UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 * 
 
 "^^((^'V 
 
 -^wfc.
 
 IMPKESSIONS OF DANTE 
 
 AND OF 
 
 THE NEW WOULD
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF DANTE 
 
 AND OF 
 
 THE NEW WORLD 
 
 WITH A FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. CEOSS 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCXCIII
 
 P K E F A C E. 
 
 " DON'T shoot the organist ; he's doing his 
 level best." This ancient American story of 
 a notice prominently affixed in a church in 
 the Wild West, as a gentle appeal to the 
 congregation, expresses the mildly depreca- 
 tory attitude that I desire to assume to my 
 readers if I have any or rather the attitude 
 that I hope they will assume to me. " Don't 
 shoot the essayist ; he's doing his level best." 
 I confess that it is difficult to find a valid 
 excuse for republishing old magazine articles, 
 and in my own case I cannot plead that any 
 host of admiring friends has put pressure on 
 me to collect mine. I take it that the real 
 reason for these republications is always the 
 same a desire on the part of the writer to 
 
 451453
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 leave some print of his footsteps, however 
 shallow, on the sands of time. It must be 
 admitted that this reason is not a very urgent 
 one for readers, and may even prove to be 
 slightly pathetic for the writer if it happens 
 that no copies of his book are sold. One copy 
 must always go to the British Museum, and 
 that is a record of his existence on this troub- 
 lous planet. But it is rather like a tombstone 
 record. For I protest that, with the excep- 
 tion of one's feelings in a cemetery, I know 
 scarcely any sensation more depressing than 
 to stand on the floor of the great reading- 
 room in Bloomsbury and let the eye follow, 
 till the head is dizzy, the huge circles of 
 books, hundreds of thousands of which no eye 
 but the author's has ever looked at. What 
 a grave of reputations ! What a mute appeal 
 to our sympathies in the long labour, the 
 hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows that 
 went to the making of all these unread, and 
 
 o 
 
 mostly unnecessary, volumes ! Fortunately 
 mine is " only a little one." I hope that the 
 first three essays may have some general 
 interest. Perhaps this may prove to be a 
 harmless delusion on my part, and hope's
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 flattering tale may be rudely contradicted 
 by Messrs Blackwoods' account of sales. If 
 the first three have no general interest, I 
 expect that the remainder will generally be 
 looked on as rather ancient history. But 
 history has its uses even though it be true 
 that it never repeats itself. And there is 
 a certain interest (especially, let us admit, to 
 the author !) in noting the progress of the 
 matters reviewed in twenty years, and in 
 learning from later events whether any of 
 the results were more or less clearly deducible 
 from the premisses. The state of things in 
 the United States during the suspension of 
 specie payments and after resumption, must 
 always arrest the attention of business men, 
 economists, and currency doctors. In any 
 time, too, of great commercial depression, 
 it is good to know that another country 
 has been through the same mill before, and 
 has come out safely. I doubt if the finan- 
 cial condition of any country was ever more 
 depressed than that of the United States 
 in 1877. The year lives in my memory as 
 characterised by the shrewdly humorous re- 
 mark of an American to an English fellow-
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 traveller on a Cunard steamer. " The fact 
 is, sir, that trade is so powerful bad in my 
 country, that although I am now on my honey- 
 moon trip to Europe, I really couldn't afford 
 to bring my wife along ! " Events have since 
 proved that time is all that is wanted in a 
 new, rich, and undeveloped country with an 
 energetic and mainly honest population. The 
 three forces that have enabled the United 
 States to pull through their troubles so 
 quickly and so successfully are immigration, 
 the extension of railroads, and the assurance 
 of peace. There is no blood-tax, and conse- 
 quently all the energies of the entire popula- 
 tion are devoted to the production of useful 
 and agreeable things possessing exchangeable 
 value or in other words, to the production 
 of wealth. And if the question be asked, 
 What connection has Dante with the New 
 World ? I am inclined to answer it in his 
 own words from the ' De Monarchia.' " It 
 has thus been sufficiently set forth that the 
 proper work of the human race, taken as a 
 whole, is to set in action the whole capacity 
 of that understanding which is capable of 
 development : first in the way of speculation,
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 and then by its extension in the way of 
 action. And seeing that what is true of a 
 part is true also of the whole, and that it 
 is by rest and quiet that the individual man 
 becomes perfect in wisdom and prudence ; so 
 the human race, by living in the calm and 
 tranquillity of peace, applies itself most freely 
 and easily to its proper work a work which, 
 according to the saying, ' Thou hast made him 
 a little lower than the angels,' is almost divine. 
 And hence the word which sounded to the 
 shepherds from above was not riches, nor 
 pleasure, nor honour, nor length of life, nor 
 health, nor strength, nor beauty ; but peace. 
 For the heavenly host said, ' Glory to God 
 in the highest, and on earth peace to men 
 of goodwill.' Therefore also ' Peace be with 
 you' was the salutation of the Saviour of 
 mankind. For it behoved Him, who was the 
 greatest of Saviours, to utter in His greeting 
 the greatest of saving blessings." Three hun- 
 dred years, too, after Dante's death, Bacon, 
 in his ' Novum Organon/ remarks with the 
 prophetic vision of true genius, " the breath 
 of hope blows on us from that Continent." 
 What is this breath of hope which has now
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 become a pervading atmosphere over half the 
 planet ? It is the freedom from the continual 
 dread of war. The New World rests on the 
 basis of industrialism as opposed to militarism. 
 In this single nineteenth century we have 
 seen a nation, which has had the good fortune 
 to be able to establish itself on this basis, 
 grow to be 65 millions of people holding one of 
 the most commanding positions in the world. 
 If it can maintain that position without further 
 war, the example must have a beneficent 
 effect on Europe ; for although the circum- 
 stances of the two hemispheres are so widely 
 different, success will always have its admirers 
 and its great influence. Every day saved 
 from war is a day gained, and the union in 
 sentiment of all the English-speaking peoples 
 nearly 120 million of them to-day will al- 
 ways be the strongest guarantee of peace. 
 
 In conclusion, I must apologise for the defects 
 of style in these papers. They are not put 
 forward as literature but as impressions and 
 as impressions they must be judged. Let me 
 not forget, too, the chief raison d'etre of a 
 preface to reprints namely, to thank the pro-
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 prietors of the various magazines ' Black- 
 wood's,' * Nineteenth Century,' ' Fraser's,' 
 ' Macmillan's,' and the ' Contemporary ' for 
 their courtesy in permitting the republication. 
 
 J. W. C. 
 
 QCEEX AXXE'S MANSION'S, 
 October 1892.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL, ..... 1 
 
 DANTE AND THE " NEW REFORMATION," ... 66 
 THE NEW WORLD, . . . . . .110 
 
 ON THE EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA, . 134 
 THE FUTURE OF THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS* 
 
 EMIGRATION, .... 163 
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA, ...... 199 
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD, ...... 236 
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK, ...... 266 
 
 CONCLUSION : WITH A FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM, . 294
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL 1 
 
 A WORD of apology, or at any rate of explan- 
 ation, seems almost to be required from any 
 one who, without special qualification, writes 
 about Dante at this period of the world's 
 history. The excuse and the motive are in 
 effect one. Within the last few years Dante 
 may be said to have becomje popular popular 
 in the widest use of the term both in England 
 and in America. A new generation of readers, 
 drawn in many cases from fresh social strata, 
 approach a poet (and particularly a poet whose 
 writing is in a sense sacred) in a different 
 attitude from that of the select few to whom 
 the poems have hitherto been a special cult : 
 
 1 Black wood's Magazine, May 1886. 
 A
 
 2 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 and it may perhaps be worth while to look at 
 the ' Divina Commedia ' from the standpoint 
 of some of those who may come unaided to 
 the attempt to understand the meaning the 
 simplest and most elementary meaning of the 
 world-famous work. The study of the great 
 Italian, for some reason or other, frequently 
 breeds a peculiar intellectual and spiritual 
 exclusiveness. But this is no new feeling. 
 
 " If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be 
 That such high fancies of a soul so proud 
 Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd 
 (As touching my discourse I'm told by thee), 
 This were my grievous pain." l 
 
 So wrote Boccaccio to one who had censured 
 his public exposition of Dante in 1373 fifty- 
 two years after the great poet's death and 
 the year, too, of our own Chaucer's visit to 
 Florence. But the genial story-teller need 
 not have been afraid. No great poet's work 
 really suffers from contact with the crowd. 
 There will always be a large number of the 
 uneducated ready to be touched by the best, 
 however much they may miss the subtler deli- 
 cacies of artistic work, and it is impossible 
 
 1 Dante and his Circle (D. G. Rossetti), p. 250.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 3 
 
 for the most commonplace audience to harm 
 a great writer ; whilst, on the other hand, the 
 greater the writer, the more certainty there 
 is of his sowing seed of incalculable value in 
 the minds of the most commonplace audience. 
 In music, for example, it has often been ob- 
 served that, in such assemblages as the People's 
 Concerts, the greatest masters always make 
 themselves felt, however much the general 
 taste may have been debased by music-halls. 
 It is said that in the art of acting, no player 
 ever made a complete failure in the part of 
 Hamlet, the play is so entrancing. In the 
 sacred cabinet of the Sistine Madonna, the 
 solemn awe is not confined to the cultured 
 few. It is the possession and the privilege 
 of the many. And is the same thing not true 
 also of pure literature ? The experiment will 
 now, at any rate, be tried in rather a crucial 
 case ; for the ' Divine Comedy,' translated and 
 on the whole admirably well translated by 
 Longfellow, has been published in Professor 
 Morley's ' Universal Library,' and can be 
 bought for the modest sum of lOd. 
 
 It would be interesting (if it were possible) 
 to know the numbers and the class of buyers
 
 4 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 of the book. There will undoubtedly be a 
 number of artisans and mechanics among 
 them. What will they think of it ? It must 
 be a considerable puzzle, viewed probably 
 with mixed feelings. Professor Morley has 
 given a succinct account of the poet and his 
 writings in five pages of very small print, and 
 then follows the introductory canto of the 
 " Inferno " preluding the other 99 cantos the 
 mystic number of the great vision without one 
 single note or explanation of any kind what- 
 ever. It would probably have been quite 
 impossible, as a question of expense, to have 
 given the Italian text at the foot of the 
 English version for the nominal price of a 
 shilling ; but will it not be necessary to pub- 
 lish another volume, in the original, if the 
 book is to have a wide appreciation or success 
 amongst the poorer of the English upper 
 middle classes and the more advanced of the 
 lower middle classes, for whom the series is 
 mainly intended ? 
 
 There is a good deal to be said in favour of 
 the absence of notes. Adequate notes are 
 necessarily so frequent, that the continuity of 
 reading is too much interrupted for pleasure.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 5 
 
 Very few of the buyers of such a book are 
 likely to become Dante students, and whoso- 
 ever listens with the right ear can enjoy the 
 most exquisite bits of the poem without any 
 explanation. But, apart from the original, 
 the work cannot be fairly tasted in a trans- 
 lation. With an Italian grammar and dic- 
 tionary, any intelligent person, fired with 
 enthusiasm, can master the most beautiful 
 passages in the original with the help of such 
 a rendering as this of Longfellow's, and read- 
 ing the poem in that way will be of the 
 highest value. For when an Englishman with 
 only a smattering of Italian asks himself why 
 the reading of Dante gives him greater plea- 
 sure than almost anything known to him in 
 his own language, one of the answers must be, 
 that in the matter of foi^rti the great master 
 writing 600 years ago has spoken the last 
 word. But this pleasure can only be enjoyed 
 (savour e, to use an expressive French word) 
 by reading the very words that the poet him- 
 self has written. Lines so perfectly wrought 
 as the story of Francesca da Rimini, the de- 
 scription of the voyage of Ulysses (which may 
 be very profitably compared with Tennyson's
 
 6 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 transcript of it), the story of Ugolino, the 
 meeting with Beatrice in purgatory, the 
 picture of the bird waiting for the dawn, and 
 the last canto of the " Paradiso," besides 
 hundreds of other passages and single lines, 
 " cannot be transmuted from their own speech 
 to another without breaking all their sweet- 
 ness and harmony." 
 
 There are single lines in Longfellow's trans- 
 lation which will appeal to every reader as 
 admirably well given : for instance, Jason's 
 desertion of Hypsipyle 
 
 " Lasciolla quivi gravicla e soletta ; " 
 
 " There did he leave her pregnant and forlorn ; " l 
 
 the line on Buonconte 
 " Per una lagrimetta che '1 mi tosrlie : " 
 
 O * 
 
 " For one poor little tear that takes him from me " 2 
 or Virgil to Bordello 
 
 " Non per far, ma per non fare ho perduto ; " 
 " I by not doing, not by doing lost," &c. 3 
 
 In all of these the full flavour of the original 
 is retained; and these are only a sample of 
 many more of equal felicity. This little essay, 
 however, is not meant for a criticism, but is 
 
 1 Inf. xviii. 94. 2 Purg. v. 107. 3 Purg. vii. 25.
 
 DAXTE FOR THE GENERAL. 7 
 
 written on the assumption that the reader of 
 the poem is trying to make what he can out 
 of the one volume in his hands. 
 
 Probably few things in literature approach 
 in exciting, breathless interest, the seven 
 opening cantos of the " Inferno." They bear 
 us so strongly along, that their effect is like 
 the first sight of the ocean, of Niagara, or of 
 the Alps, amongst the three or four unfor- 
 gettable impressions in life -- amongst the 
 three or four things much heard of which 
 have not proved disappointments. If one 
 had never known the name of Dante before 
 reading them, one would still be enthralled, 
 simply taking the words as they stand with- 
 out any allegorical interpretation. The im- 
 pressive opening 
 
 " Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 
 Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, 
 Ch& la diritta via era smarrita." 
 
 " Midway upon the journey of our life 
 I found myself within a forest dark, 
 For the straightforward pathway had been lost.' 
 
 The meeting with the shade of Virgil : 
 
 " Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte, 
 Che spande di parlar si largo flume ? "
 
 8 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 The sense that such lines as the following 
 have come echoing down to us through our 
 own greatest poet in ' Hamlet ' : 
 
 " And as he is who unwills what he willed, 
 
 And by new thoughts doth his intention change, 
 So that from his design he quite withdraws ; 
 Such I became upon that dark hillside, 
 Because in thinking I consumed the emprise 
 Which was so very prompt in the beginning." 
 
 The appearance of Beatrice on the scene, and 
 the exquisite passage where we are intro- 
 duced by Lucia to the relation between her 
 and Dante : 
 
 " Disse : Beatrice, loda di Dio vera, 
 
 Che non soccorri quei che t' amo tanto, 
 Ch' uscio per te della volgare schiera ? " 
 
 " ' Beatrice,' said she, ' the true praise of God, 
 
 Why succourest thou not him who loved thee so 
 For thee he issued from the vulgar herd ? ' " 
 
 The comparison of Dante's renovated courage 
 to the flowerets : 
 
 " By nocturnal chill 
 
 Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them 
 Uplift themselves all open on their stems." 
 
 The descriptions of the starlings, of the cranes, 
 and best of all, that of the doves :
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 "As turtle-doves called onward by desire, 
 
 With open and steady wings to the sweet nest 
 Fly through the air, by their volition borne." 
 
 The inscription on the Gate of Hell, " Las- 
 ciate ogni speranza, voi, ch' entrate," and 
 the sadness of the blind life of those " who 
 have foregone the good of intellect." The 
 meeting with Homer and the Latin poets : 
 
 " Parlando cose che '1 tacere e bello." 
 "Things saying 'tis becoming to keep silent." 
 
 And the picture of the great shades : 
 
 " People there were with solemn eyes and slow, 
 Of great authority in their countenance ; 
 They spake but seldom, and with gentle voices. 
 
 . . . The mighty spirits 
 Whom to have seen I feel myself exalted." 
 
 Every word of canto v., with the story of 
 Francesca da Rimini, especially that culmin- 
 ating line embodying the tragedy in half-a- 
 dozen words : 
 
 " Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante." 
 
 The natural pitying feeling exhibited by Dante 
 to Ciacco the glutton : 
 
 " Thy wretchedness 
 Weighs on me so, that it to weep invites me."
 
 10 DANTE FOB THE GENERAL. 
 
 The great lines on Fortune : 
 
 " Now canst thou, son, behold the transient farce 
 Of goods that are committed unto Fortune 
 For which the human race each other buffet ; 
 For all the gold that is beneath the moon, 
 Or ever has been, of these weary souls 
 Could never make a single one repose." 
 
 And these on the sullen, which should be 
 inscribed on all our hearts : 
 
 " Fitti nel limo dicon : Tristi fummo 
 Nell' aer dolce che da sol s' allegra, 
 Portando dentro accidioso fummo ; 
 Or ci attristiam nella belletta negra." 
 
 "Fixed in the mire they say we sullen were 
 
 In the sweet air which by the sun is gladdened, 
 Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek ; 
 Now we are sullen in this sable mire. rt 
 
 In truth, it may be said of these seven cantos 
 as Alfieri said of the whole ' Comedy,' that 
 one may begin by making extracts, but one 
 ends by wishing to extract every word. The 
 epithets are so original, " mute of all light," 
 " where the sun is silent," the rain " eternal 
 maledict and cold and heavy," " the air with- 
 out a star," the " sound of hands," the " em- 
 browned air," the " water sombre-hued." We 
 have every finest quality of his style the
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 11 
 
 simplicity, the strength, the compression, the 
 forthrightness, the tenderness ; and we are 
 altogether wrought up to the highest pitch 
 of enthusiasm not only towards the poem, 
 but towards the poet. No grating note has 
 been sounded : so far the tone is sad, but it 
 is solemn, when it becomes passionate and 
 personal, we feel inclined to echo Farinata's 
 words 
 
 "Come avesse lo Inferno in gran clispitto." 
 
 But the opening of the poem strikes exactly 
 the right key. A deep awe has fallen upon us, 
 and we are therefore in a state of mind to 
 receive all the greater shock when we are 
 suddenly brought face to face, in canto viii., 
 with the brutality (there is no other word for 
 it) of Dante's expressed delight in the torture 
 of Philippo Argent i. We feel that we are in 
 the hands of a different man from the author 
 of the previous cantos, and we feel it with 
 resentment a resentment which we are in- 
 tended to feel towards Argenti, but which we 
 unfortunately do feel towards Dante for his 
 want of self-control and want of dignity in 
 the treatment of that " arrogant person," who,
 
 12 DAXTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 whatever he may have been in life, says here, 
 appealingly, " Thou seest that I am one who 
 weeps." A glory has passed away ; and we 
 can only account for the sudden change in the 
 tone on the hypothesis that a considerable 
 interval of time elapsed between the writing 
 of the seventh and eighth cantos a time 
 during which the great tragedy in Dante's life 
 occurred. From this point onward to the 
 end of the " Inferno," the wrath is always 
 gathering, -- not only the righteous wrath 
 against the worse forms of sin as the poet 
 descends the circles of hell where a good 
 man might well say, " I do well to be angry " 
 but passionate personal attacks on wretched 
 sinners, where the want of dignity in the 
 narrator turns all our sympathies to the 
 sinners ; and perhaps, before going further, 
 it will be well for a reader to familiarise him- 
 self with the history of the poet, to try to 
 find some of the reasons which prompted him 
 to write as he has written. 
 
 There are authors so impersonal that we care 
 not greatly to know them in their habits as 
 they lived. Dante will be found to be, above 
 all, personal. The little that is really known
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 13 
 
 of him, from outside and contemporary sources, 
 can be gathered up in very few words ; but 
 all his own writing is more or less auto- 
 biographical. 
 
 Of all poets that ever were born, he was 
 perhaps the most favourably circumstanced 
 in his birth and in his surroundings. Of 
 
 o 
 
 good family, and with sufficient fortune, 
 Durante Alighieri (as he was christened in 
 1265) received the usual education of a 
 Florentine young man in his circumstances. 
 There is absolutely no historical evidence to 
 prove that he went to any of the universities 
 to which his various biographers have con- 
 signed him; but we know from his own writing 
 that he fell under the influence of Brunetto 
 Latini, one of the most learned men of that 
 time. Guido Cavalcanti, then the chief poet 
 in Italy, was his elder by thirteen years, and 
 the first among his friends. When, at the 
 age of eighteen, the rising star writes his 
 first sonnet, he sends it round to all the 
 sonneteers of the day, and is at once received 
 and welcomed as a poet among poets. There 
 is no early struggle with self-education, with 
 chill penury, or with an unsympathetic en-
 
 14 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 vironment. From the age of nine he has 
 made Beatrice Portinari his idol and his ideal, 
 and has received that highest education which 
 a pure young love can best give. 
 
 " For indeed I know 
 Of no more subtle master under heaven 
 Than is a maiden passion for a maid." 
 
 She dies when he is twenty-five years old. 
 He is disconsolate ; takes his part in military 
 service, and we have his own account of his 
 sensations on two or three occasions, 1 when 
 there were engagements of some importance. 
 Afterwards he marries Madonna Gemma, of 
 the family of the Donati, and five sons and one 
 or two daughters are born to him. Having 
 entered public life in those stormy times of feud 
 and faction, he becomes one of the Priors or 
 chief officers of the Republic ; is sent many 
 times on embassies by his Government (one of 
 them giving occasion for the famous and very 
 characteristic remark " Se io vo, chi rimane ? 
 e se io rimango, chi va ? " "If I go, who is to 
 remain ; and if I remain, who is to go ? "). 
 From his last embassy to Pope Boniface VIII. 
 he never returned to Florence, the party 
 
 1 Inf. xxi. 94, xxii. 1-10 ; Purg. v. 93.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 15 
 
 opposed to him having attained power, and 
 in his absence decreed his banishment, with 
 the unusually severe addition to the sentence 
 that he should be burned alive if ever he 
 returned to his native city. For the last 
 nineteen years of his life he was a wanderer. 
 In exile he died, even as in exile he had 
 been conceived, for his father and mother 
 were among the " fuorusciti " up to the time 
 of his birth. Boccaccio describes him as 
 of medium height, the face long, the nose 
 aquiline, the jaw large, and the under lip pro- 
 truding considerably over the upper, shoulders 
 rather bent, eyes larger than ordinary, an 
 olive complexion, hair and beard thick, crisp, 
 and black ; most temperate in eating and 
 drinking, and most zealous in study or in 
 any other pursuit, and he went along with 
 the air of a melancholy man, and a dreamer. 
 He had a lofty soul, and was excessively 
 haughty. 
 
 Boccaccio's life of Dante has been too much 
 decried. It is quite true that it is rhetorical, 
 insufficient, often inaccurate as to dates, and 
 generally very much below the level of its 
 subject ; but when the other biographers are
 
 16 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 consulted, almost all their salient points are 
 referred back to Boccaccio. His description 
 of Dante's first meeting with Beatrice, though 
 taken from the ' Vita Nuova,' has a certain 
 charm of its own in the Boccaccian style, 
 which may be thus roughly transcribed : 
 
 " It used to be the habit of the ladies and 
 gentlemen of Florence, when the sweet spring- 
 time arrived, to give themselves up to social 
 enjoyments, each in his own circle of society. 
 Following this custom, a worthy citizen, Folco 
 Portinari, had invited his neighbours to as- 
 semble at his house upon the first of May. 
 Among the company was Alighieri, the father 
 of Dante, who brought his boy, then scarcely 
 nine years of age. And it happened that 
 Bice, the daughter of Folco, was there too 
 a maiden not yet past her eighth year, 
 graceful, charming, and attractive in her 
 manners, of a beautiful countenance, and 
 grave beyond her years. Her very delicate 
 features were in admirable harmony, and over 
 and above their beauty, revealed such candid 
 charms, that by many she was said to be 
 almost an angel. Dante's gaze was riveted 
 on her with so great an affection, that, child
 
 DANTE FOB THE GENERAL. 17 
 
 though he was, he received her so deeply 
 into his soul that no other after-pleasure ever 
 effaced the lovely image. And this love not 
 only persisted, but it increased to such a 
 degree that Dante had no greater desire, 
 and no greater consolation, than to see her 
 who was its object. As he advanced in life, 
 this passion very often occasioned him both 
 sighs and tears, which are poured forth in his 
 ' Vita Nuova.' It ought to be added that his 
 love was a very pure love which is rare in 
 passions of this kind." 
 
 This, as we know, was the master or the 
 mistress influence in Dante's life, and it is 
 impossible to understand the ' Divina Corn- 
 media' without some theory regarding this 
 relation to Beatrice. There can be no doubt 
 of her existence in the flesh. There is no 
 evidence that Dante ever wished to marry 
 her. We know that she was married to 
 Simone dei Bardi when our poet was twenty- 
 two years old. But while she is a real woman, 
 and we feel at times that it is a real passion, 
 there is always a note of unreality in it. By 
 the force of his imagination, and by his per- 
 fect art-workmanship, Dante has contrived to 
 
 B
 
 18 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 create and to sustain from the beginning to 
 the end of his writing a relation so simple 
 in appearance and so complex in fact, that it 
 is always impossible to determine where the 
 true Beatrice ends and the ideal begins. His 
 passion (even in its least allegorical shape) is 
 evidently not at any time a man's natural 
 passion for the woman he is in love with. It 
 is rather the intellectual and spiritual per- 
 ception of what such a passion might be 
 ideally. A flesh-and-blood woman a child 
 and then a woman formed the basis of the 
 sentiment, which could not have existed 
 without that basis ; but we continually feel 
 that there is a good deal of reflex egoism 
 about it. It could never have stood the 
 strain of intimate acquaintance, at close 
 quarters it would have been shattered. A 
 salutation in the street was sufficient to 
 nourish it, and more might have proved 
 dangerous. But over and above her influ- 
 ence as a woman, she represents in the 
 ' Comedy,' allegorically, Heavenly Wisdom 
 and Theology ; and the suggestion may be 
 hazarded that, between the real and the 
 purely allegorical, Dante personifies his own
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 19 
 
 better nature in Beatrice. She has become 
 his outside conscience. Whenever he goes 
 wrong in life, it is her whom he has offended . 
 He can scarcely now be imagined apart from 
 her. She reigns supreme as a vital part of 
 himself, from the first word to the last. In 
 words of the " Paradiso," 
 
 " From the first day that I beheld her face 
 In this life to the moment of this look, 
 The sequence of my song has ne'er been severed." l 
 
 With this view of Beatrice as representing 
 Dante's own higher nature it may be said 
 that not even in Goethe himself was there 
 greater warfare of two souls within one breast 
 which could not be harmonised, " the one 
 which clung with indomitable energy to the 
 earth and the things of earth, and the other 
 which was ever struggling to rise beyond the 
 confines of this world into the illimitable." 
 Dante, in his dark strivings, is always con- 
 scious of the right way, and in the end his 
 higher soul carries us with him on a magic 
 cloak to the realms of Paradise. The interest 
 of the drama, in the ' Comedy/ centres in the 
 ascent of that soul of his. For the more we 
 
 1 Par. xxx. 28.
 
 20 DANTE FOB THE GENERAL. 
 
 read the poem, the more we feel that the most 
 dominant note throughout is the author's per- 
 sonality ; and one way of understanding its 
 meaning is to conceive that the journey re- 
 corded in the vision is to be accounted for by 
 Dante's own faithlessness, both in the flesh and 
 in the spirit, to his ideal to his own higher 
 nature to Beatrice. And if Dante was ever 
 faithless to his ideal, how much more faithless 
 are other mortals ! This is one of the lessons 
 we have to learn from the ' Comedy.' But it is 
 all one long lesson a long discipline. Keeping 
 this in mind, let us now enter on the most diffi- 
 cult and the most delicate part of the subject. 
 Boccaccio was seven years old when Dante 
 died. He was the intimate friend of Dante's 
 nephew, and had therefore exceptional oppor- 
 tunities of knowing the truth. Moreover, he 
 was the first person chosen to deliver public 
 lectures on the ' Divina Commedia ' in Flor- 
 ence, fifty years after Dante's death, so that 
 it may be inferred that he was then consid- 
 ered thoroughly competent to deal with the 
 subject ; and this is what he writes in his 
 ' Life,' not lightly, or to round a period, but 
 with a solemn appeal to Dante's shade :
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 21 
 
 " Of a truth, I blush to cast any shadow on 
 the bright reputation of so great a man ; but 
 as the order of my history began by setting 
 forth his good qualities, the less that I try to 
 conceal his frailties, the more will I be believed 
 in what I have said in his praise. It is then 
 to Dante himself that I address my excuses, 
 if, perchance, from the heights of heaven, his 
 scornful eye is looking at me now as I write. 
 Along with all his strength of character and 
 all his learning (and I have already shown 
 how much of both he possessed), he was not 
 free from the sway of the passions (lussuria) 
 nay, they had very great power over him, 
 not only in his youth, but in his riper years ; 
 and such vice, however natural and common 
 it may be, is certainly not to be commended. 
 Nay, it is very difficult to plead a tolerable 
 excuse for it." 
 
 Nor is this the only contemporary evidence. 
 In a well-known sonnet, Guido Cavalcanti re- 
 bukes Dante for his way of life after the death 
 of Beatrice. 
 
 " I come to thee by day-time constantly, 
 
 But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find : 
 Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind,
 
 22 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 And for thy many virtues gone from thee. 
 It was thy wont to shun much company, 
 
 Unto all sorry concourse ill inclined : 
 
 And still thy speech of me heartfelt and kind, 
 Had made me treasure up thy poetry. 
 But now, I dare not, for thine abject life, 
 
 Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes ; 
 
 Now come I in such sort that thou mayst know, 
 
 Ah ! prithee read this sonnet many times. 
 So shall that evil one who bred this strife 
 
 Be thrust from thy dishonoured soul and go" l 
 
 Dante himself, in speaking to Forese Donati, 
 his brother-in-law, who was among 1 the gluttons 
 in the " Purgatorio," says : 
 
 " If thou bring back to mind 
 What thou with me hast been, and I with thee, 
 The present memory will be grievous still. 
 Out of that life he turned me back who goes 
 In front of me [Virgil]. 
 
 His encouragements have led me up, 
 
 Ascending and still circling round the mount 
 That you doth straighten whom the world made 
 crooked." 2 
 
 We know that our poet himself had no 
 tendency to the sin of gluttony. The passage 
 must therefore refer to other lapses. It has 
 
 1 Dante and his Circle (D. G. Rosaetti, p. 161). 
 
 2 Purg. xxiii. 115.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 23 
 
 been attempted to explain all allusions of this 
 sort by supposing them to be simply allegori- 
 cal. Shakespeare has been treated in some- 
 thing of the same fashion. Is it not best, 
 however, because truest, to acknowledge to 
 ourselves that both of them were men with 
 the strongest intellectual and spiritual natures, 
 founded on strong animal natures (the con- 
 junction is not unknown), with passions strong 
 in proportion to their beings passions that 
 sometimes completely dominated them ; that 
 there were times in their lives when the un- 
 manageable horse of the chariot plunged down 
 and dragged the other after it ? But their 
 writings will not appeal the less to us on 
 that account nay, rather the more. One of 
 our own great living poets has pointed out 
 that one at any rate of the meanings of this 
 mighty polysensuous work of Dante's is to 
 
 show 
 
 " How men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 Among 1 mortals, it is not the faultless be- 
 
 O ' 
 
 ings but the faulty, who have conquered and 
 triumphed over their faults, that have left the 
 greatest heritage of good to mankind. For their
 
 24 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 lesson is, that no sinner who has the root of 
 goodness and of nobleness and of purity in his 
 heart, need ever despair while life lasts of 
 coming "quando che sia alle beate genti "- may 
 always hope that for him, too, there is the water 
 of Lethe from which he may emerge after he 
 has paid the penalty of his faults with tears, 
 " Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars." 
 
 Before proceeding with the " Inferno," let 
 us read carefully cantos xxx. and xxxi. of the 
 " Purgatorio," and perhaps we may then feel 
 that we hold in our hands one of the keys 
 to " the straight way which was lost." It is 
 the great scene of Dante's first meeting with 
 Beatrice one of the very grandest passages 
 in the whole comedy and of course it ought 
 to be read in its entirety. Unfortunately 
 space forbids anything but an extract here. 
 She speaks 
 
 " But still that thou mayst feel a greater shame 
 For thy transgression, and another time 
 Hearing the Sirens thou mayst be more strong," l 
 
 1 Of. Purg. xix. 7-32 and 58-60 ; also Purg. xxxi. 80-90. See, 
 too, Inf. xviii. 127-137, and Letter to Moruello Malaspina, 
 dated, Witte thinks, in 1310, in which Dante writes how " Love 
 terrible and imperious " has him in its power and reigns over 
 him, and that his principles are of no avail against it.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 25 
 
 " Cast down the seed of weeping and attend ; 
 So shalt thou hear how in an opposite way 
 My buried flesh should have directed thee. 
 
 Never to thee presented art or nature 
 
 Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein 
 I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth. 
 
 And if the highest pleasure then did fail thee 
 By reason of my death, what mortal thing 
 Should then have drawn thee into its desire? 
 
 Thou oughtest not to have stooped thy pinion down- 
 ward 
 
 To wait for further blows, or little girl, 
 Or other vanity of such brief use. 
 
 If thou 
 
 In hearing sufferest pain, lift up thy beard, 
 And thou shalt feel a greater pain in seeing. 
 
 Then I upraised at her command my chin, 
 And wJwn she by the beard tJieface demanded, 
 Well I perceived the venom of her meaning" 1 
 
 The allusion to the beard is a character- 
 istically feminine way of making his pec- 
 cadilloes unpleasant to the mature offender. 
 Dante was forty-five years old in 1310. One 
 hears the very voice of a real woman in the 
 words, charged with jealousy and hurt feeling. 
 They are spoken in a tone that we can scarcely 
 
 1 Purg. xxxi. 43-75.
 
 26 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 conceive the most highly imaginative poet 
 putting in the mouth of an abstraction (call 
 it Heavenly Wisdom, Theology, or what we 
 will), who is supposed to address a disciple 
 merely gone astray in philosophy, religion, or 
 politics. The allusion to her own fair limbs, 
 and to the mortal thing which had drawn 
 Dante into its desire not to mention the 
 use of the word "pargoletta" seems to be 
 conclusive. 
 
 And Beatrice shows us the pity of it 
 " By the largess of celestial graces 
 
 Sucli had this man become in his new life, 
 Potentially, that every righteous habit 
 Would have made admirable proof in him ; 
 
 But so much more malignant and more savage 
 Becomes the land untilled and with bad seed 
 The more good earthly vigour it possesses. 
 
 So low he fell that all appliances 
 For his salvation were already short, 
 Save showing him the people of perdition" 
 
 Let us now try to familiarise ourselves with 
 the atmosphere in which the young poet, 
 blessed by the " largess of celestial graces," 
 and so full of gentleness, apparently, in his
 
 DANTE FOR, THE GENERAL. 27 
 
 spring-time, sang his quaint mystic ballad of 
 the New or the Early Life. In reading it, we 
 can only think, in his own words, of the olden 
 times 
 
 "The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease 
 
 That filled our souls with love and courtesy." 1 
 
 But this was far indeed from the actual con- 
 dition of Florence in the years which fol- 
 lowed 1287-1300. The little city could put 
 30,000 men under arms within its walls ; and 
 we read of constant unintermitting feuds be- 
 tween family and family, between house and 
 house a close-packed fighting neighbourhood, 
 that must have been a very lively sample of 
 the Inferno. Taking Dante's own house in 
 the Via San Martino as a centre, we are 
 amazed to see what a tiny circle includes the 
 ancient city with " il mio bel San Giovanni" 
 (the Baptistery) ; the Badia, whence the bell 
 tolled the terza e nona ; Santa Maria Novella, 
 where Cimabue's great picture of the Virgin 
 was carried in triumph ; Or San Michele ; the 
 yet unfinished Duomo and Giotto's rising cam- 
 panile ; the Palazzo Vecchio and Santa Croce 
 
 1 Purg. xiv. 109-111.
 
 28 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 still a -building. The blue sky, the bright 
 sun, the peculiarly clear and thrilling air, the 
 opalescent light which makes every building 
 a poem in Florence, are all the same to-day 
 as they were 600 years ago made to fash- 
 ion a poet. The lot of the masses, chattering 
 and chaffering in the market-place, or throng- 
 ing the noisy Calimara, is probably not very 
 different now. The poor have become not 
 much less poor, but the rich have perhaps 
 become relatively less rich for the City of 
 Flowers was then the chief banking centre 
 of Europe, and her palaces remain the monu- 
 ments of the capitalists mostly extinct vol- 
 canoes now, as are her famous citizens. 
 
 As we look down from the heights of San 
 Miniato or Bellosguardo, the wonder grows 
 how one such very little spot on the earth's 
 surface could have produced in three short 
 centuries (thirteenth to sixteenth) so many 
 names eminent in history, and that within its 
 walls it could have held at one and the same 
 time (while Roger Bacon was finishing his 
 work in England and Sir William Wallace 
 was the glory of Scotland) men of such mark 
 as Cimabue, Brunetto Latini, Guido Caval-
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 29 
 
 canti, Casella, Arnolfo, Dante, Giotto, Dino 
 Frescobaldi, R. Malaspina, Dino Compagni, 
 and Giovanni Villani all in the full vigour 
 of their manhood and of their work. Every 
 stone speaks to us of the great dead ; and if 
 the men were worthy of the city, the city in 
 its beauty was becoming worthy of the men. 
 For surely it is, as old Boccaccio has some- 
 where described it, " Di ogni citta d' Italia 
 bellissima." Here it was with Fiesole above 
 him, the purple hills beyond, Monte Morello 
 near, and Falterona in the distance, with " il 
 bel fiume d'Arno" flowing through the vale, 
 that this young eagle of song mewed his 
 mighty youth. This was the stage on which 
 he played his part an active part from his 
 25th to his 36th year up to " the middle of 
 the way of life," battling in the midst of the 
 seething politics of the city for the four last 
 years of that period. Without this experience 
 of the active life, the ' Divina Commedia ' 
 could never have been written ; but if the 
 poet had remained a politician, " the straight 
 way" would indeed have been lost, and the 
 great vision would have been lost too. Dante's 
 banishment, which to himself and to his friends
 
 30 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 no doubt at the time seemed to be the ex- 
 tinguishing of his career his failure as a 
 
 o o 
 
 public man, as a politician was really, as we 
 see it now, the necessary condition for his 
 arriving at that perpetuation of his fame the 
 desire for which no doubt was innate, but 
 which, he himself tells us, frad first been taught 
 to him by Brunetto Latini come uom' s'eterna. 
 It was not only that he widened the horizon 
 of his view of life in his travels, but that he 
 was able more or less to liberate his soul from 
 personal participation in all the miserable petty 
 jealousies of the time ; for no party politician, 
 however great by nature, can ever be at his 
 best. Dante's contributions to politics are 
 the great thoughts of an ideal, not of a prac- 
 tical, politician pregnant ideas of a universal 
 spiritual and a universal political direction. 
 The Pope is his " sun " and the Emperor his 
 " moon," both divinely ordained. 
 
 Such a work as the ' Divina Commedia,' with 
 a scope so vast and a treatment so elaborate, 
 demanded the sacrifice of a life. The extra- 
 ordinary compression of the thought, the 
 variety and the intensity of the imagery, the 
 mass of historical and mythical allusions and
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 31 
 
 their exactitude, required a mind wholly dis- 
 engaged from the ordinary business of the 
 world ; and it ought to be recognised that his 
 exile, although the bitterest trial in his earthly 
 life, has been the means of securing his true 
 immortality as nothing else could have done. 
 The ' Divina Commedia ' alone has made him 
 eternal. All his other writings together might 
 have secured him a place in the first class 
 among the great, but far, indeed, from the 
 place he holds as one of the universally 
 acknowledged triumvirate of the world's 
 literature. 
 
 Contemporaries can never realise the relative 
 importance of the personages as they play 
 their parts on the stage : the politicians and 
 the soldiers always stand out in grotesque 
 relief. To the Florentines of 1300 (even to 
 such a man as Giovanni Villani), the Uberti, 
 the Donati, the Cerchi, and the rest of the 
 powerful local families, were the only actors 
 worth talking about : whereas to the mass of 
 the men of our time, Dante the great poet, and 
 Giotto the great painter, are the real " people 
 of importance." Where are they all now who 
 were contemporaries with Dante in his political
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 career ? To the million readers of to-day no 
 vestige of them remains, except such immor- 
 tality as he has given them in his rhyme. 
 To remain a politician was to kill a poet : and 
 we must remember that Dante was not only 
 a great poet, but he was also a great philo- 
 sopher, a great theologian. In the " Paradise " 
 we read how, as his higher nature emerges, 
 he becomes conscious of the degrading influ- 
 ences of the political life from which he had 
 escaped : 
 
 " thou insensate care of mortal men, 
 
 How inconclusive are the syllogisms 
 
 That make thee beat thy wings in downward flight ! 
 One after laws and one to aphorisms 
 
 Was going, and one following the priesthood, 
 
 And one to reign by force or sophistry, 
 And one in theft and one in state affairs, 
 
 One in the pleasures of the flesh involved, 
 
 Wearied himself, one gave himself to ease ; 
 When I from all these things emancipate 
 
 With Beatrice above there in the heavens, 
 
 With such exceeding glory was received ! " 1 
 
 And here we have another key to the " straight 
 way which was lost." 
 
 But this sense of emancipation only came 
 
 1 Par. xi. 1-12.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 33 
 
 later, with the years that bring the philosophic 
 mind. In his first hot rage at the peculiar 
 severity of his sentence of banishment, we 
 become aware of the savage unforgiving side 
 of the poet's nature. There probably was al- 
 ways a good deal of truth in Cecco Angioleri's 
 line 
 
 " Sugar he seems, but salt's in all his ways." 
 
 From the 8th canto onwards in the " Inferno," 
 we seem to see him ever in imagination sweep- 
 ing, in his stately eagle flight, over Florence, 
 poising on slow broad wings, with eyes so keen 
 that nothing escaped them with beak and 
 talons always ready to pounce on any mis- 
 creant on earth eager to rend and pick him 
 to pieces (with a certain bird of prey delight) ; 
 yet still, when the higher spirit willed, always 
 able to fly up again into the very fountain of 
 light. With a character that, alas ! often re- 
 pels, and an intellect that always fascinates us, 
 he stands out in the twenty-five last cantos 
 of the "Inferno" as the cruellest of poets in 
 his judgments and in his treatment of men ; 
 and yet often, in the same canto, the tender- 
 est in his interpretations of nature. 
 
 c
 
 34 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 There is a certain pathos in Boccaccio's 
 somewhat imaginative account of the circum- 
 stances which divided the seven opening cantos 
 from the remainder of the poem : 
 
 " At the very time when Dante was most 
 busily engaged on this glorious labour (after 
 he had composed seven out of the hundred 
 cantos which he had determined on), came 
 the grave incident of his expulsion or flight, 
 which led him to abandon all his projects. He 
 was adrift, and obliged to wander during many 
 years. But the accomplishment of the will 
 of God cannot be counteracted by a stroke of 
 bad fortune. So that it happened that some 
 of his family, looking by chance for some 
 papers in his strong - boxes, found a little 
 copy-book in which the seven cantos were 
 written. It had been put there in a place of 
 safety at the time when the ungrateful pop- 
 ulace had risen against our poet, and, more 
 intent on plunder than on just vengeance, had 
 made a raid on his house. The cantos were 
 read with admiration, and the finders, not 
 knowing what they had got hold of, carried 
 the book to one of our fellow-citizens, Dino 
 di Messer Lambertuccio Frescobaldi, who was 
 famous at that time for his recitation of poems.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 35 
 
 The moment Dino cast his eyes over the little 
 book, he was so much struck with the beauty 
 of the style, as well as with the depth of 
 thought which seemed to him to lie hidden 
 under the beautiful crust of words, that he 
 came to the conclusion at once that it was 
 Dante's work. Distressed to see the poem 
 unfinished, and finding that Dante was stay- 
 ing at the time with the Marquis Moruello 
 Malaspina, he communicated to the Marquis 
 the circumstances of the discovery, and his 
 desire to see the work continued. 
 
 " The Marquis was a man of high culture, 
 and when he had read the cantos with great 
 admiration he showed them to Dante, asking 
 him if he knew who the author might be. 
 
 o 
 
 Dante recognised them, and replied at once 
 that they were his. Then the Marquis begged 
 him not to leave unfinished a work so well 
 begun. ' Of a truth,' said Dante, ' I had 
 thought that these verses had been lost in 
 my ruin with the rest of my books ; and 
 partly from this belief, and partly from the 
 constant fatigues which I have undergone in 
 exile, I had entirely abandoned the idea of 
 finishing the lost work. But as these cantos 
 have been recovered so unexpectedly, and as
 
 36 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 you seem to wish it, I will try to remember 
 my original plan, and if I succeed I will con- 
 tinue the work.' 
 
 "We can readily imagine," continues Boc- 
 caccio, " that he had no great difficulty in 
 recovering the thread of his original idea ; 
 and it is in taking up this thread again that 
 he opens the 8th canto with the words : ' lo 
 dico seguitando che assai prima/ &c. (' I say, 
 continuing/ &c.), from which, when we have 
 the clue, it is evident that this is the resump- 
 tion of the interrupted work." 
 
 Assuming that there is a little basis of fact 
 in this account, it furnishes us with an 
 hypothesis which enables us to understand 
 better how the bitterness of unmerited mis- 
 fortune was working a change in Dante's 
 nature or rather, was temporarily operating 
 to bring out the worse side of it. For the 
 more we try to figure to ourselves and to 
 grasp his real character, the more we realise 
 the anguish that his proud disdainful spirit 
 must have been constantly undergoing in a 
 dependent position. We feel how the iron 
 entered into his soul. It must have been a 
 veritable crucifixion for him
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 37 
 
 " And that which most shall weigh upon thy shoulders 
 Will be the bad and foolish company 
 With which into this valley thou shalt fall." l 
 
 The patronage of Can Grande must have 
 become insufferable. Grand seigneur and fine 
 fellow when he had everything his own way, 
 there was also a good deal of the spoilt child 
 of fortune in him. The world's admiration for 
 the splendid courage with which Dante finished 
 his work, bowed down under the weight of 
 such a load, has contributed to his undying 
 renown. No doubt he had himself in mind 
 when he wrote of the pilgrim Romeo 
 
 " E se il mondo sapesse il cuor ch' egli ebbe, 
 
 Mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto, 
 Assai lo loda, e piu lo loderebbe." 
 
 " And if the world could know the heart he had 
 
 In begging, bit by bit, his livelihood, 
 Though much it laud him it would laud him more." 2 
 
 The allusions to his exile are constant in his 
 writings, and very touching : "I have com- 
 passion for all unhappy people, but my great- 
 est compassion is reserved for those who, 
 eating out their hearts in exile, see their 
 native land only in their dreams." 
 
 1 Par. xvii. 61. 2 Par. vi. 140. 
 
 . _- M M r~ r*
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 But it is only in the most rarely tempered 
 natures that the uses of adversity sweeten the 
 disposition. They turn the unforgiving to 
 gall. Dante's was never the spirit to forgive 
 or to forget. Whilst it may be admitted 
 that no one has ever clutched more firmly 
 in an iron grasp the letter of the Christian 
 religion, -- its doctrines its evidences (as 
 understood in the fourteenth century), it 
 may, perhaps, without presumption, be per- 
 mitted us to doubt whether in his writings 
 he exhibits an equally true appreciation of 
 the real nature of the true essence of 
 Christ's gospel. He is constantly referred 
 to as the pre-eminently Christian poet ; but 
 does he not really belong to the Hebrew type 
 the type of David, Isaiah, Jeremiah ? An 
 eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, is 
 his avowed doctrine. He is above all things 
 a Roman a Churchman of the true Church 
 with a leaning to St Dominic, of whom he 
 says 
 
 " Therein was born the amorous paramour 
 Of Christian faith, the athlete consecrate, 
 Kind to his own, and cruel to his foes." l 
 
 1 Par. xii. 55.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 39 
 
 He places the Inquisitor in heaven, and would 
 have placed John Wesley in a very low circle 
 of hell. He is an aristocrat in feeling ex- 
 clusive in all his tendencies. We can see very 
 few rays of Christ's spirit, and can catch very 
 little echo of His voice in Dante's judgments 
 of sin, or in his general attitude towards life. 
 There is no exaltation of the humble and meek, 
 but, on the contrary, something very like 
 intellectual arrogance. In the " Paradise " he 
 takes cognisance of 
 
 " Only the souls that unto fame are known, 
 Because the spirit of the hearer rests not, 
 Nor cloth confirm its faith by an example, 
 Which has the root of it unknown and hidden, 
 Or other reason which is not apparent." l 
 
 This is not the spirit of the friend of pub- 
 licans and sinners. Dante's is not a gospel 
 for little children : as Villani says of him, 
 " On account of his learning, he was a little 
 haughty and shy and disdainful, and, like a 
 philosopher almost ungracious, knew not well 
 how to deal with unlettered folk." Those 
 who are in the " piccioletta barca " are warned 
 off in the second canto of the " Paradise " 
 
 1 Par. xvii. 138.
 
 40 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 from attempting to follow "behind my ship 
 that singing sails along." It would be diffi- 
 cult to imagine Dante saying to a woman 
 taken in adultery, " Go and sin no more ; " 
 or to her accusers, " Let him that is with- 
 out sin cast the first stone at her." He 
 does not act on the injunction, " Judge not, 
 that ye be not judged." He never has a 
 doubt about his own competence to sit in 
 judgment on the whole human race past, 
 present, and future and not only on the 
 race, but on named individuals, which is a 
 much more dangerous pretension. His pre- 
 cepts are better than his practice 
 
 " And you, O mortals, hold yourselves restrained in 
 judging." i 
 
 To us general readers, 600 years after the 
 event, the names of Brunetto Latini and of 
 Guido Guinicelli, " the father of me and of 
 my betters," have become mere types, any 
 other names would be equally effective to 
 point a moral or adorn a tale ; but when we 
 consider that these men were quite recently 
 dead, and that their relatives and friends 
 
 1 Par. xx. 133.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 41 
 
 were still alive when the ' Divina Commedia ' 
 was published that they were both men 
 to whom Dante acknowledged that he was 
 immensely indebted intellectually and spirit- 
 ually the gibbeting of the one in the " In- 
 ferno" and the other in the "Purgatorio" 
 for very heinous sins makes us stand aghast. 
 It is not a sufficient explanation that it was 
 GOO years ago other times other manners. 
 A natural and proper reverence for Dante 
 as one of the greatest moralising and spirit- 
 ualising influences in the world leads us at 
 first naturally, though perhaps unreasonably, 
 to expect that under all circumstances and 
 at all times he will himself, in his own con- 
 duct, prove true to the fundamental principles 
 of all morality a sense of justice and of 
 charity as well as of severity. Some one 
 has described the virtuous man to be one 
 who has always a severe standard for his 
 own conduct, and the most lenient that the 
 circumstances will admit for his neighbour's 
 " using his imagination in the service of 
 charity." It may be said, " Judex damnatur 
 cum nocens absolvitur." Be it. But then 
 the guilt must always be publicly proved.
 
 42 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 It must not rest on the mere ipse dixit even 
 of a poet, however eminent ; otherwise all 
 our sympathies go out to the " cara buona 
 imagine paterna," and to " il padre mio e 
 degli altri miei miglior," and no good is done 
 to us by their example ; but we can fancy 
 the evil done in Florence, at the time, by 
 this outrage on the memory of the accused, 
 who were no longer there to answer for them- 
 selves, by the cruel pain inflicted on their 
 friends. In the case of these two famous 
 writers and of the two citizens "who were 
 so worthy " -Tegghiaio Aldobrandi and Jacopo 
 Rusticucci one of two things. Either their 
 offences had been proved and were matter of 
 common knowledge, or they were not. If 
 they ivere, there would have been some jus- 
 tification for selecting their names, as the 
 
 o 
 
 accused must have had an opportunity of 
 clearing their characters, if that were possible, 
 during their lifetime. But if their offences 
 were not definitely, absolutely, publicly proved 
 beyond possibility of doubt, it would be very 
 difficult to make out a case to justify the 
 mention of their names. There is unfortu- 
 nately no want of types. It does not seem
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 43 
 
 as if Dante himself could have had proofs 
 of their guilt, because in a previous circle 
 he asks Ciacco where these very men were 
 "who on good deeds set their thoughts" 
 
 " Say where they are, and cause that I may know them ; 
 For great desire constraineth me to learn, 
 If heaven doth sweeten them or hell envenom." l 
 
 And when he does come upon them, his 
 relation of the scene is very curious. After 
 poor Rusticucci has complained, " My savage 
 wife more than aught else doth harm me," 
 Dante continues 
 
 " Could I have been protected from the fire, 
 
 Below I should have thrown myself among them, 
 And think the Teacher would have suffered it. 
 But as I should have burned and baked myself, 
 My terror overmastered my goodwill, 
 Which made me greedy of embracing them," &c. 2 
 
 " I of your city am ; and evermore 
 
 Tour labours and your honourable names 
 I with affection have retraced and heard"* 
 
 Then he breaks out into one of his tirades 
 against Florence : the shades pay him a pretty 
 compliment "looked at each other as one 
 looks at truth " and he leaves them. 
 
 1 Inf. vi. 82. 2 Inf. xvi. 46. 3 i n f. xv i. 53.
 
 44 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 Even his most fanatical devotees draw the 
 line at Dante's treatment of Guido of Monte- 
 feltro, who, after being honourably mentioned 
 in the 'Convito' as "this most noble Latin," 
 is ignominiously consigned to the eighth 
 circle of hell for giving most dastardly advice 
 to Boniface VIII. It is believed that there 
 is absolutely no historical evidence to confirm 
 the acusation. Muratori suggests that polit- 
 ical motives probably furnish the key. The 
 imputation of motives is justified by these 
 unsustained accusations. Dante's prophetic 
 soul, perhaps, had in view a Muratori (but did 
 not quite see the look he would give) in the 
 lines 
 
 " Ah me ! how very cautious men should be 
 With those who not alone behold the act, 
 But with their wisdom look into the thoughts ! " l 
 
 If anything were wanted to prove the 
 demoralising effect on any human being of 
 setting himself up in the position of the Al- 
 mighty as the eternal judge of other indi- 
 vidual and contemporary men's sins, it would 
 be found in the crescendo movement in Dante's 
 personal cruelty in the descriptions of the 
 
 1 Inf. xvi. 118.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 45 
 
 " Inferno "-from the most ignoble and ghastly 
 gambols in the "new sport" with the Male- 
 branche, the episode of Vanni Fucci and the 
 serpents, " From that time forth the serpents 
 were my friends/' the cowardly attack on 
 Bocca degli Abati pulling shocks of his hair 
 out to the culminating point where our 
 Christian poet shows himself at once cruel 
 and a traitor in his treatment of the shade 
 of Friar Alberigo, who says in his frozen 
 helplessness 
 
 " But hither ward stretch out thy hand forthwith, 
 Open mine eyes ; and open them I did not, 
 And to be rude to him was courtesy." l 
 
 And this after having made a solemn compact 
 with the shade 
 
 " If thou wouldst have jne help thee, 
 Say who thou wast ; and if I free thee not, 
 May I go to the bottom of the ice." 2 
 
 There can be no comment on this passage 
 except, perhaps, to admit that with a widening 
 psychology we are forced to the conclusion 
 that the greatest minds, the most noble 
 spirits, often carry within themselves volcanic 
 intensity of passion for evil as well as for good. 
 
 1 Inf. xxxiii. 148. 2 Inf. xxxiii. 116.
 
 46 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 It may be supposed that on re-reading these 
 lines, and leaving them to stand for all time, 
 Dante had the same feeling towards them that 
 he must have had to the passionate passage in 
 the ' Convito,' where he says that to argu- 
 ments against the immortality of the soul, 
 " one would wish to reply not with words, but 
 with a knife." This, though intense, is not 
 really so malignant, because the eyes of the 
 contemporary, who did not take precisely 
 Dante's view of the most knotty of all prob- 
 lems, not being 1 frozen, he might have had 
 
 O ' O 
 
 the chance of defending himself. These ex- 
 pressions must of course be taken figuratively. 
 No actual bloodshed or broken bones were to 
 be apprehended ! But this intense way of 
 arguing is open to objections. Seriously, these 
 personal attacks, even on the most flagrant, 
 the most contemptible, and the most hateful 
 of sinners (who, be it remembered, are already 
 undergoing eternal torments of unutterable 
 anguish), must be acknowledged as below the 
 dignity of a great poem and a great poet. 
 Our first feeling is to draw a veil over all 
 these ungoverned outbursts ; but the after 
 and perhaps more reasonable feeling is the
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 47 
 
 wish to know the man Dante as he was, with 
 all his faults. He is great enough to carry 
 them. His very faults are part perhaps an 
 inseparable part of that intensity of nature 
 which is the secret of his power ; but do not 
 let us be misled into making virtues of his 
 vices because he is Dante. 
 
 And it does not meet the case to say that 
 because " these things are an allegory," or 
 because Friar Alberigo was really still alive 
 in the body, and it was only his soul that was 
 already in hell, therefore Dante's behaviour on 
 such occasions gives us no opportunity of 
 judging his own nature. The essential qua- 
 lity of all allegory and particularly of the 
 allegory in the ' Divina Commedia ' is that it 
 produces on us the most complete impression 
 of reality. This is the very reason of its 
 being, and the source of all its power. It 
 is like reading a record of facts. Whoever 
 undertakes to exhibit that most complex ab- 
 straction, a sinful human soul, in the concrete 
 image of a body in torment, will necessarily 
 be judged more or less by the way in which 
 he deals with that image. Dante's treatment 
 is constantly remorseless and vindictive. His
 
 48 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 worshippers resent this view, and will see no 
 spot upon their sun. There seems to be a 
 peculiar difficulty in writing on the subject 
 with moderation, but there surely must be 
 some mean between the flippant falsities of 
 Voltaire that " Dante's reputation will go on 
 increasing because scarcely anybody reads 
 him," and the tone of the prostrate ones who 
 are not content that the world should see 
 anything less in their idol than " the pure 
 severity of perfect light." These two points 
 of view represent the misers and the prodigal 
 in praise. " Perche tieni ? e perche burli ? " 
 Does not the truth lie between them ? and 
 was not our poet really a man of supremest 
 faculty, with one side of his nature noble, ten- 
 der, godlike the other side passionate, vin- 
 dictive, demonic ? He himself gives us one of 
 the best clues to his own character in the 
 
 lines 
 
 " I who by nature am 
 Exceeding mutable in every guise." l 
 
 He was not one man, but half-a-dozen men 
 rolled into one. But whether we regard him 
 as one man or as six, we never get rid of his 
 
 1 Par. v. 98.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 49 
 
 unconscious and unconscionable egoism. Not 
 only in the ' Divina Commedia,' but from the 
 first word of the ' Vita Nuova ' to the last 
 word of the Sonnet addressed to Giovanni 
 Quirino, Dante can never be said, in his verses, 
 to get outside of his own personality. Every 
 one has noticed his want of humour, but no 
 one (so far as we know) has attributed it to 
 this cause. Inordinate egoism and humour 
 are mutually exclusive. In the ' Comedy ' 
 there is one faint gleam in the meeting with 
 Statius in purgatory, which is charmingly 
 described : 
 
 " These words towards me made Virgilius turn 
 
 With looks that in their silence said, ' Be silent ! ' 
 But yet the power that wills cannot do all things ; 
 
 For tears and laughter are such pursuivants 
 
 Unto the passion from which each springs forth, 
 In the most truthful least the will they follow. 
 
 I only smiled as one who gives the wink ; 
 Whereat the shade was silent, and it gazed 
 Into mine eyes, where most expression dwells ; 
 
 And, ' As thou well mayst consummate a labour 
 So great,' it said, ' why did thy face just now 
 Display to me the lightning of a smile 1 ' 
 
 Now am I caught on this side and on that ; 
 One keeps me silent, one to speak conjures me, 
 Wherefore I sigh, and I am understood. 
 
 ' Speak," said my Master, ' and be not afraid 
 
 D
 
 50 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 Of speaking, but speak out, and say to him 
 
 What he demands with such solicitude.' 
 Whence I : ' Thou perad venture marvellest, 
 
 O antique spirit, at the smile I gave ; 
 
 But I will have more wonder seize upon thee. 
 This one, who guides on high these eyes of mine, 
 
 Is that Yirgilius from whom thou didst learn 
 
 To sing aloud of men and of the gods. 
 If other cause thou to my smile imputedst, 
 
 Abandon it as false, and trust it was 
 
 Those words which thou hast spoken concerning him.' 
 Already he was stooping to embrace 
 
 My Teacher's feet ; but he said to him : ' Brother, 
 
 Do not ; for shade thou art, and shade beholdest.' 
 And he uprising : ' Now canst thou the sum 
 
 Of love which warms me to thee comprehend, 
 
 When this our vanity I disremember, 
 Treating a shadow as substantial thing.' " l 
 
 But the other instances of humour that have 
 been laboriously culled are either very far- 
 fetched or very grim. Wherever he goes, 
 through hell, purgatory, or paradise, he is 
 generally himself the gracious and benignant 
 creature that the spirits dwelling in those 
 parts are chiefly concerned about. They 
 prophesy his future, and there is no want of 
 self-appreciation in the terms of the prophecies. 
 As Giuliani has said, Dante is the " protag- 
 onist " of his own comedy. In the ' Vita 
 
 1 Purg. xxi. 103 et seq.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 51 
 
 Nuova/ when Beatrice dies our poet quotes 
 Jeremiah: "How doth the city sit solitary, 
 that was full of people ! How is she become a 
 widow, she that was great among the nations !" 
 And the attitude of his mind towards the pil- 
 grims is thoroughly characteristic. Here there 
 is real humour in the want of humour, We 
 never have a word about the glories of his 
 native city of that Florence where Giotto 
 and Arnolfo were all the time busily at work 
 leaving behind them those art-treasures which 
 make the latter part of the thirteenth and the 
 earlier part of the fourteenth centuries so 
 unspeakably precious. We should never be 
 able to guess from Dante's verses that build- 
 ings were rising during his lifetime as im- 
 perishable as his own poems, and the spirit of 
 the citizens must have been far indeed from 
 wholly bad that has left behind such a record 
 in stone and in marble. The city having be- 
 haved unjustly and cruelly to its greatest man, 
 its greatest man cannot forgive the wrong ; 
 nor can he get outside of himself sufficiently 
 to see that there were redeeming qualities in 
 the citizens. He turns off Cimabue and Giotto 
 in one triplet, and in the next triplet lets the
 
 52 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 two Guides know their place. He can find no 
 one goed enough to associate with in political 
 life, and must make " a party by himself." No 
 mention is anywhere made of wife or child in 
 the 'Comedy'; and it may be noted that in 
 all the references to children, it is the child's 
 love for the mother, or the mother's love for 
 the child, that is dwelt upon showing the 
 keen observation of the intellect, but not the 
 instinct of the heart. It may be doubted, 
 with all Dante's powers, whether he could 
 have written the line 
 
 " With light upon him from his Father's eyes." 
 
 Even in the Ugolino story, it is the children's 
 feeling for their father more than the father's 
 for the children that is prominent. Very 
 noteworthy, too, is the difference in the 
 treatment by Dante of his own offences com- 
 pared with the offences of his fellow- mortals. 
 His own passage through the fire is exceed- 
 ingly short, but the unpleasantness of it is 
 characteristically described : 
 
 " When I was in it, into molten glass 
 
 I could have cast me to refresh myself, 
 
 So without measure was the burning there." l 
 
 1 Purg. xxvii. 49.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 53 
 
 He has Virgil in front and Statius behind to 
 keep him company and to sustain his spirits. 
 For himself, he feels that this penalty of a 
 few minutes is adequate ; but for the rest of 
 the sinners, for Homer, Virgil, and the other 
 Latin poets, he is content that for eternity 
 they should linger 
 
 " Where without hope they live on in desire ; " 
 
 and for Brunetto Latini and the rest, eternal 
 fire. 
 
 Almost every mention of Florence and 
 indeed of Italy throughout the poem, is 
 couched in the bitterest terms. Nine years 
 after he had been exiled, he writes a letter 
 to the Emperor Henry VII., which ought to 
 be read' by all who wish to know the full 
 orb of Dante's character the shadow as well 
 as the light. Henry VII. really did a great 
 deal more harm than good to Italy. He was 
 a man of no practical capacity. He substi- 
 tuted for the respected Podestas petty tyrants 
 more or less hated, to whom he sold, at the 
 highest price, the title of his vicars. He 
 extorted money from the hostile towns, and 
 begged it from the friendly towns. The
 
 54 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 Marquis of Monferrat bought from him the 
 privilege of coining debased money. Yet no 
 terms of adulation are too strong for Dante 
 in addressing him. He speaks of Florence 
 as the viper that rushes at the bosom of her 
 mother ; the diseased sheep that contaminates 
 by its touch the herd of the Lord ; the wicked 
 and impious Myrrha, whom he urges Henry 
 to crush. All his letters at this time " To 
 the Princes and People of Italy," and " To 
 the most wicked Florentines in the City," are 
 surcharged with bitterness, " O most ar- 
 rogant among the Tuscan peoples, insensate 
 both by natural and by acquired vices," &c., 
 &c. To avenge himself and reinstate himself 
 in power, it is difficult to say where he would 
 have stopped short. He is sometimes cited 
 as the Bard who saw in prophetic vision 
 United Italy as we see it to-day. But King 
 Humbert's position is scarcely that of the 
 German Albert whom Dante demanded. He 
 may bestride the saddle-bow, but he cannot 
 use the spurs. A monarch who is a mere 
 figurehead, registering the decrees of a legis- 
 lature elected by universal suffrage, is about 
 as far removed from Dante's ideal as light
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 55 
 
 from darkness. The advocate of Caesarism 
 would scarcely wish to be credited with any 
 share in the Garibaldian birth, which is in 
 fact one of the legitimate offspring of the 
 new democracy with which our age has been 
 in travail since the French Revolution, whether 
 for good or for ill. 
 
 Comparisons between one great poet and 
 another are always futile ; but to many 
 Englishmen, who are not absolute devotees, 
 but who yet feel the tremendous pressure of 
 Dante's power, there must be a certain sense 
 of relief in passing from the study of his 
 work (particularly the latter part of the 
 " Inferno ") to that of Shakespeare for ex- 
 ample. It is like passing from a cell where, 
 amidst the fumes of incense, a great soul is 
 communing with himself on all the irredeem- 
 able faults and follies of his fellow-creatures 
 and on his own manifold virtues, to the bright 
 bracing fresh air of the mountains, in the 
 companionship of a healthy, human, natural, 
 broadly-humorous man, delighting in his kind, 
 and in full sympathy with all the various 
 aspects of humanity its comedy as well as 
 its tragedy and above all with its natural
 
 56 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 as well as its supernatural relations. But 
 although the average man will generally feel 
 that the concentrated essence of Dante's food 
 is too strong for him, he will never, having 
 once tasted it, cease to return again and again 
 to that rich banquet. It is partly the poet's 
 very egoism which causes his writing to come 
 down to us after six centuries as if it had 
 been written yesterday. He will always re- 
 main modern, for he has written all from 
 himself. We constantly feel how much he 
 is taking out of himself. We bend with him 
 under the weight on his shoulders, acknow- 
 ledging that he is not a pilot, " Ch'a s& 
 medesmo parca." And we scarcely require to 
 be told that for years the sacred poem made 
 him lean. It almost makes us lean merely to 
 contemplate it. Side by side with much that 
 is repulsive in the latter part of the " Inferno," 
 there are in almost every canto those wonder- 
 ful descriptions of natural phenomena, those 
 subtle observations of the habits of men and 
 of their countenances, those dramatic incidents 
 (in which our poet is always one of the chief 
 actors), those allusions to his travels, those 
 masterly " applications of ideas to life." Gozzi
 
 DANTE FOB THE GEXERAL. 57 
 
 has somewhere said that " Danteide " would 
 be the best title for the poem. 
 It is as true to-day as in 1300 that 
 
 " Avarice afflicts the world, 
 Trampling the good and lifting the depraved." 1 
 
 And that 
 
 " ' Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth,' 
 My Master said ; ' for sitting upon down 
 Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame, 
 Withouten which whoso his life consumes 
 Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth, 
 As smoke in air, or in the water foam.' " 2 
 
 Or- 
 
 " When now unto that portion of mine age 
 I saw myself arrived, when each one ought 
 To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes." 3 
 
 How sad that this sound advice should be 
 forgotten by so many of our day ! 
 
 And to our generation of scandalmongers, 
 how dignified and excellent is this reproof: 
 
 " In listening to them was I wholly fixed, 
 
 When said the Master to me : ' Now just look, 
 For little wants it that I quarrel with thee.' 
 When him I heard in anger speak to me, 
 
 I turned me round towards him with such shame 
 That still it eddies through my memory. 
 
 1 Inf. xix. 104. 2 Inf. xxiv. 46. 3 Inf. xxvii. 79.
 
 58 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 And as he is who dreams of his own harm, 
 Who dreaming, wishes it may be a dream, 
 So that he craves what is, as if it were not ; 
 
 Such I became, not having power to speak 
 For to excuse myself I wished, and still 
 Excused myself, and did not think I did it. 
 
 ' Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,' 
 The Master said, ' than this of thine has been ; 
 Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness, 
 
 And make account that I am aye beside thee, 
 If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee 
 Where there are people in a like dispute ; 
 
 For a base wish it is to wish to hear it.' " 
 
 " Che voler ci6 udire & bassa voglia." 1 
 
 Amidst all the gruesomeness and the horrors 
 of the passage through hell, the relation to 
 Virgil is always a delightfully refreshing 
 human element in the journey. We have 
 already alluded to the description of the first 
 meeting, and there is a pretty acknowledg- 
 ment later on by the Latin poet of his dis- 
 ciple's intimate acquaintance with all his 
 work : 
 
 " Ben lo sai tu, che la sai tutta quanta." - 
 
 And the parting in the " Purgatorio " is very 
 simple and very touching. 3 On Dante's side 
 
 1 Inf. xxx. 130-148. 2 Inf. xx. 114. 
 
 3 Purg. xxx. 49-51.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 59 
 
 there is always present the love of the Son 
 for the Father, of the pupil for the master, of 
 the inferior for the superior the last a relation 
 which the judgment of the world has some- 
 what changed. The " Inferno " closes with 
 the appropriately lurid light of the Ugolino 
 story the most powerful and the most hor- 
 rible in all poetry and the description of 
 Dis, where Dante in one of his marvellously 
 descriptive lines says 
 
 " Io non morii, e non rimasi vivo." 
 
 " I did not die, and I alive remained not." 1 
 
 It may perhaps be said that by us " the 
 general " the " Purgatorio " is always likely 
 to be the best loved of the three canticles. To 
 appreciate all of the " Paradise," there must 
 be a certain mystical tendency in us. To the 
 majority of minds, it is the positive side of 
 Dante's poetry that will be the most at- 
 tractive the scientific observation of man 
 and nature more than the purely mystical 
 imagination. In the " Purgatorio " we come 
 back to the Dante of the seven opening cantos 
 of the " Inferno" full of sweetness and light, 
 
 1 Inf. xxxiv. 25.
 
 60 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 of dignity and solemnity. We are conscious of 
 the old delight 
 
 " D' antico amor senti' la gran potenza " 
 
 in pressing on to each new beauty. 
 
 "He seeketh liberty, which is so dear." 
 
 We can only run over a few of the most 
 famous passages. The meeting with " my own 
 Casella," who has the good taste to sing one 
 of Dante's own songs without so much as 
 asking " What shall it be ? " (a foolish query 
 which some readers aloud have asked a more 
 modern bard, and always get the natural 
 answer, " Oh, I don't mind, as long as it's 
 something of my own ") the second descrip- 
 tion of the doves collecting grain or tares, and 
 of the sheep coming out from the fold 
 
 "Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils, 
 And what the foremost does the others do, 
 Huddling themselves against her, if she stop 
 Simple and quiet, and the wherefore know not." l 
 
 The glorious lines put in the mouth of Man- 
 fred 
 
 " But infinite Goodness hath such ample arms, 
 That it receives whatever turns to it." 2 
 
 1 Purg. iii. 79. 2 Purg. iii. 122.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 61 
 
 The description of the ascending soul 
 
 " Questa montagna e tale, 
 Che sempre al cominciar di sotto e grave, 
 E quanto uom piu va su, e men fa male." 
 
 " This mount is such, that ever 
 At the beginning down below 'tis tiresome, 
 And aye the more one climbs the less it hurts." 1 
 
 The flood of light we have here on Dante's 
 character 
 
 " Mine eyes I turned at utterance of these words, 
 And saw them watching with astonishment, 
 But me, but me, and the light which was broken ! 
 
 'Why doth thy mind so occupy itself,' 
 
 The Master said, ' that thou thy pace doth slacken ? 
 What matters it to thee what here is whispered ? 
 
 Come after me, and let the people talk ; 
 
 Stand like a steadfast tower that never wags 
 Its top for all the blowing of the winds ; 
 
 For evermore the man in whom is springing 
 
 Thought upon thought, removes from him the mark, 
 Because the force of one the other weakens.' " 2 
 
 The meeting with Sordello, who " eyed them 
 after the manner of a couchant lion," 3 and the 
 magnificent diatribe on Italy, with the appeal 
 to German Albert 
 
 " Come and behold thy Rome, that is lamenting, 
 Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims, 
 ' My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' " 4 
 
 1 Purg. iv. 88. 2 Purg. v. 7-18. 
 
 3 Purg. vi. 66. 4 Purg. vi. 112.
 
 62 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 The lap on the hillside where 
 
 " Gold and fine silver, and scarlet, and pearl white, 
 The Indian wood resplendent and serene, 
 Fresh emerald the moment it is broken. 
 By herbage and by flowers within that hollow 
 Planted, each one in colour would be vanquished, 
 As by its greater vanquished is the less." l 
 
 The oft-quoted opening of Canto viii., which 
 can no more be hackneyed out of its charm 
 than the sunset itself because we see it every 
 day- 
 
 " 'Twas now the hour that turneth back desire 
 In those who sail the sea, and ruelts the heart, 
 The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell, 
 And the new pilgrim penetrates with love 
 If he doth hear from far away a bell 
 That seemeth to deplore the dying day." 
 
 Or the other almost equally well-known lines 
 on the daybreak 
 
 " Just at the hour when her sad lay begins 
 The little swallow, near unto the morning, 
 Perchance in memory of her former woes, 
 And when the mind of man, a wanderer 
 
 More from the flesh, and less by thought imprisoned, 
 Almost prophetic in its visions is." 2 
 
 The description of desolation 
 
 1 Purg. vii. 73. 2 Purg. ix. 13.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 63 
 
 " We stopped upon a plain 
 More desolate than roads across the deserts." l 
 
 The marvellously realistic account of the sculp- 
 tures on the marble rocks where " Nature's 
 self had there been put to shame ; " and that 
 line which must go to the heart of all true 
 artists 
 
 " In sooth I had not been so courteous 
 While I was living, for the great desire 
 Of excellence, on which my heart was bent."^ 
 
 Marco Lombardo's fine discourse ; Pope Adrian 
 V. and Hugh Capet on avarice ; the meeting 
 with Statius, and his philosophic conception of 
 the evolution of Christianity 
 
 " Already was the world in every part 
 Pregnant with the new creed" ' 3 
 
 The exquisite ending of Canto xxiv. 
 
 " And as, the harbinger of early dawn, 
 
 The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance, 
 Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers." 
 
 The description of the goats in the mid-day 
 heat ; and of sleep 
 
 " Sleep seized upon me sleep that oftentimes 
 Before a deed is done has tidings of it." 4 
 
 1 Purg. x. 20. 2 Purg. xi. 85. 
 
 3 Purg. xxii. 76. 4 Purg. xxvii. 92.
 
 64 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 
 
 Virgil's address to Dante, where we feel that 
 the higher spirit's triumph is assured 
 
 " And said : The temporal fire and the eternal, 
 Son, thou hast seen, and to a place art come 
 Where of myself no farther I discern. 
 
 By intellect and art I here have brought thee ; 
 
 Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth ; 
 Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou. 
 
 Behold the sun, that shines upon thy forehead ; 
 Behold the grass, the flowerets, and the shrubs, 
 Which of itself alone this land produces. 
 
 Until rejoicing come the beauteous eyes 
 
 Which weeping caused me to come unto thee, 
 
 Thou canst sit down, and thou canst walk among them. 
 
 Expect no more or word or sign from me ; 
 Free and upright and sound is thy free will, 
 And error were it not to do its bidding ; 
 
 TJiee o'er thyself I t/terefore crown and mitre ! " 1 
 
 And thence to the end of the canticle the 
 beauties are like the March primroses in Sussex 
 lanes too profuse in their luxuriance for gath- 
 ering the air is all impregnate with them. 
 
 There are single lines better than any 
 volume of sermons 
 
 " Pensa che questo di mai non raggiorna." 
 "Think that this day will never dawn again." 2 
 
 " Think that this day will never re-day itself." 
 
 1 Purg. xxvii. 127. 2 Purg. xii. 84.
 
 DANTE FOR THE GENERAL. 65 
 
 Not only that the sweet air which by the sun 
 is gladdened to-day has passed away for ever, 
 but that we too may have passed by on the 
 other side, unheeding the sorrow we might 
 have lightened, the joy we might have wel- 
 comed, the love we might have strengthened, 
 the pain we might have lessened. Have we 
 added to some one's good to-day ? have we 
 not added to some one's harm ? Each day 
 is a renewal of our chance while we live, 
 until the day comes when there is no re- 
 newal. It is not a gospel of despair, but a 
 gospel of effort. And this is a single line 
 which, whatever men's differing religious pro- 
 fessions may be, the whole human race can go 
 on repeating till the end of time as one of the 
 ultimate expressions of life 
 
 " Pensa che questo di mai non raggiorna." 
 
 E
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 WHEN we remember that for centuries Cath- 
 olics tortured Protestants, and that in their 
 turn Protestants tortured Catholics, in the 
 sacred name of religion a religion, too, sup- 
 posed to be founded on Divine love and that 
 they are still ready to rend one another, meta- 
 phorically speaking (and to join together in 
 rending " the infidels "), on account of their 
 religious beliefs, it is really very curious and 
 encouraging to find that they can nevertheless 
 lie down amicably together, like the lion and 
 the lamb, in the presence of Dante, the religious 
 poet, notwithstanding that the framework of 
 his great poem is compacted of the very ele- 
 ments that elsewhere have made the two sects 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, February 1890.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 67 
 
 irreconcilable. Each sect seems to find in him 
 its special interpreter. Naturally they have 
 a good deal of quiet mutual contempt for each 
 other's interpretations of the interpreter ; but, 
 on the whole, they disagree not more unami- 
 ably than other literary disputants, and there 
 are no threats of eternal damnation for any 
 heresies. The Positivists and Agnostics have 
 also taken the pre-eminent poet as their pro- 
 phet, so that to-day he may be said to focus 
 all the conflicting rays of religious thought in 
 the Western world. 
 
 Nothing would probably have surprised the 
 poet himself so much as the idea that he might 
 one day prove to be the missing link between 
 belief, resting on theological dogmas, and a 
 coherent social faith a social faith dependent 
 on the whole range of the past and looking to 
 the future with unstinted hope, tempered by 
 a great awe of the Eternal and of the ever- 
 lasting reign of Laws, whereof Science is the 
 handmaiden, and not necessarily divorced from 
 a deep mystical tendency, for it w T ill be nour- 
 ished by the Bible and by all poetry of a 
 high seriousness, as Mr Matthew Arnold has 
 pointed out.
 
 68 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFOBMATION." 
 
 The situation is not only curious, it is sug- 
 gestive of possibilities. For there is no more 
 noteworthy phenomenon amongst the forces 
 that are at work moulding the thought of 
 our time, than the extraordinary increase in 
 Dante's influence during the last forty years 
 especially in England and America. It will 
 probably be well within the mark to say that 
 there are hundreds of readers of the ' Divina 
 Commedia ' to-day for every single reader that 
 there was when Dean Church published his 
 well-known scholarly essay in 1850. And this 
 increase has taken place, be it remembered, 
 precisely in the period during which the re- 
 spect for theological or ecclesiastical dog- 
 mas has been most rapidly decaying, when it 
 might naturally have been expected that the 
 poem would have lost much of its constrain- 
 ing power over the minds and consciences of 
 its readers, owing to the fact that the vast 
 majority of them have ceased to believe in the 
 corporeal realities of Hell, Purgatory, and 
 Paradise. How, then, is the increase to be 
 accounted for ? No doubt it is to some ex- 
 tent due to the cheap editions of Longfellow's 
 translation, for the readers of to-day are not
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 69 
 
 confined to the small circle of Italian scholars. 
 They form a wide public. Then it is a religious 
 book which stands on its intrinsic merits, as 
 the Bible perhaps may some day stand. Every 
 one is permitted to put his own interpretation 
 on the whole scheme and on every incident in 
 it to adapt its teachings to his own personal 
 idiosyncrasy and to believe only that which 
 seems to him reasonable to believe. Whatever 
 creeds a man may be brought to recite, he 
 will never practically believe more than that ; 
 but the possibilities of belief will, of course, 
 vary, as human minds vary, that which 
 appears perfectly reasonable to one person 
 often appearing in the highest degree un- 
 reasonable to another. What all sects claim, 
 in reading Dante, is untrammelled freedom 
 of the reason as well as of the imagination. 
 Hence the interpretations are as numerous 
 as the readers but no reader goes empty 
 away. There is matter for all. 
 
 It is true that Dante was professedly a great 
 theologian but he was something more. He 
 was above all things an epoch-making poet, 
 who " carried a light behind " ; and he is the 
 true prophet of the New Reformation, because
 
 70 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 he shows us how a revelation is made, and 
 why it is made. In the ' Comedy ' we not only 
 see the effect produced, but we are taken 
 behind the scenes, so to speak, and are shown 
 the means by which it is produced. The 
 pulleys and the properties are all laid bare. 
 The poet has triumphed by the unique power 
 of convincing mankind that a mortal, suffi- 
 ciently moved by his theme, can by mere 
 force of genius arrogate to himself, and can 
 have accorded to him, the attributes of the 
 Deity. He felt, as all the prophets from 
 Moses onwards had felt before him, that the 
 way to penetrate and enthral the hearts and 
 consciences of his hearers was to bring them 
 a special message direct from the Eternal. 
 It was a device " une pense'e de la jeunesse 
 executee dans 1'age mur ; " and in Dante's case 
 it is open to us to accept the message with 
 the consciousness of the device a device 
 which was worthy of his genius, and his genius 
 was equal to it. 
 
 No such superbly audacious undertaking 
 had ever been attempted before. Not that 
 the idea was new no world-famous idea is, 
 every matured conception being the result of a
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 71 
 
 long process of development ; but the method 
 of its application was new. Other prophets, 
 seers, and poets, before and since, have visited 
 in imagination the kingdoms of the dead ; but 
 the great Florentine was the first, and will 
 probably be the last, to undertake the de- 
 livery of what are supposed to be the ever- 
 lasting judgments of a personal God, not 
 only on mankind in general, nor only on 
 the great historical characters of the past, 
 but on named individuals contemporary with 
 his own life on his personal enemies as well 
 as on his personal friends, on the living as 
 well as on the dead. He was the first, and 
 the last, to describe the spirits of the de- 
 parted as engaged not only in suffering 
 torments or singing hallelujahs, but appar- 
 ently as still more deeply interested in the 
 political and social questions of the day in 
 Florence, and not unmindful of the personal 
 fortunes and character of the poet Dante 
 nor of their own literary productions. Bru- 
 netto Latini, in taking farewell of Dante 
 in hell, touchingly says, " Commended unto 
 thee be my ' Tesoro,' in which I still live, 
 and no more I ask." The great desire of
 
 72 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 all the spirits is to have their fame re-estab- 
 lished in the world, quite oblivious of the 
 practical inconsistency, from the theological 
 point of view, of the same man describing 
 their tortures in hell and at the same time 
 setting them right with mankind. Bocca 
 degli Abati is the only one who sees this 
 logical difficulty, and acknowledges that the 
 less that may be said of him the better it 
 will be. But these are details. The plan 
 of the ' Comedy ' results in a bold perhaps 
 an unconsciously bold attempt to show that 
 when the assumed divine voice speaks in the 
 language of men, it is in reality the exalted 
 human voice. 1 As one of the most exalted 
 of these voices has said, in language that 
 will endure as long as the human race endures, 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the firmament showeth His handiwork." The 
 only atheist, or infidel, is the man whose 
 soul is dead to that declaration, which con- 
 trasts the infinite greatness of the Eternal 
 with the infinite littleness of man ; and it is 
 
 1 "The Scripture condescends unto your faculties, and feet 
 and hands to God attributes, and means something else." 
 Par. iv. 43.
 
 DANTE AND THE " NEW REFORMATION." 73 
 
 the function of all poets of a high seriousness 
 to act as interpreters between the Eternal and 
 mankind. 
 
 And now let the orthodox Protestant Dean 
 of St Paul's tell us how Dante's attempt has 
 succeeded. Writing of the ' Comedy,' he uses 
 these phrases : " It is at once the mirror to 
 all time of the sins and perfections of men, 
 of the judgment and grace of God. . . . 
 History is indeed viewed, not in its ephemeral 
 look, but under the light of God's final judg- 
 ments, . . . and that which Dante held up 
 before men's awakened and captivated minds 
 was the verity of God's moral government." 
 
 What more can be said for prophet or 
 apostle ? But no one now asserts that the 
 ' Comedy ' is directly inspired of divine origin 
 in the sense that such claim is asserted 
 for the Scriptures. What, then, is the exact 
 meaning of Dean Church's words ? The 
 answer surely is, that when we analyse 
 what is here meant by the judgment and 
 grace of God, we shall find that it resolves 
 itself into a specially enlightened and elevated 
 human judgment and grace. In fact, it is 
 neither more nor less than the judgment
 
 74 DANTE AND THE " NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 and grace of the man Dante. . No doubt 
 every Agnostic would be as ready as Dean 
 Church to attribute an exceptional spiritual 
 power to Dante as well as to Moses, Ezekiel, 
 and St John. The Agnostic probably would 
 say that the only difference among them is 
 one of degree, not of kind ; and it is difficult 
 to understand, from the language quoted 
 above, what further difference the Dean sees. 
 Now if the difference between the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures and the inspiration of a 
 work of human genius like the ' Divine Com- 
 edy ' can be narrowed down to a difference of 
 degree, the path of the New Reformation will 
 be made easier. For the object to be gained 
 is the liberty of interpreting the Bible with 
 the same freedom as the ' Comedy ' may be 
 interpreted each reader believing in that 
 part of it which is conformable with his reason, 
 and with the best thought and with the social 
 sanctions of the time. No ordinary reader of 
 the ' Comedy ' considers himself to be bound 
 by any particular judgment of Dante's which 
 may seem to him to be contrary to that 
 thought and to those sanctions. It is other- 
 wise with the Dantologist, as it is with the
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 75 
 
 Theologist. Dean Church, for instance, says 
 that " he who could tell her story bowed to 
 the eternal law, and dared not save Francesca." 
 Why, then, it may be asked, did he dare to 
 save Cunizza ? The historical evidence (such 
 as it is) does riot seem to disclose much 
 difference between the virtues of the two 
 ladies, and if there be any, it is in favour 
 of Francesca. Cunizza could scarcely have 
 said, " Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso : " 
 she would have had to use the plural " Che 
 forse parria forte al vostro vulgo." l That 
 which was eternal law in the one case ought 
 
 o 
 
 certainly to remain eternal in the other. But 
 Dante consigns the one to eternal torment 
 (and, oddly enough, she is the only Christian 
 woman in his hell), and the other to eternal 
 beatitude, because it happens to suit his 
 dramatic purposes. Again, why should the 
 great spirit of Virgil be left in limbo, " where, 
 without hope, he lives on in desire," whilst 
 the Trojan Bipheus is relegated to an honoured 
 place in paradise, although neither of them 
 had the benefit of that baptism " which is the 
 portal of the faith we hold " ? 
 
 1 Par. ix. 36.
 
 76 DANTE AND THE " NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 The truth is, that it is impossible for us 
 to take these judgments literally. We must 
 always bear in mind that the ' Comedy ' is a 
 fourteenth-century drama, and in the nine- 
 teenth century it requires to be translated 
 into our language, just as the miraculous 
 portions of the Bible require to be translated. 
 For example, the damnation of Boniface 
 VIII. may have been necessary or expedient 
 as a dramatic incident, whether considered 
 from Dante's personal or from his political 
 point of view ; but how can we think of it 
 seriously as God's final judgment ? The words 
 are easily written, but the idea is difficult 
 to seize. For is not God the God of battles 
 liable to be appealed to by both sides in 
 a conflict ? Boniface would, without doubt, 
 and with great show of reason from his point 
 of view, have made an earnest appeal to his 
 God against the gross impiety of the whole 
 conception and execution of the ' Comedy ' 
 against the revolutionary audacity of the 
 layman who had dared to usurp the Papal 
 prerogative and to lock and unlock at his 
 own will the gates of hell, purgatory, and 
 paradise even in a vision. For it is evident
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 77 
 
 that the vision of a man of genius is capable 
 of being regarded as " history viewed, not 
 in its ephemeral look, but under the light of 
 God's final judgments." 
 
 It remains, indeed, a great puzzle for the 
 lay mind to understand how stringent Church- 
 men are not more affected, and afflicted, by 
 the savour of sacrilege in Dante's whole treat- 
 ment of his theme. There is, in truth, no 
 escape from a logical impasse. If the ' Comedy' 
 is to be regarded in the same light as any 
 other human drama (say " Hamlet," " Lear," or 
 " Faust "), it is undoubtedly a very ruthless 
 satire on the pretensions of the Popes and 
 the Church, showing their insignificance as 
 compared with the pretensions of the poet. 
 If, on the other hand, it is to be regarded as 
 something more than human (and there is evi- 
 dence that Dante wished it to be so regarded, 1 
 and many have so regarded it), then we are 
 driven to admit an authority infinitely more 
 binding than any that the Church can lay 
 claim to, because the message from the heav- 
 enly powers conveyed by him is more specific, 
 more circumstantial, and more personal than 
 1 Par. x. 27, and xxv. 1.
 
 78 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 any previous message, whether by the mouth 
 of Moses, Ezekiel, or St John. The Church 
 must make up its mind which horn of the 
 dilemma to choose. If the one, we are not 
 surprised that, within twenty years of his 
 death, the poet's ashes had a very narrow 
 escape of being exhumed and scattered to the 
 winds as those of a heretic ; if the other, the 
 marvel is that his revelation is not accepted 
 as the most directly divine message ever 
 delivered, and that St Dante does not take 
 his place as at least the equal of St John, St 
 Peter, or St Paul. 
 
 M. Ozanam, the orthodox Catholic Dant- 
 ologist, is amusing in his way of dealing with 
 the difficulty. " Si Dante apprecia mal la 
 pie'te de St Celestine, le zele impetueux de 
 Boniface VIII. , la science de Jean XXII., ce 
 fut imprudence et colere, ce fut erreur et 
 faute et non pas heresie." There is a quaint 
 humour in the phrase " apprecia mal " when 
 we bear in mind the virulent language in 
 
 O o 
 
 which the misdoings of these Popes are re- 
 corded, and that two of them are chiefly known 
 to popular fame outside the Catholic world by 
 Dante's damnation of them. Then there is
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 79 
 
 poor Pope Anastasius also in hell, " whom 
 out of the right way Photinus drew " ; but 
 Dr Dollinger assures us that Anastasius was 
 guiltless of any lapse from the true faith. 
 What a reflection it is on theological preten- 
 sions when a Pope can be eternally damned by 
 one eminent theologian and certified as sound 
 by another ! It would be ludicrous if it were 
 not so serious. The fact is, that a Pope with 
 whom he did not agree seems to 'have been 
 to Dante like a red flag to a bull. He has 
 placed three of them irredeemably in hell, and 
 Clement V. is relegated to the same hot place 
 (pozzetto), where Nicholas III. is waiting for 
 Boniface ; whilst Adrian Y. is expiating the sin 
 of avarice in purgatory, Martin IV. is expiat- 
 ing the sin of gluttony, and there is not a 
 single Pope in paradise except Gregory the 
 Great, who is set right by Dante on a point 
 of doctrine. 1 Now, whatever may have been 
 the faults and failings of these Popes in life, 
 they all died in the bosom of the Church, 
 repenting of their sins, receiving absolution 
 and extreme unction ; and one would have 
 thought that no deadlier blow could be struck 
 
 1 Par. xxviii. 133.
 
 80 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 at the authority of the Church than the doffing 
 aside of all these solemn rites and mysteries 
 on the independent judgment of a lay poet. 
 And the same argument may be applied to 
 the admission of the excommunicated Man- 
 fred and the pagan Cato to purgatory, as 
 well as of Eipheus to paradise. Which are 
 we to take as God's final judgment, Dante's 
 or the Church's, when Dante damns and 
 the Church canonises ? The difficulty can 
 only be solved by the old device of read- 
 ing with one eye open and the other shut : 
 and so I suppose the Churchmen manage to 
 solve it. 
 
 General readers, however, happily for them- 
 selves and for their appreciation of everything 
 best worth appreciating in the poem, need 
 not be troubled with these difficulties ; for 
 they may believe Dante to have been a man 
 of transcendent genius, with a mighty message 
 to deliver to the world in the early years of 
 the fourteenth century, who used the device 
 of a vision of the unseen as the most powerful 
 vehicle for delivering that message. It would 
 have been impossible for him to have struck 
 so hard or so deep without the intervention
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW KEFORM ATION. " 81 
 
 of supernatural agency, for the age was one 
 which cast every serious thought into a re- 
 ligious mould the age following St Louis, 
 when the last crusade had just been accom- 
 plished, when miracles were of daily occurrence, 
 when the end of the world was still looked for 
 as imminent, and when hell, purgatory, and 
 paradise were realities such as can scarcely be 
 conceived of by the men of to-day. 
 
 But although it was an age that, after the 
 lapse of six centuries, we have the proud privi- 
 lege of characterising as grossly superstitious 
 (what age is not to the age six hundred years 
 later ?), it was also one of the most interest- 
 ing epochs in the world's history an epoch 
 vibrating with new life, intellectual, political, 
 religious, and artistic. After the long sleep 
 of over a thousand years, the laity were be- 
 ginning to recover their freedom of thought. 
 The lawyers were everywhere pitting them- 
 selves against the clergy. The two great 
 institutions that had between them governed 
 the Western world for centuries (the Holy 
 Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Church) 
 were grappling in death -throes. The spirit 
 of nationality was crystallising in France and
 
 82 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 in England, and the bases of representative 
 and constitutional government were being laid, 
 the very forms of which still endure in Eng- 
 land to this day. Dante, not knowing, stood 
 at the fountain-head of this stream, which, 
 issuing through the Reformation in Germany, 
 Holland, and England, and the Revolution 
 in France, broadened out into the wide river 
 of American Independence, opening a new 
 industrial era of great hope to mankind. In 
 the intellectual world Roger Bacon 1 had 
 already laid the foundation for his great 
 namesake's superstructure, and had driven 
 the first nails into the coffin of theological 
 dogmas. 
 
 Upon this surging " sea of being " was 
 launched the ' Comedy ' like the ark upon 
 the waters after the Deluge and an apprecia- 
 tive re-born world instinctively and gratefully 
 christened it Divine. It is still divine in the 
 New Reformation's sense of the term, for it 
 is the divine-human. All future ages will pay 
 due tribute to the genius with which the poet 
 worked out his conception ; but we shall never 
 
 1 It is noteworthy that Dante never mentions Roger Bacon's 
 name.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 83 
 
 form a just idea of the man Dante unless we 
 recognise that he had his full share of human 
 errors and weaknesses, even as the reputed 
 author of the Psalms had his. The one was 
 an impassioned Italian poet and prophet (and 
 it needs an Italian to comprehend his nature 
 as well as his intellect), the other was an im- 
 passioned Hebrew prophet and poet ; and both 
 of them had the defects of their qualities 
 defects which must never be forgotten. They 
 were merciless and unforgiving to their ene- 
 mies, capable of any injustice where their 
 own egoistic preferences were crossed ; l but 
 whether by reason of, or in despite of, their 
 defects of character, they both knew how 
 to sound the depths of the human heart, 
 its capabilities for good and evil, its great 
 yearnings. They were both men of sorrows 
 and acquainted with sin, and consequently 
 they were able to let shafts of light down into 
 
 1 Note especially the case of Guido da Montefeltro the 
 " romanzo storico " of " the promise long and the fulfilment 
 short." On the face of it, it is ridiculous to suppose that Boni- 
 face who is described by Dante as a fox, and was undoubtedly 
 a very accomplished Italian intriguer would seek for such 
 ingenuous and childlike advice. It is said that the story is not 
 mentioned by any contemporary.
 
 84 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 the secret places of men's souls. And this is 
 the characteristic attribute of the great seer, 
 whether he be a Hebrew prophet, a Greek 
 tragedian, a Roman poet, a Christian apostle, 
 or a Dante. He must have the eye to pene- 
 trate the eternal truths of life, and the real 
 motives which actuate human conduct to see 
 things as they are, disengaged from the con- 
 ventional point of view of the day. The 
 motto of the ' Comedy ' might be taken from 
 St Francis : " What every man is in the eyes 
 of God, that he is and no more." The God 
 within each man knows what that is. 
 
 " How many are esteemed great kings up there 
 Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, 
 Leaving behind them horrible dispraises." l 
 
 " But look thou, many crying are, Christ ! Christ ! 
 Who at the judgment shall be far less near 
 To Him than some shall be who knew not Christ. 
 
 Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn, 
 When the two companies shall be divided, 
 The one for ever rich, the other poor. 
 
 What to your kings may not the Persians say, 
 W T hen they that volume opened shall behold 
 In which are written down all their dispraises 1 " 2 
 
 1 Inf. viii. 49. 2 Par. xix. 106.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 85 
 
 " Let not Dame Bertha nor Ser Martin think, 
 Seeing one steal, another offering make, 
 To see them in the arbitrament divine, 
 For one may rise, and fall the other may." l 
 
 Dante's undying influence with the great mass 
 of lay - readers is due to this penetrating 
 power of seeing things as they are, and mak- 
 ing us see ourselves as we are, unmasking the 
 shams of the world, and passing beyond the 
 pretensions of the Church to absolve and remit 
 sins. He knew that wrong -doing and its 
 punishment are as inseparable as the root and 
 the flower of a poisonous plant, and that if 
 the mills of the gods grind slow they grind 
 exceeding fine. 2 Then his clear perception of 
 the necessity for social regeneration appeals 
 directly to the modern spirit. Looking round 
 on the world from his standpoint as an exile 
 and a wanderer deprived of all worldly goods, 
 he vividly realised the misery wrought by the 
 excessive claims of individual selfishness the 
 envy, the arrogance, the sloth, and the avarice 
 and he conceived his vision as the strongest 
 possible appeal to men's fears and to their 
 hopes. 
 
 1 Par. xiii. 142. 2 Cf. Par. xxii. 16.
 
 86 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 The fundamental idea of the ' Comedy/ as of 
 the Bible, consists in the precept, " Love thy 
 neighbour as thyself." l As Beatrice beauti- 
 fully puts it 
 
 "Of those things only should one be afraid 
 
 Which have the power of doing others harm. 
 Of the rest no ; because they are not fearful." 2 
 
 It is an essentially social basis. The appli- 
 cation of the idea to life will enlarge with the 
 developing conscience of mankind. At one 
 time it will require the support of a super- 
 natural sanction, at another time it will rest on 
 the social sanction ; but it will ever remain the 
 basis of all true religion of universal religion 
 
 1 "Love must be the seed within yourselves of every virtue 
 and every act that merits punishment." Purg. xvii. 103. 
 
 " Hence if, discriminating, I judge well, 
 
 The evil that one loves is of one's neighbour, 
 And this is born in three modes in your clay. 
 
 There are, who, by abasement of their neighbour, 
 Hope to excel, and therefore only long 
 That from his greatness he may be cast down ; 
 
 There are, who power, grace, honour, and renown 
 Fear they may lose because another rises, 
 Thence are so sad that the reverse they love ; 
 
 And there are those whom injury seems to chafe, 
 So that it makes them greedy for revenge, 
 And such must needs shape out another's harm. 
 
 This threefold love is wept for down below. " 
 
 Purg. xvii. 112. 
 
 2 Inf. ii. 88.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 87 
 
 because it demonstrably leads to the king- 
 dom of heaven. If we could conceive of a world 
 where the doctrine was not only preached but 
 practised, we could conceive of a world with- 
 out sin. For all sin or wrong-doing is finally 
 referable to the love of self, instead of love 
 of others ; and the love of others is the love 
 of God, for " God is love." l In these three 
 words of St John lie the foundation and the 
 reconciliation of all religions. 
 
 We have only to read the literature of the 
 opposing Christian sects in order to acknow- 
 ledge that we are still a long way off this final 
 stadium of development ; but the worship of 
 human goodness (which is the highest good- 
 ness we know from experience) is one form of 
 worshipping God, and our best image of God's 
 love is the love of the mother for her child, of 
 the child for its mother. All readers of Dante 
 know that when he wishes to strike his ten- 
 derest chord, this love is the note he touches. 2 
 And in another art in the Madonna di San 
 Sisto, the ideal mother with the ideal Child 
 
 1 Cf. Inf. i. 39 ; and Par. xxxiii. 145. 
 
 2 Inf. xxiii. 38 ; Purg. xxx. 44 ; Par. i. 101, xiv. 64, xxii. 1, 
 xxiii. 121, xxx. 82.
 
 88 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 in her arms we recognise the everlasting 
 emblem of the religion of Christianity, of the 
 religion of humanity, and haply also of their 
 junction. 
 
 Hell can never be reached except when the 
 love of others is dead within us, whether we 
 regard hell as an actual place of torment or 
 as a subjective mental and moral state. So 
 long as there is love of others in the heart 
 there is hope, and that is the secret of Jesus. 
 He is the true corner-stone, for our finest con- 
 ceptions of perfect love cluster round His per- 
 sonality, real or ideal. The authenticity of 
 the Gospel narratives may be proved or dis- 
 proved, but the character of Jesus as it has 
 formed itself for us during nineteen centuries 
 will remain as a type. It is true that in 
 Dante's poem the finest essence of Christ's 
 teaching and example is often overlaid by the 
 requirements of the system of the Roman 
 Church, and by the poet's own passionate 
 unforgiving nature ; but no one has shown 
 more clearly than Dante how treachery, fraud, 
 covetousness, pride, anger, sloth, and all other 
 deadly sins, have their common root in love of 
 self, causing us to claim more than our fair
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 89 
 
 share. What we have to aim at is " hunger- 
 ing at all times so far as is just." l In a few 
 striking lines he puts his finger on the diseased 
 spot in our social structure : 
 
 " human race ! why dost thou set thy heart 
 Where interdict of partnership must be ? 2 
 
 ' What did the spirit of Romagna mean, 
 Mentioning interdict and partnership ? ' 
 
 Whence he 3 to me : ' Of his own greatest failing 
 He knows the harm ; and therefore wonder not 
 If he reprove us, that we less may rue it. 
 
 Because are thither pointed your desires 
 
 Where by companionship each share is lessened, 
 Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs. 
 
 But if the love of the supernal sphere 
 Should upwardly direct your aspiration, 
 There would not be that fear within your breast; 
 
 For there, as much the more as one says Our, 
 So much the more of good each one possesses, 
 And more of charity in that cloister burns.'" 4 
 
 The purchase which capital has acquired 
 over the products of labour is seen to be the 
 root of some of the greatest evils from which 
 humanity suffers. In the very opening of the 
 poem Avarice is figured as a she-wolf 
 
 1 Purg. xxiv. 154 ; and cf. Par. vii. 25. 
 
 2 Purg. xiv. 86. 3 Virgil. 4 Purg. xv. 45.
 
 90 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 " that with all hungerings 
 Seemed to be laden in her meagreness, 
 And many folk has caused to live forlorn ! " l 
 
 She is to be driven back to hell, " there from 
 whence Envy first did let her loose." The 
 application is much wider than to the mere 
 avarice of the clergy. The sudden gains are 
 set down as the ruin of Florence. Plutus is 
 referred to as the great enemy, and Virgil is 
 constantly reminding Dante of the dangers 
 arising from "the accursed hunger of gold"; 
 particularly in the beautiful lines : 
 
 " For all the gold that is beneath the moon 
 Or ever has been, of these weary souls 
 Could never make a single one repose." - 
 
 Beatrice, at the beginning of that charming 
 passage in the " Paradise " where she antici- 
 pates much that Wordsworth has said as to 
 " the youth who daily farther from the East 
 must travel," says : 
 
 " O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf 
 
 Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power 
 
 Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves ! " 3 
 
 Dante himself, too, takes occasion to blow the 
 
 1 Inf. i. 49 ; cf. Purg. xx. 10. 2 Inf. vii. 64 
 
 3 Par. xxvii. 121, and cf. xxx. 139.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 91 
 
 bellows on the flames that are licking the soles 
 
 o 
 
 of Pope Nicholas the Third, by reminding him 
 how " his avarice afflicts the world trampling 
 the good and lifting the depraved"; and the 
 following lines put into the mouth of Hugh 
 Capet have still their pointed significance in 
 our own Vanity Fair. They refer to Charles 
 the Second of Apulia, who married his daughter 
 to Azzo the Third da Este of Ferrara. 
 
 " The other, now gone forth, ta'en in his ship, 
 See I his daughter sell, and chaffer for her 
 As corsairs do with other female slaves. 
 What more, O Avarice, canst thou do to us, 
 Since thou my blood so to thyself hast drawn, 
 It careth not for its own proper flesh ? " l 
 
 These are only a few passages, that can be 
 multiplied over and over again, showing that 
 social questions form the very warp and woof 
 of the ' Comedy.' The poet is in truth much 
 more concerned with the affairs of this world 
 than with the next although the scene is 
 laid in the latter. He is not afraid to use the 
 lash, and it falls on peculiarly tender places 
 in the modern conscience. He saw clearly 
 that the voluntary poverty of the Friars was 
 
 1 Purg. xx. 79.
 
 92 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 the most helpful gift that the medieval 
 Church had given to the world l (our Bishops 
 and Deans must have their withers wrung 
 as well as the rest of us) ; and as he had 
 himself been involuntarily stripped of all 
 his own worldly goods, he was in a position 
 to recognise the fact that the ever-increas- 
 ing inequality in the distribution of wealth is 
 the greatest danger to social wellbeing. The 
 fierce white light that he throws on the 
 danger of the two excesses, in acquiring in- 
 dividual wealth and in profusely spending it, 
 illumines for us the higher aspirations of the 
 true spirit of social regeneration that spirit 
 which is looming up so largely through the 
 world to-day. Not the crude spirit which 
 would risk reducing order to chaos by violent 
 methods, but the spirit which is at work 
 modifying and changing our ideal of pos- 
 session from an individual to a social basis. 
 Dante sombrely shadows forth the outlines of 
 the mighty problem, and to the modern mind 
 it is one of the most interesting of all the 
 interesting elements in the ' Comedy.' 
 
 1 St Francis, Par. xi. 64-67 etseq.; St Dominic, Par. xii. 82 et 
 seq. ; and cf. Par. xxii. 82.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 93 
 
 His descriptions of the spirit-world may be 
 taken as figures, symbols, types. No doubt 
 many people will maintain that if you take 
 away the belief in the future life as repre- 
 sented in the ' Comedy,' you take away all 
 meaning from the poem, which may be com- 
 pared to saying that if you take away the 
 Jewish ordinances from the Old Testament 
 you take away its essential part. Those or- 
 dinances had no doubt a deep and important 
 significance to the Israelites ; their significance 
 has ceased for us, but the vital teaching of the 
 Old Testament is not in the least dependent on 
 them. It is as true to us as the day it was 
 written, because it is the highest poetry. I 
 suppose in Dante's time there were believers 
 in the future life as described by him ; but 
 does any one believe in it literally to-day ? 
 Did he believe in it himself ? It is much more 
 difficult to think that he did, than to think that 
 he did not. It is hard for us to imagine that 
 the torments w r ere really such, and felt by the 
 shades to be such, as they are described when 
 we find Farinata in hell saying to Dante, in 
 reference to the banishment of the Ghibellines 
 by the poet's- ancestors, and in reply to a
 
 94 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 taunt that they had not " acquired the art " 
 of returning from their banishment to Flor- 
 ence 
 
 " And if they have not learned that art aright, 
 That more tormenteth me than doth this bed." l 
 
 It certainly puts a different complexion on 
 these torments when we are told that a 
 sufferer feels them less than the thought 
 that his descendants had not found the way 
 of reinstating themselves in power in the city 
 of Florence, and that he " held hell in great 
 despite." Again, if Dante had believed in the 
 actuality of his own hell, he would scarcely 
 have made Virgil say to Capaneus 
 
 " O Capaneus, in that is not extinguished 
 Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more : 
 Not any torment saving thine own rage 
 Would be unto thy fury pain complete "^ 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, if he had believed in 
 the reality of his own paradise, can we im- 
 agine him introducing his pride of birth in 
 meeting his great ancestor Cacciaguida ; nor, 
 when he has been brought face to face with 
 the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel, St John, 
 
 1 Inf. x. 76. a Inf. xiv. 63.
 
 DANTE AND THE " NEW REFORMATION." 95 
 
 and Moses, allowing St Bernard to finish his 
 introduction with such lines as these : 
 
 " But since the moments of thy vision fly, 
 
 Here will we make full stop, as a good tailor 
 Who makes the gown according to his cloth" l 
 
 Undoubtedly one of the most puzzling among 
 the many puzzling problems coiled in the mys- 
 terious verses of the ' Comedy ' is to conceive 
 how we are meant to take this future life. 
 There are so many curious incongruities in the 
 treatment of it, that we are sometimes driven 
 to think that 
 
 " Perhaps his doctrine is of other guise 
 
 Than the words sound, and possibly may be 
 With meaning that is not to be derided." 2 
 
 In the verses spoken by Cacciaguida we 
 find a suggestion that may be taken as a 
 reference to subjective immortality : 
 
 " Because thy life into the future reaches 
 Beyond the punishment of their perfidies." 3 
 
 To which Dante replies : 
 
 1 Par. xxxii. 139. 2 Par. iv. 55 
 
 3 Par. xvii. 98.
 
 96 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 " And if I am a timid friend to truth, 
 
 I fear lest I may lose my life with those 
 Who will hereafter call this time the olden." l 
 
 He conjures the spirits in hell : 
 
 " So may your memory not steal away 
 
 In the first world from out the minds of men, 
 But so may it survive 'neath many suns." 2 
 
 And Cunizza says that of Folco the trouba- 
 dour : 
 
 " Great fame remained ; and ere it die away 
 This hundredth year shall yet quintupled be. 
 See if man ought to make him excellent, 
 So that another life the first may leave "^ 
 
 This is probably the immortality that Dante 
 refers to when he says to Brunetto Latini, 
 "You taught me how a man becomes eter- 
 nal." 4 Of course, there are scores of passages 
 in the ' Convito ' as well as in the ' Comedy ' 
 which can be adduced in proof of Dante's 
 complete belief in the accepted view of his 
 century on this subject, just as an equal 
 number of passages can be adduced in proof 
 of his complete belief in the accepted view 
 of his century as to the divine appointment 
 
 1 Par. xvii. 118. 2 Inf. xxix. 103. 
 
 3 Par. ix. 39. 4 Inf. xv. 85.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 97 
 
 of the holy Roman emperors. All we can 
 with certainty affirm is, that whatever inter- 
 pretations may be put on the poet's descrip- 
 tions of the future life, these descriptions 
 have no warrant from Scriptural authority, 
 but rest entirely on the authority of his own 
 imagination. In that great subtle mind there 
 was room for many conceptions of immortality, 
 and for many motives in favour of enforcing 
 a particular conception. No one knew better 
 than he that human nature is so constituted 
 that the reiterated assertion by a supreme 
 artist of a claim to superhuman knowledge, 
 and experience beyond the grave, although 
 admittedly in a vision, compels an attention 
 and a belief that would never be accorded 
 to any mortal who had cast his ideas into a 
 different form. 
 
 And no writer ever made such personal 
 claims for himself. He tells us at once of 
 his beautiful style that has done honour to 
 him, and how the five poets whom he re- 
 garded as the greatest of antiquity made 
 him the sixth in their own band. Brunetto 
 Latini prophesies smooth things to him, and 
 says he is "the sweet fig amongst the crabbed 
 
 G
 
 98 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 sorbs." Guido del Duca, Judge Nino, Currado 
 Malaspina, Sapla, Marco Lombardo, Hugh 
 Capet, Guido Guinicelli, Cacciaguida, Charles 
 Martel, Thomas Aquinas, Justinian, and indeed 
 most of the shades of the departed, assure 
 him that he is particularly beloved of God 
 an assurance that was scarcely required, 
 as the very fact of his journey was sufficient 
 evidence of his " especial grace." He ad- 
 dresses the Gemini, " glorious stars, O light 
 impregnated with mighty virtue, from which 
 I acknowledge all of my genius, whatsoe'er 
 it be." l In paradise St Peter himself en- 
 circles Dante's brow after his examination 
 on faith a much greater honour for the 
 poet than " taking the laurel crown at his 
 baptismal font." St James expresses his 
 gratitude to the expert disciple who shows 
 such proficiency in the doctrine of hope, St 
 John catechises him on Divine Love, and 
 St Bernard introduces him to the Virgin 
 Mary. He receives direct from the mouths 
 of these saints elucidations of various disputed 
 points of doctrine, 2 and is commanded to tell 
 the blind world how it is going wrong by 
 
 1 Par. xxii. 112. 2 Par. xxix. 70 et sea.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 99 
 
 not separating the Spiritual and the Temporal 
 powers. Much as we may bow to Dante's 
 genius to - day, it is utterly impossible for 
 us by any effort of the imagination to realise 
 the impression that these intimate relations 
 with the saints in paradise must have pro- 
 duced on the religious minds of the time 
 in Florence. To think that their own fellow- 
 citizen could say at the sight of the blessed 
 Rose : 
 
 " I who to the divine had from the human, 
 From time into eternity had come, 
 From Florence to a people just and sane, 
 With what amazement must I have been filled ! " l 
 
 A selection from the various writers on 
 the ' Divina Commedia ' and their various in- 
 terpretations will convince us of the impossi- 
 bility of defining Dante's 6wn inmost beliefs. 
 Probably no other human soul ever believed 
 exactly as he believed. Probably no two 
 human souls from the beginning of time have 
 ever believed exactly alike as to the eternities 
 a thought which ought to make us chari- 
 table in our judgment of each other's beliefs. 
 
 1 Par. xxxi. 37.
 
 100 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 But we may observe that whenever he comes 
 out of the region of barren metaphysics into 
 his own region of exquisite poetical images, 
 we can all go along with him. No one of a 
 religious mind, whatever may be his creed, 
 can fail to appreciate such lines as these : 
 
 " Into the justice sempiternal 
 The power of vision that your world receives 
 As eye into the ocean penetrates ; 
 Which, though it see the bottom near the shore, 
 Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet 
 'Tis there, but it is hidden by the depth." l 
 
 This is the very gospel of Agnosticism. It 
 is true that in another passage he tells us, 
 "If so the Scriptures were not over you for 
 doubting there were marvellous occasion ; " 
 but then it is precisely on the interpretation 
 of these Scriptures that the whole difference 
 between Catholics and Protestants has turned. 
 Certainly Dante's literal interpretation will 
 not coincide with the Protestant's interpreta- 
 tion, still less with the Unitarian's, and least 
 of all with the Agnostic's, but they all join in 
 admiration of the beauty of his imagery : 
 
 1 Par. xix. 58.
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 101 
 
 " Within the deep and luminous subsistence 
 
 Of the high light appeared to me three circles 
 Of threefold colours and of one dimension, 
 And in the second seemed the first reflected 
 As Iris is by Iris, and the third 
 Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed." l 
 
 Mr Lowell takes this as an " image of that 
 Power, Love, and Wisdom, one in essence 
 but trine in manifestation, to answer the 
 needs of our triple nature and satisfy the 
 senses, the heart, and the mind." That is 
 an interpretation to which every one can sub- 
 scribe. Professor Huxley and Cardinal Man- 
 ning can meet on it, although it conveys such 
 different conceptions to their two minds. It 
 has been said that Dante " translated into 
 the language of the multitude what the 
 Schools had done to throw light on the deep 
 questions of human existence/' 2 But he has 
 done much more. As a great poet he has 
 soared infinitely beyond and above their meta- 
 physics, although it is evident that he judged 
 it to be necessary that the world of his day 
 should be governed by their system, or rather 
 he placed his hopes in the idealisation of the 
 
 1 Par. xxxiii. 115. 2 Dean Church (Essay on Dante).
 
 102 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 two systems then existing the Holy Roman 
 Church and the Holy Roman Empire. But 
 to make the arrangements completely satis- 
 factory to his critical and exacting mind, 
 he would have required, for their actual 
 working, one Dante as Pope, and another 
 Dante as Emperor. He was keenly alive 
 to the necessity of a divine authority for 
 the Temporal power as well as for the Spirit- 
 ual power, because he knew that the crowd 
 must have emphatic warrant ; and we get 
 some help to understanding his mental atti- 
 tude towards miracles and revelations from 
 the serious argument in the ' De Monarchia,' 
 founding the claims of Rome to the empire 
 of the world on the old Roman miracles 
 the geese of the Capitol, the hailstorm which 
 checked Hannibal, &c., "proved by the testi- 
 mony of illustrious authorities." If any one 
 wishes to learn the value of the testimony 
 of illustrious authorities, it is only necessary 
 to look up the records of the Tichborne trial. 
 
 Dean Church remarks on Dante's belief in 
 these early miracles that " the intellectual 
 phenomenon is a strange one." Perhaps the 
 stranger one is to accept some miracles and
 
 DAXTE AXD THE "NEW REFORMATION." 103 
 
 to reject others, when they are all said to be 
 " proved by the testimony of illustrious au- 
 thorities." Our poet carried his belief back- 
 wards from the early Christian miracles, just 
 as Dr Newman carries his belief in them for- 
 wards. The logic is unimpeachable. Every 
 phenomenon claiming acceptance as a miracle 
 must be subjected to the same rigorous scien- 
 tific tests, although I suppose the most sceptical 
 of men admits that all life is one long miracle, 
 
 o 
 
 from birth to death, in the sense that the first 
 cause is unknown. It may be said that these 
 arguments for the miraculous sanctions of the 
 Roman Empire are in the ' De Monarchia,' 
 which was probably written before 1300. But 
 they are not confined to that essay. The 
 belief was a common one at the period, and 
 if we were to take out of the ' Comedy ' all the 
 direct and indirect references to the divinity 
 of the Empire, we should have a body of doc- 
 trine fully as convincing as the theological 
 dogmas. God is alluded to as the Emperor, 
 the Virgin Mary as Augusta, and in purgatory 
 Beatrice tells Dante that he will only be a 
 short time there, and then will be with her 
 for evermore in paradise, " a citizen of that
 
 104 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 .Koine where Christ is Roman." Judas, who 
 betrayed Christ, and Brutus and Cassius, who 
 betrayed Csesar, are all punished together ; 
 and the Roman eagle is one of the most con- 
 spicuous features in paradise as well as in 
 purgatory. So far as Dante's arguments go, 
 the reasons for believing in the divine origin 
 of the Empire are just as convincing as the 
 reasons for believing in the divine origin of 
 the Church. And in a certain sense we all 
 believe in this kind of divinity. There was 
 a time (not long ago) when this divinity did 
 hedge our kings. It still hedges the English 
 constitution to the Englishman, the American 
 constitution to the American, and so forth : 
 for the frame of civil government is the symbol 
 of the reign of law, which mankind has seen 
 to be necessary for its salvation and endurance. 
 In that sense it is eternal or divine just as 
 the decisions of a supreme court of appeal are 
 practically infallible. But at the same time 
 we know that if the majority of the men in a 
 country determine to alter them they will be 
 altered, and generally improved. Institutions 
 develop as the race develops. As Dante puts 
 it, ' ' though there are other beings which with
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 105 
 
 him have understanding, yet this understand- 
 ing is not, as man's, capable of development." l 
 " Semper eadem " is an impossible motto in 
 this quickly changing world quickly chang- 
 ing especially from the point of view of a 
 thousand years being as one day. 
 
 Dante shows us the real meaning, to his 
 mind, of the divine origin and the supernatural 
 sanction, when he says : "If the Church had 
 power to bestow authority on the Roman prince, 
 she would have it either from God, or from 
 herself, or from some emperor, or from the 
 universal consent of mankind, or at least of 
 the majority of mankind." This is indeed 
 the vox populi vox Dei. It is a firm social 
 basis : for it practically acknowledges the di- 
 vinity of the State, supported by supernatural 
 sanctions sanctions which, as Gibbon said of 
 other sanctions, " to the people were equally 
 true, to the philosopher were equally false, 
 and to the magistrate were equally useful." 
 Now, the State can stand unaided on the 
 basis of human reason. No wonder that the 
 ' De Monarchia ' is in the Index Expurgatorius. 
 For it is certain that one of the institutions 
 
 1 De Monarchia.
 
 106 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 which Dante believed to be as divinely or- 
 dained as the Church has passed away ; the 
 other may pass away also ; but, because the 
 social instincts of man are ever ripening to a 
 finer fruit, the human race will still go on 
 
 ' O 
 
 developing, though, perhaps, under different 
 conceptions of spiritual and temporal direction. 
 Dogmas will alter as they always have altered 
 with the process of the suns ; but the spirit 
 of truth and justice will remain, because it is 
 " within men, like the kingdom of God, as a 
 great spiritual yearning." We may disbelieve 
 all Dante's supernatural ideas, just as we dis- 
 believe the miraculous sanctions of the Roman 
 Empire, or the Ptolemaic system of astronomy ; 
 but they were not " false errors," and he will 
 remain to us as the greatest poet of humanity, 
 because none has seen more clearly the seed 
 of social disease and the need for social regen- 
 eration. The germ of the latest political ideal 
 too the parliament of man, the federation of 
 the world is to be found in his writings. 
 
 And great as his claims may be as a thinker, 
 they are still greater as an artist. Through 
 his dramatic representation he has riveted the 
 attention of mankind on his writing for six
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 107 
 
 centuries, and his influence is as fresh and 
 infinitely wider to-day than it has ever been 
 before. The interest of his poem centres in 
 his own personality. Its origin is constantly 
 attributed to his desire of deifying Beatrice ; 
 but if we look at it closely, the result is not 
 the deification of Beatrice, but the deification 
 of Dante. The lady of his mind becomes more 
 and more shadowy, melts into his ideal self, 
 but his own personality becomes ever more 
 sharply defined cut out in clear relief against 
 the background of the poem so that at the 
 last we find that Beatrice is not a being apart 
 from him, but that she has become a part of 
 his being, and that she, the angels, the saints, 
 the spirits in torment, and Lucifer, are all used 
 as adjuncts to enable a supreme artist to de- 
 liver one ,of the greatest of human messages 
 to a social world. 
 
 As the first Christian prophet who has 
 given us a revelation without the pretension 
 of any miraculous intervention a revelation 
 which we are not bound to accept by any 
 theological dogma, but the essence of which 
 (its perception of the social bases of human 
 virtues and vices) forces itself on our belief
 
 108 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 
 
 as the truth, whether we like it or not and 
 as the first great literary artist who has 
 known how to seize the essential in that which 
 he wished to portray, and by a few strong 
 strokes to leave a perfect picture on the 
 mental retina who has known how to press 
 out the juice of his conception, throwing away 
 the pulp and the rind in a word, as the 
 first great impressionist, the Italian poet has 
 fixed his place as the guiding star to the 
 modern intellectual movement. And if the 
 Dante dome is wide enough to cover opinions 
 and feelings as antipodal as those of Protes- 
 tants and Positivists, Roman Catholics and 
 Agnostics, shall the Christian Cathedral of 
 the future offer a less hospitable shelter ? 
 Surely there will be room in it for all the 
 men, women, and children who may be seek- 
 ing in any way to leave this confused world 
 a little better than they found it, whatever 
 may be their beliefs or no beliefs in dog- 
 matic theology. The Church speaks brave 
 words as to its increasing influence, but the 
 voice of Rome sounds tremulous. It is too 
 late nowadays to anathematise men of science 
 as infidels. The Church of the future must
 
 DANTE AND THE "NEW REFORMATION." 109 
 
 recruit them to herself as the best soldiers 
 in the ranks of the truly religious. For the 
 pursuit of real science is the pursuit of truth 
 truth in which alone the intellect finds 
 rest : 
 
 " Light intellectual replete with love, 
 
 Love of true good replete with ecstasy, 
 Ecstasy that transcendeth every sweetness." : 
 
 This too is religion, and the highest poetry is 
 its best expression. 
 
 1 Par. xxx. 40.
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 1 
 
 WE know how difficult it is to form any true 
 estimate of popular opinion in our own little 
 island, where the area is exceedingly limited, 
 where all shades of opinion are fairly and 
 faithfully represented by an ubiquitous, an 
 independent, and a self-respecting newspaper 
 press mainly intent on recording the facts 
 as they exist, and where, consequently, we 
 have all the appliances for arriving at a rea- 
 sonable judgment. Yet every general elec- 
 tion teaches us how hopelessly even the most 
 knowing ones the men whose whole function 
 
 o 
 
 in life is to know are led astray on great 
 and well - defined issues. We may judge, 
 therefore, how much more difficult it is to 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, March 1891.
 
 THE NEW WORLD. Ill 
 
 arrive at any accurate knowledge of popular 
 opinion among the English-speaking peoples, 
 amounting to double our own numbers, scat- 
 tered over the vast area of the New World. 
 We run constant risk of attributing to them 
 imaginary states of feeling begotten of our 
 own sentiment and our own egoistic desires, 
 where our wish is father to our thought. A 
 case in point is the confident notion very gen- 
 erally entertained in this country that there 
 is a strong popular feeling in our great colonies 
 in favour of Imperial Federation. Perhaps 
 it is scarcely worth while either to deny or 
 to affirm the existence of this feeling, because 
 the scheme of federation is as yet so formless 
 and so vague it is still so completely outside 
 the area of practical politics that no one can 
 possibly have formed an intelligent judgment 
 upon it ; but while the project is still in the 
 air it may not be amiss to call attention, in 
 the fewest possible words, to certain general 
 principles which must necessarily underlie it, 
 and which have scarcely yet received all the 
 consideration that they merit. We want fairly 
 to envisage the situation to face its realities. 
 We are concerned with the growth of a New
 
 112 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 World, and we may be sure that it has a 
 natural principle of growth which can only 
 be departed from under pain of retributive 
 penalties. Is this principle of growth the 
 same for Canada and Australia as it is for 
 England ? Have we fully considered the ques- 
 tion from their point of view ? For instance, 
 if we set ourselves to think of the relations 
 between the New World and the Old, what 
 is the first and the most important considera- 
 tion that arises in our minds? An English- 
 man, primed by Professor Seeley, will promptly 
 answer, " The expansion of England." But an 
 American will certainly answer, " The predomi- 
 nance of American ideas," and an Australian 
 will probably answer, " Advance Australia ! " 
 
 Here then, at the outset, we find that the 
 question is not a simple one, as we get these 
 very different answers from the three parties 
 principally interested. The Englishman's an- 
 swer is obviously too narrow, the American's 
 is perhaps too shallow, and the Australian's 
 is certainly too callow if the expression may 
 be used in regard to such a rapidly growing 
 young bird. Yet there is some truth in each 
 answer. It may be said that, in a restricted
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 113 
 
 sense, the Englishman's is true of the past, 
 the American's is true of the present, and the 
 Australian's may possibly be true of the future. 
 But to express the full significance of the 
 New World's development, we must find a 
 formula that will combine the three points 
 of view. Perhaps that formula may be " The 
 expansion of the great humanitarian move- 
 ment," which is broader than the expansion of 
 England, deeper than the predominance of 
 American ideas, and higher than 'Advance 
 Australia ! ' For if we go back to the birth 
 of the New World and the tradition which it 
 has created, we can trace its descent directly 
 from that movement a movement which was, 
 in its origin, coincident with the Reformation, 
 which was nourished by the eighty years' 
 struggle of the Netherlands against Spain, 
 and which afterwards received the most quick- 
 ening impulse from the French Revolution. 
 The movement was based on revolt against 
 tyranny, privilege, and oppression, in favour of 
 liberty, equality, and fraternity. Its ultimate 
 aim was to abolish monarchy, to abolish aris- 
 tocracy, to abolish the connection between 
 Church and State, and to establish the sov- 
 
 H
 
 114 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 ereignty of the people. It profoundly modified 
 all previously existing ideas of religion and 
 politics, and set in motion the great long wave 
 of emigration which has not only been the 
 overflow of population, but has borne onward 
 in its course a continuous protest against 
 many of the ideas, the sentiments, and the 
 methods (particularly the military methods) of 
 the Old World, and landed on the shores of 
 the New World a people determined to try a 
 wholly new system founded on the basis of 
 industrialism. 
 
 And here we get to the very kernel of 
 the question. Industrialism, as opposed to 
 militarism, is now the central idea of the New 
 World the pivot upon which the New World 
 may be said to turn. Here we find a vital 
 principle not merely a vague aspiration as it 
 still is in the Old World and we must lay 
 hold of it as an elementary and fundamental 
 consideration if we are to understand rightly 
 the relations between the two worlds. For 
 the full accomplishment of this stage of social 
 development signalises a new departure of 
 immense historical importance. It changes 
 the whole attitude and the ideals of a people
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 115 
 
 whether for better or for worse is a point we 
 need not argue here ; there is, no doubt, much 
 to be said on both sides. For it may be 
 admitted that intense industrial competition 
 often produces its own miseries, its own 
 cruelties, its own degradations, its o*wn sac- 
 rifices of human life and wellbeing, without 
 the balance of ennobling elements that mili- 
 tary undertakings for a great and worthy 
 common end have sometimes, though rarely, 
 called forth. The change, however, is the 
 important consideration, and it must never 
 be lost sight of when we attempt to gauge the 
 sentiment and the probable future action of 
 the New World for change of function leads 
 to change of organism. 
 
 What do we mean, for instance, when we 
 speak now of the United States as a dominat- 
 ing power ? We mean dominating by ideas, 
 not by physical force. They are not an aggres- 
 sive power (though often a blustering power), 
 but they have been, and are, an incalculably 
 powerful factor in revolutionising the think- 
 ing and the feeling of half the world. To the 
 future historian one of the most striking phe- 
 nomena of the last quarter of this century will
 
 116 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 be the extraordinary increase that he will 
 discern in the relative weight of America 
 during this period compared with former years. 
 He will be called on to chronicle the fact that 
 her example was relied on as an argument 
 in favour of the scheme for British Imperial 
 Federation, and notwithstanding its curious 
 inapplicability, he will find that the analogy 
 was made use of for years after its absurdity 
 had been demonstrated. Imitation is the 
 sincerest form of flattery, and the flattery 
 is none the less sincere even though the suc- 
 cessful imitation be impossible. 
 
 We all know what the United States of 
 America are. They are equal sovereign 
 states, which have delegated certain powers to 
 a central authority of their own creation, under 
 a rigid written Constitution. They are con- 
 tiguous to one another, containing some sixty- 
 five million people, with identical language, 
 identical institutions, identical aims, and iden- 
 tical currency ; threatened by no strong neigh- 
 bouring powers ; no part of the federation 
 bound by obligations or treaties to which any 
 other part objects, or is ever likely to object ; 
 with absolute freedom of trade internally and
 
 THE XEW WORLD. 117 
 
 protection externally a commercial policy, by 
 the way, which seems to be the present ideal 
 of the whole New World alas, for the irony 
 of fate ! Compact within themselves, and with 
 continuous lines of railroad (about 170,000 
 miles in all) running through the whole length 
 and breadth of the federation, they form a 
 colossal power, solid by reason of the diffused 
 ownership of the land, the diversity of employ- 
 ment between agriculture and manufactures, 
 the rapidity of inter - communication ; and 
 although practically only a hundred years 
 old not yet older than individuals still liv- 
 ing amongst us they are already in actual 
 wealth the richest community and the great- 
 est manufacturing community in the world, 
 potentially fabulous in population and power, 
 but with no standing army and a compara- 
 tively small navy. Yet they are strong for 
 defence, because having no outlying dependen- 
 cies ; and in the last resort, being absolutely 
 independent of external commerce, owing to 
 their capacity for supplying abundantly within 
 their own borders every need of man, all that 
 they require is a navy strong enough for 
 purely defensive purposes. And we, as free-
 
 118 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 traders, must admit that protection of native 
 industries, notwithstanding all its drawbacks, 
 has given them this incidental advantage of 
 rendering them independent of the outside 
 world in case of war, which is not a negliga- 
 ble quantity even to a New World industrial 
 power " in this so-called nineteenth century." 
 The advantage, however, has been bought 
 at the price of the eclipse at any rate the 
 temporary eclipse of their mercantile marine, 
 and that is not the only price they have had 
 to pay, and will have to pay, for protection. 
 
 " But that is another story." 
 These states have had the good fortune, 
 through favouring circumstances, to be able 
 to build up for themselves a tradition of 
 peaceable expansion, so that militarism is no 
 longer a factor in the conduct of their affairs, 
 nor in their thinking. The bayonet has been 
 banished as a standing institution, though 
 ready enough to reappear if occasion requires. 
 The civil war which ended in 1865 was caused 
 indirectly, if not directly, by the abnormal 
 institution of slavery, and instead of increas- 
 ing the tendency towards militarism, it really 
 advanced the cause of industrialism more than
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 119 
 
 any event in history. The whole armed forces 
 on both sides were at once quietly reabsorbed 
 into the industrial population ; the great lesson 
 was taught to the world that industrialism 
 does not necessarily lead to national impotence ; 
 and the experience gained by the Northerners, 
 of the difficulty of governing an unwilling 
 South after the war, has made them more 
 averse than before to the responsibility of 
 introducing any possibly recalcitrant elements 
 into their commonwealth. 
 
 Perhaps four Americans out of five look 
 on it as " manifest destiny " that the whole 
 continent must sooner or later come into 
 their system of federation, but they are 
 content to know that if this result is to be 
 arrived at, it will be by the peaceful power 
 of railroads and commercial intercourse, and 
 not by force of arms. In any previous 
 period of history sixty - five million people 
 wedged in, as the Americans are, between 
 five million Canadians on their northern 
 border and ten million Mexicans on their 
 southern border, would have been restless 
 in their endeavours to subdue at least one 
 of these weaker neighbours ; and the war of
 
 120 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 1861-65 conclusively proved that they were 
 not prevented by any lack of the fighting 
 and organising qualities that make conquer- 
 ing nations, but rather by the reasoned con- 
 viction that aggression and a feverish desire 
 for extension is a mistaken policy in the 
 case of an industrial people already possessed 
 of sufficient territory for its reasonable ex- 
 pansion. Whatever feeling there may have 
 been forty or fifty years ago in favour of 
 forcible annexation, has gradually died out. 
 There is certainly no such feeling to-day ; 
 and this national attitude marks an epoch, 
 for it is the practical acknowledgment that 
 the New World is to be unified, not con- 
 quered, by the strongest power, and that 
 the only true, enduring, and endurable union 
 is a voluntary one based on community of 
 interests and aims. But the pact once made 
 has to be kept. 
 
 Here, then, we have the example of a true 
 federation, the outcome of a natural principle 
 of growth, with nothing forced about it. It 
 is the characteristic product of the century, 
 and carries a world of meaning in its short 
 history, for it has opened a new era to
 
 THE NEW WOULD. 121 
 
 mankind by revolutionising the means for 
 attaining given ends. And this brings us to 
 the probable point of issue between English 
 and American ideas as to the future devel- 
 opment of the North American continent. 
 Canada has the proverbial " three courses " 
 open to her. She may (1) determine to 
 maintain existing relations with the mother 
 country, or (2) to set up for herself, or 
 (3) to be absorbed into the American federa- 
 tion. The difficulty in the first case is the 
 natural instinct, rapidly maturing into a 
 passion, for a real national existence indepen- 
 dent of leading-strings a passion which is 
 palpable to every observer in the Dominion, 
 and which can scarcely be gratified except 
 at the expense of a revolution in our English 
 institutions, a revolution, or an evolution, 
 in the direction of Imperial Federation, for 
 which under existing social conditions we 
 a,re ' not yet prepared, and which presents so 
 many practical difficulties that its successful 
 accomplishment within any measurable dis- 
 tance of time is exceedingly doubtful, and 
 time is of the essence of the contract. The 
 difficulty in the second case is the constant
 
 122 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 impact of 65,000,000 people upon 5,000,000 
 along an artificial frontier 4000 miles long, 
 the two peoples being really divided by no 
 irreconcilable differences of race and religion, 
 and having, as a matter of fact, every mate- 
 rial interest in common ; so that, under these 
 circumstances, it would scarcely seem to be 
 worth their while to run the risks of per- 
 petual jealousies and collisions for the sake of 
 a sentiment confined probably to a minority 
 of the whole population on the Canadian 
 side. The difficulty in the third case is pre- 
 cisely this anti - American sentiment among 
 " the classes " in the Dominion a sentiment 
 in which the French Canadians join, and 
 which is mainly based on a broad and com- 
 mendable feeling of individuality and distrust 
 in the political purity of American institu- 
 tions, 1 in addition to the sentiment of nation- 
 ality and loyalty to the British connection. 
 Turn it which way we will, however, we 
 shall find that, whichever of the three facets 
 
 1 Americans will no doubt be amused by my ingenuous 
 belief in the " purity principles " of the Canadians, after recent 
 revelations. But I leave the sentence as it was written, because 
 it represented a general and a genuine, if a mistaken, conviction, 
 among Englishmen up to a year ago (1892).
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 123 
 
 of the problem fronts us, there is always 
 one thing clear namely, that by the inex- 
 orable logic of facts Canada is essentially a 
 New World industrial power. She is ap- 
 proaching very rapidly to the parting of the 
 ways, and one of the most interesting and 
 far-reaching events of the near future will 
 be the course she decides on as to commer- 
 cial union with the United States ; for it can 
 scarcely be supposed that she will perma- 
 nently cut herself off from the great market 
 at her doors, and commercial union will al- 
 most inevitably bring her to a closer bond. 
 No man can tell yet what her decision will 
 be. All that can be certainly affirmed is, 
 that it will be one of the most momentous 
 decisions in the history of the New World ; 
 because, if the Dominion and Newfoundland 
 eventually determine to throw in their . lots 
 with the United States, the last material 
 link between the Old World and the con- 
 tinents of the Western Hemisphere will be 
 snapped, and the North American continent, 
 under a single federation, will present to 
 view the most solid power that the world 
 has ever seen purely industrial, armed only
 
 124 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 for defence, and with no apparent bone of 
 contention between itself and any other power 
 either of the Old or the New World. This 
 solution would not be agreeable to us in 
 England with our present ideas, and all that 
 can be said in its favour from our point of 
 view is that it would minimise the danger of 
 future collisions between the United States 
 and ourselves, and it would have a favour- 
 able effect on the whole future progress of 
 industrialism. Again, if we could view the 
 question from a wholly impartial standpoint, 
 it might be said that a diversity of institu- 
 tions would be a sensible gain in the devel- 
 opment of so great a country as the North 
 American continent ; but, on the other hand, 
 it must be admitted that the present tend- 
 ency in human affairs is towards federation 
 towards unification of contiguous areas, with 
 peoples of the same race, speaking the same 
 language, and having common interests and 
 aims. As the means of communication in- 
 crease, nationalism becomes a feebler, and 
 internationalism a stronger, motive power ; 
 and this is more particularly the case in the 
 New World. This tendency is much the
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 125 
 
 most important and the most interesting 
 feature in the world's politics to-day ; and 
 if the federation of the North American 
 continent ever takes place, it will probably 
 exercise a decisive influence in moulding the 
 destinies of Australia. 
 
 The United States of Australasia are still 
 in the embryonic stage, and the cry of 
 " Advance Australia ! " is perhaps premature 
 as the watchword of the New World ; but 
 they are, nevertheless, distinctly leading the 
 way in attempting solutions of many social 
 problems, with more or less success. Any one 
 who has been out there, or who has read 
 the ' Problems of Greater Britain,' must be 
 aware that the Australians already show 
 decided aspirations towards separate nation- 
 ality, combined with a very ardent feeling 
 of true patriotism (in the largest sense of 
 the word), and with a remarkable personal 
 attachment to the Queen and to the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales ; but they have long 
 since passed beyond the stage of thinking 
 themselves a part of England "as Yorkshire 
 is a part of England." If they are not build- 
 ing their state on a reformed religion, in
 
 126 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 the same sense as the Puritans founded the 
 New England colonies in the early years 
 of the seventeenth century, they are none 
 the less founding themselves on the evolution 
 of a social faith in which industrialism is a 
 vital tenet and a part of their effective re- 
 ligion. The lesson we have to learn is that 
 our kin beyond the sea are giving us the 
 lead in this direction. They are setting the 
 step for us, not we for them ; and it is this 
 consideration which stultifies the comparison 
 so often made, in post-prandial perorations, 
 between the Roman and the British Empires. 
 There is nothing more misleading than a false 
 historical analogy. 
 
 We must never forget that, whilst there 
 is warm affection, immense admiration, and 
 great reverence amongst the higher elements 
 of the New World for all that is truly admir- 
 able in the Old World, there is also exceed- 
 ingly free criticism of all that is not admirable. 
 And amongst the lower elements amongst 
 that large class who emigrated because they 
 were discontented with, or rebellious against, 
 their former lot there is quite as much of 
 distrust as love. If the New World has
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 127 
 
 been in a certain sense the expansion of the 
 Old World, it has also been the expansion 
 of an " anti-Old World." The Germans in 
 America retain still a sentiment for the 
 Vaterland for the land of Schiller and 
 Goethe but they glory far more in having 
 got beyond " Militarismus." The English 
 agricultural labourers or artisans in Australia, 
 and more particularly their children, no doubt 
 nourish a sentiment for the old home the 
 land of Shakespeare and Milton, the land of 
 all the poetry, the romance, the history, the 
 fine traditions of our race ; but it is crossed 
 with memories of a land of privilege, of in- 
 equalities of condition, low wages, slums, 
 smoke, spirits, and a sweated residuum. It 
 would be miserably unjust of them to fix 
 their minds only on the latter considerations, 
 but it is foolish optimism to believe that the 
 former alone are held in universally loving 
 remembrance. Their feelings are mixed, and 
 the craving for individual" expansion is as 
 strong in a young nation as it is in a young 
 person. 
 
 A community settled on a new continent 
 all its own, even when the great majority of
 
 128 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 its members belongs to the same race, and 
 even though that race be the English race, 
 is sure almost insensibly to form new ideals, 
 and it does not keep its gods thousands of 
 miles away. It lives more in the hopes of 
 its own future of subduing the land for 
 itself, of building its railroads, of constructing 
 its great works of irrigation than in the 
 memories of ancestors in the past, however 
 glorious. This may not be man's best estate, 
 but it is what happens it is what always has 
 happened in the history of the world. 
 
 And in thinking of the New World, we 
 must be careful not to mix up the case of 
 the North American and the Australasian 
 continents with the case of Africa. Happily 
 there is scarce the remotest possibility of 
 the two former ever being made future battle- 
 grounds for the Old World military powers, 
 because England is the sole European power 
 that now has a substantial foothold on either 
 continent, and there is practically no abo- 
 riginal population to reckon with. On the 
 other hand, in Africa there are six European 
 powers most of them conterminous one with 
 another all actively and jealously at work
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 129 
 
 on the colonisation or exploitation of a con- 
 tinent already thickly peopled with an inferior 
 and a very prolific race. 
 
 Nothing short of a miracle will prevent 
 some of these powers from coming to logger- 
 heads sooner or later, and then we shall see 
 re-enacted there all the miseries elevated, 
 no doubt, by the heroisms that wars have 
 erewhile entailed upon Europe. Acquisition 
 of territory can only be a permanent and sub- 
 stantial good in the cases where the acquirers 
 can inhabit the land. Gibbon quotes a very 
 just observation of Seneca, " Wheresoever the 
 Roman conquers, he inhabits," and it is con- 
 firmed by history and experience. India has 
 always been an effectual bar to the true union 
 of a Greater Britain, and equatorial Africa 
 will prove a second bar, because English chil- 
 dren cannot be brought up in these countries. 
 The only interest of the individual Englishman 
 is to make as much money as he can out of 
 them. He hates them and he quits them. 
 
 And it is this forward policy in a dangerous 
 direction, this constant tendency in England 
 to increase her already enormously extended 
 liabilities, which is the little rift within the 
 
 I
 
 130 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 lute that makes the words British Imperial 
 Federation anything but a fascinating strain 
 to great masses of voters in Canada and Aus- 
 tralia. Evidence accumulates that they do not 
 dance when we pipe this tune to them. For 
 the truth is that they are dominated, rightly 
 or wrongly, by three main ideas the sover- 
 eignty of their own people, the importance 
 of their own industrial development, and the 
 determination not to meddle with the affairs 
 of other people. The example of the United 
 States of America is very potent with them, 
 and in this sense it is true that American 
 ideas hold the field in the New World. These 
 ideas may ultimately prove to be not wise, 
 but unwise inadequate at any rate for the 
 development of a higher life in a great people. 
 Anyhow, we may be certain that, like all ideas 
 of all times, they are not permanent but tran- 
 sitory, merely steps in the procession of ideas. 
 Meantime, however, they appeal to " the 
 masses," to the average minds, and therein 
 lies their present force. 
 
 America's strong points are easily seen, her 
 weak points are more difficult to discern and 
 keep in view ; but her negro question, her
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 131 
 
 silver question, her very size, the unprece- 
 dentedly rapid growth of wealth (with all the 
 peculiar temptations and degradations that 
 quickly acquired wealth carries in its train), 
 and the absence of a high national ideal, present 
 their own peculiar difficulties. With her en- 
 terprising spirit and boundless resources, how- 
 ever, she may still be the first to arrive at 
 a more systematic reconstruction of the social 
 fabric than has yet been attempted ; but, 
 until she does so, her power of repelling one 
 class of minds will be almost as great as her 
 power of attracting another class. The cul- 
 tured classes of the Old World will find more 
 to enjoy and to admire in any corner of their 
 own countries than in the choicest spots of 
 the New World, but it is otherwise with those 
 who have been the hewers of wood and the 
 drawers of water. To them the New World 
 is in many respects the ideal world ; and in 
 these days, when the voice of the majority is 
 so widely recognised as the voice of God, we 
 need not be surprised although it may be a 
 rude awakening to find that Canada and the 
 United States of Australasia will presently 
 follow in the way that the United States of
 
 132 THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 America have led, because they imagine it to 
 be the way of peace the way that seems best 
 to assure to themselves the undisturbed enjoy- 
 ment of their industries, the precious possession 
 of their individuality and the natural principle 
 of their growth. And just as there cannot 
 be true patriotism in the United States, in 
 Canada, or in Australia without perpetual loyal 
 recognition of the root from which they have 
 all sprung from which they have derived 
 their language and their laws, their literature 
 and their religion so there cannot be true 
 patriotism in England without proper con- 
 sideration for the best interests of all the 
 offspring ; and in whatever way they see fit 
 to work out their own future (by separation 
 or otherwise), we shall be better occupied in 
 strengthening our alliances and our fellowship 
 with the whole 75,000,000 of them, in unify- 
 ing the sentiment of all the English-speaking 
 peoples, rather than in attempting a partial 
 British Imperial Federation which, with its 
 heterogeneous elements, can never really be 
 welded into a homogeneous structure, because 
 it does not represent any natural principle of
 
 THE NEW WORLD. 133 
 
 growth. Even if a scheme could be evolved 
 capable of being practically worked (and none 
 has yet been formulated worthy of serious con- 
 sideration), it would always remain a highly 
 artificial contrivance, and would end probably 
 in satisfying no one.
 
 ON THE EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 
 IN AMERICA. 1 
 
 EVERY one who has directed particular at- 
 tention to the United States has no doubt 
 already heard enough, and perhaps too much, 
 of their everlasting " unprecedented material 
 progress"; for it is an unpleasant character- 
 istic of the less agreeable kind of Americans, 
 that they are very apt to ram their prosperity 
 down one's throat. 
 
 There is a story of a Yankee persistently 
 adopting this mode of treatment to a dear, 
 irascible British Tory of the old school, till the 
 latter, exasperated beyond endurance, snarled 
 \S out, " It's a thousand pities, sir, that Chris- 
 topher Columbus ever discovered your d d 
 
 country." 
 
 1 Eraser's Magazine, June 1873. 
 
 
 I f 
 
 n r *i j 9 
 
 ,' v ^v. yLi'\ Ct^f f .
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 135 
 
 At the risk of having this impolite observa- 
 tion repeated, it may be again asserted that in 
 some respects their progress really is very 
 astounding. We have become gradually so 
 used to big figures in the past five-and-thirty 
 years, that we have to put ourselves back in 
 recollection or imagination to the year 1840 
 to be properly impressed with the fact that 
 America then had 17,000,000 people, and 2000 
 miles of railroad, built at a cost of 14,000,000. 
 Now there are 40,000,000 people, and 70,000 
 miles of railroad, costing over 550,000,000, 
 operated by some 400 separate companies or 
 organisations, whose total earnings in the 
 year 1871 were 80,000,000. 1 It is a curi- 
 ous and noteworthy fact, that this railroad 
 mileage is as nearly as possible the same as 
 the total European mileage for 300,000,000 
 people, so that in this respect the young 
 republic has shot far ahead of the " effete 
 old monarchies and empires." How George 
 
 1 Now (1892) there are 65,000,000 people ; 175,000 miles of 
 railroad, costing 2,000,000,000, whose total earnings for the 
 year 1890 were 260,000,000, operated by 1800 corporations. 
 It may be noted that the United States have already expended 
 exactly the amount that all the world had expended on rail- 
 roads twenty years ago.
 
 136 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 Stephenson would turn in his coffin if it 
 could be revealed to him that the world has 
 already spent nearly two thousand millions 
 sterling in developing his application of steam- 
 power a much greater sum than all the Na- 
 tional Debts of all the world of his day ! 
 
 American railroad authorities state that 
 8500 miles of additional new road will be 
 built this year (1873), and one of them gives 
 a further glimpse into the future, saying that 
 there are 35,000 miles more in various stages 
 
 o 
 
 of incipiency. Therefore there would seem to 
 be a visible supply of 113,000 miles of track. 
 Leaving, however, the flowery paths of future 
 imaginings, we may take it as fact that in 
 the four past years (1869-72 inclusive) 25,000 
 miles of new road have been completed, inclu- 
 sive of main and branch lines and sidings. 
 
 Estimating the actual cost of these at 
 $35,000 per mile, there must have been a 
 bond fide expenditure of cash on these new 
 undertakings of $875,000,000, or, at exchange 
 133, 150,000,000. There will be a further 
 expenditure this year of 60,000,000, making 
 a total of 210,000,000. Now this is a very 
 large transfer from floating to fixed capital in
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 137 
 
 so short a space of time. Our largest expen- 
 diture in England on railroads was in the four 
 
 o 
 
 years 1846-49 inclusive, when the total was 
 143,000,000, or an average of 36,000,000 a-, 
 year ; and the largest sum in any one year 
 was in 1848-49, 43,000,000. We know that 
 the financial negotiations for this then unpre- 
 cedentedly large expenditure precipitated on 
 us the panic of 1847. And America has not 
 advanced to this outlay gradually, nor by un- 
 restricted development of her resources, with- 
 out other strain on her capital or credit ; for in 
 the eight years immediately preceding 1869, 
 the United States Government alone had bor- 
 rowed 510,000,000 for war expenditures, not 
 to mention further very large borrowings by 
 individual States and municipalities for the 
 same purposes. 
 
 In fact, never before in the history of the 
 world has there been borrowing on the scale 
 on which America has borrowed during the 
 past twelve years. It would be very inter- 
 esting to have accurate figures of the amounts 
 taken by Europe. Estimates differ widely ; 
 but perhaps of all descriptions of securities 
 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 would not be
 
 138 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 out of the way for Europe's present holding. 
 It must therefore be a very important ques- 
 tion to large numbers of persons on this side 
 the Atlantic to ascertain the exact nature of 
 their investment. 
 
 There can be very little doubt about the 
 present safety of the Government bonds ; and 
 we shall, therefore, confine ourselves to a glance 
 at the railways only. 
 
 And in this matter we must be very careful 
 accurately to define to ourselves the true 
 meaning of terms. Speaking broadly, our 
 railways in England have been built by the 
 stockholders, and then debenture stocks have 
 been created equal to about one - third of 
 their cost. The position of the latter, there- 
 fore, is almost absolutely secure. There is 
 some reason to apprehend that many Eng- 
 lish investors in the first mortgage bonds of 
 American railroads, reasoning from analogy, 
 suppose that these bonds are in all cases a 
 kind of equivalent to our debenture stocks. 
 It is of course perfectly well known to those 
 who have cared to look into the subject, 
 that there is in America no Government 
 control over the relations between the cost
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 139 
 
 of railroads and the mortgages upon them. 
 Some roads are mortgaged avowedly for more 
 than their cost ; others fully up to their cost ; 
 others again for only a small percentage of 
 their cost. Therefore whereas some bonds 
 are merely an equivalent of an ordinary stock 
 where the holder takes all the risk of build- 
 ing the road, but is limited in his profit to a 
 high fixed rate of interest other bonds are 
 as desirable investments for trust funds as can 
 well be imagined. It is very natural that 
 the Americans should wish to keep to them- 
 selves all the future increment of profit on 
 their railroads ; and if a bondholder is aware 
 that he is paying the total cost of the road, 
 and is getting in exchange a very high rate 
 of interest for his money, there does not seem 
 to be any decided objection to a system so 
 carried out. There are worse ten per cent 
 risks dealt in every day on the London Stock 
 Exchange. But then it is very necessary 
 that such investor or speculator should have 
 entirely trustworthy statements of the real 
 cost of the undertakings to guide him. He 
 may be willing to pay the full amount actually 
 disbursed for building and equipping a road,
 
 140 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 but he will not wish in addition to pay 
 gigantic profits in advance to the contractors 
 or promoters : not, at any rate, without the 
 evidence of such payments appearing plainly 
 on the face of the accounts. He will bear 
 in mind that peculation and knavery have 
 incessantly laid heavy booty on capital used 
 in construction in its transit from a floating 
 to a permanent condition, and that this 
 roguery has contributed largely to swell the 
 cost of American railroads there can be no 
 possible doubt. A curious and instructive 
 illustration of the fact may be found in a 
 comparison of the cost of different lines in 
 the same States. In Mr Poor's valuable 
 'Railroad Manual' for 1872-73, which in the 
 absence of any official statistics is the most 
 useful source of information, we find such 
 instances as the following. These have been 
 selected at haphazard, simply to give a gen- 
 eral idea. It scarcely requires to be pointed 
 out that there are many considerations, such 
 as the acquisition of valuable real estate for 
 terminals, &c., &c., which render anything like 
 accurate comparisons of the cost of different 
 roads practically impossible.
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IX AMERICA. 141 
 
 State. 
 
 No. 
 
 Miles. 
 
 Total stated 
 cost. 
 
 Stated cost 
 per mile. 
 
 Total mort- 
 gage. 
 
 ILLINOIS . < 
 
 WISCONSIN \ 
 MINNESOTA -I 
 IOWA . . 
 KANSAS . 
 MISSOURI 
 VIRGINIA 
 GEORGIA . 
 OHIO . . 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 3 
 
 869 
 419 
 219 
 
 $21,500,000 
 17,000,000 
 11,300,000 
 
 $24,700 
 40,600 
 51,800 
 
 $4,500,000 
 4,500,000 
 7,000,000 
 
 1 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 80 
 65 
 
 2,000,000 
 3,500,000 
 
 25,000 
 53,800 
 
 1,400,000 
 1,500,000 
 
 122 
 283 
 
 4,500,000 
 15,000,000 
 
 36,900 
 53,000 
 
 Not given. 
 16,206,500 
 
 118 
 99 
 
 3,700,000 
 5,000,000 
 
 31,400 
 50,500 
 
 1,600,000 
 800,000 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 154 
 
 463 
 
 5,700,000 
 24,700,000 
 
 37,000 
 53,300 
 
 5,700,000 
 12,700,000 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 275 
 353 
 
 8,600,000 
 24,800,000 
 
 31,300 
 70,300 
 
 5,800,000 
 9,200,000 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 203 
 428 
 
 5,000,000 
 18,000,000 
 
 24,600 
 42,100 
 
 2,600,000 
 11,400,000 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 2 
 
 259 
 202 
 
 4,100,000 
 7,250,000 
 
 16,000 
 35,900 
 
 680,000 
 3,750,000 
 
 261 
 570 
 
 11,500,000 
 Not stated. 
 
 44,000 
 103,500 
 
 3,800,000 
 59,100,000 
 
 In the last-mentioned instance I have sub- 
 stituted the mortgage per mile for the cost 
 per mile, and we may be sure the latter did 
 not exceed the former. The above are a few 
 examples that may be multiplied in pretty
 
 142 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 nearly every State in the Union ; but for 
 our present purposes it is sufficient to draw 
 attention to the fact that the cost of one 
 line is often double the cost of another line 
 in the same State, and to the still more 
 pregnant fact that we can find a railroad 
 built and equipped in Georgia by stockholders 
 at a cost of $12,500 per mile, and another road 
 in the Far West built and equipped by bond- 
 holders at a stated cost of $136, 700 a mile, 
 with a funded debt of over $90,000 a mile. 
 
 We can further find 13 companies (inclu- 
 sive of the above-mentioned) with an aggre- 
 gate of 4824 miles railroad stated to cost 
 $348,000,000, on which the total mortgages 
 or funded debts amount to $300,000,000 : 
 an average stated cost of $72,100 a mile, 
 and an average funded debt of $62,200 a 
 mile. The interesting question arises, Did 
 these roads in the aggregate cost $72,000 
 per mile or $62,000, or was it not a very 
 much less sum than either ? No doubt the 
 sums stated were actually paid to some one 
 - perhaps to a Credit Mobilier, acting as 
 intermediary between the directors of the 
 railroad company and the contractors, and
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 143 
 
 composed of the same shareholders but how 
 much went to pay for actual construction of 
 road and equipment at first hand ? The 
 nearest approximation to an answer to this 
 question is the assertion in America that 
 the average expenditure on Western railways 
 ought not to exceed $35,000 per mile for 
 building and equipping, including those with 
 very difficult gradients. We have seen above 
 a first-class line of 869 miles built and equip- 
 ped for $24,700 per mile. We can find others 
 in Georgia at $16,000, and plenty more in 
 various States at $20,000 and $25,000, and 
 again we see them running up to $70,000 and 
 $100,000 per mile. In some of these latter 
 a lively business must evidently have been 
 done by the contractors and promoters in dis- 
 counting and pocketing future profits at the 
 expense of the bondholder. Let us, however, 
 take an instance of a road apparently built 
 entirely with the proceeds of bonds. Here we 
 find one in the South-west, 326 miles, with 
 no return of cost, bonded for $6,520,000, or 
 $20,000 per mile. Total stock, $820,000 ! In 
 its first five years of existence, in what must 
 be termed a still uninhabited region, the road
 
 144 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 has, with an average of 128 miles open, earned 
 net $602,000 annually, or $4700 per mile. 
 The interest on the mortgage at 7 per cent 
 is $1400 per mile. Therefore a profit of 
 $422,000 per annum must have gone into the 
 pockets of the holders of $820,000 stock. If 
 the road has done this in the "green" stage 
 of its existence, what will it not do in the 
 " dry," when the country it traverses becomes 
 really populated ? Its bonds, principal and 
 interest (7 per cent), payable in gold, are 
 quoted in New York 90 currency asked. That 
 is to say, at present rate of exchange, 128 
 for currency, a bond of $1000 can be bought 
 for 158, paying an annual interest of 14 ; 
 principal redeemable in 1891, when $1000 gold 
 will produce 203. Here, then, is interest at 
 the rate of 9 per cent per annum on the in- 
 vestment, and a gain of 45 on 158, or about 
 28 J per cent on redemption, supposing the 
 bonds to be paid at maturity. Only 50 per 
 cent of the gross receipts has been consumed 
 in the working expenses of this road, whereas 
 60 to 70 per cent is the ordinary ratio in 
 the Northern and Western roads, averaging 
 nearly 65 per cent all through.
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 145 
 
 The promoters of the road bid high for 
 money, and they show their hand in the 
 accounts. They do not profess to have sub- 
 scribed any stock further than the few hundred 
 thousand dollars above mentioned. But they 
 show that the net earnings per mile are 
 already far more than sufficient to pay the 
 interest on the mortgage per mile ; and any 
 one buying such bonds thoroughly understands 
 that he is backing the continued prosperity of 
 the new road a fair risk in such a country, for 
 which he is well paid. At any rate, if he does 
 not so understand his position, it is his own 
 carelessness in not investigating the accounts. 
 
 This is one instance of a fair application 
 of the new American principle of railroad - 
 building. The figures here seem to correspond 
 with the facts ; and there are many more in 
 the same category. As we have seen above, 
 there are others that are simply incompre- 
 hensible as regards stated cost. Generalising 
 on the mass of these new American under- 
 takings, we may say with the old Latin line, 
 " There are good ones, a considerable number 
 of doubtful ones, and many bad ones." Apart 
 altogether from any question of morality, it 
 
 K
 
 146 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 is a most fatally mistaken policy for a country 
 like America, that must for years continue 
 to be a great borrower from Europe on the 
 security of new railroads, to flood us with 
 bonds in so many cases representing more 
 than any actual money expended on the under- 
 takings. It lowers the tone of all her securi- 
 ties, and, if persisted in, will in very truth 
 at last kill the goose that lays the golden 
 eggs. America has been living and growing 
 for years on her great borrowing powers ; and 
 as long as she does it with fair decency, 
 Europe will only be too delighted to secure 
 the outlet for superabundant capital at tempt- 
 ing rates of interest. But Europe can afford to 
 hold her hand unless the securities are trust- 
 worthy : America cannot afford even a tempo- 
 rary lull in the European demand for bonds : 
 such demand ceasing, a most unpleasant com- 
 mercial and financial picture presents itself to 
 the mind's eye " Over Niagara and after ? " 
 Already to the accustomed eye the craft seems 
 working dangerously near the rapids. 1 
 
 1 In September of this year (1873) six months after this 
 article was written the craft went over Niagara, and the 
 " after " proved to be the five most lugubrious years in the 
 commercial and financial history of the United States.
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 147 
 
 Ultimately even the heaviest bonded road, 
 running as a trunk-line east and west, may 
 be expected to pay its interest, the growth is 
 so marvellous ; but a very disagreeable hiatus 
 may be conceived in the meantime. 
 
 Turning from these new roads to the older 
 and better established, we find a mass of bonds 
 as safe for investment as any securities in the 
 world. We take, as instances, from Mr Poor's 
 book, 27 roads, with an aggregate of 14,660 
 miles, whose total cost is stated at $613, 000, 000 
 (an average of $41,800 per mile), and whose 
 total funded debt is $215,000,000 (an average 
 of $14,800 per mile). 
 
 Besides these, there are millions of dollars 
 of bonds whose relation to the cost of the 
 roads, though not quite so favourable as 
 the above, practically makes them very safe 
 for investment. In fact, it is quite an excep- 
 tion with roads built even ten years ago to 
 find the exaggerated mortgages of recently 
 built roads, and in most cases it would now 
 be impossible to duplicate the former roads 
 at the old stated cost. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter as re- 
 gards an investor is, that no general assertion
 
 148 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 can with truth be made about these mortgage 
 bonds en masse. Each of the securities must 
 be taken and carefully examined on its own 
 merits, and it may always be borne in mind 
 that the financial house negotiating their sale 
 is apt to take a very sanguine view of possi- 
 bilities. The point to most of us in investing 
 is not the certainty of great returns twenty- 
 five or fifty years hence, but that we may 
 count on a punctual payment of our interest 
 year by year. 
 
 That said, there are many opportunities, 
 by careful exercise of judgment, to make good 
 investments or speculations in these American 
 mortgages, old and new, and often without 
 extreme risk. But it will probably be found 
 more profitable for each individual to make 
 such ventures on his own personal examina- 
 tion of facts and figures than to confide the 
 selection to a " trust company," unless he is 
 very sure that the promoters of such trust 
 companies have 110 heavy load of unmarket- 
 able securities of their own to dispose of to 
 their shareholders. It is a fallacy to sup- 
 pose that over 7 per cent can be obtained 
 from American securities that can be com-
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 149 
 
 pared in any fair way with English debenture 
 stocks. 1 
 
 It might almost have been expected that, 
 looking to the magnitude of the interests 
 involved, a council of American bondholders 
 would have been organised here to obtain 
 trustworthy reports on the various lines from 
 independent engineers, sent out for the pur- 
 pose, aided by independent local information ; 
 but a curious characteristic of the ordinary 
 British investor is that, as a rule, he will take 
 very little trouble to acquaint himself with 
 the true condition of his purchases. One man 
 buys because another man whom he knows 
 has bought before him, and very few of them 
 like any security except at a high price, in- 
 dependent altogether of its intrinsic merits. 
 
 The Germans, with their keen educated 
 eyes, get a good deal ahead of us in monetary 
 transactions. How heavily they laid in Five- 
 twenty Bonds in New York, all the way from 
 the thirties (London price) to the seventies ! 
 After that they resold them to John Bull. 
 
 1 Alas ! those halcyon days are past, never to return in the 
 United States. It is impossible now to obtain more than 3^ 
 to 4^ per cent on the best railway mortgages. What a change 
 of credit in twenty years !
 
 150 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 They are now attempting the same thing with 
 the new railroad bonds. 
 
 There has been a good deal of speculation 
 for the fall in the premium on gold entered 
 into through these purchases of currency bonds. 
 That is to say, one of the great inducements 
 held out to investors has been that, looking 
 to the spread of a quickly increasing popula- 
 tion over an ever wider area of country, the 
 inconvertible paper that is now redundant as 
 a circulating medium in America will in time 
 prove adequate only, and that its value will 
 then approximate very closely to the value of 
 gold. 
 
 This view would certainly appear likely to 
 be fulfilled bar further issues of greenbacks by 
 the Government. These issues are at present 
 confined by law to $400,000,000, with author- 
 ity to issue " such additional sum, not exceed- 
 ing $50,000,000, as may be temporarily re- 
 quired for the redemption of temporary loans." 
 The actual legal tender paper circulation has 
 been as high as $433,000,000. It is now 
 $358,000,000, but there have been very great 
 efforts lately made to have that amount in- 
 creased, and the tone of feeling in America on
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 151 
 
 this subject must be very jealously watched 
 by those who are speculating for a future ap- 
 proximation in value between greenbacks and 
 gold. It is scarcely necessary to remark that 
 the policy of expansion is abhorrent to all polit- 
 ical economists, and to all the thinking classes 
 in America ; but expansion is a pleasant pros- 
 pect to all debtors. And debtors are a very 
 powerful class in America, where almost every 
 man in business has a desire to possess with 
 borrowed money more than he can own. On 
 the other hand, the masses, whose wages do 
 not advance in proportion to the augmenta- 
 tion in the price of commodities, consequent on 
 increased circulation, and whose savings are 
 mostly in bank in greenbacks, naturally are 
 opposed to those greenbacks being depreciated 
 in value and the masses in America finally 
 rule all policies. Meantime the state of feel- 
 ing and parties is sufficiently uncertain to 
 keep the premium at a figure that is tempting 
 to speculators. 
 
 These are some of the aspects of the exten- 
 sion of American railways that may be inter- 
 esting to the comparatively narrow class of 
 investors in these securities. But there is a
 
 152 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 further view of the question. That 9000 miles 
 of new railroad have been completed in eight 
 new States and territories, with a population 
 of only 2,800,000 people (or a mile of rail to 
 every 300 people), may be but a sorry present 
 experience for over-sanguine capitalists, but 
 may at the same time have a much wider 
 meaning, and a wholly beneficent effect over 
 very much larger classes in Europe. What 
 matters it to the labourer on Wiltshire Downs, 
 in Essex Marshes, or in Lincoln Fens, whether 
 mortgages bear a proper relation to cost or 
 not ? What he sees, or what he may see if 
 .any one will point it out to him, is the fact 
 that some one has done the thing for him. 
 And the lines laid down on the other side of 
 the Atlantic concern him much. For what 
 do railroads mean in a country like America, 
 teeming with every description of mineral, 
 agricultural, and pastoral product, where the 
 surface wealth has scarcely yet begun to be 
 scratched ? They mean in language seemingly 
 hyperbolical, but in fact not here exaggerated, 
 " the potentiality of growing rich beyond the 
 dreams of avarice." Look how the wealth has 
 already grown. In 1790 (within the memory of
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 153 
 
 still living men) the population of the States was 
 4,000,000, and the value of their real and per- 
 sonal property was estimated at 150,000,000; 
 in 1870 the Superintendent of the Census 
 returns population at 38,000,000, and the true 
 value of their real and personal property at 
 6,000,000,000 ! l And this means not only 
 so many added dollars, but the addition of 
 what dollars will buy, and what is too hard for 
 the many to get without dollars a universal 
 education : a general consumption of liter- 
 ature undreamed of in the Old World ; the 
 feeling amongst all those whose mere manual 
 labour is their only capital, that they too are 
 equal with all other men are a necessity to 
 other men ; that they can bargain with their 
 employers as man to man ; that they are 
 not for ever to remain ignorant, treated to 
 eleemosynary doles of coal or flannel in lieu 
 of fair bargained wages ; that the hope dear 
 to men that of ultimate independence is 
 no longer forbidden to them. To be sure, 
 
 O ' 
 
 it may be objected that this is only one side 
 of the picture, and a highly coloured one. 
 
 1 Population now (1892) about 65,000,000, and the value of 
 real and personal property about 11,000,000,000.
 
 154 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 It will be said that the venture of emigra- 
 tion is uncertain ; that we are insufficiently 
 informed of the conditions of the labourer in 
 these new countries. But do we require much 
 detailed knowledge to arrive at a conclusion 
 that a country possessing every variety of 
 climate, with any quantity of land, much of 
 it still virgin soil 3,000,000 square miles for 
 40,000,000 people only requires railroads to 
 assure conditions for manual labour impossible 
 of attainment in any old country ? As in all 
 great movements, cases of individual suffering 
 in emigration are unavoidable. An English 
 labourer in Minnesota, sick unto death in a 
 sparse-peopled region, will no doubt look back 
 with a sigh to what he has left behind him. 
 Here is no village green to gladden his dying 
 eyes, nor Lady Bountiful to wipe the clammy 
 brow with delicate handkerchief, nor parish 
 rates to bury him. Death and sickness will 
 be harder to him, though it is astonishing how 
 tender he will often find his rough fellow- 
 workers in the wilderness. But then death 
 and sickness are not the prevailing conditions 
 of life. The argument is the old one of stage- 
 coaches versus railroads, hand -looms versus
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 155 
 
 machinery. It is a sentimental minority 
 argument. Lusty young- fellows with lusty 
 young wives, who are to be found by thou- 
 sands among our labouring population, are not 
 likely to be deterred from bettering them- 
 selves by fear of sickness or death, any more 
 than they would think twice of going to 
 India if they had enlisted in the army. 
 
 A harder life, with a prospect of ultimately 
 rising to something higher and more indepen- 
 dent, even accompanied by the risk of unat- 
 tended sickness, is surely a preferable prospect 
 to remaining for ever on that dreary old feudal 
 footing of the "benefiter" and the "benefited." 
 Surely the great general rule may be applied 
 to almost all things under the sun that sup- 
 ply will be most favourably dealt with where 
 demand is greatest. It is a mistake, if it can 
 be helped, to form part of a community in 
 over-supply. Much better be part of one in 
 over-demand. 
 
 And if on the one hand we have conjured 
 up for a possible emigrant a dreary scene from 
 Minnesota, may we not on the other hand 
 dwell on the attractions of California, that 
 Land of Promise to agricultural labourers ?
 
 156 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 Who that has seen them can forget the white 
 painted wooden cottages, trellised with roses 
 which grow nowhere else as they grow there ? 
 the children as plump and rosy as the 
 rosiest in our English lanes ; the profusion of 
 the finest vegetables, fruit, and flowers ; the 
 climate always equable by the sea ; no ice 
 nor snow 
 
 " Soft blows the wind that breathes from that blue sky." 
 
 Miles of the very finest wheat in the world, 
 waving beneath the forest-trees, with never a 
 hedgerow interrupting the view, " in silence 
 ripen, fall, and cease " ; for notwithstanding 
 that Nature has beneficently separated the 
 wet season from the dry, so that the farmer 
 can count on weeks when he can leave the 
 grain ungarnered where it falls, the dearth of 
 labour is so great that, in spite of all the 
 marvellous mechanical contrivances of ingem- 
 
 o 
 
 ous labour-saving Yankees, in every abundant 
 year part of the crop has actually to be 
 ploughed into the earth again. There beg- 
 gary, except the beggary of decayed gentility, 
 is unknown ; there every man and woman able 
 and willing to do hard work with their hands
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 157 
 
 can not only earn good wages and comfortable 
 living, but can finally dictate really their own 
 terms to their employers, or, better still 
 occupy their own homesteads. 
 
 No doubt the end attained may be mere 
 material wellbeing. But then that is a great 
 point to people who don't seem even likely to 
 attain to that in England. 
 
 Watching our poor agricultural labourers 
 here preparing for a strike, is as painful as 
 watching a bird striking itself against the 
 iron bars of its cage, when all the time a door 
 is open ; but the exit not being the accus- 
 tomed one, and requiring some knowledge to 
 discover it, the poor blind, helpless thing, with 
 only a passionate consciousness of inherent 
 right to the free air, insists on testing which 
 is the hardest the iron bars or its own weak 
 body. There can be but one end to that. 
 Here the conditions are too hopeless. Let 
 the Union spend its money in deporting the 
 superabundant labour, and so give the smaller 
 number remaining behind a better chance. 
 Let Warwickshire ponder the fact that from 
 the year 1848, when San Francisco first really 
 existed, till 1872, the exports from that port
 
 158 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 alone have been 250,000,000 sterling value. 
 Let the colliers in South Wales, before they 
 again draw on themselves the self-inflicted 
 misery of a strike, consider that America 
 produced in 1871, 760,000 tons of rails just 
 double the quantity produced in 1866, and 
 four times the production of 1862. Last year 
 the production was further increased, and will 
 be again very much increased this year. 1 
 California is not now more than three weeks' 
 travel from Leamington ; Pennsylvania is not 
 more than twelve days' from Cardiff. Why 
 should English labour cut its own throat ? 
 
 In this country a peculiar delight is taken 
 by one section of politicians in pointing the 
 finger of scorn at the political corruption 
 in America : by another section, such cor- 
 ruption is sorrowfully admitted as a grievous 
 
 1 Of all the astonishing increases in American production 
 during the last twenty years, iron and steel beat the record. 
 Whereas in 1870 Great Britain produced nearly four times as 
 great a quantity of pig-iron as the United States, in 1890 the 
 United States produced one-sixth more than Great Britain. 
 And in Bessemer steel, Great Britain made five times as much 
 as the United States in 1870, whereas in 1890 the United 
 States made twice as much as Great Britain (4131 thousand 
 tons against 2016 thousand tons). About 70 per cent of the 
 whole production of Bessemer steel is now worked up into 
 railway material in the United States.
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 159 
 
 blot on the institutions of a nation from which 
 there is otherwise so much to hope for and to 
 believe in for the future. 
 
 In this short paper we have already dwelt 
 on the knavery practised in some of their 
 railroad enterprises ; and it may be asked, is 
 it worth while, for a gain in material conditions, 
 for English labourers to become citizens of a 
 country where such things can be ? Is it not 
 better for them to remain in this land of grand 
 old traditions, and grand old families that 
 carry out these old traditions ? The wages, 
 to be sure, are small 15s. a-week, and meat 
 very occasionally ; but if the living is low, the 
 thinking must be high in such an atmosphere, 
 where to approach a judge for the purpose of 
 influencing his judgment, or to offer a cheque 
 to a member of Parliament for his vote, would 
 of itself be almost sufficient evidence to send 
 a man to a lunatic asylum. Doubtless this 
 is the great boast we can make in England. 
 It is a blessing we cannot be too thankful for, 
 nor too proud of. And it must be a profound 
 discouragement to all lovers of republican 
 institutions that America should have shown 
 not one but many instances of lapsing from
 
 160 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 these inestimable virtues. But this discour- 
 agement should not be unalloyed with hope of 
 improvement. The Irish, and latterly the 
 negro, votes are answerable for a great deal. 
 Education may be expected to improve them. 
 The country is still very young, and perhaps 
 the political corruption is not much greater 
 than it was in England in Walpole's time. 
 And however much we may deplore the 
 failings of our neighbours, we are scarcely 
 in the position to throw stones recklessly at 
 them. For there is a kind of justice beyond 
 the jurisdiction of Westminster Hall or Lin- 
 coln's Inn. Our Legislature has taken the 
 people's taxes for all these hundreds of years, 
 and yet has left millions of the population of 
 these isles to-day absolutely uneducated, and 
 in an ignorance so brutal that it could not be 
 credited in America ; is that justice ? The 
 very tone adopted by a large proportion of 
 our upper and upper-middle class people in 
 speaking of strikes is often revoltingly unjust. 
 It is scarcely justice that a cottager who sees 
 a hare in his garden destroying his produce, 
 and knocks it on the head, should be branded 
 as a criminal, and thereby be very probably
 
 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 161 
 
 ruined for life. Nor is it exactly a thing to 
 be proud of that in Scotland deer-forests of 
 100,000 acres in extent should be kept with- 
 out sheep, lest sport should be spoiled ; or 
 that in England labour should be drawn 
 from the fields to beat Norfolk stubbles or 
 Yorkshire heather, that one noble sportsman 
 may slaughter with his own hands some 900 
 birds in one day. Is the tenure of our land, 
 or the state of our great universities, or our 
 method of representation, free from the gross- 
 est injustice ? And yet, where we have so 
 many crying needs of reform, we are told that 
 the burning questions of the day and the 
 raUying-cries of a great party are the Central 
 Asian difficulty, the maintenance of the aristo- 
 cratic element in our institutions, the sacred- 
 ness of endowments ; and some people regard 
 our Conservative statesmen as honestly devot- 
 ing themselves to what they believe to be the 
 best interests of their countrymen in propos- 
 ing to attract the public attention mainly to 
 such issues. But if by means of a co-operative 
 emigration organisation our labouring classes 
 could have conveyed to them an accurate 
 conception of the conditions of life in America, 
 
 L
 
 162 EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS IN AMERICA. 
 
 they might perhaps be not unwilling to prove 
 011 their own vile bodies which is in reality the 
 more corrupt state, so far as they are concerned. 
 
 It may perhaps be too late for those of our 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water who are 
 already in their prime of life to understand, even 
 in the dimmest fashion, what the very highest 
 privileges of being an Englishman really are; 
 but their children in America may have a fair 
 start with all other classes of men : they will, 
 at any rate, all learn to read and write the lan- 
 guage which makes all the English-speaking 
 races kin, and which enables them all to par- 
 take equally in the noblest common traditions. 
 
 That this should be a real possibility for 
 every class ; that a nearer equality between 
 capital and labour should be a dominant con- 
 dition ; that there should be the wide elbow- 
 room that alone can annihilate caste, and that 
 alone can give scope to the experiments that 
 are being now tried on a small scale in England 
 to elevate by co-operation the status of our 
 agricultural population : these are the greater, 
 the wider " potentialities " that every mile of 
 new American railroad built brings a step 
 nearer to practical attainment.
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE AGRICULTURAL 
 LABOURERS' EMIGRATION, 1 
 
 AT last there appears to be something very 
 like a rainbow in the sky a veritable arch, to 
 join the Old World to the New which may 
 without exaggeration, we hope, be heralded 
 as a perpetual promise to our agricultural la- 
 bourers. It is difficult as yet to take the 
 measure of the influence likely to" be exerted 
 on the future of emigration by Mr Arch's 
 trip across the Atlantic ; but it is almost 
 certain to be a very great influence, probably 
 much greater than is generally understood 
 or acknowledged by employers in England, 
 who seem often disinclined to look in the 
 face the existing conditions of the white 
 labour problem amongst the English-speaking 
 
 1 Fraser's Magazine, January 1874.
 
 164 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 races. Yet some of these conditions are surely 
 very apparent and important. On the one 
 hand, the vast continents of America and 
 Australia, with undeveloped wealth beyond 
 precedent, are stretching out their hands and 
 crying aloud for the manual labourers neces- 
 sary for their development ; on the other 
 hand, England is overweighted with some 
 hundreds of thousands of these very labourers, 
 able and willing and anxious to work, but 
 owing to the superabundance of their numbers 
 unable to earn wages sufficient to obtain the 
 necessaries of life at home ; with no prospect 
 of an independent old age for themselves, nor 
 hope that their children may attain to that 
 deserved equality with all other classes to 
 which they may consider themselves natur- 
 ally and justly entitled, so soon as their edu- 
 cation justifies them in claiming it. 
 
 Given the removal of certain existing hin- 
 drances, and the movement of these bodies 
 appears to be almost as calculable as the 
 rush of air admitted into an exhausted re- 
 ceiver. Such hindrances have heretofore 
 mainly been (l) want of knowledge as to 
 the true condition of life in the new countries ;
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 165 
 
 (2) want of co - operation, and consequent 
 dread of uprooting from the old homes, and 
 of the isolation to be encountered in strange 
 lands and among strange people ; (3) want 
 of money. And they have all been reasonable 
 hindrances. The wonder really is not that 
 so many hardy men and women have for so 
 long neglected the opportunity of bettering 
 themselves by emigration, but rather that 
 so very many of them have been found to 
 give up their village, their kinsfolk, and their 
 acquaintance (the only experience they have 
 ever known), to dare the terrible risks of 
 crossing the wide seas, to often absolutely 
 unascertained prospects of occupation and 
 living. Immense has been the pressure of 
 preventible suffering from the want of system 
 hitherto prevailing in the emigration move- 
 ment. But it is no doubt better that such 
 suffering should have been experienced, and 
 that the cure we now anticipate should have 
 been evolved from within the labouring body 
 itself, rather than that the attempt at sys- 
 tematic organisation should have been under- 
 taken by a class or a fragment of a class 
 outside. It is now much more likely to be
 
 166 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATIOX. 
 
 permanently successful. For the tone of the 
 bulk of these labourers has to be raised. The 
 belief that it is part of the immutable scheme 
 of a Divine Providence that the hewing of 
 wood and drawing of water is to appertain 
 to their class as an everlasting heritage, has 
 been transmitted to them in their blood, and 
 they are still unmoved by the enormity of the 
 injustice done to them by the State to whom 
 they paid taxes, in not having earlier pro- 
 vided them with the opportunities of learning 
 to read and inform themselves of the very dif- 
 ferent conditions for labour already existing 
 elsewhere. Any little information they may 
 have picked up about other countries has 
 dribbled through by such circuitous processes 
 that it has finally reached them in the most 
 contradictory and questionable shape, so that 
 they have not really known what to believe 
 and what to disbelieve. And their advisers 
 have been almost as ignorant as themselves. 
 The average English country squires and par- 
 sons are not minutely acquainted with the 
 details most necessary to be acquired by the 
 intending emigrant, nor have they generally a 
 personal knowledge of the actualities of life in
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 167 
 
 new countries, so that they can scarcely be 
 blamed for shirking the immense responsibility 
 of taking the burden of so important a recom- 
 mendation on themselves. That responsibility 
 is so great and can so easily be appreciated, 
 that it is unnecessary to inquire whether there 
 has been any arriere pensee on the part of the 
 squires : any interested motive of a desire not 
 to diminish the supply of cheap labour. The 
 fact is sufficient that there has been no wide 
 opportunity in England for ascertaining the 
 drawbacks and advantages offered by the 
 various countries now competing for labour. 
 True, there is a mass of information in regard 
 to our colonies available in the Reports of the 
 Commissioners of Emigration and their Colon- 
 isation Circular ; but mere statistical know- 
 ledge, however well put together, will never 
 command many readers of any class, and is of 
 course utterly beyond the reach of the classes 
 who cannot read. This has been the old order 
 which is changing, and which will very shortly 
 give place to the new. In ten words, the 
 practical effect of Mr Arch's trip would seem 
 to be, the making of the labour-markets of 
 America and England one. It is a revolution.
 
 168 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 The Union here, with active corresponding 
 agencies in the principal centres of employ- 
 ment in the United States and Canada, will 
 be able to disseminate through every village 
 in England accurate information as to the 
 demand and supply of labour and the rate of 
 wages in every part of America. Emissaries 
 will be sent all over the country to inform the 
 labourers, by word of mouth and from a source 
 they will absolutely trust, how they are to set 
 about the removal of themselves and their 
 belongings. Whole villages will move to- 
 gether, instead of single individuals ; but they 
 will not move at all until they are sent for 
 to a fixed employment under favourable con- 
 ditions. With such precautions, the former 
 risks and suffering will be very materially 
 diminished. If there be an exodus of these 
 poor, illiterate people, it will be methodical, 
 and that is a new experience in our history. 
 Many persons in the upper and middle classes 
 doubt whether the means will be forthcoming- ; 
 
 O * 
 
 but it seems to be evident that the famine of 
 labour on the other side of the Atlantic will 
 result in the Government of Canada, and pro- 
 bably in the great railroad corporations in
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 169 
 
 the United States, reducing emigration ex- 
 penses to a minimum, if they can make con- 
 tracts for service for any reasonable length of 
 time, as our Australian colonies have already 
 done. 1 Independent, however, of any outside 
 help, the force of internal organisation in such 
 a case is almost immeasurable. We have not 
 yet seen it fully exerted, but we may judge in 
 part what may be done from the Irish move- 
 ment after the potato famine. In the ten 
 years 1847 to 1856, 2,800,000 persons left 
 Great Britain without having any Mr Arch 
 
 1 Already in June 1872, an Act was passed by the Canadian 
 Government, dividing the Dominion into emigration districts, 
 providing for the formation in such districts of societies for the 
 purpose of introducing immigrants, finding employment for 
 such as may arrive, and assisting employers to obtain the labour 
 they require. The societies may enter into contracts, and bor- 
 row and lend money for immigration purposes, and correspond 
 with the agents of the Dominion in the United Kingdom for 
 the introduction of such immigrants as may be applied for, and 
 may also take the necessary steps for recovering any advance, 
 whether made by the society or by the Dominion agent, or by 
 any individual in the United Kingdom, which an emigrant 
 may have undertaken to repay. The society may also advance 
 money to an emigrant on condition of an engagement on his 
 part to take service with a nominee of the society for a speci- 
 fied period and at specified wages, and to allow the deduction 
 from such wages and payment to the society of a sum to be 
 fixed in the engagement. Thirty-third General Report of the 
 Emigration Commissioners, 1873, pp. 46 and 47.
 
 170 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 to act as pioneer, and without any properly 
 concerted organisation : simply driven by the 
 pressure of hunger overmastering all obstruc- 
 tions. And one of the most interesting and 
 instructive results of that movement is given 
 in the Report of the Emigration Commission- 
 ers, stating that from 1848 to 1872 inclusive 
 the amounts of money traced as remitted by 
 settlers in North America to their friends in 
 the United Kingdom amounted to 18,000,000. 
 No doubt that is a mere indication of how 
 those who left this country bettered them- 
 selves ; it can in no sense be regarded as a 
 measure of it. To persons who have never 
 been in America or Australia it is very difficult 
 to convey an accurate conception of the differ- 
 ence in the status of the labourer in these new 
 countries. One would wish not " to extenuate 
 aught or set down aught in malice." It is a 
 misfortune that our labourers should be im- 
 pressed with too rosy a view of the lands that 
 are really in many respects lands of promise 
 for them. There can be no question about it, 
 that the life of the pioneer is not a comfortable 
 life. None is much more difficult. He works 
 harder than any English labourer has ever
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 171 
 
 dreamed of doing he suffers more from ex- 
 posure he has probably even fewer amuse- 
 ments he is very solitary ; but then the goal 
 before him renders all toil endurable, and 
 without that goal toil is scarcely a fair burden 
 for man. He subdues the land for himself. 
 He sees about him the men of his own class 
 who have preceded him in the hard struggle, 
 now owning their hundreds and thousands of 
 acres ; prosperous farmers with children grow- 
 ing up around them, reading their newspapers 
 and their books, surrounding themselves with 
 luxuries tending to culture (for in the house 
 of many a well-to-do labourer who has raised 
 himself to be a proprietor, a piano will con- 
 stantly be found) ; his sons eligible for the 
 Governorship of his State or for the Presi- 
 dency of his country. He feels from the 
 outset that his labour is as necessary to his 
 employer as his employer's superior means are 
 necessary to enable him to earn wages and ex- 
 perience sufficient to start for himself. The 
 enervating system of pauperising benevolence, 
 with the workhouse for the bourn (only pre- 
 ferable to the want of it, ending perhaps in 
 actual starvation in England), is past ; the
 
 172 AGEICULTUEAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 more bracing, although perhaps for a time not 
 less disagreeable process of active struggle for 
 self, unaided by rates, but with the great hope 
 daily growing greater of independence, has 
 begun. And it is difficult to believe that a 
 hard-working, enduring race of men, like the 
 bulk of our agricultural labourers, who only 
 require education to enable them to aspire 
 creditably to all the dignity and independence, 
 to all the usefulness and happiness in public 
 or in private capacity of which human life is 
 capable, will be content to remain deprived of 
 these possibilities after they have thoroughly 
 realised the knowledge that all these things 
 are open to them or to their children within 
 ten or twelve days' travel. 
 
 Therefore, as we are not likely to impose 
 an export duty on our labourers, we must be 
 prepared for a large, perhaps in a few years' 
 time a stupendous, movement. For if it once 
 lays hold of the imagination of our agricul- 
 turists, it will proceed in a geometrical ratio. 
 And the majority of those who are capable 
 of viewing the question solely from the 
 labourer's own point of view, will not regret 
 it, though it must needs be that the shoe will
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 173 
 
 pinch somewhere in England at any rate for 
 a time. We confess to a great hope that it 
 will only be a temporary pinch, for we have 
 great faith in British capital, British science, 
 British mechanical ingenuity, British indomi- 
 table energy, getting more out of the land 
 than ever, spite of fewer labourers, by more 
 scientific appliances to farming under reformed 
 conditions of land tenure ; so that the good 
 obtained from emigration may eventually be 
 an " all round " good. In the few words we 
 have to say on the subject, however, our desire 
 is rather to mitigate than to encourage en- 
 thusiastic action being taken all at once. If 
 it is overdone before the machinery is in 
 thorough and smooth working order, there is 
 certain to be disappointment ; for we must not 
 forget that the great saving of immediate 
 suffering likely to be effected by the new 
 organisation is not without an element of 
 danger. 
 
 In former days, only those as a rule emi- 
 grated who by a process of natural selection 
 were the strongest and hardiest and most self- 
 reliant. Now, many not possessed of these 
 qualities will go, throwing the responsibility
 
 174 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 on the Unions, and they may prove themselves 
 altogether unfit to encounter the altered con- 
 
 o 
 
 ditions of life in Canada or America. Such 
 weak brethren should take to heart before 
 making up their minds to start, that the ab- 
 straction of any considerable number of the 
 stronger ones will improve the wages and 
 general status of those who remain behind. 
 Naturally they too will move gradually and 
 later on, unless they see a marvellous change 
 in their condition here. And it is difficult 
 not to be sceptical of a wide general change, 
 until it is absolutely forced and wrung from 
 the bulk of the property classes in this country 
 by dearth of labour. We are aware that 
 many persons who have the interest of the 
 labourer most honestly and strongly at heart 
 think and insist that he will eventually be 
 better off here than anywhere else, and are 
 averse to the emigration movement on patriotic 
 grounds. Such persons argue that in England 
 " Freedom broadens slowly down from prece- 
 dent to precedent," and that it will surely 
 reach the agricultural labourer at last. They 
 place their hopes in a radical alteration of our 
 system of land tenure and conveyance, in the
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 175 
 
 granting of leases to tenants in the abolition 
 of the laws of entail, of primogeniture, and of 
 the game laws in the building of better 
 cottages by philanthropic landlords in the 
 system of rewarding the frugal and indus- 
 trious labourer with a plot of garden for him- 
 self, or a patch of grass for his cow or in 
 putting ten shillings to his credit in a savings 
 bank, in order to induce him to begin a system 
 of laying up some provision for the future. 
 They rightly look on it that moral reform is 
 the first necessity, both on the part of the 
 employer and on the part of the labourer, to 
 the end that, in the years to come, the former 
 will be impressed with the conviction that the 
 profit he may earn through the sweat of the 
 brows of other men can never rightfully belong 
 to himself alone, but must be shared with all 
 the producers, either in the shape of propor- 
 tional wages, or in their direct participation 
 as co-operators in the beneficial results of the 
 work ; and the latter will take the position 
 of refusing to work except at wages sufficient 
 to provide him with something more than 
 mere sustenance. It may be that the thought 
 of the civilised world is tending in this direc-
 
 176 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 tion. We hope it is, and the highest honour 
 is due to those who are working towards its 
 fulfilment ; but looking at the question from 
 the standpoint of the labourer of to-day, we 
 feel that even were the theory to be generally 
 accepted, its practical realisation and applica- 
 tion must be so gradual and long deferred 
 in England, that it can scarcely be expected 
 to have very much appreciable effect on the 
 mass of men now concerned, whose lives are 
 passing away day by day, whether in dull 
 hopelessness or in newly awakened promise. 
 Is not their most natural and proper guide an 
 enlightened self-interest ? Enlightened, we 
 mean, in the very broadest sense, to the ex- 
 tent of conceiving and believing, in the noble 
 words of the author of ' Romola,' differently 
 applied, that " a result towards which all 
 human goodness and nobleness must spon- 
 taneously tend is that the light abandonment 
 of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, be- 
 cause they have ceased to be pleasant, is the 
 uprooting of social and personal virtue ; " and 
 that " all minds, except such as are delivered 
 from doubt by dulness of sensibility, must be 
 subject to a recurring conflict when the many-
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 177 
 
 twisted conditions of life have forbidden the 
 fulfilment of a bond. For in strictness there 
 is no replacing of relations : the presence of 
 the new does not nullify the failure and breach 
 of the old. Life has lost its perfection ; it has 
 been maimed ; and until the wounds are quite 
 scarred, conscience continually casts backward 
 doubting glances." 
 
 Between employers and employed amongst 
 our agricultural population there may be- 
 doubtless there are many such ties and 
 bonds, and in these cases we surely shall not 
 talk of " substantial good " only, as if " faith- 
 fulness and love and sweet grateful memories 
 were no good." But a tie or a bond is loosened 
 when either of the contracting parties has 
 ceased to fulfil its conditions ; and our argu- 
 ment is rather directed to those labourers 
 who are simply regarded by their employers 
 as instruments to be used for furnishing 
 ways and means for game-preserving or horse- 
 racing. 
 
 It may also be further questioned, even 
 granting that all the reforms we have men- 
 tioned could be accomplished to - morrow, 
 whether it would not still remain true that 
 
 M
 
 178 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 the excessively limited area of England must 
 for centuries to come prevent it from offering 
 the same inducements to the manual labourer 
 as the practically illimitable fields of America 
 and Australia ? 
 
 As a matter of fact, too, reform moves so 
 slowly in an old country, that an ordinary 
 lifetime is consumed before anything is accom- 
 plished. The Hodge in prime of life in 1832, 
 faithful to his country and his parish, who 
 heard and understood in dim fashion from 
 radical squire or mildly anti-conservative par- 
 son of those days, that the millennium was 
 drawing towards him with the passing of the 
 " Great Reform Bill," and waited expectantly 
 for it, doubtless thinks, now that he is sixty, 
 with children grown up as uneducated as him- 
 self, that his confidence was misplaced. He 
 envies his neighbour, who, with perhaps un- 
 patriotic scepticism, disbelieving in the possi- 
 bility of that immediate change, imperatively 
 demanded, in those paternal and feudal re- 
 lations between employer and employed, and 
 having a distinct determination that his future 
 work should be for the benefit of himself, the 
 labourer, as well as for his employer the capi-
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 179 
 
 talist, emigrated, and is now a prosperous 
 farmer in America or Australia. 
 
 The Hodge of to-day, counselled by Mr 
 Arch, is not likely to be as credulous as was 
 his father. As a country has sown, so must 
 it reap. Each man must judge of the crop 
 of trust and gratitude that may be fairly 
 expected. To us, the comfortable classes, 
 England is " the land of such dear souls, the 
 dear dear land ; " but when asked by the scep- 
 tical for proof of the labourer being really better 
 off elsewhere, it may confidently be asserted 
 that it would simply be considered inconceiv- 
 ably retrograde for any child born in America 
 or Australia of British labouring parents to 
 return to the old life in the old home in 
 the old country. Of that, we* think, there 
 can be no question, and it seems to cover 
 all the ground of doubt. Of course there 
 are some advantages clearly discernible in 
 England even to the labourer. And no one 
 can appreciate them better than one recently 
 returned from the monotonous dreariness of 
 Australia, or the rough unpicturesqueness of 
 Canada and Western America, with their 
 rude wooden shanties, dusty uninviting roads,
 
 180 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 and hedgeless fields. After them how trim 
 our village greens look, each with its square, 
 surrounded by white posts and chains for 
 rustic cricketers ; how inviting the clean 
 village " public," with its sanded floor and 
 gossip of the neighbours ; how lovely the 
 manor - houses, with their parks and lawns, 
 " the haunts of ancient peace " ; how pictur- 
 esque the cottage gables covered with roses 
 and creepers ; how like a beautiful well- 
 ordered garden the whole island is ! How 
 hard to leave it all, to be driven out from 
 such a paradise ! But it too often happens 
 that the very conditions of the picturesque 
 are incompatible with the most profitable 
 husbandry : and when we examine the inner 
 life of these cottages, how can we help wishing 
 that the inmates could travel with the set- 
 ting sun across the wide ocean till its beams 
 slanted on the little toddlers returning home, 
 no doubt to the roughest of shanties, but to 
 plentiful living, from the national free schools 
 in every village and township from Maine to 
 California, from Quebec to British Columbia ; 
 or on the young men and maidens stacking 
 the rich grain or driving home the kine ; or
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 181 
 
 on the elder folk counting their gains in land 
 or stock, all belonging to themselves keenly 
 alive to the domestic politics of their adopted 
 country ; all with interests growing as the 
 country grows ; all daily bettering their 
 conditions, with nothing before them unat- 
 tainable ! It is probably true, as has been 
 remarked, that the institutions of these new 
 countries are in advance of the intelligence 
 of their peoples, who have not attained to 
 them by a gradual process of evolution, but 
 have received them ready-made from a select 
 body of leaders. These leaders derived their 
 experience from a knowledge of all existing 
 polities, and in selecting that which they 
 judged highest, were perhaps ahead of their 
 time ; and this may be one reason why we 
 are already confronted with a condition of 
 unprecedented political corruption, where in 
 the beginning there was unprecedented purity. 
 It requires perhaps a robust faith to believe 
 that this tendency may be checked ; but even 
 in its existing evil phase it is open to doubt 
 whether it is not better that forty million 
 people should believe and act on the great 
 doctrine of the equality of men, even if they
 
 182 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 should throw up a scum of four million corrupt 
 politicians, rather than that a whole country 
 should believe and act on the supremacy of 
 caste. Mr Fitzjames Stephen notwithstanding, 
 we think there is a good deal to be said in 
 favour of equality, in this " the nineteenth 
 century since the Man Divine taught and 
 was hated in Capernaum." Hated ! why ? 
 Chiefly on account of His preaching that 
 doctrine. At any rate, so far as our agri- 
 cultural labourers are concerned, they will 
 surely gain more than they will lose by it, 
 even if all the drawbacks asserted to proceed 
 from the system are admitted. 
 
 And it must not be forgotten that in his 
 visit to Canada, Mr Arch has only yet accom- 
 plished one-half of his task, and that, in our 
 opinion, the less important half. Putting 
 aside for the moment all question of nation- 
 ality, it can scarcely be maintained that a 
 country with so long and rigorous a winter 
 is as eligible for emigrants as many of the 
 Western States of America. No doubt Cana- 
 dians will stoutly affirm that it is preferable. 
 But we gain a piece of information from the 
 United States census of 1870, which appears
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 183 
 
 to dispose shortly of the arguments on the 
 subject, and carries more weight than all 
 mere assertions that can be made. Out of 
 the total foreign-born population of 5, 600, 000 
 in the United States, more than one- twelfth, 
 or exactly 495,000, were born in British North 
 America ; and as the population of Canada 
 was 3,700,000 at the census of 1871, it would 
 seem as if about one-eighth of the Canadians 
 preferred the States as a residence. Great 
 as is the prosperity of Canada, we think that 
 any unprejudiced Englishman in crossing the 
 border must acknowledge that the prosper- 
 ity of the United States is greater ; and tak- 
 ing into consideration the very much milder 
 climates to be found there in more southern 
 latitudes than Canada, we cannot help believ- 
 ing that they afford an altogether preferable 
 field for emigration. It is evident that the 
 bulk of emigrants find it so. Taking the 
 figures of the total emigration from Great 
 Britain for the last ten years, from 1863 to 
 1872 inclusive, we see that the total number 
 of persons embarked was 2,300,000, of whom 
 1,749,000 (or 76 per cent) were destined to 
 the United States; 232,000 (or 10 per cent)
 
 184 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 to North American colonies; 242,000 (or 11 
 per cent) to Australia ; 79,000 (or 3 per cent) 
 to elsewhere. Or again, if further proof be 
 wanted, we find that " the total number of 
 emigrants who arrived in the United States 
 during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1873, 
 was 459,803 (404,806 the previous year), of 
 whom 307,334 landed at New York, and 
 58,917, WHO CAME THROUGH CANADA, entered 
 the country at Huron, Michigan." 
 
 The considerations by which emigrants are 
 naturally influenced in giving a preference 
 to one destination over another, where wages 
 are about the same, and where language is 
 identical, are : 
 
 1. Climate most suitable to their constitu- 
 tions and to agricultural employment. Cheap 
 land, and plenty of it, with the greatest facility 
 for marketing produce. 
 
 2. Accessibility. As short a period of 
 travel, especially of sea travel, as possible. 1 
 
 3. Political and social considerations, in- 
 
 1 Of the emigrants to North America in 1872, 261,846, equal 
 to 98.04 per cent of the whole, went in steamers, and only 41.06 
 in sailing-ships. The proportion of those who go in steamers 
 has shown a continuous increase since 1863, when it amounted 
 to less than 46 per cent of the whole. The shorter passage and
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 185 
 
 eluding nationality. If the advantages and 
 the drawbacks appertaining to each destina- 
 tion are put fairly and fully before the intend- 
 ing emigrant, and if he of his own freewill, 
 and after due consideration, deliberately pre- 
 fers to retain his nationality and his alle- 
 giance, rather than gain certain advantages 
 by becoming the citizen of another country, 
 every Englishman must rejoice at and admire 
 the patriotism of his decision. Certainly none 
 of us would be found to discourage him. But 
 it is difficult to see anything either to rejoice 
 at or to admire in those who counsel a desti- 
 nation other than the most desirable, without 
 letting the totally uneducated emigrant know 
 on what grounds the conclusion has been ar- 
 rived at, very often involving him in all the 
 
 the better accommodation of the steamers make up for the 
 additional cost. 
 
 The resort to steamers has also much diminished the mortal- 
 ity on the voyage. Among 230,531 emigrants on 545 voyages 
 to North America of which we have received returns, the 
 deaths were only 102, which, taking the voyage at twelve days, 
 is equal to a mortality of only 13.38 per 1000 per annum. 
 Considering the effect which the change of life and sea-sickness 
 are calculated to have on the feebler members of the emigration, 
 such a rate of mortality must be admitted to be very low. 
 Thirty-third General Report of the Emigration Commissioners, 
 1873, p. 3.
 
 186 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 misery of a second emigration. It is most im- 
 portant to him that he should get t6 the most 
 suitable place in one move, and he surely 
 ought to be the sole judge of the extent of 
 his own patriotic feelings ; besides, it is not a 
 necessity in all the States that he should be- 
 come an American citizen simply because he is 
 a landowner. Take an instance even in our 
 own class. If an English gentleman in very 
 needy circumstances were offered the choice of 
 a tolerably good appointment in Montreal, or 
 a more lucrative one in New York or Boston, 
 in which latter places he might see superior 
 advantages in openings for his children, we 
 do not believe his friends would recommend 
 him, on patriotic grounds, to decline the more 
 valuable appointment ; and even if his friends 
 did (who are sometimes patriotic, like Artemus 
 Ward, to the extent of " sending all his wife's 
 relations to the war ! "), we are pretty confident 
 that the gentleman himself, if he had wife and 
 family, would postpone to what he considered 
 their best interest considerations of residence, 
 and possibly even of nationality. We do not 
 wish to push the argument too far ; but reflect 
 on the difference between the gentleman to
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 187 
 
 whom England may be a real paradise, and 
 the agricultural labourer to whom it certain- 
 ly is not, and let us modify any accusation 
 of want of patriotism : if that is to be charged 
 at all, let it be put on the right shoulders viz., 
 on that portion of our hereditary aristocracy 
 and " gorgeous plutocracy " who are apparently 
 willing to sacrifice all the prosperity and good 
 feeling of the country for their unbridled lust 
 of sport. 
 
 Taking into account the reasons we have 
 mentioned above as ruling the choice of des- 
 tination, it appears to us that Canada is at an 
 irremediable disadvantage as regards the first 
 (climate) ; and until time and space are an- 
 nihilated (or the governing markets of the 
 world are changed), our Australian colonies 
 will not be able to compete on equal terms 
 under the second of these requirements (acces- 
 sibility). As regards the political and social 
 considerations, it would take a longer examin- 
 ation than we have space for here to weigh 
 the inducements held out respectively by the 
 three great competitors for our surplus labour ; 
 but it may be doubted whether there is any 
 sufficient superiority in any one of them over
 
 188 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 any other, to alter a determination arrived 
 at, from the remaining considerations, by an 
 English agricultural labourer. 
 
 President Grant, in his last inaugural Mes- 
 sage, threw out an idea of a great future 
 Federation, which was received with a good 
 deal of mocking derision in England. But 
 there may be a notion more grotesquely absurd 
 than that the people on the American conti- 
 nent, who all speak the same language, and 
 are mainly governed by the same laws, should 
 eventually have but one custom-house (let 
 us hope for collection of duties for revenue 
 purposes only !), one post-office, one central 
 executive and shall we say it ? finally one 
 nationality. There is not probably to-day the 
 bitterness of feeling between the Canadians 
 and Americans that existed between Scots- 
 men and Englishmen before the Legislative 
 
 o o 
 
 Union a hundred and seventy years ago ; and 
 yet it is almost impossible to find now the 
 faintest remnant of that bitterness in Scot- 
 land. Identity of interests and constant 
 inter - communication, and the feeling that 
 union was inevitable, have absolutely erased 
 it. Is it not wiser to hope that this same
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS* EMIGRATION. 189 
 
 tendency may increase on the other side of 
 the Atlantic, rather than encourage the feel- 
 ing of national hostility between peoples who 
 ought to have no divergent interests ? Mean- 
 time, we think that the British agricultural 
 labourer proposing to emigrate ought to have 
 the fullest and most unprejudiced information 
 laid before him about both countries, so that 
 he can make a reasonable election, knowing 
 the advantages and the drawbacks. Until 
 Mr Arch has visited and reported on the 
 various States in the American Union, pro- 
 bably the most reliable knowledge may be 
 derived from the ' Reports from her Majesty's 
 Consuls of the manufactures, commerce, &c., of 
 their consular districts.' What a world of 
 information, for instance, we obtain in the 
 following half - dozen lines in the report of 
 Consul Booker, upon California for the year 
 1871 : "The savings and loan societies of San 
 Francisco had on deposit on 31st December, 
 7,406,675 on account of 41,590 depositors, 
 against 6,257,910 on account of 36,862 de- 
 positors on the previous 31st December. It 
 will be seen that the average amount to each 
 depositor was 178, against 169 in 1870."
 
 190 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 The population of San Francisco in 1870 was 
 150,000, and of the whole State of California 
 560,000. Of this population 91,176 attended 
 school, and only 24,877 persons over ten years 
 of age in the whole State could not read, and 
 only 31,716 of all ages (including 2853 Chinese 
 and 1789 Indians) could not write. Five-and- 
 twenty years ago the site of the city was 
 an agglomeration of sand-hills, with a single 
 Spanish mission - house, and the State was 
 only the home of a few Indians. We must 
 find space for the following further extract 
 from the same report : 
 
 " Great efforts are now being made to in- 
 crease our agricultural population, and it can 
 only be for want of knowledge of the advan- 
 tages California offers to the settler that keeps 
 it so very limited. Every man with any 
 knowledge of farming and with a small cap- 
 ital, can without difficulty secure a home- 
 stead for himself and family, and his future 
 success depends upon his own exertions. The 
 drawback to success, where there have been 
 failures, has been the result of careless farm- 
 ing. The facility for growing grain is so 
 great, that the raising of wheat and other
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 191 
 
 cereals has been in too many instances alone 
 the object of the farmer ; whilst the mere fact 
 that during the time the grain is growing 
 there is comparatively nothing to be done, 
 should induce farmers to add to their grain- 
 growing, stock - raising and garden - farming. 
 The State Board of Education very properly 
 calls the attention of the farmers to the bene- 
 fits to be derived from keeping a few head of 
 sheep and cattle on their farms to eat their 
 grain straw in preference to burning it, which 
 is the practice in many parts of the State. It 
 points out to them that this straw, eaten and 
 trampled by the cattle, may be a source of 
 direct profit, in furnishing our markets with 
 beef and mutton where they are most poorly 
 supplied, and where they command the high- 
 est prices, and also in contributing to the pro- 
 ducing qualities and fertility of the soil, which, 
 however rich now, will in a few years of con- 
 stant cropping and no manuring be reduced 
 to a state of poverty and unproductiveness. 
 . . . The production of fruits of all descrip- 
 tions, except strictly tropical, is enormous, 
 and the drying of figs and raisins has become 
 a business of considerable importance. Grapes,
 
 192 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 pears, and peaches have been sent in some 
 quantities to the Eastern States." 
 
 The average daily wages in California, with- 
 out board, vary from, one dollar seventy 
 cents, or, say, seven shillings in winter, to 
 two dollars fifteen cents, or, say, nine shillings 
 in summer, for ordinary field hands. The 
 present writer had personal experience of that 
 delightful State ten years ago, but distrusts 
 his own recollection of figures showing the 
 astounding scale on which farms there are 
 worked. The Philadelphia ' Public Ledger,' 
 however, states that " one field in Livermore 
 Valley, in California, covers 68,000 acres, or 
 over 106 square miles, and has yielded over 
 40 bushels of first-class wheat to the acre." 
 And " in the San Joaquin Valley there is a 
 field of 100,000 acres!" 
 
 The whole of the Report of Consul Kort- 
 right on the trade and commerce of the States 
 of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, 
 Michigan, and Wisconsin, for the years 1870 
 and 1871, is also well worth studying for 
 those who take an interest in emigration. We 
 can only find space for one extract : 
 
 " The State of Michigan is another example
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 193 
 
 of the great increment in population in the 
 Western States, chiefly by immigration. In 
 1830 its population numbered less than 32,000. 
 According to the census of 1870 it now has 
 1,184,296. The southern portion of the State 
 consists of rich prairies studded with oak and 
 watered by many rivers, favoured by a mild 
 climate. The railroads and numerous lakes 
 and rivers render its navigation facile. The 
 price of improved farms averages from 2 to 
 20 an acre, according to situation. Unim- 
 proved lands can be bought for 4s. to 20, the 
 higher prices ranging only when the land is 
 cleared, fenced, or well wooded. All kinds of 
 labour, skilled and unskilled, find a ready 
 market, especially farm hands, wood-choppers, 
 and common labourers. Wheat costs from 
 3s. 2d. to 5s. per bushel ; corn, 2s. to 3s. 2d. ; 
 oats, Is. 4d. to 3s. 5d. ; potatoes, Is. 3d. to 
 4s. Small farmers can do well in the counties 
 of Ottawa and St Clair, where wild land can 
 be purchased at from 1 to 4 per acre, with 
 one to ten years to pay it in, at 7 per cent 
 interest. There is still a vast field for im- 
 migrants of all kinds in this State, as land 
 is abundant, the communications numerous, 
 
 N
 
 194 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 and Government lands especially can be ob- 
 tained cheap. Mining also offers a vast 
 field for industrial occupation. . . . The 
 average rates of wages are as follows for 
 farm-labourers : 
 
 Per month, 
 with board. 
 
 Experienced hands in summer . . . <4 16 3 
 
 Experienced hands in winter . . .3127 
 
 Ordinary hands in summer . . .3129 
 
 Ordinary hands in winter . . . 2 17 11 
 Common labourers at other than farm 
 
 work . . . . . .446 
 
 Female servants . . . . . 1 17 11 
 
 " Where the labour is engaged without 
 board, it averages in the case of farm hands 
 about 16s. per month higher than the above 
 rates. Farm hands are also largely engaged 
 by the day, especially in summer." 
 
 We have preferred making the above ex- 
 tracts from our own consuls' reports, because 
 we think they are more likely to be received 
 in this country as unprejudiced than any 
 information coming from a purely American 
 source ; but for any one desirous of acquir- 
 ing the greatest amount of information in a 
 compendious and, we believe, entirely trust- 
 worthy form, there is a most interesting little
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 195 
 
 volume compiled by the Hon. Edward Young, 
 Ph.D., Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, and 
 published at the Government Printing Office, 
 Washington, 1872. It is entitled, ' Special 
 Report on Immigration ; accompanying infor- 
 mation for immigrants relative to the prices 
 and rentals of land, the staple products, facili- 
 ties of access to market, cost of farm -stock, 
 kind of labour in demand in the Western and 
 Southern States,' &c. &c., to which are ap- 
 pended tables showing the average weekly 
 wages paid in the several States and sections 
 for factory, mechanical, and farm labour ; the 
 cost of provisions, groceries, dry goods, and 
 house-rent in the various manufacturing dis- 
 tricts of the country in the year 1869-70. 
 
 Our purpose, however, is not to advocate 
 any particular country or State, but rather to 
 advise the labourers to pause until they have 
 further materials from which to draw conclu- 
 sions as to the desirability of all the destin- 
 ations offering, and not to move at all except 
 to fixed engagements. We cannot but look 
 on the emigration movement as a good and 
 healthy movement for all parties concerned. 
 We expect to see the small farmers, without
 
 196 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 sufficient capital, finding out, too, that when 
 wages rise it will be for their interest to seek 
 the new lands, where they will be men among 
 men, instead of being condescendingly admit- 
 ted to a sort of ^wasi-equality with the neigh- 
 bouring squire at cover -side, or among the 
 turnips at home. These movements may lead 
 in time to the reforms noticed at the beginning 
 of this paper, which it may be hoped will be 
 carried out without any violent recrimination 
 or bandying of reproaches among classes. An 
 enlightened self-interest on the part both of 
 employers and employed embracing the pro- 
 position, non pour nous seuls, mais pour tons 
 nous naissons will probably guide us safely 
 through them. One word we must say in 
 regard to the existing prostration of trade in 
 America. To any one who had noticed care- 
 fully the progress of the country, it has for 
 some time past been evident that the extension 
 of its railroad enterprises was too rapid. The 
 consequence has been a financial panic, very 
 similar to that of 1847 in England. Many 
 manufactories have been closed. There is wide- 
 spread distress among the factory hands and
 
 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 197 
 
 among artisans in general this winter. Of 
 these classes, we shall probably see a good 
 many who have lately left this country return- 
 ing. The most will be made of such a move- 
 ment by the Anti-Emigration party. Let not 
 the agricultural labourers, however, be misled. 
 These 25,000 miles of railroad which have been 
 built in the past four years, and are mainly 
 accountable for the financial confusion, must 
 be good friends to them. 
 
 Finally, we have great hopes that the deep- 
 sea cables, which have up to this time been 
 used almost exclusively by the rich classes, 
 and have effected principally an equalisation 
 of profits and losses in trade, may, by lighter 
 and cheaper construction, be made available 
 for equalising all conditions ; so that the rich 
 will not grow so rapidly and unwholesomely 
 rich, and the poor will grow richer. We hope 
 to see ten words sent across the Atlantic for 
 a dollar 4s. 2d. ; and those who know the 
 horror that partially educated people have of 
 writing a letter, and the way the uneducated 
 will shirk the trouble of getting it written, 
 will appreciate the difference to them of going
 
 198 AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' EMIGRATION. 
 
 to the nearest telegraph office and getting the 
 operator to tinkle the bell in their native vil- 
 lage in England, and announce, " Doing finely: 
 bring father and mother : more the better 
 here."
 
 AMEEICA EEDIYIYA. 1 
 
 THE return to specie payments, if safely 
 effected on the 1st of January, will make an 
 epoch in the history of the United States and 
 a great moral tradition for the people. The 
 accomplished fact will enkindle belief in all 
 reform and progress, and will falsify the pre- 
 dictions of the prophets (and they were many) 
 who foretold that the democracy would never 
 submit to the great sacrifices necessary to 
 raise the value of all debts from 38 cents in 
 1864 to 100 cents to-day. A recent instance 
 will prove what a crucial test this has been. 
 In June 1864, an Englishman lent 10,000, 
 or its then equivalent, 120,000 dollars, on 
 mortgage on an American farm worth 400,000 
 
 1 Macmillan's Magazine, January 1879.
 
 200 AMEEICA KEDIVIVA. 
 
 dollars. The loan has just been repaid, and 
 the 120,000 dollars produces 24,500. Thus 
 his profit has been 14,500, besides interest 
 during the fourteen years at the rate of 6 per 
 cent per annum to start with, increasing to 
 14^ per cent per annum with the rise in value 
 of the currency. What he, as a creditor, has 
 gained in this way, his unfortunate Ameri- 
 can debtor has lost. There can be no doubt 
 of the hardship of such a case. Here truly 
 is an " unearned increment of value " almost 
 sufficient to justify the expression " bloated 
 capitalist ! " And this is the real meaning of 
 resumption. It is of course true that depre- 
 ciation is equally hard on all creditors, and if 
 the two processes concerned the same indi- 
 viduals the results might be equalised and no 
 great harm done. But as a matter of fact 
 this never can be so ; and I think it redounds 
 to the credit of universal suffrage that each 
 time hard or soft money has been fairly brought 
 to a popular vote the people have been true to 
 themselves, notwithstanding all that the most 
 skilful and unscrupulous demagogues could 
 urge to seduce them. The honesty evinced 
 at the polls is the more striking when it is
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 201 
 
 remembered that one person out of every four 
 in the United States has both a foreign father 
 and a foreign mother, and that their patriotism, 
 therefore, cannot have very deep roots. Not 
 to mention English and Scotsmen, there are 
 almost as many Germans as Irishmen, and 
 these are not always the best specimens of 
 their nationalities, while a very great number 
 of them went to the country as professed soci- 
 alists. The welding of this immense foreign 
 mass into the native metal is a very trying 
 process, and must ever be borne in mind in 
 criticising American proceedings. After re- 
 sumption, it will be difficult even for pessimists 
 altogether to despair of the Republic. We 
 have known something of the difficulties of 
 paper money in England, and so lately as 
 1835 Mr Mill found it necessary to adopt 
 very severe language in denouncing the " cur- 
 rency juggle " here. 
 
 But the birth -throes of resumption were not 
 the only cause of the bad times and suffering 
 which have been experienced in America dur- 
 ing the last five years ; and it may be useful 
 rapidly to run over the period between 1862 
 and 1873 before proceeding to notice the later
 
 202 
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 events which have conduced to a very consid- 
 erable revival of soundness and prosperity. 
 
 The root of the evil was the destruction of 
 capital during 1 the civil war, which may be 
 measured, in some sense, by the withdrawal 
 of a million and a half of soldiers from active 
 production, and the annihilation of all industry 
 and of a vast amount of property in the Border 
 and Southern States. These influences were 
 not felt in their full force at the time in the 
 North, owing 1 first to the issue of 400 million 
 dollars inconvertible legal tender paper-money, 
 and afterwards to the extraordinary amount 
 of borrowing. The immediate effect of the 
 
 o 
 
 large issues of paper was to make all debtors 
 " feel good," as they say in America. The 
 appended table will show what the 100 dollar 
 greenback was worth in gold on 30th June of 
 each of the years following 1862 : 
 
 1861 
 1862 
 1863 
 1864 
 1865 
 1866 
 1867 
 1868 
 1869 
 
 100 
 
 1870 
 
 96 
 
 1871 
 
 76-6 
 
 1872 
 
 38-7 
 
 1873 
 
 70-4 
 
 1874 
 
 66-0 
 
 1875 
 
 71-7 
 
 1876 
 
 70-1 
 
 1877 
 
 73-5 
 
 1878 
 
 85-6 
 89-0 
 87-5 
 86-4 
 91-0 
 87-2 
 89-2 
 94-5 
 97-3
 
 AMERICA KEDIVIVA. 203 
 
 Any statement of figures, however, can 
 give but a limited idea of the bad effect on 
 all kinds of business, and the widespread 
 demoralisation incident to the violent daily 
 and hourly fluctuations in the value of the 
 circulating medium. The way in which mer- 
 cantile transactions were carried on in the 
 second largest commercial city in the world, 
 for several years after the suspension of specie 
 payments, was certainly most curious, and, in 
 looking back on it, it appears already like a 
 dream. Up to 1867, if my memory serves 
 me right, there was no Gold Clearing Bank 
 in New York; and up to the end of 1865 
 there was no bank that would take gold on 
 deposit and let cheques be drawn against 
 it. The consequence was that all the gold 
 bought and sold for the first four years after 
 suspension was delivered from office to office 
 in bags containing 1000 each. These used 
 to go round and round from buyer to seller 
 shovelled in and out again, generaUy in 
 a few minutes' time just sufficient to test 
 their weight in a very rough-and-ready way. 
 It was a striking instance of the difficulty 
 of a community suddenly accommodating
 
 204 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 itself to new conditions. No city in the 
 world had better banking accommodation 
 than New York : nowhere was the economy 
 of labour by the use of /cheques and clearing 
 better understood or more fully acted on. 
 But when business had to be done in two 
 currencies instead of one, the requisite facil- 
 ities could only apparently be developed by 
 slow and gradual stages. First, the bags of 
 gold going round, as in primitive races ; then, 
 after some years, cheques ; lastly, after some 
 more years, clearing : a beautiful example for 
 students of evolution ! Transactions on a 
 large scale in gold did not begin till about 
 the end of July 1862, when the price rose 
 rather suddenly to 120. This advance made 
 it evident that all mercantile operations must 
 of necessity be kept on a specie basis, by 
 immediate sales of gold against all produce 
 shipped, and by purchases of gold against 
 all sales of goods imported. A forced paper 
 currency might be a local standard of value 
 in America, but all her external trade opera- 
 tions had to be finally adjusted to the world's 
 standard. This necessitated immense dealings 
 in gold, and speculation aiding it, the premium
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 205 
 
 advanced by leaps and bounds. In June 
 1864 the highest price of 280 was touched; 
 that is, it took 280 paper dollars to buy 100 
 gold dollars. On the day that sales were 
 made at 280 in the morning, the price fell 
 later in one drop to 255, and at three o'clock 
 the same afternoon it was offered at 225. 
 From this it will be seen at a glance that any 
 one who borrowed 100,000 dollars gold in the 
 morning and sold it at 275, could have bought 
 it back the same evening at 225, netting 
 50,000 dollars currency profit on the opera- 
 tion. This is a sample (no doubt an extreme 
 one) of daily fluctuations which went on for 
 months and years. Conducting business under 
 these circumstances was like driving a high- 
 pressure engine, and sitting on the boiler with- 
 out a safety-valve. 
 
 When money was liable to be made or lost 
 in such amounts in every necessary trans- 
 action, the use of working became less and 
 less obvious. How could any really legitimate 
 mercantile operations be entered into under 
 such conditions of uncertainty ? A cargo 
 of tea or coffee might be sold at a most 
 satisfactory price in currency, but before the
 
 206 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 vendor could get from his place of business 
 in South Street to Exchange Place, where 
 he had to buy his gold, a rise or fall in the 
 premium would upset all calculations. So, 
 too, with exports of produce, paid for by bills 
 drawn on Europe. Everything depended on 
 how the gold was sold. The uncertainty 
 was even greater in Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
 or St Louis ; since New York alone had a 
 gold exchange, where all the business of the 
 country concentrated. This being so, many 
 merchants turned their attention to trying 
 what could be made by buying and selling 
 gold, pure and simple, without complicating 
 the transactions with merchandise. This was 
 fatal in its simplicity and in the habits it 
 formed ; for the step from gambling in gold 
 to gambling in stocks, or anything else, is a 
 very short one. There is, too, at all times a 
 peculiarly speculative element in the ordinary 
 American man of business. He fears the ups 
 and downs of life less than the ordinary Euro- 
 pean. Excitement is more pleasing to him 
 than any small certainty. He is fond of 
 exercising the sharpness of his wits, and in 
 the fluctuations of the currency opportunities
 
 AMERICA KEDIVIVA. 207 
 
 were boundless. The result was that gam- 
 bling became a predominating national vice, 
 with the sure concomitants of excessive extra- 
 vagance in living and in general expenditure. 
 New York ran riot. Rents were doubled and 
 trebled. The number of private carriages in- 
 creased tenfold. So morbid was the craving 
 for perpetual excitement, that a stock and 
 gold exchange was in active operation " up- 
 town," at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, then the 
 centre of what may be called the West End of 
 the city. Nor was the fever confined to New 
 York. It permeated every city of the Union. 
 The only people who really seemed to feel poor 
 were the wealthy. It looks like a paradox, 
 but it is a fact. The man with '80,000 out 
 on safe mortgages, who before the war. got 
 his 5000 a -year interest, and spent it, found 
 his income gradually going down to 4000, 
 3000, 2000; that was the decline if, for 
 instance, he was living in Europe, and it had 
 to be remitted ; or, what amounted to the 
 same thing, the currency price of commodities 
 increased to that extent in America. On the 
 other hand, to make quite sure of growing 
 rich, it was only necessary to borrow currency
 
 208 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 and to buy gold, stocks, merchandise, houses, 
 land any property, in short. And the more 
 any one borrowed the richer he got. It was 
 well, therefore, to do it en gros. Finally it 
 came to this, that nearly every one began to 
 think, and to end by stating, that he was 
 " worth a million dollars ! " It was so easy 
 to make, apparently. Thus it will be under- 
 stood how, even during the existence of the 
 civil war, the whole mass of the people in 
 the North who were debtors felt themselves 
 better off. 
 
 The farmers got high currency prices for 
 their products, and as they were mostly in 
 debt to their mortgagees, they seemed to be 
 coining money. The shopkeepers who bought 
 goods on credit in currency found them con- 
 stantly advancing in value on their hands. 
 And the moment the war was ended, gigantic 
 borrowing began. It is estimated that be- 
 tween 1865 and 1873 America got from Eu- 
 rope between 300,000,000 and .400,000,000 
 from sales of Government, State, City, and 
 Railway bonds. This no doubt went a long 
 way to fill up the vacuum of capital caused 
 by the war. And in the five years ending
 
 AMERICA REDIYIVA. 209 
 
 with 1873, over 28,000 miles of new railroad 
 were constructed at a cost of 280,000,000, 
 so that the demand for labour was at high 
 pressure, and a vast mass of labourers who 
 had been engaged in the war were quietly 
 absorbed back into productive employment. 
 This put oft' the day of reckoning, because it is 
 easy to pay high wages with borrowed money. 
 But the sudden pouring in of immense 
 amounts of new capital is always a very 
 dangerous process in any country, as we have 
 since seen in the payment of the war indem- 
 nity to Germany by France. It is very apt 
 to sap the morality of a people, and it will be 
 understood that the morality of the American 
 people had already been pretty well sapped. 
 No nation could have been subjected to more 
 demoralising influences than those accompany- 
 ing the advance in gold from par to 280 in 
 three years, and the decline from 280 to 130 
 in the five following years. It was in Sep- 
 tember 1869 that Messrs Jay Gould and Fisk 
 concocted the great gold " ring," which was 
 the dying kick of the expiring gold excitement, 
 when in three days the price was forced up 
 from 137 to 167, and back again to 132. 
 
 o
 
 210 AMEEICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 This was one of the most successful and 
 disgraceful "corners" ever effected in Wall 
 Street. It came to a head on " Black Friday," 
 the 24th September, when these stock-gam- 
 blers, having all the available gold in their 
 own hands, locked it up, and made it impos- 
 sible for those who had sold to make deliveries 
 under their contracts except at the conspira- 
 tors' own price. Many an honest man was 
 ruined by that single day's work ; and that 
 so many of them should have paid out their 
 last dollar rather than fail on their contracts, 
 shows how binding is that outside conscience, 
 derived from a custom of trade, which will 
 not admit that even such a conspiracy can be 
 pleaded in bar of the fulfilment of obligations. 
 The clearings for the three days were said to 
 amount to one hundred millions sterling, and 
 it took weeks to get the accounts straight. 
 The "corner "was only broken in the after- 
 noon by a telegram from Washington order- 
 ing the assistant treasurer to sell gold for 
 immediate delivery. Even personages very 
 high in the Republic were said not to be free 
 from complicity in the whole transaction. If 
 the rose itself was pure, those who dwelt very
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 211 
 
 near indeed to the rose were unquestionably 
 tainted. Corruption was in the air. It grew 
 with what it fed on. Between 1868 and 1873 
 there were " corners " in everything : in stocks, 
 in grain, in cotton. There was the famous 
 "day of the three corners" in 1872, when 
 -f per cent was paid for the loan of money, J- 
 per cent for the loan of gold, and 2 per cent 
 for the loan of Erie stock for the one day. 
 Riches were supposed to be made by one man 
 getting his profit out of another's loss. Tweed 
 was robbing the city. Credit Mobilier scan- 
 dal in connection with the Pacific Railways 
 had come to light, and a judge in New York 
 was issuing blank injunctions to the most 
 notorious stock-gamblers. The money market 
 was in a state of constant spasms. Day after 
 day, for weeks and months together, borrow- 
 ers were paying ^ to ^ per cent commission 
 per diem, besides interest at the rate of 7 
 per cent per annum for loans. This could 
 not last. The fruit had got to that stage 
 which succeeds ripeness, and fell. The fail- 
 ure of Jay Cooke & Co., on 19th Septem- 
 ber 1873, followed by a string of houses 
 who had been occupied in financing the new
 
 212 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 railroads, was the point of apparent origin 
 of the panic ; but, as I have endeavoured 
 briefly to point out, the whole catastrophe 
 was in reality a slowly prepared growth of the 
 entire character of the business of the country. 
 Following these finance houses, railways, 
 mercantile firms, and savings banks became 
 bankrupt in rapid succession, and to such an 
 extent that credit may be said to have ceased 
 to exist. During 1873 the price of gold 
 ranged from 119 to 107. The currency price 
 of commodities which had followed the up- 
 ward movement in the gold premium had not 
 kept pace with its decline. By the end of the 
 year hundreds of thousands of workmen had 
 been thrown out of employment by the break- 
 ing of that small wheel of credit which keeps 
 all the big wheels of production and trans- 
 portation turning. This of course affected 
 the demand for every article of consumption, 
 and the distributing merchants throughout 
 the country felt the pinch, not only of this 
 smaller actual demand, but also found that 
 their stocks of goods laid in at the high 
 currency prices were constantly shrinking in 
 currency value owing to the appreciation of
 
 AMERICA EEDIVIVA. 213 
 
 greenbacks. Shrinkage was universal. To 
 add to the depression, the harvests of cereals 
 in 1870-71 and 1871-72 had been below an 
 average, and the farmers felt the growing 
 burden of their loans. 
 
 The figures representing the external trade 
 of the country from 1863 to 1873 are instruc- 
 tive. The net imports of merchandise (that 
 is, the total imports, less imported goods after- 
 wards exported to foreign countries) amounted 
 to 890,000,000; the exports of domestic mer- 
 chandise in same period were 665,000,000; 
 so that in these ten years the imports of 
 merchandise exceeded the exports (exclusive of 
 specie) by the enormous total of 225,000,000. 
 During the same period the exports of coin 
 and bullion (all the gold in the country 
 having been driven out of circulation by 
 the paper issues) exceeded the imports by 
 135,000,000, thus leaving a balance of 
 90,000,000 imports in excess of exports of 
 merchandise and specie combined. But, as 
 we have seen during this very time, there was 
 an ever-growing interest account to be re- 
 mitted to Europe for the 300,000,000 or 
 400,000,000 raised on loans, so that Ameri-
 
 214 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 can exports ought to have exceeded imports 
 by at least 30,000,000 annually. Instead 
 of this, there was 90,000,000 the other way 
 in ten years. This fact led Professor Cairnes, 
 in 1873, to the conclusion that the condition of 
 the external trade of the United States was 
 essentially abnormal and temporary. " If 
 that country," said he, " is to continue to 
 discharge her liabilities to foreigners, the 
 relations which at present exist between 
 exports and imports must be inverted. Her 
 exports must once again, as previous to 1860, 
 be made to exceed her imports, and this by an 
 amount greater than the excess of that former 
 period in proportion as her financial obliga- 
 tions to foreign countries have in the interval 
 increased. This, it seems to me, is a result 
 which may be predicted with the utmost 
 confidence. The end may be reached either 
 by an extension of exportation or by a cur- 
 tailment of importation, or by combining both 
 those processes ; but by one means or other 
 reached it will need to be. It is simply 
 the condition of her remaining a solvent 
 nation." 
 
 The news of the commercial crisis in New
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 215 
 
 York reached Professor Cairnes as he was 
 writing these words, so soon to be completely 
 and emphatically confirmed by the subsequent 
 facts. 
 
 Up to the very eve of the crash in America 
 this gigantic excess of imports was being 
 triumphantly pointed to as showing the 
 wonderful spending power of the country. It 
 was not heeded that it was capital being 
 expended as if it were income. The old 
 fallacies in regard to the balance of trade 
 are no doubt exploded ; but we may be in 
 danger of an equally misleading fallacy in 
 believing that the fact of a country's imports 
 exceeding its exports is to be taken as a sign 
 of prosperity. No such general statement 
 can in truth be made ; and if made, it can 
 only be accepted with the strictest limitations. 
 The phenomena cannot be isolated in this way. 
 The relation of the exports and imports must 
 be considered in connection with the profit- 
 ableness or otherwise of the general trade of 
 the country. We have seen that in America 
 the excess of imports was the prelude of the 
 greatest adversity. 
 
 The years 1874 to 1877 will long be remem-
 
 216 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 bered as a period of unparalleled suffering 
 amongst all the dwellers in the cities of the 
 United States. The great trunk railroads 
 went to war with one another, owing to the 
 excessive competition for a limited amount 
 of business which they had all been spending 
 vast sums of money to control. Rates were 
 cut down to a point at which a great deal of 
 the through business was done at an absolute 
 
 o 
 
 loss. Transportation was reduced to an ab- 
 surdity (to the transporters), when 100 Ib. of 
 wheat was carried by the lakes and canals 
 from Chicago to New York fifteen hundred 
 miles for sixpence ! Many of the railroads, 
 too, had undertaken the business of collieries : 
 one of them in its report some years ago men- 
 tioned the borrowing of 2.400,000 to secure 
 sufficient coal lands to give the road employ- 
 ment in transportation for centuries, and after 
 that borrowed 12,000,000 more in England 
 to develop these lands, on the anticipation, no 
 doubt, that America was going to construct 
 10,000 miles of new railroad every year to 
 eternity. Instead of this, the construction of 
 new railroad has scarcely been 2000 miles a- 
 year since 1873. The consequences to the coal
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 217 
 
 and iron industries may be imagined. All the 
 dependent industries of course became affected, 
 and there were never so many unemployed 
 labourers at any one time in the United States. 
 They swarmed over the country a menace to 
 society. 
 
 The lowest point of general depression was 
 about coincident with the lowest price of rail- 
 road stocks namely, in the first half of 1877 ; 
 and some idea may be formed of the deprecia- 
 tion in this class of property between 1873 and 
 April 1877, when it is mentioned that such 
 stocks as Central of New Jersey had fallen 
 from 120 to 6 ; Illinois Central from 116 to 
 40 ; Chicago and North Western (ordinary) 
 from 80 to 16 ; Michigan Central from 110 to 
 34. The cause was not far to seek. The 
 number of inhabitants to a mile of railroad 
 was 925 in 1867, and only 577 in 1876. It 
 was a question of the survival of the fittest 
 lines. The weak ones had to go into liquida- 
 tion. The extent to which their construction 
 had been carried in advance of their profitable 
 employment, may be judged from the fact that 
 the 633,000,000 invested in United States 
 railway property before 1872 brought in just
 
 218 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 the same net earnings as the 913,000,000 
 invested in 1877 ! 
 
 To save expenses the wages of the employees 
 had been greatly reduced, and the bad times 
 came to a climax with the widespread rail- 
 road strikes in Pennsylvania in August 1877. 
 And for a short time these strikes looked most 
 threatening to the cause of law and order 
 throughout the States. The destruction of 
 life and property was very considerable, but 
 the difficulty was more easily overcome than 
 was at one time expected. For it is true, as 
 has been so often observed and it must never 
 be forgotten in attempting to judge American 
 issues that the mass of real American people 
 is pre-eminently law-abiding and law-enforcing. 
 
 With decreasing profits of industry in every 
 branch of trade, and the immensely increased 
 taxation, 1 there was really only one course 
 possible to recover national prosperity. That 
 
 1 Governor Tilden in his message to the New York State 
 Legislature in January 1876, mentioned that in 1870 the taxes 
 Federal, State, and local of the whole country amounted to 
 146,000,000, against 31,000,000 in 1860 ; or reducing the fig- 
 ures to a per capita comparison, the taxes were 3, 16s. per 
 head in 1870, against 1 per head in 1860. Martin's States- 
 man's Year-Book.
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 219 
 
 course was national economy. And it was 
 pursued. There is an old saying that " when 
 America takes to wearing her old shoes she 
 can lay the world under contribution." This 
 is what has happened. There is probably no 
 other nation that has the same capacity for 
 suddenly restricting a profuse expenditure. 
 New York, so lately riotous, became a pattern 
 of quiet living. People talked poor and lived 
 poor. It became a fashion. It was like the 
 case we sometimes see of a wildly extravagant 
 bachelor suddenly settling down to the cares 
 of married life with a thoughtful prudence 
 astonishing to his most intimate friends. 
 
 The value of fancy goods, silk goods, jewel- 
 lery, and precious stones, imported in 1877, 
 was 5,000,000 less than in 1873; the con- 
 sumption of coffee in same period fell off 2^ 
 lb., and of tea 1 lb., per head of population. 
 These are fair samples of what was going on 
 throughout the country in diminished con- 
 sumption of articles of luxury. But this 
 forced economy told both ways for some time 
 on the general condition of trade. It was a 
 negative more than a positive advantage. 
 
 But there was also a positive and much
 
 220 AMEEICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 more potent cause of prosperity actively at 
 work, though not so visibly. The crops of 
 cereals from 1872-73 onwards, proved abun- 
 dant and ever-increasing 1 (with the exception 
 of the Indian-corn crop, 1874-75, and a partial 
 failure of the wheat crop in some of the North- 
 Western States in 1876); and in 1877, con- 
 currently with the largest production up to 
 that time, the threatening position of political 
 matters in the East of Europe, and the falling 
 off of supplies of grain from Russia, gave the 
 American farmers a great chance, of which 
 they were not slow to avail themselves. There 
 was heard the ceaseless tread of a vast army 
 of emigrants from the Atlantic and middle 
 States, and from Europe to the Far West, 
 and that army saved the situation. 
 
 And here we may take notice of the fact 
 that, although the making of all these new 
 railroads had been, generally speaking, a most 
 unpleasant experience to the capitalists, both 
 native and foreign, it brought an immense 
 area of country within the reach of markets, 
 so that there was the very great compensation 
 of one set of people in the country gaining 
 what another set in and out of the country
 
 AMERICA RED1VIVA. 221 
 
 lost. It was not like the case of England 
 lending hundreds of millions sterling to de- 
 faulting foreign governments, where the loss 
 was absolute, like so many sovereigns cast 
 into the sea, never to be recovered again. 
 America had this advantage in being a debtor 
 country, that other nations contributed to her 
 losses, whilst she alone reaped all the benefits 
 of the resulting low prices. The railroads 
 exist, and must be a gain to the country for 
 all time. The very low rates of transpor- 
 tation, which looked so disastrous from the 
 stockholders' point of view, permitted vast 
 masses of bread-stuffs and provisions to be 
 made available for consumption, that other- 
 wise would have been wasted. Mr Poor, the 
 American railroad statistician, estimates the 
 saving; in movement of 200,000,000 tons of 
 
 O ' * 
 
 freight, by the improved facilities made in the 
 railroad system during the past twenty years, 
 at 200,000,000 per annum; and the Director 
 of the Bureau of Statistics has lately stated 
 that the total traffic on four railroads the 
 New York Central, the Lake Shore, the 
 Pennsylvania, and the Fort Wayne is, in 
 his belief, considerably greater in value than
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 the entire foreign commerce of the United 
 States, imports and exports combined. 
 
 Here, then, were the elements of the most 
 certain prosperity : the largest production 
 ever known, the lowest carrying rates ever 
 known, and, owing to circumstances in the 
 East of Europe, exceptionally good prices for 
 grain and provisions. This year's production 
 has again been greater than anything known 
 before, and a very few figures will illustrate 
 the marvellous growth in three of the great 
 staples : 
 
 Average of 
 
 Production. 18(30. five years, 1ST8. 
 
 1870-75. 
 
 Wheat . qrs. 22,000,000 33,000,000 50,000,000 
 Indian corn 104,000,000 120,000,000 162,000,000 
 Cotton . bales 4,800,000 3,300,000 5,200,000 
 
 And, as a consequence of this increase in the 
 production of Indian corn, the number of hogs 
 packed in the West now exceeds an annual 
 average of 5,000,000, taking the past five 
 years, compared with 2,200,000, the annual 
 average for the five years 1857-61. 
 
 The temptation to the prophetic soul to 
 project imagination into the future, and con- 
 jure up a vision of ten years hence, is almost 
 irresistible. The proportion sum looks so easy.
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 223 
 
 If 45 million men produce 50 million quarters 
 wheat, 160 million quarters corn, 5^ million 
 bales of cotton, in 1878, what will 55 million 
 of the same men produce in 1888? 
 
 The export of meat is still in its infancy. 
 The State of Texas alone is capable of pro- 
 ducing sufficient for all the consumption of 
 Great Britain, and hundreds of emigrants are 
 pouring in to that great State every day. The 
 difficulties of carriage are almost certain to be 
 surmounted by science. I have mentioned the 
 production of only three great staples of ex- 
 port ; but the money value of the hay crop 
 in the United States is really greater than 
 that of the cotton crop. There are almost as 
 many quarters of oats produced as of wheat ; 
 there is rye, and petroleum, and fruits in an 
 abundance we can scarcely realise. Surely it 
 is a land teeming with corn, and wine, and 
 oil, and cotton ; with every kind of animal, 
 vegetable, and mineral wealth, and anything 
 may be predicted of it. " Among all forms of 
 mistake," says George Eliot, " prophecy is the 
 most gratuitous." " Man must always carry 
 a threatening shadow under the full sunshine." 
 And there are, and are always likely to be,
 
 224 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 plenty of shadows hanging over the human 
 element in America. The widespread political 
 corruption, 1 though probably not so deep- 
 seated as in Russia to-day, or more noxious 
 than in England 150 years ago, is a malignant 
 disease that may easily have a fatal termina- 
 tion unless it is arrested in time. Its causes 
 are multitudinous enough and subtle enough, 
 I imagine, to elude the observation of those 
 
 O ' 
 
 quick-witted, but perhaps not always deep- 
 witted, critics who wish to found thereon a 
 destructive charge against the republican form 
 of government. The charge, as we see, may 
 be equally well levelled against an autocracy, 
 or against a monarchy with such very limited 
 popular representation as existed in Walpole's 
 time. And evidences are not wanting of great 
 improvement in the United States compared 
 with the state of things existing five or six 
 years ago. But the reform must be deter- 
 mined, and a new departure must be taken, 
 before the greatest things can be predicted 
 of the future. In recording achievements we 
 
 1 See an interesting article by Hon. John Jay on " Civil 
 Service Reform," October - November number of ' North 
 American Review. 3
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 225 
 
 are on safer ground. " Things won are done." 
 The prosaic fact remains that the exports 
 from America, for the year ending 30th June 
 last, amounted to 145,000,000, or more than 
 double the amount of any year before the war ; 
 while the increase in exports of grain alone 
 amounted to 22,000,000, and of provisions to 
 19,000,000, compared with 1868. 
 
 Our exports from Great Britain have in- 
 creased at times with marvellous rapidity, but 
 I do not think that we ever accomplished the 
 feat of doubling them in so short a period 
 as sixteen years. In America's case it has 
 no doubt partly been a consequence of exces- 
 sive borrowing ; but looking to the fact that 
 four of those years were occupied with an 
 internecine civil war, and the Jiberation of 
 four or five million slaves, on whose labour 
 the production of cotton the most valuable 
 article of export mainly depended, it is an 
 astonishing result. If Professor Cairnes had 
 lived, he would have seen during the last 
 three years the exports from America exceed- 
 ing the imports by 100,000,000. The effect 
 on the exchanges has been to enable the 
 country to keep all its own production of gold ;
 
 226 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 and the Government, on this 1st January, will 
 have an ample coin reserve for the resump- 
 tion of specie payments. Another effect has 
 been that a large mass of securities has been 
 taken back, so that President Hayes was 
 recently able to say : "A few years ago the 
 Government bonds were largely held in 
 foreign countries. It is estimated that in 
 1871 from 160,000,000 to 200,000,000 were 
 held abroad, and there was then paid from 
 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 annually to Eu- 
 rope for interest alone. Now it is estimated 
 that five-sixths of them are held in the United 
 States, and only one-sixth abroad. Instead of 
 paying to foreigners 10,000,000, we now pay 
 them only about 2,400,000 or 3,000,000 
 a-year ; and the interest on our debt is mainly 
 paid to our own citizens." The principal of 
 the debt has been reduced by 160,000,000, 
 and the annual interest by about 10,000,000 
 a-year, owing to the reduction of capital and 
 refunding at reduced rates of interest. 
 
 It is probable that the accumulation of 
 capital will now proceed at an unprecedented 
 rate in America. The savings banks' returns 
 are very remarkable. In the New England
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 227 
 
 States alone, out of a population of 3,500,000 
 persons, there were, in 1876, 1,223,000 deposit 
 accounts open, with 64,000,000 deposited. 
 It is true that these institutions are used by 
 others than the poorer classes. A capitalist, 
 by putting 1000 dollars in each of half-a-dozen 
 names, may have 6000 dollars in one bank, 
 for the sake of the 5 or 6 per cent interest 
 paid. But making allowance for this, the 
 statement is still marvellous, for the great 
 mass of the savings really belongs to the 
 workers, not to the capitalists as a class. 
 
 Three things are necessary to material pro- 
 gress and prosperity in such a country as 
 America and we may frankly include a 
 country nearer home capital, labour, and 
 thrift. The experience of the past five years 
 has taught men there to labour more and 
 
 o 
 
 spend less on luxuries. The gambling element 
 has been very much weeded out of business. 
 The characteristic attributes of the real 
 American masses are thrift and " invention 
 ever new." I use " thrift " in the sense that 
 they are not wastrels. They live more com- 
 fortably and generously than any other people 
 in the world, but they spend nothing like the
 
 228 AMEKICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 amount in drink that the English people 
 spend. Their general extravagance under the 
 influence of the war fever and irredeemable 
 paper was, I am inclined to think and hope, a 
 parasitic growth that has been lopped off. It 
 is a country where no man is, from the neces- 
 sity of his position, hopelessly cut off from his 
 chance of the best. It is emphatically a 
 land of " equality of conditions." Behind all 
 is the wide West, with any quantity of excel- 
 lent unimproved land still to be bought at 
 three and a half dollars (15s.) per acre. This 
 suits all pockets. The man with capital can 
 do well by breaking the lands up and renting 
 them ; the labourer, with any energy and work 
 in him, can soon lease a farm of 160 acres for 
 himself, and finally own it. 
 
 In these Western States there seems an 
 issue for the agricultural labour difficulties of 
 other countries. A bright future can scarcely 
 be hoped for farmers or labourers, either on 
 the continent of Europe, so long as the great 
 standing armies are maintained, or in England 
 whilst our very limited quantity of land is 
 kept at an altogether artificial price by the 
 action of laws which induce the plutocracy to
 
 AMERICA KEDIVIVA. 229 
 
 invest in it, regardless of return of interest, 
 for the sake of social importance and enjoy- 
 ment of sport, and where none of the workers 
 on the soil farmers or labourers can look 
 forward to its ownership. The extraordinary 
 productiveness and facilities for communica- 
 tion with markets give the agriculturists far 
 better chances in America than anywhere else. 
 Throughout all the recent hard times, no man 
 able and willing to work on a farm has ever 
 been badly off. There has always been a 
 demand for such labourers in excess of the 
 supply, and at no diminution of wages look- 
 ing at wages in the only true sense of their 
 purchasing power. 
 
 Of course they will have their difficulties in 
 the United States in the future as they have 
 had them in the past. We shall no doubt 
 very soon be hearing the cry from the West of 
 over-production of food a bearable evil ; for 
 transportation charges are now higher than 
 they were (is. per 100 Ib. for grain from 
 Chicago !), and the hard times here will abate 
 the demand, and cause a decline in prices ; and 
 Great Britain takes nearly two-thirds of the 
 total American exports, so that she is a large
 
 230 AMERICA 
 
 factor in all calculations of future prosperity. 
 With dissatisfaction in the West and South 
 there will be a much louder demand for free 
 trade ; and if I were to depart from the golden 
 rule of not prophesying, it would be to hazard 
 a guess that the next great agitation will be 
 for free trade, 1 and the next great difficulty 
 will be the silver question. 
 
 And America's action on these two questions 
 will have a bearing, difficult to exaggerate in 
 the potency of its effect on our future here in 
 England. Under the existing protective tariff 
 the import of railroad bars, for instance, 
 amounted to only 100 this year, against 
 4,000,000 in 1873: this may be accounted 
 for, however, to some extent by the growing 
 use of steel. In 1872 the production in the 
 United States of Bessemer steel rails was 
 94,000 tons. In 1877 it had increased to 
 432,000 tons. 2 The import of cotton manu- 
 factures was 3,000,000, against 6,000,000 
 
 1 The M'Kinley tariff has since shown how dangerous it is 
 to prophesy " unless you know ! " It still remains to be seen 
 how long the United States will stand the heavy protective 
 duties. 
 
 2 The production of Bessemer steel last year (1891) was 
 4,131,000 tons in the United States, of which about 70 per cent 
 was worked up into railway material.
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 231 
 
 in the same period. On the other hand, the 
 exports from America of iron, steel, and the 
 manufactures of these metals, was 1,100,000 
 greater this year than in 1868 : the exports of 
 cotton manufactures have more than doubled 
 during the past five years, and the United 
 States now consume 22*6 per cent of the 
 world's total production of cotton, instead of 
 19*1 per cent before the war. But considering 
 all the outcry that has recently been made 
 about the export of American manufactures, I 
 confess I am surprised to find that this year 
 they only amount after all to 5 per cent of 
 the total exports of merchandise 7,000,000 
 out of 145,000,000. Without entering the 
 tempting field of controversy between free 
 trade and protection, it may be surmised that 
 the protectionists in America will shortly be 
 drawing a striking parallel between their own 
 regained prosperity (if it lasts !) and the exist- 
 ing state of things in Great Britain under free 
 trade, than which nothing could well be more 
 deplorable. But these selected parallels are 
 not very useful : inconvenient facts so often 
 come immediately to refute all the conclusions 
 arrived at. There can be little doubt that if
 
 232 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 the consumers choose to pay more for inferior 
 goods of native manufacture, America is cap- 
 able of producing almost all that her inhabit- 
 ants require. And this is especially true of 
 iron and cotton goods. How long will the 
 West and South consent to this ? In the 
 existing conditions of the world a bad state of 
 
 o 
 
 trade in one great country immediately affects 
 all other countries ; and if things go from bad 
 to worse here, the continuity of improvement 
 in America may be very rudely interrupted. 
 It is very certain that if we are kept out of 
 markets for our manufactures, we cannot spend 
 the same amount of money on raw products. 
 For the last five years we have had not only 
 the old protective or prohibitive duties against 
 us, but also that economy in consumption which 
 we have seen followed the pricking of the 
 financial balloon. It may, I think, be safely 
 predicted that America will not go on for ever 
 wearing her old shoes. There is still almost 
 infinite capacity for railroad extension ; and 
 new roads, built with decent honesty at the 
 present excessively low prices of iron, steel, 
 and materials generally, are almost certain to 
 pay very handsomely in time. Capital is yet
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 233 
 
 timid naturally, poor thing, after recent ex- 
 periences ! but the go-ahead nature is certain 
 to prevail in the end. And just as America's 
 bad time started the ball for the rest of the 
 world, so now that she has been through the 
 unpleasant process of liquidation, it is likely 
 that her good time will again start the ball in 
 the opposite direction. We have probably a 
 good deal of liquidation to get through in 
 England before we are purged of our troubles ; 
 but if the American tariff be speedily altered, 
 we may perhaps be found with our loins girt, 
 and in a better frame of mind for solid work 
 and real business than we have been in for 
 years. We, too, have had our period of de- 
 moralisation. After the Foreign Loans Com- 
 mittee and the City of Glasgow Bank, we 
 shall never more be able to throw stones at our 
 commercial neighbours, but we may do some- 
 thing much more useful : we may make our 
 work more perfect. There is an ancient pro- 
 verb (Russian, I believe) -" If every man 
 would only keep his own doorstep swept, how 
 clean the town would be ! " Instead of those 
 on the " upper plane " always falling foul of 
 the working men's shortcomings, let them
 
 234 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 
 
 the business men among them especially 
 consider a little what example they set. Let 
 them consider that almost all the worst kinds 
 of shame have their roots in extravagance, 
 whether of employer or of workman, of man 
 or of woman. There is something too much of 
 this in the latest developments of our com- 
 mercial life. But this may be a passing phase. 
 We may reform it altogether. One thing is 
 certain, namely, that all gain of real wealth in 
 America must be of advantage to England ; and 
 it will surely be the first sign of impending 
 decadence if the business men of this country, 
 instead of putting their shoulders to the wheel 
 to carry their chariot over all obstructions, con- 
 tent themselves with cherishing a vindictive 
 feeling to rivals 
 
 " Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 
 View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, 
 And hate for arts that caused themselves to rise." 
 
 But I have left myself no space for the sil- 
 ver question. Indeed I should not have made 
 so bold as to refer to it, but that one point 
 may be worth keeping in mind in regard to 
 America. If it be admitted that the demon-
 
 
 AMERICA REDIVIVA. 235 
 
 etisation of silver in Europe has essentially 
 been an immense measure of contraction of the 
 former circulating medium, with the consequent 
 great inconvenience of a general fall in prices 
 as measured in gold (the result of which may, 
 perhaps, go a long way to account for the ex- 
 isting wretched state of trade throughout the 
 world), it is open to question whether, after all, 
 Europe may not have eventually to seek an 
 understanding with America, to endeavour to 
 fix a relation between the value of gold and 
 silver coins all the world over. This might 
 help to lift us out of a great difficulty in India. 
 Therefore let us not judge too hastily in this 
 matter. The last word has not been said yet 
 about silver, the Paris Conference notwith- 
 standing.
 
 THE FTJTtTEE OF FOOD. 1 
 
 AFTER the first flush of satisfaction over Mr 
 Bear's consoling essay on ' The British Farmer 
 and his Competitors' has died away, it may 
 be useful to ascertain what the interesting 
 little book has really contributed towards a 
 solution of our farmers' difficulties. With the 
 conclusion no one, I suppose, will find fault, 
 " that, whatever else Parliament does for the 
 benefit of agriculture, or leaves undone, there 
 is one thing needful above all others - - a 
 system of land tenure based upon just and 
 enlightened laws." There will perhaps be 
 a difference of opinion between landowners 
 and farmers as to what laws are just and 
 enlightened, but there is more than one 
 
 1 Contemporary Review, December 1888.
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 237 
 
 allusion scattered through the volume, as, for 
 instance, on page 140 "The enormous tax 
 levied on the people of the world by those 
 who have got possession of the land, and are 
 so able to appropriate a very large proportion 
 of the earnings of every community, especially 
 in cities and towns, is one great cause of the 
 depressed condition of the people everywhere " 
 which points to sufficiently radical altera- 
 tions. Further, there is the excellent recom- 
 mendation of the extension of co-operation by 
 farmers, both for the purchase of what they 
 require and for the disposal of what they have 
 to sell. That is a suggestion at once business- 
 like and to the point ; and perhaps it would 
 be demanding too much from any gentleman 
 writing in this year of grace 1888, to expect 
 him to refrain from the remark that he " can- 
 not conceive of any more legitimate use of 
 public money than the devotion of a moderate 
 sum " to the purposes which he has particular- 
 ly in view. Clearly, as Sir William Harcourt 
 has said, " we are all Socialists now." It is 
 possible to sum up Mr Bear's positive beliefs 
 in a sentence Reduction of rents (where not 
 already sufficiently conceded) ; security for
 
 238 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 farmers' capital ; reduced railway rates ; co- 
 operation in buying and selling ; and better 
 education in agriculture. Now it is obvious 
 
 o 
 
 that none of these things can, or will, be done 
 in a hurry. It is doubtful whether that part 
 of the programme which is dependent on 
 legislation will ever be seriously attempted 
 so long as a Conservative Government is in 
 power, and, thanks to our friends the Liberal 
 Unionists, there is no great likelihood of a 
 change before 1892 or thereabouts. But after 
 the last thirteen years of bad times, another 
 four or five years without material alteration 
 of conditions for the better is a serious outlook 
 for our agricultural interests. 
 
 The Report of the Royal Commission on 
 Depression of Trade estimated the capital- 
 ised loss of income by owners of agricultural 
 land and their tenants in Great Britain at 
 740,000,000 in 1885, compared with ten years 
 before. If that was the loss in 1885, what 
 must it be to-day ? Again, in the ten years 
 from 1871 to 1881, the percentage of the whole 
 population supported by agriculture decreased 
 from 17 per cent to less than 14 per cent, and 
 the next census for 1891 will certainly show
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 239 
 
 a considerable further reduction. When we 
 remember that thirty years ago at least 24 
 per cent were so supported, and when we stand 
 face to face here in London with this most 
 menacing increase of our urban population 
 at the expense of our rural population, in a 
 country which is admittedly so peculiarly 
 well fitted for agricultural pursuits as Great 
 Britain, it must make the boldest hold his 
 breath. Fortunately for our peace of mind, it 
 is difficult for us to realise it is impossible for 
 us to have an ever vivid consciousness of our 
 terrible and growing dependence on the world 
 outside for the daily bread of our 38,000,000 
 of people. If we were not gifted with a plen- 
 tiful lack of imagination, we should not sleep 
 well o' nights. It would be like " feeling the 
 squirrel's heart beat," and would end in the 
 wrecking of our nervous systems. But the 
 grim hard fact is always there, and every day 
 it becomes more and more painfully obtrusive. 
 It is therefore very natural that any hopeful 
 and consoling view such as Mr Bear's is 
 grasped at with avidity, and it is perhaps 
 an ungracious task to look at it too critically. 
 But in this, as in all other things, the only
 
 240 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 important point is to get at the truth, and 
 not to nurse delusions. Ignorance of what is 
 going on in the world outside this little island 
 has been one of the most fruitful sources of 
 our agricultural troubles. Any reasonably 
 well-informed man could have predicted them 
 with almost absolute certainty. That I may 
 not be accused of prophesying after the event, 
 I take the liberty of quoting a couple of sen- 
 tences I wrote in 1878 on the future of Ameri- 
 can competition : ] - 
 
 " The temptation to the prophetic soul to 
 project imagination into the future, and conjure 
 up a vision of ten years hence, is almost irre- 
 sistible. The proportion sum looks so easy. 
 If 45 million men produce 50 million quarters 
 wheat, 160 million quarters corn, 5^ million 
 bales of cotton, in 1878, what will 55 million 
 of the same men produce in 1888? The ex- 
 port of meat is still in its infancy. The dif- 
 ficulties of carriage are almost certain to be 
 surmounted by science. I have mentioned 
 the production of only three great staples of 
 export ; but the money value .of the hay crop 
 
 1 " America Eediviva," ' Macmillan's Magazine,' January 
 1879. See preceding paper.
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 241 
 
 in the United States is really greater than that 
 of the cotton crop. There are almost as many 
 quarters of oats produced as of wheat : there 
 is rye, and there are fruits in an abundance 
 we can scarcely realise. ... A bright future 
 can scarcely be hoped for farmers or labourers, 
 either on the continent of Europe, so long as 
 the great standing armies are maintained, or 
 in England whilst our very limited quantity 
 of land is kept at an altogether artificial 
 price by the action of laws which induce 
 the plutocracy to invest in it, regardless 
 of return of interest, for the sake of social 
 importance and enjoyment of sport, and 
 where none of the workers on the soil- 
 farmers or labourers can look forward to its 
 ownership." 
 
 Now while, of course, it cannot be seriously 
 attempted to work out such a complicated 
 problem as agricultural returns by simple pro- 
 portion, it is curious to note how the figures 
 result. It was a mistake to assume in 1878 
 that the population of the United States would 
 amount to only 55 million in 1888, for, as a 
 matter of fact, it is to-day nearer 62 million. 
 But, taking the population as 60 million in 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 1887, the proportions would work out as 
 follows : 
 
 Production Actual 
 
 ought to have been. Production. 
 
 Wheat . 66 million qrs. 57 million qrs. in 1887 
 
 Indian corn 213 n n 222 n n av. 1885-88 
 
 Oats . 60 I. it 78 n H in 1887 
 
 Cotton 64 ii bales 7 .1 bales in 1887-88 
 
 Speaking roughly, the value of a quarter of 
 Indian corn is little more than half the value 
 of a quarter of wheat, and the value of a 
 quarter of oats a little less than half the value 
 of a quarter of wheat at the prices of to-day; 
 so that the gain in the proportion of the two 
 former cereals is much greater than the loss 
 in the proportion of wheat not to mention 
 the gain of 5,000,000 in the value of the 
 extra half-million bales of cotton. As a stand- 
 ard of comparison, we can add up the produc- 
 tion of these three cereal crops in America, 
 and we shall find that they amount to 357 
 million quarters, whereas the production of 
 all the corn crops in the United Kingdom 
 amounts to less than 35 million quarters. 
 It may be added that the corn crop of 1888 
 just harvested is the largest ever produced in
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 243 
 
 America. 1 The reason I wish to dwell on 
 these figures is, that it is more than doubtful 
 whether the British agriculturist has even yet 
 appreciated to its full extent the potency of 
 the North American continent as the supreme 
 factor in the future of his business, notwith- 
 standing all that has been written on the 
 subject. This is partly owing to his not hav- 
 ing realised what has been done, and what is 
 being done, in the extension of American rail- 
 roads, and partly to an unfortunately worded or 
 an unfortunately misunderstood axiom of his 
 leaders. When Messrs Read and Pell visited 
 the United States as Assistant Commissioners 
 to the Royal Commission on Agriculture in 
 1880, they stated that 42s. per quarter was 
 the minimum price at which the general run 
 of American producers could sell wheat in 
 London with profit. They may have been 
 
 1 In 1891 the aggregate of all the cereal crops in the United 
 States taken together shows the largest production ever re- 
 corded ; and the yield per acre is also the largest. 
 
 The wheat crop comes up to . 76 million quarters. 
 The Indian corn crop to . . 257 n n 
 
 The oat crop to .... 92 M n 
 
 So that the production of wheat is now more than the propor- 
 tion I calculated in 1878, and Indian corn and oats very much 
 more.
 
 244 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 right, or they may have been wrong, in this 
 calculation ; but, as a matter of fact, the 
 average price of wheat in London for the 
 ten years from 1879 to 1888 has been under 
 40s. per quarter ; and during the three years 
 of lowest prices 1885 to 1887 when the 
 average was only 32s. Id. per quarter, the 
 United States sent us 30 million quarters, 
 or considerably more than half say 57 per 
 cent of our total imports. Now undoubt- 
 edly the effect of such a statement as Messrs 
 Read and Pell's on the British farmer was 
 to induce him to believe that he was pretty 
 safe never to see wheat below 42s. for any 
 considerable period. 1 Whereas for the last six 
 years he has never seen the price up to 42s., 
 and has seen it as low as 31s., the average of 
 the year 1886. Ten years is a very long period 
 for the average price of a main article of 
 production to be selling 5 per cent below its 
 supposed minimum, and the consequences of 
 such mistakes are disastrous. The safest plan 
 surely is to distrust all calculations where one 
 of the most important factors the price of 
 
 1 The average price of wheat in Great Britain for 1891 was 
 37s. per quarter. It is now under 30s. per quarter (1892).
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 245 
 
 carriage is and must always remain an un- 
 certain and an unknown quantity. For in- 
 stance, if any wise man had told us in America 
 in 1870 that eight years later (in 1878) we 
 should have been able to transport 100 Ib. 
 of wheat from Chicago to New York for 6d., 
 we should have looked on the supposition as 
 incredible. 
 
 With the extension of the means for trans- 
 portation and the discoveries science is making 
 every day, it is practically impossible to say 
 what rates of freight may decline to. Simi- 
 larly, all anticipations that countries with 
 large wheat - fields will cease sending wheat 
 because somebody is ready to prove that it 
 leaves a loss, should be distrusted. Ever since 
 I entered the American trade in 1857, I have 
 always been told that farmers were making 
 losses, and that it was calculably impossible 
 to send grain from such and such a point 
 in the West at a profit. The only answer 
 is, that they have always kept on sending it 
 ever in greater and ' greater volume, and, com- 
 paring the total value of farms between one 
 census period and another in the United 
 States, we do not find any record of ruin.
 
 246 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 1,852,000,000 in 1870 against 2,000,000,000 
 in 1880, for instance. Mr Bear quotes Mr 
 Bookwalter, who says : 
 
 " The real advantage heretofore possessed 
 by the American agriculturist, cheap lands 
 (the rapid rise of which, in recent years, and 
 not the profits of farming, being the real source 
 of his present wealth) and natural fertility, 
 are rapidly disappearing ; and unless his Gov- 
 ernment removes the cause which operates 
 to artificially increase cost of production, 
 the English farmer will have year by year 
 less cause to fear serious competition from 
 America." 
 
 Now everything, of course, depends on the 
 interpretation of the word " rapidly." If the 
 present generation of English farmers expect 
 during their lifetime to see cheap lands dis- 
 appearing in the United States and Canada- 
 lands eminently fitted for growing wheat 
 I think they will be disappointed. So far 
 from anticipating that they have less to 
 fear from American competition in the future 
 than in the past, they will be better advised 
 to believe that American competition is still 
 in its infancy.
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 247 
 
 Mr Bookwalter's view, and the whole tone 
 of Mr Bear's little book, remind me of the 
 man who, in 1837-40, comforted the old coach- 
 owners and the inns on the road by saying 
 that sooner or later those infernal railroads 
 would all burst up. Well, 1848 came, and 
 they did burst up, but all the Queen's horses 
 and all the Queen's men couldn't put the old 
 coaches on the road again. The difference 
 between the American system and conditions 
 of agriculture compared with the British is 
 the difference between railroads and coaches. 
 The latter must suffer in the competition. 
 Mr Bear quotes a passage from Dornbusch, 
 which it is well to reflect on : "Although cereal 
 production has not been checked in Russia, 
 wheat-growing does not pay " He might have 
 added that, although wheat-growing may not 
 pay, wheat - growing will not be seriously 
 checked on the North American continent. 
 Now, is there any warrant for saying this? 
 There is the warrant of experience. 
 
 Wherever extension of railroads takes place 
 in the new States and territories of the Amer- 
 ican continent or anywhere else, for that 
 matter, where there is virgin soil there wheat-
 
 248 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 growing is bound to increase. Let us, then, 
 consider for a moment what has been done 
 in this direction during the last ten years. 
 Since 1878 the United States have built 
 80,000 miles of new railroad of which 20,000 
 have been built in the last eighteen months 
 a bit of industrial work wholly unparalleled in 
 the history of the world. It is difficult to know 
 how to compare it with anything of the same 
 sort elsewhere, for when we come to contrast 
 the figures of mileage in one country with those 
 in another, we are met with difficulties in the 
 calculation of double tracks, sidings, and other 
 matters, which can only be adjusted by ex- 
 perts. But we can compare one period with 
 another in the same country with better chance 
 of enlightenment, because the variations from 
 accuracy will be more or less constant. There 
 cannot then be a doubt, I think, that on 
 December 31 of this year there will be nearly 
 160,000 miles of railroad open for traffic, 
 compared with 80,000 ten years ago ; and the 
 gross receipts last year (1887-88) amounted 
 to 187,000,000, compared, for instance, with 
 gross receipts of about 105,000,000 from all 
 the railways in the whole British Empire
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 249 
 
 including India, Canada, Australia, and all 
 our other colonies. Or, to put the case in 
 a still more striking way, the United States, 
 with sixty million inhabitants, took about the 
 same gross receipts as Great Britain, France, 
 Germany, and Russia in Europe combined, 
 with 210 million inhabitants, took from all 
 their railroads. Assuming 5000 per mile 
 as a low actual cost for building and equip- 
 ping these new lines, the expenditure of hard 
 cash must have amounted to 400,000,000 in 
 the last ten years a sum equal to more than 
 half our National Debt and the nominal 
 value of securities issued against them is pro- 
 bably a good deal over 800,000,000. Now, 
 railways are the heavy artillery in modern 
 industrial warfare, and English farmers will 
 be better occupied in making themselves ac- 
 quainted with what is being done in this 
 direction than in laying the flattering unction 
 to their souls that American competition is 
 on the wane. What they should particular- 
 ly bear in mind is, that out of the total 
 13,000 miles built last year, 9000 miles are 
 west of the Missouri river the State of 
 Kansas alone having 2100 miles of new lines.
 
 250 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 To most of us the State of Kansas, and all 
 the country west, north-west, and south-west 
 of it, is merely a geographical expression ; but 
 if we look at the map we shall find that the 
 centre of it is, roughly speaking, exactly mid- 
 way between the Atlantic and the Pacific 
 Oceans. There are five magnificent States and 
 territories Colorado, Nebraska, Dakota, Mon- 
 tana, and Wyoming, with a combined acreage 
 equal to that of Great Britain, France, Ger- 
 many, Holland, and Belgium together being 
 opened up to the west and north-west, and 
 a country of about equal extent on the south- 
 west, in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. 
 The process of development is a continuous 
 tapping of new and virgin sources of supply 
 over an area equal to the whole of Europe, 
 bar Russia, in these eight States and terri- 
 tories, whose total population, all told, does 
 not yet amount to the population of London. 
 The density is at present about 4 to the 
 square mile, against 520 per square mile in 
 Belgium, for instance. It will take a long 
 time yet before cheap lands disappear in these 
 regions which only want a system of irriga- 
 tion to make them immensely productive
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 251 
 
 not to mention the Dominion of Canada. 
 Looking to the gigantic scale on which agri- 
 cultural operations are conducted, and on 
 which railroads are built on the other side of 
 the Atlantic, I think it is a bold prognosti- 
 cation to anticipate any material decrease in 
 the production of wheat, even when prices are 
 below 42s. per quarter in London. If prices 
 rise above that point we can be deluged with 
 quantity. The increase is so sudden. For 
 instance, the average production of wheat for 
 the five years 1870-75 in the United States 
 was 33 million quarters. In 1878 it had risen 
 to 50 million quarters, increasing to an aver- 
 age of about 5"6 million quarters during the 
 last four years, when the price has averaged 
 just 33s. per quarter in London. Deducting 
 the export of those four years from the pro- 
 duction, leaves about 40 million quarters as 
 the average annual consumption of wheat in 
 America. If the production keeps up to 56 
 million quarters, there will remain a large 
 excess for export even with increasing popu- 
 lation. But when wheat is below 40s., there 
 are many chances of a rise, against very few 
 chances of a fall. We live with the daily
 
 252 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 prospect of a great European war constantly 
 before us, and in that event the price of 
 wheat might easily be doubled in a few 
 weeks. That dreaded disaster may be on us 
 at any moment, and without warning. Look- 
 ing to these possibilities of a great rise in the 
 price of wheat, and no great risk of a fall 
 under 35s. to 40s., the acreage planted over 
 the world will not materially diminish yet. 
 And, in passing, I must allude to what ap- 
 pears to me to be a strange tone in a book 
 issued under the auspices of the Cobden Club. 
 Mr Bear seems rather to hope for a rise in 
 the price of wheat. I should have thought 
 genuine and thorough - going free - traders 
 would have wished to see wheat down to 
 22s. rather than up to 42s. per quarter. I 
 cannot understand on what theory of free 
 trade any true believer can object to wheat 
 or sugar declining to the lowest possible 
 prices. Surely in both cases the old argument 
 remains true, that the gain to the mass of 
 the community, who are consumers, is of more 
 consequence than the loss to the small class 
 of landlords or sugar-producers. I say this 
 rather from the point of view of the Cobden
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 253 
 
 Club. From another point of view it may 
 be said that we are better not to be under 
 bondage to dogmas whether the dogma be 
 free trade or another. When we look at the 
 world around us, we do not see success in- 
 variably and inevitably attending either the 
 free trade nations or the protectionists. In 
 the last fifteen years certainly, the nations 
 that have been gaining most, relatively speak- 
 ing, in the race for wealth and commercial 
 supremacy, are the Americans and the Ger- 
 mans. They are both protectionists, and 
 both nations are surely characterised by a 
 very vigorous intelligence, an unprecedented 
 universality of education, a keen commercial 
 spirit, and uncommonly sharp eyes to their 
 own interests. Their success may either be 
 in consequence of, or in spite of, what we 
 may consider to be their fiscal heresies. I 
 do not presume to say. But is it not just 
 conceivable that the effect of mere fiscal 
 arrangements may very easily be grossly 
 exaggerated, and that success rather follows 
 character ? The race is to the strong, to the 
 intelligent, to the hardest working, to the 
 best educated peoples. To know what they
 
 254 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 want, and to see that they get it, is the first 
 essential for any people. The little more or 
 the little less of duties (except on food in 
 England, under our existing conditions !) is 
 a detail no doubt an important detail but, 
 after all, the duties go out of one pocket into 
 another in the same country. Free trade 
 seems to me, if I may say so, to be the only 
 ultimate sensible solution all the world over ; 
 but meantime almost every great country ex- 
 cept England thinks differently, and it does 
 not appear that they are all prospering less, 
 relatively speaking. No doubt it is true that, 
 owing to America's protective policy, her 
 mercantile marine has been swept from the 
 seas. But notwithstanding 1 their soreness on 
 
 o 
 
 the subject, the Americans may very well con- 
 sole themselves with the reflection that the 
 same country cannot do everything at the 
 same time. Sentiment apart, shipowning is 
 a question of profit or loss. If the Ameri- 
 cans had built steamers to share in the pro- 
 fits (?) of the last few years, it would indeed 
 have been an attempt " to tak' the breeks aif 
 a Hielandman." There may have been much 
 glory to England, but there has been very
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 255 
 
 little profit, owing to the unprecedented 
 lowness of freights. The practical question 
 arises, " Is shipowning the most desirable 
 business that Americans can undertake at 
 present ? " They have to consider whether 
 the capital of their country is not much more 
 profitably employed in manufacturing steel 
 and iron rails, locomotives, and all the other 
 requisites for railroad transportation (which, 
 by the way, protective duties have enabled 
 them to do with very signal success, not only 
 as regards the extraordinary improvement in 
 the quality of the articles in the last few 
 years, but also in securing diversified em- 
 ployment for hundreds of thousands of work- 
 men who become the farmers' best customers), 
 and thus completing the iron ways within 
 their own borders, which go on for ever, make 
 available the produce of every inch of land 
 they traverse, and increase in value every 
 year. Steamers, on the other hand, are con- 
 stantly depreciating, and become valueless 
 after a certain and a very limited number 
 of years, having spent the best part of their 
 lives in ploughing that old ocean on which 
 they can leave no track, nor improve its sale-
 
 256 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 able value I Unquestionably the world must 
 have an effective service of steamers, and, if 
 the necessity ever arises, the Americans may 
 be depended on to supply them quickly ; but 
 in the meantime the competition in Great 
 Britain, supplemented by the bounty-fostered 
 efforts of other nations, leaves no cause of 
 complaint either as to efficiency or cheapness 
 of carriage. In fact, this cheapness of freights 
 is one of the main causes of our farmers' diffi- 
 culties. For it is not only in the United 
 States that we see this extraordinary activity 
 in railroad-building. The same thing is going 
 on at a great rate, though on a less gigantic 
 scale, in Canada and the Argentine Republic. 
 Mr Bear speaks with a good deal of contempt 
 of the pretensions of these countries as wheat- 
 growers. It may be admitted that they have 
 been perhaps a little premature in announcing 
 themselves as " the future granaries of the 
 world." But Mr Bear should not be in a 
 hurry to conclude that, because such countries 
 may actually be importers of wheat to-day, 
 they may not be very large exporters in 
 an uncommonly short space of time. Any 
 middle-aged man can remember the day when
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 257 
 
 both California and Australia were importers 
 of wheat and flour. The British farmer 
 should make careful note of the immense 
 sums now being borrowed in this country for 
 railroad-building in South America. Within 
 the last few months the Argentine Republic 
 has granted concessions, with guarantee of 
 interest, to new railroads to the extent of 
 forty millions sterling an enormous outlay 
 for such a country, as the London money 
 market is now learning to its cost. 1 In 
 Canada, again, we have not by any means 
 yet had time to see the effect of the opening 
 of the Canadian Pacific Railroad on the wheat- 
 fields it traverses, particularly in the Sas- 
 katchewan Valley. Early frosts may have 
 lessened the production this year, but there 
 may be no early frost next year. Unless all 
 accounts are false, we must certainly look for 
 a great increase in the production of wheat 
 from these regions, whatever the price may 
 be in London. When we turn to India, I see 
 no reason to anticipate a reduction in the 
 
 1 The crisis of 1890 which happened two years after this 
 paper was written was mainly attributable to these Argen- 
 tine loans. 
 
 R
 
 258 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 bonus on exportations from any sustained rise 
 in the value of silver. Mr Bear has explained 
 very lucidly how, when the value of the 
 pound sterling increases in rupees (whilst 
 there is not a corresponding increase in the 
 rupee price of commodities), exportations are 
 stimulated. What reason is there to believe 
 that such a process is likely to be arrested, 
 looking to the production and the existing 
 stocks of silver in the world ? The only 
 action likely to arrest it would be the world 
 becoming bimetallist, and that seems to be 
 a long way off. It is very difficult to express 
 any positive opinion about the effect of the 
 depreciation of the rouble in respect of the 
 exports from Russia ; but it may safely be 
 said about any backward, slow-moving coun- 
 try, where banking accommodation is in its 
 infancy, and . information does not travel 
 rapidly, that the depreciation in the value of 
 the currency always outruns the appreciation 
 in the price of commodities, and so exporta- 
 tion is stimulated. The British farmer may 
 have to contend with the same difficulty 
 before very long in America, because it is 
 scarcely possible that the United States can
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 259 
 
 continue to coin silver at the present rate, 
 and yet remain on a gold basis. Here, again, 
 the depreciation in the value of the dollar 
 would probably take place a little quicker than 
 the appreciation in the dollar value of wheat. 
 But with American lucidity of thought, and 
 the extraordinary development of banking 
 facilities, prices would soon equalise them- 
 selves. The risk, however, is an additional 
 one to be taken into consideration by our 
 farmers. 
 
 And now I wish to come to a point a little 
 larger than the mere production of wheat, 
 which is, after all, only one item although so 
 large a one in agriculture. What can we 
 reasonably suppose will be the effect of the 
 expenditure within the last few years of these 
 hundreds of millions sterling on new railroads 
 running through virgin soils, whose fee-simple 
 can still be acquired for an old song, in com- 
 parison with the price of land in England ? 
 What are the millions of people now settling 
 on these lands going to do with their land, their 
 labour, and their railways ? The answer is 
 obvious. They are all going to produce, in ever 
 greater and greater quantity, and, so long as
 
 260 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 our ports are open, they are going to send us 
 their productions. One gets a little tired of 
 the argument about farming not paying in 
 America. At the risk of becoming wearisome, 
 let me just give these figures from that played- 
 out old State, Massachusetts : 
 
 Total value of agricultural property 
 
 In 1885 43,000,000 
 
 In 1875 37,000,000 
 
 Number of persons engaged in agriculture 
 
 Tn 1885 ... . 78,000 
 
 In 1875 . . . 71,000 
 
 The conclusion at which the Census Commis- 
 sioner arrives is, that while Massachusetts is 
 not a great farming State, and does not com- 
 pare with the great Western States in the 
 great staple products of the soil, it has suc- 
 ceeded in gradually replacing these products 
 by minor crops, which have, nevertheless, 
 proved to be more remunerative, and that the 
 increasing value of these crops offers great 
 encouragement .to the further development of 
 the farming interests of the commonwealth. 
 Here, again, is American lucidity of thought. 
 They change quickly to meet changed circum- 
 stances. In Massachusetts, dairy products
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 261 
 
 hay, straw, fodder, and vegetables account 
 for more than five-eighths of the total agricul- 
 tural production. That can only be quickly 
 effected in a land where the occupier is the 
 owner, and is trammelled by no burdensome 
 conditions in leases. I ask again, What are all 
 these millions of emigrants to the Far West 
 of America, to Canada, to the Argentine Re- 
 public, going to do with themselves and their 
 land ? No man can eat more than his three 
 or four square meals a-day. An ever-growing 
 surplus of food must come to us. With our 
 antiquated system of land tenure, the contest 
 between us and these new countries in the 
 production of food is like the contest between 
 great commercial companies and small shop- 
 keepers. Unless we reform our agricultural 
 system it means ruin. A great European war 
 might stave it off for a time. But, of course, 
 looking to the interests of the whole country, 
 such a cure would be a great deal worse than 
 the disease. England would probably herself 
 be involved sooner or later, and that would 
 indeed be a case of burning our house down 
 to roast our pig. From this point of view, to 
 w r hatever party we belong, we can have but
 
 262 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 one policy, and that is to bring our navy 
 up to a proper strength for its multifarious 
 and most portentous duties. It is a simple 
 principle of fire insurance, and whoever ne- 
 glects that duty will, sooner or later, incur 
 unparalleled national resentment. But sup- 
 posing there is no war, what warrant have we 
 for supposing that the prices of food will be 
 higher ? I cannot see any valid reason : and 
 the lower prices are the better, we ought all 
 to be pleased except the landowners and the 
 farmers. What a curious commentary it is on 
 the danger of prophecy, to consider that in 
 this year 1888, when Mr Malthus would have 
 proved to us that population was bound to 
 have outrun the means of subsistence, the fact 
 is that the means of subsistence were never in 
 greater abundance, in proportion to the popu- 
 lation, than they are in England to-day. Tak- 
 ing the British colonies, the North American 
 continent, and the Argentine Republic, there 
 are to-day 360 million head of cattle, sheep, 
 and pigs, which were practically represented 
 by zero when Mr Malthus published his first 
 edition. With the extension of transportation 
 facilities, all these vast flocks and herds will
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 263 
 
 sooner or later be available for the meat-sup- 
 ply of England. And there is this further 
 consideration, that if we look at the Western 
 World as a whole, we shall find that a great 
 deal more. than half of it is suffering from 
 under-population in a greater degree than the 
 remaining part is suffering from over-popula- 
 tion. Looking to the way in which space has 
 been, and is being, annihilated, I believe it to 
 be strictly true to say that every averagely 
 healthy, strong child of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 born free from inherited intemperance, and 
 fitted by suitable education for any kind of 
 work, is a distinct gain, instead of a loss, in 
 the struggle for existence, because every such 
 child will be able to produce more than it can 
 consume. The labour markets of two conti- 
 nents the American and the Australasian- 
 are contending for his or her services. There 
 is no prospect of lack of subsistence in these 
 new worlds for hundreds of millions of people 
 who are physically able for, and are morally 
 not afraid of or disinclined to, rough work. 
 The pressing national question for us in Eng- 
 land is how to obtain this right sort of people, 
 and how to prevent deterioration in quality.
 
 264 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 
 
 This is really a more practicable end to aim 
 at than a diminution in their quantity. The 
 difficulty and danger of over-population now- 
 adays arises precisely amongst that class of 
 helpless, hopeless ones who will be the last to 
 apply any moral self-restraint, and it would be 
 difficult to instance a nation whose population 
 is at a standstill or diminishing in numbers 
 which is free from la miser e. We have to 
 borrow the very term from France to get the 
 exact nuance of meaning, and it certainly 
 cannot be asserted that population in France 
 is increasing in a threatening manner. We 
 hear nothing now but complaints of the re- 
 verse, and that the nation is consequently 
 falling into a state of decadence. How, then, 
 are we to better the quality of our people ? 
 Clearly, first of all, by re-marrying the people 
 to the land if that be possible. Let us hope, 
 too, that the State or the municipalities will 
 take up energetically the great questions of 
 systematic emigration, technical education, 
 housing, draining, lighting, open - air spaces, 
 baths and wash-houses, gymnasia, and all the 
 other means for making the mass of the peo- 
 ple's lives brighter and better. For, after all,
 
 THE FUTURE OF FOOD. 265 
 
 they the masses are " the State." The 
 food-supply may then be left to take care of 
 itself. 
 
 Mem., 1892. Lord Salisbury is now also to 
 be reckoned among the prophets. He sees 
 that the only salvation for English agriculture 
 is to increase the number of holdings ; and as 
 Mr Arthur Balfour in his Irish Land Bill has 
 introduced the principle of State socialism in 
 its most flagrant form, it is difficult to see the 
 
 o 
 
 arguments that will be adduced on the other 
 side when it is proposed to apply the same 
 principles to England. Some of us may begin 
 to think that we are too much " all Socialists 
 now." With the two parties competing against 
 one another in the same direction there will be 
 no cog on the wheels, and we may soon have 
 to bewail as our greatest political misfortune 
 that there is no real Conservative party in this 
 country.
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 1 
 
 THE outward appearance of the city of New 
 York' has been so often described that it is 
 tolerably well known to English readers. The 
 fine bay, with its white sails and the usually 
 clear blue sky overhead, forming so great a 
 contrast to the Mersey, gives at once to the 
 American-bound traveller a comfortable sense 
 of breadth and cheeriness. TKere is nothing 
 dull to look at ; nothing hopeless ; nothing 
 hateful in ugliness and gloom. And Broad- 
 way, although we may find it much narrower 
 
 1 Macmillan's Magazine, June 1872. It must be remembered 
 that this little paper was written twenty years ago, and I am 
 told that things have changed very much socially in New York, 
 as they have done in England. They have been Anglicising 
 their ideas, whilst we have been Americanising ours. Such is 
 life.
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 267 
 
 than we imagined, and very disappointing in 
 the incongruity and tastelessness of its archi- 
 tecture (with the wretched flagstaff's of differ- 
 ent sizes on every roof, and flaunting signs 
 stuck up at every door-post), has still an 
 attraction from the novelty and the scale of 
 many of its buildings ; and there is a display 
 of wealth and bustling eager activity about 
 the street that give it a character of its own. 
 Fifth Avenue, too, with its handsome brown 
 stone houses, and the trees bordering the 
 pavement in their fresh green, is a sight 'to 
 please the eye. It is a sort of street we 
 have not been accustomed to. It is typically 
 American. It would be difficult to match its 
 three miles in comfort and sightliness. It is 
 
 O 
 
 already built out to the Central Park, the 
 great pride and glory of New Yorkers. With- 
 in the last ten or twelve years this park has 
 been formed out of an absolute wilderness of 
 rock. The roads in it are perfect. The turf 
 is admirably kept, and no English lawn can 
 look brighter or greener than it does in spring. 
 Fine timber there is none, and never can be, 
 owing to the want of depth of soil, but flower- 
 ing shrubs and small trees there are in
 
 268 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 abundance, with several artificial lakes very 
 picturesquely laid out ; and whether in spring- 
 time in its freshness, or in the fall, when 
 autumn's "fiery finger" is laid among the 
 leaves, the Park has a bright, pleasant appear- 
 ance, with its crowds of well-dressed people 
 walking about, and the numerous "waggons" 
 with fast-trotting horses. 
 
 When the ordinary tourist, without letters 
 of introduction, asks what more there is to be 
 seen in this the third largest city in the civil- 
 ised world, it must be difficult to direct him. 
 There are one or two collections of modern 
 pictures in private houses open to view, which 
 might interest him for half an hour. If ad- 
 dicted to education or charitable institutions, 
 he can occupy some time and receive much 
 valuable information from visiting the schools 
 and other buildings devoted to these purposes. 
 If commercially inclined, the shipping and 
 the "Bulls and Bears" in Wall Street will 
 claim attention ; but at the end of three or 
 four days he must join in the general verdict 
 of travellers, which has not been favourable 
 to New York. Now, although it must be ad- 
 mitted that, as a metropolis, it is very defi-
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 269 
 
 cient in objects of general interest, the ground 
 on which it may claim both attention and 
 study has scarcely been travelled over by any 
 foreigner. That ground is the interior life 
 the social life of the city. For in their social 
 as well as in their political innovations Amer- 
 icans exhibit the same tendency towards an 
 equality of conditions. In both cases the 
 general result is a wonderful average of con- 
 tent with less of extraordinary eminence in 
 culture and refinement than may be found 
 among the few in such a country as England, 
 but with a much wider diffusion of apparent 
 happiness among the many. 
 
 The same Englishman who devoutly thanks 
 Heaven that he does not live in a land where 
 gentlemen take no part in the government, 
 and where such frauds can be perpetrated as 
 have recently come to light in New York city 
 administration, will return thanks with equal 
 fervour that his wife and daughters do not 
 squander his substance in millinery, nor their 
 own time in frivolities. Scarcely, perhaps, 
 giving due weight to the fact that however 
 deplorable certain blemishes may be in the 
 practical working of these American institu-
 
 270 SOCIAL NEW YOKK. 
 
 tions, the country, whether by aid of them or 
 in spite of them, thrives and in the one case 
 the spectacle is presented of forty millions 
 of the best educated, the best fed, the best 
 clothed, and the most contented people in the 
 world ; and in the other, that whatever defects 
 may be found in the social organisation, one 
 end, and not an unimportant one, is attained 
 namely, securing a very great amount of 
 happiness for a very large number of young 
 people, by encouraging them in constant 
 opportunities of meeting, of getting to know 
 one another, and of marrying. This latter 
 feature is of special interest to us in Eng- 
 land, for we are becoming so ultra - civilised 
 that love-marriages are in some danger of 
 going altogether out of existence ; the pre- 
 valent and growing idea of man's real enjoy- 
 ment being, apparently, to get away from 
 petticoats. In America, on the other hand, 
 scarcely any amusement is popular in which 
 the presence of ladies is not the essential 
 part. The " tournament of doves " languishes 
 in New York because ladies will not go there. 
 Take an ordinary croquet -party, or a yacht- 
 ing-party, or a picnic ; or, better still, take the
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 271 
 
 general way in which average young gentle- 
 men in the two countries will spend a holiday. 
 In London, it will be a party of men to shoot, 
 or hunt, or row, or play cricket, or whatever 
 else it may be ; it will seldom occur to them 
 to take ladies with them as one of the ele- 
 ments in their pleasure - seeking. It will as 
 little occur to the same class of men in New 
 York not to take them. There the first thing 
 thought of is a matron, and as many young 
 ladies as there are gentlemen ; and whether 
 they drive out for a game of croquet and 
 a dinner to the Four-in-Hand Club, or to see 
 the horses in training at the Jockey Club, or 
 steam up the noble Hudson to picnic among 
 the Highlands, or go to some house in the 
 country for luncheon and a dance afterwards, 
 or down the bay in a yacht, or (if the season 
 be winter) on a sleighing - party, the great 
 point aimed at the circumstance from which 
 the chief pleasure is expected to be derived 
 is the association of ladies and gentlemen 
 together. And this association, which is thus 
 prized, esteemed, and, one may say, lived for 
 by American men, cannot be said to be more 
 than tolerated by Englishmen, and that not
 
 272 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 always with the best grace in the world. We 
 see the results in the dreariness of our garden- 
 parties, our croquet - parties, our archery- 
 parties. 
 
 In America we find women, and especially 
 unmarried women, holding a higher rank, rela- 
 tively to men, than they do in this country. 
 More deference is shown to them more 
 courtesy. They are encouraged to feel that 
 they are the most important element in the 
 social happiness of the men ; and the con- 
 sequence is, among the better, but not at all 
 uncommon styles of girls, there is a most 
 charming want of constraint, affectation, or 
 mannerism. They are very little conventional 
 or self-conscious, and the just mean is very 
 often found where perfect freedom does not 
 verge on forwardness, pertness, or fastness. 
 And this is due not merely to the difference 
 in the numerical proportion of men and women 
 in the country, but it must also, in great part, 
 be attributed to the independence in which 
 American girls are brought up from their 
 childhood. They become recognised leaders 
 in all amusements, and are able to dictate a 
 tone to society. For society seems to be a
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 273 
 
 good deal like any other bully a very great 
 coward when made to feel the strong hand ; 
 and young ladies, aware of their tremendous 
 social power when organised, cease to be sat- 
 isfied with graceless inattentions from men. 
 And is not this want of community between 
 men and women in their interests and amuse- 
 ments 
 
 "... the little rift within the lute, 
 That by-and-by will make the music mute " ? 
 
 And that is sad if it happens to the sweetest 
 of all music here in England. 
 
 o 
 
 The prevalent English notion of New York 
 society is that it is a perfect sink of iniquity ; 
 but bad though it may be and its best friend 
 could not say much for some sections of it 
 there is nowhere the same effrontery in vice as 
 can be seen in London or Paris. 
 
 Another and perhaps a stronger point is 
 that Americans are very far indeed from recog- 
 nising the inherent superiority of boys over 
 girls which is admitted without question in 
 most English families, and which was so well 
 satirised some years ago by ' Punch/ in the 
 story of the schoolboy at home, asked by a 
 
 s
 
 274 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 visitor the number of his family, and answer- 
 ing, "Well, if you count the girls, we're eight. 
 Tm one." The taunt may go for what it is 
 worth, were it not that the poor girls pay the 
 penalty of their inferiority in a form appreci- 
 able by the dullest understanding or sensi- 
 bility, namely, in being left 20,000 where 
 their brothers are left 200,000, if their pa- 
 rents are wealthy ! In America they share 
 and share alike. And all the advantages that 
 money can buy will be lavished on the daugh- 
 ters, while the sons will be turned into a 
 counting-house or lawyer's office at seventeen 
 or eighteen years old, and will be made to 
 work for their living, with little or no money 
 help from their fathers. It is not therefore 
 altogether surprising that in their own estima- 
 tion young ladies on the other side of the 
 Atlantic have, as they themselves would 
 phrase it, a much more " lovely time " than 
 their cousins here. From their childhood they 
 assume the position of the greatest importance 
 in society. When they are seven or eight 
 years old they go to " dancing schools " or 
 classes, where they meet boys two or three 
 years older than themselves, and from that
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 275 
 
 time forward they are thrown into constant 
 association with the other sex. 
 
 The consequence is, that at whatever age 
 you may see an American boy and girl to- 
 gether, you are never pained by that wretched 
 mauvaise honte so common in England. 
 
 o 
 
 A college boy of fifteen or seventeen in 
 New York will make visits to his girl-friends 
 
 o 
 
 of thirteen or fourteen, and treat them with 
 thorough courtesy. He will have plenty to 
 say to them, and will say it naturally, not 
 in the least off his ease, and yet not as a 
 general rule forward. It is his ambition to 
 know many of them, to be a favourite with 
 them, and their pursuits and amusements out 
 of school will be in common. These boys go 
 into society at a ridiculously early age, and 
 are often very indifferently educated. Many 
 of them, of course, are readers, and make up in 
 later life for any early deficiencies ; but many 
 have an extremely low intellectual standard 
 being quite contented with that amount 
 of knowledge or native smartness that will 
 enable them to succeed in importing fancy 
 dry goods or in selling stocks and gold in 
 Wall Street : and yet with all that there will
 
 276 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 generally be found a " grace of courtesy " 
 ingrained in them which makes it impossible 
 for them to be otherwise than polite to a lady, 
 or indeed to any other human being. 
 
 It would be absolutely impossible to find 
 twelve American gentlemen in an omnibus on 
 a wet day some of whom would not make 
 room for a woman and do it with grace, as if 
 they had a pleasure in the doing of it. They 
 would always prefer even that a man should 
 come in and stand on their toes with his 
 umbrella dripping over them, than that he 
 should be left out in discomfort. Most of 
 us who take occasion to travel in these not 
 very aristocratic conveyances in London may 
 remember to have noticed the expressions and 
 actions of the five on each side when a lady 
 passenger makes her appearance as No. 1 1 at 
 the door the alacrity to make room and 
 remove her embarrassment as to which side 
 she should choose, and the pleasant welcome 
 Driven ! However, we have rules and recnila- 
 
 o o 
 
 tions as to complements which are conspicuous 
 for their absence in New York. It is out- 
 rageous the way in which they fill their 
 omnibuses and cars exactly like the carts
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 277 
 
 one sees in London streets filled with calves 
 not only with all the sitting and standing 
 room taken up, but with men hanging on to 
 the platforms, and that under no necessity of 
 exceptional pressure, but as an everyday 
 occurrence. One often hears in this country 
 unfavourable comments on American manners, 
 and it is true that they may often be found 
 not altogether consonant with the highest 
 grace or finish ; but a stranger may travel 
 " from Maine to California, and from the 
 Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico," with very 
 tolerable certainty that he will never encoun- 
 ter the slightest. wilful impoliteness unless he 
 himself gives occasion for it. On the other 
 hand, he will often find excessive courtesy 
 from rough exteriors where he might little 
 expect it, exhibited not in waste of words but 
 in kindness of action. Even in a California 
 emigrant steamer, an Englishman, busy in 
 taking care of his guns and of his bath-tub 
 and of himself generally, may, if he has the 
 eyes to see and the heart to understand, learn 
 some lessons in chivalry an accomplishment 
 of bygone days from these same rough 
 Western fellows, who may have shocked his
 
 278 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 delicate sensibility by eating peas with their 
 knives, and by chewing tobacco. Under a 
 glaring tropical sun it will be their first 
 business on arriving at Aspinwall to carry 
 ashore the chairs and other movables, includ- 
 ing babies of women in no way connected with 
 them, helpful to get them good places in the 
 new steamer at Panama unmindful, till that 
 is done, of their own comfort. Is it, then, 
 this equality of conditions that tends to 
 greater courtesy, greater kindliness in manner ? 
 Certainly these qualities are noticeable among 
 American men. As for the women, they are 
 very bewitching from their sprightliness ; but 
 they are sometimes spoilt more or less by the 
 attentions they receive, looking upon the men 
 merely as providers for their amusement, and 
 they may be a little too apt to regard what 
 they designate " having a good time " as the 
 most important object in life; but still, as a rule, 
 they appear to make good wives and mothers. 
 And while they are young life certainly is 
 made very easy to them, very joyous, as it 
 naturally should be. Their association with 
 the other sex is encouraged in every direction. 
 Nothing so pleasantly surprises an English
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 2*79 
 
 gentleman who goes to a New York ball well 
 introduced, as to be asked by half-a-dozen fair 
 maidens of. eighteen to twenty years of age, 
 to whom he may have been presented, to call 
 on them any evening. As it is only in excep- 
 tional instances that their papas or mammas 
 add to the crush in a ball-room, he is not likely 
 to have the faintest idea who his new friends 
 may be ; but the invitation having been given 
 in the frankest, kindest manner, he naturally 
 takes advantage of it, and on the first occasion 
 will probably be introduced to the parents and 
 
 the rest of the familv. But on all future occa- 
 
 j 
 
 sions he is as likely as not to find the young 
 lady quite alone. Not that she will deliberately 
 so contrive it as to be alone. It would be truer 
 to say that no one else will deliberately con- 
 trive that she should not be alone ; and yet so 
 habitual is this custom, that there will not be 
 the smallest constraint or consciousness in her 
 manner. She conducts herself exactly as if it 
 was the most natural thing in the world that 
 two young people should be alone together. 
 Perhaps the most common form for the visit to 
 take will be that the young lady receives her 
 friend in an ante-room, while the rest of the
 
 280 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 family, with folding-doors open between, will 
 be proceeding with their ordinary avocations in 
 the adjoining room, precisely as if no foreign 
 element were present. Each girl in the family 
 will have her own distinct circle of acquaint- 
 ance, both men and women so that Maria's 
 friends are possibly unknown except by sight 
 to Julia, and papa's and mamma's friends may 
 be quite unknown to both young ladies. In 
 some large houses in New York, where two or 
 three of the girls are in society, each receives 
 her own friends in her own boudoir, where 
 her visitor is shown up straight from the front 
 door, and where she has her piano and her 
 own favourite books and flowers about her. 
 He comes and goes without seeing any other 
 member of the family, and this unconstrained 
 intimacy tends naturally towards matrimony. 
 The safety of the arrangement lies in the 
 numbers. For the visitor going out is likely 
 to stumble on another coming in, and the 
 same young lady will walk or ride alone in the 
 park with a different gentleman every day of 
 the week, or will be seen one day perched on 
 one of those marvellous " light waggons," with 
 very scanty room for two on the seat, behind
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 281 
 
 a pair of trotters speeded up to a " two-forty 
 gait " (twenty-two miles an hour) ; the next 
 day, alongside a different driver, on an English 
 dog-cart with a tandem team ; or a third day 
 reclining with a third cavalier among buffalo 
 robes in a sleigh, rattling along under the 
 merry music of its silver bells. In whatever 
 form the men amuse themselves, the compan- 
 ionship of ladies seems to be a necessity for 
 their thorough enjoyment. 
 
 And to this may be attributed the light- 
 ness of the atmosphere of American entertain- 
 ments. At a New York dinner there is cer- 
 tain to be a very large proportion of young 
 married ladies and girls recently " come out," 
 and these women are often so beautiful to look 
 on and so coquette (without being flirts at all 
 in the offensive sense of the word), simply so 
 frankly ready to be admired and to be pleased, 
 and so anxious to please, that no man can have 
 time to realise any defects or wants. He 
 welcomes the new sensation of seeing people 
 thoroughly and unrestrainedly enjoying them- 
 selves in their own way. It may not be the 
 highest way, but they are there for the pur- 
 pose of enjoyment and they do enjoy them-
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 selves, and do not consider it necessary to 
 give themselves airs either of frigidity, gush- 
 ing sentimentality, literary enthusiasm, or fast- 
 ness. They are simply natural. Of course 
 in a city of the size of New York there are 
 numerous sets in what may be called " the 
 best society," comprising every tone of culture 
 or want of culture. It would not surprise you 
 to find in an average dinner company several 
 men unaware of the existence of well-known 
 recent works, as for instance the ' Idyls of the 
 King/ ' The Spanish Gypsy,' or ' The Ring 
 and the Book.' But at the very same table 
 you might find yourself taken up sharp by a 
 girl in her teens if you ventured to air a 
 doubtful knowledge of Mr Herbert Spencer's 
 writings, or were to quote Buckle inaccur- 
 ately. It would probably, however, be dif- 
 ficult to find anything like the number of 
 quiet dinner-parties in New York that may 
 be found in London, where various subjects 
 of political, literary, or scientific interest are 
 conversed about with considerable knowledge 
 on the part of the talkers, and where it would 
 be impossible for any one to circulate without 
 a very fair acquaintance with the current
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 283 
 
 literature of the day. " Shop " is the general 
 bane of average New York dinner conversa- 
 tion among men. 
 
 Then there is generally a hearty desire on 
 the part of every one to have a "good time"; 
 and as hospitality is one of the cardinal 
 virtues of American character, whatever your 
 host has of best in the way of wines and 
 cigars, is sure to be forthcoming without stint. 
 There is none of that repression which is the 
 cold blanket on so many English entertain- 
 ments, where those who consider themselves 
 as a little grander socially than their neigh- 
 bours must always be asserting their supre- 
 macy ; and where from the butcher to the 
 baronet so many people are always striving 
 to be what they are not, and to force them- 
 selves into the society of others whose whole 
 end and aim in life is to avoid associating 
 with them. In New York the lawyer, the 
 banker, the merchant, and the broker all 
 associate on terms of perfect equality as 
 gentlemen ; and out of business hours you 
 may see the young broker without a shilling 
 of fortune, but who is a gentleman, take a 
 position in society that a millionaire banker
 
 284 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 who may not be a gentleman would give his 
 ears to obtain, and never can obtain. In 
 England there is a very general almost a 
 universal impression or reproach that money 
 will do anything in New York ; but we who 
 live in so thin a glass-house cannot afford 
 to throw stones. Many a railway magnate 
 who may have amassed a fortune compared 
 with which Hudson's in his palmiest days 
 would have been scarcely a competence is 
 as rigidly interdicted from any decent society 
 in New York, as Hudson was warmly wel- 
 comed in those circles which claim to call 
 themselves the select society of London. It 
 is very hard to say what does constitute the 
 right of entree into good society in New York ; 
 but it most certainly is not wealth alone. 
 There seems to be a sort of process of natural 
 selection of all those people who in themselves 
 contribute something to the general enjoy- 
 ment. For in all their social gatherings en- 
 joyment is the chiefest point considered. This 
 is especially noticeable in a ball-room. The 
 genius of the people goes out much towards 
 dancing. Nothing can be more perfect of its 
 kind than one of their assemblies at " Del-
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 285 
 
 monico's." " Delmonico's " is an institution 
 of New York, a Swiss family of that name 
 having for long been the chief restaurateurs 
 of the city. They have rented a couple of 
 the handsomest houses in Fifth Avenue, and 
 have built a ball-room behind them, which is 
 used not only for these public assemblies, but 
 is very generally hired by any one wishing to 
 give a large private ball. The suite of rooms 
 is sufficiently handsome ; and as four or five 
 hundred people can be accommodated without 
 crushing, there is generally room to move 
 about and to dance. The bulk of the mat- 
 ronising is done by comparatively few young 
 married ladies, each of whom will take charge 
 of a number of girls who report them- 
 selves to her as a matter of form. It is a 
 very pretty sight to see one of these young 
 matrons enter the salon bleu, the reception- 
 room, with half-a-dozen girls in her train, 
 each carrying from one to half-a-dozen bou- 
 quets of exquisite flowers. They have a 
 rare faculty for dressing well understanding 
 how to wear their fine things, and having 
 in general a perception of the harmony of 
 colours, aided by a liberality in allowance
 
 286 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 attained by a diversion of much that English 
 fathers devote to the hunting and shooting 
 proclivities of their sons. A ball-room pre- 
 sents a rich brilliant appearance, like a gay 
 parterre of flowers. Dancing has been ele- 
 vated almost into an art, and it is very rare 
 to see either man or woman who does not 
 dance really well. Pace and endurance are 
 not so much cultivated in America as grace ; 
 and the whole room does not set to dancing, 
 or rather jostling one another, at the same 
 moment. Rows of respectable but uncalled- 
 for papas and mammas, consuming valuable air 
 and space, are unknown. The young girls are 
 consequently the lords of the ascendant, and 
 they look as if they felt it, as they are entitled 
 to do in a ball-room. 
 
 Quadrilles and lancers are never danced, 
 having gone out of fashion as completely as 
 stage-coaches. Waltzes and galops alternate 
 till twelve o'clock, when the favourite German 
 cotillon, with its many fanciful, pretty, and 
 graceful figures, begins and lasts till any hour 
 in the morning. Dancing young ladies seem 
 to be divided into two sets : one of which
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 287 
 
 dances everything except, and the other no- 
 thing but, " the German." 
 
 The men having been taught dancing from 
 their infancy, and having kept it up ever 
 since, seem to enjoy a ball as much as the 
 women and the women are radiant. The 
 universality of flower-carrying adds very much 
 to the effectiveness of their appearance. It is 
 extremely rare to see any lady quite bouquet- 
 less ; and it is a pleasant custom and a natural 
 one that a man should send to any woman or 
 to many women whom he admires, or to whom 
 he may be indebted for civilities, flowers either 
 in baskets for their boudoirs or in bouquets 
 to swell their triumphs at a ball. They ex- 
 press a sentiment as lightly as it can be 
 expressed, without having any undue weight 
 attached either by giver or receiver. The 
 sending of the flowers is good for the man, in 
 that for the moment he has thought of some 
 one's pleasure besides his own : the receiving 
 of them is good for the woman, because it puts 
 her in charity with all men and women. The 
 drawback is the want of moderation which 
 characterises things American. The cost of a
 
 288 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 choice ball bouquet is ten or twelve dollars, so 
 that a belle may often be seen entering a room 
 with ten or twelve pounds sterling worth of 
 flowers in her hands, as five bouquets will be 
 no unusual number. As they will all be cast 
 out next day, the waste of money is exces- 
 sive, for the sentiment cannot be measured 
 in dollars. Baskets of flowers, of course, run 
 to much greater excess twenty pounds or 
 forty pounds being often paid in winter for 
 handsome ones. 
 
 Even in their club-life the New York men 
 seem to aim at including the other sex. They 
 have a Four-in-Hand Club, which certainly 
 belongs as much to the ladies as to the gen- 
 tlemen, so far as regards the uses to which 
 it is put and the pleasures derived from it. 
 The Club-house is beautifully situated on a 
 knoll overlooking the Hudson, some eight 
 miles from the city, and was built for the pur- 
 pose of giving dinners and dances. The view 
 from it up and down the river is lovely, and 
 many a pleasant ladies' dinner (always includ- 
 ing unmarried girls) is given there in the long 
 summer afternoons. In the winter-time, dances 
 with thirty or forty couple, and the return home
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 289 
 
 in a sleigh behind a gentleman-whip slightly 
 exhilarated (of course by the keen frosty air), 
 and doing his honest sixteen or eighteen miles 
 an hour, with the moon shining out cold and 
 clear no " nebulous hypothesis " as we are ac- 
 customed to in this little isle and the bright 
 stars (much more steadfast than the driver), 
 and the solos and the choruses accompanying 
 the joyous ringing of the silver bells, leaves a 
 pleasant very pleasant impression on the 
 mind of him who, through the storm of the 
 singing, may still be listening to a still small 
 voice very near him. 
 
 Another pleasant innovation is the custom 
 of giving theatre or opera parties. Any un- 
 married young lady or gentleman can select 
 a matron and ask half-a-dozen or a dozen of 
 their friends to go to the theatre or opera ; 
 the entertainment being generally prefaced 
 by a dinner, or followed by a supper and an 
 impromptu "German" at Delmonico's. You 
 very rarely turn into any theatre in New York 
 without seeing a party of young people enjoy- 
 ing themselves in this way. It is, perhaps, as 
 pleasant a way of passing an evening as any 
 other, to dine at half-past six and go to the 
 
 T
 
 290 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 opera afterwards. If unfortunate in your right 
 and left at dinner, there is the chance of a 
 new deal subsequently and that again failing, 
 there is always the piece to look at, with closed 
 eyes, perhaps, if the light is strong ! It will be 
 understood that the opera is a much cheaper 
 amusement in New York than in London, and 
 in itself inferior in fully equal proportion. In 
 fact, there is nothing first-rate about it, except 
 the toilettes of the ladies in the audience. 
 
 But whether a young lady prefers the con- 
 stant society of a gentleman or gentlemen at 
 her theatre-parties or in her walks, her rides, 
 her drives, or her church-going, the point that 
 makes her life in America different from any 
 European experience is that she is free as the 
 air to dispose of herself as she thinks best. It 
 can scarcely be said that any part of the mode 
 of life described above is likely to contribute 
 much towards making people wiser, and a 
 disposition towards mere enjoyment is apt to 
 be much contemned by superior people who 
 are impressed with the many difficult problems 
 in life which have to be solved, and in the solu- 
 tion of which they themselves may be aiding. 
 But it must be remembered how few of us are
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 291 
 
 superior, or have any intention even grant- 
 ing we have the ability to apply our leisure 
 time to schemes for the improvement of our- 
 selves or of our fellow-creatures ; and if we 
 don't get the amusement to which we, rightly 
 or wrongly, think ourselves entitled in one way, 
 we will attempt it in another. Pretty constant 
 social intercourse is good for the great mass of 
 young people, even if a little frivolity be su- 
 perinduced. But if ladies and gentlemen are 
 to associate together, let their proper relative 
 positions be maintained. Don't let us get and 
 'keep the wrong side uppermost. 
 
 And notwithstanding the luxury in which 
 these young ladies are brought up, it is a 
 common thing to see them marry men without 
 a shilling of fortune except their brains, and 
 after having been surfeited with every kind 
 of attention and amusement, take up their 
 quarters in a three-pair-back in " Bridal Row" 
 without a murmur, and live for a season on 
 about the cost of the bouquets sent to them 
 in a previous season. As far as an outsider 
 can judge, they make contented, loving, and 
 faithful wives ; and perhaps, after all, they 
 cannot more worthily fulfil their destinies.
 
 292 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 
 
 The records of the Sanitary Commission, too, 
 during the war showed wonderful achieve- 
 ments on the part of American ladies, and 
 of these New York claimed no small share ; 
 and the splendid charitable institutions of the 
 city itself bear witness that these duties are 
 in no way neglected. 
 
 It does not follow that work will not be 
 well done because play is well done. And 
 although the walks and the rides, the drives 
 and the dinners, the croquet-parties and the 
 evening parties, of ordinary young people may 
 seem to be matters of very trivial interest or 
 importance, it must be remembered that the 
 sum of these small daily incidents powerfully 
 affects the disposition, the manners, and the 
 bearing of whole sections of society. We in 
 England are too much tempted to think that 
 because the best specimens of our own country- 
 women and countrymen show types that are 
 very rarely equalled and never excelled so 
 that the words English lady and English gen- 
 tleman convey, and convey rightly, to our 
 mind quite a distinct and different notion 
 from mere " lady " or " gentleman " therefore 
 we are entitled to believe that our average
 
 SOCIAL NEW YORK. 293 
 
 Briton holds something- of a superior social 
 rank to all foreigners. But when the choice 
 specimens have been culled out, the fact is 
 that, owing to our inequality of condition, 
 the residuum in Great Britain is sometimes 
 of a dull, pompous, selfish, ungenial nature, 
 and may learn something even from much- 
 maligned New York.
 
 CONCLUSION: 
 
 WITH A FEW WORDS OX BIMETALLISM. 
 
 IT is perhaps a work of supererogation to 
 write a conclusion to so slender a bundle of 
 materials, particularly as I have no definite 
 conclusion to offer ; for I hold entirely with 
 the Frenchman that " si un livre porte un 
 enseignement ga, doit etre malgre' son auteur 
 par la force memedes faitsqu'il raconte." But, 
 unhappily, not one person out of a thousand 
 ever really reads or masters facts and figures 
 especially figures. They are, generally 
 speaking, regarded as a blot on creation, par- 
 ticularly from the literary man's point of view, 
 although there are many tastes in literature. 
 I once even heard of a gentleman who said 
 that he " enjoyed reading Euclid, but found
 
 CONCLUSION. 295 
 
 him too systematic ! " He no doubt possessed 
 a phenomenal flaire for the neglected nooks 
 and by-ways of belles-lettres, and one cannot 
 expect to have many readers of his peculiar 
 taste. The lovers of the triangles are rare 
 of figures rarer. The moment we descry them 
 in the distance we make up our minds to skip. 
 But facts are facts. Let me therefore re- 
 capitulate the most important of them by 
 way of summary. 
 
 For us in England the chief material con- 
 siderations in viewing the New World are 
 that, alongside of our little island teeming 
 with population, we have moored (so to say) 
 vast sparsely peopled continents, capable of 
 producing all the food that our people require. 
 We have lent them the money to build their 
 railroads (which in some cases they do not 
 repay) ; we have given them the greater part 
 arid the best part of their population ; we 
 have created a credit for their securities 
 nearly equal to our own national credit a 
 credit which has sometimes been abused ; we 
 have built steamers to carry their products 
 to our shores at marvellously low rates, and 
 entry free, with the consequence that grain
 
 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 from Minnesota, California, Canada, or India, 
 and beef and mutton from Australasia or 
 Argentina, can be delivered in London at less 
 cost of carriage than the same articles from 
 
 o 
 
 Yorkshire forty years ago. This is a material 
 revolution, and is at last beginning to make 
 our farmers sit up and open their eyes. Dur- 
 ing these forty years we have, more and more, 
 come to live and move and have our being by 
 the New World. We have only to glance at 
 the tables of our imports and exports to 
 realise what we should have been without it. 
 Meantime our population as a whole has never 
 been so well off. It is true that in the last 
 twenty years the small class of landowners 
 and farmers has suffered, but not the masses 
 of the people, agricultural or manufacturing, 
 comparing their position with any former 
 period. Their money wages are higher, and 
 the purchasing power of these wages very 
 much greater. But the New World has 
 forced great changes on us. It is the key to 
 the triumph of the Democracy. It is the key 
 to the landowners' difficulty in Ireland, and 
 goes some length towards explaining the 
 demand for Home Rule. It is the key to the
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 297 
 
 landowners' difficulty in England, and is now 
 precipitating on us a radical reform of our 
 system of land tenure. Would that the cure 
 of these particular difficulties were as easy to 
 arrive at as the key. The knowledge of the 
 cause comes, but the wisdom enabling us to 
 apply the remedy lingers. 
 
 Again, the New World is building for itself 
 (has already built for itself, one may say) a 
 wall against the products of our manufacture. 
 That wall will, I think, be levelled some day ; 
 but it is difficult to be certain, when that time 
 comes, that we shall get much aid or comfort 
 from the levelling. The United States are 
 our most formidable competitors in trade and 
 commerce, and as time goes on and they per- 
 fect their processes, we may find that if they 
 adopt free trade, in the long-run they may be 
 able to undersell us in manufactured goods 
 in neutral markets, and even in our own home 
 markets. They have all our adaptability, 
 they have all our elemental advantages in 
 plentiful supplies of coal and iron, and if we 
 join in fixing an international ratio for them 
 between the value of silver and gold, they will 
 have more than all our capital, and they will
 
 298 CONCLUSION: WITH A 
 
 become the strongest banking power in the 
 world : they have unrivalled water-force for 
 the generation of electricity, and they have 
 nothing else to do, nothing else to think of, 
 except industrial production. The mental 
 anxiety and worry for us in England of con- 
 sidering or fearing whether our next com- 
 plication or war will be in Europe, Asia, or 
 Africa, is a prodigious handicap in this com- 
 mercial competition. Never for a day have 
 we our minds quite free from this dread ; and 
 the risk cannot be expressed exactly in figures 
 in a rate of insurance, for instance, it is 
 "a spirit diffused through time and space," im- 
 palpable but, as some one has said, " It is the 
 impalpable that has prevailing weight." In 
 other words It is fate. "Our days are 
 heritors of days gone by : " and all that we 
 can practically do to help ourselves is, where 
 possible, to curtail our responsibilities, and, 
 particularly, to be careful of entering with a 
 light heart into fresh responsibilities. Sooner 
 or later they will come back on us. 
 
 Another practical thing we can do is to 
 raise the question whether it is permissible for 
 our own colonies to tax our manufacturers.
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 299 
 
 It is taxation without representation on our 
 part. The boot is on the other leg now. 
 With foreign nations we cannot help our- 
 selves we have no .locus standi. But if our 
 colonies (which are held as a part of ourselves) 
 are allowed to treat us as foreigners, their 
 benefit to us as colonies is problematical. We 
 throw the aegis of protection over them, and 
 in return they mulct us in duties for their 
 trade protection. It is a one-sided arrange- 
 ment. Is not the principle of do ut des 
 practicable ? Whatever import duties they 
 may see fit to levy on the goods of foreign 
 nations, our colonies ought to open their ports 
 freely to our manufacturers as we open our 
 ports to their products. In this way we 
 would receive a quid pro quo which would 
 relieve pro tanto our handicap in competition 
 with the United States. 
 
 One of the objects of this little volume (very 
 inadequately compassed, I am afraid) is to 
 endeavour to discriminate between the senti- 
 mental view and that which I hold to be the 
 true sentiment in regard to the New World. 
 It is a sentimental view, and, in my belief, an 
 historically untrue view, to look on the New
 
 300 CONCLUSION: WITH A 
 
 World as merely an expansion of England or 
 that Canada and Australia are, as a matter of 
 fact, a part of England as Yorkshire is a part 
 of England. Although many of their leaders 
 may not acknowledge it, although they may 
 passionately protest against it, onlookers are 
 aware that it is undeniable that these two 
 colonies take their tone of political thinking 
 and acting more from America than from Eng- 
 land. And American notions are not wholly 
 English ; they are crossed with many other 
 strains. For instance, we must never forget 
 that although France lost the material occu- 
 pancy of the New World, she nevertheless left 
 there the indelible impress of revolutionary 
 ideas and the force of the ideas has perhaps 
 been really greater and more enduring, in some 
 ways, than the force of the later occupancy. 
 We must always bear this in mind in our 
 dealings with the New World. Its ways are 
 not > exactly our ways, nor its purposes and 
 ideals our purposes and ideals. 
 
 Meantime we have free trade all to ourselves, 
 and we get our food cheap and plentiful ; and 
 the practical moral I draw from the present 
 state of things agricultural in this country is,
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 301 
 
 that it would have been very useful to our 
 farmers and landowners, and would have saved 
 them much loss, if they had taken the trouble 
 to make themselves more intimately acquainted 
 
 if they had kept themselves more thoroughly 
 au courant (up to date, as the phrase goes) 
 
 with the extraordinary rapid progress the 
 New World has been making in the develop- 
 ment of railways in the last five-and-twenty 
 years. The results were clearly predicable. 
 We must shoot the folly as it flies. 
 
 Now we must turn our attention to silver, 
 which is going to be the next most important 
 and burning question. And here, again, the 
 New World has the beau r6le. There are 
 States in America, like Nevada, Colorado, and 
 New Mexico, which contain almost incredible 
 masses of unmined silver. At Washington the 
 treasury vaults bulge out with silver, coined 
 and uncoined, continually requiring fresh ac- 
 commodation to be built for it. The whole 
 country is covered with silver certificates. 
 Silver is the present dreadful difficulty and 
 danger to American finance. Unless she gets 
 the rest of the world's help, she must break 
 under the load break, in banking parlance.
 
 302 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 That is, she will be unable to continue on a 
 gold basis. Four years ago I drew attention 
 to this danger (see pp. 258, 259). It is in the 
 mouths of all men who know America. It 
 won't break her productive power, though a 
 great currency crisis may temporarily cripple 
 it. And her currency is in an almost inextri- 
 cable muddle. Naturally, in her trouble, she 
 turns to sympathetic neighbours. We all 
 do so in trouble. She wishes the rest of 
 the world to pull the chestnuts out of the 
 fire. We are going to send representatives 
 to the Bimetallic Conference, but we must 
 keep our weather - eye open to see who is 
 going to get the advantage from any in- 
 ternational arrangement that may be pro- 
 posed for fixing a ratio between the value 
 of silver and gold. The Americans are a very 
 smart people, and we must take care that we 
 get as much as we give in our dealings with 
 them, otherwise we may find, after a time, 
 that they have all the gold and we have 
 the experience and their silver. We may 
 have a very soft, and even a sentimental, 
 side to the New World, but really we must 
 draw the line somewhere in placing ourselves
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 303 
 
 at its feet. Business is business ; and I fail 
 to see at the present juncture why we should 
 aid in giving this tremendous bonus to Amer- 
 ican property. Any critic who may have 
 taken the trouble to read this volume will 
 no doubt refer me to p. 235, where, fifteen 
 years ago, I said a very few words on the 
 subject. Bimetallism was then being . taken 
 up by the new school of political economy, 
 and all of us who were in business were very 
 anxious to find some panacea some easement 
 for the throes of currency contraction pro- 
 duced all over the world by Germany's de- 
 monetisation of silver. None of us, I think, 
 then realised the possibilities of the increased 
 production of silver by improved machinery, 
 and the increased facilities of carriage by rail- 
 roads from the Far West. It seemed then 
 that something had to be done for our Indian 
 trade, and that our gain in that direction 
 would compensate the risk of a general de- 
 preciation of currency. But what has hap- 
 pened in these fifteen years ? The fall in 
 the prices of commodities has taken place. 
 The deed is done. Low prices are not in 
 themselves objectionable. It is instability in
 
 304 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 prices that murders legitimate commerce. A 
 "boom" is really worse, because more dan- 
 
 */ 
 
 gerous, than a gradual subsidence in prices. 
 Both ought to be avoided if possible. But 
 any great and sudden changes in nominal 
 values convert whole peoples into masses of 
 gamblers. Nothing can be more demoralising. 
 Fifteen years ago America was just recovering 
 from a long period of profound commercial 
 depression. Her financial position was very 
 safe, and her currency comparatively sound. 
 Even then the mixture of gold, silver, and 
 paper left much to be desired, and it was 
 perhaps foolish not to have foreseen the mag- 
 nitude of the proposal for helping to fix an 
 international ratio at that time. But circum- 
 stances have meanwhile completely changed. 
 Nobody could then have foreseen or at any 
 rate it required a great deal of seeing to foresee 
 
 that America would have become so loaded 
 up with silver as is the case to-day. 
 
 Now it is painfully plain it scarcely re- 
 quires to be pointed out that she is reel- 
 ing under the insupportable weight ; and why 
 our poor " army of the orderly annuitants " 
 
 as George Meredith calls the holders of
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 305 
 
 consols, debenture stocks, rent-charges, &c. 
 should be called upon to relieve the sturdy 
 and prosperous Americans from their burden 
 I fail to perceive, even if we admit and 
 throw in the advantage to our Indian trade, 
 and the making good of the pensions of 
 our Indian civil servants. Est modus in 
 rebus. No doubt this " army of the orderly 
 annuitants" is fair food for the satirist and 
 the socialist ; but they are the prop and main- 
 stay the very life's blood of the great Con- 
 servative party. There are comparatively few 
 of them in the New World ; and perhaps it is 
 difficult to justify their existence now, when 
 " the world in every part is pregnant with 
 the new creed " ; but it will be hard on them 
 if their special defenders go back on them. 
 For if the object aimed at is not a great 
 appreciation of the price of commodities, or, 
 in other words, a great depreciation an in- 
 calculable future depreciation of all fixed 
 incomes, then what is it? I think we may 
 leave our socialist friends to take care of that 
 department. They are quite strong enough 
 as it is. It is scarcely the time now for the 
 leader of the Conservative party of the Com- 
 
 u
 
 306 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 mons in England (even speaking as a private 
 member) to dangle Bimetallism before the 
 eyes of an excited electorate before any kind 
 of real scheme has been formulated, or any 
 ratio fixed as possible or probable between 
 silver and gold. The threat against property 
 is often only thinly veiled. It reminds one 
 of the word " ransom," used by another dis- 
 tinguished defender of law and order. It 
 seems to me to be one of the most dangerous 
 symptoms of the most dangerous disease of 
 our time I mean political poker - playing. 
 Every one is going "a hundred better" over 
 every one else all round the table. Bluffing 
 is no doubt a very pretty game until some 
 one calls your hand and then ? Well, then, 
 it is the end of you. We, who are in touch 
 with the city, have no reason to fear Bi- 
 metallism, as far as our own pockets are 
 concerned. We shall be among the first to 
 know when it is coming ; and then for the 
 steady-going people it will be a mere ques- 
 tion of selling property with fixed incomes, 
 and buying any real property, such as good 
 ordinary stocks ; but for the speculators the 
 cry will not be " put money in thy purse,"
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 307 
 
 but " put margins in thy pocket, and buy 
 with borrowed money anything and every- 
 thing"; and the cheapest stocks will be the 
 most profitable, for they must all go up as the 
 silver counters are thrown into the pool. It 
 will be the biggest "boom" of our time, or of 
 any time an unparalleled measure of inflation. 
 But it will be hard on large classes, par- 
 ticularly on the widows and orphans of people 
 of large property arid of small property the 
 people who cannot turn quickly round and 
 "bull" stocks whose funds are for the most 
 part tied up in trusts. It will be hard on the 
 wage-earners, for their wages will not advance 
 so quickly as the price of commodities will 
 rise. It will be hard on all salaried people 
 on poor clerks in the city, and poorer clerks in 
 holy orders ; on judges and civil servants, on 
 solicitors, barristers, and struggling doctors, 
 whose fees are fixed by long custom ; on the 
 greater part of the knights and dames of the 
 Primrose League, who are mostly numbered 
 among the idle rich, and form the rank and 
 file of the "army of orderly annuitants." 
 And the unkindest part of it all is that the 
 blow is threatened by Mr Balfour, whom
 
 308 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 they have all hitherto called " the blessed." 
 On the other hand, Bimetallism will be a 
 gain to the landowners, it will be a gain to 
 the farmers and they have no doubt had a 
 hard time the last twenty years, but they 
 took the cream of things before that, and 
 the railways made their money for them with- 
 out much effort on their own part and it will 
 be a most inestimable boon to the stock- 
 gamblers. They are always ready to sell 
 their souls for " a boom " for anything that 
 will cause fluctuations in prices. 
 
 From the point of view of good Radicals 
 and Socialists there would be, I fancy, little 
 predisposition against any reasonable scheme 
 that would really benefit the "have-nots" at 
 the expense of the " haves." But I do not 
 think it goes quite the length of taking 
 measures to sacrifice the interests of the 
 propertied class in England in order to help 
 the Americans, who are so exceedingly well 
 able to take care of themselves. They may 
 play any pranks they like with their currency 
 in the United States and they have been 
 playing extraordinary pranks in the last 
 fifteen years. They will have their crisis,
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 309 
 
 and in a few years' time it will .pass away 
 without much serious harm being done, for 
 they have their wide country behind them. 
 By it they must prosper, do what they will 
 almost in spite of themselves. Their pros- 
 perity does not really hang on the slender 
 thread of credit. New York is not yet the 
 banking centre of the world. 
 
 But before Bimetallism becomes a question 
 of practical politics in England, I would ven- 
 ture to point out that, after the events of 
 1890 in the city of London, we have to be 
 extremely careful not to injure further our 
 national financial credit in the estimation of 
 foreign nations : and it is difficult quite to 
 realise (unless one lives a good deal abroad) 
 what a shattering shock was dealt to us at 
 that time. Other nations do not love us : 
 they are naturally jealous ; and financial credit 
 is tha, most delicate of all growths sensitive 
 as the sensitive plant. A speech from the 
 leader of the Conservative party in England 
 in favour of Bimetallism will certainly set 
 people thinking and talking in every business 
 city from San Francisco to St Petersburg. 
 Caesar's wife must be above suspicion ; and we
 
 310 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 must never we can never for one moment 
 forget that we in England being the banking 
 centre of the world live on, and are depen- 
 dent on, our credit as no other nation in the 
 world is, or ever has been. We know what a 
 pound sterling is to-day. We know not what 
 it may become if we attempt to play the fool 
 with it. On that dav it will indeed be dim*- 
 
 / 
 
 cult to say what it is or what it may become. 
 And we have no great West behind us. The 
 breaking of the small wheel of credit would be 
 to us an irreparable break. 
 
 Let us then relegate Bimetallism to the re- 
 gion alone fitted for its discussion namely, 
 in pamphlets, magazine articles, or debating 
 clubs. The subject does not lend itself to 
 discussion in political meetings. It is like 
 metaphysics. Nobody really knows anything 
 about either subject, and it pleases us all to 
 have something to talk about or write about 
 all in a circle, where one can never lay hold 
 of the end of anything, and at the end 
 nobody is a penny the better nor a penny 
 the worse. But a juggle with the currency 
 is a very awkward question to chuck into the 
 arena of the political and party scuffle.
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 311 
 
 And if the Conservative party are going to 
 adopt Bimetallism as a plank in their plat- 
 form, together with other revolutionary fads, 
 and if they come into power again and can 
 carry them through the two Houses, let us 
 hope, at any rate, that provision may be made 
 for referring such measures specifically to the 
 general electorate, before they become law, 
 bv means of a referendum ad hoc. The con- 
 
 / / 
 
 sequences of these revolutionary measures will 
 be more far-reaching by a long way than the 
 consequences of granting a measure of Home 
 Rule to Ireland, and we ought to have the 
 referendum as a final check on all these great 
 changes. There is nothing like the " sober 
 second thought." We have not the con- 
 
 o 
 
 stitutional guards that the United States 
 possess to prevent too hasty action on the 
 part of temporary majorities, as has been so 
 often pointed out to us of late years, and by 
 none more forcibly than by the late Sir Henry 
 S. Maine. We all know that there is no 
 logical halting-place between the ascertained 
 right of the majority and the Divine Right ; 
 and the Divine Right is no longer appealed 
 to in the political sphere. No doubt the
 
 312 CONCLUSION : WITH A 
 
 " tendency of the time " is to create the 
 Commonwealth into " a mortal god," as 
 Hobbes called it long ago. But even a 
 mortal god is all the better of checks on 
 hasty action. We ought to pray for more 
 "lucidity of thought" to be granted to our 
 leaders, whether Radical or Conservative. 
 Whoever is going to steer our barque this 
 realm of England in the near future through 
 the rough seas of our "wild, windy modern 
 time," will require a great deal of lucidity. 
 " The deep moans round with many voices." 
 Let us not be left, when the old pilot is no 
 longer at the helm 
 
 " Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta 
 Non donna cli provincie, ma casino." l 
 
 Let us not be turned into a great gambling- 
 machine by inoculating our currency with 
 unlimited silver. 
 
 I am afraid that my gentle reader will 
 think that this little infant takes " a most 
 unconscionable time in dying " ; but I have 
 now really come to my conclusion, which is 
 to ask any one who may be kind enough to 
 
 1 Purg. vi. 77.
 
 FEW WORDS ON BIMETALLISM. 313 
 
 peruse these pages through, to remember that 
 the earliest dated papers were written some 
 twenty years ago, when there were no board 
 schools, when comparatively few people in- 
 terested themselves in the material welfare 
 of our agricultural labourers (they had no 
 votes in those days), when it was highly 
 unpopular to advocate " the re-marrying the 
 people to the land," when the dogmas of the 
 old political economy were still held to be 
 binding in their fullest force, M 7 hen any praise 
 or even appreciation of America and things 
 American was frigidly cold-shouldered in Eng- 
 lish society, when the girls in England were 
 still rather "a down -trodden nationality." 
 All these things are changed now. From 
 unpopular causes they have become fashion- 
 able fads, and the pendulum has, naturally 
 enough, swung back far to the other side 
 too far, perhaps. It is well that justice should 
 be done ; but more than justice is injustice. 
 I merely mention this to explain a certain bias 
 in my own writing during these twenty years 
 there is an amount of " work on the ball" 
 (if I may use an illustration from cricket) 
 which would be quite unnecessary and out
 
 314 CONCLUSION. 
 
 of place to-day. The times are changed, and 
 we are changed with them. I conclude with 
 Bacon : " It may be in civil states a Republic 
 is a better policy than a kingdom. Yet God 
 forbid that lawful kingdoms should be tied to 
 innovate and make alterations." 
 
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