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res enteet

APPLETONS NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES.
IMPRESSIONS
OF
OOC
A M E RICA.
ил
BY
obert
Irian
R. W. DALE.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
1879.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. SOCIETY
5
II. POLITICS
41
.
III. POPULAR EDUCATION
87
.
IV. RELIGION
164
are-sz-ER 2007
094778

IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

I.
SOCIETY.
course, by all
In the autumn of last year I spent two very
pleasant months on the other side of the Atlantic.
Since my return I have been asked, as a matter of
my friends, what I think of America.
I had to answer or to evade the question almost
as soon as I was on the landing-stage at Liver-
pool, and before my portmanteaus were fairly
through the custom-house ; I am nearly sure, in-
deed, that the question was asked me on the ten-
der before we had reached the landing-stage. I
have had to answer or evade it nearly every day
since.
I say that I have had to "answer or evade
it; for the question cannot be fairly answered in
an omnibus, or between the courses at a dinner-
party, or while putting on one's great-coat after a
committee-meeting, or while talking under an um-

6
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
brella to a friend one has happened to meet in the
street in a shower of rain. Indeed, I am not sure
that I have a right to express any opinion on
America and the American people, even when
there is the opportunity for expressing it deliber-
ately and fully. I sailed from Liverpool on the
1st of September, and reached Liverpool again on
the 17th of November. In seven or eight weeks
what trustworthy judgment can a man form of
the habits, manners, temper, and character, of a
population so varied in its origin and occupations
as that of the United States, and covering so vast
a territory? After so brief a visit, what right
have I to form any confident opinion on American
institutions ?
I do not imagine that all Americans are like
the accomplished professors at Yale, or like the
clergymen I met in New York, Brooklyn, Boston,
and in several of the smaller cities of New Eng-
land, or like the distinguished physicians who
showed me hospitality at Philadelphia and Chi-
cago, or like the Education Commissioners and
the chairmen and members of school committees,
with whom I spent many interesting days in sev-
eral great cities, or like the heads of famous com-
mercial houses to whom I was introduced by my
friend and fellow-traveler Mr. Henry Lee. Nor
do I suppose that I have a complete and exhaustive
knowledge of American manners and character
because I staid in many American hotels, and
SOCIETY.
ny
traveled several thousands of miles on steamboats
and in railway carriages. I can but tell what I
saw. But I saw enough to convince me that some
of the representations of the American people
which have become popular in England are gross
and slanderous libels.
An American who had formed his conception
of Englishmen from the typical “ John Bull” in
top-boots, with a cudgel in his hand, would be
rather perplexed on meeting Dean Stanley, whose
hospitality to Americans has given him a reputa-
tion on the other side of the Atlantic almost as
enviable as that which he has won by his literary
genius ; nor would his perplexity be lessened if
from the deanery at Westminster he crossed over
to the House of Commons, and happened to see
and hear Mr. Gladstone. He might go to fifty
London dinners and still wonder where the ideal
Englishman was to be found. At churches, con-
certs, museums, picture-galleries, and theatres, his
curiosity would still be unsatisfied. He might
ride in innumerable omnibuses, he might travel
morning after morning by the underground rail-
way,
and
go
from London Bridge to Chelsea every
afternoon in a penny boat, and never see the ob-
ject of his search. He might go down to Oxford,
or York, or Brighton, or Salisbury, and still look
in vain for the John Bull of his imagination.
Neither in appearance nor in manners would the
men he met with correspond to the familiar type.

8
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
At an agricultural show he might find a man here
and there who looked dressed for the character,
but the chances are ten to one that if he began to
talk with the burly-looking farmers he would dis-
cover that many of them, though a little rough
in their ways and rather loud in their speech, were
wholly unlike in their temper and spirit what he
had supposed that every Englishman ought to be.
Occasionally, no doubt, the type is realized-real-
ized physically and realized morally—but it is
possible to live for months in many parts of Eng-
land without seeing a man who has anything of
the appearance of the John Bull of one of Punch's
cartoons; and when you have found a man who
looks as if he might have sat for the picture, he
often turns out to have no moral resemblance to the
conventional idea of our national character. The
people I happened to meet with in New York and
Chicago, in Boston and Philadelphia, in Wash-
ington and the manufacturing towns of New Eng-
land, were equally unlike the high-falutin', self-
asserting American of caricature and popular fan-
cy. They were quiet instead of noisy, modest
instead of ostentatious and boastful, reticent rath-
er than demonstrative.
My own impressions were confirmed by an
English friend who had been living in New York
for several months, and who asked me whether I
had not been struck with the extreme gentleness
of American manners. Nor was it the gentleness

SOCIETY.
9
merely that impressed me. There was something
of the old-fashioned formal courtesy which has
now almost disappeared in this country. It is
one of the reproaches, indeed, which the Republi-
cans of America fling at the Democrats that the
triumph of the Democratic party in 1801 de-
stroyed the good manners of the people and made
them rude and insolent. Before Jefferson's elec-
tion to the presidency—so it is said—the children,
when they passed their elders on country roads or
in the streets of the smaller towns, made a respect-
ful bow; but with the accession of the Democrats
to
power, the bow began to subside, “first into a
vulgar nod, half ashamed and half impudent, and
then, like the pendulum of a dying clock, totally
ceased.” To illustrate this charge, a popular
author, Mr. Goodrich, tells a characteristic story :
“How are you, priest ?” said a rough fellow to a
clergyman. “How are you, Democrat ? ” was the
clergyman's retort. “How do you know I am a
Democrat ?" asked the man. " How do
you
know
I am a priest ?” said the clergyman. “I know
you to be a priest by your dress.”
to be a Democrat by your address," said the par-

6 I know you
son.*
It is true, no doubt, that the kind of respect
which the people in an English agricultural vil-
lage sometimes show to their pastors and masters
is not to be found, as far as I know, in the United
* James Parton's "Life of Thomas Jefferson,” pp. 584, 585.

10
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
States. The little girls do not draw up against
the wall and make a respectful courtesy to every
well-dressed stranger they meet.
If you say
Good-morning” to a man you happen to pass in
the rural parts of New England, and who looks
like a prosperous agricultural laborer, but who
is probably the owner of a farm of eighty or a
hundred acres, he will not feel so honored by your
condescension as to stand still and pull the front
lock of his hair ; he may even stride on with a
grunt which is hardly courteous. The servants or
“helps ” have not exactly the manners of servants
in England. I always found them respectful and
attentive, but there is a certain something with
which we are familiar on this side of the Atlantic
that is absent. It is quite clear that they do not
suppose that their master and their master's guests
belong to a superior race. At an English pic-
nic the younger ladies and gentlemen sometimes
spread the cloth, hand the lobster-salad, the cold
chicken, and the bread, pour out the wine, and
take round the fruit; they wait “for love” and
not for wages. Perhaps, when the dinner is half
over, they take their seats and are waited on them-
selves. American servants reminded me occasion-
ally of these kindly volunteers. Seneca tells one
of his correspondents that he should treat his
slaves not like beasts of burden, but as “humble
friends.” Seneca would have found himself quite
at home in America. If he thought that the
SOCIETY
11
slaves who waited on him should be treated as
humble friends," he would have treated free men
and women who waited on him as friends that
required to be described by another epithet. I
found that the servants took quite a hospitable
interest in me. The day before I left New Haven
I called to bid good-by to a friend, whose guest I
had been during the earlier part of my stay in the
city. He happened to be out, but the house-maid
who opened the door understood the object of my
call, and hoped I was well, and that I had had a
pleasant time in America, and that I should have
a good voyage, and find all well at home. I do
not think that the girl did her work at all the
worse because she felt herself at liberty to speak
in this way to her master's friend. Sometimes,
indeed, this sense of social equality may show it-
self in ways which strike an English traveler as
rather odd and not quite agreeable. An English
gentleman told me that he was being driven
through the beautiful park at Philadelphia by an
American lady with whom he was staying. She
wanted to leave the carriage at a particular point,
walk through the Exhibition Building, and meet
the carriage at another entrance, and she asked
her coachman, a colored man, whether he thought
the doors at the other end of the building were
open. “Dunt know,” was the reply ; “hadn't
you better get down and ask ?" If he had pro-
posed that the gentleman should “get down,” it


12
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
would have been more consistent with our notions
of propriety.*
I was told that there are delicate distinctions
among the servants which it is necessary for a
stranger to remember. When you leave the house
an Irish girl will take your dollar with as much
satisfaction as a servant in England receives the
customary “vail.” I believe that most German
and Swedish girls will be equally accommodating.
But I heard that if by chance your friend has a
genuine American girl for a house-maid, she will
resent the offer of money as an insult. Whether
this is true or not I cannot say, as I did not hap-
pen to have the opportunity of trying the experi-
ment. A story that was told me by an English
lady living at Ottawa—the wife of a colonel in the
English army-shows that the conditions of
American life have affected Canada. A girl ap-
plied to her for a house-maid's place, and asked
what seemed to the lady extravagant wages.
“How much did you have at your last situation ? "
asked
my
friend. “Well, ma'am,” was the reply,
* An English servant who has not been well “ broken in "
can sometimes be sufficiently free and independent. A lady in
the south of England had a new house-maid who, after being in
the house a fortnight, omitted to put any water on the dinner-
table. When she was reminded of her omission, she replied,
“Fur varteen days I ha' putt they bottles on the table and none
of yur have drunk any warter; I dunt mean to put 'em on any
more.”
2.

SOCIETY.
13
“I only had six dollars a month, but the lady gave
me music-lessons."
American mistresses have their sorrows, and
are disposed to envy ladies in England, who seem
to have their servants more perfectly under com-
mand. But English mistresses are not without
their
annoyances.
I believe that the real trouble
on the other side of the Atlantic, as on this, is the
difficulty of finding servants who really understand
their work. In the relations between servants and
masters I saw nothing that was offensive ; indeed,
I am democratic enough to think that the friendly
ease of the American “help” is more satisfactory
than the absolute self-suppression and mechanical
deference which are seen in the servants of many
English houses.
When I said that in America there remains
something of the old-fashioned courtesy which
among ourselves must have vanished for at least
fifty years, I was not thinking of the relations of
the “lower orders” to their “betters,” but of the
manners of educated American society. Again
and again I was reminded of the characters in
Miss Austen's novels. There was just a touch of
the same formality. “Politeness,” which is a
word that has very much gone out of use in Eng-
land, still survives in America ; according to an
American author, “politeness appears to have been
invented to enable people who would naturally
fall out to live together in peace.” As the word

14
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
is in more common use in America than among
ourselves, so I think that in the ordinary life, even
of those who are in no danger of “falling out,”
there is more of what the word denotes. The dis-
appearance of the reverential habits of the last
century is, of course, deplored. Jonathan Ed-
wards's children always rose from their seats when
their father or mother came into the room. This
surprising custom does not exist in any of the
families that showed me hospitality; but I noticed
that one of my young lady friends often called her
father “sir,” and that she used the word not play-
fully, but with all the respect with which she
would address a stranger: Her father was not
stiff and unsociable” as Jonathan Edwards was
thought to be by “those who had but a slight ac-
quaintance with him," * but one of the kindest,
simplest, and most genial of men. His children
were on the freest and easiest terms with him,
teased him and played with him just as children on
this side of the ocean tease and play with their
fathers; but the line of filial respect was never
passed, and the respect showed itself in the defer-
ential “sir.” The “sir" was used, indeed, un-
consciously. I asked my young friend, who was
a bright, clever girl, whether she generally called
her father “sir ;” she said that she did not know
that she ever did, but within five minutes the
* Hopkins's “Memoir ” prefixed to English edition of Ed-
wards's Works, p. 44.
SOCIETY.
15
word was on her lips again. A day or two after-
ward I asked a gentleman, whom I met frequently,
whether it was customary for children when ad-
dressing their father to say “sir.” He said, “Oh,
yes—is it not customary in England ? We teach
our children to do it; we have not too much of
the spirit of reverence in America, and we think
it desirable to cultivate it.”
I came to the conclusion—to me a very unex-
pected one—that the Americans are a reserved
people. They are not eager to talk to
you
about
their own affairs. Manufacturers, except when I
asked them, did not tell me how many men they
employed. Merchants were not anxious to im-
press me with the magnitude of their business
transactions. Nor, indeed, did I find that the
strangers I met were very anxious or, indeed, very
willing to talk at all. I often found it hard to
discover whether the people I was traveling with
approved of Mr. Hayes's Southern policy or not,
or even whether they belonged to the Republican
or the Democratic party. When I was fortunate
enough to find a man with a cigar in his mouth
standing on the platform of a Pullman car, I
could sometimes make him more communicative;
and occasionally, under these conditions, I learned
a great deal about the country. But, as a rule,
strangers opened slowly and shyly. Nor was this
because I was an Englishman. I used to watch
the people in railway-carriages—a dozen or twen-

16
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
ty in a Pullman drawing-room car, forty or fifty
in an ordinary car—and if they did not know
each other they would travel together all day
without exchanging half a dozen words. Occa-
sionally three men who were friends would ask a
stranger to take a hand at whist, but this was not
very common. Perhaps the reticence is confined
to the wealthier people. On the lines which have
two classes of carriages I often spent half an hour
in a smoking-car intended for both classes of pas-
sengers. There I generally found much more
freedom. Working - men talked to each other
without any difficulty ; but even there the passen-
gers who had come from the first-class carriages
sat and smoked in silence.
I remember one conspicuous exception, how-
ever, to the general reserve.
In the smoking-
cabin of a steamboat, a Southern gentleman, a
professor in a college of some reputation, gave
the company an elaborate account—à propos of
nothing—of the exercises he had had to perform
for his degree in a German university. As most
of the men were obviously men of business, and
just as uninterested in university affairs as in the
incidents of the gentleman's personal history, they
smoked on in silence, looking at him occasionally
with an expression of stolid wonder, alleviated
slightly with perplexity and amusement.
other occasion, and equally without provocation,
the same gentleman gave the same company the

On an-

SOCIETY.
17
most minute information about his physical ail-
ments and how he treated them, and was listened
to with the same look of amusement, perplexity,
and wonder. It was very odd. He was under
fifty, so that he had not become garrulous through
old age.
He had not lost the control of his tongue
by drinking whiskey-and-water. . I had several
private talks with him outside the smoking-room,
and found him an intelligent and well-read man.
He had seen a great deal of the world, and though
he was extraordinarily communicative about his
opinions and doings, he could talk pleasantly
about many things besides his own learning, head-
aches, and attacks of indigestion. But he was
the only instance I happened to meet with of an
American absolutely free from reserve.
rule, the people appeared to me to be more re-
served than ourselves.
The same quality of their national tempera-
ment shows itself in another form; as a rule, they
are undemonstrative. The late Lord Lytton tells
us that on one occasion when Kean was perform-
ing in the United States, he came to the manager
at the end of the third act and said: “I can't go
on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps its hands
in its pockets. Such an audience would extin-
guish Etna.” After receiving this alarming threat
the manager appeared before the curtain and in-
formed the audience that “Mr. Kean, having been
accustomed to audiences more demonstrative than

As a
2

18
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
was habitual to the severer intelligence of an
assembly of American citizens, mistook their silent
attention for disapprobation; and, in short, that
if they did not applaud as Mr. Kean had been
accustomed to be applauded, they could not have
the gratification of seeing Mr. Kean act as he had
been accustomed to act."*
Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was lecturing
many years ago in some city in Vermont or New
Hampshire, and the same “severe intelligence of
an assembly of American citizens” baffled and
perplexed him. There was no sign of interest.
His brightest wit and his shrewdest humor failed
to produce even a passing smile. The people sat
as if they had been in church listening to the
dullest of sermons. But as he was walking away
from the lecture-room with the full conviction
that he had made a miserable failure, his host
said to him quietly: “Why, Mr. Holmes, you said
some real funny things to-night; I could hardly
help laughing.” Mr. Holmes was comforted. I
also heard of a politician from the South who
made a long speech to a political meeting in New
England without provoking the faintest expression
of sympathy or approbation. He thought that
the audience was unfriendly. But as soon as he
sat down a gentleman rose and moved, with great
gravity, that the meeting should give the speaker
* “Upon the Efficacy of Praise," “ Caxtoniana,” vol. i.,
P. 335.
SOCIETY
19
three cheers; and when the motion had been duly
seconded and formally put from the chair, the
cheers were given with well-regulated enthusiasm.
The last two stories seem to show that this
undemonstrativeness is characteristic of the New-
Englanders, and is not common in other parts of
the country, though perhaps it may exist in those
districts in the Middle and Western States which
have been settled by immigration from New Eng-
land. My own impressions favor this supposi-
tion. I think that the manners of the people I
saw in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York,
though quiet, were freer and more cordial than
the manners of the people I saw in New England.
There was less restraint upon the expression of
kindly feeling, in words and tone and bearing.
The New-Englander is apt to keep his heart
where he keeps the furnace which heats his house
—underground. He does not care to have an
open grate in every room, and to let you see the
fire. But the fire is there, and the heat makes its
way secretly to every part of the house. You
see no coals burning, but behind the door of the
dining-room there is a hole in the carpet, and
through the register there comes a stream of hot
air which keeps the room at 70° on the coldest
day. There is another register in the hall and
another in your bedroom. I missed the sight
of the fire. When we had what the Americans
call the first “snap” of cold weather, I wanted

20
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
the assurance of my eyes to make me believe
that though there was a frost outside there was
no reason for shivering indoors. Sydney Smith
tells us that soon after the introduction of plate-
glass Samuel Rogers was at a dinner-party, and
thought that the window near him was open all
the evening. The window was shut, but Rogers
went home with a severe cold which he had
caught from an imaginary draught. Unkindly
critics might affect to mourn that his imagination
was not always equally active when he was writ-
ing his verses. He soon learned that a window
might be shut though he could not see the win-
dow-frame ; and I soon learned in America that
a house may be warm on a cold day—too warm,
indeed—though I could not see the fire. And
so, though Americans, and especially perhaps the
New-Englanders, are not demonstrative, a stranger
soon discovers that they are among the kindest
people in the world. There are no limits to their
kindness. They find out what their guest would
like to see and to do, and spare themselves no
thought or trouble to gratify him. Their hos-
pitality is of the best sort ; they do not force a
stranger to visit the places which they themselves
may think the most interesting and attractive;
they consult his tastes, and place themselves ab-
solutely at his disposal. A Brooklyn host would
probably be very much distressed if an English-
man persistently put aside a proposal to drive to

SOCIETY.
21
Greenwood Cemetery, and a Philadelphian would
be vexed if he could not persuade his guest to
take a drive through the charming park in which
the Centennial buildings were erected; but they
would bear their disappointment quietly. I
wanted to see the common schools. Most of my
friends had become familiar with the common
schools, and saw very little in them that was
novel or surprising ; they therefore wished me to
go to lunatic asylums, prisons, and hospitals,
where they thought that I should see something
that was much more remarkable. But when they
discovered that my preference was no mere whim
they took a great deal of trouble to satisfy it.
I was struck with the admirable temper of the
people. Though I traveled several thousands of
miles on steamboats and in railway-carriages-
westward as far as Chicago, and southward as far
as Richmond—I never heard the noisy quarreling
which some sketches of American manners might
have led me to expect. On my way from Chi-
cago to Washington, the train was delayed for
several hours. The “watchman,” as I think they
called the man who had charge of a portion of
the line near one of the stations, had left his post
to attend a Democratic meeting. While he was
away, a wooden bridge was burned down. The
train was stopped for an hour or two at a small
station some ten or twelve miles distant from the
burning bridge. There was no refreshment-room,

22
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
no “bar," and the passengers could do nothing
except lounge about the line, speculate on the
cause of the accident, smoke, and wonder when
the train would get to Washington ; but every
one was in excellent temper, and accepted the
delay without any resentment. After a time we
went on, and when we were within a mile of the
river which the train could not cross, we were
met by an omnibus, and several of the rough
wagons of the country. The passengers packed
themselves as close as they could in the several
conveyances--some of them having to climb to
the summit of a mountain of luggage on the top
of an omnibus—and were driven, still in excellent
humor, round the country and over a bridge
which crossed the river a mile above or below the
point where the flames revealed the scene of the
disaster. At the little town on the other side we
had to wait two or three hours more; but still
there was not a sign of bad temper, there was no
abuse of the railway in general, and only a very
measured and moderate condemnation of the offi-
cial whose political zeal had led him away
from
his post, where he might have prevented the acci-
dent. It occurred to me that if the Limited Mail
between London and Edinburgh were stopped for
three or four hours by a similar accident, there
would be the expenditure of a great deal of
stormy eloquence; the company would be de-
nounced for having even a single wooden bridge

SOCIETY.
23
on the line; there would be loud threats of letters
to the Times, and of actions to recover damages
caused by the delay; the zealous Liberal who had
deserted his duty to listen to Mr. Chamberlain or
to some other orator of his party would be vigor-
ously abused; the offense would be treated as a
characteristic illustration of the effect of Liberal
principles ; Mr. Gladstone would be made indi-
rectly responsible for the whole business. But
the Americans treated the delay with as much
equanimity as if it had been an eclipse of the
moon, for which no one was to be blamed, and at
which no one had a right to grumble. This was
not because they are more accustomed to railway
accidents and delays than we are. The trains
seem to me to keep as good time in America as in
England, and it is maintained by the Americans
that their accidents are not more frequent than


ours.
It is possible, I think, that the war produced
a great effect on the national manners. An im-
mense number of men went into the
army,
and
had to learn to obey the word of command, and to
submit to a rigid drill. For three or
For three or four years
they were “under authority.” While in the
army they had no time for idleness and dissipat-
ing pleasures. They had to make long marches
and to do a great deal of fighting. The self-con-
trol and orderliness which seem to me to charac-
terize the mass of the American people may be

24
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
partly the effect of the discipline, the serious
work, and the peril and sufferings of those terrible
years. Such an experience could hardly fail to
produce a deep impression on the national char-
acter.
The absence of a powerful and hereditary
aristocracy, the trustees and heirs of the culture
and refinement of many generations, produces,
no doubt, a sensible difference between American
society and our own. In England the classes
which are never brought into contact with the
country gentry or with families wearing old titles
are affected more or less powerfully by aristocrat-
ic traditions and manners.
Even the servants
and tradesmen of great people acquire habits of
courtesy and deference which are not likely to be
found in societies organized on a democratic
basis, and these habits have an effect on their
friends and neighbors. But, on the other hand,
when the power of an aristocracy has begun to
wane, their position and their pretensions will
probably provoke in the classes which do not
share their dignity a spirit of self-assertion which
is far more “vulgar” and far more alien from
the “sweet reasonableness” which Mr. Arnold
wishes us to cultivate than the spirit of equality
which troubles some English travelers in America.
When the mass of the English people supposed
that a duke with estates covering a whole county
was as much an ordinance of Nature as Skiddaw

SOCIETY.
25
or Ben Nevis—when the existence of an aristoc-
racy of wealth and of title was accepted just in
the same spirit in which men accept the succes-
sion of day and night—there were certain gra-
cious habits of mind produced by the inequalities
of our social order. But for good or evil that
time has gone by. The best men of the middle
classes are, indeed, almost unconscious of the ex-
istence of the classes above them, and devote
themselves to their business, their books, their
pictures, and their public work, without troubling
themselves about "society.” But the men of in-
ferior quality cannot make themselves quite hap-
py unless they can penetrate into the charmed
circle. There is a certain measure of suppressed
resentment as long as they are excluded from it ;
and even when they obtain occasional admission,
and are tolerably well content with their own
good-fortune, the mischief is not over. They
begin to draw invisible lines between themselves
and the “ruck” of the people about them. This
in its turn provokes ill-feeling and self-assertion,
and the feeling spreads--assumption on the one
side and resentment on the other-through all
the imaginary degrees of social inferiority beneath
them. Some years ago a Birmingham manufac-
turer told me that the girls who wrapped up his
goods in the warehouse refused to tolerate the
humiliation of leaving the premises by the same
entrance as the girls who made them in the work-

26
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
shops. The “uppishness” which offends many
of the critics of the manners of English manufac-
turing districts is, I believe, the direct result of
our aristocratic social order. There is no reason
for a man to be “uppish” in America. He does
not live in the presence of social institutions which
permanently assert the social superiority of a class
to which he does not belong.
To an English traveler the scare which the
Americans received last autumn from the railway
disturbances is very surprising. I talked with
many grave and wise men-men who had studied
the political and social bistory both of America
and of Europe—who imagined that the Pittsburg
riots were an outburst of the spirit of communism,
and that they indicated the existence of a serious
conspiracy against the institution of private prop-
erty, and against the whole social order of the
country. The strikes were no doubt very annoy-
ing. They showed that some of the economical
and social troubles from which the old countries
of Europe have suffered will have to be faced in
America. Perhaps, too, they showed that the pres-
ent means for repressing popular disturbances are
inadequate. But that the strikes were the result
of a deep and general hostility against the present
social organization of America, that they were the
premature explosion of forces which threaten
America with a social revolution, appeared to me
to be one of the wildest and most grotesque fan-

SOCIETY.
217
cies which ever found a lodgment in the brains of
reasonable men.
It is very possible that in several of the great
manufacturing cities there may be a few hundreds
of restless and discontented men who have carried
with them across the Atlantic the bitter hostility
to government and to society which exists among
the less fortunate classes in many Continental na-
tions. Men with similar passions may be scattered
thinly through the agricultural States. In the
New World as in the Old, some of these men see
visions and dream dreams. They are hoping for
a social millenium in which all the present con-
trasts between poverty and wealth, luxurious ease
and severe labor, will disappear. They have clung
to the hope so long and so passionately that they
cannot easily surrender it. They see that under
a republic these contrasts, if less violent than in
the monarchical countries from which they came,
are still violent enough. They believe that it is
an economical, not a merely political, reorganiza-
tion of society which is to remedy all human evils
and redress all human wrongs. But, of all the
great countries in the world, America contains
the smallest number of people that can have any
motive for desiring a social revolution. The
fiercest hatred of the institution of private prop-
erty gradually cools when a man finds that he is
getting his house filled with good furniture ; it
vanishes altogether when he is able to buy a farm.

28
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
There has been considerable distress during the
last few years in some of the manufacturing dis-
tricts of America ; but the distress has been very
slight and transient compared with what was suf-
fered in this country during the first quarter of
the present century; and the enormous numbers
of the population holding property in land consti-
tute a conservative social force of enormous and
irresistible power.
.
While I was staying at Bridgeport, in Con-
necticut, my host proposed that we should drive
twenty miles round the neighborhood, that I might
have some impression of the agricultural districts
in New England. It was a charming afternoon
in October, and the maple and the oak and the
hickory were beginning to clothe themselves in
their autumnal splendor of scarlet and gold. But
it was not the beauty and the glory of the foliage
which struck me most powerfully. We drove on
for mile after mile, but there was not a laborer's
cottage to be seen. We came to a village—it was
a group
of beautiful houses with lawns and trees
about them. In the open country, at intervals of
every few hundred yards along the road, there was
a cozy, clean-looking farm-house. The houses
were nearly all built of wood, and were painted
white; the windows were protected against the
sun by green Venetian shutters. I hardly ever
saw a house that was in bad condition. The paint
was nearly always bright and fresh.
There were

SOCIETY
29
no mansions belonging to great landlords. The
farms belong to the men who cultivate them. On
my voyage out a New York lawyer, with a large
knowledge of American affairs, said to me : “A
girl will not look at a man who wants to marry
her, if he hasn't a farm of his own. Marry a man
that hires his land !-she will not dream of it. It
sometimes happens that a man takes a farm and
can't
pay
the
money down;
in that case he en-
gages with the owner to rent it for four or five
years ; but it is arranged that at the end of that
term-or earlier if he is able to find the money-
he shall have the farm for a price that is fixed
when his occupation begins. Tenant-farmers are
almost unknown in America."
The farmer owns the farm and works on the
land himself. His sons, if he has any, work with
him. If he wants additional labor, he may get
help from a neighbor whose farm is too small to
occupy all his own time, or he may get help from
his neighbors’ boys when their fathers can spare
them. If he is obliged to engage laborers, they
are described as “hired men,” and they live in the
house with their employ
employer. In the census for
1870 * the total number of persons, over ten years
of age, engaged in agriculture, is given as 5,922,-
471. Of these, only 2,885,996, or considerable
less than half, are described as “agricultural la-
borers ;” if we add “dairymen and dairywom-
*“Compendium,” table lxv., “Occupations,” pp. 604, 605.

30
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
en,
"*“farm and plantation overseers,” and “tur-
pentine-laborers," we have a total of 2,895,272
persons employed in agriculture who are not their
own masters. The “farmers and planters” num-
ber 2,977,711—that is, the masters are more nu-
merous by 80,000 than the men.
Add to these,
“ apiarists,” “florists,” “gardeners and nursery-
men,”
" "stock-breeders," "stock-raisers,” “turpen-
tine-farmers,” and “vine-growers,” and we have a
total of 3,027,099; and even if some of these should
be included in the class of "hired men,” the error
is very slight, for the whole of these minor classes
together number only 49,388, and we still arrive
at the result that in the United States the men that
employ agricultural labor are more numerous than
the men they employ.
Of course, this implies that the farms are small.
In Connecticut the average size of a farm in 1850
was 106 acres, and of this acreage there was a
percentage of 25.8—more than a fourth—consist-
ing of “unimproved” land ; in 1860 the average
size of a farm was 99 acres, with 26.9 per
cent. of
unimproved ” land ; in 1870, 93 acres, with 30.4
per cent.-nearly a third-of the land “unim-
proved.” In Maine, in 1850, the average size of
a farm was 97 acres ; in 1860, 103 acres ; in 1870,
98 acres ; and the proportion of “unimproved”
land at these periods was 55.2, 52.8, and 50 per
* It is doubtful whether all the “dairymen and dairywom-
en" should be included in the class employed by others.

SOCIETY
31
92
per cent. in
cent. of the whole. In Massachusetts the farms
averaged 99 acres in 1850, 94 acres in 1860, and
103 acres in 1870; of this acreage in the same
years 36.1, 35.4, and 36.4 per cent. were
(6
unim-
proved.” For the whole of the States the average
size of a farm was 203 acres in 1850, 199 acres in
1860, and 153 acres in 1870; the “unimproved”
land included in this acreage was 61.5
1850, 59.9 per cent. in 1860, and 53.7 per cent. in
1870.* It follows, therefore, that the average
amount of land which each “farmer” was actually
*“ Farms ... include all considerable nurseries, orchards,
and market-gardens, which are owned by separate parties,
which are cultivated for pecuniary profit, and employ as much
as the labor of one able-bodied workman during the year.
Mere cabbage and potato patches, family vegetable-gardens, and
ornamental lawns, not constituting a portion of a farm for gen-
eral agricultural purposes, will be excluded. No farm will be
reported of less than three acres, unless five hundred dollars'
worth of produce has actually been sold off from it during the
year. The latter proviso will allow the inclusion of many mar-
ket-gardens in the neighborhood of large cities, where, although
the area is small, a high state of cultivation is maintained, and
considerable values are produced. A farm is what is owned or
leased by one man and cultivated under his care. A distant
wood-lot or sheep-pasture, even if in another subdivision, is to
be treated as part of the farm; but, wherever there is a resi-
dent overseer or a manager, there a farm is to be reported.
By 'improved land' is meant cleared land, used for grazing,
grass, or tillage, or lying fallow. Irreclaimable marshes, and
considerable bodies of water, will be excluded in giving the
area of a farm, improved and unimproved.”—Compendium of
the Ninth Census of the United States, pp. 688, 689, notes.

32
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
cultivating amounted in 1850 to about 77 acres,
in 1860 to about 80 acres, and in 1870 to about 70
acres.
If “considerable nurseries, orchards, and mar-
ket-gardens” had not been enumerated as farms,
the average holdings of those who are properly
described as “farmers” would have been slightly
increased ; but an examination of the tables will
show that the difference would probably have
amounted to not more than an acre.
In New England the person whom we describe
as the “gentleman-farmer” is, therefore, almost
as unknown as the “tenant-farmer.” The same
man is landlord, farmer, and laborer. He owns
the soil, and he cultivates it with his own hands
-cuts the drains, loads the manure, holds the
plough, sows the seed, works in the harvest-field,
and does the thrashing. Even if he employs
“hired” labor, he shares the work with the “hired
men.” In the Southern States, where the planta-
tions are worked by the colored people, the eco-
nomical condition of the country is, of course,
very different. Even there the small farm sys-
tem is being rapidly introduced. It was difficult,
however, at the last census, to obtain the exact
returns from the Southern States “ in consequence
of the wholly anomalous condition of agriculture
at the South. The plantations of the old slave
States are squatted all over by the former slaves,
who hold small portions of the soil—often very

SOCIETY.
33
loosely determined as to extent-under almost
all varieties of tenure." The holdings of these
squatters have been treated in the census as farms
of more than three and less than ten acres," and
it is believed that the assumption answers to the
real facts of the case in ninety-nine out of every
hundred instances.* In the Middle and Western
States there are larger farms, and there must be,
I imagine, an occasional reproduction of our own
idea of a farmer, as a man who employs agricul-
tural laborers but does none of the rough work
himself; but in these cases, too, it is necessary to
remember that the farmer is not a tenant but a
freeholder,
This organization of agriculture, so remarka-
ble to an Englishman, raises many economical and
social questions. . I was especially anxious to learn
its effects on the intellectual and moral life of the
farming population. What kind of men are these
New England farmers ? That they have advan-
tages which raise them to a condition far above
that of our own agricultural laborers might be as-
sumed without much inquiry ; but are they, as a
class, inferior to those tenant-farmers of England
who have land enough and capital enough to re-
lease them from the necessity of working in the
fields ? What kind of women are their wives and
daughters ? Are the men made coarse and dull
by the severity of their physical labor? Do the
* “ Compendium of the Ninth Census,” pp. 692, 693, notes. ·

3
34
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

women suffer any injury from constant associa-
tion with men engaged in rough, out-door labor,
and from the necessity of doing their own house-
work?
I was driving one afternoon, in the neighbor-
hood of New Haven, with a gentleman who lived
among New England farmers for many years, and
I told him that I should like to see the inside
of one of the pleasant-looking farmhouses which
we were continually passing. He said, “By all
means,” and, at the next farmhouse, he pulled up.
I asked him whether he knew the people who lived
there. “No.” My friend's daughter, a young lady
who has also seen a great deal of country-life in
New England, went and asked whether two Eng-
lish gentlemen might see the house, and in a few
moments she came to us and said that we might
go in. The farm belonged to a widow. She met
us at the door, and received us with a quiet dig-
nity and grace, which would have done no dis-
credit to the lady of an English squire owning an
estate worth four or five thousand a year. Her
English was excellent—the English of a refined
and educated woman. Her bearing and manners
had an ease and quietness which were charming.
The house had three good sitting-rooms, well fur-
nished. Books and magazines were lying about ;
and there was a small but pretty greenhouse. I
went into one bedroom and saw that it was ex-
tremely neat, and that the linen looked as white
SOCIETY.
35
as the driven snow. I found that the farm was
an unusually large one, being about 200 acres.
How much of it was under actual cultivation and
how much was “unimproved,” it did not occur to
me to ask. The farm-work was done by the lady's
two sons, and either two or three “hired men”
who lived in the house. There was another hired
man” who did “chores”—cut the wood, lit the
fires, attended to the garden, cleaned the boots,
went on errands, and relieved the solitary “girl”
of the rougher part of the house-work; when the
hay had to be got or the wheat cut, I dare say
he
was employed on the farm. The house gave me
the impression that the people who lived in it
must be surrounded by all the comforts and many
of the luxuries and refinements of life. The lady,
whom I have already described, was the only
member of the family that I was fortunate enough
to see.
When we had got back into the carriage, I
charged my friend roundly with having played
me false. I told him that I felt sure that the
house was not a fair specimen of its kind, and
that the lady I had seen must be very unlike most
of the ladies of the same class; that he must have
selected the farm in order to give me a favorable
impression. However, he assured me that it was
not so. Then I appealed to the young lady who
had
gone
into the house with my traveling com-
panion and myself. She said that the house was


36
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
certainly rather better than the average farm-
house, but that there were very many others quite
as good ; and that the lady was rather superior,
both in education and in refinement of manners,
to the average farmer's wife, but that she knew
very many ladies living in farmhouses who were
quite her equals. The suspicion of my
friend's
good faith had to be dismissed, and though I was
unfortunate in happening to hit upon what was
admitted to be an exceptionally favorable illustra-
tion of farm-life in New England, what I had seen
made it easier for me understand and to believe
those of my friends who were never so eloquent
as when they were celebrating the virtue, the in-
telligence, and the comfort that exist in the rural
districts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
They reminded me that it was in the farm-
houses of the New England States that a large
number of the most eminent Americans-states-
men, theologians, orators, men of science—had
received their early training; and that the sons
of these plain and homely farmers had not only
created the great manufacturing industries which
are now established in the older parts of the
country, but had been among the most adventu-
rous and successful settlers in the West. An
Englishman whom I met in New York the day
after I landed, said that wherever I went I should
find that the brains came from New England ;

SOCIETY.
34
my New England friends did not make quite so
strong a claim as this, but they asserted that
from the farmhouses of the New England States
had been derived a very large proportion of the
intellectual and moral strength of the country.
One of the most learned and accomplished men
in America, who for some years had preached to
a congregation of New England farmers, assured
me that they were generally men of strong, shrewd
sense and sound judgment, rather slow in their
intellectual movements, but with a healthy appre-
ciation for solid thinking. Many of them, he
assured me, had a considerable number of excel-
lent books and read them. On the other hand, I
was told by a distinguished lawyer that the intel-
lectual development of the farmers was seriously
checked by the severity of their out-door work.
On the whole, however, the testimony which
reached me from those who had the largest ac-
quaintance with them supported very strongly
the most favorable estimate both of their intelli-
gence and their morals. What I heard about the
farmers' wives and daughters was still more de-
cisive. These ladies generally rise early and
spend their morning in house-work; but after an
early dinner, which most of them cook with their
own hands, they “dress,” and are generally free
to visit their friends or to occupy themselves with
their books, their music, or their needle. They
take a pride in cultivating the refinements of life.

38
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
At dinner and supper the table-cloth is as white
and the silver as brilliant as in the houses of
wealthy merchants in Boston or New York. The
farmhouses are planted so thickly over the coun-
try that evening entertainments are very numer-
ous, and at many of these-so I was assured-
the conversation is very bright and intelligent.
It is a common thing for a farmer to send at
least one of his boys to college, and during the
vacations the lads find in their mothers and sis-
ters the keenest sympathy with their literary am-
bition. One lady, who had been surrounded from
her childhood by the most cultivated society in
New England, told me that she knew a large
number of women living in farmhouses, that she
constantly corresponded with some of them, and
that among the farmers' wives and daughters
there were some of the most attractive, most in-
telligent, and best informed women that she had
ever met with.
About the effect of the New England agri-
cultural system on the intellectual activity and
refinement of the population there may be dif-
ferences of opinion ; but there can be no dif-
ference of opinion as to the effect it must pro-
duce on their political spirit and principles. A
population of farmers, owning the land they cul-
tivate, is certain to have strong conservative in-
stincts. Nor is the conservative temper the spe-
cial, or at least the exclusive characteristic of

SOCIETY.
39
New England. To an English radical the con-
servatism of the people generally is very striking.
If a couple of million American voters were sud-
denly transferred to English constituencies, the
conservative reaction would probably receive a
great accession of vigor. Of course, the Church
would be disestablished within a few months af-
ter the first general election ; perhaps the House
of Lords would be abolished ; there would per-
haps be an attempt to change the monarchy for
a republic; but there might be a very vigorous
conservative spirit in England, as there is in
America, in the absence of a throne, a House of
Lords, and an ecclesiastical establishment. The
respect for the rights of property, for instance, is
positively superstitious. Some of the most “lib-
eral ” of my American friends were astounded by
Mr. Cross's “ Artisans' Dwellings Act.” They
were doubtful themselves about the policy and
the justice of it; they were certain that no such
act could be carried in America.
The proceed-
ings of the Endowed Schools Commission under
the late Lord Lyttleton, and of the present Charity
Commissioners, appear to many Americans per-
fectly revolutionary. There are trusts in the
United States which are utterly useless, because
the conditions under which they were created
have become obsolete ; the money is lying idle or
is being applied in ways which confer no benefit
on the community, but to change the trusts

40.
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
seems like sacrilege or spoliation. A few men
are plucking up courage to make the attempt,
and are coming to the conclusion that the ghosts
of the founders are not likely to appear if the
trusts are modified, and that there is nothing in
the Ten Commandments requiring us to confer
upon any man the right to determine the uses of
property for a thousand years after his death ;
and yet the boldest of them show a certain tre-
mor and awe when they are drawn into a discus-
sion of the question. They are like those pa-
gans who, having discovered that their gods are
wood and stone, want to displace them from their
shrines, but approach the sacred places with a
nervous dread lest, after all, they should be com-
mitting some terrible offense against mysterious
powers.
This conservative instinct reveals itself in
many directions.
From what I know of Oxford
and Cambridge, I am inclined to believe that in
neither of them is the conservative temper so
strong as at Yale. I mean that at Yale there is
less disposition to try adventurous experiments,
and to turn aside from the old paths; there is a
more deeply-rooted belief in the “wisdom of our
ancestors,” and a greater reverence for methods
of education which are sanctioned by the example
and authority of past generations. At Harvard,
however, there is far less reluctance to try new
schemes, and I imagine that the changes which

POLITICS.
41
have been made there during the last few years
would almost satisfy the most advanced liberals
in our own universities.
It is possible for a nation with Republican in-
stitutions to be intensely conservative, and it is
possible for a nation with monarchical institutions
to be earnestly liberal. I do not say that, on the
whole, America is more conservative than Eng-
land, but there is a strength of conservative sen-
timent in America which some English statesmen
would be very glad to transfer to this country.
But what I have to say about the political spirit
and character of the American people must be re-
served for another paper.

II.
POLITICS.
THE American Revolution is very commonly
regarded as one of the results of that wide and
general movement of political thought and passion
which sixteen years later overthrew the French
monarchy. But we shall misunderstand both
American history and American politics unless we
remember that most of the leaders of the Revolu-
tion were English Whigs pur sang. They had
no theoretical or sentimental objections to mon-
archy, and no democratic faith in “ the rights of
42
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
man.
"
The famous passage in the Declaration of
Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien-
able rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness,” etc.—this passage,
I
say, is colored by a political theory which had
very
little to do with the resistance offered to the
Stamp Act and to the threepenny duty on tea;
and for this theory only a few of the men who
were assembled in Independence Hall on the July
4, 1776, and voted for the Declaration, had any
hearty admiration. The Americans maintained
that they ought not to be taxed by a Parliament
in which they were not represented. This was
the real question in dispute with the mother-
country. Webster, in his famous speech on
Adams and Jefferson, puts the case very clearly :
“The inhabitants of all the colonies, while colo-
nies, admitted themselves bound by their allegi-
ance to the king; but they disclaimed altogether
the authority of Parliament ; holding themselves
in this respect to resemble the condition of Scot-
land and Ireland before the respective unions of
those kingdoms with England, when they acknowl-
edged allegiance to the same king, but had each
its separate Legislature.”* They did not revolt
because they had any abstract preference for a re-
publican form of government; and after their
*“Works of Daniel Webster," vol. i., p. 127.

POLITICS.
43
separation from the mother-country they estab-
lished a republic simply because a monarchy was
impossible. Their political creed consisted of one
article—that the right to tax the colonies belonged
to the colonial Legislatures, which were elected
by the colonists, not to the British House of Com-
mons, which was elected by Englishmen, Scotch-
men, and Irishmen. In their debates they rested
their whole case on the ancient principles of the
English Constitution.
It was because they refused to recognize any
authority in the British Parliament over the colo-
nies that in the Declaration of Independence Par-
liament was absolutely ignored. The whole in-
strument was directed against the king. To the
colonists Parliament was nothing; it was with the
king that they had to do, and they therefore as-
sumed that the misgovernment and tyranny of
which they complained were his. The only repre-
sentative assemblies of which they knew anything
were the assemblies which met and legislated in
the several American States ; in those assemblies,
as far as America was concerned, were vested all
the powers and prerogatives which were exercised
in England by the two Houses of Parliament.
This was their theory. They believed that they
were acting in the true spirit of the English Con-
stitution.
They followed English precedents with a rab-
binical fidelity. At the English Revolution James

44
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
very in-
II. was declared to have “ abdicated ;” and the
Americans declared that the king “has abdicated
government here by declaring us out of his pro-
tection and waging war with us.” George III.
had “abdicated” at the very time that he was
putting forth the whole strength of the empire,
on sea and on land, to maintain his authority !
This recurrence to a British constitutional pre-
cedent is positively humorous. It is also
structive. It illustrates the political spirit of the
founders of the American Republic. There were
some of them Jefferson, for instance—who had
theories, and it was Jefferson who drew up the
Declaration of Independence, and inserted in it
what has been described by Americans themselves
as the “glittering generality” about all men being.
created “equal” and having “inalienable rights;”
but most of the prominent Revolutionary statesmen,
and most of their followers, desired nothing bet-
ter than to retain the privileges which, as they be-
lieved, were secured by the British Constitution to
all the subjects of the British crown. The Federal
party, which, with Washington and Hamilton at
its head, claimed to represent “the experience, the
prudence, the practical wisdom, the discipline, the
conservative reason and instincts of the country," *
held supreme power till 1801. While Washington
lived, the opposition, which, according to a Feder-
* Hildreth's “History of the United States," vol. ii., Second
Series, p. 415.

POLITICS.
45
alist historian, expressed “the hopes of the coun-
try, its wishes, theories, many of them enthusiastic
and impracticable, more especially its passions, its
sympathies and antipathies, its impatience of re-
straint,” had no chance of controlling the policy
of the Government.
The Federalists regarded the French Revolu-
tion with a hatred almost as intense as that which
inspired the splendid and vehement pages of Ed-
mund Burke. In 1784 Jefferson was sent as en-
voy
to France. While there he was in the closest
relations with the revolutionary leaders, and he
sympathized with all their hopes. He made him-
self acquainted with the hard life of the French
peasantry; he went into their houses and would
contrive “to sit upon the bed instead of the of-
fered stool, in order to ascertain of what material
it was made ; and he would peep on the sly into
the boiling pot of grease and greens to see what
was to be the family dinner.”* He came to the
conclusion that the poverty and misery of the
common people were the result of bad laws and
bad institutions ; monarchy and an hereditary aris-
tocracy were in his judgment the root of all the
evil. For the intellectual capacity of kings he
had an ineffable contempt. “There is not a
crowned head in Europe,” he wrote to General
Washington in 1784, “whose talents or merits
would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by
* Parton's “Life of Thomas Jefferson,” p. 316.


46
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
The queen
.
the people of America." For the nobles he had
no deeper reverence. Even the Queen of France,
who so intoxicated the imagination of Burke when
he saw her, “just above the horizon, decorating
and cheering the elevated sphere she just began
to move in, glittering like the morning-star, full of
*life and splendor and joy,” failed to dazzle the
Virginian democrat. In the summer of 1789 he
declared that this fair and brilliant creature was
prepared to do “whatever rage, pride, and fear
can dictate in a breast which never knew the
presence of one moral restraint.
cries,” he says, “and sins on.” Even after the
tragedy of her execution, which, however, he did
not approve, thinking it would have been better
to have shut her up in a convent, he did not shrink
from writing that her “inordinate gambling and
dissipations” had been one of the causes which
led to the financial crisis that precipitated the
revolution, and that it was her inflexible oppo-
sition to reform which “led herself to the guillo-
tine, drew the king on with her, and plunged the
world into crimes and calamities which will for-
ever stain the page of modern history."*
He returned from France long before there
were any signs of the excesses of the Reign of
Terror, and his whole heart was glowing with en-
thusiasm for the revolution. To his dismay and
indignation he discovered that the most powerful
* Parton's “Life of Thomas Jefferson,” pp. 328, 329,
POLITICS.
47
classes among his own countrymen regarded his
political friends in France with bitter hostility.
He entered Washington's cabinet, and found that
the political sympathies and principles of his
colleagues were wholly antagonistic to his own.
He records part of a conversation on the British
Constitution which took place at a cabinet dinner
about the year 1790, just after his return.
“Mr. Adams observed, “Purge that constitution of
its corruption, and give to the popular branch equality
of representation, and it would be the most perfect con-
stitution ever devised by the art of man.' Hamilton
paused and said, 'Purge it of its corruption, and give its
popular branch equality of representation, and it would
become an impracticable government; as it stands at
present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most per-
fect government which ever existed.'”
',
And this was more than forty years before
the first Reform Bill.
Adams and Hamilton are among the greatest
names in the early history of the republic, and
the political temper which is illustrated in this
conversation still survives. Some of the Ameri-
cans with whom I came into contact were so in-
tensely conservative that if they were English-
men they would regard the democratic achieve-
ments of Lord Beaconsfield with dismay, and
would sigh over the disappearance of genuine
Tory statesmanship. One gentleman expressed
the hope that in fifty years America might cease


48
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA
to be a republic-not remembering that between
monarchy and conservatism there is no indissol-
uble alliance. Men of this extreme type generally
belong to the class that has wealth enough and
leisure enough to travel in Europe. When they
are on this side of the Atlantic, there are many
Americans whose imagination appears to be very
easily excited by the pomp and splendor of thrones,
and by whatever is venerable and romantic in
ancient institutions. In all parts of the country
I found a kind of sentiment toward the
queen
and
the members of her family which it was not very
easy to distinguish from loyalty.
Though there are very few persons who se-
riously desire to see a monarchical form of gov-
ernment established in America, and fewer still
who expect it, a distrust of popular institutions
is far from uncommon among the wealthier and
educated classes. In America as in England
there are many who believe that a country will
never be well governed unless a preponderating
power is conferred by the constitution on wealth
and culture. Unhappily, most of the persons, in
America as well as in England, who hold this
theory refuse to exert the authority which is
actually within their reach. They would be per-
fectly happy if the political affairs of the country
could be transacted quietly in carpeted rooms lit
with wax-candles, and with walls covered with
engravings after the best masters,” or with
POLITICS.
49
water-color sketches from Italy and Spain and
Algiers ; but if they must go into heated halls
lit with flaring gas, and defend their opinions in
the presence of a crowd of noisy electors, their
patriotism fails them. There is a still larger
class—a class including thousands and tens of
thousands of the best men in the country-who
think it possible to enjoy the fruits of good gov-
ernment without working for them.
To an Englishman, especially to a Birmingham
radical, the little interest which many Americans
seem to feel in politics is one of the worst and
most ominous characteristics of American life.
They go to the poll when there is an election, but
at other times they seem to feel no responsibility
for the maintenance and diffusion of their po-
litical convictions. The reasons for this neglect
of political duty are not far to seek. The action
of Government does not affect the life and in-
terests of the great masses of the people so direct-
ly and so powerfully as among ourselves. The
material prosperity of the country has been so
great that there has been no reason for engaging in
political agitation in order to resist a policy which
was regarded as the cause of national distress.
From the close of the war down to the election
of Mr. Hayes there were no public questions
which were calculated to kindle popular passion,
none that created the enthusiasm and the hos-
tility which were aroused in this country by the

4

50
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
struggle for Catholic emancipation, for the Re-
form Bill of 1832, for the abolition of the Corn
Laws, for the disestablishment of the Irish Church,
for the extension of the suffrage in boroughs, for
the reform and reconstruction of the national
system of education-none that could excite the
fervor both of support and antagonism which is
excited by the present movement for the dises-
tablishment of the Church of England. Of late
years the most violent contests in America have
turned upon persons rather than upon principles.
“The American people,” some one has said, “ care
very little about politics, but a great deal about
politicians."
Further, the energy of political life is lessened,
and the current of political interest is broken, by
the division of power between the State Legisla-
tures and Congress. America is the paradise of
home-rulers. With the interior affairs of the sev-
eral States the Washington Government has no
authority to interfere. Within its own limits, the
government of every State is charged with the
protection both of life and property ;
it
preserves
order and controls all matters of police ; tries
criminals in its own courts, and punishes them in
its own prisons ; enforces contracts; regulates the
mode of acquiring, holding, selling, and convey-
ing property ; legislates on all social questions,
such as education, pauperism, marriage and the
domestic relations, wills and testaments; provides
POLITICS.
51
roads and bridges ; grants powers for the making
of railways and canals ; levies, collects, and ad-
ministers taxes for all purposes of government
within its own boundaries. On the other hand,
“ within the several States, the Federal Govern-
ment has power to levy taxes for national pur-
poses ; to establish post-offices and post-roads, re-
ceive, transport, and distribute mail matter; to
regulate foreign commerce, and the commerce and
navigation between States; to exercise certain
enumerated military powers ; to borrow money ;
to establish a uniform system of naturalization
and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies ;
to secure copyrights to authors, and patents to in-
ventors; to coin money, ... to regulate the cur-
rency, as is now claimed, and fix the standard of
weights and measures ; to punish certain enumer-
ated crimes and all violations of its own laws ;
and to hold courts to administer its own laws, and
to administer justice between citizens of different
States and in a few other cases." * It has also the
entire control of the foreign relations of the coun-
try.
It is at Washington that statesmen win a na-
tional reputation; and in the great crises of the
national history, when war seems imminent, when
any of the States are disposed to secede, when
commercial disasters compel the whole country to
* “The American System of Government," by Ezra Seaman,


pp. 25, 26.
52
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
reëxamine the principles of free trade, or the cur-
rency laws, or the laws regulating bankruptcy,
Congress is the centre of all political excitement.
But in quiet times Congress has very little to oc-
cupy it. To the farmers of Illinois and to the
citizens of Boston, Washington seems to be a very
long way off, and Washington has nothing to do
with most of those departments of Government
which affect most closely the affairs of ordinary
life. But the State Legislatures, though charged
with great powers, fail to appeal to the popular im-
agination. The State, though it may cover more
square miles than an ancient and powerful Euro-
pean kingdom, is dwarfed to the American mind
by the extent of the national territory, and the im-
portance of State politics suffers a corresponding
diminution. This system of home-rule is a his-
torical necessity, and it is vindicated by its prac-
tical adaptation to the necessities of the people.
But it divides political interest. Political life
loses the depth and the force derived from con-
centration.
The interest of the general community in po-
litical affairs is lessened by another and perhaps
still more powerful cause. In the United States
during the last fifty years, it has been customary
for each political party, on its accession to power,
to expel its opponents from all the appointments
in the civil service worth having, in order to make
way for the promotion of its own adherents. This

POLITICS.
53
92
was not the custom in the earlier days of the
republic. During Washington's Administration,
which covered eight years, he removed “six un-
important collectors, one district surveyor, one
vice-consul, and one foreign minister,” nine per-
sons in all ; and none of them were removed be-
cause they did not belong to his own party. John
Adams “removed nine subordinate officers during
his presidency, but none for political opinion's
sake.” “Jefferson,” according to Mr. Parton,
from whose life of Andrew Jackson * I have quoted
these facts, "removed thirty-nine persons, but he
himself repeatedly and solemnly declared that not
one of them was removed because he belonged to
the party opposed to his own.” Hildreth, indeed,
appears anxious to make Jefferson guilty of intro-
ducing the mischievous practice which has had
such disastrous fruits in later times ; † but the
evidence seems to be inadequate. And if, in a
few cases, Jefferson displaced men because of their
political opinions, it must be acknowledged by his
most bitter critics that the manner in which his
predecessor exercised the power of patronage dur-
ing the interval between Jefferson's election and
the commencement of his presidency was a strong
provocation to resort to measures of retaliation.I

* Vol. iii., pp. 207, sq.
† “ History of the United States," vol. ii., Second Series, pp.
426, sq.
| Hildretb speaks lightly of the “ clamor” which was raised
54
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
Madison, according to Mr. Parton, made five re-
movals ; Monroe nine ; John Quincy Adams two.
The evil precedent was really set by Jackson. In
about the midnight appointments” of John Adams.
" If Mr.
Parton's narrative and the story which he gives on the author-
ity of Jefferson's great-granddaughter are to be trusted, these
appointments created very great annoyance.
The incidents
are given by Mr. Parton with his usual dramatic force. It
should be remembered that the President comes into power on
the 4th of March.
“Mr. Adams's last day arrived.
“This odious judiciary law had been passed three weeks
before; but, owing to the delay of the Senate to act upon the
nominations, the judges were still uncommissioned. The gen-
tlemen's party had not the decency to leave so much as one of
these valuable life-appointments to the incoming administra-
tion; nor any other vacancy whatever, of which tidings reached
the seat of government in time. Nominations were sent to the
Senate as late as nine o'clock in the evening of the 3d of March,
and Judge Marshall, the acting Secretary of State, was in his
office at midnight, still signing commissions for men through
whom another administration was to act. But the secretary
and his busy clerks, precisely upon the stroke of twelve, were
startled by an apparition. It was the bodily presence of Mr.
Levi Lincoln, of Massachusetts, whom the President-elect had
chosen for the office of Attorney-General. A conversation en-
sued between these two gentlemen which has been recently re-
ported for us by Mr. Jefferson's great-granddaughter:
“ Lincoln. I have been ordered by Mr. Jefferson to take
possession of this office and its papers.'
“ Marshall. “Why, Mr. Jefferson has not yet qualified.'
“ Lincoln. “Mr. Jefferson considers himself in the light of
an executor bound to take charge of the papers of the Govern-
ment until he is duly qualified.'

POLITICS.
55
the first month of his administration (1829) more
removals were made than had occurred from the
foundation of the Government to that time. Some
have declared that during the first year of his
presidency 2,000 persons in the civil employment
of the Government were removed from office, and
2,000 partisans of the President appointed in their

stead.*
The Democratic party represented by Jackson
must, therefore, be held responsible for one of the
worst and most pernicious elements in the politi-
cal life of America.f But since his time both
“ Marshall (taking out his watch). “But it is not yet twelve
o'clock.'
“Lincoln (taking out a watch from his pocket and showing
it). "This is the President's watch, and rules the hour.'
“Judge Marshall felt that Mr. Lincoln was master of the
situation, and, casting a rueful look upon the unsigned com.
missions spread upon the table, he left his midnight visitor in
possession, Relating the scene in after-years, when the Fed-
eralists had recovered a portion of their good-humor, he used
to say, laughing, that he had been allowed to pick up nothing
but his hat."
* Parton, “Life of Andrew Jackson,” vol. ii., p. 209.
+ In the report of a speech delivered a few weeks ago by an
English manufacturer, I noticed that he charged the “hot-
headed Democrats " of America with the folly of maintaining
the present protective system. The speaker was a Conserva-
tive, and seems to have forgotten four things: 1. That Mr.
Hayes and his administration are not "Democrats,” but “Re-
publicans ;” 2. That the “Democrats " in America have not
been in power for the last seventeen years ; 3. That the “hot-
headed Democrats” are the party with which English Conser-

56
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
parties have accepted the evil motto—“The spoils
to the victor”-as the rule of their policy. If the
Democrats have carried their candidate for the
presidency, Republican postmasters, custom-house
officers, supervisors of excise, and a whole army
of office-holders besides, have had to make way
for the men who have won the presidential tri-
umph. If the Republicans have been successful,
the Democratic office-holders have suffered the
same penalty for their political defeat. The local
predominance of either party in any particular
State is succeeded by similar consequences.
A
considerable number of salaried State officials are
elected by popular vote ; and whenever there is a
change in the political temper of a State the men
that are in office lose their positions, and give
place to the nominees of the victorious party.
An Englishman will naturally suppose that
only the waifs and strays of society, men who have
learned no trade or profession, or who, from want
of power, or want of industry, or want of charac-
ter, have been unsuccessful in ordinary business,
would be willing to accept office on these terms;
and that the civil service must, therefore, be inef-
ficient and expensive, and probably corrupt. But

vatives have always had most political sympathy; 4. That,
although protection is a cross-question and does not accurately
divide the two great American parties, free-trade principles
have a stronger support among the “Democrats " than among
the “Republicans.”
POLITICS.
57
the conditions of society in America are very dif-
ferent from the conditions of society in England.
There is reason to suppose that many restless
“ ne'er-do-weels” find refuge in public employ-
ment, and such men are likely to be as incompe-
tent and inefficient in the business of the public
as in their own. In America, however, it seems
to be comparatively easy to turn from one occupa-
tion to another. A judge who loses his seat on
the bench will go out West and buy a farm, or he
will start a manufactory in New England, or be-
come manager of a bank. Sometimes a man, while
holding a public office, carries on a business of his
own on which he will be able to fall back when
his party gets into trouble. A postmaster, for in-
stance, whom I met, was also a manufacturer, and,
in the event of his losing the $5,000 a year which
he received as postmaster, he would still have a
considerable income from his own business. Men
of excellent character and great energy are, there-
fore, eager for public appointments. The scan-
dals of the New York Custom-House are shame-
ful and notorious ; in some other departments
there has been, here and there, great inefficiency ;
but I am convinced, on the testimony of men of
large knowledge and high integrity, that the civil
service is on the whole both honest and effective.
The organization of the Post-Office, for example,
is admirable, and I believe that the whole admin-
istration of this department is not only singularly

58
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
vigorous and able, but absolutely free from cor-
ruption.
The popular election of judges in New York
and some other States is obviously a mischievous
practice. There is strong reason to believe that
when the resolute administration of the law would
be generally unpopular, a judge, if he owes his
seat to a popular vote, sometimes shrinks from
doing his duty. But the system works better than
might have been expected. Now and then, espe-
cially in the thinly-settled districts, a man is elect-
ed who knows as little of law as the unpaid magis-
trates that administer justice on this side of the
water ; but it is rarely that there is any suspicion
of a judge's integrity, and since the man who is
run" for a judgeship is usually selected by the
lawyers of his party, he is, in the great majority
of cases, a man of good ability and with a compe-
tent knowledge of law.
It must also be remembered that the tenure of
office is less uncertain than it seems.
The Repub-
lican party has now been in power for seventeen
years, and since the changes incident on the elec-
tion of Mr. Lincoln there has been no political
reason for disturbing the appointments under the
Federal Government. Up to 1861 there had been
a Democratic President in the White House for a
very much longer period. I was told by a gentle-
man, who had exceptionally good means for know-
ing the facts, that among the present clerks in the

POLITICS.
59
Secretary of State's office at Washington the av-
erage length of service is longer than among the
present clerks in our own Foreign Office.
In most of the States the ascendency of one of
the great political parties is, under ordinary po-
litical conditions, sufficiently secure to relieve its
adherents from any serious dread of a political
catastrophe. Among ourselves most of the con-
stituencies usually remain faithful to their politi-
cal colors through a long course of years. The
counties and the boroughs are comparatively few
in which the political equilibrium is so unstable as
to make it uncertain whether the members will be
Conservative or Liberal. Except in times of great
political excitement it is only here and there that
there is any chance of changing the character of
the representation. It is the same in America.
There are some States in which the rival parties
are so nearly equal in power that an election is
always anticipated with anxiety ; but in most
the political bias is too strong and permanent to
leave the issue of a contest in any uncertainty.
The State officials, therefore, in the majority of
the States, have very little reason to fear that
they will lose their places through the triumph of
their political opponents.
The worst consequences of the civil service
arrangements in America are to be found outside
the civil service. At this moment I suppose that
from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico,

&
60
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, every postmas-
ter, every supervisor, every Federal official of
every description, is, with rare exceptions, a Re-
publican.* These officials constitute the political
“machine” for securing the permanent ascend-
ency of the Republican party throughout the
United States. In those States which have a Re-
publican majority these gentlemen are reënforced
by the State officials, and the “machine " is so
much the stronger. Every one of them has a pe-
cuniary motive for keeping the power in the hands
of his own party. In every district of the country
the Republican officials are the permanent Repub-
lican committee. It is their business to keep the
party together; to look after the register ; to ar-
range for "primary meetings ;" to select candi-
dates ; to work the elections. They have received
their appointments from the party ; they will
keep their appointments only so long as the party
retains its supremacy ; it is taken for granted that
they will look after party interests. The Demo-
* Mr. Hayes is said to have appointed a few Democrats as
postmasters in the Southern States. The reason alleged is that
in some districts of the South there are no Republicans that are
decently qualified for the office. Occasionally an announce-
ment appears in the newspapers of the death of a man
has been postmaster at — for forty years.” In these cases
the man was probably the only person in the district whom it
was possible to appoint, or else the office was too obscure and
too poorly paid for any one to have been anxious to deprive
him of it.

who
POLITICS.
61
crats who would like to hold the offices now held
by Republicans constitute, as a matter of course,
the standing Democratic committee. When the
Democrats win, they will have their reward. In
those States in which the Democrats command a
majority, these expectants of Federal office are, of
course, associated with those who already hold
office under the State governments.
The results of this system of party organiza-
tion are most disastrous. Men who have no de-
sire to hold any public employment feel that they
are released from political responsibility. If a man
is disposed to discharge his political duties, he is
regarded with suspicion and jealousy. Let him
show a disposition to promote the interests of his
party, let him attend "primary meetings,” let him
appear frequently on the party platform, and his
allies as well as his opponents will ask, “What does
he want?" If he be on the same side as the men
who are in office already, they begin to think that,
to secure a berth for himself, he will intrigue in
order to get one or another of them dismissed ; if
he is on the other side, the men who are hoping
for office will feel that their own chances of win-
ning an appointment when their party becomes
triumphant are diminished by the appearance of a
new candidate.
Of course, general statements of this kind are
not to be taken without qualification. Men who
have done little for their party are often appointed

62
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
to office on their merits, and there are others who
do a great deal for their party without any hope
or desire of receiving official reward. But, broad-
ly speaking, men who are too wealthy to care for
public employment, and men whose time is ful-
ly occupied with a remunerative profession, are
thrown out of politics. The complete separation
of the civil service from party interests would re-
move from the political life of America its most
corrupt and most pernicious element.
Mr. Hayes is making a gallant attempt at re-
form, but he is fighting a desperate battle. To a
stranger, the manner in which he opened the cam-
paign seemed audacious. On the eve of a great
contest in Ohio he issued a circular directing the
civil service to take no part in the struggle. By
doing this, he simply broke up and shattered the
Republican organization in the State, and the re-
sult was that Ohio was lost to the party. This
catastrophe did not recommend the President's
policy to Republican politicians. The Democrats
are still less likely to regard it with favor. If he
is to succeed, he must awaken the conscience and
kindle the enthusiasm of the great masses of the
people who commonly abstain from political agi-
tation.
The great material prosperity of the American
people has contributed to make them indifferent
to their political and municipal responsibilities.
Sometimes I was told in a tone of complaint that

POLITICS.
63
answer :
rogues went into municipal office with no other
object than to make money. “Why don't you
keep them out ?" I asked ; "there are more hon-
est men in the country than rogues.” “We can't
afford it,” was the reply ; “we are making money,
and, on the whole, it is cheaper to be swindled
than to give our time to public work to prevent
ourselves from being swindled.” I ventured to
“ The rogues, according to this account, ,
do public work in order to make money, and the
honest men neglect public work in order to save
money. Judged by the laws of public morality,
there is not much to choose between them."
On one point of public duty most Americans
seem to have a conscience--they go to the poll.
"To vote seems to be recognized as a duty. In-
deed, in the old colonial times, every voter in Vir-
ginia was compelled to vote under a penalty of a
hundred pounds of tobacco. But there are con-
siderable classes—or, rather, there are consider-
able numbers of men in all classes—who have not
yet learned that it is the duty of the citizen of a
free country to give time and labor and money to
promote the diffusion of the political principles in
which he believes, and the triumph of the politi-
cians whose integrity and ability command his
confidence. There are many Americans, as there
are many Englishmen, who have not yet learned
that in claiming the right to govern themselves
they have accepted the responsibility of doing

64
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
their part toward maintaining a just and wise and
vigorous government. In politics, as in every
other region of morals, rights and duties are in-
separable. Free institutions are worthless unless
they are sustained by the zeal of an intelligent
and virtuous people.
The politician who was creating the greatest
sensation while I was in America was Mr. Conk-
ling, one of the senators for the State of New
York, a distinguished orator, and one of the ablest
leaders of the Republican party. Last autumn
he and his immediate friends were very wroth
with Mr. Hayes, and the cause of their anger will
serve to illustrate the magnitude of the task which
the President has undertaken in attempting to
regenerate the civil service.
It is provided by the Constitution that the
President “shall nominate, and by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate shall appoint,
embassadors, other public ministers and consuls,
judges of the Supreme Court, and all other offi-
cers of the United States whose appointments are
not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall
be established by law.”* The clear intention of
the Constitution was to vest the patronage in the
President, but to enable the Senate to prevent
corrupt and improper appointments. As it was
impossible for the President to have any personal
knowledge of the claims and qualifications of all
* Article II., section 2.

POLITICS.
65
applicants for employment, it was the common
practice for him to consult the senators represent-
ing a State in which a Federal office had fallen
vacant before he made any nomination to the
Senate. The private suggestions of the senators
were sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected. The
President asked for advice, but retained in his
own hands the authority vested in him by the
Constitution. Under the reign of Andrew John-
son, the illiterate and drunken successor of Abra-
ham Lincoln, it is alleged that the nominations of
the President were so flagrantly bad that the
Senate was driven to adopt some decisive meas-
ures to save the public service from absolute ruin.
It was therefore agreed among the members of
the Senate that, when a Federal appointment was
to be made in any State, the nomination of the
President should not be confirmed unless he nomi-
nated the man whom the senators from that
par-
ticular State had recommended to him.
This
informal understanding has, of course, practically
transferred the Federal patronage from the Presi-
dent to the senators. The senators for New York
are able, through what is commonly described as
“the courtesy of the Senate,” to distribute among
their own political supporters all the Federal
offices in the State of New York. The senators
for the other States have a similar power. Mr.
Hayes was resolved to reassert the prerogative of

GC
5

66
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
99
Senate as a new and most pernicious instrument
of political corruption. Mr. Conkling, with great
vehemence and
energy,
defended the “rights” of
the senators, and took a course which contributed
to widen the rents which already existed in the
Republican party.
It is not merely in relation to Federal offices
in the several States that the Senate has attempt-
ed to wrest the patronage from the hands of the
President. Last autumn a new American minis-
ter had to be sent to England. The senators from
Pennsylvania claimed the right of selection, and,
from all that I saw in the newspapers, the man
they selected was preposterously unfit for the
post. Mr. Hayes resolutely refused to nominate
him. After some private negotiations, in which
it was understood that the President would recog-
nize the claims of Pennsylvania, the candidate
was withdrawn. Mr. Hayes nominated Mr. Welsh,
of Philadelphia, to whom, as I have good reason
for believing, he intended from the first to give
the appointment. Mr. Welsh was in every re-
spect qualified for the position, and he now repre-
sents the United States at the court of Saint
James's.
I had long discussions with several of my Amer-
ican friends on free trade. Some of them main-
tained the extraordinary proposition that the
pres-
ent tariff is a tariff for purposes of revenue, not for
purposes of protection. Those who admitted that
POLITICS.
67
in an enormous number of cases the duties are pro-
hibitory, and who defended the policy of prohibi-
tion, used the old arguments with which we were
familiar before 1846. The unquiet ghosts of Lord
George Bentinck's speeches are still “walking”
in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
Had
my friends argued, as I believe some Ameri-
can statesmen have argued, that economically pro-
tection inflicted a heavy loss on the country, but
that it was worth while to submit to the loss in
order to secure variety of employment for the
population, and to rescue the national life and
character from the dull monotony which would
follow from uniformity of occupation, the plea
for protection would have some force. Assuming
that, in the absence of protective duties, nearly
all forms of manufacturing industry would be
unprofitable, and that the whole people would
have to devote themselves to growing buckwheat
and Indian-corn, and to raising pigs, I can im-
agine an intelligent and patriotic American de-
fending the protective tariff. But the defense
was rested on the old economical fallacies which
in this country have been finally exploded.
In one respect the American advocates of
pro-
tection are exceptionally unfortunate. When in
1844 and 1845 the “farmers' friends” were deliv-
ering eloquent and gloomy prophecies at market
dinners, and in the House of Commons, about the
certain ruin of the agricultural interest if the in-

68
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
sane and wicked policy of the Anti-Corn Law
League ever became triumphant, we were not ex-
porting wheat to Odessa and Chicago, and the
price of wheat in Mark Lane was very much
higher than at New York or at the mouth of the
Danube. But the Lowell manufacturers who are
aghast at the prospect of free trade are actually
sending cotton-cloth to Manchester; and in Amer-
ican retail "stores ” cotton goods are marked at
a lower price than that at which goods of the
same quality could be sold in Liverpool or Lon-
don. It is the same with the other manufactur-
ing industries of America. The manufacturers
of hardware who think that they would have to
shut up their works if the duties on English goods
were abolished are beating us in market after
market from Hamburg to Melbourne. In Bir-
mingham itself merchants are importing from the
United States such articles as axes, hay-forks, and
agricultural implements of nearly every descrip-
tion, sash-pulleys, and “small castings” of very
many kinds, although it is estimated that freight
and other expenses add seventeen or eighteen per
cent. to the cost of the goods.
The Russo-Turkish war ought to have shown
the American manufacturers that they have little
reason to fear us. Not a single cartridge, as far
as I know, has been made in Birmingham for
either Russia or Turkey; but when I was in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, in November, the car-

POLITICS.
69
tridge-factories had been running day and night
for months, and I saw a Russian commissioner
and a Turkish commissioner in the same works.
The Americans have made the rifles as well as the
cartridges for both combatants. When I asked
how it was that they had carried off the orders
from Birmingham, they told me that the exchange-
able parts of the American weapon are more read-
ily fitted than ours. This explanation was con-
firmed by an eminent Birmingham manufacturer
with whom I had some conversation on the sub-
ject after I came home. He said that in England
we are accustomed to make the parts of the rifle
fit very tightly, and that the Americans are satis-
fied with a loose fit ; so that when the English
rifle receives any damage, more time and trouble
are required to replace the injured part than when
an American rifle receives similar damage. He
also told me that he could never see that there
was any practical advantage in the closer accuracy
of the English make.
Spite of their tariff, the Americans may be
said to enjoy the advantages of free trade more
largely than any other nation in the world. They
are a confederation of States extending over a
territory that stretches from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, and from the tropics through nearly twen-
ty-five degrees of latitude. These States, pos-
sessing every variety of climate and of soil, rich
in forests, in corn-lands, in pasture, and in mines,



70
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
are separated from each other neither by differ-
ences of language, nor by differences of govern-
ment, nor by differences of currency. No line
of custom-houses divides State from State ; their
commercial intercourse is absolutely unrestricted.
The Americans, therefore, argue that what might
be ruinous for England may be safe for them-
selves. It is obvious, however, that the very
wealth and variety of their internal resources de-
stroy every plausible economical argument for
prohibition. Already the professors of political
economy in every considerable college, with hardly
an exception, are free-traders ; and notwithstand-
ing the cry of distress, which I believe has gone
up from Pennsylvania at the very moderate re-
duction of duties proposed in the Tariff Bill now
before Congress, there is little probability that
the policy of protection will last many years
longer. Commercial restrictions in any country
must always have an injurious effect on the nat-
ural and vigorous development of the industry of
the world, and for this reason it is very desirable,
in the interest both of Europe and of America,
that America should adopt the principles of free
trade. But, if the protective duties were swept
away to-morrow, I doubt whether our own manu-
facturing industry would receive at once the gen-
eral stimulus which some sanguine persons might
anticipate. Leeds and Bradford might become
more active; but that the Lancashire and Bir-
POLITICS.
71
mingham manufacturers would recover their old
place in the American market seems to me ex-
tremely improbable.
The agitation for the repeal or the evasion of
the act passed in 1875 for the resumption of spe-
cie payments in 1879 was only beginning to show
its strength last autumn. Most of my New Eng-
land friends assumed that the repeal of the act
was not to be feared, and when I left the country
the Silver Bill of Mr. Bland had not created
any
considerable excitement; indeed, I am not sure
whether at that time the bill was actually before
the House. The President was known to be
strongly in favor of “hard money,” and resolute-
ly opposed to repudiation in any form. There
was a general impression in New England that he
would be able to prevent any tampering with the
act of 1875.
The apologists of Mr. Bland's bill contend that
the bill provides for the honest fulfillment of the
financial obligations of the Government. They
allege that, when the American debt was con-
tracted, silver was a legal tender, and that the
acts under which the loans were raised promised
payment of principal and interest in “coin,” but
did not specifically promise gold.* These pleas
* In a letter which appeared in the Times of February 18th,
it is stated that “in the prospectus of the funded loans-issued
under the auspices of Messrs. Rothschild and Messrs. Baring
Brothers-payment of both interest and principal is guaranteed
in 'gold coin' of the United States."


172
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
may have concealed from honest Americans the
true character of Mr. Bland's measure, but as a
justification of it they are wholly and absurdly in-
adequate. When the loans were raised, the United
States had practically ceased to have a double
standard ;
“coin” meant gold ; the interest of
the public debt has always been paid in gold; the
duties which have been levied to pay the in-
terest have been made payable in gold. To make
silver a legal tender and to make the silver dollar
weigh only 4121 grains is an attempt to cheat all
creditors for the advantage of all debtors. If the
ratio between the value of gold and the value of
silver which has ruled for some time past continues,
every one who has lent money, whether to the
Federal Government, to State governments,* to
municipal corporations, to railway and manufac-
turing companies, or to private persons, will lose
nine or ten per cent. of his principal and interest.
The parable of the unjust steward is to be illus-
trated in the national policy of America ; to every
man who owes a hundred thousand dollars, Mr.
Bland
says,
“ take thy bill and write ninety.”
It is very possible, indeed, that the enormous
injustice which this policy is calculated to inflict
may
be averted. Under the fresh demand for
silver created by remonetization, the price may
* Immediately on the passing of Mr. Bland's bill, Massa-
chusetts announced that she intended to pay the interest of her
debt in gold.
POLITICS.
13
to'ich a point which will make the silver dollar of
4121 grains equal in value to gold. If this hap-
pens, the people of the United States will have
provoked universal distrust and indignation by
the attempt to pay their debts in a depreciated
currency, and yet they will have to pay in full.
They will have committed the crime, and will lose
the wages of their iniquity.
The controversy is a grave one, politically as
well as morally. It will create a bitter feeling in
New England against the rest of the country.
The Middle and Western States are the borrowers;
the Northeastern States are the lenders. The sud-
den resurrection of Chicago from its ashes a few
years ago was the splendid achievement of New
England capital. A great part of the city was
mortgaged to the men of Connecticut and Massa-
chusetts. When the fire came, the mortgagees
found the money necessary to rebuild. Chicago
is only an example of the extent to which the
West is indebted to the Northeast. If the results
which Mr. Bland and his supporters are expecting
actually follow the triumph of their policy, the
resentment of the New Englanders will not be
easily allayed.*


* These paragraphs were written before the bill had passed.
The President's message to Congress, in which he explained
his reasons for vetoing the bill, was excellent; but within two
hours and twenty-five minutes from the time the veto message
reached the Capitol, the measure was carried through both

174
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
I propose to give my impressions of the com-
mon schools of America in another paper ; but
there are certain political aspects of the education
question which it will be convenient to dismiss at
once.
As to the necessity of maintaining the exist-
ing system for providing elementary education, I
found no difference of opinion among the Ameri-
cans with whom I happened to meet. On this
subject Northerners and Southerners, the men of
New England and the men of the West, Repub-
licans and Democrats, free-traders and protection-
ists, Episcopalians, Unitarians, and Congregation-
alists, were all of one mind. About the free high-
schools there was not the same unanimity. In one
of the Middle States I spent an evening with a
number of gentlemen who complained most bit-
terly of being taxed for schools in which, without
paying a cent, the son of a bricklayer or a wash-
er-woman may study conic sections and the cal-
culus, Goethe, Molière, and Tacitus, ancient and
modern history, and political economy, and the
art of rhetoric; and in which the bricklayer's
daughter and the washer-woman's daughter may
have half an hour's calisthenics every day, may
have a drawing-master and a music-master, may
Houses by majorities sufficiently large to overrule the veto : in
the House of Representatives by 196 to 73, fifty votes over the
necessary majority of two-thirds ; in the Senate by 46 to 19,
eight votes over the two-thirds.
POLITICS.
175
study geometry and work quadratic equations,
may run through a course of French and German
literature, and may listen to lectures on chemistry,
on mechanics, on heat, on light and sound, on
electricity, galvanism, and magnetism, on astron-
omy, mathematical and descriptive, on botany,
geology, and mineralogy. They maintained that
in these schools the children of the poor acquire a
distaste and contempt for manual labor, and are
made discontented with their “ rank and station
in life.” But even these gentlemen were as anx-
ious as any of their fellow-citizens to sustain the
efficiency of the elementary schools and to keep
them in the hands of the school boards.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy are, of course,
hostile to the fundamental principle of the Ameri-
can system. In America, as in Europe, it is their
contention that education should be under the
control of the Church. The large number of Ro-
man Catholics in the city and State of New York,
and the importance of the Roman Catholic vote
to the rival political parties, led the bishops, a
few years ago, to hope that, by skillful political
management, they might be able to secure for
their parochial schools grants from the Public
Education Fund. The disposition on the part of
a certain section of the American people to regard
English precedents with sympathy and admira-
tion was in their favor. In England, where a
Protestant Church is established, Roman Catholic



176
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
schools receive large grants of public money ;
conspicuous English statesmen-Liberals as well
as Conservatives—have declared again and again
that to withhold public assistance from schools
which are managed by Roman Catholic priests
and the clergy of other religious denominations
would be a violation of religious liberty. Why
should Americans be less “liberal” than English-
men ? Why should Roman Catholics under the
American Republic, which has no national Church
of any kind, enjoy inferior advantages to those
which they possess under the English monarchy,
which has made the sovereign the head and the
defender of a Protestant Establishment ? There
was one serious difficulty to be got over.
act passed in 1851, for amending and consolidat-
ing the acts relative to the common schools in
the city and county of New York, it was pro-
vided
In an
“that no school shall be entitled to receive any portion
of the school moneys in which the religious doctrines or
tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect
shall be taught, inculcated, or practised, or in which any
book or books containing compositions favorable or pre-
judicial to the particular doctrines or tenets of any par-
ticular Christian or other religious sect, or which shall
teach the doctrines or tenets of any other religious sect,
or which shall refuse to permit the visits and examina-
tions provided for in this act. But nothing herein con-
tained shall authorize the Board of Education to exclude
POLITICS.
rary
the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment, or any
selections therefrom, from any of the schools provided
by this act; but it shall not be competent for the said
Board of Education to decide what version, if any, of
the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment, shall be
used in any of the schools : Provided that nothing here-
in contained shall be so construed as to violate the
rights of conscience, as secured by the constitution of
this State and of the United States." *


While this clause remained unrepealed it was
impossible for Roman Catholic parochial schools
to receive any appropriations from the Public
School Fund. The Board of Education of the
city of New York is, however, especially empow-
ered by the acts under which it is constituted to
make grants to certain “corporate and asylum
schools” which are not under the direct govern-
ment of the board. The schools to which the
grants may be made are specifically named in a
series of acts of the State Legislature, the earliest
of which was passed in 1851 and the latest in
1874. The total amount apportioned in 1876 to
schools of this class was a little under £20,000,
the whole amount expended by the board on
schools of every kind during the same year being
a little under £250,000. Of the £20,000, the
Children's Aid Society, which establishes and
maintains industrial schools for the worst and

*“Manual of the Board of Education of the City and Coun-
ty of New York,” 1876, p. 37.

178
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
most destitute classes of the population, received
considerably over £7,000. The society is “un-
sectarian," and I heard so much of its success in
dealing with “wastrel children” that I regret
that I was unable either to visit its schools or to
make myself acquainted with its methods of op-
eration. Societies for the Reformation of Ju-
venile Delinquents” and for “the Reception of
Juvenile Delinquents” receive between them ra-
ther more than £2,000. The schools established
by the “New York Juvenile Asylum ” and by
the “Five Points House of Industry
"
receive
rather more than £2,000. · Orphan asylums which
are not described as connected with any religious
denomination receive £1,000. The schools of the
“ American Female Guardian Society” receive
more than £3,000 ; a school, established by the
Ladies' Home Missionary Society of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church, receives rather more than
£800 ; and the Roman Catholic Orphan Asy-
lum about £2,700. The rest is divided among
“Schools for Colored Orphans,” “Schools for
the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled,” and
other minor charities. With one possible excep-
tion, none of these schools seem to be ordinary
day-schools ; in most of them the children are
lodged, boarded, and clothed. The grant which
they receive appears to be determined by the cost
of the elementary instruction which is given to
their inmates. Only one of the schools can be
POLITICS.
179
recognized as Roman Catholic by its description
in the schedule of the report from which these
figures are quoted ; and this school, as I have
said, received less than £3,000 in the year 1876.*
The grants to these “corporate and asylum
schools,” though insignificant in amount, and con-
stituting less than a twelfth of the whole sum ex-
pended by the New York Board for educational
purposes, were a convenient instrument in the
hands of the priests. They argued that if the
board was willing to assist in maintaining Roman
Catholic schools which boarded and lodged the
children as well as educated them, there was
flagrant inconsistency in refusing assistance to
ordinary Roman Catholic day-schools.
The struggle was a fierce one. It ended in a
very unexpected manner. Party spirit ran high.
It was resolved that the priests should be sharply
punished for attempting to undermine an institu-
tion which the American people regard as one of
the chief glories of the commonwealth. It is one
of the current scandals of New York that the
party which governed the municipality in its evil
times secured the Roman Catholic vote by the
sale of sites for Roman Catholic churches at
nominal prices. The defenders of the common
schools alleged that sites and buildings for Roman
* I have the impression, however, that there are other
Roman Catholic schools of this class, not described as Roman
Catholic, which may receive £1,000 or £1,500 more.


80
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
thwarted, and that the
Catholic schools had also been sold by the munici.
pality at prices far below their value in the open
market. They alleged that by means of corrupt
influence the intention of the Legislature to with-
hold public aid from ordinary day-schools un-
der denominational management was persistently
a stop to abuses which had become flagrant and
intolerable. The clause I quoted from the act of
1851 was left as it stood, and an act was passed
(June 13, 1873) in which there appears the follow-
ing stringent provision :
“No money belonging to-the city, or city and county,
of New York, raised by taxation upon the property of
the citizens thereof, shall be appropriated in aid of any
religious or denominational school; neither shall any
property, real or personal, belonging to said city, or said
city and county, be disposed of to any such school, ex-
cept upon the sale thereof at public auction after the
same has been duly advertised, at which sale such school
shall be the highest bidders, and upon the payment of
the sum so bid into the city treasury; neither shall any
property belonging to the city, or city and county, be
leased to any school under the control of any religious or
denominational institution, except upon such terms as
city property may be leased to private parties after the
same has been duly advertised.” *
has been duly deve
I believe that the agitation was continued for
some time after the passing of this act, but it ap-
*" Manual of the Board of Education, etc., 1876, pp. 81,
82.
POLITICS.
81
pears now to have collapsed, and the friends of
the common-school system have won a definite
victory. In the city and state of New York the
denominationalists are probably stronger than in
any other part of the Union, and they fought
with great energy.
For a time the English oppo-
nents of the denominational systèm watched the
contest with anxiety, and even with apprehension;
and I remember very well the sense of relief
which came to us when we heard of its result.
But, if I may trust the assurances of many gen-
tlemen whom I saw last autumn in different parts
of the country, our anxiety and alarm were need-
less. I was told again and again that the com-
mon-school system was never in serious danger.
Defeated in their attempts to obtain public
money for the support of Catholic education, the
priests have not closed their schools, but are main-
taining them with characteristic vigor. In the
city of New York they have nearly ninety schools,
with an average attendance of between 30,000
and 40,000.* In the archdiocese of Cincinnati,
with a Catholic population of 240,000, there are
140 parochial schools, with an average attendance
of nearly 30,000. In the archdiocese of Phila-
delphia, with a Catholic population of 250,000,
there are 51 parochial schools, with an average
*"Sadlier's Catholic Directory for 1877." All the Roman
Catholic statistics in this paragraph are given on the same au-
thority.


6

82
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
attendance of 20,000. In this diocese there are
also a few parochial schools, under the charge of
the Christian Brothers, the attendance at which
is not included in these figures. In the diocese
of Chicago the Catholic population is reported as
numbering 300,000 ; there are nearly ninety paro-
chial schools, and an average attendance is reported
of rather less than 25,000, but, as many of the
schools do not return the number of their schol-
ars, it is probable that the attendance is at least
30,000. Similar figures might be given from other
dioceses.
It must be remembered that in America, as in
England, a very large proportion of the Roman
Catholic population consists of laborers and of
other classes receiving small wages, and that the
common schools are all free. The priests have,
therefore, to carry on their own schools, not only
without a grant, but in most cases, I believe,
without the aid which denominational managers
in this country receive from the children's pence.
In some cases they appear to charge a fee, but in
the
presence of the public schools, in which no fee
is charged, and which are attended by the chil-
dren of wealthy tradesmen and professional men,
the levying of a fee on the Irish bricklayer must
obviously be a matter of extreme difficulty. The
whole cost of maintaining denominational educa-
tion must, therefore, in most cases come from the
contributions of the faithful. What adds to the
POLITICS.
83
difficulties of the zealous priest is the discovery
which even the bricklayer is very likely to make
before he has been very long in the country, that
as a rule the common schools are incomparably
superior to the schools of the Church ; and I
was informed on excellent authority that, even
where Catholic schools are within reach, the high-
er educational advantages of the common schools
attract Catholic children in considerable numbers.*
Under the present Constitution of the United
States the struggle, whenever it may be renewed,
will bave to be carried on, as it has been carried
on hitherto, in the separate States. At present
it is in the power of the Legislature of
any
State
to permit appropriations from the Public Educa-
tion Fund to denominational schools. In 1876
an attempt was made to deprive them of this
power. The Judiciary Committee reported to
the Senate the following amendment to the Con-
stitution :

The School Board of New Haven, Connecticut, recently
reported that of the children on the rolls of the schools other
than high-schools, during the week ending January 18th, sixty-
three out of every hundred were of foreign parentage. A very
competent authority estimates that, of these sixty-three, fifty
were either Roman Catholics or Jews. From what I know of
New Haven I think it very unlikely that of these fifty more
than ten are Jews. It therefore follows that forty per cent.
of the children in the common schools of New Haven are
probably the children of Roman Catholic parents. There are
three Roman Catholic “parochial schools ” in New Haven.

84
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
"No State shall make any law respecting an estab-
lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; and no religious test shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office or public trust under any State.
No public property, and no public revenue of, nor any
loan of credit by or under the authority of the United
States, or any State, Territory, district, or municipal
corporation, shall be appropriated to or made or used
for the support of any school, educational or other insti-
tution under the control of any religious or anti-religious
sect, organization, or denomination, or wherein the par-
ticular creed or tenets of any religious or anti-religious
sect, organization, or denomination, shall be taught.
And no such particular creed or tenets shall be read or
taught in any school or institution supported in whole
or in part by such revenue or loan of credit, and no such
appropriation or loan of credit shall be made to any re-
ligious or anti-religious sect, organization, or denomi.
nation, or to promote its interests or tenets. This ar-
ticle shall not be construed to prohibit the reading
of the Bible in any school or institution, and it shall
not have the effect to impair rights of property already
vested.
SECTION 2. Congress shall have power, by appropri-
ate legislation, to provide for the prevention and punish-
ment of violations of this article."
27
This amendment, though it begins with a clause
directed against the creation of a religious estab-
lishment of any kind, was notoriously intended
to prevent the creation of a religious establish-
ment of that particular type for which the Roman
Catholic hierarchy are anxious an educational
POLITICS.
85
religious establishment. The amendment in a
somewhat different form had been carried in the
House of Representatives by an overwhelming
majority—180 to 7. In the Senate, on the first
reading, it was carried by 27 to 15. On “ final
passage
» 28 voted for it, and 16 against it ; it
was therefore lost-a constitutional amendment
requiring a majority consisting of two-thirds of
those voting. The senators who voted against
the amendment are not to be regarded as friendly
to granting aid from public funds to sectarian
education ; they were simply contending for the
old principle of the Democratic party — State
rights. That any encroachment on the part of
Congress upon the free action of the several
States in relation to their internal concerns
should be resisted, is the leading article of the
Democratic creed. Up to the time of the civil
war the Democrats contended that if any of the
States chose to maintain slavery, Congress had
no right to interfere, for slavery was a “domestic
institution.” Slavery has gone, but the Demo-
crats are still jealous of any limitation on the
powers of the State Legislatures. Fourteen out
of the sixteen who secured the rejection of the
amendment belong to the Democratic party ; one
is regarded as “doubtful ;” of the sixteenth I
have no information. The twenty-eight who
voted in its favor are, without exception, Repub-
licans.



86
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,

That the Roman Catholic hierarchy should so
far renounce the traditions of their Church as to
sanction the attendance of the children of Roman
Catholic parents at schools which are not under
the control of the priests, is very improbable.
That, with all the difficulties created by the rival-
ry of the public system, they should abandon the
hope of obtaining assistance for their own paro-
chial schools from the public funds, is equally im-
probable. The conflict appears to have come to an
end for the present; to renew it immediately would
seem useless. But the political troubles of Amer-
ica are not over. The two existing political par-
ties are rapidly dissolving, and within a very few
years they will have to be reconstituted, probably
under new names, and certainly on new principles.
The priesthood will watch for their occasion, and
grasp
it. In
many
of the States the Catholic vot-
ers are so numerous that politicians will be under
a strong temptation to purchase their support.
Here and there the denominationalists may win a
temporary victory. But on the whole I have a
firm belief that, with whatever persistency and en-
ergy the struggle may be sustained, the general
defeat of the priests is certain. For the Ameri-
can people to surrender their common-school sys-
tem would be to confess that they are a conquered
race. It would be to acknowledge that Roman
Catholic immigrants from Europe have been strong
enough to trample under foot the proudest tradi-

POPULAR EDUCATION.
87
tions and to destroy the dearest institutions of the
republic. It would imply a complete revolution
in the spirit and temper and habits of the nation.
III.
POPULAR EDUCATION.

THE common school is one of the most char-
acteristic of American institutions. It existed in
the New England States long before the colonies
were separated from the mother-country, and it has
survived the separation. The Pilgrim Fathers-
as they are reverentially and affectionately called-
had left behind them in England grammar-schools
which had been endowed out of the estates of the
Church by the wise policy of Edward VI. and Eliza-
beth, or which commemorated the pious liberality of
rich merchants, great nobles, and learned bishops.
They determined to create schools for themselves
-schools that should be supported by taxation lev-
ied on every citizen, and that should be under the
control of the citizens “in town's meeting assem-
bled.” Twenty-two years after that terrible win-
ter which followed the landing of the pilgrims
from the Mayflower, an act was passed by the
General Court of the “old colony” requiring the
select-men” of every township “to have a vigi-
lant eye over their brethren and neighbors, and to
88
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
see that none of them shall suffer so much barbar-
ism in any of their families as not to endeavor to
teach, by themselves or others, their children and
apprentices so much learning as may enable them
perfectly to read the English tongue, and obtain
a knowledge of the capital laws, upon the penalty
of twenty shillings for each neglect therein.” This
act contained the rudiments of a law rendering edu-
cation compulsory. Five years
later
every town-
ship containing fifty householders was required
by another act to appoint a teacher “to teach
all such children as shall resort to him to write and
read ;” and every township containing a hundred
families or householders was required to “set up
a grammar-school” whose master should be “able
to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for
the university.” Heavy penalties, increased from
time to time with the increasing wealth of the
community, were inflicted on townships which neg-
lected to make the legal provision for education.
These laws were sustained by the force of
public opinion, and as the population moved far-
ther and farther inland, or occupied one rocky
bay after another on the coast, schools were erect-
ed all over the country. The result has been de-
scribed by a pleasant American writer :
"If in a New England town there chances to be a
native who cannot read and write, he is regarded as a
curiosity, and is pointed out to strangers as one of the
objects of interest in the place. There is one such man

POPULAR EDUCATION.
89
near Stockbridge, in Massachusetts, who was pointed
out to me last summer as the only native of New Eng-
land, in all that region, who could neither read nor
write. The people appeared to be rather proud of him
than otherwise, as though he had given no slight proof
of an ingenious mind in having escaped so many boy-
traps and man-traps baited with spelling-books as they
have in New England."*


The Dutch settlers on the Hudson were also
zealous friends of popular education. The char-
ter of the West India Company of the Nether-
lands, which began the work of colonization, re-
quired the company to maintain “good and fit
preachers, schoolmasters, and comforters of the
sick.” In the proposed articles for the coloniza-
tion and trade of the New Netherlands in 1638, it
is agreed that “each householder and inhabitant
shall bear such tax and public charge as shall here-
after be considered proper for the maintenance of
schoolmasters.”+ The municipal organization of
New Amsterdam (1653)—now New York—and
of the Dutch towns on Long Island distinctly pro-
vided for the establishment of common schools.
In 1659 the colonists sent home for a «Latin

I
* “Topics of the Times," by James Parton, p. 34.
“Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year
1875" (Washington), p. xv. In the brief sketch of the early
history of popular education in America I have made a free use
of the materials contained in the Historical Retrospect” pre-
fixed to this report.
90
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
schoolmaster." When he came out he was paid a
salary from the city treasury, and was allowed the
use of a house and garden. Pupils attending the
Latin school had to pay the master six guilders a
quarter ; the elementary schools were free. The
Dutch colony was conquered in 1664 by the Eng-
lish, and from that time popular education made
no progress. The Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent out a number
of schoolmasters, and a high-school was estab-
lished ; but the colonial authorities were unfavor-
able to the Dutch policy of sustaining free com-
mon schools by public taxation. The Roman
Catholic and Episcopalian founders of Maryland
and Virginia appear to have left the provision of
elementary schools altogether to private enterprise
and beneficence. In the early days of these colo-
nies the authorities were by no means zealous in
the encouragement of even private zeal for educa-
tion. Sir William Berkeley, who was appointed
Governor of Virginia by Charles I., gives what
he regards as a very cheerful description of the
condition of the colony after he had governed it
for thirty years : “I thank God there are no free
schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have,
these hundred years ; for learning has brought
disobedience and heresies and sects into the world,
and printing has divulged them and libels against
the best government. God keep us from both !”*
* Hildreth's.“ History of the United States,” vol. i., p. 526.


POPULAR EDUCATION.
91
For a long time after his death the prayer re-
ceived a fulfillment which the old Cavalier would
have regarded with a large measure of satisfaction.
The founder of Pennsylvania was a man of a dif-
ferent spirit. William Penn reminded his people
that “that which makes a good constitution must
keep it, namely, men of wisdom and virtue, quali-
ties that, because they descend not with worldly
inheritance, must be carefully propagated by vir-
tuous education of youth, for which spare no cost ;
for by such parsimony all that is saved is lost.'
But even William Penn did not follow the
prece-
dent which had been set by the Puritan and Dutch
settlers, of imposing the duty of establishing and
maintaining elementary schools on the municipali-
ties and the colonial government.
In 1717 the people of Maryland attempted to
establish a school in every county. Taxes were
to be levied on furs, tobacco, and liquors, and
“for every Irish papist servant and every negro
imported into the province” a duty of twenty
shillings had to be paid, and the proceeds went to
the school-fund. In Dorchester, South Carolina,
a free school was established in 1724 by an act of
the Colonial Assembly. But as the population in-
creased, the educational condition of most of the
Southern colonies became desperately bad, not-
withstanding the efforts of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, which continued to
send out schoolmasters, and notwithstanding the
92
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
numerous “charity schools” which were founded
by private liberality.
In New England itself the Revolutionary War
had a disastrous effect on popular education.
Sixty years ago the schoolhouses were mean and
inconvenient; the school-apparatus was defec-
tive; the teachers were in many cases ill prepared
for their duties; the educational methods were
slovenly and antiquated. A few years later, in
the time of Andrew Jackson, the New-England-
ers began to be alarmed by the ignorance of the
population in the great cities. Thousands and
tens of thousands of illiterate immigrants were
pouring in upon them from every country in Eu-
rope, and even their own children were being
badly taught. But the framework of an admi-
rable organization of popular schools had been
created for them by their fathers, and, stung by
the consciousness of having neglected too long
the work which the founders of New England
had so nobly begun, they gave themselves, with
magnificent zeal and energy, to the development
of all the resources of the system,
Their zeal
was contagious ; and their success has provoked
imitation throughout the rest of the country.
The “Yankee schoolmarm,” as Mr. Parton calls
her, is now to be found all over the States. The
recent triumphs of this irresistible lady have been
very sudden and very remarkable.
Before the civil war the common-school sys-

POPULAR EDUCATION.
93
tem had hardly made any way in the South. Dr.
Fraser was informed that the only exceptions
were “a tolerably complete organization for the
city of Charleston, South Carolina, and another
for the State of Louisiana." * When I was in
Richmond I found that the building used by Jef-
ferson Davis as his headquarters during the
Southern rebellion was occupied by a common
school organized on the New England model.
Within a hundred yards of it there was a free
high-school for colored people. The vice-princi-
pal of the high-school was a shrewd, keen, ac-
complished lady from Massachusetts. She said
that the municipal authorities of Richmond were
doing their very best to provide school accommo-
dation for all the children in the city, and to make
the education as good as it was in Boston. She
could give them no higher praise. I told her
that I had just been visiting a common school for
colored children, which was most inconveniently
crowded, the accommodation being so inadequate
to the wants of the district that the master was
obliged to arrange for the younger children to at-
tend only half-time-one set coming in the morn-
ing and the other in the afternoon. She replied
very fairly that the common-school system had
not been in operation more than seven years,
and
that the losses sustained by the city during the
Dr. Fraser's “Report on the Common-School System of the
United States,” eto., p. 11.

*
94
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
92
war made it hard for the people to bear heavy
taxation, but that the loyalty, intelligence, and
energy,
with which the authorities were trying to
overtake lost time, were admirable. She said
that the city had come to take great pride in its
schools, and that the success which had been
achieved in so limited a time was remarkable.
Still harping on the crowded colored school which
I had just left, I asked whether the Education
Board dealt quite fairly with the colored children.
“Are the buildings for the colored children as
good as the buildings for the white children ? "
" The board wishes the accommodation to be
precisely the same for both." “ Is the organiza-
tion of the two sets of schools the same ?"
“Precisely the same.” “Is the course of educa-
tion the same ?" “Exactly." “Is the school-
apparatus the same ?” “It is."
To apply a
crucial test, I inquired whether the salaries paid
to teachers in the colored schools were equal to
the salaries paid to teachers holding the same
rank in the schools for the white children. Two
or three of the assistants were standing near her
when I asked this question, and they all seemed
infinitely amused at my simplicity. The vice-
principal herself laughed heartily, and exclaimed,
in tones of astonishment, “Do you think we
should accept lower salaries than are given to
teachers in the other schools ?” As I saw the
look of humorous amazement on her keen, vig-

99
POPULAR EDUCATION.
95
orous face, I am bound to acknowledge that I
thought it very unlikely. She went on to say:
“I came South just after the war, and with all
the prejudices of a Massachusetts woman against
Southerners, slavery, and rebellion ; but I should
not be doing justice to the Richmond people if I
did not tell you that they are working the school
system with perfect fairness as between the white
and the colored people, and are doing their ut-
most to give a thoroughly good education to all
the children." The arrangements of the school
in which this conversation took place—the cool,
lofty rooms, the furniture, the maps, the books,
the scientific apparatus, and the perfect cleanli-
ness of the whole building, from the ground-floor
to the highest story - strongly confirmed the
lady's statement. It was also confirmed by the
bright intelligence of the teachers who assisted
her. I omitted to make a note of the number of
the students, but it is my impression that there
were about fifty young men and about a hundred
young women. Their ages varied from sixteen
to thirty. Some of them were as black as ebony ;
here and there I noticed a complexion which in-
dicated that the African blood was not unmixed.
When these young men and women have “grad-
uated,” most of them will become school-teachers ;
some of the young men may become pastors of
colored churches. I suppose that without excep-
tion their parents had been slaves, and most of


96
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
their parents were still poor people. “That young
woman's mother is a washer-woman,” said the
vice-principal, pointing to a girl of four or five
and twenty ; "and that young woman's father is
a barber," pointing to another. How the system
is being worked in other parts of the South I did
not learn ; but there is not a State in the Union
which has not, at least, resolved to establish com-
mon schools.
In the West there has been a most energetic
and intelligent effort to reach the New England
standard. Guided by New England experience
and employing New England teachers, some of
the Western States are said to have created a sys-
tem of schools almost as efficient as those of Mas-
sachusetts. Chicago is in the “West” no longer,
and can hardly be quoted as an illustration of
Western progress ; but the following facts are
curious proofs of the progress both of the city
and of its educational institutions : In 1810 the
first school was opened—a private school. It was
taught by Robert A. Forsyth, a lad thirteen
years
he had one pupil, aged nine. In 1816 a pri-
vate school was opened by W. L. Cox ; another
private school was opened in 1820—the name of
the teacher has not been preserved ; another in
1829 by Charles H. Beaubien ; another in 1830 by
Stephen Forbes ; another in 1833 by John Wat-
kins; in the same year an infant school was opened
by Eliza Chappell ; and an English and classical

old ;
POPULAR EDUCATION.
97
school by George T. Sproat. It is an interesting
illustration of the spirit of the American people
that the names of these early teachers have been
published in the report of the Board of Education
in order that the benefactors of an earlier
genera-
tion may not be forgotten. In 1834 the first “ap-
propriation” was made by the municipality for
the support of a public school.
of a public school. In 1838 the city
employed seven male teachers. In 1839 several
of the teachers were dismissed in consequence of
financial troubles, but in the same year the city
obtained a special charter, which laid the founda-
tions of the present school system. In 1840 only
four male teachers were employed. The first
public schoolhouse was built in 1844. In 1876
the Board of Education employed 762 teachers,
of whom 39 were male teachers, and the estimated
daily attendance of children was 35,970. The
number of school-buildings was 67; the number
of rooms contained in these buildings and used
for school purposes 66%. The Haven School, which
was described to me as a fair specimen of a Chi-
cago grammar and primary school, is one of the
best schools that I saw in America.

Wherever the common-school system has been
introduced-and, as I have already said, it has now
been introduced into every State in the Union
--its introduction has been the act of the State
Legislature. The Washington Government has
17
98
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
no power to compel any State or Territory to es-
tablish a school system of any kind. An attempt
was made in Congress seven years ago “to com-
pel by national authority the establishment of a
thorough and efficient system of public instruc-
tion throughout the whole country,” and the pro-
posal received considerable support. It was re-
jected on the old democratic principle that any
interference on the part of the central Govern-
ment with the interior affairs of the several States
is contrary to the fundamental principle of the
Constitution. The National Bureau of Educa-
tion, established in 1867, can exercise no control
over the educational policy of the States. In the
act which created it, the powers of the bureau are
very closely defined : it is founded “ for the pur-
pose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall
show the condition and progress of education in
the several States and Territories, and of diffus-
ing such information respecting the organization
of school systems and methods of teaching as
shall aid the people of the United States in the
establishment and maintenance of efficient school
systems, and otherwise to promote the cause of
education."

92
The organization of the educational system
varies, therefore, in the different States. In Mas-
sachusetts there is a board consisting of the Gov-
ernor of the State, the Lieutenant-Governor, and
POPULAR EDUCATION.
99
public schools in all
eight other persons appointed by the Governor
with the concurrence of the Council. The secre-
tary of the board performs some of the duties of
a State Superintendent. There are also several
officers whose business it is to visit the schools of
the State, to inquire into their condition, to hold
conferences with teachers and school commmit-
tees, and to lecture on educational subjects. The
board has also a director of art-education, who
superintends the State Normal School of Art, and
aids, either personally or by deputy, in the art-
cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.*
In the State of New York there is a “Board
of Regents of the University” with twenty-three
members-nineteen being elected by joint ballot
of the two Houses of Legislature, and the remain-
ing four being the Governor, the Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor, the Secretary of State, and the Superin-
tendent of Public Instruction. The board has a
general supervision of the literary and medical
colleges of the State, of the special schools in
Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year
1875,” pp. 184, 185. The commissioner is Mr. Eaton. As I
shall have occasion to quote this report several times, partly
for the sake of the brief and convenient descriptions of the
organization of the various school boards-descriptions which
need supplementing, however, from the reports and regulations
of the several boards and partly for the sake of other infor-
mation, I shall quote it, in order to prevent mistake, as “Mr.
Eaton's Report."

*
Q
100
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
which students are prepared for these colleges, of
the State Museum and the State Library, and of
the institutions for the training of teachers in
common schools.
The duties of the superintendent in the State
of New York illustrate, I think, the extreme lim-
its of the control which the State authorities, in
any instance, exercise over the local school admin-
istration. He is elected, like the “regents,” by
joint ballot of both Houses of Legislature ; holds
office for three years ; receives an annual salary
of £1,000, with £100 more for traveling-expenses ;
and is allowed £600 for a deputy and £1,800 for
clerks. He has “a general supervision of the
schools of the State, with advisory control of
their management, discipline, and course of in-
struction ; and determines, finally, on appeal, all
controversies arising under their local adminis-
tration.” He apportions and distributes the edu-
cational funds not derived from local sources of
these I shall have something to say in another
paper—and he is responsible for securing the ap-
plication of these funds by the local authorities
to legitimate objects. He issues, upon examina-
tions instituted by himself, certificates of qualifi-
cation to approved teachers, valid, until revoked,
in all the counties of the State ; he also issues
temporary licenses to teach ; and he has power to
revoke licenses, whether granted by himself or
others. “ It is his duty to visit, as often as is

CC
POPULAR EDUCATION.
101
consistent with his other duties, the common
schools of the State, to inquire into their course
of instruction, management, and discipline, and
advise and encourage pupils, teachers, and school-
officers, though he may delegate to citizens of a
county this duty of visitation for the schools of
that county, they reporting to him the result. He
is charged, too, with the general control, visita-
tion, and management, of teachers' institutes in
the several counties, the employment of teachers
and lecturers therein, and the payment of the
expenses incurred by the district commissioners in
conducting the exercises of them.” He has other
duties in relation to children sent by the State to
schools for the deaf, the dumb, and the blind, and
in relation to Indian schools. He has further to
compile abstracts of the reports of the local au-
thorities in the several school-districts, and is re-
quired to submit “ an annual report to the Legis-
lature of the condition of the schools and institu-
tions subject to his supervision, said report to con-
tain recommendations of such measures as will,
in his judgment, contribute to their welfare and
efficiency.” *
In Pennsylvania there is a State Superintend-
ent appointed by the Governor, with the advice
and consent of the Senate; and there are cou
county
superintendents, elected at a triennial convention
* Quoted and summarized from Eaton's “Report,” pp. 289,
290.


102
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
of the local school authorities. The duties of the
State Superintendent in Pennsylvania are practi-
cally the same as those of the similar officer in
the State of New York; the county superintend-
ents discharge similar duties in their respective
counties, and are required to report to the Super-
intendent of the State.* In Illinois the State Su-
perintendent is elected by the people of the State,
and the county superintendents are elected by the
people of each county.
In all the States the local educational authori-
ties have a much larger amount of freedom than
is permitted to school boards in this country.
The constitution and powers of these authorities
are determined by a general State law, or, as in
the case of many of the great cities, by special
acts of the State Legislatures. During the last
ten years the constitution of some of the boards
has undergone considerable changes. Since the
publication of Dr. Fraser's report, there has been,
for instance, a complete revolution in the organi-
zation of the boards of New York and Boston.
In some districts the local board is elected by a
direct popular vote, as in this country under the
act of 1870. In others the appointment is vested
in public authorities elected by the people, as in
the case of the committees of free libraries in
England and Wales, which are appointed by town
councils. The simple democratic system of the
* Eaton's “Report,” p. 353.
POPULAR EDUCATION.
103
New England “township,” under which all the
electors “in town's meeting assembled " discussed
their local affairs, determined the amount and
the appropriation of the rates, and elected town-
officers—“select-men”-to carry out the resolu-
tions of the meeting, has become unworkable
in those parts of the country which are thickly
populated.
In the school district of New Haven, Con-
necticut, which includes the whole of the city
but only part of the township of New Haven, the
original organization is closely followed, although
the population numbers nearly 60,000. An an-
nual meeting of the legal voters in the district
is held on the third Monday of September.
Special meetings may be called at other times.
The board consists of nine members, three of
whom are chosen at each annual meeting of the
district. At the "annual meeting” of the voters
the board is required to “make a full report of
their doings, and the condition of the schools
under their superintendence, and all important
matters concerning the same,” so that every year
the “legal voters ” have the opportunity of dis-
cussing the policy of the board, asking for expla-
nations, condemning extravagance, or condemn-
ing parsimony.
The board appoints a secretary, who, in addi-
tion to the ordinary duties of a secretary, fur-
nishes all fuel and all “supplies” to the schools,


104
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
.
superintends repairs of school-buildings, and is
charged with the troublesome task of securing
the attendance of truant and neglected children.
The board also appoints a superintendent, who
is required “to devote his whole time to the
schools, point out defects, and suggest improve-
ments; and to report to the Committee on Schools
or to the board the results of his observations."
Further, the regulations provide that “he shall
assemble the teachers from time to time for ad-
vice and direction, shall inquire into all com-
plaints, and shall examine candidates for the
position of teacher. He shall do his utmost, by
assistance, advice, or censure, to secure in all the
schools of the district thoroughness of instruc-
tion, good order, good morals, and harmonious
relations between the parents and teachers.” *
In Boston, with a population of between three
and four hundred thousand, the New Haven sys-
tem of electing the members of the school board
at an annual meeting of the “legal voters” would
be impossible. The members are therefore elect-
ed, as in England, by a poll. Previous to the
year 1876 the Boston School Board consisted of
118
persons, six members being elected by each
ward of the city, and additional members being
appointed by municipalities which were united
to Boston for school purposes.
Under an act
*" Annual Report of the Board of Education of the New
Haven City School District,” 1877, p. 113.
POPULAR EDUCATION.
105
passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts in
1875, the number was reduced to twenty-five
members, nominated on a general ticket”-
that is, elected by the whole school-district, and
not by the separate wards. The mayor is ex offi-
- cio president. There is something that strikes
an Englishman as a little remarkable in the man-
ner in which the first committee elected under
the new act criticised the previous educational
authorities of Boston. If any public board were
reorganized in the same way in this country, the
members of the new board would either be silent
about their predecessors, or would recognize in
complimentary terms the earnestness, or at least
the good-will, with which they had endeavored
to discharge their public functions. The Boston
people are much more frank. In the first annual
report of the board elected under the act of
1875, the “one hundred and eighteen persons
who had previously had charge of the common
schools are thus described :

2
“Some among them had never given any thought to
the subject upon which they were called to legislate, and
others had just that amount of knowledge which is a
dangerous thing.' . The rest formed a small nucleus of
men, well qualified for their position, though not always
able to fill it to their own satisfaction, as their wisest
measures were subjected to the decision of a controlling
majority. In one particular, however, all the members
labored under an equal disadvantage, namely, a want of
106
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
time to attend to their assigned duties, however willing-
ly they would have performed them."*
The board has the control of all the public
schools.of the city, and has power
"to elect
teachers and other school-officers, fix their com-
pensation, and discharge them if there be cause ;
arrange the courses of study in schools, and de-
termine such rules as may seem necessary; elect
a superintendent of schools and six supervisors,
and the head masters of the Latin, normal, high,
and
grammar schools.” ť The whole of the
teachers are elected every year. The committees
of the Board on the Normal School and on the
High School, the Divisional Committees having
charge of the common schools, and the Commit-
tee on Nominations, lay before the board a report
recommending for reappointment those teachers
who have discharged their duties satisfactorily.
Very much of the efficiency of the Boston
schools depends upon the superintendent and su-
pervisors. The following extracts from the regu-
lations of the board will show the duties of the
superintendent :
“He shall devote himself to the study of the public-
school system, and keep himself acquainted with the
progress of instruction and discipline in other places, in
order to suggest appropriate means for the improvement
*“Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of
Boston," 1876, p. 4,
+ Eaton's "Report,” p. 189.

POPULAR EDUCATION.
107
7
92
of the public schools in this city, and he shall see that
the regulations of the board in regard to these schools
are carried into effect.
“He shall visit each school as often as his other duties
will permit, that he may obtain, as far as practicable, a
personal knowledge of the condition of all the schools,
and be able to suggest improvements and remedy defects
in their management. He shall advise the teachers on
the best method of instruction and discipline, and, to
promote this object, he shall hold occasional meetings of
the teachers; and he is authorized to dismiss the gram-
mar-schools one half-day semi-annually, and the primary
schools one half-day each quarter, for this purpose.
The superintendent is consulted by the com-
mittee having charge of the building or altering
of schools. He is specially required “to suggest
such plans as he may consider best for the health
and convenience of the teachers and pupils, and
most economical for the city;" he has to inves-
tigate “the number and condition of the chil-
dren of the city who are not attending the public
schools,” and to discover remedies for their non-
attendance; he may be asked by any committee
of the board to furnish them with information
which they think may assist them in their work ;
he determines “the forms of all registers, record-
books, blanks, and cards, used in the schools, and
is required to see that they are of uniform pat-
terns; he attends the meetings of the board ; and
twice a year he presents an elaborate report.
“Regulations,” pp. 27–29.

108
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
Among his other duties there is one which, as far
as I know, has never been provided for by any
English school board :
“When the weather is very stormy, the superintend-
ent may suspend the forenoon session of the grammar
and primary schools by causing the number 'twenty-
two'to be struck and repeated by the fire-alarm tele-
graph, at quarter before eight o'clock. When the schools
are to be suspended for the afternoon for the same rea-
son, the superintendent shall cause the same signal to be
struck and repeated at quarter before twelve o'clock; and
if in session, the primary schools shall be dismissed at
twelve o'clock, and the grammar schools at one o'clock.”+
When I was in Boston the superintendent was
Mr. Philbrick, whose name is almost as well known
on this side of the Atlantic as on the other to all
who are interested in popular education. The
most accurate description of his office is to say
that he was “Education Minister” to the city of
Boston. He has recently resigned.
The “supervisors” are the Executive Commit-
tee of the board, and “as such may
be called upon
to perform any of the duties of the school com-
mittees under the statutes of the Commonwealth,
except such as are legislative in their nature. But
neither the superintendent nor the supervisors ...
have any authority over or direction of the princi-
*“Regulations,” p. 37. The school session in the morning
is from nine o'clock to twelve, in the afternoon from two o'clock
to four.

POPULAR EDUCATION.
109
pals, or other instructors, except as provided by
the board in the regulations or otherwise.”*
The supervisors are six in number. They are
required to visit and examine the schools “in de-
tail” twice a year, and to record the result of
these examinations in books kept in the supervi-
sors' office, and open only to the inspection of the
members of the board. The regulations further
provide that-
“in addition to the examinations in detail, it shall be the
duty of the supervisors to visit all the schools in detail,
as often as possible, and inquire into the character of the
discipline, the methods of instruction, the working of the
heating and ventilating apparatus, and generally into all
matters pertaining to the welfare of the schools and
classes, and the moral, mental, and physical condition
of the scholars; and they shall report thereon, with
such remarks and suggestions as they may deem ex-
pedient.”+
Every year they examine the highest classes in
the grammar-schools, and grant to the successful
pupils certificates which admit them to the high-
schools. They also examine the highest classes in
the high-schools, and grant diplomas of “gradua-
tion.” They examine candidates desiring to qual-
ify as teachers, and grant certificates of qualifica-
tion, which are of “five grades.” Certificates of
a “special grade” are issued by the supervisors to
“all instructors in special studies, to all instructors
Regulations," p. 29.
| Ibid., p. 30.

** 16
110
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
in Kindergarten schools, schools for deaf-mutes,
etc." *
The organization of the Education Board for
the city and county of New York is wholly dif-
ferent from that of the Boston board. During
the last quarter of a century it has been frequent-
ly changed. The present board is constituted
under an act passed in 1873. Its members, de-
scribed as
“commissioners,” are nominated by the
mayor, and hold office for three years, a third of
the board retiring annually. The board appoints
trustees, five from each ward, who hold office for
five years, one retiring in rotation every year.
The executive staff consists of a city superin-
tendent and seven assistant superintendents of
schools—corresponding to the Boston “supervi-
-a superintendent of school-buildings, and
an engineer. There are also three inspectors ap-
pointed by the mayor; these gentlemen have to
certify the necessity for new schools, to grant cer-
tificates to persons qualified to act as teachers,
and to determine whether the local trustees of
schools have acted rightly in dismissing any of
their teachers. The board has supreme control
over the whole educational system, including the
College of the City of New York, with its presi-
dent, fourteen professors, eighteen tutors, and
1,050 students. The trustees have a general over-
sight of the schools in their respective wards, and
* “Regulations,” pp. 31, 32.

sors
POPULAR EDUCATION.
111
nominate the principals and vice-principals of the
schools for confirmation by the board.
If any body of trustees is guilty of neglecting
or mismanaging any school under its control, the
board can take the school into its own hands.
In 1876 the board had seventeen “standing com-
mittees,” including Finance Committee, Commit-
tee on Teachers, on Buildings, on Supplies, on
Sites, on Study and School Books, on School Fur-
niture, on Warming and Ventilation, on Evening
Schools, Colored Schools, etc.
In New York, as in Boston, the efficiency of
the whole system largely depends on the superin-
tendent and his assistants. The work of these
gentlemen seemed to me to be far less mechanical
than that of either her Majesty's Inspectors or of
the School Board Inspectors in England. It is
not their principal duty to “examine and report ;”
they are empowered and required to “promote
the efficiency” of the schools. If a supervisor in
Boston or an assistant superintendent in New
York, or the superintendent in either city, thinks
that there might be some improvement in the
existing methods of teaching reading, he is able
to get his improved method tried in one of the
schools, and he watches the results. If he wants
to make a still bolder experiment and to give a
special character to the discipline and teaching of
a whole school, he is able, within the limits of the
regulations of the board, to ascertain how the ex-


112
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
periment will work. When I was in New York
I visited a primary school in which one of the
assistant superintendents had made an experiment
in order to discover whether it was not possible
to secure far greater promptness and accuracy in
the intellectual activity of the children than is
common in schools of the same kind. The prin-
cipal teacher, a lady who gave me the impression
that she possessed unusual ability and vigor, en-
tered heartily into his scheme; her assistants were
equally zealous. The results, whatever their merit,
were certainly astonishing. The intellectual drill
of the children was absolutely perfect. There
was something almost preternatural in the readi-
ness with which they answered every question
that was put to them. They exploded as soon as
they were touched ; and the answers were always
as definite and exact as if they had been revised
by a committee of lawyers or mathematicians. I
watched several classes at work in different sub-
jects-reading, spelling, arithmetic, and geography
—and what struck me as most extraordinary was
the fact that every child in every class was equal-
ly keen, equally clear, equally exact, equally alert.
My friend, the assistant superintendent, who
went through the school with me, was a little dis-
appointed when I expressed the fear that in the
long-run the children might suffer from the ex-
treme tension to which their minds were subject-
ed. The mistress, who was naturally very proud
POPULAR EDUCATION.
113
of the results she had achieved, was equally dis-
appointed. I argued that the atmosphere of the
school was so electric and so stimulating that the
children seemed to me to have lost the character-
istics of childhood. The lady replied : “They are
New York children; this is the way we live in
New York.” I rejoined that I had seen nothing
like it in Chicago, and that I supposed that Chi-
cago was as “ alive” as New York. It happened
to be the first school I had seen in New York, or
I might have told her that in the schools of New
York itself I had seen no such extraordinary ac-
tivity elsewhere. To make my peace, and get off
with a moderate degree of credit, I was obliged
to plead that, being an Englishman, I was neces-
sarily conservative and phlegmatic. I spent an
hour or an hour and a half in this school, but, was
so astonished and confounded by what I saw that
I was unable to form any conception of the pecu-
liarities of method by which these very remark-
able results were produced. I arranged to visit
the school again, and to spend several hours there
in order to find out the secret. This visit was
reserved as a kind of bonne bouche for
my
last
day in America, and it was a great disappoint-
ment to me to discover, when I rang the bell,
that, as the city elections were going on that day,
the school was closed.
It may be said that this illustration of the kind
of work which is done by the assistant superin-

8
114
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
any other.
tendents is not very felicitous ; that to permit
these gentlemen to make experiments in the com-
mon schools is to open a wide field for impractica-
ble or pernicious crotchets; and that, in my own
judgment, the wisdom of the method developed
by one of these officers in this particular school is
extremely doubtful. But, as an illustration of
what may be done for a school by an assistant
superintendent, the case I have cited is as good as
other. Within the rigid limits of the regula-
tions of the board, omitting no lessons provided
for in the ordinary scheme of studies, he had pro-
duced a school of an exceptional type. He had set
his heart upon securing a rapidity and precision of
intellectual activity unusual in primary schools,
and by the intelligent and zealous coöperation of
the mistress and her assistants he had succeeded.
In this particular instance my English habits
and traditions led me to regard the system and
its results with suspicion. But the “supervisors”
of Boston and the “ assistant superintendents”
of New York are appointed on the ground of their
general ability and their practical knowledge of
education. It is their business to make themselves
acquainted with the educational methods which
have proved successful in other parts of the United
States and in foreign countries. They attend
conferences of teachers, read school board reports,
discuss among themselves the discipline, the
methods of teaching, and the organization of the

POPULAR EDUCATION.
115
schools of which they have charge. They bring
to bear upon the system which they are working
the free criticism of cultivated minds. Whatever
mistakes they may make occasionally, it seems to
me that, on the whole, their influence must be of
immense advantage.
And yet I am bound to acknowledge that one
of the greatest cities in the United States, a city
that has been conspicuous for its educational zeal
and for the success of its schools, has neither as-
sistant superintendents nor superintendent, nor
any officers who, under other names, discharge
the same duties. The organization of the school
system of Philadelphia is, in many respects, pe-
culiar. The board, consisting of thirty-one mem-
bers, is appointed by the judges of the Court of
Common Pleas and district court, the judges
themselves being appointed by popular election.
A member of the board is selected from each
ward in the city. They serve for three years, and
one-third of the members retire annually. In
each ward there is a board of fifteen directors
ap-
pointed by popular election ; five retire every
year.
The relations of the “ directors" to the
board in Philadelphia are very similar to the re-
lations of the “ trustees” to the board in New
York ; but the “ directors ” have larger powers--
they can appoint teachers * in cases in which the
* The“ directors” have to report their appointments to the
board for approval; but the approval is granted as a matter of

116
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
New York “trustees” can only nominate them to
the board for appointment.
I have said that Philadelphia has no super-
intendent; this statement ought, perhaps, to be
qualified. Some of the duties properly belonging
to a superintendent are performed by the secretary
to the board, Mr. Halliwell. Mr. Halliwell is one
of the most energetic men I have ever seen in any
part of the world. His strength, which must be
severely tasked, seems inexhaustible ;
his courtesy,
it is pleasant to me to add, is equal to his vigor.
To him, and to the chairman of the board, Mr.
James Long, I am under great obligations ; no
trouble seemed too great for them to take in order
to enable a stranger to carry away a just impres-
sion of their schools.
The system on which the schools are organized
is very simple. The efficiency of every school is
tested, at regular intervals, by the number of pu-
pils that are qualified for “promotion” to a school
of a higher grade ; and the efficiency of every
division of a school is tested by the number of pu-
pils that are qualified for “promotion” to the
division next above it.
With us promotion from “standard” to “stand-
ard,” in a public elementary school, is made upon
the report of her Majesty's Inspector. In Phila-

course if the teacher appointed has the qualifications required
by the by-laws. It is the business of a committee of the board
to ascertain whether the teacher is duly qualified.
POPULAR EDUCATION.
117
"pass”
delphia, if I remember aright,* promotion from
“grade to “grade,” in the same school, is worked
upon a system which may be described as a self-
acting one. It requires the interference of no. in-
dependent examiner. Every six months the chil-
dren in the lowest grade are examined by the
teacher of the grade above it, and those who
are promoted. The examining teacher
has the strongest possible motive for making the
examination a rigorous one, for the children that
she “passes” will be in her own class till the next
examination, and if she admits any who are un-
qualified her percentage of failures will be in-
creased. This system extends through the whole
school; the teacher of each grade examining the
children of the grade below. The ultimate re-
sponsibility for the promotions lies, however, with
the principal ; if a teacher is too exacting, he can
override her decision ; and he is also empowered
to promote the children from a lower to a higher
division, in the same school, whenever he thinks
that their progress requires it.
Promotions from one school to another of a
higher rank are made in a different way. In

* I speak with some hesitation, because, in the brief“ notes"
which I made when in Philadelphia, I do not find any record
of the particular method in which promotions are made from
grade to grade, in the same school. If the system does not ex-
ist in Philadelphia—though I am nearly certain that it does—
I was assured elsewhere that it answers perfectly.
118
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
Philadelphia there are two groups of graded
schools. The lower group consists of the prima-
ry, secondary, and grammar schools ; the higher
group consists of two schools of equal rank—the
Central High School for boys, and the Normal
School for girls. The Central High School con-
fers degrees in art-B. A. and M. A. ; the Normal
School grants diplomas of graduation. Promo-
tions from the primary schools to the secondary,
and from the secondary to the grammar schools,
are regulated by examinations, conducted twice
a year by the principals of the grammar-schools.
Schools which do not obtain a fair number of
pro-
motions have to account to the board for their
failure. The examiners are certain not to make
promotions to the grammar-schools too easy ; for
they, in their turn, have to submit to a similar
test of efficiency, and if they promoted to their
own schools scholars who had been badly taught,
their credit would infallibly suffer.
Every year the president of the Central High
School makes what is called a "requisition " upon
the grammar-schools for boys. Each school is
required to send up a certain number of scholars
to an examination conducted by the faculty of
the High School. The papers must be such as
can be answered from the text-books used in the
senior classes of the grammar-schools, and no pu-
pil is admitted to the High School who does not
obtain a general average of sixty marks out of a

POPULAR EDUCATION.
119
hundred. Every year the board sends a simalar
requisition, on behalf of the Girls' Normal School,
to the principals of the girls' grammar-schools.
The entrance examination is conducted by a com-
mittee of principals of the girls' grammar-schools,
under the same regulations as govern the examina-
tion for admission into the Central High Schools.
Why the principals of girls? grammar - schools
should conduct this examination instead of the
faculty of the Normal School, which is a very
strong one, does not appear. If any grammar-
school fails to supply its properly qualified “ quo-
ta” to these two high-schools, this is prima-facie
evidence of inefficiency.
The system is ingenious, but not quite satis-
factory. The examinations of the Central High
School, and the Girls' Normal School, fail to sup-
ply an adequate test of the general efficiency of
the grammar-schools. The “quota” sent up from
a school may pass brilliantly, while its general
condition may be miserably poor. If all the
scholars that belong to the senior class of each
grammar-school had to be sent in for these exam-
inations, those being admitted who obtained the
highest average of marks, the system would be
more complete.
The examinations for teachers' certificates are
conducted by the “Committee on Qualification of
Teachers,” “ with the assistance of such members
of the Faculties of the Boys' Central High School


120
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
and the Girls' Normal School, and of such prin-
cipals of grammar-schools for boys, as they may
deem necessary to conduct such examinations."*
The whole organization of the Philadelphia board
imposes an exceptional measure of responsibility
on the “principals” of the schools. Whether this
is a safe policy is a question which can be solved
only by experience.
From these illustrations, it will be seen that
the organization of the local school boards and
their methods of administration vary very greatly
in different parts of the country. Everywhere
they are appointed directly or indirectly by the
people; but the machinery through which the
popular will is expressed is not uniform. In Bos-
ton the board is elected by a popular vote; in
New York it is appointed by the mayor, and the *
board appoints the ward “trustees,” who have the
management of the schools within the limits of
each ward ; in Philadelphia the board is appointed
by the judges, but every board elects its own “di-
rectors.” Our own local educational authorities
—including school boards and the managers of
denominational schools—are under the rigid su-
perintendence of the Education Department in
London. In America the school boards are left
very
much to themselves. The State government
determines the organization of the local authority,
but does practically nothing to direct or control
*" Annual Report,” 1877, p. 308.

POPULAR EDUCATION.
121
its action. The state may offer suggestions, may
diffuse information ; but, even where the State
law appears to give the State “superintendent”
of education some power to interfere with the lo-
cal administration, the power does not seem to be
very real.
The differences in the organization and grad-
ing of the schools are too numerous and minute
to be described in this paper.
I found that usually
the lowest grade in the primary school was about
equal to the highest class--not the standard class
-in an ordinary English infant school. The
children usually begin to go to school when they
are about five years old ; in some parts of the
country, where the Kindergarten system has been
introduced, the children are received earlier ; but
the Kindergarten schools are as yet extremely few.
The second grade in a primary school corresponds
pretty nearly to our Standard I. The lowest
grade in a grammar-school corresponds to our
Standard III., and the highest to what might be a
Standard VIII., if we were fortunate enough to
have it.
Primary schools are generally “mixed”—that
is, boys and girls are taught together—and in
many school-districts grammar-schools are also
mixed; but, in the older States, public opinion is,
on the whole, favorable to separate schools for boys
and girls over ten years
of
age.
122
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
Philadelphia, which is economical in its general
expenditure, is fairly generous in its arrangements
for staffing the schools—although, contrary to our
English practice, the regulations determine the
minimum instead of the maximum number of pu-
pils for each teacher. In the senior class of a large
grammar-school there must be at least thirty in
average attendance ; in the lower divisions of the
grammar-schools, and in the secondary schools,
there must be an average attendance of forty to
each teacher ; in the primary schools, except in
the lowest division, forty; and, with an odd
change of the principle which governs all the pre-
ceding regulations, it is required that, in the low-
est primary division, the number of scholars to
each teacher shall not exceed fifty.
In Boston, under the most recent regulations,
the maximum number of pupils to each teacher in
the primary schools is fifty-six ; in the
grammar-
schools (principal not counted), fifty-six ; in high,
mixed (principal not counted), thirty ;' in high,
unmixed (principal not counted), thirty-five.
New York, like Philadelphia, fixes the mini-
mum number of children that may have a teacher.
In grammar-schools there must be thirty-five to
each teacher ; in primary schools, fifty ; the prin-
cipals and the teachers of special subjects are not
counted.* The Committee on Teachers
may,
how-
* Our own code requires a pupil teacher to be provided, in
addition to the principal, “for every forty, or fraction of forty,


POPULAR EDUCATION.
123
ever, in special cases, permit the staff to be
strengthened. In one of the worst districts of
the city I saw an illustration of the manner in
which this power is used with admirable effect.
There were a number of children who had come
to school for the first time at eleven, twelve, or
thirteen years of age ; many of them were the
children of German and Swedish immigrants, and
they were unable to read a letter. For reasons
which will be obvious to every one who has any
practical acquaintance with school organization, it
was undesirable to put these children into a pri-
mary school with children of five or six years of
age. Two class-rooms were therefore appropri-
ated to them; there were about thirty scholars in
each room, with an energetic mistress to each
class. I was informed that there was no difficulty
in passing these children through the ordinary
three years' primary course in a year and a half.
Boston affords the simplest and, in some re-
spects, perhaps, the best example of what the
Americans mean by “grading” their schools.
The city is divided into school-districts. In each
district there are a grammar-school and an ade-
quate number of primary schools, the district tak-
scholars in average attendance after the first sixty.” A quali-
fied adult teacher is equivalent to two pupil-teachers. For 100
scholars, therefore, a school must have a head-teacher and a
pupil-teacher; for 140, a head-teacher, and either an adult as-
sistant or two pupil-teachers.

124
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
ing its name from the grammar-school. The pri-
mary schools are in separate buildings, each con-
taining from one to twelve class-rooms, six being
the standard number. Pupils are admitted at five
years of age, and the course of instruction covers
three years. There are “intermediate” schools,
corresponding to the classes for backward children
that I saw in New York. The master of the
grammar-school is the “principal” of the district.
In January and June it is his duty to examine the
first classes of the primary schools in his district,
and to grant certificates to those children who are
qualified for admission into the grammar-school.
The parent of a child who is not “passed” may
appeal to a committee of the board in charge of
the “division ” of the city to which the “district "
belongs. It is the duty of the “principal” to or-
ganize all the classes of the primary schools in his
district, as well as the classes of the grammar-
school. Without the special consent of the “ di-
vision ” committee, no pupil is permitted to remain
in the grammar-school after he is qualified for ad-
mission to the high-school.
After all the experience of the Boston board,
Mr. Philbrick complains that the coördination of
the schools is not yet satisfactory. The qualifi-
cation for admission to the grammar-school does
not quite coincide with the standard of attain-
ments prescribed for the highest class in the pri-
mary schools ; and the examination for admission
POPULAR EDUCATION.
125
$
to the high-schools excludes an important part of
the curriculum of the highest class in the gram-
mar-schools.* This want of adjustment in the
relations of the three orders of schools to each
other appears to admit of easy correction, and
will probably soon disappear.
There is another and far graver defect in the
organization of American schools.
The theory
of the system is very simple. Let there be a
hierarchy of schools-primary, grammar, high ;
let the course of instruction be so arranged that
the highest class in the primary shall be a grade
below the lowest in the grammar, and the highest
in the grammar a grade below the lowest in the
high ; and let the “graduating" class in the high-
schools be a grade below the junior classes in the
colleges and universities. On paper this scheme
is admirable. It looks like the fulfillment of the
dreams of those enthusiastic educationists among
ourselves who insist that when a child enters an
infant-school he should have his foot on the low-
est rung of a ladder by which he may ascend to a
fellowship at Trinity or Balliol. But the whole
scheme of education for boys over ten years of
age who are to go to a university ought to be
different from that which is intended for those
who are to leave school at fourteen or fifteen.
Boys destined for the university should begin
some subjects at eleven or twelve which it would
* Report for 1876, p. 81.


126
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
be waste of time for them to touch if their educa-
tion had to close in the course of two or three
years. On the other hand, boys who are to go
into business as soon as their elementary educa-
tion is finished, should be taught some things in
a popular and unscientific way which boys who
are going to the university must be taught more
thoroughly. The “primary" instruction of both
sets of children may be carried on together; but
from the time that they are ten or eleven a special
training is necessary for those who are to enjoy
the advantages of a university. The Boston board
has made a successful attempt to solve this diffi-
culty. The Latin School receives pupils at nine
years of age, with qualifications about equivalent
to the requirements of the lowest grade in the
grammar-schools. Its full course covers eight
years.
I believe that there is no other city in the
United States which has a public high-school that
receives children at so early an age. The great
want of America is a set of schools corresponding
to the Shrewsbury Grammar School, King Ed-
ward's School in Birmingham, and the City of
London School. The Boston Latin School is a
bold and admirable attempt to supply this want,
but it has had to encounter serious opposition.
“Well-meaning ignorance,” says Mr. Philbrick
in his frank way, “has frequently tried to abolish
this feature of the system, and has two or three
POPULAR EDUCATION.
12"
into Harvard College for the previous year. Out
times partially succeeded, greatly to the injury of
the school." * In the absence of free common
schools of this kind elsewhere, wealthy parents
who intend their boys to have a university educa-
tion send them either to private schools or to en-
dowed “academies,” some of which have a very
high character. Of the schools of this class the
one of which I heard most frequently was “Phil-
lips Academy,” in Andover, Massachusetts. This
institution has about 240 pupils, 140 of whom (in
1876) were preparing for a classical course at col-
lege; most of the remaining 100 were preparing
for a scientific course. The cost of board and
lodging is from £40 to £70 per annum, and the
cost of tuition is £12. Mr. Eaton reports that
there are 102 schools of this kind-he calls them
preparatory schools ”—with 746 instructors and
12,594 students. “The income of these schools,"
he says, “is chiefly from tuition. They are great-
ly in need of endowments.” | When I was at
Harvard, President Eliot was good enough to
show me a tabulated statement of the admissions
of a total of 239, the ordinary public schools had
supplied 86, the endowed schools or "academies”
63, private schools 31, other colleges 12; and 46
had been prepared by private tuition. Mr. Eliot
strongly confirmed my impression that the chief
defect in the American public system of educa-
* Report for 1876, p. 83. + Eaton's "Report,” p. 74.

128
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
tion is the absence of schools corresponding to
the best type of our English grammar-schools.

The latest returns showing the revenues and
expenditure of the several States and Territories
for educational purposes are for 1875. These show
a total revenue of $88,648,950, or £17,729,790 ;
and a total expenditure of $81,932,954, or £16,-
386,590.* The State taxes yield $15,194,525, or
£3,038,905 ; the local taxes, $59,050,191, or £11,-
810,038; the total from taxation, including $2,-
246,261 not assigned in the returns to either source,
was $76,490,977, or £15,298,195.
By far the larger part of this enormous reve-
nue is derived from taxation, and the amount re-
ceived from taxes levied and administered by the
local authorities exceeds by $43,855,666, or £8,-
1771,133, the amount received from taxes levied by
the State Legislatures. Some of the forms in
which money is raised for school purposes are
curious. In New Hampshire a railroad-tax for
schools yields $6,401, and a “dog-tax and contri-
butions” are credited for $24,883; why the dog-
tax and the voluntary contributions of zealous
educationists should be classed together is not
very intelligible. In Delaware there is an educa-
tional revenue derived from marriage and tavern
licenses. North Carolina appropriates to the main-
tenance of schools the taxes levied on auctioneers'
* Eaton's "Report,” p. 33.
POPULAR EDUCATION.
129
licenses. In some of the States the ordinary tax
on property is supplemented by a poll-tax.
Part of the educational revenue consists of the
annual income derived from “permanent funds."
These are of a very miscellaneous character. Some
of them are “local,” consisting of property ap-
propriated to educational purposes by cities and
townships, or of money contributed by private
donors. Others are State funds. In Iowa the
permanent school fund receives 5 per cent. on
the net proceeds of the sale of all public lands;
in Florida it receives 25 per cent. ; other States
levy a varying percentage. Escheated estates,
fines which have been paid for exemption from
military service, fines levied in courts of justice,
are in many States appropriated to the same
purpose. The permanent fund is also largely
increased by private donations. Mr. Peabody
devoted a considerable proportion of his vast
wealth to the encouragement of education in
the South,
Congress has no power to levy any tax for the
support of education, but it has appropriated an
enormous amount of public property to the crea-
tion and augmentation of the permanent school
funds in the several States.
As long ago as 1785 the Federal Government
provided for regular surveys of the whole of the
national territory at the public expense.
series of lines perpendicular to each other, the one


“ By a
9
130
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
set running north and south, the other east and
west, the Federal lands were to be lotted out into
townships of six miles square; these townships to
be subdivided by similar lines into thirty-six sec-
tions, each containing a square mile, or six hun-
dred and forty acres. ... One section in each
township was to be reserved as the basis of a school
fund—a beneficent provision, which, in too many
States, negligence and misappropriation have al-
most defeated."* The section reserved for school
purposes was in every case to be the sixteenth sec-
tion, and the school lands are therefore commonly
described as “the sixteenth-section lands." These
lands have been either sold or let, and the proceeds
are vested in each State for educational purposes.
The distribution of the income is not made accord-
ing to any uniform rule. In some cases the town-
ship receives the annual revenue arising from the
sale of its own section ; but I believe that the
gen-
eral custom is to throw the proceeds of the sales
into a common fund and to distribute them by the
same rule that governs the appropriation of the
State school-tax. Congress has also made special
grants of public lands for agricultural colleges.
Mr. Adams states that in 1870 there had been set
apart by Congress for common schools, universi-
ties, agricultural and mechanical colleges, 79,566,-
1794 acres, or 124,322 square miles—a larger sur-
* Hildreth's “History of the United States," vol. iii.,

p. 452.
POPULAR EDUCATION.
131
face than that of Great Britain and Ireland.* But
for the “negligence and misappropriation” of
which Mr. Hildreth speaks, the funds derived from
these land appropriations might probably have
gone a long way toward making taxation for edu-
cational purposes unnecessary.
About forty years ago the “permanent school
fund” in the several States obtained another large
augmentation from the Federal Government. Un-
der Andrew Jackson's presidency there was a pas-
sion for speculation in public lands. In one year
the amount received by the national Treasury
from this source was $11,000,000. The Federal
debt had been paid, and year after year the land-
sales continued to yield so large a revenue that
Congress had to confront a difficulty which I sup-
pose never occasioned serious trouble to any other
government either in the Old World or in the
New. The revenue was enormously in excess of
the expenditure. Politicians declared that the
surplus in the national Treasury “had increased,
was increasing, and ought to be diminished.”
The President wished to meet the difficulty by
stopping the speculations in land; he proposed
to refuse to sell except to actual settlers, to refuse
to sell in large quantities, and to sell at the bare
cost of survey and conveyance.
Mr. Calhoun
* “Free Schools,” p. 59. Mr. Adams's work is well known
to educational experts in America, and they speak highly of its
accuracy.

132
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

suggested that the golden tide should be per-
mitted to flow into the national Treasury un-
checked, and that the annual surplus should be
placed on permanent deposit with the several
States. His suggestion was approved by Con-
gress. An act was passed in 1836 which provided
that whatever annual surplus over $5,000,000 ac-
crued to the Treasury should be divided among
the States ; “that the States were to give the
Federal Government certificates of deposit ; .
that the Secretary of the Treasury could sell or
assign these certificates whenever he needed the
money ; that the certificates, when sold or
assigned, should bear an interest of 5 per cent. ;
that the deposits not sold or assigned should bear
no interest." * The measure was epigrammatically
described by one of its opponents as being, “in
name, a deposit ; in form, a loan; in essence and
design, a distribution.” The “deposit" has never
been recalled ; and in many of the States it forms
a part of the permanent school fund. t
The principle on which the revenue derived
from the State tax and from the permanent school
funds of the several States is distributed, varies.
In no case, so far as I have been able to discover,
.
* Parton's "Life of Andrew Jackson," vol, iii., pp. 590, 591.
+ I have not thought it necessary to give any detailed ac-
count of the “ Agricultural College Act” of 1862, as that act
provided for the appropriation of public lands to the support
of technical colleges, not of ordinary schools.
POPULAR EDUCATION.
133
is there any recognition of our English principle
of “payment by results." It is assumed that the
local authorities will make their schools as efficient
as possible, and the costly machinery which is
rendered necessary by the financial relations be-
tween our own public elementary schools and the
Education Department is, therefore, dispensed
with. The “superintendents and "assistant
superintendents” are released from a great part
of the purely mechanical work imposed upon her
Majesty's inspectors, and are free to give a larger
amount of their time and strength to direct efforts
for improving the organization and instruction of
the schools. In some cases the State fund is di-
vided among the local school-districts in propor-
tion to the number of children between five and
fifteen living in the district ; in others the limits
of age are four and sixteen; in others five and
twenty-one. In some cases the distribution is
made on the basis of the number of scholars in
average attendance at the public schools. In one
instance at least, a certain proportion of the whole
grant is divided among the school-districts “at
the rate of one quota for each qualified teacher”
who has taught in the district-schools.*
The “taxing ” powers of the local educational
* Dr. Fraser's “Report,” p. 48. Mr. Eaton's account of
the New York State law (“Report,” pp. 289–291) is too brief
to include all details ; but one of the paragraphs seems to im-
ply that the principle of distribution which existed at the time
of Dr. Fraser's visit is still maintained.


134
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
authorities are not so great as the “rating” pow-
ers of our own Boards of Education under the act
of 1870. Where the original “ township” organi-
zation is preserved, the tax is fixed, I believe, by
the meeting of legal voters. In the cities the
“appropriation” is made by the city Council, and
the Council has power to revise the estimates of
the Education Board. When in New York I heard
that the board could not induce the Council to
make as large an appropriation as they wanted,
although I am bound to say that at the close of
1875 the Education Board had an unexpended bal-
ance of more than £56,000. In Chicago, the com-
mittee of the Board on Buildings and Grounds
report in 1876 that “on account of the failure on
the part of the city to enforce the collection of
the taxes levied for the past three years, your
committee deemed it advisable not to contract for
any new buildings during the year, but as far as
possible have met the wants for increased school
accommodation by renting buildings. . We
would
urge that the city Council grant the board,
as soon as possible, all that they have asked for,
every instance the demand is great, and in
some cases it has been so for the last two years ;
and as several of the lots have been purchased and
paid for, it is a loss not to erect the buildings.”*
* “Report of the Chicago Board of Education,” 1876, p. 70.
It should be remembered that at this time Chicago was suffering
from the fire.
.
.
as in
POPULAR EDUCATION.
135
But, generally, the popular feeling in favor of
the schools is so strong that the boards have no
difficulty in obtaining necessary funds. . In the
elections which were being held in New York on
the day that I sailed for England I noticed an
amusing illustration of the manner in which the
popular zeal for education is appealed to in mu-
nicipal and political contests. On the upper half
of a large placard some of the conspicuous repre-
sentatives of the dominant party in the city were
represented as indulging in most luxurious splen-
dor, and on the lower half they were handing a
miserable pittance to a half-starved “school-
marm."
The pressure of the school-tax varies very
greatly in different cities and different States.
In the city and county of New York the total
sum apportioned to educational purposes in 1875
was $3,653,000 ; $3,068,345 came from the local
tax; this was at the rate of about 10s. 2d.
per
head for the whole population. This does not
represent, however, the whole amount raised by
the city and county of New York for educational
purposes. In the same year they paid for State
school-tax $1,503,983; the amount apportioned
to them from the State tax was $530,350, and
from the State school fund $54,303. The total
received from the State was $584,654, as against
$1,506,914 paid. Including the State school-tax
and the city school-tax, the population of New


136
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
York paid in 1875 about 15s. 3d. per head for
educational purposes.
In the city of Philadelphia $1,646,929 was
raised by the local tax; nothing was received by
the Education Board either from local funds or
from the State. The tax for the city schools was
rather more than 8s. 9d. per head for the whole
population.*
In the same year (1875) the total educational
expenditure of the city of Boston was $2,081,043.
The returns are defective, but they appear to
show that the whole amount was derived from
the local tax. If this impression is correct, the
people of Boston paid, per head, 24s. 4d. for the
support of their own schools.
The cost per head of the education of the
scholars in these three cities also varies very
much. In New York it amounts to 114s. 8d. on
the number of scholars in average attendance; in
Philadelphia to a fraction over 78s. 6d. ; in Bos-
ton to 147s. 6d. Deducting “incidental expenses,”.
the cost per head on average attendance of “in-
struction and supervision” is 89s. 6d. in New
York, and 105s. 3d. in Boston. The analysis of
cost is not given for Philadelphia.t
* In 1876 the tax was a little over 9s.
per
head.
+ The results in the above paragraphs are worked out from
Table II. of Mr. Eaton's "Report," pp. 656-585, which gives
some particulars concerning the revenue of the school boards
not contained in the annual reports which were courteously
POPULAR EDUCATION.
137
From a table in Mr. Eaton's report it appears
that there are still more remarkable differences in
the cost of education in the different States. The
Territory of Arizona, with eleven schools and 560
pupils enrolled,* spends 1698. 8d. on each of
them, while Georgia spends only 11s. 3d. ; Massa-
chusetts spends 80s. ; Connecticut, 51s. 8d. ; Cali-
fornia, 68s. 4d.; Ohio, 42s. 3d.; Louisiana, 378. 8d.;
Florida, 23s. 5d.
Mr. Adams (“Free Schools,” p. 71) has worked
out the amount of taxation paid per head in sev-
eral States for the maintenance of schools. I give

furnished me by the clerks of the boards. The summary of
Mr. Eaton's tables on pp. xlvi. et seq. of his “Report” is mis-
leading. The figures given in columns 19 and 20, as showing
the average expenditure per capita of enrollment in public
schools, are the same as those given in columns 120 and 121 of
the complete tables, as showing expenses per capita of average
attendance. I have treated the figures as representing the cost
per head on average attendance, believing that the summary
tables are wrong and the complete tables right. It must, how-
ever, be always remembered in dealing with American educational
statistics that the Central Government has no power to enforce
the keeping of uniform registers, and that the rules for deter-
mining how many scholars may be returned as "enrolled," or
as “belonging,” or as "in average attendance," vary in differ-
ent school districts. I observe that in Mr. Eaton's table the
city and county of New York is represented as receiving $584,-
655 from the State tax. In a schedule contained in the New
York report, $54,303 of this amount are shown to come not
from the State tax, but from the State fund.
* One county sends no returns.

138
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
a few of the results which he has arrived at. The
figures are for the year 1873. In Massachusetts
the population contributed 9s. 11 d. per head ; in
New York, 8s. 9fd. ; in Pennsylvania, 8s. 4d.;
in Kentucky, 2s. 44d. ; in Louisiana, 2s. 6d. ; in
Michigan, 8s. 1d. ; in Illinois, 9s. 3 d. ; in New
Jersey, 10s. ; in Iowa, 12s. 2įd.
These figures afford, of course, no materials
for comparison with our expenditure on public
elementary schools in England, since the Ameri-
can expenditure covers the cost of high-schools
and normal schools, as well as primary and gram-
mar schools.
But they serve to illustrate the
readiness with which the people bear taxation for
educational purposes.
The social position of American teachers is
much higher than that of the teachers in our own
public elementary schools; but in many parts of
America teachers' salaries are not larger than in
England. The scale of salaries varies greatly,
however, in different States and different cities.
In Philadelphia, the principals of boys' grammar-
schools receive £363 per annum ; the salaries of
the assistants are graded, according to rank, from
£123 to £96. In girls' grammar-schools the prin-
cipals receive £186; the assistants receive the
same salaries as in the boys' grammar-schools. In
the secondary schools—a grade between the “pri-
mary” and the grammar—the principals receive
£123; the assistants from £101 to £91. In the
POPULAR EDUCATION.
139
primary schools, principals £111; assistants from
£96 to £87. In Chicago, the schedule does not
distinguish between the principals of grammar-
schools and the principals of primary schools ;
eighteen principals receive each £310. One re-
ceives £270; one £240; one £210; fourteen
£180 ; four £163 ; eight principals or “teachers
in charge ” £137; five principals or “ teachers in
charge ” £143. Head assistants receive £160 or
£150. Two hundred ordinary assistants receive
£130 each ; one hundred £115 ; one hundred
£105; one hundred £95 ; sixty £85 ; sixty £75.
In New York the salaries are much higher.
Principals in boys' grammar-schools receive £450,
£500, £550, and £600 per annum ; vice-principals
£400 and £500; male assistants £330 and £377;
female assistants, an average salary not exceeding
£170. In girls' grammar-schools, principals re-
ceive salaries varying from £240 to £400 ; vice-
principals from £240 to £359 ; assistants an aver-
age salary not exceeding £155.
In primary
schools, principals from £200 to £360; vice-prin-
cipals from £180 to £240 ; assistants an average
salary not exceeding £120.
In Boston the salaries are higher still; after
the first year, masters of grammar-schools receive
£640 per annum ; sub-masters £520 ; ushers £400 ;
first assistants (female) £240 ; second first assist-
ants (female) £200 ; second assistants (female)
£170; third assistants (female) from £120 to


140
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
£160, according to length of service. In primary
schools all the teachers are ranked as “fourth as-
sistants,” and receive salaries rising, according to
length of service, from £120 per annum to £160.
In their expenditure on school-buildings, the
boards appeared to me to be economical. The
buildings for the primary and grammar schools
were all very much alike, and I do not remember
noticing in any of them any attempt at archi-
tectural display. The elevation is usually very
plain, and there is no unnecessary expenditure on
interior decoration, or on furniture or fittings.
The buildings are, as a rule, three stories high, and
the play-grounds are very small. Nearly always,
however, every class is taught in a separate room,
and the school-apparatus is generally admirable.
The worst buildings that I saw are those in
New York. The city is heavily in debt, largely
in consequence of the enormous and unparalleled
frauds of which the city authorities were guilty
a few years ago, and there is difficulty in obtain-
ing grants from the Council for new school-build-
ings. In some of the schools several classes were
being taught in one room, and the number of
children was often far in excess of what the
rooms
could conveniently accommodate.
The regula-
tion of our own department, which provides that
there shall be “eight square feet of area ” and
eighty cubical feet of internal space” for each
child in average attendance, is far from being lib-
POPULAR EDUCATION.
141
eral; but the regulations of the New York board,
as far as the younger children are concerned, are
less liberal still. In the three lower classes of
primary schools and departments the allowance is
five square feet and seventy cubic feet for each
child ; in the three higher grades six square feet
and eighty cubic feet. In the grammar-schools
the regulations are more generous ; there must be
in the four lower grades seven square feet and
ninety cubic feet for each child ; in the four
higher grades nine square feet and one hundred
cubic feet.* If the space were calculated on the
average attendance as in England-a most absurd
and pernicious principle—the New York regula-
tions would be intolerable ; but, as it is calculated
on the number of pupils on the register in each
class, the absentees afford those who are present a
welcome relief. But it was quite clear to me that
the limit fixed by the regulation is not rigidly
observed. Some of the class-rooms were
crowded that I wondered how it was possible for
the work to be done.
The Normal School for Girls in Philadelphia
and the Normal College in New York are fine
buildings, and must have cost a large amount of
money. These institutions are the special pride
of the educational authorities in both cities. In
Philadelphia the chairman and secretary of the
board were particularly anxious that I should be
*“Manual of the New York Board of Education,” p. 135.

SO
142
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
present at the “opening exercises,” which com-
mence, if I remember aright, at nine o'clock in
the morning. When we reached the school I was
first taken into a very handsome private room,
and introduced to the principal, Mr. George W.
Fetter, who, in addition to discharging his duties
as principal, lectures on mental science. After a
few minutes' conversation, we went up-stairs into
the “audience-chamber,” which occupies about
half of the second floor, and is a large hall, rather
more than one hundred feet in length, and nearly
seventy feet in breadth, with a gallery on one
side and a platform opposite to it, fifty-four feet
by fifteen. On the platform there were twenty
or thirty visitors, including several members of
the Board of Education. The body of the ball
was occupied by young ladies, whose ages ap-
peared to vary from eighteen to thirty. Every
young lady had a separate desk of black walnut,
prettily mounted with fittings which might have
been silver, but which I believe were nickel. In
the gallery were the children of the training-
school, with a strong staff of teachers. The lady
students number about nine hundred, and the
children in the training-school about three hun-
dred. Mr. Fetter read a few verses from the
New Testament, and then announced a hymn, and
I noticed that the hymn was exceedingly color-
less in its theology. This was followed by a
prayer offered by a clergyman who happened to

POPULAR EDUCATION.
143
be present. Then the young ladies were invited
to come to the platform and “ declaim.” Three
volunteers responded to the invitation. Two of
them did their work very moderately, the third
most admirably. For the information and warn-
ing of English travelers in America, I must tell
what followed: When the declamations were
over, the principal delivered a very brief address
to the students, to which I listened with interest
until there came an alarming sentence about the
school being “honored that morning with the
presence of a distinguished stranger from Eng-
land," and, before I had time to recover from the
shock, I was called upon to make a speech. This
was the first occasion on which I fell a victim to
the remarkable American superstition that every
wandering Englishman is capable, at a moment's
notice, of getting on to his feet and addressing
any audience on any subject. I could not plead
that I was “ altogether unaccustomed to public
speaking,” but I confess that it required more
nerve to address these nine hundred young ladies,
looking at me with keen eyes over their dainty-
looking desks, than to stand up in the Birming-
ham Town Hall and to face fifteen hundred or
two thousand excited Conservatives, shouting
themselves hoarse on behalf of the policy of Lord
Beaconsfield's
government.
How many times
during the remaining weeks of my American
visit I heard the ominous formula about the “dis-

144
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
tinguished stranger” I am afraid to estimate.
Fortunately, I avoided prisons and lunatic asy-
lums, or else I suppose that it would have been
my
fate to find suitable words to address to con-
victs and mad people.
The “opening exercises” at the New York
Normal College were rather different. In the
great hall we found twelve hundred young ladies
and seven hundred children belonging to the
training-school: the long, narrow platform was
crowded. A few words of Scripture were read
by Mr. Hunter, who, like the principal at Phila-
delphia, is also Professor of Mental Science. Then
came a hymn, or what Dr. Watts would call “a
moral song," but I think there was no prayer.
The young ladies were asked for “ declamations;”
as there was no response, they were asked for
quotations.” Instantly one lady rose after an-
other in every part of the hall, and, without leav-
ing her place, recited a brief passage, sometimes
in prose, sometimes in verse. They were chiefly
from English and American authors, but, if I re-
member aright, a few of the quotations were
French. On the whole, the selections were cred-
itable to the judgment and taste of the students.
As the time for this “ exercise” was running out,
two or three often stood up together. The eager-
ness of the young ladies to "quote" seemed al-
most as keen as the eagerness of honorable miem-
bers to speak during an exciting debate in the


POPULAR EDUCATION.
145
House of Commons. There was not a moment's
pause from first to last. I did not count the num-
ber of ladies whom we heard, but I had the im-
pression that there were between twenty and
thirty. Then, as a matter of course, came the
ominous formula which had now begun to sound
quite humorous; the person disguised under the
flattering alias of “a distinguished stranger” had
by this time become accustomed to the manners
of the country, and was not taken unawares.
The students in the normal schools or colleges
are not pledged to become teachers. A very large
number of young ladies take the three or four
years' course in these institutions in order to com-
plete their own education. In Boston, the course
of training is exclusively professional ; in addition
to practice in schoolroom-work it includes instruc-
tion in psychology, physiology, ethics, logic, and
methods of teaching ; the course extends over
only one year, but before entrance the students
are required to have completed their course in the
High School.
The course of studies varies greatly in the dif-
ferent colleges. The following is the programme
of the Normal College of New York :
GRADE I.–First year, first term: 1. Latin; 2. Hisa
tory—Outlines of Ancient History; 3. German or
French; 4. Algebra-Simple Equations, Involution, Evo-
lution, and Radicals; 5. Geometry — Plane.
Drawing, English Composition, and Penmanship.
Music,
10
146
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
GRADE II.—First year, second term : 1. Latin-con-
tinued; 2. History-Outlines of Ancient History con-
tinued; 3. German or French—continued ; 4. Geometry-
Plane, continued and completed ; 5. Physics—Heat, Elec-
tricity, and Mechanics. Music, etc., as during the first term.
GRADE III.-Second year, first term: 1. Latin-
Easy selections from the classic authors; 2. History-
Outlines of Modern History; 3. German-Grammar and
Reader, Conversation introduced gradually, or French-
Grammar and Reader, easy pieces of prose, Conversation
introduced gradually ; 4. Algebra-Quadratics; 5. Phys-
ics—Light and Sound. Music, etc., as before. Botany, ,
two lectures per week.
GRADE IV.-Second year, second term : 1. Latin-
Extracts from Cæsar, Sallust, and Cicero ; 2. Rhetoric
and English Composition; 3. German-Grammar and
Reader, Conversation; French-Grammar and Reader,
Conversation; 4. Astronomy—Mathematical and De-
scriptive; 5. Chemistry-Notation, Nomenclature, and
Atmospheric Elements. Music and Drawing. Geology
and Mineralogy, two lectures per week. No lessons for
home study to be assigned in Music, Drawing, or Com-
position, in any of the classes or grades.
GRADE V.—Third year, first term: 1. Latin–Virgil,
Book I. ; 2. English Language and Literature—Simple
Outlines with Composition; 3. German-Grammar com-
pleted, Reader, Conversation; French-ibid. ; 4. Physics
-Electricity, Galvanism and Magnetism, etc.; 5. Astron-
omy—Mathematical and Descriptive, continued. Also
Music and Drawing. Zoölogy-Two lectures per week.
Review of subjects prescribed for the primary and gram-
mar school grades, with the methods of teaching them:
two hours each week.

POPULAR EDUCATION.
147
GRADE VI.-Third year, second term: 1. Latin-
Virgil continued; 2. Intellectual Philosophy and Theory
of Teaching ; 3. English Language and Literature-con-
tinued, with Composition ; 4. German-General review
of Grammar, Translation of select passages, Conversa-
tion, Outlines of German Literature; French—similar;
5. Physics — Astronomy, general review. Music and
Drawing. Physiology, two lectures per week. Review
of subjects prescribed in primary and grammar schools
as before. Practice in Training Department, under the
guidance of teachers of experience.
On Saturday, all female teachers holding li-
censes to teach under the New York board are re-
quired to attend classes at the Normal College until
they have had two years' experience as teachers in
public schools. These classes are intended for
instruction and practice in the art of teaching, and
are conducted by professors of the college.
The programme of the Girls' Normal School
at Philadelphia covers four years ; it does not in-
clude Latin, French, or German, but it provides
for some subjects which are not touched by the
New York course. *
There are altogether 137 normal schools in the
States and Territories, with 1,031 instructors; 12,-
1724 male students, and 14,454 female students ; †

* In the Central High School for Boys at Philadelphia,
which is of the same rank as the Girls' Normal School, the
course includes Latin, German, and Political Economy.
+ Several of the schools did not report the sex of students;
and the total number of students was 29,105.
148
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
only 78 have model schools. Of the 2,196 students
who graduated in 1875, 1,495 have become teach-
Of these 137 schools, 70 are maintained by
States, 3 by counties, 8 by cities, and 56 by "all
other agencies.”

ers.
The strength and, as some critics would allege,
some of the elements of weakness in the Ameri-
can system of education, as compared with our
own, are derived from the training received by
American teachers in high and normal schools.
With us, a child of thirteen or fourteen is ap-
prenticed as a pupil-teacher for five years, and is
employed in teaching for five hours and a half
five days in the week. Out of school the child
receives instruction-or ought to receive instruc-
tion—for a short time every day from the master
or mistress of the school. In many cases there is
strong reason to believe that the instruction is not
given very regularly ;
arly ; in many cases it is not very
efficient ; in all cases, the hours which the pupil-
teacher is required to spend in teaching greatly
interfere with the vigor and earnestness with which
he pursues his own studies.* At the end of his
* Take a case-a fair specimen of thousands. A few days
ago I asked a girl of fourteen, who is a pupil-teacher in her
first year, how long she worked. She told me that on five
days a week she was at school at 8.15, to receive the hour's
instruction required by the code. At 9.15 she began to pre-
pare the schoolroom for the children. She taught from 9.30
POPULAR EDUCATION.
149
pupil-teachership he may obtain employment as a
qualified teacher under Article 70 of the New
Code ; or else he may go for two years to a train-
ing-college. In America, a child who is to be.
come a teacher remains in the grammar-school till
he is fourteen or fifteen
years
of age,
then
passes
into the high-school, and then perhaps into a nor-
mal college. Instead of exhausting his strength
in teaching, he has nearly all his time for his own
work. He begins to teach five or six years later
than our own masters and mistresses, and receives
a really “liberal” education before his profes-
sional training begins. He is brought into con-
tact for several hours every day with professors
of large and varied knowledge, and generally dis-
tinguished for their intellectual vigor and activity.
He has libraries at his command, and carries on
his scientific studies with the aid of excellent ap-
paratus and laboratories. He has the stimulus
afforded by association and rivalry with a consid-
erable number of fellow-students. All this holds
true of girls as well as of boys. The average
American teacher has, therefore, an intellectual
freedom, refinement, and elasticity, which are
rarely found in the ex-pupil-teacher, and which
are not very common even among masters and
mistresses who have spent two years at a training-


to 12.30, with half an hour's interval; also, from 2 to 4.30.
She began her own lessons at 6.30 in the evening, and worked
tiil 9.30.
150
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
college, although there are some masters and mis-
tresses in English public elementary schools who
are quite equal, in every respect, to the best mas-
ters and mistresses in the primary and grammar
schools in America.
On the other hand, a pupil-teacher begins to
teach when he is thirteen or fourteen, and, if he
is at all clever, he is sure to learn the “ trick” of
teaching as much as is necessary to get his class
through the inspector's examination. He acquires
a certain mechanical dexterity which produces
surprising results. He learns how to" grind”
his scholars, and in very many cases will do as
much to secure a high percentage of “passes” as
a more thoroughly-trained teacher.
As far as I could judge—and I speak with
considerable distrust of my own competency to
form a very trustworthy opinion on the question
--the actual knowledge of an elementary kind
possessed by the children in American schools,
knowledge that can be definitely tested by exam-
ination, is not much greater than that of children
of the same age in our own schools. They seemed
to me to write rather better, and to read consider-
ably better, though with some conspicuous faults
which are due to the American theory of what
reading ought to be ; and I thought that they
were rather more advanced in their arithmetic,
and knew more geography. In mere “grind,”
the American teachers are not much more success-

POPULAR EDUCATION.
151
ful than our pupil-teachers who are in the third or
fourth year of their apprenticeship ; but their
higher and more liberal “culture”—to use a word
of which I became rather tired while I was in
New England—has a very obvious effect on the
children. Children of thirteen in an American
grammar-school may not know very much more
than children of the same age in our own public
elementary schools, but they seemed to me to be
superior in general intelligence, and in what the
Americans call “ brightness."
In justice to our own teachers, it should be
remembered that a large proportion of the chil-
dren in the American common schools belong to
a much more educated class of the population
than the children attending similar schools in our
own country. Even in Philadelphia a consider-
able number of the children of wealthy parents
attend the common schools of the city. In New
York city a larger proportion than in Philadel-
phia of the children who would be sent to private
schools in England attend the common schools.
In Chicago I was assured that most of the profes-
sional men and prosperous tradesmen send their
children to the common schools. In Boston, with
a school population of 58,636 on the 1st of May,
1876, there were 55,417 enrolled in the city schools,
leaving less than 3,000 for the private schools
and Roman Catholic parochial schools. I hap-
pened to say to the superintendent that the chil-

152
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
dren in one of the primary and grammar schools
which I visited were remarkably well dressed,
and he answered, with a laugh : “Naturally so ;
there is not a house within easy reach of that
school worth less than $25,000”-£5,000. In
some of the more wretched districts of New York
and Boston I saw schools in which all the chil-
dren were extremely poor; but generally the chil-
dren of working-men were sitting on the same
forms with children who belonged to families that
in England would suppose themselves under an
obligation to send their children to private schools,
at which they would have to pay for each child
from £10 to £60 a year if the child was a day-
scholar, and from £60 to £150 if the child was a
boarder. The presence in the common schools
of a large number of children accustomed to
the refinements of a pleasant and even luxurious
home must have an influence on their less for-
tunate school-fellows which it is not easy to es-
timate, and must greatly aid the work of the
teacher.
The methods of instruction interested me
greatly. In teaching reading it is very common
to use lesson-sheets in which the “otiose " letters
are printed in very faint ink, and the varying
sounds of the vowels indicated by a few simple
signs. * What is described as the " phonic
* I have seen similar sheets in our own elementary schools,
but I have the impression that the system is carried out more


POPULAR EDUCATION.
153
method of teaching spelling is also in use in many
schools, and seemed to be successful. Elementary
reading-books are printed in the same way as the
sheets. After these books have been used by a
child for about a year they are laid aside. I heard
a reading-lesson in a class which had been using
for about a fortnight a book printed in common
type; they stumbled a little now and then, but
not quite so much as I should have expected. I
was told that the common type becomes quite fa-
miliar and easy to them in about a month. In
mental arithmetic it is usual to put books of ques-
tions in the hands of the scholars, and the teacher
calls
upon
them by name to give the answers. In
the lower grades these questions consist of exer-
cises in simple addition-e. g., " Add together 24,
36, 12, 7, 9.” In the higher grades the questions
are complex and difficult. The advantages of
this method are obvious ; the scholars are not per-
plexed by efforts to remember the terms of the
question while they are working out the answer,
and they can attack questions requiring far more
complicated calculations than are customary in
classes in which the whole exercise is conducted
orally.
A system of “map-drawing,” which seemed to
me very ingenious, has been introduced into the
Connecticut schools, chiefly, I believe, through
perfectly in the American sheets, and that the sheets are more
generally used.
154
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
the influence of the Secretary of the State Board
of Education, the Hon. B. G. Northrop. The
class-rooms in which I saw this exercise conducted
were paneled all round with blackboards, or rather
with a black composition which is generally used
instead of the blackboard. Each of the classes
numbered between forty and fifty children, and
each child worked at a black panel about three
feet in height and two feet broad. The children
in the first class which I visited were drawing the
map of North America. They stood with their
faces to the wall, and with a piece of chalk in
their right hand and a rubber to wipe out a false
stroke in the left. The teacher stood at her desk,
and was able to see exactly how each child was
working. A “ formula” had been learned by the
children, and, when the exercise began, child A
said, “ Coast of Greenland, Cape Farewell, Davis
Strait, Baffin's Bay”—drawing the outline at the
same time, and every child in the room was doing
the same.
Then child B went on : “ William
Land, Cumberland Island, Hudson Strait, Hudson
Bay”—the drawing all round the room accom-
panying the words. Child C then said, “Labra-
dor, Newfoundland, Gulf of St. Lawrence ;” and
this went on till the coast-line was finished. Then
the lines of the rivers were drawn; then the chief
mountain-ranges; and finally the principal cities
were put in; the “formula” passing from child
to child till the map was finished. The drawing


POPULAR EDUCATION,
155
was very fairly done. I saw a class of younger
children who had just begun this kind of work
drawing a map of South America. Before they
began the map, the “formula” told them to
divide the top of their panel into two parts, then
to subdivide these parts, then to divide and sub-
divide the side of the panel in the same way ;
lines were drawn from a point near the top of the
right side to a point near the centre of the base,
then from a point near the left end of the top to
the same point in the base, and so the children
had “guide-lines” for the triangular shape of
the continent. Other lines drawn from point to
point across the panel gave them assistance in
other parts of their map. The drawing was rough
and rather wild ; the contrast between the manner
in which children who were just beginning this
exercise were able to do it and the way in which
it was done by children who had been working at
it for some time was instructive.
In teaching history, it seems to be the common
practice to dwell at length and in detail on great
and critical periods, and to touch very slightly the
less important intervals of national life. Lessons
are also given on the biography of eminent men.
In one of the high-schools I heard a lady give a
very
clear and brilliant sketch of the life and times
of Richelieu.
Very much of the teaching which I heard was,
in a sense, too good. Everything was made so
156
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
to the
plain and so easy that there was no hard work left
in schools of every grade. One of the most con-
venient examples which I remember of this fault
was in a girl's high-school-I forget whether it
was in Philadelphia or New York. The fifth
proposition of the first book of Euclid was on the
board. The teacher-a lady-analyzed the proof
of the proposition with perfect skill ; showed her
class the successive points which had to be demon-
strated, and how they were demonstrated. Noth-
ing could have been more clear; the dullest girl
in the room could hardly have failed to get com-
plete possession of the proof. The pupils were
expected to study the proposition at home, and to
up the next day. But all the work had
been done for them. When the class was over,
I asked the lady whether she believed that this
was the right way of teaching mathematics, and
whether she did not think that the girls would de-
rive more benefit from their studies if she left
them to do more of the work themselves. She
said : When I was a girl, I was not helped in
this way ; I had to dig out everything as best I
could ; I was thrown upon myself ; but the girls
have so many subjects to study now, that they
would never get through their work unless they
were taught as I have been teaching them.” I
suggested that, when the principal object of a
class was to give information, it was reasonable

bring it
: "W

POPULAR EDUCATION.
157
enough to enable the pupils to get it with as little
trouble as possible ; but that girls studied the fifth
proposition of Euclid for the sake of the discipline,
not for the sake of learning the mere fact that
the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are
equal. She answered: “Yes, that is quite true,
and I often think that we are on the wrong track
altogether. We had a different method when I
was young ; but with our present range of sub-
jects we have no choice; the teachers must do
everything for the scholars.” This seemed to me
to be one of the weak points in the American edu-
cational methods; and on two or three occasions,
when I had the opportunity of examining a class
in a high-school or a normal school, I thought I
recognized its evil effects. When the class was
tested by questions that traveled a very
little
way
beyond the limits of the text-book which they
were studying, or the lecture to which they had
listened, there was far less readiness and intellect-
ual self-reliance than there ought to have been.
If the teachers did not teach quite so well, the re-
sults would, I believe, be better.
The “religious difficulty” exists in America in
a much less virulent form than among ourselves.
The Episcopalians scattered over Massachusetts
are not obliged to send their children to schools
connected with Congregational churches, man-
aged by the Congregational clergy, and main-
158
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
tained as “bulwarks”* of Congregationalism, al-
though receiving large grants of public money ;
they have not to appeal to the protection of a
conscience-clause in order to prevent their chil-
dren from being taught that diocesan episcopacy
is
very
unlike the polity of the churches of apos-
tolic times, and that the sacramental doctrine of
the Episcopal Church is corrupt and pernicious.
Schools supported by public money are managed
by public boards elected by the rate-payers or by
their representatives, and form no part of the de-
fensive or aggressive agency
of
any
church. They
are “unsectarian,” and sometimes secular. In the
schools of New York and Boston a portion of
Scripture is read by the teacher at the opening of
the morning school. No note or comment is per-
mitted, and no other religious exercises are permit-
ted. In Philadelphia it is provided that, “at the
opening of each session of the schools, at least ten
verses of the Bible shall be read, without note or
comment, to the pupils by the principal, or in his
or her absence by one of the assistants. A suita-
ble hymn may also be sung.” In the schools of
New Haven, the regulations used to require that
the morning session of the schools should be opened
with “appropriate devotional exercises.” At the
beginning of the present year the schools were
* I owe the phrase to a zealous clergyman, who described
the Church of England schools as the “bulwarks of the Church
of England.”


POPULAR EDUCATION.
159
made purely secular. The Chicago schools are
also secular; the Bible is not read, nor are there
religious exercises of
any kind. The superintend-
ent reports (July, 1876): “An attempt to reinstate
the Bible in our schools was defeated by a vote of
three in the affirmative to ten in the negative, two
members being absent and not voting. I cannot
but repeat now what I said on the occasion of
that vote : 'If I were a clergyman of a Chris-
tian church, and believed in all its doctrines and
tenets, I should still vote upon this question as I
now vote-No.'"
The principal “religious difficulty” in Ameri-
ca arises from the strength of the Roman Catho-
lic population, and the steady refusal of the priests
to sanction the attendance of Roman Catholic
children at the common schools.* Two or three
years ago some of the conspicuous Protestant
clergy made an attempt to promote reconciliation.
They argued that as long as the Protestant Bible
was read in any of the common schools it was
equally hopeless and unreasonable to expect that
the priests would change their policy. For a few
months the columns of several religious news-
papers were filled with those arguments on both
sides of the question with which we have become
familiar in this country. No one contended, as
* A very large number of Roman Catholic children attend
the common schools, notwithstanding the disapproval of the
priests.
160
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
far as I know, that the schoolmaster should ex-
plain or enforce the Scripture lessons ; but many
excellent people had the impression that if the
“ten” or more verses which are read at the com-
mencement of the school were omitted the schools
would become atheistic. To what extent the dis-
cussion, which has now ceased, affected public
opinion, I do not know.
Whether the hostility of the Roman Catholic
hierarchy to the common schools would be ap-
peased if the Protestant flag were taken down is
more than doubtful. But that an honest attempt
should be made to remove every reasonable ground
of hostility seems to me to be the plain duty of
the American people. The children of Roman
Catholic parents are receiving an education in
“parochial” schools which is almost necessarily
inferior to that which is given in the free common
schools sustained by the general community; and
Roman Catholic tax-payers have a right to com-
plain that the public schools, which they are com-
pelled to support, are formally identified with a
faith which they reject.
The Governor of New York, in his last annu-
al message, raised the “religious difficulty” in
connection with colleges and high-schools.
New
York City has a college with a faculty of fourteen
professors and eighteen tutors ; it educates more
than a thousand students. From the report of
the board for 1876 it appears that the college


POPULAR EDUCATION.
161
costs the city $144,250, or £28,850 per annum.
There is a Professor of Philosophy and a Pro-
fessor of History. I do not know the philosophi-
cal creed of Prof. Huntsman ; but if he happens
to be a positivist or a pessimist—a disciple of
Comte or a disciple of Schopenhauer—it may be
urged that all citizens who hold firmly any form
of the Christian faith are suffering a serious griev-
ance, for his lectures must be a polemic against
the religious truths which seem to them of su-
preme importance. If his philosophy sustains
and justifies the Christian theory of the universe,
positivists and agnostics of every school have a
similar grievance; the city-so they may say-
might as well give a salary to a professor to de-
fend the authenticity and genuineness of the four
Gospels, or the theology of the Westminster Con-
fession. Dr. Anthon is Professor of History ; is
he a Protestant,or a Roman Catholic ? This is a
vital question. Does he denounce or palliate the
massacre of the Huguenots ? Does he give the
papacy the credit of nearly all the civilization
and intellectual activity of Europe, like Mr.
Balmez ? Or does he try to show, like Dr. Dra-
per, that the Church has been the steady and re-
lentless foe of free thought and scientific discov-
If he glorifies the papacy, how is it possi-
ble for Protestants to be satisfied? If he con-
demns it, have not the Romanists a just ground
of complaint ? Similar questions may of course
ery ?
11
162
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
be pressed in relation to the high-schools. If the
validity of these plausible but untenable objec-
tions could be maintained, philosophy, ethics, and
history would have to be excluded from all edu-
cational institutions sustained out of public funds.
There are some men who are prepared to ac-
cept this conclusion. They contend that the
higher education should be withdrawn from the
hands of the state, and intrusted to schools and
colleges sustained by private endowments. On
the other hand, the friends of the public system
maintain that a college like that of New York,
which charges no fees, but gives free admission
to all students who are qualified to pass its en-
trance examination, is a necessity. They main-
tain that without the college there would be no
certain provision for training the kind of teachers
that ought to have charge of ordinary schools.
They maintain still more earnestly that the col-
lege gives a powerful stimulus and invaluable di-
rection to the studies in the public schools of a
lower grade, and that if it were abolished the
whole educational system would lose both its
heart and its brain. There are other questions
raised by the controversy between “State” col-
leges and “corporate” colleges, but the omni- .
present “religious difficulty” is cne of the most
exciting and the most perplexing. The contro-
versy, which has been rather animated, recalls our
own debates on Irish university education.


POPULAR EDUCATION.
163
It was my intention to make a few general ob-
servations on some of those aspects of the Ameri-
can school system which are most instructive to
an Englishman interested in popular education-
the independence of the local boards, the advan-
tages which the cause of education derives from
the absence of “ denominational” schools sustained
by grants of public money, the excellent effects
of the free system, the influence of the free high-
schools on the general intelligence of the people.
But I have already written far more than I intend-
ed, and I will close this paper with expressing a
rough judgment on the relative position of ele-
mentary education in America and England.
When addressing the fifteen hundred young
ladies
in the Normal College of New York, I said : “In
your elementary schools you are in advance of us,
but, so far as the results of your teaching which
can be definitely tested by examination are con-
cerned, not so far in advance as I suspected.
Ten years ago we were a long way behind, but
we are improving rapidly, and if you intend to
keep before us you will have to work hard.” This
was my impression after visiting schools in Chica-
go and Philadelphia ; it was confirmed by all that
I saw in New York, New Haven, and Boston. But
until we can get rid of the pupil-teacher system-
or greatly modify it—the American elementary
schools will be always far superior to our own in
their general effect on the intellectual life of the
children.
*
164
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA
IV.

RELIGION.
WITHIN the limits of this paper it will be im-
possible to fulfill the large promise of its title.
Indeed, if the space at my command were much
larger, the most important questions concerning
the religious thought and life of the American
people would have to be left almost untouched. I
cannot venture, after living among them for only
seven or eight weeks, to attempt to pronounce any
opinion on the vigor of their faith in Christ, on
their ideal of Christian living, on the extent to
which the spirit and law of Christ regulate their
conduct in business, in politics, in their social
life, and in their homes. And yet there is one
characteristic of the religious life of the Ameri-
cans with whom I came in contact which might,
perhaps, justify even a stranger in forming a
modest judgment on some of these topics. On
most subjects the Americans, as I said in an earlier
paper, are extremely reserved; on religion I found
them singularly open. They spoke of their reli-
gious opinions as naturally and easily as English-
men speak of their opinions on literature and poli-
tics. Nor was it about their opinions merely that
they were disposed to be frank. They were frank
about their personal joy in God, and about their
RELIGION.
165
are
struggles to master Christian truth and to dis-
charge Christian duty. English Congregational-
ists, among whom I chiefly live in this country,
are very shy in speaking about these matters.
Evangelical Church people—so far as I have had
the opportunity of forming à judgment
equally shy. Even Methodists, who used to be
much more free and unreserved, are, I think, be-
coming as shy as other people in delivering any-
thing that can be called a “testimony.” But I
met with many Americans who had a charming
and beautiful simplicity in their way of acknowl-
edging the infinite love which God had shown to
themselves, and in their way of speaking about
the difficulties which had impaired the develop-
ment of their religious life, but which had now
partly or altogether disappeared. About their
present difficulties they spoke with equal freedom.
It was unlike anything I know among religious
people in England. There was not, of course, the
kind of unreserve which is possible now and then
with a very intimate friend of exceptional wisdom
and sympathy; but it seemed to me that there
was precisely that measure of frankness with
which we might expect that men having a com-
mon faith and a common hope would speak to
each other about what they regard as the supreme
facts in their personal history.
The educated Christian people whom I met in
New England appeared to be less affected by the

166
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
conflict between the Christian faith and modern
speculation than most people of equal education
in our own country. The genial warmth of their
religious life had not been lessened by unkindly
winds. There was a simplicity and depth in their
piety which reminded me of the traditions which
have come down to us from past generations.
I also thought that I recognized a prevalent
conservatism in the spirit in which men of nearly
all churches approached the consideration of spec-
ulative and doctrinal questions. They were cau-
tious and reverent, and not disposed to think that
all previous generations of Christian people had
lost their way. The atmosphere was not quite
the same as that which I breathe at home; it was
less keen and less vexed with storms.
There appeared to be fewer open questions,
and, as far as there was theological movement,
men seemed to move very much together. Some-
times I thought that I was associating too much
with people of my own age to learn how the cur-
rents of thought were really flowing, and I tried
to get among men who were under five-and-thirty.
But the younger men whom I saw were very
much like their seniors. Those who had modified
particular parts of the traditional theological sys-
tem did not give one the impression that they had
committed themselves to a life of theological ad-
venture. They did not speak as though they
supposed that the whole thought of the Church

RELIGION.
167
had to be rebuilt from its foundations, and that
they were called to be the architects of the faith
of the future. I heard of a few orthodox men
who had gone into open revolt against one or an-
other of the traditional doctrines of Evangelical
Churches, and it seemed to me that there were
some points on which separation from the tradi-
tional creed provoked stronger antagonism in
America than in England. But I met with no
man professing the Christian faith who betrayed
that sense of insecurity which I sometimes meet
with in this country in relation to the ultimate
grounds of religious belief. Of course, this was
an accident; but I can only speak of what I saw.
I heard of vehement attacks on the orthodox
creed; but these attacks troubled the Christian
people whom I met in America much less than
similar attacks trouble Christian people in Eng-
land. They seemed to feel very sure of their
ground, and they showed no alarm.
In one respect their religion differed very con-
spicuously from the type of religion with which I
am most familiar in this country. For want of a
better word, I must describe it as less "militant”
-I do not mean less “controversial,” for it is not
of controversies between the Church and Noncon-
formists, or of any such matters, that I am think-
ing. It was less "militant ;” but the word re-
quires explanation. I have lived for thirty years
in a great town; for five-and-twenty years I have

168
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA,
been the minister of a congregation in the heart
of a great town; my most intimate friends, both
among those who are ministers and those who are
not, live in other great towns. My friends and I
seem to have the impression that our duty is to
maintain an incessant effort to rescue people from
irreligion and unbelief. We are always trying to
induce men to break with sin, and to begin to
serve God. Some of us may give a great deal of
time and strength to the instruction, in Christian
truth and duty, of those who are already right-
hearted; we may fight controversial and political
battles; but the supreme thought continually re-
turns--the thought of the thousands and tens of
thousands of people about us who have drifted
away from all Christian Churches. Our temper is
therefore a “militant” temper. I do not think
that among my friends in America there was real-
ly less of Evangelical zeal, but they seemed to be
less impressed by the constant presence of hostile
forces which it was their first business to subdue.
They were under less tension. They had more
religious rest. They seemed to live at home-not
To me there was something very
charming in the change.
But, if I permit myself to write any more on
these topics, I shall be guilty of the presumption
which I wish to avoid ; and when I begin to
think of the Christian men and women who
showed me kindness on the other side of the At-

in a camp.
RELIGION.
169
lantic, I am conscious that affection is likely to
master judgment. To criticise them coolly is
impossible. It will be wise to turn to topics of
another kind in which controversies which have
occupied much of my time in this country led me
to take special interest.
To a Nonconformist traveling in America, one
of the freshest sensations arises from the absence
of an ecclesiastical establishment. In England I
am reminded wherever I go that the State is hos-
tile to my religious opinions and practices. Dio-
cesan Episcopacy, in my judgment, deprives the
commonalty of the Church of many of their
rights, and releases them from many of their
duties ; but in every parish I find an Episcopal
clergyman who, according to Mr. Forster's accu-
rate description, is a servant of the State. Though
I am a minister of religion, the civil government
has placed me and my family under the spiritual
charge of the Vicar of Edgbaston ; that excellent
gentleman is my pastor and religious teacher. I
am not obliged to hear him preach, but the State
has thought it necessary to intrust him with the
duty of instructing me in Christian truth, and
celebrating for my advantage the Christian sacra-
ments. The doctrine of baptismal regeneration
seems to me a mischievous superstition, but I can-
not say this to anybody without being in revolt
against a great national institution. Now and
then I am bound to liberate my conscience, and I

1170
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
tell my congregation what I think of the doctrine;
but within a couple of hundred yards there are
two national buildings in which, under the author-
ity of the State, the State clergy give thanks to
Almighty God for the regeneration of every child
they baptize, and in which grown men and women
are taught that in baptism they were made mem-
bers of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of
the kingdom of heaven. The law is against me.
It tolerates me, but it condemns me. It barks,
though it does not bite. It describes me as being
among the number of those people in divers parts
of this realm, who, “ following their own sensual-
ity, and living without knowledge and due fear of
God, do willfully and schismatically abstain and
refuse to come to their parish churches.” * It has
provided a “Book of Common Prayer,” that
every person within this realm may certainly
know the rule to which he is to conform in public
worship.” I am permitted to break the rule, but
the rule stands. It is the policy of the State to
induce the country to accept or to retain religious
doctrines which seem to me to be erroneous, and
an ecclesiastical polity which seems to me to be
unfriendly to the free and vigorous development
of the religious life. The position of a Noncon-
formist in this country is, to say the least, not a
pleasant one. His religious work is carried on in
the presence of a government which condemns his
* Act of Uniformity, 1661.

RELIGION.
171
creed, condemns his modes of worship, condemns
his ecclesiastical organization, and sustains the
authority of a hostile Church.
In the United States I breathed freely. I was
under the flag of a foreign government, but the
law had nothing to say against my religious belief
or my religious practices, and there was no na-
tional institution established with the direct in-
tention of maintaining religious beliefs and prac-
tices which I reject. Americans not belonging to
the Episcopal Church are conscious, when they
are traveling in England, that the national au-
thority is hostile to their faith, just as I was con-
scious when traveling in America that the na-
tional authority subjected me to no religious dis-
advantages. During the last few years several
English ministers-Presbyterians and Congrega-
tionalists—have become the pastors of American
churches. In conversation with one of the pro-
fessors of the theological faculty at Yale I said
that I thought we ought to attempt to make
reprisals ; he replied : “No-you will not get
American ministers to become pastors of Non-
formist churches in England. We do not like
to be under the ban."
So late as fifty years ago, however, there was
an Established Church in Massachusetts—a State
Church, organized on very different principles
from ours, but still a State Church. The original
settlers in New England, with the exception of

172
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
the Pilgrim Fathers, who founded the Plymouth
colony, were members of the English Church up
to the time that they settled in the New World.
The great and powerful party of emigrants that
went out to Massachusetts in 1630 were extreme-
ly anxious to repel the suspicion that they were
separatists. They declared that they were loyal
and loving children of the English Church, al-
though they were anxious for reformation. But,
as soon as they landed, their evangelical theology
led them to organize their ecclesiastical polity on
the Congregational model. They went further.
They limited the political franchise to members
of Congregational churches, and they levied a
tax for the support of Congregationalism.
In Plymouth the original citizens were the
men who signed the Mayflower contract, Novem-
ber 11-21, 1620. For thirty-seven years, and
until Massachusetts had begun to interfere effec-
tively with the political affairs of its neighbors,
the Plymouth settlers passed no general law de-
termining the qualifications for citizenship-every
candidate was admitted on his merits by the vote
of the General Court. But in 1658 it was or-
dered that “manifest opposers of the true wor-
ship of God must not be freemen.”
later candidates had to produce testimony that
they were “of sober and peaceable conversation,
orthodox in the fundamentals of religion,” and
having property of twenty pounds' ratable value.

Three years
RELIGION
173
In the same year the law provided for the dis-
franchisement of “apostates from the fundamen-
tals of religion.” But Plymouth never required
membership of a Congregational church as a con-
dition of citizenship; this condition, however, was
imposed not only in Massachusetts, but in Con-
necticut and Maine.
In Plymouth it seems to have been the origi-
nal custom to rely on the weekly contributions
of the church for the support of church institu-
tions; but this laxity was unsatisfactory to her
powerful neighbor. In 1656, five-and-thirty years
after the landing of the Pilgrims, Massachusetts
complained to the commissioners for the United
Colonies that the Plymouth people were want-
ing to themselves in a due acknowledgment of
encouragement to ministers of the gospel.” The
following year the General Court of Plymouth
passed a law requiring the towns to tax them- .
selves for the support of ministers.
The com-
pulsory support of religious institutions became
universal in New England, except in Rhode Isl-
and. Intolerable cruelties and crimes were the
inevitable result of the attempt to establish reli-
gion in New England, as they have been the re-
sult of similar attempts elsewhere. The experi-
ment was tried under exceptional conditions, and
was attended with exceptional difficulties. The
ministers and churches which were supported by
a compulsory rate were Congregational in their

174
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
polity. Every separate church had the right to
admit its own members, and to expel them for
whatever offenses were deemed inconsistent with
honest loyalty to Christ. Every separate church
had the right to elect its own ministers and to
regulate the order of its own worship. In theory
no ecclesiastical power was conceded to the po-
litical authorities, even in those colonies in which
the franchise and political office were limited to
church-members belonging to churches established
by the State. To tell the story of the political
troubles which were occasioned by the attempt
to carry out this theory, and of the compromises
which the churches were gradually forced to ac-
cept-compromises fatal to the life and vigor of
Congregationalism-would, however, require a
volume instead of a few pages in this book.
In nearly all the middle and southern colo-
• nies Episcopacy was established. In the original
charter of Virginia it was provided that religion
should be established according to the doctrines
and rites of the Church of England, and no Non-
conformity was to be permitted.* But no legal
provision appears to have been made for the
clergy till about twelve years after the founding
of the colony. Maryland was settled by Roman
Catholics in 1633, but there was no public pro-
vision for religion till Episcopacy was established
in 1692. In New York, while it was under the
* Bancroft, “ History of the United States," vol. i., p. 93.


RELIGION.
175
Dutch, the support of the clergy was left to vol-
untary zeal ; Episcopacy was established in 1693.
In South Carolina Episcopacy was established in
1704. An Episcopal establishment of a feeble
kind was set up in Delaware in 1691, in New
Jersey in 1702, and in North Carolina in 1704.
In Pennsylvania there was never any ecclesiasti-
cal establishment.
The ecclesiastical laws of Virginia were very
curious. Among the earliest (1624) there is one
which imposes a fine of a pound of tobacco for
absence from public worship “without allowable
excuse,
» the fine to be increased from one
pound to fifty if the absence is persisted in for a
month. For speaking to the disparagement of
a minister without proof, the offender had to pay
a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco, and to
beg the minister's pardon in the presence of the
congregation. A few years later (1632) the
Episcopal colony began to feel the influence of
English Puritanism ; churchwardens had to take
an oath to “present” all who led profane and
ungodly lives, common swearers and drunkards,
blasphemers, adulterers, fornicators, slanderers,
tale-bearers, and all masters and mistresses who
neglected catechising their children and ignorant
persons under their charge. Drunkenness was
made punishable with a fine of five shillings, and
for every oath there was to be paid a fine of one
shilling. In 1642 it became necessary to pass a
176
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
law to compel Nonconformists “to depart the
colony with all conveniency.” When the civil
war broke out, Virginia held by the king. Dur-
ing the Commonwealth its ecclesiastical estab-
lishment appears to have been seriously dislo-
cated, every parish being left to arrange its own
affairs. In 1662, however, Episcopacy was re-
established, and some of the provisions of the
code under which this was accomplished are very
amusing. The parish ministers, in addition to
their glebes and parsonages, were to receive from
their parishes at least three hundred and twenty
dollars a year, payable in “valuable and current
commodities of the country.” But practically
their salary seems to have been rather variable.
The usual payment was 16,000 pounds of tobacco.
This might be worth eight or nine hundred dol-
lars if the tobacco was of a very good sort, and
if the clergyman sold it well; but if the tobacco
was poor, and if prices were low, it might not
fetch more than two hundred and fifty dollars.
The glebe was to be sufficient for a good farm, and
“a liberal vestry,” we are told, “were sometimes
kind enough to 'stock’ it with one or two families
of slaves.” The law also provided that for preach-
ing a funeral sermon the clergyman should be
paid four hundred pounds of tobacco ; for a mar-
riage by license, two hundred pounds ; for a
marriage by bans, fifty pounds. In reëstablish-
ing the Church the Assembly did not forget to


RELIGION
1777
protect it by expelling Nonconformist preachers
from the country.* It is said that as the popula-
tion of the colony increased the Established Church
became more intolerant. As late as 1774, Madi-
son, afterward President of the United States,
wrote to a friend in the North :
“I want again to breathe your free air. ... That
diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution reigns
among some; and, to their eternal infamy, the clergy can
furnish their quota of imps for such purposes. There
are at this time, in the adjacent county, not less than
five or six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing
their religious sentiments, which, in the main, are very
orthodox." +
The prisoners were Baptists.
Of course this intolerance provoked fierce an-
tagonism. The temper of Madison's letter was
widely spread. Nonconformists had grown strong,
notwithstanding persecuting laws, and as soon as
the Revolution broke out they resolved to be free
from ecclesiastical tyranny. In 1776 Dissenters
in Virginia were exempted from the compulsory
support of the clergy, and all the laws which made
it penal to profess any particular religious opinions,
or to attend services held in conventicles, were re-
pealed. The final suppression of the establishment
was effected by Jefferson in 1785. In Maryland,
See Parton's “Life of Jefferson," p. 65, and Hildreth's
“History of the United States," vol. i., pp. 614, 615.
+ Parton's “Life of Jefferson,” p. 203.
12
178
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
the Episcopal Church was disestablished in 1776 ;
and within a very few years it met the same fate
in New York, South Carolina, and in all the other
Episcopal colonies. In all the colonies the major-
ity of the Episcopalian clergy appear to have been
Tories, and they resisted the movement which
ended in the Declaration of Independence. Their
political creed provoked popular indignation, and
led to the disestablishment of their Church.
The Congregational clergy of New England
were on the popular side, and took a prominent
part in the struggle. Congregationalism, there-
fore, continued to be the national church—“ the
standing order”—of New England for more than
a generation after the colonies were separated
from the mother-country. But the severity of
the ecclesiastical laws was relaxed long before
the Congregational clergy were finally disestab-
lished. In 1735 town treasurers in Massachusetts
were ordered to pay over to the Episcopal minis-
ter such taxes levied for the support of public
worship as were collected from his “parishion-
ers, ” his “parishioners” being those who brought
certificates that they belonged to the Episcopal
Church, and “usually and frequently attended the
public worship of God” at the Episcopal church
on the Lord's day.* A little later a similar ex-
emption was granted to Anabaptists and Quakers.
In 1780 the Massachusetts “Bill of Rights” al-
* Buck's “Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law,” p. 37.

RELIGION.
179
lowed taxpayers to assign their taxes to the main-
tenance of any “public Protestant teacher of
piety, religion, and morality of their own sect,
provided there was one in the town on whose
ministry they attended ; otherwise the tax was
paid to the established Congregational preacher
of the parish.”* In 1799 a law was passed em-
powering the town treasurers to omit to tax those
who belonged to and usually attended other
churches ; or allowed the ministers of other
churches to recover by petition or suit of the
town treasurers the religious taxes paid by their
own members.
This law gave occasion to an
amusing action on behalf of a Methodist minister.
It was maintained that if this gentleman, who
“preached along the country from Pittsfield to
Springfield,” was permitted to recover from all
the town treasurers in his circuit the taxes paid
by Methodists, the arrangements for the mainte-
nance of the regular religious societies of the
commonwealth would be subverted. The judges
allowed the objection, and the Methodist lost his
suit. Indeed, the Nonconformist ministers seem
to have had considerable trouble in making good
their legal claim to the taxes paid by their ad-
herents. In one instance fourteen lawsuits were
necessary before the town treasurer surrendered
to a Dissenting clergyman his legal share of the
local taxes ; in another a Baptist minister had to
* Buck's “Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law," p. 40.

180
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
spend a hundred dollars to recover four dollars,
and the contest covered four years. After angry
lawsuits and prolonged and bitter discussion,
Nonconformists of all kinds were at last able to
appropriate their religious taxes to the mainte-
nance of their own worship. Even Shakers were
allowed the right. The Conservatives were of
course greatly depressed by these alarming con-
cessions, and in 1817 the chief-justice feared that
the policy would be injurious to "public morals
and religion, and tend to destroy the decency and
regularity of public worship.”* The principle of
this legislation was very simple: the parish levied
a tax for the support of religion ; every parish-
ioner was compelled to pay it. The proper per-
son to receive the tax was the Congregational
parish minister ; but if an Episcopalian, Baptist,
Presbyterian, or Universalist, wished to appropri-
ate it to his own minister, the law allowed him to
appropriate it. The same principle was embodied
in the legislation of the other New England States.
But in Massachusetts for the other States I
cannot speak—the form in which the principle
was carried out was not quite satisfactory. It
was not the intention of the Legislature to release
any man from paying the full amount of the tax,
but simply to allow Nonconformists to pay the
tax to their own ministers. People who went to
no church at all were therefore compelled to pay
* Buck's “ Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law," p. 43,


RELIGION
181
ex-
for the support of the Congregational clergy.
The law answered its purpose as long as all the
parishioners were required to pay the tax to the
town treasurer, the Nonconformist ministers re-
ceiving the proportion of the tax paid by their
own adherents. But, when the taxpayer who
handed the treasurer a certificate of his member-
ship of an Episcopalian or Baptist society was
empted ” from payment, it is obvious that there
was a charming opportunity for escaping the tax
altogether, or at least for lightening its pressure.
A man who wanted to pay something less than
the full rate had only to attend the Episcopal or
Baptist church occasionally, and to apply to the
Episcopalian or Baptist minister for a certificate
that he belonged to the Episcopal or Baptist so-
ciety, and he was free. He might tell the minis-
ter of his choice that he was poor, and that he
was willing to pay half the tax or two-thirds, and
the minister could accept the “composition.” It
was not necessary that the applicant should be-
come a church member or a communicant; it was
enough that he was registered as a member of
some Nonconformist ecclesiastical“society,” Mr.
Buck, in his valuable treatise on the ecclesiastical
laws of Massachusetts, says that the stringent par-
ish laws of that State promoted dissent and weak-
ened Congregationalism. “ Instances,” he says,
are given in Essex County of Congregationalists
forming Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist so-
182
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
cieties, merely to avoid the tax laws.”* I suspect
that in this country, if a farmer could get ex-
empted from paying tithes by showing a certifi-
cate that he belonged to some Nonconformist
congregation, rural Nonconformity would become
extremely prosperous.
Corporations holding land within a parish were
naturally taxed for the support of the parish min-
ister, and they were not exempted till 1831. A
company for the manufacture of nails in Ames-
bury resisted payment on the ground that the
chief design of public worship was to save souls,
and that Lord Coke had laid it down that corpo-
rations had no souls to be saved; but the court
maintained that, so far as the community is con-
cerned, public religious and moral instruction is
intended for the prevention of crimes, not the sal-
vation of souls,† a doctrine which fairly represents
some of the arguments for a religious establish-
ment that are popular in this country.
It is curious, as an indication of the temper
of the Massachusetts people, that so late as 1791,
when the Legislature came to the conclusion to
revise the laws requiring every one under heavy
penalties to attend church on Sundays, fast days,
and thanksgiving days, the laws were modified,
not repealed. It was enacted that, if an able-
bodied man was absent three months from church,
* Buck's “ Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law," p. 46.
+ Ibid., p. 28.


RELIGION.
183
he might escape by paying ten shillings. This
fine was leviable till 1834, when the “Bill of
Rights was amended, and the connection be-
tween Church and State was finally dissolved.
In Connecticut the separation was accomplished
in 1816, and about the same time in New Hamp-
shire and Maine. Rhode Island had never had
an ecclesiastical establishment. In Vermont, if
any establishment can be said to have existed, it
was extremely ineffective, and has long ago dis-
appeared.
There are many intelligent Englishmen who
do not seem to be aware of the intimate relations
which existed between Church and State in nearly
all the American colonies down to the Revolution.
Or if they remember that, in the early days of
New England, Quakers and Anabaptists were per-
secuted, they imagine that the severities of ec-
clesiastical legislation were very soon relaxed, and
are surprised by the discovery that when the first
great Reform Bill was carried in this country there
was still an Established Church in Massachusetts.
The policy of disestablishment did not win its
final triumph in the United States till about ten
years before Mr. Edward Miall and his friends es-
tablished the Liberation Society.
The principle on which disestablishment was
carried out in Connecticut, and, I believe, in all
the other New England States, is rather startling
to an Englishman. The “vested rights” of the
184
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
clergy were not recognized. They were thrown
upon the liberality of their own congregations
from the moment that Congregationalism ceased
to be the “standing order” of the State ; but the
parish church was vested in what we call the con-
gregation worshiping in it—in American law this
is usually an ecclesiastical society having the rights
of a corporation, and is legally a distinct body
from the church, or society of communicants. If
there was a glebe or any other kind of permanent
endowment, this was also vested in the “ ecclesias-
tical society,” which, by the way, is commonly
called the “parish.”* The same principle had
been adopted in disestablishing the Episcopal
Church in Virginia and other States.
While I was in America I talked with men who
remembered the disestablishment of Congregation-
alism in Massachusetts, and with the sons of the
men who were disestablished in Connecticut. Most
of
my New England friends belonged to the re-
ligious party which had been subjected to the
fiery trial. Some of them had been born in rural
parsonages before the catastrophe came, and re-
* Every minister has his “parish ” in America; but the
“parish” is not a territorial division; it is the congregation to
which he preaches, and it is generally organized into an “ec-
clesiastical society" for legal purposes. The details of Ameri-
can ecclesiastical law vary in different States, and it would re-
quire a great deal of space to sbow how the law deals with
communions like the Methodists and Episcopalians, which con-
stitute great religious organizations.


RELIGION.
185
membered how the neighboring clergy used to dis-
cuss the wicked policy of the disestablishment
party, and to mourn over the evils which the suc-
cess of the movement would inflict on the country.
Congregationalists like Dr. Lyman Beecher, the
father of Mrs. Stowe and of Mr. Henry Ward
Beecher, fought for the maintenance of the es-
tablishment with as much vigor and passion as if
they believed that the Church of Christ would
perish as soon as the establishment was over-
thrown. They were greatly scandalized that Epis-
copalians, Baptists, Universalists, and infidels,
should have united in a common movement to pull
down the State religion ; such a coalition seemed
to show that sectarian jealousy was stronger than
religious earnestness. That some Congregation-
alists should have combined with the enemies of
the Church was a lamentable proof of the extent
to which political partisanship had eaten out the
heart of their piety. The endowed clergy and
their friends maintained that, if the agitation suc-
ceeded, the State would become atheistic. They
heaped argument upon argument, statistics upon
statistics, to show that the churches in which they
and their fathers had worshiped would fall into
decay, that the clergy would receive no adequate
support, and that the rural parts of the country
would be left without the institutions of divine
worship. Even if the churches were kept in re-
pair, and some poor income provided for the rural
.
186
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
clergy by voluntary liberality, the moral influence
of the clergy would be destroyed if they became
dependent on the charity of their congregation.
And now to what extent have these appalling
prophecies been fulfilled ? The Toleration party,
as the friends of disestablishment were called,
carried the elections in Connecticut in 1817, and
the victory was theirs. In later years Lyman
Beecher, referring to the end of the conflict, said
to one of his daughters :
" It was a time of great depression and suffering.
I worked as hard as mortal man could.... My
health and spirits began to fail. It was as dark a day
as I ever saw. The injury done to the cause of
Christ, as we then supposed, was irreparable. For sev-
eral days I suffered what no tongue can tell for the best
thing that ever happened to the State of Connecticut. It
cut the churches from dependence on State support; it
threw them wholly on their own resources and on God.
They said that ministers would lose their influence: the
fact is, they have gained."*

.
Among the State-Church clergy of Connecti-
cut Dr. Lyman Beecher was as considerable a per-
son seventy years ago as Dr. Tait is at this mo-
ment among the State-Church clergy of England.
He was as strongly opposed to disestablishment
in Connecticut as Dr. Tait is to disestablishment
* Quoted from Lyman Beecher's autobiography in “Five
Problems of State and Religion,” by William C. Wood (Boston,
1877), p. 89.

RELIGION.
187
in England. I hope that his Grace will live long
enough after the disestablishment of Episcopacy
in this country to bear an equally frank and satis-
factory testimony to the beneficent effect of what
he now dreads as a catastrophe.
Whether the American clergy enjoy as much
social consideration as their predecessors enjoyed
a hundred years ago is a question on which, as a
stranger, I have hardly the means for pronouncing
a very confident opinion. My impression is that,
in Virginia and the other States in which Episco-
pacy was formerly established, the ministers of
all the most powerful churches hold a higher so-
cial position and exert a greater public influence
than before disestablishment. The Nonconformist
ministers in those colonies had to struggle hard
against the evil laws which were intended for the
protection of Episcopacy. The authorities of the
colonies were hostile to them. Their position was
necessarily improved by the triumph of religious
equality. The Episcopal clergy, on the other
hand, were regarded with bitter enmity by the
Nonconformists, and by all who shared the po-
litical spirit which led to the revolt of the colonies
against the crown. They were hated as the friends
and allies of the English statesmen who were re-
solved to treat the colonists as slaves. I believe
that the income of many of the Episcopal clergy
is not only absolutely larger than it was when
they levied their sixteen thousand pounds of to-

188
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
bacco on their parishioners every year, and were
paid four hundred pounds of tobacco for a funeral
sermon, but that it is larger in relation to the gen-
eral income of the people. Judging from the sto-
ries about the pre-Revolutionary Episcopal clergy
which are afloat, the present race of ministers are
far more earnest, and ministerial education has
greatly improved.
In New England the social position of the
clergy in the last century was, no doubt, very
high, and their influence on public affairs extraor-
dinarily powerful. The Congregational parish
minister was generally a very dignified person-
age; his cocked hat, white wig, black coat and
black breeches, knee-buckles and shoe-buckles,
impressed the popular imagination with the idea
of his importance. He was usually the best edu-
cated man in his parish, and he was the centre of
all its intellectual activity. He was also the nat-
ural leader of the people in all social and political
movements. Almost to a man the Congregation-
al pastors of Connecticut were vehemently on the
side of the colonists in their struggle with the
English crown ; and I believe that as much might
be said for the Congregational ministers in the
other New England States. Some of them went
as chaplains with the army. Those who remained
at home kept up the fires of patriotism in their
parishes, and helped to sustain the courage and
fortitude of the people throughout the conflict.
RELIGION
189

Their public influence was enormous.
But the
social position of the clergy of New England is
still very high. In the absence of an hereditary
aristocracy, professional men of all kinds receive
a consideration which is not conceded to them in
an aristocratic country; and of this consideration
the New England clergy have their full share.
Sometimes I thought I saw among eminent phy-
sicians the indications of a certain aristocratic sen-
timent; sometimes I thought I saw similar indi-
cations among my more distinguished clerical
friends. I am not a very good judge in such
matters. I do not know how the gentlemen in
the Marquis of B's billiard-room talk about
the ironmaster who has recently bought an estate
in the county, or how the ladies in the Marchion-
ess's drawing-room talk about his wife and daugh-
ters. I do not imagine that, if these noble people
are really well-bred, there is any contempt for
their neighbors who have somehow managed to
get born without having grandfathers. There
may even be cordial respect for a man whose vig-
or and ability have enabled him to accumulate a
great fortune, especially if he is modest, and uses
his money generously ; but people who are happy
enough to have ancestors must necessarily regard
themselves as more fortunate than the people who
have none.
“More fortunate,” I say; for it is
clear that they have a considerable start in the de-
velopment of the species. Occasionally I thought
190
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
that I saw some slight signs of a similar self-com-
placency, but resting on other grounds, among
professional men in America ; they seemed to as-
sume that they were at the summit of the social
hierarchy; and I also thought that the assumption
was allowed. A great manufacturer or merchant
took equal rank with them, just as I believe-
though I do not know-that a great banker or a
great brewer may be admitted into our own
“earthly paradise.” But still I thought that the
professional men regarded themselves as the elect
race, the true children of Abraham, and the true
heirs of the promise. To an English Nonconform-
ist minister all this was very curious. .
About the income of ministers of religion I
have no general information ; it varies, I believe,
very greatly in different churches. In some of
the great cities both Presbyterians and Congrega-
tionalists receive salaries which are quite unknown
to their brethren in this country. The fears that,
as the result of disestablishment, the rural dis-
tricts would be left without churches and without
ministers, have proved altogether unfounded. In
1870, according to the returns in the United
States census, the sittings in churches of all kinds
numbered 21,665,062 ; as the population was 38,-
558,371, there was provision for rather more than
55
per cent. Mr. Horace Mann, in his “Report
on the English Religious Census of 1851,” esti-
mated that, after making an adequate allowance


RELIGION.
191
for infants and children who are too young to be
taken to church, for sick and aged people, for
persons in charge of houses and in attendance on
the sick, for men employed on railways, steam-
boats, omnibuses, and other public conveyances,
only about 58 per cent. of the population can be
present at public worship at the same time. Sup-
posing, therefore, that the religious accommoda-
tion of the United States is equally distributed
over the country, there were only 3 per cent. of
the people in 1870 for whom religious accommo-
dation had not been provided. In 1860 the ac-
commodation almost touched Mr. Mann's stand-
ard. There were 19,128,751 sittings for a popu-
lation of 31,443,321 ; the accommodation
pro-
vided for 57
per
cent. Ten
years earlier, in 1850,
the provision was in excess of the requirements of
the country, still supposing that it was distrib-
uted equally. The population was 23,191,876 ;
the accommodation was for 14,234,825 ; so that
there was provision for 61 per cent.
Between 1850 and 1870, the public mind was
violently disturbed by a succession of political
excitements. The Fugitive Slave Act was passed
in the autumn of 1850 ; “Uncle Tom's Cabin "
was published in 1852 ; the Kansas riots began in
1855, and soon afterward Kansas was in open re-
bellion ; Sumner was assaulted by Brooks in 1856 ;
the insurrection at Harper's Ferry was in Octo»
ber, 1859, and John Brown was executed before

192
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
per cent.
the end of the year ; Lincoln was elected in No-
vember, 1860, and then followed the Southern
rebellion ; Lincoln was shot in 1865; and, even
after the war was over, the South continued for
some time in a state of anarchy which was only
repressed by military power. It was not unnatu-
ral that, during such a time, church-building
should
go on more slowly than usual. The
popu-
lation increased, during these twenty years, 60
per cent. ; the church accommodation increased
only about 50
The comparison between the religious accom-
modation in this country and in the United States
is instructive. In 1851 we had provision for
rather less than 53 per cent. of the population.
In 1850 the United States had provision for 61
per cent. ; in 1860 for 57 per cent. ; and in 1870
for 55 per cent. When it is considered that a
very large proportion of the people of the United
States are scattered very thinly over a vast extent
of territory, in which the resources of voluntary
churches must be most severely tasked, these re-
turns will become extremely significant.*
* I believe that the accuracy of our own religious census
of 1851 has been challenged on the ground that many of
the particulars in the returns were made by the churches
themselves, and that the churches have probably exaggerated
their resources. No such ground of suspicion attaches to the
United States census : the returns were all made by official
enumerators.

RELIGION.
193
The question of the “distribution” of the
accommodation is very important.
Mr. Mann
showed that in England in 1851 the rural parishes
had accommodation for 66.5 of their inhabitants,
while the urban parishes had accommodation for
only 46 per cent. ; showing in the one case an
excess of more than 8 per cent., and in the other
a deficiency of about 12 per cent. In the United
States census for 1870 no such detailed investiga-
tions were attempted. But the causes which have
led to an excess of accommodation in our own
rural districts have never existed in the United
States, and it is probable that the accommodation
is distributed pretty equally over the whole coun-
try.
The modes in which church property is held
vary in different States.
Very commonly the
“parish ”-or what we should call the "
congre-
gation "—is incorporated, and such corporations
are defined by the Hon. William Strong as
“Voluntary associations of individuals or families
united for the purpose of having a common place of
worship, providing teachers for instruction in religious
doctrines and duties, as well as for the administration of
the ordinances of the church, and generally to support
the cause of morality and religion in the neighborhood
where they are formed. ... Being voluntary associa-
tions, they may adopt such rules for their government
as their wishes may dictate, subject only to such restric-
tions as their charters may impose upon them if they are
13
194
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
incorporated. ... In most of the States, statutes have
been enacted providing an easy mode by which religious
societies may become incorporated, at small expense,
and where no such mode has been adopted the Legisla-
ture is competent to incorporate them.”
22
.
After enumerating the advantages of incorpo-
ration, as, for instance, that it simplifies the ten-
ure of property, enables the society to sue and to
be sued, Justice Strong goes on to say:
“They are almost always allowed to hold property
for the use of the society and the church connected with
it, and generally to manage the church temporalities.
But an incorporated religious society is not an ecclesias-
tical corporation in the sense of the English law. ...
A religious society incorporated is regarded, with us, as
a civil corporation, as much 80 as is a railroad company,
a bank, or an insurance company."*
The relations of this “ecclesiastical society”
to the Church--the society of communicants-
originate many curious and interesting questions.
According to the principles of the Congregational
polity, the Church is absolutely independent of
all external authority ; its decisions concerning
the discipline of its members, and the appoint-
ment of its ministers, are final ; but the “socie-
ty" determines the minister's salary. Where
*“Two Lectures upon the Relations of Civil Law to Church
Polity, Discipline, and Property,” by Hon. William Strong,
LL. D., Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, pp.

97
67, 68.

RELIGION.
195
local churches are under the government of a
central ecclesiastical authority, the relations of
the local “society” to the central government of
the church have to be determined. Occasionally
the church incorporates itself. In Massachusetts,
for instance, the “Third Church in Chelsea” re-
cently secured a special Act of Incorporation-
what we should call a private act—from the Mas-
sachusetts Legislature, which reads thus :
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repre-
sentatives, in General Court assembled, and by the au-
thority of the same, as follows:
“SECTION 1. Jacob Pratt, Allison H. Palmer, Charles
H. Newell, and all other members of the Third Congre-
gational Church in Chelsea, and their successors, as
members of said church, are hereby made a corpora-
tion, with all the powers and privileges, and subject to
all the duties, restrictions, and liabilities set forth in all
general laws which now are or hereafter may be in
force applicable to religious societies.
“ SEO. 2. Said corporation shall be called 'The Third
Congregational Church.'
“ SEQ. 3. Said corporation may hold real and per-
sonal estate, to an amount not exceeding fifty thousand
dollars, for parochial and religious purposes."
The newspaper paragraph containing this act is
headed “A Church without a Parish.” As a
Congregationalist I venture to think that the
“ Third Congregational Church in Chelsea ” may
find that legal incorporation will occasionally cre-
ate difficulties in connection with questions of
196
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
discipline. It is the general rule of the courts to
recognize the right of a church to censure, sus-
pend, or expel members according to its own
laws. With the spiritual acts of ecclesiastical
authorities the judges decline to interfere. But
where membership of a church carries with it
membership of a civil corporation holding prop-
erty, the courts would probably claim to revise
church decisions, for the expelled member would
be able to show that he had sustained civil
damage.
Very many “religious societies are not in-
corporated ; in a few of the States they cannot
obtain charters. In such cases the property is
held by trustees, as in England, for certain de-
fined uses.
In the Moravian Church it is the
common, if not the universal, custom for the title
to church buildings, schoolhouses, cemeteries,
and other church property to be held by the
bishop. The same rule holds with regard to the
great mass of the property belonging to the Ro-
man Catholic Church. The bishop of the dio-
cese, however, is neither a “corporation sole”
nor a trustee. He holds the property of the
church just as he holds his private estate. It
does not descend to his successor except by will.*
American lawyers will probably show themselves
sufficiently keen to remedy this abuse, which is
*“Relations of Civil Law,” etc., by Hon, William Strong,
pp. 110, 111.


RELIGION.
197
CG
contrary to the prevailing spirit of American ju-
risprudence. The American people have not for-
gotten the evils which came upon Europe in
former centuries from the enormous amount of
property held by ecclesiastical corporations. In
the charter of the “Third Congregational Church
in Chelsea ” already quoted, it is provided that
the corporation may hold real and personal
estate, to an amount not exceeding fifty thousand
dollars, for parochial and religious purposes.” In
many of the States there is a general law which
prevents any incorporated “religious society”
from holding property yielding more than a spe-
cified annual income. If the annual revenue of
the property acquired by a “religious society”
exceeds this limit, the property is escheated. The
law is evaded if all the church property in a dio-
cese is conveyed to the bishop without trusts;
and I do not think that the American people are
likely to tolerate the evasion forever.
The value of property held by the churches is
large, and is constantly increasing. In 1850 it
was returned at $87,328,801, or nearly £17,500,-
000; in 1860 at $171,397,932, or about £34,280,-
000; in 1870 at $354,483,581, or nearly £70,000,-
000.* It would be interesting to know the amount
* General Walker, the superintendent of the census, has in-
formed me that these enormous sums practically represent the
value of church edifices, parsonages, etc.; and that the endow-
ments are comparatively small. There are individual churches,
however, which are very heavily endowed.
198
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
of the debts by which the “religious societies.”
are encumbered. When I was in Chicago I was
informed that, with rare exceptions—the Unita-
rian church, of which the Rev. Brooke Herford
is minister, was named to me as one of these ex-
ceptions—all the churches were heavily in debt.
It might be alleged in explanation that the city
had recently been burned, and that nearly all the
churches had had to be rebuilt. But, when I
came to New York, I found that church debts
were far too common, and far too heavy. The
New York Times recently instituted an inquiry,
which resulted in the discovery that only one
denomination is entirely free—the Friends. Of
the 345 congregations included in the inquiry, 22
Protestant Episcopal, 22 Methodist Episcopal, 20
Presbyterian, 14 Baptist, Reformed (Dutch), 5
Jewish, and 4 Roman Catholic—120 in all-were
equally happy. The debts of the remaining 224
are given in the table on the opposite page.
Most of the new churches are splendid build-
ings, and the furniture and fittings are luxurious.
Dr. Goodwin's church (Congregational) at Chicago
seemed to me admirable in its arrangements. The
Jesuits' church at Chicago is also a remarkably
fine building The memorial chapel connected
with the Rev. Brooke Herford's church (Unita-
rian), in the same city, is very beautiful; it was
built in honor of Mrs. Collier, the wife of a former
minister. Trinity Church (Episcopalian), Boston,

RELIGION.
199

CHURCH.
Debt.
Property.
Roman Catholic..
Protestant Episcopal.
Reformed (Dutch)..
Presbyterian. ..
Methodist Episcopal.
Jewish.....
Baptist..
Lutheran..
Congregational.
Unitarian...
Universalist..
Colored .....
United Presbyterian...
Reformed Presbyterian.
Friends...
$3,042,814
1,341,300
1,098,800
542,600
480,850
380,500
223,300
183,900
181,000
82,000
75,000
72,350
23,500
20,000
$11,176,500
24,175,000
4,381,000
5,802,000
2,799,100
1,861,000
1,446,500
1,095,000
607,000
475,000
466,500
360,000
190,000
310,000
585,000
Total....
$7,770,314
$56,191,600
of which the Rev. Phillips Brooks is the minister,
is, perhaps, the finest church I saw.
The new
“Old South” (Congregational), of which Dr.
Manning is minister, and which stands at the dis-
tance of a few hundred yards from Trinity, is the
most magnificent. The “First Church" in Bos-
ton (Unitarian), of which the Rev. Rufus Ellis is
minister, is singularly beautiful. The Pilgrims'
church (Congregational), at Brooklyn, where Dr.
Storrs preaches, is also a very fine building. The
conveniences provided in nearly all of them are
most admirable. Nearly every one of my
minis-
terial friends has a “study” at his church large
enough to hold an ample library. They go to
their study soon after breakfast, and spend the
200
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
The young
morning there. I was especially attracted by the
“church parlors.” These are large, handsomely
furnished rooms, in which congregational “recep-
tions” are held. It is a custom in some churches
for the minister to be “at home” for an evening
once a month during the winter.
ladies of the congregation prepare refreshments
-oysters in all the charming forms familiar to
travelers in America, and ices in lavish abun-
dance. The members of the congregation begin
to stream in about seven o'clock, and talk to the
minister and to each other. It is understood
that those who can afford it should contribute a
quarter or half a dollar toward the expense of the
entertainment.
Most of the new churches are very
" ecclesi-
astical” in their style. In some cases the archi-
tects seem to have remembered that, since our
Protestant worship is not a “spectacle,” congre-
gations that cannot hear the voice of the minister
require some sort of entertainment, and so the
walls are covered with elaborate decoration. But
I prefer a church which, to use an American
phrase, is a good “audience room.” Plymouth
Church, Brooklyn-Mr. Henry Ward Beechers-
is a plain square brick box; it holds 2,500 peo-
ple; and a whisper reaches the remotest corner;
and since the people are able to hear the prayers
and the sermons elaborate decoration is unneces-
sary
The Tabernacle-Dr. Talmage's - which

RELIGION.
201
holds 3,500 people--is a far more beautiful build-
ing than Mr. Beecher's, and is equally well adapt:
ed to its purposes. There is no conceivable rea-
son why a fine Gothic church should not be as
easy to speak in as the old-fashioned dissenting
meeting-house; but, when American architects
attempt Gothic, they often seem to suppose that
they are perfectly successful when they have built
a church which is beautiful to the eye, and the
functions of the voice and the ear are altogether
forgotten.
Of the religious denominations the Methodists
--including the Methodist Episcopal Church,
North and South, Colored Methodist Episcopal,
African Methodist Episcopal, and some other
smaller communities-are the most numerous ;
they provided, in 1870, 6,528,209 sittings. Be-
tween 1850 and 1860 their church accommodation
had increased forty-three per cent.; between 1860
and 1870 their accommodation increased very
slightly ; but, according to the returns in the
“Methodist Almanac," the number of “mem-
bers” in the Methodist Episcopal Church in-
creased enormously between 1866 and 1876, the
net additions amounting to more than fifty per
cent. The Baptists, nốt including Free-Will
Baptists, Seventh - Day Baptists, Six - Principle
Baptists, and some other minor sects, stand next,
with 3,997,116 sittings. According to the census
returns the increase of the Baptist sittings be-

202
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
per cent.
tween 1850 and 1860 was about sixteen per cent. ;
and between 1860 and 1870 about six or seven
The Presbyterians—not including the
Reformed Church in America, the Reformed
Church in the United States,* and some other
smaller communities having a Presbyterian polity
-provide 2,198,000 sittings. Their rate of in-
crease appears to have been very slow; they pro-
vided 2,079,765 sittings in 1850, and 2,088,838 in
1860. The Roman Catholics return accommoda-
tion for 1,990,514 persons ; between 1850 and
1860 they increased their accommodation one
hundred and ten per cent., and between 1860 and
1870 rather more than forty-one per cent. The
Congregationalists hold the fifth place, with 1,117,-
212 sittings ; between 1850 and 1860 they added
about eighteen per cent. to their accommodation,
and between 1860 and 1870 about sixteen per
cent. The next place is held by the Episcopali-
ans, who in 1870 provided 991,051 sittings; be-
tween 1850 and 1860 they increased their accom-
modation rather more than thirty-one per cent.,
and between 1860 and 1870 about seventeen per
cent. The Lutheran Church stands seventh. It
provided 977,332 sittings. Between 1850 and
1860 it added nearly thirty-three per cent. to its
sittings, and between 1860 and 1870 just under
thirty per cent.
* These two churches were formerly known as the Dutch
Reformed and the German Reformed Churches.


RELIGION.
203
Of these figures those which indicate the rapid
growth of Roman Catholicism will probably ex-
cite the deepest interest in most of the readers of
this paper. They suggest the gravest questions
in relation to the religious and political future of
the United States. It has been a very common
belief that Roman Catholic immigrants are lost
to the Roman Catholic Church within a very few
years after landing in America. The priests may
be able to maintain their hold on the first genera-
tion, but it is supposed that the second almost
always escape them. Roman Catholic bishops
have shared this impression. Seven-and-twenty
years ago an Irish priest, the Rev. Robert Mullen,
was sent to the United States to collect funds for
a Roman Catholic university which it was pro-
posed to establish at Thurles. The Bishop of
Charleston, after expressing his approval of the
scheme, said to him : “You will serve religion
still more by proceeding, on your return to Ire-
land, from parish to parish, telling the people not
to lose their immortal souls by coming here."
The Archbishop of New York said to him: “The
people at home (Ireland) do not understand the
position of the emigrants, thousands being lost in
the large cities, while in the country the faith has
died out in the multitudes." On returning to Ire-
land Mr. Mullen published a letter, in which he es-
timated that between 1835 and 1851 the Catholic
Church in America had lost nearly 2,000,000 ad-
204
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
herents. As recently as 1870 the Archbishop of
Cincinnati complained that “the Catholic Church
is losing hundreds of German members, who pre-
fer Protestant preaching in German to the Catho-
lic preaching in English, and who also want to be-
long to more societies than the Church provides." *
These apprehensions, however, seem inconsistent
with the figures which show the increase of the
religious accommodation provided by the Roman
Catholic Church during the last twenty years.
I believe that the explanation lies in the fact
that, notwithstanding the enormous efforts of the
hierarchy, vast numbers of the Roman Catholic
population are still beyond the reach of the Church,
and, like good shepherds, the priests think more
of the thousands and tens of thousands of sheep
who have wandered into the wilderness, than of
the millions who are safe in the fold. M. Rameur
estimates the number of Roman Catholics in 1850
at 2,150,000; there was religious accommodation
for only 667,863 ; in 1860 he estimates that there
were 4,400,000, the increase being rather more
than 100 per cent. ; the religious accommodation
in that year had risen to 1,404,437, being an in-
crease of 110 per cent. ; but the actual deficiency
was obviously greater than before ; the present

* “Romanism as it is,” by Rev. S. W. Barnum, Hartford,
Conn., p. 673. Mr. Barnum has collected a large amount of
valuable material, illustrating the present position of the Roman
Catholic Church in America.

RELIGION.
205
number of Roman Catholics is probably about
5,000,000; the religious accommodation is for
1,990,514. If the whole of the Roman Catholics
in America were concentrated in the great towns,
this provision would not be so inadequate as it
seems, for the numerous services of the Roman
Catholic Church make the same building available
for a much larger number of worshipers than could
be accommodated in a Protestant building of the
same size. But large numbers drift away to the
West, and settle on the land ; these, too, are the
most vigorous, the most enterprising, and the most
industrious of the immigrants; they are the people
whom the priests are most anxious to keep; and
yet to follow them all is impossible. They remain
nominal Catholics for a few years, but their faith
is gradually dissipated. It is believed that very
many of them become Protestants. In 1850, the
American and Foreign Christian Union reported
“several churches composed mainly of converted
Romanists, that have Lutheran, German Reformed,
Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Baptist, and Meth-
odist ministers as their preachers and pastors.
But, however many of its members may be
lost to the Roman Catholic Church, every traveler
in America is constantly reminded that Roman
Catholicism is a great and formidable power. The
most magnificent building on the Fifth Avenue in
New York--the most magnificent ecclesiastical
* Quoted in Barnum's “Romanism as it is," p 674.
or
206
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
building, probably, in America—is the unfinished
Roman Catholic cathedral ; every one that drives
from the centre of the city to the park passes it.
In Chicago, the Jesuits' church is one of the show
places of the city. Even in New Haven, within
a few hundred yards of the college associated with
the names of Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight,
and Nathaniel Taylor, a Roman Catholic church
rises among the glorious elms which were planted
by the most Puritan of the Puritans ; its
presence
is almost enough to bring some of them out of
their graves in the neighboring cemetery. New
England farms—so I was told--are being bought
in considerable numbers by Irish Roman Catho-
lics. In all the great cities the Roman Catholic
vote is the source of perplexity and alarm to the
most honorable politicians.
Immigration has, no doubt, been the chief
source of the Roman Catholic strength. Of the
eight millions of foreigners who settled in Amer-
ica between 1783 and 1870, it is estimated that
four millions and a half belonged to the Roman
Catholic Church ; and there is a general impression
that the Irish, if not the Germans, increase in num-
ber more rapidly than the rest of the population.
Some of my New England friends contested the
accuracy of this impression, and maintained that,
while Irish parents have a larger number of chil-
dren than native-born Americans, the proportion
of children that die young is so much higher


RELIGION.
2017
among the Irish than among the Americans as to
compensate for the larger number of births.
Annexation has also added greatly to the nu-
merical growth of the Roman Catholics in the
United States. Of the original colonies, Mary-
land was the only one that was settled by Roman
Catholics, and at the time of the Revolution the
number of Roman Catholics in Maryland was
probably very small. But Louisiana, purchased
from France in 1803, had a large Roman Catholic
population. When General Jackson had driven
away
the British from New Orleans in 1815, a
Te Deum was celebrated in the Roman Catholic
cathedral in honor of his victory. The general
himself was present, greatly to the scandal, I fear,
of Mrs. Jackson, who was a zealous Methodist.
When Florida was ceded by Spain in 1821, there
was another large accession of strength to the Ro-
man Catholic Church of the United States.* Sev-
* Andrew Jackson was appointed Governor of Florida, and
Mrs. Rachel was sorely distressed that on Sunday the theatres
and gambling-houses in Pensacola were open, and that trade
was more active than on any other day of the week. Poor
woman!. She found it, she says, a “howling wilderness.” She
tells a lady correspondent that on the first Sunday after the
Americans took possession "great order was observed ; the
doors kept shut; the gambling-houses demolished (?); fiddling
and dancing not heard any more on the Lord's day; cursing
not to be heard." “Old Hickory” was not a very religious
man himself in those days; he could swear pretty heavily dur-
ing the week, and I suspect that he could swear just as heavily

208
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
eral other States annexed since 1800 were also
originally settled by Romanists—Alabama, Mis-
sissippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, In-
diana, Michigan, and California.
It is also admitted that Romanism has made
converts. According to the Catholic World,
Episcopalians and Unitarians have been espe-
cially accessible to Roman Catholic influence.*
Protestants, however, assert that the converts
from Romanism to Protestantism have been as
numerous as the converts from Protestantism to
Romanism. For myself, I very much doubt
whether converts have gone over from either side
in sufficient numbers to affect very seriously their
relative strength.
The general conclusions which I have reached
on this question are these : 1. That there are
probably five millions at least of nominal Roman
Catholics in the United States—I mean five mil-
lions of persons who were baptized into the Ro-
on Sunday when Mrs. Rachel was not near; but he loved his
wife, and, while protecting all the people of the newly-acquired
State in the free enjoyment of their religion," empowered
the mayor and council to make any regulations on the observ-
ance of the Sabbath “which they may deem proper.” At St.
Augustine, immediately after the stars and stripes had been run
up in place of the Spanish flag, a zealous Methodist preacher
began to distribute tracts through the town. A priest was in.
dignant. The Methodist pointed to the American flag, and the
priest went off in disgust.
* See “ Romanism as it is,” p. 675.
3
.

RELIGION.
209
man Church and have never formally renounced
their faith. 2. That of these a very considerable
proportion are practically lost to the Church.
They live in parts of the country where there is
no priest, and their children are being educated
among Protestants, and will probably become
either Protestants or unbelievers. 3. That the
Roman Catholic organization is far more com-
plete and powerful at the present time than it
ever was before, and that consequently the Church
is not likely to lose so large a proportion of its
members in the future as it has lost in the past,
and that Roman Catholicism, as a social and po-
litical force, is far stronger than it has ever been.
4. That American statesmen, who care to main-
tain the institutions and traditions of their coun-
try, will have to deal very firmly with the at-
tempts of the priesthood to secure for the Roman
Catholic Church special immunities and privi-
leges. They will have to stand fast by the com-
mon-school system, and to discover some means
of preventing the bishops from violating the
spirit of American law which is hostile to the
unlimited appropriation of property to ecclesias-
tical uses.
In the middle ages the struggle with the
papacy tasked the strength of the greatest kings;
it remains to be seen whether the strength of the
greatest of republics will be equal to the conflict.
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OCEAN WONDERS:
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AMERICAN PAINTERS:
Biographical Sketches of Fifty American
Artists,
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ENGRAVED ON WOOD IN A PERFECT MANNER.
Quarto; cloth, extra gilt...........Price, $7.00; full morocco, $13.00.
GTON,
The painters represented in this work are as follows:
CHURCH,
HUNT,
J. H. BEARD,
INNESS,
WHITTREDGE, W. H. BEARD,
HUNTINGTON, W. HART,
PORTER,
PAGE,
J. M. HART, G. L. BROWN,
SANFORD GIFFORD, MCENTEE,
APPLETON BROWN,
SWAIN GIFFORD, COLMAN,
CROPSEY,
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W.T. RICHARDS, DE HAAS,
SHIRLAW,
T. MORAN,
J. G. BROWN, CHASE,
P. MORAN
WYANT,
BRICHER,
PERRY,
WOOD,
ROBBINS,
BELLOWS,
BRISTOL
WILMARTH,
SHATTUCK,
REINHART, EATON,
MILLER,
BRIDGMAN, GUY,
J. F. WEIR,
BIERSTADT, QUARTLEY,
HOPKINSON SMITH,
MEEKER.
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OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
"The richest and in many ways the most notable of fine art books
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reproduced in the very best style of wood-engraving, and printed with
rare skill, constitute the chief purpose of the book; while the text
which accompanies them, the work of Mr. George W. Sheldon, is a
series of bright and entertaining biographical sketches of the artists,
with a running commentary--Critical, but not too critical-upon the
peculiarities of their several methods, purposes, and conceptions."-
New York Evening Post.
“The volume gives good evidence of the progress of American art.
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ters of the country, and it shows, moreover, that we have publishers
who are liberal and cultured enough to present their works in a hand-
some and luxurious form that will make them acceptable. American
Painters' will adorn the table of many a drawing-room where art is
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- New York Express.
" It is at once a biographical dictionary of artists, a gallery of pen
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“One of the most delightful volumes issued from the press of this
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“Outside and inside it is a thing of beauty. The text is in large,
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“This book is a notable one, and among the many fine art books it
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“ 'American Painters' consists of biographical sketches of fifty
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This work is one of surpassing interest, and of marvelous typo-
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66
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COLLECTION OF FOREIGN AUTHORS.
THE design of the “ Collection of Foreign Authors" is to give selections from
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PAPER, CLOTH.
-50
50
-50
I. SAMUEL BROHL AND COMPANY. A
Novel. From the French of VICTOR CHER-
BULIEZ
$0.60 $1.00
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the French of ANDRÉ. THEURIET
III. SPIRITE. A Fantasy.. From the French of
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
50. - 75
IV.: THE TOWER OF PERCEMONT. From
the French of GEORGE SAND
V. META HOLDENIS. A Novel. From the
French of VICTOR CHERBULIEZ
50 75
VI. ROMANCES OF THE EAST From the
French of COMTE DE GOBINEAU
.60 1.00
VII. RENEE AND FRANZ. From the French
of GUSTAVE HALLER
- 75
VIII. MADAME GOSSELIN. From the French
of LOUIS ULBACH
.60 1.00
IX. THE GODSON OF À MARQUIS. From
the French of ANDRÉ THEURIET
- 50 - 75
X. ARIADNE. From the French of HENRY
GREVILLE
-75
XI. SAFAR-HADGI, OR, RUSS AND TUR-
COMAN. From the French of PRINCE
LUBOMIRSKI
.60
I.00
XII. IN ARADISE. From the German of PAUL
HEYSE In Two Volumes
Per vol. .60 1.00
XI-REMORSE. A Novel. From the French of
TH. BENTZON.
.75
XIV. FEAN TETEROL'S IDEA. A Novel. From
the French of VICTOR CHERBULIEZ.
.60
XV. TALES FROM THE GERMAN OF PAUL
HE VSE
6000
XVI. THE DIARY OF A WOMAN. From the
French of OSTAVE FEUILLET
.50 .75
•50
:50
D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, New York.
* Either of the above yolumes sent by mail, post-paid, to any address in the
United States or Canada, upon receipt of the price.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY
DATE DUE
NOV I 197
JUN 21 1990
AUG 112 1992
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 01766 4569
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OR
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