THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE GREAT REPUBLIC
 
 THE 
 
 GREAT REPUBLIC 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR LEPEL HENRY GRIFFIN, K.C.S.I. 
 
 " The Commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts." 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 " O Liberte" ! que de crimes on commet en ton nom." 
 
 JEANNE-MARIE ROLAND. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 
 
 LIMITED. 
 
 1884.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 K. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, E.G.
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 A FEW days ago Mr. James Russell Lowell, 
 poet and diplomatist, was pleasantly discoursing 
 on the charms of Democracy to an English 
 audience. The slippery road to the abyss, over 
 which " Nulla vestigia retrorsum " is engraved, was 
 strewn with the graceful flowers of rhetoric, and 
 if all the statements of the official representative of 
 Democracy were correct, the English people might 
 wisely cease a hopeless struggle with the inevitable 
 and march joyfully into Mr. Lowell's promised 
 land. But no one knows better than the American 
 Minister that his syllogisms were fallacious, his 
 axioms paradoxical, and his conclusions contra- 
 dicted not only by the past history of Republi- 
 canism, but by the contemporary spectacle of the 
 
 1179525
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 Presidential election, the scandals of which would 
 make Democracy herself blush, if that brazen 
 hussy had any modesty remaining. 
 
 Of all the products of Republicanism sent by 
 America to England, Mr. Lowell is at once the 
 most agreeable and the most strange. Like a 
 pearl in an oyster, we regard him with gratified 
 surprise. His culture, modesty, and gentle 
 breeding impart a delicate yet piquant charm to 
 his democratic optimism, and pleasantly flavour 
 his bad logic. But he is not the normal and 
 typical American politician. If he were so, 
 Englishmen might look on Democracy with more 
 favourable eyes. But Mr. Lowell is a poet whose 
 songs have justly won him such popular repute 
 that the Government of the States were compelled 
 to honour themselves by offering him a dignified 
 exile. He would be as bewildered in the back 
 slums of American politics as a country maiden in 
 St. Giles. Although a violet may have sprung 
 from a manure heap, we do not forget that the 
 normal growth is coarse grass, the rank dock, and 
 the stinging nettle.
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 The etiquette of American diplomacy is not 
 to be measured by the Old World standard of 
 propriety. The republican simplicity which 
 pretends to see in a court dress a badge of 
 servitude, will possibly find nothing astonishing 
 in the American Minister to a Monarchical Govern- 
 ment lecturing the subjects of the Queen on the 
 advantages of Democracy. What would be the 
 American comment were the British Minister at 
 Washington to lecture the citizens of New York 
 on the divine right of kings ? With what pleasure 
 does Mr. Lowell think the Russian Government 
 would regard the British Ambassador addressing 
 the merchants of Moscow on the priceless blessing 
 of representative institutions ? 
 
 But Englishmen who prefer the rule of logic to 
 that of the mob will forgive Mr. Lowell for the 
 impropriety of his speech in consideration of the 
 service he has thereby rendered to the cause of 
 freedom. It is with a secret joy that they will 
 note the public demonstration of how poor and 
 paltry a thing is this same Democracy, since so 
 accomplished an advocate as Mr. Lowell can
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 only weave for it so poor and sophistical an 
 apology. 
 
 In paraphrasing Napoleon's definition of the 
 French Revolution, as "/a carriere ouverte aux 
 talents" Mr. Lowell called " Democracy that form 
 of society, no matter what its political classi- 
 fication, in which every man had his chance and 
 knew it. If a man can climb from a coal pit 
 to the highest position for which he is fitted, he 
 can well afford to be indifferent to the form of 
 Government under which he lives." This may 
 be true of the fortunate collier, but appears less 
 admirable to those who deny the divine right 
 of colliers to rule ; and who, looking to the past 
 history of France and the United States, would 
 be disposed to define Democracy as that form of 
 Government in which a man can climb from a 
 coal pit to the highest position for which he 
 is most unfit. There can, however, be little doubt 
 that Mr. Lowell, with perhaps unconscious 
 sarcasm, has rightly indicated a cpal mine as the 
 most appropriate school for an American 
 politician. Thence emerging, secure in his
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 livery of grime, he might defy the abuse and 
 garbage which are thrown at every prominent 
 candidate for popular favour, and which blacken 
 and stain the fairest reputation. 
 
 While Mr. Lowell was delivering his panegyric 
 on Democracy, the following extract will show 
 how a Republican journal speaks of the favoured 
 Republican candidate for the Presidentship, the 
 nominee of the party to which Mr. Lowell 
 himself belongs. 
 
 " If Elaine be elected, the Republican party is 
 stained beyond all cleansing. It will have put 
 its neck under the yoke of corruption, it will 
 have made alliance with dishonesty. It will have 
 sold its birthright of honour for fat offices and 
 the profits of a venally lax administration of 
 Government. It will be no longer a political 
 party, it will be no more than an organisation 
 for public plunder. 
 
 "All know the record of his indecent prostitu- 
 tion of the powers of office : all have seen the 
 hideous infamy to which he has resorted in his 
 attempt to crush the honest man whom honest
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 men hope to make President next November. 
 Shamelessly he has violated the sanctity of a 
 man's private life, shamelessly he has perverted 
 his party press to the lowest purposes of scandal- 
 mongering. Pitilessly he has dragged a woman's 
 shame before the public. He has not hesitated 
 to use weapons which would disgrace the foulest 
 cause. He has not hesitated to begin a warfare 
 which has filled the public prints with columns 
 of unparalleled indecency." 
 
 If journals favourable to the Republican party 
 use language such as this, it may be imagined 
 with what rancour and venom the papers of the 
 Opposition assail the Republican candidate. An 
 attentive study of the humours of the present 
 election in the States will abundantly confirm 
 all that has been written in this book regarding 
 the condition of American politics. It is useless 
 to assert that these scandals are but superficial 
 blemishes which will gradually disappear as 
 public morality becomes more austere. The 
 contention is not supported by experience ; 
 while the fact remains that men of honour and
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 delicacy decline to enter the unsavoury stream 
 of American political life for the same reason 
 that they would object to bathe in the Thames 
 below London Bridge. The whole political 
 system being corrupt, Mr. Lowell's collier survives 
 as the fittest, for the reason that he is the worst. 
 In the present edition of The Great Republic, 
 I have omitted certain correspondence with Mr. 
 Grant White, and some expressions regarding 
 one of his books which seemed to impart a 
 personal flavour to criticism which is intended 
 to be altogether general and friendly to America. 
 I have also omitted a passage relating to Mr. 
 George Washington Childs of Philadelphia, as 
 I am informed by a friend in that city that 
 statements which I quoted from a local guide 
 book are incorrect, and I am unwilling to wound 
 the feelings of a gentleman who is a warm 
 friend of England, and to whose courtesy and 
 kindness many Englishmen are under deep 
 
 obligations. 
 
 LEPEL GRIFFIN. 
 
 October ibth, 1884.
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 SOME portions of this little book have already 
 appeared in the Fortnightly Review, and are here 
 reproduced with the consent and, indeed, at the 
 suggestion of the editor. My criticisms of various 
 American characteristics attracted much attention 
 in the United States, and a mass of hostile com- 
 ment in the shape of verses and newspaper 
 articles. I would, then, at the threshold of this 
 book, hasten to assure Americans that it is written 
 in no unfriendly spirit to them. If what I have 
 said be distasteful to them, I am sorry for it, 
 for I have had no intention to wound. I am 
 writing for Englishmen and especially for English 
 Liberals, and wish to point out for their avoidance 
 those of the political methods of America which
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 strike me as thoroughly bad and corrupt. It is 
 necessary that Englishmen should understand, at 
 the present time, the demoralisation which may fall 
 upon a country which is so unwise as to surrender 
 political power into the hands of the uneducated 
 masses, and if, in pressing home this lesson, I 
 have been compelled to speak somewhat roughly 
 and frankly, the fault is less mine than that of 
 the institutions I criticise.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA IS 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCENERY AND CITIES 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIBERTY 4 1 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EQUALITY . ' 67
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 86 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY IOO 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT 126 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 JUSTICE 139 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY 159 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 FOREIGN POLICY 173
 
 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. 
 
 WHETHER the discovery of America by 
 Columbus has been of advantage or loss to the 
 so-called civilised peoples of the Old World would 
 form an interesting thesis for discussion. When we 
 remember the gentle and refined races of Mexico 
 and Peru trampled beneath the gross feet of Pizarro, 
 Cortes, and the Inquisition ; or regard the savage pic- 
 turesqueness of the Indian tribes that wandered over 
 the North American continent, cruel, brutal, and 
 happy, uninjured by and uninjuring Western culture, 
 we cannot but look with some doubt and hesitation 
 at America of to-day, the apotheosis of Philistinism, 
 the perplexity and despair of statesmen, the Mecca 
 to which turns every religious or social charlatan 
 
 D
 
 2 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 where the only god worshipped is Mammon, and 
 the highest education is the share list ; where 
 political life, which should be the breath of the 
 nostrils of every freeman, is shunned by an honest 
 man as the plague; where, to enrich jobbers and 
 monopolists and contractors, a nation has eman- 
 cipated its slaves and enslaved its freemen ; where 
 the people is gorged and drunk with materialism, 
 and where wealth has become a curse instead of 
 a blessing. 
 
 America is the country of disillusion and dis- 
 appointment, in politics, literature, culture, and art ; 
 in its scenery, its cities, and its people. With some 
 experience of every country in the civilised world, 
 I can think of none except Russia in which I would 
 not prefer to reside, in which life would not be 
 more worth living, less sordid and mean and 
 unlovely. 
 
 In order that this opinion may not appear harsh, 
 exaggerated, and unfriendly, it is necessary to say 
 a few words on the subject of international criticism. 
 There appears to exist an idea that the friendliness 
 and indeed the amalgamation, social and political, 
 of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race 
 are so to be desired, that all mutual criticism of 
 politics or manners should be uniformly favourable, 
 even though the praise be undeserved. I will leave
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. 3 
 
 others to discuss whether there can be more in un- 
 candid criticism than loss of self-respect ; and only 
 inquire whether, if we are unable to say pleasant 
 things of America, it be not better to remain alto- 
 gether silent. I believe silence to be both harmful 
 and useless. In the first place, America is not an 
 inert mass, devoid of attractive power. It is, to 
 the last degree, energetic, dynamic, and aggressive, 
 while its attractive force is so felt within the orbit 
 of England that a large and increasing number of 
 politicians and publicists are looking to America 
 for the dawn of a new social and political millen- 
 nium, and are recommending American remedies 
 for all our national disorders. Each year the de- 
 mocratic tide rises higher and our institutions 
 become more Americanised ; while some English 
 statesmen are admittedly careless how high the 
 tide may rise, and what existing institutions it 
 may sweep away. It is as well that Englishmen 
 should understand what is the dream of 
 advanced New York Republicans as represented 
 by the World: 
 
 " Ca ira I Efrttsas les infames ! ! 
 
 " The storm of revolution is looming and lowering over 
 Europe which will crush out and obliterate for ever the hydra- 
 headed monarchies and nobilities of the Old World. In 
 Russia the Nihilist is astir. In France the Communist is the 
 coming man. In Germany the Social Democrat will soon 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 rise again in his millions as in the days of Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 In Italy the Internationalist is frequently heard from. In 
 Spain the marks of the Black Hand have been visible on 
 many an occasion. In Ireland the Fenian and Avenger 
 terrorise, and in England the Land League is growing. All 
 cry aloud for the blue blood of the monarch and the aristocrat. 
 They wish to see it pouring again on the scaffold. Will it be 
 by the guillotine that cut off the head of Louis XVI. ? Or 
 by the headsman's axe that decapitated Charles I. ? Or by 
 the dynamite that searched out the vitals of Alexander the 
 Second ? Or will it be by the hangman's noose around the 
 neck of the next British monarch ? 
 
 " No one can tell but that the coming English sans-culottes, 
 the descendants of Wamba the Fool and Gurth the Swine- 
 herd, will discover the necessary method and relentlessly em- 
 ploy it. They will make the nobles who fatten and luxuriate 
 in the castles and abbeys and on the lands stolen from the Saxon, 
 sacrilegiously robbed from the Catholic Church and kept from 
 the peasantry of the villages and the labourer of the towns 
 wish they had never been born. They will be the executioners 
 of the fate so justly merited by the aristocratic criminals of 
 the past and the present. The cry that theirs is blue blood 
 and that they are the privileged caste will not avail the men 
 and women of rank when the English Republic is born. They 
 will have to expiate their tyrannies, their murders, their lusts, 
 and their crimes in accordance with the law given on Sinai 
 amid the thunders of heaven : ' The sins of the fathers shall 
 be visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth 
 generations.'" 1 
 
 Even if such ravings as these are dismissed as 
 unworthy of notice, it is not the less certain that 
 the most amiable and intelligent Americans are 
 
 1 It is necessary to note that the New York World is edited by a 
 German.
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. 5 
 
 looking forward to a near future in which the 
 Republican lion, having digested the aristocratic 
 lamb, shall lie down in dignified repose with no one 
 to question his claim to be the first of created 
 beings in a renewed world, the secret of which he 
 pretends to be equality applied to all except 
 himself. For an illustration of this, it is sufficient 
 to refer to one of the latest and most pleasing 
 American books, entitled, An American Four-in- 
 Hand in Britain, by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, which 
 describes, with great vivacity, how a party of 
 simple and impressionable Republicans chartered 
 a coach at Brighton and were driven, to their 
 immense satisfaction, through England and Scot- 
 land. Throughout this book, which is by a 
 friendly hand, and treats British weaknesses 
 with kindly compassion, runs the strong stream 
 of belief in the triumph of Republicanism in 
 England, and its regeneration " under the purify- 
 ing influences of equality," which Mr. Carnegie 
 declares is the panacea of all disorders, even 
 a constitutional monarchy. If he would only 
 visit Boss Kelly, surrounded by the gang of 
 Irish thieves who rule and rob New York, and 
 explain to them that he was in every sense their 
 equal, I cannot but think that, during his 
 hurried exit from the presence of the municipal
 
 6 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 gods, he would modify his somewhat simple 
 political beliefs. 1 
 
 If, then, there be those, like myself, who believe 
 that no greater curse could befall England than for 
 her to borrow political methods, dogmas and in- 
 stitutions from America, there seems every reason 
 why such should explain the grounds, good or bad, 
 for their belief, with which American travel may 
 have furnished them. The good in American 
 institutions is of English origin and descent ; what 
 is bad is indigenous, and this she now desires to 
 teach us. But Britannia, who, since her daughter 
 has become independent and carried her affections 
 elsewhere, has escaped the dreary role of chaperone, 
 may surely refuse invitations to see Columbia dance, 
 in fancy dress, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, and 
 may plead her age and figure when asked to learn 
 the new step. There are doubtless in English 
 politics and society many evils and anomalies 
 privileges which cannot be defended, wrongs and 
 injustice and misery which must be redressed and 
 relieved ; but, nevertheless, the English constitu- 
 tion, with its ordered and balanced society from 
 the throne to the cottage, is the symbol and 
 
 1 Mr. Andrew Carnegie, though he plumes his republican 
 feathers with so much complacency, is, in reality, a Scotchman 
 who still remains a subject of the Queen.
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. 7 
 
 expression of liberty in the world. Republican 
 institutions have had a trial for a hundred years, 
 and, so far as outsiders can judge, their failure is 
 complete. France under a Republic has become a 
 by-word in Europe for weakness and truculcnce 
 abroad, and financial imbecility and corruption at 
 home ; while America, which boasts of equality 
 and freedom, does not understand that, with the 
 single exception of Russia, there is no country 
 where private right and public interests are more 
 systematically outraged than in the United States. 
 The ideal aristocracy, or government of the best, 
 has in America been degraded into an actual gov- 
 ernment of the worst, in which the educated, the 
 cultured, the honest, and even the wealthy, weigh 
 as nothing in the balance against the scum of 
 Europe which the Atlantic has washed up on 
 the shores of the New World. 
 
 International social criticism, which rests on a 
 basis altogether different from political, is very apt, 
 between England and America, to be prejudiced 
 and unjust. Both races are strangely provincial 
 for people who travel so much, and create 
 grievances out of mere differences in habits and 
 manners, while they are so near of kin as to 
 be acutely sensible of departures from their own 
 standard of taste or morals. English travellers are
 
 8 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 apt to expect too much ; and men who travel 
 uncomplainingly in Spain, where night is chiefly 
 distinguished from day by its change of annoyance, 
 or in Bulgaria, where the only procurable bath is 
 a stable bucket, complain bitterly at not finding 
 in the rude hostelries of the Western States of 
 America the conveniences and the cuisine of 
 Bignon or the Bristol. But, apart from unreason- 
 able claims, which, throughout life, make up so 
 large a part of our unhappiness, there exists a 
 fruitful source of irritation to Englishmen travel- 
 ling in America in the depreciatory attitude to all 
 things English that is taken by the vast majority 
 of Americans. It is a new and doubtless a whole- 
 some experience for Englishmen, for on the con- 
 tinent of Europe, however much we may be 
 disliked, we are regarded with a hostile respect and 
 consideration which are flattering to the national 
 vanity. Our habits and prejudices are indulged 
 and consulted. The splendid hotels of the Rhine, 
 of Switzerland and Italy were built for English 
 travellers and in deference to English tastes and 
 requirements, although of late years our American 
 cousins have shared with us the venal attention of 
 Continental landlords. But in America all this is 
 changed. English tourists are few in number, and 
 are lost in the vast society of travelling Americans.
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. 9 
 
 Their habits, when they differ from those of the 
 natives, are considered antiquated or objectionable ; 
 and every American usage or institution is held 
 up to admiration, not only as good in itself, but 
 as better than anything to be found in " the 
 old country." The stranger would be far more 
 disposed to accord an ungrudging admiration to 
 the many improvements and conveniences which 
 America has introduced into common life, if it 
 were not demanded so peremptorily with regard to 
 numerous matters on which there may be a reason- 
 able difference of opinion, or on which impartial 
 observers would give the preference to English 
 methods. But whether it be hotels or railway cars, 
 horses or carriage-building, banks or beautiful 
 women, oysters or engineering, the ordinary 
 American loudly asserts his superiority over 
 England, and treats an Englishman as an imbecile 
 creature to whom he was deigning to expound 
 the elementary principles of social and political 
 life. Mr. Washington Adams in England, 
 a novel by Mr. R. G. White, amusingly re- 
 viewed last October in the Saturday Review, 
 is as good an illustration as could be found 
 of this type of American critic who might 
 have been thought, from the internal evidence 
 of his book, to have never crossed the ocean,
 
 io THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 discussing English life and manners. It is some 
 consolation to find that Mr. White does not 
 reserve his thunders for his English cousins 
 alone, and that to the September number of 
 The North American Review he has contributed 
 an article on " Class Distinctions in the United 
 States," which, for fierce and contemptuous abuse 
 of the mushroom millionaires whose evil example 
 is demoralising American society, exceeds any- 
 thing which a partially-informed Englishman could 
 fairly or with propriety write. I do not, however, 
 desire, by criticising American society further than 
 it influences political and national life, to lay 
 myself open to charges of bad taste or super- 
 ficiality ; and my friends in New York, Washington, 
 Philadelphia, and the West, whose kindness and 
 hospitality will always be remembered, would, 
 I am sure, be included by Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 in " the remnant " upon which he was inaudibly 
 eloquent in his first New York lecture the salt 
 which is to purify American society, the examples 
 of sweetness and light which are to illumine and 
 beautify the degenerate western world. But 
 whether writers like Mr. White misunderstand 
 and misrepresent English society, or whether we 
 are as black as we are painted, British equanimity 
 will probably remain unshaken. In either case
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. u 
 
 it is certain that the English are not popular in 
 the United States, although there is a far more 
 friendly feeling between the two nations than 
 existed some years ago. This is most evident 
 in the eastern towns, such as Boston and New 
 York, where the imitation of English manners 
 and amusements has become for the time the 
 fashion. Horse-racing has grown to large pro- 
 portions, fox-hunting, lawn-tennis, and cricket, are 
 making slow progress, and the New York dude 
 might almost compare, for fatuous imbecility, with 
 the London masher. So far and low have English 
 fashions penetrated, that Mr. Stokes, the affable 
 proprietor of the Hoffman House, keeps no waiters 
 in his employ who will not consent to shave their 
 moustaches and cut their whiskers a I'Anglaise. 
 But in the Central and Western States, with the 
 exception of Colorado, which is being largely 
 developed by English settlers and capital, there 
 is little love for England or English ways, and 
 criticism is almost uniformly unfriendly. As an 
 example of this may be mentioned the savage 
 abuse of Western journals, among which raged 
 an epidemic of discourtesy directed against some 
 members of Mr. Villard's North Pacific party for 
 a misapprehension, amply apologised for, which in 
 England, and affecting American guests, would
 
 12 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 have remained unnoticed. Americans will often 
 say that the sentiment of the country cannot fairly 
 be ascertained from newspapers ; but in a country 
 where the press has attained an unprecedented 
 development, and where newspapers are, to all 
 appearance, the only literature of the vast majority, 
 a foreigner must assume that they represent, with 
 some exactness, the popular opinion. There is 
 no reason why the English should be popular 
 in America. They are almost the most disagree- 
 able race extant, and are often unendurable to 
 each other ; nor is there any part of Europe, 
 except perhaps Hungary, where they are not more 
 disliked than in the United States. The opinion 
 expressed by the most original of living American 
 poets, the present Minister to the Court of St. 
 James's, represents that of most foreigners, and 
 it is difficult to see that it is essentially unfair : 
 
 " Of all the sarse that I can call to mind 
 England doos make the most onpleasant kind : 
 It's you're the sinner oilers, she's the saint : 
 Wat's good's all English, all that isn't ain't. 
 She's praised herself ontil she fairly thinks 
 There ain't no light in Natur' when she winks." 
 
 Such characteristics are not amiable, and the 
 laws of heredity have transmitted them to our 
 Transatlantic cousins. It is, indeed, probable that
 
 INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM. 13 
 
 the Americans are, intrinsically, as disagreeable as 
 ourselves ; for although, on the continent of 
 Europe, they are comparatively popular, this is 
 probably because they are less known. Annually, 
 a flight of pork-packers and successful tradesmen 
 cross the Atlantic, with their families, to complete 
 an education, which has in reality not begun, by a 
 contemplation of Paris hotels and Rhine steam- 
 boats. But the American pork-merchant is silent 
 in the presence of his peacock-voiced wife and 
 daughters ; and the complete party, Philistine 
 though it be, is infinitely preferable to the swarm 
 of London shop-boys with their sweethearts, whose 
 uproarious felicity makes hideous all foreign re- 
 sorts in the near neighbourhood of England. In 
 the continental dislike of England is an element of 
 jealousy and suspicion in which America has no 
 part. We have fought and bullied in every quarter 
 of the world, and, to-day, we stand with crossed 
 swords with Russia in Central Asia and Armenia, 
 with France in China and Egypt. Eight hundred 
 years of victory for the English never own a defeat 
 has left much soreness on every side, while the 
 too fortunate Yankee, navyless and armyless, is 
 not regarded, in a city like Paris, as a past or 
 future enemy, but merely as the welcome victim of 
 hungry shopkeepers. If America were as closely
 
 I 4 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 connected with Europe as is England, her citizens 
 would be as much disliked as Englishmen. The 
 two nations, however diverse their special character- 
 istics may appear to a superficial observer, are 
 curiously alike.. The true Americans are unaffected 
 by the stream of German or Scandinavian or Irish 
 emigration, with which they have never mingled. 
 They are now, and will remain, Englishmen in 
 thought, genius and weaknesses the physical type 
 modified by an uncongenial climate mostly in 
 extremes, the commercial spirit intensified by 
 unrivalled opportunities for its successful employ- 
 ment, and the national genius for mechanical 
 invention developed by the high wages of labour, 
 precisely as the monkey developed a prehensile 
 tail.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 
 
 AN English characteristic, strongly developed 
 and even grotesquely caricatured in America, is 
 the love of big things, which is, after all, a failing 
 akin to virtue, and which will guide America into 
 fair pastures when adversity and Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold shall have chastened and purified Philistia. 
 At present, Americans are satisfied with things 
 because they are large ; and if not large, they must 
 have cost a great deal of money. One evening, at 
 the Madison Square Theatre, an American observed 
 to me, " That is the most expensive drop-scene in 
 the world." It was a glorified curtain of em- 
 broidery, with a golden crane and a fairy land- 
 scape, and might justly have been claimed as the 
 most beautiful drop-scene in the world ; but this 
 was not the primary idea in the Yankee mind. 
 The two houses most beautiful architecturally in
 
 16 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 the Michigan Avenue at Chicago were shown to 
 me as half-a-million-dollar houses. A horse is not 
 praised for his points, but as having cost so many 
 thousand dollars ; a man, who certainly may 
 possess no other virtue, as owning so many 
 millions. The habit of making size a reason for 
 admiration is less jarring to an educated taste than 
 that of making money the standard of beauty and 
 virtue. 
 
 Full in front of the White House at Washington 
 as a warning to all future Presidents to avoid the 
 penalties which attach to patriotism, a column 
 of white marble is slowly rising to the memory of 
 Washington. It is intended eventually to appear 
 as an obelisk of six hundred feet, "the highest 
 structure ever raised by man, excepting the Tower 
 of Babel." Whether the design, which would seem 
 to have been framed in the spirit which brought 
 confusion on the builders of its prototype, will ever 
 be completed it is impossible to say. The corner- 
 stone was laid thirty-five years ago, and something 
 more than half the destined height has been already 
 reached. Colonel Casey, in charge of the work, 
 promises its early completion ; but if America 
 continues to depart from that standard of free and 
 honest administration which the high-minded, 
 chivalrous, and clean-handed founder of the
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 17 
 
 Republic set up, it would seem that for very shame 
 the monument will be left unfinished, to symbolise 
 as the tower of a shot manufactory or a cotton-mill, 
 the triumph of industrial enterprise rather than ot 
 successful patriotism. In no case will it possess 
 any interest beyond its size. Many nations have 
 begged or stolen obelisks from Egypt to decorate, 
 with dubious taste, their capitals. Half-a-dozen 
 may be found in odd corners in Rome ; London, 
 and Paris, and New York have each their trophy ; 
 and modern imitations have been raised in 
 cemeteries and on battle-fields in memory of those 
 whom the affection of friends or the gratitude of 
 nations have not thought worth an original design. 
 But the obelisk is a monolithic feature in Egyptian 
 architecture proportional to and in harmony with 
 surrounding buildings, and never placed by itself. 
 On the banks of the Potomac, and to the memory 
 of the most distinguished American, this gigantic 
 obelisk, although embellished with three large 
 windows and a patent elevator for country visitors, 
 is incongruous and absurd. When the next saviour 
 of his country shall have liberated America from 
 the tyranny of rings and monopolists, as much 
 heavier than that of George III. as were the 
 scorpions of Rehoboam compared with the whips 
 of his father, a grateful people must logically raise 
 
 C
 
 i8 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 a pyramid, greater than that of Cheops, to his 
 memory. 
 
 The Metropolitan Opera House at New York 
 which has been opened this season, is the latest 
 illustration of the American love of big things 
 because they are big. This theatre is said to be 
 the largest in the world, and was built by wealthy 
 New Yorkers who were unable to buy boxes at 
 the original Opera House, as their proprietors did 
 not think fit to die or vacate as quickly as the 
 aspirants made money. The result has been the 
 present house, in which may be nightly seen the 
 miserable and unmusical millionaires, from Van- 
 derbilt, like royalty, in the centre, to Jay Gould in 
 the depth of his stage-box, like a financial spider 
 waiting to suck the blood of a new victim, feigning 
 a pleasure they do not feel, applauding, with 
 consistent ignorance, at the wrong time and in the 
 wrong place. A similar scene of anguish was 
 surveyed by Satan when, in Milton's song, he rose 
 from the fiery marl and addressed his peers. The 
 new house cannot be compared with those of Paris, 
 Vienna, Moscow, and London, which have all 
 and each their special charm. Its architect visited 
 Europe, and carefully collected for reproduction 
 everything that he could find ugly or inconvenient, 
 and then built the largest, the meanest, the most
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 19 
 
 ill-arranged opera-house, the worst for sight and 
 sound, to be found in the world. New York, 
 whose opera-going society is hardly a twentieth of 
 that of London in the season, cannot support two 
 opera-houses ; and on the six or seven occasions 
 that I have been in the new house it was half 
 empty. But the love of big things has been 
 gratified, although the interests of music and the 
 public have been sacrificed. 
 
 If a stranger were to ask an intelligent and well- 
 informed American what, in his opinion, was the 
 thing best worth seeing in the United States, he 
 would probably name the pork-packing establish- 
 ments at Chicago. To this loathsome favour, like 
 Yorick's skull, all must come. The young beauty 
 on her honeymoon tour ; the statesman, the 
 tourist, all are drawn by some mysterious fasci- 
 nation to the shambles. They watch the unfortunate 
 swine hurry up the broad way which leads to de- 
 struction ; in absorbed horror, they see the throats 
 of the victims cut, and the descent of the body, 
 living or dead, it matters little, into the boiling 
 sea below, the scraping, the disembowelling and all 
 the revolting details of the toilette of the dead. 
 Few are permitted to escape the spectacle. Lord 
 Coleridge, carried to the shambles by his friends of 
 the Chicago bar, after having witnessed a few 
 
 C 2
 
 20 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 executions, begged to be allowed to retire, as other- 
 wise he would be unable to eat sausages again. 
 Whether Matthew Arnold saw and reflected on 
 the mystery I know not, but we will hope that the 
 apostle of culture refused to follow this worse than 
 Ashantee custom. When I declined absolutely to 
 witness the pig-killing, my Chicago acquaintances 
 were distinctly ruffled. It was hardly to be en- 
 dured that a mere tourist, filled with the idle 
 sentiment of Europe, should despise the institution 
 which had done most to make their city famous. 
 But I was firm. I respectfully pointed out that 
 among the evil qualities which I had inherited or 
 acquired, a love of seeing pigs killed was not in- 
 cluded ; that if I were possessed of this unamiable 
 monomania I could gratify it in Europe, and that 
 I would cheerfully pay fifty dollars to avoid the 
 sight. I was reluctantly excused. But I foresee 
 that generations of tourists yet unborn will be less 
 fortunate ; and the pork-packing establishments of 
 Chicago will continue the cynosure of a nation's 
 eyes, ranking with the Abbey of Westminster, 
 the Parthenon of Athens and the Duomo of 
 Milan. 
 
 The only sight which, in American eyes, disputes 
 the pre-eminence of the Chicago slaughter-yards 
 is Niagara, and there may be some who would
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 21 
 
 unhesitatingly assign it the palm. Its chief beauty 
 consists in its being the largest waterfall in the 
 world, with greater capacity than any other for 
 producing by water-power those manufactured 
 abominations which, as American fabrics or novel- 
 ties, are gradually debasing the taste of the civilised 
 world. Its one drawback is that the left bank of 
 the Niagara river being English territory and the 
 main body of the fall being situated therein, Ame- 
 ricans are unable to claim a monopoly in this 
 natural marvel for the States. It is fortunate for 
 posterity that the Canadian English have control 
 over the finer portion of the Niagara scenery, as 
 this alone protects it from such ruin as vulgarity 
 and greed combined can bring on nature. On a 
 small island, midway across the American fall, the 
 authorities of the State of New York whose names 
 I would hand down to eternal infamy were I not 
 convinced that, being New York officials, they are 
 already as infamous as it is possible for officials to 
 be have permitted the erection of a paper-mill, 
 hideous in its architectural deformity, and blight- 
 ing with a curse the beauty of Niagara. It is not 
 possible to describe the effect that this building has 
 upon a sensitive visitor. The outrage on good 
 taste is so extreme, and the state of nervous irrita- 
 tion induced by the unconscious vandalism of the
 
 22 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 American people is so acute, that I am disposed to 
 consider a visit to Niagara a source of more pain 
 than pleasure. This mill is the outward and visible 
 sign, blazoned voluntarily to the world, of American 
 Philistinism. The Boston journals may announce 
 the advent of the millennium of good taste ; Messrs. 
 James and Howells and White may set forth their 
 poor platitudes to prove the cultured and refined 
 sentiments of their countrymen ; but the Niagara 
 paper-mill raises its tall chimney high above the 
 everlasting roar of the torrent to give them all 
 the lie. 
 
 Nor is this the only outrage on good taste at 
 Niagara. The torture of the paper-mill ceases with 
 the daylight, and its presence may be forgotten. 
 The traveller then, in frantic search for an emotion, 
 may hope to wander alone to the edge of the 
 avalanche of waters, and there commune with 
 such soul as waiters, rival touts, and coachmen 
 may have allowed him to retain. In the solemn 
 moonlight the wonderful pageant seems more 
 weird and mysterious than ever. But what is this 
 new and unknown effect of the moonbeams ? Is 
 it yes, it is the coloured lime-light, red, green, 
 and blue, thrown upon the hoary fleece of Niagara 
 by American cockneys ! In sheer disgust and 
 exasperation the traveller turns his back on the
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 23 
 
 insult and retires sulkily to bed. I remember, some 
 years ago, arriving at Naples in the evening with 
 two ladies who had never seen Vesuvius, and, as 
 the volcano was in eruption, I anticipated great 
 pleasure in showing them the glorious spectacle. 
 Darkness fell, and the red lines of the molten 
 rivers of lava burnt into sight, and the sullen 
 clouds above the crater turned to crimson. But 
 suddenly a long line of bright points of light 
 appeared from the observatory along the crest of 
 the mountain. These were lamps of electric light, 
 which the Neapolitan municipality, who would 
 make a profit out of the Day of Judgment if it 
 were possible, had set up to guide visitors along a 
 wire tramway to the summit. If I remember 
 rightly, the work was afterwards destroyed by the 
 lava, and I sincerely trust its promoters and con- 
 structors were burnt with it. But the disgust with 
 which I saw those electric lights degrading the 
 most majestic of nature's phenomena to the level 
 of Cremorne or Mabille was repeated in my heart 
 as I looked upon the lime-lights at Niagara. 
 
 On the whole, and always excepting the Chicago 
 pig-shambles, I am disposed to think Niagara the 
 sight best worth seeing in America, though I will 
 never return there until the paper-mill shall have 
 been removed. I will not attempt to describe the
 
 24 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 indescribable, and would merely note for the benefit 
 of future travellers that the effect of Niagara is as 
 follows. On the first day it is distinctly disappoint- 
 ing : the roar of the waters is not so loud, the fall 
 so high, or the current so fierce as was imagined. 
 On the second day this natural though irrational 
 disappointment has been gradually and un- 
 consciously swallowed up by the waterfall, which 
 has become omnipresent, tremendous, and soul- 
 absorbing. On the third day Niagara has grown 
 a monster so oppressive to soul and sense 
 that the visitor hurries from the place with the 
 feeling that another day's communing with the 
 waters would make him mad. Such, at any rate, 
 were my sensations, and I found them almost 
 identical with those of my three fellow travellers. 
 The last, though by no means the least, 
 annoyance connected with Niagara is the 
 all-prevading presence of brides. When a young 
 American's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of 
 love, he vibrates to Niagara as the needle to the 
 pole. Here he brings his bride for the honey- 
 moon, whether from the facilities offered for 
 suicide, or for other and more recondite reasons, 
 unconnected with the beauty of the scenery, I know 
 not ; though my belief, founded on prolonged 
 observation, is that the choice is due to the fact
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 25 
 
 that Niagara is the place in the world where two 
 persons, who have nothing to say to each other, 
 can remain silent without embarrassment for the 
 longest period of time, the noise of the water 
 forbidding all but pantomimic conversation. How- 
 ever this may be, brides and bridegrooms are 
 everywhere to be seen, making demonstrative if 
 silent love under every tree and on every point 
 of danger overhanging the torrent. There are 
 perhaps earthly conditions in which the identity 
 of a bride may remain concealed, for other women 
 besides her are demonstrative in their affection 
 and wear new frocks. But Niagara, with its 
 almost perpendicular descents to the river, is 
 peculiarly favourable to the display of the 
 feminine foot and ankle ; and the bride invariably 
 wears new boots, which is done by no other sane 
 woman on a country excursion. The time to 
 visit Niagara is in the early spring or in the late 
 autumn, before the arrival, or after the departure, 
 of tourists, and when all hotels save one are closed. 
 The visitor may then, for a time, be happy, 
 especially if he has induced Mr. Patrick Ford, 
 the editor of the Irish World, to blow up the 
 paper-mill with the dynamite collected for his 
 scientific war with England. 
 
 In the Mississippi, the Americans may confidently
 
 26 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 boast of possessing- a river larger and longer than 
 any to be found elsewhere. The Thames and the 
 Tiber, the Danube and the Ganges, though not 
 without historical interest or commercial import- 
 ance, are pigmies beside this river giant. Yet, in 
 beauty, the Mississippi is not to be compared with 
 the clear St. Lawrence, or fifty smaller American 
 streams. Indeed its waters are but liquid mud, 
 and the scenery, in the lower part of its course, is 
 chiefly composed of swamps and sand banks. 
 Further to the north its beauty increases, and at 
 St. Paul in Minnesota, two thousand miles from 
 its mouth, the river flows between cliffs which 
 would be imposing were it not that they are 
 decorated with the announcement, in letters twenty 
 feet high, that " Smith's chewing tobacco is the best." 
 At St. Louis, nearly a thousand miles nearer the 
 sea, and after its junction with the Missouri, the 
 river has become a superb volume of pea-soup ; 
 and thence pursues a thoroughly uninteresting and 
 unlovely course to the sea, doing as much mis- 
 chief as it can on the way. 
 
 The manner in which Americans permit their 
 most beautiful scenery to be spoiled by the 
 rapacity of vulgar advertisers, notifying their 
 respective swindles on rocks and stones and trees, 
 or by the erection of the most commonplace or
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 27 
 
 ugly buildings in most incongruous situations, 
 is hardly to be explained except on the sup- 
 position that the long and absorbed contem- 
 plation of the dollar has destroyed any popular 
 appreciation of natural beauty. The question 
 is one of great psychological interest, and some 
 obscurity, for the deepest love of nature and the 
 fullest delight in natural beauty fill the works of 
 such American poets as Bryant and Longfellow, 
 and dignify the obscene ravings of Walt Whitman. 
 Yet on what reasonable ground can we account for 
 the Niagara paper-mill ? It is not that the love of 
 freedom in the States is so keen that the individual 
 right of the manufacturer to erect his building over 
 the waterfall cannot be safely disputed. The 
 whole argument of this book is to show that such 
 cannot be the explanation, since individual right 
 is not regarded in America when opposed to the 
 wishes or prejudices of the majority, or of that 
 minority which, by impudence and audacity, 
 has usurped the prerogatives of the majority. 
 Democracy is everywhere tyranny ; in the same 
 sense and only differing in degree from that 
 socialistic tyranny which Mr. Herbert Spenser 
 has made the text of his latest warning. If the 
 New York people thought the Niagara paper-mill 
 the outrage on decency which it is, they would
 
 28 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 sweep it away without a thought of the individual 
 rights which they well know have been acquired by 
 bribing the State officials. It would almost seem 
 that the sense of beauty was so faint in Americans 
 that the desecration of beautiful scenery excited no 
 sensation of annoyance in their minds. The 
 elevated railway in New York is a striking 
 example of this bluntness of aesthetic perception. 
 To a stranger this work appears altogether fatal to 
 the beauty of the streets. But no one has ever 
 heard a New Yorker object to it on aesthetic 
 grounds. On the contrary, it is considered a 
 chief glory of the city, and a noteworthy sign 
 of its marvellous enterprise and activity. One 
 memorable event has occurred in modern American 
 history which would, at first sight, appear to 
 suggest the existence of a popular love of natural 
 beauty. This was the Act of Congress in 1872, 
 constituting that strange region in the north- 
 western part of the territory of Wyoming, which 
 is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable and 
 beautiful districts in the known world, a public 
 park or pleasure-ground for the benefit and enjoy- 
 ment of the people. But this action, though de- 
 serving of every commendation, is still open to 
 criticism. The Yellowstone National Park is 3,575 
 square miles in extent, that is to say, the size of
 
 THE BIG THINGS OF AMERICA. 29 
 
 Kent, Sussex, and Surrey together ; and it is ob- 
 vious that as the country becomes populated, and 
 Wyoming passes from a wild and uninhabited 
 Territory to the higher political rank of an inde- 
 pendent State, the Act of Congress will be a dead 
 letter. As well attempt to hold Leviathan with a 
 hook as to maintain this enormous tract of country 
 in savage isolation. Before many years shall have 
 passed the paper-maker will have his inevitable 
 chimneys over trie Mammoth Falls, and the rocks 
 of the Grand Canon will invite the traveller to 
 invest in Trego's Teabury Tooth Wash or Conger's 
 Chest Shields. The whole transaction was a piece 
 of swagger which was known to be meaningless. 
 Probably no single member of Congress who voted 
 for the Bill had ever seen the Yellowstone country. 
 Even to this day it is not visited by Americans, 
 and, with the exception of the " free-lunchers " 
 who were drawn in Mr. Villard's ephemeral 
 triumph across the continent last autumn, on the 
 occasion of the opening of the Northern Pacific 
 Railway, I have never met an American who had 
 seen the Yellowstone Park. Of twenty tourists 
 who have visited it, nineteen are Englishmen ; and 
 Americans will tell you that they have a great deal 
 too much to do to be fooling around looking after 
 beautiful scenery. Saratoga and Newport are quite
 
 30 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 distant enough for their holiday, while the more 
 enthusiastic will penetrate to Lakes George and 
 Champlain, the White Mountains and the banks of 
 the St. Lawrence. In the most beautiful parts of 
 the Rocky Mountains, in the finest season of the 
 year, I do not remember to have met a single 
 American travelling for pleasure and enjoyment 
 of the scenery.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCENERY AND CITIES. 
 
 I HAVE already said that America is the country 
 of disillusion and disappointment, in politics, litera- 
 ture, culture, and art ; in its scenery, its cities, and 
 its people ; and I would here explain the limited 
 sense in which this criticism is intended to apply 
 to scenery and cities. My remarks can only be 
 general, seeing that I have no ambition to enter 
 into competition with the guide-books, or do 
 more than note those superficial characteristics of 
 America which cannot fail to attract the at- 
 tention of every intelligent traveller. I would 
 then observe that to a person who has travelled 
 much and has seen the most striking and 
 beautiful parts of both Europe and Asia, the 
 scenery of the United States and Canada appears 
 singularly unattractive and tame. There is some 
 fine scenery, but the country is so vast, and
 
 32 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 the distances to be traversed so wearisome, that 
 the impression made by the oases of loveliness is 
 effaced by the monotony of the general ugliness. 
 The prairie has been the favourite theme of poets 
 and novelists : its illimitable extent ; its carpet of 
 flowers and its canopy of stars ; its mysterious 
 silences ; its terrible awakening to life in whirl- 
 wind and fire. But the prairie of real life is a 
 dull, uniform plain, for most part of the year 
 burnt a dead brown ; stretching in unbroken 
 monotony for hundreds and even thousands of 
 miles, precisely like those dismal Russian steppes 
 across which, month after month, the poor victims 
 of tyranny drag their failing limbs to their 
 Siberian grave. 
 
 As the prairies are too large to be beautiful, so 
 are the great American lakes, Superior, Michigan, 
 and Ontario. They have much of the beauty which 
 belongs to the sea ; but on their southern shores 
 there is little scenery of interest ; and it is only 
 where they narrow to form the St. Lawrence 
 river, and for forty miles take the name of the 
 Lake of the Thousand Islands, that they are in 
 any degree noteworthy. But, although pretty, 
 there is nothing in this renowned lake of any 
 special beauty, and the same remark applies to 
 the famous Lakes George and Champlain, which
 
 SCENERY AND CITIES. 33 
 
 American guide-books proclaim to be unequalled 
 in the world for beauty, but which would not 
 receive much attention were they situated in 
 the country that owns Maggiore, Como and 
 Garda, Such a spectacle as Lucerne on a 
 brilliant spring morning, with Pilatus and the 
 Righi to right and left, still covered with their 
 crown of snow, the deep-blue lake and the multi- 
 tudinous mountains in the white distance, is no- 
 where to be seen in the States. Of river scenery 
 I know little, and the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, 
 the Las Animas, Del Norte, and the Mississippi 
 exhaust my list. The Hudson has a world-wide 
 reputation for beauty, but strikes a European as 
 overrated. That portion of its course in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of New York is fine, 
 and indeed the fifty miles to West Point is well 
 worth seeing. After that the scenery is tame, 
 and the beauty of the whole distance is much 
 injured, more Americano, by the railway running 
 on either bank, and cutting the river from the 
 scenery by its level line of embankment, and by 
 the numerous block ice houses and manufactories 
 which occupy every specially lovely turn in the 
 river. The St. Lawrence is, like the Mississippi 
 or the lakes, too large to be uniformly beauti- 
 ful, though it is a superb stream, and Quebec, 
 
 D
 
 34 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 situated at its true mouth, is from natural position 
 incomparably the most stately and striking city 
 that I have seen in America. Indeed there are 
 few cities in Europe which can match Quebec for 
 imperial beauty. Much of the best scenery in the 
 States is within reasonable distance of the eastern 
 sea board, in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia and 
 New Hampshire, where low ranges of picturesque 
 mountains and an infinite variety of vegetation 
 make in spring and autumn a veritable paradise. 
 But, for the boldest and most characteristic scenery, 
 it is necessary to go two thousand miles west to the 
 Rocky Mountains, where, unless the imagination of 
 the traveller has been unduly exalted, he will be 
 well repaid for his labours. The first view of the 
 Rocky Mountains, before snow has fallen on the 
 heights, is disappointing. They do not appear of 
 any considerable elevation, though a few of the 
 loftiest peaks, such as those behind Colorado 
 Springs, are not much inferior to Mont Blanc. This 
 is due to the gradual rise of the prairie from the 
 Mississippi, until at Cheyenne or Denver the 
 traveller, though still on the open plain, is some 
 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. Nor is the 
 colouring of the mountains at all rich. Almost 
 devoid of vegetation on their eastern slopes, and 
 not high enough for snow to lie throughout the
 
 SCENERY AND CITIES. 35 
 
 year, the long range of bare, burnt hill-side rather 
 resembles the dreary mountain ranges of Afghan- 
 istan or the Derajat than the Alps or the 
 Pyrenees. In the spring months, before the 
 winter snow has melted or the fierce heats of 
 summer have baked the country to a uniform tint, 
 the mountains are doubtless beautiful enough. So 
 they are as I was privileged to see them, in the 
 autumn. One day, early in October, the scene 
 changed as if by magic: at night, no snow had 
 been visible on the mountains, except in some few 
 isolated patches in sheltered valleys, but heavy 
 rain fell in the lowlands, and with the morning 
 the Rocky Mountains were covered far down with 
 snow. The scene then was one of surpassing 
 beauty, and the journey from Antonito and 
 Duvango to Silverton, the train now slowly 
 climbing passes 11,000 feet above the sea, now 
 winding along the bank of an impetuous river, 
 the whole mountains from river to peak densely 
 covered with vegetation aflame with the thousand 
 tints with which autumn in America decorates 
 the forest, could never be forgotten by any one 
 who witnessed it. For the bareness of the 
 Rocky Mountains towards the plain country in 
 Colorado does not prepare one for the great 
 beauty and variety of the forest when once the 
 
 D 3
 
 36 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 heart of the hills has been penetrated. One 
 charm of railway travelling in the Rocky Moun- 
 tains is due to the manner in which the lines 
 have been constructed. In order to avoid un- 
 necessary expenditure in this new and wild country, 
 which, a few years ago, was almost unexplored, the 
 line has been carried along the edge of the pre- 
 cipice in a thousand curves, instead of piercing the 
 mountains by tunnels as in the St. Gothard Rail- 
 way. What is thus lost in directness of route is 
 gained in beauty of scenery. No traveller who 
 desires to understand what America has of rich, 
 quiet beauty, as well as of wild, savage scenery, 
 should fail to visit some portions of the interior of 
 the Rocky Mountains, and if his business or plea- 
 sure carries him to Salt Lake City or San Fran- 
 cisco, he would do well to travel by the new route 
 through Pueblo and Gunnison, rather than by the 
 uninteresting direct line from Cheyenne. 
 
 In speaking of the general impression left upon 
 me by American cities, I trust that I shall not be 
 accused of Philistinism if I give, unhesitatingly, my 
 preference to the brand new city of Chicago, which 
 has risen, phcenix like, from its ashes. I am well 
 aware that many of the evils which I have here- 
 after described as existing in the municipal 
 administration of New York, flourish almost as
 
 SCENERY AND CITIES. 37 
 
 luxuriantly in Chicago. But with all its defects, 
 upon which I do not intend to dwell, this city 
 seems to me destined by its unrivalled position, 
 and by the energy and public spirit of its citizens, 
 to be the future metropolis of America. It has 
 been planned and laid out with a noble confidence 
 in its future. Its avenues, and magnificent series 
 of parks surrounding the city, are not only un- 
 surpassed but unequalled in any part of the world. 
 It has had the good fortune to possess architects of 
 genius, and many of the private residences are 
 models of convenience and good taste, while the 
 City Hall and Post Office, for beauty and dignity, 
 might well be studied by those architects who are 
 now submitting plans for public offices in London. 
 Most American towns are of little interest, and 
 their monotony, from the rectangular system on 
 which they have been planned, is depressing to 
 the last degree. The narrow streets, the winding 
 ways, the perpetual surprises of unexpected views 
 of strangeness and beauty found in the ancient 
 cities of Europe, which have slowly grown up 
 through a thousand years, with no definite plan, 
 and recalling even in their inconveniences the 
 struggles and warfare of their mediaeval days, have 
 naturally no place in American cities. The width 
 of the streets, the admirable public buildings, and
 
 38 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 the well built and extensive shops and places of 
 business, together with the general air of industry 
 and prosperity form their only charm, which has no 
 connection with the picturesque. Churches, indeed, 
 form an exception to the general monotony, and 
 to judge from their number, of every denomination, 
 the Americans must be, on Sundays, at any rate, 
 a religious people ; while there is every sign that 
 the Roman Catholic form of creed is gaining, in 
 America, all the ground that it has lost in Europe. 
 The most noticeable defect of the towns is the 
 inferior character of the roadway. Paving in Ame- 
 rica seems an unknown art ; the principles of Mac- 
 adam have not crossed the ocean, and the paving 
 generally would be considered disgraceful in an 
 English village. Washington is, in this, as in almost 
 every branch of civic administration, the honour- 
 able exception, and the reason is found in the fact, 
 which is as significant as any in American political 
 life, that the district of Columbia, which is virtually 
 no more than the city of Washington itself, is not 
 delivered, like other American towns, to the tender 
 mercies of an inefficient and corrupt municipality. 
 I believe that Washington, in former days, had its 
 municipal troubles, and it was only bitter experi- 
 ence that induced it to take refuge in despotic 
 government from that popular administration which
 
 SCENERY AND CITIES. 39 
 
 Congress recommends elsewhere, but which it 
 soon discarded when the usual results followed 
 in the only city over which the Government of 
 the United States can exercise any direct control. 
 The number of Industrial Exhibitions, both in 
 the United States and Canada, surprises a stranger 
 who is accustomed to the apathy of the Old World 
 at all those times when it is not excited to interna- 
 tional competition. Toronto, Chicago, London, St. 
 Louis, and even Denver, with many other towns, 
 had their exhibitions, all good, and some, especi- 
 ally that at Chicago, admirable. In this last was 
 the best loan collection of pictures that I saw in 
 America. At Denver, the Exhibition buildings 
 had been placed too far from the town, and the 
 show was not a financial success; but in its display 
 of mineral wealth it was of the greatest interest. 
 The example of America might be followed in 
 England with great advantage to trade. In Lon- 
 don something is being done, and the Fisheries 
 Exhibition last year and the Sanitary Exhibition 
 this season, together with the international show 
 at the Crystal Palace, sufficiently testify to metro- 
 politan public spirit. But there is no reason that 
 the great provincial cities, like Manchester, Liver- 
 pool, Glasgow, Bristol, and Birmingham, should not 
 annually by turns have an exhibition of arts and
 
 40 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 industries, which, with due attention to amusement, 
 should be profitable. Industrial Exhibitions are 
 not the most exciting form of human amusement, 
 and it is only as a means for developing commer- 
 cial enterprise that they are to be recommended. 
 They seem to form a considerable proportion of 
 the popular recreation in the United States, and 
 their number and excellence are partly due to the 
 commercial energy of the people and partly to 
 the republican simplicity which, in a country 
 possessing little to amuse, has adopted that form 
 of dissipation which the jaded cities of the West 
 have abandoned from sheer disgust and weariness 
 of spirit. There are, however, many circles in the 
 inferno of amusement, and it is possible to make 
 even an Industrial Exhibition attractive, as was 
 proved at Vienna in 1873, and by the Fisheries 
 Exhibition in London.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL criticism was represented in 
 its most attractive form by Lord Coleridge during 
 his recent visit to the States. It is true that he 
 was in no position to act the Mentor and unfavour- 
 ably discuss American institutions. He was the 
 guest of the American bar, and no Englishman in 
 recent years has received in the States a more 
 cordial or more generous welcome. The high 
 rank and reputation of the Chief Justice, his un- 
 blemished character, and the literary distinction 
 connected with his name, combined with his fine 
 presence and courtly manners, impressed and 
 charmed American society. His progress from 
 city to city was almost triumphal, and his opinion 
 of his hosts and their country as expressed in his 
 speeches was doubtless heartfelt and sincere. 
 Guests and hosts were mutually gratified. It may, 
 however, be questioned whether it was altogether
 
 42 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 consistent with the dignity of the Chief Justice of 
 England to be carried about America like Barnum's 
 " Greatest Show on Earth," as an advertisement 
 of the glory of that remarkable country. Better 
 the dinner of herbs with freedom, than terrapin 
 and canvas-back ducks with servitude. And it 
 must be admitted that a full expression of opinion 
 and indulgence of the critical or judicial spirit 
 were impossible in these frequent banquets and 
 receptions. It is not after dining with a friend 
 that we can best criticise the arrangement of his 
 house or the manners of his family. It is true 
 that honest criticism was neither expected nor 
 desired, for the Americans resemble and herein 
 they are very sensible people those authors de- 
 scribed by Oliver W. Holmes, who, when they ask 
 for your criticism expect your praise, and will not 
 be satisfied with anything else. A Chief Justice 
 should only speak from the bench, where his 
 words carry the force and weight which is rightly 
 accorded to deliberate judgment, wisely formed 
 and temperately expressed. Not for him is the 
 glorious dust of the arena or the applause of the 
 crowd ; the falseness of open compliment, the 
 insincerity of unspoken blame. His language 
 should be judicial, or he should be silent. Now, 
 whatever may have been the merits or charm of
 
 LIBERTY. 43 
 
 Lord Coleridge's American utterances, no one 
 will be disposed to call them judicial. His praise 
 of many things American may be fairly held 
 extravagant ; his eulogy of Matthew Arnold is 
 open to the same objection ; while, if the American 
 press be correct, he even attempted socially to 
 whitewash General Butler, Governor of Massa- 
 chusetts, the most unscrupulous and indecent of 
 demagogues, whose defeat during the late elections 
 has delighted all honest men, whether Republicans 
 or Democrats. His ungrudging praise of the 
 judiciary of the United States altogether ignored 
 the fact that a considerable proportion of that 
 body, elected by the same processes as give 
 municipal government to the cities, is notoriously 
 inefficient and corrupt, and that the criminal 
 classes, who are personally most interested in the 
 verdicts of the courts, select the judges to preside 
 in them. Even in lighter matters Lord Coleridge's 
 desire to please went somewhat in excess of the 
 requirements of the situation. His comparison of 
 English and American beauty, which occasioned 
 much comment in the States, cannot be considered 
 just to his own countrywomen. The Washington 
 Post says : 
 
 " But his expressions regarding the American ladies have 
 imperilled the Lord Chief Justice's chances of ever again
 
 44 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 finding favour in the eyes of English beauty. An absence of 
 only two months from his native land has served, he says, to 
 win him from the standard of English loveliness, and he can 
 conscientiously champion only the American type of beauty. 
 Wherever rys went the American lady was the same charming 
 personage, and the American girl the same self-possessed 
 bundle of independent anomalies. He could not sufficiently 
 praise the fresh complexions, the charming manners, and the 
 independence that marked the ladies he counted himself for- 
 tunate in meeting. And fairly turning against his own 
 countrywomen, he unhesitatingly admitted that in his eyes 
 the American women were the more attractive." 
 
 A correspondent of the New York World, 
 who claimed to have interviewed Lord Coleridge 
 on the steamer which took him to England, 
 writes : 
 
 " He said he thought the American women far excelled 
 their English cousins in both beauty and intellect, and he 
 should not be backward to say so on his native soil." 
 
 Although justice be proverbially blind, and the 
 ethics of compliment are elastic, there is no occa- 
 sion to believe that Lord Coleridge ever made the 
 remarks attributed to him in so crude a form ; 
 and American reporters are very apt to record the 
 questions they may ask as being the answers they 
 have received. But the comparison, whether made 
 by Lord Coleridge in these terms or not, is one 
 of some interest, and a few remarks on it will not 
 be out of place. There can be no doubt that
 
 LIBERTY. 45 
 
 Americans honestly believe their women to be the 
 most beautiful in the world ; nor to them would 
 there appear any extravagance in the remark of 
 the New York Sun on the audience which attended 
 Irving' s first performance, " in respect of the beauty 
 it contained far surpassing any audience that Mr. 
 Irving ever bowed to in his life." But the opinion 
 of foreigners I do not speak of Englishmen alone 
 is very different ; and I have never met one who 
 had lived long or travelled much in America who 
 did not hold that female beauty in the States is 
 extremely rare, while the average of ordinary good 
 looks is unusually low. More pretty faces are to be 
 seen in a single day in London than in a month in 
 the States. The average of beauty is far higher in 
 Canada, and the American town in which most 
 pretty women are noticeable is Detroit, on the 
 Canadian border, and containing many Canadian 
 residents. In the Western States beauty is con- 
 spicuous by its absence, and in the Eastern towns, 
 Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, 
 it is to be chiefly found. In New York, in August, 
 I hardly saw a face which could be called pretty. 
 Society was out of town, but an estimate of 
 national beauty is best formed by a study of the 
 faces of the people ; and the races at Monmouth 
 Park had collected whatever of beauty or fashion
 
 46 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 had been left in the city. Even at Saratoga, the 
 most attractive face seemed that of a young 
 English lady passing through on her way to 
 Australia. In November, New York presented a 
 different appearance, and many pretty women were 
 to be seen, although the number was comparatively 
 small, and, at the Metropolitan Opera House, even 
 American friends were unable to point out any 
 lady whom they could call beautiful. A dis- 
 tinguished artist told me that when he first visited 
 America he scarcely saw in the streets of New 
 York a single face which he could select as a 
 model, though he could find twenty such in the 
 London street in which his studio was situated. 
 The American type of beauty is extremely deli- 
 cate and refined, and London and Continental 
 society will always contain some American ladies 
 who may rank among the loveliest in the world. 
 Such are known to us all, but are more common 
 in Europe than America. A beautiful girl is, in 
 the first place, more likely to travel than a plain 
 one, for she is anxious for new worlds to conquer ; 
 the pride and affection of her parents are more 
 likely to second her legitimate ambition, and, 
 having reached Europe, she is obviously more 
 likely to remain there. If American girls be 
 anxious to marry Englishmen, as a study of
 
 LIBERTY. 47 
 
 contemporary novels, plays, and society would 
 seem to show, it is a proof of their good sense ; 
 for America, which is the best place in the world 
 for making money, is the very worst for spending 
 it. Life revolves round the office and the shop 
 and the counting-house, and a woman of spirit 
 doubtless prefers a society like that of London, 
 where even the men, to say nothing of the women, 
 from the time they rise at eleven till they go to bed 
 at three o'clock in the morning, think of nothing 
 but how they may amuse themselves. America 
 will grow day by day more like the Old World 
 in this respect, and when its citizens shall have 
 learned the science of amusement it will become 
 a far more agreeable place than it is at present. 
 The change in the habits of the men will have a 
 direct effect upon the beauty of the women. The 
 English are an athletic race, and the amusements 
 in which they delight are in the open air. As are 
 the men so are the women. Riding and rowing, 
 walking and tennis, have developed in them a 
 beauty the chief charm of which is that it is 
 healthy. The late hours of the ball-room do not 
 take the bloom from a cheek which is daily re- 
 newed by a gallop in the park before luncheon 
 or a game of lawn-tennis in the afternoon. In 
 America life is sedentary. The national game of
 
 48 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 base-ball is mostly played by professionals ; the 
 national pastime of trotting-matches cannot be 
 counted as exercise in the English sense of the 
 word. The men, with few exceptions, have no 
 country life few of them even know how to ride ; 
 they neither hunt nor row, nor shoot, nor play 
 cricket ; and the women, being everywhere the 
 shadow of the men, are accomplished in none of 
 those outdoor exercises in which their English 
 sisters find and renew their beauty. The charm 
 which is born of delicacy may be a very lovely 
 hing, like the finest porcelain, but it does not, 
 constitute the highest form of beauty, which is 
 inseparable from good health. 
 
 The foregoing remarks, which were intended in 
 all courtesy, excited, on their first publication 
 much angry criticism in America. Denunciation 
 of political profligacy was not only expected, but 
 could not equal in acrimony that which daily ap- 
 peared in every American newspaper. But it was 
 an unpardonable offence to challenge the superi- 
 ority in beauty of the American women over 
 the rest of the feminine world. One or two 
 extracts may be taken almost at random from 
 American journals. The New Orleans Times 
 Democrat writes as follows :
 
 LIBERTY. 49 
 
 " His denial of the beauty of American women does not 
 call for any special mention. That is a matter of taste, and 
 an opinion is valuable in proportion to the qualifications of 
 the judge. Sir Lepel may prefer the large and ample style of 
 his countrywomen to the more delicate types of this country. 
 It is his privilege to do so, and its exercise may possess for 
 him the additional attraction of placing him in antagonism 
 to nearly every foreigner of taste who has visited the country. 
 No doubt the arrangement is gratifying to so thorough a 
 Britisher as Sir Lepel Griffin appears to be. It is quite 
 evident that he would be shocked and grieved to find himself 
 forced into agreeing with the rest of the world. We can 
 afford to dismiss this topic without making an effort to dis- 
 lodge any of our critic's convictions. His proposition that 
 American women are unhealthy and that the average English- 
 woman is a model of grace and beauty is simply amusing 
 and nothing more. He is welcome to his preference, and, as he 
 declares his horror of dwelling anywhere save in England, we 
 are rather disposed to congratulate him on his philosophy." 
 
 A Chicago newspaper writes : 
 
 " The pertinence of what Sir Lepel has to offer upon this 
 delicate subject depends entirely upon his standard of beauty, 
 and these standards always vary in different localities. The 
 Central Africans regard the Caucasian pink and white as some- 
 thing hideous. The ebony hue is to them the colour of beauty. 
 The thick lips, the sprawling noses, and the kinky hair ex- 
 press to them the highest type of loveliness. In like manner 
 the Mongol luxuriates in the saffron hue and almond eyes, 
 the long finger-talons and pinched feet as the traits which go 
 to make up the symbolic Venus. The Digger Indian regards 
 the squalid, splay-footed, disgusting belle of his tribe as a 
 thing of sweetness and light. What are Sir Lepel's standards ? 
 Probably the English women. We hope it is not ungallant 
 to say that if they are no one will be surprised to learn that 
 he does not think American women are handsome. Measured 
 by English standards they certainly are not. Fortunately we 
 
 E
 
 50 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 have had opportunities of applying the tests. They sent us 
 their most lovely lady widely advertised as the professional 
 beauty of England sent her over here making no pretensions 
 that she was an actress, but claiming for her that she was 
 lovely beyond all description or comparison. Her charms 
 had distracted all England and had been praised by all 
 the connoisseurs and esthetes from the Prince of Wales to 
 Oscar Wilde. 
 
 " The ' Jersey Lily ' came, and it was soon found that she 
 could not compare in beauty with scores of American ladies 
 in every city where she was on exhibition. Her charms 
 smote one of our countrymen to a considerable extent and at 
 considerable expense, if reports be true, but the rest of the 
 population escaped unscathed. Having had the typical 
 English beauty on inspection, we can speak with some 
 confidence in the matter." 
 
 Criticism of this character would seem wanting 
 in precision if it be remembered that nowhere in 
 her own country is a beautiful American woman 
 more admired than in English society. The 
 history of successive London seasons proves 
 this ; and the passion of the English for novelty, 
 which has been noticed by every foreign observer 
 from the time of Froissart, inclines them rather 
 to exaggerate than depreciate the attractions of a 
 fair stranger. All can remember American ladies 
 who have been accepted as beauties in London 
 drawing-rooms where far lovelier English women 
 have remained unnoticed. It is improbable that 
 any civilised or cultured person, whose eye, or 
 are, or mind has been trained in accordance with
 
 LIBERTY. 51 
 
 the acknowledged rules of art and taste, would be 
 influenced in his estimate of beauty by national 
 predilections. Does the Englishman prefer the 
 daubs which cover so large a space on the walls 
 of the Royal Academy to the glories of the Pitti or 
 the Vatican ? Does the cultured American prefer 
 the thin milk and water of Mr. W. D. Howells 
 to the strong wine of Thackeray or George Eliot ; 
 or ignore the winning grace of Ellen Terry for 
 the pastoral friskings of Minnie Palmer ? I think 
 not: and Englishmen are ready enough to allow 
 that in some parts of Italy, in Greece, and on 
 the northern shores of Asia Minor the average of 
 female beauty is far higher than in his native 
 land. National vanity, where inordinately de- 
 veloped, may take the form of asserting that 
 black is white, as in France, where the average 
 of good looks, among both men and women, is 
 perhaps lower than elsewhere in Europe. If a 
 pretty woman be seen in the streets of Paris she 
 is almost certainly English or American : yet if 
 a foreigner were to form an estimate of French 
 beauty from the rapturous descriptions of con- 
 temporary French novels, or from the sketches 
 of La Vie Parisienne, he must conclude that 
 the Frenchwoman was the purest and loveliest 
 type in the world, in face and figure. The
 
 52 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 fiction in this case disguises itself in no semblance 
 of the truth. 
 
 I have freely admitted the American type of 
 beauty to be extremely delicate and refined, and, 
 although I maintain my position that there are 
 more pretty women to be met in London in a day 
 than in the States in a month, yet the comparison 
 thus made is hardly fair to America, seeing that 
 London naturally absorbs all that is best and 
 brightest in English men or women ; and there are 
 many parts of England where beauty, among the 
 lower classes, is as rare as in America. Moreover, 
 the ranks of London beauty are swelled each 
 season by a large and distinguished American 
 contingent. 
 
 Many of my critics have disputed the statement 
 that American women are delicate and physically 
 undeveloped ; but denial does not affect those 
 notorious facts which the physicians of the States 
 themselves endorse. But on this subject I would 
 neither wish nor presume to speak, though, in justi- 
 fication of my former statement, I will venture to 
 quote the words of a few American authorities 
 whose unprejudiced opinion would seem convinc- 
 ing. To them I will only add the expression of a 
 hope, which all friends of America will share, that 
 a more healthy and robust physical training of
 
 LIBERTY. 53 
 
 children and a growing love of exercise and field 
 sports, may restore the race to the vigour of its 
 original stock, and avert the now threatened danger 
 of physical decadence. 
 
 Dr. S. Weir Mitchell writes : 
 
 " To-day the American woman is, to speak plainly, physi- 
 cally unfit for her duties as woman, and is, perhaps, of all 
 civilized females the least qualified to undertake those weightier 
 tasks which tax so heavily the nervous system of man. She 
 is not fairly up to what nature asks from her as wife and 
 mother. If the mothers of a people are sickly and weak, 
 the sad inheritance falls upon their offspring, and this is why 
 I must deal first, however briefly, with the health of our girls, 
 because it is here, as the doctor well knows, that the trouble 
 begins. Ask any physician of your acquaintance to sum up 
 thoughtfully the young girls he knows, and to tell you how 
 many in each score are fit to be healthy wives and mothers, 
 or, in fact, to be wives and mothers at all. I have been asked 
 this question myself very often, and I have heard it asked of 
 others. The answer I am not going to give, because I should 
 not be believed a disagreeable position in which I shall not 
 deliberately place myself. Perhaps I ought to add that the 
 replies I have heard given by others were appalling." 
 
 Later he continues : 
 
 " Now I ask you to note carefully the expression and figures 
 of the young girls whom you may chance to meet in your 
 walks, or whom you may observe at a concert or in a ball- 
 room. You will see many very charming faces, the like of 
 which the world cannot match figures somewhat too spare of 
 flesh, and, especially south of Rhode Island, a marvellous little- 
 ness of hand and foot. But look further, and especially among 
 New England young girls : you will be struck with a certain
 
 54 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 hardness of line in form and feature, which should not be seen 
 between thirteen and eighteen at least. And if you have an 
 eye which rejoices in the tints of health, you will miss them 
 on a multitude of the cheeks which we are now so daringly 
 criticising. I do not want to do more than is needed of this 
 ungracious talk ; suffice it to say that multitudes of our young 
 girls are merely pretty to look at, or not that ; that their 
 destiny is the shawl and the sofa, neuralgia, weak backs, and 
 the varied forms of hysteria, that domestic demon which has 
 produced untold discomfort in many a household, and, I am 
 almost ready to say, as much unhappiness as the husband's 
 dram." 
 
 Dr. Allen, of Rhode Island, speaking of the 
 strictly native New Englanders, says : 
 
 " The women have deteriorated physically in a surprising 
 degree. A majority of them have a predominance of nerve 
 tissue, with weak muscles and digestive organs." 
 
 The New York Sun, in commenting on this 
 statement of Dr. Allen, says further of the New 
 Englanders who have remained at home : 
 
 " Their families are small. They are not physically as 
 vigorous as their fathers. The women are not symmetrically 
 developed, and their nervous organisation is apt to be 
 morbid. " 
 
 The statements of the Rev. S. W. Dike : 
 
 " The diminishing size of the New England family of so- 
 called native stock is well known. The reported number of 
 children of school age in Vermont and New Hampshire is 
 scarcely three-fourth? as large as it was thirty years ago."
 
 LIBERTY. 55 
 
 The following is the opinion of Mr. William 
 Blaikie : 
 
 "The results of this utter neglect of any sound system of physi- 
 cal education stand out in almost every city home in America. 
 Scarcely one girl in three ventures to wear a jersey, mainly 
 because she knows too well that this tell-tale jacket only be- 
 comes a good figure. Yet the difference in girth between the 
 developed arm which graces a jersey and the undeveloped 
 one which does not, in a girl of the same height and age, is 
 seldom more than two inches, and often even than one, while 
 the well-set chest outgirths the indifferent one by seldom over 
 three inches. Among girls, running is a lost art. Yet it is 
 doubtful if an exercise was ever devised which does more to 
 beget grace and ease of movement. There are probably not 
 ten girls in any class of fifty in one of our public schools who 
 could run a mile, even if they got a dollar a foot for it. Or 
 twenty boys out of any fifty either." 
 
 Later, in his clever article on " Our Children's 
 Bodies," the same writer compares the physically 
 robust Canadians with his delicate country- 
 women : 
 
 " In what contrast with this make-believe walking and the 
 wofully defective physical culture and condition of many of 
 our city girls is the story told in the following despatch from 
 the Montreal Carnival last winter : 
 
 " ' Next came skating races, which were only second, in 
 drawing spectators, to the trotting. As is universally known, 
 Montrealers are like ducks, who take to the water when born. 
 They assume skating frolics when escaping from the cradle. 
 It is literally true that they are skating almost before they are 
 able to walk. The fascination in the exercise, which seems 
 to be hereditary, increases as they grow up, and when they 
 have arrived at manhood or womanhood -for the girls are even
 
 56 THE GREAT REPUBLIC 
 
 more expert than the men they can rival the world for grace 
 and agility as runners. Proof of this last assertion was seen 
 by thousands on the river this afternoon. The contests were 
 in some cases more tightly fought out than by the trotting 
 equines.' 
 
 " What a ring and tingle and glow of ruddy health there 
 is about all this ! We wonder if those girls know what a 
 headache is, or a side-ache ? Or if ' the shawl, the sofa, and 
 
 neuralgia ' are likely soon to be their destiny ? 
 
 How would, not the weakest and most inert, nor yet the fleetest 
 and most enduring girl, but she who fairly represents the 
 average girl in one of our school classes, have fared in that 
 inspiring struggle that bright winter afternoon on the gleaming 
 broad St. Lawrence ? Would she have been in it at all, much 
 less anywhere near the front rank, at the end of half a mile, 
 or even of a quarter ? Ask her brother, and he will tell you 
 plainly whatever different and more flattering version some 
 other girl's brother may make of it." 
 
 When we read of these performances of the 
 Canadian girls, and, further, of the lady who has 
 been accepted in the States as the representative of 
 English beauty, astonishing the Americans by a 
 thirty-mile walk without fatigue, we can under- 
 stand the belief held by Englishmen that delicacy 
 directly detracts from beauty, which is inseparable 
 from good health. 
 
 In reply to the statement that the English stan- 
 dard of beauty is incorrect, it may be suggested 
 that it is in strict accord with the most ancient 
 examples and the generally accepted canons of 
 art, and that a study of classical models will show
 
 LIBERTY. 57 
 
 that Greece and Rome, in their worthiest days, 
 acknowledged no beauty which did not include full 
 physical development. The lithe and willowy 
 figure, the praises of which are sounded by 
 American writers, and the grace of which has 
 an undoubted charm, too often represents mere 
 physical degeneracy. 
 
 Nothing is more pleasant in America, or places 
 the civilisation of the country in a brighter or more 
 honourable light, than the universal respect publicly 
 paid to women by men of all degrees. That there 
 is in this something of exaggeration, and that some 
 women abuse their exceptional privileges, demand- 
 ing discourteously what men are ready voluntarily 
 to offer, does not materially affect the question. 
 An American gentleman who resigns his seat to a 
 lady in a steamboat or tram-car, or who wearies 
 himself in looking after her luggage and wrestling 
 on her account with railway porters, does not ask 
 even the thanks which politeness should be eager 
 to proffer. His action has been disinterested, 
 instinctive, and to satisfy his own sense of pro- 
 priety. The difference, in this respect, between the 
 French and American Republics is curious indeed. 
 A Frenchman will ruthlessly turn a lady into the 
 mud of the street rather than step off the pave- 
 ment himself; or will bribe the railway guard to
 
 58 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 induce delicate women to leave their pre-engaged 
 carriage in order that he may not sit with his back 
 to the engine. He will hardly assist a woman in 
 distress unless she be attractive. The French, 
 below the thinnest veneer, are the most impolite of 
 civilised races. Americans, on the other hand, 
 though without superficial polish, are warm-hearted 
 and chivalrous in the highest degree. The position 
 in which they have placed their women is the best 
 guarantee that the nation will outgrow the blemishes 
 which now disfigure it, and will, in the future, attain 
 a higher civilisation than has been enjoyed by any 
 people who have regarded their intellectual and 
 political life as the undivided dominion of man. 
 
 But the emancipation of women is not without 
 its dangers and inconveniences. Between woman 
 and man there can be no true equality, for there are 
 no common terms to express what is essentially 
 different ; and, if the woman allow her social and 
 domestic position to be undermined, her victories 
 in other fields will avail her little. And of this 
 there are some ominous signs in America. Within 
 the last thirty years, divorces in the States have 
 doubled proportionally to population and the 
 number of marriages. Being granted for trifling 
 reasons, such as incompatibility of temper, and 
 the law governing them being different in the
 
 LIBERTY. 59 
 
 several States ; while the confusion is increased by 
 a vast immigration of strange nationalities, 
 wandering hither and thither in search of a 
 favourable settlement, it can be no cause for 
 surprise if the fixity of marriage be shaken and the 
 conception of the family as the social unit becomes 
 weakened in favour of the individual. But this 
 result, so far as social evolution is concerned, is 
 strictly retrogressive. The feeling against Mor- 
 monism is, in the States, exceedingly strong ; and 
 polygamy is, beyond dispute, a condition un- 
 favourable and indeed fatal to a high civilisation, 
 although the community of Salt Lake City must 
 be allowed to be prosperous and well ordered. But 
 a too facile divorce law differs from polygamy in 
 little but name, and some American writer has said 
 that the man who has three or four wives divorced, 
 one after another, only drives his team tandem, 
 while the Mormon elder has it four in hand. The 
 proportion of divorces to marriages is in some 
 States startling enough. In San Francisco city 
 there was a divorce to every five marriages in 
 1 88 1 : in Maine, there were 507 divorces in 1880, 
 or nearly one to nine marriages. The frequency of 
 the suits results in the utmost carelessness of the 
 courts ; in one State the average duration of such 
 cases is fifteen minutes. At Chicago, according to
 
 60 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, the boys on the train call 
 " Chicago, thirty minutes for divorce," and though 
 I cannot say that I have myself heard them, the 
 incident is not more surprising than was the touting 
 for clients of rival parsons of the Fleet, in the 
 London of the last century. Collusion becomes a 
 matter of course ; the tie which can be so easily 
 snapped is inconsiderately formed ; while the 
 frequent difference in the law renders it difficult to 
 know whether the marriage or divorce of one State 
 is valid in another, and induces many foreign 
 immigrants to abandon their families and marry 
 elsewhere. The evil of the present state of things 
 is so great and acknowledged that ere long 
 Congress will be compelled to intervene and pass a 
 uniform law for the whole United States. England 
 may take a lesson from America in this particular, 
 that, so far as divorce is concerned, the sexes are 
 equal before the law. Here, where the subjection 
 of women has so long formed a discreditable chapter 
 in the statute book, from which a higher liberalism 
 and a more chivalrous generosity have not yet 
 completely banished it, the relief which men can 
 demand is refused to the weaker sex which needs 
 it the most. Equal justice will not, it may be 
 hoped, be much longer denied ; while divorce will 
 be granted for cruelty, habitual intemperance,
 
 LIBERTY. 61 
 
 or on conviction of any heinous or disgraceful 
 crime. 
 
 The idea which underlies the institution of 
 marriage has materially differed in England and 
 America, whose first chivalrous settlers abandoned 
 all they held most dear in order to avoid the 
 heavy burthen which sacerdotalism, ever allied 
 with tyranny, had placed upon them. They re- 
 jected marriage as a sacrament, and regarded it 
 as a civil contract, the moral obligation and per- 
 manency of which would have till now remained 
 undisputed had not the flood of immigration and 
 the rapid development of the country formed a 
 solution so strong as to partially dissolve social 
 institutions, as it has those political methods which 
 were sufficient for the original community. In 
 England, on the contrary, the idea of marriage 
 as a sacrament has survived its exclusion, as such, 
 from the Anglican ritual ; and its acceptance as 
 a civic contract alone, secure, like other solemn 
 engagements of a formal character, under an 
 impartially administered law, is only gradually 
 taking the place of the former sentiment. The 
 conservatism of the country is ever too strong for 
 the speedy triumph of any liberal principle ; and 
 sacerdotalism, as distinct from religion, is still an 
 imposing force. It must not be imagined that
 
 2 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 the priestly caste, of any denomination, is more 
 liberal or charitable in America than elsewhere. 
 The trail of the serpent is over them all. Cotton 
 Mather and his Puritan fathers preached as savage 
 a gospel as the Spanish Inquisition, and his de- 
 scendants are worthy of him. Last October a 
 Congregational minister named Newman was 
 preaching in New York on " Christianity tri- 
 umphant in the elevation of Woman." The 
 representative of Independence and Dissent fur- 
 nished and produced all those old weapons of 
 sophistry which English ecclesiasticism is being 
 forced to abandon. He pronounced for the sacra- 
 mental character of marriage, and ridiculed the 
 civil ceremony. Here he was assisted by the fact 
 that, besides the denominational ministers, the 
 New York aldermen were empowered to perform 
 it. "Imagine," he said, "a New York alderman 
 performing such a ceremony. A New York alder- 
 man with a shillelah on his shoulder, brogues on 
 his feet, and potatoes in his pocket. A walking 
 grog shop, reeking of gin. Surely such a marriage 
 performed by such a one is scarcely worth 
 seventy-five cents." The roars of laughter which 
 greeted this description sounded oddly in a 
 religious building. The apostle of hatred then 
 proceeded to denounce the Mormons, who, he
 
 LIBERTY. 63 
 
 said, defied the laws of the United States, and 
 urged that the heresy which had grown up in 
 the West should be forcibly trampled out. It 
 would have been more to the purpose had he 
 denounced the practical polygamy and polyandry 
 which result from the present condition of the 
 marriage law. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the position of women 
 in the United States is far more favourable and 
 just than in England, where their most elementary 
 rights have been only lately conceded in the 
 Married Woman's Property Bill. Their equitable 
 claim to such work as they may choose and can 
 efficiently perform is not disputed, and the un- 
 manly riots in Kidderminster to prevent the 
 employment of women in the curtain and carpet 
 manufactories would hardly be possible in 
 America. For them an elaborate system of 
 higher education, technical and industrial, has 
 been framed ; and, three years ago, there were 
 no less than 227 high-class institutions, besides 
 colleges and universities, in which women could 
 study as completely as men, chemistry, geology, 
 botany, physics, mathematics and all such applied 
 sciences as might be useful to them in private or 
 professional life. Most of these institutions are
 
 64 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 the growth of the List twelve years ; and, as 
 England has made a good start in this most 
 honourable contest it may fairly be hoped that 
 she will not permit America to leave her behind. 
 
 Whether the emancipation of women has not 
 proceeded too far in the case of unmarried girls 
 is a question which those who are acquainted with 
 American society can best decide. I confess a 
 preference for the English system, which, midway 
 between the complete and jealous seclusion of 
 France and the independence of America, allows 
 the young girl as much liberty as experience has 
 shown can be safely intrusted to her. American 
 novelists have described their young country- 
 woman as formed of different clay to the rest 
 of the world, and so strong, self-reliant, and 
 superior to the infirmities and weakness of 
 humanity as to be able to defy the dangers 
 which may threaten her from without or from 
 her own heart. But the American girl is still 
 one of Eve's family, and as susceptible as any 
 of her European sisters. The process known in 
 England as "keeping company," and confined to 
 the humbler ranks of life, is an institution of 
 American society ; and an unmarried girl can 
 receive her admirers without reference to her
 
 LIBERTY. 65 
 
 parents ; and drive or go to the opera or theatre 
 with the special object of her attention. Marriage 
 is the original object of this as of all customs, 
 civilised or savage, which bring the youth of both 
 sexes together ; but pleasure rather than marriage 
 is the modern development of the idea. A young 
 debutante in New York or Boston, in her first 
 season, when her attractions are the brightest and 
 her chances of marriage are naturally the best, 
 is adopted by one of the professional male flirts, 
 who may be a gentleman of good position and 
 whose attentions flatter the vanity of the in- 
 experienced girl. He is her constant attendant at 
 balls and picnics, in public and private. He may 
 not have the remotest intention of marrying, yet 
 drives out of the field the aspirants who would 
 propose. These intimate relations, which would 
 not be tolerated for a day in England unless the 
 parties were engaged, may continue the whole 
 season, or for two ; or may be repeated with 
 another or half-a-dozen newer admirers. If this 
 system be liked by American men, there is no 
 reason that any one else should object to it. But 
 that it must tend to rub the bloom off the peach, 
 and lessen the delicacy and freshness of a girl's 
 sentiments is obvious to all who know anything 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 of the world or the human heart. Men, unambitious 
 in their social aspirations, would prefer a wife from 
 a New England farm-house to a New York beauty 
 who had been ostentatiously protected through a 
 whole season by a Fifth Avenue exquisite.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EQUALITY. 
 
 THE doctrine of equality, essentially illogical 
 though it may be, has, in America, been carried 
 into practical effect so far as the conditions of 
 social and political life will allow ; and in no other 
 country can its results be more clearly seen or 
 more accurately tested. There can be no study 
 more interesting than the strange and wide di- 
 vergence in the application of the doctrine in the 
 two great Republics of to-day, France and America. 
 In the former we are accustomed to the emblazon- 
 ment on every public building of the republican 
 profession of faith, Liberte, Egalite, Fraterniti ; but 
 what is the interpretation of the legend ? Liberty, 
 as reflected in contemporary French literature, is 
 the apotheosis of animalism, of which Zola's latest 
 novel is the most loathsome witness ; equality 
 signifies the internecine warfare of class against 
 class ; while fraternity is hardly more than a 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 deeper contempt and a keener hatred of every- 
 thing not French. The Republic has given to 
 France little beyond a perpetual change of street 
 nomenclature, and a more greedy class of officials ; 
 it has not deeply influenced the life of the people, 
 and may be thrown aside to-morrow like a coat 
 which has outlived the fashion. A theatrical air, 
 suggestive of the footlights, attends it, and thus 
 it has failed to attract the sympathy of America, 
 whose sturdy and ingrained Republicanism de- 
 spises the democratic tinsel and limelight. There 
 was a time when Paris was the veritable paradise, 
 not of women alone, but of the whole American 
 race ; when the pinchbeck glories of a brand 
 new court, whose welcome of parvenus was 
 naturally sympathetic, fluttered the gentle breasts 
 of the Yankee matrons and maidens, whose ideas 
 of society had been formed in the quiet of New 
 England villages, or amid the bustle of Saratoga 
 caravansaries. But with the fall of the Empire 
 the love of Americans for Paris grew cold, and it 
 is amusing to hear them describe the ruin which 
 republican institutions have wrought in their 
 latest paradise, after the same fashion as Satan is 
 held to have made the first uninhabitable. They no 
 longer see Paris clothed in the old imperial 
 glamour, but as it really is a commonplace, stucco
 
 EQUALITY. 6 9 
 
 wilderness, as dull and sordid as their own New 
 York ; where the theatres are crowded dens sacred 
 to asphyxia, and the opera house a stupendous 
 imposture, where gilding usurps the place of art : 
 a city where the only sentiment ennobling the 
 population is expressed in the daily effort to make 
 as much out of the foreigner as possible, with the 
 least expenditure of money or politeness. 
 
 Equality is understood in America in a very 
 different sense. Not there, as in France, the ex- 
 pression of a passing caprice, it is the monomania 
 of an entire nation. An ideal impossible of 
 attainment, contradicted in daily practice by the 
 exclusive society of New England and the South, 
 as by the millionaires whose monopolies are its 
 very negation, it yet influences the life of the i 
 people in every particular, much as the belief that 
 he could fly governed every movement of a lunatic 
 I once saw in an asylum. The struggle after 
 equality has determined most of the social insti- 
 tutions of the States : domestic service, houses, 
 hotels, cuisine, travelling and education. It has 
 dominated their politics and has perhaps determined 
 their religion. It has withdrawn much of the 
 sweetness and light from their social life, and has 
 left literature and art as monotonous a wilderness 
 as their own prairies.
 
 70 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 The first relation affected by the worship of 
 equality, and one which underlies every social 
 condition in the United States, is that of master 
 and servant. This, in its patriarchal or modern 
 English sense, can hardly be said to exist in 
 America. If, by law and in popular belief, one 
 man be the equal of another, it necessarily follows 
 that the position of the servant, or help, to the 
 citizen who pays him for certain specified service 
 is essentially different from that which he holds in 
 countries where tradition and prescription have 
 attached to menial service other conditions than 
 the bare performance of particular duties. The 
 first and the most important of these is the out- 
 ward observance of unvarying respect to the 
 master. This habit of deference, which would be 
 termed servile in America, has in it no necessary 
 element of servility. The relations between a 
 well-bred Englishman and his servants are cordial 
 and mutually respectful ; with them he is not 
 familiar, but neither is he arrogant or unreasonable. 
 The prescription of a thousand years has decided 
 that they move on different though parallel lines ; 
 they do not approach, but neither do they collide. 
 Here, the divisions between the different classes 
 are almost as complete as those which separate the 
 castes of India those immemorial barriers against
 
 EQUALITY. 7i 
 
 change which only those would remove who do 
 not understand that they insure the stability of our 
 Eastern Empire. When in England a successful 
 tradesman gives up business and buys an estate in 
 the country he breaks altogether from his former 
 moorings. He will not be received with open 
 arms by the county families, and if they do not 
 return his calls, his isolation is complete. But the 
 neglect of the exclusive caste does not affect the 
 behaviour of the menial class towards him ; and 
 his footmen are as obsequious and dignified as 
 those of his aristocratic neighbours. However 
 much Boston or Virginia may proclaim their high 
 descent pretensions which seem somewhat out of 
 place in a Republic or however contemptuously 
 the exclusive clubs of New York may regard the 
 enriched parvenu, there are no recognised castes in 
 America. Mr. Macgillicuddy, the ex-grocer, with 
 his house in Fifth Avenue and his wife and 
 daughters brilliant with diamonds, has changed 
 position but little from the time when he bullied 
 his shop boys in Broadway. Indeed his personal 
 interest in the shop continues ; for were he to be idle 
 he would find no one to keep him company, and 
 would probably die of ennui. And as there is no 
 caste of masters, so is there none of service. The 
 advantage of the feudal tradition which prevails in
 
 72 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 England is, that domestic service being held in no 
 dishonour, and implying no loss of self-respect, it 
 has grown into a science to be perfectly acquired 
 by patience and study alone. The exclusiveness 
 and fastidiousness of a cultivated and wealthy 
 class have produced the perfection of domestic 
 service, performed with the least possible friction, 
 by persons as accomplished in their menial but 
 still honourable duties as the masters in their 
 several occupations. In America there is nothing 
 of this, and the absence of quiet and respectful 
 service is to an Englishman an ever-recurring 
 source of annoyance. No one can deny that the 
 American ideal is a noble one, and worthy a great 
 and free people. Every political dogma which 
 encourages the true man to rise above the evil 
 surroundings of his birth or his misfortunes, and 
 look his fellow, without fear or favour, in the face, 
 is worthy of respect, and the doctrine of equality 
 has distinctly raised the character of the mass of 
 the American people. The servility which is too 
 often the disgrace of Europe is unknown ; and, 
 among the many fine qualities of the Americans, 
 none are more honourably conspicuous than their 
 courage, frankness and independence. 
 
 So strongly do I feel this that I would not wish 
 my observations on some practical applications of
 
 EQUALITY. 73 
 
 the doctrine of equality to be considered as hostile 
 criticism, but rather as passionless comment on 
 curious phases of national life. For to English 
 prejudice and prejudice it may be equality is 
 a bitter pill to swallow. I remember a family who 
 sold their possessions in England for a settlement 
 in the Western States. The soil was favourable, 
 the climate congenial, and they might have grown 
 to love their new home but for the one circum- 
 stance that they were compelled to take their 
 meals with the farm labourers. It was no feudal 
 survival, with the master above and the servants 
 below the salt ; all were socially equal, and their 
 helps would at once have left them had they been 
 relegated to the kitchen ; so, after a prolonged 
 struggle with these, to them, impossible sur- 
 roundings, they sold their farm and returned to 
 England, poorer if not wiser than they left it. In 
 the Northern States, the Irish and negroes almost 
 monopolise domestic service, but the first are un- 
 trained and the latter are only efficient within 
 narrow limits. So difficult and indeed impossible 
 is it to procure good servants that the whole style 
 of living has been affected by it. The houses are 
 strangely small ; and in a city as wealthy as New 
 York there are very few which in London would be 
 considered of the first rank. The spacious family
 
 74 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 mansions, which in London are to be counted by 
 thousands in the western quarters, hardly exist in 
 New York. Fifth Avenue which, with a few off- 
 shoots, forms the fashionable quarter contains but 
 few houses above the average of those in a London 
 square. Country houses, in the English sense of 
 the word, with great establishments of servants of 
 every grade, are unknown. The New York million- 
 aire, whose wealth makes so imposing a show in 
 London or Paris, lives at home in what we should 
 consider a very modest fashion. He inhabits a 
 house of a dozen rooms, and is served by four or 
 five helps. His house is small because he cannot 
 procure good servants ; or his servants are few 
 as his house is not large enough for a great es- 
 tablishment. There should here be some room for 
 compensation. An English gentleman with an 
 income of ,100,000 a year will keep up a large 
 London house and two or three places in the 
 country, the expenditure on which swallows up 
 the greater portion of his income. Hence it is 
 that the English aristocracy are so little dis- 
 tinguished for acts of public beneficence ; and 
 landlords who amass millions from the ground 
 rents of London do nothing to beautify the 
 metropolis in which they should take a special 
 pride, and the dignity cf which they should
 
 EQUALITY. 75 
 
 associate with their own. The great benefactions 
 to the public, colleges, parks, obelisks, and squares, 
 are the honourable gifts of merchants and manu- 
 facturers, of stock-jobbers and vendors of quack 
 medicines. The American millionaire, who by no 
 personal extravagance can spend his income, might 
 be expected to devote a considerable portion of it 
 to the public good. But this is the last thing of 
 which he thinks ; and it is only fair to remember 
 that riches make to themselves wings and fly 
 away with strange rapidity in America. The 
 money easily won is easily lost, as the history 
 of Monte Carlo may remind us ; and the pile of 
 many a Yankee millionaire has been made in 
 a manner quite as speculative and no more 
 honourable than the chances of the gaming- 
 table. 
 
 The American town house which is too small 
 to accommodate an establishment of servants 
 is obviously too small for a governess, so the 
 daughters of the family, deprived of that careful 
 home training which is held to be essential in 
 England, are exposed to the roughness and the 
 independence of a day-school, often in company 
 with boys of the same age. The effect of this on 
 the young American, of either sex, is not attractive, 
 though if American parents approve the system,
 
 76 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 with its freedom and development of individuality, 
 no one else has any right to complain. But I 
 believe that it is only approved, because, under 
 existing conditions, it is impossible to adopt any 
 other ; and the independence of their children, 
 which to outsiders seems to savour of disrespect, 
 is unnoticed by Americans, who have grown so 
 accustomed to it that it has ceased to wound. 
 American children are wonderfully bright and 
 clever, but their good manners are too often 
 conspicuous by their absence. 
 
 Equality, which makes it impossible to procure 
 service at home, induces a great part of the 
 community to reside in hotels, which form a far 
 more important feature in American than in 
 English life. The American hotel is to a well 
 ordered establishment of the same name in 
 Europe what a six franc table-d'hdte meal at a 
 Paris caravansary is to an artistically conceived 
 dinner at the Cafe" Anglais. Some are better, 
 some worse; the Fifth Avenue Hotel or the 
 Potter Palmer House at Chicago compare un- 
 favourably with Barnum's menagerie, while a very 
 few are distinctly good, such as the Windsor in 
 New York, which is probably the best in America, 
 with some of the old-world politeness, and one of 
 the only cooks hitherto discovered on the new
 
 EQUALITY. 77 
 
 continent. The typical American hotel is as 
 splendid as colour and gilding can render it ; for 
 the law of republican simplicity has determined 
 that all public institutions, such as railway cars, 
 steamboats and hotels, shall be decorated in the 
 fashion which commends itself to the ornate taste 
 of the shoddy millionaire, rather than to the more 
 sober requirements of his poorer fellow-travellers. 
 The ground floor, entrance hall, drinking bar and 
 reading-rooms constitute the 'agora' or public 
 meeting-place of the entire adult male population- 
 Here at mid-day and at night they assemble to 
 discuss politics, the stock exchange and the last 
 murder ; to quarrel, and smoke, and spit, and 
 liquor up ; and the bewildered traveller passes with 
 difficulty through their noisy ranks to the counter 
 where the hotel clerk, like Rhadamanthus, sits 
 supreme above the babel, issuing decrees which 
 are without appeal. This young man has formed 
 the frequent target for American humour. He is 
 said to have been originally created to fill the 
 throne of an emperor or a dukedom, but there 
 being few of these vacant has condescended to 
 accept temporarily a position behind the hotel 
 register. But, like the Peri, he does not forget his 
 lost paradise, and his austerity, indifference to the 
 public, and ignorance of every matter which can
 
 78 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 be referred to him is probably unsurpassed. He 
 is fortunately more insolent to his own countrymen 
 than to Englishmen who, not being accustomed to 
 salaried incivility, are more disposed to resent it. 
 Having secured his room, in which every colour 
 and every article of furniture will be an outrage on 
 good taste for the protective tariff compels hotel 
 managers to patronize native manufactures the 
 traveller finds himself an unregarded unit in the 
 crowd. Service in the proper sense does not 
 exist ; and he will find it difficult to get his boots 
 blacked unless he descend into the nether regions 
 and have them polished on his feet. The dining- 
 rooms, as the ground floor, are open to the public ; 
 as indeed are the drawing-rooms, called in Irish 
 fashion (which indeed is the origin of nine-tenths 
 of so called colloquial Americanisms) the parlours ; 
 but these last are deserted, so far as the male sex 
 are concerned. After dining, they retire to smoke 
 and drink, and the emancipated half of the world 
 is left to enjoy its freedom alone. 
 
 The difference between the English and the 
 American hotel is in the comparative privacy of 
 the former. There are now, in London, hotels, 
 built or building, as large as any in New York, 
 several with upwards of a thousand rooms, but 
 they are practically closed to the public. Each
 
 EQUALITY. 79 
 
 visitor is as secure from outside intrusion as if in 
 his own house. The idea of making the hotel the 
 common lounge for the loafers of the street corner 
 and the drinking bars has fortunately not yet 
 commended itself to English managers. 
 
 The American traveller pays a fixed sum for 
 board and lodging, a system which has many 
 advantages. It is on the whole cheap, and the 
 traveller knows precisely what will be the amount 
 of his bill. But it demoralizes the national cuisine, 
 which is a department into which democratic ideas 
 should not be permitted to enter. The American 
 people being as accustomed to feed at public 
 tables as the Spartans, and the table d'hote being 
 accommodated to the simplest palate and the 
 shortest purse, the result has been that (putting 
 clubs and private houses apart) cookery is an 
 unknown art in America. There is abundance 
 indeed, but it is the Homeric abundance of 
 quartered oxen and sheep roasting whole on the 
 spit. Roast and boiled in endless variety ; fish, 
 flesh and fowl ; dishes so numerous as to satisfy 
 the appetite of a Cyclops, but hardly anything 
 fit to eat. The first thing brought by the waiter 
 at every meal is a glass of iced water, in itself 
 sufficient to spoil both dinner and digestion. The 
 victim is then persuaded to declare the ten or
 
 8o THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 twenty dishes, from the endless menu, of which 
 he will partake ; and he is fortunate if he can 
 prevent the waiter from bringing them all at once. 
 Ordinarily the diner is seen surrounded by the 
 numerous dishes of his choice, eating against time 
 to prevent the entries getting cold while he is 
 swallowing his soup. It is not the custom to 
 drink wine at dinner, and this alone is fatal to 
 the artistic conception of dining. The drinking 
 is done at the bar, after meals, standing ; in the 
 most unwholesome manner, and of the most un- 
 wholesome materials the hundred mixed liquors 
 which are known to fame as American drinks, and 
 which by themselves account for any amount of 
 dyspepsia and ill health. The coloured waiters 
 are far more polite and attentive than their white 
 comrades ; but in America, as in Europe, money 
 will do much ; though the traveller, if wise, will 
 distribute his largess on arrival instead of on 
 departure, and can thus ensure, if liberally in- 
 clined, as good attendance as he can desire. The 
 Americans do not ordinarily fee the servants ; but 
 without this precaution, the foreigner may starve 
 in the midst of plenty. There is one restaurant 
 in New York of world-wide reputation Del- 
 monico's at which the cuisine is only good by 
 comparison with the general monotony of bad
 
 EQUALITY. 8 1 
 
 cooking, though it is asserted to be superior to any 
 establishment in London or Paris. 
 
 In travelling, the doctrine of equality has been 
 tempered by the enterprise of Mr. Pullman, whose 
 saloon and sleeping cars form, to all intents and 
 purposes, a separate and higher class, although 
 this idea is abhorrent to true Republicanism 
 However this may be, the rich and the poor 
 except on those less important lines which know 
 not Mr. Pullman, are as much separated in travel- 
 ling as in England. To compensate for this 
 deviation from Republican principle, the eman- 
 cipated negro attendant will endeavour to illustrate 
 and assert the law of equality by taking his seal 
 in the car, placing his dirty boots on the opposite 
 cushions, and generally acting as new-born freedom 
 suggests ; and, in New Mexico, I have sat at 
 dinner next to the engine-driver, who was a 
 most worthy and amusing citizen, and to whose 
 presence only hypercriticism would have objected, 
 had he condescended, before joining the ladies and 
 gentlemen, to remove the grease and soot from 
 his face and hands. The person who in America 
 impressed me as possessing power of the most 
 absolute kind, before whose authority that of the 
 President himself seemed to pale, was the railway 
 guard, or conductor. Even the hotel clerk is a less 
 
 G
 
 82 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 imposing personage in the Republic. Travelling 
 many thousand miles through the States, I watched 
 the conductor under many conditions and on many 
 lines of railway ; but I do not remember to have 
 seen one who was ordinarily civil or who had the 
 faintest knowledge of any subject connected with 
 the line on which he was employed. Where or 
 when the train stopped ; where refreshments were 
 to be procured ; at what junction the traveller 
 should change carriages ; on all such subjects his 
 mind was a blank. The railway company which 
 employed him was a monopoly which systemati- 
 cally disregarded and despised the public by which 
 it prospered, and he too acknowledged no obliga- 
 tion of politeness or information. He did not 
 consider himself paid to be civil or to answer the 
 wild questions of unreasoning travellers who ought 
 to purchase enigmatical guide books and discover 
 for themselves the mysteries of the road. 
 
 Nothing is more striking than the patience with 
 which the free American citizen bears the insolence 
 of office ; the rudeness of ticket-collectors, the 
 unnecessary violence of the police, and the general 
 contempt of every petty employ <* of the govern- 
 ment or of private companies, who, one and all, 
 seem to consider the public they serve as a beast 
 of burden to be beaten or driven at their pleasure.
 
 EQUALITY. 83 
 
 We are accustomed to this official aggressiveness 
 and petty insolence in France or Italy, but it seems 
 strangely out of place in an Anglo-Saxon Republic. 
 For this temper is altogether foreign to the people. 
 There is no more kindly and considerate person in 
 the world than the unofficial American. Hospi- 
 table, generous and warm-hearted, he will take 
 infinite trouble to assist a stranger, and if you ask 
 him to direct you in the public street, will probably 
 walk far out of his way to point out your destina- 
 tion. But politics have so demoralised office that 
 with its possession his whole temper seems changed. 
 The old wine of authority is too strong for Re- 
 publican bottles, and next to being an official 
 yourself, there is hardly a greater misfortune than 
 to have to conduct dealings with one. 
 
 One of the most curious social results of equality 
 is the supposed right which it gives to one portion 
 of the community to interfere with the private and 
 domestic concerns of another. Even the President 
 of the United States is not above such interference. 
 Mr. R. B. Hayes was a total abstainer, and nothing 
 stronger than lemonade was to be procured at the 
 White House during his occupancy. When Presi- 
 dent Arthur, a temperate and courteous gentleman, 
 succeeded to office, a committee of ladies is said to 
 have waited upon him and informed him that he 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 must drink only water ; but he courageously 
 informed them that he should regulate his dinner- 
 table without their assistance. Not long since, the 
 Free-Will Baptists of Minnesota passed a resolu- 
 tion warmly approving the noble and economical 
 spirit of Mr. Hayes in serving water to his guests, 
 and viewing "with growing alarm the use of intoxi- 
 cants by President Arthur." This concern for the 
 manners and morals of the highest officials, how- 
 ever impertinent, has not been altogether unjusti- 
 fied, for every citizen is a possible occupant of the 
 Presidential chair, and may carry there the habits 
 he has acquired during his earlier days of rail- 
 splitting or cattle-farming. I remember a former 
 President with whom sobriety was an exceptional, 
 and indeed a phenomenal, phase of existence ; and 
 a United States minister at a European Court 
 who was too uncertain of the direction in which 
 his legs would take him to receive the Royalties 
 who had honoured his evening party. 
 
 When Presidents can claim no immunity from 
 the shrill lectures of prohibitionist missionaries, it 
 is clear that the rank and file of simple citizens 
 cannot hope to drink in peace. Against this per- 
 secution the Germans have stoutly fought, and are 
 prepared for any sacrifice rather than lose their 
 national beer. Where they are most numerous the
 
 EQUALITY. 85 
 
 prohibitionists have had least success ; but there 
 are wide districts in which no intoxicating beverage 
 is to be procured without a resort to humiliating 
 subterfuges. The .people no doubt drink a great 
 deal, and most crimes in America, as in England, 
 have their origin in intoxication. But there are 
 few drunken people to be seen ; and whether the 
 liquor trade be a blessing or a curse, it is not for a 
 Republic which professes to uphold individual 
 liberty to insist upon people abstaining against 
 their will. We have, however, no occasion to cross 
 the ocean to see fervent Liberals preaching a com- 
 pulsory temperance in opposition to the true spirit 
 of Liberalism.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 
 
 IT was with much interest and some anxiety 
 that I went to Chickering Hall to hear Matthew 
 Arnold's first lecture in New York, for he had 
 freely condemned the Americans in former days as 
 a race of Philistines, and they have long memories. 
 We English are accustomed to Mr. Arnold when, 
 like Balaam, he starts on a mission of cursing. 
 Whether we drink champagne, or sand the sugar, 
 or beat our wives, we know that there is no escape 
 from condemnation. Unless we can take refuge 
 with the few elect in his private ark, we belong to 
 an upper class materialised, a middle class vul- 
 garised, or a lower class brutalised. But the Ame- 
 ricans were not used to this drastic treatment, and 
 had shown some temper when told that, even if 
 they had fewer barbarians and less mob, they were 
 an unredeemed and irredeemable vulgar middle
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 87 
 
 class. Chickering Hall, however, displayed no 
 signs of hostility. On the contrary, when Mr. 
 Parke Godwin had ended a laboured and perfervid 
 introduction, the great English critic was received 
 by a crowded house with every sign of sympathy 
 and respect. There was not a vacant chair, and 
 the audience was evidently largely composed of 
 the most educated and cultured classes, and in- 
 cluded many ladies. But the lecture, as such, 
 was a complete failure. Matthew Arnold says he 
 dislikes public speaking, and certainly his voice is 
 or was unequal to the demands of a well- filled 
 hall. Reading his lecture with the manuscript 
 close to his eyes, placing a strong accent on the 
 penultimate or ante-penultimate syllable, and 
 dropping the last altogether, allowing the voice to 
 so sink at the close of a sentence that the last 
 words were inaudible, without gesture or expres- 
 sion, Mr. Matthew Arnold combines in himself all 
 the possible faults of a public lecturer. Sitting 
 ten rows in front of the reader, I found it impos- 
 sible to hear the whole of any sentence or to follow 
 the argument of the address. Occasionally, a 
 quotation more or less familiar could be picked 
 from the general monotone as Dr. Johnson's 
 declaration that " Patriotism is the last refuge of 
 a scoundrel," or Plato's description of Athenian
 
 88 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 society : " There is but a very small remnant of 
 honest followers of wisdom, and they who are of 
 these few and have tasted how sweet a possession 
 is wisdom, and who can fully see the madness of 
 the multitude, what are they to do ? " 
 
 But these were mere oases of sound in a desert 
 of inaudibility; and of the fifteen hundred persons 
 present, perhaps a hundred understood the lecture, 
 to some four hundred an occasional sentence was 
 vouchsafed, while a thousand heard nothing. An 
 American audience is wonderfully patient and 
 generous ; and although at first from several parts 
 of the hall came unavailing cries of " Louder," 
 " Can't hear you," yet, when it was thoroughly 
 realised that remonstrance and entreaty were in 
 vain, the audience resigned themselves to the 
 enjoyment of their Barmecide feast in a manner 
 both amusing and pathetic. The lecture, if audible, 
 would hardly have satisfied an American audience. 
 Its purport seemed to be that majorities were 
 always vicious and wrong; and that the only 
 advantage to America in her great and increasing 
 population was that, in so vast a multitude of fools 
 and knaves, there must be a considerable "remnant" 
 who, if fortune were favourable, which the lecturer 
 did not anticipate, might redeem and transform the 
 corrupt mass. Mr. Matthew Arnold is very likely
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 89 
 
 right, but With these sentiments America has no 
 sympathy. It holds that he wastes his rare powers 
 in futile criticism of the Philistines, who are the 
 practical men of the world and who do its real 
 work. The night after his lecture, the well-known 
 journalist, Mr. Dana, in the same hall, repudiated 
 his doctrine, and declared that the facts of America 
 and Europe contradicted his theory ; that in Eng- 
 land and France there was little or no political 
 progress, that in democratic institutions and the 
 principle of equality were the salvation of the 
 human race ; while material triumphs by man 
 over nature contained the condition of progress, 
 a work independent of poets and essayists like 
 Mr. Arnold. There can be no doubt that Mr. 
 Dana truly interprets the feeling of his countrymen, 
 who are satisfied with themselves and do not care 
 to be improved or instructed by any teacher, how- 
 ever illustrious. Mr. Matthew Arnold, piloted by 
 Mr. D'Oyley Carte, and inaudibly lecturing to 
 New York society, too painfully recalls Samson 
 grinding corn for the Philistines in Gaza. 
 
 If the future of America were of little importance 
 to humanity, the inquiry as to whether its in- 
 herited or acquired sweetness and light satisfied 
 the severe demands of Mr. Matthew Arnold would 
 have no more interest than the disputes of mediaeval
 
 90 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 casuistry. But the destiny of this great country 
 and this brave and energetic race is of supreme 
 importance to the world, and especially to 
 England. Before children now born shall have 
 grown grey there will be but three Great Powers 
 in the civilised world : the Greater Britain, Russia, 
 and the United States. France, Germany, and 
 Austria may still be prosperous and maintain 
 vast standing armies as to-day ; but to the Anglo- 
 Saxon and the Slav races will have fallen 
 the dominion of the world. We have thus a 
 direct interest in ascertaining the direction in 
 which American civilisation tends, and the force 
 and sweep of the currents which reach our shores 
 from the western side of the Atlantic. Of what 
 temper is this strange creation, whose origin was 
 indeed due to England, but over whose growth 
 she has had no control ? Is it a monster, like that 
 wrought by Frankenstein, eager to confuse and 
 destroy; or is it but a new avatar of the Goddess of 
 Liberty, who has softly lit, dove-like, with white 
 shining wings, on the western shore ? The more 
 urgent of these questions will best be answered 
 when we later consider the tendency of the political 
 institutions of the United States. Here I would 
 only touch on those lighter subjects, culture, 
 literature, and art, which are suggested by Mr.
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 91 
 
 Matthew Arnold's visit to America, and which 
 have an influence only second to political institu- 
 tions on the mental and moral growth of a people. 
 Culture is essentially aristocratic in the highest and 
 unconventional sense of the term, and flourishes 
 best among a class whose inherited wealth 
 and leisure permit them to find their interest in 
 intellectual pursuits rather than in money-making, 
 which is the most absorbing as it is the most 
 demoralising of occupations. Art is, in a great 
 measure, dependent on patronage ; and, if the art 
 is to be worthy, the patronage must not be of the 
 uneducated multitude, but of the instructed and 
 cultivated, who are everywhere few in number 
 but who will be found most rarely in democracies. 
 The Bonanza king of San Francisco, who is re- 
 ported to have successfully sued a railway company 
 for having delivered to him a cast of the Venus 
 of the Louvre without the arms, which he insisted 
 should have accompanied the goddess, may, under 
 instructed direction, stock museums with foreign 
 works of art, but cannot aid the development of 
 native talent. The political bias of republics to 
 equality; the popular dislike of inherited rank and 
 wealth ; the redistribution of acquired property, 
 all react unfavourably on culture, and discourage 
 the growth of the leisured and refined class in
 
 92 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 whose existence is the best hope for the creation 
 and the appreciation of works of art It cannot 
 be denied that there have been times and places 
 in which there seemed to exist a phenomena! 
 love of art among the people generally, as in 
 Athens and Florence, which were republics in 
 name though aristocratic in spirit ; but although 
 the popular taste was refined in these cities, yet 
 the community affected was small, and had been 
 educated to a high sense of beauty by the 
 enlightened munificence of wealthy or noble 
 families. The natural capacity of European races 
 for artistic representation of beauty differs, not 
 only in degree, but in kind ; and it is not likely 
 that Anglo-Saxons will ever, in music, painting, 
 or sculpture, reach the standard of Greece or 
 Italy, though they have no superiors in literary 
 achievement. It might have been supposed that 
 the free air of a republic would be favourable to 
 every class of intellectual effort ; and that its 
 citizens would easily surpass those countries 
 where knowledge is held in chains, or where 
 authority, fashion, and prescription restrict on 
 every side the movements of genius. But this 
 assumption would not be supported by history, 
 which shows that in England and France, the 
 most active intellectual periods, richest in works
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 93 
 
 of the highest imagination and power, were those 
 when despotism was the rule of government, and 
 reverence to authority was most conspicuous in 
 the people. The truth seems to be, although 
 the question is deserving of more attention than 
 has yet been paid to it, that the atmosphere of 
 a republic is unfavourable to art. The lamp of 
 artistic truth burns with a feeble flame ; and 
 mediocrity is allowed to take the highest place. 
 The general level is so unbroken that it is 
 difficult for Genius to find any elevation from which 
 to take its flight. The absence of height to train 
 the mental eye, injures the sense of proportion, and 
 permits an exaggerated estimate of artistic 
 excellence. If a careful and impartial review of 
 the intellectual productions of the United States 
 since their foundation, or during the last hundred 
 years, be made, it will be found that, in no de- 
 partment of art, has any work, drama, novel, poem, 
 painting, or musical composition been produced 
 which could justly be placed in the first class. In 
 science, America has been more distinguished, as 
 might have been expected from a practical people 
 devoted to industrial pursuits. But the absolute 
 dearth of all work of the highest artistic value is 
 most striking. In literature, there are many names 
 justly held in honour and some authors whose
 
 94 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 works have won a wide reputation ; essayists and 
 historians as Irving, Emerson, Bancroft, Prescott, 
 and Motley : poets like Bryant, Longfellow, 
 Whittier, and Lowell : and novelists like Cooper, 
 Holmes, Hawthorne, and Howells. Yet, although 
 some of these writers have attained that mastery 
 over style which Matthew Arnold seems to con- 
 sider the chief sign of literary power, placing men 
 like Addison, La Bruyere, Cicero, and Voltaire, in 
 the front rank of letters, no American has, 
 so far, shown himself possessed of constructive or 
 imaginative power in any high degree. The 
 stormy history of the young Republic, and the 
 natural beauties of a new Continent have inspired no 
 national poem ; nor indeed any poetry which can be 
 ranked as of the highest order. Twenty years ago, 
 in England, the poetry best known and most 
 delighted in, after Tennyson, by the majority of 
 readers was that of Longfellow, and its popularity 
 was well deserved, for its simple charm, and pure, 
 lofty spirit appeal directly to the heart. But when 
 compared with his English contemporaries 
 Tennyson and Browning, it is at once seen 
 within what narrow limits the genius of Longfellow 
 is confined. In dramatic work, which is the 
 highest and most imaginative expression of 
 literary genius, America has done nothing whatever ;
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 95 
 
 though it must not be forgotten that England, 
 during the present century, has been almost as 
 barren of high dramatic ability. Even in the 
 dramatic representations of the stage, American 
 artists appear ordinarily devoid of that imaginative 
 power which enables the actor to so seize and em- 
 body the very life and individuality of a character 
 as to touch spectators with that swift and sudden 
 sympathy which makes of the dramatic art the very 
 mirror of nature. Booth, and to a less degree, 
 Jefferson, may be held to possess something of 
 this power, but it is altogether absent from the work 
 of most American actors, as might be seen this 
 season in London, where Mary Anderson and 
 Lawrence Barrett have drawn large houses : one, as 
 a pretty and picturesque woman, the other as an 
 accomplished and well-trained artist, without pos- 
 sessing the power of stirring the faintest emotion 
 in the spectators or conveying any impression 
 of reality in their several parts. That this defect 
 is less inherent in the actor than due to the 
 unsympathetic and uncongenial atmosphere in 
 which he has been trained, seems likely when it is 
 remembered that the majority of American actors 
 are English or Irish by origin, and indeed the 
 American stage is as rich in brogue as if it were 
 recruited direct from Cork. The low ebb of the 
 dramatic art in America is the more striking from
 
 96 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 the wide and deep love for the theatre among the 
 people. In no country are there more numerous, 
 better arranged or more handsome theatres, or 
 more enthusiastic and quick-witted audiences. 
 Every point is at once appreciated by the house ; 
 and dramatic criticism is often both learned and 
 discriminating. 
 
 The chief hope for American literature and art 
 is, that as they outgrow English influences, they 
 may become more robust and national. No one 
 would wish to deprive our kinsmen across the 
 ocean of their common inheritance in the glories of 
 English literature, which forms the most powerful 
 of the ties which bind us in amity together. But 
 the overpowering splendour and richness of that 
 literature have had an enfeebling and crushing 
 effect upon American writers. Year by year, 
 English influence grows visibly less, and this is 
 a healthy sign. Even the extravagant estimate 
 placed in America on the work of some con- 
 temporary native authors, which, judged by our 
 standards, appears worthy of but small admiration, 
 shows the growth of an independent national spirit 
 without which no literature can be excellent or 
 durable. In other departments of art, where 
 English influence is necessarily weak, such as 
 painting and sculpture, Americans are advancing 
 to an honourable place ; though they do not draw
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 97 
 
 their inspiration from native air, but from Paris and 
 Rome. In music, their time has not yet come ; 
 though, as the best of so-called English music, now 
 taking a high place in the artistic history of the 
 century, is Irish in origin, and as there are more 
 Irishmen in America than in Ireland itself, it may 
 be hoped that republican surroundings may not 
 forbid its successful cultivation there. 
 
 There can be no more potent means of increas- 
 ing and deepening popular culture than by the 
 introduction of art into the common ways of 
 domestic life ; employing taste and beauty to 
 dignify the most ordinary articles of furniture, 
 ornament, and dress. In this direction, free trade 
 has done much for England, and of late years the 
 standard of good taste in domestic life has greatly 
 risen. But, in America, the protective tariff has 
 prevented the general use of foreign manufactures 
 with the consequence that most of the work is crude 
 and inartistic. Whether a love of beauty has, as yet, 
 taken much possession of the English people may 
 be doubted ; but improvement is everywhere visible, 
 and comfort and good taste are becoming, every 
 year, more common in the homes of the English 
 artisan. I will conclude this chapter with an 
 extract from the letter of the American cor- 
 respondent of the Pittsburg Dispatch, who had been 
 sent to England to examine into the question of 
 
 H
 
 98 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 wages and labour, and which from such a source is 
 especially interesting. I would particularly com- 
 mend it to the attention of English working men, 
 who are disposed to think their own class is more 
 favourably situated in the States than in England. 
 It deals with a subject by no means foreign to 
 "sweetness and light," for wholesome and well- 
 ordered homes are the soil from which true culture 
 must spring. 
 
 " A walk from Wolverhampton, with its 100,000 inhabitants, 
 to Birmingham, with its 400,000, is through a succession of 
 villages, which form an almost continuous town, through a 
 forest of chimneys which send forth pillars of cloud which 
 obscure the sun by day, and pillars of fire which outshine 
 the moon at night. The vast bulk of the smoke is outside of 
 Birmingham, so that it is less beclouded than one would antici- 
 pate from its reputation. It is not by any means so enshrouded 
 as the ' Birmingham of America ; ' but its smoke and soot are 
 not hemmed in by high hills, but are constantly dispersed by 
 the breezes from the Channel and the Welsh mountains. Yet 
 in this field are manufactured not only incomputable quantities 
 of raw iron and large machinery, but thousands of kinds of 
 small articles in immense bulk, guns, swords, all kinds of 
 brass and ormolu articles, jewellery, presses, pins, buttons, 
 bicycles, needles, fish-hooks, money, not only for the Home 
 Government, but for a dozen other governments, and innumer- 
 able other things which one always knew were made some- 
 where but never knew the place. 
 
 " And now, let me say briefly, and once for all, that a carefr.l 
 inspection of the localities where working people most do 
 congregate in this wonderful world of manufactures, has proved 
 to me, as it will prove to any one taking similar pains, that 
 here, where one expects to find ' pauper labour,' by comparison 
 with America there is a condition of comfort in habitation,
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 99 
 
 clothing, and food, which cannot be excelled in any American 
 manufacturing locality. This may be treason, but if it is, my 
 protectionist friends are at liberty to make the most of it. I do 
 not assert that the condition of these workmen is what it ought 
 to be. I only assert that if it be worse than that of American 
 workmen, then the difference is concealed with wonderful 
 success. I am not advancing by any means the opinion that 
 it is time to apply the theory of free-trade to America, but 
 merely reiterating what I have often said and always believed, 
 that the assertion of republican politicians that protection was 
 in the interest of the working-man was buncombe, for if it 
 was of any benefit at all the working-man got none of it, but 
 the capitalist all. If I was not altogether certain of my 
 premises then, I am now. I will agree to exhibit better houses 
 for working people, with just as ample food and comfortable 
 clothing, and as many bank depositors in this Birmingham 
 district, according to ratio of population, as can be found 
 in any manufacturing district of America. It would make 
 the most prejudiced and most loyal Pittsburger ashamed of 
 his own city, to note here the actual superiority in comfort 
 and cleanliness of the streets and houses where live the 
 common working classes. Courts, alleys, and domiciles are 
 clean, and lack the foul odors which are smelled everywhere 
 on the back streets and alleys of Pittsburg. I searched in 
 vain for a plague spot. I asked for the localities where there 
 were the most poor, and went there ; I propounded all sorts 
 of impudent questions to the inhabitants ; I penetrated to the 
 obscurest courts and alleys, making inquiries for imaginary 
 persons my excuse, and my conclusion was that, so long as 
 we must have a poor class a class which must struggle hard 
 for bare necessities it would be well to have them live as 
 they do here, if possible. Everything, too, speaks of good 
 government. Hell-holes, such as exist in some parts of 
 Pittsburg, seem to be unknown here. The gin-mills and tap- 
 rooms are compelled to close promptly at the hour fixed by 
 law. To judge from -the police statistics, crime is here reduced 
 to a minimum.' 
 
 H 2
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 SOME two years ago a political satire was 
 published in New York under the title of Solid for 
 Mulhooly^- which did not receive from English 
 politicians the attention which it undoubtedly 
 deserved. It was not to be seen on the club tables 
 in Pall Mall, nor was it in demand at Mudie's, and 
 is now, I understand, out of print. Nevertheless, 
 its interest is so great, and the conclusions which 
 seem naturally to follow its story pierce the soul 
 and marrow of modern English politics with so 
 true and acute a rapier-point, that representative 
 Radicals like Mr. Chamberlain, or disguised 
 Radicals, as is Lord Randolph Churchill, might 
 well republish the work for gratuitous distribution 
 in the still unenlightened and unregenerate con- 
 stituencies. Solid for Mulhooly purported to be a 
 
 1 By Rufus E. Shapley, of Philadelphia.
 
 THE .HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 101 
 
 new and novel satire on the Boss system in 
 American politics, in which the mysterious 
 methods of the leaders, the Ring and the Boss, 
 were laid bare ; and although, for the American 
 public,- which the chief living exponent of the 
 science of political corruption asserts to have 
 greater patience and longer ears than any other 
 animal in the New World, there could be little 
 that was novel in the revelations, there is much 
 which is, fortunately, both new and useful for 
 Englishmen. 
 
 It cannot be expected that the arid wilderness of 
 American politics should ever become a fair and 
 pleasant garden in which English students may 
 wander with delight and contentment. The sub- 
 ject is strange and distasteful, and from most points 
 of view unprofitable, and Americans themselves 
 turn from it with disgust. If but few educated 
 Englishmen could explain the differences in dogma 
 between the Republican and Democratic parties, 
 an average American could do little more, seeing 
 that to the eyes of impartial observers the only 
 conflict between political parties is as to which 
 should obtain the larger proportion of the spoils of 
 victory the fat offices given to unscrupulous 
 wirepullers ; judgeships, the reward of the prostitu- 
 tion of justice; and contracts by which the people
 
 102 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 pay three dollars for every one which is expended 
 on its behalf. 
 
 There is, however, one light in which American 
 politics have for Englishmen an engrossing interest, 
 namely, the effect which democratic principles, 
 carried to their extreme logical conclusions, have 
 had upon a race identical in many particulars with 
 the English from which it has sprung. Has this 
 effect been such as to encourage us to apply these 
 principles at home ? Has the result been a nobler 
 view of the obligations of citizenship ; a more 
 generous and unselfish use of wealth ; a higher and 
 purer municipal administration ; a more patriotic, 
 farsighted, and courageous foreign policy ? And 
 even should a favourable answer be returned to 
 these inquiries, there remains for Englishmen the 
 practical question whether, if undiluted democracy 
 be suited to the conditions of America, with its 
 vast homogeneous territory and a population still 
 scanty proportional to its area, secure from all 
 foreign attack and self-contained and self-sufficient 
 in its resources, we could reasonably expect that it 
 should be equally successful in England. For this 
 country is the centre and omphalos of a world-wide 
 empire, confronted in every land and on every sea 
 with enemies or rivals ; with an overgrown popula- 
 tion crowded into cities and dependent on others
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 103 
 
 for their very bread, and already enjoying a system 
 of government which is not only the envy of less 
 fortunate peoples, but which has had the force to 
 make us, and may still possess the inherent virtue 
 to maintain us, first among the nations of the 
 earth ? 
 
 A novel called Democracy, giving a clever and 
 amusing sketch of Washington society and the 
 political intrigues which have their origin and 
 development in the capital of the United States, 
 excited considerable interest in England a short 
 time ago. It was written with much spirit, and its 
 frankness was so condemnatory of American in- 
 stitutions that it was first supposed to be written 
 by an Englishman. But there are no more severe 
 critics of their political system than the Americans 
 themselves, and the authorship of Democracy is no 
 secret at Washington, where I have met more than 
 one of the persons whose presentment is supposed 
 to be given in the novel. Another book lately 
 published A Winter in Washington though of 
 doubtful taste, and below criticism as a work of 
 literary art, is fully as outspoken regarding the 
 low tone of morality which prevails in political 
 circles. But, Solid for Mulhooly, the work which 
 I have taken as the text for this article, is of a 
 different quality. Its style disdains those half-
 
 104 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 lights and shadows and reticences which belong 
 to romance, the conventional glamour which 
 artistically obscures the naked truth. It carries 
 the American political system into the dissecting- 
 room, and pitilessly exposes the hidden seat of its 
 disease. While Democracy shows the ultimate 
 result of official corruption in the lobbies and 
 drawing-rooms of Washington, Solid for MulJwoly 
 discloses its genesis in the drinking-saloon and the 
 gutter. Democracy differs from it as a rainbow 
 differs from the mathematical formulae which 
 express the laws that determine its shape and 
 colour. A short sketch of the plot, showing 
 how a penniless adventurer became Member of 
 Congress, rich without toil, like the lilies, in- 
 fluential without character, and famous through 
 his very infamy, will not be unprofitable. 
 
 Michael Mulhooly was born in those conditions 
 which experience has shown to be eminently 
 favourable to prominence in American statesman- 
 ship a mud cabin among the bogs of County 
 Tyrone, which he shared with his parents, his 
 ten brothers and sisters, and the pig. Fortune 
 sent him early to America, where his struggles 
 and subsequent successes form the subject of the 
 story. Epitomised as was his history by the 
 journal of the Reform party, it read thus :
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 105 
 
 " A bogtrotter by birth ; a waif washed up on our shores ; 
 a scullion boy in a gin-mill frequented by thieves and 
 shoulder-hitters ; afterwards a bar-tender in and subsequently 
 the proprietor of this low groggery ; a repeater l before he 
 was of age ; a rounder, bruiser, and shoulder-hitter ; then 
 made an American citizen by fraud after a residence of but two 
 years ; a leader of a gang of repeaters before the ink on his 
 fraudulent naturalisation papers was dry ; then a corrupt and 
 perjured election officer ; then for years a corrupt and perjured 
 member of the Municipal Legislature, always to be hired or 
 bought by the highest bidder, and always an uneducated, 
 vulgar, flashily-dressed, obscene creature of the Ring which 
 made him what he is, and of which he is a worthy represen- 
 tative ; such, in brief, is the man who has been forced upon 
 this party by the most shameless frauds as its candidate for 
 the American Congress. This is filthy language, but it is the 
 only way in which to describe the filthy subject to which it 
 refers, as every man who reads it must admit that it is only 
 the simple truth. 
 
 " Is it possible that the American people are compelled to 
 scour the gutter, the gin-mill, and the brothel for a candidate 
 for Congress ? Is it possible that the Ring which has already 
 plundered the city for so many years, and which has so long 
 abused our patience with its arbitrary nominations of the 
 most unworthy people for the most honourable and responsible 
 offices, will be permitted to crown its infamies by sending to 
 Congress this creature who represents nothing decent and 
 nothing fit to be named to decent ears?" 
 
 1 Repeating is an amusing game much played at American 
 elections. The repeater, who, if possible, should be a professional 
 bully and prizefighter, represents himself to be and votes for some 
 member of the party opposed to that which employs him. When 
 the true voter appears at the poll he is assailed as a fraudulent person 
 who desires to register twice, and is kicked and beaten by the 
 repeater and his friends. This game causes much innocent 
 amusement.
 
 106 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 Though all this, with much more that the 
 indignant journal wrote, was not only true but 
 notorious, it had no effect upon the foregone 
 conclusion of the contest. The Boss, who held 
 in his hand the fifty thousand Irish Catholic 
 votes of New York, called upon one of the judges 
 whom he had "made" to convict of libel the 
 journal which had dared to tell the truth and 
 condemn his favoured nominee. Justice was 
 dishonoured and the truth was condemned. 
 Meanwhile the campaign was fought between 
 honesty and corruption. The candidate of the 
 Reform party was a young man of good family, 
 the highest character, possessed of wealth, genius, 
 and eloquence, and he had at his back all the 
 voters of respectability and position. But he did 
 not condescend to those arts which could alone 
 insure success. He did not visit bar-rooms, or 
 drink with and treat the party-workers, or bribe or 
 cajole; and he declared war to the knife against 
 the Boss and the Boss' system, and the Ring, and 
 the whole gang of confederated thieves who had 
 for so long laughed at and plundered the people. 
 The result' was what might have been foreseen. 
 The leaders, the Ring, and the Boss, and their 
 thousands of dependents, were " solid for 
 Mulhooly," who was elected Member of Congress
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 107 
 
 by the grace of the municipal gods ; manhood 
 suffrage was vindicated, and the corrupt, obscure 
 adventurer represented "a Government of the 
 people, by the people, and for the people." 
 
 It will be asserted that this satire is exaggerated 
 and a caricature of the truth. But this is not the 
 opinion of those educated and high-principled 
 Americans with whom I have talked in the large 
 cities, such as Washington, New York, Phil- 
 adelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, or Denver. They 
 are generally willing to discuss the political 
 situation with all frankness if they be only 
 approached with discretion. Should the traveller 
 commence with abuse of American institutions he 
 will naturally meet with a rebuff; but should he 
 sympathetically praise an administration which 
 professes to be of and for the people, his listener 
 will quickly open the floodgates of his invective 
 against it. From my Colorado note-book 1 
 extract the ipsissima verba of one of the most 
 prosperous and distinguished citizens of that 
 State. " Politics," said he, " are nothing but a 
 trade by which to live and grow fat, and an evil 
 and a stinking trade. No one who respects 
 himself can join it, and should a respectable 
 man be chosen for office he refuses to accept 
 the nomination. Everything connected with it
 
 loS THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 is corrupt ; and success being impossible to an 
 honest man, the dirty work is left to the 
 scallawags and scoundrels who live by it, and 
 who degrade the name of politics throughout 
 America." 
 
 The City of New York has, for many years, 
 been one of the most striking and convenient 
 illustrations of what is known in America as 
 Boss rule, and the many millions that it has cost 
 the people, in waste, peculation, and undisguised 
 and unblushing robbery, form the price which 
 they have had to pay for the pretence of freedom. 
 Matters are now less openly scandalous than ot 
 old, but the same system is in full force. Boss 
 Kelly, who sways the destinies of New York, 
 has been able, from his near connection with 
 an Irish cardinal, to defend his position with 
 spiritual as well as temporal weapons, and the 
 whole Irish Catholic population vote solid as he 
 bids them. The result of a generation of this 
 regime has been disastrous. The commercial 
 capital of the United States may now be fairly 
 reckoned, for size and population, the second 
 city in the world, if Brooklyn, New Jersey, and 
 the suburbs be included within its boundaries. 
 Its property is assessed at fifteen hundred million 
 dollars, its foreign commerce is not far from a
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 109 
 
 billion dollars, while its domestic trade reaches 
 many hundred millions. But there is hardly a 
 European city of any importance which is not 
 infinitely its superior in municipal administration, 
 convenience, beauty, and architectural pretensions 
 With the exception of the Post Office and the 
 unfinished Catholic cathedral, which is neither in 
 size nor design a cathedral at all, there is scarcely 
 a building which repays a visit. The City Hall, 
 which cost ten or twelve millions of dollars, is 
 certainly worth inspection as an instance of what 
 swindling on a gigantic scale is able to accomplish ; 
 as is the Brooklyn Bridge, which cost seventeen 
 millions, or three times the original estimate, and 
 which was further unnecessary, as a subway would 
 have been more convenient and have cost much 
 less. Local taxation is crushingly heavy, and so 
 inequitably assessed that the millionaires pay 
 least and the poor most. The paving of the 
 streets is so rough as to recall Belgrade or 
 Petersburg ; the gas is as bad as the pavement ; 
 and it is only in Broadway and portions of Fifth 
 Avenue that an unsystematic use of the electric 
 light creates a brilliancy which but heightens the 
 contrast with the gloom elsewhere. The Central 
 Park, so called from being a magnificent expanse 
 of wilderness in the centre of nothing, is ill-kept
 
 i io THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 and ragged, and at night is unsafe for either sex. 
 The fares of hack-carriages are four to five times 
 as high as in London. The police is inefficient, 
 arbitrary, and corrupt. At its head are 'four Com- 
 missioners, who are politicians in the American 
 sense and nothing more. They are virtually 
 appointed by the aldermen, who have authority 
 to confirm or reject the mayor's nomination of 
 heads of departments. The aldermen are, in many 
 cases, persons to whom the description of Michael 
 Mulhooly might apply politicians of the drinking- 
 saloons, the tools and slaves of the Boss who made 
 them and whose orders they unhesitatingly obey. 
 When a respectable mayor has chanced to be 
 appointed, he has declared it useless to nominate 
 good men to office, and has lowered his appoint- 
 ments to the level of the confirming aldermen. 
 The Comptroller, who is the financial head of 
 the city, expending between thirty and forty 
 millions of dollars annually, the Commissioners 
 of Excise, Taxes, Charities, Fire, Health, and 
 Public Works, are all controlled, approved and 
 virtually appointed by the aldermen, who are 
 directed by the Boss. Even the eleven police 
 judges, who should be the independent ex- 
 pounders and enforcers of the criminal law, 
 are appointed by the same agency, so that if
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. in 
 
 their origin be traced to its first cause they are 
 the nominees of the criminal classes they have 
 to try and punish. The result is that it is 
 impossible to procure the adequate punishment 
 of any official, however criminal, since he was 
 appointed as a political partisan. One or two 
 instances, almost at random, may be cited in 
 illustration of this. While I was in New York 
 a policeman, named McNamara, killed a drunken 
 but perfectly quiet and inoffensive citizen, named 
 John Smith, by blows on his head and neck with 
 a loaded club. There was no provocation, and 
 even New York was profoundly moved by the 
 outrage, although the police are there accustomed 
 to use their clubs on even orderly crowds in a 
 manner which would not be tolerated for a day 
 in England. But while a verdict of murder or 
 aggravated manslaughter would alone have met 
 the merits of the case, McNamara was found 
 guilty of assault in the third degree, and sentenced 
 to a nominal punishment. In the case of the 
 numerous catastrophes on railways and steamers 
 in and near New York, due to gross negligence 
 and causing the wanton slaughter of numerous 
 citizens, no official has for years past been 
 punished. An inspector's certificate is the only 
 guarantee of security of the numerous passenger
 
 Ii2 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 steamboats which ply on the waters of the city. But 
 in August last, when the Riverdale steamer blew 
 up and sank, the boiler was found so corroded 
 that a knife-blade was easily thrust through a 
 piece of iron which was originally an inch and 
 a quarter thick ; while the inspector who had 
 certified that the boiler was in good order stated 
 on inquiry, that he did not know that the boiler 
 was corroded because he had never examined the 
 inside. Inspectors of this calibre are appointed to 
 certify to the soundness of the boilers of ocean 
 steamers, and the chief engineer of one of these 
 told me that the inspector who had looked at the 
 outside of the engines and had signed the required 
 certificate, when asked whether he was not going 
 to examine the interior of the boilers, confessed 
 that such an examination \vould give him no 
 information, as he was altogether ignorant of 
 the construction of engines or boilers. 
 
 Nor are public interests and private rights in 
 property more respected than personal safety is 
 secured. In London we see Mr. Bowles fighting 
 against a railway which is to pass underneath the 
 parks without once appearing at the surface, and 
 even those who consider his zeal excessive will yet 
 admit that this jealousy of any invasion of popular 
 rights is wholesome and admirable. Yet, in New
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 113 
 
 York, elevated railways, on iron pillars level with 
 the first-floor windows, have been run through 
 many of the principal streets, without a dollar 
 of compensation having been paid to any one. 
 It may be that the ultimate result has been to 
 raise the rents of the shops in these thoroughfares, 
 but this does not alter the fact that the original 
 construction was an outrage on the rights of 
 private property and a hideous disfigurement of 
 the public streets. 
 
 The carcase over which the New York vultures 
 are now gathered together is the new aqueduct, 
 which is estimated to cost from twenty to thirty 
 millions of dollars, but which, if the precedents of 
 the County Court House and the Brooklyn Bridge 
 be followed, will probably cost sixty millions. 
 Here is a prize worthy of Tammany and a contest 
 a mine rich in jobbery and corruption for years 
 to come ; and there is no doubt that, before the 
 work is completed, many patriotic Irish statesmen 
 of the Alulhooly type, who are now loafing around 
 the saloons on the chance of a free drink, will be 
 clad in purple and fine linen and cheerfully climbing 
 the venal steps which lead to the Capitol. 
 
 The mal-administration of New York has, at 
 the present time, a very near and personal interest 
 for Londoners. It is proposed by the Government 
 
 I
 
 114 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 to place the administration of the vast metropolis, 
 with its limitless wealth and multiplied interests, 
 in the hands of one governing body, which there 
 is no reason to believe will attain a very high 
 standard of wisdom, virtue, and administrative 
 ability. The Guildhall Parliament will be no 
 more than a glorified vestry, with its jobs and 
 personalities and indifference to the public interest ; 
 and it is unlikely that candidates of distinction 
 will present themselves or be elected should they 
 be nominated. It is true that, in England, politics 
 are still a profession for honest men, and on the 
 London School Board many persons of emi- 
 nence have shown themselves willing to perform 
 arduous and ungrateful work for the public- 
 But the experience of this Board is not alto- 
 gether hopeful, and able and accomplished candi- 
 dates have too often been rejected for pretentious 
 busybodies. It will be the duty not only of 
 the Government but of Parliament generally, to 
 consider carefully the arguments from analogy 
 for and against the London Government Bill, and 
 to take care that the disgrace which has fallen 
 both on New York and Paris by intrusting enor- 
 mous responsibilities to corrupt, feeble, and in- 
 terested municipal bodies may not attach to 
 London which, with its many defects in organ i-
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 115 
 
 sation, is still incomparably the best administered 
 of the great cities of the world. 
 
 The municipal administration of New York and 
 many of the principal cities is injurious not alone 
 for its inefficiency, robbery, and waste. The chief 
 evil, and one which, like a cancer, is ever poisoning 
 and corroding the yet wholesome body politic, is 
 found in its contagious example. Theft and job- 
 bery are exalted as virtues which lead to wealth 
 and political honour, while honesty and wisdom 
 are left to preach at the corners of the streets 
 regarded by none. The name of the people, and 
 manhood suffrage, and the popular vote, are used 
 as veils to screen the shifts and frauds of wire- 
 pullers ; and the elected of the people is often no 
 more than the corrupt nominee of a dishonest 
 clique who laugh at the people, who, now, as ever, 
 are willing to be deceived. Corruption accumulates 
 on every side ; its slime makes every path slippery 
 which politicians tread, till the State Legislature 
 and Congress itself become an Augean stable 
 which would require a new Hercules to cleanse. 
 
 Americans who love and are proud of their 
 country, and who loathe the political system which 
 degrades it in the eyes of the world, will not 
 consider the picture that I have drawn over- 
 coloured. But it is impossible to acquit even the 
 
 I 2
 
 i [6 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 most honourable among them of the blame which 
 attaches to this state of things. Manhood suf- 
 frage, untempered by any educational test and 
 rendered uncontrollable by the surging mass of 
 emigration, which was a condition unestimated by 
 the drafters of the Constitution, is the chief cause 
 of the present difficulty, and respectable Americans 
 do not see how they can escape from it. Their 
 usual reply, when driven into a corner, is that 
 although the administration is shamefully corrupt, 
 they will be able to reform it whenever they have 
 time to do so. At present they are engaged in 
 making money as quickly as they can. They 
 cannot be troubled with politics ; but when at 
 leisure they will reform the administration and 
 make it clean and honest. Moreover, the country 
 is young, and people, like the English, who have 
 passed through the political experiences of the 
 Georges, should not be squeamish in criticising 
 America, which is undergoing a not more dis- 
 creditable process of purification. The double 
 fallacy which underlies this defence is obvious to 
 every historical student. In all communities, and 
 certainly in America, the honest and respectable 
 largely outnumber the disreputable and disorderly. 
 Yet the greatest catastrophes in republics have 
 been due to the cowardice and apathy of the
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 117 
 
 former when opposed by the organisation and 
 audacity of the latter. The excesses of 1793, 
 both in Paris and the provinces, were the work of 
 a very small minority, who might have been easily 
 overpowered had the nobles and bourgeoisie shown 
 the commonest energy and courage. The horrors 
 of the Commune were due to a handful of men 
 whom the shopkeepers of the Boulevards could 
 have driven into the Seine with their yard- 
 measures. Safety is never to be secured by 
 hesitation and delay, and the longer an abuse re- 
 mains unremoved the more difficult is its extirpation. 
 The conditions of political life in England during 
 the last century and those in America to-day are 
 essentially different Here the power was in the 
 hands of an educated class, who, as the standard of 
 morality became more high, were compelled to 
 change their methods or lose power altogether. But, 
 in America, manhood suffrage has placed power in 
 the hands of the lowest and least educated class, 
 a large proportion of whom have little sympathy 
 with the country of their adoption and are too 
 ignorant to understand its requirements. Educa- 
 tion may possibly affect these favourably in the 
 future ; but it is also to be considered that the 
 present system directly tends, by making dis- 
 honesty more profitable than political virtue, to
 
 Ii8 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 continually augment, in an ever-increasing ratio, 
 the number of those whose interest it is to per- 
 petuate the reign of corruption. Nor can America 
 plead youth as an excuse for her moral decrepitude. 
 A vicious and depraved youth does not promise a 
 healthy manhood or an honourable old age. The 
 advantages of her youth were a people unfettered 
 by the chains of poverty and prejudice which 
 weigh on the races of Europe, and a field free for 
 the noblest experiments in government. She 
 inherited the experience and culture of the ages ; 
 she could profit by their splendid examples and 
 avoid the rocks on which they had made ship- 
 wreck. She should have advanced and not fallen 
 back ; and this was the proud hope of her earliest 
 statesmen. The young and vigorous republic of 
 the West was to revive the classic virtues of Brutus 
 and Cincinnatus, and blaze forth, a pillar of fire, to 
 guide through the darkness the effete monarchies 
 of the Old World. But it would be difficult to 
 name any country, except j Russia, where the 
 Emperor Nicholas declared that he and his son 
 were the only people in the country who did not 
 steal, and where his successor found that the chief 
 peculator of the recent war was his own brother, 
 to which the political history of America would 
 not be a warning rather than an example.
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 119 
 
 While, in England, there is an intelligent and 
 increasing party who advocate the adoption of 
 universal suffrage, thoughtful men in America are 
 convinced that this very manhood suffrage, unac- 
 companied by an educational test, is the chief cause 
 of their misfortunes. Mr. Trevelyan, at Galashiels, 
 speaking for the Government, recently declared 
 that their policy in the extension of the franchise 
 had nothing to say as to whether a man were 
 Whig or Tory. " We say, if he is a householder, 
 jit to vote, he should have a vote. We think that 
 every intelligent and independent head of a house- 
 hold should have an equal voice in directly choosing 
 the representatives and indirectly choosing the 
 Government of the country." There is probably 
 no consistent Liberal who would not accept this 
 principle, which applies to Ireland with as much 
 force as to England. But it is obvious that the 
 condition of fitness is its all-important qualification. 
 Mr. Trevelyan's distinguished uncle, in one of hi 
 splendid sophistries, asserted that to deny men 
 freedom until they knew how to make a proper 
 use of it was worthy of the fool in the old story 
 who would not go into the water until he had 
 learned to swim. But men who are unintelligent 
 and uneducated ; who have not shown themselves 
 possessed of temperance, honesty, and self-restraint
 
 120 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 are virtually infants who have not yet the use of 
 their limbs, and whose experiments in the water 
 can only end in their destruction. Open wide the 
 doors of the franchise to education and intelligence, 
 but, with the example of America before us, close 
 them in the face of ignorance and crime. 
 
 It is popularly supposed that in no country are 
 the advantages of education more widely diffused 
 than in the States, and if this were the case, the 
 danger which now threatens the Republic from the 
 character of those into whose hands political 
 power has been placed would not exist. But so 
 far as published statistics inform us the reverse is 
 the case. A Bill is now before Congress to provide 
 Federal aid to education, the schedules of which 
 seem to show that the ignorance of the masses is 
 exceptionally dense. 
 
 Illiteracy holds the balance of power in fourteen 
 Northern and in all the Southern States. In the 
 thirty-eight States of the Union there are no less 
 than 1,871,217 illiterate voters : only one voter in 
 five can write his name in the Southern States. 
 The illiterate voters in South Carolina are more 
 than one-half the entire number ; in Alabama, 
 Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and 
 Virginia one in two ; while Missouri, with one in 
 nine, has the best record. In the Presidential
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 121 
 
 election of 1876, New York, New Hampshire, New 
 Jersey, Connecticut, Indiana, California, Nevada, 
 Ohio, Oregon, Wisconsin, Illinois, Rhode Island, 
 Michigan and Pennsylvania were ranged on the side 
 of illiteracy. In the last Presidential contest the 
 voters in thirty States, commanding 298 electoral 
 votes, were unable to read. In 1876, 60 out of the 
 76 senators, or four-fifths of the whole, and 259 out 
 of 292 representatives in Congress, were in the 
 grasp of illiteracy. In 1880, 58 out of 76 senators 
 and 292 out of 325 representatives were from 
 States where the illiterate voters held the balance 
 of power. The most superficial knowledge of the 
 distribution of the white and coloured population 
 will show that these results are not primarily due 
 to the almost universal ignorance of the negroes. 
 It is so in States like South Carolina, Mississippi 
 and Lousiana where they outnumber the whites ; 
 and in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida 
 and Alabama in which the numbers of the two 
 races are almost equal ; but in Connecticut, New 
 York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Michigan, 
 Ohio and others, the negroes form a very small 
 fractional part of the population. At the same 
 time, the incapacity of the negro for improvement 
 makes the question of the greater fecundity of the 
 black race one of extreme interest. Their increase
 
 122 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 proportionally to the whites is a matter of dispute, 
 and Mr. J. H. Tucker, Member of Congress, has 
 instituted careful inquiries, extending over the 
 period from 1790 to 1880, from which it appears 
 that the natural rate of increase of the whites is 
 slightly greater than that of the blacks, and while 
 the whites were 807 per cent, of the population in 
 1790, they were 8i'5 per cent, in 1860. Including 
 immigrants, the white population gained and the 
 coloured lost 6 per cent, in the whole period from 
 1790 to 1880; while, in the last 20 years, the 
 whites have gained I per cent; Texas being the 
 only state in which the black population shows an 
 increase. The outcome of Mr. Tucker's complete 
 survey is that the white race composes 80 per cent, 
 of the total population and is steadily gaining, but 
 at so slow a rate as to afford no reason for expecting 
 any material change in the ratio in the present or 
 coming generations. Professor Gilliam, who has 
 also made the question a subject of study, arrives 
 at very different conclusions. He considers that 
 the white population may be expected to double 
 itself in 35 years, and the black in 20 years. In 
 100 years, this would make the black population 
 of the Southern States 192,000,000, while the 
 white would be only 96,000,000, and the white 
 population of the entire country 336,000,000.
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 123 
 
 Professor Gilliam further considers that the greater 
 fecundity of the negro race is due in a measure to 
 the absence of those checks to population which 
 exist in all other cases. 
 
 It is true, so far as statistics are reliable, that, 
 if a period like the decade between 1870 and 1880 
 be taken, and the States and Territories in which 
 there has been an increase be compared with those 
 in which there has been a decrease, it will be 
 found that, on an assumed basis of 100,000 whites, 
 there has been a gain of 625 to the whites during 
 the decade. But it is probable that in the future 
 the conditions which affect the white and black 
 population will materially change. The propor- 
 tion between the two races for the last thirty years 
 is shown in the following table : 
 
 Year. 
 
 White. 
 
 Coloured. 
 
 1850 
 i860 
 IS/0 
 1880 
 
 19,553,068 
 26,922,537 
 
 33,589,377 
 43,404,876 
 
 3,638,808 
 4,441,830 
 4,88o,000 
 6,577,151 
 
 These figures would, at first sight, seem to support 
 Mr. Tucker's rather than Professor Gilliam's con- 
 clusions. The white population has considerably 
 more than doubled in the thirty years, while the 
 black population has not done so. The most
 
 124 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 remarkable feature of these figures is the slow 
 rate of increase of the negroes between 1860 and 
 1870, and their rapid increase since the latter 
 date, which has nearly overtaken that of the white 
 population in spite of the advantage of European 
 immigration, which, during the decade, amounted 
 to no less than 3,129,384. When the probabilities 
 of the future are considered, it appears reasonable 
 to assume that the checks on increase, voluntary 
 and external, will affect the white rather than 
 the coloured portion of the community. The 
 negroes will remain, as at present, uninfluenced 
 by those moral and prudential considerations 
 which, in educated communities, restrain the in- 
 crease of population by discouraging early marriage 
 or marriage altogether. These considerations will, 
 with the white population, have an ever-increasing 
 weight as the standard of living becomes higher 
 and more luxurious, and the country less able to 
 support the population without that struggle for 
 existence which is seen in the older countries of 
 Europe. While the prudential check will thus 
 operate to diminish the ratio of normal increase, 
 the same causes will affect the stream of im- 
 migration which will slacken and at length cease 
 altogether. The race in population will then be 
 between a reasonable and highly civilised people
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEMOCRACY. 125 
 
 restrained from marriage by numerous considera- 
 tions of the most complex character, and an ir- 
 rational and uncivilised negro community, whom 
 no prudential check on population affects, and who 
 can live and be happy on the simple elements 
 of sunshine and sweet potatoes.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 
 
 THE Irish question is as burning a one in 
 American as in English politics, and I cannot help 
 thinking it more hopeless in the States than here, 
 from the difficulty of withdrawing concessions 
 which have once been made. Mr. Edward O'Brien, 
 in reply to a letter of mine in the Times, has in- 
 sisted that the most progressive and prosperous 
 cities in America New York, Chicago, and San 
 Francisco are just those in which the population 
 of Irish birth and descent is largest in proportion, 
 and would have us infer that to this element their 
 prosperity is chiefly due. As reasonably might we 
 argue that the prosperity of London and Liverpool 
 was due to the Irish, who are the poorest and 
 most unmanageable part of their population. The 
 splendid commercial situation of New York,
 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 127 
 
 Chicago, and San Francisco, and the marvellous 
 energy of the American population, are the cause 
 of their prosperity. It is because they are rich that 
 the Irish collect, in them. They live almost 
 exclusively in the towns, and although in Ireland 
 they complain of not possessing land, yet in 
 America they will not accept land for cultivation, 
 though they may obtain it at a nominal price, or 
 for nothing. The majority of the Irish of New 
 York differ little from the same class in English 
 cities ; they are mostly illiterate, and the secret of 
 their power is not in their energy or numbers, but 
 that the long and absolute rule of the priests has 
 accustomed them to vote solid as they are bid. 
 The voters of the city are two hundred and fifty 
 thousand, and of these the Irish are probably little 
 more than a fifth ; but the determination of their 
 leaders, and their own ignorance and political 
 ineptitude, enable the disreputable minority to 
 triumph over the wealth, culture, and intelligence 
 of the disunited majority. No more grotesque 
 illustration of the failure of universal suffrage to 
 attain the result which alone would justify it could 
 possibly be found. The Irish Catholics of America 
 are Democrats almost to a man, but this is an 
 accident due to a national characteristic which is 
 illustrated in the well-known story of the Irishman
 
 128 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 who being asked, on his first landing at New York, 
 what were his politics, replied that he knew nothing 
 of politics, but that he was against the Government. 
 The Republicans having held office ever since the 
 war, the Irish have naturally joined the ranks of 
 the opposition. It would be a mistake to imagine 
 that political purity prevails where there is no con- 
 trolling Irish element. New York has been cited 
 as a convenient illustration of the evils of the 
 American system. But leave civilisation behind 
 and go to the far West, to a new town, like 
 Cheyenne, in Wyoming, and every form of 
 electoral corruption will be found there rampant, 
 and votes sold shamelessly and as openly as sheep 
 in the public market. The Irish are far more un- 
 popular in America than they are in England ; and 
 little sympathy for their grievances is felt or 
 expressed ; for the Americans are far too practical 
 a race not to rate at their true value the utterances 
 of interested demagogues such as O'Donovan 
 Rossa and Parnell. The language used in 
 Dynamite League meetings in New York, and 
 the criminal actions which follow, are alike 
 viewed with indignation and disgust by the whole 
 American community ; but the weakness of Demo- 
 cratic Government is such that the respectable 
 majority do not dare to crush or even silence these 

 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 129 
 
 enemies of the human race, and allow them, without 
 molestation, not only to preach and plot arson 
 and murder, but to carry them into execution. No 
 civilised Government should tolerate for a day the 
 open preaching of murder, and America must not 
 be surprised if her protection, not of political 
 offenders, but of common assassins, results ere 
 long in seriously straining her relations with this 
 country. 
 
 It is a happy circumstance that the self-com- 
 mand and moderation of the English people are 
 such that a long series of atrocious outrages has 
 failed to arouse any wide-spread hostility to 
 Ireland. Englishmen realise that Irish troubles 
 are in great part due to the selfish and unworthy 
 policy of past years, while it is impossible that the 
 Irish should be unpopular when (putting Messieurs 
 les assassins aside) there is no more delightful, 
 lovable, and quick-witted race in the world. But 
 we have not suffered from them as the Americans 
 have suffered ; and were London, as is New York, 
 in the hands of a gang of Irish adventurers, our 
 patience might be tried too sorely. Mr. Parnell 
 hopes in the next Parliament to command the 
 political situation ; but as his avowed programme 
 includes the rejection of allegiance to the Queen 
 and dismemberment of the empire, he must not be 
 
 K
 
 130 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 surprised if both parties unite in temporarily, 
 and so far as imperial questions are concerned, 
 disfranchising constituencies who return members 
 pledged to destroy and degrade the country. 
 When the Irish leaders cease to demand what no 
 party could grant them without immediate political 
 suicide, they will find Englishmen disposed to 
 render them full justice, and such a measure of 
 local ar;d municipal self-government as prevails in 
 England, and is consistent both with imperial 
 rights and with the duty of protection, we owe to 
 the loyal minority in Ireland. When the time for 
 considering this question shall arrive and it will 
 not be until the Irish leaders abandon the open 
 profession of treason the precedent of America, 
 both in its war to prevent national disintegration 
 and in the virtual independence of each unit of the 
 Federal body, will doubtless receive full attention 
 from the Liberal Government. In the ears of the 
 orators of the Opposition, who habitually speak of 
 the Irish as of some savage people with whom we 
 were at open war, the words compromise and 
 concession sound weak and criminal. But when 
 History writes the annals of the nineteenth century 
 and the voice of passion is still, the policy of the 
 Liberal Government towards Ireland, its generosity 
 in the presence of ingratitude, its justice and self-
 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 131 
 
 possession amidst the fierce storm of party abuse, 
 will be held its best title to honour. 
 
 Since the above remarks were written London 
 has been startled -by the partial destruction of the 
 Victoria Railway Station by dynamite, and by 
 the synchronous attempt to destroy the stations 
 of Charing Cross, Ludgate Hill, and Paddington. 
 It has been curious to note the comparative in- 
 difference with which these crimes have been 
 regarded by the people of London. There has 
 been no panic and but little excitement ; while 
 it has been generally felt that strong language 
 directed against the dynamiters would be as il- 
 logical as abuse of wolves engaged in their natural 
 occupation of ravaging the sheep-folds. The ex- 
 planation is to be partly found in the enormous 
 size of London, the districts of which know as 
 little of each other as if they were situated in 
 different countries. The unit in a body of five 
 million persons regards with comparative equa- 
 nimity an outrage directed against the entire 
 community. The doctrine of chances protects 
 him from being blown into the air. But while 
 England watches with contempt the efforts of 
 the dynamiters to pose as heroes in the eyes of 
 the Irish helps of New York, whose wages they 
 hope to divert^to their own pockets, considerable 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 irritation has been excited by the attitude of 
 America. Indeed, the great Republic has never 
 cut a more sorry figure ; and its struggles to 
 appear impartial, virtuous, and the sacred asylum 
 of oppressed patriotism, are rather subjects for 
 amusement than anger. The poor rags with which 
 the New York Press has striven to cover its 
 political nakedness are threadbare indeed. We 
 are told that neither municipal nor international 
 law meet the supposed exigencies of the case; 
 that the law cannot act against the assassins 
 without clear and irrefragable proof in each 
 particular case ; that no practical way out of 
 the difficulty has been suggested ; that political 
 refugees must be protected, however objectionable 
 their modes of argument ; that the British Govern- 
 ment declined to surrender Orsini, whose case was 
 identical with that of the dynamiters, and that 
 it would be illogical for England to expect 
 America to take action where she had previously 
 refused to move. It is possible that the American 
 Government may be less timid than the Press, 
 and may find sufficient courage to defy the Irish 
 vote, and insist that those who live beneath its 
 flag and claim its protection shall refrain from 
 the open preaching and practice of murder but 
 a Presidential election is at hand, and those who
 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 133 
 
 know America best expect least from its govern- 
 ment. The Alabama precedent, in accordance 
 with which the English paid extravagant com- 
 pensation for damage inflicted on American 
 commerce by ships of war which had been 
 allowed to arm in British ports, ,is, naturally, 
 declared in the States to be inapplicable. But 
 the nature of arbitration would not allow the 
 Americans to be themselves the judges of this 
 question ; and an impartial umpire, whether it 
 were France, or Brazil, or Germany, might hold 
 that the Government which allowed public sub- 
 scriptions for murder and outrage ; which saw 
 the assassins arrange their crimes, and glory, in 
 the face of the world, in their perpetration, was 
 fully as liable to be called upon for the amplest 
 compensation as was the British Government, 
 which, in a careless moment, and uncertain of the 
 power of its municipal law, allowed the Alabama 
 to leave its shores. There is no real doubt as 
 to the identity of the assassins. If a dozen men, 
 such as John Devoy, of the Irish Nation ; Patrick 
 Ford, editor of the Irish World ; P. J. Sheridan, 
 the friend of Mr. Parnell, and connected with 
 the same paper; O'Donovan Rossa and Patrick 
 Joyce of the United Irishmen were arrested and 
 sent to prison in default of sufficient guarantees
 
 134 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 of future good behaviour, no great injustice would 
 be done. But so long as the annoyance and 
 danger affect England alone, America does not 
 take the trouble to move. The day will come 
 when American men and women and children 
 will suffer from the dynamiters' activity. Then 
 Judge Lynch, whose methods Englishmen refuse to 
 follow, will have an interview with these New 
 York editors, ending with a short shrift and the 
 nearest telegraph pole. 
 
 The difficulties and dangers which necessarily 
 accompany manhood suffrage are, in America, 
 intensified by the enormous emigration and the 
 law of naturalisation under which aliens are 
 admitted as citizens after five years' residence. 
 The consequence of this provision, which, as in 
 the case of Michael Mulhooly, is frequently 
 evaded, is that a large number of persons are 
 annually admitted to all the rights of citizenship 
 before they have become American in sympathy 
 or sentiment, with the tendency to form separate 
 political groups looking only to the interests of 
 their own class or nationality. Thus a number 
 of imperia in imperio grow up, German, Scandi- 
 navian, or Irish, bringing, as we have seen with 
 the last-named, confusion into the Federal Govern- 
 ment, and fighting from beneath its shield against
 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 135 
 
 their private enemies. The Germans, in America 
 as elsewhere, are a sober, honest, and intelligent 
 body, and have brought the land of their adoption 
 its most valuable contingent. But they are rather 
 in than of the American world. They do not 
 intermarry with Americans ; they have their 
 separate societies and amusements ; and as they 
 now number some ten millions, there will at no 
 distant date be a larger German population in 
 America than in Europe, whose sympathies must 
 more or less affect European politics. To a less 
 degree these remarks apply to the Scandinavian 
 emigrants, who, in States like Minnesota, are 
 numerous. They have in no way changed their 
 nationality with their climate, and the Swedish 
 charge d'affaires at Washington told me that 
 they were continually referring to him in their 
 difficulties instead of to the authorities of their 
 State. 
 
 Difficulties such as these may be successfully 
 solved ; but there is one legacy of the war, in the 
 negro vote, which will only become more in- 
 tolerable by the lapse of time, for the reason 
 that the African race is extremely prolific, 
 and, under existing conditions, may be expected 
 to increase more rapidly than any other element 
 of the heterogeneous mass of American citizens
 
 136 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 The position of the negro is anomalous and 
 embarrassing. Without referring to the multiplied 
 researches of the Anthropological Society on the 
 capacity of the African races, it may generally be 
 asserted that the negro is as fit for the franchise 
 as the monkey he closely resembles. He has one 
 or two good qualities and many bad ones. He 
 makes a very good waiter if in firm hands, but 
 is usually spoilt by American familiarity, which 
 in his small mind breeds contempt, so that the 
 head waiter at a restaurant give himself more 
 airs than an English duke. For any occupation 
 requiring higher intellectual powers than blacking 
 boots or waiting at table the vast majority of 
 negroes are unfit. A few of the best struggle 
 into the professions and there fail, though I 
 remember at Washington some cases of partial 
 success ; while one coloured female lawyer of much 
 vivacity roundly declared, during the recent civil 
 rights discussion, that the negroes were the 
 superior race in America. Since the war they 
 have largely increased, and now number some 
 six millions of uneducated and unimprovable 
 persons, as useless for the purposes of civilisation 
 as if they were still wandering naked through the 
 African jungle. Slavery is an accursed thing, 
 but it is rather as degrading the higher race of
 
 THE FOREIGN ELEMENT. 137 
 
 slaveholders than as brutalising the slaves that 
 it must be condemned. There is no more natural 
 equality among races than individuals, and im- 
 perial peoples have to use up some of the weaker 
 and poorer in their political manufactories. The 
 Nemesis of slavery was not exhausted in the civil 
 war. Its evil fruits are still to be gathered by 
 the American people, who have in their midst 
 this ever-growing mass of savagery which they 
 hate and despise, and to which they were com- 
 pelled to give the rights of citizenship. For 
 although it sounds well to speak of the war as 
 the protest of the North against slavery, the 
 emancipation of the slaves was never intended by 
 the Americans. They then cared for the negroes 
 no more than now, when they would be delighted 
 to carry the whole race to the middle of the 
 Atlantic and sink them there. The North was 
 driven into war, much against its will, by the 
 threats, the insults, and the hostile acts of the 
 South. Abraham Lincoln, in his inaugural address 
 as President, repeated and emphasised his former 
 declaration that " he had no purpose, directly or 
 indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery 
 in the States where it existed." And when the 
 war was over and the victory won, he was far too 
 shrewd to desire to admit the negroes to the
 
 138 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 franchise. This fatal measure was taken in sheer 
 self-defence to swamp the Southern vote, which 
 would otherwise have restored the intolerable 
 situation previous to the war. Since that day 
 the miserable negro has been the tool and sport 
 of every party ; now petted, now kicked ; his 
 strong limbs and feeble brain at the service of 
 any demagogue who might best know how to 
 tickle his vanity and arouse his passions. If he 
 were other than himself he would be a fit object 
 for compassion ; but he is of too low a type to 
 be unhappy, and is probably the only man who 
 laughs to-day in America.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 JUSTICE. 
 
 THE administration of justice in the States, on 
 which I have alreadyincidentallyremarked, demands 
 some further notice, for it contains the surest test 
 of the measure of freedom enjoyed by a nation. 
 However debased may be the standard of popular 
 morality, and however low the ideal of national 
 duty, that people is still free among whom the 
 judgment seat is pure and unaffected alike by the 
 passion of the mob or the influence of the 
 Government. But, however bravely a people may 
 flaunt its national flag, it is not yet free or has 
 ceased to be so when its judges prostitute their 
 sacred functions ; when they are the hired servants 
 of corrupt and infamous adventurers; when juries 
 are bought and sold ; where the poor are condemned 
 and the rich are criminal with impunity ; and 
 when the outraged people have their ultimate and
 
 140 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 only refuge from the infamy of the Courts in 
 those parodies of justice which, under the name of 
 Lynch Law, are as much the disgrace of America 
 as the outward sign of its moral decrepitude. 
 That this is the condition of the administration 
 of what is termed justice in many of the States 
 it is impossible to doubt, or that it has accom- 
 panied a general depreciation in the standard 
 of public virtue. The contemporary press pro- 
 claims it daily in a thousand newspapers, and 
 novelists and essayists are equally frank. Mr. 
 Grant White, who, while an untrustworthy witness 
 on English manners is both a competent and 
 courageous one with regard to America, writes as 
 follows : 
 
 " The deterioration in morals is so certain and so well-known 
 that no one thinks of disputing it. To look through a file of 
 one of our leading newspapers for the last fifteen years is to 
 be led to the conclusion that personal honesty has become the 
 rarest of virtues in the United States, except public probity, 
 which seems no longer to exist. The very ruins of it have 
 disappeared. Our State legislators, instead of being com- 
 posed of men to whom their constituents looked up, are now 
 composed of men upon whom their constituents look down 
 not second-rate, nor even third-rate, but fourth- and fifth-rate 
 men, sordid in morals and vulgar in manners, who do politics 
 as a business, for the mere purpose of filling their own 
 pockets. No one thinks of disputing this more than the 
 presence of the blood-sucking insects of summer. Congress 
 itself is openly declared by our own journals to be, because
 
 JUSTICE. 141 
 
 it is known to be, the most corrupt [body in civilised Chris- 
 tendom. Within the last fifteen years we have seen men 
 occupying the highest positions in the Government of the 
 United States, who were not only purchasable, but who had 
 been purchased, and at a very small price. I know what I 
 say, and mean it. The Cabinets, during the same period, 
 have been so rotten with corruption that the presence in 
 them of two or three men of integrity could not save them. 
 Worse even than this, judges are openly called Mr. This-one's 
 judge or Mr. That-one's ; their owner being generally the 
 controlling stockholder and manager of some great corpora- 
 tion which coins wealth for him and his satellites by schemes 
 of gigantic extortion." 
 
 The protest of the American people against this 
 prostitution of justice is Lynch law, which many 
 apologists have attempted to justify on the ground 
 that in new communities, and especially in those 
 which have attracted, in mining districts, an ex- 
 ceptionally brutal, lawless and dangerous class of 
 settlers, the more respectable portion of the com- 
 munity is compelled, in self-defence, and to maintain 
 those elementary principles of society without which 
 an assembly of men is no better than a pack of 
 wolves, to arm themselves with the powers which the 
 law is unable to wield, and punish offenders sum- 
 marily and severely. This justification is sufficient, 
 and indeed complete so far as those communities are 
 concerned the conditions of which are so primitive 
 that the law is necessarily silent and the social 
 instinct of self-preservation takes its place. But a
 
 I 4 2 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 traveller may go far in America to find circum- 
 stances such as these. Perhaps in towns like 
 Austin and San Antonio, on the very borderland 
 of civilisation, lynching may still be a necessary 
 evil : but in the rudest mining districts of the 
 Rocky Mountains I have found the general popu- 
 lation as orderly as elsewhere. No doubt if 
 curiosity or amusement take the traveller into 
 gambling saloons at midnight in Silverton or 
 Leadville he will do well to avoid giving offence to 
 his rough companions ; but the average miner is a 
 pleasant fellow enough, and there are many quarters 
 of London, Paris or New York more dangerous to 
 a well-dressed stranger than the wildest mining 
 town in the Western States. Nor is lynching at all 
 confined to such districts. Few days pass without 
 the newspapers recording lynchings in Southern or 
 Western States, generally with indifference, often 
 with approval. In October last, within two or 
 three days, I noted several such cases which 
 attracted no particular attention. In one, in 
 North Carolina, a negro, in a quarrel with a white 
 man named Redmond, shot him dead. Campbell, 
 the negro, was arrested. The same night a band of 
 thirty masked men took him from the jail and 
 hanged him to a tree, doing their work so quickly, 
 and it may be supposed so entirely with the
 
 JUSTICE. 143 
 
 connivance and consent of the jail officials, that 
 the occurrence was not known till Campbell's body 
 was found dangling from the tree at daylight. 
 "Everything" (says naively the local newspaper) 
 " is quiet now." A day or two before, what 
 the journals call " an effective but unusual 
 punishment" was inflicted upon a negro of the 
 name of Lewis Wood, who had been convicted 
 of outraging a young coloured girl. The mob 
 waited at the Edgerly station for the train 
 conveying the prisoner, dragged him a short 
 distance from the line, chained him to a tree, 
 covered him with pine knots and chips, and burnt 
 him to death. About the same day at Lafayette, 
 Indiana, an old man named Jacob Nell, who had 
 confessed to the murder of a young girl, Ada 
 Atkinson, was with difficulty saved from the mob. 
 The crime seemed to me so motiveless that, in 
 England, a verdict of acquittal on the ground of 
 insanity would have been probably given : but the 
 mob were excited and demanded blood. The 
 local paper observed calmly that the mob appearing 
 to have no leader, " it was probable that the law 
 would be allowed to take its course." Whether the 
 old maniac was torn to pieces or hanged I cannot 
 say. I did not follow his fortunes further. Such 
 cases are too common in America to excite more
 
 144 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 than a passing interest. The inveterate dislike to 
 the negro on the part of the white population in the 
 Southern States is shown very clearly in these out- 
 rages. The assault or the manslaughter committed 
 by a white man is often passed over altogether by 
 the community. The unfortunate negro, whose 
 passions are strong and uncontrolled by education 
 or self-respect, has no such immunity, and is ruth- 
 lessly strung up by Judge Lynch, or sometimes, 
 as we have seen, burnt alive. 
 
 As these lines are passing through the press, I 
 notice in the American telegraphic intelligence the 
 following announcement : " A negro who had 
 brutally murdered a woman near Austin, Texas, 
 was chased and captured. He was taken to the 
 scene of the crime by a lynching party of one 
 hundred, and confessed his guilt. He was then 
 roasted to death." The confession extorted under 
 such circumstances was probably worth neither 
 more nor less than those wrung from the victims of 
 the Inquisition previous to an auto-da-fe. 
 
 " It will be noticed," writes the New York Tribune, " that 
 the privilege of becoming furious because one of their race 
 has been killed by one of the other is strictly reserved to the 
 whites. The negroes are expected to be serene, if not grateful, 
 when negroes are killed by whites." 
 
 The conviction of eight " sturdy farmer boys " 
 in Georgia for outrages on negroes was received with
 
 JUSTICE. 145 
 
 general surprise, the more so when it appeared that 
 a majority of the jury was composed of whites, it 
 having been found impossible to punish such 
 offences which were justified by the sentiment of 
 the white community, and verdicts of acquittal were 
 always returned. The evidence in this case showed 
 that the prisoners had whipped, shot, and otherwise 
 maltreated negroes who had voted for Mr. Speer, 
 the independent Democratic candidate for Congress. 
 One negro swore to having received one hundred 
 and seventy -five lashes, on the ground that he was 
 
 a " d d Speer negro," besides being struck with 
 
 steel knuckles, kicked, and threatened with death. 
 Another had been shot in three places. The 
 defence was a general alibi, but the witnesses 
 positively identified several of the defendants ; and 
 the secret of the verdict probably was that the 
 evidence was too strong to be safely disregarded 
 by even a sympathising jury. 
 
 The following incident, which occurred in August 
 last in the same State, will show the manner in 
 which the negro can be treated by " a member of 
 a good family " : 
 
 " While Mrs. George W. Felts was shaking fruit from a 
 tree, Peter Broomfield, coloured, asked her to be careful that 
 she did not break off any branches. Mrs. Felts lost her 
 temper and complained to her husband of what Broomfield 
 had said. Yesterday, while the latter was at work roofing a 
 
 L-
 
 145 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 house, in company with three other men, Felts appeared at 
 the foot of the ladder with a double-barrelled shotgun. Broom- 
 field comprehended the situation and pleaded for mercy. 
 Felts said, ' If you will come down and let me flog you, that 
 will be the end of it ; if you don't I will kill you.' Broomfield's 
 terrified companions urged him to take the flogging and save 
 his life. As Broomfield commenced a descent of the ladder, 
 Felts, without saying a word, fired both barrels of the gun 
 and two balls from a revolver into the coloured man's body, 
 and he fell to the ground a corpse. Felts then walked to 
 where the body lay, and with an oath fired three bullets from 
 his pistol into the dead man's breast. Then, turning to the 
 terrified spectators, Felts said, ' There, I guess that fixed 
 him ! ' and walked away, since which he has not been seen. 
 The negroes are greatly excited, and say if they can capture 
 Felts they will burn him alive in the woods. Felts is twenty- 
 seven years old and a member of a good family." 
 
 If it should be said that from an outrage such as 
 this, committed by a passionate man, no argument 
 can be drawn, I would only reply that the incident 
 may be taken for what it is worth, and derives its 
 only significance from the general surprise with 
 which the Ku-Klux convictions above referred to 
 were received. 
 
 The Echo, which is the greatest admirer of 
 American institutions in the London press, and 
 which has criticised my opinions of the Harvest of 
 Democracy with some asperity, lately observed in 
 its leading columns that it was remarkable that 
 American public opinion seldom mad'e a mistake 
 in its judgment of a criminal, whatever the courts
 
 JUSTICE. 147 
 
 might do, and that there was no case on record of 
 a man having been lynched on evidence that would 
 not have procured his conviction in any well- 
 constituted and honest court. A more laughable 
 statement was surely never framed. It is 
 obviously impossible to be certain of the guilt of 
 *a man who has been hanged or burnt alive before 
 trial. It is as obviously unreasonable to insist on 
 the guilt of an unfortunate who has been lynched 
 after an acquittal in open court. Yet such cases 
 form a considerable proportion of these outrages. 
 Nor do the Americans themselves adopt the 
 illogical view of their English apologist. The 
 Century of April last writes as follows : 
 
 " It cannot be too often nor too strongly proclaimed that 
 these lynchings themselves are crimes ; that they are utterly 
 without excuse ; that they furnish a remedy which is worse 
 than the disease. When a score of men can find no better way 
 of expressing their detestation of murder than by becoming 
 murderers themselves, our civilisation seems to have reduced 
 itself to an absurdity. Moreover, lynch law is not much more 
 accurate in its measurement and dispensation of justice than 
 the lax administration against which it protests. The mob 
 is neither judicial nor chivalrous ; the weak and defenceless 
 are far more likely to suffer at its hands than the strong and 
 prosperous, as is shown by the fact that the victims of more 
 than half the lynchings reported last year were Southern 
 negroes. 
 
 " Nevertheless, the failure of criminal justice, which makes 
 room for mobs and lynching, is a greater disgrace than the 
 savagery of the mobs. The fact that thirteen out of fourteen 
 
 L 2
 
 I4 8 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 murderers escape the gallows is the one damning fact that 
 blackens the record of our criminal jurisprudence. No 
 American ought to indulge in any boasting about his native 
 land, while the evidence remains that the laws made for the 
 protection of human life are thus shamelessly trampled under 
 foot. No occupant of the bench and no member of the bar 
 ought to rest until those monstrous abuses which result in the 
 utter defeat of justice are thoroughly corrected." 
 
 The statistics of criminal justice in the States to 
 which the Century refers show that, during the year 
 1882, twelve hundred and sixty-six murders were 
 reported ; and in 1883, no less than fifteen hundred 
 and seventeen a proportion three times as large as 
 in England, and nearly double that of those Euro- 
 pean countries where crimes of violence are most 
 common and least regarded. Against this black 
 record there stand only ninety-three legal execu- 
 tions ; so that the deterrent influence of the death 
 penalty, where only one murderer in fifteen meets 
 his deserts, can hardly be considered very 
 great. Where the law has thus grievously and 
 conspicuously failed, the wild and blind passion of 
 the mob has pretended to supply its deficiencies, 
 and the same year records no less than one hundred 
 and eighteen lynchings. 
 
 The weakness of the law and its corrupt and 
 inefficient administration are .the direct cause of 
 this state of things. But, as the Century truly
 
 JUSTICE. 149 
 
 observes, the remedy is worse than the disease. 
 Justice is brought into contempt both by the 
 usurpation of its functions by the mob and by its 
 own cowardice and venality. How many persons, 
 it might reasonably be asked, were judicially 
 punished during the year 1883 for their participa- 
 tion in these 118 mob murders. It is notorious 
 that the law is ordinarily powerless to punish such 
 outrages ; while it is equally certain that their effect 
 upon the people is of the most demoralising kind. 
 
 Last September I was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, 
 a day or two after a lynching had occurred, and I 
 inquired into its circumstances from some of the 
 townsmen who had assisted at the ceremony. So 
 far as I remember, the victim was accused of having 
 murdered a man whom he had met camping in the 
 prairie, who had invited him to share his meal, and 
 whom, when sleeping, he killed and robbed. The 
 crime was an atrocious one, though whether the 
 accused were guilty can be never known, for, having 
 been arrested, he was lodged in the lockup, whence 
 the good citizens, fearing that he might escape 
 punishment, through the uncertainty of the law, 
 incontinently took him, without any resistance on 
 the part of the officials, and hanged him to a 
 telegraph pole in the principal street. One of my 
 informants was a young man employed in a large
 
 ISO THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 dry-goods store, who assured me that, although 
 he took his gun, he only attended the execution in 
 the character of a spectator. The self-constituted 
 judges and executioners were, he said, the most 
 respectable inhabitants of the town, shopkeepers 
 and merchants. The hangman was a telephone 
 clerk, and as, mounted on a ladder, he drew the 
 rope, already round the victim's neck, to the top 
 of the pole, he put the end to his ear and shouted 
 " Hullo," in telephonic fashion, attracting the 
 attention of the person at the other end of the 
 line. This brutal witticism was received with great 
 laughter by the crowd, though it may have been 
 less appreciated by the condemned, who was 
 straightway launched into eternity. No one of 
 the Cheyenne people to whom I spoke seemed in 
 any way ashamed of the occurrence. The mur- 
 derer, they said, would have escaped punishment 
 if he had been sent for trial, and their procedure, if 
 less regular, was more certain and just than that 
 of the courts. Now we may allow, for the sake of 
 argument, that this hanged man was guilty, though 
 of this there can exist no legal proof ; and, further, 
 that his execution was due to the fear that, if 
 regularly tried, he would escape proper punish- 
 ment. Yet to a person who has been privileged to 
 live in a civilised country, where the passions of
 
 JUSTICE. 151 
 
 the mob are held in control by the firm and 
 impartial administration of the law, the respectable 
 citizens of Cheyenne, which is a wealthy, prosperous 
 town, with churches, banks, hotels, and daily news- 
 papers, seem little removed from savages. If the 
 people of Wyoming or any other State desire a 
 pure administration of justice, they can obtain it. 
 The remedy is in their own hands. The judges 
 are not appointed by the Government, but elected 
 by themselves: the juries who acquit murderers 
 are their own friends and comrades, and the 
 defeat of justice is due to their own low standard 
 of public morality. 
 
 If an illustration, on a larger scale, of the mal- 
 administration of justice and the demoralisation 
 which results from the practice of lynching be 
 required, the recent riots at Cincinnati furnish it. 
 The details are too notorious to need lengthy 
 repetition. Suffice it to say that a sentence of 
 twenty years' imprisonment having been passed on 
 a young man named Berner for the murder and 
 robbery of his employer, general indignation was 
 excited in the town. The people had long com 
 plained that murderers were habitually acquitted, 
 admitted to bail, or sentenced to inadequate terms 
 of imprisonment, and they believed that any 
 criminal might escape whose friends were in a
 
 152 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 position to fee unscrupulous lawyers to bribe 
 equally unscrupulous juries. A mass meeting was 
 held, which, speedily losing self-control, started 
 for the jail with the declared intention of lynching 
 the murderers confined there. The attack on the 
 building was repulsed by the police and militia, 
 with a loss to the mob of some sixty-five killed and 
 wounded. The excitement continually rose higher : 
 for two days the fighting lasted. Troops were 
 poured into the town, and a Catling gun was used 
 with terrible effect on the rioters. At the conclusion 
 of the affray, some two hundred were killed and 
 wounded, and the Court House, which had cost a 
 quarter of a million of dollars, was in ashes. Some 
 four thousand soldiers were encamped in the streets, 
 and Cincinnati resembled a city taken by assault. 
 
 I can imagine a simple German emigrant, on his 
 arrival in New York, reading the dark story of the 
 Cincinnati riots with a feeling akin to stupefaction. 
 Was it then for this that he had left Bismarck and 
 the tyranny of the Old World behind ? Was this 
 the America of his dreams, where the rich were 
 beneficent, the poor content, and where every free- 
 man enjoyed his own in honourable independence ? 
 Instead of the paradise he had imagined, he found 
 a pandemonium, with the people in revolt against 
 the law ; the troops mowing down the mob with
 
 JUSTICE. 153 
 
 machine guns, and Liberty, her eyes alight with 
 unholy passions and her shining garments all be- 
 smirched with blood, hounding on her worshippers 
 to arson, pillage, and murder. How could the 
 simple Teuton understand that this was the result 
 of government of the people for the people, or that 
 the American judge would not only, like Pilate, 
 have condemned the blameless victim and released 
 Barabbas, but, with a deeper infamy, would have 
 divided with Judas the price of blood ? 
 
 If we could believe that the Cincinnati riots 
 signified no more than a genuine protest of respect- 
 able citizens against the systematic prostitution of 
 justice, the friends of America and of freedom 
 might regard them with equanimity, if not approval. 
 Desperate diseases need desperate remedies, and in 
 politics, as in war, omelettes are not to be made 
 without breaking eggs. But I do not believe that 
 this view of the case would be correct. The riots 
 of Cincinnati were less due to the indignation of 
 the people at any inadequate sentence for, in every 
 country, such failures of justice are common from 
 the tenderness of the judge or the humanitarian 
 sentiment of the jury, than to the general demorali- 
 sation of the popular conscience due to the habitual 
 and unpunished practice of extra-judicial murder 
 under the name of lynch law. To the mob a
 
 154 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 lynching has all the savage delight and attraction 
 which Imperial Rome found in gladiatorial exhibi- 
 tions. The murder which caused this particular 
 outbreak was by no means an atrocious one, and 
 was brought home to the murderer by his voluntary 
 surrender and confession. It was punished by a 
 sentence of twenty years' imprisonment, only less 
 severe than death, and by many would be held to 
 be far worse than the death penalty. But a certain 
 number of citizens were determined that their 
 opinion of the appropriate punishment should, 
 according to Judge Lynch's arbitrary procedure, 
 over-ride the decision of the court ; and they were 
 surprised and indignant that the jail officials did 
 not fail in their duty and surrender the destined 
 victims after the usual and decent amount of coy 
 resistance. The passions of the mob were soon 
 aroused : the tiger had tasted blood ; and the pre- 
 tended purifiers of the judgment seat were speedily 
 reinforced by the large contingent of brutality and 
 crime which is to be found in the slums of every 
 considerable city. The contest was then between 
 order and anarchy ; and the troops were as justified 
 in firing on the rioters as was the Republican 
 Government of France in suppressing the Commune 
 in a similar manner. The character of the riot is 
 clearly shown in the savage attack made by the
 
 JUSTICE. 155 
 
 mob on the men engaged in extinguishing the fire 
 in a shop which was being pillaged, one fireman 
 being killed and several wounded. What does 
 American Liberty . say to these poor victims, 
 wounded and slain by their fellow-citizens while 
 discharging a dangerous and honourable duty ? 
 This is not the blood which cements the altar of 
 Freedom, but rather that with which African 
 savages besmear their cruel idols. If there be a 
 page in human history which, more than another, 
 might give occasion for sorrow to angels and 
 laughter to devils, it is surely the story of the 
 Cincinnati riots. 
 
 Although lynch law, both in the inequity of its 
 procedure and in the moral lassitude which it 
 induces, is the most startling symptom of judicial 
 maladministration, there are many concurrent signs 
 of the decadence of the respect due to law and of 
 the paralysis of its healthy action. The criminal 
 law is as little respected as feared, and, out of the 
 morbid sentimentalism of judges and juries and 
 the love of excitement in the people, who are dis- 
 posed to consider every one a hero who can suffi- 
 ciently amuse them, has arisen a race of lawyers 
 and experts who can prolong a trial till a jury 
 acquits because it has forgotten the evidence, and 
 who can successfully maintain that the most cold-
 
 156 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 blooded and deliberate murder was but the result 
 of a pardonable hallucination. English procedure 
 can show many lengthy trials, and the famous 
 Tichborne case was discreditable to our courts ; 
 but the point in dispute was obscure and of ab- 
 sorbing interest ; while the outrageous conduct of 
 the counsel for the defence was universally repro- 
 bated by the profession to which he belonged. But 
 we have nothing to compare with the scandal of the 
 Star Route case, the second trial of which lasted 
 six months, and ended in a gross miscarriage of 
 justice ; or the indecency of the Guiteau case, where 
 the assassin of the President was permitted, for 
 months, to browbeat and insult judges and counsel 
 alike, while his blasphemy and insolence were 
 applauded by a public as noisy and disrespectful 
 as the gallery of a suburban theatre. The com- 
 ments of the New York Herald on the Cincinnati 
 riots are significant enough : 
 
 " What with facile coroners and criminal authorities who 
 are chosen for political reasons and obey the nod of a boss, 
 and the plea of insanity and all the dilatory processes of the 
 land, the murderer who gets hanged at last is an unusually 
 unlucky mortal. But while we do not see any probability 
 that our citizens are likely to try the Cincinnati remedy 
 against this evil, yet if they should be disposed that way, 
 they may well remember the troublesome elements that 
 smoulder just beneath the peaceful surface of city life. We 
 have a society here that meets every Sunday night to hear
 
 JUSTICE. 157 
 
 speeches in favour of universal murder with dynamite. We 
 have a colony of the men who tried to burn the city of Paris. 
 We have Most and Schwab and an army of their adherents. 
 We have perhaps a hundred thousand men who would con- 
 template the burning of this city as a noble sacrifice on the 
 altar of their principles." 
 
 No critic of American institutions can, with 
 justice or honesty, refuse to make the fullest allow- 
 ance for the heterogeneity of the American popu- 
 lation, and the enormous difficulties caused by the 
 swarm of immigrants who pour into New York at 
 the rate of a thousand a day from every part of 
 Europe. But in drawing from American difficulties 
 the lesson for English guidance, we cannot forget 
 that the root of the evil lies in universal suffrage, 
 untempered by any educational or moral checks, 
 and in opening the ballot to all but the Chinese 
 (who would probably vote far more reasonably 
 than a large number of more favoured citizens), 
 thus taking the power from those who could use 
 it aright, and intrusting it to those who have no 
 knowledge to use it wisely, even had they the wish 
 to do so. The law then becomes, as we have seen, 
 the accomplice of the criminal ; and the orderly 
 majority are thrust into the position so abhorrent 
 to a civilised community, of holding their own by 
 force of arms. Nothing can be more hardening to 
 the national conscience than this attitude. An
 
 158 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 American friend, writing to me from New York on 
 the subject of the low Irish in that city, says : 
 
 "They are clamorous and noisy, and, like O'Donovan 
 Rossa, make a great noise to convince people of what they 
 call their power. When they become lawless, however, we 
 shoot them down, and shall continue to do so." 
 
 Drastic remedies such as these, inevitable as 
 they may be, are not to be prescribed with a light 
 heart. They seem to signify the negation of law ; 
 and the more prosaic procedure of the English 
 courts, even when administering the odious neces- 
 sity of a Coercion Act, is more in accord with 
 nineteenth-century civilisation.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 THE cheapness of democratic institutions is the 
 ground on which they have been most frequently 
 recommended to popular approval. Demagogues 
 have pointed the attention of the mob to the long 
 Civil Lists of princes, and to the pensions and fat 
 offices which a privileged aristocracy have divided 
 among their order ; and have contrasted this 
 system of jobbery with the chaste republican 
 simplicity which, instead of the imperial ermine, is 
 content to be clothed with virtue and public spirit. 
 It is then necessary to examine these high pre- 
 tensions. History is full of the extravagance of 
 Courts, and in no country more than our own has 
 titled incompetence drained the public purse, and 
 brought confusion on our policy at home and 
 abroad. Would the adoption of republicanism 
 abolish these evils, which, in a purer atmosphere,
 
 i6o THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 and in the light of a fuller publicity, have grown 
 daily less conspicuous ? 
 
 In France the new Republic has cost twice as 
 much as the Empire ; and the expenditure shows 
 no sign of having reached its highest point. But 
 it is not possible here to examine the statistics of 
 the French Republic, and we will be content with 
 a few of those connected with military and naval 
 administration in the United States. First, it is 
 necessary to understand the duties which are 
 expected of the American army. Its services are 
 not likely to be required against a foreign enemy, 
 and it is thus maintained for home service in such 
 numbers and efficiency as may enable it to preserve 
 order in any exceptional emergencies, such as the 
 riots of Cincinnati or Pittsburg, to guard the 
 Mexican frontier, and to restrain the raids of 
 Indian tribes. The last duty is that upon which 
 it is mostly engaged, and a most unsatisfactory 
 duty it is. The world may judge of the value 
 which a republic sets on liberty when it studies 
 the treatment of the negroes before the war, and 
 the Indians to-day, at the hands of the people 
 and Government of the United States. If all the 
 Indian tribes men, women, and children through- 
 out the States and Territories be enumerated they 
 amount to some 66,000 souls, the population of a
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 161 
 
 second-rate town. Yet a long series of Indian 
 outrages and reprisals have and are taking place, 
 which a nation of 50,000,000 does not disdain to 
 call " Indian wars/' The true origin of the 
 disputes is in the weakness of the executive and 
 the popular contempt for the law. The squatters 
 and settlers of the West look upon the Indians as 
 " vermin," to be exterminated as speedily as 
 possible. The miserable savages have no refuge 
 save in the generosity and justice of the Govern- 
 ment, which has set apart for their especial use 
 and benefit reservations within which no white 
 settlements are permitted. But they are harassed 
 and persecuted on every side ; their undoubted 
 rights are disallowed or confiscated, and corrupt 
 place-hunters, ignorant of their language and 
 customs, are appointed to superintend their delicate 
 relations with their white neighbours. Only the 
 other day one of these officials, Mr. Commissioner 
 Price, took upon himself to abolish polygamy. 
 The usage was universal and immemorial in all 
 the tribes, but did not commend itself to the 
 enlightened views of Mr. Price, who not only 
 proposed to forbid it in the future, but to insist 
 upon ail those Indians who had two or more 
 wives summarily discarding all but the one he 
 considered permissible. As I have not heard of 
 
 M
 
 162 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 a new "Indian war" I presume that Mr. Price 
 has been extinguished by some superior official 
 possessed of more intelligence ; but the incident, 
 extraordinary as it may appear, is a fair illustration 
 of the policy of the Indian Bureau. It is im- 
 possible not to sympathise with the sentiment 
 of disgust and contempt with which the shrewd, 
 hard-working Yankee regards the dirty, lazy, and 
 irreclaimable savage whose lands and hunting- 
 grounds he considers his lawful spoil. The Indian 
 of romance, as drawn by Fenimore Cooper, who 
 seems in life and manners to have been as much 
 of a savage as his favourite models, is hardly 
 recognisable in the squalid and repulsive outcasts 
 one meets in New Mexico and other by-paths of 
 American civilisation. The Indian refuses to work 
 in any way or for any consideration, and subsists 
 on the chase and on the weekly dole of flour 
 which he is by no means too proud to accept from 
 the Government. If h'e cannot dig, to beg he is 
 by no means ashamed. It is obvious that the 
 sooner he dies out and makes room for more 
 useful persons the better ; yet this does not, from 
 an administrative point of view, excuse the 
 Government for the unworthy and dishonest policy 
 which they have permitted towards those who are 
 so few and weak that they should not look to the
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 163 
 
 authorities for protection in vain. In British 
 India there are many aboriginal races, like Bhils 
 and Gonds, who are of no account as a source of 
 revenue or strength, yet the Government takes 
 fully as much care of their interests as if they 
 were a rich and civilised community. In Canada, 
 where the Indians are numerous, we have no 
 record of constant Indian wars, and the white and 
 coloured races live side by side orderly and peace- 
 fully. The difference is due to the care with 
 which complaints are investigated and grievances 
 redressed, while Indian affairs are conducted by 
 officials who understand the business, instead of 
 by the first adventurer who can bribe the wire- 
 pullers of Washington to give him office. 
 
 Although the duties to be performed by the 
 United States army are few, and would be 
 nominal were the Indian Bureau administered 
 with ordinary honesty and discretion, it must not 
 be imagined that its cost is at all proportional to 
 its work or numbers. In 1881, the war ex- 
 penditure, in a time of profound peace, was 
 $40,500,000 ; and the number of regular 
 troops was 20,000. For i larger expenditure, 
 Germany maintains, on a peace footing, 419,650, 
 men : for an expenditure i|- greater, France 
 maintains 470,600 men, and England, whose 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 military expenditure is, from obvious reasons, 
 exceptionally heavy, for f greater expenditure 
 maintains (exclusive of India) 133,720 men. 
 
 For Englishmen, and especially for those who 
 look ignorantly and blindly across the Atlantic to 
 the great Republic of the West, and who, in their 
 simplicity, imagine that the adoption of republican 
 institutions would make the burthen of life in 
 England less heavy, there can be no more whole- 
 some course of study than the financial statistics of 
 the United States during the present century. I 
 will attempt, most briefly, to explain their general 
 features so far as military and naval expenditure is 
 concerned, in order that the cost of democracy may 
 be fairly realised. 
 
 The year 1801 found the young Republic at 
 peace, under the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson. 
 The strength of the regular army, as fixed by 
 Congress, was 5,144, and the cost $1,672,000. The 
 expenditure declined for some years, and the war 
 with England then raised it to an average of 
 $16,000,000 during the years 1812 to 1816. It fell 
 to one half of this the following year ; to $2,500,000 
 in 1820; and fluctuated from $3,000,000 to 
 $6,000,000 until the year 1836, when it suddenly 
 rose to $12,000,000, at which point it remained till 
 1839, when stringent and successful efforts at reduc-
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 165 
 
 tion were made, expenditure falling to 89x300,000 in 
 1839, and to 83,000,000 in 1843. With the year 
 1845, the first and economical period of war ex- 
 penditure ceased for America ; and the second 
 phase commenced with war with Mexico and the 
 annexation of Texas, and an annual expenditure 
 which between 1846 to 1860 averaged $17,000,000. 
 The period 1862 to 1866 must be excluded from 
 the calculation, as the enormous cost of the civil 
 war would make the statistics of normal expendi- 
 ture valueless. 
 
 In 1867, the military expenditure on peace estab- 
 lishments was 895,250,000, and it was not till 1871 
 that the effect of the war no longer appeared 
 directly in the estimates. The charges were 
 then some 835,750,000, and they have averaged 
 40,000,000 during the present decade. 
 
 The naval expenditure must now be considered. 
 This, in 1801, was considerably larger than that on 
 the army, and amounted to $2,111,424. It was, 
 however, kept below this sum until 1812, when 
 war being declared with Great Britain, the cost of 
 the navy at once doubled. But at no period of the 
 war, in which the American navy was most dis- 
 tinguished for gallantry and enterprise, did the 
 expenditure exceed $8,500,000. This was in 1815 
 With the conclusion of peace the naval budget
 
 166 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 fell to $4,000,000 ; during the period 1817 to 1846 it 
 fluctuated between $3,000,000 and $6,000,000. The 
 second phase of naval as of military finance then 
 set in. From 1 846 till the civil war, some $ 1 2,000,000 
 were spent annually on the navy ; the year suc- 
 ceeding the civil war, 1867, found the expenditure 
 $31,000,000 ; in 1874, it was the same, and the last 
 year, 1881, for which we have figures, the naval 
 expenditure was $15,686,671. 
 
 These results may be best thrown into the 
 tabular statement on p. 167, showing the ex- 
 penditure at different periods of the history of 
 the past century on both the army and navy, and 
 the number of troops maintained at the several 
 dates. For convenience the sums are given in 
 thousands of dollars, smaller sums being omitted. 
 
 However dull statistics may ordinarily be, no 
 one can deny that these figures are both in- 
 structive and amusing. Many curious financial 
 phenomena may be discovered within them. It 
 will be observed that while in the year 1850, 10,000 
 men of the regular army cost $9,000,000 annually, 
 they could not be procured in 1881 for less than 
 $20,000,000 ; that reduction in the number of the 
 troops signifies an increase in the total expendi- 
 ture on the army, and that 20,000 men cost more, 
 by many millions, than 27,000, or than 35,000. In
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 167 
 
 return for this enormous annual expenditure on 
 the army there are 20,000 men on paper. Whether 
 
 Year. 
 
 Army. 
 
 Navy. Regular 
 Army. 
 
 Remarks. 
 
 1801 
 
 1,672,000 
 
 2,III,OOO 5,144 
 
 
 1812 
 
 II,8l7,OOO! 3,957,000 11,831 ' \-ir , -p. i 
 
 1815 
 
 14,794,000 8,660,000 9,413 / 
 
 1817 
 
 8,004,000 
 
 3,314,000 9,980 ; 
 
 1827 
 
 3,948,000 
 
 4,263,000 6,184 
 
 1835 
 
 5,759,000 
 
 3,864,000 7,198 
 
 
 1837 
 
 13,682,000 
 
 6,646,000 Do. 
 
 
 1839 
 
 8,916,000 
 
 6,182,000 12,539 Florida War. 
 
 1843 
 
 2,908,000 
 
 3,727,000 8,613 
 
 1847 
 
 35,840,000 
 
 7,900,000 17,812 Mexican War. 
 
 1850 
 
 9,687,000 
 
 7,904,000 10,320 
 
 1855 
 
 14,648,000 
 
 13,327,000 Do. 
 
 1859 
 
 1860 
 
 23,154,000 
 16,472,000 
 
 14,690,000 -12,931 ... 
 11,514,000 Do. Peace ^Establish- 
 
 1861 
 
 23,000,000 
 
 12,387,000 Do. 
 
 mem. 
 
 186266 
 
 __ 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 Civil War. 
 
 1867 
 
 95,224,000 
 
 31,034,000 
 
 54,641 
 
 Peace Establishment. 
 
 1868 
 
 123,246,000 
 
 25,775,000 
 
 52,922 
 
 
 1869 
 
 78,501,000 
 
 20,000,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1870 
 
 57,655,000 
 
 21,780,000 
 
 37,313 
 
 
 1871 
 
 35,799,000 
 
 19,431,000 
 
 35,353 
 
 
 1872 
 
 35,372,000 
 
 21,249,000 
 
 32,264 
 
 
 1873 
 
 46,323,000 
 
 23,526,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1874 
 
 42,313,000 
 
 30,932,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1875 
 
 41,120,000 
 
 21,497,000 
 
 27,489 
 
 
 1876 
 
 38,070,000 
 
 18,963,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1877 
 
 37,082,000 
 
 14,959,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1878 
 
 32,154,000 
 
 17,365,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1879 
 
 40,425,000 
 
 15,125,000 
 
 20,000 
 
 
 1880 
 
 38,116,000 
 
 13,536,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 1881 
 
 40,466,000 
 
 15,686,000 
 
 Do. 
 
 
 they really exist or not is unknown, and I have 
 never met any one who has seen them. They are 
 supposed to be quartered in remote districts of
 
 168 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 New Mexico, Indian Territory, and Arizona, where 
 they probably are the only inhabitants, and where, 
 at any rate, there are no critics to count their 
 numbers on parade. 
 
 Before leaving military expenditure, there is 
 another item to which I would invite the attention 
 of English Radicals and the editor of the Financial 
 Reform Almanack. This is Pensions. Ini86i,the 
 charge for pensions was $1,034,000; in 1862, 
 $852,000. At the close of the war, 1867, it had 
 risen to $21,000,000; in 1868, to $23,750,000 ; in 
 1871, to $34,500,000; in 1878, it had fallen to 
 027,000,000; in 1879, it again rose to $35,000,000; 
 in 1880, it reached the prodigious total of 
 $56,750,000; and in 1881 it again sank to 
 $50,000,000, exceeding by $10,000,000 the total 
 expenditure on the army. The physiological 
 phenomenon which these figures present is start- 
 ling enough. At the close of a war, and when the 
 distribution of pensions has been once made, the 
 Treasury would expect the ordinary laws of mor- 
 tality to reduce annually the pension charges. But 
 the veterans of the civil war appear to renew their 
 strength like the eagles. Not content with im- 
 mortality themselves, they have the power of 
 dividing and multiplying their individuality like 
 zoophytes ; and, unless some check on their
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 169 
 
 power of reduplication be discovered, these honest 
 warriors will, in twenty years, absorb the whole 
 revenue of the United States. 
 
 The expenditure which falls under the head of 
 Indians is remarkable. These interesting savages 
 cost President Jefferson $31. 22c. in the* year 1 800. 
 It was not till thirty years later that their charges 
 had reached $1,000,000 annually. Like the army, 
 and unlike the pensioners, their numbers have been 
 continually decreasing, and, as above noted, they 
 only number at the present time 66,407 souls. Yet, 
 like the army and the veterans, their cost con- 
 stantly increases. For the decade preceding the 
 war, they cost some $3,000,000 annually. They 
 now cost $6,000,000, and a few years ago they cost 
 between 88,000,000 and $9,000,000. Every Indian 
 family should thus receive from the benevolent 
 Government about $500 a year, for no " Indian 
 war " expend'ture is excluded in the item now 
 under discussion. Perhaps if it be roughly esti- 
 mated that of the $56,500,000 which are annually 
 paid under the head of pensions and Indians, 
 $40,000,000 represent unblushing robbery from 
 the United States Treasury, we shall be well 
 within the truth. At least half of the $40,000,000 
 of war expenditure may be assumed to disappear 
 in a similar fashion.
 
 170 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 In the year 1814, when the young Republic 
 disputed, not without glory, the dominion of the 
 sea with the powerful British Empire, its navy cost 
 one-half of what it does to-day. Its peace expen- 
 diture was, in 1818, some $2,000,000 or $3,000,000, 
 compared with the $15,000,000 which is now wasted 
 on a navy which has neither ships nor guns. Ad- 
 miral D. Porter, and other authorities as respect- 
 able, declare that the American navy consists of 
 officers and water without any ships. It is true 
 that the protective tariff has annihilated the mer- 
 chant shipping, so that the navy is no longer 
 required to protect American commerce abroad, 
 but its naval weakness is unworthy the dignity of 
 a great country. It is certainly not for the advan- 
 tage of England that America should adopt free 
 trade and again cover the sea with merchant ships, 
 but the day will probably come when the farmers 
 of the West and the artisans of the East will unite 
 in refusing to pay double prices for almost every 
 necessary of life in order to swell the profits of the 
 manufacturers. But under a Republic, where the 
 minority rule and the majority suffer, the hour of 
 deliverance may be far distant In the meantime, 
 the United States can, as a naval power, be hardly 
 reckoned in the third rank. Congress appears to 
 have awakened to the fact that this state of things
 
 THE COST OF DEMOCRACY. 171 
 
 is discreditable, and extra grants of large amounts 
 are now being proposed to increase the navy. But 
 a creeping paralysis has attacked the Executive, and 
 Congress votes money in vain. Three and a half 
 millions of dollars have been passed for building 
 four steel cruisers, one of which, the Dolphin, is 
 almost complete. But experts declare the type an 
 inferior one ; the engines are unsuited to the ships, 
 and there is no authority with power to prevent a 
 barren experiment being indefinitely repeated. 
 Since the close of the civil war, some $385,000,000 
 have been spent upon the navy, more than it 
 cost from the foundation of the Republic to 
 1860, when it was able to make itself everywhere 
 respected. This money might, as Congress has 
 itself declared, have been as profitably thrown 
 into the sea. 
 
 Can it be matter for surprise that, having regard 
 to the profligate expenditure of the past, Mr. 
 Randall and the Democratic party he leads in Con- 
 gress are opposing the proposed grants to the navy, 
 and would even refuse to complete the monitors 
 without which the ports are defenceless, or to 
 purchase the guns without which the new steel 
 cruisers cannot put to sea. 
 
 Such is the cost of Democracy. Up to the date 
 of the civil war, some decency was observed in the
 
 172 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 public expenditure. The result of that unfortunate 
 struggle was like a typhoid fever, which alters the 
 whole constitution of the sufferer, and not un- 
 frequently results in rapid -consumption. The 
 resources of the United States are too vast, and 
 the people too energetic, for the one to be speedily 
 exhausted or for the other to be vitally affected. 
 But the rapid consumption has set in, and has first 
 attacked the Treasury. The reckless extravagance 
 and robbery of the war demoralised the entire com- 
 munity. The people discovered how easy it was to 
 rob the national exchequer, and everyone hastened 
 to become rich at the public expense. The highest 
 officials seem powerless to stem the torrent of cor- 
 ruption. Few of them attempt to do so. They 
 recall the Cornish parson of Peter Pindar's poem, 
 who was preaching when the cry, " A wreck, a 
 wreck ! " was heard without the church. For a 
 moment he attempted vainly to restrain his con- 
 gregation, but, finding them beyond control 
 
 " ' Stop, stop,' cried he, ' at least one prayer": 
 Let me get down, and all start fair.' "
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 FOREIGN POLICY. 
 
 IT has been seen, in the last chapter, that the 
 United States are in no position to take an active 
 part in foreign policy, even should they be disposed 
 to do so. Their army, costly though it be, is 
 only sufficient for home requirements; while the 
 navy could not meet on equal terms that of a 
 fourth-rate European power. But of the latent 
 power of America there can be no doubt : and its 
 attitude is so different from that of the French 
 Republic, whose restlessness and insolent 
 aggression in every quarter of the world is incon- 
 veniently conspicuous, that it would be interesting 
 to inquire whether apathy or truculence were 
 the normal effect of republican institutions. Es- 
 pecially is such an inquiry interesting and im- 
 portant for England with her tangle of foreign 
 relations, and she cannot wisely adopt American 
 institutions without determining what effect they 
 would have on her foreign policy.
 
 174 
 
 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 We have the most exact descriptions in history 
 of the sentiments and conditions of the fighting 
 republics of Athens, Sparta, Florence, and Venice ; 
 and we must allow its due importance to the fiery 
 enthusiasm which carried France triumphantly 
 through Europe at the close of the last century. 
 But the more attentively these instances are re- 
 garded, the more probable does it appear that the 
 fierce and aggressive spirit which animated the 
 policy of the Greek and Italian republics was 
 rather oligarchical and aristocratic than democratic 
 in the modern sense of the word. This was 
 certainly the case with Italy ; and although it 
 cannot be denied that in the little wild-cat republic 
 of Athens every freeman had as much opportunity 
 cf voting and talking as if he had been a member 
 of the British Parliament, yet the prevailing temper 
 was aristocratic, as was inevitable where a minority of 
 freemen rule a majority of slaves. As for France, 
 the excitability and restlessness of her people are 
 such as to make her an unsafe illustration of normal 
 political phenomena ; yet it may be asserted that, 
 while the new-born republican fury had its un- 
 doubted effect during the early days of the 
 Revolution, chiefly stirred to action by the 
 unwarrantable attempt of the European monarchs 
 to crush a movement the success of which mi'sfht
 
 FOREIGN POLICY. 175 
 
 endanger their own stability, the victories of 
 France were mostly won under the Napoleonic 
 despotism. The danger to the world from French 
 republicanism chiefly arises from the enormous 
 proportion of vanity in the character of the people, 
 demanding in the national policy constant grati- 
 fication. It is a jealous deity destroying those 
 who do not burn incense on its altar. Con- 
 sequently, Republican France, directed by states- 
 men whose ephemeral existence depends on 
 popular caprice, is more likely to be aggressive in 
 her foreign policy than when controlled by a ruler 
 who can sit careless above the thunder of the mob. 
 Even he is never safe. The French tiger devours 
 his tamer the moment he makes a mistake in 
 the performance ; as Napoleon III. discovered to 
 his cost. England has never tried a republic ; for 
 the experiment between 1650 and 1660 was 
 a strict military despotism barely veiled by con- 
 stitutionalism. To-day the English are more 
 democratic than of old, in that the people have a 
 larger voice in the national policy ; but it is difficult 
 to say that the country is less loyal, less conser- 
 vative, or less disposed to fight for a reasonable, 
 or, indeed, an unreasonable, cause. If public 
 utterances were to be regarded, it might seem that 
 the Tory party were more in favour of a bold and
 
 176 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 active foreign policy than the Liberals ; but this is 
 extremely questionable, and in opposition to it is 
 the fact that among the Liberals themselves, putting 
 aside certain eccentric members of Parliament 
 who in no way represent the national feeling, the 
 advanced Left is far more thorough, aggressive, 
 and imperialistic in matters of foreign policy than 
 the moderate Liberals or Whigs, who would seem 
 to have adopted the policy of quieta non movere. 
 
 If the case of America be now considered it will 
 be seen that her epoch of aggressiveness in foreign 
 policy was while she was practically governed by 
 an aristocratic oligarchy. This was previous to the 
 war, when the slaveowners of the South dominated 
 the political situation ; and they might have retained 
 their supremacy till to-day, so weak and spiritless 
 was the Northern majority, had they not, in sheer 
 wantonness, bullied the North into the war which 
 naturally ended in their own destruction. In those 
 days the United States were certainly accustomed 
 to bounce and bluster a good deal ; but, endeavouring 
 to look at their political action with impartial eyes, 
 it had about it an air of patriotism and genuine 
 national spirit which is less conspicuous under a 
 more popular administration. It is true that the 
 war, with all its demoralisation, had a tranquillising 
 effect upon the American temper. The people felt
 
 FOREIGN POLICY. 177 
 
 that they had at last done a very big thing. They 
 had killed and wounded as many men as would 
 have satisfied Caesar or Napoleon, and had spent 
 on the ennobling operation some six thousand 
 eight hundred millions of dollars. It mattered 
 little whether the half a million of men who had 
 been killed in battle or who died of wounds or 
 disease knew for what they had been fighting ; or 
 whether the money had, for the most part, gone 
 into the pockets of thieves and swindlers who built 
 their fortunes on the calamity of the nation. The 
 Americans had fairly bought, in fire and blood, the 
 right to hold up their heads among the down-trodden 
 peoples of the Old World. Like them, they had 
 been driven to battle and death for the lying schemes 
 of shifty adventurers ; like them, they were heavily 
 taxed in order that saloon keepers and shoddy 
 contractors might cover their vulgar wives and 
 daughters with diamonds. If such glorious results 
 do not consolidate and dignify a nation, the political 
 theories of England and Europe must be mistaken. 
 The Monroe doctrine which was, previous to the 
 war, the most generally accepted exposition of 
 American foreign policy, as stated by its founder 
 in his seventh annual message, in December, 1823, 
 was a wise and reasonable declaration of policy. 
 It was directly aimed at Spain and Portugal, whose 
 colonial policy is, and ever has been, obnoxious to 
 
 N
 
 178 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 all liberal and enlightened principles, and warned 
 them that the great Republic of the West would 
 not tolerate their continued efforts to re-conquer 
 those South American countries which had, most 
 happily, escaped from their rapacious clutches. 
 Further, the President of the United States cate- 
 gorically informed those Powers that his Govern- 
 ment would consider any attempt on their part to 
 extend their system to any portion of the Western 
 Hemisphere as dangerous to the peace and safety 
 of the United States. The policy thus enunciated 
 was as successful as it was wise, and Englishmen 
 who condemn it may be sure that any British 
 Government, under similar circumstances, would 
 not only have done as much, but more, for Cuba and 
 Hayti would long ago have been annexed to the 
 Empire. England would not wish the Monroe 
 doctrine to be used, as has sometimes been 
 attempted by too zealous Secretaries of State at 
 Washington, against herself, and this is natural 
 enough. Nor was the Monroe doctrine so designed ; 
 and the most ardent Republican could not pretend 
 that freedom and civilisation were in danger from 
 the extension of the political influence of England. 
 The doctrine is one which the two branches of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race would do well to preserve and 
 fortify rather than contemn and deny. The British 
 States of Australia, which a wise statesmanship
 
 FOREIGN POLICY. 179 
 
 would cease to term or treat as colonies, have 
 lately proclaimed the same principle for the South 
 Pacific, with the full and cordial approval of the 
 majority of their fellow-countrymen in England. 
 It is not a paltry question of the transportation to 
 New Caledonia of a few thousand French convicts 
 that is at issue : this the Australians could easily 
 settle for themselves; it is the claim/which will yearly 
 be more loudly pressed, that the whole of the South 
 Pacific has fallen by fortune to the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, which alone has the power to hold and civilise 
 it and that other nations who choose to dispute 
 this claim must do so by force of arms. 
 
 The Monroe doctrine, as originally designed, was 
 explained by Mr. President Adams in 1826. He 
 desired to summon a Congress of American States, 
 who should agree to take independent measures 
 against the establishment of any future European 
 colony within their borders, and thus secure and 
 develop the freedom of the new and struggling 
 Republics of South America, with which the United 
 States were naturally in strong sympathy. This 
 authoritative declaration of what the Monroe 
 doctrine really was, by a member of President 
 Monroe's Cabinet, differed very materially from its 
 later and more aggressive development, binding the 
 United States to resist all colonisation or inter- 
 ference by any European Power within the New
 
 iSo THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 World. The idea of the founders of the doctrine 
 was evidently to strengthen the hands of the 
 Southern Republics, and to invite each State in 
 North or South America to take steps to protect 
 itself from foreign intrusion. But the intention of 
 a formula which has been altogether changed in 
 practical application has little beyond historical 
 interest ; and the Monroe doctrine in any shape 
 has fallen out of fashion. It was lately dragged 
 forth by Mr. Secretary Elaine to frighten the pro- 
 moters of the Panama Canal scheme, but was not 
 very effective, and was relegated to obscurity. So 
 little does the passion for foreign annexation now 
 animate Americans, that the occupation of the 
 Sandwich Islands by England or Germany would 
 not form the subject of remonstrance, though it was 
 once a burning question ; and were these islands 
 offered to the United States as a free gift, it is doubt- 
 ful whether they would be accepted by Congress. 
 
 There is in the foreign policy of America nothing 
 unfriendly to England. The good feeling between 
 the two countries is fortunately increasing year by 
 year, and so long as the States confine their atten- 
 tion exclusively to the American continent our 
 interests are not likely to clash. Canada is not a 
 source of anxiety ; for while, on the one hand, this 
 dependency is exceedingly loyal to the Crown 
 there is, on the other, no desire on the part of the
 
 FOREIGN POLICY. 181 
 
 States to absorb it. Should a policy of annexation, 
 contrary to the wish of the Dominion, be ever 
 launched, England and Canada will be quite able 
 to take care of themselves. 
 
 The large and rapidly increasing German popula- 
 tion of the States may have a tranquillising effect 
 on American relations with England, and to some 
 extent neutralise the Irish element ; for there can 
 be little doubt that English sentiment is tending 
 towards the natural alliance with Germany as op- 
 posed to France, who, since she has adopted repub- 
 lican institutions, has proved herself worthless as an 
 ally. We can have no true sympathy with France, 
 whose attitude towards us is uniformly unfriendly, 
 and whose interests are opposed to ours in every 
 quarter of the world ; while with Germany we have 
 the bond of a common origin, creed, and interests. 
 
 The sentimental regard for the Russian Govern- 
 ment, which was once so strongly and fre- 
 quently expressed in America, has died out. It 
 was always an unnatural and artificial growth, and 
 had its origin in the astuteness of Russia attempt- 
 ing to make political capital out of the mistakes of 
 the upper classes in England, who, for reasons 
 which need not here be discussed, gave their 
 sympathy and moral support to the Southern 
 Democrats in the civil war. Russia, who foresaw 
 the inevitable result of the struggle, sided warmly
 
 182 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 with the North, and earned a cheap gratitude, 
 which for some time made an imposing display. 
 But the farce was played out with the return of 
 cordiality between England and America, for it 
 was impossible that either of these nations should 
 long regard with any other sentiment than disgust 
 the domestic policy of Russia. It was an evil day 
 for the Liberal party in England when fortune 
 compelled it to appear as the advocate of Russian 
 fraud and aggression in south-eastern Europe, to 
 champion a Power whose hostility to England is 
 deep-seated and inveterate, and whose political 
 methods are abhorrent to every sentiment of 
 Liberalism. America and England have both 
 fallen into the same snare, and we may hope that 
 for them, at least, the fowler may in future spread 
 his nets in vain. 
 
 Great as the evils of the political system in 
 America may be, and serious as are the dangers 
 which lie before the Republic, the people are far 
 too energetic and high-spirited to view them with 
 any unworthy alarm. The pride in the greatness 
 and wealth of their country which is felt and 
 expressed by Americans, their confidence in its 
 future, and the equanimity with which they regard 
 the dangers or troubles of the hour, are admirable 
 to behold, and are qualities which in themselves go 
 far to deserve and command national good-fortune.
 
 FOREIGN POLICY. 183 
 
 Nor is their pride and confidence exaggerated or 
 unfounded. They possess a country immense in 
 extent and of unparalleled richness. In its virgin 
 soil and limitless prairies are an inexhaustible 
 treasury, a cornucopia from which fatness and 
 abundance for ever flow, while in no part of the 
 world is found such varied mineral wealth. The 
 harvest of field and mine is reaped by an intel- 
 ligent, industrious, and energetic people, whose 
 territory stretches from ocean to ocean, and this 
 generation will see within its borders one hundred 
 millions of English-speaking people, who will 
 doubtless be prosperous, and who, if they be wise 
 in time, may be also free. 
 
 England, who has girdled the earth with empire, 
 and the roots of whose national oak lie, like those 
 of the mystic tree in Norse sagas, among the 
 hidden bases of the world, can look without fear, 
 or distrust, or envy, but rather with a glad and 
 generous pride, at the development of the great 
 American people, bone of her bone, and blood of 
 her blood. And if England can find nothing 
 worthy of adoption in the political system of 
 America, she can yet take care that she does not 
 fall behind in that noble and confident spirit which 
 is the birthright of imperial races, and which 
 enables them to look indifferently on good or evil 
 fortune. There are Englishmen who seem to
 
 184 THE GREAT REPUBLIC. 
 
 believe that the golden age has passed for their 
 country, and that she is falling into decrepitude. 
 This is not the view of those who have breathed 
 the free air of the younger and greater Britain in 
 Canada, Australia, or India. It is not the spirit 
 which breathes in Lord Dufferin's Canadian 
 speeches, or in the admirable address lately de- 
 livered by Lord Lome before the Colonial Institute, 
 or which inspires the patriotic resolve of Australia 
 to not only share the glory but the burthens of 
 the mother-country. The British Empire is still in 
 its infancy. Grafted, it is true, on an ancient 
 monarchy, it only dates from the occupation of 
 Virginia by Raleigh three hundred years ago. It 
 has grown to be the greatest empire the world has 
 ever seen, with a territory of 9,000,000 square miles 
 and 300,000,000 subjects of the Queen, and now 
 only waits the statesman whose genius shall gather 
 it into one mighty federation, animated by loyalty 
 and dignified by freedom. When that day shall 
 come we may hope that the united Anglo-Saxon 
 race, English and American, will join hands across 
 the Atlantic, and, disdaining all possible occasion 
 of quarrel, cement a lasting alliance which will 
 insure the peace and progress of the world. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 fLOR, PRINTEKS.
 
 ii, HENRIETTA STREET, COYENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 (Late 193, Piccadilly, W.) 
 
 JULY, 1884. 
 
 CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 CHAPMAN & HALL 
 
 LIMITED, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 DRAWING EXAMPLES, DIAGRAMS, MODELS, 
 INSTRUMENTS, ETC. 
 
 ISSUED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF 
 
 FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND ART AND SCIENCE CLASSES.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 REC'D ID 
 
 91 
 
 Form L9-20m-7,'61(Cl437s4)444 
 
 --.': -'. l ' V
 
 L 006 339 671 7 
 
 E 
 
 138] 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 001101257 2