LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
 
OUTLOOKS 
 
 ON 
 
 SOCIETY, LITERATURE 
 
 AND POLITICS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN PERCY WHIFFLE 
 
 BOSTON 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
 
 211 OLxmont 
 1888 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 
 BY TlCKNOR AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Smbrrsitg Prrss: 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
O-i 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS 1 
 
 A GRAND BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL .... 25 
 MR. HARDHACK ON THE DERIVATION OP MAN FROM THE 
 
 MONKEY 47 
 
 MR. HARDHACK ON THE SENSATIONAL IN LITERATURE AND 
 
 LIFE 63 
 
 THE SWEARING HABIT 75 
 
 DOMESTIC SERVICE 99 
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES 117 
 
 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES 127 
 
 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS 150 
 
 THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY 186 
 
 THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE UNITED STATES 196 
 
 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE 207 
 
 THE JOHNSON PARTY 231 
 
 THE PRESIDENT AND ms ACCOMPLICES 249 
 
 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON 273 
 
 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH . . 287 
 
 "LORD" BACON 300 
 
 LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER 306 
 
 IN DICKENS-LAND 314 
 
 236364 
 
OUTLOOKS 
 
 ON 
 
 SOCIETY, LITERATURE, 
 
 AND POLITICS. 
 
 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 THE financial storm which of late swept so piti 
 lessly over the commercial world has, like all other 
 calamities, produced reflection in producing ruin. 
 Amidst the wreck of their property men began to 
 meditate upon the laws of trade, and if they could 
 not pay their creditors, they were at least singularly 
 fruitful in reasons why such payment was impossible. 
 A note of hand falling due at a certain day was the 
 occasion, not of the disbursement of money, but of 
 profound speculations on the complications of the 
 Currency Question and the fluctuations of values. 
 Merchants became political economists, not when 
 their obligations were incurred, but when they ma 
 tured; and the connection between debtor and cred 
 itor assumed the character of an edifying interchange 
 of philosophic thought, in which they were mutually 
 improved, instead of being a cold and harsh relation 
 
 1 
 
2 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 of profit and loss. As nearly all creditors were like 
 wise debtors, arid as nearly all debtors were like 
 wise creditors, the transition from mercenary to medi 
 tative relations between men of business was effected 
 without that profuse expenditure of profane language 
 which in ordinary times vulgarizes the passage from 
 facts to ideas. It was seen that to take legal means to . 
 enforce the payment of debts would be simply to trans 
 fer the property that remained if such a thing as 
 property really existed into the hands of lawyers, and 
 as law is made by mutual assent, it was by mutual 
 assent suspended. Meanwhile all the ethical and 
 theological maxims relating to the evanescent nature 
 of worldly goods were hunted out from the innermost 
 recesses of memory, brightened into epigrams, and 
 tossed about as good jokes from the banker who could 
 not pay his bills to the merchant who could not pay 
 his banker. " Base is the slave who pays ! " was no 
 longer a rhetorical flourish of Ancient Pistol, but a 
 settled principle of modern finance. Property, deified 
 but a short time before, was now a broken and pros 
 trate idol. From being the one solid and permanent 
 thing in the universe, it became the most visionary 
 and elusive of all objects of contemplation. It was 
 ten thousand millions of dollars a month ago, riant, 
 exulting, glorying in its strength, and now it hid its 
 face in shame before the abhorred spectacle of debt. 
 The feeling of poverty shivered in every heart ; and 
 no person, in the scepticism provoked by the tum 
 bling of values, had the impudence to call himself rich. 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 3 
 
 Wealth, indeed, was an obsolete idea. Men eyed 
 their debts with a comical horror, and the shrivelled 
 assets for which the debts were incurred, with a comi 
 cal contempt. The real sufferers and grumblers 
 were those capitalists who had lent but had not bor 
 rowed ; and it was but natural that disappointed greed 
 should prevent them from viewing the matter in its 
 wider relations and higher philosophical aspects. The 
 fabric of our splendid prosperity rested, in a great 
 degree, on credit. This, argued the debtor class, 
 ought to have been known by those who supplied the 
 credit. But credit, as Mirabeau says, is " Suspicion 
 asleep" One fine autumnal day the fiend woke up ; 
 confidence fled at his first withering glance ; each 
 man believed at once in universal depravity, with but 
 one honorable exception himself ; and persons re 
 puted wise and cautious but a day before, forthwith 
 acted in. the spirit of those Hibernian thinkers on 
 currency who, in their rage against a Dublin banker, 
 could hit upon no more felicitous method of wreaking 
 their wrath than by burning all his bills they could 
 find in circulation. If the crisis was produced by 
 recklessness, it was met by timidity and folly. In 
 deed, one of the most mortifying characteristics of a 
 panic is the feebleness of thought and nervelessness 
 of will it reveals in those respectable mediocrities who 
 occupy the summit of financial society, and who con 
 vert the storm into a hurricane by refusing to face it 
 resolutely from the first. 
 
 In regard to the causes of what in after years will 
 
4 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 be known as The Great Panic, it seems to us that 
 those which have been explored by the economist are 
 merely subsidiary to those which force themselves 
 upon the attention of the moralist. The laws of 
 trade were doubtless violated; but the violation of the 
 laws of trade was preceded by a violation of the laws 
 of mind and a violation of the laws of conscience. 
 Political economy, in its appeals to the industrial and 
 commercial classes, proceeds on the ground that self 
 ishness may be intelligent, and avarice judicious ; but 
 selfishness and avarice have an instinctive antipathy 
 to the general principles which promote self-interest 
 by cooling the fever of its desires, by bringing its 
 wishes into some harmony with its capacities, and by 
 showing the limitations which reason imposes on its 
 greed. The month which witnessed the anarchy and 
 chaos of our industrial system found us plentifully 
 gifted with selfishness and avarice, but found us defi- 
 . cient in the power of intelligent action. The charac 
 teristic of real intelligence is the capacity to discern 
 objective facts and laws ; but intelligence must feel 
 the pressure of some moral impulse, in order to es 
 cape from the self-delusions which obstruct the clear 
 view of objects which are independent of self. "Poe 
 try," says Lord Bacon, " accommodates the shows of 
 things to the desires of the mind ; " and certainly in 
 this sense we could have boasted many poets among 
 our men of industrial enterprise, had the " desires " 
 been as poetical as the "accommodation" of facts was 
 complete. 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 5 
 
 Some thinkers on the subject find consolation in 
 the thought that there has been no absolute destruc 
 tion of wealth by the panic, but only a downfall of 
 values. The injury to individuals, however, has been 
 the same as if wealth, and not values, had been de 
 stroyed. A government which should violently take 
 the property of some portions of the community and 
 transfer it to other portions, would not destroy any of 
 the wealth of that community, though such an act 
 of monstrous wrong would justify a revolution. The 
 practical result of our commercial revulsion has been 
 a wholesale confiscation of property, which, had it 
 been done by the Government, would have led to civil 
 war; for it is not so much the characteristic of a 
 good government that it protects the property of a 
 nation, as that it protects the property of a nation by 
 protecting its individual possessors. It is frightful to 
 think of the number of individuals who have seen the 
 hard earnings of a life of labor melt and mysteriously 
 disappear in a single day, under the operation of 
 merciless laws which avenged on the whole commu 
 nity the disregard of their monitions and menaces by 
 the improvident, ignorant, and knavish portion of it. 
 The average honesty and intelligence of the country 
 is also satirized in the indifference with which this 
 individual spoliation is commonly regarded. In situ 
 ations of financial responsibility, incompetency is a 
 moral offence, and its good intentions are proverbially 
 the pavement of hell : the wrong man in the right 
 place is the plague and curse of modern society ; but 
 
6 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 when recklessness and greed are united with incom- 
 petency, the wholesome wrath of all good men should 
 be roused against the monstrous combination. Yet 
 every panic in the money market is a revelation of 
 presumptuous folly wielding and wasting the fortunes 
 of credulous and trusting prudence. Wholesale rob 
 beries, which no professional thief would ever have 
 the opportunities of perpetrating, are ranked among 
 the necessary incidents and risks of capital invested 
 in corporations. Haydon, the painter, tells us that 
 in one of his many Micawber-like financial entangle 
 ments he applied to Coutts, the rich banker, for a 
 loan of four hundred pounds. The banker, though 
 he seems to have apprehended that the investment 
 would be a permanent one, gratified the martyr of 
 debt and " high art " by graciously assenting to his 
 request. As the painter was leaving the house, he 
 noticed the footman spurning from the door a pauper 
 who came to beg for bread. The supplicant for four 
 hundred pounds was received as a distinguished vis 
 itor by the master of the house, in the gilded parlor ; 
 the supplicant for a penny was hooted by the master s 
 flunky from the door-step into the street. This is the 
 type of the American mode of dealing with big and 
 little thieves. 
 
 There are some persons who think that the rascali 
 ties and follies of our business are referable to our 
 paper currency, especially to bank-bills of low de 
 nominations. In answer to this it might be said that 
 in Hamburg, where they have a specie currency, in 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 7 
 
 England, where they have no bank-bills under five 
 pounds, some of the worst abuses of the credit 
 system have been developed. The most superficial 
 examination of our own credit system will prove that 
 bank-bills form but a small portion of it. We have 
 lately seen a careful estimate of the losses by the fail 
 ures in the United States since the month of Septem 
 ber, and the amount is considerably larger than the 
 whole paper currency of the country. It is, indeed, 
 but natural that men and corporations should issue 
 bills payable on demand with more caution than bills 
 payable in six or nine months. We doubt if ex 
 cessive credits are produced by a paper currency, or 
 could be prevented by a gold currency. We doubt if 
 any law could be framed which would meet the evils 
 and abuses of the credit system. As long as capital 
 ists think they can make their capital remunerative 
 and reproductive by giving credits, as long as bor 
 rowers think they can use capital profitably, so 
 long will credits be given and received. The moment 
 that capital becomes redundant new enterprises start 
 up, more than sufficient to absorb it, and the bril 
 liancy of their pretensions blinds avarice to their 
 folly. 
 
 A person once asked Home Tooke, the celebrated 
 writer of political libels, how far a man could libel 
 the Government and escape being hanged. " I have 
 passed my life," replied Tooke, " in trying to find that 
 out." So each man of business, in our country, seems 
 to learn political economy, not through Adam Smith 
 
8 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 and Mill, but through experience of protested notes 
 and ruinous speculations ; and economic principles 
 of the most elementary character are frequently pur 
 chased at the expense of whole fortunes. It costs 
 some men a hundred thousand dollars to learn the 
 relations which subsist between supply and demand. 
 Indeed, principles level to trade are clearly perceived 
 only by minds which survey them from a higher level. 
 Pure selfishness never generalizes. Its guiding idea 
 is best expressed in the imperfect English of the 
 French coxcomb, " Every man for myself." 
 
 We therefore are reluctantly compelled to believe 
 that the notorious abuses of our credit system, the 
 frightful commercial revulsions they occasion, and the 
 agrarian laws they practically inaugurate, will con 
 tinue to afflict the country as long as so much absurd 
 and mischievous importance is attached to the idea of 
 wealth, and as long as it is pursued with such raven 
 ous intensity. The desire of wealth is the dominant 
 desire of the larger portion of our population, a de 
 sire not so much to create wealth by industrial genius 
 as to get it by speculative ingenuity. The morbid 
 phenomena presented in our world of business only 
 embody in palpable facts qualities of our national char 
 acter. The intellect of the country is under the domin 
 ion of a low order of motives, which prevent it from 
 exercising the higher functions of intellect. Smart 
 men push themselves into the places of able men ; and 
 their only notion of progress is speed which trusts in 
 luck, with no discernment of paths, and no foresight 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 9 
 
 of the goal. Now, business cannot be honestly and 
 intelligently conducted when it is conducted under 
 the simple impulse of getting money at any rate. 
 That honesty is the best policy is a principle too large 
 and general to influence the bargain or speculation of 
 the hour; and so flashy and superficial is much of the 
 mind engaged in trade, that it lacks thought sharply 
 to discriminate between acuteness and knavery, a 
 wise reticence and direct falsehood. Half of the light 
 and airy swindlers whose schemes of business rapine 
 end in failure are unconscious of the true nature of 
 their misdeeds, and are really surprised at the hard 
 names sputtered out by the gruff honesty of the old 
 fogies of commerce when their equivocal modes of 
 obtaining money are brought to light. At the worst, 
 they probably conceived their creditors would in 
 dulge in language no harsher than that in which little 
 Isaac, in " The Duenna," chuckles over his sharp 
 practice: "Roguish, perhaps, but keen devilish 
 keen ! " 
 
 And if wealth and poverty are respectively the 
 heaven and hell of our concrete religion, why wonder 
 that men will do anything to obtain the one and 
 escape from the other ? " Worth makes the man," 
 says a character in one of Bulwer s plays ; " and the 
 more a man is worth the worthier he is." Sydney 
 Smitli once declared that in England " poverty is in 
 famous ; " and in the United States, where man was 
 supposed to have achieved some victory "over his 
 accidents," the accident of property domineers in the 
 
10 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 public mind over the substance of mind and virtue. 
 To be poor is to be a " poor devil." It is pathetic to 
 observe the moral prostration of our free and inde 
 pendent citizens before some affluent boor or well- 
 invested booby ; or to watch the complacent simper 
 that comes over the face of scornful beauty as she 
 listens to the imbecilities chattered by some weak 
 stripling of fortune who presents to the eye of science 
 nothing but " a watery smile and educated whisker." 
 These follies proceed from no respect for what the 
 rich are, but from a worship of what they possess. 
 Indeed, the worship of the wealth is often combined 
 with a secret contempt, hatred, or envy, of the posses 
 sor. Property makes a distinction between man and 
 man as arbitrary and artificial as aristocratic privi 
 lege ; and our people feel that the doctrine of equality 
 the doctrine that one man is as good as another 
 can only be realized by striving to make one man as 
 rich as another. For one person who pursues wealth 
 as an end, from the impulse of avarice, there are 
 hundreds who pursue it as a means, from the im 
 pulses of vanity, sensuality, egotism, and the desire 
 to make a good appearance. If the capitalist asserts 
 himself socially as an aristocrat, the democrat trades 
 recklessly on what he borrows from the capitalist in 
 order to be as good an aristocrat as he. A few afflu 
 ent families, composed miscellaneously of millionnaires 
 vulgar and millionnaires refined, of millionnaires intel 
 ligent and millionnaires stupid, combine together, and 
 impudently attempt to confine the meaning of " good 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 11 
 
 society " to the possession of a splendid establishment 
 in a fashionable street, with a large income to support 
 it ; and it is curious to see with what ludicrous sim 
 plicity their pretensions are admitted, and with what 
 wear and tear of brain and conscience, with what 
 sacrifices of health, comfort, and honor, thousands 
 aim to qualify themselves for entrance into that ter 
 restrial paradise. Under this system the style of 
 living quickly becomes of more importance than the 
 pleasure of living or the object of living. Life means 
 the appearances of life. It means houses, equipages, 
 dress, dinners, a crowd of servants, reception into the 
 awful company of fops and belles, everything but 
 human souls. A higher life slightly changed from 
 the definition of the idealist means a life exalted 
 from West Broadway to the Fifth Avenue. Without 
 ten thousand a year it is impossible to be and know 
 ladies and gentlemen. Existence is fretted away in 
 desperate attempts to make it splendid, conspicuous, 
 and uncomfortable ; and after the object is reached, it 
 is found to be a stupendous imposture. As regards 
 any satisfaction in life, it is much better to adopt the 
 theory of that unsophisticated mechanic who asserted 
 that he was as rich as the richest man in town, and 
 supported his assertion by this train of argument. 
 The rich man, he said, had only what he wanted, and 
 he had the same. In regard to luxuries, he doubted 
 if the rich man could claim any superiority ; " for at 
 his house they had doughnuts for dinner every day, 
 whether they had company or not." The ideal of 
 
12 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 good living may not have been high, but there was 
 something sublime in the content. 
 
 Now one great result of such a panic as we have 
 lately witnessed is, that it disenchants the mind of 
 the illusions created by the hope of wealth, and the 
 vanities created by the ambition for social position. 
 People, at least sensible people, learn what substances 
 they are and what " shadows they pursue." Events 
 preach to them truths which the most persuasive 
 preachers would fail to convey. And among these 
 truths there is none more important, or more fertile 
 of sobering reflections, than the truth that what a 
 man invests in trade and industry, in railroads and 
 manufactures, is not merely his labor, or talent, or 
 money, but himself; and that property, resting as 
 it does on a deceitful basis of fluctuating values, is 
 among the least solid and permanent of all the things 
 in which a man can invest himself. This proposition 
 would have been scouted as transcendental a year 
 ago ; but within a few months the most practical of 
 men have been compelled to admit that wealth, with 
 all its bullying solidity of appearance, has proved the 
 most visionary, elusive, and transcendental of abstrac 
 tions. The idealists have convicted the materialists 
 of mistaking the shifting sand for the immovable rock, 
 and it is now their turn to dogmatize from the throne 
 of common sense. Facts have demonstrated two of 
 their propositions, which are most repugnant to self 
 ishness and evident to reason : first, that the commer 
 cial world being a unit, shocks in one quarter are felt 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 13 
 
 in all quarters, and that the whole body is made to 
 suffer for the stupidities and rascalities of any of its 
 individual members ; second, that the good of all is 
 bound up in the real good of each ; and now, after 
 thus indicating the identity of individual interests 
 with the general interest, and placed political economy 
 on its true foundation in the Christian religion, the 
 idealists can further show the perfect practical sa 
 gacity of their great principle, that material posses 
 sions lack all the elements of permanency, certainty, 
 and satisfying content which inhere in spiritual 
 possessions. 
 
 We think the most rapid and superficial survey of 
 the things in which men invest, and in which they are 
 invested, will prove the proposition. In regard to the 
 darling object to which American energy and intelli 
 gence are directed, the obtaining of property and social 
 station, we have already shown its transitory and vis 
 ionary character. All of us have seen men go up 
 and down with Erie and Michigan Southern, with 
 Cumberland Coal and Cotton, until the doubt insinu 
 ated itself whether they were not mere phantasms to 
 which stocks and stones gave all the appearance 
 of reality they possessed. Soul, manhood, vitality, 
 dropped out of them as Erie fell twenty per cent, or 
 Cotton tumbled from its proud eminence of price and 
 place. This fact shows that while these men were 
 cunningly investing in Erie and Cotton, Erie and 
 Cotton were far more cunningly investing in them. 
 To say that they became bankrupt is not to express 
 
14 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 the whole tragedy of their lives. In the pursuit of 
 material objects they were insensibly building up their 
 characters, and becoming what they pursued. Men 
 tally and morally they were " breeding in and in " 
 with the transactions of their business. When they 
 failed, their bankruptcy was not merely a bankruptcy 
 of the purse but a bankruptcy of nature. Their souls 
 were insolvent. They consented to be nothing in 
 themselves in order to be everything by the grace of 
 the objects in which they dealt ; and when these last 
 proved deceptions they literally had nothing they 
 could call their own. Wall Street bowed before them 
 for the wealth which was in them. When the wealth 
 vanished, neither civility nor servility could detect 
 anything in what was left to repay the trouble of a 
 nod or a cringe. Fifth Avenue made them members 
 of its society for their establishments. When these 
 came under the auctioneer s hammer, no social quali 
 ties were left which u good company," even by the 
 aid of a microscope, could recognize. The universe, 
 it is true, was still full of objects which wealth could 
 neither purchase nor take away; but in them our 
 ruined millionnaires had never thought of investing 
 any portion of their souls. We might have pardoned 
 their venturing their whole fortunes in two or three 
 securities; but it is difficult to tolerate their venturing 
 also in them their whole natures, with a like oversight 
 of the prudence which keeps on the safe side of the 
 world s chances by a wise distribution of its resources. 
 When we contrast the attitude of resolute scorn which 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 15 
 
 these men formerly assumed toward the highest ob 
 jects of human concern with their present forlorn 
 aspect, we can but murmur pathetically, " Bottom ! 
 how art thou invested ! " 
 
 But investments of the kind we are now considering, 
 namely, investments of human nature, are not merely 
 made in property : they are also made in politics and 
 party ; and when made in politics and party, they rest 
 on a foundation as insecure, and are liable to end in 
 bankruptcies as fatal, as when made in business. In 
 vestment of the soul in politics is often investment in 
 the changing caprice of the hour, in rage, envy, ha 
 tred, disappointed ambition, in lies, heartache, hypoc 
 risy, and self-deception. The man is possessed by the 
 delusions and passions, instead of possessing the reali 
 ties, of political power. Even if he be so fortunate as 
 to obtain an office, he finds that he has to undergo a 
 larger amount of vituperation for a smaller amount 
 of money than the holder of any other kind of office. 
 No president of a railroad or manufacturing company 
 would consent, for ten thousand a year, to be the sub 
 ject of so much public abuse as is lavished on many a 
 postmaster whose salary is hardly a thousand a year. 
 Few voters will take the trouble to perform the neces 
 sary business of a political organization, but they are 
 all willing to indulge in more or less contempt for 
 those who do, for those who do the "dirty work," 
 as they are too fond of calling the work which is done 
 for their profit and success. There is enough sym 
 pathy for broken-down merchants, but who has any 
 
16 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 sympathy for a broken-down politician ? The orange 
 is thoroughly squeezed; who heeds the peel that is 
 cast into the street ? 
 
 It may also be doubted if the investment of the 
 brain in partisan catchwords and declamation is a 
 judicious investment of the mental powers. No more 
 efficacious mode of dissipating the mind from a force 
 into a vaporous phantom has ever been devised than 
 the mode of cramming the minds of the young with 
 political phrases, and then irritating their sensibilities 
 to that pitch of enthusiasm which urges them to 
 "utter all themselves into the air." The tendency 
 of such speechifying is to make the mind incapable of 
 observing a fact, analyzing a combination, grasping a 
 principle, or thinking closely, accurately, and con 
 secutively upon any subject. The vagabond thoughts 
 and shreds of thought, decked out in faded finery 
 selected from the " old clo " of eloquence, reel from 
 the orator s lips in jubilant defiance of order and se 
 quence. Or, to change the figure, the brain is inflated 
 to that extent which justifies the hope that the defects 
 of a logic of wind will be overlooked in a rhetoric of 
 whirlwind, and that the absence of ideas will hardly 
 be noted in the terrific clatter of words. Such are 
 the characteristics of many of those astonishing dis 
 plays of juvenile political eloquence, which should be 
 witnessed, not by citizens desirous of obtaining some 
 facts and principles to guide them in voting sensibly 
 and honestly, but by an audience composed of ladies 
 whose lips are engaged in dissolving the organized 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 17 
 
 perfume of peppermints, and gentlemen whose teeth 
 are busy in penetrating into those appetizing "Aids 
 to Reflection " which lie hid in the shell of the peanut. 
 It is next to impossible ever to reclaim a young man 
 who has once accustomed his mind to think vagrantly 
 in order that he may spout " eloquently." But we 
 still may be permitted to hope that every young person 
 who has made a foolish speech, and been applauded 
 therefor by his party, will consent, for his own good, 
 to abandon his intention of being President of the 
 United States. That his qualifications for the office 
 are undoubted, the peculiar style of his eloquence 
 abundantly proves ; but we would respectfully suggest 
 to him the remote chance that some three or four 
 millions of his countrymen may not be sufficiently 
 familiar with his claims to select him for the post. 
 
 In regard to all the lower forms of politics, we 
 much doubt the wisdom of the man who invests his 
 nature in their perilous chances and changes. But 
 politics have their higher ambitions and more splendid 
 rewards, those which inflame the passions and stim 
 ulate the intellect of the statesman. Even here it is 
 dangerous to invest in anything lower than patriotism ; 
 for patriotism affords the only real compensations for 
 that " laborious, invidious, closely-watched slavery 
 which is mocked with the name of Power." It is the 
 misfortune of the United States that few of our emi 
 nent statesmen can be content to serve their country 
 and gain an honorable fame in those situations which, 
 though really of the first, are seemingly of secondary 
 
 2 
 
18 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 importance. As Representatives and Senators, the 
 clear perception of their duties is disturbed by a bea 
 tific vision of the Presidential Chair. This magnifi 
 cent delusion, created by a visionary hope, is too often 
 the bauble in which they invest their hearts and souls. 
 Disappointed in that, they are stripped of all that 
 makes life worth living. Now, for the real purposes 
 of ambition and patriotism, the office of Senator is a 
 nobler one than the office of President ; and a Senator 
 is certain to be an honester, wiser, and braver man, 
 more likely to prove himself qualified for the Presi 
 dency, provided the hope of being President has not 
 warped his convictions and complicated his patriotism 
 with intrigue. But rub off the varnish which gives 
 such a mischievous shine to the White House, and to 
 the eye of reason the office of President has little in 
 it to inflame an honorable ambition. Events daily 
 tend to make the President little more than the Dis 
 tributor-General of the spoils of office ; and for every 
 office he gives, he turns ten sycophants into nine 
 personal enemies and one lukewarm friend. Lord 
 Brougham, in a passage black with bile, but which 
 should be deeply meditated by every aspirant for 
 executive office, has shown what a charming and dig 
 nified occupation that is which attempts to feed the 
 hunger for place. Writing from his own experience 
 of office-hunters, he says that " no one who has long 
 been the dispenser of patronage among large bodies 
 of his fellow-citizens can fail to see infinitely more 
 numerous instances of sordid, selfish, greedy, ungrate- 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 19 
 
 ful conduct, than of the virtues to which such hateful 
 qualities stand opposed. Daily examples come before 
 him of the most unfeeling acrimony toward competi 
 tors, the most far-fetched squeamish jealousy of con 
 flicting claims ; unblushing falsehood in both its 
 branches, boasting and detraction ; grasping selfish 
 ness in both kinds, greedy pursuit of men s own bread 
 and cold calculating on others blood ; the fury of 
 disappointment when that has not been done which 
 it was impossible to do ; swift oblivion of all that 
 has been granted ; unreasonable expectation of more 
 only because much has been given ; not seldom fa 
 vors repaid with hatred and ill-treatment, as if by this 
 unnatural course the account might be settled between 
 gratitude and pride, such are the secrets of the hu 
 man heart which power soon discloses to its possessor: 
 add to these that which, however, deceives no one, 
 the never-ending hypocrisy of declaring that what 
 ever is most eagerly sought is only coveted as afford 
 ing the means of serving the country, and will only 
 be taken as a sacrifice of individual interest to the 
 sense of public duty." Now, as much of Brougham s 
 patronage as Chancellor was ecclesiastical, we may 
 charitably suppose that our ex-Presidents could testify, 
 in language at least as gloomy and bitter, of their ex 
 perience of unclerical applicants. Is it not amazing 
 that any sane man, who could pick up a subsistence 
 in a country court, or even on the highway, should 
 think it the highest of earthly honors to be engaged 
 in this business of dispensing patronage ? 
 
20 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 But investments, truly considered, are made in 
 literature, art, science, and philosophy, as well as in 
 business and politics ; and when made in beauty and 
 truth, in laws, principles, inventions, ideals, they are 
 among the most permanent and essentially real and 
 remunerative of all investments of mind and charac 
 ter provided always that the motives of the thinker 
 are on a level with the subject-matter of his thought. 
 The Swiss who sell their brains are of no higher 
 rank than the Swiss who sell their swords ; and it 
 is doubtless true that the poet, the artist, the man of 
 science, the philosopher, may be impelled by vanities, 
 envies, jealousies, and hatreds, as ignoble as any 
 which influence the action of the knavish trader in 
 money or the knavish trader in political opinions and 
 interests ; but when the search for truth and beauty 
 is inspired by a genuine love of truth and beauty, 
 everything that is gained is a possession forever. 
 The mind is in harmonious relations with the great 
 objective facts and laws it was created to discern, 
 commune with, and possess ; and whether we say 
 that the mind invests in them or they invest in the 
 mind, the result is equally beneficent. If we contrast 
 a broken merchant or a defeated politician with a 
 man of equal intellect who has invested in art and 
 science, we shall see at once the difference between 
 the property that panics can destroy and the property 
 that panics cannot touch. In regard to the joy, the 
 ecstasy, even the solid, practical satisfaction, which 
 come from the consciousness of intellectual wealth, 
 
PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 21 
 
 who shall have the impudence to compare with them 
 the delights which any material property can give ? 
 Who shall say that the chuckle of Rothschild, as he 
 makes a lucky hit in the three per cents, represents 
 a tithe of the inward ecstasy of Agassiz, as his con 
 quering intelligence subjugates to his science some 
 hitherto rebellious province of the animal kingdom ? 
 We doubt if all the money of the banker could pur 
 chase the transport that the naturalist finds even in 
 his jelly-fishes. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that many amateurs who 
 have mistaken " aspiration for inspiration," the power 
 of enjoying beauty for the power of creating beauty, 
 the faculty of apprehending what science has discov 
 ered for scientific genius, may have found that the 
 attempt to invest their natures in literature, art, and 
 science has ended in mortification and disappoint 
 ment, in mental bankruptcy and impossibility to 
 pay the debt " which every man owes to his profes 
 sion." This, however, comes from their own inability 
 to acquire property in Nature, and not from the in 
 ability of Nature to confer property on the genius that 
 can rightly claim it. They are miserable, not because 
 they are engaged in the pursuit of truth, but because, 
 through their vanity, they are pretenders to genius. 
 They might have profitably invested in taste and 
 knowledge ; they failed only because they traded be 
 yond their capital, and attempted to introduce into 
 the kingdoms of mind the worst abuses of that credit 
 system which is the plague of the world of business. 
 
^ 1CS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 Ami this briii ; the consideration of those 
 
 inrestmentf which are not only the most solid and 
 
 -jg in them if. which underlie and guide 
 
 all others which give durable satisfaction to human 
 
 nature. These an: inYestments in moral principles. 
 
 Property j n mora.l principles is " real " property, in 
 a higher sense than any legal sense ; but these prin 
 ciples- are only truly possessed when they are organ 
 ized into virtues, and then they are good for both 
 worlds. Let any man invest himself in justice, firm 
 ness, simplicity, patience, moderation, truthfulness, 
 disinterestedness, charity, and he will quickly reali/c 
 the truth of the Chinese proverb, that " Virtues, if 
 they do not give talents, supply their place ; while 
 talents neither give virtues nor supply their place." 
 Virtues act on the intelligence primarily by prompt- 
 in" (he self-scrutiny which results in self-knowledge. 
 Tin- mi.iery and fret of life proceed from immoderate 
 deiref Appetite, passion, egotism, conceit, run 
 away with the mind, corrupt, all its processes of 
 ll""i"lil, and doom it equally to ignorance of self 
 :ill(| ignorance of the real character of UK; vicious or 
 flimsy externals of life for which, as well as to which, 
 il. madly abandons itself. The .sublime thought ill 
 the parable Of the Prodi-;;)! Son is compressed in the 
 simple words, " when he eame to himself," when 
 exhaustion of all the pleasures of sensuality, and 
 exhauslion of all ils penalties, had brought him back 
 l<) l.be awful personality lodged in his breast, from 
 uhieh be had been violently swept in (he tumult and 
 
TANU S AND IV 
 
 storm of his riot, hi tho same way men h 
 tho revulsions of oilier forms of self-abandonment 
 from commercial panics, from mortified political am 
 bition, from failures in achiexinu: fame in tho pursuits 
 of literature, art. ami science, from all forms of de 
 bauch, sensual, selfish, or mental what is intrinsic 
 ami Indestruotible in thomsolvos. Kseapotl f(>r a timo 
 from the ivalitios of thoir being, ami investing their 
 lilV in delusions, tlio porioil inovitably oomos \vhon 
 ihi 4 v an 4 oompolKnl <o confront (ho ivbukinuj spirit, 
 within, and stand convict oil of folly as uoll as sin. 
 Tlio virtues nro then remorsefully rocoj;ni/i(l as tho 
 only snro possessions. It is scon that, these toao.h 
 eeoiioiuie principloa, and givo to business nil it luus of 
 permanency by giving to it all it has of honesty, h 
 is seen that tho.so tuko Hellish ambition out of polities, 
 and keep Slates alivo by patriotism. It is seen that 
 these lift the sentiments of tho man of loiters and tho 
 man of sriruee to (he level of tho beauty tho imagina 
 tion aims lo embody, and tho truth tho intolloot seeks 
 to discOV6F< It is seen, in short,, thud tho peculiar 
 combination ,,! \irlnrs which is called integrity in 
 the source of (lie peculiar combination of faculties WO 
 call wisdom. And it is (his (.horoiiyh inlr-rily of 
 ttatlirc, which implies mle";rity in bu:;ine:; :;, mlr-i il \ 
 in aJ l airs of ;;lal<-, inlev;rily in i.cntimenl, und< i ;.l and 
 in", raaSOn, and ima/malion, it [| I his which I M 
 (!Spec,ially ne-di-(l in an a-<> |||,,- our::, ffhOM :i livilv 
 and inli-lli-M nrc run ^o furiously in tin; <lirer|.ion of 
 industrial aud commercial occupa.tionii thai, notlmi" 
 
24 PANICS AND INVESTMENTS. 
 
 less than the austerest ethics can overcome the fright 
 ful temptations to excess or to fraud by which those 
 occupations are beset ; and we trust that the country 
 will not be compelled to learn through a series of 
 regularly recurring panics, that virtues, ideal in their 
 spiritual essence and power, but tremendously actual 
 in the consequences which follow their violation, are 
 in their immense utility the most practical of all 
 things, though they may draw their vitality from in 
 visible fountains of influence, and refer to motives 
 of action which self-styled practical men are wont 
 to deride as too fine and abstract for the conduct 
 of life. 
 
A GRAND BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW 
 SCHOOL. 1 
 
 I HAD the rare privilege, when I was a lad of fif 
 teen, to make the acquaintance and to be favored 
 with the confidence of a business man of " the new 
 school." So many precious remarks fell from his 
 lips during the period, extending to thirty years, in 
 which I was honored by his approval or by his en 
 mity, that I feel injustice would be done both to com 
 merce and to him unless I recorded his conduct and 
 experience in fitting words. 
 
 Mr. Smith had risen to eminence from the lowest 
 social grade. As a beggar boy, his exceptional talent 
 for begging had roused the enthusiasm of a set of 
 elderly maidens, who were attracted by his peculiar 
 whine of helplessness and his peculiar brag of hon 
 esty. They put him to school. He learned there 
 the fundamental principles of arithmetic, and little 
 else ; but his aptitude for trade was developed in a 
 marvellous degree. All the spending-money of the 
 scholars was invariably found, at the end of a vaca 
 tion, in his pockets. Yet no boy could say that he 
 had been cheated. All the lads felt that their bits 
 
 1 As far as the personal pronoun is concerned, this narrative is 
 purely fictitious. 
 
26 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 of small silver coin had mysteriously disappeared in 
 their various business relations with Smith ; but still 
 they reluctantly confessed that everything was " fair 
 and square." He plucked them, it would seem, piti 
 lessly ; but he stood by his own contracts, as he com 
 pelled them to stand by theirs. No act of positive 
 dishonesty was ever proved against this plausible, 
 cautious, deferential, and relentless trader. The boys 
 declared that he was shrewd, cunning, and hard, but 
 then he was " so obliging ! " They hated him, and 
 at the same time accepted his services. Could they 
 have caught him in any act of juvenile rascality, they 
 would have pounded him into a jelly ; but he was so 
 discreet in his early preparation for his future career 
 that at the age of ten he already gave promise of the 
 great merchant and banker he eventually became. 
 He robbed strictly within the rules of boy law. It 
 has always appeared to me that his innate genius 
 for traffic was rarely more beautifully exhibited in 
 his after-career than in his manner of dealing with 
 his school-fellows, most of whom began by despising 
 him as a beggar, and all of whom ended in recogniz 
 ing him as a capitalist. 
 
 On leaving school, young Smith found that his 
 possessions amounted to thirty dollars. Instead of 
 rushing at once to the elderly maiden ladies who had 
 been his patrons, and depositing the money in their 
 laps, he speeded to a wholesale fish-house in the city, 
 and offered himself as a clerk. The senior partner 
 was attracted by his evident talent, and especially by 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 27 
 
 his juvenile cynicism as to the practical application 
 of the Golden Rule. The old man felt his youth 
 renewed in looking at the premature youngster, and 
 magnanimously gave him a place in his counting- 
 room at a salary of fifty dollars a year. The keen 
 youth, seeing at a glance that his employers were 
 pious skinflints, instantly joined their church, and to 
 all appearance became a pious skinflint himself. But 
 in the course of five or six years he astonished the 
 firm by showing that he knew more of the whole fish 
 business than they did, and had made some money 
 by quiet speculations of his own. They offered to 
 double, treble, quadruple his salary. But Smith was 
 inexorable. Nothing would satisfy him but a part 
 nership in their questionable gains. This they reso 
 lutely refused. Smith promptly set up for himself 
 on a small capital of money, but a large capital of 
 knowledge and intelligence, sold " short " and " long, * 
 cornered his former employers in two or three heavy 
 operations, and put them into the bankruptcy court 
 in twenty-four months after he had left them. His 
 cleverness was never more evident than in the way 
 in which lie accomplished this difficult feat of beating 
 his former employers by a skilful use of their own 
 methods. 
 
 Dominant now in the article of fish, he in the 
 course of a few years ventured cautiously but surely 
 into other departments of commerce. Pie became a 
 general merchant in other commodities than mack 
 erel and halibut. He at last assumed the dignity of 
 
28 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 shipowner, and his cargoes to and from the East and 
 West were carried in his own vessels. The strategy 
 he had learned at school was strictly observed in his 
 large commercial transactions. He had two grand 
 qualifications for business : his mind was quick and 
 his heart was hard. In all financial panics he en 
 forced what was his due relentlessly, regardless of 
 the woe it might bring upon nobler people than him 
 self ; but even though money was at three or four 
 per cent a month, he paid punctually all his own 
 notes as they matured. He would thus crush a 
 debtor to the dust grind him to death ; but still 
 every dollar of his property, and every resource of 
 his credit, were freely devoted to buy money, at any 
 rates of interest, to meet his own obligations. To 
 " fail " was to him the worst ignominy. Mean in all 
 minor matters, lie was liberal in any sacrifices de 
 manded by the mutations of trade. Almost every 
 body detested him, yet everybody knew that he might 
 rely both on the skinflint s word and bond. 
 
 Such a merchant, perhaps, should be judged by his 
 own principles. He was essentially a bird of prey, 
 with beak and talons somewhat ostentatiously and in 
 solently displayed. He had no sympathy with the 
 great body of the merchants of the country. Indeed, 
 he laughed at all such sentimentality. " Get the 
 better of em," was his motto. It may be said that 
 he believed religiously in the maxim, Homo homini 
 lupus, " Man to man is, and must be, a wolf." 
 
 At about the time he was a little wearied with 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 29 
 
 commerce, and had obtained a fortune of two mil 
 lions, the moneyed world was first amazed by the 
 rush into Wall Street of securities (ironically so 
 called) based on the new-born " enterprise " of the 
 country. Bonds and stocks renewed in him the 
 charm which merchandise had lost. He became a 
 gigantic stock-jobber and banker. On account of his 
 known opulence and his wide reputation for sagacity 
 and integrity, he was naturally selected by the rogues 
 and enthusiasts of the nation as the proper person 
 to negotiate large loans. Whether these loans were 
 based on unfinished railroads, or undeveloped mines, 
 or any other financial castles in the air, he contrived 
 to obtain big commissions on the doubtful or worth 
 less securities he sold. Those who relied on his 
 ungenial integrity relied also on his hard sense. Be 
 lieving him, they took his advice. The result was 
 that his commissions amounted to hundreds and 
 thousands of dollars, their losses to many millions. 
 They could not assert that he had done anything to 
 forfeit his character for honesty, though some natu 
 rally growled over the fact that he had himself bought 
 few of the bonds he had negotiated. 
 
 It was at this point of his triumphant success that 
 I happened to have the. honor of being one of his 
 clerks, and in a short time his confidential one. The 
 thing that at first most touched me was the simplicity 
 of his religion. It consisted in the simple phrase, 
 " Goddam ! " This phrase was so often on his lips 
 that it took me some time to discriminate between 
 
30 A BUSINESS MAX OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 the persons it was justly or unjustly launched against. 
 I believed at first that this peculiar form of religious 
 faith was fulminated against people who righteously 
 . - rved the anathema. It is curious how many 
 persons engaged in trade are thus fitly designated. 
 By slow degrees, however, I at last found that im 
 pious employer used this phrase only to blast every 
 body and everything interfering with his business de 
 signs. As I in my innocence looked at the matter, it 
 seemed that his associates in speculation should be 
 as frequently saluted with the condemnation as his 
 rivals and opponents. Probably the most interesting 
 period in the development of the juvenile mind is the 
 first exercise of the faculty of ethical generalization. 
 The moment that faculty was developed in my im 
 mature intelligence I began to doubt the purity, 
 though not the sagacity, of my employer. The readi- 
 n>;>$ with which he called upon the Lord of heaven 
 and earth to curse every person and every scheme 
 that at all obstructed the success of his own objects, 
 insensibly dimmed my perception of the natural piety 
 which I at first supposed dictated his outbreak of pro 
 fane moral indignation. That the Deity should be on 
 his side in every honest transaction, I could very easily 
 understand ; but that He should consign to the lowest 
 pits of the infernal regions anybody who crossed the 
 purposes of Mr. Smith, puzzled me mightily, especially 
 when Mr. Smith contrived many schemes to catch un 
 wary people in his traps, and then fleece them remorse 
 lessly. His favorite formula of faith lost all its pious 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 31 
 
 significance in view of such doubtful transactions. 
 But still I was a youth, and was only beginning to 
 learn the connection between such a business and 
 such a religion. 
 
 There is probably no greater shock to the mind of 
 a well-intentioned country lad, who has sucked in hon 
 esty from his mother s milk, and is sent to confront 
 the temptations of a city with a mother s prayers hov 
 ering over him, than when he finds his employer is 
 a rascal disguised as an honest man. Shall he also 
 become a rascal ? Shall he stoop to scoundrelisms 
 which his inmost soul abhors ? It is a matter of un 
 certainty whether such a lad is consigned to a long 
 headed rogue or to a merchant of unquestioned in 
 tegrity. His behavior under such circumstances is a 
 test of his character ; and how laboriously such char 
 acter is formed is known only to the fathers and 
 mothers and sisters who have combined all their 
 moral energies to form it. There is no reason why 
 the boy should have more privileges and be protected 
 by more affections than the girl : but the fact that he 
 is, is too notorious to admit of a doubt. The abneea- 
 tion of sisters to advance their brothers is one of the 
 tragedies of human life. The reverse should be the 
 . but unfortunately it is not. 
 
 But to return to my theme. As soon as, with mv 
 awakened intelligence, I had penetrated into the mind 
 of Mr. Smith, I began to look upon him with a certain 
 horror. He had the greatest confidence in my hon 
 esty, and even allowed me to sign in his name checks 
 
32 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 amounting to many millions a month ; but he used 
 his favorite formula of vital religious faith when I sug 
 gested that my services were not remunerated by a 
 thousand a year, and that fifteen hundred would but 
 poorly recompense my unceasing work in his journal 
 and ledger. He really thought that my devotion to his 
 interests was something due to his pre-eminent posi 
 tion, though he was aware that I might ruin him in a 
 single day had I chosen to decamp at the close of busi 
 ness hours with his multitudinous stocks and bonds 
 in a carpet-bag. He nominally possessed millions : 
 but he trusted me with all the evidences of his wealth, 
 and allowed me the power to draw checks on all his 
 balances in the banks in which he deposited. Watch 
 ing like a wolf "a gray old wolf and a lean " to 
 pounce upon his prey, he was singularly blind to the 
 fact that I, his poorly paid clerk, who had begun to 
 hate him mortally, might at any moment rush off to 
 other lands with the spoils of his rapacity in my pocket. 
 The honesty of clerks, when they have persons who 
 are essentially knaves for their employers, is one of 
 the wonders of modern civilization. It is curious that 
 I nevQr had the slightest temptation to use the vast 
 powers with which Mr. Smith endowed me to his 
 slightest detriment. I might easily have become a 
 millionnaire in some European country had I chosen, 
 like my employer, to become a rogue in my own. He 
 invited me to be a rogue by his ingenuous trust in my 
 perfect honesty, while 1 was daily recording transac 
 tions illustrating every variety of the arts of chicane. 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 33 
 
 I witnessed the process of plundering, without any 
 desire to plunder the plunderer. This is, I think, a 
 common experience in the life of clerks. 
 
 One occurrence during my connection with this es 
 timable man will never fade from my memory. His 
 wife, a meek woman, whom he swiftly scared into the 
 tomb, left him a daughter. She appeared to me a 
 foolish, giggling, bedizened creature, with large black 
 eyes, a pug nose, and a complexion which was red to 
 the point of inflammation. A younger clerk in the 
 office, on a salary of five hundred a year, declared, 
 much to our amusement, that he was madly in love 
 with her. When the other clerks jeered at her ob 
 vious defects of person and mind, he raved about her 
 being " natural." Whether or not he ever felt any love 
 for her it is impossible for me to determine, but at 
 any rate he convinced her of the sincerity of his pas 
 sion. As it was ridiculous to suppose that the father 
 would consent to such a match, the aspiring clerk and 
 the heiress eloped and were married. 
 
 Mr. Smith s facility in calling upon the Deity to 
 condemn everybody who interfered with his own will 
 was marvellously increased by this occurrence. He 
 blasphemed with a savage fluency which was won 
 derful even in him. His son-in-law, however, was a 
 shallow but bright young fellow, with some rich connec 
 tions. He had been in the office long enough to detect 
 certain secrets of the business. Accordingly he soon 
 appeared in Wall Street as a speculator on a large 
 scale. He made money, backed as he was by relatives 
 
 3 
 
34 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 who stood by him with their financial support, that 
 is, as long as they saw his ventures were likely to be 
 successful. Mr. Smith went deliberately to work to 
 ruin him, but at first he did not succeed. The son-iu- 
 law, in an early " corner in Erie," took three hundred 
 thousand dollars out of the pockets of the father-in-law 
 in that neat and beautiful fashion so well understood 
 in the operations of stock gambling. We, the remain 
 ing clerks, supposed that this loss would endear the 
 son-in-law to the father-in-law by showing that his 
 daughter was married to a person whose spirit was 
 akin to his own. But we made a sad mistake. Mr. 
 Smith became gloomily implacable when I reported the 
 loss to him. He even indulged in none of his piously 
 profane ejaculations. The frown on his brow alone 
 acknowledged his fixed purpose. I felt that the inci 
 dent was something which altogether transcended 
 his usual fertility in profanity. He ventured his 
 millions without stint in an attempt to "corner" his 
 son-in-law. In his first rage he was reckless, but he 
 afterward became cool, cautious, watching every turn 
 in the market, and intent simply on catching the 
 husband of his daughter in what, in the slang of the 
 street, is called a tight place. He at last succeeded. 
 The poor fellow was reduced not only to beggary, but 
 to dishonesty. After desperate attempts to retrieve 
 his position, the sori-in-law ended by blowing out what 
 brains he had left. His wife, a withered woman of 
 twenty-five, again entered her father s mansion, but 
 none of us could say that she was " natural." A more 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OE THE NEW SCHOOL. 85 
 
 wretched creature one more thin, cadaverous, and 
 woc-begone, one whose original homeliness was ren 
 dered more pathetically ugly by her misery never 
 re-entered a mansion in Fifth Avenue. She died a 
 year after, and the only exclamation of the bereaved 
 father, in following her to the tomb, was his favorite 
 oath, growled in an undertone. He felt that all the 
 money he had acquired would descend to strangers, 
 and he was inwardly wrathful that the wife he had 
 bullied and the daughter he had killed could not be 
 by his side when he made his own exit into another 
 and probably a worse world. 
 
 The most curious thing in my experience of the 
 moods of this grand old business man was his sav- 
 ageness in treating his clerks after his many bereave 
 ments had soured him into hopeless misanthropy. 
 He swore in such a fashion that I was at last com 
 pelled to tell him I should pitch him down the stairs 
 of his own office unless he was more considerate in 
 his curses. This intimation made him only all the 
 more furious ; and I regret to record that I parted 
 with this grand old merchant when his body was 
 prostrate at the foot of the stairs on which I leis 
 urely descended. 
 
 This abrupt termination of my business relations 
 with Mr. Smith naturally resulted in a resolution on his 
 part to prosecute me, first for assault and battery, and 
 secondly for swindling. His judicious friends laughed 
 him out of the first proposition, which was simply 
 prompted by his rage, and which he soon felt would 
 
36 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 lead to disagreeable communications in open court. 
 The second he urged with great rancor and energy, 
 and employed one of those intelligent, meek-eyed, 
 and sharp-eyed book-keepers of fifty, who never in 
 their progress through life get beyond a moderate 
 salary, but who are invaluable to merchants doing a 
 large business, owing to their talent in unravelling 
 the most complicated accounts, and the beautiful dex 
 terity with which they clearly record the most con 
 fused transactions. My employer, able as he was in 
 managing his business, was, like many other employers 
 I have known, deplorably ignorant of the mysteries of 
 book-keeping. My successor, after exhausting all the 
 resources of his art, was compelled to admit that 
 when I left Mr. Smith at the foot of the stairs to 
 which I somewhat impatiently consigned him, Mr. 
 Smith owed me one hundred and twenty-six dollars 
 and thirty-one cents. When this was proved to him, 
 he indulged his favorite anathema with more than his 
 usual religious unction, and lavished it on my suc 
 cessor with redoubled force, all of which the new 
 book-keeper patiently bore with the meekness befitting 
 his station. 
 
 I easily obtained a new clerkship, with a salary 
 which I thought was more in correspondence with 
 my services than that which I had obtained from Mr. 
 Smith. Indeed, my new employers allowed me to go 
 to church on a Sunday morning without feeling the 
 burden of a hundred curses launched at me during the 
 week. While the good clergyman was preaching, how- 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OE THE NEW SCHOOL. 37 
 
 ever, I felt stirring within me the impulses of what I 
 styled a righteous wrath. I thought I could not be a 
 good Christian until I had been instrumental in de 
 pleting Mr. Smith of some of his ill-gotten gains. The 
 faculty of generalization had, I suppose, outgrown my 
 sentiment of piety, and I saw clearly the means of 
 touching the only soul my former employer had ; 
 namely, that which resided in his pocket. Brooding 
 over many schemes of unmasking and punishing the 
 old rogue, I thought the occasion was at hand in an 
 approaching business panic, which I scented in the air. 
 In this emergency it was notorious that Mr. Smith 
 was very heavily engaged on the side of a body of 
 capitalists who were rushing up shares far beyond 
 their intrinsic worth, regardless of the ominous signs 
 of a revulsion, which were apparent to those cool 
 heads who understand that an annihilation of capital 
 means a depreciation of all values. That some two or 
 three or four hundred millions of capital were certain 
 to be annihilated in the inevitable collapse of certain 
 railroad schemes was plain to me. This I proved to my 
 employers. I showed them that Mr. Smith was sure 
 to be caught in the trap into which he had designed 
 to lure unwary speculators. They acted on my advice, 
 and made a million of dollars. Mr. Smith lost three 
 millions. When I had the honor to call upon him for 
 the settlement of the claims which our firm had against 
 him, it must be confessed he paid punctually, but I 
 had to bear a storm of oaths which seriously wounded 
 my pride. As soon as I held his checks in my hands, 
 
38 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 I vehemently told him that my opposition to him was 
 mortal, and that it would never cease until his scoun- 
 drelism had reduced his property to its right dimen 
 sions. In fact, I enjoyed the exquisite satisfaction of 
 telling him that it was my knowledge of his methods of 
 doing business which had not only saved my employers 
 from falling into his snares, but had enabled them to 
 add a million of dollars to their already large capital. 
 He became red, almost purple, in the face ; but his 
 memory of a sudden descent he once made down the 
 stairs of his own office prevented his wrath from 
 assuming a belligerent aspect. 
 
 As a result of these transactions, I became a partner 
 in the firm of which I had previously been a highly 
 salaried clerk. We prospered marvellously ; but I 
 knew that we must count on the implacable rancor of 
 my former employer. Indeed, I never drew a bill on 
 London or Liverpool, whether it was for five pounds 
 or five thousand pounds, without feeling assured that 
 he would contrive every means in his power to have 
 it dishonored. But his blind, mad hatred of me put 
 him in my power, for his hatred had become morbid. 
 With his immense wealth, established character for 
 formal integrity in business transactions, and shrewd 
 intelligence, he might have injured my firm greatly 
 had he been content to give sly insinuations, doubtful 
 nods of the head, and the other signs with which men 
 of property indicate their distrust or disapproval of 
 adventurous firms which go beyond their capital, and 
 strive to place themselves on a level with the Roths- 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 39 
 
 childs, Barings, and Hopes. But he was not satisfied 
 with this judicious malice, based on a clear mercantile 
 perception of facts and principles. He was enraged 
 that a person to whom he thought a thousand dollars 
 a year was a fair equivalent for services received, 
 should dare to send out bills of credit, receivable all 
 over the civilized globe, and pretending to be as good 
 as specie in hand. The success of our firm in our 
 legitimate business as bankers did not deceive me as 
 to the intentions of the malignant creature with whom 
 we had to contend. The generality of merchants 
 laughed at his threats; they received our bills with 
 out any questioning; but I knew that my original 
 defiance of a duel to the death would be answered. 
 Mr. Smith was worth about fifteen millions ; we were 
 worth about five ; and I felt that, his wife and daugh 
 ter being dead, he had no stronger purpose in life 
 than to gratify his malevolence by ruining his old 
 clerk. 
 
 The first clash came in 1857. We were victorious ; 
 and in protecting our own property in good securities, 
 we necessarily took from our desperate enemy two 
 millions at least. Watchful of him as ever, we suc 
 cessfully withstood his assaults during the anxious 
 years of the Civil War. I was so perpetually conscious 
 of his enmity, that I felt his hatred palpitating in 
 every variation in the stock-market, especially in 
 every fall in the price of the securities of the United 
 States. He detested the Union cause almost as much 
 as he detested me. It was, in his estimation, a " nig- 
 
40 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 ger war," a war undertaken by the North without any 
 provocation, a war against the " rights" of the South. 
 The bonds of the United States were not, he said, 
 worth the paper on which they were printed. He bet 
 so desperately against a possible Union success, that 
 it seemed as if he were possessed with a mania. Our 
 firm held the bonds of the United States to the extent 
 of ten millions of dollars. He knew this fact, but he 
 did not know that we had sent them to prominent 
 bankers in London, Paris, and Frankfort, and had 
 obtained a credit on them of five millions to secure 
 our bills of exchange. . With this advantage, we were 
 invulnerable. He thought, when gold went up to 280, 
 that we must be ruined; but the tranquillity with 
 which we continued to draw on European bankers, 
 the ease with which our bills were negotiated, and 
 the promptness of their payment when they fell due, 
 gradually impressed him with the fact that our affairs 
 were conducted on a solid basis of ten millions in 
 gold. By his foolish distrust of the resources of the 
 country, he had lost the opportunity to double his 
 fortune ; by his mad assault on the solvency of the 
 United States, he had lost half of the fortune with 
 which he began his crusade against the public credit ; 
 and bitterer than all, he discovered that our financial 
 patriotism had added largely to the wealth of the 
 firm. He never recovered from this disappointment. 
 His energies were worn out in his long fight. He 
 grumbled and growled and swore in a minor key. 
 In a few months he retired from his den in Wall 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 41 
 
 Street to his den in Fifth Avenue. There, tormented 
 with the feeling that he had sunk three quarters of 
 his immense property in an endeavor to gratify his 
 impotent malice, he pined away. The clergymen of 
 the Church to which he nominally belonged were not 
 wanting in attentions and consolations to the old 
 reprobate. They bore his incessant swearing with 
 Christian meekness, having ulterior views on his 
 remaining property, which they justly estimated as 
 still large, and which, they thought, might be advan 
 tageously used in the service of the Lord, though 
 every reference of Mr. Smith to the Lord was an 
 explosion of senile profanity shocking to all Christian 
 ears. The blandness with which these smooth cler 
 ical gentlemen listened to his oaths indicated that 
 they had much to hope by the bequests of his will. 
 On his death-bed his red eyes, in the malignant glance 
 they cast at the pious circle gathered to witness the 
 departure of such a saint, might have suggested some 
 doubt as to the possibility of the wolf becoming a 
 lamb; but the innocent brethren were .satisfied, and 
 Mr. Smith, according to them, made a pious end. 
 
 Mr. Smith, in fact, was a remarkable instance of 
 " the merchant of the new school." He rose grad 
 ually to the eminent position he enjoyed by industry, 
 frugality, natural sharpness of intellect, and natural 
 hardness of heart. He early learned that honesty 
 was the best policy ; that cheating in small things 
 was the greatest mistake an ambitious youth could 
 make; that to keep his word and to pay his obliga- 
 
42 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 tions were the conditions of commercial success ; that 
 knavery in such matters did not pay ; and accord 
 ingly, with such a reputation for formal business 
 integrity, he eventually rose to be one of the most 
 accomplished leaders of business banditti that Wall 
 Street ever saw. Had he frequented gaming-tables, 
 and been known to lose or gain one or two hundred 
 dollars a night, his character might have been ruined. 
 That he frequently lost or gained a million in the 
 mutations of the stock-market did not affect his repu 
 tation as a business man at all, or incapacitate him 
 from being respected as a " worshipper" in a fashion 
 able church. Had he organized a band of robbers, 
 and shown eminent skill in petty larceny and bur 
 glary, acutely eluding the officers of justice always at 
 his heels, and betraying his confederates the moment 
 they rebelled against his leadership, he might have 
 been a new Jonathan Wild ; but he would have been 
 a thoroughly disreputable man, with no position in 
 the financial world, no station in society, no pew in 
 the sanctuary. Besides, he could not have amassed 
 more than a few hundreds of thousands of dollars in 
 thus making obvious rascality a trade. He was too 
 shrewd to be deluded, even when a boy, by the tempt 
 ing promises which recognized dishonesty presents 
 to the youthful imagination. He early perceived that 
 a reputation for integrity was necessary to be estab 
 lished before any extensive acts of financial rapine 
 could be successfully perpetrated. Swindling in small 
 things he early learned to despise, in order that he 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 43 
 
 might the more surely swindle in large things. The 
 moral element in a transaction never troubled him at 
 all ; its possible legal aspect troubled him much. His 
 logic in all these matters showed the enlargement of 
 his intellect. Why, he said, garrote a capitalist in 
 the street as he is returning home at night from his 
 office ? The most that could be gained by such an 
 operation would be a watch and a pocket-book, with 
 danger of being arrested by the police, tried in the 
 courts, and sent to prison for a term of years. Better 
 to garrote him under the full noonday sun by a corner 
 in stocks, and thus deprive him of all his property, 
 without any risk of being called to account for the 
 robbery before any of the tribunals of justice. Mor 
 ally, of course, the proceeding was identical with that 
 of a sharper, with loaded dice, who allures his victims 
 into games of chance, or of a free-booter who lies in 
 wait at the corner of a road to plunder a stage-coach ; 
 but it had the immense advantage over these of being 
 legally safe, and of holding out the promise of a 
 hundredfold more booty. Indeed, he held that the 
 difference between a great operator in stocks and an 
 ordinary thief was the difference between a monarch 
 who makes war to steal the territory of a neighbor 
 and an individual murderer who kills the wayfarer he 
 designs only to plunder. This horrible old spider of 
 speculation experienced a certain grim delight in gaz 
 ing at the flies as they fell successively into his cun 
 ningly spun web, and when he darted out upon them, 
 they were devoured with all the savage and ravenous 
 
44 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 glee with which a cannibal devours the ribs and joints 
 of a missionary. 
 
 Not the least noticeable peculiarity in Mr. Smith s 
 character was the absence in him of most of those 
 qualities of avarice which we associate with the idea 
 of a miser. He never seemed to gloat over his wealth, 
 but rather gloated over the power it gave him to prey 
 on his less opulent or intelligent fellow-citizens. He 
 pinched and starved his clerks, not so much because 
 he was too mean to give them adequate salaries, but 
 because he wished to demonstrate to them that they 
 were, as long as they chose or were compelled to stay 
 with him, his abject slaves. After his fortune was 
 made, his avarice was concentrated in making himself 
 a money power. As Napoleon only considered one 
 conquest as a step to others, so this creature ruined 
 his competitors in Wall Street to-day, only to form 
 new combinations to ruin fresh competitors to-morrow. 
 He intensely enjoyed, not his wealth, but the means 
 his wealth afforded him of preventing others from 
 acquiring it. Having no heart, his only happiness 
 was in the play of his intellect and the indulgence of 
 his malignant propensities. In studying him, I have 
 been more and more impressed with two things, 
 first, that human life is mercifully limited to seventy 
 or eighty years ; and secondly, that old men, divorced 
 from all family connections, with no grandchildren 
 playing about their knees, and with no memories but 
 those which record the triumphs of their greed of 
 power and gain, are apt to be the deadliest enemies 
 
A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 45 
 
 of the human race. Their life has been an enormous 
 failure, however large may be their property ; they 
 know the fact when they have become old, however 
 much they have doubted it in their vigorous age ; and 
 such men are the real misanthropes of the business 
 world, human wolves which only the decay of the 
 physical powers prevents from becoming spiritual 
 devils. Mr. Smith was saved from being a devil 
 because the Lord did not accord to him the lon 
 gevity of Methuselah. He died very respectably, with 
 a number of godly clergymen and philanthropists 
 around his bed. In his will he left all his remaining 
 property to certain rather heretical religious and 
 benevolent associations, not one of which expected 
 the old cynic would give it a dollar, because it had 
 never toadied him. He had a grand burial, indeed, 
 a weeping New York followed his hearse to the tomb. 
 On the next day he was forgotten, except by those he 
 had cheated. The rage of the sect of Christians to 
 which he was nominally attached, and whose min 
 isters had condoned his offences against Christian 
 sentiments and principles in the hope that he would 
 leave his ill-gotten money to its academies and 
 churches, was secretly but not less bitterly expressed. 
 The old man, in making his will, probably anticipated 
 this pious indignation, and chuckled over it with a 
 kind of senile glee. He doubtless thought, in his 
 ironical scorn, that those who had been preaching, 
 for the fifty years he had attended their services, 
 against the devil, would not condescend to accept the 
 
46 A BUSINESS MAN OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 
 
 devil s dollars. Certainly every dollar he had earned 
 belonged to the devil rather than to the Lord. As 
 there was no church here on earth which was for 
 mally organized in the name of Satan, he probably 
 felt that the best way he could adopt to reach his 
 master was to leave his money to a class of persons 
 he had always abhorred, because they assumed to 
 be reformers, abolitionists, " liberal " Christians, and 
 whom he was taught by his clergyman to consider as 
 little better than atheists on account of defects in 
 their religious creed. He accordingly left his money 
 to them in the hope that they would serve the cause 
 to which he had devoted his life. What would be his 
 rage could he know that the money he had obtained 
 by inflicting suffering was devoted to allaying it, 
 that the devil s money was strictly expended in ad 
 vancing the cause of the good Lord ? Peace to his 
 ashes ! I wish I could add, peace to his soul ! But 
 alas ! in the whole course of his life he never showed 
 that he had any soul. 
 
MR. HARDHACK ON THE DERIVATION OF 
 MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 
 
 I CAN stand it no longer, sir. I have been seething 
 and boiling inwardly for a couple of years at this last 
 and final insult which science has put upon human 
 nature, and now I must speak, or, if you will, ex 
 plode. And how is it, I want to know, that the duty 
 of hurling imprecations at this infernal absurdity has 
 devolved upon me ? Don t we employ a professional 
 class to look after the interests of the race fellows 
 heavily feed to see to it that gorilla and chimpanzee 
 keep their distance ; paid, sir, by me and you to 
 proclaim that men ay, and women too are at the 
 top of things in origin, as well as in nature and des 
 tiny ? Why are these retained attorneys of humanity 
 so confoundedly cool and philosophical, while human 
 ity is thus outraged ? What s the use of their assert 
 ing, Sunday after Sunday, that man was made a little 
 lower than the angels, when right under their noses 
 are a set of anatomical miscreants who contend that 
 he is only a little higher than the monkeys? And 
 the thing has now gone so far, that I 11 be hange<} if 
 it is n t becoming a sign of a narrow and prejudiced 
 mind to scout the idea that we are all descended from 
 mindless beasts. You are a fossilized old fogy, in 
 
48 MR. HARDBACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 this day of scientific light, if you repudiate your rela 
 tionship with any fossilized monstrosity which, from 
 the glass case of a museum, mocks at you with a 
 grin a thousand centuries old. To exalt a man s soul 
 above his skeleton, is now to be behind the age. All 
 questions of philosophy, sir, are fast declining into a 
 question of bones, and blasted dry ones they are! 
 The largest minds are now all absorbed in the ugliest 
 brutes, and the ape has passed from being the butt of 
 the menagerie to become the glory of the dissecting- 
 room. And let me tell you, sir, that, if you make 
 any pretensions to be a naturalist, you will find those 
 of your co-laborers who defend the dominant theory 
 as great masters of hard words as of big ones ; and if 
 you have the audacity to deny that man is derived 
 from the monkey, it is ten chances to one they will 
 forthwith proceed to treat you like one. 
 
 Now I go against the whole thing, sir. "When the 
 public mind first took its bent towards science, I, for 
 one, foresaw that the devil would soon be to pay 
 with our cherished ideas. Under the plea of exercis 
 ing some of the highest faculties of human nature, 
 these scientific descendentalists have exclusively de 
 voted themselves to the lowest objects of human con 
 cern. The meaner the creature, the more they think 
 of it. You, sir, as a free and enlightened citizen of 
 this great Republic, doubtless think something of 
 yourself ; but I can tell you there is n t one of these 
 origin-of-species Solons who would n t pass you over 
 as of no account in comparison with any anomalous 
 
OF MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 49 
 
 rat which you would think it beneath your dignity to 
 take the trouble of poisoning. There is n t a states 
 man, or philanthropist, or poet, or hero, or saint in 
 the land, sir, that they would condescend to look at, 
 when engaged in exploring the remains of some igno 
 rant ass of the Stone Period. As for your ordinary 
 Christian, he has no chance whatever. The only man 
 they think worth the attention of scientific intelli 
 gence is pre-historic man, the man nearest the mon 
 key. And this is called progress ! This is the result 
 of founding schools, colleges, and societies for the 
 advancement of knowledge ! No interest now in Ho 
 mer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton, in Leonidas, 
 Epaminondas, Tell, and Washington, in Alexander, 
 Hannibal, Cassar, and Napoleon. They, poor devils, 
 were simply vertebrates ; their structure is so well 
 known that it is unworthy the attention of our mod 
 ern prowlers into the earth s crust in search of lower 
 and obscurer specimens of the same great natural di 
 vision. What do you think these resurrectionists on 
 a great scale, these Jerry Crunchers of palaeontology, 
 care for you and me ? Indeed, put Alfred Tennyson 
 alive into one end of a museum, and one of those hor 
 rible monsters whose bones are being continually dug 
 up into the other, and see which will be rated the 
 more interesting object of the two by the " great 
 minds" of the present day. 
 
 And now what is the consequence of thus inverting 
 the proper objects of human concern ? Why, if you 
 estimate things according to their descent in the scale 
 
 4 
 
50 MR. HARDBACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 of dignity, and occupy your faculties exclusively with 
 organized beings below man, you will tend to ap 
 proach them. Evil communications corrupt good 
 manners. You can t keep company with monkeys 
 without insensibly getting be-monkeyed. Your mind 
 feeds on them until its thoughts take their shape and 
 nature. Into the " veins of your intellectual frame " 
 monkey blood is injected. The monkey thus put into 
 you naturally thinks that monkeydom is belied ; and 
 self-esteem, even, is not revolted by the idea of an ape 
 genealogy. In this way the new theory of the origin 
 of man originated. Huxley must have pretty thor 
 oughly assimilated monkey before he recognized his 
 ancestor in one. The poor beast himself may have 
 made no pretensions to the honor, until he was men 
 tally transformed into Huxley, entered into the sub 
 stance of Huxley s mind, became inflamed with 
 Huxley s arrogance. This is the true explanation, 
 not perhaps of the origin of species, but of the ori 
 gin of the theory of the origin ; and I should like to 
 thunder the great truth into the ears of all the scien 
 tific societies now talking monkey with the self-satis 
 fied air of great discoA^erers. Yes, sir, and I should 
 also be delighted to insinuate that this progress of 
 monkey into man was not so great an example of 
 " progressive development " as they seem inclined to 
 suppose, and did n t require the long reaches of pre 
 historic time they consider necessary to account for 
 the phenomenon. Twenty years would be enough, in 
 all conscience, to effect that development. 
 
OP MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 51 
 
 Thus I tell you, sir, it is n t monkey that rises ana 
 tomically into man, but rather man that descends 
 mentally into monkey. Why, nothing is more com 
 mon than to apply to us human beings the names of 
 animals when we display weaknesses analogous to 
 their habitual characters. But this is metaphor, not 
 classification ; poetry, not science. Thus I, Solomon 
 Hardhack, was called a donkey the other day by an 
 intimate friend. Thought it merely a jocose reference 
 to my obstinacy, and did not knock him down. Called 
 the same name yesterday by a comparative anatomist. 
 Thought it an insulting reference to my understand 
 ing, and did. But suppose that, in respect both to 
 obstinacy and understanding, I had established to my 
 own satisfaction a similarity between myself and that 
 animal, do you imagine that I would be donkey enough 
 to take the beast for my progenitor ? Do you suppose 
 that I would go even further, and, having established 
 with the donkey a relation of descent, be mean enough 
 to generalize the whole human race into participation 
 in my calamity ? No, sir, I am not sufficiently a man 
 of science to commit that breach of good manners. 
 Well, then, my proposition is, that nobody who rea 
 sons himself into a development from the monkey has 
 the right to take mankind with him in his induction. 
 His argument covers but one individual, himself. 
 As for the Hardbacks, they at least beg to be excused 
 from joining him in that logical excursion, and insist 
 on striking the monkey altogether out from their 
 genealogical tree. 
 
t>2 MR. HARDBACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 And speaking of genealogical trees, do the adhe 
 rents of this mad theory realize the disgrace they are 
 bringing on the most respectable families ? There is 
 not an aristocracy in Europe or America that can 
 stand it one moment, for aristocracy is based on the 
 greatness of forefathers. In America, you know, no 
 body is aristocratic who cannot count back at least 
 to his great-grandfather, who rode in a carriage, or 
 drove one. As for the Hardbacks, I may be allowed 
 to say, though I despise family pride as much as any 
 man, that they came in with the Conqueror and went 
 out with the Puritans. But if this horrible Huxlcian 
 theory be true, the farther a person is from his origin, 
 the better ; antiquity of descent is no longer a title 
 to honor ; and a man must pride himself in looking 
 forward to his descendants rather than back to his 
 ancestors. And what comfort is this to me, an un 
 married man ? With a monkey in the background, 
 how can even a Hapsburg or a Guelf put on airs of 
 superiority ? How must he hide his face in shame to 
 think, that, as his line lengthens into an obscure an 
 tiquity, the foreheads of his house slope, and their jaws 
 project ; that he has literally been all his life aping 
 aristocracy, instead of being the real thing ; and that, 
 when he has reached his true beginning, his only 
 consolation must be found in the fact that his great 
 skulking, hulking, gibbering baboon of an ancestor 
 rejoices, like himself, in the possession of " the third 
 lobe," " the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle," 
 and " the hippocampus minor." Talk about radical- 
 
OF MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 53 
 
 ism, indeed ! Why, I, who am considered an offence 
 to my radical party for the extremes to which I run, 
 cannot think of this swamping of all the families in 
 the world without a thrill of horror and amazement ! 
 It makes my blood run cold to imagine this infernal 
 Huxley pertly holding up the frontispiece of his book 
 in the faces of the haughty nobility and gentry of his 
 country, and saying, " Here, my friends, are drawings 
 of the skeletons of gibbon, orang, chimpanzee, gorilla ; 
 select your ancestors ; you pays your money and has 
 your choice." I don t pretend to know anything 
 about the temper of the present nobility and gentry 
 of England ; but if the fellow should do this thing 
 to me, I would blow out of his skull everything in it 
 which allied him with the apes, taking a specially 
 grim vengeance on " the posterior cornu of the lateral 
 ventricle," as sure as my name s Hardback, and as 
 sure as there s any explosive power in gunpowder. 
 
 And in this connection, too, I should like to know 
 how the champions of this man-monkey scheme get 
 over a theological objection. Don t start, sir, and 
 say I am unscientific. I am not going to introduce 
 Christianity, or monotheism, or polytheism, or fetich- 
 ism, but a religion which you know was before them 
 all, and which consisted in the worship of ancestors. 
 If you are in the custom of visiting in good society, 
 you will find that that is a form of worship which has 
 not yet altogether died out, but roots itself in the 
 most orthodox creeds. Now you must admit that 
 the people who Worshipped their ancestors were the 
 
54 MR. HARDBACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 earliest people of whose religion we have any archaeo 
 logical record, and therefore a people who enjoyed the 
 advantage of being nearer the ancestors of the race 
 than any of the historical savages to whom you can 
 appeal. I put it to you if this people, catching a 
 glimpse of the monkey at the end of their line, if the 
 monkey was really there, would have been such dolts 
 as to worship it ? A HE worship an IT ! Don t you 
 see, that, if this early people had nothing human but 
 human conceit, that would alone have prevented them 
 from doing this thing? Don t you see that they 
 would have preserved a wise reticence in regard to 
 such a shocking bar-sinister in their escutcheons ? 
 Worship ancestors, when ancestors are known to 
 have been baboons! Why, you might as well tell 
 me our fashionable friend Eglantine would worship 
 his grandfather if he knew his grandfather was a 
 hodman. No, sir. That early people worshipped 
 their ancestors, because they knew their ancestors 
 were higher and nobler than themselves. To sup 
 pose the contrary would be a cruel inputation on the 
 character of worthy antediluvians, who unfortunately 
 have left no written account of themselves, and there 
 fore present peculiar claims on the charitable judg 
 ment of every candid mind. 
 
 You have been a boy, sir, and doubtless had your 
 full share in that amusement, so congenial to ingenu 
 ous youth, of stirring up the monkeys. You remember 
 what an agreeable feeling of elation, springing from a 
 conscious sense of superiority to the animals pestered, 
 
OF MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 55 
 
 accompanied that exhilarating game. But suppose, 
 while you were engaged in it, the suspicion had 
 flashed across your mind that you were worrying 
 your own distant relations ; that it was undeveloped 
 humanity you were poking and deriding ; that the 
 frisking, chattering, snarling creature you were tor 
 menting was trying all the while to say, in his unin 
 telligible speech, " Am I not to be a man and a 
 brother ? " Would not such an appeal have dashed 
 your innocent mirth ? Would you afterwards have 
 been so clamorous or beseeching for parental pen 
 nies, as soon as the dead walls of your native town 
 flamed with pictorial announcements of the coming 
 menagerie ? No, sir, you could n t have passed a 
 menagerie without a shudder of loathing or a pang 
 of remorse. How fortunate it was, that, for the full 
 enjoyment of your youthful sports, you were ignorant 
 of the affecting fact that the monkey s head as well 
 as your own possessed the " hippocampus minor " and 
 " the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle " ! 
 
 I admit that this last argument is not addressed to 
 your understanding alone. I despise all arguments 
 on this point that are. I, for one, am not to be rea 
 soned out of my humanity, and I won t be diddled 
 into turning baboon through deference for anybody s 
 logic. My opinions may be up for argument, but I 
 myself am not up for argument. In a question affect 
 ing human nature itself, all the qualities of that nature 
 should be addressed. Self-respect, respect for your 
 parentage and your race, your moral instincts, and 
 
56 MR. HARDHACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 that force in you which says " I," all these, having 
 an interest in such a discussion, should have a voice 
 in it ; and I execrate the flunky who will allow him 
 self to be swindled out of manhood, and swindled into 
 monkeyhood, by that pitiful little logic-chopper he 
 calls his understanding. I am not " open to convic 
 tion " on this point, thank God ! I don t pretend to 
 know whether a " third lobe " is in my head or not, 
 but I do know that Solomon Hardhack is there, and 
 as long as he has possession of the premises, you will 
 find written on his brow, " No monkeys need apply ! " 
 Do you tell me that this is a matter exclusively for 
 anatomists and naturalists to decide ? That s the 
 most impudent pretension of all. Why, it s all the 
 other way. Have I not a personal interest in the ques 
 tion greater than any possible interest I can have in 
 the diabolical lingo of scientific terms in which those 
 fellows state the results of their investigations ? Have 
 I delegated to any College of Surgeons the privilege 
 of chimpanzeeizing my ancestors ? No, sir. Just 
 look at it. Here are the members of the human race, 
 going daily about their various avocations, entirely 
 ignorant that any conspiracy is on foot to trick them 
 out of their fatherhood in Adam. While they are 
 thus engaged in getting an honest living, a baker s 
 dozen of unauthorized miscreants assemble in a dis 
 secting-room, manipulate a lot of skulls, and decide 
 that the whole batch of us did not descend from a 
 human being. I tell you the whole thing is an atro 
 cious violation of the rights of man. It s uncon- 
 
OF MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 57 
 
 stitutional, sir ! Talk about the glorious principle 
 of " No taxation without representation " ! That is 
 simply a principle which affects our pockets, and we 
 fought, bled, and died for it. Shall we not do a 
 thousand times more for our souls ? Shall we let our 
 souls be voted away by a congress of dissectors, not 
 chosen by our votes, persons who not only don t 
 represent, but infamously misrepresent us ? Why, 
 it s carrying the tactics of a New York Common 
 Council from politics into metaphysics ! And don t 
 allow yourself to be humbugged by these assassins of 
 your nature. I know the way they have of election 
 eering. It is, "My dear Mr. Hardback, a man of 
 your intelligence can t look at this ascending scale 
 of skulls without seeing that the difference between 
 Homo and Pithecus is of small account," "A man 
 of your candid mind, Mr. Hardback, must admit that 
 no absolutely structural line of demarcation, wider 
 than that between the animals which immediately 
 succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the 
 animal world and ourselves." And while I don t 
 comprehend a word of this cursed gibberish, I am 
 expected to bow, and look wise, and say, " Certainly," 
 and " Just so," and " It s plain to the meanest 
 capacity," and be soft-sawdered out of my humanity, 
 and infamously acknowledge myself babooned. But 
 they can t try it on me, sir. When a man talks to 
 me in that fashion, I measure with my eyes " the 
 structural line of demarcation " between his 9 and with 
 my whole force plant there my fist. 
 
58 MR. HARDBACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 Bo you complain that I am speaking in a passion ? 
 It seems to me it s about time for all of us to be in a 
 passion. Perhaps, if we show these men of science 
 that there is in us a little righteous wrath, they may 
 be considerate enough to stop with the monkey, 
 make the monkey " a finality," sir, and not go lower 
 down in the scale of creation to find an ancestor for 
 us. It is our meek submission to the monkey which 
 is now urging them to attempt more desperate out 
 rages still. What if Darwin had been treated as he 
 deserved when he published the original edition of 
 his villanous book ? If I had been Chief Justice of 
 England when that high priest of " natural selection " 
 first tried to oust me out of the fee-simple of my 
 species, I would have given him an illustration of 
 " the struggle for existence " he would n t have rel 
 ished. I would have hanged him on the highest 
 gallows ever erected on this planet since the good 
 old days of Haman. What has been the result of a 
 mistaken clemency in his case ? Why, he has just 
 published a fourth edition of his treatise, and what 
 do you think he now puts forward as our " probable " 
 forefather? "It is probable," he says, "from what 
 we know of the embryos of mammals, birds, fishes, 
 and reptiles, that all the members in these four great 
 classes are the modified descendants of one ancient 
 progenitor, which was furnished in its adult state 
 with branchiae, had a swim-bladder, four simple limbs, 
 and a long tail fitted for an aquatic life." Probable, 
 indeed ! Why, it is also probable, I suppose, that this 
 
OF MAN FROM THE MONKEY. 59 
 
 accounts for the latent tendency in the blood of our 
 best-educated collegians to turn watermen, and aban 
 don themselves with a kind of sacred fury to the 
 fierce delight of rowing-matches. The " long tail 
 fitted for an aquatic life " will also " probably " come 
 in course of time. Student-mammals of Harvard and 
 Yale, what think you of your " one ancient progeni 
 tor " ? Inheritors of his nature, are you sure you 
 have yet succeeded in cutting off the entail of the 
 estate ? 
 
 We have been brought up, sir, in the delusive belief 
 that " revolutions never go backwards." It s a lie, 
 I tell you ; for this new revolution in science docs 
 nothing else. It is going backwards and backwards 
 and backwards, and it won t stop until it involves the 
 whole of us in that nebulous mist of which, it seems, 
 all things are but the " modified " development. Well, 
 in for a penny, in for a pound. Let us not pause at 
 that " long tail fitted for an aquatic life " which made 
 our one ancient progenitor such an ornament of fluvial 
 society, but boldly strike out into space, and clutch 
 with our thoughts that .primitive tail which flares 
 behind the peacock of the heavens, the comet. 
 There s nebulous matter for your profound contem 
 plation. That is the flimsy material out of which 
 stars, earth, water, plants, jelly-fish, ancient progeni 
 tor, monkey, man, were all equally evolved. That is 
 the grand original of all origins. We are such stuff 
 as comets tails are made of, "third lobe," "hippo 
 campus minor," " posterior cornu of the lateral ven- 
 
60 MR. HARDBACK ON THE DERIVATION 
 
 tricle," and all the rest. " Children of the Mist," we 
 are made by this " sublime speculation " at home in 
 the universe. Nebuchadnezzar, when he went to 
 grass, only visited a distant connection. The stars 
 over our heads have for thousands of years been wink 
 ing their relationship with us, and we have never in 
 telligently returned the jocose salutation, until science 
 taught us the use of our eyes. We are now able to 
 detect the giggle, as of feminine cousins, in the grain 
 whose risibilities are touched by the wind. We can 
 now cheer even the dull stone which we kick from 
 our path with a comforting " Hail fellow, well met ! " 
 We must not be aristocrats and put on airs. We 
 must hob and nob with all the orders of creation, 
 saying alike to radiates, articulates, and mollusks, 
 " Go ahead, my hearties! don t be shamefaced ; you re 
 as good as vertebrates, and only want, like some of 
 our human political lights, a little backbone to have 
 your claims admitted. You arc all on your glorious 
 course manward, via the ancient progenitor and the 
 chimpanzee. It seems a confounded long journey ; 
 for Nature is a slow coach, and thinks nothing of a 
 million of years to effect a little transformation. But 
 one of these days our science may find means to 
 expedite that old sluggard, and hurry you through 
 the intermediate grades in a way to astonish the 
 venerable lady. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
 those are the words which will open the gates of your 
 organized Bastiles, and send your souls on a career 
 of swifter development. Trust in Darwin, and let 
 
OF MAN PROM THE MONKEY. 61 
 
 creation ring with your song of " A good time coming, 
 Invertebrates ! " 
 
 Well, sir, you want logic, and there you have it with 
 a vengeance ! I have pitched you back into nebula, 
 where these fellows tell me you belong, and I trust 
 you re satisfied. Now what is my comfort, sir, after 
 making my brain dizzy with this sublime speculation 
 of theirs ? Why, it s found in the fact that, by their 
 own concession, the thing will not work, but must 
 end in the biggest " catastrophe " ever heard of. The 
 whole infernal humbug is to explode, sir, and by no 
 exercise of their "hippocampus minor" can they pre 
 vent it. This fiery mist, which has hardened and 
 rounded into our sun and planets, and developed into 
 the monkey s "third lobe" and ours, does not lose 
 the memory or the conceit of its origin, but is deter 
 mined to get back into its first condition as quickly 
 as circumstances will admit. It considers itself some 
 how to have been swindled in every step of the long 
 process it has gone through in arriving at our brains. 
 It doesn t think the speculation pays; prefers its 
 lounging, vagabond, dolce far niente existence, loafing 
 through the whole space between the sun and Nep 
 tune, to any satisfaction it finds in being concentrated 
 in your thoughts or mine ; and accordingly it medi 
 tates a coup d etat by which the planets are to fall 
 into the sun at such a pace as to knock the whole 
 system into eternal smash, and reduce it to its origi 
 nal condition of nebulous mist, sir. Do you like the 
 prospect? I tell you there is no way of escaping 
 
62 THE DERIVATION OE MAN. 
 
 from conclusions, if you are such a greenhorn as to 
 admit premises. I have been over the whole chain 
 of the logic, and find its only weak link is the monkey 
 one. Knock that out, and you save the solar system 
 as well as your own dignity as a man, sir ; retain it, 
 and some thousands of generations hence the brains 
 of your descendants will be blown into a texture as 
 gauzy as a comet s tail, and it will be millions of ages 
 before, in the process of a new freak of development 
 in the unquiet nebula, they can hope to arrive again 
 at the honor of possessing that inestimable boon, dear 
 equally to baboons and to men, " the posterior cornu 
 of the lateral ventricle " ! 
 
MR. HARDHACK ON THE SENSATIONAL IN 
 LITERATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 HAVE I read Miss Braddon s last? Ay, and her 
 first too. Why, during the last three or four months 
 I have been through a whole course of sensational 
 novels, and, in imagination, have married more wives 
 than Brigham Young, and committed more homicides 
 than Captain Kidd ; and I flatter myself I have got 
 at the whole secret of the thing. It s whiskey for 
 the mind, sir, the regular raw, rot-brain fluid of the 
 Devil s own distilling. What do you suppose is to be 
 come of the intellects and hearts of a generation which 
 takes to such a terrible tipple ? They are all at it, 
 men and women, boys and girls, imbibing the sting 
 ing, burning, corroding beverage as though it were as 
 innocent as milk. " Drink, pretty creature, drink," - 
 that is the song of the Circes and the Comuses of the 
 new school of depravity, as they hold their yellow cups 
 to the lips of sweet fifteen : " This, my dear, has a 
 delicious flavor of theft ; this of arson ; this of big 
 amy ; this of murder. Drink, and Newgate and the 
 Old Bailey will be more familiar to you than the 
 school -"house and the church ! Drink, and you will 
 draw the charming convicts out of their cells, and 
 
64 MR. HARDHACK ON THE SENSATIONAL 
 
 have them all nicely housed in your own imagination ! 
 Drink, drink, drink ! " 
 
 But, you retort, do not the greatest writers deal 
 with the greatest crimes ? Is Shakspeare himself an 
 economist of the dagger and the bowl ? Why object 
 to contemporary romancers for taking criminals for 
 heroes, when criminality enters so largely into the 
 heroes of all dramas and romances ? You think you 
 have me, do you ? Well, others before you have been 
 infatuated with the idea that they could get Solomon 
 Hardback into a corner, but he always found a road 
 out of it as wide as the Appian Way. I admit at once 
 that I have no objection to murders when they are 
 perpetrated by Shakspeare or Scott. The more the 
 better, say I. When the old woman told her doctor 
 that she feared her health was failing, because during 
 the past week she had not, in reading the newspaper, 
 " enjoyed her murders," she caught a glimpse of the 
 great principle of all art, sir. When I read Macbeth, 
 when I see it performed by actors of imagination, I 
 enjoy the murders. When I read or see a coarse melo 
 drama, I don t enjoy the murders. What s the rea 
 son ? Why, my artistic sense is satisfied by the first, 
 and shocked by the second. The tragedy lifts your 
 whole nature sentiment, conscience, reflection, im 
 agination, whatever there is in you altogether above 
 actual life into the ideal world of art. You become 
 conscious of a new, strange, and vivid play of all your 
 faculties ; and there is delight in that, even though 
 you may now and then shudder or blubber. It is an 
 
IN LITERATURE AND LIFE. 65 
 
 escape out of all the conditions of your daily life, and 
 you feel ten times the man you were before the fine 
 sting of the dramatist s genius sent its delicious tor 
 ment into your soul. Now, how is it with the melo 
 drama ? Why, you are in the mud and dust of the 
 earth all the time you listen ; everything is intensely 
 commonplace, not excepting the rant and the crimes ; 
 when a character is stabbed, or has his brains blown 
 out, or, what is better, blows out his brains with his 
 own hand, it is simple murder or suicide you witness, 
 and there s no enjoyment in witnessing either, except 
 perhaps the enjoyment you feel in thinking that the 
 wretched spectacle has come to an end. 
 
 And here we have the whole philosophy of the sen 
 sational in fiction. You are, let me suppose, a com 
 monplace and common-sense man, sir. If I were a 
 person without an atom of genius, and yet were com 
 pelled by circumstances, like many of my unfortunate 
 fellow-creatures, to gain my living by writing novels, I 
 should have you in my eye while I wrote. I should so 
 manage my story as to galvanize a small part of your 
 mediocrity out of all its relations to the other parts. 
 You would still be the commonplace fellow you were 
 before, plus " a sensation." My book would be as artis 
 tically worthless as a police report, but to you it would 
 be a specimen of literature ; and I should have the 
 inexpressible satisfaction of transferring money from 
 your pocket into mine, without going through the ex 
 tremely tedious process of attempting to get a fine sen 
 timent into your heart or a new idea into your head. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 MR. IIARDHACK ON THE SENSATIONAL 
 
 Indeed, sir, you will find that it is your ordinary, 
 matter-of-fact, bread-and-butter, practical people, rather 
 than your romantic and poetic ones, who are swindled 
 by sensations. The sensational is a revolt against 
 humdrum, through the means of a vulgar wonder. 
 Let me tell you an illustrative story. Once upon a 
 time a vagabond pedler appeared in a secluded vil 
 lage, and called the people round him by ringing a 
 big bell. When his audience had become sufficiently 
 large, he stopped ringing in order to make this an 
 nouncement : " All you young women here with small 
 mouths will have a husband ! " The spinsters pres 
 ent pursed and puckered up their lips, and murmured, 
 "Dear me! what a pretty little man!" Then he 
 rung his bell again, with still more startling emphasis, 
 and said in his deepest and loudest tones : " And all 
 you young women here with large mouths will have 
 two ! " Instantly the lips were stretched to their ut 
 most width, and from them all came the wondering 
 exclamation, " Law ! " Now don t tell me that Miss 
 Braddon hadn t heard of this story when she wrote 
 " Aurora Floyd," for it was exactly this open-mouthed 
 wonder that she desired to produce when she made 
 the interest of her plot centre in bigamy. You know, 
 sir, how quickly you, and the rest of people like you, 
 exclaimed, " Law ! " 
 
 The great defect, then, to my notion, of the ro 
 mancers of rascality is, that there s no romance in 
 them. They treat you to hard, ugly, " slangy," pro 
 saic fact, and throw in some wild nonsense, or brutal 
 
IN LITERATURE AND LIFE. 67 
 
 ruffianism, or cynical villany, just to give it a coarse 
 zest. Neither sentiment nor imagination is addressed. 
 The heroes commit just such crimes, and encounter 
 just such penalties, as you find printed in the news 
 paper records of the criminal courts. Take Miss 
 Braddon s " Birds of Prey," which is one of her latest 
 attempts at a sensation, and notice how bare and bleak 
 is the atmosphere of the story, and how commonplace 
 as well as bad is the company she drags you into. 
 But this photographing of poisoners and swindlers is 
 not characterization ; this power to interest you in 
 society where you fear your pocket will be picked is 
 not art. 
 
 So much for the novels that please a practical man 
 like you, sir. Now, what kind of author do you sup 
 port when it enters your brain that your moral nature 
 needs to be braced ? Tupper, of course ; for you and 
 your set have sent that " Proverbial Philosophy " of 
 his through a hundred editions. He has just the com 
 bination of truism and vagueness, do-me-good reflec 
 tion and windy vastness, to fill your idea of the moral 
 sublime. And then what a poet he is in his ethics! 
 Your idea of the beautiful is of course identical with 
 your notion of the big ; and he goes over the whole 
 universe to gather images of bigness for your delec 
 tation, doing a larger business in mountains, earth 
 quakes, and firmaments than any other metaphor- 
 monger of the t day. Did it ever occur to you that, 
 even in moral significance, one of Burns s daisies 
 outvalues all of Tupper s empyreans ? 
 
68 Mil. HARDBACK ON THE SENSATIONAL 
 
 You must be a patron of art, too ; that is, you are 
 one of those men of dollars who are engaged in cor 
 rupting all the promising painters of the land by urg 
 ing them to the production of panoramic pictures, in 
 which there shall be an almost photographic repre 
 sentation of some strange or big thing in nature, but 
 in which all the life and spirit of nature shall be left 
 out. You value things in art just in proportion as 
 they recede from the artistic. Here is a little picture, 
 representing a bit of grass, a cow, and a cottage. 
 How you turn up your nose ! There s nothing in it 
 to create a sensation, I admit ; but there is something 
 in it to touch a sentiment, if sentiment you had to 
 touch. The landscape is thoroughly humanized, sir, 
 and if you had ever seen a simple landscape in na 
 ture, you ve stared, no doubt, at thousands, you 
 would feel the fact. But that stupendous picture of 
 mountains you can, of course, appreciate. You never 
 even stared at such a phenomenon as that, and it 
 stirs your languid consciousness with a new sensa 
 tion. But still the painted bit of grass is greater, as 
 a work of art, than the painted chain of mountains, 
 and would be worth more in money if purses in our 
 day had not unfortunately lost their artistic percep 
 tion. Did you ever read Hawthorne s essay on the 
 town-pump of Salem ? Well, the town-pump of Salem 
 is n t so important a matter as the battle of Water 
 loo ; but then, Hawthorne s description of the pump 
 has infinitely more significance to the intellect than 
 Alison s description of the battle. Now, in estimating 
 
IN LITERATURE AND LIFE. 69 
 
 pictures you make the mistake of judging by the sub 
 ject painted, and not by the genius that paints. And 
 so far you are a fool, sir. Don t redden ! The fools 
 in art are the most sensible men in business, and at 
 any rate are in the majority. 
 
 A man like you must have a religion, too, and as 
 you pride yourself on being a very sensible and prac 
 tical man, you probably have a false and bad one, sir. 
 I don t care where you go to church ; I know that, if 
 you must have sensations in literature and art, you 
 must have them also in religion. Ten to one you are 
 a reader of Dr. Gumming, and are charmed with the 
 grandiloquent way he transfixes Napoleon II. on one 
 horn of the dilemma of the Beast, and the certainty 
 he expresses every year that the world is to be de 
 stroyed in the next. No ? Why, you certainly cannot 
 be a Mormon, though the novels you read might 
 tempt you, if you lived in Utah, to look with favor on 
 that over-connubial faith. I see how it is, you re 
 a Spiritualist. You believe in no miracles that don t 
 pass under your own eyes and into your own ears. 
 You need to have your religion rapped into you. 
 You cannot perceive the spiritual unless you have a 
 sensation of it. Now, mind, I don t doubt there are 
 many fine natures interested in the phenomena of 
 what is called Spiritualism, and expect to draw some 
 thing out of it to satisfy their spiritual curiosity or 
 aspiration. But they are not the sensation-mongers 
 of the creed ; they are not the persons who exhibit 
 the spirits of the departed to an intelligent public at 
 
70 MR. HARDBACK ON THE SENSATIONAL 
 
 so much a head. You, however, as I repeatedly have 
 had the honor of reminding you, are an eminently 
 practical man, and of course easily humbugged on all 
 matters where real spiritual discernment comes into 
 play. Your notion of spiritual communion with the 
 dead is a gossip with ghosts. And such ghosts ! 
 Why, your next world, sir, is filled with nothing but 
 bores and dunces, and existence there would be 
 passed by any reasonable man in one long, everlast 
 ing yawn ! You never read Bacon, or Milton, or 
 (/banning ; yet I admit you have succeeded in mak 
 ing Bacon and Milton and Channing talk to you 
 true table-talk ! But then, Bacon, freed from all lim 
 itations of the flesh, talks like Tupper, and Milton 
 like Robert Montgomery, and Channing like Mrs. 
 Trimmer. You have got a spiritual world, I con 
 cede, but it is one into which poets pass only to be 
 deprived of their imagination, philosophers of their 
 wisdom, saints of their sanctity, and all persons of 
 their brains. The " revelations " may be very cred 
 itable for tables to make, for tables are of wood, and 
 " wooden " is English for bete ; but considered as 
 coming from disembodied souls, they cast discredit 
 on the human mind itself. And then, sir, what fol 
 lies you practical men slip into ! T is a pity that 
 with all your boasted sense you have n t some sense 
 of humor to see the ludicrous element in your faith. 
 The mediums who allow you to have a chat with the 
 denizens of the spiritual world, how inexpressibly 
 moderate they are in their charges ! You know per- 
 
IN LITERATURE AND LIEE. 71 
 
 fectly well that the mysteries of your religion are 
 presided over, in many cases, by persons who com 
 municate with the dead simply for the purpose of 
 getting a living ; by showmen turned priests and 
 sempstresses ambitious to be sibyls, priests who 
 are content to exchange a revelation for a shilling, 
 and sibyls who " charge a pistareen a spasm " ! 
 
 Well, it might at least be hoped that we should 
 have none of these sensations in science. Never was 
 a greater mistake, sir. In the process of being popu 
 larized, science is becoming melodramatic ; and such 
 melodramas ! I don t know how it is with the real 
 investigators, the plodding, conscientious fellows who 
 are engaged in adding to our knowledge of facts and 
 laws. It is, however, to be supposed that they are 
 leading lives more or less obscure, arriving at limited 
 results by hard labor and patient thought, loving 
 truth more than notoriety, and untroubled by any 
 ambition to excogitate a theory of the universe out 
 of the depths of their own consciousness. Poor 
 devils ! Do they suppose that a public, craving new 
 sensations and desirous of having a slap-dash state 
 ment of the origin and development of all things and 
 all beings, cares for the little they can tell about the 
 works and ways of nature ? Probably if questioned 
 as to some of the novel and splendid scientific theo 
 ries now in vogue, they would profess complete igno 
 rance of such deep matters. They would answer the 
 querist somewhat as Mr. Prime Minister Pitt an 
 swered the lady who asked him for the latest news. 
 
72 MR. HARDBACK ON THE SENSATIONAL 
 
 He had n t, he said, read the papers, to which, doubt 
 less, she instantly referred, and found more informa 
 tion there about Mr. Pitt s acts and intentions than 
 Mr. Pitt himself could have given her. The fact is, 
 the question we now put to every man of science is 
 practically this : " What is your pet method of allow 
 ing God Almighty to build the universe ?" This, of 
 course, compels every pushing, self-glorifying, sensa 
 tional savant to bring out his plan of creation for 
 our amusement and edification. We put the various 
 schemes to vote, and the one which has the noisiest 
 and most theatrical accompaniments commonly car 
 ries it. Now, I call all this creating God after man s 
 image, and the universe after man s crotchets, for I 
 find that every plan is the measure of the mind which 
 gets it up, and is ridiculous considered as a measure 
 of Infinite intelligence. Even if you leave the Deity 
 altogether out of your scheme, as an u hypothesis 
 which has now ceased to have any practical interest," 
 you create, not a world, but merely a sensation. It is 
 to be presumed that God can get along better with 
 out you than you can without him, and certainly his 
 existence is not one of those questions which can be 
 determined by popular suffrage. If the vote were un 
 favorable, I am not without a suspicion that he would 
 still contrive to keep his place at the heart of things, 
 and assert his reality in ways emphatic enough. In 
 fact, the whole business of building up universes, as 
 now conducted, is decidedly overdone, sir. You get 
 nothing out of it but words, and what, as an old theo- 
 
IN LITERATURE AND LIFE. 73 
 
 logian says, are words "against Him who spoke worlds, 
 who worded heaven and earth out of nothing, and 
 can when he pleases word them into nothing again " ? 
 But you may say that in all I assert about the 
 sensational in religion and science, I am talking of 
 matters about which I know nothing. There you arc 
 right, sir. But how is it with business ? Here is 
 something which a man of plain understanding and 
 ordinary conscience may speak of without incurring 
 the charge of presumption. Now what is one of the 
 most frightful characteristics of our present mode of 
 doing business? Is it not the building up of great 
 fortunes out of colossal robberies ? And the thing 
 is done by a series of sensational addresses to the 
 cupidity of the cheated. High interest notoriously 
 goes with low security ; but we have, sir, in this 
 country, a class of rogues who may be called the 
 aristocracy of rascaldom, and who get rich by dazzling 
 and astonishing others into the hope of getting rich. 
 They are the contrivers of enterprises which propose 
 to develop the wealth of the country, but which com 
 monly turn out to be little more than schemes to 
 transfer wealth already realized from the pockets of 
 the honest into those of the knavish. They are the 
 financial footpads who lure simple people into stock 
 " corners," and then proceed to plunder them. They 
 make money so rapidly, so easily, and in such a splen 
 did sensational way, that they corrupt more persons 
 by their example than they ruin by their knaveries. 
 As compared with common rogues, they appear like 
 
74 THE SENSATIONAL IN LITERATURE. 
 
 Alexander or Caesar as compared with common thieves 
 and cutthroats. As their wealth increases, our moral 
 indignation at their method of acquiring it diminishes, 
 and at last they steal so much that we come to look 
 on their fortunes as conquests rather than burglaries. 
 Indeed, their operations on Change vie with those of 
 military commanders in the field, and are recorded 
 with similar admiring minuteness of detail. They 
 are the great sensations of the world of trade, and 
 have, therefore, more influence on the imaginations of 
 young men just starting in business than the dull 
 chronicles of the great movements of legitimate com 
 merce. Now, sir, take the universal American desire 
 to get rich, and combine it with the rapid, rascally 
 way of getting rich now in vogue, and you will find 
 you are breeding up a race of trading sharks and 
 wolves, which will eventually devour us all. Honesty 
 will go altogether out of fashion, and respectability 
 be associated with defect of intellect. Why, the old 
 robber barons of the Middle Ages, who plundered 
 sword in hand and lance in rest, were more honest 
 than this new aristocracy of swindling millionnaires. 
 Do you object that I am getting into a passion ? 
 Why, sir, I have purchased dearly enough the right 
 to rail. Didn t I put my modest competence into 
 copper ? And to recover my losses in copper, did n t 
 I go madly into petroleum ? And did n t the small sum 
 which petroleum was considerate enough to leave me 
 disappear in that last little " turn " in Eric ? 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 A CURIOUS volume has recently been published in 
 London, entitled " A Cursory History of Swearing," 
 by Julian Sharman. The author has lightly sketched 
 the annals of swearing, whether legal or irreverent, 
 from the dawn of civilization to the present day. He 
 has traced back many English oaths that by natives 
 are commonly thought to be original contributions to 
 the English vocabulary of imprecation and maledic 
 tion, to French, Roman, and even Greek sources. We 
 are so defective in our scholarship, as far as it relates 
 to the art and practice of profanity in all nations and 
 all times, that we hardly dare to question some of the 
 results of his investigations, because the " comparative 
 method," however successful it may be in its appli 
 cations to various forms of religion, has not yet 
 succeeded in giving to blasphemy the precision and 
 sureness of a science. 
 
 It would seem that the habit of using oaths adapts 
 itself to almost all classes of character, from the low 
 est nearly to the highest. The profane use of sacred 
 words slides naturally into the expression of mere 
 animal rage, but it also sometimes bursts out in the 
 utterance of righteous wrath at fraud, oppression, and 
 wrong. The most repulsive phase of profanity, how- 
 
76 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 ever, is that which is most common. A man of 
 refinement cannot walk the streets of any city, or the 
 lanes of any country village, without having his sense 
 of decency shocked by senseless oaths and impreca 
 tions, whether coming from the lips of a hack-driver 
 cursing his horses, or a farm laborer cursing his oxen. 
 Any impediment, no matter how inevitable, is the 
 occasion for bestowing upon it a torrent of the dirtiest 
 and most sacrilegious terms that the language con 
 tains. In some cases this profanity among unedu 
 cated men is the result of a very limited command of 
 words to express their feelings of impatience, anger, 
 jealousy, spite, and hatred; in others, mere levity of 
 mental and moral constitution leads them to adopt 
 the common and accredited forms of blasphemy, with 
 out any thought of their import ; but in too many 
 cases the words express the real passions of coarse, 
 hard, dull, envious, and malignant natures, indifferent 
 to religious or moral restraints, finding a certain de 
 light in outraging ordinary notions of decorum, flat 
 tering themselves with the conceit that in ribaldry 
 and blasphemy they have some compensation for the 
 miseries brought upon them by poverty or vice, and 
 indulging in outward curses as a verbal relief to their 
 inward " cussedness " of disposition and character. 
 
 From the houses of all these classes issue a crowd 
 of children that have breathed an atmosphere of blas 
 phemy from their birth, who are proficient in the 
 language of execration and malediction learned at the 
 parental hearth or den, whose every third word is an 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 77 
 
 oath, who are educating themselves in that form of 
 " self-culture " which may eventually lead them to the 
 penitentiary or the gallows, and who, in the energetic 
 words of an old divine, " seem not so much born as 
 damned into the world." It does not require any 
 deep sense of religion in the man that threads his 
 way through a group of these infantile tramps, these 
 childish ruffians, spawned on the sidewalk before 
 their wretched habitations, to feel a thrill of horror 
 as he hears the oaths that spontaneously leap forth in 
 their little shrill voices. Well, they have been born 
 and brought up in households in which the " wet 
 damnation " of bad whiskey in the stomach has found 
 its appropriate expression in the hot damnation of 
 execrations rushing to the lips. But then the " pity 
 of it," the horror of it, when you think of the desecra 
 tion of childhood. Everybody imbued with the least 
 tincture of literature is aware of a certain sacredness 
 that ideal minds, especially minds of a poetic cast, 
 attribute to children born in happy circumstances! 
 There is a feeling that the child, in its innocence, is 
 nearer to its Maker than the grown-up man, brought 
 into direct contact and conflict with the practical facts 
 of life. If we disregard Wordsworth s sublime ode, 
 "Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of 
 Early Childhood," we still must have some respect 
 for the emotion that uplifts the imagination and affec 
 tions of such an apparent worldling as Thomas Moore, 
 in his exquisite representation of the child in " Para 
 dise and the Peri." What a picture is that of the 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 hardened ruffian, as he gazes on the innocent boy 
 playing among the roses of the vale of Baalbec ! 
 Then, as he hears it, 
 
 "... the vesper call to prayer, 
 
 As slow the orb of daylight sets, 
 Is rising sweetly on the air, 
 
 From Syria s thousand minarets. 
 The boy has started from the bed 
 Of flowers, where he had laid his head, 
 Arid down upon the fragrant sod 
 
 Kneels with his forehead to the South, 
 Lisping the eternal name of God, 
 
 From Purity s own cherub mouth." 
 
 Now contrast this with the way " the eternal name 
 of God " is bandied about by the reckless urchins and 
 the unsexed girls that line the streets to every rail 
 road station in every city in the United States. The 
 merely respectable man shudders as he passes by 
 these outcasts, and congratulates himself, perhaps, 
 that he has hidden his offspring in some country 
 nook, where such words are unheard. But he is mis 
 taken. The disease of profanity is infectious. It 
 spreads like the measles, the scarlet fever, and diph 
 theria ; and ten miles of space cannot preserve his 
 own little innocents from the contagion. The great 
 mystery of life, if considered in the light of what is 
 called God s Providence, is the solidarity, the essen 
 tial union, of mankind, so that every wickedness and 
 corruption in the low and degraded populations mount 
 up into the higher and more educated ranks, just in 
 proportion as the higher in rank, wealth, and cultiva- 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 79 
 
 tion neglect the lower sunk in poverty, ignorance, and 
 vice. -There is no apparent reason why their offspring 
 should have a share in the contamination of the little 
 outcasts they shrink from in the streets. The Sunday- 
 school, the genial home, the academy, the college, the 
 exclusive social position they enjoy, these will keep 
 them from the dismal fate of the wretched " lowest 
 classes " they pity but make only ineffectual attempts 
 to raise. What is the result ? It is seen almost daily 
 in funerals, where pious fathers and mothers, who 
 have worked and prayed to shield their children from 
 the talk of the profane and the practice of the vicious, 
 have vainly striven, in scrutinizing the features of 
 their dead and dishonored sons, to call back in 
 memory " the smile of cradled innocence on the lips 
 of the coffined reprobate." The tragedy of life and 
 death is there. You should have known that you 
 cannot preserve your own protected children from 
 contamination, unless you labor to protect the ne 
 glected children of improvidence, carelessness, and 
 vice from what seems to be their inevitable doom. 
 Self-protection, dissociated from mutual protection, is 
 the imminent danger that our present civilization is 
 called upon to meet. 
 
 So far the practice of swearing has been condemned 
 on what the reader might call religious or sentimental 
 objections. Still, even those who ignore or deny the 
 existence of God, or have only a faint traditional 
 sense of religious obligation, are impelled by their 
 common sense and regard for common decency to 
 
80 THE SWEARING HxlBIT. 
 
 stigmatize profanity as at least vulgar. The conven 
 tional gentleman, though fifty or eighty years ago he 
 might consider an oath as an occasional or frequent 
 adornment of his conversation in all societies, no\v 
 reserves it for " gentlemen " alone, and is inclined to 
 deem it slightly improper in the society of ladies. 
 The improvement has been gradual, but it is still 
 growing, and in ordinary society blasphemy is ban 
 ished from the polite tattle and prattle of good com 
 pany, on the ground that it indicates a coarse nature, 
 or a very limited command of the resources of the 
 English language to express sterility of mind and 
 vacuity of heart. 
 
 But there is a coarse fibre in the physical and 
 moral constitution of the English race, which was 
 early indicated by its habit of profane swearing. 
 Curses were accepted as the signs of manliness. The 
 author whom we have taken as our guide makes a 
 desperate attempt to defend his countrymen in this 
 respect. He shows that a profane use of sacred 
 words is common to all races and nations, barbaric 
 as well as half civilized. This fact must be admitted ; 
 but in regard to modern times one must think that 
 the English have excelled all other nations in the 
 meaning and emphasis they have put into their words. 
 The Latin races swear more constantly and more 
 volubly than their Teutonic brethren, but their exe 
 crations are trivial in comparison with the deep- 
 mouthed and fierce-hearted oaths of the Anglo-Saxon 
 people. The imprecations of the Italian, especially, 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 81 
 
 seem to be mere outbursts of physical irritation, 
 without any solid purpose in them ; but in the ordi 
 nary English soldier and suilor profanity expresses 
 character. It is needless to go farther back than the 
 invasion of France in the fifteenth century. The 
 English were called by the French peasants, who did 
 not understand their language, "the Goddams." The 
 heroes of Agincourt were thus named, after their fa 
 vorite oath. When, afterward, the last step to make 
 France an English province, or to make England a 
 province of France, was thwarted by the genius and 
 faith of Joan of Arc, it is curious that this wonderful 
 peasant-girl was accustomed to name the English, as 
 distinguished from the French, " the Goddams." This 
 is the more to be noticed because she had an utter 
 horror of profanity. When she took command of the 
 six thousand soldiers that, under her lead, threw 
 themselves into Orleans, she first required that the 
 profane and dissolute French men-at-arms who 
 marched under her sacred banner should entirely 
 banish from their minds, as well as from their lips, 
 their copious stores of ribaldry and blasphemy. La 
 Hire, one of the bravest and coarsest of her captains, 
 growlingly consented to talk like a decent human 
 being. Yet she always spoke of the English by the 
 name they had doubtless acquired by the profusion 
 with which they lavished their national imprecation 
 on their enemies. Her knowledge of the English 
 language was probably confined to this single phrase. 
 When she was preparing her assault on one of the 
 
 6 
 
82 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 strongest forts that the English had erected against 
 Orleans, she was asked by a French soldier to partake 
 of a breakfast of fish before she set out on her haz 
 ardous expedition. " In the name of God," she ex 
 claimed, " it shall not be eaten till supper, by which 
 time we shall return by way of the bridge, and I will 
 bring you back a Goddam to eat it with." And in 
 her lonely dungeon, after she had been captured and 
 imprisoned, she proudly said to the earls of Warwick 
 and Stafford, " You think when you have slain me 
 you will conquer France ; but that you will never do. 
 No ! although there were one hundred thousand more 
 Goddams in this land than there are now." 
 
 English culture, as we have said, may have ban 
 ished from polite society the favorite oath of the 
 English race; but the rough, stout soldiers, sailors, 
 and pioneers of the race have carried the name that 
 Joan of Arc bestowed upon them in the fifteenth 
 century, to every savage and civilized clime in which 
 they have appeared. It is four hundred years since 
 their distinguishing imprecation was heard by Joan 
 on the walls of Orleans ; yet it is uttered now with 
 equal emphasis on our own Western plains, by those 
 pioneers that use, or rather misuse, the English tongue. 
 After New Mexico was organized as a Territory of the 
 United States, a gentleman of our acquaintance was 
 sent there to occupy an official position. When he 
 arrived at the point from which the wagon-train of 
 oxen and mules was to set forth for the place of his 
 future residence, he noticed that recent rains had 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 83 
 
 made the miserable roads seemingly impassable. He 
 asked a wretched-looking Indian savage, lounging 
 about the station, if he thought the train would get 
 through. " The ye-hocs may," he answered, " but I 
 don t believe the Goddams will." These terms he con 
 sidered the English names of the animals he pointed 
 out; for he had never heard their drivers mention 
 them as oxen and mules, but he so understood their 
 exclamations and execrations as to discriminate be 
 tween the designation given to the patient and for 
 bearing ox, and that plentifully bestowed upon the 
 obstinate and resisting mule. In fact, he had only 
 taken his first lesson in the English language, as 
 taught by our boasted pioneers of civilization. 
 
 Mr. Sharman (if that be his real name) attempts to 
 trace the oath to a French source. He declares that 
 at the time of Joan of Arc, " dame Dicu ! " was com 
 mon on the lips of Frenchmen, that the word Dieu 
 could not be pronounced by the rough Englishmen, 
 and " that they were accordingly forced to anglicize 
 it to fit it to the remainder of the oath ; " but this 
 derivation fails, because it is easy to prove that the 
 English never were driven to borrow such sulphurous 
 expletives from any nation they invaded. Their 
 " morning drum-beat " does not more certainly circle 
 the earth daily with their martial airs than with their 
 martial blasphemies. The French wits and satirists 
 have never wearied of fastening anew on the English 
 man the name by which he was called four centuries 
 ago. Voltaire, in his mock-heroic poem of " La Pu- 
 
84 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 celle," makes Talbot die, after a hard struggle, with an 
 intense utterance of the favorite English malediction 
 foaming from his lips. Beaumarchais, in the " Mariage 
 de Figaro," laughingly extols the beauty and compact 
 ness of the English language ; you only need, he says, 
 one expression (quoting that we have so often men 
 tioned), and it will go a great ways. There are other 
 words, he adds, used occasionally by the English in 
 conversation, but the substance and depth of the lan 
 guage is in that magical oath. In 1770, Lord Hailes 
 gives it as his experience, that in Holland, when the 
 children saw any English people they exclaimed, 
 "There come the ;" and that the Portu 
 guese, when they see an English sailor, accost him 
 with, " How do you do, Jack, dash you ? " Captain 
 Hall, many years ago, told us that when a Sandwich 
 Islander wished to propitiate a British crew, he ex 
 hibited his knowledge of the language they spoke by 
 exclaiming, " Very glad see you ! Dash your eyes ! 
 
 me like English very much. Devilish hot, sir ! 
 
 ." "We have a faint remembrance of a French 
 
 comedy, written about a century and a half ago, in 
 which a French imitator of English manners has con 
 trived to express his Anglican tendencies by swear 
 ing, " Dieu-moi-dam." In 1789 a farce was played in 
 Paris, in which one Williams enters a cabaret, with 
 the oath that betrayed his nationality. The person 
 addressed repeats the curse, and instantly adds, 
 " Monsieur est Anglais apparemment." Indeed, this 
 vice of profanity is so common in the English race 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 85 
 
 that historians of manners, all playwrights and novel 
 ists, have emphasized it. From the time of Henry 
 VIII. to the time of George IV. it raged with the 
 virulence of an epidemic. As the English race and 
 language seem bound to possess the greater part of 
 the earth, it is a pity that British soldiers and sailors 
 should have heretofore preceded its missionaries in 
 the conquest of savage or what are called pagan na 
 tions. It is said that there are certain barbarians in 
 whose limited dialects every word is associated with 
 some obscene or profane idea, and that the missionary 
 is utterly unable to convey to them a spiritual truth 
 or dogma, because the Bible, translated into their 
 language, becomes a support to their degeneration, 
 rather than affords an impulse to their regeneration. 
 It is probable that the civilized people that first meet 
 with them for the purpose of conquest or trade, only 
 add new words to their restricted resources of ex 
 pression in native obscenity and profanity. It is to 
 be regretted that the great colonizing enterprises of 
 Britain, if we except the persecuted nonconformists 
 that settled New England, carried English coarseness 
 and brutality and profanity to the same shores to 
 which they introduced British civilization. How 
 could the followers of Drake, Raleigh, and Cavendish 
 regard blasphemy as a serious offence, when they 
 must have known that their maiden queen, the hot- 
 tempered, despotic Elizabeth, swore as lustily as they 
 did ? Even grave historians tell us of a bishop who, 
 when he muttered some reluctance to obey, in one 
 
83 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 instance, her imperative command, was stunned by 
 
 her passionate answer : " Do it, or, by , I will 
 
 unfrock you ! " 
 
 In noting the connection of British profanity with 
 British colonization, the disastrous attempt of the 
 Scotch to colonize the Isthmus of Daricn must not 
 be overlooked. The expedition carried a goodly com 
 pany of clergymen to convert the heathen natives, 
 and Christianity was intended to consecrate com 
 merce. The colony failed as miserably in its theo 
 logical as in its commercial aim ; and the historian 
 tells us that " the colonists left behind them no mark 
 that baptized men had set foot on Darien, except a 
 few Anglo-Saxon curses, which, having been uttered 
 more frequently and with greater energy than any 
 other words in our language, had caught the ear and 
 been retained in the memory of the native population 
 of the Isthmus." 
 
 But to return. Through the reigns of James I. and 
 Charles I., the habit of swearing continued in the 
 higher as well as the lower classes. It was checked 
 somewhat in the despotic domination of the Puritan 
 Commonwealth, but broke out again, at the restora 
 tion of Charles II., with a fury that nothing could 
 withstand. Macaulay tells us that in the reaction 
 from the austerity of the Commonwealth the genera 
 tion that succeeded delighted in doing and saying 
 whatever would most shock their defeated enemies. 
 As the Puritan " never opened his mouth except 
 in Scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 87 
 
 gentlemen never opened their mouths without utter 
 ing ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, 
 and without calling on their Maker to curse them, 
 sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn 
 them." 
 
 " The Glorious Revolution of 1688," whatever it did 
 for constitutional liberty, did not do much to make 
 profanity unfashionable. Lawrence Hyde, Earl of 
 Rochester, did not swear in his cups more lustily 
 than Sir Robert Walpole, the astute Whig Premier, 
 in his orgies at his country seat. Pelham, and his 
 brother, the Duke of Newcastle, afterward the heads 
 of the great Whig connection, were not famous for 
 profanity, neither was Chatham ; but the plays of the 
 period, and the novels of Fielding and Smollett, prove 
 that profanity was quite an ordinary exercise of the 
 English lungs. To " swear like a lord " became, with 
 the rustic as well as the city populace, as much an 
 object of admiring wonder, as " to get as drunk as a 
 lord." Even women of rank did not hesitate to imi 
 tate of course, at a respectful distance, befitting their 
 inferior sex the more masculine profanity of the 
 acknowledged lords of creation. It is difficult to say 
 how long they availed themselves of their precious 
 privilege. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who did 
 not die much to the regret of her relatives until 
 1744, once called at the house of an eminent judge 
 on business. Learning from the footman that he was 
 not at home, the old harridan departed, in one of her 
 furious fits of irritation, without condescending to 
 
88 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 mention her august title. The servant, when ques 
 tioned by the judge on his return to the house as to 
 the name of his visitor, could only answer that she 
 had not mentioned her name, but that " she swore 
 like a lady of quality." 
 
 There is, unhappily, a class of men who, in differ 
 ent degrees of depravity, seem possessed by the devil. 
 They experience a strange delight in exalting their 
 own wills above all moral law. They are sufficient 
 to themselves. They despise what they call the poor 
 weaklings of superstition, who are ruled by such ab 
 ject sentiments as wonder, reverence, and awe. They 
 disbelieve in them because they have never felt them. 
 They are under the delusion of a moral and mental 
 color-blindness, and have no vision of spiritual facts 
 that are plain to humbler mortals. Tt is difficult to 
 assert that they have souls, either to be saved or to be 
 exposed to the other alternative ; but if beneath the 
 thick scum of evil experience that has settled on their 
 minds and characters there remains a faint, unextin- 
 guished spark of immortal fire, their souls are of a 
 kind that " rot half a grain a day," and promise to 
 go on rotting until they reach the appointed term 
 of their earthly lives. These creatures find a strange 
 pleasure in showing their superiority to common folk, 
 by disgusting all decent people whose ears unfortu 
 nately come within reach of their tongues, by their 
 ribaldry, and shocking by their blasphemy all devout 
 people that are placed in the same predicament. The 
 world has been sufficiently sermonized on the sin of 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 89 
 
 self-righteousness ; but neither preacher nor satirist 
 seems to have emphasized the opposite vice, namely, 
 self-unrighteousness, though it is but too common. 
 The self-righteous man is ever self-complacent when 
 he views the multitude of trembling sinners that have 
 not, as he has, a through ticket to pass from the tomb 
 to the Celestial Kingdom, signed by the proper au 
 thority ; the self-unrighteous man, scorning all con 
 sideration of the possible life beyond the grave, laughs 
 at the fears of those whose cry is, " What shall I do 
 to be saved ? " and by his conduct and conversation 
 seems to be eager to mock the supplication of peni 
 tent hearts by defiantly substituting for it that other 
 question, " What shall I do to be damned ? " 
 
 It is curious how many men of eminent ability, or 
 eminent frivolity, have asserted their self-unrighteous 
 ness in this fashion. The frivolous do it to astonish 
 their fellow-coxcombs by a display of what they call 
 courage, with probably little deeper feeling than that 
 of the good boy, brought up to reverence holy things 
 on the mechanical method adopted by his self-right 
 eous parents, who accordingly hated in his heart all 
 the uncomprehended words they had lodged, by a ma 
 chine process, in his memory, and who sulkingly con 
 fided his secret scepticism to a companion of his own 
 age and degree of theological culture, as they returned 
 one Sunday from church, in the words that he " didn t 
 care for God, nor Christ, nor any of em ! " But this 
 desecration of what is essentially sacred is connected, 
 even in the most frivolous natures, with a certain per- 
 
90 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 versity, which Edgar Poe thought, or said he thought, 
 inherent in the constitution of human beings. It cer 
 tainly seemed in him to be inherent ; it doubtless in 
 many cases comes, like the gout or any other trans 
 mitted physical disease, by inheritance ; but as to 
 the mass of human beings perversity is generally the 
 perversion of qualities originally intended for good. 
 When it appears in shallow minds and hearts, this 
 perversity is expressed in the fundamental dogma of 
 profligacy, that vice and profanity confer distinction. 
 Consequently, a rivalry springs up among the pro 
 fessors of this school of licentiousness and blasphemy, 
 and lies are told by these aspirants for an infamous 
 reputation, not for the purpose of denying the crimes 
 against society that they have actually committed, but 
 for the purpose of circulating monstrous rumors of 
 their success in blasting the reputations of virtuous 
 wives whom they know only by name, and of un 
 spotted maidens they may have chanced to meet in 
 a drawing-room. So great a poet as Byron stooped 
 to this ignoble ambition. The published " Memoirs " 
 that relate to the social manners and ethics of both 
 France and England during the last and the first quar 
 ter of the present century, are full of details respecting 
 this detestable race of shallow-hearted, feather-brained, 
 and thoroughly depraved coxcombs. The creatures 
 still survive, often in the highest circles of fashion 
 able society. To do them justice, it must be admitted 
 that they are commonly physically brave. The Eng 
 lish Guards, at the battle of Waterloo, maintained 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 91 
 
 their reputation for valor better than the Imperial 
 Guard that " dies but never surrenders ; " and their 
 gallantry forced from Wellington the curt remark, 
 " The puppies fight well." In the Crimean War the 
 "dandy" officers exhibited the same English pluck, 
 with, we trust, a higher regard for morality. 
 
 It may be said that those who have contracted 
 the habit of using oaths to give force, emphasis, or 
 audacity to their conversation, are roughly divisible 
 into two classes, the reclaimable and the irreclaim 
 able. The first class is composed of men who swear 
 from the surface and not from the substance of their 
 minds ; who, provided they have a sufficiently strong 
 motive, can cure themselves of the habit, as they can 
 cure themselves of the habit of smoking or drinking, 
 by means of reflection and volition. It is difficult, 
 however, to rouse careless and heedless natures to a 
 sense of the folly and indecorum, not to say the wick 
 edness, of their flippant blasphemies. Charles Lamb, 
 when once asked why he did not give up the practice 
 of smoking, humorously replied, " Because I cannot 
 find an equivalent vice." It is in some such light 
 way that practitioners in swearing are apt to evade 
 the remonstrances of friends whose sense of decency 
 their easy and voluble stream of profanity disgusts 
 or shocks. Still, these men are reclaimable, though 
 after conquering the habit they may occasionally show 
 that they once allowed themselves to be conquered by 
 it. Thus, we knew a man of talent and energy who 
 ha<J cultivated the art of swearing from his youth 
 
92 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 upward, but who, in mature age, had married, had be 
 come a father, and had to some degree " experienced " 
 religion. Still, in moments of high emotion, when he 
 was off his guard, an oath would slip into the begin 
 ning of a sentence that ended in something like a 
 prayer. Thus, on one occasion, when he was dilating 
 to us on the theme of his happiness in his new life, he 
 
 rapturously exclaimed, " By ! my friend, when I 
 
 look at that child of mine, and think of what he may 
 become to me, I feel thankful to God that he has 
 vouchsafed to me such a blessing ! " 
 
 The second class of swearers we have called the ir 
 reclaimable, for the reason that profanity has become 
 a part of their organism. About thirty years ago an 
 Englishman, who had been lessee and manager of 
 Drury Lane Theatre, and in that capacity had had an 
 altercation with Macready which resulted in a prose 
 cution against the actor for a personal assault, came to 
 the United States for the purpose of lecturing on the 
 stage. His memory was full of recollections of distin 
 guished actors, and his power of mimicking their great 
 " points " was remarkable. His imitations of the elder 
 Kean were specially notable, in respect both to voice 
 and gesture. But his seemingly unconscious profanity 
 astonished even those whose oaths were about one in 
 ten or fifteen of the words they used in familiar con 
 versation. He swore as instinctively as he breathed. 
 At a dinner to which he had been invited, the present 
 writer sat on the right side of him and a clergyman 
 on the left. The latter was introduced to him as 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 93 
 
 Doctor C. Mr. B. began to talk fluently of his expe 
 rience with actors and of the drama, sprinkling his 
 sprightly narratives with so many unnecessary exple 
 tives that his right-hand neighbor had to whisper to 
 him that Doctor C. was not a doctor of medicine, but 
 a doctor of divinity. The scene that ensued was su 
 premely ludicrous. Mr. B. turned, with extreme earn 
 estness and politeness, to the clergyman, professed his 
 great regard for " the cloth," dashed his eyes, body, 
 and soul to everlasting perdition, declared if he had 
 known the profession of his auditor he would not have 
 used such words as might be offensive to his sacer 
 dotal ears, and in three minutes contrived to condense 
 into his apology more blasphemies than he poured 
 forth in the original offence. Everybody present must 
 have been impressed with the fact that in him, as in 
 many similar swearers, profanity was a secretion in 
 the throat. 
 
 We have only space to devote a little consid 
 eration to what may be called executive swearing. 
 Though this may be more or less effective as a means 
 of menace and intimidation, as it comes from the 
 mouths of resolute, aggressive, strong-minded, coarse 
 grained men, who are habitual swearers, it has still 
 the greatest power when occasionally employed by the 
 strict economists of the language of profanity. The 
 rarity of an oath increases its force. General Lee 
 felt the truth of this when Washington, at the battle 
 of Monmouth, discharged upon him a series of male 
 dictions for his misconduct, which owed their smiting 
 
04 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 force to the fact that he had been selected from all the 
 subordinate generals of the Revolutionary army to call 
 forth such unaccustomed words from the lips of the 
 general-iii -chief. " Beware," says the poet, " beware 
 the anger of a patient man." Fortitude and self-com 
 mand are not virtues of cold natures, but are really 
 powers fused into intrepid character by an inward fire, 
 the external expression of which is sternly repressed ; 
 but there are occasions in war though General 
 Grant seems never under any circumstances to have 
 been provoked into profanity when folly, stupidity, 
 disobedience to orders, or treachery, is so plain that 
 the hidden heat in the heart of the commander rends, 
 for a time, all obstructions to its seemingly profane 
 utterance, and blazes out in words that strike the per 
 son at whom they are aimed with the effect of blows. 
 In the lives of most eminent men, specially distin 
 guished for their fortitude, we notice these infrequent 
 escapes of moral wrath, though the terms in which 
 they are clothed may be such as disgust us in the 
 language of a pot-house belcher of oaths. Shaks- 
 peare, who has touched almost every phase of human 
 character, has not overlooked these occasional out 
 bursts of passion in men that are noted for coolness, 
 self-possession, and self-command. Take this passage 
 from the third act of " Othello " : 
 
 " lago. Is my lord angry 1 
 
 Emilia. He went hence but now, 
 
 And certainly in strange unquietness. 
 
 lago. Can he be angry ? I have seen the cannon, 
 When it hath blown his ranks into the air, 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 95 
 
 And, like the devil, from his very arm 
 Puffed his own brother : and can he be angry ? 
 Something of moment then ; I will go meet him ; 
 There s matter in t indeed, if he be angry." 
 
 This parsimony in the use of profane expressions is 
 specially noticeable in men of business, when the mer 
 chant or banker is a man of integrity and of high busi 
 ness capacity. There is, of course, a large number 
 of traders whose natures are irritable, petulant, and 
 passionate, who seize every opportunity to exercise 
 their proficiency in profanity ; who swear jocosely 
 when they have made a good bargain, and fiercely 
 when they have made a bad one ; who pester the ears 
 of their clerks and shopmen from morning to night 
 with their resounding execrations, and impartially 
 curse their Maker whether they have failed or suc 
 ceeded in cheating others. Such shops and counting- 
 houses are kindergartens for the practical teaching of 
 blasphemy. But able men of business rarely indulge 
 in this license of the tongue. A number of years ago 
 we knew intimately a Boston banker of exceptional 
 capacity, who in all conditions of the money-market, 
 especially in periods of financial panic, was ever im- 
 perturbably calm. It happened that on one occasion 
 he had joined in a moderately successful speculation 
 with an outside operator, and his partner for the time 
 was to come at ten o clock in the forenoon to claim 
 his share of the profits. At nine o clock the banker 
 had placed in his hands proofs that the other party 
 had played false in the whole transaction. The would- 
 
96 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 be swindler entered the office of him whom he con 
 sidered his dupe, in an easy, confident manner. The 
 banker looked not so much at as through him, sub 
 jected him to a few stern, searching questions, and 
 the scamp s confused and hesitating answers con 
 firmed his guilt. Then came out the hoarded wrath 
 of the banker, in terms that seemed to force their 
 way into the very soul of the detected trickster. His 
 fit reply would have been, in the words of an old 
 English dramatist, 
 
 " I have endured you with an ear of fire ; 
 Your tongue has struck hot irons on my face ! " 
 
 But failing in these forcible expressions, which so 
 well indicated the appearance of his ears and cheeks, 
 he stumbled down the office stairs with the gait of a 
 man consciously bound for the place to which he was 
 wrathfully consigned. We do not remember having 
 heard the banker swear either before or after this 
 supreme occasion. 
 
 Some arbitrary rulers have a tendency to assume a 
 certain grandiloquence in their oaths. William the 
 Conqueror swore by " the Splendor of God ; " Henry 
 II., by " God s Eyes ; " and Charles the Bold, by " the 
 hundred thousand devils of hell," in this phrase in 
 dicating how accurate a census he had taken of those 
 inmates of pandemonium who most had possession of 
 himself. Other rulers, gifted with a strong sense of 
 religious duty, have denounced terrible punishments 
 against the profane. Saint Louis of France ordered 
 
THE SWEARING HABIT. 97 
 
 that the tongue of the utterer of oaths should be 
 branded with a red-hot iron ; and his gay courtiers 
 were driven to ingenious contrivances of verbal ar 
 rangement, by which they might express the sub 
 stance of swearing without using the words. At the 
 period of the English Commonwealth the soldier was 
 compelled to abstain from profanity by fear of the 
 penalties attached to its use. In 1649 a quarter 
 master was tried by a council of war for the of 
 fence, declared guilty, and sentenced, not only to 
 have his sword broken over his head, and to be 
 dismissed from the service, but to have his tongue 
 bored with a red-hot iron. In the old drama of " The 
 Witch of Edmonton," the author cautions, through 
 the mouth of the devil himself, the passionate blas 
 phemer against what may be the result of his callings 
 on the devil : 
 
 " Thou never art so distant 
 From an evil spirit, but that thy oaths, 
 Curses, and blasphemies pull him to thine elbow." 
 
 Indeed, in hearing some men swear, the hearer is 
 almost converted to the old doctrine of demoniac pos 
 session. What most impresses us, is the utter sense 
 lessness, the pure insanity, of his curses and maledic 
 tions. For it is the Almighty that this " aspiring lump 
 of animated dirt" blasphemes. The folly of it can 
 only be fitly described in that energetic and vivid pas 
 sage in which Dr. South draws the contrast between 
 the power of the offender and the divine object of his 
 puny wrath. u A man so behaving himself," he says, 
 
 7 
 
98 THE SWEARING HABIT. 
 
 " is nothing else but weakness and nakedness setting 
 itself in battle array against Omnipotence ; a handful 
 of dust and ashes sending a challenge to all the host 
 of heaven. For what else are words and talk against 
 thunderbolts, and the weak, empty noise of a queru 
 lous rage against him who can speak worlds, who 
 could word heaven and earth out of nothing, and can 
 when he pleases word them into nothing again ? " 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 WE live under a republican form of government, 
 where the rights of the citizen are supposed to be 
 jealously guarded by law. Leaving out some limita 
 tions on the right of voting, which will readily occur 
 to every reader, the statement is correct. The po 
 litical rights of the individual are on the whole well 
 secured and maintained ; but these are not sufficient 
 to confer social happiness. Political rights enable a 
 man to have a voice in deciding what persons shall 
 rule over him, and make and execute the laws of the 
 country. But his political well-being may be rela 
 tively perfect while his social well-being is constantly 
 vexed and tormented by certain peculiarities in the 
 organization, or rather disorganization, of his house 
 hold. He votes at certain times and at certain places 
 once, twice, or thrice a year, and the annual expendi 
 ture of time in exercising this august privilege of the 
 freeman is hardly an hour; but taking man and 
 wife as one as soon as he proudly leaves the polls 
 and enters his own house, he is no longer an indepen 
 dent citizen of a " great and glorious country," but an 
 abject serf, utterly dependent on the caprices of his 
 domestics, or, as they are ironically named, his " help." 
 He finds his wife the victim of an intolerable tyranny, 
 
100 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 which presses on her every day and almost every 
 hour, exerting her energies in often vain attempts to 
 put down an insurrection in the kitchen, or to concil 
 iate the insurgents. He may have been during the 
 day threatened by a strike of the laborers in his 
 workshop, and have used all the resources of his 
 patience, intelligence, and character in so adjusting 
 matters that his men, being reasonable beings, agree 
 to a compromise between labor and capital which 
 does justice to both. When he arrives at his house 
 he encounters a conflict in which sullen stupidity, or 
 vociferous stupidity, each insensible to reason, is en 
 gaged in battle with the " lady of the house." This 
 last conflict is too much for him ; he commonly suc 
 cumbs with the meekness of a galley slave, and witli 
 a rueful countenance tries to eat his half-done pota 
 toes and over-done beefsteak with the solemn compo 
 sure of a martyr at the stake. 
 
 It is important here to note that this is not a ques 
 tion of equality. The nominal master and mistress 
 of the house may be just and humane, considerate of 
 the rights of others, and sensitive not to wound their 
 feelings ; but they have to submit to the mortifying 
 fact that the object of their help is to render them 
 helpless; that a despotism is established in their 
 house: and that their tyrants are their hired servants. 
 There is more or less resistance going on for a time, 
 but the autocracy of the kitchen is firmly established 
 in the end. Frequent changes of help do little good. 
 One spirit seems to animate the whole class. The 
 
DOMESTIC SEEYICE. "i Ol 
 
 new-comers announce, in true monarchial fashion : 
 " The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen ! " Those 
 who are dismissed find comfort, as they depart, in 
 hearing this triumphant strain from the lips of their 
 successors. They glow with the thought that the 
 household from which they are expelled will still be 
 taught to know that domestic life is indeed a " fitful 
 fever;" that the art of "slaughtering a giant with 
 pins " is not yet extinct in the world ; and that the 
 process of converting homes into hells is as well 
 understood by the incoming as by the outgoing deni 
 zens of the house. 
 
 There is a story going the round of the newspapers 
 to this effect, that a wife, after reading the report of 
 Queen Victoria s speech, told her husband she was 
 now a convert to woman suffrage, as the queen had 
 made as good a speech as a king. Her husband 
 objected on the ground that Victoria, like the rest 
 of her sex, when she says anything always makes a 
 mess of it. " Look." he continued, " at the Irish " 
 "Yes," she retorted, "look at the Irish. If she had 
 half the trouble with her Bridgets that I have, who 
 blames her " " But that is a matter of statesman 
 ship, and not of domestic affairs," was his response. 
 Her reply was crushing: "My dear, it requires states 
 manship to run domestic affairs. You just try it." 
 Probably this excellent stateswoman, with her power 
 of managing refractory tempers and enforcing neces 
 sary rules, must often have been beaten in her efforts 
 to maintain her persuasive or belligerent supremacy, 
 
102 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 must have sometimes sighed as she heard what 
 Hood calls that " wooden damn " with which Bridget, 
 after a reproof, slams the door as she descends to the 
 realms she rules, and heard, with a sinking of the 
 heart, the crash of crockery (sworn to be accidental) 
 which occurred soon afterward. In fact, no states 
 man or stateswoman has yet solved the problem 
 and it may be that it is a problem impossible to be 
 solved by human skill and intelligence how to har 
 monize the relations between those who hire and 
 those who are hired, so that persons of limited in 
 comes can have a comfortable home. Take the ma 
 jority of modest householders, who set up house 
 keeping on fifteen hundred or twenty-five hundred a 
 year, and ask them, after twenty years experience 
 of the petty miseries attendant on their employment 
 of one or two domestics, the terrible pessimistic ques 
 tion, "Is life worth living?" and it is to be feared 
 that their answer would be a sorrowful or splenetic 
 or passionate " No ! " 
 
 More than half a century ago, Colonel Hamilton, 
 one of the officers who won their laurels in Welling 
 ton s campaigns in Spain and Portugal, published a 
 book which he called " Men and Manners in America. 1 
 He criticised both our men and manners with a caus 
 tic severity such as might have been predicted when a 
 bigoted Scotch tory assailed the people and institu 
 tions of a republic. His work exasperated almost 
 every American who read it, and Edward Everett 
 never wrote a more popular paper than his scorching 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 103 
 
 criticism of it in the "North American Review." The 
 book is now forgotten. Still one sentence in it sur 
 vives in the memories of antiquarians, and it is this : 
 " In an American dinner party, the first dish served 
 up is the roasted mistress of the house." It is to be 
 supposed that the author only condescended to dine 
 with persons distinguished by their opulence or official 
 position ; and it seems to prove that domestic service, 
 fifty or sixty years ago, in the mansions of the rich 
 was as much in a state of anarchy, owing to the in 
 competence or ill temper of the cook and her assist 
 ants, as it is now in humbler dwellings. Indeed, 
 who has not occasionally seen, at ordinary dinner 
 parties where no aristocratic Colonel Hamilton is 
 present, the flaming countenance of the mistress of 
 the house, as she takes her seat at the head of the 
 table, indicating how hard has been her contest with 
 her " help " ? 
 
 But at the time a Mrs. Schuyler, or a Mrs. Adams, 
 or a Mrs. Quincy may have appeared to the British 
 guest as a victim to the incompetency of her cook, a 
 representative of the great house of Devonshire was 
 subject to a tyranny of another kind. The duke hap 
 pened to be prejudiced against port wine, which those 
 who were admitted to his great dinner parties pre 
 ferred to other wines. The duke s butler, knowing 
 his master s taste, provided the best champagne and 
 claret that could be purchased in Europe, but bought 
 the worst port he could find at a low price, and 
 charged the duke at the price which was notoriously 
 
104 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 demanded by wine dealers for the best. The im 
 position was successful for years. Nobody who was 
 invited to the dinners of a duke could dare to remon 
 strate against the liquid logwood they swallowed as 
 port. At last one friend had the courage to tell the 
 duke that his butler was a rascal. The result was 
 an investigation of the facts ; the offending servant 
 was ignominiously dismissed, but not until he had 
 amassed a comfortable amount of some two or three 
 thousand pounds as a compensation for his disgrace. 
 
 This is a pertinent illustration of the difference 
 between our domestics and those of England. People 
 are never tired of berating ours as barbarians, and 
 contrasting them with those of England, who are 
 thoroughly tamed and trained, and do their work with 
 exemplary skill and propriety. In the great houses 
 of England most of the servants are sycophantic and 
 crafty, bending their knees in prostrate adoration be 
 fore the " gentry " they serve, but at the same time 
 taking every secure opportunity to pick their pockets. 
 An English servant of an English noble is apt to be 
 the most ignoble of men. 
 
 But the female English domestic is the ideal of 
 many American women who can afford to hire one. 
 The history and literature of England show the in 
 correctness of this assumption. Take the literature 
 of England from the time of Charles the Second, and 
 you will find that a majority of the clear-cited drama 
 tists and novelists represent the servant maids as 
 the obedient accomplices of their mistresses in every 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 105 
 
 questionable act they do but plundering those whom 
 they serve. Even to the present day one can hardly 
 enter a theatre without finding the pert and unscrupu 
 lous chambermaid of the comedy to be a lively com 
 bination of liar and trickster, an expert in effrontery, 
 malice, and mischief, and destitute equally of the 
 sense of honor and the sense of shame. 
 
 In the last century, Fielding condensed the whole 
 class in his Mrs. Slipsop. u My betters ! " she indig 
 nantly exclaims, " who is my betters, pray ? " As to 
 the large question of domestic service, Dickens and 
 Thackeray, in our own generation, have shown what 
 people have to endure in the continual hostility be 
 tween the kitchen and the drawing-room. David 
 Copperfield, when he has won the adorable Dora, his 
 "child wife," is daily tormented by the doings and 
 misdoings of the wretches she employs as servants, 
 and whom the adorable Dora is utterly incapable of 
 converting into " help ; " and in the household of Mr. 
 Dombey, what a picture is presented of the kitchen 
 aristocracy of the mansion in which the great mer 
 chant dwells, and in which he has the pretension 
 to believe that he is the lord and master ! How is 
 he looked down upon, when he fails, by the mean 
 est menial whose business it is to scrub the floors of 
 his house ! Indeed, the description of the assembly 
 of Mr. Dombey s domestics, when it is known that 
 the firm of Dombey & Son has fallen into cureless 
 ruin, is one of Dickens s masterpieces. Thackeray, 
 in all his novels, seems to be haunted with the idea 
 
106 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 of the utter falsity of English domestics, from the 
 august butler of the palatial mansion down to the 
 wench who does the lowest work of the cheap board 
 ing-house. He is never more cynical than when he 
 records the scandalous and unfavorable judgments 
 delivered by the tenants of the kitchen on their mas 
 ters and mistresses. One would hesitate, indeed, to 
 undertake the forming of a household in England, if 
 he were dolorously impressed by Thackeray s moni 
 tions as to the essential antagonism between those 
 who dwelt below the drawing-room and those who 
 dwelt in the room itself. The two, being separated 
 by distinction of caste, can rarely have with each 
 other cordial human relations. There may be for 
 mal subordination and obedience on the part of the 
 servants ; but hate, envy, uncharitableness, rankle 
 beneath the mask of sycophancy they wear. 
 
 Much has been written about realistic fiction as 
 distinguished from fiction which is eminently unreal 
 istic ; and English novelists who belong to the latter 
 class are still prone to push upon the attention of 
 their readers a revival of the old feudal relation 
 between mistress and maid. It seems from these 
 novels that they are bound together by the ties of 
 mutual affection. The mistress condescends to make 
 her maid her confidante, confides to her all her 
 griefs and joys, and is rewarded for her protecting 
 kindness by awakening in the bosom of her maid 
 a sentiment of love which is entirely independent of 
 self-interest. The husband of the lady is ruined by 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 107 
 
 a trusted friend, who proves to be a villain, or he is 
 made a bankrupt by some unfortunate speculation, 
 or he is suspected of a crime which compels him to 
 fly from his home and country, at any rate, he dies 
 forever or disappears for a time. The disconsolate 
 wife or widow calls the roll of her " pampered min 
 ions," pays them their wages up to the day of their 
 separation, and they depart from the house with an 
 ill-concealed scorn of their ruined employer. But one 
 aged domestic remains ; she protests that she will 
 never leave her mistress ; she will serve her with 
 out wages, nay, all the money she has saved up for 
 a series of years shall be forthcoming at this mo 
 ment of financial distress in the household ; and ends 
 by flinging herself into the arms of her dejected mis 
 tress, and in a flood of tears declares that she will 
 never desert her beloved mistress never ! never ! ! 
 never ! ! ! Three points of admiration hardly do jus 
 tice to the pathos of the scene. Scores of novels 
 might be named in which it is rehearsed to the im 
 mense satisfaction of sentimental readers, who would 
 never do anything of the kind themselves. Practical 
 people are now apt to consider this disinterested, this 
 sublime self-devotion of the feminine servant to the 
 feminine employer as something bordering on the un 
 real, so far as their experience goes. Perhaps some 
 of them are malicious enough to remember Mrs. 
 Micawber s repeated statement to David Copperfield, 
 when the hot punch was passed around the table, 
 that, despite the injurious opinions which her dis- 
 
108 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 tinguished relations had formed of her husband s ca 
 pacity to get an honest living for himself and family, 
 she would never desert Mr. Micawber never, never, 
 never ! 
 
 Indeed, persons of limited incomes, whether poets, 
 scientists, mechanics, clerks, or philanthropists, are 
 commonly subjected, and always have been subjected 
 to the tyranny of domestics, without regard to their 
 place of residence in one country or another. Neither 
 genius, nor integrity, nor virtue, nor fame, nor saint- 
 liness of character, can check a virago s tongue when 
 she condescends to enter a comparatively poor man s 
 home, after she has served an apprenticeship, even as 
 scullion, in the mansion of a millionnaire. Perhaps 
 nothing could better illustrate this fact than to cite 
 an instance from the biography of one of the most 
 prominent poets of the century. Thomas Campbell, 
 after publishing " The Pleasures of Hope," and many 
 immortal lyrics, such as " Hohenlinden," " Ye Mari 
 ners of England," and " The Battle of the Baltic," 
 which had thrilled the whole nation, settled down in 
 Sydenham with his wife and child, poor, but with 
 a great and wide poetical fame. In a letter to an 
 other immortal, Walter Scott, he humorously nar 
 rates a comic epic which had occurred in his own 
 home. It seems that he hired a cook, recommended 
 to him as faithful and sober, who had been, with 
 her husband, for many years on board of .a man- 
 of-war. In the course of seven weeks, however, she 
 developed her real character, and went from bad to 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 109 
 
 worse. " One fatal day," Campbell says, " she fell 
 upon us in a state of intoxication, venting cries of 
 rage like an insane bacchanalian, and tagged to our 
 names all the opprobrious epithets the English lan 
 guage supplies. An energetic mind, in this state of 
 inflammation, and a face naturally Gorgonian, kindled 
 to the white heat of fury, and venting the dialect of 
 the damned, were objects sufficiently formidable to 
 silence our whole household. The oratrix continued 
 imprecations till I locked up my wife, child, and 
 nurse to be out of her reach, and descending to the 
 kitchen, paid her wages, and thrust her forthwith out 
 of my doors, she howling with absolute rage. Dur 
 ing the dispute, she cursed us for hell-fire children of 
 brimstone, whose religion was the religion of cats 
 and dogs. I asked the virago what was her religion, 
 since her practice was so devout. Mine, says she, 
 is the religion of the Royal Navy, at the same time 
 showing a prayer-book. After vainly trying to set 
 the house on fire, this curious devotee set off for 
 London on the top of a stage-coach, cursing as she 
 went." 
 
 It seems to us that this is a typical scene. It has 
 been witnessed since by so many small householders, 
 that it is needless to remind them that a certain ele 
 ment of ceremonial religion mixes with the ribaldry 
 and blasphemy of such domestics. " Mine," the 
 drunken brute exclaims, " is the religion of the Royal 
 Navy." All persons who have borne an active part 
 in turning such creatures out of their houses must 
 
110 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 have noticed that a vague sense of formal piety finds 
 utterance in their wild maledictions ; still it is a piety 
 which comforts itself in predicting sure future dam 
 nation to the masters or mistresses who call it forth. 
 But perhaps the worst of the matter is, that such 
 domestic hornets develop the habit of swearing in 
 employers who previously had shown no tendency to 
 the vice. Indeed, to many heads of families a course 
 of housekeeping is a school of profanity. 
 
 The domestic service of the United States is mostly 
 composed of immigrants who differ from their em 
 ployers in race, manners, and religion. In one of the 
 most splendid orations of Edward Everett, he happily 
 contrasted the peaceful emigrants who came from 
 Ireland, Germany, and other European countries to 
 settle here, with the descent of the barbarians on the 
 Roman Empire. The former came to increase enor 
 mously the wealth and productive power of the nation 
 they peacefully invaded ; the warlike mission of the 
 latter was to destroy and devastate what the genius 
 and industry of former centuries had accumulated. 
 The former came to create new capital ; the latter 
 to annihilate the capital which had previously been 
 added to the stores of civilization. Indeed, the im 
 mense debt which we owe to what is called foreign 
 labor though laborers from abroad are so swiftly 
 assimilated into the mass of our citizens, that the 
 word foreign hardly applies to them is practically 
 incalculable. It has been for some time considered 
 that the yearly additions to our population from this 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. Ill 
 
 source is, in a great degree, an index of our advancing 
 prosperity. 
 
 There are evils resulting from this rush of new 
 powers and influences into the rapid stream of our 
 American life, but the evils are overcome in time by 
 counterbalancing good. It certainly is provoking to 
 have a few foreign socialists, escaping perhaps from 
 the prisons of their native countries, or from the fear 
 of being imprisoned in them, coming to this land of 
 liberty and labor, and in corner groceries and lager- 
 beer saloons announcing the doctrine that laborers 
 cannot get their rights, unless they begin their cru 
 sade against capital by robbery, arson, and murder ; 
 but it is hard to convince a workman who really 
 works, that he is to become better off by destroying 
 the palpable and permanent monuments of previous 
 generations of laborers, such as houses, mills, rail 
 roads and, other evidences of labor capitalized. In 
 deed, the belligerent socialist is merely a reproduction 
 of Attila and Alboin, acting a part which is foreign 
 to our present civilization. 
 
 This is one side of foreign immigration, its be 
 neficent side. The other side relates to the mothers, 
 daughters, and sisters of the inflowing host, who " go 
 out to service," and who control most of the business. 
 The gradual disappearance of American girls from 
 service in families is a calamity both to themselves 
 and the public, and it is based on an absurd prejudice 
 that they lower their position and forfeit their inde 
 pendence in doing what they call menial work. They 
 
112 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 accordingly rather prefer to labor in factories, or 
 swell the crowd of half-starved sewing-women, than 
 to gain board, lodging, and good wages in a private 
 family. The result is that the Irish, German, and 
 Swedish women, who have had no education qualify 
 ing them for the business of cooks and general house 
 hold work, learn their duties by experimenting on the 
 meats given them to prepare for the table, and on the 
 floors and carpets they are to scrub or sweep. This 
 Kindergarten system results in educating them at last 
 into domestics, but it is at the expense of a great 
 breaking of crockery, a series of burnt steaks and 
 chops which are uneatable, and a trial of the em 
 ployer s patience, which gradually results in nervous 
 prostration. The servants undoubtedly follow the 
 Baconian theory that knowledge is obtained by obser 
 vation and experiment ; but their experiments resem 
 ble those of the Irish pilot, who, after remarking to 
 the captain of the ship that the coast was full of 
 sunken rocks, casually added as the vessel struck, 
 " and that is one of em ! " 
 
 It would be a lesson in the study of human nature 
 to note all the varieties of experience which the mis 
 tress of a house passes through when one servant, 
 who has been educated in this way, departs, and 
 another, who has also obtained an approximate idea 
 of what good housekeeping means, applies for the 
 vacant place. There is no form of " interviewing " 
 more prolific than this of incidents illustrating the 
 conflicts and collisions of adverse specimens of 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 113 
 
 human character. There, for instance, is the inter 
 esting invalid, who is bullied and browbeaten by the 
 energetic virago who storms into the house, demands 
 the wages which she thinks her services are worth, 
 obtains them, and then dominates the household, 
 reigning supreme until the master of the establish 
 ment is compelled to interfere, and dismisses her 
 with words that savor more of strength than of right 
 eousness. The list might go on to include the fretful, 
 the economical, the bad-tempered, the shrewd, the 
 equitable, the humane female heads of households 
 that require help, but find it difficult to procure from 
 those who offer it. Perhaps it would be well to con 
 dense and generalize the whole matter in dispute by 
 citing an example in which the applicant for a situa 
 tion was confronted by a woman who had a touch 
 of humor in her composition. In all the dignity of 
 second-hand finery, resplendent with Attleboro dia 
 monds and rubies which must have cost at the least 
 a quarter of a dollar a gem, the towering lady sweeps 
 into the parlor, and demands a sight of the lady of 
 the house. The meek lady of the house appears. " I 
 understand you want a second girl to do the house 
 work." " Yes," is the gentle response. The high 
 contracting parties forthwith proceed to discuss the 
 terms of the treaty by which the claimant for the 
 office of second-girlship will condescend to accept the 
 place, stating her terms, her perquisites, and her right 
 to have two or three evenings of every week at her 
 own disposal, when her engagements will compel her 
 
114 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 to be absent from the house. The reply is, " It seems 
 to me, if we comply with your terms, it would be 
 better for my husband and myself to go out to service 
 ourselves, for we never have had such privileges as 
 you claim." " That is nothing to me. I have lived 
 in the most genteel families of the city, and have 
 always insisted on my rights in this matter. By the 
 way, have you any children?" "Yes, I have two." 
 " Well, I object to children." " If your objections, 
 madam, are insuperable, the children can easily be 
 killed." " Oh ! you are joking, I see. But I think I 
 will try you for a week to see how I can get along 
 with you." The curt response is : u You shall not try 
 me, but the one minute which elapses between your 
 speedy descent from those stairs, and your equally 
 speedy exit from the door." The high contracting 
 parties being unable, under the circumstances, to for 
 mulate a treaty agreeable to both, the applicant for 
 the vacant place disappears in a fury of rage. 
 
 It may be said that this is a caricature of what 
 actually occurs in such interviews and encounters ; 
 but it has an essential truth underneath its seeming 
 exaggeration. In almost all the professions and occu 
 pations in which men are engaged, the supply is com 
 monly more than equal to the demand. In domestic 
 service the supply of intelligently trained servants is 
 notoriously far short of the demand. One must notice 
 the readiness with which clubs, of late, are formed, 
 for advancing all imaginable causes which can arrest 
 the attention of intelligent, patriotic, philanthropic 
 
DOMESTIC SERVICE. 115 
 
 men. They meet weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, at 
 some hotels noted for their excellent method of cook 
 ing the fish and flesh which are daily on the dinner- 
 tables of the members, but cooked on a different 
 method. The Sunday newspapers report the effusions 
 of eloquence which the Saturday meetings call forth. 
 The clubs multiply also with a rapidity which puzzles 
 ordinary observers to account for their popularity. 
 Perhaps a simple reason may be timidly ventured as 
 an explanation of this phenomenon. Men who are 
 classed as prosperous citizens like a good dinner, 
 which they cannot get at home, and at stated periods 
 they throng to a hotel, where the Lord sends the 
 meats, and at the same time prevents the devil from 
 sending the cooks. 
 
 It will be said that this attack on the present disor 
 ganization of our domestic service is one-sided. It is. 
 Doubtless much may be urged in reply, arraigning the 
 conduct of employers, and defending that of the em 
 ployees. Many evils of the present relations between 
 the two might be averted by a mutual understanding 
 of each other s motives and aims. Still the previous 
 education of domestics, not only in the enlightenment 
 of their minds, but in the regulation of their tempers, 
 is the pressing need at present. If some charitable 
 person should start a College for the Education of 
 Female Domestics, its success in increasing human 
 happiness would prompt others to follow in his lead. 
 Such a college might turn out thousands on thousands 
 of competent servants every three or four months. 
 
116 DOMESTIC SERVICE. 
 
 The diplomas it would give would command attention 
 at once ; and the way now followed, of sending to 
 the girl s " references " and receiving evasive replies, 
 would be discountenanced. It would also give all 
 classes of domestics a great lift in social estimation ; 
 the certificates, that they have graduated with honor 
 in such colleges, would be equivalent to the B.A. or 
 A.M. of colleges of another sort, when a young stu 
 dent applies for the position of schoolmaster in a 
 country town or village. At any rate, a vast mass of 
 unnecessary misery in families might be prevented, 
 and a large addition made to the stock of human 
 happiness. 
 
RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 
 
 IN the various works written by devout, learned, 
 and " liberal " theologians on the harmony between 
 religion and science, there appears to be a general 
 oversight of the "esoteric" doctrine the inner and 
 fundamental principle of much current scientific 
 theorizing. Theologians are apt to consider the ques 
 tion as if it were simply a question of the credibility 
 of the Bible. It goes much deeper than that. It 
 relates to religion itself, not merely to the Christian 
 religi on, but to all religions. Historically it is ad 
 mitted, on rationalistic grounds, that what is called 
 "the spiritual nature of man" demands a religion of 
 some kind. The philosophic scientists question the 
 propriety of this appeal to man s spiritual nature. 
 The theological rationalists are, in fact, quite ortho 
 dox in comparison with many of the theorists of 
 " advanced " and advancing science. And even 
 among the latter there are degrees of audacity. 
 Some of them question the possibility of a personal 
 God, but are willing to compromise with man s 
 " spiritual nature " by admitting the validity of a 
 vague Pantheism. Others, shocked at the sentimen 
 tality of their speculative brethren, remind them that 
 Pantheism is as much opposed to positive science as 
 
118 RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 
 
 Deism. The human understanding, according to the 
 latter class, is simply the result of a development of 
 the forces of Nature, which dates back to the nebu 
 lous mist out of which worlds were formed, and 
 which arrived at last, through the travail of un 
 counted millions of years, to the brain of the monkey, 
 and has thence been developed into the brain of 
 Aristotle and Descartes, of Dante and Shakspeare, 
 of Kepler and Newton. Conceding that God, or gods, 
 may be ahead in this process of development, it is an 
 outrage, they insist, on common sense to assert that 
 either God or gods are back of it. " We know," they 
 say, " nothing of the matter ; our faculties are too 
 limited to see any sense in what theological and 
 metaphysical dogmatists have confidently announced. 
 But, modest thinkers as we are, we recommend that 
 men confine themselves within the sphere of positive 
 knowledge. In positive knowledge no God is appar 
 ent. On our theories of positive knowledge, no God 
 can ever be apparent ; for finite intelligence must 
 ever be confined within the limits of finite facts and 
 laws. We can get along very well without your hy 
 pothesis of a creative God, a hypothesis which has 
 now, in the language of a selfishly sagacious French 
 bookseller, lost all interest with the public. You say, 
 quoting one of your antiquated religious books, that 
 the heavens declare the glory of God ; we say, after 
 M. Comte, that they rather declare the glory of 
 Kepler, Newton, and La Place. You say, from the 
 same authority, that man was created a little lower 
 
RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 119 
 
 than the angels ; we are satisfied in knowing that he 
 has been developed into a condition which is now, 
 thanks to " natural selection," a good deal higher 
 than that of the monkeys. The fundamental point 
 of difference between you and us is this : " That we 
 do not admit your right to speak of a living God, 
 either personal or impersonal. In making the asser 
 tion, you simply show your ignorance of the progress 
 of scientific philosophy, based, as it is, on ascertained 
 facts and demonstrated laws. At the best, your as 
 sumption must be considered premature. All we 
 know is that we have got far beyond our immediate 
 ancestor, the monkey. Monkey has become man. 
 Rest in that consoling fact." 
 
 Theologians and metaphysicians, who may be dis 
 posed to be perfectly fair to their opponents, answer 
 these theorists in this way: "Admitting your ex 
 planation of what we call the creation of nature and 
 man, there is still no need to deny a Creator. Your 
 theory, supported as it is by many facts scientifically 
 established, but with many other facts entirely un 
 explained, may be God s method of creation. We 
 are willing to admit that He created, according to 
 your conceited method ; but why deny him ? " The 
 scientific theorists answer : " We can do without 
 him." " But where did you get your nebulous mat 
 ter?" "That," is the sulky reply, "is something 
 outside of positive science." " But you, after all, rest 
 the world, as in the old times, when philosophy was 
 notoriously ww-positive, on an elephant ; and you can t 
 
120 RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 
 
 find anything for the elephant to stand on." " We 
 don t trouble ourselves to find anything for it to 
 stand on. That s a work beyond the capacity of the 
 human faculties." " But, if it be beyond the capacity 
 of the human faculties, it is still shown by experience 
 that it is not beyond the capacity of human nature." 
 "What you call human nature, as distinguished from 
 human intelligence, is a confused mass of stuff, made 
 up of sentiment and imagination, and of no logical 
 bearing on the question." In short, men of this kind 
 indicate, mentally, a disease similar to that which 
 oculists style color-blindness. People afflicted with 
 color-blindness are often gifted with more than or 
 dinary understanding ; but it is impossible to argue 
 with them on the difference between red and blue, 
 " They do not see it." They are men of a vigorous 
 intelligence, who, in a similar way, can get no idea 
 of Cause. They are deficient in the power of per 
 ceiving it, and think that those who do perceive it 
 are under a hallucination. The mental, like the 
 bodily eye, is apt to be blind in some respects when 
 it is uncommonly sharp-sighted in others. 
 
 It is obvious that the advanced guard of scientific 
 theorists have, at least, as much im-scientific pre 
 sumption, bigotry, and intolerance as some of their 
 most unreasonable theological opponents. Hypothe 
 sis is an admirable aid and guide to investigation ; 
 but it is as intolerable when it dogmatizes scientifi 
 cally as when it dogmatizes theologically. Positive 
 philosophy has no right to go beyond generalized 
 
RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 121 
 
 knowledge, from theories of the universe, and then 
 enforce them on the intelligence of mankind as in 
 disputable facts, which it is idiotic or superstitious 
 to deny or to denounce. It violates its own principles 
 in attempting to explain what it declares to be es 
 sentially unexplainable. The heart of the mystery 
 has notoriously not been yet reached by science. If 
 we give up the old idea that man was created in 
 the image of God, let us have manliness enough to 
 refuse assent to the proposition that he was created 
 after the image of Huxley, or Darwin, or Spencer. 
 However much we may honor the force and com 
 prehensiveness of such individual minds, they still 
 are not gods. Holmes in a recent paper humorously 
 wonders whether the race will hereafter substitute 
 Anno Danvini for Anno Domini; and thinks that, 
 even in case of such a change, the convenient A. D. 
 will be retained. This stroke of wit lights up as by 
 a flash of lightning the absurdity of supposing that 
 any scientific theory of the present day can control 
 the science of a thousand years hence. 
 
 But, leaving out of view the scientific theories 
 which are put forward to satisfy man s insatiable 
 intellectual curiosity, the essential question comes up: 
 " Will man, centuries hence, be content to substitute 
 generalized knowledge for religion ? " 
 
 It seems to us that the inmost essence of man, 
 his soul, will more than keep pace with the progress 
 of his mind in knowledge. God will be as near to his 
 heart as now, and as distant from his understanding 
 
122 RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 
 
 as now. The Divine nature will never lose its intimate 
 hold on human nature, and never be comprehended 
 by the human intellect. God will be everlastingly in 
 the soul of man, and everlastingly outside of the grasp 
 of his thought. As the scientific development pro 
 ceeds, it will be more and more felt that God leads it 
 on. His " grace " will be recognized by future New- 
 tons, as well as by future Wesleys. We were never 
 more struck by an intense shock of surprise than 
 when we heard a distinguished naturalist say, at a 
 dinner-table, that at the critical moment of his investi 
 gations, at the time his mind was on the brink of a 
 discovery at the time he was, as he thought, pene 
 trating into a jealously guarded secret of Nature he 
 involuntarily uttered a prayer to God to guide and 
 direct him. He felt, he said, the Divine Presence as 
 soon as he really entered His heretofore concealed 
 domain. He was impressed with his own individual 
 nothingness in coming into direct contact with a new 
 natural truth. He prayed by instinct, not by re 
 flection. Indeed, he would be rejected now from 
 most churches as imperfect in the faith ; but still 
 he prayed while he was in the spiritual ecstasy of 
 discovering. He felt the need of divine " help " in 
 his human work, and he frankly acknowledged it. 
 
 We suppose that no thinker is more repugnant to 
 orthodox divines than Ernest Renan. His defects 
 are obvious ; but he is still true to what may be 
 called the right side of the fundamental question at 
 present argued between theologians and such scien- 
 
RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 123 
 
 tists as ignore or deny God. He accepts the theories 
 of development and evolution without a question. In 
 a remarkable article, contributed some ten years ago 
 to the " Revue des Deux Mondes," but of which his 
 admirers equally with his adversaries seem to be 
 strangely ignorant, he regrets that he had not chosen 
 science rather than history for his work in life. But, 
 he adds, what is science but history in its most com 
 prehensive form ? Science gives the history of evolu 
 tion, in the long passage of the nebulous mist into 
 its final product, the brain of man. That, says 
 Renan, is God s method, as far as science now knows 
 it. But science shows that, in the slow but sure 
 operation of natural laws, the solar system must be 
 destroyed. Still the catastrophe is far from being 
 probable, much less certain. A million of years is a 
 comparatively short period in the figures of astron 
 omy. If scientific men have during the past hundred 
 and fifty years made such enormous advances in the 
 discovery, control, and application of the forces of 
 Nature, why should they not, in the course of a mil 
 lion years, contrive to arrest the seeming tendency 
 of our little solar system to self-destruction ? In a 
 century and a half much has been done ; what may 
 not be done in ten thousand centuries in a " square " 
 fight of the quick faculties of mind against the slow 
 operations of matter ? A hundred thousand of cen 
 turies would be a very moderate computation for any 
 disturbance which would knock our planet to pieces 
 and dissolve it into the shining dust out of which 
 
124 RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 
 
 systems are made. Our foremost men of science are 
 mere babes in knowledge, as well as in power, com 
 pared to the men who will rise within the next thou 
 sand years, if science and invention go on at their 
 present continually accelerated pace. Why, on this 
 principle, should not man at the end of a million 
 years obtain control of the whole solar system ? 
 Why should he not at that distant period be in the 
 position of the God of the present popular theology ? 
 But Renan is careful to add : Man in this supposed 
 enormous extension of his power over Nature, would 
 still find the Infinite just as far beyond his thought 
 as he is now, and just as near his soul as he is now. 
 No possible increase of his power can decrease the 
 sense of his dependence. The enlargement of his 
 knowledge can only give him a larger perception of 
 the Divine Omniscience ; the increase of his power 
 can only give him a more vivid feeling of the Divine 
 Omnipotence. Carry out the principle of human 
 progress as far as you may, extend it to the time 
 when man will be almost the master of Nature, and 
 God will be still as far off as he is now, and the 
 spiritual nature of man will crave him even more in 
 tensely than it did when " stocks and stones " were 
 worshipped as divinities. 
 
 We have referred to Renan because he happens 
 to be a person who feels the need both of the mind 
 and the heart. He is a " rationalist" of the extreme 
 type. He accepts both the facts and the theories of 
 scientists. But, in his French way, he still softly 
 
RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 125 
 
 exclaims, " Glory be to God ! " Mild, polite, com 
 plimentary as he is to the savants, he still says to 
 them : " Gentlemen, your idea of ignoring God and 
 the spiritual nature of man is Darwinism reversed. 
 You will conduct us back to the monkeys, rather 
 than aid us to extend the space which separates us 
 from them." 
 
 In concluding, we would say that the idea of a 
 personal and infinite God is at the base of all re 
 ligion, as far as religion has any interest to the 
 "advanced" scientists of the present time. Renan 
 predicts that a million of years hence the scientists 
 will be more inclined to admit this fundamental 
 truth than they now seem disposed to be. It appears 
 ridiculous to declare that God Almighty is still alive, 
 and that our modern theorists have not succeeded 
 in dethroning him. The disciples of Epicurus repre 
 sented the gods as laughing at the folly and short 
 comings of men. Can we not, without irreverence, 
 think of God as, at least, smiling at the vagaries of 
 the men that he has endowed with exceptionally 
 vigorous powers of scientific speculation ? He is ever 
 lastingly safe from all attempts of human beings to 
 deny or ignore him ; but the sceptics are no less his 
 agents than the believers. He uses them as instru 
 ments to keep practical piety on a level with doctrinal 
 piety. Every revolt ends in adding to his adherents. 
 That nobody can evade God is just as apparent in 
 the present " enlightened " age as it was in the 
 worst ages of superstition ; and it will be as ap- 
 
126 RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES. 
 
 parent millions of years hence as it is now. The 
 Devil himself serves Him. Indeed, the Devil is, after 
 all, raised up, now and then, to teach theologians that 
 there is something in their doctrines or in their lives 
 which needs to be corrected. 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 IT has been very well said that he has the best 
 digestion who never is reminded that he has any 
 digestion at all, and that the model of all stomachs 
 was that of the eupeptic clodhopper, who devoured 
 his food without any uncomfortable after-thoughts, or 
 ever knowing that he had any stomach. The same 
 principle holds good of the body politic, and it is a 
 sign that something is out of the way in the social 
 system whenever it is so restless as to be continually 
 feeling its pulse or looking at its tongue, and asking 
 the doctors what can be the matter. Our good Old 
 America is now somewhat in difficulty of this kind, 
 and has painful misgivings lest he may have taken 
 into his capacious mouth some foreign substances that 
 cannot possibly be assimilated. He is asking him 
 self what is proper food for himself and his children, 
 somewhat more careful than usual of the distinction 
 between the true American and the foreign elements. 
 Sometimes our ambition has been to expatriate our 
 selves as much as possible, in our manners and habits 
 at least, if not in our residence. In the parlor or ball 
 room we have been fond of being French ; at the con 
 cert and opera, Italian ; over the cigar and the choco 
 late, Spanish ; after dinner, over the bottle, not a few 
 
128 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 have been inclined to be English ; at elections, the 
 fashion has been somewhat Irish ; in philosophy, Ger 
 man ; while a few inglorious citizens have been dis 
 posed to play the Turk, and, under the lead of Joe 
 Smith, run into abominations that would have made 
 Mohammed s beard curl with disgust. Now we are a 
 little less ashamed of our own birth and breeding, and 
 our own natal star shines out with new radiance from 
 the studded heavens. Some of our people have indeed 
 discovered new charms in Russia, and their polar star is 
 in the constellation of the Great Bear. Not a few there 
 are who have been ready to doff the Hungarian plume 
 for the Russian sable, and pledge the nation to the Czar, 
 as before to the Magyar dictator. But the most promi 
 nent tendency of late has seemed to be toward a more 
 positive nationality of our own ; and surely the present 
 position, as well as the intrinsic importance of the sub 
 ject, justifies an article upon the characteristics of the 
 true American, as we understand them. 
 
 We start in a very commonplace way, and maintain 
 that the true American is, first of all, true to his soil, 
 or to the land of his birth and home. It is some 
 times said, indeed, that it is a sorry kind* of feel 
 ing that attaches itself to localities ; that it is the 
 heart of a cat that stands by the mere place, while the 
 human heart goes with friends, and finds its home 
 wherever they are. For this very reason we should 
 be true to our own country ; for we look upon it, not 
 so much as a vast tract of land, as the abode of our 
 friends, the sphere of our labor, and the inheritance 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 129 
 
 of our children. The land may be, in fact, called 
 the homestead of the nation, calling out at once our 
 toil and our tastes, our energy and our affections to 
 till and beautify its domain. We may even go further, 
 and say that the land is the physical framework of 
 the nation, the earthly organism through which it 
 develops its powers. Look at our country in this 
 way, and instead of seeing so many square miles of 
 territory, we behold the limbs and features of a gigan 
 tic physical constitution. The great lakes and rivers 
 are our country s heart and arteries ; the mountains 
 the shoulders and backbone ; the forests the lungs ; 
 the sea-coast the arms ; the flowing winds and waters, 
 with all the great currents of trade, are the healthful 
 tides of circulation that feed and quicken the colossal 
 brain. Every country has its own peculiar form and 
 physiognomy, and ours is sufficiently marked to make 
 it ours. Bounded by twin oceans and their mighty 
 tributary gulfs and lakes, our America has a unity 
 from God s own hand ; and what God hath joined, let 
 not man try to put asunder. The Mississippi, with its 
 various roots and branches, repeats in every wave the 
 compact of our national union between North and 
 South. The twin oceans no longer divide East and 
 West. God has raised up two providential men to 
 join the Atlantic to the Pacific shore. Fulton s re 
 volving wheel and Franklin s electric wire have made 
 San Francisco neighbor to New York ; and California 
 is but one of the pockets of our great seaports. 
 
 The American, in being true to his country, will be 
 9 
 
1-30 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 true alike to its productive utilities and to its adapta 
 tion to beautiful tastes. With him the useful and tht 
 beautiful should be but different aspects of the same 
 bountiful heritage ; and in the inarch of his compre 
 hensive and far-seeing policy, refinement walks hand 
 in hand with industry. The landscape smiles more 
 sweetly to the eye from the plenty that is garnered 
 from well-tilled fields, and the trees of the forest 
 whisper a richer blessing when their murmur joins 
 with the voices of the children and parents whose 
 home rises from beneath the friendly shade. Let the 
 physical resources of our country be developed by our 
 largest policy and bravest enterprise. Let the mill- 
 wheels of the North cry out to the cotton of the South, 
 " Come forth, and let us work together, and weave 
 for our country a nobler tissue than the loom can pro 
 duce ! " Let the teeming grain-fields of the West 
 wave health and greeting to the workshops of the 
 East, in token of the mighty compact between the 
 agriculture and the mechanism of the nation. Let 
 the gold that is washed by waters from the Rocky 
 Mountains shout out to the iron and the coal in the 
 Alleghanies, " Come forth, and let us run such a race 
 together as the world has never seen ! " The gold 
 giving the sinews, and the iron the arms and feet, and 
 the coal the moving power in a campaign of peaceful 
 industry that shall make war hide his diminished head. 
 By a due encouragement of agriculture, by a judicious 
 protection of our own manufactures, by a wary guar 
 dianship of our commerce, let all the industrial inter- 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 131 
 
 ests of the country be quickened and reconciled, until 
 America shall be the blessing of Americans, without 
 being the foe of any nation under the sun. Let beau 
 tiful tastes follow in the wake of wholesome utilities. 
 Let every man who cuts down a tree, where its place 
 is needed for nutritious grain, honor the beauty that 
 falls to the ground, transfer its grace to the waving 
 corn, and not fail to plant another tree wherever its 
 shade is needed. Let the landscape-gardener, the 
 surveyor, the architect, combine their taste with the 
 teachings of Nature, and have an eye to radiant health 
 and artistic beauty, quite as much as to gain and con 
 venience. Let the poet and the orator not spare their 
 gift, nor fail to weave into their verse and eloquence the 
 names that stand for the loveliness and the grandeur 
 of our land. God has given America goodly gifts, yet 
 they have been too little developed. Her treasure, like 
 that to which the divine kingdom was likened, is hid 
 den in a field, and only he who tills the field faith 
 fully can find it. Says that philosopher among geog 
 raphers, Guyot : " America looks toward the Old 
 World ; all its slopes and its long plains slant toward 
 the Atlantic, toward Europe. It seems to wait with 
 open and eager arms the beneficent influence of the 
 man of the Old World. No barrier opposes his pro 
 gress ; the Andes and the Rocky Mountains, banished 
 to the other shore of the continent, will place no obsta 
 cle in his path." Thus invited by the very inclination 
 of the land, the chosen man came, and began to culti 
 vate his domain. The wilderness became a garden. 
 
132 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Stand at the mouths of one of our great rivers ; look 
 upon the forest of masts at our wharves, so freighted 
 or fruited with the products of our soil, to be ex 
 changed for the commodities of every land under the 
 sun ; read the returns of our census ; then speak 
 not of the great things that America has done, but 
 of the grandeur of her future if her sons are only 
 true to her soil. 
 
 Her sons who are her sons ? They, of course, 
 who best embody her spirit and carry out her destiny. 
 They are pre-eminently the sons who have the blood 
 of the sires who made America our mother. We 
 maintain, then, in the next place, that the true Amer 
 ican is true to his blood, the old blood that came 
 hither from Europe in the veins of our wisest and 
 strongest colonists (not last nor least of whom were 
 the pilgrims of the "Mayflower," and the Dutch of 
 Manhattan, our own peculiar ancestors). All history 
 shows the power of blood over circumstances as much 
 as agriculture shows the power of the seeds over the 
 soils. The main strength of the American nation has 
 come from the free people of Northern Europe. the 
 Teutonic, and especially the Anglo-Teutonic races, 
 who brought liberty and law to the New World. We 
 are not disposed to narrow down our nationality, much 
 less our humanity, by any prejudices of race, and we 
 are ready to allow that there has been a great deal of 
 folly on both sides, in the quarrel between the Celtic 
 and the Anglo-Saxon partisans. The Anglo-Saxon is 
 but one tribe of that great division of the Caucasian 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 133 
 
 family to which our people belong. As known in Eu 
 rope, the Caucasian family has had three branches, 
 the Celtic, the Teutonic, the Slavonic. The Celt and 
 the Teuton have had many a bloody quarrel with each 
 other ; but of late much of their blood pulsated to the 
 notes of the same martial music, under the flags of 
 France and England, that waved together their de 
 fiance against the Slavonic banner floating on the 
 the walls of Sebastopol. Of the three branches, thus 
 far the most vigorous and fruitful in our modern his 
 tory has been the Teutonic, and those who have been 
 ingrafted upon its stock. Now it is very clear that 
 the chief portion of the American people came from 
 the Teutonic branch, no matter whether as in the 
 case of New England, Virginia, and Maryland the 
 seed went first from Northern Europe to England, 
 and thence to America, and so became Anglo-Saxon ; 
 or whether as in the case of New York, New Jer 
 sey, and Pennsylvania it remained in continental 
 Europe until transplanted hither in the Dutch and 
 Germans. Call the majority of our people Anglo- 
 Teutonic, Anglo-Gothic, Anglo-Germanic, or Anglo- 
 Saxon, as you will. No matter, if we only know 
 what the terms mean, and designate by them the 
 descendants of the Northern Europeans who came to 
 America, and made the English language the voice of 
 their faith and their freedom. 
 
 Two great classes of men appear in history : the 
 one class impulsive, impassioned, tending strongly 
 toward a sensuous ritual and a centralized priesthood 
 
134 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 and empire ; more ready to persuade than to reason, 
 to -venture than to persevere; not a little prone to 
 exaggeration alike in speech and action, yet full of 
 generous enthusiasm, and, by very temperament, elec 
 tric and eloquent ; the other class self-poised, delib 
 erate, jealous of priesthoods and thrones, calculating 
 the end carefully, and very slow to yield an inch of the 
 ground once taken ; at the same time cautious and 
 courageous, fond of solid comfort, yet readier far to 
 starve than to beg, and more quick to deeds than 
 words ; constitutionally suspicious of large talk and 
 fine sentiment. Of the former class the Celt is 
 the most conspicuous and characteristic specimen, 
 whether full blooded, as in most of Ireland, and in 
 the Scotch Highlands, or modified by other races, as 
 in France, Spain, and Italy. Of the latter class the 
 Anglo-Teuton, or the Anglo-Saxon if we must re 
 tain the common but somewhat incorrect word is 
 the most characteristic specimen that we can choose 
 from the great Teutonic family to which he belongs. 
 It is he who has given our country most of its charac 
 ter, ideas, and institutions. The Frenchman on our 
 northern frontier with his volatile nature, the Span 
 iard at the South with his reserved, impassioned zeal, 
 were not to rule ; and the destinies of North America 
 were to be decided chiefly by the race that founded 
 Jamestown and Plymouth, and gave language and 
 law to the land. If we are to distinguish at all be 
 tween these two sets of English colonists, the cava- 
 liers of Virginia and the Puritans of New England, 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 135 
 
 we must rank the latter as of the purer Teutonic type, 
 and having less of the mixture of French blood which 
 the Norman aristocracy received from their abode in 
 France and bequeathed to the new nobility of Nor 
 man England. Yet in these the Northman s blood 
 predominated over the Celtic mixture, and it may be 
 said with truth that the main founders of the nation, 
 whether English, or Dutch, or German, brought with 
 them hither the hearts of freemen, and claimed every 
 triumph of popular liberty not as the gift of a strange 
 bounty but as the restoration of an old right. Our 
 blood is free blood, and has been so for ages, during 
 the march of our fathers from their first home in Cen 
 tral Asia to the western coast of Europe and thence 
 to America. We sell our birthright whenever we sell 
 our liberty for any price of gold or honor. 
 
 Yet follow out the lessons of our blood, and we find 
 that our hearts are not bound to beat unkindly to 
 ward races of different lineage. The civilization of 
 Europe has sprung from the mingling of the three 
 great races of the Caucasian family. Who can spare 
 from our literature the great names given by each 
 branch, who scorn Copernicus because he was Polish 
 and probably Slavonic, who scoff at Dante because 
 Celtic, and who refuse to place them upon the same 
 place of honor as our own Milton, and Shakspeare, 
 and Newton ? Surely the New World should not be 
 less generous than the Old World, and we are not to 
 repeat on these great shores the petty feuds that have 
 fallen into disrepute in Europe. There is room for 
 
136 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 the Celt of every clime, whether from Italy, France, 
 Scotland, or Ireland. Of the latter branch of the Cel 
 tic family we have had perhaps a little too much, es 
 pecially of a certain quality. We have had too much 
 of the dregs of Erin in our political cup, and the tea 
 has been considerably too green for the pure Ameri 
 can taste. But wiry not cure the evil in our own way, 
 instead of borrowing any new tyranny from the Brit 
 ish oppressor ? We are for giving the Irishman the 
 same justice that others of similar blood and creed 
 have found, and we are on this very ground in a better 
 way to prevent his doing us the injustice which some 
 of his bad advisers may have been scheming. We 
 believe that there is a providential aspect in the rela 
 tion of the Irish to America, and in the tendencies, 
 old and new, which balance their influence. They, 
 for the most part, represent the form of worship once 
 supreme in Christendom, and thus hold up for our 
 careful study and practical scrutiny the whole genius 
 and history of ages which now stand embodied in 
 churches and colleges whose crosses are rising on 
 every side among our academic halls and city spires. 
 The young, restless heart of the nation is thus re 
 buked by the stern rule of Hildebrand, and the new 
 science of Yale and Harvard is now startled as by the 
 spectre of the ancient lona, roused from her sepul 
 chral sleep in mouldering cells. The Celt brings hither 
 a church that can teach the American many a lesson in 
 personal discipline and spiritual experience ; yet he 
 must have a very defective vision to see any prospect 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 137 
 
 of Romanizing the heart of a nation in its whole his 
 tory and progress so indomitably Protestant as ours. 
 The old North blood in our veins never beat kindly 
 toward the Pope ; the sons of the sea-kings never had 
 much fancy for the amateur fisherman who professes 
 to sit in Saint Peter s chair ; and the ancient quarrel 
 is not likely to be made up so long as the blood lasts. 
 Yet it should be a part of our freedom and faith to 
 give all creeds liberty of utterance, and we are not in 
 any way to invade the spiritual privileges of the new 
 comers to our shores because they are taught by a 
 priesthood such as Charles Carroll recognized. Let 
 us be willing to see the worthy elements in all 
 religions, and not play the Pharisee in the name 
 of .Him whose gospel came from the Nazareth that 
 the Pharisee scorned. If we fight Rome we must 
 fight with our weapons, which we understand, and 
 not with hers, in which we are no match for her. If 
 we try to beat the Jesuits by secret cabals and con 
 spiracies, they probably understand that game better 
 than we. The better way is to fight darkness with 
 light ; and every morning s sunshine with its expand 
 ing radiance teaches the true policy of freedom against 
 spiritual despotism. Remember that the Celt must 
 be Americanized in time, if we only let him be, 
 and that nothing can tend more than personal pro 
 scription to arrest the virtually Protestant feeling that 
 is already putting a check upon priestly interference 
 in our financial and political affairs, and claiming 
 for the Roman Catholic people the right to hold and 
 
138 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 control ecclesiastical property which they purchase. 
 France has put a check upon Romish domination, 
 and her chief prelates have been an honor and 
 strength to the nation. May not American liberty 
 do as much as the French throne, and pastors of the 
 stamp of Fe nelon and Cheverus here teach piety to 
 their flocks without teaching servitude, and win souls 
 to God without mortgaging our soil to the virtual sub 
 jects of a Roman king ? The true course of toleration 
 and caution will help the Celt as much as ourselves, 
 and the sooner he learns in the true school a little 
 of our own self-reliance, the better for all parties. 
 
 We must not forget to consider the providential 
 balance between him and his emigrant companion the 
 German, or between the Irishman, the Anglo-Saxon s 
 original neighbor, and the German, so nearly his kins 
 man by common Teutonic origin. It will be well for 
 us if we are sagacious in playing off the excesses of 
 the two against each other, and offsetting Irish impul 
 siveness and zeal for the priesthood by the German s 
 more phlegmatic individuality and political radicalism. 
 Far more of a neutralizing power than we usually 
 suppose comes from the constant battle going on 
 between the more ultra German democratic organs 
 and the Irish Catholic presses in this country. So 
 long as one party maintains, as it sometimes does, 
 that every church and all religion is a conspiracy 
 against liberty, and the other maintains, as it some 
 times does, that all liberty of opinion is impiety, and 
 that a little burning of Bibles and Bible readers may 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 139 
 
 not always be a bad thing, we are willing that they 
 should use each other up, confessing that we feel 
 somewhat like the backwoodsman s wife, who saw 
 her drunken husband fighting with a bear, and said 
 that for her part she was for fair play, and " did n t 
 much care which licked." Neither, however, is to 
 prevail ; and the old blood, with its sober balance 
 between freedom and order, is to carry the day against 
 the new centralization and the new anarchy. 
 
 In some respects we may not be unwilling to win 
 advantage from the new-comers to our shores. Per 
 haps our hereditary stiffness, in joint and manner, 
 may be a little lessened by the contact with Celtic 
 enthusiasm, and our tongues may be loosened by 
 French vivacity as much as our roads are smoothed by 
 Irish spades. Perhaps, too, our excessive proneness 
 to luxury and ostentation may be somewhat corrected 
 by German frugality and taste. We must not forget 
 that Germany is famous for something more than 
 lager bier, sauerkraut, and tobacco-pipes, and that the 
 purest art and the deepest scholarship comes to us 
 from countrymen of Luther and Schiller, who are 
 sometimes in danger of starving on our shores for 
 lack of the Yankee tact in catching the nimble dollar 
 as it flies. 
 
 If fairly understood and judiciously treated, the 
 foreign element cannot be a very dangerous one. By 
 the last census the foreign-born portion constitutes 
 but eleven per cent of our free population. If we 
 make a rough guess and divide this eleven per cent 
 
140 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 into two equal parts, one would be nearly all Celtic 
 and the other nearly all Teutonic. Thus, of these 
 two drops of blood transfused into our body politic, 
 the one is more quick with Celtic oxygen, the other 
 more solid with Teutonic nitrogen, and the heart of 
 the nation does not lose its balance by the transfusion. 
 Let that heart beat bravely in the good old way, and 
 it will take the new elements without harm into its 
 circulation. It is indeed true that our patience has 
 been sorely tried in some quarters, and that it de 
 mands of a native American no little philosophy to 
 keep cool when he sees the ignorant horde of foreign 
 ers crowding our ballot-boxes and clamoring for our 
 land and goods, spending their earnings in good times 
 on beer and whiskey, and criticising our soup in bad 
 times. We have been too long imposed upon by the 
 braggadocio of foreign ruffians, and it is high time to 
 stop their mouths. But while we revise our naturali 
 zation laws, and demand perhaps longer residence 
 and proofs of sufficient education before admitting 
 foreigners to citizenship, let us not forget that most 
 of the difficulty has come from the baser sort of our 
 own politicians ; and our pot-house demagogues, aided 
 perhaps now and then by a foxy ecclesiastic, have been 
 the wire-pullers of the disgraceful business. The sta 
 tistics of the last census have thrown daylight into 
 the political arena, and it is the revelation of the weak 
 ness of the foreign element among us more than any 
 secret societies that has raised the cry, " America for 
 Americans ! " a cry quite just if we define the term 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 141 
 
 " Americans " largely enough to cover all loyal citi 
 zens of our republic, lovers of its liberty and laws. 
 
 After all that may be said of the new elements, the 
 old blood is the main dependence of the nation, and 
 the coming of the Anglo-European to this hemisphere 
 is the chief event in history since the rise of the Chris 
 tian religion. With his coining came the union of 
 the two hemispheres, so beautifully delineated by the 
 poet among our geographers. America, lithe and 
 graceful, in form a woman, waiting, guarded by twin 
 oceans, was unconscious of her mighty destiny that 
 was to ally her with Europe so remote and unknown, 
 Europe, as a continent, square and solid, like the 
 figure of a man. May we not recall Tennyson s ex 
 quisite description of the sleeping beauty as we think 
 of America, our fair mother, before startled from her 
 slumber by the coming of her lord ? 
 
 " Year after year unto her feet, 
 
 She lying on her couch alone, 
 Across the purpled coverlet, 
 
 The maiden s jet-black hair has grown, 
 On either side her tranced form 
 
 Forth streaming from a braid of pearl : 
 The slumbrous light is rich and warm, 
 
 And moves not on the rounded curl. 
 
 " She sleeps ; her breathings are not heard 
 
 In palace chambers far apart ; 
 The fragrant tresses are not stirred 
 That lie upon her charmed heart." 
 
 In God s own time the ocean gates were passed. 
 The bravest of the Europeans won America for his 
 
142 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 own ; the winds of heaven, in their deepest swell and 
 their gentlest whispers, chanted the marriage hymn ; 
 and the race that sprang from that union bears the 
 best blood of the Old World and the New in their 
 veins. To that old blood the true American will be 
 true, or he parts with his birthright. 
 
 True to his soil and to his blood, he will be true 
 to the institutions founded upon this soil by men of 
 his own blood. Whenever those institutions are in 
 danger, whether on the part of absolutists or anar 
 chists, he will rally under the old banner of liberty and 
 order. The simple story of the rise of our national 
 government is answer enough to both classes of de 
 structives who are trying to undermine its founda 
 tions. This nation was the providential organization 
 and growth from the stock of our ancestors out of 
 this new country. They brought with them its seeds, 
 or all the seminal principles of a free government. 
 From their open Bible the free faith of Luther and 
 the free press of Gutenberg held out to them a majes 
 tic promise. In the cabin where the Pilgrims signed 
 their simple compact of self-government they put the 
 best rights of the Old World into their signature ; 
 and although, perhaps, they did not think of it at the 
 time, Alfred the Great with his jury, and the Barons 
 of Runnymede with their Magna Charta, held for them 
 the pen. Without any common theory, the various 
 colonies, from their own spirit and under the action 
 of circumstances, grew into a nation. To understand 
 our government we must not begin with the central 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 143 
 
 power, and go down to the homes of the people ; but 
 we must begin with the households and neighborhoods, 
 and go up to the central power. The scattered colo 
 nists wished to follow their business, educate their 
 children, and enjoy their religion in the New World. 
 Hence the laws, schools, and churches of the town 
 ships, and in time the Confederacy of States. The 
 republic grew like a living tree, instead of being hewn 
 out like timber, or hammered out like a dead stone. 
 It grew ; and the Revolution itself was but one stage 
 of a growth that had already been going on for a 
 century and a half, little more, indeed, than the 
 dropping of withered blossoms that the fruit which 
 they had covered might come to light. Our laws were 
 not paper manufactures, but the organic expression 
 of the public life ; and our Constitution marched 
 because the vitality of the nation was in it. The 
 Dutch Republican, the Virginia Loyalist, the Massa 
 chusetts Puritan, the Maryland Catholic, the Pennsyl- 
 vanian Quaker, all grew into a harmonious people ; 
 and never since time was has there been such a 
 national commentary upon the text, " Diversities of 
 gifts, but the same spirit." The aim was to secure 
 individual liberty and social order, to vest in each 
 township power adequate to its responsibility, and to 
 delegate to the central State and National Govern 
 ment no more than the needed authority. Thus 
 wiser than France, so cursed by centralization as to 
 leave the whole nation to the mercy of the army or 
 the mob of Paris ; wiser than Switzerland and Ger- 
 
144 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 many, so broken into separate dynasties as often to 
 afford no common front, the United States of America 
 enjoy a Confederacy without centralization, and state 
 and town and individual rights without disintegration 
 or anarchy ; at once free and strong, independent, 
 yet united. We are to look well to it that we keep 
 this balance true, and are to have a wary eye upon 
 all disorganizers, whether of home or foreign growth. 
 Local institutions he leaves to local jurisdiction, and 
 national rights he defends against local usurpations. 
 Quite as little is he inclined to listen to destructives 
 of foreign as of home growth, and he has as little 
 affection for the black-capped Jesuit who stands ready 
 to steal away our individual and local rights in the 
 name of a great centralized absolutism, as for the red- 
 capped communist who, under the pretence of indi 
 vidual freedom, strikes at sacred rights of person and 
 property which autocrats have not dared to threaten. 
 Their black and red are not our own true blue. 
 
 It will be well if the recent revival of native Ameri 
 can feeling awakens the nation to a careful study of 
 its own origin, progress, and organic laws. It will be 
 well if the general disgust at the ravings of the thou 
 sands of vagrants who have recently been venting their 
 ignorance and impudence against our institutions, 
 leads us to compare the organic principles of our 
 government with the air-castle that some of their 
 windy theorists would put in its place. Destroy the 
 National and State Senate as too aristocratic, bring 
 the people together to vote directly upon every public 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 145 
 
 question, and, instead of representatives, have commit 
 tees to carry out the popular will at once, whether 
 to declare war, or to build a ship, or coin a new cent, 
 what a set of Solons we should be, according to 
 these radicals ! Our State and National Governments 
 would vanish like the dew, and in their place there 
 would be an everlasting series of town meetings, all 
 talk and no action, until some old-fashioned American 
 would move that we return to the old ways of Wash 
 ington, or some Cromwell or Napoleon drove out the 
 new nonsense with sword and bayonet. America is 
 now an organic body, a nation with bones and mus 
 cles, compactly joined. Destroy the organism of the 
 various constituent parts that are harmonized by the 
 central life, and instead of this compact body with 
 each limb true to itself and to the whole, we should 
 have a monstrous mollusk, an animated jelly-bag 
 without any internal skeleton, like a flabby sunfish 
 tossed by the waves, or an overgrown oyster, having 
 no bones but its shell, and waiting to be devoured, at 
 the breaking of the shell, by the first adventurous 
 sword. 
 
 Stand up stoutly for the doctrine that in this coun 
 try the individual man, and the local community, and 
 the minor party are not to be sacrificed to the central 
 power whether by democratic or aristocratic usurpa 
 tion, and we honor America in her noblest sphere. 
 We will not speak with contempt or disparagement 
 of the decisions of the majority in this country, for 
 the popular vote has secured to us a degree of liberty 
 
 10 
 
146 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 and privilege hitherto unexampled on the globe. Yet 
 may we not be peculiarly proud of the influence and 
 honor accorded by our people to the minority and its 
 leaders ? Put upon a marble stone the names of the 
 leaders who have opposed the opinions of the majority, 
 whether Hamilton, Jay, the Adamses, Webster, Clay, 
 and their peers among the dead and living statesmen, 
 what man of any standing among the majority would 
 dare to deface that stone, or deny it the place of honor 
 in the temple of our liberty ? Honor to America for 
 the favor here shown to those who in important points 
 oppose the popular will. It is something to be proud 
 of that so much of the ablest thought of this country 
 has been on the unpopular side, and the people have 
 welcomed in the Senate hall, the press, and the pulpit, 
 powerful thinkers, writers, and orators, who have 
 boldly arraigned the current of popular opinion. Red 
 Republicanism is prone to cut off the heads of the 
 opposition. American Republicanism has allowed 
 the leaders of the opposition to hold their heads as 
 high as the popular favorites, and when they have 
 died it has shed tears over their grave, and the nation 
 has put on mourning for the bereavement. Such is 
 the proper genius of our institutions, and the true 
 American will honor the spirit alike in its freedom 
 and its order as the true growth upon our soil from 
 the blood which his fathers brought hither from the 
 Old World. Washington, Franklin, Adams, and their 
 fellows, not Rousseau, Robespierre, and that ilk, laid 
 the foundation of our institutions. 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 147 
 
 Are we to stop here and say nothing of the reaction 
 of America upon Europe, nothing of the hopes of 
 humanity and the world ? Much might be said upon 
 each branch of this theme, but we are content here 
 with making a single simple remark, and maintaining 
 that the American is truest to humanity everywhere 
 when he most loyally respects the rights and the 
 duties of men in his own personal, social, and civil 
 relations. We have not done much at inventing 
 philosophies, and we do not claim for our two native 
 American religions, Mormonism and Spirit Rapping, 
 any divine honors ; but we may lay claim to a civil 
 order which aims to secure to the individual man the 
 largest measure of privilege enjoyed upon the face of 
 the earth. If we were to send to the Great Exhibi 
 tion at Paris the best specimen of our products, it 
 would not be a bedquilt or a piano, a militia major 
 or even a Broadway dandy, strong as might be the 
 claims of the latter alike as a natural arid an artificial 
 curiosity ; but we should send a sample of the average 
 culture of our schools and homes and workshops, a 
 thrifty Yankee youth who has been taught self-respect, 
 faith, and energy under our institutions, and who is 
 ready to honor any position by energy, good sense, 
 and right principle. We hope that the average man 
 among our native people would be found alike in re 
 spect to culture, character, and power of independent 
 bearing, unsurpassed by the average standard any 
 where in history or among existing nations. We 
 do not claim to have invented any native American 
 
148 AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 
 
 species of man, and the red Indian still keeps Ins 
 exclusive aboriginal specialty. If the Greek philoso 
 pher was right when he defined man to be a two- 
 legged animal without feathers, we are of that type, 
 and we have no more feathers than the Greeks, ex 
 cept, perhaps, at balls and on training days. If we 
 take the English chemist s definition, and say that 
 " A man is a little less than fifty pounds of carbon 
 and nitrogen diffused through six pailfuls of water," 
 the definition applies to us as to the John Bull who 
 gives it, although probably we have less brandy and 
 beer in our pails of water than he. No, we do not 
 ask to have any new definition made for us ; and in 
 spite of our teeth, which are said to be dropping two 
 of the old-fashioned number, our European brethren 
 must be content to reckon us of their type of human 
 ity, and we are content to read humanity out of the 
 same old Bible, and with the commentary of a genuine 
 manhood such as the old heroes showed. We have 
 brought over from the old homes many seeds of per 
 sonal and domestic, civil and religious, blessings, and 
 we return the favor when we allow them freer and 
 fairer growth under institutions and circumstances 
 more favorable to individual well-being. 
 
 The old doctrine is the best one in spite of the new 
 times, the best now that Europe is at our doors as 
 well as when it was a far-off and almost inaccessible 
 country. Sterling character, strong by self-reliance ; 
 faith, and industry, guarded by civil order and social 
 economy, this is the best thing that America has 
 
AMERICAN PRINCIPLES. 149 
 
 shown to the world, or is likely to show. The great 
 est thing that England ever did, said Carlyle, was 
 Oliver Cromwell. The greatest thing that America 
 ever did was we will not say was any one man nor 
 deed, not even the Revolution, not Congress, but the 
 hosts of energetic, honest, faithful men, who have 
 believed in God and their country, and brought up 
 their families in the school and church as citizens of 
 an earthly and of a heavenly kingdom. This simple, 
 earnest humanity we are to keep both at home and 
 abroad against the silken follies that would enslave it 
 to a home luxury and pretension that Europe hardly 
 equals ; against the courtly arrogance that meets it 
 abroad, and insists upon concealing our republican 
 manhood under the tinsel pageantry of superannuated 
 courts. The American will be the best propagandist 
 of liberty and humanity abroad when he dares to be 
 himself before foreign courts and priesthoods, and 
 when the dignity and power of the nation give 
 majesty and force to his simplicity. The great blow 
 will be struck for the New World against the despot 
 isms of the Old World when Americans dare to show 
 a true light in face of foreign oppressions. The worst 
 foes to liberty have always been the traitors within 
 its own camp. Humanity in Europe does not so 
 much ask of us soldiers for Kossuth and Mazzini, as 
 citizens trained in the school of Washington and 
 Franklin. 
 
SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, DEVELOP 
 MENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 
 
 WITHIN the memory of men still in the vigor of life, 
 American Slavery was considered by a vast majority 
 of the North, and by a large minority of the South, as 
 an evil which should, at best, be tolerated, and not 
 a good which deserved to be extended and protected. 
 A kind of lazy acquiescence in it as a local matter, to 
 be managed by local legislation, was the feeling of the 
 Free States. In both the Slave and the Free States, 
 the discussion of the essential principles on which 
 Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nul- 
 lificrs and a few uncompromising Abolitionists ; and 
 we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison 
 were both classed by practical statesmen of the South 
 and North in one category of pestilent " abstraction 
 ists." Negro Slavery was considered simply as a 
 fact ; and general irritation among most politicians of 
 all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore 
 the principles on which the fact reposed. That these 
 principles had the mischievous vitality which events 
 have proved them to possess, few of our wisest states 
 men then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees 
 into the present war without any clear perception of 
 its animating causes. 
 
SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, ETC. 151 
 
 The future historian will trace the steps by which 
 the subject of Slavery was forced on the reluctant 
 attention of the citizens of the Free States, so that at 
 last the most cautious conservative could not ignore 
 its intrusive presence, could not banish its reality 
 from his eyes, or its image from his mind. He will 
 show why Slavery, disdaining its old argument from 
 expediency, challenged discussion on its principles. 
 He will explain the process by which it became dis 
 contented with toleration within its old limits, and 
 demanded the championship or connivance of the 
 National Government in a plan for its limitless ex 
 tension. He will indicate the means by which it 
 corrupted the Southern heart and Southern brain, so 
 that at last the elemental principles of morals and 
 religion were boldly denied, and the people came to 
 " believe a lie." He will, not unnaturally, indulge in 
 a little sarcasm, when he comes to consider the occu 
 pation of Southern professors of ethics, compelled by 
 their position to scoff at the "rights" of man, and 
 Southern professors of theology, compelled by their 
 position to teach that Christ came into the world, not 
 so much to save sinners, as to enslave negroes. He 
 will be forced to class these among the meanest and 
 most abject slaves that the planters owned. In treat 
 ing of the subserviency of the North, he will be con 
 strained to write many a page which will flush the 
 cheeks of our descendants with indignation and 
 shame. He will show the method by which Slavery, 
 after vitiating the conscience and intelligence of the 
 
152 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 South, contrived to vitiate in part, and for a time, the 
 conscience and intelligence of the North. It will be 
 his ungrateful task to point to many instances of 
 compliance and concession on the part of able North 
 ern statesmen which will deeply affect their fame with 
 posterity, though he will doubtless refuse to adopt 
 to the full the contemporary clamor against their 
 motives. He will understand, better than we, the 
 amount of patriotism which entered into their " con 
 cessions," and the amount of fraternal good-will 
 which prompted their fatal " compromises." But he 
 will also declare that the object of the Slave Power 
 was not attained. Vacillating statesmen and corrupt 
 politicians ifc might address, the first through their 
 fears, the second through their interests ; but the in 
 trepid and incorruptible " people " were but super 
 ficially affected. A few elections were gained, but 
 the victories were barren of results. From political 
 defeat the free people of the North came forth more 
 earnest and more united than ever. The insolent 
 pretensions of the Slavocracy were repudiated ; its 
 political and ethical maxims were disowned ; and 
 after having stirred the noblest impulses of the 
 human heart by the spectacle of its tyranny, its 
 attempt to extend that tyranny only roused an in 
 surrection of the human understanding against the 
 impudence of its logic. The historian can then only 
 say, that the Slave Power "seceded," being deter 
 mined to form a part of no government which it 
 could not control. The present war is to decide 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 153 
 
 whether its real force corresponds to the political 
 force it has exerted heretofore in our affairs. 
 
 That this war has been forced upon the Free States 
 by the " aggressions " of the Slave Power is so plain 
 that no argument is necessary to sustain the propo 
 sition. It is not so universally understood that the 
 Slave Power is aggressive by the necessities of the 
 wretched system of labor on which its existence is 
 based. By a short exposition of the principles of 
 Slavery, and the expedients it has practised during 
 the last twenty or thirty years, we think that this 
 proposition can be established. 
 
 And first it must be always borne in mind that 
 Slavery, as a system, is based on the most audacious, 
 inhuman, and self-evident of lies, the assertion, 
 namely, that property can be held in men. Property 
 applies to things. There is a metaphysical impossi 
 bility implied in the attempt to extend its application 
 to persons. It is possible, we admit, to ordain by 
 local law that four and four make ten ; but such an 
 exercise of legislative wisdom could not overcome 
 certain arithmetical prejudices innate in our minds, 
 or dethrone the stubborn eight from its accustomed 
 position in our thoughts. But you might as well 
 ordain that four and four make ten as ordain that a 
 man has no right to himself, but can properly be held 
 as the chattel of another. Yet this arrogant false 
 hood of property in men has been organized into a 
 colossal institution. The South calls it a " peculiar " 
 institution ; and herein perhaps consists its peculiar- 
 
154 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 ity, that it is an absurdity which has lied itself into 
 a substantial form, and now argues its right to exist 
 from the fact of its existence. Doubtless the fact 
 that a thing exists proves that it has its roots in 
 human nature ; but before we accept this as decisive 
 of its right to exist, it may be well to explore those 
 qualities in human nature, " peculiar " and perverse 
 as itself, from which it derives its poisonous vitality 
 and strength. It is plain, we think, that an institu 
 tion embodying an essential falsity, which equally 
 affronts the common sense and the moral sense of 
 mankind, and which, as respects chronology, was as 
 repugnant to the instincts of Homer as it is to the 
 instincts of Whittier, must have sprung from the un 
 blessed union of wilfulness and avarice, of avarice 
 which knows no conscience, and of wilfulness that 
 tramples on reason ; and the marks of this parentage, 
 the signs of these its boasted roots in human nature, 
 are, we are constrained to concede, visible in every 
 stage of its growth, in every argument for its exist 
 ence, in every motive for its extension. 
 
 It is not, perhaps, surprising that some of the 
 advocates of Slavery do not relish the analysis which 
 reveals the origin of their institution in those dispo 
 sitions which connect man with the tiger and the 
 wolf. Accordingly they discourage, with true demo 
 cratic humility, all genealogical inquiries into the 
 ancestry of their system, substitute generalization for 
 analysis, and, twisting the maxims of religion into a 
 philosophy of servitude, bear down all arguments with 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 155 
 
 the sounding proposition that Slavery is included in 
 the plan of God s providence, and therefore cannot he 
 wrong. Certain thinkers of our day have asserted the 
 universality of the religious element in human nature ; 
 and it must be admitted that men become very pious 
 when ftieir minds are illuminated by the discernment 
 of a providential sanction for their darling sins, and 
 by the discovery that God is on the side of their inter 
 ests and passions. Napoleon s religious perceptions 
 were somewhat obtuse, as tried by the standards of 
 the Church, yet nothing could exceed the depth of 
 his belief that God " was with the heaviest column ; " 
 and the most obdurate jobber in human flesh may 
 well glow with apostolic fervor, as, from the height 
 of philosophic contemplation to which this principle 
 lifts him, he discerns the sublime import of his provi 
 dential mission. It is true, he is now willing to con 
 cede that a man s right to himself, being given by 
 God, can only by God be taken away. " But," he ex- 
 ultingly exclaims, " it has been taken away by God. 
 The negro, having always been a slave, must have 
 been so by divine appointment ; and I, the mark of 
 obloquy to a few fanatical enthusiasts, am really an 
 humble agent in carrying out the designs of a higher 
 law even than that of the State, of a higher will 
 even than my own." This mode of baptizing man s 
 sin and calling it God s providence has not alto 
 gether lacked the aid of certain Southern clergymen, 
 who ostentatiously profess to preach Christ and Him 
 crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, cru- 
 
156 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 cified by them. Here is Slavery s abhorred riot of 
 vices and crimes, from whose soul-sickening details 
 the human imagination shrinks aghast, and over 
 all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring 
 in the seraphic countenance of the Saviour of man 
 kind, smiling celestial approval of the multitudinous 
 miseries and infamies it serenely beholds ! 
 
 It may be presumptuous to proffer counsel to such 
 authorized expositors of religion, but one can hardly 
 help insinuating the humble suggestion that it would 
 be as well, if they must give up the principles of 
 liberty, not to throw Christianity in. We may be 
 permitted to doubt the theory of Providence which 
 teaches that a man never so much serves God as 
 when he serves the Devil. Doubtless Slavery, though 
 opposed to God s laws, is included in the plan of 
 God s providence ; but, in the long run, the providence 
 most terribly confirms the laws. The stream of 
 events, having its fountains in iniquity, has its end 
 in retribution. It is because God s laws are immuta 
 ble that God s providence can be foreseen as well as 
 seen. The mere fact that a thing exists, and persists 
 in existing, is of little importance in determining its 
 right to exist, or its eventual destiny. These must 
 be found in an inspection of the principles by which 
 it exists; and from the nature of its principles, we 
 can predict its future history. The confidence of 
 bad men and the despair of good men proceed equally 
 from a too fixed attention to the facts and events 
 before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 157 
 
 which underlie and animate them ; for no insight 
 of principles, and of the moral laws which govern 
 human events, could ever cause tyrants to exult or 
 philanthropists to despond. 
 
 If we go farther into this question, we shall com 
 monly find that the facts and events to which we 
 give the name of Providence are the acts of human 
 wills divinely overruled. There is iniquity and wrong 
 in these facts and events, because they are the work 
 of free human wills. But when these free human 
 wills organize falsehood, institute injustice, and es 
 tablish oppression, they have passed into that mental 
 state where will has been perverted into wilfulness, 
 and self-direction has been exaggerated into self- 
 worship. It is the essence of wilfulness that it ex 
 alts the impulses of its pride above the intuitions 
 of conscience and intelligence, and puts force in the 
 place of reason and right. The person has thus 
 emancipated himself from all restraints of a law 
 higher than his personality, and acts from self, for 
 self, and in sole obedience to self. But this is per 
 sonality in its Satanic form ; yet it is just here that 
 some of our theologians have discovered in a person s 
 actions the purposes of Providence, and discerned the 
 Divine intention in the fact of guilt instead of in 
 the certainty of retribution. The tyrant element in 
 man is found in this Satanic form of his individuality. 
 His will, self-released from restraint, preys upon and 
 crushes other wills. He asserts himself by enslaving 
 others, and mimics Divinity on the stilts of diabolism. 
 
158 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 Like the barbarian who thought himself enriched by 
 the powers and gifts of the enemy he slew, he aggran 
 dizes his own personality, and heightens his own 
 sense of freedom, through the subjection of feebler 
 natures. Ruthless, rapacious, greedy of power, greedy 
 of gain, it is in Slavery that he wantons in all the 
 luxury of injustice, for it is here that he tastes the 
 exquisite pleasure of depriving others of that which 
 he most values in himself. 
 
 Thus, whether we examine this system in the light 
 of conscience and intelligence, or in the light of his 
 tory and experience, we come to but one result, 
 that it has its source and sustenance in Satanic 
 energy, in Satanic pride, and in Satanic greed. This 
 is Slavery in itself, detached from the ameliorations 
 it may receive from individual slaveholders. Now a 
 bad system is not continued or extended by the virtues 
 of any individuals who are but partially corrupted by 
 it, but by those who work in the spirit and with the 
 implements of its originators. Every amelioration is 
 a confession of the essential injustice of the thing 
 ameliorated, and a step towards its abolition ; and the 
 humane and Christian slaveholders owe their safety, 
 and the security of what they are pleased to call their 
 property, to the vices of the hard and stern spirits 
 whom they profess to abhor. If they invest in stock 
 of the Devil s corporation, they ought not to be severe 
 on those who look out that they punctually receive 
 their dividends. The true slaveholder feels that he 
 is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 159 
 
 the right of conquest, that the relation is one of war, 
 and that there is no crime he may not be compelled 
 to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant, he 
 clearly perceives that the system, in its practical 
 working, must conform to the principles on which 
 it is based. He accordingly believes in the lash and 
 the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may 
 as often be from policy as from disposition, for bru 
 tality and cruelty are the means by which weaker 
 races are best kept " subordinated " to stronger races ; 
 and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt as 
 restraint and terror on the plantation of his less reso 
 lute neighbor. And when we speak of brutality and 
 cruelty, we do not limit the application of the words 
 to those who scourge, but extend it to some of those 
 who preach, who hold up heaven as the reward of 
 those slaves who are sufficiently abject on earth, and 
 threaten damnation in the next world to all who dare 
 to assert their manhood in this. 
 
 If, however, any one still doubts that this system 
 develops itself logically and naturally, and tramples 
 down the resistance offered by the better sentiments 
 of human nature, let him look at the legislation which 
 defines and protects it, a legislation which, as ex 
 pressing the average sense and purpose of the com 
 munity, is to be quoted as conclusive against the 
 testimony of any of its individual members. This 
 legislation evinces the dominion of a malignant prin 
 ciple. You can hear the crack of the whip and the 
 clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these 
 
160 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 laws, which cannot be read in any civilized country 
 without mingled horror and derision, indicate a mas 
 tery of the whole theory and practice of oppression, 
 are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, 
 and bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of 
 practical men, of men who know their sin, and 
 " knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it is true, 
 enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or 
 wise additions ; but we do not look for such luxuries 
 as justice, reason, and beneficence in ordinances de 
 vised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and tyranny. 
 Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of 
 Slavery are, they are still dictated by the nature and 
 necessities of the system. They have the flavor of 
 the rank soil whence they spring. 
 
 If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders 
 constitute a general Slave Power, that this Slave 
 Power acts as a unit, the unity of a great interest 
 impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues 
 of individual slaveholders have little effect in check 
 ing the vices of the system, we can find that evidence 
 in the zeal and audacity with which this power en 
 gaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggres 
 sive in this, it was really acting on the defensive, 
 on the defensive, however, not against the assaults of 
 men, but against the immutable decrees of God. The 
 world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are 
 not, in a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage 
 the future, when they glut the avarice of the present. 
 The avenging Providence, which the slaveholder can- 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 161 
 
 not find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of 
 conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political 
 economy ; and however indifferent to the Gospel ac 
 cording to Saint John, he must give heed to the 
 gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He 
 discovers, no doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to 
 his indignation, that there is an intimate relation be 
 tween industrial success and justice ; and however 
 much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract 
 principles which declare Slavery a nonsensical enor 
 mity, he cannot fail to read its nature, when it slowly 
 but legibly writes itself out in curses on the land. 
 He finds how true is the old proverb, that, " if God 
 moves with leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." 
 The law of Slavery is, that, to be lucrative, it must 
 have a scanty population diffused over large areas. 
 To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end 
 by the laws of population. To limit it is to force the 
 planters, in the end, to free their slaves, from an ina 
 bility to support them, and to force the slaves into 
 more energy and intelligence in labor, in order that 
 they may subsist as freemen. People prattle about 
 the necessity of compulsory labor ; but the true com 
 pulsory labor, the labor which has produced the mira 
 cles of modern industry, is the labor to which a man 
 is compelled by the necessity of saving himself, and 
 those who are dearer to him than self, from ignominy 
 and want. It was by this policy of territorial limita 
 tion, that Henry Clay, before the annexation of Texas, 
 declared that Slavery must eventually expire. The 
 
 11 
 
162 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 way was gradual, it was prudent, it was safe, it was 
 distant, it was sure, it was according to the nature of 
 things. It would have been accepted, had there been 
 any general truth in the assertion that the slave 
 holders were honestly desirous of reconverting, at any 
 time, and on any practicable plan, their chattels into 
 men. But true to the malignant principles of their 
 system, they accepted the law of its existence, but de 
 termined to evade the law of its extinction. As Slav 
 ery required large areas and scanty population, large 
 areas and scanty population it should at all times 
 have. New markets should be opened for the surplus 
 slave-population ; to open new markets was to acquire 
 new territory, and to acquire new territory was to 
 gain additional political strength. The expansive 
 tendencies of freedom would thus be checked by the 
 tendencies no less expansive of bondage. To acquire 
 Texas was not merely to acquire an additional Slave 
 State, but it was to keep up a demand for slaves which 
 would prevent Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, 
 and Kentucky from becoming Free States. As soon 
 as old soils were worn out, new soils were to be ready 
 to receive the curse ; and where slave-labor ceased to 
 be profitable, slave-breeding was to take its place. 
 
 This purpose was so diabolical that, when first 
 announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot 
 spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolition 
 ists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts 
 which bear all the signs of cool atrocity ; and needless 
 to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 163 
 
 when they are plainly but steps in the development of 
 principles already known. Slave-breeding and Slavery- 
 extension are necessities of the system. Like Romulus 
 and Remus, " they are both suckled from one wolf." 
 
 But it was just here that the question became to 
 the Free States a practical question. There could be 
 no " fanaticism " in meeting it at this stage. What 
 usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit 
 of uncompromising assault on a thing because its 
 principles are absurd or wicked ; what usually goes 
 under the name of common sense is the disposition to 
 assail it at that point where, in the development of its 
 principles, it has become immediately and pressingly 
 dangerous. Now by no sophistry could we of the 
 Free States evade the responsibility of being the 
 extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be 
 extended. If we did not oppose it from a sense of 
 right, we were bound to oppose it from a sense of 
 decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do 
 with Slavery at the South ; but we had something to 
 do with rescuing the national character from infamy, 
 and unhappily we could not have anything to do with 
 rescuing the national character from infamy without 
 having something to do with Slavery at the South. 
 The question with us was, whether we would allow 
 the whole force of the National Government to be 
 employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating 
 this detestable and nonsensical enormity, espe 
 cially, whether we would be guilty of that last and 
 foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate plant- 
 
164 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 ing of slave institutions on virgin soil ? If this ques 
 tion had been put to any despot of Europe, we had 
 almost said, to any despot of Asia, his answer 
 would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. 
 Yet the South confidently expected so to wheedle or 
 bully us into dragging our common sense through the 
 mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we 
 should connive at the commission of this execrable 
 crime ! 
 
 There can be no doubt that, if the question had 
 been fairly put to the inhabitants of the Free States, 
 their answer would have been at once decisive for 
 freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would 
 have been " Free-Soilers ; " not only those who are 
 conservatives in virtue of their prudence, moderation, 
 sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced conservatives, - 
 conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is 
 decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die 
 when its time comes, conservatives as thorough in 
 their hatred of change as Lamennais himself. u What 
 a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, " Lamennais would 
 have made on the day of creation, could he have wit 
 nessed it ! His first cry to the Divinity would have 
 been to respect that ancient chaos." But even to 
 conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend 
 Slavery, though really in the order of its natural 
 development, must still have appeared a monstrous 
 innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats 
 and Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the 
 bad work. Indeed, in our country, conservatism 3 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 165 
 
 through the presence of Slavery, has inverted its 
 usual order. In other countries, the radical of one 
 century is the conservative of the next ; in ours, the 
 conservative of one generation is the radical of the 
 next. The American conservative of 1790 is the so- 
 called fanatic of 1820 ; the conservative of 1820 is 
 the fanatic of 1856. The American conservative, 
 indeed, descended the stairs of compromise until his 
 descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized 
 humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. 
 And the reason of this strange inversion of conserva 
 tive principles was, that the movement of Slavery is 
 towards barbarism, while the movement of all coun 
 tries in which labor is not positively chattelized is 
 towards freedom and civilization. True conservatism, 
 it must never be forgotten, is the refusal to give up a 
 positive, though imperfect good, for a possible, but 
 uncertain improvement : in the United States it has 
 been misused to denote the cowardly surrender of a 
 positive good from a fear to resist the innovations of 
 an advancing evil and wrong. 
 
 There was, therefore, little danger that Slavery 
 would be extended through the conscious thought and 
 will of the people, but there was danger that its ex 
 tension might, somehow or other, occur. Misconcep 
 tion of the question, devotion to party or the memory 
 of party, prejudice against the men who more imme 
 diately represented the Antislavery principle, might 
 make the people unconsciously slide into this crime. 
 And it must be said that for the divisions in the Free 
 
166 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 States as to the mode in which the free sentiment of 
 the people should operate, the strictly Antislavery 
 men were to some extent responsible. It is difficult 
 to convince an ardent reformer that the principle for 
 which he contends, being impersonal, should be puri 
 fied from the passions and whims of his own person 
 ality. The more fervid he is, the more he is identified 
 in the public mind with his cause ; and, in a large 
 view, he is bound not merely to defend his cause, but 
 to see that the cause, through him, does not become 
 offensive. Men are ever ready to dodge disagreeable 
 duties by converting questions of principles into criti 
 cisms on the men who represent principles ; and the 
 men who represent principles should therefore look to 
 it that they make no needless enemies and give no 
 needless shock to public opinion for the purpose of 
 pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or 
 gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of 
 the North has heretofore played altogether too much 
 on Northerners. 
 
 But to return. The South expected to fool the 
 North into a compliance with its designs, by availing 
 itself of the divisions among its professed opponents, 
 and by dazzling away the attention of the people from 
 the real nature of the wickedness to be perpetrated. 
 Slavery was to be extended, and the North was to be 
 an accomplice in the business; but the Slave Power 
 did not expect that we should be active and enthusi 
 astic in this work of self-degradation. It did not ask 
 us to extend Slavery, but simply to allow its exten- 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 167 
 
 sion to occur ; and in this appeal to our moral timid 
 ity and moral laziness, it contemptuously tossed us a 
 few fig-leaves of fallacy and false statement to save 
 appearances. 
 
 We were informed, for instance, that by the equality 
 of men is meant the equality of those whom Provi 
 dence has made equal. But this is exactly the sense 
 in which no sane man ever understood the doctrine of 
 equality ; for Providence has palpably made men un 
 equal, white men as well as black. 
 
 Then we were told that the white and black races 
 could dwell together only in the relation of masters 
 and slaves, and, in the same breath, that in this re 
 lation the slaves were steadily advancing in civiliza 
 tion and Christianity. But if steadily advancing in 
 civilization and Christianity, the time must inevitably 
 come when they would not submit to be slaves ; and 
 then what becomes of the statement that the white 
 and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? 
 Why boast of their improvement, when you are im 
 proving them only that you may exterminate them, or 
 they you f 
 
 Then, with a composure of face which touches the 
 exquisite in effrontery, we were assured that this an 
 tithesis of master and slave, of tyrant and abject na 
 tures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery so said 
 these logicians of liberticide has solved the great 
 social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for 
 capital, happily for labor ; and has effected this by an 
 ingenious expedient which could have occurred only 
 
168 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the 
 expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now, doubt 
 less there has always been a struggle between em 
 ployers and employed, and this struggle will probably 
 continue until the relations between the two are more 
 humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this 
 struggle in its earliest and most savage stage, a 
 stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder 
 conceptions of barbarians. The issue of the struggle, 
 it is plain, will not be that capital will own labor, but 
 that labor will own capital, and no man be owned. 
 
 Still we were vehemently told that, though the 
 slaves, for their own good, were deprived of their 
 rights as men, they were in a fine state of physical 
 comfort. This was not and could not be true; but 
 even if. it were, it only represented the slaveholder as 
 addressing his slave in some such words of derisive 
 scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso, 
 
 " Thou ! born to eat, and be despised, and die, 
 Even as the brutes that perish," 
 
 though we doubt if he could truly add, 
 
 " save that thou 
 Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty." 
 
 Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty 
 to "know no North and no South." This was the 
 very impudence of ingratitude ; for we had long known 
 no North, and unhappily had known altogether too 
 much South. 
 
 Then we were most plaintively adjured to comply 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 169 
 
 with the demands of the Slave Power, in order to save 
 the Union. But how save the Union ? Why, by vio 
 lating the principles on which the Union was formed, 
 and scouting the objects it was intended to serve. 
 
 But lastly came the question, on which the South 
 confidently relied as a decisive argument, " What 
 could we do with our slaves, provided we emancipated 
 them ? " The peculiarity which distinguished this 
 question from all other interrogatories ever addressed 
 to human beings was this, that it was asked for the 
 purpose of not being answered. The moment a reply 
 was begun, the ground was swiftly shifted, and we 
 were overwhelmed with a torrent of words about State 
 Rights and the duty of minding our own business. 
 
 But it is needless to continue the examination of 
 these substitutes and apologies for fact and reason, 
 especially as their chief characteristic consisted in 
 their having nothing to do with the practical question 
 before the people. They were thrown out by the 
 interested defenders of Slavery, North and South, 
 to divert attention from the main issue. In the fine 
 felicity of their inappropriateness to the actual condi 
 tion of the struggle between the Free and Slave States, 
 they were almost a match for that renowned sermon, 
 preached by a metropolitan bishop before an asylum 
 for the blind, the halt, and the legless, on " The Moral 
 Dangers of Foreign Travel. 7 But still they were in 
 finitely mischievous, considered as pretences under 
 which Northern men could skulk from their duties, 
 and as sophistries to lull into a sleepy acquiescence the 
 
170 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 consciences of those political adventurers who are al 
 ways seeking occasions for being tempted and reasons 
 for being rogues. They were all the more influen 
 tial from the circumstance that their show of argu 
 ment was backed by the solid substance of patronage. 
 These false facts and bad reasons were the keys to 
 many fat offices. The South had succeeded in insti 
 tuting a new political test ; namely, that no man is 
 qualified to serve the United States unless he is the 
 champion or the sycophant of the Slave Power. Pro 
 scription to the friends of American freedom, honors 
 and emoluments to the friends of American slavery, 
 adopt that creed, or you did not belong to any 
 " healthy " political organization ! Now we have heard 
 of civil disabilities for opinion s sake before. In some 
 countries no Catholics are allowed to hold office, in 
 others no Protestants, in others no Jews. But it is 
 not, we believe, in Protestant countries that Protes 
 tants are proscribed ; it is not in Catholic countries 
 that Catholics are incompetent to serve the State. It 
 was left for a free country to establish, practically, 
 civil disabilities against freemen, for Republican 
 America to proscribe Republicans ! Think of it, 
 that no American, whatever his worth, talents, or 
 patriotism, could two years ago serve his country in 
 any branch of its executive administration, unless he 
 was unfortunate enough to agree with the slavehold 
 ers, or base enough to sham an agreement with them ! 
 The test, at Washington, of political orthodoxy was 
 modelled on the pattern of the test of religious ortho- 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 171 
 
 doxy established by Napoleon s minister of police. 
 u You are not orthodox," he said to a priest. " In 
 what," inquired the astonished ecclesiastic, "have I 
 sinned against orthodoxy ? " " You have not pro 
 nounced the eulogium of the Emperor, or proved the 
 righteousness of the conscription." 
 
 Now we had been often warned of the danger of 
 sectional parties, on account of their tendency to break 
 up the Government. The people gave heed to this 
 warning ; for here was a sectional party in possession 
 of the Government. We had been often advised not 
 to form political combinations on one idea. The peo 
 ple gave heed to this advice ; for here was a trium 
 phant political combination, formed not only on one 
 idea, but that the worst idea that ever animated any 
 political combination. Here was an association of 
 three hundred and fifty thousand persons, spread over 
 some nine hundred and fifty thousand square miles of 
 territory, and wielding its whole political power, en 
 gaged in the work of turning the United States into 
 a sort of slave plantation, of which they were to be 
 overseers. We opposed them by argument, passion, 
 and numerical power ; and they read us long homilies 
 on the beauty of law and order, order sustained by 
 Border Ruffians, law which was but the legalizing of 
 criminal instincts, law and order which, judged by 
 the code established for Kansas, seemed based on legis 
 lative ideas imported from the Feejee Islands. We 
 opposed them again, and they talked to us about the 
 necessity of preserving the Union ; as if, in the Free 
 
172 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 States, the love of the Union had not been a principle 
 and a passion, proof against many losses, and insensi 
 ble to many humiliations ; as if, with our teachers, 
 disunion had not been for half a century a stereotyped 
 menace to scare us into compliance with their rascali 
 ties ; as if it were not known that only so long as they 
 could wield the powers of the National Government 
 to accomplish their designs, were they loyal to the 
 Union ! We opposed them again, and they clamored 
 about their Constitutional rights and our Constitu 
 tional obligations ; but they adopted for themselves a 
 theory of the Constitution which made each State the 
 judge of the Constitution in the last resort, while they 
 held us to that view of it which made the Supreme 
 Court the judge in the last resort. Written constitu 
 tions, by a process of interpretation, are always made 
 to follow the drift of great forces ; they are twisted 
 and tortured into conformity with the views of the 
 power dominant in the State ; and our Constitution, 
 originally a charter of freedom, was converted into an 
 instrument which the slaveholders seemed to possess 
 by right of squatter sovereignty and eminent domain. 
 Did any one suppose that we could retard the ever 
 onward movement of their unscrupulous force and 
 defiant wills by timely compromises and concessions ? 
 Every compromise we made with them only stimu 
 lated their rapacity, heightened their arrogance, in 
 creased their demands. Every concession we made 
 to their insolent threats was only a step downwards 
 to a deeper abasement ; and we parted with our most 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 173 
 
 cherished convictions of duty to purchase, not their 
 gratitude, but their contempt. Every concession, too, 
 weakened us and strengthened them for the inevitable 
 struggle into which the Free States were eventually 
 goaded, to preserve what remained of their dignity, 
 their honor, and their self-respect. In 1850 we con 
 ceded the application of the Wilmot Proviso ; in 1856 
 we were compelled to concede the principle of the 
 Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 we had no fears that slaves 
 would enter New Mexico ; in 1861 we were threatened 
 with a view of the flag of the rattlesnake floating over 
 Faneuil Hall. If any principle has been established 
 by events, with the certainty of mathematical demon 
 stration, it is this, that concession to the Slave Power 
 is the suicide of Freedom. We are purchasing this 
 fact at the expense of arming five hundred thousand 
 men and spending a thousand millions of dollars. 
 More than this, if any concessions were to be made, 
 they ought, on all principles of concession, to have 
 been made to the North. Concessions, historically, 
 are not made by freedom to privilege, but by privi 
 lege to freedom. Thus King John conceded Magna 
 Charta; thus King Charles conceded the Petition of 
 Right ; thus Protestant England conceded Catholic 
 Emancipation to Ireland ; thus aristocratic England 
 conceded the Reform Bill to the English middle class. 
 And had not we, the misgoverned many, a right to 
 demand from the slaveholders, the governing few, 
 some concessions to our sense of justice and our 
 prejudices for freedom ? Concession indeed ! If any 
 
174 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 class of men hold in their grasp one of the dear- 
 bought chartered " rights of man," it is infamous to 
 concede it. 
 
 " Make it the darling of your precious eye ! 
 To lose or give t away were such perdition. 
 As nothing else could match." 
 
 Considerations so obvious as these could not, by 
 any ingenuity of party-contrivance, be prevented from 
 forcing themselves by degrees into the minds of the 
 great body of the voters of the Free States. The com 
 mon sense, the " large roundabout common sense " of 
 the people, slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, came up 
 to the demands of the occasion. The sophistries and 
 fallacies of the Northern defenders of the pretensions 
 of the slaveholding sectional minority were gradually 
 exposed, and were repudiated in the lump. The con 
 viction was implanted in the minds of the people of 
 the Free States, that the Slave Power, representing 
 only a thirtieth part of the population of the Slave 
 States, and a ninth part of the property of the coun 
 try, was bent on governing the nation, and on subor 
 dinating all principles and all interests to its own. 
 Not being ambitious of having the United States 
 converted into a Western Congo, with the traffic in 
 " niggers " as its fundamental idea, the people elected 
 Abraham Lincoln, in a perfectly Constitutional way, 
 President. As the majority of the House of Represen 
 tatives, of the Senate, and of the Supreme Court was 
 still left, by this election, on the side of the " rights of 
 the South" (humorously so styled), and as the Presi- 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 175 
 
 dent could do little to advance Republican principles 
 with all the other branches of the Government op 
 posed to him, the people naturally imagined that the 
 slaveholders would acquiesce in their decision. 
 
 But such was not the result. The election was in 
 November. The new President could not assume of 
 fice until March. The triumphs of the Slave Power 
 had been heretofore owing to its willingness and 
 readiness to peril everything on each question as it 
 arose, and each event as it occurred. South Carolina, 
 perhaps the only one of the Slave States that was 
 thoroughly in earnest, at once " seceded." The " Gulf 
 States " and others followed its example, not so much 
 from any fixed intention of forming a Southern Con 
 federacy as for the purpose of intimidating the Free 
 States into compliance with the extreme demands of 
 the South. The Border Slave States were avowedly 
 neutral between the " belligerents," but indicated their 
 purpose to stand by their " Southern brethren," in 
 case the Government of the United States attempted 
 to carry out the Constitution and the laws in the 
 seceded States bty the process of " coercion." 
 
 The combination was perfect. The heart of the 
 Rebellion was in South Carolina, a State whose free 
 population was about equal to that of the city of 
 Brooklyn, and whose annual productions were ex 
 ceeded by those of Essex County, in the State of 
 Massachusetts. Around this centre was congregated 
 as base a set of politicians as ever disgraced human 
 nature. A conspiracy was formed to compel a first- 
 
176 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 class power, representing thirty millions of people, to 
 submit to the dictation of about three hundred thou 
 sand of its citizens. The conspirators did not dream 
 of failure. They were sure, as they thought, of the 
 Gulf States and of the Border States, of the whole 
 Slave Power, in fact. They also felt sure of that 
 large minority in the Free States which had formerly 
 acted with them, and obeyed their most humiliating 
 behests. They therefore entered the Congress of the 
 nation with a confident front, knowing that President 
 Buchanan and the majority of his Cabinet were prac 
 tically on their side. Before Mr. Lincoln could be 
 inaugurated they imagined they could accomplish all 
 their designs, and make the Government of the 
 United States a Pro-slavery power in the eyes of 
 all the nations of the world. Mr. Calhoun s paradoxes 
 had heretofore been indorsed only by majorities in 
 the national legislature and by the Supreme Court. 
 What a victory it would be, if, by threatening rebellion, 
 they could induce the people of the United States to 
 incorporate those paradoxes into the fundamental law 
 of the nation, dominant over both Congress and the 
 Court ! All their previous " compromises " had been 
 merely legislative compromises, which, as their cause 
 advanced, they had themselves annulled. They now 
 seized the occasion, when the " people " had risen 
 against them, to compel the people to sanction their 
 most extreme demands. They determined to convert 
 defeat, sustained at the polls, into a victory which 
 would have far transcended any victory they might 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 177 
 
 have gained by electing their candidate, Breckinridge, 
 as President. 
 
 A portion of the Republicans, seeing clearly the 
 force arrayed against them, and disbelieving that the 
 population of the Free States would be willing, en 
 masse, to sustain the cause of free labor by force of 
 arms, tried to avert the blow by proposing a new 
 compromise. Mr. Seward, the calmest, most mod 
 erate, and most obnoxious statesman of the Republi 
 can party, offered to divide the existing territories of 
 the United States by the Missouri line, all south of 
 which should be open to slave labor. As he at the 
 same time stated that by natural laws the South 
 could obtain no material advantage by his seeming 
 concession, the concession only made him enemies 
 among the uncompromising champions of the Wilmot 
 Proviso. The conspirators demanded that the Mis 
 souri line should be the boundary, not only between 
 the Territories which the United States then pos 
 sessed, but between the Territories they might here 
 after acquire. As the country north of the Missouri 
 line was held by powerful European States which 
 it would be madness to offend, and as the country 
 south of that line was held by feeble States which 
 it would be easy to conquer, no Northern or West 
 ern statesman could vote for such a measure with 
 out proving himself a rogue or a simpleton. Hence 
 all measures of " compromise " necessarily failed dur 
 ing the last days of the administration of James 
 
 Buchanan. 
 
 12 
 
178 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 It is plain, that, when Mr. Lincoln after having 
 escaped assassination from the " Chivalry " of Mary 
 land, and after having been subjected to a virulence 
 of invective such as no other President had incurred 
 arrived at Washington, his mind was utterly un 
 affected by the illusions of passion. His Inaugural 
 Message was eminently moderate. The Slave Power, 
 having failed to delude or bully Congress, or to in 
 timidate the people, having failed to murder the 
 elected President on his way to the capital, was 
 at its wits end. It thought it could still rely on 
 its Northern supporters, as James II. of England 
 thought he could rely on the Church of England. 
 While the nation, therefore, was busy in expedients 
 to call back the seceded States to their allegiance, 
 the latter suddenly bombarded Fort Sumter, tram 
 pled on the American flag, threatened to wave the 
 rattlesnake rag over Faneuil Hall, and to make the 
 Yankees " smell Southern powder and feel Southern 
 steel." All this was done with the idea that the 
 Northern " Democracy " would rally to the support of 
 their " Southern brethren." The result proved that 
 the South was, in the words of Mr. Davis s last and 
 most melancholy Message, the victim of " misplaced 
 confidence" in its Northern " associates." The mo 
 ment a gun was fired, the honest Democratic voters 
 of the North were even more furious than the Repub 
 lican voters ; the leaders, including those who had 
 been the obedient servants of Slavery, were ravenous 
 for commands in the great army which was to " co- 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 179 
 
 erce " and " subjugate " the South ; and the whole 
 organization of the " Democratic party " of the North 
 melted away at once in the fierce fires of a re 
 awakened patriotism. The slaveholders ventured 
 everything on their last stake, and lost. A North, 
 for the first time, sprang into being ; and it issued, 
 like Minerva from the brain of Jove, full-armed. The 
 much-vaunted engineer, Beauregard, was " hoist with 
 his own petard." 
 
 Now that the slaveholders have been so foolish 
 as to appeal to physical force, abandoning their 
 vantage-ground of political influence, they must be 
 not only politically overthrown, but physically humili 
 ated. Their arrogant sense of superiority must be 
 beaten out of them by main force. The feeling with 
 which every Texan and Arkansas bully and assassin 
 regarded a Northern mechanic a feeling akin to 
 that with which the old Norman robber looked on the 
 sturdy Saxon laborer must be changed, by showing 
 the bully that his bowie-knife is dangerous only to 
 peaceful, and is imbecile before armed citizens. The 
 Southerner has appealed to force, and force he should 
 have, until, by the laws of force, he is not only 
 beaten, but compelled to admit the humiliating fact. 
 That he is not disposed "to die in the last ditch," 
 that he has none of the practical heroism of des 
 peration, is proved by the actual results of battles. 
 When defeated, and his means of escape are such as 
 only desperation can surmount, he quickly surren 
 ders, and is even disposed to take the oath of alle- 
 
180 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 glance. The martial virtues of the common European 
 soldier he has displayed in exceedingly scanty meas 
 ure in the present conflict. He has relied on engi 
 neers ; and the moment his fortresses are turned or 
 stormed, he retreats or becomes a prisoner of war. 
 Let Mr. Davis s Message to the Confederate Congress, 
 and his order suspending Pillow and Floyd, testify to 
 this unquestionable statement. Even if we grant 
 martial intrepidity to the members of the Slavocracy, 
 the present war proves that the system of Slavery is 
 not one which develops martial virtues among the 
 " free whites " it has cajoled or forced into its hateful 
 service. Indeed, the armies of Jefferson Davis are 
 weak on the same principle on which the slave-system 
 is weak. Everything depends on the intelligence and 
 courage of the commanders, and the moment these 
 fail the soldiers become a mere mob. 
 
 American Slavery, by the laws which control its 
 existence, first rose from a local power, dominant in 
 certain States, to a national power, assuming to domi 
 nate over the United States. At the first faint fact 
 which indicated the intention of the Free States to 
 check its progress and overturn its insolent dominion, 
 it rebelled. The rebellion now promises to be a fail 
 ure ; but it will cost the Free States the arming of 
 half a million of men and the spending of a thousand 
 millions of dollars to make it a failure. Can we af 
 ford to trifle with the cause which produced it ? We 
 note that some of the representatives of the loyal 
 Slave States in Congress are furious to hang individ- 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 181 
 
 ual Rebels, but at the same time are anxious to sur 
 round the system those Rebels represent with new 
 guaranties. When they speak of Jeff. Davis and his 
 crew, their feeling is as fierce as that of Tilly and 
 Pappenheim towards the Protestants of Germany. 
 They would burn, destroy, confiscate, and kill with 
 out any mercy, and without any regard to the laws 
 of civilized war; but when they come to speak of 
 Slavery, their whole tone is changed. They wish us 
 to do everything barbarous and inhuman, provided 
 we do not go to the last extent of barbarity and in 
 humanity, which, according to their notions, is, to 
 inaugurate a system of freedom, equality, and justice. 
 Provided the negro is held in bondage and denied the 
 rights of human nature, they are willing that any 
 severity should be exercised towards his rebellious 
 master. Now we have no revengeful feeling towards 
 the master at all. We think that he is a victim as 
 well as an oppressor. We wish to emancipate the 
 master as well as the slave, and we think that thou 
 sands of masters are persons who merely submit to 
 the conditions of labor established in their respective 
 localities. Our opposition is directed, not against 
 Jefferson Davis, but against the system whose cumu 
 lative corruptions and enormities Jefferson Davis 
 very fairly represents. As an individual, Jefferson 
 Davis is not worse than many people whom a general 
 amnesty would preserve in their persons and prop 
 erty. To hang him, and at the same time guarantee 
 Slavery, would be like destroying a plant by a vain 
 
182 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 attempt to kill its most poisonous blossom. Our 
 opposition is not to the blossom, but to the root. 
 
 We admit that to strike at the root is a very 
 difficult operation. In the present condition of the 
 country it may present obstacles which will practi 
 cally prove insuperable. But it is plain that we can 
 strike lower than the blossom ; and it is also plain 
 that we must, as practical men, devise some method 
 by which the existence of the Slavocracy as a politi 
 cal power may be annihilated. The President of the 
 United States has lately recommended that Congress 
 offer the co-operation and financial aid of the whole 
 nation in a peaceful effort to abolish Slavery, with 
 a significant hint, that, unless the loyal Slave States 
 accept the proposition, the necessities of the war may 
 dictate severer measures. Emancipation is the policy 
 of the Government, and will soon be the determina 
 tion of the people. Whether it shall be gradual or 
 immediate depends altogether on the slaveholders 
 themselves. The prolongation of the war for a year, 
 and the operation of the internal tax bill, will convert 
 all the voters of the Free States, whether Republicans 
 or Democrats, into practical Emancipationists. The 
 tax bill alone will teach the people important lessons 
 which no politicians can gainsay. Every person who 
 buys a piece of broadcloth or calico, every person 
 who takes a cup of tea or coffee, every person who 
 lives from day to day on the energy he thinks he 
 derives from patent medicines, or beer, or whiskey, 
 every person who signs a note, or draws a bill of 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 183 
 
 exchange, or sends a telegraphic despatch, or adver 
 tises in a newspaper, or makes a will, or " raises " 
 anything, or manufactures anything, will naturally 
 inquire why he or she is compelled to submit to an 
 irritating as well as an onerous tax. The only an 
 swer that can possibly be returned is this, that all 
 these vexatious burdens are necessary because a com 
 paratively few persons out of an immense population 
 have chosen to get up a civil war in order to protect 
 and foster their slave-property, and the political power 
 it confers. As this property is but a small fraction 
 of the whole property of the country, and as its 
 owners are not a hundredth part of the population 
 of the country, does any sane man doubt that the 
 slave-property will be relentlessly confiscated in order 
 that the Slave Power may be forever crushed ? 
 
 There are, we know, persons in the Free States 
 who pretend to believe that the war will leave Slavery 
 where the war found it, that our half a million of 
 soldiers have gone South on a sort of military picnic, 
 and will return in a cordial mood towards their 
 Southern brethren in arms, and that there is no 
 real depth and earnestness of purpose in the Free 
 States. Though one year has done the ordinary 
 work of a century in effecting or confirming changes 
 in the ideas and sentiments of the people, these 
 persons still sagely rely on the party-phrases current 
 some eighteen months ago to reconstruct the Union 
 on the old basis of the domination of the Slave 
 Power, through the combination of a divided North 
 
184 SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 with a united South. By the theory of these persons, 
 there is something peculiarly sacred in property in 
 men, distinguishing it from the more vulgar form 
 of property in things ; and though the cost of putting 
 down the Rebellion will nearly equal the value of 
 the Southern slaves, considered as chattels, they 
 suppose that the owners of property in things will 
 cheerfully submit to be taxed for a thousand millions, 
 a fourth of the almost fabulous debt of England, 
 without any irritation against the chivalric owners 
 of property in men, whose pride, caprice, and insubor 
 dination have made the taxation necessary. Such 
 may possibly be the fact, but as sane men we cannot 
 but disbelieve it. Our conviction is, that, whether 
 the war is ended in three months or in twelve 
 months, the Slave Power is sure to be undermined 
 or overthrown. The sooner the war is ended, the 
 more favorable will be the terms granted to the 
 Slavocracy ; but no terms will be granted which do 
 not look to its extinction. The slaveholders are 
 impelled by their system to complete victory or utter 
 ruin. If they obey the laws of their system, they 
 have, from present appearances, nothing but defeat, 
 beggary, and despair to expect. If they violate the 
 laws of their system, they must take their place in 
 some one of the numerous degrees, orders, and ranks 
 of the Abolitionists. It will be well for them, if the 
 wilfulness developed by their miserable system gives 
 way to the plain reason and logic of facts and events. 
 It will be well for them, if they submit to a necessity, 
 
DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS. 185 
 
 not only inherent in the inevitable operation of divine 
 laws, but propelled by half a million of men in arms. 
 Be it that God is on the side of the heaviest column, 
 there can be no doubt that the heaviest column is 
 now the column of Freedom. 
 
 May, 1862. 
 
THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 
 
 IN the rapid alternations of opinion produced by 
 the varying incidents of the present war, a few days 
 effect the work of centuries. We may therefore be 
 pardoned for giving an antique coloring to an event 
 of recent occurrence. Accordingly we say, once upon 
 a time (Tuesday, July 1, 1862) a great popular con 
 vention of all who loved the Constitution and the 
 Union, and all who hated " niggers," was called in 
 the city of New York. The place of meeting was the 
 Cooper Institute, and among the signers to the call 
 were prominent business and professional men of that 
 great metropolis. At this meeting, that eminently 
 calm and learned jurist, the Honorable W. A. Duer, 
 interrupted the course of an elaborate argument for 
 the constitutional rights of the Southern rebels by a 
 melodramatic exclamation, that, if we hanged the 
 traitors of the country in the order of their guilt, 
 " the next man who marched upon the scaffold after 
 Jefferson Davis would be Charles Sumner." 
 
 The professed object of the meeting was to form a 
 party devoted to the support of " the Constitution as 
 it is and the Union as it was." Its practical effect 
 was to give the Confederates and foreign powers a 
 
THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 187 
 
 broad hint that the North was no longer a unit. The 
 coincidence of the meeting with the Federal reverses 
 before Richmond made its professed object all the 
 more ridiculous. The babbling and bawling of the 
 speakers about " the rights of the South," and a the 
 infamous Abolitionists who disgraced Congress," were 
 but faint echoes of the Confederate cannon which had 
 just ceased to carry death into the Union ranks. 
 Both the speeches and the cannon spoke hostility 
 to the National Cause. The number of the dead, 
 wounded, " missing," and demoralized members of 
 the great Army of the Potomac exceeded, on that 
 Tuesday evening, any army which the United States 
 had ever, before the present war, arrayed on any 
 battle-field. Jefferson Davis, on that evening, was 
 safer at Richmond than Abraham Lincoln was at 
 Washington. A well-grounded apprehension, not 
 only for the "Union," but for the safety of loyal 
 States, was felt on that evening all over the North 
 and West. It was, in fact, the darkest hour in the 
 whole annals of the Republic. Even the authorities 
 at Washington feared that the Army of the Potomac 
 was destroyed. This was exactly the time for the 
 Honorable Mr. Wickliffe and the Honorable Mr. 
 Brooks, for the Honorable W. A. Duer and the 
 Honorable Fernando Wood, to delight the citizens 
 of New York with their peculiar eloquence. This 
 was the appropriate occasion to stand up for the 
 persecuted and down-trodden South ! This was the 
 grand opportunity to assert the noble principle, that, 
 
188 THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY, 
 
 by the Constitution, every traitor had the right to be 
 tried by a jury of traitors ! This was the time to 
 dishonor all the New England dead ! This was the 
 time to denounce the living worthies of New Eng 
 land ! Hang Jeff. Davis ? Oh, yes ! We all know 
 that he is secure behind his triumphant slayers of the 
 real defenders of the Constitution and the Union. 
 Neither hangman nor Major-General can get near 
 him. But Charles Sumner is in our power. We can 
 hang him easily. He has not two or four hundred 
 thousand men at his back. He travels alone and un 
 attended. Do we want a constitutional principle for 
 combining the two men in one act of treason ? Here 
 
 O 
 
 is a calm jurist, here, gentlemen of the party of the 
 Constitution and the Laws, is the Honorable W. A. 
 Duer. What does he say ? Simply this : u Hang 
 Jeff. Davis and Charles Sumner." Davis we cannot 
 hang, but Sumner we can. Let us take one half of 
 his advice ; circumstances prevent us from availing 
 ourselves of the whole. There is, to be sure, no pos 
 sibility of hanging Charles Sumner under any law 
 known to us, the especial champions of the laws. 
 But what then ? Don t you see the Honorable W. A. 
 Duer appeals, in this especial case, to "the higher 
 law " of the mob ? Don t you see that he desires to 
 shield Jeff. Davis by weaving around his august per 
 son all the fine cobwebs of the Law, while he pro 
 poses to have Sumner hanged on "irregular" princi 
 ples, unknown to the jurisprudence of Marshall and 
 Kent? 
 
THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 189 
 
 But enough for the New York meeting. It was of 
 no importance, except as indicating the existence, and 
 giving a blundering expression to the objects, of one 
 of the most malignant and unpatriotic factions which 
 this country has ever seen. The faction is led by a 
 few cold-blooded politicians universally known as the 
 meanest sycophants of the South and the most impu 
 dent bullies of the North ; but they have contrived to 
 array on their side a considerable number of honest 
 and well-meaning dupes by a dexterous appeal to 
 conservative prejudice and conservative passion, so 
 that hundreds serve their ends who would feel con 
 taminated by their companionship. Never before has 
 Respectability so blandly consented to become the 
 mere instrument and tool of Rascality. The rogues 
 trust to inaugurate treason and anarchy under the 
 pretence of being the special champions of the Con 
 stitution and the Laws. Their real adherents are 
 culled from the most desperate and dishonest por 
 tions of our population. They can hardly indite a 
 leading article, or make a stump speech, without 
 showing their proclivities to mob-law. To be sure, 
 if a known traitor is informally arrested, they rave 
 about the violation of the rights of the citizen; but 
 they think Lynch-law is good enough for " Abolition 
 ists." If a General is assailed as being over-prudent 
 and cautious in his operations against the common 
 enemy, they immediately laud him as a Hannibal, a 
 Cassar, and a Napoleon ; they assume to be his special 
 friends and admirers ; they adjure him to persevere in 
 
190 THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 
 
 what they conceive to be his policy of inaction ; and, 
 as he is a great master in strategy, they hint that his 
 best strategic movement would be a movement, a la 
 Cromwell, on the Abolitionized Congress of the United 
 States. Disunion, anarchy, the violation of all law, 
 the appeal to the lowest and fiercest impulses of the 
 most ignorant portions of the Northern people, 
 these constitute the real stock in trade of " the Hang- 
 Jeff.-Davis-and-Charles-Sumner" party; but the thing 
 is so managed, that, formally, this party appears as 
 the special champion of the Union, the Constitution, 
 and the Laws. 
 
 Those politicians who personally dislike the present 
 holders of political power, those politicians who think 
 that the measures of confiscation and emancipation 
 passed by the Congress which has just adjourned are 
 both unjust and impolitic, unconsciously slide into 
 the aiders and abettors of the knaves they individu 
 ally despise and distrust. The " radicals" must, they 
 say, at all events, be checked ; and they lazily follow 
 the lead of the rascals. The rascals intend to ruin 
 the country ; but then they propose to do it in a 
 constitutional way. The only thing, it seems, that 
 a lawyer and a jurist can consider is Form. If the 
 country is dismembered, if all its defenders are slain, 
 if the Southern Confederacy is triumphant, not only 
 at Richmond, but at Washington and New York, if 
 eight millions of people beat twenty millions, and the 
 greatest of all democracies ignominiously succumbs 
 to the basest of all aristocracies, the true patriots 
 
THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 191 
 
 will still have the consolation, that the defeat, the 
 " damned defeat," occurred under the strictest forms 
 of Law. Better that ten Massachusetts soldiers should 
 be killed than that one negro should be illegally freed ! 
 Better that Massachusetts should be governed by Jeff. 
 Davis than that it should be represented by such men 
 as Charles Simmer and Henry Wilson, notoriously 
 hostile to the constitutional rights of the South ! 
 Subjection, in itself, is bad ; but the great American 
 idea of local governments for local purposes, and a 
 general government for general purposes, still, thank 
 God ! may survive it. To be sure, we may be beaten 
 and enslaved. The rascals, renegades, and liberti- 
 cides may gain their object. This object we shall 
 ever contemn. But if they gain it fairly, under the 
 forms of the Constitution, it is the duty of all good 
 citizens to submit. Our Southern opponents, we 
 acknowledge, committed some " irregularities ; " but 
 nobody can assert, that, in dealing with them, we 
 deviated, by a hair s-breadth, from the powers in 
 trusted to the Government by the Fathers of the 
 Republic. While the country is convulsed by a re 
 bellion unprecedented in the whole history of the 
 world, we are compelled by our principles to look 
 upon it as lawyers, and not as statesmen. We apply 
 to it the same principles which our venerated fore 
 fathers applied to Shays s Rebellion in Massachusetts 
 and the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania. To 
 be sure, the "circumstances" are different; but we 
 need not remind the philanthropic inhabitants of our 
 
192 THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 
 
 section of the country, that " principles are eternal." 
 We judge the existing case by these eternal princi 
 ples. We may fail, and fail ignominiously ; but, in 
 our failure, nobody can say that we violated any 
 sacred form of the ever-glorious Constitution of the 
 United States. The Constitution has in it no pro 
 visions to secure its own existence by unconstitu 
 tional means. It is therefore our duty, as lawyers 
 as well as legislators, to allow the gentlemen who 
 have repudiated it, because they were defeated in an 
 election, to enjoy all its benefits. That they do not 
 seem to appreciate these benefits, but shoot, in a 
 shockingly " irregular " manner, all who insist on 
 imposing on them its blessings, furnishes no reason 
 why we should partake in their guilt by violating its 
 provisions. It is true that the Government estab 
 lished by the Constitution may fall by a strict ad 
 herence to our notions of the Constitution ; but even 
 in that event we shall have the delicious satisfaction 
 of contemplating it in memory as a beautiful idea, 
 after it has ceased to exist as a palpable fact. As 
 the best constitution ever devised by human wisdom, 
 we shall always find a more exquisite delight in medi 
 tating on the mental image of its perfect features 
 than in enjoying the practical blessings of any other 
 Government which may be established after it is 
 dead and gone ; and our feeling regarding it can be 
 best expressed in the words in which the lyric poet 
 celebrates his loyalty to the soul of the departed 
 object of his affection: 
 
THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 193 
 
 " Though many a gifted mind we meet, 
 
 And fairest forms we see, 
 To live with them is far less sweet 
 Than to remember thee ! " 
 
 It is fortunate both for our safety and the safety of 
 the Constitution, that these politico-sentimental gen 
 tlemen represent only a certain theory of the Consti 
 tution, and not the Constitution itself. Their leading 
 defect is an incapacity to adjust their profound legal 
 intellects to the altered circumstances of the country. 
 Any child in political knowledge is competent to give 
 them this important item of political information, 
 that by no constitution of government ever devised by 
 human morality and intelligence were the rights of 
 rascals so secured as to give them the privilege of 
 trampling on the rights of honest men. Any child 
 in political knowledge is competent to inform them 
 of this fundamental fact, underlying all laws and 
 constitutions, that, if a miscreant attempts to cut 
 your throat, you may resist him by all the means 
 which your strength and his weakness place in your 
 power. Any child in political knowledge is further 
 competent to furnish them with this additional bit of 
 wisdom, that every constitution of government pro 
 vides, under the war-power it confers, against its own 
 overthrow by rebels and by enemies. If rebels rise 
 to the dignity and exert the power of enemies, they 
 can be proceeded against both as rebels and as ene 
 mies. As rebels, the Government is bound to give 
 them all the securities which the Constitution may 
 
 13 
 
194 THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 
 
 guarantee to traitors. As enemies, the Government 
 is restricted only by the vast and vague " rights of 
 war," of which its own military necessities must be 
 the final judge. 
 
 " But," say the serene thinkers and scholars whom 
 the rogues use as mouthpieces, " our object is simply 
 to defend the Constitution. We do not believe that 
 the Government has any of the so-called 4 rights of 
 war against the rebels. If Jefferson Davis has com 
 mitted the crime of treason, he has the same right to 
 be tried by a jury of the district in which his alleged 
 crime was committed that a murderer has to be tried 
 by a similar jury. We know that Mr. Davis, in case 
 the rebellion is crushed, will not only be triumphantly 
 acquitted, but will be sent to Congress as Senator 
 from Mississippi. This is mortifying in itself, but it 
 still is a beautiful illustration of the merits of our 
 admirable system of government. It enables the 
 South to play successfully the transparent game of 
 Heads I win, tails you lose, and so far must be 
 reckoned bad. But this evil is counterbalanced by 
 so many blessings, that nobody but a miserable Aboli 
 tionist will think of objecting to the arrangement. 
 We, on the whole, agree with the traitors, whose 
 designs we lazily aid, in thinking that Jeff. Davis and 
 Charles Sumner are equally guilty, in a fair estimate 
 of the causes of our present misfortunes. Hang both, 
 we say ; and we say it with an inward confidence that 
 neither will be hanged, if the true principles of the 
 Constitution be carried out." 
 
THE NEW OPPOSITION PARTY. 195 
 
 The political rogues and the class of honest men 
 we have referred to are, therefore, practically asso 
 ciated in one party to oppose the present Government. 
 The rogues lead ; the honest men follow. If this new 
 party succeeds, we shall have the worst party in power 
 that the country has ever known. Buchanan as Presi 
 dent, and Floyd as Secretary of War, were bad enough. 
 But Buchanan and Floyd had no large army to com 
 mand, no immense material of war to direct. As far 
 as they could, they worked mischief, and mischief 
 only. But their means were limited. The Adminis 
 tration which will succeed that of Abraham Lincoln 
 will have under its control one of the largest and 
 ablest armies and navies in the world. Every gen 
 eral and every admiral will be compelled to obey the 
 orders of the Administration. If the Administration 
 be in the hands of secret traitors, the immense mili 
 tary and naval power of the country will be used for 
 its own destruction. A compromise will be patched 
 up with the Rebel States. The leaders of the rebel 
 lion will be invited back to their old seats of power. 
 A united South combined with a Pro-slavery faction 
 in the North will rule the nation. And all this enor 
 mous evil will be caused by the simplicity of honest 
 men in falling into the trap set for them by traitors 
 and rogues. 
 
 September, 1862. 
 
THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 THE hostility of foreign governments to the United 
 States is due as much at least to dread of their 
 growing power as dislike of their democracy ; and 
 accordingly the theory of the Secessionists as to the 
 character of our Union has been as acceptable to the 
 understandings of our foreign enemies as the acts of 
 the Rebels against its government have been pleasing 
 to their sympathies. They well know that a union 
 of States whose government recognized the right of 
 Secession would be as weak as an ordinary league 
 between independent sovereignties ; and as the rapid 
 growth of the States in population, wealth, and power 
 is certain, they naturally desire that, if united, these 
 States shall be an aggregation of forces neutralizing 
 each other, rather than a fusion of forces which, for 
 general purposes, would make them a giant nation 
 ality. Accordingly, centralized France reads to us 
 edifying homilies on the advantages of disintegration ; 
 and England, rich with the spoils of suppressed insur 
 rections, adjures us most plaintively to respect the 
 sacred rights of rebellion. The simple explanation 
 of this hypocrisy or irony is, that both France and 
 
THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY. 197 
 
 England are anxious that the strength of the United 
 States shall not correspond to their bulk. The looser 
 the tie of union, the greater the number of confedera 
 cies into which the nation should split, the safer they 
 would feel. The doctrine of the inherent and undi 
 vided sovereignty of the States will therefore find 
 resolute champions abroad as long as it has the most 
 inconsiderable faction to support it at home. 
 
 The European nations are kept in order by what is 
 called the Balance of Power, and this policy they 
 would delight to see established on this continent. 
 Should the different States of the American Union be 
 occupied, like the European States, in checking each 
 other, they could not act as a unit, and their terrific 
 rate of growth in wealth and population, as compared 
 with that of the nations across the Atlantic, would 
 not excite in the latter such irritation and alarm. 
 The magic which has changed English abolitionists 
 into partisans of slaveholders, and French imperialists 
 into champions of insurrection, came from the figures 
 of the Census Reports. It is calculated that the 
 United States, if the rate of growth which obtained 
 between 1850 and 1860 is continued, will have, forty 
 years hence, a hundred millions of inhabitants, and 
 four hundred and twenty thousand millions of dollars 
 of taxable wealth, over three times the present pop 
 ulation, and over ten times the present wealth, of the 
 richest of European nations. It is probable that this 
 concrete fact exerts more influence on the long-headed 
 statesmen of Europe than any abstract dislike of de- 
 
198 THE CAUSES OE EOREIGN ENMITY 
 
 mocracy. The only union which they could bring 
 against such a power would be a league, a confed 
 eracy, a continuous and subsisting treaty, between 
 sovereign powers. Is it surprising that they should 
 wish our union to be of the same character ? Is it 
 surprising that the contemplation of a government, 
 whether despotic or democratic, which could act di 
 rectly on a hundred millions of people, with the 
 supreme right of taxing property to the amount of 
 four hundred and twenty billions of dollars, should 
 fill them with dismay ? 
 
 The inherent weakness of a league, even when its 
 general object is such as to influence the passions of 
 the nations which compose it, is well known to all 
 European statesmen. The various alliances against 
 France show the insuperable difficulties in the way of 
 giving to confederacies of sovereign States a unity and 
 efficiency corresponding to their aggregate strength, 
 and the necessity which the leaders of such alliances 
 are always under of expending half their skill and 
 energy in preventing the loosely compacted league 
 from falling to pieces. The alliance under the lead 
 of William III. barely sustained itself against Louis 
 XIV., though William was the ablest statesman in 
 Europe, and had been trained in the tactics of confed 
 eracies from his cradle. The alliance under the lead 
 of Marlborough owed its measure of success to his 
 infinite address and miraculous patience as much as 
 to his consummate military genius ; and the igno 
 minious " secession " of England, in the treaty of 
 
TO THE UNITED STATES. 199 
 
 Utrecht, ended in making it one of the most conspicu 
 ous examples of the weakness of such combinations. 
 When the exceptional military genius, as in the case 
 of Frederick and Napoleon, has been on the side of 
 the single power assailed, the results have been all the 
 more remarkable. The coalition against Frederick, 
 the ruler of five millions of people, was composed of 
 sovereigns who ruled a hundred millions ; and at the 
 end of seven years of war they had not succeeded in 
 wringing permanently from his grasp a square mile 
 of territory. The first coalitions against Napoleon 
 resulted only in making him the master of Europe ; 
 and he was crushed at last merely by the dead weight 
 of the nations which the senselessness of his political 
 passions brought down upon his empire. Indeed, the 
 trouble with all leagues is, that they are commanded, 
 more or less, by debating societies ; and a debating 
 society is weak before a man. The Southern Confed 
 eracy is a confederacy only in name : for no despotism 
 in Europe or Asia has more relentless unity of pur 
 pose, and in none does debate exercise less control 
 over executive affairs. All the powers of the govern 
 ment are practically absorbed in Jefferson Davis, and 
 a rebellion in the name of State Rights has ended in 
 a military autocracy, in which all rights, personal and 
 State, are suspended. 
 
 Now, as it is impossible for European governments 
 to combine efficiently against such a colossal power 
 as the United States promise within a few genera 
 tions to be, provided the unity of the nation is pre- 
 
200 THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY 
 
 served with its growth, they naturally favor every 
 element of disintegration which will reduce the sepa 
 rate States to the condition of European States. Earl 
 Russell s famous saying, that " the North is fighting 
 for power, the South for independence," is to be 
 interpreted in this sense. What he overlooked was 
 the striking fact which distinguishes the States of the 
 American Republic from the States of Europe. The 
 latter are generally separated by race and nationality, 
 or, where composed of heterogeneous materials, are 
 held together by military power. The people of the 
 United States are homogeneous, and rapidly assimi 
 late into American citizens the foreigners they so 
 cordially welcome. No man has lifted his hand 
 against the government as an Irishman, a French 
 man, a German, an Italian, a Dane, but only as a 
 slaveholder, or as a citizen of a State controlled by 
 slaveholders. The insurrection was started in the 
 interest of an institution, and not of a race. To 
 compare such a rebellion with European rebellions is 
 to confuse things essentially distinct. The American 
 government is so constituted that nobody has an 
 interest in overturning it, unless his interest is op 
 posed to that of the mass of the citizens with whom 
 he is placed on an equality ; and hence his treason 
 is necessarily a revolt against the principle of equal 
 rights. In Europe, it is needless to say, every re 
 bellion with which an American can sympathize is a 
 rebellion in favor of the principle against which the 
 slaveholders rebellion is an armed protest. An in- 
 
TO THE UNITED STATES. 201 
 
 surrection in Russia to restore serfdom, an insurrec 
 tion in Italy to restore the dethroned despots, an 
 insurrection in England to restore the Stuart system 
 of kingly government, an insurrection anywhere to 
 restore what the progress of civilization had made 
 contemptible or accursed, would be the only fit par 
 allel to the insurrection of the Southern Confederates. 
 The North is fighting for power which is its due, 
 because it is just and right; the South is fighting 
 for independence, in order to remove all checks on 
 its purpose to oppress and enslave. The fact that the 
 power for which the North fights is a very different 
 thing from the power which a European monarchy 
 struggles to preserve and extend, the fact that it is 
 the kind of power which oppressed nationalities seek 
 in their efforts for independence, only makes our 
 foreign critics more apprehensive of its effects. It 
 is a dangerous power to them, because, founded in 
 the consent of the people, there is no limit to its 
 possible extension, except in the madness or guilt of 
 that portion of the people who are restive under the 
 restraints of justice and impatient under the rule of 
 freedom. 
 
 It would be doing cruel wrong to Earl Russell s 
 intelligence to suppose that he really believed what 
 he said, when he drew a parallel between the Amer 
 ican Revolution and the Rebellion of the Confederate 
 States, and asserted that the right of the Southern 
 States to secede from the American Union was iden 
 tical with the right of the Colonies to sever their 
 
202 THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY 
 
 connection with Great Britain. We believe the Col 
 onies were right in their revolt. But if the circum 
 stances had been different, if since the reign of 
 William III. they had nominated or controlled almost 
 every Prime Minister, had shaped the policy of the 
 British Empire, had enjoyed not only a representation 
 in Parliament, but in the basis of representation had 
 been favored with a special discrimination in their 
 favor against Kent and Yorkshire, if both in the 
 House of Lords and the House of Commons they 
 had not only been dominant, but had treated the 
 Bentincks, Cavendishes, and Russells, the Montagus, 
 Walpoles, and Pitts, with overbearing insolence, 
 and if, after wielding power so long and so arro 
 gantly, they had rebelled at the first turn in political 
 affairs which seemed to indicate that they were to 
 be reduced from a position of superiority to one of 
 equality, if our forefathers had acted after this 
 wild fashion, we should not only think that the 
 Revolution they achieved was altogether unjustifia 
 ble, but we should blush at the thought of being 
 descended from such despot-demagogues. This is 
 a very feeble statement of the case which would 
 connect the Revolt of the American Colonies with 
 the Revolt of the American Liberticides ; and Earl 
 Russell is too well-informed a statesman not to know 
 that his parallel fails in every essential particular. 
 He threw it out, as he threw out his sounding an 
 tithesis about " power " and "independence," to catch 
 ears not specially blessed with brains between them. 
 
TO THE UNITED STATES. 203 
 
 But European statesmen, in order to promote the 
 causes of American dissensions, are willing not only 
 to hazard fallacies which do not impose on their own 
 understandings, but to give aid and comfort to in 
 iquities which in Europe have long been antiquated. 
 They thus tolerate chattel slavery, not because they 
 sympathize with it, but because it is an element 
 of disturbance in the growth of American pWer. 
 Though it has for centuries been outgrown by the 
 nations of Western Europe, and is repugnant to all 
 their ideas and sentiments, they are willing to give 
 it their moral support, provided it will break up the 
 union of the people of the States, or remain as a 
 constantly operating cause of enmity between the 
 sections of a reconstructed Union. They would tol 
 erate Mormouism or Atheism or Diabolism, if they 
 thought it would have a similar effect ; but at the 
 same time they would not themselves legalize polyg 
 amy, or deny the existence of God, or inaugurate 
 the worship of the Devil. Indeed, while giving slav 
 ery a politic sanction, they despise in their hearts 
 the people who are so barbarous as to maintain such 
 an institution; and the Southern rebel or Northern 
 demagogue who thinks his championship of slavery 
 really earns him any European respect is under that 
 kind of delusion which it is always for the interest 
 of the plotter to cultivate in the tool. It was com 
 mon, a few years ago, to represent the Abolitionist 
 as the dupe or agent of the aristocracies of Europe. 
 It certainly might be supposed that persons who 
 
204 THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY 
 
 made this foolish charge were competent at least to 
 see that the present enemy of the unity of the Amer 
 ican people is the Pro-slavery fanatic, and that it is 
 on his knavery or stupidity that the ill-wishers to 
 American unity now chiefly rely. 
 
 For the war has compelled these ill-wishers to 
 modify their most cherished theory of democracy in 
 the United States. They thought that the marvel 
 lous energy for military combination, developed hy a 
 democracy suddenly emancipated from oppression, 
 such as was presented by the French people in the 
 Revolution of 1789, was not the characteristic of a 
 democracy which had grown up under democratic in 
 stitutions. The first was anarchy plus the dictator; 
 the second was merely " anarchy plus the constable." 
 They had an obstinate prepossession, that, in a set 
 tled democracy like ours, the selfishness of the indi 
 vidual was so stimulated that he became incapable 
 of self-sacrifice for the public good. The ease with 
 which the government of the United States has raised 
 men by the million and money by the billion has 
 overturned this theory, and shown that a republic, of 
 which individual liberty and general equality form the 
 animating principles, can still rapidly avail itself of 
 the property and personal service of all the individ 
 uals who compose it, and that self-seeking is not 
 more characteristic of a democracy in time of peace 
 than self-sacrifice is characteristic of the same de 
 mocracy in time of war. The overwhelming and 
 apparently unlimited power of a government thus of 
 
TO THE UNITED STATES. 205 
 
 the people and for the people is what the war has de 
 monstrated, and it very naturally excites the fear and 
 jealousy of governments which are based on less firm 
 foundations in the popular mind and heart and will. 
 
 It is doubtless true that many candid foreign 
 thinkers favor the disintegration of the American 
 Union because they believe that the consolidation of 
 its power would make it the meddlesome tyrant of 
 the world. They admit that the enterprise, skill, and 
 labor of the people, applied to the unbounded unde 
 veloped resources of the country, will enable them to 
 create wealth very much faster than other nations, 
 and that the population, fed by continual streams of 
 immigration, will also increase with a corresponding 
 rapidity. They admit that, if kept united, a few gen 
 erations will be sufficient to make them the richest, 
 largest, and most powerful nation in the world. But 
 they also fear that this nation will be an armed and 
 aggressive democracy, deficient in public reason and 
 public conscience, disposed to push unjust claims with 
 insolent pertinacity, and impelled by a spirit of propa- 
 gandism which will continually disturb the peace of 
 Europe. It is curious that this impression is derived 
 from the actions of the government while it was con 
 trolled by the traitors now in rebellion against it, and 
 from the professions of those Northern demagogues 
 who are most in sympathy with European opinion 
 concerning the justice and policy of the war. Mr. 
 Fernando Wood, the most resolute of all the North 
 ern advocates of peace, recommended from his seat 
 
206 THE CAUSES OE FOREIGN ENMITY. 
 
 in Congress but a month ago, that a compromise be 
 patched up with the Rebels 011 the principle of sac 
 rificing the negro, and then that both sections unite 
 to seize Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. The kind of 
 " democracy " which Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. 
 Fernando Wood represent is the kind of democracy 
 which has always been the great disturber of our for 
 eign relations, and it is a democracy which will be 
 rendered powerless by the triumph of the national 
 arms. The United States of 1900, with their popula 
 tion of a hundred millions, and their wealth of four 
 hundred and twenty billions, will, we believe, be a 
 power for good, and not for evil. They will be strong 
 enough to make their rights respected everywhere ; 
 but they will not force their ideas on other nations 
 at the point of the bayonet ; they will not waste their 
 energies in playing the part of the armed propagand 
 ist of democratic opinions in Europe ; and the con 
 tagion of their principles will only be the natural 
 result of the example of peace, prosperity, freedom, 
 and justice, which they will present to the world. 
 In Europe, where power commonly exists only to be 
 abused, this statement would be received with an in 
 credulous smile ; but we have no reason to doubt 
 that, among the earnest patriots who are urging on 
 the present war for Liberty and Union to a victorious 
 conclusion, it would be considered the most common 
 place of truths. 
 
 March, 1865. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 THE submission of the Rebel armies and the occu 
 pation of the Rebel territory by the forces of the 
 United States are successes which have been pur 
 chased at the cost of the lives of half a million of 
 loyal men and a debt of nearly three thousand mill 
 ions of dollars ; but, according to theories of State 
 Rights now springing anew to life, victory has smitten 
 us with impotence. The war, it seems, was waged for 
 the purpose of forcing the sword out of the Rebels 
 hands, and forcing into them the ballot. At an enor 
 mous waste of treasure and blood we have acquired 
 the territory for which we fought ; and lo ! it is not 
 ours, but belongs to the people we have been engaged 
 in fighting, in virtue of the Constitution we have been 
 fighting for. The Federal Government is now, it 
 appears, what Wigfall elegantly styled it four years 
 ago, nothing but " the one-horse concern at Wash 
 ington : " the real power is in the States it has sub 
 dued. We are therefore expected to act like the 
 savage, who, after thrashing his Fetich for disap 
 pointing his prayers, falls down again and worships 
 it. Our Fetich is State Rights, as perversely misun 
 derstood. The Rebellion would have been soon put 
 down, had it been merely an insurrectionary outbreak 
 
208 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 of masses of people without any political organization. 
 Its tremendous force came from its being a revolt of 
 States, with the capacity to employ those powers of 
 taxation and conscription which place the persons 
 and property of all residing in political communities 
 at the service of their governments. And now that 
 characteristic which gave strength to the Rebel com 
 munities in war is invoked to shield them from 
 Federal regulation in defeat. We are required to 
 substitute technicalities for facts ; to consider the 
 Rebellion what it notoriously was not a mere 
 revolt of loose aggregations of men owing allegiance 
 to the United States ; and to hold the States, which 
 endowed them with such a perfect organization and 
 poisonous vitality, as innocent of the crime. The 
 verbal dilemma in which this reasoning places us is 
 this : that the Rebel States could not do what they did, 
 and therefore we cannot do what we must. Among 
 other things which it is said we cannot do, the pre 
 scribing of the qualifications of voters in the States 
 occupies the most important place ; and it is necessary 
 to inquire whether the Rebel communities now held 
 by our military power are States, in the sense that 
 word bears in the Federal Constitution. If they are, 
 we have not only no right to say that negroes shall 
 enjoy in them the privilege of voting, but no right to 
 prescribe any qualifications for white voters. 
 
 In the American system, the process by which con 
 stitutions are made and governments instituted is by 
 conventions of the people. The State constitutions 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 209 
 
 were ordained by conventions of the people of the 
 several States; the Constitution of the United States 
 was made the supreme law of the land by conventions 
 of the people of all the States ; and the only method 
 by which a State could be released, with any show of 
 legality, from its obligations to the United States, 
 would be the assent of the same power which created 
 the Federal Constitution, namely, conventions of 
 the people of all the States. The course adopted by 
 the so-called "seceding" States was separate State 
 action by popular conventions in the States seceding. 
 This was an appeal to the original authority from 
 which State governments and constitutions derived 
 their powers, but a violation of solemn faith towards 
 the Government and Constitution decreed by the peo 
 ple of all the States, and which, by the assent of each 
 State, formed a vital part of each State constitution. 
 No State convention could be called for the purpose 
 of separating from the Union, of destroying what 
 the officers calling it had sworn to support, without 
 making official perjury the preliminary condition of 
 State sovereignty. Looked at from the point of view 
 of the State seceding, the act was an assertion of 
 State independence ; looked at from the point of view 
 of the Constitution of the United States, it was an act 
 of State suicide. The State so acting through a con 
 vention of its people was no longer a State, in the 
 meaning that word bears in the Federal Constitution ; 
 for whatever it may have been before it was one of 
 the United States, it was transformed into a different 
 
 14 
 
210 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 political society by making the Federal Constitution a 
 part of its own organic law. In cutting that bond, it 
 bled to death as a State, as far as the Federal Consti 
 tution knows a State, to rise again as a Rebel com 
 munity, holding a portion of the Federal territory by 
 force of arms. A State, in the meaning of the Fed 
 eral Constitution, is a political community forbidden 
 to exercise sovereign powers, and at once a part of 
 the Federal Government and owing allegiance to it. 
 Is South Carolina, which has exercised sovereign 
 powers, which has broken its allegiance to the Fed 
 eral Government, and which at present is certainly 
 not a part of it, such a political society ? 
 
 It is, we know, contended by some reasoners on the 
 subject, that the Rebel States could not do what they 
 palpably did. This course of argument is sustained 
 only by confounding duties with powers. By the Con 
 stitution a State cannot (that is, has no right to) se 
 cede, only as, by the moral law, a man cannot (that is, 
 has no right to) commit murder ; nevertheless, States 
 have broken away from their obligations to the Union, 
 as murderers have broken away from their obligations 
 to the moral law. It is folly to claim that criminal 
 acts are impossible because they are unjustifiable. 
 The real question relates to the condition in which 
 the criminal acts of the Rebel States lefi^ them as 
 political societies. They cannot claim, as some of 
 their Northern champions do for them, that, being 
 in the Union in our view, and out of it in their own, 
 the only result of defeating them as Rebels is to 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 211 
 
 restore them as citizens. This would be playing a 
 political game of " Heads I win, tails you lose," which 
 they must know can hardly succeed with a nation 
 which has made such enormous sacrifices of treasure 
 and blood in putting them down. After having, by a 
 solemn act of their own, through conventions of the 
 people, forsworn their duties to the Constitution, they 
 by that act forfeited its privileges. In our view they 
 became Rebel enemies, against whom we had both the 
 rights of sovereignty and the rights of war ; in their 
 own view, they became foreigners ; and from that 
 moment they had no more " constitutional " control of 
 the area they occupied, were no more " States," than 
 if they had transferred their allegiance to a European 
 power, and the war had been prosecuted to wrest the 
 territory they occupied, and the people they ruled, 
 from the clutch of England or France. Even if we 
 consider the Union a mere partnership of States, the 
 same principle will apply; for partnership implies 
 mutual obligations, and no partner can steal the prop 
 erty of his firm, and abscond with it, and then, after he 
 has been hunted down and arrested, claim the rights 
 in the business he enjoyed before he turned rogue. 
 
 But it is sometimes asserted that the small minor 
 ity of citizens in the Rebel States claiming to be, and 
 to have been, loyal, constitute the States in the con 
 stitutional meaning of the term. Now, without in 
 sisting on the fact that it is so plainly impossible accu 
 rately to distinguish these from the disloyal, that an 
 oath, not required by State constitutions, has, in the 
 
212 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 recent attempt at reconstruction, been imposed by 
 Federal authority on all voters alike, it is plain that 
 no minority in a political society can claim exemption 
 from political evils it had not power to prevent. Had 
 we gone to war with Great Britain, the property of 
 Cobden and Bright on the high seas would have been 
 as liable to capture as that of Lindsay or Laird. No 
 loyal citizens at the South could have been more 
 bitterly opposed to Secession than some of our North 
 ern Copperheads were to the war for the Union ; and 
 yet the persons of the Copperheads were as liable to 
 conscription, and their property to taxation, as those 
 of the most enthusiastic Eepublicans. There would 
 be an end to political societies, if men should refuse 
 to be held responsible for all public acts except those 
 they personally approved. A member of a community 
 whose people, in a convention, broke faith with the 
 United States, and made war against it, the Southern 
 Unionist was forced into complicity with the crime. 
 By the pressure of a power he could not resist he was 
 compelled to pay Confederate taxes, serve in Confed 
 erate armies, and become a portion of the Confederate 
 strength. More than this : the property in human 
 beings, which he held by local law, was confiscated 
 by the Federal Government s edict of emancipation, 
 equally with the same kind of property held by the 
 most disloyal. And now that the war is over, he and 
 those who sympathized with him are not the State, 
 which was extinguished by its own act when it re 
 belled. He and his friends may be the objects of 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 213 
 
 sympathy, of honor, of reward; but in the work of 
 reconstruction the interest and safety of the great 
 body of loyal citizens of the United States, of the 
 persons who have bought the territory at such a ter 
 rible price, are to be primarily consulted. And not 
 simply because such a course is expedient, but because 
 the Southern Unionists can advance no valid claim to 
 be the political societies which were recognized by the 
 Federal Constitution as States before the Rebellion. 
 If they were, they might proceed at once to assume 
 the powers of the States, without any authority from 
 Washington, and without calling any convention to 
 form a new constitution. If, on the breaking out of 
 the Rebellion, they had rallied in defence of the old 
 constitutions within State limits, preserved the organi 
 zation of the States in all departments, raised and 
 equipped armies, and conducted a war against the 
 Confederates as traitors to their respective States as 
 well as to the United States, they might present some 
 claims to be considered the States ; but this they did 
 not do, and they were not powerful enough to do it. 
 The large proportion of them were compelled to form 
 a part of the Rebel power. 
 
 And this brings us directly to the heart of the mat 
 ter. It is asserted that the Acts of Secession, being 
 unconstitutional, were inoperative and void. But they 
 were passed by the people of the several States which 
 seceded, and the persons and property of the whole 
 people were indiscriminately employed in making 
 them effective. The States held by Rebel armies 
 
214 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 were Rebel States. All the population were necessa 
 rily, in the view of the Federal Government, Rebel 
 enemies. Consequently the territory of the States 
 was as " void " of citizens of the United States as the 
 Acts of Secession were " void." The only things left, 
 then, were the inoperative ideas of States. 
 
 Again, to put the argument in another form, it is 
 asserted that, though the people of a State may com 
 mit treason, the State itself remains unaffected by the 
 crime. A distinction is here made between a State 
 and the people who constitute it, between the State 
 and the persons who create its constitution and organ 
 ize its government. The State constitution which ex 
 isted while it was a State, in the Federal meaning of 
 the word, was destroyed in an essential part by the 
 same authority which created it, namely, a convention 
 of the people of the State ; and yet it is said that 
 the State remained unaffected by the deed. By this 
 course of reasoning, a State is defined an abstract 
 essence which can comfortably exist in all its rights 
 and privileges, in potentia, apart from all visible em 
 bodiment ; a State which is the possibility of a State 
 and not the actuality of one ; a State which can be 
 brought into the line of real vision only by some such 
 contrivance as that employed by the German play 
 wright, who, in a drama on the subject of the Crea 
 tion, represented Adam crossing the stage going to 
 be created. 
 
 There is, it is true, one method of getting a kind of 
 body to this abstract State, but it is a method which 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 215 
 
 may well frighten the hardiest American reasoner. 
 It was employed by Burke in one of the audacities of 
 his logic directed against the governments established 
 after the French Revolution of 1789. He took the 
 ground that France was not in the French territory 
 or in the French people, but in the persons who repre 
 sented its old polity, and who had escaped into Eng 
 land and Germany. These constituted what he called 
 " Moral France," in distinction from " Geographical 
 France ; " and Moral France, he said, had emigrated. 
 
 But as few or none will be inclined to take the 
 ground that South Carolina and Georgia exist in the 
 persons who left their soil on the breaking out of 
 the Rebellion, we are forced back to the conception 
 of an invisible spiritual soul and essence of a State sur 
 viving its bodily destruction. But even this abstrac 
 tion must still, from the point of view of the Federal 
 Constitution, be conceived of as owing allegiance to 
 the Federal Government ; and it can confessedly get 
 a new body only by the exercise of Federal authority. 
 Its leading institution has been destroyed by Federal 
 power. Its old legislature and governor, who alone, 
 on State principles, could call a convention of the 
 people, are spotted all over with treason, and might 
 be hanged as traitors, by the law of the United States, 
 while engaged in measures to repair the broken unity 
 of the State life, a fact which is of itself sufficient 
 to show that the old State is dead beyond all bodily 
 resurrection. The white inhabitants who occupy its 
 old geographical limits are defeated Rebels, and not 
 
216 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 one can exercise the privilege of voting without taking 
 an oath which no real " State " prescribes. They are 
 all born again into citizens by a Federal fiat ; they are 
 " pardoned " into voters ; they derive their rights not 
 from their old charters, but from an act of amnesty. 
 Far from any discrimination being made between loyal 
 and disloyal, the great body of both classes are com 
 pelled to submit to Federal terms of citizenship or be 
 disfranchised ; and they are called upon, not to revive 
 the old State, but to make a new one, within the old 
 State lines. And all this would result from the ne 
 cessity of the case, even if it were not made justifia 
 ble by the essential sovereignty of the United States, 
 of which the war-power is but an incident. But if the 
 Federal Government can thus give the white inhabi 
 tants, or any portion of them, the right of suffrage, 
 cannot it confer that right upon the black freedmen ? 
 It will not do, at this stage, to say that the Federal 
 Government has no right to prescribe the qualifica 
 tions of voters in the States ; because, in the case of 
 the whites, it does and must prescribe them; and 
 President Johnson has just the same right to say that 
 negroes shall vote as to say that pardoned Rebels shall 
 vote. The right of States to decide on the qualifica 
 tions of its electors applies only to loyal States ; it 
 cannot apply to political communities which have lost 
 by Rebellion the Federal character of " States," which 
 notoriously have no legitimate State authority to de 
 cide the question of qualification, and which are now 
 taking the preparatory steps of forming themselves 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 217 
 
 into States through the agency of provisional Federal 
 governors, directing voters, constituted such by Fed 
 eral authority, to elect delegates to a convention of 
 the people. It is a misuse of constitutional language 
 to call North Carolina and Mississippi " States," in the 
 same sense in which we use the term in speaking of 
 Ohio and Massachusetts. When their conventions 
 have framed State constitutions, when their State gov 
 ernments are organized, and when their senators and 
 representatives have been admitted into the Congress 
 of the United States, then, indeed, they will he States, 
 entitled to all the privileges of Ohio and Massachu 
 setts ; and woe be to us, if they are reconstructed on 
 wrong principles ! 
 
 It is often said that, although the Federal Govern 
 ment may have the right and power to decide who 
 shall be considered " the people " of the Rebel States, 
 in so important a matter as the conversion of them 
 into States of the Federal Union, it is still politic and 
 just to make the qualifications of voters as nearly as 
 possible what they were before the Rebellion. Con 
 ceding this, we still have to face the fact that a large 
 body of men, held before the war as slaves, have been 
 emancipated, and added to the body of the people. 
 They are now as free as the white men. The old con 
 stitutions of the Slave States could have no applica 
 tion to the new condition of affairs. The change in 
 the circumstances, by which four years have done the 
 ordinary work of a century, demands a corresponding 
 change in the application of old rules, even admitting 
 
218 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 that we should take them as a guide. Having con 
 verted the loyal blacks from slaves into the condition 
 of citizens of the United States, there can be no reason 
 or justice or policy in allowing them to be made, in 
 localities recently Rebel, the subjects of whites who 
 have but just purged themselves from the guilt of 
 treason. 
 
 The question of negro suffrage being thus reduced 
 to a question of expediency, to be decided on its own 
 merits, the first argument brought against it is based 
 on the proposition that it is inexpedient to give the 
 privilege of voting to the ignorant and unintelligent. 
 This sounds well ; but a moment s reflection shows 
 us that the objection is directed simply against defi 
 ciencies of education and intelligence which happen 
 to be accompanied with a black skin. Three fifths or 
 three fourths of the poor whites of the South cannot 
 read or write ; and they are cruelly belied, if they do 
 not add to their ignorance that more important dis 
 qualification for good citizenship, indisposition or 
 incapacity for work. In general, the American sys 
 tem proceeds on the idea that the best way of qualify 
 ing men to vote is voting, as the best way of teaching 
 boys to swim is to let them go into the water. " Our 
 national experience," says Chief-Justice Chase, in a 
 letter to the New Orleans freedmcn, " has demonstrated 
 that public order reposes most securely on the broad 
 base of Universal Suffrage. It has proved, also, that 
 universal suffrage is the surest guaranty and most 
 powerful stimulus of individual, social, and political 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 219 
 
 progress." But even if we take the ground that edu 
 cation and suffrage, though not actually, should prop 
 erly be, indentical, the argument would not apply to 
 the case of the f reedmen. What we need primarily at 
 the South is loyal citizens of the United States, and 
 treason there is in inverse proportion to ignorance. 
 If, in reconstructing the Rebel communities, we make 
 suffrage depend on education, we inevitably put the 
 local governments into the hands of a small minority 
 of prominent Confederates whom we have recently 
 defeated ; of men physically subdued, but morally re 
 bellious ; of men who have used their education simply 
 to destroy the prosperity created by the industry of 
 the ignorant and enslaved, and who, however skilful 
 they may be as " architects of ruin," have shown no 
 capacity for the nobler art which repairs and rebuilds. 
 If, on the other hand, we make suffrage depend on 
 color, we disfranchise the only portion of the popula 
 tion on whose allegiance we can thoroughly rely, and 
 give the States over to white ignorance and idleness 
 led by white intrigue and disloyalty. We are placed 
 by events in that strange condition in which the safety 
 of that "republican form of government" we desire 
 to insure the Southern States has more safeguards in 
 the instincts of the ignorant than in the intelligence 
 of the educated. The right of the freedmen, not 
 merely to the common privileges of citizens, but to 
 own themselves, depends on the connection of the 
 States in which they live with the United States be 
 ing preserved. They must know that Secession and 
 
220 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 State Independence mean their re-enslavement. Sauls- 
 bury of Delaware, and Willey of West Virginia, de 
 clared in the Senate, in 1862, that the Rebel States, 
 when they came back into the Union, would have the 
 legal power to re-enslave any blacks whom the Na 
 tional Government might emancipate ; and it is only 
 the plighted faith of the United States to the freed- 
 men, which such a proceeding would violate, which can 
 prevent the crime from being perpetrated. It is as 
 citizens of the United States, and not as inhabitants 
 of North Carolina or Mississippi, that their freedom is 
 secure. Their instincts, their interests, and their posi 
 tion will thus be their teachers in the duties of citizen 
 ship. They are as sure to vote in accordance with the 
 most advanced ideas of the time as most of the em 
 bittered aristocracy are to vote for the most retrograde. 
 They will, though at first ignorant, necessarily be in 
 political sympathy with the most educated voters of 
 New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts ; if they were as 
 low in the scale of being as their bitterest revilers as 
 sert, they would still be forced by their instincts into 
 intuitions of their interests ; and their interests are 
 identical with those of civilization and progress. We 
 suppose that those who think them most degraded 
 would be willing to concede to them the possession of 
 a little selfish cunning; and a little selfish cunning is 
 enough to bring them into harmony with the pur 
 poses, if not the spirit, of the largest-minded philan 
 thropy and statesmanship of the North. 
 
 It is claimed, we know, by some of the hardiest 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 221 
 
 dealers in assertion, that the freedmen will vote as 
 their former masters shall direct ; but as this argu 
 ment is generally put forward by those whose sym 
 pathies are with the former masters rather than 
 with the emancipated bondmen, one finds it difficult 
 to understand why they should object to a policy 
 which will increase the power of those whom they 
 wish to be dominant. The circumstances, however, 
 under which credulous ignorance becomes the prey 
 of unscrupulous intelligence are familiar to all who 
 have observed our elections. An ignorant Irish Cath 
 olic may be the victim of a Pro-slavery demagogue, 
 because the latter flatters his prejudices ; but can he 
 be deceived by a bigoted Know-Nothing, who is the 
 object of them ? The only demagogue who could 
 control the negro would be an abolition demagogue, 
 and he could control him to his harm only when the 
 negro was deprived of his rights. The slave-masters 
 were wont to pay considerable attention to zoology, 
 not because they were interested in science, but 
 because in that science they thought they could ob 
 tain arguments for expelling blacks from the hu 
 man species. In their zoological studies, did they 
 ever learn that mice instinctively seek the protection 
 of the cat, or that the deer speeds to, instead of 
 from, the hunter ? The persons whose votes the late 
 masters would be most likely to control would pal 
 pably be those whose votes they always have con 
 trolled, namely, the poor whites ; for in the late 
 Slave States white aristocrat is still bound to white 
 
222 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 democrat by the strong tie of a common contempt of 
 " the nigger." Meanwhile it is not difficult to believe 
 that, among four millions of black people, there are 
 enough plantation Hampdens and Adamses to give po 
 litical organization to their brethren, and make their 
 votes efficient for the protection of their interests. 
 
 We think, then, it may be taken for granted that, 
 while ignorant, the freedmen will vote right by the 
 force of their instincts, and that the education they 
 require will be the result of their possessing the po 
 litical power to demand it. Free schools are not the 
 creations of private benevolence, but of public taxa 
 tion ; it is useless to expect a system of universal 
 education in a community which does not rest on 
 universal suffrage ; and the children of the poor free 
 man are educated at the public expense, not so much 
 by the pleading of the children s needs as by the 
 power of the father s ballot. To take the ground 
 that the " superior" race will educate the "inferior" 
 race it has but just held in bondage, that it will 
 humanely set to work to prepare and qualify the 
 " niggers " to be voters, only escapes from being con 
 sidered the artifice of the knave by charitably refer 
 ring it to the credulity of the simpleton. We do not 
 send, as Mr. Sumner has happily said, " the child to 
 be nursed by the wolf ; " and he might have added, 
 that the only precedent for such a proceeding, the case 
 of Romulus and Remus, has lost all the little force 
 it may once have had by the criticism of Niebuhr. 
 
 If the negroes do not get the power of political self- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 223 
 
 protection in the conventions of the people which are 
 now to be called, it is not reasonable to expect they 
 will ever get it by the consent of the whites. Legal 
 State conventions are called by previous law. There 
 is no previous State law applicable to the Rebel com 
 munities, because, revolutionized by rebellion, the 
 very persons who are qualified by the old State laws 
 to call conventions are disqualified by the laws of the 
 United States. The result is, that the people are an 
 unorganized mass, to be reorganized under the lead 
 of the Federal Government; and of this mass of 
 people literally, in this case "the masses" the 
 free blacks are as much a part as the free whites. 
 As soon, however, as the machinery of State govern 
 ments is set in motion by these conventions, as 
 soon as these governments are recognized by the 
 President and Congress, no conventions to alter 
 the constitutions agreed upon can be called, except 
 by previous State laws. If negro suffrage is not 
 granted in the election of members to the present 
 conventions, the power will pass permanently into 
 the hands of the whites, and the only opportunity 
 for a peaceful settlement of the question will be lost. 
 At the very time when, abstractly, no party has legal 
 rights, and only one party has claims, we propose de 
 liberately to sacrifice the party that has claims to the 
 party which will soon acquire legal rights to oppress 
 the claimants. For, disguise it as we may, the United 
 States Government really holds and exercises the 
 power which gives vitality to the preliminaries of 
 
224 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 reconstruction, and it is therefore responsible for all 
 evils in the future which shall spring from its neglect 
 or injustice in the present. 
 
 The addition, too, of four millions of persons to the 
 people of the South, without any corresponding addi 
 tion of voters, will increase the political power of the 
 ruling whites to an alarming extent, while it will re 
 move all checks on its mischievous exercise. The 
 Constitution declares that " representatives and direct 
 taxes shall be apportioned among the several States 
 which may be included in this Union, according to 
 their respective numbers, which shall be determined 
 by adding to the whole number of free persons, in 
 cluding those bound to service for a term of years, 
 and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all 
 other persons." The unanswerable argument pre 
 sented at the time against the clause relating to the 
 slaves did not prevent its adoption. " If," it was 
 said, " the negroes are property, why is other prop 
 erty not represented ? if men, why three fifths ? " 
 Still, the South has always enjoyed the double privi 
 lege of treating the negro as an article of merchandise 
 and of using three fifths of him as political capital. 
 He has thus added to the power by which he was en 
 slaved, and has been represented in Congress by per 
 sons who regarded him either as a beast or as " a 
 descendant of Ham." In 1860, when the ratio of 
 representation was about one hundred arid twenty- 
 seven thousand, the South had, by the three-fifths 
 rule, the right to eighteen more representatives in 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 225 
 
 Congress, and eighteen more electoral votes, than 
 it would have had if only free persons had been 
 counted. The emancipation of the slaves will give 
 it twelve more; for the blacks will now no longer 
 be constitutional fractions, but constitutional units. 
 The three-fifths arrangement was a monstrous anom 
 aly ; but the five-fifths will be worse, if negro suf 
 frage be denied. Four millions of free people will, 
 by the mere fact of being inhabitants of Southern 
 territory, confer a political power equal to thirty 
 members of Congress, and yet have no voice in their 
 election. It has been computed by the Honorable 
 Robert Dale Owen, in a paper on the subject, pub 
 lished in the New York "Tribune," that in some 
 States, where the blacks and whites are about equal 
 in number, and where two thirds of the whites shall 
 " qualify " as voters, this new condition of things 
 will give the Southern white voter, in a Presiden 
 tial or Congressional election, three times as much 
 political influence as a Northern voter. And on 
 whom shall we, in many localities, confer this im 
 mense privilege? Here is Mr. Owen s description of 
 a specimen of the class of Southern " poor whites " 
 we propose thus to exalt. 
 
 " I have often encountered this class. I saw many 
 of them last year, while visiting, as member of a Gov 
 ernment commission, some of the Southern States.. 
 Labor degraded before their eyes has extinguished 
 within them all respect for industry, all ambition, all 
 honorable exertion to improve their condition. When 
 
 15 
 
226 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 last I had the pleasure of seeing you at Nashville, I 
 met there, in the office of a gentleman charged with 
 the duty of issuing transportation and rations to indi 
 gent persons, black and white, a notable example of 
 this strange class. He was a Rebel deserter, a rough, 
 dirty, uncouth specimen of humanity, tall, stout, 
 and wiry-looking, rude and abrupt in speech and bear 
 ing, and clothed in tattered homespun. In no civil 
 tone he demanded rations. When informed that all 
 rations applicable to such a purpose were exhausted, 
 he broke forth, 
 
 " What am 1 to do, then ? How am I to get 
 home ? 
 
 " You can have no difficulty, was the reply. It 
 is but fifteen or eighteen hours down the river (the 
 Cumberland) by steamboat to where you live. I fur 
 nished you transportation ; you can work your way. 
 
 " Work my way! (with a scowl of angry con 
 tempt.) I never did a stroke of work since I was 
 born ; and I never expect to, till my dying day. 
 
 " The agent replied, quietly, 
 
 " They will give you all you want to eat on 
 board, if you help them to wood. 
 
 " i Carry wood ! he retorted, with an oath. When 
 ever they ask me to carry wood, I 11 tell them they 
 may set me on shore; I d rather starve for a week 
 than work for an hour; I don t want to live in a 
 world that I can t make a living out of without work. 
 
 "Is it for men like that, ignorant, illiterate, vi 
 cious, fit for no decent employment on earth except 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 227 
 
 manual labor, and spurning all labor as degrada 
 tion, is it in favor of such insolent swaggerers 
 that we are to disfranchise the humble, quiet, hard 
 working negro ? Are the votes of three such men 
 as Stanton or Seward, Sumner or Garrison, Grant 
 or Sherman, to be neutralized by the ballot of one 
 such worthless barbarian ? " 
 
 But this great power, wielded by a population 
 imperfectly qualified to vote, in the name of a 
 population which do not vote at all, a power 
 equivalent to thirty members of Congress and 
 thirty electoral votes, will be directed as much 
 against Northern interests as against negro interests. 
 Added to the power which the South will derive 
 from its voting population, it will enable that sec 
 tion to control one third of all the votes in the 
 House of Representatives ; and, says Professor Par 
 sons, "if they stand together, and vote as a unit, 
 they will need only about one sixth more to get 
 and hold control of our national legislation and all 
 our foreign and domestic policy." Our political ex 
 perience has unfortunately not been such as to justify 
 us in believing it to be impossible for any party, 
 under a resolute Southern lead, to obtain one sixth 
 of the Northern strength in Congress. What would 
 be the result of such a combination ? Why, the 
 National government would be substantially in the 
 hands of those who have been engaged in a desper 
 ate struggle to overthrow it; and it would be a gov 
 ernment converted into a great military and naval 
 
228 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 power by the war which resulted in their defeat, and 
 fully competent to enforce its decisions at home and 
 abroad by the strong hand. Nothing is purchased at 
 such a frightful price as the indulgence of a preju 
 dice ; the cry against " nigger equality " is a prejudice 
 of the most mischievous kind ; and it may be we 
 shall hereafter find cause to deplore that, when we 
 had to choose between " nigger equality " and South 
 ern predominance, our choice was to keep the " nig 
 ger " down, even if we failed to keep ourselves up. 
 
 One result of Southern predominance everybody 
 can appreciate. The national debt is so interwoven 
 with every form of the business and industry of the 
 loyal States that its repudiation would be the most 
 appalling of evils. A tax to pay it at once would not 
 produce half the financial derangement and moral 
 disorder which repudiation would cause ; for repudia 
 tion, as Mirabeau well observed, is nothing but taxa 
 tion in its most cruel, unequal, iniquitous, and 
 calamitous form. But what reason have AVC to think 
 that a reconstructed South, dominant in the Federal 
 Government, would regard the debt with feelings simi 
 lar to ours ? The negroes would associate it with 
 their freedom, of which it was the price ; their late 
 masters would view it as the symbol of their humilia 
 tion, which it was incurred to effect. We must 
 remember that the South loses the whole cost of 
 Rebellion, and is at the same time required to pay its 
 share of the cost of suppressing Rebellion. The cost 
 of Rebellion is, in addition to the devastation of prop- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 229 
 
 erty caused by invasion, the whole Southern debt of 
 some two or three thousand millions of dollars ; and 
 the market value of the slaves, which, estimating the 
 slaves at five hundred dollars each, is two thousand 
 millions of dollars more. The portion of the cost of 
 suppressing Rebellion which the South will have to 
 pay can be approximately reached by taking a recent 
 calculation made in the Census Office of the Depart 
 ment of the Interior. 
 
 Estimating the national debt at twenty-five hundred 
 millions of dollars, and apportioning it according to 
 the number of the white male adults over twenty 
 years of age in the different sections of the country, 
 it has been found that the proportion of the New- 
 England States is $308,689,352.07; of the Mid 
 dle States, 1740,195,342.32; of the Western States, 
 $893,288,781.01; of the Southern States, $461,929,- 
 846.85; and of the Pacific States, $95,896,677.75. 
 This calculation makes the South responsible for over 
 four hundred and sixty millions of the debt. What 
 amount have the Southerners invested in it ? Where 
 both interest and passion furiously impel men to re 
 pudiation, can they be trusted with the care of the 
 public credit ? " But," the Northern people may ex 
 claim, " in case of such an execrable violation of 
 justice, we would revolt, .we would- Ah! but 
 in whose hands would then be " the war power " ? 
 
 From every point of view, then, in which we can 
 survey the subject, negro suffrage is, unless we are 
 destitute of the commonest practical reason, the logi- 
 
230 RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 
 
 cal sequence of negro emancipation. It is not more 
 necessary for the protection of the freedmen than for 
 . the safety and honor of the nation. Our interests are 
 . inextricably bound up with their rights. The highest 
 s requirements of abstract justice coincide with the 
 lowest requirements of political prudence. And the 
 largest justice to the loyal blacks is the real condition 
 of the widest clemency to the Rebel whites. If the 
 Southern communities are to be re-organized into 
 Federal States, it is of the first importance that they 
 should be States whose power rests on the proscription 
 or degradation of no class of their population. It would 
 be a great evil, if they were absolutely governed by a 
 faction, even if that faction were a minority of the 
 " loyal " people, whose loyalty consisted in merely 
 taking an oath which the most unscrupulous would 
 be the readiest to take, because the readiest to break. 
 We are bound either to give them a republican form 
 of government, or to hold them in the grasp of the 
 military power of the nation ; and we cannot safely 
 give them anything which approaches a republican 
 form of government, unless we allow the great mass 
 of the free people the right to vote. And least of all 
 should we think of proscribing that particular class 
 of the free people who most thoroughly represent in 
 their localities the interests of the United States, and 
 whose ballots would at once do the work and save 
 the expense of an army of occupation. 
 
 August, 1865. 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 THE President of the United States has so singular 
 a combination of defects for the office of a constitu 
 tional magistrate, that he could have obtained the 
 opportunity to misrule the nation only by a visitation 
 of Providence. Insincere as well as stubborn, cun 
 ning as well as unreasonable, vain as well as ill- 
 tempered, greedy of popularity as well as arbitrary 
 in disposition, veering in his mind as well as fixed in 
 his will, he unites in his character the seemingly 
 opposite qualities of demagogue and autocrat, and 
 converts the Presidential chair into a stump or a 
 throne, according as the impulse seizes him to cajole 
 or to command. Doubtless much of the evil devel 
 oped in him is due to his misfortune in having been 
 lifted by events to a position which he lacked the 
 elevation and breadth of intelligence adequately to 
 fill. He was cursed with the possession of a power 
 and authority which no man of narrow mind, bitter 
 prejudices, and inordinate self-estimation can exercise 
 without depraving himself as well as injuring the 
 nation. Egotistic to the point of mental disease, he 
 resented the direct and manly opposition of statesmen 
 to his opinions and moods as a personal affront, and 
 
232 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 descended to the last degree of littleness in a political 
 leader, that of betraying his party, in order to 
 gratify his spite. He of course became the prey of 
 intriguers and sycophants, of persons who under 
 stand the art of managing minds which are at once 
 arbitrary and weak, by allowing them to retain unity 
 of will amid the most palpable inconsistencies of opin 
 ion, so that inconstancy to principle shall not weaken 
 force of purpose, nor the emphasis be at all abated 
 with which they may bless to-day what yesterday they 
 cursed. Thus the abhorrer of traitors has now become 
 their tool. Thus the denouncer of Copperheads has 
 now sunk into dependence on their support. Thus 
 the imposer of conditions of reconstruction has now 
 become the foremost friend of the unconditioned re 
 turn of the Rebel States. Thus the furious Union 
 Republican, whose harangues against his political 
 opponents almost scared his political friends by their 
 violence, has now become the shameless betrayer of 
 the people who trusted him. And in all these changes 
 of base he has appeared supremely conscious, in his 
 own mind, of playing an independent, a consistent, 
 and especially a conscientious part. 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Johnson s character would be imper 
 fectly described if some attention were not paid to his 
 conscience, the purity of which is a favorite subject of 
 his own discourse, and the perversity of which is the 
 wonder of the rest of mankind. As a public man, his 
 real position is similar to that of a commander of an 
 army, who should pass over to the ranks of the enemy 
 
THE JOHNSON PAKTY. 233 
 
 he was commissioned to fight, and then plead his 
 individual convictions of duty as a justification of his 
 treachery. In truth, Mr. Johnson s conscience is, like 
 his understanding, a mere form or expression of his 
 will. The will of ordinary men is addressed through 
 their understanding and conscience. Mr. Johnson s 
 understanding and conscience can be addressed only 
 through his will. He puts intellectual principles and 
 the moral law in the possessive case, thinks he pays 
 them a compliment and adds to their authority when 
 he makes them the adjuncts of his petted pronoun 
 " my ; " and things to him are reasonable and right, 
 not from any quality inherent in themselves, but 
 because they are made so by his determinations. 
 Indeed, he sees hardly anything as it is, but almost 
 everything as colored by his own dominant egotism. 
 Thus he is never weary of asserting that the people 
 are on his side ; yet his method of learning the wishes 
 of the people is to scrutinize his own, and, when act 
 ing out his own passionate impulses, he ever insists 
 that he is obeying public sentiment. Of all the wilful 
 men who, by strange chance, have found themselves 
 at the head of a constitutional government, he most 
 resembles the last Stuart king of England, James II. ; 
 and the likeness is increased from the circumstance 
 that the American James has, in his supple and 
 plausible Secretary of State, one fully competent to 
 play the part of Sunderland. 
 
 The party which, under the ironical designation of 
 the National Union Party, now proposes to take the 
 
234 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 policy and character of Mr. Johnson under its charge, 
 is composed chiefly of Democrats defeated at the polls 
 and Democrats defeated on the field of battle. The 
 few apostate Republicans, who have joined its ranks 
 while seeming to lead its organization, are of small 
 account. Its great strength is in its Southern sup 
 porters, and, if it comes into power, it must obey a 
 Rebel direction. By the treachery of the President, 
 it will have the executive patronage on its side, for 
 Mr. Johnson s " conscience " is of that peculiar kind 
 which finds satisfaction in arraying the interest of 
 others against their convictions ; and having thus the 
 power to purchase support, it will not fail of those 
 means of dividing the North which come from cor 
 rupting it. The party under which the war for the 
 Union was conducted is to be denounced and pro 
 scribed as the party of disunion, and we are to be 
 edified by addresses on the indissoluble unity of the 
 nation by Secessionists, who have hardly yet had time 
 to wash from their hands the stains of Union blood. 
 The leading proposition on which this conspiracy 
 against the country is to be conducted is the mon 
 strous absurdity that the Rebel States have an inher 
 ent, " continuous," unconditioned, constitutional right 
 to form a part of the Federal Government, when they 
 have once acknowledged the fact of the defeat of their 
 inhabitants in an armed attempt to overthrow and 
 subvert it, a proposition which implies that vic 
 tory paralyzes the powers of the victors, that ruin 
 begins when success is assured, that the only effect of 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 235 
 
 beating a Southern Rebel in the field is to exalt him 
 into a maker of laws for his antagonist. 
 
 In the minority Report of the Congressional Joint 
 Committee on Reconstruction, which is designed to 
 supply the new party with constitutional law, this 
 theory of State Rights is most elaborately presented. 
 The ground is taken, that during the Rebellion the 
 States in which it prevailed were as " completely 
 competent States of the United States as they were 
 before the Rebellion, and were bound by all the 
 obligations which the Constitution imposed, and en 
 titled to all its privileges ; " and that the Rebellion 
 consisted merely in a series of " illegal acts of the citi 
 zens of such States." On this theory it is difficult to 
 find where the guilt of rebellion lies. The States are 
 innocent because the Rebellion was a rising of indi 
 viduals ; the individuals cannot be very criminal, for 
 it is on their votes that the committee chiefly rely 
 to build up the National Union Party. Again, we are 
 informed that, in respect to the admission of repre 
 sentatives from " such States," Congress has no right 
 or power to ask more than two questions. These are : 
 " Have these States organized governments ? Are these 
 governments republican in form ? " The committee 
 proceed to say : " How they were formed, under what 
 auspices they were formed, are inquiries with which 
 Congress has no concern. The right of the people 
 to form a government for themselves has never been 
 questioned." On this principle, President Johnson s 
 labors in organizing State governments were works 
 
236 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 of supererogation. At the close of active hostilities the 
 Rebel States had organized, though disloyal, govern 
 ments as republican in form as they were before the 
 war broke out. The only thing, therefore, they were re 
 quired to do was to send their Senators and Representa 
 tives to Washington. Congress could not have right 
 fully refused to receive them, because all questions as 
 to their being loyal or disloyal, and as to the changes 
 which the war had wrought in the relations of the 
 States they represented to the Union, were inquiries 
 with which Congress had no concern ! And here 
 again we have the ever-recurring difficulty respecting 
 the " individuals " who were alone guilty of the acts 
 of rebellion. " The right of the people," we are as 
 sured, "to form a government for themselves, has 
 never been questioned." But it happens that " the 
 people " here indicated are the very individuals who 
 were before pointed out as alone responsible for the 
 Rebellion. In the exercise of their right " to form a 
 government for themselves," they rebelled ; and now, it 
 seems, by the exercise of the same right, they can un 
 conditionally return. There is no wrong anywhere: it 
 is all " right." The people are first made criminals, in 
 order to exculpate the States, and then the innocence 
 of the States is used to exculpate the people. When 
 we see such outrages on common sense gravely perpe 
 trated by so eminent a lawyer as the one who drew up 
 the committee s Report, one is almost inclined to define 
 minds as of two kinds, the legal mind and the human 
 mind, and to doubt if there is any possible connection 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 237 
 
 in reason between the two. To the human mind it ap 
 pears that the Federal Government has spent thirty-five 
 hundred millions of dollars, and sacrificed three hun 
 dred thousand lives, in a contest which the legal mind 
 dissolves into a mere mist of unsubstantial phrases ; and 
 by skill in the trick of substituting words for things, 
 and definitions for events, the legal mind proceeds 
 to show that these words and definitions, though scru 
 pulously shielded from any contact with realities, are 
 sufficient to prevent the nation from taking ordinary 
 precautions against the recurrence of calamities fresh 
 in its bitter experience. The phrase " State Rights," 
 translated from legal into human language, is found 
 to mean, the power to commit wrongs on individuals 
 whom States may desire to oppress, or the power to 
 protect the inhabitants of States from the conse 
 quences of their own crimes. The minority of the 
 committee, indeed, seem to have forgotten that there 
 has been any real war, and bring to mind the con 
 verted Australian savage, whom the missionary could 
 not make penitent for a murder committed the day 
 before, because the trifling occurrence had altogether 
 passed from his recollection. 
 
 In fact, all attempts to discriminate between Rebels 
 and Rebel States, to the advantage of the latter, are 
 done in defiance of notorious facts. If the Rebellion 
 had been merely a rising of individual citizens of 
 States, it would have been an insurrection against the 
 States, as well as against the Federal Government, 
 and might have been easily put down. In that case, 
 
238 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 there would have been no withdrawal of Southern 
 Senators and Representatives from Congress, and 
 therefore no question as to their inherent right to 
 return. In Missouri and Kentucky, for example, 
 there was civil war, waged by inhabitants of those 
 States against their local governments, as well as 
 against the United States ; and nobody contends that 
 the rights and privileges of those States were for 
 feited by the criminal acts of their citizens. But the 
 real strength of the Rebellion consisted in this, that 
 it was not a rebellion against States, but a rebellion 
 by States. No loose assemblage of individuals, though 
 numbering hundreds of thousands, could long have 
 resisted the pressure of the Federal power and the 
 power of the State governments. They would have 
 had no -means of subsistence except those derived 
 from plunder and voluntary contributions, and they 
 would have lacked the military organization by which 
 mobs are transformed into formidable armies. But 
 the Rebellion being one of States, being virtually de 
 creed by the people of States assembled in convention, 
 was sustained by the two tremendous governmental 
 powers of taxation and conscription. The willing 
 and the unwilling were thus equally placed at the dis 
 position of a strong government. The population and 
 wealth of the whole immense region of country in 
 which the Rebellion prevailed were at the service of 
 this government. So completely was it a rebellion 
 of States, that the universal excuse of the minority 
 of original Union men for entering heartily into the 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 239 
 
 contest after it had once begun was, that they thought 
 it their duty to abide by the decision, and share the 
 fortunes, of their respective States. Nobody at the 
 South believed at the time the war commenced, or 
 during its progress, that his State possessed any " con 
 tinuous " right to a participation in the privileges of 
 the Federal Constitution, the obligations of which it 
 had repudiated. When confident of success, the South 
 erner scornfully scouted the mere suspicion of enter 
 taining such a degrading notion ; when assured of de 
 feat, his only thought was to " get his State back into 
 the Union on the best terms that could be made." 
 The idea of " conditions of readmission " was as firmly 
 fixed in the Southern as in the Northern mind. If 
 the politicians of the South now adopt the principle 
 that the Rebel States have not, as States, ever altered 
 their relations to the Union, they do it from policy, 
 finding that its adoption will give them " better terms " 
 than they ever dreamed of getting before the Presi 
 dent of the United States taught them that it would 
 be more politic to bully than to plead. 
 
 In the last analysis, indeed, the theory of the 
 minority of the Reconstruction Committee reduces 
 the Rebel States to mere abstractions. It is plain 
 that a State, in the concrete, is constituted by that 
 portion of the inhabitants who form its legal people ; 
 and that, in passing back of its government and con 
 stitution, we reach a convention of the legal people as 
 its ultimate expression. By such conventions the 
 acts of secession were passed ; and, as far as the 
 
240 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 people of the Rebel States could do it, they destroyed 
 their States considered as organized communities 
 forming a part of the United States. The claim of 
 the United States to authority over the territory and 
 inhabitants was of course not affected by these acts ; 
 but in what condition did they place the people ? 
 Plainly in the condition of rebels engaged in an attempt 
 to overturn the Constitution and government of the 
 United States. As the whole force of the people in each 
 of the Rebel communities was engaged in this work, 
 the whole of the people were rebels and public enemies. 
 Nothing was left, in each case, but an abstract State, 
 without any external body, and as destitute of people 
 having a right to enjoy the privileges of the Constitu 
 tion as if the territory had been swept clean of popu 
 lation by a pestilence. It is, then, only this abstract 
 State which has a right to representation in Congress. 
 But how can there be a right to representation when 
 there is nobody to be represented ? All this may 
 appear puerile ; but the puerility is in the premises 
 as well as in the logical deductions, and the premises 
 are laid down as indisputable constitutional princi 
 ples by the eminent jurists who supply ideas for the 
 National Union Party. 
 
 The doctrine of the unconditional right of the 
 Rebel States to representation being thus a demon 
 strated absurdity, the only question relates to the 
 conditions which Congress proposes to impose. Cer 
 tainly these conditions, as embodied in the constitu 
 tional amendment which has passed both houses by 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 241 
 
 such overwhelming majorities, are the mildest ever 
 exacted of defeated enemies by a victorious nation. 
 There is not a distinctly " radical " idea in the whole 
 amendment, nothing that President Johnson has 
 not himself, within a comparatively recent period, 
 stamped with his high approbation. Does it ordain 
 universal suffrage ? No. Does it ordain impartial 
 suffrage ? No. Does it proscribe, disfranchise, or ex 
 patriate the recent armed enemies of the country, or 
 confiscate their property ? No. It simply ordains 
 that the national debt shall be paid and the Rebel 
 debt repudiated ; that the civil rights of all persons 
 shall be maintained ; that Rebels who have added 
 perjury to treason shall be disqualified for office ; and 
 that the Rebel States shall not have their political 
 power in the Union increased by the presence on their 
 soil of persons to whom they deny political rights, 
 but that representation shall be based throughout the 
 Republic on voters, and not on population. The pith 
 of the whole amendment is in the last clause ; and is 
 there anything in that to which reasonable objection 
 can be made ? Would it not be a curious result of 
 the war against Rebellion, that it should end in con 
 ferring on a Rebel voter in South Carolina a power 
 equal, in national affairs, to that of two loyal voters in 
 New York ? Can any Democrat have the face to assert 
 that the South should have, through its disfranchised 
 negro freemen alone, a power in the Electoral College 
 and in the national House of Representatives equal to 
 that of the States of Ohio and Indiana combined ? 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 Yet these conditions, so conciliatory, moderate, 
 lenient, almost timid, and which, by the omission of 
 impartial suffrage, fall very far below the require 
 ments of the average sentiment of the loyal nation, 
 are still denounced by the new party of " Union " as 
 the work of furious radicals, bent on destroying the 
 rights of the States. Thus Governor James L. Orr, 
 of South Carolina, a leading Rebel pardoned into a 
 Johnsonian Union man, implores the people of that 
 region to send delegates to the Philadelphia Conven 
 tion, on the ground that its purpose is to organize 
 " conservative " men of all sections and parties, " to 
 drive from power that radical party who are daily 
 trampling under foot the Constitution, and fast con 
 verting a constitutional Republic into a consolidated 
 despotism." The terms to which South Carolina is 
 asked to submit, before she can be made the equal 
 of Ohio or New York in the Union, are stated to be 
 "too degrading and humiliating to be entertained by 
 a freeman for a single instant." When we consider 
 that this " radical party " constitutes nearly four 
 fifths of the legal legislature of the nation, that it was 
 the party which saved the country from dismember 
 ment while Mr. Orr and his friends were notoriously 
 engaged in " trampling the Constitution under foot," 
 and that the man who denounces it owes his forfeited 
 life to its clemency, the astounding insolence of the 
 impeachment touches the sublime. Here is confessed 
 treason inveighing against tried loyalty, in the name 
 of the Constitution it has violated and the law it has 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 243 
 
 broken ! But why does Mr. Orr think the terms of 
 South Carolina s restored relations to the Union " too 
 degrading and humiliating to be entertained by a 
 freeman for a single instant " ? Is it because he 
 wishes to have the Rebel debt paid ? Is it because he 
 desires to have the Federal debt repudiated ? Is it be 
 cause he thinks it intolerable that a negro should have 
 civil rights ? Is it because he resents the idea that 
 breakers of oaths, like himself, should be disqualified 
 from having another opportunity of forswearing them 
 selves ? Is it because he considers that a white 
 Rebel freeman of South Carolina has a natural right 
 to exercise double the political power of a white loyal 
 freeman of Massachusetts? He must return an af 
 firmative answer to all these questions in order to 
 make it out that his State will be degraded and hu 
 miliated by ratifying the amendment ; and the neces 
 sity of the measure is therefore proved by the motives 
 known to prompt the attacks of its vilifiers. 
 
 The insolence of Mr. Orr is not merely individual, 
 but representative. It is the result of Mr. Johnson s 
 attempt " to produce harmony between the two sec 
 tions," by betraying the section to which he owed his 
 election. Had it not been for his treachery, there 
 would have been little difficulty in settling the terms 
 of peace, so as to avoid all causes for future war; 
 but, from the time he quarrelled with Congress, he 
 has been the great stirrer-up of disaffection at the 
 South, and the virtual leader of the Southern reac 
 tionary party. Every man at the South who was 
 
244 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 prominent in the Rebellion, every man at the North 
 who was prominent in aiding the Rebellion, is now 
 openly or covertly his partisan, and by fawning on 
 him earns the right to defame the representatives of 
 the people by whom the Rebellion was put down. 
 Among traitors and Copperheads the fear of punish 
 ment has been succeeded by the hope of revenge ; 
 elation is on faces which the downfall of Richmond 
 overcast; and a return to the old times, when a 
 united South ruled the country by means of a divided 
 North, is confidently expected by the whole crew of 
 political bullies and political sycophants whose profit 
 is in the abasement of the nation. . It is even said 
 that if the majority of the " Rump " Congress can 
 not be overcome by fair means, it will be by foul ; 
 and there are noisy partisans of the President who 
 assert that he has in him a Cromwellian capacity for 
 dealing with legislative assemblies whose notions of 
 the public good clash with his own. In short, we are 
 promised, on the assembling of the next Congress, a 
 coup d etat. 
 
 Garret Davis, of Kentucky, was, we believe, the 
 first to announce this executive remedy for the " rad 
 ical " disease of the State, and it has since been often 
 prescribed by Democratic politicians as a sovereign 
 panacea. General McClernand, indeed, proposed a 
 scheme, simpler even than that of executive recogni 
 tion, by which the Southern Senators and Represent 
 atives might effect a lodgment in Congress. They 
 should, according to him, have gone to Washington, 
 
THE JOHNSON PARTY. 245 
 
 entered the halls of legislation, and proceeded to oc 
 cupy their seats, " peaceably if they could, forcibly if 
 they must ; " but the record of General McClernand 
 as a military man, was not such as to give a high 
 degree of authority to his advice on a question of 
 carrying positions by assault, and, there being some 
 natural hesitation in following his counsel, the golden 
 opportunity was lost. Mr. Montgomery Blair, who 
 professes his willingness to act with any men, 
 " Rebels or any one else," to put down the radicals, 
 is never weary of talking to conservative conventions 
 of " two Presidents and two Congresses." There can 
 be no doubt that the project of a coup d etat has 
 become dangerously familiar to the " conservative " 
 mind, and that the eminent legal gentlemen of the 
 North who are publishing opinions affirming the right 
 of the excluded Southern representatives to their 
 seats, are playing into the hands of the desperate 
 gang of unscrupulous politicians who are determined 
 to have the right established by force. It is com 
 puted that the gain, in the approaching elections, of 
 twenty-five districts now represented by Union Re 
 publicans, will give the Johnson party, in the next 
 Congress, a majority of the House of Representatives, 
 should the Southern delegations be counted ; and it is 
 proposed that the Johnson members legally entitled 
 to seats should combine with the Southern pretenders 
 to seats, organize as the House of Representatives 
 of the United States, and apply to the President for 
 recognition. Should the President comply, he would 
 
246 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 be impeached by an unrecognized House before an 
 " incomplete " Senate, and, if convicted, would deny 
 the validity of the proceeding. The result would be 
 civil war, in which the name of the Federal Govern 
 ment would be on the side of the revolutionists. 
 Such is the programme which is freely discussed by 
 partisans of the President, considered to be high in 
 his favor ; and the scheme, it is contended, is the 
 logical result of the position he has assumed as to the 
 rights of the excluded States to representation. It is 
 certain that the present Congress is as much the Con 
 gress of the United States as he is the President of 
 the United States ; but it is well known that he con 
 siders himself to represent the whole country, while 
 he thinks that Congress only represents a portion of 
 it ; and he has in his character just that combination 
 of qualities, and is placed in just those anomalous 
 circumstances, which lead men to the commission of 
 great political crimes. The mere hint of the possi 
 bility of his attempting a coup d etat is received by 
 some Republicans with a look of incredulous surprise ; 
 yet what has his administration been to such persons 
 but a succession of surprises ? 
 
 But whatever view may be taken of the President s 
 designs, there can be no doubt that the safety, peace, 
 interest, and honor of the country depend on the suc 
 cess of the Union Republicans in the approaching 
 elections. The loyal nation must see to it that the 
 Fortieth Congress shall be as competent to override 
 executive vetoes as the Thirty-Ninth, and be equally 
 
THE JOHNSON PAKTY. 247 
 
 removed from the peril of being expelled for one more 
 in harmony with Executive ideas. The same earnest 
 ness, -energy, patriotism, and intelligence which gave 
 success to the war, must now be exerted to reap its 
 fruits and prevent its recurrence. The only danger 
 is, that in some representative districts the people 
 may be swindled by plausibilities and respectabilities ; 
 for when, in political contests, any great villany is 
 contemplated, there are always found some eminently 
 respectable men, with a fixed capital of certain emi 
 nently conservative phrases, innocently ready to fur 
 nish the wolves of politics with abundant supplies of 
 sheep s clothing. These dignified dupes are more 
 than usually active at the present time ; and the 
 gravity of their speech is as edifying as its emptiness. 
 Immersed in words, and with no clear perception of 
 things, they mistake conspiracy for conservatism. 
 Their pet horror is the term " radical ; " their ideal 
 of heroic patriotism, the spectacle of a great nation 
 which allows itself to be ruined with decorum, and 
 dies rather than commit the slightest breach of con 
 stitutional etiquette. This insensibility to facts and 
 blindness to the tendency of events, they call wisdom 
 and moderation. Behind these political dummies are 
 the real forces of the Johnson party, men of insolent 
 spirit, resolute will, embittered temper, and unscru 
 pulous purpose, who clearly know what they are after, 
 and will hesitate at no " informality " in the attempt 
 to obtain it. To give these persons political power 
 will be to surrender the results of the war, by placing 
 
248 THE JOHNSON PARTY. 
 
 the government practically in the hands of those 
 against whom the war was waged. No smooth words 
 about " the equality of the States," " the necessity of 
 conciliation," " the wickedness of sectional conflicts," 
 will alter the fact, that, in refusing to support Con 
 gress, the people would set a reward on treachery 
 and place a bounty on treason. " The South," says 
 a Mr. Hill of Georgia, in a letter favoring the Phila 
 delphia Convention, " sought to save the Constitution 
 out of the Union. She failed. Let her now bring 
 her diminished and shattered but united and earnest 
 counsels and energies to save the Constitution in the 
 Union*" The sort of Constitution the South sought 
 to save by warring against the government is the 
 Constitution which she now proposes to save by ad 
 ministering it ! Is this the tone of pardoned and 
 penitent treason ? Is this the spirit to build up a 
 " National Union Party " ? No ; but it is the tone 
 and spirit now fashionable in the defeated Rebel 
 States, and will not be changed until the autumn 
 elections shall have proved that they have as little 
 to expect from the next Congress as from the present, 
 and that they must give securities for their future 
 conduct before they can be relieved from the penalties 
 incurred by their past. 
 
 September, 1866. 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 ANDREW JOHNSON has dealt the most cruel of all 
 blows to the respectability of the faction which re 
 joices in his name. Hardly had the political Peck 
 sniffs and Turveydrops contrived so to manage the 
 Johnson Convention at Philadelphia that it violated 
 few of the proprieties of intrigue and none of the 
 decencies of dishonesty, than the commander-in-chief 
 of the combination took the field in person, with the 
 intention of carrying the country by assault. His 
 objective point was the grave of Douglas, which 
 became, by the time he arrived, the grave also of his 
 own reputation and the hopes of his partisans. His 
 speeches on the route were a volcanic outbreak of 
 vulgarity, conceit, bombast, scurrility, ignorance, in 
 solence, brutality, and balderdash. Screams of laugh 
 ter, cries of disgust, flushings of shame, were the 
 various responses of the nation he disgraced to the 
 harangues of this leader of American "conservatism." 
 Never before did the first office in the gift of the 
 people appear so poor an object of human ambition, 
 as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on 
 which to exhibit inability to behave and incapacity to 
 reason. His low cunning conspired with his devour 
 ing egotism to make him throw off all the restraints 
 
250 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 of official decorum, in the expectation that he would 
 find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, 
 and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with 
 Mob impersonated. Never was blustering demagogue 
 led by a distempered sense of self-importance into a 
 more fatal error. Not only was the great body of the 
 people mortified or indignant, but even his " satraps 
 and dependents," even the shrewd politicians acci 
 dents of an Accident and shadows of a shade who 
 had labored so hard at Philadelphia to weave a cloak 
 of plausibilities to cover his usurpations, shivered 
 with apprehension or tingled with shame as they 
 read the reports of their master s impolitic and igno 
 minious abandonment of dignity and decency in his 
 addresses to the people he attempted alternately to 
 bully and cajole. That a man thus self-exposed as 
 unworthy of high trust should have had the face 
 to expect that intelligent constituencies would send 
 to Congress men pledged to support Ms policy and 
 his measures, appeared for the time to be as pitiable 
 a spectacle of human delusion as it was an exasperat 
 ing example of human impudence. 
 
 Not the least extraordinary peculiarity of these 
 addresses from the stump was the immense protu 
 berance they exhibited of the personal pronoun. In 
 Mr. Johnson s speech, his "I" resembles the geom 
 eter s description of infinity, having "its centre every 
 where and its circumference nowhere." Among the 
 many kinds of egotism in which his eloquence is pro 
 lific, it may be difficult to fasten on the particular one 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 251 
 
 which is most detestable or most laughable ; but it 
 seems to us that when his arrogance apes humility it 
 is deserving perhaps of an intenser degree of scorn or 
 derision than when it riots in bravado. The most 
 offensive part which he plays in public is that of 
 " the humble individual," bragging of the lowliness 
 of his origin, hinting of the great merits which could 
 alone have lifted him to his present exalted station, 
 and representing himself as so satiated with the 
 sweets of unsought power as to be indifferent to its 
 honors. Ambition is not for him, for ambition as 
 pires ; and what object has he to aspire to ? From 
 his contented mediocrity as alderman of a village, the 
 people have insisted on elevating him from one pin 
 nacle of greatness to another, until they have at last 
 made him President of the United States. He might 
 have been Dictator had he pleased ; but what, to a 
 man wearied with authority and dignity, would dic 
 tatorship be worth ? If he is proud of anything, it 
 is of the tailor s bench from which he started. He 
 would have everybody to understand that he is hum- 
 ble^ thoroughly humble. Is this caricature? No. 
 It is impossible to caricature Andrew Johnson when 
 he mounts his high horse of humility and becomes a 
 sort of cross between Uriah Heep and Josiah Boun- 
 derby of Cokctown. Indeed, it is only by quoting 
 Dickens s description of the latter personage that wo 
 have anything which fairly matches the traits sug 
 gested by some statements in the President s speeches. 
 " A big, loud man," says the humorist, " with a stare 
 
252 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 and a metallic laugh. A man made out of coarse 
 material, which seemed to have been stretched to 
 make so much of him. A man with a great puffed 
 head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and 
 such a strained skin to his face, that it seemed to hold 
 his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up. A man with 
 a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like 
 a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could 
 never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A 
 man who was continually proclaiming, through that 
 brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old 
 ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the 
 Bully of humility." 
 
 If we turn from the moral and personal to the men 
 tal characteristics of Mr. Johnson s speeches, we find 
 that his brain is to be classed with notable cases of 
 arrested development. He has strong forces in his 
 nature, but in their outlet through his mind* they 
 are dissipated into a confusing clutter of unrelated 
 thoughts and inapplicable phrases. He seems to pos 
 sess neither the power nor the perception of coherent 
 thinking and logical arrangement. He does not ap 
 pear to be aware that prepossessions are not proofs, 
 that assertions are not arguments, that the proper 
 method to answer an objection is not to repeat the 
 proposition against which the objection was directed, 
 that the proper method of unfolding a subject is not 
 to make the successive statements a series of contra 
 dictions. Indeed, he seems to have a thoroughly ani- 
 malized intellect, destitute of the notion of relations, 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 253 
 
 with ideas which are but the form of determinations, 
 and which derive their force, not from reason, but 
 from will. With an individuality thus strong even 
 to fierceness, but which has not been developed in the 
 mental region, and which the least gust of passion in 
 tellectually upsets, he is incapable of looking at any 
 thing out of relations to himself, of regarding it 
 from that neutral ground which is the condition of 
 intelligent discussion between opposing minds. In 
 truth, he makes a virtue of being insensible to the 
 evidence of facts and the deductions of reason, pro 
 claiming to all the world that he has taken his posi 
 tion, that he will never swerve from it, and that all 
 statements and arguments intended to shake his re 
 solves are impertinences, indicating that their authors 
 are radicals and enemies of the country. He is never 
 weary of vaunting his firmness, and firmness he doubt 
 less has, the firmness of at least a score of mules ; but 
 events have shown that it is a different kind of firm 
 ness from that which keeps a statesman firm to his 
 principles, a political leader to his pledges, a gentle 
 man to his word. Amid all changes of opinion, he 
 has been conscious of unchanged will ; and the intel 
 lectual element forms so small a portion of his being, 
 that, when he challenged " the man, woman, or child 
 to come forward " and convict him of inconstancy to 
 his professions, he knew that, however it might be 
 with the rest of mankind, he would himself be uncon 
 vinced by any evidence which the said man, woman, 
 or child might adduce. Again, when he was asked 
 
254 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 by one of his audiences why he did not hang Jeff. 
 Davis, he retorted by exclaiming, " Why don t you ask 
 me why I have not hanged Thad. Stevens and Wendell 
 Phillips ? They are as much traitors as Davis." And 
 we are almost charitable enough to suppose that he 
 saw no difference between the moral or legal treason 
 of the man who for four years had waged open war 
 against the Government of the United States, and the 
 men who for one year had sharply criticised the acts 
 and utterances of Andrew Johnson. It is not to be 
 expected that nice distinctions will be made by a mag 
 istrate who is in the habit of denying indisputable 
 facts with the fury of a pugilist who has received a 
 personal affront, and of announcing demonstrated fal 
 lacies with the imperturbable serenity of a philosopher 
 proclaiming the fundamental laws of human belief. 
 His brain is entirely ridden by his will, and of all the 
 public men in the country its official head is the one 
 whose opinion carries with it the least intellectual 
 weight. It is to the credit of our institutions and our 
 statesmen that the man least qualified by largeness of 
 mind and moderation of temper to exercise uncon 
 trolled power should be the man who aspired to usurp 
 it. The constitutional instinct in the blood, and the 
 constitutional principle in the brain, of our real states 
 men, preserve them from the folly and guilt of set 
 ting themselves up as imitative Caesars and Napo 
 leons the moment they are trusted with a little dele 
 gated power. 
 
 Still we are told that, with all his defects, Andrew 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 255 
 
 Johnson is to be honored and supported as a " conser 
 vative " President engaged in a contest with a " radi 
 cal " Congress ! It happens, however, that the two 
 persons who specially represent Congress in this strug 
 gle are Senators Trumbull arid Fessenden. Senator 
 Trumbull is the author of the two important measures 
 which the President vetoed ; Senator Fessenden is the 
 chairman and organ of the Committee of fifteen which 
 the President anathematizes. Now, we desire to do 
 justice to the gravity of face which the partisans of 
 Mr. Johnson preserve in announcing their most ab 
 surd propositions, and especially do we commend their 
 command of countenance while it is their privilege to 
 contrast the wild notions and violent speech of such 
 lawless radicals as the Senator from Illinois and the 
 Senator from Maine, with the balanced judgment and 
 moderate temper of such a pattern conservative as 
 the President of the United States. The contrast 
 prompts ideas so irresistibly ludicrous, that to keep 
 one s risibilities under austere control while institut 
 ing it argues a self-command almost miraculous. 
 
 Andrew Johnson, however, such as he is in heart, 
 intellect, will, and speech, is the recognized leader of 
 his party, and demands that the great mass of his 
 partisans shall serve him, not merely by prostration 
 of body, but by prostration of mind. It is the hard 
 duty of his more intimate associates to translate his 
 broken utterances from Andy-Johnsonese into consti 
 tutional phrase, to give these versions some show of 
 logical arrangement, and to carry out, as best they 
 
256 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 may, their own objects, while professing boundless de 
 votion to his. By a sophistical process of developing 
 his rude notions, they often lead him to conclusions 
 which he had not foreseen, but which they induce him 
 to make his own, not by a fruitless effort to quicken 
 his mind into following the steps of their reasoning, 
 but by stimulating his passions to the point of adopt 
 ing its results. They thus become parasites in order 
 that they may become powers, and their interests 
 make them particularly ruthless in their dealings with 
 their master s consistency. Their relation to him, if 
 they would bluntly express it, might be indicated in 
 this brief formula : " We will adore you in order that 
 you may obey us." 
 
 The trouble with these politicians is, that they can 
 not tie the President s tongue as they tied the tongues 
 of the eminent personages they invited from all por 
 tions of the country to keep silent at their great Con 
 vention at Philadelphia. That Convention was a 
 masterpiece of cunning political management; but 
 its Address and Resolutions were hardly laid at Mr. 
 Johnson s feet, when, in his exultation, he blurted 
 out that unfortunate remark about " a body called, 
 or which assumed to be, the Congress of the United 
 States," which, it appears, " we have seen hanging on 
 the verge of the Government." Now all this was in 
 the Address of the Convention, but it was not so bru 
 tally worded, nor so calculated to appall those timid 
 supporters of the Johnson party, who thought, in their 
 innocence, that the object of the Philadelphia meeting 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 257 
 
 was to heal the wounds of civil war, and not to lay 
 down a programme by which it might be reopened. 
 Turning, then, from Mr. Johnson to the manifesto of 
 his political supporters, let us see what additions it 
 makes to political wisdom, and what guaranties it 
 affords for future peace. We shall not discriminate 
 between insurgent States and individual insurgents, 
 because, when individual insurgents are so overwhelm 
 ingly strong that they carry their States with them, 
 or when States are so overwhelmingly strong that they 
 force individuals to be insurgents, it appears to be 
 needless. The terms are often used interchangeably 
 in the Address, for the Convention was so largely 
 composed of individual insurgents that it was impor 
 tant to vary a little the charge that they usurped State 
 powers with the qualification that they obeyed the pow 
 ers they usurped. At the South, individual insurgents 
 constitute the State when they determine to rebel, and 
 obey it when they desire to be pardoned. An identical 
 thing cannot be altered by giving it two names. 
 
 The principle which runs through the Philadelphia 
 Address is, that insurgent States recover their former 
 rights under the Constitution by the mere fact of sub 
 mission. This is equivalent to saying that insurgent 
 States incurred no guilt in rebellion. But States can 
 not become insurgent unless the authorities of such 
 States commit perjury and treason, and their people 
 become rebels and public enemies ; perjury, treason, 
 and rebellion are commonly held to be crimes ; and 
 who ever heard, before, that criminals were restored 
 
 17 
 
258 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS. ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 to all the rights of honest citizens by the mere fact of 
 their arrest ? 
 
 The doctrine, moreover, is a worse heresy than 
 that of Secession ; for Secession implies that seceded 
 States, being out of the Union, can plainly only be 
 brought back by conquest, and on such terms as the 
 victors may choose to impose. No candid Southern 
 Rebel, who believes that his State seceded, and that 
 he acted under competent authority when he took up 
 arms against the United States, can have the effron 
 tery to affirm that he had inherent rights of citizenship 
 in " the foreign country " against which he plotted and 
 fought for four years. The so-called " right " of se 
 cession was claimed by the South as a constitutional 
 right, to be peaceably exercised, but it passed into the 
 broader and more generally intelligible "right" of 
 revolution when it had to be sustained by war ; and 
 the condition of a defeated revolutionist is certainly 
 not that of a qualified voter in the nation against 
 which he revolted. But if insurgent States recover 
 their former rights and privileges when they submit 
 to superior force, there is no reason why armed rebel 
 lion should not be as common as local discontent. 
 We have, on this principle, sacrificed thirty-five hun 
 dred millions of dollars and three hundred thousand 
 lives, only to bring the insurgent States into just those 
 " practical relations to the Union " which will enable 
 us to sacrifice thirty-five hundred millions of dollars 
 more, and three hundred thousand more lives, when 
 it suits the passions and caprices of these States to 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 259 
 
 rebel again. Whatever they may do in the way of dis 
 turbing the peace of the country, they can never, it 
 seems, forfeit their rights and privileges under the 
 Constitution. Even if everybody was positively cer 
 tain that there would be a new rebellion in ten years, 
 unless conditions of representation were exacted of 
 the South, we still, according to the doctrine of the 
 Johnsonian jurists, would be constitutionally impotent 
 to exact them, because insurgent States recover un 
 conditioned rights to representation by the mere fact 
 of their submitting to the power they can no longer 
 resist. The acceptance of this principle would make 
 insurrection the chronic disease of our political sys 
 tem. War would follow war, until nearly all the 
 wealth of the country was squandered, and nearly 
 all the inhabitants exterminated. Mr. Johnson s 
 prophetic vision of that Paradise of constitution 
 alism, shadowed forth in his exclamation that he 
 would stand by the Constitution though all around 
 him should perish, would be measurably realized ; 
 and among the ruins of the nation a few haggard 
 and ragged pedants would be left to drone out eulo 
 gies on "the glorious Constitution" which had sur 
 vived unharmed the anarchy, poverty, and depopu 
 lation it had produced. An interpretation of the 
 Constitution which thus makes it the shield of trea 
 son and the destroyer of civilization must be false 
 both to fact and sense. The framers of that instru 
 ment were not idiots ; yet idiots they would certainly 
 have been, if they had put into it a clause declaring 
 
260 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 " that no State, or combination of States, which may 
 at any time choose to get up an armed attempt to 
 overthrow the Government established by this Consti 
 tution, and be defeated in the attempt, shall forfeit 
 any of the privileges granted by this instrument to 
 loyal States." Bat an interpretation of the Consti 
 tution which can be conceived of as forming a possible 
 part of it only by impeaching the sanity of its f ramers, 
 cannot be an interpretation which the American people 
 are morally bound to risk ruin to support. 
 
 But even if we should be wild enough to admit the 
 Johnsonian principle respecting insurgent States, the 
 question comes up as to the identity of the States 
 now demanding representation with the States whose 
 rights of representation are affirmed to have been only 
 suspended during their rebellion. The fact would 
 seem to be, that these reconstructed States are merely 
 the creations of the executive branch of the Govern 
 ment, with every organic bond hopelessly cut which 
 connected them with the old State governments and 
 constitutions. They have only the names of the 
 States they pretend to be. Before the Rebellion, 
 they had a legal people ; when Mr. Johnson took hold 
 of them, they had nothing but a disorganized popu 
 lation. Out of this population he by his own will 
 created a people, on the principle, we must suppose, 
 of natural selection. Now, to decide who are the peo 
 ple of a State is to create its very foundations, to 
 begin anew in the most comprehensive sense of the 
 word ; for the being of a State is more in its people, 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 261 
 
 that is, in the persons selected from its inhabitants 
 to be the depositaries of its political power, than it is 
 in its geographical boundaries and area. Over this 
 people thus constituted by himself, Mr. Johnson set 
 Provisional Governors nominated by himself. These 
 Governors called popular conventions, whose mem 
 bers were elected by the votes of those to whom Mr. 
 Johnson had given the right of suffrage; and these 
 conventions proceeded to do what Mr. Johnson dic 
 tated. Everywhere Mr. Johnson ; nowhere the as 
 sumed rights of the States ! North Carolina was one 
 of these creations ; and North Carolina, through the 
 lips of its Chief Justice, has already decided that Mr. 
 Johnson was an unauthorized intruder, and his work 
 a nullity, and even Mr. Johnson s " people " of North 
 Carolina have rejected the constitution framed by Mr. 
 Johnson s Convention. Other Rebel communities will 
 doubtless repudiate his work, as soon as they can dis 
 pense with his assistance. But whatever may be the 
 condition of these new Johnsonian States, they are 
 certainly not States which can " recover " rights which 
 existed previous to their creation. The date of their 
 birth is to be reckoned, not from any year previous to 
 the Rebellion, but from the year which followed its 
 suppression. It may, in old times, have been a politic 
 trick of shrewd politicians, to involve the foundations 
 of States in the mists of a mythical antiquity ; but we 
 happily live in an historical period, and there is some 
 thing peculiarly stupid or peculiarly impudent in the 
 attempt of the publicists of the Philadelphia Con- 
 
262 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 vent-ion to ignore the origins of political societies for 
 which, after they have obtained a certain degree of 
 organization, they claim such eminent traditional 
 rights and privileges. Respectable as these States 
 may be as infant phenomena, it will not do to Methu- 
 selahize them too recklessly, or assert their equality 
 in muscle and brawn with giants full grown. 
 
 It is evident, from the nature of the case, that Mr. 
 Johnson s labors were purely experimental and pro 
 visional, and needed the indorsement of Congress to 
 be of any force. The only department of the Govern 
 ment constitutionally capable to admit new States or 
 rehabilitate insurgent ones is the legislative. When 
 the Executive not only took the initiative in recon 
 struction, but assumed to have completed it ; when 
 he presented his States to Congress as the equals of 
 the States represented in that body ; when he as 
 serted that the delegates from his States should have 
 the right of sitting and voting in the legislature 
 whose business it was to decide on their right to 
 admission ; when, in short, he demanded that crimi 
 nals at the bar should have a seat on the bench, and 
 an equal voice with the judges, in deciding on their 
 own case, the effrontery of Executive pretension went 
 beyond all bounds of Congressional endurance. 
 
 The real difference at first was not on the question 
 of imposing conditions, for the President had no 
 toriously imposed them himself, but on the question 
 whether or not additional conditions were necessary 
 to secure the public safety. The President, with that 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 263 
 
 facility " in turning his back on himself " which all 
 other logical gymnasts had pronounced an impossible 
 feat, then boldly took the ground that, being satisfied 
 with the conditions he had himself exacted, the exac 
 tion of conditions was unconstitutional. To sustain 
 this curious proposition he adduced no constitutional 
 arguments, but he left various copies of the Constitu 
 tion in each of the crowds he recently addressed, 
 with the trust, we suppose, that somebody might be 
 fortunate enough to find in that instrument the clause 
 which supported his theory. Mr. Johnson, however, 
 though the most consequential of individuals, is the 
 most inconsequential of reasoners ; every proposition 
 which is evident to himself he considers to fulfil the 
 definition of a self-evident proposition ; but his sup 
 porters at Philadelphia must have known that, in 
 affirming that insurgent States recover their former 
 rights by the fact of submission, they were arraigning 
 the conduct of their leader, who had notoriously 
 violated those " rights." They took up his work at a 
 certain stage, and then, with that as a basis, they 
 affirmed a general proposition about insurgent States, 
 which, had it been complied with by the President, 
 would have left them no foundation at all; for the 
 States about which they so glibly generalized would 
 have had no show of organized governments. The 
 premises of their argument were obtained by the vio 
 lation of its conclusion ; they inferred from what was 
 a negation of their inference, and deduced from what 
 was a death-blow to their deduction. 
 
264 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 It is easy enough to understand why the Johnson 
 Convention asserted the equality of the Johnson re 
 constructions of States with the States now repre 
 sented in Congress. The object was to give some 
 appearance of legality to a contemplated act of arbi 
 trary power ; and the principle that insurgent States 
 recover all their old rights by the fact of submission 
 was invented in order to cover the case. Mr. John 
 son now intends, by the admission of his partisans, to 
 attempt a coup d etat on the assembling of the Forti 
 eth Congress, in case seventy-one members of the 
 House of Representatives, favorable to his policy, 
 are chosen, in the elections of this autumn, from the 
 twenty-six loyal States. These, with the fifty South 
 ern delegates, would constitute a quorum of the House ; 
 and the remaining hundred and nineteen members are 
 in the President s favorite phrase, " to-be kicked out " 
 from that " verge " of the Government on which they 
 now are said to be " hanging." The question, there 
 fore, whether Congress, as it is at present constituted, 
 is a body constitutionally competent to legislate for 
 the whole country, is the most important of all practi 
 cal questions. Let us see how the case stands. 
 
 The Constitution, ratified by the people of all the 
 States, establishes a Government of sovereign powers, 
 supreme over the whole land ; and the people of no 
 State can rightly pass from under its authority except 
 by the consent of the people of all the States, with 
 whom it is bound by the most solemn and binding of 
 contracts. The Rebel States broke, in fact, the con- 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 265 
 
 tract they could not break in right. Assembled in 
 conventions of their people, they passed ordinances of 
 secession, withdrew their Senators and Representa 
 tives from Congress, and began the war by assailing 
 a fort of the United States. The Secessionists had 
 trusted to the silence of the Constitution in relation 
 to the act they performed. A State in the American 
 Union, as distinguished from a Territory, is constitu 
 tionally a part of the Government to which it owes 
 allegiance, and the seceded States had refused to be 
 parts of the Government, and had forsworn their 
 allegiance. By the Constitution, the United States, 
 in cases of " domestic violence " in a State, is to in 
 terfere, " on application of the Legislature, or of the 
 Executive when the Legislature cannot be convened." 
 But in this case legislatures, executives, conventions 
 of the people, were all violators of the domestic 
 peace, and of course made no application for interfer 
 ence. By the Constitution, Congress is empowered to 
 suppress insurrections ; but this might be supposed 
 to mean insurrections like Shays s Rebellion in Mas 
 sachusetts and the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsyl 
 vania, and not to cover the action of States seceding 
 from the Congress which is thus empowered. The 
 secedcrs, therefore, felt somewhat as did the abscond 
 ing James II. when he flung the Great Seal into the 
 Thames, and thought he had stopped the machinery 
 of the English government. 
 
 Mr. Buchanan, then President of the United States, 
 admitted at once that the Secessionists had done 
 
266 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 their work in such a way that, though they had done 
 wrong, the Government was powerless to compel them 
 to do right. And here the matter should have rested, 
 if the Government established by the Constitution was 
 such a government as Mr. Johnson s supporters now 
 declare it to be. If it is impotent to prescribe terms 
 of peace in relation to insurgent States, it is certainly 
 impotent to make war on insurgent States. If in 
 surgent States recover their former constitutional 
 rights in laying down their arms, then there was no 
 criminality in their taking them up ; and if there was 
 no criminality in their taking them up, then the 
 United States was criminal in the war by whicli they 
 were forced to lay them down. On this theory we 
 have a Government incompetent to legislate for insur 
 gent States, because lacking their representatives, 
 waging against them a cruel and unjust war. And 
 this is the real theory of the defeated Rebels and 
 Copperheads who formed the great mass of the dele 
 gates to the Johnson Convention. Should they get 
 into power, they would feel themselves logically justi 
 fied in annulling, not only all the acts of the " Rump 
 Congress " since they submitted, but all the acts of 
 the Rump Congresses during the time they had a 
 Confederate Congress of their own. They may deny 
 that this is their intention ; but what intention to 
 forego the exercise of an assumed right, held by 
 those who are out of power, can be supposed capable 
 of limiting their action when they are in ? 
 
 But if the United States is a Government having 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 267 
 
 legitimate rights of sovereignty conferred upon it by 
 the people of all the States, and if, consequently, the 
 attempted secession of the people of one or more 
 States only makes them criminals, without impairing 
 the sovereignty of the United States, then the Govern 
 ment, with all its powers, remains with the represent 
 atives of the loyal people. By the very nature of 
 government as government, the rights and privileges 
 guaranteed to citizens are guaranteed to loyal citi 
 zens ; the rights and privileges guaranteed to States 
 are guaranteed to loyal States ; and loyal citizens 
 and loyal States are not such as profess a willingness 
 to be loyal after having been utterly worsted in an 
 enterprise of gigantic disloyalty. The organic unity 
 and continuity of the Government would be broken by 
 the return of disloyal citizens and Rebel States with 
 out their going through the process of being restored 
 by the action of the Government they had attempted 
 to subvert ; and the power to restore carries with it 
 the power to decide on the terms of restoration. 
 And when we speak of the Government, we are not 
 courtly enough to mean by the expression simply its 
 executive branch. The question of admitting and 
 implicitly of restoring States, and of deciding whether 
 or not States have a republican form of government, 
 are matters left by the Constitution to the discretion 
 of Congress. As to the Rebel States now claiming 
 representation, they have succumbed, thoroughly ex 
 hausted, in one of the costliest and bloodiest wars in 
 the history of the world, a war which tasked the 
 
268 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 resources of the United States more than they would 
 have been tasked by a war with all the great powers 
 of Europe combined, a war which, in 1862, had 
 assumed such proportions, that the Supreme Court 
 decided that it gave the United States the same 
 rights and privileges which the Government might 
 exercise in the case of a national and foreign war. 
 The inhabitants of the insurgent States being thus 
 judicially declared public enemies as well as Rebels, 
 there would seem to be no doubt at all that the vic 
 torious close of actual hostilities could not deprive 
 the Government of the power of deciding on the terms 
 of peace with public enemies. The Government of 
 the United States found the insurgent States thor 
 oughly revolutionized and disorganized, with no State 
 governments which could be recognized without rec 
 ognizing the validity of treason, and without the 
 power or right to take even the initial steps for State 
 reorganization. They were practically out of the 
 Union as States ; their State governments had lapsed ; 
 their population was composed of Rebels and public 
 enemies, by the decision of the Supreme Court. Un 
 der such circumstances, how the commander-in-chief, 
 under Congress, of the forces of the United States 
 could re-create these defunct States, and make it 
 mandatory on Congress to receive their delegates, 
 has always appeared to us one of those mysteries 
 of unreason which require faculties either above or 
 below humanity to accept. In addition to this fun 
 damental objection, there was the further one, that 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 269 
 
 almost all of the delegates were Rebels presidentially 
 pardoned into "loyal men," were elected with the 
 idea cf forcing Congress to repeal the test oath, and 
 were incapacitated to be legislators even if they had 
 been sent from loyal States. The few who were 
 loyal men in the sense that they had not served the 
 Rebel government, were still palpably elected by 
 constituents who had ; and the character of the con 
 stituency is as legitimate a subject of Congressional 
 inquiry as the character of the representative. 
 
 It not being true, then, that the twenty-two hun 
 dred thousand loyal voters who placed Mr. Johnson 
 in office, and whom he betrayed, have no means by 
 their representatives in Congress to exert a control 
 ling power in the reconstruction of the Rebel com 
 munities, the question comes up as to the conditions 
 which Congress has imposed. It always appeared to 
 us that the true measure of conciliation, of security, 
 of mercy, of justice, was one which would combine 
 the principle of universal amnesty, or an amnestj" 
 nearly universal, with that of universal, or at least 
 of impartial suffrage. In regard to amnesty, the 
 amendment to the Constitution which Congress has 
 passed disqualifies no Rebels from voting, and only 
 disqualifies them from holding office when they have 
 happened to add perjury to treason. In regard to 
 suffrage, it makes it for the political interest of the 
 South to be just to its colored citizens, by basing 
 representation on voters, and not on population, and 
 thus places the indulgence of class prejudices and 
 
270 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 hatreds under the penalty of a corresponding loss of 
 political power in the Electoral College and the Na 
 tional House of Representatives. If the Rebel States 
 should be restored without this amendment becoming 
 a part of the Constitution, then the recent Slave 
 States will have thirty Presidential Electors and 
 thirty members of the House of Representatives in 
 virtue of a population they disfranchise, and the vote 
 of a Rebel white in South Carolina will carry with it 
 more than double the power of a loyal white in Mas 
 sachusetts or Ohio. The only ground on which this 
 disparity can be defended is, that as u one Southerner 
 is more than a match for two Yankees," he has an 
 inherent, continuous, unconditioned right to have this 
 superiority recognized at the ballot-box. Indeed, the 
 injustice of this is so monstrous, that the Johnson 
 orators find it more convenient to decr} r all conditions 
 of representation than to meet the incontrovertible 
 reasons for exacting the condition which bases rep 
 resentation on voters. Not to make it a part of the 
 Constitution would be, in Mr. Shellabarger s vivid 
 illustration, to allow "that Lee s vote should -have 
 double the elective power of Grant s ; Semmes s 
 double that of Farragut s ; Booth s did he live 
 double that of Lincoln s, his victim!" 
 
 It is also to be considered that these thirty votes 
 would, in almost all future sessions of Congress, de 
 cide the fate of the most important measures. In 
 1862 the Republicans, as Congress is now constituted, 
 only had a majority of twenty votes. In alliance with 
 
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 271 
 
 the Northern Democratic party, the South with these 
 thirty votes might repeal the Civil Rights Bill, the 
 principle of which is embodied in the proposed 
 amendment. It might assume the Rebel debt, which 
 is repudiated in that amendment. It might even 
 repudiate the Federal debt, which is affirmed in that 
 amendment. We are so accustomed to look at the 
 Rebel debt as dead beyond all power of resurrection, 
 as to forget that it amounts, with the valuation of the 
 emancipated slaves, to some four thousand millions 
 of dollars. If the South and its Northern Democratic 
 allies should come into power, there is a strong prob 
 ability that a measure would be brought in to assume 
 at least a portion of this debt, say two thousand 
 millions. The Southern members would be nearly a 
 unit for assumption, and the Northern Democratic 
 members would certainly be exposed to the most 
 frightful temptation that legislators ever had to re 
 sist. Suppose it were necessary to buy fifty members 
 at a million of dollars apiece, that sum would only be 
 two and a half per cent of the whole. Suppose it 
 were .necessary to give them ten millions apiece, even 
 that would only be a deduction of twenty-five per cent 
 from a claim worthless without their votes. The 
 bribery might be conducted in such a way as to elude 
 discovery, if not suspicion, and the measure would 
 certainly be trumpeted all over the North as the 
 grandest of all acts of statesmanlike " conciliation," 
 binding the South to the Union in indissoluble bonds 
 of interest. The amendment renders the conversion 
 
272 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES. 
 
 of the Rebel debt into the most enormous of all cor 
 ruption funds an impossibility. 
 
 But the character and necessity of the amendment 
 are too well understood to need explanation, enforce 
 ment, or defence. If it, or some more stringent one, 
 be not adopted, the loyal people will be tricked out of 
 the fruits of the war they have waged at the expense 
 of such unexampled sacrifices of treasure and blood. 
 It never will be adopted unless it be practically made 
 a condition of the restoration of the Rebel States ; and 
 for the unconditioned restoration of those States the 
 President, through his most trusted supporters, has 
 indicated his intention to venture a coup d etat. This 
 threat has failed doubly of its purpose. The timid, 
 whom it was expected to frighten, it has simply scared 
 into the reception of the idea that the only way to es 
 cape civil war is by the election of over a hundred and 
 twenty Republican Representatives to the Fortieth 
 Congress. The courageous, whom it was intended to 
 defy, it has only exasperated into more strenuous 
 efforts against the insolent renegade who had the 
 audacity to make it. Everywhere in the loyal States 
 there is an uprising of the people only paralleled by 
 the grand uprising of 1861. The President s plan of 
 reconstruction having passed from a policy into a con 
 spiracy, his chief supporters are now not so much his 
 partisans as his accomplices ; and against him and his 
 accomplices the people will this autumn indignantly 
 record the most overwhelming of verdicts. 
 
 November, 18G6. 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 THE people of the United States now have the 
 mortification of standing before the world in the 
 attitude of a swindled democracy. Their collective 
 will is crossed by the will of one individual, whose 
 only title to such autocracy is in the fact that he 
 has cheated and betrayed those who elected him. 
 There might be some little compensation for this 
 outrage, if the man himself possessed any of those 
 commanding qualities of mind and disposition which 
 ordinarily distinguish usurpers; but it is the peculiar 
 ity of Mr. Johnson that the indignation excited by 
 his claims is only equalled by the contempt excited 
 by his character. He is despised even by those he 
 benefits, and his nominal supporters feel ashamed 
 of the trickster and apostate, while condescending to 
 reap the advantages of his faithlessness. No party 
 in the South or in the North thinks of selecting him 
 as its candidate ; for the vices and weaknesses which 
 make an excellent accomplice and tool are not those 
 which any party would consider desirable in a leader. 
 Whatever office-seekers, partisans, traitors, and pub 
 lic enemies may find in Mr. Johnson, it is certain 
 that they find in him nothing to respect. He is 
 cursed with that form of moral disease which some- 
 
 18 
 
274 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 times renders a man ridiculous, sometimes infamous, 
 but which never renders him respectable ; namely, 
 vanity of will. Other men may be vain of their 
 talents and accomplishments, but he is vain of the 
 personal pronoun itself, utterly regardless of what 
 it covers and includes. Reason, conscience, under 
 standing, have no impersonality to him. When he 
 uses the words, he uses them as synonyms of his 
 determinations, or as decorative terms into which 
 it pleases him to translate the rough vernacular of 
 his wilfulness and caprices. The " Constitution," 
 also, a word constantly profaned by his lips, is 
 not so much, as he uses it, the Constitution of the 
 United States as the moral and mental constitution 
 of Andrew Johnson, which, in his view, is the one 
 primary fact to which all other facts must be subor 
 dinate. His gross inconsistencies of opinion and 
 policy, his shameless betrayal of his party, his in 
 capacity to hold himself to his word, his hatred of 
 a cause the moment its defenders cease to flatter 
 him, his habit of administering laws he has vetoed, 
 on the principle that they do not mean what he 
 vetoed them for meaning, his delight in little tricks 
 of low cunning, in short, all the immoral and un 
 reasonable acts of his administration have their cen 
 tral source in a passionate sense of self-importance, 
 inflaming a mind of extremely limited capacity. 
 
 Such a person, whose mere presence in the ex 
 ecutive chair of a constitutional country is itself " a 
 high crime and misdemeanor," is of course the natu- 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 275 
 
 ral prey of demagogues, and he now appears to be 
 surrounded by demagogues of the most desperate 
 class. His advisers are conspirators, and they have 
 so wrought on his vulgar and malignant nature that 
 the question of his impeachment has now come to 
 be merged in the more momentous question whether 
 he will submit to be impeached. Constitutionally, 
 there is no limit to the power of Congress in this 
 respect but that which Congress may itself impose. 
 The power is plain, and there can be no revision of 
 the judgment of the Senate by any other power in 
 the Government. But Mr. Johnson thinks, or says 
 he thinks, that Congress itself, as at present consti 
 tuted, is unconstitutional. He believes, or says lie 
 believes, that the defeated Rebel States whose repre 
 sentatives Congress now excludes are as much States 
 in the Union, and as much entitled to representation, 
 as New York or Ohio. As he specially represents 
 the defeated Rebel States, it is hardly to be supposed 
 that he will consent to be punished for crimes com 
 mitted in their behalf by a Congress from which 
 their representatives are excluded ; and it is also to 
 be presumed that the measures he is now taking 
 to obstruct the operation of the laws of Congress 
 relating to reconstruction are but preliminary to a 
 design to resist Congress itself. 
 
 The madness of such a scheme leads judicious 
 people to disbelieve in its possibility ; but in respect 
 to Mr. Johnson it has been found that the only way 
 to prevent the occurrence of mischief is to diffuse 
 
276 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 extensively among the people the suspicion that it 
 is meditated. Judicious and dispassionate persons 
 are often poor judges of what men of fierce passions 
 arid distempered minds will do ; for they uncon 
 sciously attribute to such men some of their own 
 ideas of honesty, propriety, and regard for the public 
 welfare. The legislators whom Louis Napoleon out 
 witted were overthrown, because, bad as their opinion 
 of him was, it was not so bad as events proved it 
 ought to have been. In the case of Mr. Johnson, 
 there is riot the same excuse for misconception, since 
 his cunning is utterly divorced from sagacity, and 
 he has not the intelligence to conceal what his im 
 pulses prompt him to attempt. The kind of man 
 he is would seem to be obvious to the most superficial 
 observer ; the natural inference is, therefore, that he 
 will act after his kind ; but this is an inference which 
 dispassionate statesmen have hesitated fully to draw. 
 They have been continually surprised at acts which 
 they should have foreseen. They were surprised 
 that, during the months he was left to his own de 
 vices and to the counsels of Southern politicians, 
 he matured his policy of reconstruction. They were 
 surprised that he would not abandon his policy rather 
 than break with the Republican party. They were 
 surprised when they learned that he meditated a 
 coup d^tat on the assembling of the Fortieth Con 
 gress. They were surprised when they found that 
 no law could be made which would bind him accord 
 ing to its intent. They were surprised when, as soon 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 277 
 
 as Congress adjourned, he began to take measures 
 which can have no other intelligible purpose than 
 that of making him master of Congress when it 
 reassembles. And to crown all, though it has been 
 apparent since February, 1866, that he was the enemy 
 of the country, they have still had technical rea- 
 tsons for retaining him as the proper executive of its 
 laws. 
 
 It would then seem that, in dealing with such a 
 man as Andrew Johnson, it is the part of wisdom 
 to suspect the worst. Without any special knowledge 
 of the treasonable intrigue now going on in Washing 
 ton, it is still possible to fathom the President s 
 designs, and to understand the resources on which 
 he relies. In the first place, his conceit makes him 
 believe that he is the first man in the nation, and 
 that he is not only adored at the South, but popu 
 lar at the North. The slightest sign of reaction in 
 Northern and Western elections he considers a testi 
 mony to his individual merit, and an indorsement 
 of his policy. In case he refuses to recognize the 
 present Congress, turns its members by military 
 power out of their seats, and appeals for support to 
 the white population of the Rebel as well as Loyal 
 States, he will count on being sustained by the 
 nation. The Democratic party agrees with him as 
 far as regards the constitutionality of the laws which 
 he will, in the name of the Constitution, be compelled 
 to disregard in order to get possession of the military 
 power of the country ; and he thinks that party will 
 
278 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 support him in resuming those functions as com- 
 mander-in-chief of which he has been deprived by 
 a " usurping " Congress. The army and navy, with 
 all Republican officers removed, including, of course, 
 General Grant and Admiral Farragut, he thinks will 
 obey his orders. The South, he supposes, will rally 
 round him to a man. The thoroughly Rebel military 
 organization in Maryland, controlled by a Governor 
 after his own heart, will interpose obstacles to the 
 passage of troops from the Northern States to Wash 
 ington. The Democrats in those States will do all 
 they can to prevent troops from being sent. Before 
 there could be any efficient military organization in 
 the Loyal States brought to bear on his dictatorship, 
 he expects to have a Congress of " the whole nation " 
 around him, of which at least a majority will be de 
 feated Rebels and Copperheads. The whole thing 
 is to be done in the name of the Constitution ; and 
 the Proclamation he has issued to all officers of the 
 United States, civil and military, telling them to obey 
 the Constitution (that is, Mr. Johnson), may be 
 considered the first step in the development of the 
 scheme. 
 
 It is needless to say that such a scheme could only 
 find hospitable reception in the head of a spiteful, in 
 flated, and unprincipled egotist, for such an egotist 
 Mr. Johnson assuredly is. It is needless to say that 
 it would break down through the refusal of General 
 Grant to give up his command, and through the re 
 fusal of the great body of the army to obey the Presi- 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 279 
 
 dent ; for the danger is not so much the success of 
 the attempt as the convulsion which the mere attempt 
 would occasion. That the danger is a serious one, 
 provided the October and November elections show 
 a considerable Republican loss, is evident from a 
 consideration of the President s position. He has 
 already gone far enough in his course to exasperate 
 Congress, and unite its Republican members, con 
 servative and radical, in favor of his impeachment. 
 Without going over the long list of delinquencies and 
 usurpations which would justify that measure, it is 
 sufficient to name the recent Proclamation of Am 
 nesty as an act which promises to secure it. That 
 Proclamation is a plain violation of the Constitution 
 as the Constitution is understood by Congress ; and 
 it is upon the Congressional interpretation of the 
 Constitution that, in the matter of impeachment, the 
 President must stand or fall. Congress, by giving 
 the power of granting amnesty to Mr. Lincoln, evi 
 dently conceived that it was not a power given to him 
 by the Constitution; by taking it away from Mr. 
 Johnson, it as evidently conceived that it could not 
 be exercised by him except by usurpation. In usurp 
 ing this power, Mr. Johnson must have known that 
 his act belonged, in the opinion of Congress, to the 
 class of "high crimes and misdemeanors," for the 
 commission of which the Constitution expressly pro 
 vides that Presidents may be impeached ; and he 
 must also have known that Congress, in judging of 
 his infractions of the Constitution, would be bound 
 
280 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 neither by his individual opinion of his constitutional 
 powers nor by the opinion of the Supreme Court, but 
 was at perfect liberty to act on its own interpretation 
 of his constitutional duty. It is not therefore to be 
 supposed that he intended to limit his defiance of 
 Congress to the mere issuing of the Amnesty Proc 
 lamation, especially as the principle on which that 
 Proclamation was issued would cover his refusal to 
 carry out the whole Congressional plan of reconstruc 
 tion. His conviction or assertion that Congress has 
 no right to withhold from him the power to pardon 
 defeated rebels and public enemies by the wholesale, 
 is certainly not greater or more emphatic than his 
 conviction or assertion that, in its plan of reconstruc 
 tion, Congress has granted to subordinates powers 
 which constitutionally belong to him. If he can exalt 
 his will over Congress in the one case, there is no 
 reason why he should not do it in the other. 
 
 Indeed, in the Proclamation of Amnesty, Mr. John 
 son practically claims that his power to grant pardons 
 extends to a dispensing power over the laws. But it 
 is evident that the Constitution, in giving the Presi 
 dent the power to pardon criminals, does not give him 
 the power to dispense with the laws against crime. 
 At one period Mr. Johnson seems to have done this 
 in respect to the crime of counterfeiting, by his re 
 peated pardons extended to convicted counterfeiters. 
 Still, there is a broad line of distinction between the 
 abuse of this power to pardon criminals after convic 
 tion, and the assumption of power to restore to whole 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 281 
 
 classes of traitors and public enemies their forfeited 
 rights of citizenship. By the pardon of murderers 
 and counterfeiters, the President cannot much increase 
 the number of his political supporters ; by the pardon 
 of traitors and public enemies, he may build up a 
 party to support him in his struggle against the legis 
 lative department of the Government. The reasons 
 which have induced Mr. Johnson to dispense with the 
 laws against treason are political reasons, and bear 
 no relation to his prerogative of mercy. Nobody pre 
 tends tli at he pardoned counterfeiters because they 
 were his political partisans ; everybody knows he par 
 dons traitors and public enemies in order to gain 
 their influence and votes. A public enemy himself, 
 and leagued with public enemies, he has the impu 
 dence to claim that he is constitutionally capable of 
 perverting his power to pardon into a power to gain 
 political support in his schemes against the loyal 
 nation. 
 
 But it is not probable that the President will limit 
 his usurpations to a measure whose chief significance 
 consists in its preliminary character. Before Con 
 gress meets in November, he will doubtless have 
 followed it up by others which will make his impeach 
 ment a matter of certainty. The only method of pre 
 venting him from resisting impeachment by force, is 
 an awakening of the people to the fact that the final 
 battle against reviving rebellion is yet to be fought at 
 the polls. Any apathy or divisions among Republi 
 cans in the State elections in October and November, 
 
282 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 resulting in a decrease of their vote, will embolden 
 Mr. Johnson to venture his meditated coup d etat. 
 He never will submit to be impeached and removed 
 from office unless Congress is sustained by a majority 
 of the people so great as to frighten him into submis 
 sion. Elated by a little victory, he can only be de 
 pressed by a ruinous defeat ; and such a defeat it is 
 the solemn duty of the people to prepare for him. 
 Even into his conceited brain must be driven the 
 idea that his contemplated enterprise is hopeless, and 
 that, in attempting to commit the greatest of politi 
 cal crimes, he would succeed only in committing the 
 most enormous of political blunders. 
 
 Still, it is not to be concealed that there are cir 
 cumstances in the present political condition of the 
 country which may give the President just that de 
 gree of apparent popular support which is all he 
 needs to stimulate him into open rebellion against 
 the laws. It is, of course, his duty to recognize the 
 people of the United States in their representatives 
 in the Fortieth Congress ; but, on the other hand, it 
 is the character of his mind to regard the people as 
 multiplied duplicates of himself, and a mob yelling 
 for " Andy " under his windows is to him more rep 
 resentative of the people than the delegates of twenty 
 States. In the autumn elections only two Representa 
 tives to Congress will be chosen ; the political strife 
 will relate generally to local questions and candidates ; 
 and it is to be feared that the Republicans will not be 
 sufficiently alive to the fact, that divisions on local 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 283 
 
 questions and candidates will be considered at Wash 
 ington as significant of a change in the public mind 
 on the great national question which it is the business 
 of the Fortieth Congress to settle. That Congress 
 needs the moral support of a great Republican vote 
 now, and will obtain it provided the people are roused 
 to a conviction of its necessity. But a large and in 
 fluential portion of the Republican party is composed 
 of business men, whose occupations disconnect them 
 from politics except in important exigencies, and who 
 can with difficulty be made to believe that politics is 
 a part of their business, as long as the safety of their 
 business is not threatened by civil disorders. They 
 think the reconstruction question is practically set 
 tled ; and when you speak to them of plots such as 
 are now hatching in Washington, and which seem as 
 preposterous as the story of a sensational novel, their 
 incredulity confirms them in the notion that it is safe 
 to allow things to take their course. Their very good 
 sense makes them blind to the designs of such a 
 Bobadil-Cromwell as Andrew Johnson. The great 
 body of the Republican party, indeed, shows at pres 
 ent a little of the exhaustion which is apt to follow 
 a series of victories, and exhibits altogether too much 
 of the confidence which so often attends an incom- 
 pleted triumph. 
 
 The Democratic party, on the contrary, is all alive, 
 and is preparing for one last desperate attempt to 
 recover its old position in the nation. Its leaders 
 fear that, if the Congressional plan of reconstruction 
 
284 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 be carried out, it will result in republicanizing the 
 Southern States. This would be the political extinc 
 tion^ of their party. In fighting against that plan, 
 they are, therefore, fighting for life, and are accord- 
 ingly more than usually profligate in the character of 
 the stimulants they address to whatever meanness, 
 baseness, dishonesty, lawlessness, and ignorance there 
 may be in the nation. Taxation presses hard on the 
 people, and they have not hesitated to propose repu 
 diation of the public debt as the means of relief. The 
 argument is addressed to ignorance and passion ; for 
 Mirabeau hit the reason of the case when he defined 
 repudiation as taxation in its most cruel and iniqui 
 tous form. But the method of repudiation which the 
 Democratic leaders propose to follow is of all methods 
 the worst and most calamitous. They would make 
 the dollar a mere form of expression by the issue of 
 an additional billion or two of greenbacks, and then 
 " pay off " the debt in the currency they had done all 
 they could to render worthless. In other words, they 
 would not only swindle the public creditor, but wreck 
 all values. A party which advocates such a scheme 
 as this, to save it from the death it deserves, would 
 have no hesitation in risking a civil convulsion for the 
 same purpose. Indeed, the reopening of the civil war 
 would not produce half the misery which would be 
 created by the adoption of their project to dilute the 
 currency. 
 
 Now, if by apathy on the part of Republicans and 
 audacity on the part of Democrats the autumn elec- 
 
THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 285 
 
 tions result unfavorably, it will then be universally 
 seen how true was Senator Simmer s remark made in 
 January last, that " Andrew Johnson, who came to 
 supreme power by a bloody accident, has become the 
 successor of Jefferson Davis in the spirit by which he 
 is governed, and in the mischief he is inflicting on the 
 country ; " that u the President of the Rebellion is 
 revived in the President of the United States." What 
 this man now proposes to do has been impressively 
 stated by Senator Thayer of Nebraska, in a public 
 address at Cincinnati. " I declare," he said, " upon 
 my responsibility as a Senator of the United States, 
 that to-day Andrew Johnson meditates and designs 
 forcible resistance to the authority of Congress. I 
 make this statement deliberately, having received it 
 from an unquestioned and unquestionable authority." 
 It would seem that this authority could be none other 
 than the authority of the Acting Secretary of War 
 and General of the Army of the United States, who, 
 reticent as he is, does not pretend to withhold his 
 opinion that the country is in imminent peril, and in 
 peril from the action of the President. But it is by 
 some considered a sufficient reply to such statements, 
 that, if Mr. Johnson should overturn the legislative 
 department of the Government, there would be an up 
 rising of the people which would soon sweep him and 
 his supporters from the face of the earth. This may 
 be very true ; but we should prefer a less Mexican 
 manner of ascertaining public sentiment. Without 
 leaving their peaceful occupations, the people can do 
 
286 THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 I 
 
 by their votes all that it is proposed they shall do by 
 their muskets. It is hardly necessary that a million 
 or half a million of men should go to Washington to 
 speak their mind to Mr. Johnson, when a ballot-box 
 close at hand will save them the expense and trouble. 
 It will, indeed, be infinitely disgraceful to the nation 
 if Mr. Johnson dares to put his purpose into act ; for 
 his courage to violate his own duty will come from 
 the neglect of the people to perform theirs. Let the 
 great uprising of the citizens of the Republic be at the 
 polls this autumn, and there will be no need of a fight 
 in the winter. The House of Representatives, which 
 has the sole power of impeachment, will in all prob 
 ability impeach the President. The Senate, which 
 has the sole power to try impeachments, will in all 
 probability find him guilty, by the requisite two thirds 
 of its members, of the charges preferred by the House. 
 And he himself, cowed by the popular verdict against 
 his contemplated crime, and hopeless of escaping from 
 the punishment of past delinquencies by a new act of 
 treason, will submit to be removed from the office he 
 has too long been allowed to dishonor. 
 
 November, 1867- 
 
MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REPUBLICAN 
 TRIUMPH. 
 
 THE victory which the Republican party gained in 
 the November election, after the most fiercely con 
 tested struggle recorded in our political history, is 
 the crowning victory of the War of the Rebellion, and 
 its real close. A war such as raged in this country 
 between April, 1861, and April, 1865, is ended, not 
 w^hen the defeated party ceases to fight, but when it 
 ceases to hope. The sentiments and principles which 
 led to the Rebellion were overturned, not in 1865, but 
 in 1868. After the exhaustion of physical power, 
 which compelled the Rebels to lay down their arms, 
 came the moral struggle which has resulted in com 
 pelling them to surrender their ideas. If these ideas 
 had been on a level with the civilization of the age, 
 or in advance of it; if the "Lost Cause" had been 
 the cause of humanity and freedom, of reason and jus 
 tice, of good morals and good sense, such a catas 
 trophe would be viewed by every right-minded man as 
 a great calamity. But the Rebellion was essentially 
 a revolt of tyrants for the privilege to oppress, and of 
 bullies for the right to domineer. Its interpretation 
 of the Constitution was an ingenious reversal of the 
 
288 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OE 
 
 purposes for which the Constitution was declared to 
 be made, and its doctrine of State Rights was a mere 
 cover for a comprehensive conspiracy against the 
 rights of man. The success of such a " cause " could 
 not have benefited even its defenders ; for the worst 
 government for the permanent welfare even of the 
 governing classes is that in which the intelligent sys 
 tematically prey upon the ignorant, and the strong 
 mercilessly trample on the weak. In a large view, 
 the South is better off to-day for the military defeat 
 which dissipated its wild dream of insolent domina 
 tion, and for the political defeat which destroyed the 
 last hopes of its reviving passions. 
 
 Those who are accustomed to recognize a provi 
 dence in the direction of human affairs may find in 
 the course and conduct equally of this military and 
 political struggle the strongest confirmation of their 
 faith. The great things that have been done appear 
 to have been done through us, rather than by us. 
 During the war, it seemed as if no mistakes could 
 hinder us from gaining victories, no reverses obstruct 
 our steady advance, no conservative prudence prevent 
 us from being the audacious champions of radical ideas. 
 The march of events swept forward Government and 
 people on its own path, converting the distrusted ab 
 straction of yesterday into the " military necessity " of 
 to-day and the constitutional provision of to-morrow. 
 President, Congress, parties, all felt the propulsion of 
 a force more intelligent than individual sagacity, and 
 mightier than associated opinion. So strong was the 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH. 289 
 
 stress on the minds of Republicans, that the charge 
 of inconsistency, made by such politicians as had suc 
 ceeded in secluding themselves from the heroic im 
 pulse of the time, not only fell pointless, but was 
 welcomed as an indication that the men conducting 
 the war were intelligent enough to read aright its 
 grim facts as they successively started into view. The 
 result proved that the very absence of what is called 
 "a leading mind" indicated the presence of a Mind 
 compared with which Caesars and Napoleons are as 
 little as Soubises and Macks. 
 
 What was true of the military is true of the politi 
 cal contest. After the armed Rebellion was crushed 
 by arms, and the meaner rebellion of intrigue, bluster, 
 and miscellaneous assassination began, both parties 
 had reason to be surprised at the issue. The Rebels 
 found that their profoundest calculations, their most 
 unscrupulous plottings, their most vigorous action, 
 only led them to a more ruinous defeat. Their oppo 
 nents had almost equal reason for wonder ; for the 
 plan of reconstruction, which they eventually passed 
 and repeatedly sustained by more than two thirds of 
 both Houses of Congress, would not have commanded 
 a majority in either House at the time the problem of 
 reconstruction was first presented. Whether we refer 
 this unexpected and unpremeditated result to Provi 
 dence, to the nature of things, or to the logic of events, 
 it still shows that our forecast did little more than 
 " make mouths at the invisible event." The country 
 was not so much ruled as overruled. 
 
 19 
 
290 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 The form which reconstruction eventually took was, 
 however, the form which from the first reason would 
 have decided to be the best. It offended strong preju 
 dices and roused bitter animosities ; but it was neces 
 sary to insure the safety and honor of the nation, and 
 it was fitted to the peculiar facts and principles of the 
 case. The question to be decided referred primarilv 
 to suffrage. The Republicans were at first inclined 
 to think it should be conferred on the educated alone. 
 How would this principle have applied to the Rebel 
 States? Those who could read and write in those 
 States were the originators of the Rebellion, and re 
 mained, after its military overthrow, in a state of 
 sullen discontent with the Government by which they 
 had been subdued. To give them the suffrage, and 
 deny it to the great body of the blacks and the poor 
 whites, would be to put the Rebel States into the 
 hands of the enemies of the United States. This con 
 dition of things would be little improved by allowing 
 all whites to vote, and only such blacks as should hap 
 pen to possess educational qualifications. The class 
 on whose loyalty the Government could depend would 
 be practically sacrificed to the classes whose loyalty 
 the Government had the best reason to distrust. It is 
 true that the blacks were, as a general tiling, igno 
 rant ; but they at least possessed the instinct of self- 
 preservation, and they were placed in such a position 
 that the instinct of self-preservation would inevitably 
 lead them to take the side of orderly government. 
 Their interests, hopes, and passions, their very right 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH. 291 
 
 to own themselves, were all bound up in the success 
 of the national cause, to which the interests, hopes, 
 and passions of the so-called educated classes were 
 opposed. Besides, it might be said that education im 
 plies the recognition of sentiments of humanity, ideas 
 of freedom, duties of beneficence, which are on a level 
 with the civilization of the age ; and the blacks were 
 better educated in this sense than the great major 
 ity of their former masters, who had notoriously per 
 verted natural feeling, right reason, and true religion 
 in their vain effort to defend an indefensible institu 
 tion. Southern education, for many years before the 
 Rebellion broke out, had been an education in self- 
 will, and its most shining results were men distin 
 guished for the vehemence of manner and sharpness 
 of intellect with which they defended paradoxes that 
 affronted common sense, and assailed truths too te 
 diously true to admit of serious debate. They were 
 reasoning beings without being reasonable ones. Now, 
 the blacks could not help being more in sympathy 
 with the sentiments and ideas of the age than such 
 men as these, for their simple, selfish instincts identi 
 fied them with advanced opinions. And education, if 
 not made the condition of suffrage, would be its re 
 sult. If made its condition, the negroes would hold 
 no political power, and common schools for all classes 
 are only established by those legislative assemblies in 
 which all classes are represented. At first, therefore, 
 they would vote right, because they would vote as their 
 instincts taught them ; and by the time that their in- 
 
292 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 stincts might not be the measure of their true inter 
 ests, they would be educated. 
 
 In the first step made towards reconstruction, that 
 called "the President s Plan," no heed was paid to 
 these considerations. The negroes were practically 
 delivered over to the tender mercies of their former 
 masters, and the political power of the Rebel States 
 was put into Rebel hands. Profligate as this scheme 
 really was, it had sufficient plausibility to deceive 
 many honest minds, and at one period there was im 
 minent danger of its adoption. The reaction conse 
 quent on a long conflict, the desire of the people for 
 a speedy settlement of the questions growing out of 
 the war, the natural indisposition of the Republican 
 leaders to quarrel with the President, the fear to face 
 resolutely the question of negro suffrage, the seeming 
 apathy or paralysis of the great body of Republican 
 voters, all seemed to point to a settlement which 
 would be a surrender, and by which the supporters of 
 the war would be swindled out of its fair and legiti 
 mate results. Fortunately, however, the great enemy 
 of the President s plan was the President. His vul 
 garity undid the work which his cunning had planned. 
 The force which impelled the Republican party to 
 overturn Mr. Johnson s policy was derived from Mr. 
 Johnson himself. It is needless here to recapitulate 
 the mistakes by which he succeeded in concentrating 
 Northern opinion, and making his opponents irresisti 
 ble. The Republicans owe to him a debt of gratitude 
 they can never pay ; for the peculiar manner in which 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH. 293 
 
 he schemed to split them into factions made them a 
 unit. The small, intelligent, and unscrupulous clique 
 of politicians known as " the President s friends " sor 
 rowfully admit that Mr. Johnson s policy was a mag 
 nificent political game, which must have succeeded 
 had it not been for the bad playing of Mr. Johnson. 
 If the executive department of the Government lost 
 the respect of all parties during his administration, it 
 was due to the fact that the President confounded the 
 office with his personality. Nobody could respect the 
 officer, and yet the officer persistently identified him 
 self with the office. 
 
 After Mr. Johnson had broken with Congress, he 
 became a President in search of a party. He sought 
 it everywhere, and particularly at the South. At the 
 North he could get politicians enough, but he could 
 get no representative politicians, no politicians who 
 had " a following." At the South he obtained the 
 support of the great body of the Rebels, but they were 
 without any political power. They could speak for 
 him, mob for him, kill negroes for him, but they could 
 not vote for him. Believing, however, in the certainty 
 of his eventual success, they repudiated, with a great 
 display of indignant eloquence, the first " Congres 
 sional Plan " of reconstruction, which merely contem 
 plated the identification of their political interests with 
 the enfranchisement of the colored race, and denied 
 them the privilege of counting, in the basis of repre 
 sentation, four millions of people to whom they re 
 fused political rights. Certainly no conquerors ever 
 
294 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 before proposed such mild terms to the vanquished ; 
 and yet the terms were rejected with a fury of con 
 tempt such as would have misbecome a triumphant 
 faction, mad with the elation both of military and 
 political success. The ludicrous insolence of this 
 course ruined the last prospect these men had of re 
 building Southern society on its old foundations. The 
 plan of reconstruction which has recently triumphed 
 at the polls was the necessary result of their folly and 
 arrogance. The reorganization of the Southern States 
 on the comprehensive principle of equality of rights 
 became possible only through the madness of its ad 
 versaries. Congress and the people repeatedly hesi 
 tated ; but in every moment of hesitation they were 
 pushed forward by some new instance of Mr. John 
 son s brutality of speech, or by some fresh examples 
 of Southern proclivity to murder. 
 
 As it regards the right of the Government of the 
 United States to dictate conditions of reconstruction, 
 it must be remembered that the difference between 
 the President s Plan and the Congressional Plan was 
 not, in this respect, a difference in principle ; and that 
 the position held by the Democratic party that the 
 Rebellion was a rebellion of individuals, and not of 
 States equally condemns both. This position, how 
 ever, can only be maintained by the denial of the most 
 obvious facts. The enormous sacrifices of blood and 
 treasure in putting down the Rebellion were made 
 necessary by the circumstance that it was a rebellion 
 of States. Had it been merely an insurrection of in- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH. 295 
 
 dividuals, it would have been an insurrection against 
 State governments as well as against the Government 
 of the United States, We had, both before the war 
 and during its continuance, examples of such insur 
 rections. The Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania, 
 and Shays s Rebellion in Massachusetts, were risings 
 of individuals against the laws ; but nobody believes 
 that Pennsylvania and Massachusetts lost any State 
 rights by those disturbances. In Kentucky and Mis 
 souri, during the recent war, there was a tenfold more 
 terrible rebellion of individuals against the United 
 States Government ; but nobody pretends that Missouri 
 and Kentucky forfeited any State rights by this crime 
 of their individual citizens. In all these cases, the gov 
 ernments of the States remained in loyal hands. But 
 the peculiarity of our war against the Confederate States 
 consisted in the fact that all the State governments were 
 voted by the people into Rebel hands. The result was, 
 that the supreme powers of taxation and conscription, 
 placing every man and every dollar at the service of 
 the Confederate States, were lodged in a revolutionary 
 government, and the cost of suppressing the Rebellion 
 was increased at least fourfold by this fact. After 
 losing two hundred and fifty thousand men, and two 
 billions and a half of dollars, more than would have 
 been necessary to crush a rebellion of individual in 
 surgents, we are told that the States never rebelled ; 
 that the loyal but bodiless souls of these communities 
 still existed, whilst certain Rebel " individuals " exer 
 cised their supreme powers ; and that, the moment 
 
296 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 these Rebel individuals succumbed, the bodiless souls 
 instantly became embodied and continued loyal in the 
 Rebel individuals aforesaid ! Out of Bedlam no such 
 argument was ever propounded before. 
 
 In truth, there was no possibility that the Rebel 
 States could " resume their practical relations " with 
 the United States except by the intervention of the 
 United States in their internal affairs. Though the 
 plan of reconstruction eventually adopted is called 
 the " Congressional Plan," it was really the plan of 
 the Government of the country. In our system, a 
 mere majority of Congress is impotent, provided the 
 President, however " accidental " he may be, however 
 mean, base, false, and traitorous he may be, nullifies 
 its legislation by his vetoes ; but Congress becomes 
 constitutionally the governing power in the nation, 
 when its policy is supported by two thirds of the 
 Representatives of the people in the House, and two 
 thirds of the Representatives of the States in the 
 Senate. President Johnson has pushed to the ex 
 treme the powers granted to the executive by the 
 Constitution; and if he has failed in carrying his 
 policy it has been through no encroachments of the 
 legislature on his constitutional rights. Passed over 
 his vetoes, lie was bound to consider the reconstruc 
 tion laws as the acts of the Government. It is noto 
 rious that he has systematically attempted to nullify 
 the operation of the laws which, by the Constitution, 
 it was his simple duty to execute. 
 
 It was almost inevitable, however, that, in the 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH. 297 
 
 measures by which Congress attempted to make Mr. 
 Johnson perform his duties, it should commit errors 
 of that kind which tell against the popularity of a 
 party, if not against its patriotism and intelligence. 
 In spite of executive opposition Congress had suc 
 ceeded in getting new State governments organized 
 at the South, and the representatives of the legal 
 people of those States were in the Senate and House 
 of Representatives. Mr. Johnson and the Democratic 
 party pronounced these reconstructed State govern 
 ments to be utterly without validity, though their 
 Representatives formed part of the Congress of the 
 United States, and though Congress has by the Con 
 stitution the exclusive right of judging of the qualifi 
 cations of its own members, and, by the decision of 
 the Supreme Court, has the exclusive right of judging 
 of the validity of State governments. Whatever popu 
 larity, therefore, the Republicans may have lost by 
 their reconstruction policy, it was more than offset 
 by the blunder made by their opponents in proposing 
 the overthrow of that policy by revolutionary meas 
 ures. Elections are commonly decided by the votes 
 of a class of independent citizens, who belong strictly 
 to neither of the two parties ; and the course pursued 
 by the Democrats pushed this class for the time into 
 the Republican ranks. The intellect of the Demo 
 cratic party is concentrated, to a great degree, in its 
 Copperhead members ; and these had become so em 
 bittered and vindictive by the turn events had taken, 
 that their malignity prevented their ability from hav- 
 
298 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
 
 ing fair play. They assailed the Republicans for not 
 giving peace and prosperity to the nation, and then 
 laid down a programme which proposed to reach peace 
 and prosperity through political and financial anarchy. 
 They selected unpopular candidates, and then placed 
 them on a platform of which revolution and repudia 
 tion were the chief planks. Perhaps even with these 
 drawbacks they might have cajoled a sufficient num 
 ber of voters to succeed in the election, had it not 
 been for the frank brutality of their Southern allies. 
 To carry the North, their reliance was on fraud ; but 
 the Southern politicians were determined to carry 
 their section by terror and assassination, and no 
 plausible speech could be made by a Northern Demo 
 crat the effect of which was not nullified by some 
 Southern burst of eloquence, breathing nothing but 
 proscription and war. The Democratic party was 
 therefore not only defeated, but disgraced. To suc 
 ceed as it succeeded in New York and New Jersey, 
 in Louisiana and Georgia, did not prevent its fall, but 
 did prevent its falling with honor. To the infamy of 
 bad ends it added the additional infamy of bad means ; 
 and it comes out of an overwhelming general reverse 
 with the mortifying consciousness that its few special 
 victories have been purchased at the expense of its 
 public character. The only way it can recover its 
 prestige is by discarding, not only its leaders, but the 
 passions and ideas its leaders represent. 
 
 The moral significance of the struggle which has 
 just closed is thus found in the fact that the good 
 
THE REPUBLICAN TRIUMPH. 299 
 
 cause was best served by its bitterest enemies. A 
 bad institution, like slavery, generates a bad type of 
 character in its supporters, and urges them blindly on 
 to the adoption of measures which, intended for its 
 defence, result in its ruin. The immense achieve 
 ment of emancipating four millions of slaves, and 
 placing them on an equality of civil and political 
 rights with their former masters, is due primarily 
 to such men as Calhoun and McDuffie, Davis and 
 Toombs, Vallandigham, Pendleton, Belmont, John 
 son, and Seymour. The prejudice in the United 
 States against the colored race was strong enough 
 to overcome everything but their championship of it. 
 These persons taught the nation that its safety de 
 pended on its being just. The most careless glance 
 over the chief incidents in the long contest shows 
 that all the enemies of human freedom needed for 
 success was a little moderation and good sense ; but 
 moderation and good sense are fortunately not the 
 characteristics of men engaged in doing the Devil s 
 work for the Devil s pay. " The Lord reigns," a 
 simple proposition, but one which politicians find it 
 hard to accept, and which they often waste immense 
 energies in the impotent attempt to overturn. 
 
 January, 1869. 
 
"LORD" BACON. 
 
 SOME attempts have been recently made to extin 
 guish Shakspeare s individuality in Bacon s. Any 
 reader who intimately knows and sincerely loves both 
 authors instinctively feels that the external evidence 
 against Shakspeare s real existence is simply un 
 worthy of critical consideration. Shakspeare s vast 
 mind is in itself a sufficient puzzle for the critic and 
 the metaphysician to explain ; to blend it with Ba 
 con s is to double the difficulties of the problem. 
 Shakspeare and Bacon are both high above the ordi 
 nary range of even eminent intellects and souls ; but 
 to say that Bacon "wrote Shakspeare" is to introduce 
 hopeless confusion into the philosophy of the human 
 mind. Every critic who has the slightest discern 
 ment of spirits must know that the mental processes 
 of Shakspeare and Bacon are fundamentally different, 
 a difference which goes deep down into vital sources 
 of individual genius. Shakspeare individualizes the 
 results of his knowledge; Bacon generalizes the re 
 sults of his. The mind of Shakspeare darts to con 
 clusions ; the mind of Bacon moves to them with a 
 gravity worthy of a lord chancellor. Both are men 
 of large reason, large understanding, large imagina 
 tion, large individuality ; but they are different not 
 only in degree, but in kind. It would be impossible 
 
"LORD" BACON. 301 
 
 for any intelligent critic to reconcile a really charac 
 teristic work of Shakspeare with a really character 
 istic work of Bacon. The mental processes of the 
 two men are radically dissimilar. 
 
 This, however, is a digression. It may be doubted 
 if such a man as Shakspeare ever lived ; it is certain 
 that no such man as " Lord " Bacon ever existed. 
 
 Francis Bacon, Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, 
 Viscount St. Albans, these represent one individu 
 ality ; but Lord Bacon is demonstrably a fictitious 
 personage who never had any real existence on our 
 planet. Lord Verulam, Lord St. Albans is some- 
 body we can recognize ; but Lord Bacon is an indi 
 vidual unknown to the British peerage. Hardwicke, 
 Brougham, and Macaulay selected their family names 
 when they were made nobles ; but who would speak 
 of Chesterfield as Lord Stanhope, or Chatham as Lord 
 Pitt ? Bacon deliberately chose to be Lord Verulam 
 and Lord St. Albans rather than Lord Bacon. Why 
 should everybody, including scores of men who know 
 better, still persist in calling him "Lord" Bacon? 
 " Posterity," says Macaulay, has felt that the great 
 est of English philosophers could derive no accession 
 of dignity from any title which James could bestow ; 
 and, in defiance of the royal letters-patent, has ob 
 stinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into Vis 
 count St. Albans." But still Macaulay s article in 
 the " Edinburgh Review," and the reprint of it in his 
 collected " Essays," supervised by himself, is headed 
 " Lord " Bacon. 
 
302 "LORD" BACON. 
 
 Some ingenious antiquaries may account for this 
 misnomer on the ground that men of science felt a 
 necessity to discriminate between Friar Bacon, one of 
 the first of modern experimental philosophers, and 
 Francis Bacon, his supposed intellectual descendant, 
 by calling the latter " Lord " Bacon, in spite of the 
 inexorable laws of the peerage. 
 
 We must confess to a deep distrust of every theory 
 which pretends to account for the fact that Baron 
 Yerulam or Viscount St. Albans has been universally 
 converted into u Lord " Bacon. The fact that he is 
 Lord Bacon forever, though utterly debarred from the 
 title by his own deliberate choice, remains to be ex 
 plained. We obstinately put " Lord " before a name 
 in itself ignominious, a name which suggests the 
 hog, the dirtiest and basest of beasts, when the 
 owner of it sought to change the name into the more 
 resounding appellation of Verulam and St. Albans. 
 
 Still, every essayist, scientist, and philosopher ad 
 heres to the family name of " Bacon." The associa 
 tions connected with the hog do not seem to trouble 
 them at all in celebrating the merits of one of the 
 most humane, most fertile, and most comprehensive 
 of human intellects. But why should they persist in 
 calling him " Lord " Bacon ? 
 
 We would suggest an explanation, based on the 
 oldest of all old jokes. " Why," said Eve to Adam, 
 when our ancestor was engaged in naming the indi 
 viduals of the animal kingdom, 4 why do you call 
 that beast a lion?" " Because," replied Adam, "he 
 
"LORD" BACON. 303 
 
 looks like a lion." Well, Bacon is called a Lord 
 because he "looks like" a Lord. King James only 
 ratified a nobility which Nature had anticipated him 
 in conferring. Bacon .was a nobleman from his 
 cradle. He had the autocracy, the largeness, the 
 sobriety of intellect which are generally recognized 
 as the signs of a commanding nature. 
 
 Whatever may be our opinion of him as a practical 
 statesman, we all feel, in reading him, that we are 
 in communion with an intellect which is essentially 
 lordly. His " Method of Induction," which some 
 men of science ostentatiously celebrate but practically 
 disregard, is demonstrably inadequate to explain the 
 progress of modern invention and discovery. By his 
 Method he never discovered anything himself ; and 
 certainly by his Method nothing has ever been dis 
 covered by those who rank themselves among his 
 disciples. Still, he keeps his position as a kind of 
 autocrat by the sheer force of a certain grandeur in 
 his intelligence. It is useless to show that he mis 
 conceived the object of science, and was ignorant of 
 its processes ; he is still " Lord " Bacon even to such 
 men as Whewell, Herschel, Comte, Mill, Huxley, 
 Lewes, and Herbert Spencer. Every tyro in science 
 can expose the errors of his Method ; every eminent 
 scientist persists in calling him " Lord," and persists 
 in calling him Bacon. Verulam is a grander title ; 
 but it has never forced itself either into popular or 
 scientific speech. 
 
 In his own time Bacon exercised the same power 
 
304 "LORD" BACON. 
 
 over intelligent contemporaries that lie now exercises 
 over men of science, who more or less despise each 
 other, but who are still faithful to him. " My con 
 ceit of his person," says Ben Jonson, the most caus 
 tic and irreverent of critics, " was never increased 
 toward him by his place or honors ; but I have and do 
 reverence him for the greatness that was only proper 
 to himself in that he seemed to me ever by his work 
 one of the greatest men and most worthy of admira 
 tion that had been in many ages. In his adversity I 
 ever prayed that God would give him strength, for 
 greatness he could not want." It is said that no man 
 is a hero to his intimates and domestics. But Ba 
 con s chaplain, Dr. Rawley, quaintly says : " I have 
 been induced to think that if ever there were a beam 
 of knowledge derived from God upon any man in 
 these modern times it was upon him." Ben Jon- 
 son s emphatic statement of Bacon s essential " great 
 ness," even in his disgrace and adversity, has been 
 accepted by modern philosophers. They feel a tender 
 respect and veneration for the man whose theories 
 they contemptuously disregard. And they still call 
 him " Lord " Bacon because he " looks like a Lord." 
 In the utter wreck of his system they yet recognize a 
 grand intelligence which in many respects dwarfs 
 their own. 
 
 Bacon is by no means the founder of the inductive 
 sciences. It is simply ridiculous to place him above 
 Galileo and Kepler, either in the theories or the dis 
 coveries of inductive science. Nobody who has not 
 
"LORD" BACON. 805 
 
 patiently read Bacon s " Novum Organum," which 
 few modern men of science seem to have done, can 
 appreciate the impertinence of such men as Newton 
 and La Place in violating the directions of their sup 
 posed lord and master. Their discoveries have been 
 made in a very suspicious, a very illegitimate man 
 ner, according to the Baconian system. The dis 
 covery of the great law of gravitation, which made 
 astronomy a deductive science, was something of which 
 Bacon never dreamed. According to his principles of 
 induction, which contemplated a continual series of 
 inductive steps, that law should not have been arrived 
 at for five hundred or a thousand years. Still, we 
 have not any doubt that Newton, at any period of 
 his career, would have respectfully referred to Baron 
 Verulam as " Lord " Bacon. Every admirer, indeed, 
 " saves his Bacon," but will not give up the " Lord." 
 All who read him are impressed with a certain dig 
 nity, majesty, and grandeur in his intelligence, which 
 instinctively leads them to endow him witli a title 
 he disowned. In spite of his obvious defects, both as 
 jurist and scientist, they experience something of the 
 feeling which led Cowley to select him from mankind 
 as the one man 
 
 " Whom a wise king and Nature chose 
 Lord chancellor of both their laws." 
 
 In short, we all feel the essential " greatness " which 
 Ben Jonson recognized, and call him" Lord "Bacon, 
 because he " looks like a Lord." 
 
 20 
 
LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 
 
 THE publication of an additional volume of prose 
 papers by Lowell will be taken, by a considerable 
 portion of the public, as a kind of confirmation of 
 Carlyle s surly dictum, that if a man has anything 
 to say, he had better say it in prose ; while even those 
 who appreciate the subtle melodies of Lowell s verse 
 will be grateful for such a book as " My Study Win 
 dows." Lowell is indeed one of the most exquisite 
 prose writers of the century, the master of a style 
 which, while it is flexible to all the demands of 
 statement, description, reflection, epigram, and nar 
 rative, is strongly individualized, and suggests no 
 model on which it is formed. It is as much a crea 
 tion of his own mind and intellectual character as 
 are the thoughts and imaginations it conveys. Many 
 years ago a volume was published under the capti 
 vating title of " Prose, by a Poet." We have no rec 
 ollection whether the matter did or did not answer 
 to the exhilarating announcement ; but certainly such 
 a title might, without presumption, be taken as a 
 general one fitly characterizing "My Study Win 
 dows," " Among My Books," and " Fireside Travels," 
 the three volumes of Lowell s prose writings. In 
 all three we have learning, wit, humor, thought, 
 
LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 307 
 
 sentiment, description, criticism, characterization, in 
 abundance ; but the fact that the writer is a poet is 
 too plain to escape the dullest reader. The cheer 
 and charm of a poetic imagination are felt, whether 
 the poet states, reasons, satirizes, denounces, describes, 
 or pokes fun. 
 
 The volume not inaptly styled " Fireside Travels " 
 is less known than the other two ; but it is one of the 
 most delicious of Lowell s works, for it reproduces as 
 vividly the scenery and character of the backwoods 
 of Maine as it does the scenery, population, and art 
 of Italy. Without stirring from our firesides, we are 
 transported into the places, wild or over-civilized, 
 into which the author has penetrated ; and we view 
 them through the eyes of a poetic humorist, who 
 makes us keenly enjoy everything he so clearly 
 represents. 
 
 These three volumes are really additions to Ameri 
 can and to English literature. This cannot be said 
 of thousands of excellent books, published on either 
 side of the Atlantic, which, however valuable they 
 may be for the time, contain nothing, contributed 
 from the minds of their authors, which will survive 
 the occasions which called them forth. The per 
 manent element in Lowell s prose is Lowell s genius, 
 not Lowell s topics ; and his genius, like the genius 
 of Addison, or Goldsmith, or Charles Lamb, is suffi 
 ciently powerful to give permanence even to trifles. 
 The town-pump of Salem, as we see it through Haw 
 thorne s imagination, will survive Napoleon s cam- 
 
308 LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 
 
 paigns, as told by Sir Archibald Alison ; and certainly 
 many an excellent compend of botany and zoology 
 will be forgotten when Lowell s " Garden Acquaint 
 ance " and " Good Word for Winter " will be read with 
 delight. 
 
 But though Lowell can give trifles more impor 
 tance than the ordinary run of men are able to give 
 to subjects in themselves great, he is, of course, to be 
 judged by his way of dealing with the higher objects 
 of human interest. An earnest student, not only of 
 languages, but of the science of language, his ac 
 quirements are on a level with his genius. In the 
 niceties of verbal criticism, as in the application of 
 comprehensive artistic principles, he seems equally 
 at home. The great authors of Greece, Rome, Italy, 
 Spain, Germany, and England he profoundly appre 
 ciates and acutely interprets ; but at the same time 
 he over whelms those students of old English litera 
 ture whom John Russell Smith employed to edit 
 his " Library of Old Authors " with an amount of 
 recondite knowledge of the way forgotten authors 
 employ half-forgotten English words, which must 
 appear to those editors somewhat appalling. They 
 never could have dreamed that the Yankee author 
 of the " Biglow Papers " was competent to overturn 
 their pretensions to Elizabethan scholarship. But 
 Lowell has done it so thoroughly that even the 
 " Saturday Review " would acknowledge the complete 
 ness of the demolition. Again, in the article on 
 Chaucer, also included in the collection of papers 
 
LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 309 
 
 called " My Study Windows," there is not only 
 evinced an open sense to Chaucer s genius, entirely 
 independent of all controversies regarding his versi 
 fication, but a terrible amount of erudition, of which 
 the pedants of early English literature consider that 
 they hold the monopoly. Still, all this minute knowl 
 edge is so displayed as to entertain as well as to 
 inform. The antiquary and the philologist never 
 forgets that he is a poet, whose special function it 
 is to give artistic pleasure even when he is discuss 
 ing topics from the consideration of which ordinary 
 readers shrink with an instinctive dread of their 
 dulness. 
 
 And this brings us to the peculiar, the almost un 
 matched "brilliancy" of Lowell s prose. There is 
 hardly a sentence there certainly cannot be a page 
 
 in his three volumes which is not made attractive 
 through his mode of expression. This attractiveness 
 comes from the incessant action of his mind in com 
 position, no word, phrase or verbal combination 
 indicating a resort to those commonplace forms of 
 utterance such as many original thinkers do not 
 hesitate to employ. Lowell s thoughts, as Bacon 
 would say, " are immersed in matter " allusion, 
 image, and metaphor, serious or humorous flowing 
 from him in an unexhausted and seemingly inexhaust 
 ible stream. Take his paper on " Carlyle," or " Tho- 
 reau," or u Abraham Lincoln," or " Josiah Quincy," 
 or " Emerson the Lecturer," or " Chaucer," or " Pope," 
 
 all included in his last volume, and the reader, 
 
310 LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 
 
 whether he agrees or disagrees with the opinions 
 expressed, cannot but be amazed at the endless fer 
 tility and constant felicity of the imaginative forms of 
 expression. Lowell thinks in figures, giving us the 
 thought in the image, not the thought and the image. 
 Let us take some carelessly selected specimens. " The 
 lecturer built up so lofty a pedestal under certain 
 figures as to lift them into a prominence of obscurity, 
 and seemed to mast-head them there." Emerson s 
 " eye for a fine, telling phrase, that will carry true, is 
 like that of a backwoodsman for a rifle ; and he will 
 dredge you up a choice word from the mud of Cotton 
 Mather himself." " One may think roses as good in 
 their way as cabbages ; though the latter would make 
 a better show in the witness-box, if cross-examined as 
 to their usefulness." If Emerson " were to make an 
 almanac, his direction to farmers would be something 
 like this : October : Indian Summer ; now is the time 
 to get in your early Vedas." Thoreau " watched 
 Nature like a detective who is to go upon the stand ; 
 as we read him, it seems as if all-out-of-doors had kept 
 a diary and become its own Montaigne" " An apostle 
 to the Gentiles might hope for some fruit of his 
 preaching; but of what avail an apostle who shouts 
 his message down the mouth of the pit to poor lost 
 souls, whom he can positively assure only that it is 
 impossible to get out? Mr. Carlyle lights up the 
 lanterns of his Pharos after the ship is already rolling 
 between the tongue of the sea and the grinders of the 
 reef." But it is useless to give such bricks as these 
 
LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 311 
 
 as specimens of Lowell s figurative style. He is so 
 rich in this respect that one feels, in reading him, as 
 Voltaire s Candide felt when he lighted on that fabu 
 lous country where precious stones were as common 
 as the unprecious are with us. He cheapens the value 
 of his brilliants by the profusion with which he scatters 
 them. Lady Granville, when her husband was the 
 British minister at the Court of Russia, had her 
 coronet, the jewels of which were worth scores of 
 thousands of pounds, broken in one of those fashion 
 able mobs at St. Petersburg, called court balls. She 
 was, at the time of the accident, making her way 
 through the crowd to pay her respects to the emperor 
 and empress ; and she looked neither to the right nor 
 the left, but moved straight on, as the diamonds and 
 rubies fell on the floor, and were trodden under the 
 feet of the genteel multitude. In some such way 
 Lowell marches to his " objective point," careless of 
 the treasures he drops by the way. He may pride 
 himself on his sense, his sagacity, his insight, his 
 power of concentrated thought, his force of char 
 acter ; he never prides himself on his ornaments and 
 decorations. 
 
 In " Among My Books " and " My Study Windows " 
 there is a large amount of keen literary criticism, 
 which is hardly suggested by the mere titles of the 
 essays. In the four articles on Chaucer, Shakspeare, 
 Dryden, and Pope the whole field of modern European 
 literature is opened to the reader s view. The scope 
 of Lowell s scholarship is so extensive that, though 
 
312 LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 
 
 the special representative author he discusses is ex 
 haustively treated, he includes in his criticism scores 
 of other writers who illustrate the age which his 
 principal personage dominates. To thoughtful stu 
 dents of English literature the article on Pope the 
 most discriminating criticism, on the whole, ever 
 written on that poet is attractive not only for its 
 analysis of Pope, but for its general estimate of the 
 literature and writers of the reign of Anne and the 
 first two Georges. 
 
 It is a good sign for American literature that Lowell 
 is warmly appreciated by all the educated men and 
 women of the country. The wonder is that he is not 
 one of our most popular authors. He is in perfect 
 sympathy with all shrewd and sensible people, what 
 ever may be the degrees of their culture ; and cer 
 tainly none of the American writers of novels for the 
 newspapers which circulate hundreds of thousands of 
 copies weekly can compare with him in his apprecia 
 tion of " the popular mind " and his command of the 
 raciest English. At any farmer s fireside in the land 
 he would be welcomed as a good " neighborly " man. 
 Why is it that the circulation of his books is not com 
 mensurate with the extent of his literary reputation ? 
 It is hardly possible to take up a newspaper, whether 
 published in New York or Nebraska, without rinding 
 an allusion to Lowell or a quotation from him ; and to 
 all appearance he is as popular as Whittier, or Bret 
 Harte, or Artemus Ward, or Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
 Still, his books are read mainly by what are called 
 
LOWELL AS A PROSE WRITER. 313 
 
 " cultivated " people. We are convinced that if the 
 (so-called) " uncultivated " people only knew what 
 delight they might find in Lowell s prose and verse, 
 they would domesticate his books at once in their 
 homes. The only criticism which a " cultivated " 
 man is inclined to make on Lowell is simply this: 
 that lie is the most exasperating of literary aristocrats 
 in his dealings with the middle class and lower class 
 of literary people. The middle and lower classes, 
 who live their lives without pretending to versify 
 them, find in him the most sympathizing of brothers 
 and friends ; but woe to any one of them who puts his 
 mediocrity into rhyme ! 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 THE reason that everybody likes novels is, that 
 everybody is more or less a novelist. In addition to 
 the practical life that men and women lead, con 
 stantly vexed, as it is, by obstructive facts, there is 
 an interior life which they imagine, in which facts 
 smoothly give way to sentiments, ideas, and aspira 
 tions. In this imagined existence people strengthen 
 themselves with new faculties, exalt themselves with 
 new passions, surround themselves with new compan 
 ions, devote themselves to new objects. They are 
 richer, handsomer, braver, wittier, nobler, more dis 
 interested, more adventurous, more efficient, than they 
 are in their actual personalities and mode of living. 
 They construct long stories, long as their own lives, 
 of which they are the heroes or heroines ; and the 
 novels they best like to read are those whose scenes 
 and characters best lit into the novel they are them 
 selves incessantly weaving. The universality of self- 
 esteem is probably due to the fact that people confuse 
 the possibilities of their existence with its actualities. 
 Each being the hero of " My Novel," gains self- 
 importance in virtue of that; and while externally 
 classed with the " nobodies," is internally conscious 
 of ranking with the " somebodies." Burn out of a 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 315 
 
 man indeed everything else, sense, sensibility, and 
 conscience, you will still find alive in his ashes a 
 little self-conceit and a little imagination. 
 
 " How much do you weigh ? " a man was asked. 
 " Well," he replied, " ordinarily only a hundred and 
 twenty pounds ; but when I m mad, I weigh a ton ! " 
 But the great increase of weight arises when a per 
 son is kindled with a conception of what he has a 
 possibility of becoming. 
 
 It is evident that, as these novel-spinning factories 
 are in full operation in all heads, the only check on 
 their written production is the necessity for some 
 talent for narrative and some knack in composition. 
 Hence, in the first place, a swarm of romancers, who 
 have properly no place in literature, and who repre 
 sent every variety of mediocrity, from the fussy and 
 furious dead-level of sensationalism to the tame and 
 timid dead-level of conventionality. Some put blood 
 in their ink, some water ; but it must be said that in 
 these matters blood is not always thicker than water. 
 Rise a step above this level, introduce some art in 
 the plot and some truth in the characterization, 
 keep as close to actual life as a photographer, be 
 as diffuse and as dogged in details as is consistent 
 with preserving a kind of languid interest, econo 
 mize material, whether of incident or emotion, real 
 ize Carlyle s sarcasm that England contains twenty 
 millions of people, mostly bores, and you have 
 Anthony Trollope, the most unromantic of romancers, 
 popular in virtue of his skill in reproducing a popula- 
 
316 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 tion. Vitalize this dull reality by vivid feeling, put 
 passion into everything, eliminate all that does not 
 stimulate, be as fruitful in incidents as Trollope is 
 in commonplaces, envelop the reader in a whirl of 
 events, drag him violently on through a series of 
 minor unexpected catastrophes to the grand unex 
 pected catastrophe at the end, heap stimulants on 
 him until he feels like a mad Malay running amuck 
 through the streets, and you have Charles Reade, 
 the great master of melodramatic effect. This social 
 life which Trollope does not penetrate, which Reade 
 exaggerates, look at it with a curious, sceptical 
 eye, sharpened by a jaded heart ; be superior to all 
 the fine illusions of existence, by defect of spiritual in 
 sight as well as by subtlety of external observation ; 
 lay bare all the hypocrisies and rascalities of " proper " 
 people without losing faith in the possibility of virtue ; 
 survey men and women in their play rather than in 
 their real struggle and work ; bring all the resources 
 of keen observation, incisive wit, and delicate humor 
 to the task of exhibiting the frailties of humanity with 
 out absolutely teaching that it is hopelessly vicious 
 and effete, be, in short, a sceptical Hume turned 
 novelist, and you have Thackeray, a kindly man of 
 genius, honestly forced by his peculiar intellect and 
 experience to inculcate the dreadful doctrine that 
 life does not pay. Add Thackeray s sharp and bright 
 perception to Trollope s nicety in detail, and supple 
 ment both with large scholarship and wide reach of 
 philosophic insight ; conceive a person who looks not 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 31T 
 
 only at life and into life, but through it, who sympa 
 thizes with the gossip of peasants and the prin 
 ciples of advanced thinkers, who is as capable of 
 reproducing Fergus O Conner as John Stuart Mill, 
 
 and is as blandly tolerant of Garrison as of Hegel, 
 
 and you have the wonderful woman who calls herself 
 George Eliot, probably the largest mind among the 
 romancers of the century, but with an incurable sad 
 ness at the depth of her nature which deprives her 
 of the power to cheer the readers she interests and 
 informs. 
 
 It may here be said that in a peculiar and re 
 stricted domain of imagination the great American 
 novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has fairly outmatched 
 all his English brethren. He is the Jonathan Ed 
 wards of the imaginative representation of life, as 
 Thackeray is its Hume. He teaches with vivid dis 
 tinctness the doctrine of "the exceeding sinfulness 
 of sin." Scott once said that there were depths in 
 human nature which it was unhealthy to attempt to 
 sound; and it is in attempting to sound these that 
 Hawthorne has exhibited his most marvellous gifts 
 of insight and characterization. In the subtlety and 
 accuracy, the penetration and sureness, of his glance 
 into the morbid phenomena of the human soul ; in 
 exhibiting the operation of the most delicate laws of 
 attraction and repulsion which human natures can 
 experience ; in the capacity to terrify his readers with 
 the consciousness of their latent possibilities for evil, 
 so that they shrink from his pitiless exposures " like 
 
318 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 guilty things surprised," he makes novelists like 
 Thackeray and Dickens appear relatively superficial ; 
 but, as Scott had foretold, the representation is too 
 ghostly and ghastly to give that degree of artistic 
 pleasure which is the condition of a novelist s com 
 plete success with the public. 
 
 Each of these novelists has a particular class of 
 appreciative readers whose individual experience of 
 life they specially meet. But there are two roman 
 cers, Scott and Dickens, who are liked and loved 
 by everybody, because, by the happiness of their na 
 tures as well as the force of their genius, they are 
 radiators of cheer, and communicate the most de 
 licious imaginative enjoyment. Different in many 
 important respects, they agree, in that last and 
 inmost felicity of genius, of being universally at 
 tractive. They are the only novelists who have suc 
 ceeded in domesticating their creations in all imagi 
 nations as real human beings, whose wit or wisdom, 
 whose joys or sorrows, whose hates or love, we re 
 fer to as confidently as Mrs. Gamp did to her dear, 
 ideal Mrs. Harris, more real to the eye of her 
 mind than the Betsey Prig she daily beheld in super 
 abundant flesh. 
 
 To achieve this miracle Dickens must not only 
 have had exceptional powers of observation and im 
 agination, but extraordinary intensity of sympathy 
 with ordinary feelings and beliefs. His genius in 
 characterization tends to the grotesque and extrava 
 gant; his personages, in their names as in their 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 319 
 
 qualities, produce on us the effect of strangeness ; 
 the plots of the novels in which they appear would, 
 with any other -characters, seem grossly improbable; 
 and yet his mind is unmistakably rooted in com 
 mon sense and common humanity. He thus suc 
 ceeds in giving his readers all the pleasure which 
 comes from contemplating what is strange, odd, and 
 eccentric, without disquieting them by any para 
 doxes in morals, or shocking them by any perver 
 sions of homely natural sentiment. The " Christmas 
 Carol," for example, is as wild in grotesque fancy 
 as a dream of Hoffmann, yet in feeling as solid and 
 sweet and humane as a sermon of Channing. It 
 impresses us somewhat as we are impressed by the 
 sight of the Bible as illustrated by Gustave Dore. 
 Thus held fast to common, homely truths and feel 
 ings by his sentiments, he can safely give reins to 
 his imagination in his creations. The keenest of 
 observers, both of things and persons, all that he 
 observes is still taken up and transformed by his 
 imagination, becomes Dickens-ized, in fact, so that 
 whether he describes a landscape, or a bootjack, or 
 a building, or a man, we see the object, not as it 
 is in itself, but as it is deliciously bewitched by his 
 method of looking at it. Everything is suggested 
 by his outward experience, but modified by his in 
 ward experience. The result is that we do not 
 have in him an exact transcript of life, but an in 
 dividualized ideal of life, from his point of view. 
 He has, in short, discovered and colonized one of 
 
320 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 the waste districts of Imagination which we may 
 call Dickens-land or Dickens-ville ; from his own 
 brain he has peopled it with some fourteen hundred 
 persons; and it agrees with the settlements made 
 there by Shakspeare and Scott in being better known 
 than such geographical countries as Canada and 
 Australia; and it agrees with them equally in 
 confirming us in the belief of the reality of a pop 
 ulation which has no actual existence. It is dis 
 tinguished from all other colonies in Brainland by 
 the ineffaceable peculiarities of its colonizer; its in 
 habitants don t die like other people, but alas ! they 
 also now can t increase ; but whithersoever any of 
 them may wander, they are recognized at once, by an 
 unmistakable birth-mark, as belonging to the race 
 of Dickens. A man who has done this is not merely 
 one of a thousand, but one of a thousand millions; 
 for he has created an ideal population which is more 
 interesting to human beings than the great body of 
 their own actual friends and neighbors. 
 
 And how shall I describe this population, so nu 
 merous and so various ? 
 
 It must, of course, be divided into classes ; and 
 its most general division is into humane people and 
 malignant people. The one test of merit in Dickens- 
 land is goodness of heart; and it contains a consid 
 erable number of highly esteemed persons in whom 
 this quality is connected with confusion of head. No 
 other novelist ever drew so many fools and half 
 witted people, and drew them so humanely. There, 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 321 
 
 for example, is poor Miss Flite, the crazed suitor 
 in the Court of Chancery, who has discovered that 
 the sixth seal mentioned in the Revelation is the 
 Great Seal of the Lord Chancellor, and who expects 
 a judgment in her case on the Day of Judgment. 
 There is Miss Betsey Trotwood s friend, Mr. Dick, 
 with his head hopelessly troubled and intermixed 
 with that of King Charles the First, and listening 
 to Dr. Strong s learned dissertations " with his poor 
 wits wandering, God knows where, on the wings of 
 hard words." Add a little conscious brain, so that 
 the heart can stutter into half-intelligent expression, 
 and you have what Susan Nipper calls " that innocent- 
 est creeter, Toots." This young gentleman, as the 
 reader will remember, had been subjected to Dr. Blim- 
 ber s forcing system in education, but " had stopped off 
 blowing one day, and remained in the school a mere 
 stalk ; " and who, " when he began to have whiskers, 
 left off having brains." He is allowed, in his with 
 ered condition of mind, to pursue his own course of 
 study, which chiefly consists in writing " long letters 
 to himself from persons of distinction, addressed c P. 
 Toots, Esq., Brighton, Sussex/ and to preserve them 
 in his desk with great care." When any sudden and 
 heavy call is made on his intelligence, such as being 
 introduced to" a new-comer, iivthe lieu of speech he 
 blushes, chuckles, and breathes hard. He gratifies 
 his secret aspirations to be a dandy and a swell, by 
 " sticking ornamental pins into his shirt, and keeping 
 a ring in his waistcoat pocket to put on his little 
 
 21 
 
322 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 finger by stealth, when the pupils are out walking." 
 Two instances are given of the dark vices into which 
 this confiding innocent runs. Once, he is led out 
 of Mr. Feeder s room into the open in a state of 
 faintness, consequent on an unsuccessful attempt to 
 smoke a very blunt cigar, one of a bundle he had 
 mysteriously purchased " from a most desperate smug 
 gler, who had acknowledged, in confidence, that two 
 hundred pounds was the price set on his head, dead 
 or alive, by the Custom House." At another time, in 
 Mr. Feeder s room, with the doors locked, he and that 
 profligate tutor " crammed their noses with snuff, 
 endured surprising torments of sneezing with the 
 constancy of martyrs, and, drinking table beer at in 
 tervals, felt all the glories of dissipation." When he 
 comes into his property, he hires a set of apartments, 
 employs a prize-fighter, called the Game Chicken, to 
 complete his education as a gentleman, and falls in 
 love with Florence Dombey. The attachment proves 
 hopeless, and he becomes a prey to Byronic despair. 
 " The state of my feelings towards Miss Dombey," he 
 says to Captain Cuttle, " is of that unspeakable de 
 scription, that my heart is a desert island, and she 
 lives in it alone. I m getting more used up every 
 day, and I m proud to be so. If you could see my 
 legs when I take my boots off, you d fofm some idea 
 of what unrequited affection is. I have been pre 
 scribed bark, but I don t take it, for I don t wish to 
 have any tone whatever given to my constitution; I d 
 rather not." " The hollow crowd, when they see me 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 323 
 
 with the Chicken, and characters of distinction like 
 that, suppose me to be happy ; but I in wretched." 
 When he hears of Florence s flight, he tells Captain 
 Cuttle that he has been perfectly frantic. "I have," 
 he exclaims, "been lying on the sofa all night, the 
 
 Ruin you behold I have n t dared to shave, I m in 
 
 that rash state. I have n t had my clothes brushed. 
 My hair is matted together. I told the Chicken that 
 if he offered to clean my boots, I d stretch him a 
 corpse before me ! " 
 
 Dickens makes Toots indeed as ridiculous a crea 
 ture as can well be conceived ; but then, he makes him 
 as lovable as he is laughable. The readers of "Dom- 
 bey and Son " feel that he is of infinitely more im 
 portance than the haughty Edith, or the keen and 
 cunning Carker of that wonderful novel, for he has a 
 good heart under his stammering brain ; and Dick 
 ens, in such matters, agrees with his own John 
 Chivery, who says of his foolish son : " My son has 
 a art, and my son s art is in the right place. Me 
 and his mother knows where to find it, and we find 
 it sitiwated correct." 
 
 Next above the half-witted we have the stupid char* 
 acters of Dickens, characters in whom stupidity, 
 however, is, as it is in Nature, blended with self-impor 
 tance. Such are old Joe Willet, Barkis, Jack Bunsby, 
 Mr. F. s Aunt, and the rest. Intellect just twinkles in 
 them, like a fire-fly in the dark. " That chap, sir," 
 says Mr. Willet, speaking of Hugh, " though he has 
 all his faculties about him, somewheres or another, 
 
324 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 bottled up and corked down, has no more imagination 
 than Barnaby nas. And why hasn t he? Because 
 they was never drawed out of him when he was a 
 boy. That s why. What would any of us have 
 been, if our fathers had n t drawed our faculties out 
 of us ? What would my boy Joe have been if I had 
 n t drawed his faculties out of him ? " 
 
 Again, the liquor-steeped Durdles, in " Edwin 
 Drood," employs the boy-imp, Deputy, to stone him 
 home, when he is out after ten o clock at night, and 
 takes great credit on himself for thus giving the boy 
 an object in life. u What was he before ? " he says 
 with " the slow gravity of beery soddenness." " A 
 destroyer. What work did he do ? Nothing but de 
 struction. What did he earn by it ? Short terms in 
 Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece of prop 
 erty, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, 
 nor a bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned 
 for want of an enlightened object. I put that en 
 lightened object before him, and now he can turn his 
 honest halfpenny by the three penn orth a week." 
 " I wonder he has no competitors," says Mr. Jasper. 
 " He has plenty," answers Mr. Durdles, " but he 
 stones em all away." 
 
 Then there is that inscrutable old woman, Mr. F. s 
 Aunt, in " Little Dorrit," who has such a benevolent 
 desire that Arthur Clenman shall be " brought for ard" 
 in order that she may " chuck him out o winder ; " who 
 sits down in the pie-shop with the inexorable purpose 
 not to move until the " chucking " process has been 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 825 
 
 accomplished ; and who subjects her companion to 
 some embarrassment in consequence of " an idle 
 rumor which circulated among the credulous infants 
 of the neighborhood to the effect that the old lady had 
 sold herself to the pie-shop to be made up, and was 
 then sitting in the pie-shop parlor declining to com 
 plete her contract." 
 
 Connected with this class of characters is a class in ! 
 which conceit carries stupidity to an elevation quite 
 ideal. Sim Tappertit, Mr. Kenwigs, Mr. Sapsea, may 
 be cited as its representatives. Where is the person 
 so fortunate as not to have met Mr. Sapsea, or some 
 body who strongly suggested him, the man who 
 gives a certain grandeur to his fat-wittedncss, who is 
 heroically dull and majestically insensible, and whose 
 conceit could 1 hardly be blasted out of him by the 
 heaviest charge of nitro-glycerine ? Thinking, in his j 
 condescending almightiness, that it is not good for 
 man to be alone, he cast his eye about him for a nup 
 tial partner, whose mind might be absorbed in his 
 own. That eye, thus cast about him, fell on Miss 
 Brobity. " Miss Brobity s being, young man," he says 
 to Mr Jasper, " was deeply imbued with homage to 
 Mind. She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, 
 precipitated, on an extensive knowledge of the world. 
 When I made my proposal, she did me the honor to 
 be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be 
 able to articulate only the two words, < Thou ! 
 meaning myself. Her limpid blue eyes were fixed 
 upon me, her semi-transparent hands were clasped to- 
 
326 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 gether, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, 
 though encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed 
 a word further. Mrs. Sapsea, thus courted, soon dies 
 of " a feeble action of the liver," and to the very last 
 addressed her august spouse, playing Jove to her 
 Semele, in the same unfinished terms of " Thou ! " 
 And perhaps the most audacious stroke of Dickens s 
 extravagant humor is found in the inscription which 
 Mr. Sapsea places on her monument : 
 
 "ETHELINDA, 
 
 Reverential Wife of 
 
 MR. THOMAS SAPSEA, 
 
 Auctioneer, Vainer, Estate Agent, &c., 
 
 Of this city, 
 "Whose Knowledge of the World, 
 
 Though somewhat extensive, 
 Never brought him acquainted with 
 
 A SPIRIT 
 
 More capable of 
 
 LOOKING UP TO HIM. 
 
 STRANGER PAUSE 
 
 And ask thyself the question, 
 
 CANST THOU DO LIKEWISE. 
 
 If Not, 
 WITH A BLUSH RETIRE." 
 
 In these days of Woman s Rights that epitaph can 
 not but have a healthful influence in keeping woman 
 in her " appropriate sphere." 
 
 We do no injustice to that " fool positive," Mr. 
 Sapsea, in saying we make an ascent in the mental 
 scale in proceeding to consider fools after the fashion 
 of Mrs. Nickleby. She is the type of a class, very 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 327 
 
 numerous in actual life, whose minds are run away 
 with by the accidental association of ideas, who 
 have thoughts, but no power of directing their 
 thoughts. Flora Casby, in " Little Dorrit," with her 
 unpunctuated velocity of incoherent talk, belongs to 
 the same general class. So does Mr. Sparkler, whose 
 stunted brain stammers under the weight of his ad 
 miration for persons who have " no nonsense in 
 them," in his case a purely disinterested and pa 
 thetic tribute to all human beings who do not share 
 his special defect. So does tKe poor little Barnacle 
 of the Circumlocution Office, who is so shocked by 
 Arthur Clenman s coming into the office with a de 
 mand to " know " something about the matters which 
 the Department was theoretically instituted to ex 
 plain. Every one remembers the scene at Pet Mea- 
 gles s marriage with Henry Gowan, in which this 
 young Barnacle testifies his horror and indignation 
 " to two vapid young gentlemen, his relatives," at the 
 presence of Arthur at the feast. " There was a feller 
 here, look here, who had come to our Department 
 without an appointment, and said he wanted to know, 
 you know ; and that, look here, if he was to break 
 out now, as he might, you know (for you never could 
 tell what an ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would 
 be up to next), and was to say, look here, that he 
 wanted to know this moment, you know, that would be 
 jolly ; would n t it?" So does " the young man by the 
 name of Guppy," in " Bleak House." He is an attor 
 ney s clerk who, in proposing to Esther Summerson, 
 
328 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 " files a declaration ; " who represents his mother as 
 eminently calculated, by her virtues, to be a mother- 
 in-law ; and who, with vast self-esteem, and desire to 
 strike everybody he meets with an impression of his 
 superior magnanimity and intelligence, is forced by 
 his nature to demean himself like the wretched snob 
 he is, belonging, as he does, to that family of fools 
 in which the natural variety of the species blends with 
 another variety which it would be profanity to name. 
 
 C It is difficult to say where, in Dickens, the humor 
 ist ends and the satirist begins ; but there are in his 
 works whole classes of character in which the satirist 
 evidently predominates. His method of assailing 
 social and political abuses is to make them ridiculous 
 or hateful ; and he makes them ridiculous or hateful 
 by impersonating them in men and women. We 
 quote them as we quote a jest or bright saying, not 
 as characters, but as epigrams endowed with individ 
 uality. His humorous personages spring from his 
 sympathies, his satirical ones from his antipathies ; 
 and antipathy never gives us the whole and inward 
 truth about anybody, but makes us exaggerate the 
 trait we dislike until the individual is all merged in 
 his particular defect. The popularity of sucli char 
 acters in Dickens is due to the fact that they reflect 
 popular prejudices, and never go beyond that percep 
 tion of externals, which is our easy, intolerant way of 
 judging the people we despise or detest. The intel 
 lectual limitations of Dickens are also revealed in his 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 329 
 
 satirical sketches. His heart is developed out of all 
 proportion to his brain. The abuses of a system blind 
 his eyes to its merits and its purpose. He is a 
 reformer, but a reformer whose common sense is 
 unaccompanied with comprehensive intelligence, and 
 whose moral sense frequently impels him to be prac 
 tically unjust. Nobody who is carried away by his 
 delicious satire on the Barnacles and their Circum 
 locution Office, stops to think that the Circumlocu 
 tion Office is simply the introduction of method into 
 the transaction of public business, a system which, 
 with all its defects, is the only contrivance ever de 
 vised by human wit to check scoundrelism in official 
 place. Nobody who is carried away by his satire on 
 the delays in Chancery stops to think that the Court 
 of Chancery, with all its abuses, means equity juris 
 prudence ; and that equity jurisprudence, in distinc 
 tion from the common law, is one of the few things in 
 insular England in which the principles of universal 
 reason and universal justice have been fairly applied. 
 The novel of " Hard Times " is a satire on political 
 economy, of which Dickens knew little, and the lit 
 tle he knew offended his benevolent feelings ; as if 
 the law of gravitation itself did not frequently offend 
 benevolent feeling ! Still, Mr. Gradgrind will for 
 generations prevent a large number of amiable people 
 from admitting the demonstrations of Adam Smith 
 and Ricardo. One sometimes feels, in reflecting on 
 the immense influence exerted by Dickens on matters 
 requiring, for their adequate treatment, wide knowl- 
 
330 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 edge and philosophic largeness of mind, that it is a 
 great pity he did not receive in youth a systematic 
 education, which would have given him the austere 
 mental training which, with all his genius, he so evi 
 dently lacks. We are occasionally reminded, in read" 
 ing him, of Tony Weller s reply to Mr. Pickwick s 
 praise of the intelligence of his son Sam. u Werry 
 glad to hear of it, sir," he says. " I took a great deal 
 o pains in his eddication, sir ; let him run the streets 
 when he wos werry young, sir, and shift for hisself. 
 It s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir." Un 
 doubtedly, what Dickens picked up in " running the 
 streets " was precious to literature. Undoubtedly he 
 saw much that legislators, statesmen, and thinkers 
 neglect. But it would have been better, when he in 
 vaded their province, if he had known more than he 
 did of the subjects that occupied their activity. The 
 fatal defect of his judgment was that he could not 
 fairly represent any system of administration or gov 
 ernment, of philanthropy or theology, which worked 
 what he considered injustice or wrong in individual 
 cases. Now, God alone, with an eternity to operate 
 in, can deal with such exceptional cases. Imperfect 
 human beings can, at the best, only frame systems 
 which have a tendency to do the greatest good to 
 the greatest number. As a humorist, Dickens is as 
 tolerant as Nature is ; as a satirist he is, in spirit, 
 almost as intolerant, though in a different way, as 
 Carlyle himself. He has not the Shakspearian toler 
 ation, the toleration which comes from immense 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 331 
 
 force and reach and fairness of inind, as well as from 
 goodness and tenderness of heart. 
 
 But, waiving these considerations, and coming down 
 to the real talent of Dickens in looking at these 
 things from his own point of view, we have a crowd 
 of shadowy characters which are indisputably inhab 
 itants of Dickens-land. There is the whole family of 
 the Barnacles, born to receive salaries and shirk 
 work, preaching and living the gospel of "how not 
 to do it." There is Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, 
 " who had been maintained by the Circumlocution 
 Office for many years as a representative of the 
 Britannic Majesty abroad." This " noble Refriger 
 ator had iced several European courts in his time, 
 and had done it with such complete success that 
 the very name of Englishman yet struck cold to the 
 stomachs of foreigners who had the distinguished 
 honor of remembering him, at the distance of a 
 quarter of a century." At the festive board he 
 " shaded the dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the 
 gravy, and blighted the vegetables." 
 
 Then there is the class of professional philanthro 
 pists, Mrs. Jellyby, Mrs. Pardiggle, and Messrs. Quale, 
 Gusher, and Honeythunder, caricatures which express 
 one of the most persistent of Dickens s antipathies. 
 Remember poor rueful Mr. Jellyby adjuring his daugh 
 ter Caddy, when she was to marry young Mr. Turvey- 
 drop, not to have a " mission." Unless, he says, you 
 mean with all your heart to strive to make a home 
 for your husband, " you had better murder him than 
 
332 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 marry him." And then, recurring to the disorders 
 of his own home, owing to Mrs. Jellyby s absorption 
 in Borrioboola-Gha, he calls his neglected children 
 " wild Indians," and declares " that he was sensible 
 the best thing that could happen to them was, their 
 being all tomahawked together." 
 
 Then there is the class to which the Rev. Mr. 
 Chadband belongs, impersonated satires on clerical 
 defects and bigotries, which some clergymen have 
 been so injudicious as to denounce as attacks on re 
 ligion. Mr. Chadband is " a large yellow man, with 
 a fat smile," a greasy paw, and with " a general ap 
 pearance of having a good deal of train-oil in his 
 system." His eloquence consists in " piling verbose 
 flights of stairs" one upon another. His sermon on 
 what he calls " Terewth," elicited by the boy Jo on 
 his appearance in Mr. Snagsby s house, is a master 
 piece of its kind. " my juvenile friends," he ex 
 claims, " if the master of this house was to go forth 
 into the city and there see an eel, and was to come 
 back, and was to call untoe him the mistress of this 
 house, and was to say, Sarah, rejoice with me, for 
 I have seen an elephant ! would that be Terewth ? 
 Or put it that the unnatural parents of this slum 
 bering Heathen, for parents he had, my juvenile 
 friends, without a doubt, after casting him forth 
 to the wolves and the vultures and the wild dogs and 
 the young gazelles and the serpents, went back to 
 their dwellings and had their pipes, and their pots, 
 and their flutings, and their dancings, and their malt 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 333 
 
 liquors, and their butcher s meat and poultry, would 
 that be Terewth ? " 
 
 In the same class of impersonated sarcasms we must 
 rank his hits, in " Martin Chuzzlewit," on our Ameri 
 can declaimers, swindlers, and charlatans. They are 
 caricatures but then, what good caricatures ! Not 
 to speak of Mr. Jefferson Brick, and Colonel Diver, 
 of the "Rowdy Journal," how delightful is Elijah 
 Pogram, " honorable " in virtue of his being a member 
 of Congress ! The Hon. Elijah s eulogy on the rascal 
 Chollop must remind us of many specimens of West 
 ern eloquence. " Our fellow-countryman is a model of j 
 a man, quite fresh from Natur s mould! " said Pogram, 
 with enthusiasm. " He is a true-born child of this free 
 hemisphere ! Verdant as the mountains of our coun^ 
 try ; bright and flowing as our Mineral Licks ; unsp iled 
 by withering conventionalities as air our broad and 
 boundless Perearers ! Rough he may be. So air our 
 Barrs. Wild he may be. So air our Buffalers. But 
 he is a child of Natur s, and a child of Freedom ; and 
 his boastful answer to the Despot and Tyrant is, that 
 his bright home is in the settin sun ! " This is per 
 haps only a heightened representation of the way in 
 which some of our politicians make the American 
 Eagle scream ! 
 
 Now the difference between characters like these/ 
 and real men and women, is, that they have no inter- 
 nal vitality and individuality. In short, they have no 
 souls. Dickens s force of imagination is such that he 
 easily succeeds in personifying them ; but he easily 
 
334 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 succeeds also in personifying streets, buildings, land 
 scapes, furniture, everything, in short, he touches. 
 It is so difficult, in this brief survey, to mention even 
 by name scores of the true characters which enliven 
 his books, that the deduction we make is compara 
 tively of slight importance. Among those characters 
 who have essential individuality, Tony Weller and 
 Mrs. Gamp stand out as perhaps the best examples of 
 solid characterization in Dickens s works. What they 
 say is deliciously humorous, but what they are is more 
 humorous still. The same, to a less extent, may be 
 said of Sam Weller, Squeers, Wilkins Micawber, Es 
 quire, Captain Ed ard Cuttle, Mr. Crummies, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Boffin ; of the wonderful series of boys, from 
 Master Wackford Squeers all the way up to the " baby- 
 devil " Deputy, in " Edwin Drood," and that perfection 
 of urchin impudence, Bailey, Junior, in " Martin Chuz- 
 zlewit ; " of the dilapidated young gentlemen, distin 
 guished for their flow of spirits, animal and alcoholic, 
 represented by Bob Sawyer, Mr. Chuck ster, and Mr. 
 Richard Swiveller ; and of oddities and " originals " of 
 all kinds, such as Newman Noggs, Tim Linkinwater, 
 Mr. Cruncher, Durdles, Mr. Venus, Mr. Wegg, Mr. 
 Boythorne. It is useless in such an embarrassment of 
 riches to attempt specification. They are all more or 
 less overcharged, as though the author was a little in 
 toxicated with his own humorous conceptions, and 
 could not keep himself within any measure ; but they 
 are still all alive. Of the novels in which they appear, 
 " The Pickwick Papers " are the most animated and 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 335 
 
 joyous, inspired, as they are, by the very genius of 
 fun ; " David Copperfield " is the most delightful, vari 
 ous, and satisfying of stories; "Dombey and Son" is 
 the freshest and most vital throughout in style, de 
 scription, and characterization ; and " The Tale of 
 Two Cities " is the most intense, passionate, and " en 
 training " of narratives. 
 
 In all the novels, the characters can hardly be de 
 tached from the scenes and incidents in which they 
 appear, without a loss in ludicrous effect. Still, let 
 me quote a few sentences in which what they are, 
 flashes through what they my. Mr. Sam Weller, on 
 first encountering the fat boy, accosts him with the 
 question, "You a n t got nothing on your mind as 
 makes you fret yourself, have you ?" " Not as I knows 
 on," replies the boy. " I should rather ha thought," 
 says Sam, " to look at you, that you was a-laborin 
 under an unrequited attachment to some young 
 ooman." 
 
 Mrs. Todgers fears that " that dreadful child," Bai 
 ley, Junior, has been so spoilt by the gentlemen of 
 her boarding-house, " that nothing but hanging will 
 ever do him any good." Mrs. Gamp gives, as her 
 opinion, that " there s nothin he don t know. All the 
 wickedness of the world is Print to him." "Recther 
 so," retorts Bailey, Junior, "adjusting his cravat." 
 And then he confesses critically to Poll Sweedlepipe, 
 " There s the remains of a fine woman about Sairy, 
 hey, Poll!" u Drat the Bragian boldness of that 
 boy!" cried Mrs. Gamp. " I would n t be that cree- 
 
336 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 tur s mother, not for fifty pound ! " " Excuge," she 
 says, in reference to this same Poll Sweedlepipe, the 
 barber, " excuge the weakness of the man . . . which 
 not a blessed hour ago he nearly shaved the noge off 
 from the father of as lovely a family as ever, Mr. 
 Chuzzlewit, was born three sets of twins ; and would 
 have done it, only he see it a-goin in the glass and 
 dodged the rager ! " 
 
 Mr. Sapsea, in " Edwin Drood," thus discriminates 
 between equity and legality. " It is not enough," he 
 says, " that Justice should be morally certain ; she 
 must be immorally certain legally, that is." 
 
 Mr. Micawber, who is the prey of pecuniary difficul 
 ties, and who is always waiting for something to 
 " turn up," has a family in every way worthy of him. 
 " My mamma," said Mrs. Micawber, " departed this life 
 before Mr. Micawber s difficulties commenced, or at 
 least before they became pressing. My papa lived 
 to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and then expired, 
 regretted by a numerous circle." " My piece of advice 
 to you, Copperfield," says Mr. Micawber, u you know. 
 Annual income, twenty pounds ; annual expenditure, 
 nineteen nineteen six ; result, happiness. Annual in 
 come, twenty pounds ; annual expenditure, twenty 
 pounds aught and six ; result, misery. The blossum 
 is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of day goes 
 down on the dreary scene, and and, in short, you 
 are forever floored. As I am ! " 
 
 How many so-called accomplished women of the 
 world are hit in this picture of Mrs. Merdle ! She 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 337 
 
 " had large, unfeeling, handsome eyes, and dark, un 
 feeling, handsome hair, and a broad, unfeeling, hand 
 some bosom." 
 
 " I am," says Mr. Vincent Crummies, " in the theat 
 rical profession myself ; my wife is in the theatrical 
 profession ; I had a dog that lived and died in it from 
 a puppy ; and my chaise-pony goes on, in * Timour 
 the Tartar. " 
 
 When Mrs. Crupp, David Copperfield s landlady, 
 has her house invaded by Miss Betsey Trotwood, she 
 vehemently expresses her determination to assert her 
 rights before " a British Judy." Mr. Wegg, when he 
 charges Mr. Boffin more for reading poetry to him 
 than for reading prose, justifies the exaction on the 
 ground that, when " a person comes to grind off poetry 
 night after night, it is but right he should expect 
 to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind." 
 When Mr. Squeers is drunk, he goes to bed not only 
 with his boots on, but with his umbrella under his 
 arm. When Arthur Clenman, ruined by speculation 
 and utterly crushed in spirit, says to Mr. Rugg, his 
 attorney, that he cares only for the money left with 
 him in trust, and not for his own, Mr. Rugg ex 
 presses an unmistakable professional surprise at such 
 extraordinary delicacy of feeling. "I have," he 
 says "generally found in my experience, that it s 
 their own money people are most particular about. 
 I have seen people get rid of a good deal of other 
 people s money, and bear it very well; very well 
 indeed." 
 
338 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 A word may be said here in regard to the critical 
 charge against Dickens, that he preserves the individ 
 uality of his characters by the cheap contrivance of 
 constantly repeating some mere external peculiarity. 
 Mr. Snagsby always prefaces anything he has to say 
 with a slight deprecatory cough behind his raised 
 hand. Uriah Heep is always " umble." Mr. Jarn- 
 dyce s " East Wind " becomes in the end painfully 
 monotonous. Mr. Tony Weller s fear of the machina 
 tions of " widdurs " tires at last on the critical sense 
 of humor. Mrs. Merdle s " Bosom " is so obtrusively 
 prominent that it submerges Mrs. Merdle herself in a 
 physical trait. The objection is just, but still the de 
 fect belongs to Dickens s method of characterization. 
 He repeats these things as the experienced preacher 
 constantly repeats his text, in order to deepen its 
 effect on the popular mind. As long as Dickens 
 makes his characters really alive, in internal indi 
 viduality as well as in external peculiarity, the defect 
 is but superficial. 
 
 The villains in Dickens s novels are not favorable 
 specimens of the class from which Shakspeare and 
 Scott drew some of their grandest creations. All his 
 villains are essentially low villains and utter villains ; 
 but experience, history, and Shakspeare prove that 
 villains are commonly the most complicated of all 
 characters, and require the greatest subtlety and 
 depth of dramatic insight to be adequately represented 
 and explained. Dickens s villains, Quilp, Carker, 
 Arthur Gride, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Ralph Nickleby, 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 339 
 
 Blandois, and the rest, are simply hideous, and belong 
 not to literature, but to the criminal courts. Though 
 he devotes to them much of his strongest, most elab 
 orate, and most ambitious writing, he never succeeds 
 in making them artistically justifiable. Total de 
 pravity is not admissible in romance ; and Dickens 
 professes to draw his villains as totally depraved. 
 " What," he says in "Edwin Drood," the last work 
 he wrote, " could a virtuous mind know of the 
 criminal intellect, which its own professed students 
 perpetually misread, because they persist in trying to 
 reconcile it with the average intellect of average men, 
 instead of identifying it as a horrible wonder apart ? " 
 And as to the criminal heart under this criminal in 
 tellect, he has expressed a sufficiently despairing 
 opinion through the lips of the honest landlady who 
 denounces Blandois, the leading villain of " Little 
 Dorrit." " I know nothing," she says, " of philo 
 sophic philanthropy. But this I know, that there 
 are people whom it is necessary to detest without 
 compromise. There are people who must be dealt 
 with as enemies of the human race. There are peo 
 ple (men and women both, unfortunately) who have 
 no good in them none. There are people who have 
 no human heart, and must be crushed like savage 
 beasts and cleared out of the way." 
 
 Individually I may agree with this judgment, and 
 think that the hangman is doing the most useful of 
 all works in launching such existences into non- 
 existence. Kill them by all means, but don t do what 
 
340 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 Dickens does, don t make them prominent charac- 
 ( ters in the ideal realm of tragedy and romance. 
 There is a soured and cruelly deceived gentle 
 man in this place, who refused the other day 
 to subscribe to any domestic or foreign missions, 
 because, he said, there were not, in his deliberate 
 opinion, as many persons that went to hell as ought 
 to go there. Whatever we may think of this judg 
 ment, there can be no doubt that the people he 
 indicated in his anathema ought not to trouble us 
 in a romance written by a man of genius. Dickens, 
 in his novels, continually thrusts them in our eyes. 
 Consequently, in this department of his art he is 
 manifestly wrong. Shakspcare and Scott bring in 
 their villains artistically, exhibiting the clash and 
 conflict of their consciences with their passions ; 
 Dickens sticks to the vulgar, melodramatic villain, 
 without conscience, and satisfies our moral senti 
 ments at the expense of disgusting our sense of 
 ; artistic propriety. 
 
 The pathos of Dickens is no less effective than 
 his humor ; perhaps he draws tears even more easily 
 than he provokes laughter. He makes everybody 
 cry, even his hostile critics ; but his critics object 
 that they are made to cry against the rules; that 
 it is sentimentality they cry over, and not true senti 
 ment ; that it is exceedingly unnatural thus to have 
 their natures so deeply stirred. Dickens took their 
 tears as the most cogent of all answers to their 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 341 
 
 maxims, and went on with his work, forcing them 
 to weep, and disregarding the snarling protest they 
 made against the magician who extorted from them 
 such irrepressible drops of uncritical emotion. Still, 
 the critics were not altogether wrong in saying that 
 while his humor always cheered, his pathos fre 
 quently enfeebled. Vigorous manly and womanly 
 will to do practical benevolent work is apt to be 
 dissolved in such tears as Dickens makes us some 
 times shed. It is well to sympathize with sorrow; 
 but to sympathize with it to such an extent as to 
 make strong-heartedness give way to soft-heartedness 
 is to deprive us of the power to help the sorrowful. 
 For example, we all perhaps become somewhat maud 
 lin over Little Nell ; but then, Little Nell grown up 
 in " Little Dorrit ; " grown up in Lucie Manette, of 
 "The Tale of Two Cities;" grown up in Esther 
 Summerson, of the " Bleak House," is a veritable 
 character, competent, through pathetic sentiment, to 
 impress us with the highest obligations of duty. 
 The affectionateness and self-devotion of these char 
 acters are all steeped in an atmosphere of moral 
 beauty. I think that Esther Summerson is the most 
 perfect character of its kind in romantic literature, 
 thoroughly pure, sweet, kindly, maidenly, and hu 
 mane. Mr. Peggotty again, in " David Copperlield," 
 is a wonderful example of the power of goodness to 
 irradiate the homeliest form, and lift into grandeur 
 the most uncouth expression. Human nature itself 
 is indebted to Dickens for such delineations of its 
 
342 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 possibilities of purity, tenderness, and humble moral 
 strength. 
 
 There is quite a crowd of such characters in 
 Dickens-land, and they thoroughly Christianize it. 
 What a discourse on filial duty is condensed in the 
 advice given by Mr. George, in " Bleak House," to 
 young Woolwich ! " The time will come when this 
 hair of your mother s will be gray, and this forehead 
 all crossed and recrossed with wrinkles. Take care, 
 while you are young, that you can think in those 
 days, 1 never whitened a hair of her dear head, I 
 never marked a sorrowful line in her face ! : 
 
 What a living sermon is that preached at the death 
 bed of little Paul Dombey ! How it melts, human 
 izes, elevates every heart ! " Sister and brother 
 wound their arms around each other, and the golden 
 light came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked 
 together. . . . He put his hands together, as he had 
 been used to do at prayers. He did not remove his 
 arms to do it ; but they saw him fold them so, behind 
 her neck. i Mama is like you, Floy. I know her by 
 the face. But tell them that the print upon the 
 stairs at school is not divine enough. The light 
 about the head is shining on me as I go! The 
 golden ripple on the wall came back again, and 
 nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fash 
 ion! The fashion that came in with our first gar 
 ments, and will last unchanged until our race has 
 run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up 
 like a scroll. The old, old fashion Death. Oh, 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 343 
 
 thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, 
 of Immortality ! And look upon us, angels of young 
 children, with regards not quite estranged, when the 
 swift river bears us to the ocean ! " 
 
 And what a wild, agonized cry is that which bursts 
 from the heart of David Copperfield as he surveys 
 for the last time his friend tranquilly sleeping, and 
 thinks of the inexpiable crime he so soon after 
 committed. 
 
 " Never more Oh, God forgive you, Steerforth ! 
 to touch that passive hand in love and friendship. 
 Never, never more ! " 
 
 And then there is the death of Davy Copperfield s 
 mother, as told to him by his old nurse, Peggotty. 
 " Peggotty, my dear, she said, put me nearer to you, 
 for she was very weak. ( Lay your good arm under 
 my neck, she said, and turn me to you, for your face 
 is going far off, and I want it to be near. I put it as 
 she asked ; and oh, Davy ! the time came when my 
 first parting words to you were true when she was 
 glad to lay her poor head on her stupid cross old 
 Peggotty s arm and she died like a child that had 
 gone to sleep." 
 
 And then there is in " Bleak House " that wonder 
 fully depicted ride which Esther Summerson takes with 
 Mr. Bucket, the detective, to follow and save her 
 mother, Lady Dedlock, who had fled from her haughty 
 husband s house to die at the gate of the paupers 
 cemetery, where her early love, Esther s wild father, 
 was buried. " She lay there, with one arm creeping 
 
344 IN DICKENS-LAND. 
 
 round a bar of the iron gate, and seeming to em 
 brace it. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, 
 senseless creature." Esther does not think it is her 
 mother, but her attendant, Jenny. " I saw," she 
 says, " but did not comprehend, the solemn and com 
 passionate look in Mr. Woodcourt s face. I saw, but 
 did not comprehend, his touching the other on the 
 breast, to keep him back. I saw him stand uncov 
 ered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. 
 But my understanding for all this was gone. I even 
 heard it said between them, c Shall she go ? She had 
 better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. 
 They have a higher right than ours. I passed on to 
 the gate, and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, 
 put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. 
 And it was my mother, cold and dead." 
 
 This is essential pathos, going down to the very 
 roots of the thing in the human heart. And how 
 numerous the examples are, spread all over Dickens s 
 works ! 
 
 And now, in conclusion, let us celebrate, without 
 any qualification, this humane man of genius, who, 
 whether he makes us laugh or weep, makes us better ; 
 who cheers us with a fresh confidence in human nature, 
 and with an intenser sympathy for the poor, the de 
 spised and the wretched ; who has done immense good 
 while he has seemed only to diffuse vast entertainment ; 
 who has peopled the imagination with a new company 
 of ideal beings which the heart clings to and will not 
 
IN DICKENS-LAND. 345 
 
 allow to die ; who never did or said anything mean 
 or base, or refrained from stigmatizing meanness and 
 baseness when they crossed his path ; who was never 
 corrupted by success, but was as kindly and genial 
 in life as in his writings ; who tried sincerely to live 
 in accordance with what he honestly believed to be 
 true and right ; and who, while he will ever hold a 
 high rank among the great novelists of the world, 
 will also, and through his novels, hold a still more 
 precious position among the great benefactors of the 
 human race. 
 
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