I  1i' I fl S   M   Wk,. —
_:lil~illl lU~         =     ii
4                                           5
OFFICIAL RESIDENCES OF RULERS.
1-The Vatican at Rome. 2 —hite House, Washington. 3-The Tuileries, Paris.
4-Buckingham Palace, London.  r-King's Palace, Berlin.




THE iNEW WO RLD
COMPARED WITH
THE OLD:
A DESCRIPTION OF tE
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, INSTITUTIONS, AND ENTERPRISES,
AND OF THOSE OF OUR GREAT RIVALS AT THE PRESENT TIME, PARTICULARLY
ENGLAND AND FRANCE.
BY
GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND.
HARTFORD, CONN.:
S. M. BETTS & COMPANY.
CHICAGO, ILL., GIBBS & NICHOLS.
PHILADELPHIA, PENN., JOHN BIGELOW & CO.
NEW YORK, J. D. DENNISON.
H. H. BANCROFT & CO., SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
a. J. STRICKLAND, AUBURN, N. T.
1870.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
S. M. BETTS & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
District of Connecticut.




PTHEvolume which is introduced by these lines is intended to
THE volume which is introduced by these lines is intertded to
diffuse cosmopolitan political information in as picturesque fashion
as the subject will permit, or the author can present it. Much is
said in our day about our position amongst states, and our privileges amongst peoples. I have tried in these pages to ascertain
the truth under both heads, and I consider the three years I have
spent in Europe as a poorer qualification for the task, than the
access I have been so cheerfully accorded to the fine Library of
Congress.
The work was at times embarrassed by improvements in the
institutions of Europe: by a change of front in the French
Imperial Government, by the Revolution in Spain, by the unfinished condition of Germany and Italy, by the Disraeli Reform
Bill, and bf  Gladstone's disestablishment of the Irish Church
in the United Kingdom. The title of the book might more
truly have been " The Old World Compared with the New,"
as what is described of America is mainly meant to arrest
attention and fix the eye upon the successive European institutions; but the book will read either way, and it is not
impossible that an Englishman might take it up and compare our
civilization with his. The inquiry was so profitable to myself
that I felt almo&s chagrin when I came abruptly to the limit of
the volume, and, reading it over now, I remember much that I
had intended to tell, sacrificed in the consciousness that one cannot bind the globe into a book.




IV                      PREFACE.
Perhaps that which impressed me most in this research was
the superiority of European authorities upon America to our
own literature of Europe. We have believed the contrary, and
have made outcry upon foreign travellers and writers amongst
us; but we have never sent a De Tocqueville abroad nor apprehended our own future with the intelligence of a Cobden. Our
travellers in Europe have been mainly provincial in mind, and
in observation superficial; some of them write full of wonder,
band some with lofty village scorn. The very best of our travellers was Fenimore Cooper, whom we berated for his frankness
a.s heartily as we took our foreign critics to task. In Hawthorne, we sent one Consul abroad who looked about him,
but wrote too little. In our diplomatic establishment there is
scarcely one experience, save Jefferson's, which is marked by
the fine contemporary analysis of both the politician and the
traveller. Within the past ten years, however, several philosophic foreigners have become naturalized amongst us, and
these have laid the foundation of an American political literature upon Europe; the tone of our foreign correspondence in
the newspapers and reviews has also improved since the civil
war, and we are throwing out of our schools those pernicious
gunides to a true estimate of continental politics, - histories of
Europe based upon English opinion.
For fifty years our boys have been taught that Pitt's statesmanship was the wisest, and Wellington's sword the brightest;
that the French Revolution was only infidel and circumscribed
by the " Reign of Terror," and that everybody but ourselves
is incapable of Republican government. Against this English
Toryism a relaction as baneful has been led by certain American clerrgymen, sitting at the feet of Cuesar, and these have covered the land with indiscriminate praises of the Napoleons.
Between the two schools, our youth escape altogether the mnod



PREFACE.                        V
erate period and party of continental Europe, which is in
affinity with our own temper and institutions, and has sent
hither the mnost intelligent and friendly travellers.  The great
names in political economy, reciprocity, and international philanthropy have been lost to us in the rivalry of merely warlike
reputations. Peel is obscured by Bismarck, and Alison is read
instead of MIartine.u.  Our Academies and Colleges would do
well to begin the study of modern history with the year 1815,
for all prior to that time will be read and retained by the student
of his own will; whereas the attention, carried up to a giddy
climax in the story of Napoleon, relaxes at his downfall, and
listens languidly to the " History of the Peace," which is the truer
and more elevating history of our era and of European glory.
The sole object of this comparison is to popularize political
information, and wherever a quotation could be made judiciously, it has been preferred to original statement, as carrying
authority, and as being, besides, a sample of foreign thought,
idiosyncrasy, or oratory. -Personal conviction upon disputed
points has been evaded by citing opinion from both sides; but
the general conviction is retained throughout that we have the
happiest governlment, and that only popular defection or neglect
can overthrow it. The publishers have wished me to print a
list of authorities consulted in the preparation of the book; but
this custom has been so frequently abused by writers who seek
to establish authenticity merely by parading a catalogue, that I
shall confine myself merely to some general indication of books
still in print and procurable; other authorities will be named
in the text.
Harriet MIartineau's " History of the Peace " is incomparably
the best and fairest book upon English affairs since 1815. It
has been issued in an American edition of four volumes,
specially edited by the author.




IrT'Pr PREFACE.
The "Statesman's Year Book," annually published by Macmillan and Co., of London, is a book of nearly eight hundred
pages, containing a succinct account of every government of
note, and of the colonies of each, as well.
MIany hand-books of Church and State have been issued in
England, and of these one of the cheapest is published by RMurray, Lonlldon.
The only political history of note in America is that of Jabez
Iammond, " The Political History of the State of New York,"
illn three volumes, and but few copies are now in circulation;
it recites with impartial faithfulness the rise of parties between
the close of the War of Independence and the death of Silas
WVright.
Dr. Edward Fischel's work on the English Constitution has
been translated into English, tnd published by Bosworth and
Harrison of London; it is close, entertaining, and more censoriously just than similar English books.
Libraries are all supplied with Benton's "History of the  Working of the American Government for Thirty Years," which is
full on many points, an11  on some dogmatic. A very useful
book on the " Laws and Government of the States and the United
States " is that of William B. WVedgwood, published in 1866.
New York. An abridgment of the United States Census and
an abridged Blue Book have also been circulated by private
publishing houses.
The English Black Book is a caustic, partisan, and somewhat sensational account of abuses, sinecures, and evils in the
English political system; Jenckes's Report on the American
Civil Service is a more careful book upon a part of the parallel
subject.
The political history of the Continent of Europe is to be
found in an immense variety of publications, few of which are




PREFACE.                      VII
in English.  Kinglake's sketches of parties in France are
severe and bigoted, but in many respects just.  On the French
Church I have consulted the "Almanach du Clerg6ponur l'an
de Grace, 1867;" on legislation, politics, and finance, the
works of Casimir Perier and Adrien Huard.
A good book on Germany, particularly on North Germany,
is much needed in America. I have read, in the French,
Eugene VWron's History of Prussia down to the battle of Sadowa, with advantage.
"IRussia and its People," by Count Gurowski, is a pithy and
savage book; for a'charming view of citizen life in Russia, one
cannot do better than to read Turgenieff's novel of " Fathers and
Sons, " nicely translated by Consul Schuyler, and published in
New York. "The Russians in Central Asia," by Valikhanof,
and Veniukof, is a book pertinent to our new Asiatic relations,
and issued in English, London, 1865. The cheapest compendium of travel, railway fares, distances, steamship routes, cities,
etc., to be found in Europe or America, is "Bradshaw's Special
Guide for the Continent," imported by August Brentano, New
York, every month, at the price of about three dollars, currency. Other English guides to Europe are offensive and partisan, particularly Murray's; and American guides to Europe
are worthless, being based upon them.
To conclude: many of the statistics cited here will be found to
vary at different periods, and with different authors. The publishers design to keep the book in these respects up to the latest
information. I hope that some reader may grow interested in
the great contemporary questions here discussed, and hold a truer
mirror up to government, so that we may become larger politicians
in the sense expected of a republican, who is at once a citizen
and a sovereign.




LIST OF ILLIUSTRATIONS.
OFFICIAL RESIDENCES OF RULERS,t          Frontispiece.    PAGE.
1. THE VATICAN AT ROMIE.
2. WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON.
3. THE TUILERIES, PARIS.
4. BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON.
5. KING'S PALACE, BERLIN.
COUNTRY SEATS OF RULERS,,                               37.
6. ULRICKSDAL, SWEDEN.
7. WINDSOR CASTLE, ENGLAND.
8. FONTAINEBLEAU, FRANCE
9. SOLDIER'S HOME, WASHINGTON.
10. TIVOLI, ROME.
HOUSES OF THE LEGISLATURES,...                   83
11. MODERN CAPITOL, ROME.
12. PALACE OF THE CORPS LEGISLATIF, PARIS.
13. CAPITOL, WASHINGTON.
14. HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT, LONDON.
15. PARLIAMENT HOUSES OTTAWA, CANADA.
ECCLESIASTICAL EDIFICES,...                        189
16. WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND.
17. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL, FRANCE.
18. NOTRE DAME, PARIS.
19. TrIiNITY CHURCH, NEW YORK.
20. INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S, LONDON.
21. ST. SOPHIA'S MOSQUE.
22. ST. PETER'S, ROME.
MONUMENTAL STRUCTURES,...                241.
23. ALEXANDER COLUMN, ST. PETERSBURG.
24. COLUMN VENDOME.
25. ARC DE TRIOMPHE, PARIS.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.                IX
26. BUNKER HILL MO.NUMENT.                        PAGE.
27. WASHINGTON TMONUMENT.
28. STATUE OF COLUM1BUS.
SEATS OF MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT,.                         282.
29. TtIE CITY HALL, NEW YORK.
30. THE CITY HALL, PARIS.
31. NEW CITY HALL, BALTI.MORE.
32. TuIE CITY HALL, LONDON.
33. THE CITY HALL, BRUSSELS.
NATIONAL WORKS,.......   317.
34. SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT NIAGARA.
35. THE VICTORIA TUBULAR BRIDGE, MONTREAL.
36. PONT NEUF, PARIS.
37. CHICAGO RIVER TUNNEL.
38. MENAI BRIDGE, WALES.
MILITARY INSTITUTIONS,...                            344.
39. WOOLWICH ACADEMY, ENGLAND.
40. SCHOOL OF ST. CYR, FRANCE.
41. WEST POINT, NEW.YORK.
MONETARY INSTITUTIONS,....               374.
42. THE BOURSE, PARIS.
43. UNITED STATES TREASURY, WASHINGTON.
44. THE BOURSE, ST. PETERSBURG.
45. THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON.
NATIONAL SHRINES,....            399.
46. FANUEIL HALL, BOSTON.
47. STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA.
48. NAPOLEON'S TOMB.
49. TOWER OF LONDON.
NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS,.   469.
50. HOTEL DES INVALIDES, PARIS.
51. HOTEL DIEU, PARIS.
52. GREENWICH HOSPITAL, LONDON.
53. HOSPITAL AT CINCINNATI.
REGALIA OF STATE,.......   496.
54. QUEEN'S DIADEM.
55. QUEEN'S CORONATION BRACELETS.
56. PRINCE OF WALES CROWN.




X                 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
57. OLT) IMPE RIAL CROWN.                           PAGE.
58. QUEENX'S CROWN.
59 SPIRITUAL SCEPTER,
60. TEaMPORAL SCEPTER.
61. BisIioP's HAT.
62. POPE'S HAT.
63. REGALIA OF SCOTLAND.
GREAT STATE CEREMONIES,...                  528.
64. THE FETE AT VENICE.
65. THE POPE BLESSING ON CHIRISTMAS DAY.
66. CORONATION OF THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
HALLS OF LEGISLATION,..              572
67. THE SALOON OF STATE, PARIS.
68. THE SENATE OF FRANCE.
69. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON.
70. THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON.
REPRESENTATIVE HOMES OF CITIZENS,.                        589.
71. PALACE OF THE PRINCE OF PRUSSIA.
72 DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S HOME.
73. CHATEAU OF DUKE DE LYNNES, FRANCE.
74 RESIDENCE OF A. T. STEWART, NEW YORK.
75. HOME OF BAYARD TAYLOR.
HARBORS AND FORTRESSES.  604
76. EHRENBREITSTEIN.
77. GIBRALTER.
78. THE NARROWS.
79. FORTRESS MONROE.
80. CITADEL, QUEBEG.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
WASHINGTON AND LONDON.
rage
Washington city and its environs, as seen from the dome of the Capitol —Reminiscences of its site -Character of its outlying scenery — Permanence of the city
as the political metropolis - London, seen from the dome of St. Paul's - Association of the great metropolis with American history and institutions — Ancient
Rome and London in relative populousness - The Thames and the Potomac -
London topographically considered -Relation of the great parlimentary suburbs
to the old city - Relation of " the city " to the capital suburb of Westminster
- Influence of the municipality upon the nation from the earliest ages —Impending improvements and the cost of them - Old monuments in London - The
" season" of fashion and politics.21
CHAPTER II.
TIIE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.
Their comparative power, salary, place of residence, and attendants - English opinion
of the White House - Sketches of St. James, Kensington, Whitehall, and Buckingham Palaces, and of Windsor Castle, Osborne House, and Balmoral Castle, the
Queen's residences - The family of Victoria - Death of the King, her predecessor
- Manner of her succession and " Proclamation "- Her dress when she first appeared before the people - Her first state ceremony - The girl become Queen -
Her holding of the first court - The Queen going to Parliament to dissolve it -
Minute account of the procession - The Queen's wardrobe - Her visit to London
city and gorgeous reception there - Parliament votes her salary —Coronation of
the Queen compared with the inauguration of our Presidents —Sketch of Westminster Abbey with the assembled peers, officials, and commons - The Queen's regalia -History and description of the crown and sceptre -Homage paid to her
— Balls of inauguration and of coronation —How Prince Albert courted the
Queen- The marriage ceremony in St. James' palace - Honeymoon at Windsor
— A poor German prince grows thrifty after marriage -No objection on the
Queen's part to becoming a mother - Royal house-keeping - Birth of the Prince
of Wales - Death of the Prince Consort - Victoria's empire - Her influence upon
the people -Permanence of her dynasty on the throne..   37
CHAPTER III.
THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.'
American " best families" - Vigor, number, and influence of the British aristocracy
- Its dislike of our institutions - Cotton creates a rival aristocracy - The di8XI




XII                             CONTENTS.
senting church vs. the nobility - Disraeli's refusal to take a peerage - Origin of
the aristocracy of England - Example of thepedigrees of British peers- Classification of nobles - Difference between princes, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, and
barons -Meaning of each of these terms - Baronets and gentry, not noblemen -
The prefixes " Sir" and " Right Honorable "- The oldest noble families of the
present day - How nobles are created - The great expense of a nobleman — Privileges of peers above other persons - The nobles of the royal household - The
British nobility compared in power and purity of blood with those of other nations
- Nobles who have been Americans -Splendid parks and baronial estates of the
British nobles -The Marquis of Westminster, the Duke of Bedford —Burko's
Book of the Peerage - The Cavendish family - The estates of Chatsworthl and
Blenheim described- N. P. Willis' description of a fortnight at Gordon Castle --
" Town houses" of the peers -The dissolute nobility - Orders of British knighthood-The Garter, Thistle, Bath, St. Patrick, Star of India- Complete identification of the nobility with the land - To destroy the aristocracy, tai the land. 62
CHAPTER IV.
THE- SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
Sketches of the United States Capitol building and of the British House of Parliament
-The architects of the two edifices, and their cost -Incomplete character of both
buildings - The Parliament Houses of Melbourne and Ottawa - Picture of great
groups of bridges and palaces at Westminster -- Origin of the site -as a place of
historic reminiscence - Defects of the Parliament Houses - The influence of the
spot upon America-Minute account of the ornamentation of the House of Lords
- The royal throne-The peers in their seats-Their number and distribution
- The president of the Senate and the lord chancellor - The clerks, sergeant-atarms, and ushers - Political feeling in the House of Lords - The Queen opening
Parliament -Gorgeous scene in the House of Peers on state occasions- The reporters' gallery - Noisy behavior of the Commons coming up to the Lords - The
oath against popery - Duration of a Parliament —Riot in the presence of William IV. - Passage of the reform bill over the heads of the peers - The trial of an
impeachment - Warren Hastings - Lord Kingsborough - Literature of the aristocracy -Mrs. Yelverton- Earl Ferrers hanged-The Queen never comes to
Parliament as a spectator - The veto power - Parliamentary law in the Senate and
the House of Lords.83
CHAPTER V.
THE HOUSE' OF COMMONS AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
The architecture and dimensions of the chambers of both bodies —Their committee
rooms, restaurants, and libraries - Number of members in the two assemblies -
Members of Parliament paid no salaries- Scene when the Commons are assembled - Telegraph and reporting arrangements - The speaker's office and perquisites -Chairman of committee of the whole - Salaries of the clerks and the sergeants-at-arms - Persons disqualified from sitting in Parliament - Congressional
districts and parliamentary boroughs -Definition of a county, a corporate city, a
borough, a university,-Rise and growth of parliamentary government-Tlbe reform
bills of 1832-1867 - Number of voters in England - Bribery in parliamentary
elections - Clubs and the House of Commons - Instances of certain boroughs and




CONTENTS.                                 XIII
their representation — English  Boston, York, Hartford - Sir Morton PetoPleasant and honorable life of an M. P.- Gross cases of corruption -Quakers,
Jews, and Catholics, in Parliament - Regular order of parliamentary businessThe Budget - Expunging resolutions - Petitions - Respect for the Queen and our
President in debate - The lobby - The official reporters - Printing of the debates
- The Congressional Globe - The London Times - Excess of forms in Parliament
- Stranger's gallery - Manners in Parliament - Riotous and disorderly behavior
- Parliamentary ignorance - O'Connell - Crowing, hissing, and coughing in the
Commons - Castelar and the foreign orators compared with the British — John
Bright - A comparison of American and British eloquence: Disraeli and Bancroft
on Abraham Lincoln -Familiar sketches of Lords Derby, Stanley, and Russell
- Sir Robert Peel, Cobden, and Disraeli — Prize fighters in Congress and Parliament - Defects of the organization of the House of Commons.               115
CHAPTER VI.
TIIE PRIME MINISTER AND TIlE CABINET.
The prime minister of England compared with the President - Difference between parliamentary and popular government - The Queen' relations with the prime minister - The English government familiarly constructed in America - Politics and
the prime minister — The President in cabinet meeting -Cabinet recognized by
law in neither country —Names and salaries of recent cabinet officers in England and America - Unpopular cabinet officers-Duke of Wellington as a statesman
- The aristocracy and the cabinet —The privy council and the English cabinet
- Lord Chancellor Clarendon and his dishonesty -Sketch of the inauguration of
General Grant and of Sir Robert Peel, prime minister —The bedchamber plot and
Lord Melbourne - Andrew Jackson and Mr. Duane- A Presidential election and
a change of ministry - Queen disagreeing with her prime minister - Objections of
ministers to the Queen's leaving English shores — A regency- Salmon P. Chase
quitting Lincoln's cabinet —Earl Gray retiring from  his premiership —Mrs.
Eaton and Jackson's cabinet-A. T. Stewart and the  treasury —Lincoln's
cabinet signing the act of emancipation-Wellington and the reform  billThe galaxy of prime ministers and presidents compared in ability- Pendleton's
bill to seat cabinet officers in Congress —Impeachment of Andrew Johnson -
Murder of Percival in Parliament —Pensions to prime ministers —Attempts to
murder the Queen - Secrets of cabinet council - William Pitt and Gladstone -
Bright on political selfishness.                                          150
CHAPTER VII.
CHURCH AND STATE.
The Queen as the head of the established church- The Archbishops of York and Canterbury - Their residences and salaries - Descriptions of various English cathedrals- The bishops and deans of England- The Scotch established church
- The Irish church before its disestablishment — Maynooth college- Struggle of
dissenters- Ritualism - The difference in doctrine and form between the Established and the Roman Ca'tholic church - Rise of the English church - The German and English reformations- Connection of the Protestant Episcopal church
in America with the English church -The parish system and the payment of
church rates - Agitation against the church - The state prayers of the church -
The Queen's chapel - Beauty of English parish churches - Livings and presenta



XIV                               CONTENTS.
tions- Salaries of London preachers- Foreign cemeteries — Catholic church in
America and England - Dr. Pusey - John Wesley - Gladstone's book on church
and state —The Pope's council - Guizot and French Protestants —The Deity in
the Constitution - Trinity Church, New York, and St. Paul's - John Knox and
Calvinism in Ireland and Scotland - Aggressive movements of the people upon the
church.189
CHAPTER  VIII.
THE OFFICE-IIOLDERS, AND THE OFFICES IN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
Comparison of the departmental buildings of Washington and London - Whitehall -
The new public offices of London -The colonial office - Meeting of Nelson and
Wellington - New offices at Washington - Contracts for public buildings - Number of officials in the two countries - The Neow York custom house - English judicial
system - The attorney general - Salaries of Judges - Treason to kill a judge -
Manner of conducting law proceedings in England- Coke and Raleigh - The United States Supreme Court - Lord Chancellor as a judge - Master of the rolls - The
records - Jail for bankrupts - The police courts - Inspectorships - CommissionsAmerican and English patent offices - Agricultural bureau at Washington - Salaries of clerks under both governments - British internal revenue - Blue books -
State paper office - Trinity house - English post office - Coleridge and Sir Rowland
Hill-The money-order system-Purchase of telegraph lines by government
- Letters not inviolate in England - Rates of postage between America and Europe
- Franking system - The evils and debaucheries of the American civil service -
Mr. Jencks and Mr. Layard — Superiority of the British — Its construction and
management-Testimony of eminent Americans against rotation in office-Incompetent official salaries in America- Testimony of Mr. Browning - Houses for American officials of high rank - Somerset house - Baneful desire for office under the republic - Montalembert on this question..213
CHAPTER IX.
NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.
The national schools of England, and the public-school system of the United StatesStatistics of both systems - Republican nature of American schools - The Philadelphia high school - George Peabody - Ignorance in the British army, navy, and
provinces - Conservatism of British schools and students - Sketches of the schools
of Christ's Hospital, Charter House, Westminster, Eton, and Harrow —Yale and
Harvard Colleges compared with Oxford and Cambridge -Charles Astor Bristed
at Cambridge - Origin and association of English universities - Complete account
of Oxford and Cambridge - Dissoluteness of life and thought there - Academical costumes - Fellowships - Races on the Isis, Cam, and on lake Quinsigamond -
Cost of education at Yale and at Oxford - Durham university - The London university-Toryism affected by the English students - Tom Brown at Worcester,
Massachusetts - The libraries of the world —The congressional library —The
British Museum - Our sculptors and artists abroad - American medical colleges
-The English Inns of Court —The Washington monument —The Richmond
Washington monument —The Albert memorial in Hyde Park..          241




CONTENTS.                                 XV
CHAPTER X.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, COUNTIES, AND PROVINCES.
Indian names of states - Saxon names of English countries - The country abroad compared with the American state, in its mode of government, and connection with the
central administration - The lords' lieutenant, and the governors — English sheriffs
- Number of counties in England - Their origin - Their public buildings - Flogging in the state of Delaware - Description of Lancaster county, England - Varieties of provincial life - Gypsies and cricketers - The English " commons " and parks
- Hold of the aristocracy upon town sites - Game in England - Use of small states
- Gladstone on small boroughs - Justice of the peace - Superiority of the English
justices -- -Iunicipal counties - New York state - Its growth into the powers of an
independent commonwealth - New Albany state capitol - Government of New
York city - The New York civil service list - Salaries of American state officers -
The neglect of the people in their state duties as electors - Government of the Isle
of Man - Channel islands - Scotch local government and courts of law - Scotch
Judges and their salaries - The Stuart dynasty -The great emoluments of the lord
lieutenant of Ireland —His privy council - Speculations upon English tyranny
and Irish obstinacy - Causes of the quiet of Scotland and the discontent of Ireland
— O'Connell —His objects, his glory, and his decline —Harriet Martineau upon
his latter days -Happy and safe government of the states under a limited union
- De Tocqueville on the use of states.265
CHAPTER XI.
BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.
Jealousy of American cities — No municipal republics in America - Every city controlled by its state - Contrary condition of English cities - What is a metropolis - Tour of the English cities - Bristol and Liverpool racing for supremacy -
A verbal. map of England constructed on the territory of the United States
-Density of population in America and Europe —Relative measurement of
the mountains and rivers —The environs of Boston and the environs of London-Picturesque circuit of all the counties radiating from London —Portsmouth, Southampton, Hull - Rise of Manchester and Birmingham - Relative influence of Dublin and Edinburgh - Birmingham and Pittsburg compared - Lowell described by Anthony Trollope —Our working people better off than the
British - Bradford and Leeds - The woollen and cotton trade in America and
England - York county and New York - Tariff and transit - The resemblances
and differences of Glasgow and Edinburgh- River steamboats of Europe - Ship
building - Railway system of Europe - Early history of Scotland - Broad gauge
and narrow gauge - Cobden on the uniform gauge - Opening of the first railway
in England — Opposition from the aristocracy — Excursion trains - Excitement
over railway schemes in early days - The voyage from Wales to Dublin - Trinity
College and Glasgow University - Phoenix Park and Central Park - Belfast and
Londonderry — Irish flax - Orangemen and Ribbonmen - Literature of Dublin
and Edinburgh- Dilke, or the Irish in American cities —Municipal reform bill
-Great activity of American cities-Repose of the English towns... 282




XVI                              CONTENTS.
CIIAPTER XII.
BRITISII COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.
A table of all the English colonies - Their mode of acquisition, area, exports, imports,
and population - Area of the United States - European possessions of England -
lIeligoland - Ionia - Malta - Gibraltar - African establishment - Sierra Leone
and Liberia - Royal governors - The Abyssinian war  The American revolution in its effects upon the other British colonies-Taxation given upSalaries of governors-general —Immense perquisites'and salary of the gov-'
ernor of India- Rise of the British power in the orient —The East India Company-Clive, Cornwallis, and Warren Hastings — Cornwallis after his surrender at Yorktown -Residence of the governor-general of India - Rtssell's visit
to him during the Sepoy revolt - Cause and effect of this revolt -Debt of India - The Pacific and the India railways - English treatment of the HindoosRottenness of the British empire in India - The governor-general's court - Colonel
Parker and the Amerian Indians - Long talk with the Indian Commissioner —
Thefts of Indian agents - Fate of the redskin - How we have acquired our territory - Seward's plan of buying manifest destiny - Australia's peaceable settlement - Liberia our only colony - Filibustering - France in the new world -
De Tocqueville on the Anglo-Saxon in the new world - Population of America
in 1870 - Table of population of the globe - Permanence of American territoryFate of British colonies- George III. on bidding adieu to his thirteen colonies. 317
CHAPTER XIII.
THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.
Pride of the two Anglo-Saxon nations in their navies —Jealousy of their standing
armies - The American army before and after the war - Dimensions of the British army - Pay of officers - English militia, yeomanry, and volunteers - The
army in Ireland - Military districts of the United Kingdom — The army in the
colonies - Grants of money to volunteers - Our volnteer force in the war —
The grades of general and admiral - The English commander-in-chief- His salary, perquisites, staff, and dignities - Pensions and half-pay- Buying commissions -- Wraxall on the aristocracy in the army - Military hierarchy - West Point
and Annapolis naval school compared with Sandhurst, Woolwich, and Dublin -
General Garfield on West Point — Corps of royal engineers - Fortifications of
England - The Stevens' battery -The Dutch at Chatham —Nelson's life, services, and character - Decatur - Collingwood- Wellington's reward for winning Waterloo-Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror invading EnglandFlogging in the army and navy -The Army and Navy Medical Museum at Washington - Conscription - Relative navies of England and America - Description
of Annapolis school and school fleet - U. S. steam sloop Wampanoag the swiftest
in the world - The right of search.                      344
CHAPTER XIV.
BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.
Debt of England at commencement of American revolution - Manner in which money
was raised in American civil war -Salmon P. Chase and Jay Cooke —Chase




CONTENTS.                               XVII
banking system -- Centre of gravity of English state government -- "The budget"
- Parliamentary Committee of Ways and Means - Of Supplies- Bank of England - Old U. S. bank - Treasury building at Washington -English MintWall street, N. Y. - London Royal and Stock Exchanges - New York Stock Exchange - Light house and coast survey bureaux - Revenue cutter service - English commerce - Cost of railroads in England - Miles of railway in operation in
United States in 1869- Canals - Public buildings - Revenue - Civil service of
U. S - Cotton - Tariffs, free trade, etc.. 374
CHAPTER XV.
POLITICS AND POLITICAL PARTIES ON BOTH SIDES OF TIIE SEA.
History of English politics - Whigs - Tories - Jacobites, etc. - Federalists-French
Revolution - Political demonstrations in England - Chartists - American mobs
- Young England — Radicals —  American political traditions - Party spirit in
England-" Know  Nothings" - Free Masonry - Jews - Catholics - "No Popery " — Woman suffrage - Free trade -t rades unions - Popular hymn —
Catholic tvte - English elections - Reform bill..399
CHAPTER XVI.
TH: Pl'EOPLE: AS AFFECTED BY THE TWO GOVERINMENTS,                429
CHAPTER XVII.
AMEIIRICA AN'D ENGLAN'D AS INFLUENCED *-BY EACH OTHER.
England and Ameriea as allies - Causes of mutual estrangement - Malevolence of an
aristocracy for a republic - American scholarship at Oxford and Cambridge - British comment on American hlstery- French writers on America- Mrs. Trollope
- IIer son Anthony - D/ernocratic institutions - American fascination of the
higher social life of England - Ingenious passage from De Tocqueville - Progress
of population of the U. S. - Influence of England upon America... 453
CIIAPTER XVIII;
NEW YORIK AND PARIS.
From Washington to Now York compared as a journey with the transit between London and Paris -The Chesaipeake and Dover straits- The Rhine and the Hudson -
The valley of the Seine from Paris to Havre - New York bay from the battery to
the sea - Paris and its amphitheatre of hills - Unique position of New York island - Staten Island and Rouen —Naversink and Havre- Brooklyn and the
Quartier Latin —Origin of Paris - Origin of New York -Hotel de Ville and
City Hall - Administration of Paris - Patriotism and intelligence of the city —
Revolution in the streets —The New York riots- Cost of Napoleon's improvements - The parks of New York and Paris —Social life -Broadway and the
boulevards - Relative influence of the two cities upon their nations... 4G9




XVI11                             CON-TENTS.
CHAPTER XIX.
NAPOLEON III, AND NAPOLEONISM.
The French Emperor and his history - Rise and times of his family - Napoleon Bonaparte and his brothers — Louis Bonaparte and I-lortense Beauharnais - Private
lffe of the Queen of Holland - IIer natural son, DeMorny - Separates from her
husband — Birth of Louis Napoleon in the Tuileries- IIis school-life at Arenenberg- Goes to school in Bavaria - Joins the revolt against the Pope - Death of
his brother, and his elevation thereby to the successorship pf the Emperor -He
grows moody — Iecomnes an author — Iis descent upon Strasbourg — His capture
- Attracts the sympathy of the Bonaparte party in France - Persigny -Louis
sent to America - Visits the Murats in Raltimore - The American Bonapartes
- Jerome and Miss Patterson — Joseph at Bordentown - Lucien, high-minded, refuses to divorce his wife - Singular behavior of Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte — Louis
recalled to Arenenberg by his dying mother -Is he the son of the King of Iolland? - His residence in London -Descent upon Bologne-sur-mer - He is sent to
the fortress of I1am - Authorship - Growing name in France - Escape- Life in
London —The Revolution of 1848  Visits Paris - Elected to the Assembly —
lHis sincerity suspected- Persigny and De Morny have him elected President -
"Prince President" - He disgusts the republicans - Occupies Rome -Dissensions - The coup d'egat - Terrible scenes in the streets — Fight at the barricade
-Voting by plebiscite —The coup d'(tat endorsed- The Crimean war brought
about - Results of the empire - The imperial family - The Empress - Marriage - Napoleon's recent authorship - Sketches of his satraps - Mexico and
Maximilian - His various palaces - HIs industry - Birth of his child - His mother's grave - Fontainebleau and Compiegne - Author's visit to Compiegne in 1864 4S C
CHAPTER XX.
THE FRENCH GOVE:RNMIENT.
Extraordinary number of officials on the European continent as compared with America -Causes of it- A personal versus a popular government — Definition of bureaucracy or vielreyieren — Number of French office-holders  The Emperor's household
- De Tocqueville on gratuitous functionaries - Napoleon's proposed reforms - Differences between the French limited monarch and the American executive - The
present French constitution - The French cabinet - Salaries — The Moniteur —
French senate —The Corps Legislatif — Number, qualification, and term of members -A table of the governments of the world, showing the population to each representative and the proportion of members of the lower and the upper house — French
aristocracy —The legislative palaces-Appearance of the Corps Legislatif sittin gThe legion of honor -Table of representative official salaries in France and America - Education in France described - The imperial university - The Sorbonne -
Religious toleration full and complete - Strength of the French Protestants -
French charities — Hotel Dieu - Foundling hospital - Polytechnic school - The
institute of France - Free Masonry in France - New York and Notre Dame cathedrals-Napoleon's gift to the Pope- The Catholic hierarchy in France and their
salaries-Consuls and ambassadors of France - Management of railways on the continent-French post-office and telegraph-Police, garrison, firemen, national
guards, and fortifications of Paris — Monetary and metrical system - Gobelines fac




CONTENTS.                                  XrX
tory - Government regulating bread — Pensions.- The great stock enterprise
of France -Credit Foncier —Credit Mobilier — Comptoir National —Caisse de
Retraites —French judicial system  and the salaries of judges-Spy systemLawyers - The Morgue - Palais de Justice - Prefect of the Seine - Prefect of the
Police - Prisons -- The guillotine - Scene in a Parisian police court - Arrest and
brutal treatment of an American in the Paris riots of 1869 - Paralyzing influence
of a too beneficent government -" We are governed too much"... 528
CHAPTER XXI.
POLITICS AND POLITICIANS OF FRANCE AND TIHE CONTINENT.
Europe compared to a crab - France the nerve of the continent- Causes of French influence in Europe - International jealousies - The imperial party of France -
Victor HIugo and Kinglake on the Emperor's party- De Morny, the Emperor's
natural brother - Persigny, the Emperor's wire-puller- Guizot on Persiny -
Fleury and Maupas —Duruy the Protestant - Drouyn de L'huys-Thouvenel-Eugenie interfering with government - The Pope and his friend in petticoats - The
Prince Imperial or " little Prince "- His advent in politics - The Napoleons as authors - Lucien - Louis - Achille Murat - Sketch of St. Arnaud - The Bourbon
and the Orleans party - Origin of the House of Bourbon and of the Orleans branch
— Comparative social respectability of Bourbon dil Bonaparte- The expulsion
of the last Bourbon -The French clergy- Gallican and Ultra Montane parties
- Montalembert - Count de Chambord or Henri V. - Count de Paris, the heir of
Louis Philippe — Aide-de-oamp to General McClellan — The Orleans party the
true moderate republican party - Confiscation of their property - Sketch of Berryer the advocate - " Henri! 0 mon roi! "- Guizot the Protestant- Thiers —
Girardin - Picard - Pelletan - The French press - Difference between journalism
in America and France - The French republican party - Its mortal hatred for
Louis - Jules Favre - Superiority of French to American congressional orators -
Communism explained - Socialism - Sketch of Louis Blanc - National workshops
— St. Simon and his gospel — Fourier and his Amorican disciples — Comte and'
the positive philosophy - Ernest Renan - Stephen Girard and socialism in America - Hepworth Dixon on American " isms" - Impending Rocialism here - French
aesthetic enthusiasm - Edwin Forrest and Eugene Delacroix - Napoleon on Renan
- How Persigny elected Napoleon -The French elections of 1869- Political meetings in France - Italy's influence upon Europe through Mazzini and Co. - Italy
and the Latin race — Municipal republicanism- Life of Garibaldi - The redshirt and the imperial purple- Notice of De Tocqueville -Free Trade and tariff
in France - Chevalier - Bastial - The politics of the continent - Sensitive configuration of Europe - Ebullition of races- Pan-Selavism - Greek versus Catholic
- The Czar and the Kaiser - Pan-Italianism - Greek aspirations - Pan-Germanism - Pan-Scandinavianism - The state of Austria - General discontent throughout Europe and movement for reorganization upon the basis of homogeneity"Balance of power, " and the crimes done in its name - Superior happiness of
America, and the immigration she attracts by her unembarrassed condition. 555




X-7X:Z                            CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXII.
A GENERAL VIEW  OF CONTINENTAL FINANCE  ANP GOVERNMENT.
Tables of the national debts of the world —The rate of interest and the per capita tax
- Proportion of interest to principal - The exports and imports of the great nations — The revenues, expenditures, and cost of government per man of the states
of the world - A running notice of every dynasty and government in Europe*The lawsuit of the King of Hanover against the King of Prussia —The Russian
army and navy - The great cities of.middle and eastern Europe, and their sites and
populations compared to those of America- The Zollverein - Rise of the great
banking-houses of Europe - Intimiate origin of the House of Rothschild with the
American revolution —Sketch of the Rothschild family - American securitiesThe river and railway systems of the continent -War in Europe and the panics of
it-Sketches of continental statesmen — The American statesmen of European
model - Straightforwardness of our diplomacy - Maxims of Washington and Jef.
ferson -Ample ability of our resources and our institutions to meet our obligations and to provide for any political contingencies'., 58$
CHAPTER  XXIII.
THIE NEW WEST AND THE NEW- EAST.
Advent of the United States upon the Pacific Seas - Her competition with'Europe in
the trade of China, Japan, and India -State of the issue at the present time —
The Burlingame mission —The Japanese in America —Sketch of the present
operations of Russia, England, and France to anticipate each'other in the affections and interests of the East - Explanation of the "Eastern question"Notes upon theo efforts of Prussia to become a maritime power- The German
war of 1866 and its results - Italy and Greece as maritime powers -Comprehensive picture of Russia -IIer influence in Asia - -Her civilization. as compared
with ours - The cities of Russia - Chicago compared with Odessa as a grain port
-Astrachan and Omaha - Egypt, Turkey, and Persia as used by European diplomatists - Impending crisis of British India - Napoleon casting ambitious glances
toward Panama - Importance of America holding that isthmus —A general
sketch of the Pacific Ocean - Wealth, trade, and alliances of Japan, China, HIong
Kong, the Philippine Islands, Cochin China, Malacca, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New
Guinea, Australia, and SYew Zealand - The Pacific slope of the United States
-San Francisco and Puget sound versus Sydney and Melbourne — Popularity of
America in the East- Condition, of our shipping - Adaptability of a republic
to receive all races and make them all free and useful-The Monroe doctrine
-Future of the two hemispheres......... 604
CHAPTER XXIV.
EUROPEAN AMERICA.
A sketch of South America and West Indies and of American influence'in them -Brazil particularly considered and English commerce in the Southern American seas. 632




CHAPTER I.
WASHINGTON AND LONDON.
A comparison of the capital cities of America and England.- Their conception, growth,
public buildings, political and commercial influence, benefactors, revulsions, tragedies,
and social and intellectual advantages. -Probable future of Washington and London.
IF the reader will stand on the dome of the Capitol at WVashington, he will see beneath him the American nation in epitome, The
broad, clear, shallow river between whose forks the capital city lies,
was named by the Indians, whose nomenclature survives them in the
streams, lakes, and mountains of the land. Across the Potomac lies
Virginia, named for the invincible Virgin Queen, in whose reign
Shakespeare wrote, Spain decayed, and the English planted in the
New World. On the other side is Baltimore, almost within view, the
metropolis of what was once the colony of the Stuart Catholics, and
named for their protector.  The counties of Maryland and Virginia,
which enclose Washington, are further suggestive of the simple origin
of the State. In Rappahannock, Shenandoah, and Alleghany, we
hear the sounds of the sparse aboriginals, beyond -whose era lived
here no clearly defined human species. In Fairfax, Fauquier, and
Loudon, we recall the proprietors and patrons of early English colonization. Charles, Prince William, and Prince George were of the
royal families whose subjects immigrated here,-and Clarke, Jefferson,
and Washington were of the first great generation of native men who
founded the independent republic. The capital city, like the nation,
has been born within the memory of living people. The.last of the
old folks who saw vessels filled with stone for building the "Departments" come up the Potomac, the archives of the infant state landed
near by the base of the Capitol, and the dignified figure of Washington enter the suburbs of the embryo and swampy city, is not yet deceased. There were people at the funeral of Lincoln who remembered the funeral of Washington. They or their immediate parents
talked with the Indians who held an annual council on the banks of
the little creek, Tiber, which winds round. Capitol Hill. The memory
of one man can swing from that time of primitive government to
21




22      THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
this, - when thirty-five millions of people, living on two oceans and
in two zones, are represented in Washington, and their consuls and
ambassadors are in every port and metropolis of the globe, -from
the pine wilderness to the government city, from the lonely farm of
Davy Burns to the solid habitations of a hundred thousand people,
having little other vocation than what the state affords them.
The landscape of the city is new, crude, and imposing, like the
nation..The dwellings are of mixed and indifferent construction, -
quadrangles of red brick run up and covered with roofs of the once
cheap cypress shingle, some pretentious, some durable, many.of
mere plank or plaster, and heterogeneous of form as of material;
here the newly-imported French Mansard roof, there an attic coated
with patent-right contrivances of tar and pebbles, or dark-blue slate
from  the quarry.  Porticos, balustrades, verandas, bay-windows,
and church-spires, eked out between the carpenter and the architect,
are revealed above and amidst the mass. The suburbs are plentiful
with cabins or " shanties;" many vacant lots are disclosed; the upturned soil has the dark virgin colors; and looming here and there
through the tranquil tenements the monumental offices of the government are seen, - the long, granite fasade of the Treasury, the white
porticos of the Patent Office, the red sandstone towers of the Smithsonian Institute, the mansion of the President, and the plainer buildings of war, navy, and state. At last, beneath the spectator's feet,
the Capitol itself, enthroned within sight of all the lofty amphitheatre
of ridges which environ Washington, salutes them with the statue of
Freedom, poised serenely upon its shield and sheathed sword, beautifully nondescript, like the hopeful-but undeveloped destinies of the state.
If this figure of bronze, which faces Eastward,-toward Europe, could
remember and speak, it might explain why every hill-top in the horizon is capped with a freshly dismantled fort, and tell of recent days
when the tranquil navy yard, under its shadow, was surrounded with
transports and ships-of-war, coning and going silently in the night,
or saluting, the city by day with cannon. Civil war, vigorous as the
nature of our institutions, has already made the landscape of the
capital historic, and once in our brief history a foreign enemy has
burnt the public buildings to the ground. Personal tragedy has consecrated the streets of the city. Eighteen magistrates have presided
here. As far as human anticipations may go, Washington is vindii
cated as the seat of government, and by material and inspired cona
siderations is to remain the American capital.




WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                      23
The city was conceived in the opinion of the wisest founders of the
state that a free legislature should sit remote from the violence and
temptation of great commercial cities.  It was fixed midway between interests which threatened in the beginning to take sectional
outlines and organizations.  The love of Washington for the neighborhood of his estate and his preference for this spot decided the precise site of the city. It was called in his honor, with the consent of
the legislature, and surrounded with a small municipal district named
for the discoverer of the American continent. That its grave and
ardent founders did not project a dapital for a century, but for all
time, is seen in the spacious and effective ground-plan of the streets
and squares, for which our -impatient generation has not provided
consistent buildings. But without manufactures, or foreign commerce, the sequestered city now stands eleventh in the land in relative populousness, and the ratio of its increase at the present time is
greater than that of any Eastern American city, except Philadelphia
and New York. Essentially what its founders meant it to be, a city
of public offices and residences, it is idle to speculate whether Washington will ever become a busy metropolis, in the sense of trade and
physical industry. It is inland, without accommodation for deep
ships; but it has coal and reliable water-power near by. Baltimore
has outstripped it in accumulation of capital and in enterprise, and
although Washington is better. placed commercially than Paris,
Vienna, or Berlin, its established rivals, its need of stable public
spirit, and the friendlessness of it in the national councils, will probably make the social and intellectual delights its chief attractions.
Unlike Rome,
" That sat upon her seven hills,
And from her throne of beauty ruled the world,"
Washington is actually governed by its transient occupants, Congress having exclusive jurisdiction over it; and what little experience
the /city has had in self-government is of doubtful example to the
state. At present there is universal manhood suffrage in Washington,
whites and blacks sitting in the two councils, and the mayor is elect.
ive. But it rests within the discretion of the dominant Congress to
abolish the city government at any time, and resume exclusive administration over all the District of Columbia. The suggestion has
been frequently made that the municipal city should be governed by




24     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
a commission of private citizens, unsalaried, like those who compose
the boards of trustees of many colleges and bequests, or administer
the Central Park, of New York. It matters little to the counltrye at
large how the resident people of Washington live politically, —
whether they demonstrate, as at present, a crude and unqualified
municipal democracy, disfranchised nationally, or become representative, like the empire at whose head they live; but all our tastes,
patriotisms, and sensitivenesses are concerned in seeing the capital
made worthy of the land, its avenues paved, its hospitalities improved, and the unsightly environs of its public buildings made
healthy and picturesque. We need not have an embellished capital
city; we should have a neat one; less is required to be added than
to be finished. The work, however, moves on apace, and it may be
doubted at present whether the scholar, the man of social tastes,
wealth, and leisure, can find in America a more congenial residence
than Washington,- New York and Boston'not excepted.
This city, therefore, is the deliberative evolutioni of original
Christian republicanism. No oracle commanded it. No augury
fixed its site. It was not countenanced by flights of sacred birds,
like Rome, nor were its foundations baptized in blood. Its ionly
Virgil has thus far been the humorously servile Irish poet, Tomin
Moore, creating contemptuous satire upon Washington, for the -ai..
tocratic market; and in view of the influence of this capital upon
mankind, we may almost accept with pride his statement:" And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now."
From this clear sky of Washington, and almost limpid atmosphere,
bringing near the eye the distant green forests and the bare gray
heights, showing every roof and object in the basin of the city, and
suggesting exquisite sites and opportunities for future growth, let
us abruptly change the scene to the capital of the British empire.
Standing on the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, London lies beneath
us in the pall of smoke and fog, its outlines lost like its origin, -
the vague suggestion of its mighty self, like the smoke of a volcano.
Here is the capital of that empire from which our own is most
directly derived. The eyes of the men, who, with sheathed swords,
stood round the corner-stone of Washington city, had often looked
with earnest though outraged loyalty toward this ancient metropolis.




WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                   25
Here was the habitation of the American sovereign. Here deliber.
ated the parliaments which made laws affecting every ship, every
trulnk of ship timber, every pound of tobacco, and every ounce of
goldl and silver in America. Hence came the yearly parcels of books
which Washington read in his childhood, and Franklin noticed in his
newspaper. The London pamphlets and journals were their New York
and Chicago " Tribunes," their " Nation," C" Independent,"' Atlantic," and "New York Ledger." The "~ ights" they talked of were all
in London,-Westminster Abbey, the Tower, Temple Bar, St. James's
Palace. HItere were the spiritual leaders of the leading American sects;
hence came the great preachers and bishops to Newport and Philadelphia. Braddock, Wolfe, Abercrombie, and the military commanders of
our forefathers received their commissions here, and their aspirations
werelike Nelson's, for " a peerage or a tomb in Westminster Abbey."
Hlere Pocahontas kissed the hand of the sovereign of Virginia, John
Smith read the proof-sheets of his exploration of Chesapeake Bay,
Franklin came to receive insult while he pleaded for the rights of
Pennsylvanians, and Washington's modest recital of his trip to the
Ohio was here committed to the printer and the bookseller. As the
ancient world looked to'Rome with obedience or fear, those looked to
London. It was the birthplace of the English Bible and prayer-book,
the grave of Bunyan and Milton, the theme and theatre of Shakespeare. We have not lived, we shall not live, to see the American
city which can be the London to us that this was to our forefathers,
or is to the existing Englishman. Around it lie the associations of
nearly twenty centuries, stretching back to the page of Tacitus.
Here it stood, doubtless, when the idle procession followed Jesus,
bearing his cross to the hill of crucifixion in Jerusalem. When the
sovereign in London declared war against France or Spain, the
drum beat along all our Atlantic and frontier settlements,'our
privateers put to sea, and our women dreamed of painted savages
marching down from Canada and Louisiana. The scandal of the
court that was talked by our ancestors- the latest favorite, the
revolting execution of the latest traitor, the beauty of the lord
mayor's daughter — brings vividly before us the apparition that London was to the imaginations of our great grandparents. In every
American town some giddy head was full of the freshest toilet worn
at Whitehall palace; some grim dissenter or embryo republican denounced the profligacy of the court; and, over all, the intense sentiment of subject toward king prevailed, that which we faintly
4




26    TIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD,
revived in  the American word "loyalty," during the recent rebellion.
Let us stand here, on St. Paul's, as we stood on the dome of the
Capitol at Washington, and look upon London, as if by some miracle it had been swept;of fog and smoke, and lay beneath us distinctly.
A dense mass of red-tiled houses and blackened chimney-stacks,
ten miles long and six miles wide.  Ten miles to go without the
Fight of a green field!  Six miles from  hedge to hedge, from  bird to
bird'!  This is at least three times the size of New York Island, and
ten  times the size of the actually  settled  city of New  York.  All
this wonderful extent of houses, in which lodge every night three
million six hundred thousand people,- the greatest city of the modern
world, and perhaps the greatest of history in population,*-  stretches
in solid-parallelogram on both sides of a river which takes the same
general course as the Potomac, flowing south-eastward-.  Washington
lies in the "fork" of the Potomac and Anacostia- about a hundred
miles from the Chesapeake Bay; London may be said, in like manner,
to lie in the fork of the Thames and the little River Lea, sixty miles
from  the English Channel.  The tides rise and fall ten miles above
*It may be the wish of some reader to know the populousness of London and Rome, in
their highest prosperity, relatively. I therefore subjoin the following from Dr. Lord's
"Old Roman World."
"The city of Rome virtually contained between three and four millions of people.
Lipsims estimates four millions as the population, including slaves, women, children, and
strangers. Though this estimate is regarded as too large by Merivalo and others, yet how
enormous must have been the number of the people when there were nine thousand and
twenty-five baths, and- when those of Diocletian alone could accommodate three thousand
two hundred people at a time. The wooden theatre of Scaurus contained eighty thousand
seats; that of Marcellus would seat twenty thousand; the Coliseum would seat eighty-seven
thousand, and give standing space for twenty-two thousand more. The Circus Maximus
would hold three hundred and eighty-five thousand spectators. Lipsius estimates the circumference of the city at forty-five miles, and Vopiscus at nearly fifty. The diameter of.
the city, according: to Strabo, must have been eleven miles.
"'The'Coliseum alone would seat all the male adults'of the city of New York.. At
the Circus Maximus more people. witnessed the chariot races at a time than are nightly assembled in all'the places of public amusement in Paris, London, and New York combined,
-more than could be seated in all the cathedrals of Elngland and-France."
According toi nore critical testimony, London has already passed Rome in population, if
not in superficial measurement. The estimate of the population of. London, in this book,
is based upon its probableincrease by 1870. In 1861 it contained two millions eight hundred thousand people. Modern London covers seventy-eight thousand acres of ground, or
one hundred and twenty-two square miles, which, according to Mr. P. Cunningham, was
half the. area of Babylon.




WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                    27
London, three miles above Washington. The River Thames, from its
rills to the sea flows two hundred and thirty miles, the Potomac four
hundred miles, or longer than all England proper.
This River Thames, whose smoky course we see, passing by long
arms or "reaches" under more than a dozen bridges, — a black,
oozy, surly tide, charged with the refuse of three and a half millions
of people,  is in great part responsible for the power of London. To
our American eyes it seems a puny river, -a thousand feet from
shore to shore, less than a fifth of a mile. The little steamers which
run as omnibuses upon it, dropping their funnels at every bridge, are
mere needles to our fine floating-palaces. Nevertheless, it has been
more serviceable than any river in the world, and at this time six
hundred steamers' and three thousand sailing vessels belong to its
waters, while forty thousand craft of steam and sail enter and depart
from it every yea.r. The Romans embanked it when they conquered
England. Up its waters the Northmen pirates sailed on errands of
robbery, and various little creeks, on whose sites London streets arenow built, were used by these robbers to penetrate far into the coun-.
try. Since England became an independent kingdom, but one instance has occurred of a foreign enemy sailing up its channel, except
as a captive. In 1815, the year Napoleon fell,- when Washington
lay in ashes, burnt by British perhaps from this very city, — the first
steamboat was seen upon the Thames. It was named the "Margery,'"
had been built in Scotland, and sailed nearly round England to reach
London. The biggest ship which has ever been known to man was
launched upon this-little Thames, the " Great Eastern," and she safely.put to sea, while we esteemed it a doubtful enterprise to send down
the Potomac the United States frigate " Minnesota," after we had
launched her from the Washington Navy Yard.' It is this strong
-little stream which carries away from London one hundred and fifty
millions of dollars' worth of exports every year. To accommodate its
vast shipping enormous artificial docks have been excavated below
the city, covering between four hundred and five hundred acres, and
costing nearly a hundred millions of dollars. -To' keep the river deep
dredging machines are constantly at work, Which take millions. of
tons of ballast a year from it, and this alone sells for one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. The bridges across the Thames, one of:
which passes the- stream by only three arches, cost firom less than
half a million to five millions of dollars, and one of them alone cost
five-sevenths as much as the Capitol at Washington.. A tunnel, which




28      THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
cost three millions of dollars, penetrates from shore to shore beneath
the river bed, but this is neither as long nor as:useful as the Chicago
lake tunnel. The great marvel of this river is, that it has kept its
channel clear and deep for these two thousand years, never filled by
the offal of the great nation on its shores, but equal to their industry
now as in the beginning, the ocean welcomed by it twice every day;
and though tawny and grimy with toil, it is as youthful, as generous,
and as beneficent as ever, promising as hopefully for the eras and the
empires which may succeed to its dominion.
The valley of the Thames, in which London lies, is bounded by
ridges of hills to whose distant bases the vast suburbs extend, -
cities in themselves. From these hills one can look down into the
great crater of smoke, with St. Paul's, on which we stand, showing
its dome and cross three hundred and sixty-five feet above the
ground, - as many feet as there are days in the year. The ground
surface of the city itself is undulating, with a general elevation
toward either ridge, and here and there, in the heart of:the city, are
abrupt eminences, chief of which is Ludgate, or the hill of St. Paul's,
on which we stand. Looking through the dense mass of houses, we
s e few open squares or clearings of any kind, except to the west, or
up the Thames, where a series of green parks begins at the elbow of
the river, a mile from our feet, and stretches to the boundaries of -the
city. By these interscting parks, St. James's, Green, and Hyde, one
can walk from the Thames, nearly three miles westward to Kensington
Palace, where Queen Victoria was born, passing on the way Buckingham Palace, where she resides, and St., James's Palace, where she holds
her court. And at the point where this series of parks starts from
the Thames, stands Westminster Palace, commonly called the Parliament buildings, which corresponds to the Capitol of Washington,
being the palace of legislation. Beside Westminster Palace is Westminster Abbey, the burial place of the monarchs of England, which
was founded in the year 1221, or two hundied and seventy-one years
before Columbus found America. Now, facing about, and looking
east, as the river fibws, we can. see, half a mile from St. Paul's, on
which we stand, a cluster of large buildings in the densest quarter'of
the city, The strange old hall, with a heavy face, mediaeval-looking,
like a Flemish'" Hotel de Ville," is the Guildhall, or seat of city government, corresponding to the city halls of New York and Washington.
Near by it is a large, sculptured classical building, with a portico and
pillars,-which is the residence of the Lord Mayor of London.' Be



WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                    29
tween thgse two are the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange.
The bank has a capital of seventy-five millions of dollars; the Exchange building cost seven -hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and
the Lord Mayor gets, besides his house, rent free, a salary of forty
thousand dollars a year, or nearly double that of the President of the
United States. The Guildhall was the seat of city government before
Columbus was born, and London, as a corporation, is older than
Spain or IIolland as kingdoms.
The eye of the observer, pitched from the dome of St. Paul's, will
at once take in the contrary nature of this group of banks and city
lalls and the group of palaces first described. St. Paul's in the
middle, the cathedral of the city; Westminster a mile up the river,
the seat of Parliament and the Queen; the city hall. and the banks
down the river half a mile,- that is the position.
Now, strictly speaking, the Westminster end is not in London at
all, for of this —nighty mass of habitations, enclosing three millions
and a half of people, only about one-twentieth, or, in numbers, one
hundred and thirty thousand people, live in the city of London.
The rest is a grand series of suburbs, not subject to the city government, but ruled by the English ministry from their capitol at Westminster. London, the parent city, like a hoary patriarch, stands upon
its ancient charter around Guildhall, surrounded by its'offspring.
Within the limits of its ancient walls, now destroyed, the power of
its Mayor is confined. Grown rich, by the privileges and opportunities of its charter, it is the seat of trade, banking, and exchanges,
while Westminster, or the West End, is the suburb of the court and
aristocracy, and the social resort of Londoners and Englishmen. The
other subuibs are parasites and excrescences of these two, the City
and Court. Across the river, from Court and City, are the suburbs of
the poor, Southwark and -Lambeth, with nearly the population
of Philadelphia. North of London is the suburb of clerks and
business people, Finsbury, with the population of Brooklyn. Down
the river from London is the suburb of the sailors, Tower Hamlets,
named from the famous old Tower of London, with nearly the population of New York. North of Westminster is the suburb of the
tradesmen of the court, and those who, like to snuff the air of gentility, MIarylebone, with the population of Boston and Chicago. Westminster itself has the population of Baltimore. Within the past
year (1868) two new parliamentary districts have been established,
Chelsea and Hackney.




30     THE NEW WORLD COMIPARED WITH THE OLD.
When we come to examine the plan of London streets, the task
seems hopeless of conveying to the mind any methodized, memorable
notior of them. Our American towns were mainly laid out deliberately by the surveyor, beginning with Philadelphia, which was apparently conceived in some revulsion of the mind of William  Penn
againat the inscrutably mixed lanes of the neighborhood of his
father's house in London. There are three American cities whose
original streets make something of a maze, -Quebec, Boston, and
New York,- but this is mainly due to the natural configuration of the
ground on which they stand. As Boston and New York expand,
however, their streets straighten and cross at right angles. Washinaton city was carefully laid out by an engineer officer upon two
plans: a city of streets, for the people to live upon, and a city of wide
avenues to exhibit the public buildings to advantage. London is
the growth of less deliberate times, and it is by reference to her conditions at various periods that we lay hold upon the successive evolutions of her thoroughfares.
In the first place, there is old London, in the East, the walled
city, and within its small circumference we find the most involved
tangle  of streets, adapted in part to the ancient enclosure; for London Wall and Barbican are street names to this day, commemorating
the defences on whose site they stand. Out of this mighty maze go
the highways to the country, and they take the names of the gates in
the'wall through which they passed, such as Ludlgate, Aldgate;
Bishop's Gate, and Newgate. These country roads, pouring into
London through the gates, converged upon the Guildhall, the seat of'government. Other streets, running parallel with the walls, connected these gate streets; but in the ancient time the right of thoroughfare was not appreciated as now, and churches, abbeys, religious
houses, and so forth, compelled people to go -round them. Cities, in
the sense of the middle aces, were gatherings of incorporated tradesmehi -and artisans, called guilds or companies, somewhat like the
present trades-unions.  Guildhall means the council-hall of the
Guilds. Therefore Old London was largely composed of streets of
tradesmen, slipping in between privileged reservations of churchmen,
courtiers,'and the like, and a host of streets still survives, indicating
their former character, such as Cheapside, Cloth Fair, Threadneedle
Street, and Hozier Lane. So we recall the religious houses of former times in " Great St. Thomas Apostle's Cloak," Paternoster Row,
and Holy Well Street. Lombard Street, the centre of banking, takes




WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                     31
name from Lombardy, the country of the Jewish bankers who settled
in London after their expulsion from Italy and anglicizedl the pawnbroker's three golden balls, the ancient arms of Lombardl-. Jewry
was the quarter of the poor Jews. The mansions and associations of
noblemen, knicghts, and monarchs alre revived  in Knighllt Rider
Street, Garter.Lane, Earl Street, and Tudor Street; and llere, where
we stand, the central and most lofty monument in London, St.
Paul's, rests upon the foundations of successive Christian temples,
reachingl back to the seventh century and perhaps upon the site of
heathen temples a thousand years further. This is the grandest
Protestant church in the world, as St. Peter's, at Rome, is the grandest Catholic church. St. Peter's stands upon the supposed site of the
martyrdom of St. Peter. And St. Paul, or his immediate disciples,
are supposed to have been the apostles of Britain. St. Paul's and
Westminster, the- two poles.of the mighty aggregation called London,
were founded at.the same time. Both have been rebuilt. In Westminster lie the early monarchs of'England; in St. Paul's hler greatest
commanders, Nelson and Wellington. Westminster, the city Qf the
Abbey church, may be called the capital of England. Guildlhall,
under the shadow of St. Paul's, may be called the capital of London
city.
Looking down from St. Paul's upon the dense and intricate old
city, one can see the landmarks of the richest and most influential
municipal corporation ever known to man,- a corporation of bankers,
mechanics, tradesmen, and sailors, which by purchase or contention
has wrested firom the throne and the aristocracy repeated privileges,
and moulded,jointly with the nation at Westminster, the present form
of the English government. Holding the purse, the arts, and the mob,
the centre of agitation and thought, the home of a sagacious and enterprising democracy, the refuge of authors, orators, and politicians,
London has preserved every privilege, substantial or ceremonial, to
the present time. Within the walls of the city proper, Irer mayor
takes precedence of the sovereign, and walks before him. A toll of
two or four cents is still collected at the city gates upon the carts
and carriages of all strangers. The old city has an income of two
million of dollars a year. Twenty thousand "' freemen " vote in her
elections, or about one-seventh of her population.  Nearly fifteen
thousand houses are compressed within her ancient walls, whose
combined rents exceed eleven millions of dollars, and land round about
St. Paul's is worth five millions of dollars an acre. When night de



32     THIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH CTHE OLD.
scends upon the ancient city of London, her vast warehouses and
multitudinous shops are deserted. One-half her people withdraw
into the outlying suburbs. Her resident population grows thinner
every year, while her lusty offspring without the walls increase and
multiply continually.
Dismissinog the city of London as a separate subject, and considering.hereafter herself and her suburbs as an entirety udder the general
name of London, we observe that her principal thoroughfares run
from east to west, and make the figure of an elongated hour-glass;
as expressed in the following diagram: —
+   Cheapald.  l.
Curling within and around, and crossing this diagram, go twentyeight hundred streets, whose added lengths make three thousand miles,
traversed by five thousand cabs and omnibuses. Four hundred miles
of telegraph wire and two hundred telegraph stations carry news
between the three hundred thousand houses which compose the city.
Four and a half millions of dollars are spent in cab fare every year
by Londoners. Six million two hundred and seventy thousand letters are delivered to them yearly. Three hundred and sixty thousand
gas lamps light their streets; six thousand two hundred policemen
patrol them. Her five hundred and fifty charitable institutions spend
ten millions of dollars a year. The smoke of five millions of tons
of coal, which prepares the food of her people, is seen to trail
opaquely away thirty-two miles. Fifty millions of gallons of porter,
ale, and spirits are consumed in London, which is five millions of
gallons in excess of the water drunk.
The water itself comes partly from the Thames, at once the sewer
and the well of London, or it is brought by an artificial river thirtyeight miles, - less distance than by the Croton Aqueduct of New York.
Two million one hundred thousand four-footed beasts are yearly




WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                    33
sacrificed to the appetite of London. Ten million head of game and
fish feed the same necessity. Thiirte.en thousand cows give milk for
London. Eight hundred and fifty churches give players. Seven
thousand lawyers give counsel.  Twenty-five hundred bakers give
bread. Fifteen thousand eating and coffee houses accommodate
strangers, and five thousand drinking houses give beer and spirits.
To these superficial statistics many of equal marvel might be
added. As a port of revenue, London has no rival in the world.
One-half the entire customs of England are collected at her piers,
or nearly sixty millions of dollars a year, while Liverpool, next in
importance, collects only twelve millions. The entire income of the
English government, derivable iiom all sources, is only six times the
customs of London.
Within the past twenty years the spirit of public improvements
has been at work in and beneath London to increase the comfort of
her people, to beautify, modernize, and enlarge her highways, and to
obviate some of the evils arising from her slow, cumbrous, and
monstrous evolution. Twenty-one millions of dollars have been
spent in improved sewerage alone,between 1860 and 1869. Fifty-six
millions of dollars have been expended in underground railways, in
embanking the Thames, and in, many minor improvements. The
public works of London, in progress or already completed, are more
important than those of any nation in the world, America and France
excepted. Her underground life is more wonderful every hour of the
year than the proudest day of imperial triumph above the streets of
ancient Rome. Through the old tunnel of the Thames the railway
trains thunder at last. By pneumatic despatch the mails go almost
with the promptness of thought across the city.
Subterranean railways make the traversing of the great city no
more than a walk around a block. One of these roads crosses the
river twice on bridges which cost millions, to carry omnibus passengers at a few cents a head. And the sewers of Paris, which M.
Victor Hugo has presented to literature with much vividness, are
gutters to the sewers of London, which are adapted to the rise and
fall of tides, and are designed with almost the exquisiteness of the
venous and arterial system in man.
The monumental aspect of London is heterogeneous yet huge, like
the history and the eras it illustrates. St. Paul's cost nearly four
millions of dollars, and was thirty-five years in course of construction. The Crystal Palace, a pleasure house, near by London, cost
5




34     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
upwards of seven millions of dollars, which was, according to the
architect of the United States Capitol, Mr. Clark, three-fourths the cost
of the latter building. The finest private residence in London, Stafford
I-Iouse, cost with its furniture and paintings, one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There are probably nearly as fine
residences, exteriorly, in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. A
single railway depot cost four millions of dollars. The House of
Parliament cost ten millions of dollars. The contents of the British
Museum are probably more valuable than all the paintings, statues,
libraries, and curiosities which can be collected in the United States.
One boast of this institution is that its library of seven hundred thousand volumes (to which seventy-five thousand are added every year)
contains twice as many American books as the best library in America;
the building in which all these are housed cost five millions of dollars.
The oldest great monuments ofLondon are the Tower, built by William
the Conqueror; the Temple, built A. D. 1185, and Westminster Hall
and Abbey. Arches, obelisks, and statues illustrate almost every
hero and reign. Yet London cannot be called a splendid city in the
sense of art; for her riches have always exceeded her tastes. Her
monuments are more memorable by their associations than by their
art.
The city, as an apparition, is known throughout the world by its
swarthy and vapory complexion, covered with fog and smoke entangled in each other, and sometimes the twilight usurps the place
of mid-day; highway robbery goes forth to do its work, and the
lamps of gas burn consumptively. The political organization of London is further remarkable to us who live under simple municipal
charters, sometimes embarrassed by State interference. It contains a
" lordship," a " lieutenancy," some thirty "'villages," five " watering-places," four " boroughs," two " episcopal cities," three " towns,"
and it extends into four counties.
The social and intellectual life of London embraces whatever
leisure, taste, genius, riches, or profligacy can be contributed by the
kingdom. The true " season " is at its height in spring, when the. Royal
Adademy opens, court removes to London, the Queen holds drawingroom and levees, the opera commences, Epsom and Ascot races are
held, and Parliament sits. The newspaper and periodical reading of
nearly the whole kingdom is supplied by London. The literature
descriptive of London city is more extensive than all the literary
remains of the ancients extant, and few modern nations or races




WASHINGTON AND LONDON.                    35
have illustrated so many plays, novels, and histories as this city
alone. Unlike Rome it has rivals, but the-growth of their enterprise
and immigration is matched by the natural increase of London, whose
huge bulk exudes every year a city of the size of Providence, Buffalo, or Cleveland. This is the leviathan city, the monster of the
fogs. This is the metropolis of Protestantism. By the privileges
of its charter and its sturdy spirit, it has in turn divided the nobles,
defied the kings, and exercised hospitality toward oppressed mankind, but notably toward oppressed Protestants. These, flying from
France, from Flanders, from the German Empire, and from Savoy,
brought money and skill to make their adopted city the banker, the
silk-weaver, and the merchant of the world. It is by the vast fortunes laid away in London that many of our American railways are
built, and by the same assistance much of our war for the Union was
maintained.
We have in America no metropolis of corresponding influence,
either achieved or in promise. It is not probable that we shall ever
have an American London. The day of independent municipal republics seems to have gone by, and all our American cities maintain
their local self-government with difficulty. In Paris the emperor's
Prefect marshals the police; in New York they are responsible to the
legislature at Albany. London alone, of the great cities, administers
herself after her ancient forms.
But at their rate of progress, with their harbors so much more
spacious and convenient to the sea, and with their enlightened public
enterprise, it is to be apprehended that New York and San Francisco
will become the chief ports of the two oceans, receiving and discharging for that London of the New World: the rich and happy continent
which lies between them, covered by a charter more excellent than
London city's! Those young and vigorous ports retain less treasure
than London, perhaps, in their coffers, but it lies near by in the
mine. Their arts and monuments are yet crude, but their institutions
are the masterpieces of Christian freedom and human charity. Their
common schools, rooted in the law and the origin of the State, are
fairer edifices in the sight of man's happiness and destiny than
Westminster Abbey or Westminster Palace. London has no system
of public schools conceived in the spirit of ours in America. Her
private schools number sixteen hundred; but ignorance, aggravated
by the presence of an aristocracy, develops " from Saint James's to
Saint Giles's" in those shapes of caricature and subserviency, crime




36     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and folly, which illustrate the pages of Dickens and his contemporaries, and have no corresponding people in America. Except by her
money and her trades, London does not influence America in any
marked degree. The burden of influence is the other way. It is
from Washington that the century is moved.
I have made this sketch of London city for the purpose of localizing the views I am to give of the British sovereign, parliament,
and people. In subsequent chapters London will continue to afford
us descriptions.








1! — -   Ajjp f I  ~I..E     ll   t OKi      -- %I u
3
4                                         5
(COUNTRY SEATS OF RULERS.
1-Ulricksdal, Sweden. 2-Windsor Castle, England. 3-Fontainebleau, France.
4-Solliers' Home, Washington. 5-Tivoli, Rome.




CHAPTER II.
THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.
A comparative sketch of their ceremonies, dignities, public duties, places of residence,
social amusements, salaries, powers, and personal influence in the state. - Description of
the royal household: the birth, coronation, marriage, and family relations of the
queen.
THE President of the United States is, if not so sacred, a more
powerful personage than the Queen of England.  His salary is
twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Her private purse is three hundred thousand dollars a year. His perquisites are some bushels of
coal to light his fires, a gardener or two, a couple of soldiers to guard
his door, and he lives in a mansion which cost three hundred thousand dollars, and which is furnished once every four years at a cost
of twenty-five thousand dollars. The Queen has many residences,
the least of which cost more than the President's palace. Her minutest household expenses are met by the state, a large number of
courtly attendants and officials are attached to her person, and seven
thousand six hundred picked troops take turns in guarding her. One
million and a half of dollars every year are paid to support her various households and to pay her tradesmen's bills, and all her children
receive separate incomes, sufficient to support their rank.
Standing before Buckingham Palace and recalling the plain " White
House" at Washington, we can account for Mir. Anthony Trollope's
description of the home of the American Chief Magistrate.  " The
President's House," he says, "or the White House, as it is now
called all the world over, is a handsome mansion fitted for the chief
officer of a great republic, and nothing more. I think I may say
that we have private houses in London considerably larger. It is
neat and pretty, and with all its immediate outside belongings calls
down no adverse criticism."
The Queen has four palaces in London, all situated along the margin of the great series of parks which reach from the Thames, at
Westminster, to the environs of London.  Kensington Palace, the
Queen's birthplace, where she has resided only for short intervals
37




Q8     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
these many years, is an old brick edifice, near the outskirts of London. Buckingham Palace, her city residence, St. James's Palace, her
place for holding court, and the fragment of Whitehall Palace, where
she occasionally gives alms or hears prayers, are all situated upon the
borders of St. James's Park, a kite-shaped enclosure of ninety-one
acres. Each of these buildings is far more costly and elaborate than
the President's House at Washington, and excepting the fragment of
Whitehall they are all larger. But it may be doubted if either of
them is so chaste, so exquisite, or so complete as the White House at
Washington. St. James's Palace is a confused series of low brick
tenements and saloons, of the exterior appearance of a group of battlemented stables with a stack-yard in the middle. Kensington
Palace resembles an old barn-like boarding-school or convent. Buckingham Palace is a huge, forbidding, blackened pile, repeatedly altered
and enlarged, one front of which alone cost twice as much as the
White House. Probably four millions of dollars have been expended
in the construction and ornamentation of these four palaces.
The President of the United States is permitted to take quarters
for some months of the summer in a cottage at the Soldier's Home,
a military asylum near Washington city. The Queen of England
has, probably, a hundred castles, fortresses, and mansions which
belong to the crown, and stand ready to open their gates at her
will.
But there are three palaces, especially, which are reserved for the
Queen, and in which she spends all the time not given to London. I
enumerate these palaces in the order of their importance.
WINDSOR CASTLE. - An hour's ride by railroad from London, in
the midst of a noble park and forest of twenty-three hundred acres,
has been for seven hundred. years a favorite residence of English
sovereigns. It is a mighty castle on the River Thames, whose battlements and many towers are visible. for a great distance. The royal
standard denoting the presence of the Queen floats over the tallest
tower fully half the year. A court-yard of vast dimensions lies within
the castle, and upon this open many of the apartments. The cost of
this ancient and vast structure cannot be ascertained, but, in 1824,
to restore a small portion of it Parliament voted one and a half million dollars. The stables alone cost one hundred thousand dollars.
Within this castle is St. George's Chapel, one of the most elegant
Gothic churches in the world. A single apartment of Windsor is two
hundred feet long and thirty-four broad, or nearly three times as




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                39
large as the celebrated East room at Washington. Here, the greater
part of the life of Victoria has been passed, and for several years the
Queen has been seen but a small portion of the year at her London
palaces.
BALMORAL CASTLE. - The scene of many of the domestic events
related in the Queen's recent books. This castle is entirely modern,
and was built by Queen Victoria in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, a hundred miles north of Edinburgh, or upon the latitude of Labrador and
Hudson's Bay. The Scotch Dee River runs beside it. It is a hundred and twenty by two hundred feet in dimensions, built entirely of
granite in the Scotch baronial style, with a single tower at one end
thirty-five feet square and one hundred feet high. The ballroom is
the principal apartment, being sixty-eight feet by twenty-five in dimensions. Behind this castle rise' the Grampian Hills, where Norval's father fed his flocks; some of the peaks of which are upwards
of four thousand feet high. Balmoral was designed by Prince
Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who purchased it for the royal
children, with thirty thousand acres of farm and mountain land near
by.
OSBORNE HOUSE. - After Windsor, the favorite country house of
the Queen, on the Isle of Wight, within the lovely harbor called the
Solent, and overlooking Southampton water; here pass many lines
of steamships, and notably the Hamburg and Bremen steamers from
New York. Cowes, the town near by, is the head-quarters of the
English Yacht Club, and here the American yacht" IHenrietta" dropped
anchor after winning the race across the Atlantic in 1867. Osborne
was originally Oysterbourne; or, as we would name it, Oysterbay,
The Queen bought the old place in 1840, with five thousand acres of
ground, and erected a splendid mansion in the Italian style, with a
tower above it ninety feet high.
The grounds slope to the salt-water side, where ride at anchor the
fleet and elegant steam yacht of the Queen, which latter cost three
hundred thousand dollars. In this yacht she can circumnavigate her
kingdom or visit the neighboring coast of France.
The Queen of England is the ideal and ornamental head of the
British Empire. The President of the United States is a hard-working man of many cares, who is held to a strict responsibility for his
public behavior. Not so with the Queen. A cabinet of politicians
administer her realm. Her will has long since ceased to be regarded
in affairs of state, for, as it is a maxim that the sovereign can do uo




40     TIlE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
wrong, her ministers take care to rule the state according to their own
counsel, for they are ostensibly responsible to Parliament, and might
possibly be made to suffer for her obstinacy or error. Since the expulsion of James II., and notably since the American Revolution, the
IHouse of Commons has absorbed all political power in England. It
is as if the House of Representatives at WVashington said to the President, " We will relieve you of the cares of state, but your office and
person shall retain all their ancient title and respect; you shall nevet
be punished, but your prime minister who reigns in your name must be
changed as often as we disagree with him." Thus, while the Queen is
apparently the most powerful ruler on the earth, she is no more than
an effigy, laden with jewels, covered with honors, surrounded by a
court, and protected by a troop. The present Queen has made but
one effort in the course of her long reign to have her way in any political question whatever, and that singularly was to keep her own maids
of honor around her whom a new cabinet wished to displace. She
was obliged to give way..
Queen Victoria is an hereditary sovereign, descended from James
I., son of MIary, Queen of Scots. Her reign, which in glory and duration rivals that of Queen Elizabeth, seems to be a recompense for
the sorrows of her beautiful ancestor. The great-grandson of James
I. was George I;, Elector of Hanover. George III., the King whom
our revolutionary forefathers denounced, was Victoria's grandfather.
Her father, the Duke of Kent, was one of George III.'s fifteen children, far down in the list, and it seemed improbable that he or his
child would ever reach the throne. He was quite poor, badly treated,
and, while abroad in Germany, whither he had gone to find cheap
living, he married a widow, who was daughter to the Duke of SaxeCoburg. The deaths of several intermediate heirs to the crown making it possible that he still might succeed to it, the Duke of Kent
hastened to embark for England in 1819; but he had not money
enough for the journey home. His family refused to send it to him and
he had to borrow it from some humble people. Soon after he reached
the dull old Palace of Kensington, Victoria, his only child, was born
on the 24th of May, and they called her the Mayflower. She was
christened Alexandrina Victoria. Eight great noblemen and ecclesiastics were present at her birth, amongst whom was the Duke of Wellington, who had fought the battle of Waterloo four years before. One
month afterward the child was privately christened from a gold font
by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In little more than six months her




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                41
father died, deeply in debt. Victoria's early youth was passed in
dependence. Her mother knew what it was to be "dunned" by
creditors as well as the father of Abraham Lincoln, yet her income
was never less than the salary of the President,. even when poorest.
By passages from the life of Queen Victoria we can best illustrate
what it is to be a " constitutional " Queen in our century. The public
incidents of her life are mainly these: Her proclamation, her coronation, her marriage, and the birth of her heir, the Prince of Wales.
The proclamation of the Queen may be compared to the announcement of the President-elect by the two houses of Congress on counting
the electoral vote. The office of President never expires; "' the King
never dies."  On the same day that King William IV., her uncle,
died, the head of the church, the head of the cabinet, and the Lord
Mayor of London proceeded to old Kensington Palace, and the Prime
Minister gave up to this young girl, just turned her eighteenth birthday, the seals of office. All the cabinet signed the oath of allegiance
to her. She made a little speech to them, written for her by the Prime
Minister.. Then she returned to them the seals of office. The official
stamps were ordered to be re-engraved in her name, and the prayers
of the Church of England altered in like manner. That same afternoon, while the dead King was lying on his bier, hundreds of carriages
came to Kensington Palace bringing visitors to offer homage and congratulation. That night the Prime Minister wrote a proclamation,
which was next day sealed with the new great seal, and, being read
aloud at Kensington Palace, was circulated around the world. At
the reading of this proclamation, which occurred at ten o'clock in the
morning, Kensington Palace was the scene of the following ceremonies, as described by McGilchrist, the biographer: —
"All the avenues to the old palace were crowded, every balcony,
window, and housetop being crammed with the better class of spectators. The space in the quadrangle in front of the window where Her
Majesty was to appear was crowded with ladies and gentlemen, and
even the parapets above were filled with people.
"At ten o'clock the guns in the park fired a salute, and immediately afterward the Queen made her appearance at the window of the
tapestried anteroom adjoining the audience chamber, and was received with deafening cheers, - cheers all the more hearty that her
appearance was a surprise, for few had known that she was to be there
present. She was dressed in deep mourning, with a white tippet,
white cuffs, and a border of white lace under a small black bonnet,
6




42      THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
which was placed far back on her head, exhibiting her light-brown
hair simply parted in front. She viewed the proceedings with intense
interest, standing during the whole rehearsal of the proclamation;
and, although she looked pale and fatigued, she returned the repeated
rounds of cheers with great grace and dignity. All were touched
with the pale face, wet with tears, calm and simply grave, the gravity
being enhanced by the plain black dress and bands of brown hair,
giving an aspect of Quaker-like neatness..On either side stood Lords
Melbourne and Lansdownfe, in their state dresses and blue ribbons,
and close to her was her mother, who was dressed similarly to the
Queen.
" In the court-yard were Garter King-at-Arms, with Heralds and
Pursuivants in their robes of office, and eight Officers-of-Arms on horseback, bearing massive silver maces; Sergeants-at-Arms, with their
maces and collars; the Sergeant Trumpeter, with his mace and collar;
the trumpets, Drum-Major and drums; and Knights Marshal and men.
On Her Majesty showing herself at the presence-chamber window,
Garter principal King-at-Arms, having taken his station in the courtyard under the window, accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk as EarlMlarshal of England, read the proclamation, containing the formal
and official announcement of the demise of King William IV., and of
the consequent accession of Queen Alexandrina Victoria to the rule
of these realms. The proclamation was brief, and to the point:"' Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God to call to his mercy our late Sovereign Lord, King William IV., of blessed memory, by whose decease the imperial crown of the unitedkingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is solely and
rightfully come to'the High and Mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria, we
therefore, the lords spiritual and temporal of this realm, being here assisted
with these of his late Majesty's Privy Council, with numbers of other principal gentlemen of quality, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and citizens of London, do
low hereby with one voice and consent of tongue, proclaim that the High and
Mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria is now, by the death of our late Sovereign William IV., of happy memory, become our only lawful and rightful liege
lady, Alexandrina Victoria I., Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender
of the Faith, -to whom we acknowledge all faith and constant obedience,
with all humble and hearty affection, beseeching God, by whom kings and
queens do reign, to bless the Royal Princess Alexandrina Victoria with long
and happy years to reign. God save the Queen!'
"At the termination of this proclamation the band struck up the
iational anthem, and a signal was given for the Park and Tower guns




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                 43
to fire, in order to announce the fact of the proclamation being made.
The air was rent with cheers by those within the area, which were
taken up by the tens of thousands outside. The moment she was
proclaimed Queen, she turned round, threw her arms about her mother's neck, and wept without restraint. WVhen her uncle, the Duke of
Sussex, presented himself, to take the oath of allegiance, and was
about to kneel in her presence to kiss her hand, she gracefully prevented him, kissed his cheek affectionately, and said,' Do not kneel,
my uncle, for I am still Victoria, your niece.' "
Three weeks afterward the young Queen moved to Buckingham
Palace, and held her first court levee. This leads us to describe a
royal reception.
The Queen's receptions are divided into levees and drawing-rooms,
which are quite different affairs, although we generally confound the
terms in America.
A levee is an occasion for the presentation of gentlemen, only, to
the Queen.
A " drawing-room" is an occasion for the presentation of ladies,
chiefly, to the Queen.
Each of these opportunities is advertised in the London daily papers with directions as to the coming and going of carriages. Unlike
the receptions of our chief magistrate, the utmost care and circumspection are exercised in admitting persons to these levees and drawing-rooms. Court dress must be worn. The name of the person
wishing to be introduced, with the name of the nobleman, gentleman,
or foreign minister wishing to introduce him, must be sent to the
Lord Chamberlain several days before presentation, and the latter is
supposed to send the cards to the Queen that she may personally pass
upon them.
The Queen and her household, indeed, would be less ceremonious
and censorious about the quality of visitors to St. James's Palace, if
it were not for the ludicrous and reverend jealousy of the common
people and the newspapers. In 1862, a man who had been convicted
of swindling was accidentally introduced to the Queen, and the press
of the entire country was filled with indignant complaints about it.
All this seems queer to us, used to the hurly-burly of a night at the
White House; but perhaps it might be well if we also took the honor
of the President more out of the custody of politicians.
Any English person who has been introduced to the Queen can make
his ambassador in any land introduce him to the sovereign thereof.




44     TIHE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
The ceremony of presenting addresses to the Queen, greatly stickled
for by Englishmen, is also regulated after the severest fashion. Not
more than four persons can present an address, although it may be
signed by a million, and the bearers are permitted to offer no comments or speeches whatever. The latter provision, if insisted upon
at Washington, would probably put an end to all petitioning.
On her first reception the Queen wore a rich lama dress, her head
glittered with diamonds, and her breast was covered with the insignia
of the Garter and other orders. A pair of embroidered velvet slippers covered feet, which, resting on a cushion, were observed and admired by all as " exquisitely small."
The first official ceremony of the new girl Queen was the dissolution of Parliament; for the Queen is a part of Parliament, and her
attendance upon the opening, the proroguing, or the dissolving thereof, is made an occasion of considerable pomp.
It is with this imposing procession that the Queen opens, prorogues,
or dissolve~ Parliament:
Six grand carriages, each drawn by a set of bays, precede her immediate party. These carriages are driven by servants in powdered
wigs, knee-breeches of silk or velvet, silk stockings, and buckled
shoes, and footmen in like gorgeous livery stand behind them.
The first carriage contains three Gentlemen Ushers, and the Exon
in Waiting. The second carriage contains a Groom in Waiting, and
three Pages of Honor in Waiting. The third carriage contains the
Equerry in Waiting, and the Groom of the Robes. The fourth carriage contains the Clerk, Marshal, the Silver Stick in Waiting, the
Field Officer in Waiting, and the Comptroller of the Household. The
fifth carriage contains the Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, the
Lord in Waiting, and the Treasurer of the Household.
The sixth carriage contains the Lady in Waiting, the Lord Steward, and the Gold Stick in Waiting. All these officials are clad in
georgeous state-dress.  These six carriages are followed by the
Queen's marshalmen, the Queen's footmen of state, and a party of
the yeomen guard. After all this follows the grand state coach,
which cost nearly forty thousand dollars, was constructed in 1762, or
fourteen years prior to the independence of America, by the design
of Sir Wm. Chambers, a celebrated architect, and was painted by
Cipriani. In this coach sits the Queen. Her crown has gone before
her, carried by one of the Lord Chamberlain's chief officers upon a
velvet cushion. The Lord Chamberlain and the Vice Chamberlain




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                45
conduct her to this carriage. None ride with her except the Mistress
of the Robes and the Master of the Horse. Eight magnificent creamcolored horses draw this gorgeous coach.
The ceremony which the Queen performed within the Houses of
Parliament will come more properly in the chapter upon the " House
of Lords."
About four months afterward she visited in grand state the ancient
Corporation of London, or that part of London which exclusively has
a city charter and was anciently surrounded by walls. This also is a
celebrated royal ceremony in England, and it illustrates how jealously
London city insists upon all its hereditary honors and privileges.
Her dress was pink satin shot with silver. She rode from Marlborough House, her temporary residence, - now the property of her
son, the Prince of Wales, - to the Guildhall, or City Hall- of London. All along the way banners, evergreens, mottoes, and her portraits blew in the dark fogs of the narrow streets. At Temple Bar,
one of the ancient gates of London, she found the way barred before
her, but there the Lord Mayor and aldermen dismounted from horseback, and presented her with the keys of the gate. Then they were
swung back and permitted her to enter, but before her coach the
Lord Mlayor rode all the length of the city, with the jealous sword
thereof held aloft, while behind her followed the mounted aldermen.
Around St. Paul's cathedral the guilds, or voting companies of tradesmen, were crowded upon their "hustings" or voting-places, to intimate that they had a voice by right in her government. An address
of welcome and fealty was presented to her, and the boys of the
charity schools sang the national anthem of " God save the Queen."
At Guildhall she was regaled with a magnificent banquet, at the
expense of the city of London-, and she returned to Westminster over
the same route, - illuminated in the night.
The first message which the Queen sent to Parliament was to ask
for a moneyed income for her German mother. This was promptly
granted, and one hundred and fifty-thousand dollars a year was the
sum fixed, equal to six years' salary of the President of the United
States. After this the Queen observed the strictest formal etiquette
toward her mother, to quiet any suspicions that the old foreign lady
was influencing her in the state. Her mother was always placed at
her left hand at dinner, which is in the palace quite a ceremony of itself. The old lady, relieved of "duns" and well-provided for, lived
down to 1861, the same year the Queen's husband died.




46     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
About a year after her proclamation, the young Queen, now past
nineteen years of age, was solemnly crowned at Westminster Abbey.
We are all familiar with the ceremony of inaugurating the President
of the United States. It costs the government nothing. It consists
of a speech to the.people and the taking of an oath at the hands of
the highest judge in the land. Some of our presidents have ridden
to the Capitol alone on horseback, " hitched " their own horses to the
fence, taken the oath, untied the horse again, and ridden back to the
White House. Whatever festivities we have, incidentally, are of the
spontaneous movement of the people. Washington was inaugurated
at the New York City Hall. Jefferson was the first President inaugurated at Washington. Madison was the first at Washington who
addressed the crowd. There have been two days when the country
was without a President, the fourth of March falling upon Sunday.
After these simple reminiscences we may better conceive the extraordinary pageant of crowning an English sovereign, when we are
told that Victoria's coronation cost three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, which was not much beyond a quarter of the expenses at the
coronation of the worthless George IV.
This ceremony of coronation is the most gorgeous pageant witnessed in the British Empire, where the well-known loyalty of the
people makes it a popular holiday as well as a right ancient
ceremony. It happens not more than once or twice in the lifetime
of a reader, although there was one Englishman, " Old Parr," who
had lived in the reigns of ten sovereigns, namely: Edward IV.,
Edward V., Richard III., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
Mary, Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I.; in all one hundred and
fifty-two years; he was the Methusaleh of modern times.
To see Victoria's coronation in June, 1838, four hundred thousand
people visited London. One million dollars in gold were paid, in
the aggregate, merely for window-room to look out upon the procession. One ambassador paid eight thousand dollars for a chariot in
which to ride in the pageant, and another hired one for a few hours
for twelve hundred and fifty dollars. Marshal Soult and the Duke
of Wellington, ancient opponents, were -amongst the thousands who
honored the Queen. The procession passed over a route not above
two miles long, starting from Buckingham Palace and describing a
semicircle through Westminster to the grand old Abbey, but not
entering the city of London proper, at all.  In the procession
marched or rode all the executive parts of the government, the




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.  4:
Queen's household, her troops, and the foreign ambassadors, while
the nobility and the lords and dignities of the church waited in full
dress in the Abbey from daylight till nearly noon.
Contemporary accounts of the spectacle of this procession and of
the scene within the Abbey when the Queen arrived there, excite the
imagination to the utmost. The day was beautiful for London. At
dawn the guns of the grim and bloody old Tower, several miles from
the Palace, expressed themselves in salvos. London was full of
ringinog bells and heraldic banners, of cannon and cheering, of drink
and pleasantry. The procession moved soon after breakfast-time,
and very wonderful it was as a testimonial to the power of the British Empire. The most novel feature of the procession, says one
writer, was the carriages of the foreign ambassadors, with their
jagers in gorgeous or grotesque uniforms. These came in the order
in which they had arrived on their special missions to the coronation;
the carriages of the regular resident ambassadors came in their ap.
pointed order of precedence. Next followed the members of the
Royal Family, the Duchess of Kent, the Queen's mother preceding
the carriages of the surviving sons of George III. To the Queen's
barge-master, with forty-eight watermen, succeeded twelve of the
royal carriages, containing the ladies and gentlemen of the household. Next came mounted, three and three, the high functionaries
of the army, amongst them the great Duke of Waterloo. And after
came royal huntsmen, yeomen, prickers, marshalmen, foresters, and
a host of other minor functionaries, - the whole of the mounted
household troops being here and there interspersed at intervals in the
cavalcade with the gigantic Horse Guards, helmeted and most conspicuous. Then came the grand state coach containing the Queen,
with the Duchess of Sutherland, Mistress of the Robes. On either
side of the carriage rode Lord Combermere, Gold Stick in Waiting,
and the Earl of Ilchester, Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard.
The Earl of Albermarle, as Master of the Horse, and the Duke of
Buccleuch, as Captain-General of the Royal Scottish Archers, rode
behind. A squadron of Life Guards brought up the rear.
At Westminster Abbey this splendid procession came to a halt.
Above its music, plumes, and emblazoned banners, with the gorgeous
royal standard, blue,yellow, and crimson, advanced above all the rest,
rose the solemn twin towers of the great cathedral, two hundred and
twenty-five feet, grimy and venerable, and buttresses and flying buttresses, carvings of saints and kings, pinnacles and transepts, showed




48     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
hoary as sooty frostwork in the bright sunshine. The doors swung
wide open, and nobles of state and bishops appeared to receive her.
Music burst suddenly through the solemn vastness of the abbeychurch as the sovereign entered, making the deep arches and vaulted
roof tremble, and all the painted windows within shed their soft colors
upon the tombs and effigies of kings, as well as upon the brilliant
congregation, filling far-off galleries and swarming over the floors of
stone. Down the long length of the nave and choir, four hundred and
sixteen feet; up into the carved groinings, one hundred feet, held to
their places by entwined trunks of stone; into the grand transepts,
two hundred and twenty-five feet from rose-window to window, the
coronation anthem poured. As the Queen retired to her robing-room
the procession formed in the nave and slowly marched toward the
altar, which was laden with magnificent gold plate, and beside which
stood St. Edward's chair. Besides the elements which are common
to all great English royal processions, and which it is, therefore, not
requisite to recapitulate, the regalia, which only appear on such occasions, were thus distributed: St. Edward's staff, the golden spurs,
the sceptre with the cross, the curtana, and two swords of investiture, were borne respectively by the Duke of Roxburgh, Lord Byron,
Duke of Clevelarsd, Duke of Devonshire, Marquis of Westfiinster,
and Duke of Sutherland. The coronets of the princes of the blood
were borne by noblemen; their trains by knights' or peers' sons.
Next came the Earl-Marshal, Duke of Norfolk, with his staff, Lord
Melbourne with the sword of state, and the Duke of Wellington with
his staff as Lord High Constable; the Dukes of Richmond, Hamilton, and Somerset bore the sceptre and dove, St. Edward's crown, and
the orb; the Bishops of Bangor, Winchester, and London carried the
patina, chalice, and Bible.
The Queen, who was supported on one side by the Bishop of Bath.
and Wells, on the other by the Bishop of Durham, wore a royal robe
of crimson velvet, furred with ermine, and broidered with gold lace.
She wore the collars of her orders, and on her head a circlet of gold.
Eight peers' daughters bore her train, most of them friends of her
childhood, and distinguished by their personal attractions. About
fifty ladies of rank, occupying various positions in the household,
succeeded, and the procession was concluded by officers of state and
yeomen of the guard.
The splendid attire of some of the foreign ambassadors attracted
more attention than even the sovereign to whose court they were accred



THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                 49
ited. The costume of the Austrian Prince Esterhazy, says one authority, was by far the most gorgeous; his dress, even to his boot-heels,
sparkled with diamonds. The Turkish Ambassador seemed especially
bewildered at the general splendor of the scene; for some moments he
stopped in astonishment, and had to be admonished to move to his
allotted place,
As the Queen advanced slowly to the centre of the choir, she was
received with hearty plaudits, and the musicians sang the anthem, "' I
was Glad."  At its close, the boys of Westminster School, privileged
of old to occupy a special gallery, chanted " Vivat Victoria Regina."
On this the Queen moved to a chair, midway between the chair of
homage and the altar, and there, after a few moments' private devotion, kneeling on a fald-stool, she sat down, and the ceremony proper
began.
First came the "recognition."  The Archbishop of Canterbury,
accompanied by some half-dozen of the greatest civil dignitaries, advanced, and said, " Sirs, T here present unto you Queen Victoria, the
undoubted Queen of this realm; wherefore, all of you who have come
this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the same?"  On
this, all Her Majesty's subjects present shouted, " God save Queen
Victoria!" the Arwchbishop turning in succession to the north, south,
and west sides of the Abbey, and the Queen doing the same. The
bishops who bore them then placed the patina, chalice, and Bible on
the altar; the Queen, kneeling, made her first offering, - a pall, or altar-cloth, of gold. The Archbishop having offered a prayer, the regalia were laid on the altar; the litany and communion services were
read, and a brief sermon preached, by various prelates.
The preacher Actis the Bishop of London, and his text was from the
second book of Chronicles, chapter xxxiv., verse 31: "And the king
stood in his pltace, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after
the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and
his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to perform the
words of the covenant which are written in this book." After the sermon the Queen swore, the Archbishop of Canterbury putting the oath
as follows: -
"A1rchbishop of Canterbury. - Will you solemnly promise and swear
to govern the people of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the respective laws and customs of
the same?
7




50     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"Queen. -I solemnly promise so to do.
"Archbishop. - Will you, to the utmost of your power, cause law
and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?
" Queen. -I will.
"Archbishop. - Will you, to the utmost of your power, maintain the
laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant
reformed religion, established by law? And will you maintain and
preserve inviolably the settlement of the United Church of England
and Ireland, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government
thereof, as by law established within England and Ireland and the
territories thereto belonging? And will you preserve to the bishops
and clergy of England and Ireland, and to the churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as do, or shall,
appertain unto them, or any of them?
" Queen. - All this I promise to do."
The Queen then went to the altar and laid her hand upon the gospels, taking the following oath: " The things which I have heretofore
promised I will perform and keep. So help me God."
The Queen then kissed the gospels at the altar and signed the oath.
The choir meantime sang, " Veni, Creator, Dominus." The Church of
Scotland is protected by a separate oath, taken at a different time.
Next in the order of coronation was the anointment. The Queen
sitting in King Edward's chair, four knights of the garter holding the
while over her head a canopy of cloth of gold, her head and hands
were anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury; after which he said
his prayer, or blessing, over her. In quick succession followed the
delivery of the spurs, sword of state, etc. The Dean of Westminster,
having taken the crown from the altar, handed it to the Archbishop,
who reverently placed it on the Queen's head. This was no sooner
done than there arose from every part of the edifice a tremendous
shout, "God save the Queen!" accompanied with cheers and the
waving of hats and handkerchiefs. At the same moment the peers
and peeresses put on their coronets, the bishops their caps, and the
kings-of-arms their crowns, the trumpets sounded, the drums were
beaten, and volleys fired from the tower and park guns.
The crown   that symbol and metaphor of all sovereignty, spiritual
as well as temporal —was especially made for Queen Victoria's coronation, and is quite a different affair from the crown we generally conceive. It weighs one pound and three-quarters, or little more than a
vaan's winter hat, and is a cap of purple velvet, enclosed by hoops of




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                 51
silver, and studded with many diamonds and precious stones, amongst
which are a splendid ruby and a matchless sapphire. Many of these
stones had entered into the composition of other crowns, worn as long
ago as the discovery of America. The whole of this cbmfortable crown
is estimated to be worth ~111,900 sterling, or about $559,500, which
is, after all, only about three months' income of iir. Alexander T.
Stewart, the New York merchant, or less than the frequent turn of
an "operation" in Wall Street.
The royal crown proper of England, however, is a circle of gold
enriched with stones and pearls, and heightened with four crosses
patt6e and four fleurs-de-lis alternately. From these rise four archdiadems, adorned with pearls, which close under a mound, ensigned
with a cross pattee. It weighs eight pounds. With this heayy ornament was crowned George III., the last King of the thirteen American
colonies. After the benediction and Te Deum, the Queen was " enthroned," or "' lifted" as the formulary has it, from the chair in which
she had first sat into the chair of homage, where she delivered the
sceptre, etc., to noblemen, while she received the fealty of her more
distinguished subjects. The Archbishop first knelt and did homage
for himself and all the spiritual peers; next came the princes of the
blood, who merely touched the crown, kissed her left cheek, swore
the oath of homage, and retired without kneeling; thea the peers in
succession came, — seventeen dukes, twenty-two marquises, ninetyfour earls, twenty viscounts, and ninety-two barons. Each peel:
knelt bareheaded, and kissed Her Mlajesty's hand. Lord Rolle, who
was upwards of eighty, stumbled and fell in going up the steps; the
Queen at once stepped forward, and held out her hand to assist him.
While the peers were doing homage, the Earl of Surrey, Treasurer of
the IIousehold, threw silver coronation medals about the choir and
lower galleries; and when the homage was completed, the members
of the House of Commons, who occupied a special gallery, indicated
their loyalty by giving nine lusty cheers. It was almost a quarter
to four when the procession came back along the nave.
The return cavalcade along the streets was even more attractive
than that of the morning, for the royal and noble personages now
wore their coronets, and the Queen her crown.
In the evening, the Queen entertained a hundred guests to dinner
at Buckingham Palace, and at a late hour witnessed from the roof
fireworks in the park.
The Duke of Wellington gave a ball, to which two thousand guests




52     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
were invited. All the cabinet ministers gave state dinners; a fair
Twas held in Hyde Park; and a grand review of troops by the Queen,
and a great banquet was given at Guildhall.
About seven months after her coronation the Queen was married to
Albert, her cousin, the second son of the Duke of the little state of
Saxe Coburg in Germany. His father and mother had been divorced
while he was a child. The match had been really made by Victoria's
mother and his relatives, particularly by the old King of Belgium,
Leopold, father of " Carlotta," the brief Empress of Mexico. I-e had
met the future Queen when he was seventeen years old. His income
at home in Germany was twelve thousand dollars a year, and he received his education at Bonn on the Rhine. He was younger than
the Queen by a few months. Before he came to England the Queen
sent him the order of the Garter, the highest insignia of English
knighthood, and a present of diamonds, both the honor and the present being of value to his poor estate. There was considerable opposition to the match, and the Queen was in no hurry to marry anybody,
but she committed some indiscretions while a virgin Queen, and her
ministers were anxious to put her under the control of a husband.
No member of the royal family in England is allowed to marry an
English subject, and the choice on the Continent is limited to Protestant princes. There are few Protestant princes equal in rank or
Mwealth to those of England, and therefore the hand of the powerful
Queen was in great request.
This restrictive law, justly denounced by many English people,
compels the princes of England, if they dare marry at home, to
beget illegitinmate children only, and the same has been the case in
Victoria's time, - virtuous women and wives ranlking before the law
as mere mistresses. The object of the law is to prevent ambitious
suitors makling civil feuds in the nobility at home.
Young Albert came courting to England by the advice of old Leopold in 1839, four months before his marriage. The young Queen
received him at Windsor, was charmed with his manners and appearance, and in a week decided to accept him.
A magazine article published not long ago in England gives the
following undisputed account of his wooing: —
" The Prince played the part of a royal lover with all the grace
peculiar to his house. He never willingly absented himself from the
Queen's society and presence, and her every wish was anticipated
with the alacrity of an unfeigned attachment. At length Her Majesty,




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                 53
having wholly made up her mind as to the issue of this visit, found
herself in some measure embarrassed as to the fit and proper means
of indicating her preference to the Prince. This was a perplexing
task, but the Queen acquitted herself of it with equal delicacy and
tact. At one of the palace balls she took occasion to present her
bouquet to the Prince at the conclusion of a dance, and the hint was
not lost upon the polite and gallant German. His close uniform,
buttoned up to the throat, did not admit of his placing the Persianlike gift where it would be most honored; so' he immediately drew
his penknife., and cut a slit in his dress in the neighborhood of his
heart, where he gracefully deposited the happy omen. Again, to
announce to the privy council her intended union was an easy duty
in comparison to that of intimating her wishes to the principal party
concerned; and here, too, it is said that our Sovereign Lady displayed unusual presence of mind and female ingenuity.
"The Prince was expressing the grateful sense which he entertained
of his reception in England, and. the delight which he experienced
during his stay from the kind attentions of royalty, when the Queen
very naturally and very pointedly, put to himn the question upon
which their future fates depended:'If, indeed, your Highness is so
much pleased with this country, perhaps you would not object to remaining in it, and making it your home.' No one can doubt the reply."
Prince Albert's testimony tallies with the above; for we have extant a copy of a letter he wrote to his grandmother immediately after
his betrothal.
Prince Albert wrote to his grandmother: —
" The subject," he says, "' which has occupied us so much of late
is at last settled. The Queen sent for me alone to her room a few
days ago, and declared to me in a genuine outburst of love and affection that I had gained her whole heart, and( would make her intensely happy if I would make her the sacrifice of sharing her life
with her; for she said she looked on it as a sacrifice.  Since that
moment Victoria does whatever she fancies I shouldl wish or like, and
we talk together a great deal about our future life, w!lich she promises
me to make as happy as possible. Oh, the future' "
The entire courtship of the Prince and Queen lasted five weeks.
The engagement was first communicated to the ministers, then to
relatives, at last to Parliament. The latter prince-ridden body was
asked to vote Prince Albert two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a




54     TIIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
year. After some severe debate, which made angry both the Queen
and old Leopold, this sum was reduced to one hundred and fifty
thousand, - enough, one would think. To avoid further debate,
Prince Albert refused to be made an English peer. A vessel was
sent to Calais to bring the Prince to England; his bride and her mother received him at the door of Buckingham Palace, and that night he
paid formal visits to all the members of the royal family. The next
day but one they were married. A description of the marriage ceremony will be interesting to the ladies, besides necessary to make
plain the real life of a living sovereign.
Prince Albert set out from Buckingham Palace, we are told, dressed
as a British field-marshal, and with all the insignia of the Garter,
the jewels of which had been a personal present from the Queen,
having on one side his father and on the other his brother, both in
military uniforms. He entered his carriage amid tremendous cheers,
and the enthusiastic waving of handkerchiefs by a bevy of ladies
privileged to stand in the ground lobbies of the palace, and was escorted to the chapel of St. James's Palace by a squadron of the Life
Guards. On the return of the carriages which carried the Prince and
his company, Her Majesty was in turn apprised that all was in readiness for her departure. She, too, was enthusiastically received,
" but her eye was bent principally upon the ground."  In the same
carriage with the Queen rode the Duchesses of Kent and Sutherland.
It was noticed as she drove along that she was extremely pale, and
looked very anxious, though two or three incidents in the crowd
caused her to smile.
On her arrival at her old brick palace of St. James, the Queen
was conducted to the presence chamber, where she remained with her
maids-of-honor and train-bearers, awaiting the Lord Chamberlain's
summons to the altar. Meanwhile, the colonnade within the palace,
along which the bridal procession had to pass and repass, had been
filled since early morn by the elite of England's rank and beauty.
Each side of the way was a parterre of white robes, white relieved
with blue, white and green, amber, crimson, purple, fawn, and stone
color. All wore wedding favors of lace, orange-flower blossoms, or
silver bullion, some of great size, and many in most exquisite taste.
Most of the gentlemen were in court dress; and the scene during
the patient hours of waiting was made picturesque by the passing to
and fro in various garbs of burly yeomen of the guard, armed with
their massive halberts, slight-built gentlemen-at-arms, with partisans




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                  55
of equal slightness; elderly pages of state, and pretty pages of honor; officers of the lord chamberlain, and officers of the woods and
forests; heralds, all embroidery, and cuirassiers in polished steel;
prelates in their rochets, and priests in their stoles, and singing-boys
in their surplices of virgin white.
Within the chapel, in which the altar was magnificently decorated
and laden with a profusion of gold plate, four state chairs were set,
varying in splendor according to the rank of the destined occupants,
respectively for Her Majesty, Prince Albert, the Queen Dowager, and
the Duchess of Kent. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York,
and the Bishop of London, having taken their places within the altarrails, a flourish of trumpets announced the procession of the bridegroom. As the Prince passed along, the gentlemen greeted him with
loud clapping of the hands, and the ladies waved their handkerchiefs
with at least equal enthusiasm. In a few minutes the procession
of the bride was announced by trumpets and drums. It was of six
or seven times the numerical strength of the bridegroom's, and the
beauty of the twelve bridesmaids, all daughters of peers of the three
highest grades, was specially commended. The Duchess of Cam.
bridge led by the hand her then child-daughter, the Princess Mary,
" and the mother of so-beautiful a child was certainly not to be seen
without much interest."  The Duchess of Kent appeared "disconso.
late and distressed;" while the Duke of Sussex, who was to give
away the bride, was "' in excellent spirits." The Queen herself looked
" anxious and excited, and paler even than usual."  She was dressed
in a rich white satin, trimmed with orange-flower blossoms. She
wore a wreath of the same, over which was a veil of rich Honiton
lace, worn so as not to conceal her face. She wore as jewels the collar of the order of the Garter, with a diamond necklace and ear-rings.
After the conclusion of the marriage rite, the Queen hastily crossed
to the opposite side of the altar, and kissed the queen dowager and
her mother, who were standing there. She then took Prince Albert's
hand, and passed down the aisle. On the return to Buckingham
Palace, it was observed that the Prince, still retaining the Queen's
hand in his own, whether by accident or design, held it in such a way
as to display the wedding-ring, which was more solid than is usual in
ordinary weddings. When the Queen had been led into the palace
by her husband, it was observed that her morning paleness had
entirely passed off, and that she entered her own. halls with an open,
joyous, and slightly flushed countenance.




56     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
After the wedding breakfast the young couple departed, at a quarter
before four, for Windsor, amid the cheers of the undiminished multitude.  Her Majesty's travelling-dress was a white satin pelisse,
trimmed with swan's-down, with a white satin bonnet and feather.
The marriage thus commemorated was one of the happiest royal
attachments ever made. Doubtless the bride and groom already
loved each other, or soon learned to do so. The poor Prince was
obliging and modest; he made a prudent counsellor to the Queen, and
seldom excited public criticism. He had the German domestic virtues,- love of method, thrift, and the open air. His wife became busy
with child-beariing, and therefore made no trouble nor interference
with the state. He turned the energies of his household to savinfg
money, making good investments, and marrying off his children as
well as possible; and unless his sons should turn out profligates,
the private estate laid up by Victoria and Albert is enough to make
them very rich and powerful, even if they should lose the English
crown.
After marriage, house-keeping, and of the Queen's practice of this
first of female arts we have some close and entertaining glimpses in
her own books, called "Early Years of the Prince Consort," and
" Journal of our Life in the Highlands."  But the testimony of third
persons is perhaps more valid, and from one of these, Lord Lennox,
we obtain the following account of a state dinner in Buckingham
Palace. Anybody who has dined in the White House at Washington
can draw the. comparison.
"' At each end of the dining-hall, buffets, seventeen feet high and
forty broad, were set. They were of rich fretted Gothic framework,
covered with crimson cloth, and brilliant with massive gold plate.
Immediately opposite the queen was set a pyramid of plate, its apex
being the tiger's head captured at Seringapatam, and comprising the'Iluma' of precious stones which Lord Wellesley, the GovernorGeneral of India, presented to George IV. The table, which was
laid for a hundred guests, extended the whole length of the hall. All
down the centre, epergnes, vases, cups, and candelabra were ranged,
the celebrcted St. George's candelabrium being opposite Her Mlajesty. The hall was splendidly illuminated, and two bands of the
guards discoursed sweet music from a balcony. The yeomen of the
guard stood on duty at the entrance. The repast, which did ample
justice to the merits of the Queen's renowned cuisinier, Francatelli,
was entirely served in gold plate, and the attendance was so faultless




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                 57
that there was less bustle and confusion than usually attend a repast
shared by a party of ten or a dozen. At a quarter to nine grace was
said; and after the dessert and wine had been placed on the table,
the Lord Steward rose and proposed, without remark,' The Queen.'
The Queen simply, when th'e toast had been drank, bowed her acknowledgments. After a brief pause, the health of Prince Albert
was drank standing, as the Queen's had been, the band playing the'Coburg March.' At half-past nine the Queen rose, and, accompanied by the Duchess of Kent, was followed by all the ladies to the
drawing-room."
The Queen and her family, however, have never been recognized as
possessing genius. The Hanoverian dulness marks their countenances, and no Prince of that line could ever have earned great
credit in private life.
Guizot, the French statesman, who was the Queen's guest at dinner
in 1840, remarked on the want of animation and interest in the conversation, whether at the dinner-table or in the drawing-room. Politics of any kind, home or foreign, were, apparently to his surprise,
strictly avoided.  When the gentlemen joined the ladies, which,
throughout the Queen's reign, has been at a very short interval after
the departure of the latter from  the dining-room, they all sat on
chairs round a circular table set before the Queen, who occupied a
sofa. Two or three of her ladies engaged themselves in fancy work;
Prince Albert challenged some one to a game of chess. Lady Palmerston  and M. Guizot, "with some effort," carried.on a flagging
dialogue. The conversation being thus flat, M. Guizot took to looking at the pictures on the walls, of which there were but three, hung
over the different doors of the apartment. He was very much astonishdcl at the extraordinary contrasts in the subjects of these pictures.
They certainly were most incogruous. One was Fenelon, the second
the Czar Peter, and the third Anne Hyde, the discarded wife of
James II. HI-e asked one of his fellow-guests whether the combination was intentional or an accident? But he could get no satisfaction
on the subject. No one had remarked the combination, and no one
could tell the reason for it.
At the levee which he attended the day following, he was still
more astonished and perplexed. "I regard," he says, "with excited esteem the profound respect of that vast assembly, courtiers,
citizens, lawyers, churchmen, officers, military and naval, passing
before the Queen, the greater portion bending the knee to kiss her
8




58      THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
hand, all perfectly solemn, sincere, and awkward. The sincerity and
seriousness were both needed to prevent those antiquated habits,
wigs, and gags, those costumes which no one in England now wears
etcept on such occasions, from appearing somewhat ridiculous. But
I am little sensible to the outward appearance of absurdity when the
substance partakes not of that character."
Promptly on marriage-time Victoria's first child was born, now
wife to the heir of the crown of Prussia. Less than a year afterward the heir to Victoria's crown, the present Prince of Wales was
born, and a state bulletin thus announced the fact: —
" BUCKINGHAM PALACE, Nov. 9th.
" This morning, at twelve minutes before eleven o'clock, the Queen was
happily delivered of a Prince, His Royal Highness Prince Albert, Her Royal
Highness the Duchess of Kent, several Lords of Her Majesty's Most Honorable
Privy Council, and the Ladies of Her Majesty's Bedchamber, being present.
This great and important news was immediately made known to the town by
the firing of the Tower and Park guns; and. the Privy Council being assembled as soon as possible thereupon, at the Council Chamber, Whitehall,
it was ordered that a Form of Thanksgiving be prepared by his Grace the
Archbishop of Canterbury, to be used in all churches and chapels throughout
England and Wales, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on Sunday, the
fourteenth of November, or the Sunday after the respective ministers shall
receive the same.
"Her Majesty and the infant Prince are, God be praised! both doing
well."
The Prince of Wales was born in dark and ominous times, in the
starving days of 1841; yet all due exhibitions of loyalty were made.
Upon the announcement of the happy accouchement, the nobility
and gentry crowded to the palace to tend their dutiful inquiries as
to the sovereign's convalescence. Amongst other, came the Lord
Mayor and civic dignitaries in great state.  They felt peculiarly
proud that the Prince should have been born on Lord Mayor's day;
in fact, just at the very moment when the time-honored municipal
procession was starting from the city for Westminster. In memory
of the happy coincidence, the Lord Mayor of the year, Mr. Pirie,
was created Sir John Pirie, Baronet. On the 4th of December, when
he was twenty-five days old, the queen created her son by letters
patent, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester:. "And him, our
said and most dear son, the Prince of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, as has been accustomed, we do ennoble and
invest with the said Principality and Earldom, by girding him with a




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                 59
sword, by putting a coronet on his head, and a gold ring on his
finger, and also by delivering a gold rod into his hand, that he may
preside there, and direct and defend those parts." By the fact of
his birth as heir-apparent, the Prince indefeasibly inherited, without
the necessity of patent or creation, these dignities, -the titles of
Duke of Saxony, by right of his father; and, by right of his mother,
Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland.
It is this young man who is to succeed, in all probability, his virtuous and now widowed mother.
Victoria, unlike many ladies in private life, never objected to increasing her family. She has borne nine children. She adorned the
female character, and showed herself to be a healthy, spirited, yet
modest lady, happy as she is good, until, in 1861, her sturdy German
husband died. If the English throne is to continue, the offspring
of Prince Albert will long occupy it, and to associate his death with
their future careers these passages of bereavement in the palace are
appended.
Shortly after midnight the great bell of St. Paul's, which is never
tolled except upon the death of a member of the royal family,
boomed the fatal tidings over a district extending, in the quietude of
the early Sabbath morn, for miles around the metropolis.
The Queen, the Princess Alice, and the Prince of Wales, who had
been hastily summoned from Cambridge, sat with the dying Prince
until the last. After the closing scene the Queen supported herself
nobly, and, after a short burst of uncontrollable grief, she is said to
have gathered her children around her, and addressed them in the
most solemn and affectionate terms. " She declared to her family
that, though she felt crushed by the loss of one who had been her
companion through life, she knew how much was expected of her,
and she accordingly called on her children to give her their assistance, in order that she might do her duty to them and the country."
The Duke of Cambridge, and many gentlemen connected with the
court, with six of the royal children, were present at the Prince's
death. In answer to some one of those present who tenderly offered
condolence, the Queen is reported to have said: "' I suppose I must
not fret too much, for many poor women have to go through the
same trial."
Prince Albert was buried at Windsor and this is the inscription




60      THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
over his costly tomb, prepared, it is said, by the Queen's own hands;
the original is in Latin.
" ere lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince Consort, Duke of
Saxony, Prince of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the Most Noble Order
of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the most august and potent Queen
Victoria. He died on the fourteenth, day of December, 1861, in the fortythird year of his age."
Hitherto I have given sketches of pageants only, such as connect the
sovereign with the state.  She is the nominal ruler over a "United
Kingdom " of thirty millions of people, nineteen millions of whom inhabit England proper, and in her numerous colonies live about two
hundred millions more, savage or civilized, four millions of whom are
close beside the United States. Her parent kingdom, the island called
" Great Britain," is the largest island in Europe, and the sixth in size
in the world. At the time of the American Revolution the United
Kingdom contained less than eight millions of people. At present
the assessed wealth of that kingdom is thirty-two billions of dollars, - double the wealth of the United Sthtes; its imports and exports amount to seven hundred millions a year, and its debt is about
four billions and one hundred millions. Each one of these vast items
affords a volume of suggestion, which the present is not the place to
consider. The aggregate of them unquestionably indicates the mi ghtiest empire of modern times, from which we, as a detached part, rank
certainly not more than two places separated. This United Kingclom owes the backbone of its power to the fusion of northern nation's
in it. By its insular position it was relieved from the ravages of
other than civil war, and it bred hardy sailors on the long indented
line of its coast. Its acceptance of the reformed or Protestant religion made it a grand asylum  for the free-spirited, ingenious, and
persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It is the Roman Empire of
Protestantism, and the Queen now at its head is a descendant of that
Elector of Saxony who protected Martin Luther.  When the Spanish
Armada perished off the English coast, the sea changed mtasters.
Coal, iron, tin, lead, and flax were the adventitious possessions of a
race thus predestined.  With scarcely an exception its kings have
been unworthy of such a kingdom. Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell
stand almost isolated in its long list of wicked, errant, or sluggish
sovereigns, and the state has made progress in almost every case, proportionate to its aggressions upon the monarch. With the present




THE QUEEN AND THE PRESIDENT.                                61
expensive but otherwise harmless royal family, the United Kingdom
has gained upon its past rapid and solid progress, and perhaps the
poet, Tennyson, was even more excellent as a philosopher whenl he
wrote of Victoria: 
"IHer court was pure; her life serene;
God gave her peace; her land renosed;
A thousand claims to reverence ciosed
In her as mother, wife, and queen.
"And statesmen at her council met,
]Who knew the seasons, - when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet,
"By shaping some august decree,
Which kept her throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people's will,
And compassed by the inviolate sea."




CHAPTER III.
THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.
Their number, origin, wealth, privileges, habits of life, estates, and influence on the
nation.
IF, as some have contended, titles of honor are founded in human
happiness, gratitude, and love of distinction, happy should we be
in America, who are all either "general," " colonel," "major,"'" squire," " chief," " boss," " captain," " cook," or " judge."  One
of our humorists has said, that in the height of the war he threw a
stone at a dog, which, missing, hit six brigadier generals.' And,"
he naively  concludes, " it was not a good day for brigadiers
either."
Soberly speaking, there are here no legalized titles but those of
officers of the army and navy.  Following colonial precedents, the
President of the United States is sometimes called'" His Excellency,"
but seldom by well-bred persons.  "Honorable," used as a prefix
to the names of members of Congress and others, is likewise an
instance of deference or compliment, having no more authority than
the " Esquire " which we now append by vicious habit to every male
person's name, and which, like the word " Professor," used by
mountebanks, charlatans, and school-teachers indiscriminately, has
fallen into disfavor amongst people worthy of it. The universal
habit here of addressing people by these fictitious titles is our defence
against ever being compelled to accord them. When a sovereign in
Europe wishes to bring a certain order of knighthood into disrepute,
he confers it upon Tom, Dick, and Harry.  So, to be addressed by
the bare and respectful term of plain "' Bister," is still the most
honorable prefix known to Americans.
But, if we look about us, we shall find abundant relics of an aristocracy, in the names of our streets, counties, and villages. New
York has Kings, Queens, and Dutchess County; Virginia has Princess and Princesses. In some part of the United States the estate
of every nobleman in England is probably commemorated. The
62




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                  63
counties of New York and Massachusetts abound in such revivals.
Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York will suggest a
title of nobility to every Englishman. While the author is putting
this chfapter to writing, his newspaper relates the death of one of the
last of the Fairfaxes, the patrons of Washington. Near by the capital city live the Calverts still, descendants of Lord Baltimore. The
great republic has absorbed these into simple citizenship; but the
kingdom from which their titles were derived, continues to our day
that ancient aristocracy recognized by our forefathers. There exist
those badges, which, to retain or win, made Sir John Johnson a tory,
and Benedict Arnold a traitor. In no country of Europe is the aristocracy so well defined or so powerful as in modern England.
Legislatively it is irresponsible, being hereditary; and while the
House of Commons is the instrument of British legislation, the
aristocracy, by their social and landed power, control a majority of
places in it. A late English Review took the poll of the I-louse of
Commons, and showed that it contained two hundred and fifty persons, or more than one-third, either peers or related to peers, while
out of the whole number of six hundred and fifty-eight members
there were not two hundred who had not either " title, office, place,
pension, church patronage, or immediate relatives deriving large sums
from government abuses."
In the United States our " best families" have derived their position, either directly or by inheritance, from wealth, chiefly acquired by
commerce, manufactures, or speculation in lands, staples, and enterprises.  Not one of these people can be a "'gentleman" in the
English sense. With us, " gentleman" refers to the feeling and the
breeding; with the English the " gentry" is a rich, leisurely,
anciently derived class, yet untitled; and, strange as it may seem,
there are English " gentlemen " whose descent is so anciently established that a title would impair it: such regard, with haughty contempt, the new-made baronets or peers whose honors came from
brewing good ale, or building railroads, or writing histories.
Over English society the shadow of the aristocracy rests like the
pillar of fire by night which guided the Hebrews. Its patronage, its
lineage, its carriage, its unassailable place at the summit of society
and government - and, also, we must admit, the fine undegenerat%
graces of its members -enable it to absorb, corrupt, or charm the
entire character of the common people.  One by one the commons bow down to it, —now the aged knees of Carlyle, now the




64     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
pregnant hinges of the poet Kingsley, now in mid-flourish the young
radical Disraeli abases himself. It is impossible for an American to
conceive the Xvigor and influence of this aristocracy until he has visited
England, and even then, if he should come within the circle of its
social power, he might become its apologist. Then. he can understand how mightily this aristocracy appeals to every ambitious young
Englishman, lying, so to speak, across the threshold of his life,
charming him with its conversation, helping him with its means and
its favor at court, appealing to his imagination by its castles and
woodlands, incorporating itself with his traditions, until he discovers
himself its defender, and lays down his life in its worship and service.
This was the highest motive of Nelson, to which I have referred
already, -" A peerage, or a tomb in Westminster Abbey" amongst
the bones of peers.
It is from the United States that the English aristocracy has met
its great opposition in our century. When Bright, Cobden, Hughes,
Cobbett, Beales, and the young republicans of this and the last
generation moved upon the aristocracy, it was with the history and
constitution of the United States unfolded like the gospels. When,
twenty years ago, Bright and his friends, in and out of Parliament,
raised the question as to whether the English government might not
accept some profitable suggestions from the polity of the United
States, a laugh went up from the forward partisans of the aristocracy
too loud to be merry. Authors and novelists, under the patronage
of this landed aristocracy, hastened to America to misrepresent it.
And when, in 1861, the towering republic cracked from crest to
centre, the talent and vigor of the British kingdom were developed
against us in the most insidious, mocking, and persistent literature
which has signalized the art of printing. If the republic is prospered in the future as in the past, men will not wonder half so much,
at the end of the next century, at the cruise of the "Alabama" as at
the leaders of the " Times " and the speeches of the peers. In them
the British aristocracy reached high-water mark; America maintained
her unity, and British panegyric has been since as fulsome as its
previous misrepresentation was abortive.
In the principal American staple, cotton, the landed aristocracy of
England met a no less powerful enemy. To us it was the fleur de lis
of a temporary aristocracy; to the British aristocracy more destructive than the wars of the red and the white roses. It built up in
England mighty guilds of manufacturers, raised Manchester against




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                   65
Westminster, produced Richard Cobden and the anti-corn law league,
and routed the landed interest under its own prime minister, Sir
Robert Peel.
" Nothing is so sacred as aristocracy," said Charles Kingsley in
1865, " unless it be the monarch."
And the most relentless enemy of the English aristocracy has been
the dissenting church, which threw the Bible into the scale against
both peers and king. It made Oliver Cromwell in England, and
-New, or Better, England in America. Those three batteries, neirer at
rest, have steadily played upon the aristocracy, — New England,
Manchester Cotton, Presbyterianism. And, at last, intellect wavers
in its fealty to the nobility and gentry, for it has its choice of patrons.
now.  We hawe come down to that remarkable period when Mr..
Disraeli,'after serving the aristocracy for so many years, finds it
more honorable to refuse than to take a peerage. Yet, says his.
biographer, speaking of his first retirement from the cabinet: —
lHe had gained for all his future life the magical prefix of'Right,
Honorable' to his name."
But the period is more remarkable in this, that John Bright is a.
cabinet minister, he who. said: —
" You may have an ancient nobility in grand mansions, and parks,
and great estates, and you may have an ecclesiastical hierarchy,,
covering with worldly pomp that religion whose virtue is humility..
But, notwithstanding all this, the whole fabric is rotten, and doomed!
ultimately to fail; for the great mass of the people on whom it is-.
supported, is poor, and suffering, and degraded."
This book, however, is not written for partisan objects, and we.
shall find good reason, in our descriptions of the aristocracy, to ac,count for their influence upon the British population. Let us address
ourselves to this description.
How began the British aristocracy?  In the year 1066, A. D.,.the
Duke of Normandy, of France, overthrew the Saxons at Hastings, in.
England. His army was rewarded with all the estates of the Saxons..
This was the last and greatest property revolution that ever happened,
in Europe. The brutal conqueror and his soldiers seized the entire.
kingdom. The Indians were treated with far more ceremony and'
fairness by the English colonists in America. At a swoop every Saxs
on's right went down; it was the most exhaustive robbery in history..
To William the Conqueror's officers the oldest English noblemen:
trace their lineage, and probably withtrthfuilness in some cases..
9




66     THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
For instance, the Marquis of Westminster, said to be the richest
peer in England, shows every in and out of his pedigree, back to one
Lord of Grosvenour, in the County of Normandy, France, a hundred
and fifty years before the latter followed the fortunes of Duke William
to England.
With the estates of the Saxons, the Norman barons iand counts
found local names to append to their titles. Many of them married,
in the second or third generation, Saxon women; as, for example, the
present Lord Derby's family name is Stanley; for his Norman ancestor, Adam de Aldithly, married Mabella Stanley, a Saxon woman.
The Saxons were already more civilized people than the Normans.
King, Alfred had lived, who was said to have been the Saxon founder
of Oxford University, whereas Duke William could not read, and he
signed his name to all his state papers extant with a "' cross."
The English peers of. the present day, who do not trace their lineage to some officer of William the Conqueror, derive their titles by
the favor of William's successors, the kings of England, and a multitude of causes led to this favor. Some peers are descended from the
illegitimate children of the monarchs; for, although " aristocracy " is
a compound Greek word signifying "the government of the best,"
and good birth is defined by Aristotle to be " ancient (long-;inherited)
wealth alnd virtue," yet I doubt whether the most barefaced American
politician of our time would com-mend to office such beings as began
many ducal lines in England. It was a frequent custom for the sovelreign to give a husband an office, a title, or a grant of land, and
take his wife for a mistress. This was the case close down to the
reign in which we write. Dukes, a grade higher, were the fruit of
intimacies between the king and some actress. lMany families were
ennobled for military service, for opportune loans of money to the
hingl, or for mere reward of good company. In a later part of this
chapter I will give some examples under each of these heads.
HIow originated the present grades of British peers?
The sovereign is the head of the British aristocracy. Then follows
her family, the princes, or those immediately of the royal blood.
Then come three royal dukes, partly of royal blood, twenty-six dukes,
thirty-eight marquesses, two hundred and two earls, sixty-one viscounts,
and two hundred and five barons, -in all close to five hundred and
fifty peers, or nobles, including fourteen women, peeresses in their
own right (1854). Besides these peers there are nearly nine hundred
baronets, who are.not.noblemen, and cannot sit in the House of Lords,




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                 67
but are allowed the prefix of " sir,v which gives them rank and precedence, without privilege. They belong to the aristocracy, however,
andl so do the gentry, or untitled folks of ancient fa'mily.
Let us go back into the origin of these titles, for curiosity's sake.
The Duke and the Count were Roman titles, military words (Latin
dux, from the Latin verb ducere, to lead) invented by the later Roman
emperors. The count was half-magistrate of Roman provinces; the
duke was the general of the same. When the northern nations descended upon Rome they appropriated these titles. Very soon the
military dukes turned about and put themselves ahead of the countmagistrates.. After a time, the duke became so powerful in his distant province, that he held it in his own right; and this was the case
with the Duke of Normandy when he invaded England. Himself and
several other French dukes had reduced the possessions of the crown
of France to a couple of cities. A marquess was the guardian of the
Roman frontier marches, and this title, also, the nations of the middle
ages appropriated from Italy.
There were no dukes in England, except the Conqueror, Duke of
Normandy, -till two hundred and sixty-nine years after the Conquest,
the only titles in William's army being Baron and Count. The first
British duke was the Black Prince, so created by his father, King
Edward III. Afterward several sons of kings were made duke's.
Queen Elizabeth found on her accession only one duke remaining,Norfolk,  and him she executed. James I. made George Villiers
Duke of Buckingham. Charles II. made fifteen dukes, six of whom
were his illegitimate children; The number of peers of all classes has
steadily increased in England. There are now two hundred more
than there were in the American Revolution, and three hundred and
eighty more than in the time of Queen Anne.  The eldest ducal
family now in England is that of Norfolk; among the wealthier ducal
houses are Devonshire and -Bedford. The Queen addresses a duke
officially, as'" Our right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin and
counsellor," which must have required of the young Queen Victoria
the devotion of a quarter's schooling to get it by heart. A duke's
letters are endorsed, "' His Grace," or, " The most noble, the Duke
of -."  It was from the Duke of York that New York was named;
and not from York city, and ]Maine took its name from the tradition
that the Duchy of Maine, in France, was an English possession. Almost every English duke has ascended through lesser degrees of
nobility to his eminence.  Thus, the Duke of Wellington was Lord




68     TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Wellesly, and his place was just missed by one of the %Wesleys, founrders of Methodism. With his title this last of the great dukes received
about fourteen millions of dollars to support it. The Duke of Bedford
is also Marquis of Tavistock, Baron Russell of Cheneys, Baron Russell of Thornhaugh, and Baron  lowland of Streatham. His eldest
son takes, by courtesy, the second title.
MAlarquess, the second rank of nobility, is old as the reign of Ridcl
ard II. The first marquess was' Robert Vere, raised from Earl of
Oxford to Marquess of Dublin. The oldest marquessate existing is
that of Winchester. Probably the richest is that of the Marquess of
Westminster, who owns almost the whole of that vast and luxurious
district of London called Belgravia. A marquess is addressed, " M1
Lord Marquess."
Earl is a Scandinavian title of lost antiquity. When first unearthed it was applied to the custodian of an English county. Shrewsbury is the eldest earl; and the second in time - perhaps the first in
wealth and power —is Derby, whose name and whose son's name
(Lord Stanley) are well known to us in America as associated with our
late civil war, and the treaties attempted to be negotiated after it.
Viscount, as an English title, goes back to about the time of the
discovery of America, and the eldest viscount is he of Hereford.
This was the rank of Lord Palmerston, English prime minister during our recent civil war, whose title expired at his death.
Baron is a title of vague origin. The eldest extant, Le de Spencer,
dates as remotely as the year 1264.
The term " cousin," applied by the sovereign to all peers save a
baron, arose from the fact that there was one English monarch,
Henry IV., who was related to every earl in the kingdom.
The above five grades of nobles constitute the peers of England,
and they make a body nearly twice as numerous as both houses of
the United States Congress. They were created in two ways besides
original military rank and investiture of lands, namely, by Writ of
Summons, to come to Parliament and help the Queen with counsel, or
by Letters Patent, naming the exact rank and the circumstances under
which the patent is conferred. In former times with every such writ
or patent an estate was given. At present it is an expensive favor -to
be made a peer. The stamps onl a duke's patent cost one thousand
seven hundred and fifty dollars in gold. A baron pays for his creation two thousand one hundred dollars in gold. - The privilegesof the
peerage are now of little consequence, if we except right of exemp



THE BRITISII ARISTOCRACY.                  (69
tion from sitting on juries, freedom from common arrest, privilege of
seeing the Queen on public business, and trial by one's peers in
cases of treason and felony.
The baronets, next below the peers, were created out of the pecuniary necessities of James. I., who wanted money, first to settle
Ulster, in Ireland, then to "plant" Nova Scotia, the present discontented ncirghblor of the United States. Hle asked five thousand five
hundred dollars a head to make baronets in this way.
The sovereign creates a peer to be, in himself and his issue, defender
land adviser of the crown and protector of the royal prerogatives.
TXje nearer a peer is to the throne, in office or duty, the closer is he
to the fountain of honor and power. IHIence many of the nobility are
merely attendants upoi the Queen.
Madame d'Arblay, a lady of the court of the wife of George III.,
tells many stories illustrative of the absurd deference of the aristocracy
at that court during the Americau Revolution. Her employment was
to robe the Queen-Consort, and to keep her snuff-box well replenished.
No person was allowed to drive past the royal family on the road; none
could sit or eat in their presence, nor pass by the open door of any
room in which they were, nor speak to them unless requested. If met
by them anywhere, the courtier must stand still, and go backward, if
retiring. When they entered any room, all the people within it had
to rise, fall back against the wall, and give the princes all the middle
of the room exclusively, and when they entered the house of any
nobleman they brought along what persons they pleased, ecclesiastics
or concubines, and had entire control of the host's mansion. MIadame
D'Arblay used to be ready to drop from hunger and long standing, but
the Queen took no notice of it. Commenting on the above, an English
historian, MIr. John ]Wade, writing in our own time, quaintly says: —'" As princes are of ancient institution, these rules have, doubtless,
a sage and politic meaning."
The great offices around the sovereign held by peers are: —
1. The Lord Great Chamberlain, custodian of Westminster Palace, decorator of Westminster Hall and Abbey for state trials and
coronations, ticket-giver for Parliament; in short, the Queen's Sergeant-at-Arms. This office is hereditary, and, owing to some split or
other in the lineage, it is now held by two noblemen, relations.
2. The Earl-Marshal, a sort of Queen's proclamation maker, the
preparer of programmes for royal christenings, etc. The Duke of
Norfolk is hereditary Marshal.




70(    TI-IE NlEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
3. Hereditary Gr-and Almoner. This noble functionary does nothling whatever but toss medals round Westminster Abbey at tile Queen's
coronation.
The other offices around the sovereign are filled by the Queen by
writ, that is, the prime minister of the political party in power nominates for them, and they are part of the spoils of victory. Some of the
names of these ennobled servants are Lord Steward of the Household,
salary, 10,000 dollars; Treasurer, ditto, 4,500 dollars; Comptrollers,
ditto, 4,500 dollars; Master, ditto, 5,600 dollars; Lord Chamberlain,
10,000 dollars; Vice-Chamberlain, 4,500 dollars; severalLords illnWiting, 3,500 dollars; several Grooms in WVaiting, 1,750 dollars; a corps
of Gentlemen at Arms and a corps of Yeomen of the Guard, select soldiers and " gentle" officers, paid from 5,000 dollars, captains, to 300
dollars, privates; Groom of the Stole, who watches the Queen's bed,
nominally, 10,000 dollars; twelve Lords of the Bedchamber, defunct
or nearly so, 5,000 dollars a head; Mistress of the Robes, 2,500 dollars;
ten Ladies of the Bedlchamber 2,500 dollars a head,.nine Bedchamber
Womel 1,500 dollars; eight Iaids of Honor, 2,000 dollars; Mlaster of the
HI-orse, 12,500 dollars; Clerk iIarshal and Chief Equerry, 5,000 dollars;
eight. Equerries and Pages of I-Ionor, 3,750 dollars to 1,000 dollars;
MIaster of the Btuckhounds, 8,000 dollars. Contrast all this array of
sinecures with the household officers of President of the United States,
namely, two Secretaries and a MIarshal of the District of Columbia.
If he wishes more help he must get a private soldier or two detailed.
The Queen's coachmen, postilions, and footmen cost almost sixty thousand dollars a year besides. All this useless court must be maintained by the social argument of an aristocracy, who might else outblaze the sovereign, and that the Queen's poor relationls may not be
laughed at by the peers they receive enormous pensions. Old I-Hampton Court Palace, near London, is a home for decayed nobility who
must not be turned into the street. This palace costs a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year to keep it up, exclusive of numerous
pensions paid its inmates.
An English statement said of the Duke of Grafton: —' This hereditary pensioner is paid annually, out of the excise revenue, forty-two thousandl dollars, and out of the post-office revenues seventeen thousand dollars. The original pensioner was one of the numerous illegitimate offspring of Charles II.; for whose royal amours the
people of this age are still called upon to pay. These pensions have
now (1857) been paid to the Dukes of Grafton for a period of one




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                   71
hundred and seventy-three years; so that the maintenance of this
single peerage alone has cost the English people, in hard cash, no less
a sum than ten millions two hundred and ninety thousand dollars I"
I have said that the English aristocracy are the proudest nobles
in Europe. This rises mainly from their greater riches. In ancient
lineage they can at best trace their origin to the countries of their
neighbors on the Continent. The Queen's house, that of Guelph,
claims Italy for its origin. Tennyson sang in his welcome of the
bride of the Prince of Wales:
"Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,
But each all Dane in our welcome of thee."
If there is any advantage in English over foreign aristocracy, it is
that the former was created directly by the sovereign, and has never
been obliterated by a revolution, like the ancien noblesse of France.
The Venetian aristocracy sprang from rich commercial houses;
that of Florence, from bankers and money-lenders. In Germany
and France the possession of land was almost the exclusive source
of titles, and hence von and de, prefixes, in German and French
(meaning ".of"), denote the estate of the noble. Baron Von Humboldt means " The Baron of Humboldt," and it is an affectation,
generally speaking, for an American to retain the prefix de. By
buying a fine estate, a. Frenchman generally assumed to ennoble himself, and hence, when the French Revolution broke out, there were
eighty thousand French families claiming to be noble, "not three
thousand of whom," says an English writer, lugubriously, " were of
ancient lineage."  The French aristocracy was crushed out by one
decree of the French National Assembly (Republican) on the 18th of
June, 1790, which said: " An hereditary nobility is an institution
incompatible with a free state," and all titles, arms, and liveries were
forthwith abolished. Two years afterward all the records of the
nobility were burned. The present French nobles are merely descendants of Napoleon's marshals and officers.  All this will be explained in the chapter on French peers. Spain claims to have the
purest -nobility in Christendom.  The word " hidalgo" means the
" son of Somebody," and the class at large goes by the name of
grandees there.
The British aristocracy, however, keeps its position by wealth, the
profits of the vast estates hereditary in it, and British law and legislation are all suborned to keep these intact. There are in England,




72     THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
it is said, no more than thirty thousand proprietors of the land; in
Scotland and Ireland only nine thousand. The laws which perpetuate
this monstrous system are called entail and primogeniture, and that
the possession of land may not be burdensome to the aristocracy, it
is taxed inconsiderably, while the landless masses pay the enormous
expenses of the court, the army and navy, and the civil list.
The cost and character of some of these vast aristocratic estates
will stagger an American reader. The largest real-estate incomes of
America are probably derived from corporations like Trinity Church,
New York, or the Pacific railroads; and from a few private estates in
the chief cities, like those of Longworth in Cincinnati, Girard in
Philadelphia, and Astor in New York. What shall we say of the
Marquis of Westminster, on whose ground, in the fashionable part
of London, dwell three hundred thousand people? or of Earl Derby,
who owned the whole site of one manufacturing town of fifty thousand
inhabitants? The Duke of Bedford is scarcely less opulent in London real estate. And these extravagant possessions were the gift of
kings in barbarous times, transmitted intact under the protection of
laws no less extraordinary.
In this country of the United States, we travel long lines of railway, and see that the farms and dwellings are almost uniform. The
people, rich or poor, follow the impulses of emigration. It is rare
to find three generations of one family living upon the same family
estate. In England, however, the contrary is the rule. Few quit the
ancient home, be it castle or cottage. The conditions of men do not
change. The'splendid modern mansion of the nobleman, supplied
*with water and gas by modern contrivances, stands beside the picturesque ruins of his immemorial forefathers. The ivy-covered towers
and battlements overhang the Mansard roof and the polished panes
of modern window-glass. Only time has done its work of disintegration; the name of the estate is the same; the family is the same;
the tenantry of the living lord are children of the peasants of his
barbaric ancestors. This is the difference between England and
America: the land is the enemy and conqueror of the one; the other
is the conqueror of the land. When.mother earth decides against the
poor, then are they poor indeed.
Let us take up some illustrations of the estates of English noblemen.
The Marquis of Westminster has four immense and elaborate
country seats, namely, Eaton Hall, 1Halkin Castle, Motcombe House,




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                  73
and Fonthill, in the County of Wilts. Besides these he has a splendid city residence on Grosvenor Square. His pictures are valued at
three quarters of a million dollars. His income has been said to be
two hundred thousand dollars a week. The motto on the arms of this
gentleman is, "The virtue, not the mere lineage,'of race;" but his
possessions are great enough to comprehend both.
The Duke of Bedford, who owns a great part of that district of
London called Bloomsbury, derived his possessions from a characteristic accident. His ancestor was a plain squire, John Russell, who
lived on the English coast, near Weymouth, in the time of Henry
VII. At that precise time an Archduke of Austria was about sailing
from his province of Flanders to Spain. A storm arose in the English Channel, and drove him, much " demoralized," into the port of
Weymouth. Now, plain John Russell's relative was sheriff, or something of the sort, to that part of the country. He posted off, rapidly
to the court, to tell of this mighty visitor, and left the Archduke in
the company of John Russell. John proved to be a good fellow at
an aniecdote, a ride, or a dinner, and when the sheriff came back the
Austrian was so much infatuated with plain John Russell that be
insisted upon carrying him up to court. The people at court were
also delighted with Russell. He was retained there as a courtier,
and ennobled. In process of time he received an estate out of the
grand general confiscation of Abbey lands, and then Charles II., long
afterward, made his posterity Dukes of Bedford. The present Duke,
inheritor of John Russell's good luck, is also the descendant of that
Lord Russell who was executed for treason by the Stuarts, and
brother of Lord John Russell, the late English prime minister and contemporary of William H. Seward. He is said to pay Lord John, the
genius of the family, an annuity for keeping up the family talent.
The latter has also three residences, pr, as they are called in English
parlance, a " seat," a residence, and a " town house."  Lord John
Russell was made a peer in 1861. His eldest son is called Viscount
Amberly, while the eldest son of the Duke of Bedford gets the title of
Earl Grosvenor. The motto of them all is, " What will be, will be! "
The motto and arms of a peer are presented by the sovereign when
the patent of creation is issued. These are prepared by an old institution called the College of Heralds, and the science of heraldry is as
immovably maintained in England as the Lord's Prayer.
The book of the peerage is regularly issued in London at the first
of every year, and it is a huge, gilded volume, like a New York street
10




74     TiE NEW' WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
directory in size, of thirteen hundred pages. It tells all the deaths,
marriages, and births of peers and baronets in the year expired, names
the children of peers who have married commoners, recites extinct
and disputed titles and those "' in abeyance;" and all this is exhibited
with a solemnity of diction and a minuteness of detail which would
seem ludicrous to' an American. The volume for 1868 was the thirtieth edition of this ponderous dictionary of dignities.
So immense was the Duke of Queensbury's estate that the mere
legacy duty upon the settlement of it amounted to seven hundred thousand dollars. A property lawsuit between the Talbots and Berkleys
lasted one hundred and twenty years. Frequently great families inter-'narry to unite their landed estates. Thus, in the Cavendish family
there are two dukes. The father of the present Duchess of Hamilton,
John Fauqhar, gave one million four hundred thousand dollars for his
estate of Fonthill Abbey, second-hand, and the money which reared
this extravagant property came from slave labor in Jamaica. The Duke
of Athol planted at one time fifteen thousand acres of woodland.
The life of the British aristocracy should be, in the sense of selflove and the gratification of dominion, delightful beyond comparison.
At the head of the court and politics of a boundless empire, chief
possessors of an insular kingdom singularly endowed by nature, and
grand and various in its landscapes, visited by such dews as make
the foliage green, the grain and grasses big and juicy, and the cattle
and the horses large and strong, -to be a separate and a grander
class in such a klingdom must be a more national dream of empire
than Alexander ever realized.
Take a single exemplification, — the Duke of Devonshire, of the
family of Cavendish. One of his numerous estates is Chatsworth,
or the " Palace of the Peak," in Derbyshire. This nobleman belongs
to the house of Cavendish, and he is called, in the parlance of England, " a noble and generous landlord." Chatsworth is about forty
miles from Manchester. The estate is twelve miles in circumference.
There are eighty acres of mown lawn in the gardens alone, and forty
acres in the arboretum, or nursery of specimen trees. The estate is
entered by a grand gate, and over the splendid woodlands the great
mansion is seen to rise, far off, a square palladian building, of vast
proportions, erected in the time of William III. At the gate.is a
hotel for the accommodation of visitors, who are permitted to see the
palace and grounds freely. Some little distance off is the village of
Edensor, owned entirely by the Duke, in the midst of which is the




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                   75
parish church which he controls almost absolutely, filled with the
monuments of the Cavendish family. Entering the park, one sees
close before him the River Derwent, crossed by a stone bridge, with
statues above all the piers, and the velvet lawn beyond, cropped
close to the river's brink, is adorned with frequent figures inl stone,
marble, and bronze. The house itself, containing the masterpieces
of the sculptor, Grilling Gibbons, is decorated with marbles from
all foreign countries; the windows are composed of the largest panes
of plate glass, and all the sashes are gilded. A grand vestibule and
ha11, filled with noble statuary, and effigies wearing the armor of the
Cavendish ancestors, leads to a noble series of state apartments,
hung with rich tapestries, embroidered in remote times, and exhibiting
such scenes as the voyages of Ulysses and episodes of the Crusades.
Canova, Thorwaldsden, and the best modern sculptors, have made
this mansion illustrious with their works. The noblest paintings of
the masters of the middle ages line the walls. Through armories,
drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, great state bedchambers, amongst
whose furniture are the coronation thrones of George III. and William IV.,- which were the perquisites of former Dukes of Devonshire, as lords chamberlain, - by billiard rooms, through museums,
filled with articles of science and virtuoso, one wanders until he
tires of splendor, and then seeks relief in the gardens, the like of
Mwhich, public or private, we do not possess in America. There are
gates made of a single stone, moving upon a pivot; vaSt houses of
glass, wherein float, in great tanks of water, Victoria regias, whose
leaves will almost support a man's weight, yet are fluttered by the
artificial motion of a wheel in the water. "There are forty thousand
rhododendrons alone," says the description of the gardens. The
conservatory is probably the most extensive in the world. It is
approached by an artificial gorge of rocks, made up of great masses
tossed wildly together, and through this a carriage-way leads, by
such cunning curves, that one does not see the conservatory until he
comes bolt upon it. There is no necessity for dismounting; the carriage-road makes the circuit of the inside of the mighty glass building,
which covers one acre, is two hundred and seventy-six feet long, one
hpndred and twenty-six feet wide, and sixty-five feet high, is supplied
with fuel by a subterranean tramway, and warmed by seven miles
of pipes. These pipes alone cost seven thousand five hundred dollars, and the building contains forty miles of sash bars. From an
interior gallery one can look down upon a jungle of tropical trees,




76     THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
fruit, and flowers.  Here grow the banana, the India rubber, and
the dragon tree, the talipot, palm, and the American magnolia, and
lotus and papyrus float in tanks. Without there rises a tower, surmounted by the ducal flag, approached by a cyclopean aqueduct of
lofty arches, which carries up water from a reservoir of six acres near
by. This water is distributed to the numerous fountains, one of
which is a single jet geant, flung up lonesomely in the solitude of a
screen of lime-trees, whose tops it tries to reach, two hundred and
sixty-seven feet in the air. Another, and the greatest fountain, is a
colossal flight of steps, surmounted by a temple. Touch a valve, and
from every crevice of this temple water will burst, which, tumbling in
cascade down the flights of steps, disappears in the ground at the
bottom.
The stables of the Duke are also marvellous in the number and
breed of the horses, the number of which is not stated, but in 1862
the author counted the horses in the stable of the Earl of Derby, and
found them to pass one hundred and fifty. The hounds were not less
remarkable in breed and number. All the grounds are filled with
rabbits, hares, pheasants, and deer. Picked cattle graze in the
moist meadows, of stature and stride novel to Americans. There are
lodges all round the park, and game laws, besides, are made in the
Duke's favor. His many farms are spread round the country, for he
owns not only the park, but all the outlying landscapes; yet Chatsworth is only one of his " seats."  Others are Oldcotes and Hardwick Hall, the latter the prison of Mary, Queen of Scots, which bears,
in its architectures the monogram of " Old Bess of Hardwick, the
greatest member of the house of Cavendish." She was the wife of
an usher to Cardinal Wolsey, who obtained his share of the monastery
lands, seized from the church, for the spoil of the courtiers. She was
married four times, to men of large estate, in every case, and intermarrying her children with those of her husbands, their combined
lands and riches were transmitted to her posterity.
An instance of a different origin is that of Blenheim Park,
presented to the Duke of Marlborough for gaining the battle of
Blenheim. The mansion alone cost a million and a half of dollars,
and it is carved in trophies, surrounded by triumphal arches, columns, and statues, adorned with hanging woods above a lake of two
hundred and sixty acres, which is in turn crossed by a noble bridge.
The old oaks and cedars are planted in battalions to reproduce the




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                 77
plan of the battle of Blenheim. Twenty-seven hundred acres comprise this park, and the circuit of it is twelve miles.
These are scarcely exceptional instances. Similar noble estates
lie in every part of the United Kingdom. With education, means,
and taste, the aristocracy has refined horticulture and agriculture
beyond any previous condition they have gained. The hospitality
of these large estates is unbounded, after one has passed the arctic
circle of an English introduction.
N. P. Willis, while a member of the American legation in England,
had extraordinarily rare chances to observe the home life of English noblemen. I take some pages from his description of a week
spent at Gordon Castle, which MIr. William Howitt, an English
authority, has pronounced " the most perfect and graphic description
of English aristocratical life, in the country, which was ever written."
" Dismounting at Gordon Castle, in the midst of its noble park, I
followed a boy through a hall lined with statues, deers' horns, and
armor, and was ushered into a large chamber, looking out on a park,
extending, with its lawns and woods, to the edge of the horizon.'Who is at the castle?' I- asked, as the boy busied himself in
unstrapping my portmanteau.' Oh, a great many, sir.' He stopped
in his occupation, and began counting on his fingers a long list
of lords and ladies.' And how many sit down to dinner?'-' Above
ninety, sir, beside the Duke and Duchess.' —' That will do;' and
off tripped my slender gentleman, with his laced jacket, giving the
fire a terrible stir-up on his way out, and turning back to inform me
that the dinner.hour was seven precisely.
" A tall, white-haired gentleman, of noble physiognomy, but singularly cordial address, entered, with a broad red ribbon across his
breast, and welcomed me most heartily to the castle.  The gong
sounded at the next moment, and in our way down he named over
his other guests, and prepared me, in a measure, for the introduction
which followed. The drawing-room was-crowded like- a soiree. The
Duchess, a tall and very handsome woman, with a smile of the most
winning sweetness, received me at the door, and I was presented
successively to every person present. Dinner was announced immediately, and the difficult question of precedence being sooner settled
than I had ever seen it before in so large a party, we passed through
files of servants to the dining-room.
"It was a large and very lofty hall, supported at the ends by
marble columns, within which was stationed a band of music, playing




7 8k    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
delightfully. The walls were lined with full-length family pictures,
from old knights in armor to the modern dukes in kilt of the Gordon
plaid; and on the sideboards stood services of gold-plate, the most
gorgeously massive and thy most beautiful in workmanship I have
ever seen. There were, among the vases, several large coursingcups, won by the Duke's hounds, of exquisite shape and ornament.
" I fell into my place between a gentleman and a very beautiful
woman of perhaps twenty-two, neither of whose names I remembered,
though I had just been introduced. The Duke probably anticipated
as much, and as I too my seat he called out to me, from the top of
the table, that I had, on my right, Lady-, the most agreeable
woman in Scotland! It was unnecessary to say that she was the
most lovely.
"I- have been struck everywhere in England with the beauty
of the higher classes, and as I looked around me upon the aristocratic company at the table, I thought I had never seen'Iteaven's image double-stamped as man and noble,' so unequivocally
clear.
" The band ceased playing when the ladies left the table; the gentlemen closed up; conversation assumed a merrier cast; coffee and
liquors were brought in, when the wines began to be circulated more
slowly, and at eleven there was a general moveto to the drawing-roo.
Cards, tea, music, filled up the time till twelve, and then the ladies
took their departure, and the gentlemen sat down to supper. I got
to bed somewhere about two o'clock; and thus ended an evening
which I had anticipated as stiff and embarrassing, but which is
marked in my tablets as one -of the most social and kindly I lhave
had the good fortune to record on my travels. At breakfast the Duke
sat laughing at the head of the table, with a newspaper in his hand,
dressed in a coarse shooting-jacket and colored cravat; the Duchess
was in a plain morning-dress and cap of the simplest character; and
the.high-born women:about the table, whom I had left glittering with
jewels and dressed in all the attractions of fashion, appeared in the
simplest coiffure, and a toilet of studied plainness. The ten or
twelve noblemen present were engrossed with their letters or newspapers over tea and toast, - and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still greater. The soigned man of fashion of the night before,
faultless in costume and distinguished in his appearance,-in the
full force of the term,  was enveloped now in a:coat of fustian, with.a coarse waistcoat of plaid, a gingham cravat, and hobfnailed shoes




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                  79
for shooting; and in place of the gay hilarity of the supper-table
wore a face of calm indifference, and ate his breakfast and read the
paper in a rarely broken silence. I wondered, as I looked about me,
what would be the impression of many people in my own country,
could they look in upon that plain party, aware that it was composed
of the proudest nobility and the highest fashion of England.
" Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious hour,
and servants are generally dispensed with. Between breakfast and
lunch the ladies were generally invisible, and the gentlemen rode or
shot, or played billiards, or kept in their rooms. At two o'clock, a
dish or two of hot game, and a profusion of cold meats, were set on
the small tables in the dining-room, and everybody came in for a
kind of lounging half-meal, which occupied perhaps an hour.
Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of
which were drawn up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and saddle-horscs for gentlemen and ladies. Parties
were then made up for riding or driving. The number at the dinnertable of Gordon Castle was seldom less than thirty; but the company
was continually varied by departures and arrivals. No sensation was
made by either one side or the other. A travelling-carriage dashed
up to the door, was disburdened of its load, and drove round to the
stables, and the question was seldom asked,' ho has arrived?' You
are sure to see new faces at dinner, and an addition of half a dozen
to the party made no perceptible difference in anything. Leavetakings were arranged in the same quiet way. Adieus were made to
the Duke and Duchess, and to no one else, except he happened to encounter the parting guest upon the staircase, or were more than a
common acquaintance."
He is a poor nobleman who has not also a fine'town house' in
London, to which he repairs in the spring, and takes his place at court
and in society. But the real life of the aristocrat is in the country,
where he is not overshadowed by the sovereign, but all the county
turns out to his fox-hunt; his " patronage " is solicited by every mountebank and cricket-club, and flattery lifts him above the degeneracy of
a mere voluptuary's life. Ile is not simply rich, but he is a peer of
the realm. Still, this o'erdeserved human state leads to inflated
heights of self-esteem, and often to depths of baseness.
While Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington were types of the
American Revolution, the English statesman, Fox, their warmest admirer,-he who addressed Washington in terms of reverence, and




80     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
was also Bonaparte's friend, lived the life of a rou6 and a gambler.  His father gave him guineas for the gaming -table while
yet a lad, " that his spirit might not be broken," and left him seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay his debts. Within a few
years he was deeply embarrassed as before. Said Gibbon, the historian:
"Fox prepared himself for the holy work of emancipating the
clergy, by passing twenty-two hours in the pious'exercise of hazard.
His devotion cost him five hundred pounds an hour — in all eleven
thousand pounds."
Again a wild friend found him, after a night's debauch at the
gaming table, calmly perusing Herodotus in the original Greek. He
exclaimed that Fox seemed in no whit repining:"' What would you have me do," said Fox, " when I huve lost my
last shilling? "'
The great Lord Chatham, under whose administration Quebec and
Canada were annexed to the English colonies, turned his stomach
with strong ale, till gout and temporary fits of insanity marked his
career; while William Pitt, the humiliator of France and Bonaparte,
died of dyspepsia, induced by close attention to the bottle, so that
Malmsbury remarked, "' He died of old age at forty-six as much as
if he had been ninety."
There are few books more entertaining in criminal literature than
" Romances of the Peerage," " Crimes of the Nobility and Gentry,"
and others of standard authority. In our own day the giddy careers
of the Duke of Hamilton and of the Mliarquis of Hastings are fresh
in the mind of the reader. Gossip alleges that at least one of the
children of the Queen lacks "balance" for his eminence. It is,
indeed, an anomalous, though an ancient, condition of society, for a
few people to hold all the honors, control all the intellect, and
possess nearly all the land in a kingdom. This will not stand the
test of an age of mass-meetings and cheap newspapers.  In the
interest of the land, laws have been mainly made in England down to
the repeal of the corn laws. It will hardly be credited now, that,
under the plausible and selfish cry of, "Protect the British farmer!"
the millions of British people had to pay a high duty on imported
wheat down to 1849. This tax was the cause of starvation and
hunger throughout the kingdom, yet it was imposed entirely in the
interests of the landholders, the aristocracy. The Duke of Wellington coerced the passage of its repeal through the House of Lords,




THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY.                  81
himself under the coercion of Sir Robert Peel, the enlightened prime
minister.
A few Americans have been ennobled or knighted in England.
The title of Lord Lyndhurst, which expired about 1866, was shared
by his lady, formerly Susan Clarke, of Boston. He had been an
American. Tory.  The illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin was
knighted for his toryism in the American war, and Benjamin West,
our Pennsylvania colonial artist, became " Sir Benjamin."
I have omitted reference to the various orders of knighthood in
England. These confer honor and are much coveted; but they do
not confer nobility, and the honor is not hereditary. The orders of
British knighthood are, The Garter, The Thistle, Saint Patrick, The
Bath, The Star of India, and one or two more, of no consequence.
The Garter, with its well-known motto of" Honi soit qui mal y pense,"
is the proudest order of knighthood in England, perhaps in Europe,
with the sovereign at its head, and twenty-five knights.  It was
founded in 1350, meets once every year at St. George's Chapel,
Windsor, and the installation fees -are twenty-two- hundred dollars.
Amongst its present members are Louis Napoleon; the Kings of Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, and Prussia; Derby and Russell, the
statesmen, and the second Duke of Wellington. The Thistle is a
Scotch order of eighteen knights. The Knights of St. Patrick, Irish,
number twenty-four. The Bath is a military order, with nearly a
thousand officers, knights.
Such is an outline of the British aristocracy, and if we come to
examine the causes of their anomalous influence.over an active and
practical kingdom, we shall find these resolved to two, -their social
monopoly and their monopoly of the land. As a country, particularly
a small country like England, grows richer and more densely peopled,
the high circles of society and the land become less accessible.
Riches seek recognition; cramped people want land. And going
still one degree further in our inquiry, the land monopoly is the
parent of the social monopoly. A beggared and landless aristocracy
has no chance for perpetuation, as the history of the Venetian and
French nobility in our century proves. The British nobles, seizing
all the land, fir'' from the Saxons, then from the Catholic church
when they discL: ~ed it, adopted the laws of entail and primogeniture,
by which their,.g:eat estates were transmitted unbroken. Perhaps
this is not:~he'least of the causes which have driven millions of
British subjects to America and Polynesia, - a longing to own the
11




82     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
land monopolized by so few at home. The land is the best riches. It
is most grudgingly held in England. The millions pay rent, the
hundreds receive it. The better the skill and enterprise of the millions, the dearer grows the rent of the land under their feet. An
aristocracy, thus endowed, is not the shadow of an ancient lineage
merely  It is a powerful circle, which, despite the democratic
tendencies of the age, keeps its ranks unbroken and commands
homage.. Yet, despite its social graces, and the appeal it makes to
our love of pomp and luxury, its virtues touch our imagination
alone; for by the light of this century it is as baneful and unjust
as the worst relic of barbarism which has perished. The first step to
take in its overthrow is to do justice: Tax the land!  Remove
the burdens of an extravagant government from the poor and
landless, and lay them upon the ground.  Thus taxed, acre by
acre, the vast estates and parks will become expensive luxuries,
and must, though reluctantly, be broken up.  With land available, the commons will feel a new independence, and industry and
patience will rear a rival court; wealth, virtue, and intellect will
compose a new aristocracy.








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CHAPTER IV.
TIHE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
United States Capitol and British Houses of Parliament compared. - Sketches of Westminster Hall, Abbey, and Palace. -rThe House of Lords architecturally. - The lords and
the senators in their seats, relatively. - Officers of the House of Lords. - Business of
that body. - Descriptions of various scenes in that house. - Opening of Parliament.Impeachment. - Trial of a peer. - Riotous scenes. - Parliamentary law and manual.
A MILE from either arm of the Potomac River, on a commanding
hill, ninety feet above tide-water, stands the United States Capitol.
It is of Greek architecture, - in order, Corinthian. Two white marble wings, connected by a middle building of white freestone, over
the latter of which rises a white dome of iron, - that is the Capitol
at Washington. Take three dominos, and place two of them lengthwise against the ends of the middle one, stand a pullet's egg on the
middle domino, and you obtain a suggestive miniature of the building. It is the most extensive and costly edifice on the American
continent. It cost twelve millions of dollars, covers one hundred
and fifty three thousand one hundred and twelve square feet, or about
three and a half acres of ground, is seven hundred and fifty-one feet
long by two hundred and thirty-nine feet wide, and the dome is more
than two hundred and eighty-seven feet high, or two hundred and
seventeen feet, clear, above the main building.
The Capitol, as it stands, is the work of many persons, of whom
but two or three are noticeable. Dr. Thornton made the first design,
said by Washington to combine " grandeur, simplicity, and convenience." The architects retained but two or three features of Thornton's design, and preferred one by Mr. S. Hallet. B. H. Latrobe, of
an enterprising Maryland family, began to rebuild the Capitol on
Hallet's plan, after the British burned it, and a Mr. Bulfinch completed it. It was thirty-five years after the laying of the corner-stone
before a completed national Capitol existed in America.
John Quincy Adams was the first of our presidents who ever sent
a message intd an entire Capitol building. In like manner the exten83




84     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
sion of the Capitol has already (1869) occupied nearly twenty years.
Washington laid the corner-stone of the old, Webster of the new Capitol. The Brunelleschi of the house is Thomas U. Walter; the Ghiberti of it is Thomas Crawford.
Walter is incomparably the national architect.  HIe built the
Girard College, at Philadelphia; and on that building and the
wings and dome of the Capitol, his fame will rest.
This dome is the most ambitious structure in America. It is a
hundred and eight feet higher than the Washington Monument, at
Baltimore, sixty-eight feet higher than that of Bunker Hill, and twenty-three feet higher than Trinity Church tower, New York. It is the
only considerable dome of iron in the world, and it is, in this respect,
significant of the era of the republic and its industry. It is, also, the
only piece of ornamental architecture undertaken by the republic
which is at all worthy of our wealth and art. We must have halls
for Congress, and custom-houses and post-offices; but we need not
have domes. In this isolated case the country has consented to an
expensive edifice for other than practical considerations. More than
all, the dome is the real monument of the great war for the Union and
the overthrow of American slavery. It was begun in 1856, with the
rise of the Republican party; it was finished in 1865, when the Confederate flatg surrendered on the last field, and the defeated party came
back to plead for representation under the dome of the Union. The
echo of almost every hammer driven upon it, was returned by a cannon.
No day, not the darkest day of the war, saw the workmen frightened
from its scaffolds. With Early thundering on the east, and Lee far
in the northern. rear, and Beauregard at Fairfax Court-house, and
nMosby and Gilmore almost at Arlington, the flies at work upon this
eyrie of liberty crawled steadily up their filament ladders; the steamwhistle blew the signal for every girder, as they sent it aloft; like a
steamship at sea, with the storm of war beating across every horizon1
the engine under the dome never put out its fires; its lanterns burnt
every night.
The successor of Mr. Walter is Mr. Clarke, his pupil. Mr. Clarke
occupies a wooden cabin, in a green park across the way from the
Capitol. There he sits, much of the time, making models and
drawings, ciphering up the cost of marble per foot. and paint-per keg,
with Mr. Sears, his chief assistant, at a desk near by, and an appren,
tice or two draughting in India ink.
Mr. Clarke is a large, intellectual-looking man, with heavy eyebrows




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.                   85
and little beard. I-e was a pupil of MIr. Walter, the real architect of
the dome and the Capitol extension. MIr. Walter's photograph hangs
over Ir. Clarke's head,- a stout man of, say, sixty years of age, with
a luxuriant head of white and gray hair, white beard all around his
jaws, and a weary look, as of a mall who had to climb a great deal,
and was too fat for it.  Ile and Mlr. Clarke are both Philadelphians;
but Mr. Walter retired, satisfied that his work was in the best of
hands; and MIr. Clarke, having built the new library and carried out
all the designs of his predecessors, is engaged in the conscientious
work of making the Capitol building a more harmonious edifice.
Here is the Capitol as Mr. Walter found it: A building of freestone, painted white, supporting three wooden domes, all the cost of
which had been under two millions of dollars.  It was three hundred
and fifty-two feet long, and one hundred and twenty-two feet deep.
Here is what Mr. Walter did: He built a dome of iron on top of
the old freestone Capitol, and a marble wing against each end of it.
The dome cost about one million one hundred thousand dollars, and
the wings cost six million five hundred thousand dollars. To make the
old Capitol proportion itself well to the additions, short corridors
connected it with the wings.
Here is what Mir. Clarke has done: Finished up the designs of MIr.
Walter, completed the dome, worked out of the inside of the old Capitol a noble library, suggested and superintended all manner of details,
as statuary, ventilation, heating, rectifying old mistakes, and teaching
taste and harmony.
And this is what Mr. Clarke- wants Congress to do: Move the front
of the old freestone Capitol forward, and rebuild it of marble; put the
present front on the rear of the Capitol; extend the park of the Capitol so as to make it eligible for drives, and reform the architecture of
the interior of the dome, which is now a monotonous succession of
orders, so as to make two entablatures only, and not three.  To rebuild the central freestone building will cost two millions of dollars,
and to buy the land for the enlarged park will cost one million two
hundred thousand dollars.
This Capitol, standing in a wide, vacant, lofty arca of new lots and
green parks, is surpassed by but one legislative palace in the world,
- the Houses of Parliament, at Westminster, London.*  These make
$ The Parliament House at Melbourne, Australia, is four hundred and fifty feet long, two
hundred and twenty feet wide, and seventy-four feet high. The style of architecture is Roman Doric, and the:-building is surmounted by a tower and cupola upwards of two hundred




86    TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
one grand mass of Gothic buildings, situated upon a flat plain on the
brink of the River Thames, so low that the river often overflowed the
Parliament entrances in former times.
This mass of buildings covers nearly eight acres, or four acres and
a half more than the Capitol covers. Its length is nine hundred and
forty feet, its width about half as much, and the height of its tallest
tower is three hundred and forty feet, or fifty-three feet higher above
the ground than the dome at Washington. It contains over one hundred staircases, eleven hundred apartments, and more than two miles
of corridors.  Sixteen miles of steam-pipes heat it; four hundred and
fifty statues already adorn it, and there are spaces for more than two
hundred more. The plan of it was selected from ninety-seven competing designs. The architect was made a baronet. He was twentyone years at work upon it, and it cost three times his original estimate,
or, ultimately, about ten millions of dollars, in gold. This sum is
about equal, all things considered, to the cost of the Capitol of the
United States, which is proof that public works in England are more
conscientiously and more cheaply built than in America. The Parliament Houses would have cost us from twenty to thirty millions,
as we should have had to use depreciated currency, dear labor, and to
have made of the work a political "job." The new court-houses in
New York are said to have cost nearly as much as the vast Houses of
Parliament. I have made a statement of these details merely to prepare the mind of the reader for a more consecutive description of this
grand palace of Westminster.
If one will descend the hill of St. Paul's Cathedral, whence we
have already obtained a general view of London, and continue westward along Fleet Street, he will pass under Temple Bar, or arch, after a walk of twenty minutes, and the same Fleet Street prolonged
before him will take the name of " The Strand." Twenty minutes'
walk further will bring him to the end of the Strand, at an open
square, full of statues, and faced with fine hotels, and here, one of the
feet high. There are two legislative chambers, seventy-two feet long by forty wide; a
library forty feet square; two reading-rooms, and two restaurants, each of the four being
fifty by twenty-five feet.
The Parliament House at Ottawa, Canada, is to cost half a million dollars in gold. The
style is Italian Gothic. The building is to be five hundred feet long, and to support a
tower one hundred and eighty feet high. The two legislative halls are eighty-two by fortyfive feet. The building is rendered imposing by being placed on the bold bluff of the Ottawa'River, one hundred and fifty feet above the water. [See, further, the chapter on'" Canada
and Australia."]
The above are the chief legislative palaces of the British colonies.




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.               87
underground railways of London has established its principal depot.
The spot of confluence is called Charing Cross, and it is, except only
London Bridge, the spot of densest confluence in London or the
world.
At Charing Cross the streets break up and radiate. Go to the
right by the first street and you enter St. Giles, the abandoned quarter of the " West End," in ten minutes. Or go to the right by the
second street, and in five minutes you are in the tIaymarket, the street
of night-walkers and the region of theatres. Or go straight on, across
the square, and in ten minutes you are in Pall Mall and St. James,
the quarter of gentlemen's clubs and noblemen's palaces. But turn
to the left, by the broad street called Whitehall, and in ten minutes.
you are at Westminster.
Whitehall, like all the streets we have pursued since quitting St.
Paul's, follows the windings of the Thames River, and is within rifleshot of it.
Immediately on entering Whitehall one sees that the buildings
grow large and imposing. Soldiers, sentinels, mounted couriers, and
numerous policemen appear. To the right of this wide street are
the offices of the navy, the army, the treasury, the foreign secretary, and those other offices that we call in Washington by the general name of " The Departments." Behind these stretches the series.
of green parks, with the palaces on their further borders. To the
left are the police headquarters, -~- whose chief officer is a baronet,
- and a colossal fragment of the ancient palace of Whitehall, where
Wolsey and Elizabeth dwelt, and where Charles I. was beheaded;
the republicans who condemned the latter to die were hanged, drawn,
and quartered at Charing Cross behind us.
It is these objects which revive to us the past bloody and memorable associations of English history, and while yet in the glow of
their remembrance, we have come to the end of Whitehall; the River
Thames is close to the left of us, crossed by a magnificent bridge,
and right before us, separated by an open piece.of ground called
Palace Yard, are Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.
Here, for nearly a thousand years, the Kings of England have been
crowned, the royal court has been pitched, Parliament and State
trials been held, and the enemies or victims of kings have been pilloried and executed.
To the right stands the glorious Abbey Church, the oldest association of the spot, where, to this day, the House of Lords worships on




88     THE NEW WORLD COQPARED WLITH THE- OLD.
occasions of thanksgiving. Built in front of it, so that there is but
a narrow graveyard between, is the Church of St. Margaret, where
the House of Commons worships on similar days of rejoicing.
To the left, across the Palace Yard, is Westminster Hall, dating
back to the year 1087; it stands on the spot of burial of Edward
the Confessor, one of the last Saxon kings, at whose grave William,
the Norman Conqueror, was crowned Eing of England, and William
Rufus, the Conqueror's son, built this grand old hall, which is to-day
the vestibule of the Houses of Parliament.
The Abbey is a Gothic cathedral of blackened gray stone, whose
two great towers and front face across the parks, to the Queen's
Palace. Its rear or choir is toward Parliament, with gloomy cloisters and carved chapels attached thereto, like a garden and outhouses
to a dwelling. St. Margaret's Church is newer, but it carries its
spire with no more straightness than the old buttresses and pinnacles
which swarm around the oathedral.
The Palace Yard, between, is a cab-stand for the carriages of
members merely, but before this book shall become old, it will be
beautified and enclosed most probably; so will the Capitol at Washington be cleared of its commou surrounding buildings, and made to
exhibit itself more grandly.
But the Palace and the Abbey can never rise out of the ground
like our marble Capitol, which is placed Upon a hill, like the Acropolis
at Athens, or the Capitol at Rome. The Parliament Houses afford
no one grand view from any side. They lie below the level of the
surrounding streets. The approaches to the bridge of Westminster
are lifted above their lower windows.  From the Thames bank, opposite, there is an unbroken view of the river facade, but there the
Abbey is almost out of sight. From the parks, the confused towers
of Abbey and Palace show imposingly, but the body of both buildings is lost. From Whitehall we cannot see the Abbey plainly, for
the intervening Church of St. Margaret, and we observe only one
end of the Palace. The fourth side is yet more buried in blocks of
common houses, inhabited in many cases by needy or base persons.
In short, Westminster Palace (the proper name of the " Houses of
Parliament") is built upon its present site out of respect to the
ancient traditions thereof, with the characteristic respect of Englishmen; but the situation is obscure and bad on all accounts of
solid foundations, picturesqueness, and health. The sewer of the
Thames, beneath its windows, emits foul odors and dangerous vapors.




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.               89
The graveyard of St. Margaret, close by, is said to breed disease. A
bed of concrete, twelve feet thick, had to be laid, before the architect
dared proceed with his work, and the coffer dam and river wall alone
required nearly three years to complete them. The foundations of
Washington Capitolaon the contrary, were laid by nature, durably
and imposingly, and the dome of the Capitol is thirty-seven feet
higher above tide water, therefore, than the tallest tower of Westminster.
These natural defects omitted, the Houses of Parliament, which
are new as the newest parts of the American Capitol, constitute the
largest building which has been erected in England for many centuries. Excepting Milan Cathedral, and perhaps a few other Gothic
churches, it is the most elaborately ornamented building of the
Christian era. It is built of magnesian limestone, brought from Yorkshire, the color of which is somewhat like that of the New York brownstone, and this is supported upon river terraces of granite. The interior is of Caen stone from France, and of fine brick, and the trusses
and girders are of iron. The style of architecture is Gothic, of that
variety called Tudor, favorite three hundred years ago; and fretwork,
gilding, pinnacles, and statuary are profusely embroidered upon the
entire palace. Upon this English Gothic are engrafted studies from
the famous city halls and civil edifices of Belgium and Flanders, such
as the belfries and hotels de ville of Antwerp and Brussels, Lille and
Bruges. If from some lofty place one could look down upon the
whole edifice at one view, he would see that it is a vast, irregularly
oblong building, broken by pinnacles, bays, and buttresses throughout
its long outline. From the centre rises a dome surmounted by an
open stone Gothic lantern and spire, reaching the heighth of three
hundred feet. At each end are unlike towers, besides, - one eight
feet square and three hundred and fifty feet high; the other forty
feet square and three hundred and twenty feet high. The long river
front is further ornamented with a pair of wing-towers at each end,
-the two pairs, seven hundred feet apart,- almost the whole length
of the American Capitol, - and each of these wing-towers has crested
roofs, open-winged pinnacles, and gilded vanes, most exquisitely
wrought.
Remembering all this, we shall presently be able to go on with perspicuity. A vast Gothic parallelogram, with a dome and spire in
the centre and a tower at each end, —this is the situation on the land
side. A similar parallelogram, with a dome and spire in the middle
12




90     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and two towers at each end,-this is the view on the water side. Now,
what is remarkable about those two towers on the side of the land,
is this: the nearer and more slender one is the clock tower, with a
huge clock in the swollen top of it. This clock shows four illuminated
dials, each thirty feet in diameter; it chimes the quarters, and
strikes the hours, on a bell weighing eight tons. The farther and
greater tower is the largest square Gothic tower in the world. It
weighs twenty-eight thousand tons; the dome of the Capitol but four
thousand; the Victoria tower is ascended by four hundred and seventy-two steps. The architect, Sir Charles Barry, would not allow it
to be built up at a greater speed than thirty feet a year, for fear of
settling. In the front of this tower is an arch sixty-five feet high,
in which the great state carriages of the Queen and her suite are
driven. This tower is the principal marvel of the building, and it
is called in honor of the Queen. The clock tower rises up from the
side of the approaches to Westminster Bridge, and if you will stand
by that tower and strive to look down the profile of the building, you
will find the Victoria tower cut off from your view by a great old
battlemented hall, which has placed itself lengthwise along, the front
of the Palace, and parallel with it, as if striving to measure lengths.
This old hall is of a different color and of a pattern less florid than
the Palace. It is moved, so to speak, against the Palace, like a steamtug against the side of a full-rigged ship, and at its head rise two
strong towers of stone, while the rear or stern of it reaches just to
the middle of the Palace.
This is the ancient and spacious Hall of Westminster, built by
King William Rufus, and celebrated for its exquisite carpentery.
To retain it in his general pile of Westminster the architect has thus
ingeniously swung it alongside the new Palace, and made it the principal entrance hall.
The people enter Parliament Houses by walking into Westminster
Hall from the end of the Palace, near the clock tower. This takes
them for nearly three hundred feet down the face of the Palace.
Then turning to the left, at what was formerly the foot of the hall,
thev penetrate the Palace proper to the area beneath the central dome.
The Queen, on the contrary, always drives into the Palace under
the Victoria tower, at the opposite end. There are no other notable
public entrances.
These are the more bulky outlines of the great building, but its
details are intricate and rich with turrets, niches, figures of queens,




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.               91
kings, and statesmen, and exquisite pinnacles and bands of sculpture
between the stories, illustrative of heraldry, seals, and arms. Every
detail is wrought with nicety.  The noble towers appear to
lengthen themselves as we observe them, rising with the eye and the
wonder of their measurer; but the elaborate Palace is not the
product of any of those ages when Gothic architecture was a revelation of the mind, and consonant with man's existing faith and art.
It is a bran new imitation, successful and prodigious, but without
memories or inspirations of its own. It shows the power of British
science, but is in nothing besides the Britain of the century in which
it was reared. It is a perfect rose, -in wax. The same can be said
of the United States Capitol, but it will not be felt; for the Greek
architecture was akin to the Greek freedom, reviving which, the various
peoples of the eighteenth century revolutionized, — ourselves the
first. Every republicanized nation, as it shook off its fetters, returned
to classical models for laws, heroes, and architectures. In Paris they
built the Pantheon; at Washington, the.Capitol.
While we look up at the blossoming outlines of this wonderful Palace, the story of its site may be vividly called before us. This spot was
a little island beside the Thames once, called Thorney Island. In
the seventh century a small monastery was founded here. The later
Saxon kings built a palace beside it. The Norman Conqueror, anxious to flatter the conquered and take advantage of all superstitions,
was also crowned here, beside the good King Edward's tomb, on
Christmas day. Here he gave thanks for his victory also. His successors continued to ornament the site, at the expense of the good
citizens of London, who, said Henry III., sneeringly, " called themselves barons on account of their wealth."  Here the fabric of Parliament was built up. In a nook of the Great Abbey Church the
House of Commons sat for three hundred years. The great hall,
now vestibule'of the new Parliament Houses, was meantime the
rendezvous of the peers. The great courts of law were set up on
this site. Here the captive King of France was received most royally.
Here the barons in armor extorted privileges from  the sovereign.
Here direful anathemas were pronounced amidst the quenching of
tapers. Here single combats were fought out in the sovereign's
presence. Clerk of these works of Westminster was once Geoffrey
Chaucer, the earliest of our great poets. After Agincourt, the victor
came here in glorious state. Then the River Thames was the royal highway, filled with barges, and traitors were sent hence to the Tower.




92     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
In the yard of this Palace perished Raleigh. In the vaults of it
waited Guido Fawkes, with match and gunpowder, and he also, with
his co-conspirators, was hanged here. Here Charles I. was tried, and
Cromwell inaugurated. Down to our own time all great state trials
have been held here, not the least notable of which was that of Tarren Hastings, which occurred in the ratter years of George Washington's life, and was concluded four years after the ground was bought
for Washington city. The year Mrs. John Adams moved into the
unfinished White House, its first tenant, the Irish Parliament was
here annexed to the English. The novel of " Barnaby Rudge," by
Charles Dickens, will give one an interesting idea of the dreadful
religious riots which raged round Parliament in the closing years of
the American Revolution. The year before our second war with
England broke out (1811), Percival, the Prime Minister, was murdered in Parliament. The year the Missouri compromise was passed,
the King of England (Geo. IV.) was prosecuting his wife in Westminster Hall for divorce. The year Andrew Jackson was inaugurated
President for the second time, slavery in the British Colonies was
abolished here. The next year following, 1834, or twenty years after
the British had burnt the Capitol at Washington, the Houses of Parliament took fire and burnt to the ground. As a temporary Capitol
(afterwards the Old Capitol Prison) was set up at Washington in
one hundred days, so in one hundred and twenty-five days the British
Parliament met in the restored ruins of their Palace. The oldest
part of the present American Capitol, the centre, was completed in
1825; twenty-five years afterward the wings were commenced; in
1856 the new dome was commenced. In 1840 the corner-stone of
Parliament Houses was la-id. Neither Palace nor Capitol are yet
entirely completed.
Let us now enter the Houses of Parliament. Passing up a few
steps we enter Westminster Hall, sixty-eight feet wide and forty-two
feet high. The roof is splendidly carved in oak, and ornamented with
many royal devices. Formerly it was hung with guidons, standards,
and battle ensigns. To repair this roof in 1820, - nearly five hundred years after its first construction, — old ships-of-war were broken
up, and their stout and storied timber was employed. Statues of
kings flank this great hall, and when we have walked to its further
end, two hundred and thirty-nine feet, we mount a flight of steps,
sixty-five feet in height, lighted by a grand Gothic window, of stained
glass, forty-eight feet high by twenty-five feet wide. Turning to the




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.                93
left, we take a passage at right angles to the great hall behind us,
ninety-five feet long, thirty feet wide, and fifty-six feet high. This
splendid hall is all of one level; it is decorated with frescoes, and
marble statues of IIampden, MIansfield, Clarendon, and other statesmen.
This second hall, when we have traversed it, terminates in an
octagon seventy feet square, which lies directly beneath the central
dome and spire, that we have noticed without. From this octagon,
which is at the centre of the Parliament Houses, corridors pass by the
right to the House of Peers, and by the left to the House of Commons. Taking the passage to the right, we are in the lobby before
the House of Peers.
The peers' lobby is thirty-eight feet square; four lofty arches open
out of it, and the archway leading to the House of Lords is closed
with gates of massive brass, which are eleven feet high, and weigh
a ton and a half, and are richly decorated.
The bronze doors leading to the United States House of Representatives are seventeen feet high. They weigh ten tons, and are
altogether mQre remarkable than those of the House of Lords.
The House of Lords' chamber is ninety-one feet long, forty-five
feet broad, and forty-five feet high, almost an exact double cube.
The United States Senate chamber is not so high by nine feet, but it
is twenty-one feet longer and thirty-seven feet broader. The Senate
chamber has a separate seat and desk for each senator, or less than
a hundred places in all. These commodious desks are arranged in
semi-circular fashion, so that all the senators face toward the VicePresident. The senate galleries will accommodate a thousand persons. The House of Lords, however, gives benches to two hundred
and thirty-five peers, who face each other in rows lengthwise. The
galleries in the House of Lords give place to few spectators, and that
part of the chamber which, with us, is filled by the presiding officer
and his clerks, is generally unoccupied, in the peers' chamber, for
there stands the Queen's seat, the empty throne. The Senate chamber is surrounded by walls of a buff color; the ceiling is of iron,
handsomely embossed and gilded, and the only light afforded is
through panes of enamelled glass in the roof. There are neither
paintings nor statues in the Senate chamber. The House of Lords,
on the contrary, is most gorgeously decorated. Six lofty windows,
in painted glass, on either side, show full-length portraits of past
kings and queens. Three archways, in either end, show fresco




94     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
paintings of allegory, or English history. Between the windows and
the arches, are canopied niches, whose pedestals are supported by
angels, bearing shields, and in the niches stand the bronze effigies of
those barons who forced the great charter from King John. The fiat
ceiling is magnificently charged with monograms, mitres, croziers,
shields, and heraldic symbols, and these are crossed by massive
beams, gilded like solid gold, and all inscribed with mottoes of loyalty
and religion. Busts, arms of bishops and peers, and infinite feudal
cognizances, spangle the sides, borders, recesses, and ceilings. There
is a reporter's gallery, and behind it a " strangers'," or spectators',
gallery. At the opposite end from the throne is the bar, a sort
of screen and railing at which counsel plead, and to which come members of the House of Commons. Next to the throne is the clerks'
table. Nearer the body of the house are the crimson-colored woolsacks, or cushions, of the officers of the House of Peers. The
carpet on the floor of this beautiful chamber is of a deep-blue ground,
spangled with gold-colored Norman roses. The members' seats,
reaching lengthwise, leave a fair open space at each end, and four
superb brass candelabras light the area between, each seventeen feet
high, and weighing twelve hundred pounds.
The empty Royal Throne is always the object of the greatest attention. It consists of a chair and footstool mounted upon a low platform, and covered with a triple canopy. The legs of the chair rest
upon libns. The back of it is bordered with crystal and velvet, and
surmounted by the lion and unicorn. Roses, thistles, shamrocks,
and other devices are carved upon various parts of this seat, which
stands upon a low platform covered with scarlet carpet, fringed with
gold, and powdered with white roses and lilies. The Queen's footstool
has carved sides, and a crimson velvet top, embroidered with roses
and lilies. There are chairs near by, for the Prince of Wales and the
sovereign's Consort, both splendidly gilded and carved.
On either side of the throne, doors open into the Prince's chamber,
a smaller apartment, ornamented with Tudor fireplaces, with paintings and with portraits; and behind this chamber a royal gallery, one
hundred and ten feet long, and forty-five feet wide, splendidly decorated with frescoes and stained glass, reaches back to the Queen's
robing-room, near the Victoria tower.
The number of peers differs somewhat every year, but it may be
said to be at present in the neighborhood of four hundred and sixty,
including minors.




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.                95
The following was the list in 1868: -
Princes of the blood royal.                    4
Dukes.20
Marquesses.                                   18
Earls.109
Viscounts..                             22
Barons.                                      215
Peers of Scotland.                             16
Peers of Ireland.28
English and Welsh Bishops.                    26
Irish Bishops.                                  4
Total                                      462
Besides these the greater judges are generally summoned, to assist
and advise the House of Lords. It will thus be seen that there are
six times as many members of the House of Lords as of the United
States Senate, but the number generally sitting bears about the
same proportion to the House of Commons as do our senators to our
representatives. The speaker of the House of Lords is called the
Lord Chancellor, who is the custodian of the Queen's Great Seal, an
important judge, and an officer of vast power and patronage. His
salary is fifty thousand dollars a year; he has an official residence,
holds his office at the Queen's pleasure (which means as long as his
party keeps in office), and he retires upon a pension of twenty-five
thousand dollars a year.
On the table before this " bewigged and begowned" Lord Chancellor, who sits uncomfortably balanced upon a crimson pillow-case,
called the " woolsack," are placed the mace and the seal-bag. The
first is his presumed gavel, and the second contains the great seal.
The mace is five feet long, silver gilt, elaborately chased and carved
with a crown, orb, and cross. The seal-bag is of crimson silk, embroidered in gold, fringed with gold bullion, tied by a silken cord,
and inside of this bag the precious seal is further tied up in a leather
pouch and a silk purse. The seal is merely a pair of silver dies, six
inches in diameter and three quarters of an inch thick, in which
melted wax is poured to take an impression of the device engraved
there. The seal of Victoria represents that monarch, robed and
crowned, on horseback, and on the reverse side the same good lady is
enthroned between Justice and Religion. When the Queen comes to
die this seal will be cut into four pieces and deposited in the Tower.




96     THE NEEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
They used to break up the great seal, and give fragments of it to the
poor, perhaps " to cure the king's evil."
The Lord Chancellor need not be a peer; he-is not addressed by those
who claim the floor, but they address themselves to "My Lords;"
neither has he the right to decide who has the floor, nor.the right to
keep order. His office is costly, showy, and nondescript.
The Queen appoints deputy speakers when the Lord Chancellor is
absent or debating.
The Chairman of Committees is a peer who presides in committee
of the whole, and at some other times; he is not a political officer,
and is usually re-elected every session; he gets twelve thousand five
hundred dollars a year, and the counsel who assist him get seventyfive hundred dollars.
The Clerk of the Parliaments gets twenty thousand dollars a year,
a residence and a pension. He is appointed by the Queen, and his
assistants are appointed by the Lord Chancellor.
The Sergeant-at-Arms is the sheriff of the house; he carries the
mace before the Lord Chancellor, keeps order in the lobbies, and gets
seventy-five hundred dollars a year.
The foregoing officers, correspond to the officers of the United
States Senate. The Lord Chancellor resembles our Vice-President,
but gets forty-two thousand dollars more salary th than the latter. The
Senate has also a Secretary, an Executive Secretary, and a Sergeantat-Arms; but the House of Lords has another officer whose duties are
mainly ceremonial; he is called the Gentleman-Usher to the Black Rod.
He is a Knight of the Garter. He ushers the Queen into Parliament.
He carries messages to the House of Commons. Peers charged with
crimes are committed to his custody. This officer is a sort of connecting link between the sober business of Parliament and the fantastic artificiality of the court.
As in the Senate chamber, the two political parties cho6se, of their
own will, opposite sides, so in the House of Lords the long seats on
the Lord Chancellor's right hand are occupied by the administration
party, with its leaders on the front bench. On the Lord Chancellor's
left, facing the administration party, sit the opposition. If there are
neutrals, as is frequently the case, they take the cross benches in
front of the Lord Chancellor.
This is the House of Lords or Peers, — a body constituted to support the rights of the crown, and having full powers in all legislation,
except the voting of money. Its members can vote by proxy. All




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.               97
bills of amnesty and those affecting the rights of the peerage, emanate from the crown and are introduced into this house.
The House of Lords is the highest tribunal in the land; it tries
appeals from the Court of Chancery and impeachments made in the
I-louse of Commons. When a grand jury indicts a peer, he is tried by
his peers.
The Queen never comes to Parliament except with solemn ceremony
to open, adjou-P  or dissolve it. A hundred and fifty years ago the
sovereign was a.:equent spectator.
The sixteen Scotch peers who sit in Parliament are elected every
year by the eighty-four nobles who constitute the peerage of Scotland.
There are over two hundred Irish peers, only twenty-eight of
whom are representatives in the House of Lords.
Those ceremonials and representative sittings of the House of
Lords, of which we propose to give examples in the present chapter,.
will comprise:
First, the Qpeen's appearance in the House of Lords to open, prorogue, or dissc l'e Parliament.
Second, a trial by the House of Lords, acting in its capacity of juryfor the trial of a peer.
Third, so ne characteristic points of debates in the House of:
Lords.
Before we enter irto these descriptions it is necessary to say that
the two chanreers of Lords and Commons comprise but a small part of
the vast bulk of the Parliament Houses. These two chambers are
conveniently ear each other, but, besides them, there are eleven
courts open to the sky, and eighteen official residences within the
Parliament Palace limits.  Libraries, committee and refreshment
rooms, conference tnd reading rooms, are parts of this great building; telegraph g<-ces connect Parliament with the clubs - where
members coL'tm(, y loiter out the evenings —with the city of
London, with the Continent of Europe and with the Atlantic Cable.
There is, Lowever, an extensive part of the Palace, in the rear of the
House of Lords, devoted entirely to the convenience of the Queen.
In a former chapter the sovereign has been described as she proceeds with her cl,urt to open Parliament in state. That description
concluded with the Queen's entrance to the Victoria tower.
The Victoria tower stands at that corner of the Parliament buildings immediately opposite the public entrance we have -made use of
1?




98     THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
when passing into Westminster Hall. The Queen and her suite drive
under the Victoria tower, and the Queen, descending, mounts by -a
grand stairway lined with statues of sovereigns to what is called her
robing-room. Her carriage, meantime, passes on below to a large
court-yard within the Palace, where it turns and comes back to the
foot of the staircase under the Victoria tower, to await her descent.
In the United States Capitol there is one small apartment, in the
rear of the Senate, called the President's room, line-'with. vari-colored
marbles, and excessively frescoed. The President is never seen in
this room more than two or three times a year, when he comes at the
close of a session to sign bills immediately upon their passage.
The Queen, however, ls an integral part of Parliament, and a large
part of the Parliament Palace is devoted to her uses. The great
square tower, which is so expensive and so majestic a part of the
Palace, is merely a sort of triumphal arch under which she may pass,
and nearly all the space between this tower and the rear of the House
of Peers is taken up by her staircase, guard-room, robing-room, and
gallery. When the queen has been escorted by her suite up the royal
staircase, she passes through the "Norman porch," which is embellished with statues and paintings of the Norman sovereigns, to her
robing-room, -a small but exquisite chamber painted with scenes
from the legend of King Arthur and the court of chivalry.
Here the queen is robed by her attendants, everything being convenient in the way of accessories,- mirrors, toilet articles, whatever
could fit out the most fastidious belle for a ball, - and, besides the
garments in which she is arrayed, she is fitted with her crown, and
the sceptre is placed in her hand.
The two Houses of Parliament have, meantime, been three days
organizing, taking oaths, etc., in anticipation of this event, and the
House of Peers is now waiting for the Queen, while the House of Commons is waiting for the House of Peers. The peers ire all in their
robes; the Lord Chancellor is ready with the Qt. en's' speech, which
she has got pretty nearly "' by heart," meantime, as;her prime minister
wrote it for her; the Gentleman-Usher to the Black Rod, with his rod
in his hand, is itching to bow the way before the Queen to her throne.
At last they are all ready; cannons fire, outside; the Queen moves
on, with her richly clad household and grand officers behind her, the
Black Rod scraping before; and the splendid royal gallery, with its
gilded ceiling, is crowded on both sides with peeresses and people of
distinction, who have come to see the ceremony. The sovereign




TIHE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.               99
clears thlle long gallery, passes the vestibule called the "Prince's
chamber," and appears before Parliament.
Here let us take up the scene, as continued from our second chapter, of Victoria's first opening of Parliament. We are indebted for
much of it to IMr. James Grant, a celebrated Parliamentary reporter.
So early as twelve o'crock, HI., the interior of the HIouse of Lords,
on the day Victoria ope~ned Parliament, was nearly filled by peeresses
and their daughters; by one o'clock it was quite full; and so great
was the anxiety to obtain a view of the young Queen, just eighteen
years of age, that even the gallery of the House- of Lords was filled
with the female branches of aristocratic families by twelve o'clock,
all, as in the body of the house, in full dress.  Lady Mlary M1ontague has given a graphic description of the siege which a troop of
duchesses, countesses, and other titled ladies, laid to the door of the
gallery of the House of Lords, when, in her time, some interesting
debate was expected, and how, when they found, after a ten hours'
assault, the gallery was not to be taken by storm, they succeeded in
effecting an entrance by stratagem. The ladies, in the present case,
were not under the necessity of attempting an entrance into the gallery by sheer physical' force, for they had, in most cases, procured a
Lord' Chamberlain's order of admission; but several of them effected
an entrance by the persuasive eloquence of their pretty and fascinating faces, accompanied by a few honeyed words, which the officers
could not resist.
Similar persistent efforts on the part of the ladies are made to enter
the Senate chamber when the President is inaugurated. On such
occasions the Sergeant-at-Arms, acting under orders from the VicePresident, keeps the galleries and doors.
"Some of the British peeresses, on the occasion we are describing,
carried the joke still further, and actually took forcible possession of
the front seat in the gallery, which is always specially and exclusively appropriated, for the gentlemen of the press. This seat is
capable, on an emergency, of containing, including a back form,
about thirty persons, and yet, on this day, only three reporters were
fortunate enough to obtain admission; and even they, but for the
accidental circumstance of having taken possession of their places
the moment the door was thrown open, would also have been among
the excluded. And.what does the reader suppose would have been
the consequence?.- Simply, that not a word of the important proceedings in the House of Lords on the opening of Parliament- by the




100    THIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Queen, beyond a copy of the speech, which is always sent from the
government offices to the newspapers, could have appeared in next
day's papers.
"The three'reporters already referred to, when they saw the rush of
the ladies to take possession of the unoccupied seats, felt, in the first
instance, inexpressible surprise; but, on recovering themselves, the
predominant feeling in their minds was one of gratitude to their stars,
that they had been fortunate enough to.possess themselves of their
places.
" There they sat," moans Mr. Grant, " for two long hours, amidst
a large assemblage of the fairest of the fair, literally hidden from the
sight of those who were lucky enough to get a peep into the house
from the door, by a forest of waving plumes of feathers of'the richest
kind. By one o'clock the house had an appearance which, I am convinced, may be said with truth, it has seldom, if ever, presented before.
The whole of the benches on the floor and the two side galleries were
occupied by the female portion of the families of the peers, all attired
in their costliest and most magnificent dresses. I will not attempt to
describe the effect produced on the mind of the spectator by the dazzling splendor of the jewelry they wore."
The nearest approach we -Americans can make to such a scene is
grand opera night on the advent of some yjouthful new prima donna.
All the ladies had to sit about two hours before the arrival of the
Queen, and while there were no proceedings in the house; and yet
everything was quiet. Meantime opera-glasses were employed upon
each other as liberally as we make use of them in our full-dress public assemblies.
A little before two o'clock, a discharge of artillery announced that
Her Majesty was on her way to Parliament. This made great flutter
amongst the ladies, and some wished they were outside, while everybody outside wished they were in.
A short time passed away, and the striking up of a band of music
on the outside announced the near approach of Her Majesty. A few
moments more elapsed, and the thrilling tones of the trumpet intimated that Queen Victoria, though as yet unseen, was proceeding
along the passage to her robing-room, and would be in the midst of
them presently.
Here the ladies in the House of Lords indulged in lively anticipation of the Queen's wardrobe. They were not left long in doubt, for
after various noises in the rear of the throne, and a few seconds more




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.             101
of fluttering, Victoria entered the IIouse.  The peeresses and all
present simultaneously rose. The young girl Queen, laden with
jewels and precious garments, bowed in by the usher, according to
his best knowledge of l deportment," and followed by the nobility
of her court, clinbled fair and blushlling up the steps of the throne.
I1er Mlnjesty, having taken her seat on the throne, desired the peers
to be seated. The intimation was known to be equally meant for the
ladies. The Commons were then summoned into the royal presence.
In the interval. before their coming, the brilliant audience scanned
the Queen's childish face and slender figure with mingled respect
and criticism. She had been tutored to keep her self-possession, but
maidenhood was sensitive beyond royalty, and by the rules of
etiquette none dared approach to soothe her or to relieve her, and as
yet she had no husband whose near presence and sympathy she could
feel.
Very soon, however, the wild buffaloes of the House of Commons
were heard approaching.
No sooner had the door been opened, in obedience to the mandate
of the Queen, which leads into the passage through which they
had to pass, on their way to the bar of the House of Lords, than you
heard ia patting of feet as if it had been of the hoofs of. some two or
three score of quadrupeds. "This, however," says one present, " was
only one of the classes of sounds which broke on the ears of all in
the House of Lords, and even of those who were standing in the
royal passages leading to it. There were foud exclamations of'Ah! ah!' and a stentorian utterance of other sounds, which
denoted that the parties from whom they proceeded had been suddenly subjected tQ some painful visitation. All eyes, not even
excepting the eyes of Her Majesty, were instantly turned towards
the door of the passage whence the sounds proceeded. Out rushed,
towards the bar of the House of Lords, a torrent of members of the
lower house, just as if the place they had quitted had been on fire,
and they had been escaping for their lives. The cause of the strange,
if not alarming, sounds, which had been heard a moment or two before, was now sufficiently intelligible to all. They arose, from what
Mr. O'Connell would call, the mighty struggle among the members,
as to who should reach the House of Lords first, and by that means
get nearest to the bar, and thereby obtain the best place for seeing
and hearing. In this mortal competition for a good place, the honorable gentlemen exhibited as little regard for each other's persons as




102    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
if they had been the principal performers in some exhibition of physical energy in Donnybrook Fair. They squeezed each other, jammed
each other, and trod on each other's gouty toes.
"The most serious sufferer, so far as I have been able to learn,",
adds Mr. Grant, " was one of the honorable members, who had his
shoulder dislocated in the violent competition to be first at the bar.
Even after the 31I. P.'s were fairly in the presence of their sovereign,
there was a great deal of jostling and jamming of each other, which
extorted sundry exclamations indicative of pain, though such exclamations were less loud than those before alluded to. The Irish
members played the most prominent part in this unseemly exhibition, and next to them the English ultra radicals; the tories cut but
a sorry figure in the jostling match. The liberals were, as the saying is,'too many for them.' I thought with myself, at the time,
what must the foreign ambassadors and their ladies, who were present, think of English manners, should they, unhappily, form their
notions on the subject from the conduct, on this occasion, of the
legislators in the lower house? It was a rather awkward exhibition
for a body of men arrogating to themselves the character of being'the first assembly of gentlemen in Europe.'"
Her Majesty having taken the oath against popery, which she did,
in a slow and serious, yet audible manner, proceeded to read the royal
speech, which was handed to her by the Lord Chancellor, kneeling on
one knee. The most perfect stillness reigned through the place
while Her Majesty was reading her speech.
The speech being ended, Victoria descended from the throne, and
with slow and graceful steps retired from the House to her robingroom, a few yards distant, nodding, as she did on her entrance, to
most of the ppceresses as she passed.
In a few moments, by the cheers -outside, it was known that she
was returning to her palace, and her route was marked by the same
affectionate testimonials as before.
On the conclusion of the Queen's speech, both Houses adjourned,
as is usual on such occasions, till five o'clock, when they again met
to discuss the royal oration, and to consider the propriety of voting
an address to Her Majesty, expressive of the gratitude of the Legislature for her most gracious speech.
In both Houses there was a large attendance of members, while
the galleries were crowded with strangers.
In proceeding along the passage which leads to the reporter's




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.             103
gallery in either House, immediately previous to the commencement
of the debate, it was an interesting sight to witness the reporters of
the evening newspapers, with a number of boys all ready to be
despatched to their several offices, with the copy in piecemeal so
soon as prepared, sitting at a table, with the necessary apparatus
of pen, ink,-and paper before them, and each more eager than the
other to give a practical proof of the accuracy and expedition.
Divest this scene of its stars, garters, insignias, and extravagant
ceremony, and it will be seen to resemble very much any ordinary
state pageant in the United States. Here, however, women cannot
be eligible to office at the present time, whereas, in the English government, a woman stands at the pinnacle of the edifice of state.
Similar scenes happen when the sovereign prorogues, or stops,
Parliament for a stated time, and when she dissolves it, or commands its official life to cease.
No Parliament can sit longer than seven years, nor more than six
months after a sovereign's death. When a sovereign dies, Parliament
must meet instantly, even if it be Sunday. The Queen cannot prorogue Parliament more than eighty days, although when they meet
again she may again prorogue them. In 1867-68 was held the third
session of the seventh Parliament of Victoria's reign. At the same
time the forty-first Congress of the United States was in session.
It frequently happens that Parliament is opened with no more
dignity by the sovereign than we count our electoral votes in joint
Senate and House.
I have fallen upon a very humorous instance of the manner in
which William IV. appeared, reading the royal speech prepared for him
by the politicians. He was Victoria's uncle. The day the King
opened Parliament was unusually gloomy, which, added to an imperfection in his visual organs consequent on advanced years and to
the darkness of the old House of Lords, especially in the place
where the throne is situated, rendered it impossible for him to read
the royal speech with facility. MIost patiently and good-naturedly
did he struggle with the task, often hesitating, sometimes mistaking,
and at others correcting himself. On one occasion he stuck altogether, when, after two or three ineffectual efforts to make out the
word, he was obliged to give it up, when, turning to Lord Melbourne,
the Prime Minister, who stood on his right hand, and looking him
most significantly in the face, he said, in tone sufficiently loud to be
audible in all parts of the House, "' Eh! what is it?"  " The infinite




104    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
good-nature and bluntness with which the question was put," says a
looker-on, " would have reconciled the most inveterate republican to
monarchy in England so long as it is embodied in the person of
William  the Fourth."  Lord Melbourne having whispered the obstructing word, the King proceeded to toil through the speech, but
by the time he got to about the middle, the librarian brought him
two wax tapers, on which he suddenly paused, and, raising his head,
and looking at the Lords and Commons, he addressed them, on the
spur of the moment, in a perfectly distinct voice, and without the
least embarrassment, or the mistake- of a single word, in. these
terms:"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,"I have hitherto not been able, from.want of light, to read this speech in
the way its importance deserves; but, as lights are now brought me, I will
read it again from the commencement, and in a way which, I trust, will command your attention."
He then again, though evidently fatigued by the difficulty of reading in the first instance, began at the beginning, and read through
the speech in a manner which would have done credit to any professor of elocution, - though it was clear he labored under a slight
hoarseness, caused most probably by cold. The sparkling of the
diamonds in the crown, owing t6 the reflection caused by the lighted
candles, had a fine effect. Probably this was the first occasion on
which a King of England ever read his speech by candle-light, at the
opening of his Parliament.
This sovereign was Victoria's predecessor on the throne, and during
his reign the celebrated " Reform Bill" was passed, which the House
of Lords so strenuously opposed that a creation of new peers in mass
was threatened. The King was largely controlled by the Lords' party
in the crisis, but he was obliged to yield at last, and I shall instance
the sort of debate that preceded his appearance, to demonstrate that the
House of Peers is frequently coarser and more boisterous than our
Senate.
"Their Lordships," says the newspaper report, "met at three o'clock.
The Iouse was crowded in1 every part. The Lord Chancellor having,
as was understood, left the woolsack for the purpose of receiving
His Majesty, Queen Victoria's uncle, whose arrival had been announced by the firing of the Park guns, and the cheers of the multitude assembled outside the House. The King had come to dissolve Parliament.




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.            105
" The Earl of Mansfield rose and said: I move that the Earl of
Shaftesbury do take the chair pro tempore.
"4 The Earl of Shaftesbury took his seat on the woolsack.
" Lord Wharncliffe: I believe there can be no doubt in your Lordships' mind as to the purpose for which we have this day met.
" The Duke of Richmond rose amidst the greatest confusion: I
rise to order. Some noble Lords are not in their places. I move the
standing order of the House, that they do take their places.
"A noble Lord: I dissent from the suggestion of the noble
Duke.
"The Duke of Richmond: I maintain it is a standing order of
the House that the noble Lords take their proper places on such an
occasion as the present, and if that order be not complied with, I
will move another standing order,'That persons not members of
the House be ordered to withdraw.'
" The scene of confusion which here ensued defies description. A
number of peers, in all parts of the House, were calling out,' Order!
order!' at the full stretch of their voices, while the peeresses who
were present, -of whom there were many in full dress, —were
greatly alarmed. In the midst of the scene a noble Lord, supposed
to be Lord Lyndhurst, made some observations which were not
heard.
"The Duke of Richmond: I have to complain of the use of such
language as that which has just fallen from the noble Lord; and I
shall move that the standing order against offensive language be
read. [Renewed uproar, which it is impossible to describe.]
"When it had somewhat subsided, the Marquis of Londonderry's
voice was heard. He spoke in a very loud tone, and exhibited the
utmost violence of manner. He said: I rise to order. I maintain that I am in possession of the House. I rise to accuse the noble
Duke of bringing forward a very unfounded charge. I am not aware
of any offensive language being used on this side of the House which
could provoke the remarks of the noble Duke.
"The Marquis of Clanricarde: After what has fallen from the
noble Marquis, itis most desirable that the noble Duke should persist in his motion for the observance of the standing orders of the
House.
" The Marquis of Londonderry: I call on the noble Duke to mention any offensive language which has been used by the noble Baron
(Lord Lyndhurst). It appears to me that the noble Duke begins to
14




106    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE- OLD.
think that he is to be the hero of the coup d'etat on this occasion,
and that he fancies he can smother that feeling which is essential to
the expression of the sentiments of noble Lords on this most extraordinary meeting. It appears to me that the noble Duke is endeavoring, to set aside the right of peers to declare their sentiments, by
having recourse to so miserable an expedient as that of moving the
standing orders of the House. The cries of'Order! order!' which
now resounded through the House were deafening. They were
mingled with shouts of I Order of the day!' during which, Lord
Wharncliffe rose and said: Without wishing to provoke a discussion. on the subject, I am anxious that it shall be entered on the journals of the House, that I, in my place yesterday, did give notice that
I would move an humble Address to His Majesty, not to exercise his
undoubted prerogative of dissolving Parliament. I now beg leave
to read the address to your Lordships.
" The noble Lord here read the address, which was to the effect, that
it appeared to the House that under the extraordinary circumstances
in which the country was placed, and the excitement then existing
in the public mind, a prorogation or dissolution of Parliament was
likely to be attended with the most disastrou's consequences. (Loud
cries of " Hear! hear! " from the tory benches.) The Lord Chancellor at this moment entered the House, and addressed their Lordships in the most emphatic manner in the following terms:'My
Lords, I have never yet heard it doubted that the King possesses
the prerogative of dissolving Parliament at pleasure; still less have
I ever known a doubt to exist on the subject at a moment when the
lower house has thought fit to refuse the supplies.'
" Here there were tumultuous cries of' Hear! hear!' mingled with
shouts of'The King! the King!' and tremendous uproar.
" The Lord Chancellor having retired from the House to receive His
Majesty, confusion reigned.  The Marquis of Londonderry called
on Lord Shaftesbury to take the chair. [Cries of' Order! order!''Lord Shaftesbury!'' Shame! shame!''The King!' and the greatest uproar.]
"The Earl of Shaftesbury having taken his seat on the woolsack, a scene of confusion ensued, of which it were impossible
for words to convey any idea.  When it had partially subsided,
the Marquis of Londonderry rose, with much warmth of tone and
violence of gesture, and said,.' As long as I hold a seat in this
House, I will never consent to-'  [The uproar was here renewed




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.             107
with such tremendous violence as to prevent the noble MIarquis fromn
proceeding further.] It having again partially subsided, the Earl
of Mansfield rose, and said,' lIy Lords, such a scene as this I
never before witnessed in your Lordships' house, and hope I never
shall see anything like it again. I have heard from the noble and
learned Lord on the woolsack, with the utmost surprise, that it is theundoubted right of the crown to dissolve Parliament when the House
of Commons refuses the supplies. The noble and learned Lord had
indeed, perhaps, with wilful ignorance, declared this to be the fact.
I will use no intemperate language, but I will nevertheless assert, as
far as God Almighty has given me the means of understanding, that
the crown and the country are now about to be placed in a most
awful predicament, unparalleled at any previous period.'
" The noble Earl was proceeding in somewhat the same strain, when
loud cries of' The King o the King!' announced the approach of His,
Majesty, who, on entering, immediately mounted the throne with a
firm step, and, begging their lordships to be seated, he, after one or
two forms had Ueen gone through, delivered his speech dissolving the
Parliament."
The " Times" account of this extraordinary affair concludes
thus: "It is utterly impossible to describe the scene that presented itself in the House from the commencement of the proceedings up to the very moment of His Majesty's entrance. The violent
tones and gestures of noble Lords; the excitement, breaking down
the constitutional usages, not to say civilities, of life, astonished the
spectators, and affected the ladies who were present with visible
alarm. In a word, nothing like this scene was ever before witnessed
within the walls of Parliament."
There are several striking examples of trials of peers by the House
of Lords, but I have selected, to illustrate this function of the
superior House of Parliament, the trial of Lord Kingsborough for
the murder of Henry Gerald Fitzgerald. The latter was a natural
son, and a man of bad passions. He seduced the former's daughter,
his own cousin, and, after being exposed, again attempted to decoy
her from her father's house. In this attempt he was discovered, and
while engaged in a deadly struggle with her brother, Lord Kings.
borough shot him dead. This case fills many interesting pages of such
books as the "Romances of the Aristocracy," and " Tales of Noble
Families," - a class of books very popular with British females of high




108    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD
and low degree. The parties were Irish, but the " stage business,"
as one denominates it, is precisely the same nowadays.
It is from the enterprising annalist, Burke, that I derive this
sketch.
It was on the eighteenth of May, 1798, the year before Washington died, that the trial took place in the House of Lords. IMuch
interest was excited by the affair, as, since the case of Lord Byron,
in England, nothing of the kind had been known. It was a tragedy
new alike to the actors and the audience, and the imaginations of
either were proportionably raised beyond the level of ordinary occasions. The usual place of meeting, a small though handsome chamber, being too confined for the business on hand, the peers marched
in grand procession into the House of Commons. First came the
Masters in Chancery, with the robed judges of the inferior courts;
next came the minor orders of nobility not entitled to-vote, and the
eldest sons of peers; lastly, the peers themselves advanced, two by
two, all save John Fitzgibbon, the first Earl of Clare, who walked, in
solitary dignity, without a companion. "We will not," says Burke,
"dwell upon the bowings and the bendings employed by the various
subordinates in the preliminary discharge of their duties, neither will
we stop to recount all the crossings to the right and to the left, and
the reverences to His Grace, the Lord High Steward, on the woolsack. If they occupied much time, and to little purpose, we will not'
commit the same error by repeating them.  It is enough for the
present purpose to have noticed that such was the case."
When these ceremonies had been gone through, the royal commission was read aloud, appointing the Earl of Clare, Lord High Steward, all the peers standing up the while with their heads uncovered.
To this succeeded the reading of the writ of certiorari, with the
return to it, the indictment before the grand jury, and the finding of
a true bill by Boyle and Fellowes. Finally, the Clerk of the Crown
called upon the Sergeant-at-Arms to do his duty, whereupon the latter came forward and cried: "Oyez! oyez! oyez! Constable of
Dublin Castle, bring forth Robert, Earl of Kingston, your prisoner,
to the bar, pursuant to the order of the House of Lords. God save
the King!"
A profound silence followed this summons, every eye and ear
being stretched in anxious expectation of the prisoner. After a delay
that seemed more than long enough to the excited audience, though
it could not have lasted many seconds, the Earl was ushered in by




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.            109
Constable and Deputy Constable of Dublin Castle, the latter being
on his left hand, and carrying an axe, with the edge turned from him,
in token that he had not as yet incurred the last fatal penalty of the
law. He then bowed.lowly to the High Steward, and again: to
the peers on either side, after which he knelt to the bar, -" a degree
of humility," says the reverent Burke, " that might have become guilt
when soliciting for mercy, but hardly seems appropriate to a man
facing his judges in the bold consciousness of innocence."
The degradation, however, if it really were such, was short-lived.
He was directed by the High Steward to rise, whereupon he repeated
the former ceremonial, which this time was acknowledged by all
present, and Lord Clare thus addressed him from the woolsack: —:" Robert, Earl of Kingston, you are brought here to answer one
of the most serious charges that can be made against any man, -the
murder of a fellow-subject. The solemnity and awful appearance of
this judicature must naturally discompose and embarrass your Lordship. It may, therefore, not be improper for me to remind your Lordship that you are to be tried by the laws of a free country, framed for
the protection and punishment of guilt alone; and it must be a great
consolation to you to reflect that you are to receive a trial before the
supreme judicature of the nation; that you are to be tried by your
peers, upon whose unbiased judgment and candor you can have the
firmest reliance, more particularly as they are to pass judgment upon
you under the solemn arid inviolable obligation of their honor. It
will also be a consolation to you to know that the benignity of our
law has distinguished the crime of homicide into different classes.
If it arise from accident, from inevitable necessity, or without malice,
it does not fall within the crime of murder; and of these distinctions,
warranted by evidence, you will be at liberty to take. advantage.
Before I conclude, I am commanded by the House to inform your
Lordship, and all others who may have occasion to address the court
during the trial, that the address must be to the Lords in general, and
not to any Lord in particular."
"This last remark, in all likeli'hood," says the same critic, " proceeded from the general non-acquaintance with such proceedings, they
having slept so long in abeyance."  The Clerk of the Crown next
commenced the usual interrogatories: —
"How say you, Robert, Earl of Kingston, are you guilty, or- not
guilty, of this murder and felony for which you stand arraigned?"
"Not guilty," replied the noble prisoner.




110    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"How," resumed the clerk, " will your Lordship be tried?"
"By God and my peers."
"God send you a good deliverance  "
Proclamation was then made by the Sergeant-at-Arms:" Oyez! oyez! all manner of persons who will evidence upon oath
before our sovereign Lord, the King; against Robert, Earl of Kingston,
-the prisoner at the bar, let them come forth and they shall be heard,
for he now stands at the bar upon his deliverance."
To this appeal there was no answer, and, after a short delay, that the
witnesses, if there were any, might have time to come forward, Lord
Clare demanded of Curran, the counsel for the accused, whether due
notices had been served of the removal of the indictment into the High
Court of Parliament. This demand was met by evidence showing
that such notices had been served on the widow and children of the
deceased; and again proclamation was made, requiring any witnesses
for the crown to come forward with their testimony. None replying
to this second summons, the peers in succession pronounced their
verdict of " Not guilty, upon my honor;" when Lord Clare informed
the accused of his unanimous acquittal, upon which the latter made
three low bows and retired. Not the least impressive part of this
ceremony, if we look only to the imagination, was the symbolical
form which now concluded it. The white staff being delivered to the
H-Iigh Steward, he held it in both hands, broke it asunder, and declared
the commission was dissolved.
It is this identical form of trial which is liable to be revived to-day.
An instance of appeal lately made from the highest under tribunals
to Parliament was that of Mrs. Yelverton, proceeding against her
dishonorable husband, though " a gentleman" in the English sense.
The peer commanded more mercy than the woman, and, to the disgust of the English Commons, the wife's plea was rejected.
A notable example of condign punishment visited upon a peer was
the case of Earl Ferrers, about a hundred years ago. He butchered
his steward for rendering some testimony in favor of the Earl's divorced wife, and was condemned to be hanged and anatomized at
Tyburn. He proceeded to the gallows in his wedding-suit, congratulating the people on the way that they were to see " a gentleman"
die. Drunkenness and indecency, the usual accompaniments of an
English execution, marked hangman and spectators, but the gentleman was hanged with a silken cord.
Frequently, at the trial of peers, swords have been drawn in the IIall




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.             111
of Westminster by retainers of the various contestants. This has not
occurred for some years, and one of the last illustrations of the sort
was the trial of Lord Gray, of Work, indicted for seducing Earl
Berkley's daughter. The latter would not quit her paramour, and
the Earl's friends put it to the arbitrament of cold steel.
The history of England is fruitful in episodes of impeachment. We
have had two or thred such trials in the United States, and the latest
of these is yet in the memory of the youngest reader. It was the
arraignment of a President before the Senate on impeachment by a
vote of the House of Representatives. The trial was long, dramatic,
and futile, and, in a certain sense, reactionary upon its abettors. In
like manner Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, was tried
on presentment of articles of impeachment for seven years, and he,
also, was acquitted.
When the House of Commons impeaches, a member rises, makes
the motion, and offers his proofs. If the House concurs, this member,
with several of his friends, goes up to the bar of the House of Lords,
and impeaches the offender.' The trial is held in Westminster Hall,
the Lord High Steward presiding, and Commons attend in Committee
of the Whole. The peers vote guilty or not guilty, "upon my
honor!"
If guilty, the Speaker of the House of Commons demands judgment. -Either the House of Commons can rescind, or the crown can
pardon, after conviction.
When the House of Lords ".divides " on a vote, or passes through
tellers, the division is ordered by the cry of "Not content!"
No motion in the Lords need be seconded.
The House of Lords is called "'an estate." Sometimes it is considered as two " estates," one being the lords spiritual, the other the
lords temporal. Parliament, properly speaking, is composed of the
crown, these two, and the Commons. We have fallen into a fashion
of calling our House of Representatives " Congress," as the English
often improperly call the House of Commons " Parliament."
A petition addressed to the peers must begin: "To the Right
Honorable, the Lords Spiritual and'Temporal, in Parliament assembled."
The longest Parliament ever assembled was in 1661, A. D., which
existed more than sixteen years and a half, and one of the shortest
was in 1830, which expired in less than six months.
The House of Lords has exclusive jurisdiction in matters affecting




112    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the peerage. The Irish peers in it are elected for life by the body of
the Irish nobility, and the sixteen Scotch peers are also elective.
Three peers present constitute a quorum- in the House of Lords.
This house seldom holds sessions on Wednesdays or Saturdays, and
it jneets at five o'clock, P. M. If a peer gets in the rear of the Lord
Chancellor's woolsack, he is not considered to be in the House of Lords,
and cannot vote there. If a peer undergoes examination before a
select committee of the lower house, he sits with his hat on.. So jealous are the peers of their own superior station that, although the law
prescribes joint committees for the transaction of business between
the two houses, no such committee has been appointed for a hundred
years. No motion made in the Lords needs to be seconded. If several peers rise to speak together, the peers, and not the speaker, say
who shall be heard.
By right, the peers take specified seats, according to their relative
dignity and the antiquity of their peerage; but this is seldom insisted
upon. Young noblemen on attaining majority take their places without paying fees or without ceremony, while newly created peers must
pass both gauntlets. Peers and Commons alike sit with their hats on,
after the manner of a Quaker meeting.
Protestant and Catholic peers take different, oaths. The Scotch
peers show their certificates of election. Except the Princes of the
blood and the Lord Chancellor the peers take the oath in bodies.
Peers, with writs of summons, present their writs kneeling on one
knee to the Lord Chancellor. - The House of Lords is daily opened
with prayers, after which strangers are admitted by ticket. When
sitting as a court anybody can enter.
In the United States, the President has the power of vetoing bills,
returning them, with his objections, to the house in which they originated. His assent is signified by merely taking up a quill and signing them, and toward the close of a session he occupies a room in the
Capitol building for the express purpose of signing bills as rapidly as
they are passed. Or they need not be signed at all; for if he neglect
them for ten days they become laws.
The Queen has, also, the veto power, but she dare not exercise it
in the present state of English public opinion. The last refusal to
sign.a bill passed by Parliament occurred in the time of Queen Anne,
1707. Victoria gives her royal assent either by special commissioners,
or in person, robed, crowned, and seated on her throne in the House




THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS.              113
of Lords. The bill is read by its title, and the assent is rendered for
the Queen, by the Clerk of the Parliament, in Norman French:"La Reyne le veut."  [The Queen wills it.]
To bills of supply he gives her answer: —
" La Reyne remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi
le veult."  [The Queen thanks her good subjects, accepts their kindness, and wills it."]
A bill becomes an act immediately when the royal assent is rendered.
The following chapters will take up in detail many functions of the
peers performed jointly with other branches of the government.
Such is the House of Peers, imperfectly portrayed, and the reader
has been leminded of its likeness to the American Senate in many
particulars. The Senate, indeed, in many of its traditions and parliamentary laws is copied from the House of Lords.
The Senate, like the House of Lords, never completely expires, but
laps over from Congress to Congress, from administration to administration. It is the conservative body, with less direct responsibility
to the people than the lower house, and it is closely interwoven with
both the executive and the legislative government. It appoints to
office jointly with the President. It passes bills jointly with the
House. Its President is generally the Vice-President, who goes up to
the chief lmagistracy in certain contingencies. It is a court to try
judges and presidents. As the House of Commons must come to the
Chamber of Peers when the Queen opens Parliament, so does the
House of Representatives come up to the Senate when the President
is inaugurated. The Senate is partly of Roman, and partly original,
but chiefly of English, origin, created by the written constitution of
the country, and set going nearly at the beginning. The House of
Lords was the original Parliament of England, wrested from the absolute tyranny of the throne, and the House of Commons, ih turn, was
coerced from the Sovereign and the Lords. With us the people were
first; with the English the King was first.
In the growth of time the latest body has become the most powerful
of all, both in America and England, and the Senate and the House
of Lords are a. present the most honorable, and yet the most unpopular bodies in  ither government. In 1867 the House of Representatives consented to the passage of a Tenure-of-Office Bill, giving the
Senate a veto power over the President's removals. This act vastly
strengthened the Senate, yet led to troubles which perplexed the
15




114    TIHE NEWV  WORLD COMPARED'WITHE THE OLj
state, and in the end raised in certain extreme minds a queb
identical with a mooted one in England,- whether the Senate amL
the Iouse of Lords alike were not dangerous and irresponsible bodies.
Bitter experience has taught the IhIouse of Lords to consent to such
legislation as the Commons demands. The Senate in like manner
generally gives way to popular will. If the House of Lords holds
out, the only relief is to create enough new peers to outvote, them.
But we cannot create more senators except by admitting more States,
and over this the Senate has joint legislation. The senators are
elected by State legislatures, and in several cases where the latter
bodies are demoralized, it is claimed that gross corruption enters
into the choice. But, collectively, the United States Senate is the
finest body of legislators in the world, physically, at least. In 1867
they were of the average height of five feet ten and a half inches,
and above the average weight of one hundred and seventy-one pounds.
The English peers are also of dignified bearing, and frequently of handsome presence. But the tendency of thought and indignation in
England is no less against the aristocracy in its social and landed,
than in its legislative, relation. In every land rationally governed
there must needs be a body midway between impulse and tyranny,
popular passion and absolute magistracy. But whether this body
shall be hereditary, and invigorated by occasional accessions from
-the people, or indirectly elective, is the dilemma of English thinkers
at the present day. Americans think that there can be but one conclusion upon this question. What has preserved the British aristocracy is mainly this: that it is the most accessible and democratic
aristocracy in history. Its abuses are from the past, its virtues are
from the present.




CHAPTER V.
TIIE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE IIOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
Comparison of their places of meeting, parliamentary laws and behavior, and rise and development in the state.- Individual exemplifications of their leaders and oratory.- England considered in her constituencies. -The reform bills of 183 2 and 1867. -Statement
of the relative merits of the English and the American manner of representation. -
Various scenes in the House of Commons.
BY this time we are well acquainted with the Houses of Parliament. We see that the chambers of the Commons and the Peers
occupy the same relation to each other architecturally, as the Senate
Chamber and the Hall-'of Representatives at Washington. But those
two chambers in the Parliament Houses are deeply buried in the core
of the buildings, while in the American Capitol their counterparts
occupy the body of the two large wings.
Hidden in their vast Gothic palace these British chambers of legislation are no more than a couple of seeds in a melon.  "The palace
itself," as a reviewer says, " delights only those who see in it a stone
embodiment of the British Constitution -the slow, irregular, but
picturesque growth of ages."  Others, like Lord Brougham, believe
that it is "barbarous in the extreme to erect a Gothic structure for
parliamentary purposes in the middle of the nineteenth century."
Be this as it may, we have now but to return from the I-louse of
Lords alone the main corridor which passes under the great central
dome, and, crossing the lobby of the Commons, we enter the House
or Chamber of Commons. The Speaker of the IIouse in his chair and
the Queen, when enthroned in the Lords, face each other four hundred
and fifty feet apart, and midway between them is'the Octagon.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, in like manner, faces
the President of the Senate, and midway between them is the Rotunda.
The Hall of Representatives is one hundred and thirty-nine feet long,
ninety-three feet wide, and thirty feet high, and galleries running
quite round it give seats to twelve hundred spectators. The shape
of the hall is rectangular, and the Speaker sits on one of the wide
115




116    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
sides, facing the main door of entrance. His chair is placed upon a
conspicuous platform; a marble bar or table stands before him, and
this is again enclosed by the marble bar of the clerks. As with the
senators, each representative has a desk especially assigned to him,
and a comfortable chair. In the fortieth Congress tthere were two
hundred and thirty-two members.
The Hall of the House of Commons is seventy-five feet long, fortyfive feet wide, and forty-one feet high, or only about half the size of
the Hall of Representatives, with galleries on three sides. It is a
rectangular chamber, but the Speaker sits on one of the short sides,
or at the end, facing the main door of entrance. Over the head of
the Speaker, as in the American Congress, is a reporters' gallery.
Behind and above the reporters' gallery in the House of Commons,
is a sort of bird cage, with wire gauze in front, and this is the only
place which ladies are allowed to enter; for by rule they are forbidden in the House of Commons. There are places for only sixty
" strangers" or spectators, and these can be vacated by the whim of
any member crying out: "Mr. Speaker, I see strangers in the
House!"  The Speaker sits under a canopy, carved with the royal
arms, and he wears a white wig and a black gown. Before him is the
clerk's table, whereon is placed the Speaker's mace, a weapon of so
little real use as to deserve the name which Cromwell gave it of the
" fool's bauble."  The seats run lengthwise down the house, on each
side of the Speaker's chair, and there are short cross-benches by the
door. No member has a desk or table; all sit as in church pews,
with a pulpit in the middle, or, as I once heard a profane American
say, "The arrangement of seats is like that of a pit for dog-fighting,
open at the ends." There were six hundred and fifty-eight members
in the House of Commons in 1868, but seats for only four hundred
and twenty-eight. The average attendance is three hundred. The
Chamber of Representatives at Washington.is approached through
the noble semi-circular hall of the older Capitol, with columns, sculpture, and light, worthy of a Roman Senate House. Out of this a
short aisle, closed with massive and elaborate gates of bronze, leads
to the light and airy lobby which completely encloses the iew Hall
of RepresentatiVn. Opening from this lobby are committee rooms,
post offices and telegraph offices, and magnificent marble stairways,
which lead to the lobbies and galleries above. That side of the lobby
which lies behind the Speaker's chair is the private lobby of the
Speaker and members, and along it are the office rooms of the Speaker,




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 117
the Clerk, and the Sergeant-at-Arms. From this lobby two splendid
bronze stairways d6scend to the commiftee rooms, restaurant, etc., in
the basement. These lobbies have no official use, but are merely
places for conversation or promenading.
In the IIouse of Commons, the two long lobbies on either side of the
Speaker have actual uses. and they are called "division lobbies,"
that to the Speaker's rigllt hand being for " ayes," that to the left
for " noes."  When a division is called for, to precisely ascertain
the vote upon any question, the two political parties muster their
members, and the House is filled. Two minutes only are allowed
after the moving of a question for absentees to appear, and these are
marked by a sand-glass, which the Speaker turns upside down. Then
the door is closed, and he puts the question.
"I think the ayes have it! " he says, when they have voted orally.
" No! no!" from the other side.
"The ayes to the right, the noes to the left!" he says. Then
everybody leaves his seat, and goes out of the door to the right or to
the left, according to his vote, the doors being cut through the long
-benches. Two tellers are appointed for each door, picked from both
political parties. The members re-enter in single file, are counted
by the tellers, and a clerk, in wig and gown, standing at a little box,
takes the numbers. The four tellers- then' form abreast, and retire
backward, bowing, while that teller whose party has won the vote
takes the right-hand side.
In the House of Representatives, when tellers are demanded, the
members merely walk through a couple of tellers down the main'aisle of the Hall, and return to their seats by the side aisles.
The Hall of Representatives is even more elaborately ornamented
than the Senate Chamber, and gilded overhead between the painted
skylights. It contains, like the Senate, separate galleries for ladies,
gentlemen, and the foreign diplomatic body. The House of Commons is much plainer than the I-ouse of Peers. It has twelve side
windows, painted with the arms of boroughs; the ceiling is flat, with
the ends inclined, and the house is lighted by skylights, with gas
jets above them. The floor is of perforated iron, covered with mats,
and hot or cold air is admitted at will below. The benches are
painted green, and the walls are panelled with oak.
Take a meeting-house, and put half-a-dozen rows of benches
lengthwise down it on each side, sloping up in gentle tiers, so as to
leave the space in the middle open. In the centre of the open space




118    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
put a table; at the foot of the open space put a chair under a canopy,
something like an old-fashioned bed. Cut an aisle across the long
seats, paint the benches green, and grain the walls oak. Now, fill
the seats with men, with their hats on, and put wigs and robes on the
Speaker, and a few other officers, and a sword on the Sergeant-atArms. The general effect will be that of a Quaker meeting, sitting
as a jury, with some Episcopalian bishops amongst them as judges.
This is the House of Commons superficially.
We have often made complaints of the -acoustic properties and
accommodations of our Halls of Congress, but Parliament has altogether the worst of the two bargains. The " British Almanac" for
1869, says:" When designing the Houses of Parliament, in all that enormous
space room could only be found for something less than two-thirds
of the members of the House of Commons; and the building, erected
at a cost of millions, as the place of meeting of the Legislature, is
actually so constructed, that no arrangements can be made for more
than two-thirds of the working sections of it being present at the
most important discussion. Even a prominent member of the ministry stood, for hours,'unable to get a seat.' The peers have less
difficulty to be seated than to be heard." It has been seriously proposed, indeed, that both bodies shall vacate the Palace of Parliament, except on ceremonial occasions, and remove to separate
buildings.
In a severer tone, a humorous reviewer in the "London Quarterly"
for 1857, says:"This, then, is the room in which laws are made for some one hundred and forty millions of people, and in which, through ages to come,
in all human probability, laws will continue to be made for Britain and
her dependencies..... The roof looks like the inside bottom of a
huge barge. The chamber was, originally, far more handsome; but
the principle of acoustics had not been studied, and opposition members were incessantly rising and attacking clauses which the government had struck out ten minutes before, while the supporters of the
ministers were defying their antagonists to divide on amendments of
which they had announced the withdrawal. It was felt that either
the architectural beauty of the chamber must be sacrificed, or pantomime and the speaking-trumpet must be introduced into the British
constitution."
The Capitol of the United States is not above critieism in these




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 119
respects, but it is a far more commodious and sensible edifice than
its vaster and more elaborate rival.
Dismissing the architecture of the palace henceforward, we
come to the composition of the House of Commons as it existed in
1868.
Through the enactments of the Reform Acts of 1830-32, the House
of Commons consisted of six hundred and fifty-eight members, who
were returned, as follows:English County Members,.      143
- University,...         4  71
Cities and Boroughs,         324 
Welsh County Members,.             15
Cities and Boroughs,          14  29
Scotch County Members,.            30 
Cities and Boroughs,          23 
Irish County Members,....  64  105
----  University,...2  105
----- Cities and Boroughs,...  39
The effect of the Reform Act of 1867 will be considered further
along in the chapter.
The Speaker of the House of Commons is chosen by each Parliament for the whole of the session, and from amongst its own memnbers. If, during that Parliament, the political sentiment of the
country changes, the Speaker still keeps his place. Mr. Shaw
Lefevre was Speaker from 1839 through three Parliaments. He re.
ceives twenty-five thousand dollars a year and a furnished residence,
and at the close of his official life receives a peerage and a pension
of twenty-thousand dollars. He is also a member of the Queen's
Privy Council. He gives only the casting vote, " names " for censure contemptuous members, and in extreme cases orders members
into custody. The Queen is permitted by law to refuse to confirm
the Speaker after the House elects him; but if she should really do
this the country would start up in violent agitation.
This officer is, in almost every respect, the model of the office of
Speaker of the American House of Representatives. He gets about
four times the salary and perquisites of the American Speaker,,however.
The chairman of Committees of the Whole House is also chairman
of the Ways and Means Committee, and some other committees of;
the House. He is a censor and inspector of all. private bill$;. his




120    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
salary is seventy-five hundred dollars a year, and the office is a
political one.
The Clerk of the House of Commons holds for life. He is appointed
by the Queen, and appoints his own clerks, of whom there are thirtysix. He presides at the election of a Speaker, and his office is almost
identical with that of the Clerk of the House of Representatives at
Washington. His salary is ten thousand dollars, and his two principal assistant clerks receive seventy-five hundred, and five thousand
dollars a year respectively. The Clerk's in America is a political
office, and he-is dismissed at every change of party, and also in some
cases by the party which elected him.
The Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons is a sort of constable to the Speaker.
He appoints the doorkeepers, porters, and pages, is the ceremonial
officer of the House, and is paid six thousand dollars a year, with an
allowance for house-rent. He wears a sword at his side.
The Sergeant-at-Arms in 1868 was a nobleman, three of the clerks
were baronets, and the superintending short-hand writer was the same
official in both Houses. In the United States, the sergeant's office,
through " constructive" mileage, the rendering of duplicate and
fraudulent accounts, and the use of funds entrusted to the Sergeant
for his own influence and profit, has become discreditable. The
following persons are ineligible for membership in the House of
Commons: government contractors, police justices, sheriffs, mayors,
bailiffs, judges of the superior court, tax, custom, and stamp officers,
foreigners, clergymen, pensioners of the crown, bankrupts, English
peers, Scotch peers, and Irish peers sitting in the House of Lords.
Nobody but members is allowed to perambulate the House of Commons, whereas, in America, ex-members can claim the privilege of
the floor. A county member must own property worth three thousand
dollars a year; a borough member one-half that amount.
A member accepting any office under the executive government
has to be re-elected to retain his seat in the House of Commons. He
cannot resign his seat in the Commons except by accepting an office
under the crown, and there are various nondescript and sinecure
places of this kind filled for no other purpose.
In America the House of Representatives is composed of citizens
elected from congressional districts. Territories, or districts not formed
under State government, send a delegate merely. The number of districts in a State is regulated by population, according to a census




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 121
taken every ten years, and while these districts cannot be arbitrarily
increased in number, they are sometimes gerry-mandered or altered
in their boundaries to accomplish partisan objects. Neither counties,
cities, nor any of the fixed local distinctions, are recognized in Congress. The city of New York is composed, nationally, of a certain
number of congressional districts merely, and it often happens that
part of a city, and part of the next county, are united to make one
district. Thus the republic is like a network of unequal squares
thrown over the surface of the ground. The ground is the history
of population, the net is the government of it. The ground is the
original colony; the net is the nation. Looking through the open
thread of the Federal state we see particular neighborhoods in their
county or corporate circumstances. Boston as Boston has no member in Congress. Yet look through the districts of the net, and you
can see who sits for Boston by accident.
The contrary is the case in the House of Commons.  There
every member represents an original settlement and not a part of a
census. Our Congress is representative or popular. The English
House of Commons is the representative of neighborhood traditions,
venerable charters, and original and arbitrary divisions of the soil.
By a fixed routine of population, ascertained by deliberate census, we
reconstruct Congress every ten years. A new State is formed out of
newly populated territory, and it gains or loses in districts as it retains population. Not so in England, where there have been but
two reorganizations of Parliament in history, - one in 1832, another
in 1867.
Every member of the House of Commons represents either a county, a city, a borough, or a university. Let us see if we know precisely what each of these terms means.
1. Counties were formed by the Saxons before the time of Alfred
the Great, and the Normans found them intact and well defined when
they landed. A county is an administrative division of the English
government, like the District of an United States Marshal and
Court. For example, there are two divisions of Pennsylvania, each
having a court and officers. In England and WVales there are fifty-two
counties, in Scotland thirty-three, and in Ireland thirty-two. Pennsylvania alone has sixty-five counties, or the same number that Scotland and Ireland possess together, and yet it has scarcely more people than the single county of Lancashire in England. Every county
is pre2ided over by a Lord Lieutenant, who is the head of the militia,
16




122    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and it has also a Keeper of the Rolls, a Sheriff, a Receiver General
of taxes, a Coroner, Justices and Clerks of the Peace, and Courts of
Assize, County, and Hundred. These English counties, in the main,
correspond to the States of the American Union, yet are not sovereign
like our States, but are rather viceroyalties. The members of Parliament who come from the counties have been elected by the proprietors and occupiers of the land.
2. A city in the true English sense is a town corporate, with a
bishop and a cathedral church. The word cathedral is derived from
a bishop's throne or chair, deposited in it. A town corporate is a
town capable of using its name like a person in business and of suing and being sued. The first free cities of modern times were in
Italy, and their example was imitated in France, Flanders, and Germany. They bought or wrested their rights from the Prince, and were
mainly composed of trades-unions or guilds. Such are some English
cities to this day in a parliamentary sense, as I have shown in the
chapter on London, -a collection of mercantile and trading associations, made up of " freemen," who vote for members of Parliament.
With us a city gets its charter from a State, but this entitles it
merely to local self-government, and gives it no representation in
the Legislature. Politically an English city is quite a different thing
from an American city.
3. Borough is a word of Saxon origin, said to have meant
"walled town." The Normans found eighty-two boroughs when they
arrived in England. Each borough held its own fair or market, and
maintained its borough court  The borough was a sort of confederated neighborhood, generally rallying about a castle or village, and
showing or claiming to have once received a charter. It was often
governed by a little oligarchy of landholders, or by a guild or series
of guilds. After the House of Commons was established in England, each of these boroughs claimed the right to send a member or
members to Parliament. In 1830 there were one hundred and seventy-one English boroughs.
4. A university is an ancient and honorable endowment, requiring representation to protect and dignify it. Oxford, Cambridge,
Dublin, and the University of London are represented in Parliament.
Oxford University members are voted for by Doctors and Masters of
Arts, whose names are on the books, amounting to three thousand
seven hundred and eighty-six electors. Cambridge has four tho'u



HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 123
fand nine hundred and forty-nine electors. Dublin has one thousand
seven hundred electors.
I have said nothing in this chapter about the members of the
Cinque (five) Ports, which are a set of old, decayed maritime towns,
which were once admitted to Parliament because of their gallantry
in naval warfare, and there they stick, to this generation.
To see the inequality of English representation observe the difference between Sandwich, one of these Cinque Ports, and London
city in 1868. Sandwich had two members, who represented about
nine hundred voters; London proper four, who represented about
eleven thousand voters.
Portarlington, Ireland, gives about eighty votes, and has a member;
while Birmingham, which gives ten thousand votes, and elects John
Bright, has only two members.
Looking over the House of Commons, we see that all the members
represent traditional neighborhoods, counties, or corporations in this
way. But in the time in which we write, a Reform Bill is about to
go into operation, and this will affect the electors of Parliament,
though not materially the number and appearance of the House itself.
Before we take up this new bill, therefore, let us ask ourselves the
question, as we keep the House of Commons in view, What was the
origin of this body, and why did it need reforming?
Parliament, a word of French origin, had its beginning in the
Norman House of Lords. The Lords, resisting the Kings, invited the
counties to give them support and to contribute delegates. About
the middle of the thirteenth century the House of Commons was
clearly defined.  Henceforwarcd it was the instrument of voting
money, - little more. Excepting some single splendid episodes, as
of the Stuart and Puritan Parliaments, the history of the House of
Commons from the time of Henry VI. to 1830 was a series of brilliant personal apparitions, without aggregate virtue, or love of freedom. "Time had augmented its deformities," says an author,* " till
it had degenerated into a mere mockery, obvious to the minds of all
by the ludicrous contrast of old Sarum and Gatten with representatives, - Birmingham and Manchester without a voice. By nomination boroughs, close corporations, and the peculiarities of the county
franchise, only one interest was substantially incorporated into the
Legislature. Land was omnipotent; commerce, manufactures, ship* Mr. John Wade.




124    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ping, -all that had created the material greatness and opulence of
the realm were dumb. An oligarchy ruled, and the laws it made, the
measures it supported, and those it proscribed, savored of the character, the interests, and the prejudices of their authors. By patriotic
and enlightened men, parliamentary reform was deemed the sole corrective of the constitution."  The Reform Bill, so called, extinguished
fifty-six effete boroughs, which had been sending one hundred and
eleven members to Parliament. It cut thirty boroughs down to one
member. It gave one hundred and fifty-nine members to eighty-two
county constituencies, and distributed amongst the better boroughs
and the cities one hundred and forty-three members. Yet, after all
this so-called reform, it was said by Earl Gray, the chief supporter
of the bill, that "it was the most aristocratic measure that ever
passed the House of Commons; " and we can readily imagine this to
be so, if. as the appendix to the Reform Bill of 1867 shows, two hundred English and Welsh boroughs, with a population of eight million
six hundred and thirty-eight thousand five hundred and sixty-nine
persons, had only four hundred and eighty-nine thousand and seventyone registered voters, including nearly fifty thousand who voted on
some ancient qualifications, and were called Freemen, Potwallers,
Scot and Lot voters, etc.
To this miserably little extension of the franchise is yet ascribed
the progress of England in the last forty years. It called into
political existence the manufacturing cities, repealed the corn-laws,
carried free-trade, and gave opportunity to John Bright and Richard
Cobden. Poor as the gift wus, it was opposed bitterly by nearly
every nobleman, and at the head of these stood the Duke of Wellington. The noisy scenes in the preceding chapter illustrate the feeling
amongst the peers when this bill was pressed. It will be further
considered in the chapter on Political Parties in England.
The next extension of the franchise was granted in 1867, and as,
at this writing, it has not gone entirely into effect, my notice of the
matter will be brief.
The royal assent to this important act, entitled " The representation of the people's act, 1867," was given on the 15th of August in
that year. It will not probably pass into entire operation till the
latter part of the present year (1869).
Scotland, Ireland, and the two English universities are excepted
from the operations of this act. It provides that every man above
twenty-one years of age, of the following classes, shall be registered




IOI JSES OF COMMONS AND  OF REPRESENTATIVES.  125
as a voter, and shall vote for a member or members to serve in Parliament:1. Who has occupied a whole dwelling, either as tenant or owner,
for one year, and paid the poor rates, or taxes.
2. Who has lodged in a part of one house for a year, where his
rooms, unfurnished, cost not less than fifty dollars in gold a
year.
3. Who owns real estate, chattels, or has a bank account bringing
a clear income of twenty-five dollars a year, and who pays taxes
thereon.
4. Who rents and occupies land worth sixty gold dollars a year,
and pays poor rates.
By the same act four corrupt boroughs are disfranchised and everybody in them  who took bribes is disfranchised  by name.  In contested elections where three members of Parliament are to be selected
no person shall- vote for more than two, nor shall any hired election
agent, canvasser, etc., vote at all.  All boroughs with less than ten
thousand people return but one member.  London in the aggregate
gets four more members, making fourteen in all for three millions of
people; while New York State, with nearly four millions, has thirtyone congressmen.  Twelve new  boroughs are created.  The city of
Manchester gets three members, and the boroughs of Liverpool, Birminghllam, and Leeds three apiece.  The University of London gets a
member. Londoners can live twenty-five miles out of the city and
still vote there.
If anybody pays another person's taxes to  get his vote, he
and the second person shall be punished for bribery.  Several counties are divided into boroughs.  Twenty-three little boroughs return
but one member hereafter.
This Reform Bill answered the expectations of the English masses
very imperfectly. It was tendered by a tory or anti-popular ministry
to retain power, and fell far short of the intentions of the opposite
party. *
* Reform Bills were passed for Scotland and Ireland in July, 1868. In Scotland the franchise for boroughs is the same as in England, but seventy dollars in gold must be the annual tenure, or rent, paid for land in the counties. Seats are given to the universities of
Glasgow and Edinburgh. Glasgow gets three members in Parliament, with four hundred
thousand people, while Philadelphia, with five hundred and fifty thousand people, has not
quite five members in Congress. To make room for several new Scotch county members,
seven English boroughs were disfranchised. In Ireland, the occupation franchise in towns
was reduced to twenty dollars, and for lodgers fifty dollars yearly rent paid for unfurnished




126   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
We publish in the United States a little pamphlet directory of
each session of Congress.  It is compiled by clerks, and is exceedingly meagre and often imperfect.  In England, however, there are
many directories of Parliament, gleaned with care and minuteness,
and expressed with elegance. By running through any one of these
"Companions" or directories, we get some quaint insight into the
character of Parliament.
First, the names of all constituencies are given, their population,
the number of votes polled in each and of their registered electors.
Then there is a short biography of every member, his parentage, age,
profession, office, church patronage, political principles and pledges,
public acts, and the name of his clubs and residences.
An English MI. P. is always. a club man, and club life in England
is intimately associated with political life. Out of Parliament a
member is generally sought at his club, where, perhaps, he takes his
meals, receiveshis letters, attends to the desires of his constituents,
and whence he is summoned by telegraph on occasion of party
necessities to cast his vote with his party.
I give below some extracts from the Parliamentary Companion for
1868.
"BOSTON. - (The original of Boston, Massachusetts), Lincolnshire.
John Wingfield Malcolm,...   646
Thomas Parry,....            465
_3eaburn Staniland,.                  453
" On petition, March, 1866, a scrutiny being made, fourteen votes were struck
off Mr. Parry's number, which gave a majority of two to Meaburn Staniland.
"On Mr. Staniland accepting the Chiltern Hundreds, new-writ, March, 1867,
Thomas Parry was returned to Parliament.
"Constituency. - Corporation and freemen paying scot and lot, and the ho.
of 101. Population, 17,803. Registered electors, 1,093, including 148 freemen."
Explanation. - Staniland, the name in italics, was the unsuccessful candidate, but Parry's seat being contested, Staniland received it. Then Staniland
accepted office under the government, or took the sinecure place called the
Chiltern Hundred, a sort of fictitious hole to put weary pegs in. A new clection was ordered at Boston, and Parry was elected at last by the holders of
apartments. Dublin city has two members, Dublin' county two, and Dublin University
two, which would make, if they were at all representative, six members for a city and
county of more than four hundred thousand people,-the same number that New York city
has in Congress.




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 127
property, with ten pounds a year by " scot and lot" right, an ancient privilege, and by members of the town companies, or " free men."
"YORK CITY. - (I instance this as a quaint manner of comparison between
Old York and New York cities, although the American city was not
named for the English one, but for the Duke of York, afterwards
James II.)
James Lowther,.                     2,079
George Leeman,.                    1,854
Joshua P. B. Westhead,.              1,792
"Constituency. — Freemen, freeholders, and the ho. of 101. Population,
43,385. Registered electors, 4,724, including 2,571 freemen."
Explanation. - Only one person in ten is an elector in York. The electors
are members of the city guilds, property owners, and those who pay fifty
dollars a year rent.
" HERTFORD, BOROUGH. — (I Instance this as an odd sort of comparison
with the city of Hartford, Connecticut, where this book is published.)
Right Honorable William H. Cowper,
Sir Minto Farquhar,.-' On the death of Sir Minto Farquhar, new writ June, 1866.
Robert Dinsdale,...
" Constituency.-Freemen and the ho. of 101. Population, 6,769. Registered electors, 602, including 96 freemen. The Marquess of Salisbury has
considerable influence in this borough, as has also Earl Cowper."
Explanation. -The new writ referred to above required a new election.
The same thing takes place in any American constituency on the death or
retirement of a congressman.
"BRISTOL, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. - (This town is instanced to show the constituency of Sir Morton Peto, the baronet, who was a prominent
railroad stockholder in America, and made us a visit before his
failure in 1866.)
Francis F. It. Berkeley,.           5,296
Sir S. Morton Peto,....  5,228
Thomas pFrancis F'remantle,.      4..,269
"Constituency. -Freemen and freeholders, and the ho. of 101. Population,
154,093. Registered electors, 14,324, including 1,707 freemen."
Turning from Bristol constituency to another part of the book, we
find the name and history of its representatives: -
" PrTO, Sir Samuel Morton, bart. (Bristol), son of the late William Peto,
Esquire, Cookham, Berks, by the daughter of Ralph Alloway, Esquire, of




128    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Dorking Surrey. Born at Woking, 1809. Married (1st) 1831, his cousin,
Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas de la Garde Grisel, Esquire, of Stockwell
Common, Surrey. (She died May, 1842.) Married (2nd) 1843, eldest daughter of Henry Kelsall, Esquire, of Rochdale, Lancashire. A member of the
firm of Peto and Betts, contractors for Public Works.  Constructed the
Crimean Railway without profit to himself in 1855, and for his services was
made a baronet. A Magistrate and Deputy-Lieutenant for Suffolk, and a
Magistrate for Norfolk and Middlesex. A liberal (radical); in favor of the
extension of the franchise to the working-class, vote by ballot, and " complete
religious freedom to every denomination." Sat for Norwich from July, 1847,
till December, 1857; for Finsbury from May, 1859, till July, 1865, when he
was elected for Bristol. Residences and clubs, Kensington Palace Gardens,
West, Chipstead, Seven Oaks, Kent. Reform club, Auchlyne, Killin, Perthshire."
Explanation. — The above shows what family influence Sir Morton Peto
has, hints at his wealth and idiosyncrasies, and shows that he has a town
residence in London, an English country house, and a Scotch estate.
No salary is paid to a member of Parliament. A senator, or a congressman of the United States, is paid five thousand dollars a year.
The Speaker, as we have said, is generally re-elected at the beginning of
~Parliament as long as his political party retains power. In 1866, for
example, the Right Honorable John Evelyn Denison was proposed
for Speaker by 5Mr. MIonsell, seconded by Earl Grosvenor, and for
the third time unanimously re-elected.  Mr. Sergeant Yelverton,
who was elected during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, gave a good
description of the qualifications required in a Speaker, whether for
Parliament or Congress.  " He that supplieth this place ought to bea man big and comely, stately, and well spoken, his voice great, his
courage majestical, and his purse plentiful and heavy."  If two candidates are nominated for Speaker, the house divides, or settles the
vote by tellers.
Notwithstanding the fact that no salary is attached to the place
of an  I. P., the privileges, social opportunities, and honors of the
place are held in so great request that bribery and chicanery are
freely used to accomplish elections.  In the United States, a congressman is invariably a resident in the district which he represents;
but this is not of necessity the case in Parliament, and if a man is
aneeded in the House of Commons, he can be passed round by his
party from borough to borough till he is elected somewhere.  The
limited franchise, and the power of landholders to influence or compel
the votes of their tenants, lead to many abuses, but there is also
a corrupt and purchasable class of voters in England, whose degrada



HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 129
tion is an annual theme of parliamentary inquiry. Looking over
some of the documents upon English election frauds, I find that in
Harwich, consisting of one hundred and twenty voters, one Attwood,
the tory candidate, spent thirty-one thousand dollars in one election,
and his opponents enough more to make in all forty-five thousand
five hundred dollars. Another investigation showed that in Nottingham eighty-five thousand dollars were spent on a constituency-of
four thousand-five hundred people, or about twenty dollars to a man.
The reader of novels, who wishes to find in pleasant narrative form
the maniner of conducting an English election, may do so in Thackeray's ": Newcomes," or in George Elliott's "Felix Holt, the Rad.
ical."  The daily newspapers are adjuncts to the most shameless
parliamentary corruption, in witness of which see the following ad.
vertisement from the London "' Times " of July 1st, 1847: --
"To PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES. -Messrs. -- and Co., of --  Street,,
London, have all the machinery requisite to carry out the election of an
M. P., including registry, canvass clerks, etc., and writers of eminence would.
be placed at the disposal of candidates. Borough or county registers expe,ditiously arranged."
Quoting the above, a number of the " Westminster Review" entersa
into the discussion of election and bribery, and says of the abuses
of landlord and tenant:" Let a map be made of the island according to the estates of the
four and twenty thousand proprietors who own it, and color'the
estates according to the politics of their landlords. You will discover in this way the character of the votes of the tenants. They
are merely the voting-machines of their farms. The rich man, who
buys a ten-pound house in a small borough, just buys a ten-pound
vote. The attorneys in many large boroughs make sure that scarcely
any man shall get in without paying black-mail to them. The House
of Commons is thus made a'club of rich men, when it ought to be a.
workshop for the people."
The same fearless ", Review" continues:
" The maintenance of a property qualification is indefensible on any
principle of justice, right, or expediency.  It ha& been the mere bulwark of class elevation. It does not insure intelligence; for the
inadequacy of parliamentary intelligence is everywhere apparent.' It
does not even color the every-day fallacy of the patriotism of property; for we have bankrupts, spendthrifts, and blaes6gamblers and
17




130    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITHI THE OLD.
speculators in the legislature, -men only saved from the disgrace of
a prison by the privileges of their position."
The House of Commons never had a manual prepared for it, regulating order and precedence, till 1857, when Thomas Erskine May
undertook the work, and this should be consulted by any reader who
is minutely curious about parliamentary law. In America Thomas
Jefferson wrote a manual in the early years of the republic, and John
M. Barclay, Journal Clerk of the House of Representatives, has very
recently made a digest of the Rules of the House, which is said by
Mr. Speaker Colfax to be the best book of the sort extant. The
House of Representatives has had some notable Speakers, of whom
Henry Clay had probably most will, N. P. Banks superior "presence" and bearing, and Schuyler Colfax much readiness.
The House of Representatives was created when the constitution
was adopted essentially as it exists. The House of Commons is a
history of creepings-up,- at first an intimidated body, permitted to
meet by way of compliment, to vote money else wrested from it;
now the great political estate of the realm, with absolute and exclusive power to vote or withhold money. The Senate can alter an
appropriation bill of the House of Representatives, or suggest a field
of expenditure. The peers cannot amend nor originate any appropriation bill, but must either entirely accept or entirely reject it.
Not even the standing army can be maintained. except by an annual
vote of the Commons, and yet this powerful body in all formal matters is subservient and deferential to both the sovereign and the
peers. In theory the House of Commons- is intended to protect the
liberties of the people, who are the tax-payers, while the. House of
Peers is intended to protect the rights of the Sovereign. I shall take
up the House of Commons and treat of its manner of organization,
so. as to make a connected narrative jointly with the proceedings
already described in the Chamber of Peers.
A new Parliament is summoned by the Queen, who, in her Council
of State, commands the Lord Chancellor (or President of the Peers),
to issue the summons. The Lord Chancellor, in obedience directs the
Clerk of the Crown to issue writs, signed, with the Great Seal, to all
the Sheriffs of counties in the realm. Then each Sheriff, receiving
his order, directs the returning officers of the municipalities, boroughs,
etc., in his county to conduct the election. The election itself will be
considered in the chapter on Political Parties. After the elections
are over, the Sheriff sends the results back to the Clerk of the Crown,




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 131
who publishes the names of the new members in the gazettes. Then
the Queen, by proclamation, appoints the time of meeting, and as we
have already seen, goes in person, or sends commissioners, to open
Parliament.
Victoria has enacted this form seven times.
When the Commons ineet together, the first business, as in Congress, is to elect a Speaker. The Clerk of the House, being a permanent officer, presides, and some member, addressing him, makes a
nomination. When the Speaker has been chosen, he is escorted to
his chair by the mover and seconder of his nomination, and there he
returns thanks to the House. Immediately the mace, the symbol of
his office, is taken from under the table before him and laid in full
view upon the top of the table. Some elderly and influential member then goes gravely up to the Speaker, and shakes hands with him.
The House at once adjourns.
The.next day the Commons meet again and go up to the House of
Lords, where they are received by the Lord Chancellor, the presiding
officer of that body. On behalf of the Queen the Lord Chancellor
approves of the Speaker elected, and the Speaker then, in behalf of
his House, asks that all the ancient rights and privileges of the Commons may be continued. The Chancellor, in the name of the Queen,
confirms these rights.  Then the House returns to its chamber.
The next two or three days are spent in taking oaths of allegiance;
which the Speaker administers, and the oath has been a subject of
trouble for many years, being obnoxious to many sectarians and folks
with scruples. It was not till 1858 that Jews were formally admitted
to Parliament, and in 1833 Mioravians and Quakers had to be especially qualified. In 1852 Viscount Clancarty, a Protestant, was refused permission to take the Roman Catholic oath, which'he preferred.
In 1851 Alderman Salomans, a Hebrew, was rejected from Parliament for refusing the regular oath, and in 1829 O'Connell refused to
take the oath of supremacy.
No business- can now be done till the Queen formally opens Parliament. The Commons on that day wait in their chamber till the
Black Rod, the ceremonial officer of the Peers, comes to summon
them. He stands without and strikes the door three times with his
rod. The door being opened, he walks up the middle of the floor
escorted by the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House, and bows three times
with great impressiveness. Having expressed to the Speaker the




132    TIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Queen's commands that the Commons attend her immediately in the
Chamber of Peers, the Black Rod walks out backward, bowing still.
The House proceed in some order to the Chamber of Peers, and, hearing the speech, return to their own chamber, where they generally pass
some small formal bill to prove their independence, and again adjourn.
The Clerk of the Crown has meantime given the Clerk of the House
a list of members returned, and any contests are introduced by petition and referred to their proper place for consideration. The House
now proceeds, like the Peers, to answer the Queen's opening address,
and when this has been done, paragraph by paragraph, and debated,
the Commons proceed to the Queen's palace with their answer, the
Speaker in a state coach. Once they kept the Queen waiting half an
hour, - in 1845, - and the nation expressed great indignation. The
scene of presenting the answer is an interesting one; but if the Queen
be at Windsor or elsewhere, a committee from both Houses proceeds
there with the reply. In either case the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor walk together, and are ushered to the Queen's presence by the
Lord Chamberlain. The Parliament.is now ready for straightforward
business, and you will observe the political paries in it at once, yet
both parties go by the Queen's name, one being Her Majesty's Mlinistry, the other Her MlIajesty's Opposition. The front bench of the
House of Commons on the right hand of the Speaker is called the
Treasury bench; for there sits the leader of the administration, or
Prime Minister, whose official title is "First Lord of the Treasury."
His colleagues are around him, and on the bench facing them sit the
vigilant and unappeasable opposition. The members who represent
London city proper claim the right to a part of the front bench. Every
seat has a. brass plate on the back of it, with the name of the member
who claims it. Forty members present make a quorum. As in the
American Congress, there are fixed days for certain kinds of
work.
The House early in the session resolves itself into a Committee of
Supply, to consider the estimates of money required to support the
different services; namely, Army and Navy, the Civil Services,
Salaries of Custom, Inland Revenue, and Post Offices, Packet (ship)
Service, and Fortifications.
Then the House resolves itself into a Committee of Ways and
Means, to devise the means of raising the supplies of money already
granted.




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 133
Finally, at the end of the session, they pass the annual Appropriation Act. The chapter on "Finance" will take up the above
matters in detail.
The right of petition, which John Quincy Adams so magnificently
vindicated in the American Congress, is a fundamental principle of
the British Constitution, and has been exercised from the earliest
times. In the year 1868, one thousand seven hundred and seventysix petitions, officially signed and sealed, were presented, and seventeen thousand eight hundred and sixty-five altogether. More than
two and a half millions of names were appended to these petitions.
The petition of the Chartists some years ago for a republicanized
government was so immense that it was rolled into the House of
Commons like a huge cart-wheel. These petitions are crammed into
bags, and carried out, to be considered, let us charitably suppose.
One of the great periods of a parliamentarysession is the discussion upon the "Budget," which is derived from the French word
bougette, a bag.
It is an annual speech, with a comparative statement of the expenditures and receipts of the country in the year passing and the years
past, and a justification and explanation of the same.
Expunging resolutions, such as were passed blotting from the journal of the House of Representatives a censure of President Jackson, are sometimes passed in Parliament, as in 1782, in the case of
John Wilkes, and in 1833, in the matter of Sir Robert Peel and William Cobbett.
Petitions from London city are presented by the Sheriffs thereof,
in red gowns and occasionally by the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor
of Dublin also appears for the same purpose at rare opportunities.
No member of the House of Commons can speak insolently of the
Queen, nor urge her private opinion to affect any matter of legisla.
tion. Seldom does any member answer newspaper articles in his
place, and a member of one house seldom makes any reference to the
other house. These matters are less scrupulously observed in the
American Congress. The President is quoted to influence or defeat a
bill, and is frequently spoken of with acrimony and invective. As
to newspaper articles, there are many congressmen who are known to
fame in America only for explanations on this head.
There is a good deal of button-holing and claim-urging in the lobbies of Parliament; but the floor is carefully guarded from the access
of corrupt or impudent attorneys. Respectable counsel are licensed to




134    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
plead claims before committees, and this arrangement is found to give
credit and intelligence to the prosecution of claims. On the score
of personal avarice and corruption, members of the IHouse of Commons have not a like opportunity with congressmen, and the allegation and investigation of charges against personal honor are less
frequent in the British than in the American Legislature. The House
of Commons can punish contempts of its authority, give its committees
right to send for persons and papers, and commit offenders to prison
till the close of the pending session. Congress holds, and frequently
practises, the same authority. Congress generally meets at noon,
and holds night sessions when business has unduly accumulated. The
House of Commons meets at four o'clock, except on Wednesdays,
when it meets at noon. If business accumulates unduly, it holds day
sessions. All great- debates in the Commons take place by gaslight.
The essential difference between Congress and Parliament is the
presence of the executive government in the Legislature. There sit the
Cabinet Officers and the President (Prime Minister) of the state, developing their policy, answering questions of moment, struggling to
retain the confidence of a majority of the House, and voting upon
measures of their own proposition. The House of Commons is thus the
concentrated theatre of political agitation. A presidential election is
liable to take place within it at any time and by its whim or impulse the wealth and influence of the entire administration may be
transferred from one party or sentiment to another.
The debates of Parliament are printed in the newspapers, but without authority, and it is a breach of privilege theoretically for reporters to be present, or for publishers to circulate the proceedings.
Like many, other things in the English government, which are illegal,
but inevitable, this transgression has become a formidable right.
Newspaper reporting in the House of Commons began during the
American Revolution, and Dr. Johnson was one of the earliest notetakers. After the close of the British wars, in 1814, when the legislative proceedings monopolized attention, the work of publishing the
debates was earnestly.and fully undertaken. The debates of the
American Congress are reported at the cost of the government, and
a daily paper, called the " Globe," contracts for the work. A large
corps of phonographers are engaged, who are paid by the column.
Many of these were taught their art at the public High School of
Philadelphia, an institution which makes phonography a specialty.




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 135
The head of the corps, until recently, and one of the earliest shorthand writers in America, was MIr. Richard Sutton, who began his
career, I think, in the reporters' gallery of the English Parliament.
The publication of the debates is a subject of considerable expense in
the United States, but they are rendered with remarkable exactness
and promptitude. At the opening of each session at noon, daily,
the " Globe" is found on every member's desk, containing a perfect
transcript of the debates of the previous. day. The " Globe " does
not print the documents, bills, acts, memorials, and other papers
which assist legislation. These are committed to the government
printer, who has a great establishment near by the Capitol, and they
are reproduced in folio, or in stitched pamphlet form, for ready use
and reference..Collected together, they make the permanent public
documents, and are bound, registered, and numbered.
Attached to the House of Commons are two similar officers, the
Printer of Journals and the Printer of Votes. But the government has
no such institution of its own as the great-printing office at Washington, which is alleged to be the most complete establishment in
the world. The debates of Parliament are digested and reported
with pains and cleverness in the London "Times," and other papers.
The "Times" was formerly considered the most perfect newspaper
-which existed; but this encomium does not hold good in many
respects at the present day.  There is editorial gravity without
much conclusiveness in it; but in the promptitude of its news, and
the amount and variety of its matter, it is now surpassed by many
journals in America, while late developments have shown that its management is quite as unscrupulous and avaricious as that of papers elsewhere. It contains, daily, seventy-two columns of matter, or seventeen thousand five hundred lines, or upwards of one million pieces
of type. Its daily circulation was set down at fifty-nine thousand
copies in 1867, of which thirty-three thousand are distributed in
London. It employs one hundred and ten compositors of type, and
twenty-five pressmen. There is no strong newspaper at the Capitol
of the United States; but in former days influential organs of opinion
were maintained there, chief of which in different fields were the
"Intelligencer" and the "National Era," in the latter of which
appeared parts of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," the anti-slavery novel.
In both Parliament buildings and Capitol there are very many
committee rooms; for much of the work of large legislative bodies
has to be considered by select committee, while the Legislature, in




136    TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
whole, is the ultimate body to accept or reject the act. Committees
of Congress generally consist of from six to ten or twelve persons;
of the Commons, from twenty to thirty persons, The leading Committee of Congress, WVays and-Means, was composed, in 1868, of
nine members; while the whole of the House of Commons is resolved
into that committee in England. Committee duty is compulsory in
the Commons, and Smith O'Brien, once refusing to serve, was committed to custody for contempt.
To an American, the excess of forms, and the reverence for them,
is the leading distinction of the English government, and of the
House of Commons, its most practical manifestation. The Speaker
must be elected by the Commons, and the selection communicated
to the Queen. She " graciously" gives her consent, and the poor
Speaker meantime makes himself ridiculous with excuses, timidities,
and compliments. Next the superstition of the Mace is most apparent. There is no more use for the Mace than for the crowbar, and
if the Speaker of the House of Representatives employed a war-club
he would have as much reason.  This iMace is laid before the
Speaker of Commons while he sits in his place, is carried before him
when he rises, and is put beneath the table when he leaves the chairThe absurdity of the Mace and the Sergeant-at-Arms is illustrated
in a very amusing manner by the quarterly reviewer for 1857:"The most amusing ceremony," he says, " in which the bauble
figures, is when a Master in Chancery comes with a message from
the Lords: The Sergeant-at-Arms goes reverently up to the Speaker
and announces the fact, and the Speaker kindly lends him the Mace,
that he may receive the Master in a more imposing manner. Armed
with - ainlost staggering under - the gilded load, the Sergeant walks
down the house to fetch the Master. The pair form in line, and
come marching up to the table, the Master being more splendid in
regard to costume, but the Sergeant borrowing the reflected glory of
the Mace.  They bow at various stages of the journey, and the
Master having arrived, delivers the message of the Lords, the Sergeant standing by him with his grand weapon, and looking as if he
were ready to castigate him on the spot if he should show any lack
of reverence. Then they retreat, pari passu, bowing whenever it
occurs to them, and in this retrograde movement the Sergeant has an
advantage, his legs being unincumbered, whereas the legs of the
other are in chancery, and his gown is traitorous. Finally, the Sergeant, having seen his companion back to the bar, comes up again,




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 137
with more reverences, to return the Speaker his Mace, and then bows
himself back to his own chair after these six promenades.
"Strangers," adds the sarcastic reviewer, "do not always look
respectfully upon this ceremonial, but nothing is so wholesome as
etiquette between neighbors."
Violent combats and interchanges of violent language in the Armerican Congress have been a source of discredit to us at home and
abroad; but it must not be inferred that there is not also much ignorance, ill-breeding, and boyish behavior in the House of Commons.
In the month in which I write, May, 1869, I find this communication
from a correspondent of the "London Pall Mall Gazette," who dates
from the House of Commons, and signs himself " A Bloated Aristocrat":
"I read," he says, " with great interest, yesterday, your ingenious
article on'lfanners in England and America.' It pleased me so
much that I shall take care to send a copy of it to a gentleman,
a member of the House of Commons, who was lately seen, in the
reading-room of that assembly, to take his boots off preliminary to
the enjoyment of his newspaper. Lounging in one chair, with his
feet reposing in their stockings upon another, he made, in the sunshine, a very striking, if not quite an agreeable, figure. To be sure,
Tuesday was a very warm day, but that, I venture to think, is no
excuse for this particular breach of good manners. Sir, pray print
my letter as a hint to the gentleman in question; otherwise, when
the dog-days come in, he may be encouraged to strip himself still
further, and that would really be offensive. Besides, bad manners
are contagious, even (though you might not think it) in so august an
atmosphere as ours."
"Among the smaller recreations of the House," says a review,
"is the raising a terrific cry when a member new to parliamentary
manners accidentally walks between the Speaker and the member
speaking; "but this breach of etiquette is the rule rather than the
exception in the House of Representatives.  The great majority
of members of the House of Commons speak as educated men
should do, but one frequently hears a member dropping his h's like
the vulgarest cockney, saying, for example: -
"I am too'appy to leave the haffair hin the'ands of the'ouse!"
The Scotch and Irish accents, in all their forms, are heard in the
House of Commons, but the Scotch speak very little, and the Irish
very much. Long speeches are as frequently made as in America.
18




138    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE -OLD.
3Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli have, several times, spoken above
five hours apiece. No instances of late date have happened of personal affrays in Parliament, but many -duels have been fought on
account of words spoken in debate. To send or accept a challenge
is now a breach of privilege. Coarse and taunting words and bitter
repartees are as common in the English as in the American Legislature. I have selected from the debates two or three of the more
aggravated instances of such personal collisions.
That most truculent of all members of the House of Commons,
Daniel O'Connell, often figured in brawls and skirmishes on the
floor, and I recite here from the records, one particular instance: —
" Mr. O'Connell rose, and said,'The honorable member (Mr.
Shaw) has expressed his opinions in a manner which can do no good
service to his cause. There was a determination about him amounting almost to a spiritual ferocity.  He seems to think that the
Protestant religion consists of pounds, shillings, and pence."
"Mr. Shaw [with great vehemence]:'I deny that I said the
Protestant religion consists of pounds, shillings, and pence.  But
the church establishment of any country must be supported by money,
and that church which the state endowed with money became the
established church. In such a situation stands the church which the
honorable and learned member for Dublin has sworn not to subvert,
and which he now attempts to subvert.'
" Loud cries of' Order! order!' now proceeded from the ministerial side of the House. The Irish members shouted the words with
one voice.
" Mr. O'Connell [with the greatest warmth and violence of gesture]:'I call the honorable Recorder to order. Hle has made use of a false
assertion.'
"Here Mr. O'Connell's voice was drowned amidst the deafening
cries of'Order!' which proceeded from all parts of the opposition
side of the house. A number of honorable members rose at once,
and accompanied the words with a corresponding violence of gesture.
It is impossible to describe the confusion of the scene.
"Mr. O'Connell resumed:'The honorable member has accused
me of having sworn one thing and done another. It is quite out of,
order for a member to utter falsehoods.'
"Here the opposition almost in a body shouted,'Order! order!' at
the full stretch of their voices, mingled with cries of,' Chair! chair!'
It was sometime before any measure of order was restored. When




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 139
the uproar had somewhat abated, Mr. Finn said,'I pronounce the
expression which has been uttered by the learned member for the
Dublin University to be an atrocious calumny.''The latter terms
were pronounced with an emphasis,' says a sensitive reporter,'and
were accompanied with a vehemence of gesture that defy description.'
" The confusion and uproar which now ensued, owing to the cries
of' Chair! chair!' and' Order! order!' which burst from the opposition side of the House, with the rising of many of the members from
their seats, exceeded anything which can be imagined. In vain did
Mr. Bernal endeavor, as chairman of the committee, to restore order.
His voice was lost amidst the deafening noise which prevailed.
Some degree of quiet being at length restored, Ir. Shaw rose, and
with great warmth, said,'The honorable member for Dublin
knows that when he used the word falsehood -' Iere Mr. Shaw's
voice was again drowned amidst renewed uproar and confusion,
caused by the rising of seven or eight of the Irish members at once,
each of them, at the same time, speaking in the loudest and most
indignant tones. It would have been impossible to hear a single
word either of them said, owing to so many persons speaking and
shouting at the same instant; but that difficulty was greatly increased by the shouts of'Chair! chair!' which burst from the
opposition side of the house. When the uproar had again partially
subsided, Mr. Bernal said, in a most vehement and impassioned
manner,'If I cannot restore and preserve order, I must dissolve
the committee at once. It is impossible for me to maintain order
when seven or eight honorable members all get up and speak at once.'
" The determined manner and sharp rebuke of Mr. Bernal had, to
a very great extent, the desired effect.
"Then Mr. Shaw, still laboring under great excitement, and speaking with much warmth of manner, said,' The honorable member (3Ir.
O'Connell) has charged me with being actuated by a spiritual ferocity; but my ferocity is not of that description which takes for its
symbol a death's-head and cross-bones.' [Tremendous cheers from \he
opposition, with uproar from the Irish members on the ministerial
side of the house.]
"M r. O'Connell (addressing himself to Mr. Shaw personally, and
not to the chairman):'Yours is a calf's-head and jaw-bones.'
[Deafening cheers from the ministerial side of the house, with cries
of' Order! order!'' Chair! chair!' from the opposition.]




140    THE NEWvr WORLD COMPARED WITH TIHE OLD.
"I Mr. Bernal again interposed his authority as chairman, when, having once more restored order, the business of the committee proceeded without any further material interruption."
The parliamentary annalist, Grant, gives a still more indecent
scene in one of his books of sketches.
" I shall allude," he says, " to only one more scene of this kind.
It occurred towards the close of a recent session. An honorable
member, whose name I suppress, rose, amidst the most tremendous
uproar, to address the I-Iouse. He spoke, and was received, as
nearly as the confusion enabled me to judge, as follows:' I rise, sir
[ironical cheers, mingled with all sorts of zoological sounds], I rise,
sir, for the purpose of stating that I have- [" Oh! oh!" "Bah  "
and sounds resembling the bleating of a sheep, mingled with loud
laughter.] Hon. gentlemen may endeavor to put me down by their
unmannerly interruptions, but I have a duty to perform to my con[Ironical cheers, loud coughing, sneezing, and yawning, extended
to an incredible length, followed by bursts of laughter.]  I say,
sir, I have constituents who on this occasion expect that I- [Cries
of "Should sit down," and shouts of laughter.] They expect, sir,
that on a question of such importance ["O-o-a a-w," and loud
laughter, followed by cries of " Order! order! order!" from the
Speaker.] I tell honorable gentlemen, who choose to conduct themselves in such a way, that I am not to be put down by - [Groans,
coughs, sneezings, hems, and various animal sounds, some of which
closely imitated the yelping of a dog, and the squeaking of a pig,
interspersed with peals of laughter.] I appeal — ["Cock-e-leeri-oco! " the imitation, in this case, of the crowing of a cock was so
remarkably good, that not even the most staid and orderly members
in the House could preserve their gravity. The laughter which
followed drowned the speaker's cries of "Order'! order!"]  I say,
sir, tliis is most unbecoming conduct on the part of an assembly
calling itself de -[" Bow-wow-wow," and bursts of laughter.]  Sir,
may I ask, have honorable gentlemen who can- [" Mew-mew," and
renewed laughter.] Sir, I claim the protection of the chair. -[The
Speaker here again rose and called out "' Order! order! " in a loud
and angry tone, on which the uproar in some measure subsided.]
If honorable gentlemen will only allow me to make one observation,
I will not trespass further on their attention, but sit down at once.
[This was followed by the most tremendous cheering in earnest.]
I only beg to' say, sir, that I think this is a most dangerous and




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 141
unconstitutional measure, and will therefore vote against it.' The honorable gentleman then resumed his seat amidst deafening applause."
In exhibitions of oratory recent times afford few great examples
either in England or America. The historic or artificial standard of
manhood is better maintained on the continent of Europe, and at
present France and Spain can perhaps instance more fervid speakers
than either Parliament or Congress. Favre, Berryer, Olivier, and
Pelletan, in France, Castelar, and some others, in Spain, rank higher
than contemporary English or American orators. Of one of Castelar's speeches MBr. George Smalley wrote from London in Miay, 1869:
" IIe spoke upon the impulse of the moment, without a note, without the least preparation. Such a mighty oration has not been delivered in the Cortes within the memory of man. Gravid with historical
facts, which poured from his memory in torrents, he battered the
Canon's position to pieces, and pulverized every argument based upon them. Frequently the applause from every part of the House interrupted him, and when he had brought his peroration to a close -
a peroration unequalled for beauty of diction, force of language,
and sublimity of imagery —the excitement was so great that the
members of the chamber, irrespective of party, rushed up to him and
congratulated him, Rivero leading the way, and embracing him on
both cheeks. The scene was bewildering. The effect of the oration
has not worn off yet. The young orator has received upwards of
three hundred telegrams from all parts of the country, thanking him
for this service to the cause of religious liberty and freedom of
thought. There is a proposition that the Cortes shall print the
speech by tens of thousands, and outside, all parties are unitirg to
present him with a testimoniar. But these compliments, merely personal, and however deserving of record as indicating the esteem in
which his marvellous powers are held, are really empty results, compared with the effect his terrible attack upon the church and the coalition has had politically."
Our American oratory is best developed upon the "stump," or by
attorneys at the bar. In the legislature our public men are merely
debaters. The most able exhibitions of oratory witnessed in Congress during late years were those on the trial of the Impeachment
of Andrew Johnson, President, when the speeches of William S.
Groesbeck and William 5M. Evarts were able, both as pleas and as
pieces of literature. No member of the House of Commons is allowed
to read his speech.




142    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
It is doubtless within the curiosity of the reader to wish to compare the best specimens of parliamentary oratory, English and American. I have been at pains, therefore, to cull two contemporary
passages from eminent gentlemen of either nation, illustrative not
only of the same event, but of the general purpose of this volume.
These are M1r. Disraeli, late English Prime Minister, and Mr. George
Bancroft, late American Cabinet Officer.  The occasion was the
passing of eulogiums upon the death of Abraham Lincoln.
Said Mr. Disraeli, in the I-ouse of Commons: —
"In the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his
last moments, there is something so homely and innocent, that it takes
the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals
to the domestic sentiment of mankind. Whatever the various and
varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally, on the
policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that
in one of the severest trials which ever. tested the moral qualities of
man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength. Nor is it possible for the people of England at such a moment to forget that he
sprang from the same fatherland, and spoke the same mother tongue.
When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into
gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the
consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure
them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has
never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance
of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all
around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Coesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country. If we look to modern
times, to times at least with the feelings of which we are familiar,
and the people of which were animated and influenced by the same interests as ourselves, the violent deaths of two heroic men, Henry IV.
of France, and the Prince of Orange, are conspicuous illustrations of
this truth. In expressing our unaffected and profound sympathy with
the citizens of the United States on this untimely end of their elected
chief, let us not, therefore, sanction any feeling of depression, but
rather let us express a fervent hope that from out of the awful trials
of the last. four years, of which the least is not this violent demise,
the various populations of North America may issue elevated and
chastened, rich with the accumulated wisdom, and strong in the dis



HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 143
ciplined energy, which a young nation can only acquire in a protracted
and perilous struggle; then they will be enabled not merely to renew
their career of power and prosperity, but they will renew it to contribute to the general happiness of mankiircl."
It is probable that no more excellent instance of Disraeli's remarkable power and grace in eulogy can be instanced than this. IIe and
Mr. Bancroft are alike literary men and statesmen.  The latter's
culture is no higher above that of the average of congressmen than
is Disraeli's above the average of members of Parliament. I put
MIr. Bancroft's comparison between Lincoln and Lord Palmerston,
therefore, beside the above, and leave the relative merits of both to
the judgment of the reader.
" Palmerston," said lMr. Bancroft, " traced his lineage to the time
of the conqueror; Lincoln went back only to his grandfather. Palmerston received his education from the best scholars of Harrow,
Edinburgh, and Cambridge; Lincoln's early teachers were the silent
forest, the prairie, the river, and the stars. Palmerston was in publie life for sixty years; Lincoln, for but a tenth of that time. Palmerston was a skilful guide of an established aristocracy; Lincoln, a
leader or rather a companion of the people. Palmerston was exclusively an Englishman, and made his boast in the House of Commons
that the interest of England was his shibboleth; Lincoln thought
always of mankind as well as of his own country, and served human
nature itself. Palmerston, from his narrowness as an Englishman,
did not endear his country to any one court or to any one people, but
rather caused uneasiness and dislike; Lincoln left America more beloved than ever by all the peoples of Europe. Palmerston was selfpossessed and adroit in reconciling the. conflicting claims of the
factions of the aristocracy; Lincoln, frank and ingenuous, knew how
to poise himself on the conflicting opinions of the people. Palmerston was capable of insolence towards the weak, quick to the sense
of honor, not heedful of right; Lincoln rejected counsel given only
as a matter of policy, and was not capable of being willingly unjust. Palmerston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter and
knew how to divert grave opposition by playful levity; Lincoln was
a man of infinite jest on his lips, with saddest earnestness at his
heart. Palmerston was a fair representative of the aristocratic liberality of the day, choosing for his tribunal, not the conscience of
humanity, but the House of Commons; Lincoln took to heart the
eternal truths of liberty, obeyed them as the commands of Providence,




144    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and accepted the human race as the judge of his fidelity. Palmerston did nothing that will endure; his great achievement, the separation of Belgium, placed that little kingdom where it must gravitate
to France; Lincoln finished a work which all time cannot overthrow.
Palmerston is a shining example of the ablest of a cultivated aristocracy; Lincoln shows'the genuine fruits of institutions where the
laboring man shares and assists to form the great ideas and designs
of his country, Palmerston was buried in Westminster Abbey by
the order of his queen, and was followed by the British aristocracy
to his grave, which, after a few years, will hardly be noticed by the
side of the graves of Fox and Chatham; Lincoln was followed by
the sorrow of his country across the continent to his resting-place in
the heart of the Mississippi valley, to be remembered through all
time by his countrymen, and by all the peoples of the world."
The speeches of John Bright form exceptions to the average mediocrity of British oratory, but they are so familiar to this country that
I need not quote from them. He probably stands at the head of
Anglo-Saxon parliamentary orators. MIr. Gladstone and MIr. Disraeli rank as the finest running debaters. The writer and compiler
of this book has heard the leading orators of both the Lords and
the Commons declaim, but his personal verdict upon their rhetoric
and their degree of ability would not, perhaps, have the same value
to readers of different sympathies that English criticism itself might
possess. I have therefore looked over the files of the Manchester,
Dublin, and Glasgow newspapers, to glean some of the descriptions
of English public men, which are so spicily written by their London
correspondents, " many of whom," says Dr. Shelton MIackenzie, editor of the'" Philadelphia Press," himself a practised eye and hand in
parliamentary literature, " are highly educated men, who generally
are students in some of the Inns of Court, and will become lawyers
in a few years. Lord Campbell, it is remembered, began his career
in London as a reporter on the' MIorning Chronicle,' and ended it as
a peer and Lord Chancellor of England; the late Sir James Dowling,
Chief Justice of New South Vales, and Sir James Hannen, now a
judge of the Court of Queen's Bench, also were newspaper reporters,
and numerous other instances might be mentioned."
This type of young man is bound to attend every evening in the
reporters' gallery of Lords or Commons, and describe, as an eyewitness, the striking points of debates, and the manner, method, and
t'IVIV MNN~c




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 145
appearance of members. This he does usually with great freedom,
often with great ability.
Here is a sketch of Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of England
during our civil war, and generally our enemy:' —
" Though for near sixty years -he was a member of the House of
Commons; though of these he was forty-five in office, twenty-fine
in the cabinet, and seven at the head O)f the government, yet he
seldom spoke on any great question of domestic interest,- Ireland,
for example, with which his ties were unusually close, and his syImpathies as earnest as it was in his nature to feel, - without reminding us that the impress of his thought was never stamped upon any
great subject of home policy. He spoke, in his last year, of Irish
emigration, in words exceedingly like those which he used on the
same subject in 1828, and it is obvious that the question made little,
if any, progress ifnhis mind from that day to his death."
At the head of the Conservative or Tory party in the House of
Lords was Lord Derby, the father of Lord Stanley, who negotiated
the unpopular treaty on the Alabama claims with Mr. Reverdy Johnson in 1869. The Earl of Derby was no less our enemy than the
ostensible " Liberal," Palmerston, and it may be interesting to know
what stature and compass of man he was. In this we are assisted
by the analytic mind of MIr. Grant, the veteran of the reporters'
gallery:"' Of Lord Deiby's vehement career as a reformer, while great
abuses stared hirOin the face; of his generous anti-slavery policy;
of his rash and violent personal collisions with Mr. O'Connell and Mr.
Shiel; of his superficial treatment of the Irish Church question, and
his wish to relieve the grievances of Catholics without infringing the
privileges of Protestants; of his deepening conservatism as the current of liberal principles began to run stronger and deeper; of his
gallantry in adhering to his obsolete protectionist prejudices, even
when Sir Robert Peel abandoned them; of his pro-Austrian feeling
when Austria w;,s threatened by France and Italy; of his proSouthern feeling when the South (United States) was invaded by
the North, - in all stages of his career alike Lord Derby's political
motives have consisted very much of strong class-imnpulses and fastidious personal bastes, to which it is impossible to find any consistent intellectual clue. His political influence has chiefly arisen from
sharing strongly the tastes and prejudices of a class, while possessing a literary feeling too large and refined to admit of his expressing
19




146    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
these prejudices in any gross or revolting way. A commonplace
intellect and an imperious will, combined with more sensitive perceptions and cultivated tastes than most of his order possess, have
enabled him to throw these prepossessions into an effective, chivalric
form, that has given them a weight they seldom deserved. And
no nobleman of anything like Lord Derby's eminence has. ever
shown so little power of learning as he has done. His speech on
assuming office in 1852, after the free-trade controversy had been
discussed and decided for six years, was a model of dense economical
ignorance, - almost of incapacity to think on such subjects at all."
Scarcely in more complimentary terms' is Lord Derby's son,
Stanley, considered:" Conservatism and radicalism," says Grant, " might, in a certain
sense, really unite under Lord Stanley; for conservatism would be
gratified by the cold shoulder which he uniformlf turns to imaginative or enthusiastic liberalism; and radicalism would be gratified. by
the cold shoulder which he uniformly turns to sentimental or traditional conservatism. Lord Stanley is as incapable of refusing a
common-sense reform from any fear of the abstract danger of change
as of joining in a demand for reform from any anticipation of Utopian
benefits, or any chivalric devotion to abstract justice. Hence, he is
what the chemists would call a neutral or earthy base."
Lord Stanley is said to have once observed, "My father would
be a very able man - if he knew anything;  and Lord Derby, when
asked why he had not sent his translation of the QIiad to his son, is
rumored to have replied, that he was waiting till it Should be printed
in prose, and published in the form of a blue-book.
The most dashing character in Parliament is Disraeli, a politician
of Jewish descent, and of excellent literary attainments, about whose
rank and character there is great diversity of opinion. In his face
there is a dazzling, saucy look, which at once excites your interest.
You see that, if not a great mnan, he is an intensely clever one; and
though, on reflection, you see more display than reality in his performance, and are not sure that he is in earnest, or that he
means what he says, or that he is sustained and prompted by any
great principle, you feel that as an orator he has few rivals. When
he soars, as he occasionally does, you tremble lest he should break
down; but Disraeli never attempts more than he can achieve; and,
when nearest to pathos, he saves himself by a happy flight; but,
even in his highest efforts, he preserves the same doggedly cool and




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 147
unconcerned appearance, and will stop to suck an orange, or, actually (as he did in his great budget speech), to cut his nails! It is
true there are times when he displays a little more feeling.
The conservative party in England never had a more illustrious
nor more useful exemplar than Sir Robert Peel, the British Jefferson,
the son of a cotton trader, and the abolisher of the corn laws, who died
in 1850. He was a remarkably good-looking man, rather above the
usual size, and finely proportioned. He was of a clear complexion,
full, round face, and red-haired. His usual dress was a blue surtout,
a light waistcoat, and dark trousers. He generally displayed a watchchain on his breast, with a bunch of gold seals, of unusually large
dimensions. "He can scarcely," says a contemporary, " be called a
dandy, and yet he sacrifices a good deal to the graces. I hardly know
a public man who dresses in better taste." This was when Peel was
in the prime of life, being forty-seven years of age. His whole appearance indicated health. His constitution was excellent, and his
temperate habits seconded the kindly purposes of nature. He was
capable of undergoing great physical fatigue, and, says an author,
" I have known him to remain in the House for three or four-successive nights till one and two o'clock, not only watching with the
most intense anxiety the progress of important debates, but taking
an active part in the proceedings, and yet be in his office, transacting
business of the greatest moment, by ten o'clock on the following
morning."
In 1868 one hundred and ninety-two new private bills were introduced into the. House of Commons, of which one hundred and seventy
passed, -a fact which shows much less special legislation than the
American Congress indulges in. Both bodies are huge manufactories
of statute law.,'The pleasures of sitting in Parliament are highly
appreciated by Englishmen.  The spacious courts, cloisters, and
promenades of the great building are free to a member. He can
smoke his cigar on the river terrace, seeing vessels come and go, and
the mighty mass of men and horses traversing Westminster Bridge.
Near by is his club, where are the newspapers and serial literatures
of the world at his disposal. He is beset with invitations to entertainments, made presiding officer and orator of city and suburbaa
meetings, and when he returns to his district after Parliament adjourns
he is received with ceremony and a banquet. But a working member
of the House of Commons is quite as busy as any industrious congressman. The social world of London is much,vaster than Wash



148    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED.WITH THE OLD.
ington, and its allurements and seductions are more various. In
London, Parliament is a mere episode of that gigantic life which condenses into a city the riches and population of a nation. At Washington, Congress is the city, and the city is little more than a deserted
watering-place with the waiters retained after Congress has departed.
The private vices of members of Commons are much the same as
those of congressmen. There are profligate persons in both-bodies.
A prize-fighter has been seen seated in either legislature.  When
the national horse-race is held at Epsom Parliament adjourns.
If we come to ask ourselves which body is the better one to represent the people, we can best answer in the opinion of the people
themselves. A few private voices are raised in America for qualified
suifage, limiting the ballot to intelligence, to property, to color, or
to some other accident or inheritance. In England the demand for
universal suffrage and equal chance to sit. in Parliament is a formidable roar, with the passion of revolution in it.
" I go further than Bright," said a young Englishman at Southampton to me. "I want right'!"
Wealth and democracy are the great elements of politics in this
century, and it is more likely that we shall be debauched by the first
than limited in the second. The agitation in England is the other
way. Wealth constitutes the House of Commons, and democracy is
undermining it. The House of Representatives:is democratic beyond
limitation, and only money can contend with numbers there. The
abuse of representation in England is that a man can elect himself
to Parliament. The abuse here is thatt  a man can nominate himself
for Congress. The corrupt Englishman buys the constituency. The
corrupt American steals the machinery of nomination. If the English Parliament is corrupt, there are millions of English people guiltless
of it, because millions are disfranchised. If the American Congress
is corrupt, an American cannot be guiltless, because all are electors.
This government can only degenerate by default of interest in it,
and, amongst the numberless schemes of law, not the least significant is one to compel every elector in America to deposit his vote.
The effect of all the enginery of the century is to make the legislature absolutely popular. Even in the despotism of France every
citizen votes for his representative in the lower house of the legislature. Grudgingly and by degrees the English Parliament is popularizing its constituencies. In 1832 the wicket was unlatched. In 1867
the gates were set ajar. In a little while the gates will be thrown




HOUSES OF COMMONS AND OF REPRESENTATIVES. 149
wide open, and vote by ballot will be the means of sending representative citizens to Parliament. Many agreeable old traditions must
perish before this can be done. The "'freeman" must become a
citizen, the "borough" disappear in a district, the ancient privilege
expire in the census. But these English laws will be the enactment
of all Englishmen. Money will be assessed, not upon the back like
a stripe, but upon the ground.  The extravagant fiction of the
monarch and his family must then be maintained by the virtues of
the Princes, and even then it must, like every illusion, expire, if by
nothing else, by its own self-respect. To be enshrined like a jewelladen idol, complimented with a form of worship, made legally immaculate, and dowered with money anid attendants in profusion, this
age is too practical and irreverent to continue this play when democratic Parliaments come to be.
The paying of salaries to legislators must come with popular Parliaments. The state has no right even to a rich man's time without
compensating him. As to the English custom of giving the executive
government place in the Legislature, that has been proposed in Congress within a few years, and it is a question of no little importance.
The English have found it wise and convenient. It brings the magistrate and the reformer together. The one feels the earnestness of
the other, and communicates his knowledge in return. It makes
falsehood in the speechmaker superfluous, and meets inquiry with
promptitude. We must guess at a minister's intention in America.
In England he is asked in Parliament to reveal it.
The English Parliament, because of its want of representative
character, is not up to the requirements of the nation. "What is
there specially to admire in either House?" says the "Saturday
Review," 1867. " In the leaders of either there is an utter want of
creative force. They cannot suggest anything, or do anything, or
remedy anything; they can only view things in the light of an educated mind, and that comes to so very little. They have no motive
power in themselves, and they receive none from the nation. They
cannot give us an army, they cannot give us popular education, they
cannot conciliate Ireland, they cannot do anything for the poor.
Their intentions are admirable, and so is their public spirit; buc they
are impotent."




CHAPTER VI.
THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.
Explanations of the executive governments of Great Britain and America. - Relative opportunities for statesmanship. - Accounts of divers administrations and sketches of their
methods of action in developing certain policies. - The prime minister and the president
at home.- An' English foreign minister and an American secretary of state corresponding with each other. -Architecture of the executive departments in London and at
Washington. - Party politics and public duty. - Salaries and perquisites of officials at
home and abroad.
TH'i title of this chapter might have been "The Prime Minister
and the President;" for the President of England is, in fact, the
Prime Minister, while the Queen's place is analogous to nothing here
unless it be the fainter phantom  that we call The People.  We say
The Sovereign People; the English say The Sovereign; and as the
most practical nation must have some emblem, symbol, or personality
to cherish in its emotions, we love our Flag where they love their
Queen. "Our dear Queen!" cries the English child. "Our old
Flag! " say American boys going to battle.. The American flag, appealingc to the sensuous and artistic part of our nature by the gorgeousness of its colors and the purity of its symbols, - the stars shining
from  the sky, - was one of the happiest suggestions of our fathers.
It has had an influence in the state akin to the Cross in the Crusades,
the Eagle to the Romans, or the Marsellaise Hymn to the French Republicans.
It has been often said that the President of the United States has
more power than the English Sovereign. The English Sovereign has
personal influence, and there is great respect for her opinion. She is
made rich. and lives luxuriously, but she is without other power than
this. The President of the United States is more powerful than an
English Prime Minister, and this is probably what the above allegation means. The people's electors directly elect the President for a
fixed term of years. If he becomes obnoxious to either the people
or to Congress, there is no getting rid of him but by a vexatious trial,
and during his term of office he has control of many thousand officials
150




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            151
whom he may coerce to his will. But the British Prime Minister can
be changed at the will of the House of Commons, which meets annually; and in this respect lies the excellence of that form of government which is more immediately obedient to the Legislature than our
own President.
The Prime Minister is the Queen's responsible self; he who rules
the realm in her name, and can be punished for her mistakes.. She
must put him aside when the House of Commons, by voting want of
confidence in him, expresses that desire. Thus the Prime Minister is
the Queen's manager sitting in Parliament. He stands at the rudder,
and is the commander of the ship of State, but aroucd him are the
underwriters whom he must conciliate, and prove to them that his
course is the true one. Being responsible, the Prime Minister dare
not hold his place after he has been sufficiently rebuked by the votes
of Commons. Ile therefore advises the Queen to send for the leader
of the opposite political party, who becomes Prime Minister, and continues on with the administration in the name of the Queen.
Let us construct this form of government for America so as to make
it palpable what would be the appearance of the United States with a
Prime Minister at the head of it.
Here is King Ulysses Grant to represent the Queen. He belongs
to no political party, but sits in uniform at the top of the State, its
hereditary ornament and sovereign, incapable of resigning, never to
be elected out, not to be punished nor banished. He descended to
us from his father, and his son " Buck," is to take his place inevitably. We derived him without our consent, and can only expel
him from his place by rebellion, which is high treason, and the penalty thereof death. In the early days of his family, two hundred or
three hundred years ago, King Grant was his own minister and did
as he pleased, spent our money with or without our consent, and put
any of us whom he might dislike into the Tower, his jail. But being
a lazy, luxurious tyrant, he found it convenient to rule us through
some able favorite, a Cardinal, or a Duke. We could not dethrone
the King, so we turned all our animosity upon his favorite minister,
whom it was not high treason to hate, and in course of time this minister occupied so dangerous a place between the hate of the people and
the freak of the King, that he was obliged to say to the King:" Your majesty! I cannot be your minister unless you keep within
the law, for the people will hang me for executing your commands."
The people, also, rose up against the Grants after a time, cut off




152    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the head of one King Grant, drove two others out of the country, and
at last the King agreed that he would rule entirely through his minis.
ters, who were, in turn, to rule according to the laws, and to be
changed whenever the House of Commons wished.
Now, there are two political parties in the country, and they have
each sent to the House of Representatives as many members as they
could elect relatively. The House of Representatives elects a Speaker.
The two parties seat themselves on opposite sides of their legislative
chamber, and some one sagacious and eloquent statesman becomes the
leader of each party. This may be, for example, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens for the Radical party, and Mr. George Pendleton for the Conservative party. The King, Grant, at once selects Mr. Stevens for
his Prime Minister, because Mr. Stevens' party has the majority of
members of the HIouse of Representatives. He requests Mr. Stevens
to form a Cabinet for him, which shall conduct the business of the
nation, fill the executive offices, collect the revenue, and direct the
policy of the State. Mr. Stevens can either comply with this request
or decline the honor, according to his opinion of his own capacity
under the circumstances.
We will suppose that Mr. Stevens accepts the place of Prime Minister. He looks round the country and through both Houses of Congress to discover the ablest men of his party whom he can obtain.
There are, perhaps, seventy great offices to be filled; but as seventy
men would make an unwieldy Cabinet, only about sixteen of the
greatest officers are indicated for the Cabinet.  Ir. Stevens makes
himself the First Lord of the Treasury, and, perhaps also, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is known by the title of Prime Minister,
or Premier. He takes the seals of office from the King, Grant, as the
sign of his authority to rule in the King's name, and so selects his
Cabinet that they will be popular with the House of Representatives
as well as useful to the State. His own salary is twenty-five thousand dollars a year. As his Cabinet depends upon the will of Parliament for its continuance, himself and several of his colleagues must
also have seats in Parliament; but to accomplish this they all require
to be re-elected by their constituents. The government being formed,
Mir. Stevens, or that member of the Cabinet who is the leader in the
House of Representatives, begins work by recommending to the House,
in the King's name, that they. pass supply bills to carry on the country, and estimates are suggested of the amount required for each de



THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.             153
partmen-t. Mr. Stevens also writes the speech with which the King,
Grant, opens Parliament.
As in all politics to the victors belong the spoils, without which
politics would have no selfish stimulus, Mr. Stevens puts his friends
in all the great political offices, but he cannot, in the name of King
Grant, do that which President Grant has the privilege of doing,change all the clerks, laborers, and lackeys of the government. The
opposition party, with Mr. Pendleton at its head, is jealous of Mr. Stevens and the Radicals,-because they hold so many rich offices. Therefore every wily energy of the opposition is exerted to destroy the
confidence of Parliament in the Cabinet. The Prime Minister must
be ready to explain every troublous matter, and to convince Parliament that the country is being well governed   He brings up his
annual " budget," to show the good state of the country financially,
satisfies apprehensions about the foreign affairs of the State, explains
why the cattle disease rages, and accounts for the Houses of Parliament costing more than the original estimates. He also aims to bend
Parliament to his political convictions, and, being a Radical, he wishes
to extend the franchise to such Chinese, French, Africans, and Italians as may be in the country. In this the House of Representatives
is not up to his standard, and he loses some of the support of his
party or of certain neutral members. Finally he is beaten by a decided vote, as he pushes his views. He is then bantered by Mr. Pendleton, and the other party with his failure, and asked why he does
not give up the task of governing. He meets with an adverse vote
once or twice more, and sees that he has lost the confidence of Parliament. So he takes the seals of state back to the King, and resigns
his place, saying —
" Sire (or, your Iajesty), I advise you to send for Mr. Pendleton
to make up a new ministry which will be acceptable to Parliament."
Perhaps, however, Mr. Stevens may think that the people of the
country are with him in opinion, and he may take the resolute step of
advising the King to dissolve the Senate and House and order a new
election of Representatives. If this election should confirm the sentiments of Parliament, Mr. Stevens will have no alternative but to
resign, and let Mr. Pendleton take possession of seals, offices, and
honors.
This is the English form of government, which I have thus supposititiously transferred to America. Let us now see the actual Cabinet
which the President, the elected magistrate of the people, gathers
20




154    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
around him. And here we come to a remarkable fact, which is this:
that in neither America nor England is there any such organization
as a Cabinet named or provided for by law. There is no record kept
of the existence of either body, and iii England the names of the
Cabinet officers are known, but they are never announced officially.
Each member of the Cabinet, as he is also an administrative officer
of the State, is recognized in the latter capacity, but not as a Cabinet
officer. Neither Parliament nor Congress ever prescribe when or
where a Cabinet shall meet. It is a little conspiracy of great officers
to divide the magistracy of the State; and the word " cabal" is composed of the initials of the names of the members of a certain historical English Cabinet. For example, there is in England a First
Lord of the Treasury, and in America a Secretary of the Treasury.
These are recognized administrative officers. But when the Head of
the Treasury, in either case, enters into secret council at Cabinet
meeting, the law has no knowledge of such meeting. Congress or
Parliament can request the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish it
with information upon any branch of his department; but he is never
required to tell what happened in Cabinet meeting, or to disclose how
opinion was divided there upon any subject. One leading English
authority, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, has insisted, however, that
the Cabinet, "by our Constitution, is in practice a defined and acknowledged body for carrying on the executive government of' the
country."
The President of the United States is the Chief Magistrate by
name and by act for a fixed term of four years, charged with the
execution of the laws, sworn to the defence of the Constitution, made
Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, and entrusted with the
granting of pardons. He can only be removed by death, or conviction on impeachment, and, so far as we know, a President has never
been anxious to resign. He is elected by the voters of each State
going to the polls on a certain day, and casting ballots for electors.
These electors meet together at a point in each State, and ballot separately for President and Vice-President. They send detailed statements of the result to the President of the Senate, at Washington.
Then, on a fixed day, the Senate and the House meet together, with
the President of the Senate presiding, and in the presence of them
all the statements are unsealed, and the ballots read. He who has
the votes of the majority of the electors for President is declared
President for the next four years. If there be no choice, the House




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET;              155
of Representatives chooses by ballot a President from amongst the
three names highest on the electors' lists, each State delegation casting only one vote. If there should still be no person receiving a
majority, the Vice-Presideht becomes President.
The new President, being inaugurated, selects his great officers of
state within a day or two; for his duties are so numerous and various,
that he must have chief clerks over some of the important branches.
These chief clerks bear the name of Secretaries, and must be
appointed at once, because all the smaller clerkships should be filled
by them. The Secretaries are called as follows, and are considered
relatively honorable in this numerical rank: —
1. The Secretary of State and of Foreign Affairs.
2. The Secretary of the Treasury.
3. The Secretary of War.,
4. The Secretary of the Navy.
5. The Secretary of the Interior.
6. The Postmaster-General.
7. The Attorney-General.
The names of these are sent in to the Senate, which, sitting with
closed doors, and with a Secretary sworn to keep its secrets, considers the nominations, and resolves, by a majority, either to confirm
them, or to reject them. If confirmed, they remain the President's
chief clerks during his will, and are paid a salary of about eight
thousand dollars apiece, as clerks or Secretaries.
Now begins their relation of Cabinet officers, which, as I have said,
veils its existence from the laws of the land, or, in the words of an
English statesman, Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, is " merely a voluntary
meeting of certain ministers; for the archives of the country contain no means of distinguishing between a CGabinet minister and any
other."  The President, having some public design upon his mind,
finds that the execution of it will affect each of the seven great
clerkships or " departments" of the government. It would be awkward to go visiting each Secretary, or to send for each one separately.
So he calls them all together, and places his plans before them.
Under some of the Presidents, executive acts are said to have been
passed by the vote of the majority of the Cabinet. Under some of
the more imperious Presidents, Cabinet councils were called between
long intervals. General Garfield, a Representative in Congress, has
said to me that Mr. Lincoln seldom called Cabinet meetings, and that




15(6   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH- THE OLD.
his Secretary of the  Treasury complained that the Cabinet wa-s re.
duced to a series of chief clerks. The Constitution of the nation
Says only this, hinting toward a Cabinet: " He (the President) may
~require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the
executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of
their respective offices."  Besides being false syntaxj this paragraph
is in nothing explicitj as to the subject of the Cabinet, which keeps
no Secretary, and therefore does no writing.
The United States Cabinet Ministers meet: in the office of the
President, for the Cabinet has no existence without the Chief M-agis'
trate, and until 1868, when Congress enacted a bill, called the "Tenure-of-Office Law," the right of the President to remove a Secretary
was not disputed. Out of this law, and the alleged disregard of it
arose our most memorable impeachment.
While the relative harmony, intellect, and character of a Cabinet
have no influence to change' the duration of a President's term of
office, they materially affect the popularity of his; administration.
We elect Presidents in America as a reward of signal services,
more frequently in the field of war than on the plane of statesmanShip; but we regard the choice of his Cabinet as frequently more vital
to the country than his own character. Each Cabinet officer has, by
our present regulations, the absolute power of -removal and appointment over the large body of lesser clerks and laborers in his department.  In more important appointments the President sometimes
interferes. But it is seldom that a new President has the mortification of seeing his Cabinet officers rejected by the Senate, however
crude the selections may be. In 1869 the Senate even confirmed Mr.
A. T. Stewart, of New York, for Secretary of the Treasury, when,
by a law obsolete in the memory of men, it was discovered that his
mercantile pursuits rendered him ineligible. The vast I" patronage"
of the President, in honors and offices, generally secures his earlier
appointments respectful attention.
In the English government the selection of a Cabinet is altogether
a more delicate and important matter, for upon the strength of his
Cabinet associates depends the political existence of the Prime Minister. In both countries a shrewd mixture of political and social
notabilities is required to make an effective Cabinet, for the administration must commend itself to the respect of the people, and also
be equal to the tactics of its partisan opponents, who are not apt to
be scrupulous. In America, also, it is esteemed impartial to consult




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.              157
geographical attachments, two Cabinet officers from one State often
causing complaint. Personal favoritism also enters into the composition of Cabinets, as it is natural that the President should wish one
or two trusted friends at his side. President Jackson brought Major
Eaton, his neighbor, to Washington, and raised him to a ministership, much to the annoyance of his Cabinet, as I shall relate hereafter. General Grant made his townsman and chief-of-staff, General
Rawlins, Secretary of War. The majority of each Cabinet being
politicians, intrigues not uncommonly begin within the Cabinet circle
with the intent to affect the succession to the President or Prime
Minister. Instances of this sort occur in recent administrations of
both America -and England.
There are two or three remarkable coincidences between the office
of President and that of Prime Minister. The first is in the average
duration of their terms of office. In one hundred' and fifty years, or
from 1715 to 1866, there were thirty-eight Prime Ministers for England, - an average term of three years and eight months,. which is
nearly the exact period between the inauguration of one President,
and the election of his successor. Again, the salary of both President and Prime Minister is the same. Neither of them is directly
elected by the people, the source of power in America, nor appointed
by the Sovereign, the source of power in England. In one case the
electors intervene, in the other, Parliament must be satisfied. The
House of Commons can terminate the career of a minister, by voting
want of confidence in him, and the House of Representatives can
impeach a President, and with the concurrence of two-thirds of the
Senate, remove him. Both President and Prime Minister represent a
political party. Both are the dispensers of the great offices of the
State. If a Chief Justice dies during the administration of a certain
Premier, the latter, like the President, fills the place. Both offices
are the pinnacle of political ambition in their several countries.
To either office the most popular or the ablest statesman is generally
elevated by his party, although it frequently happens that some comparatively obscure gentleman, or some soldier merely, slips past a
more formidable colleague. Instances of this sort in America were
General Harrison passing over the head of Henry Clay, Mr. Polk
anticipating Mr. Van Buren, and Mr. Lincoln outstripping Mr. Seward. Analogous cases in England were the administrations of the
Earl of Aberdeen, in 1852, and, previously, of the Duke of Wellington, of whom Miss Martineau says: —




158   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"All that had been previously surmised of the Duke of Wellington's unfitness for civil government seemed orally confirmed by himself, and he was formally deposed in the accustomed way, by a majority of the House of Commons voting.against him. Next day brought
the glad tidings of his resignation."
The English Cabinet, in the summer of 1866, consisted of these
officers, fifteen in number: —
1. First Lord of the Treasury. -Earl of Derby; sixty-seven years old. Salary, twenty-five thousand dollars. He was also Prime Minister, or.Premier, and appointed, as his colleagues, the members of the Cabinet
succeeding.
2. Lord High Chancellor. - Lord Chelmsford; seventy-four years old. Salary, fifty thousand dollars. The best-paid officer in England. He corresponds in some degree to our Vice-President, being President of the
House of Lords.
3. Lord Pr)esident of the Council.- Duke of Marlborough; forty-six years
old.  Salary, ten thousand dollars a year.  He controls the department of education, and attends the Queen at the council table.
He belongs to the Privy Council, which formerly managed the country
jointly with the Sovereign.
4. Lord Privy Seal. -Earl of Malmesbury; sixty-one years old. This officer keeps the Sovereign's private seal, and was formerly of high authority in the State, but the privy seal is of little note nowadays, and
the office is little more than honorary.
5. Chancellor of the Exchequer. - Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli; sixty-three
years old. Salary, twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and the second
officer in importance in the Cabinet.' He is the English Secretary of
Treasury.
6. Secretary of State for the Home Department.- Right Hon. Gathorne
Hardy; fifty-four years old. This officer is the head of the government
police and militia, and is entrusted with the maintenance of the public
security, He renders up fugitive criminals from the United States.
7. Secretary of State fogp Foreign Affairs. -Lord Stanley; forty-two years
old; son of Earl Derby, the Prime Minister. He is the nominator of
Ambassadors and Consuls, issues passports, negotiates treaties, and
keeps England in correspondence with all foreign governments. This
office concerns us more than any other Cabinet position in England.
8. Secretary of State for the Colonies. —Duke of Buckingham; forty-five
years old. This officer, like all the five Secretaries of State, receives
twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and has charge of the immense
colonial possessions of England. We have a Secretary of the Interior,
who corresponds to him in some degree.
9. Secretary of State for India.- Sir Stafford Northcote; fifty years old.
The English Empire in India is so vast and so important, that the custody of it is entrusted to a special Cabinet officer.




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.                159
10. Secretary of State for War.-Right Hon. Sir John Parkington; sixtynine years old. This officer is, in all material respects, the counterpart
of our Secretary of War.
11. First Lord of the Admiralty. - Right Hon. Henry Thomas Lowry Corry;
sixty-five years old. This officer is the English Secretary of the Navy,
and he has a wider jurisdiction than the American Secretary, the British Navy being perpetual, and of monstrous size.
12. President of the Board of Trade. -Duke of Richmond; fifty years old.
Salary, ten thousand dollars. The commerce, railways, and commercial statistics of England, being of vital consequence, are intrusted to
a special Cabinet officer.
13. Postmaster General. - Duke of Montrose; sixty-nine years old. Salary,
-twelve thousand five hundred dollars a year. He has control of fifteen
thousand offilces, and dispenses three millions of dollars a year.
14. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. -Right Hon. Colonel John Wilson
Patten; sixty-six years old. An honorary appointment, mainly, with
a salary of ten thousand dollars, and filled by a statesman of rank.
The Duchy of Lancaster is a bit of private interest of the Queen's,
which yields her sixty thousand dollars a year.
15. President of the Poor Law Board. -Earl of Devon; sixty-one years old.
Salary, ten thousand dollars. The custodian of the mighty pauper establishment of England; the most extraordinary feature of the kingdom, not excepting its shipping.
By running over the Cabinet list above, it will be seen to be exactly twice the size of the American Cabinet, excluding the Prime
Minister. These fifteen officers govern England with the support of
the House of Commons. Yet, though dependent for their political
existence upon the Commons, nine of them are seen to be peers, and
one is a baronet. This conclusive evidence of the subserviency of
all powers in England to the aristocracy is made the subject of satire
by the German writer on the English constitution, Dr. Fischel, who
quotes from Bulwer, "' Could the king choose a.Cabinet out of men
unknown to the aristocracy? Assuredly-not! The aristocratic party
in the two houses would be in arms! What a commotion there would
be! Imagine the haughty indignation of my Lords Grey and Harrowby! What a'prelection' we should receive from Lord Brougham' deeply meditating these things.' Alas! the King's ministry would
be out the next day, and the aristocracy's ministry, with all due
apology, replaced."
The main features of this chapter, which is directed like the entire
book toward satisfying curiosity rather than making disquisitions,
will be: -
1. An account of the origin of Cabinets.




160    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
2. Some scenes in Cabinet meetings at home and abroad.
3. Sketches of certain administrations in England.
The Sovereign of England is traditionally the possessor of certain
inherited and inalienable absolute powers called prerogatives. The
earliest Kings of England were unrestrained tyrants, until the barons
forced them to consent to certain restrictions of their arbitrary power.
When James the Filst, who reigned during the settlement of Virginia,
was on his way from Scotland to be crowned in London, he had
a thief hanged up at a town of Newark, through which he passed,
merely to show " that he was God's representative, and had a right
to place himself above all law." His son, Charles I., in whose reign
New England and many of the other States were settled, declared' that he was responsible to God alone for his acts?"  Down to the
time of the expulsion of James II., a hundred and eighty years ago,
the monarch of England surrounded himself at:pleasure with- a few
confidential advisers, called Privy Councillors. Thi. body, -the Privy
Counclil, exists yet in England, but its former importance is diminished, and the Cabinet, which was formed outof a faction in it, or,
as we would say, by a "corner" in it, is now nearly absolute.
There are at this time probably a hundred or two hundred Privy
Councillors, and they are all entitled by this appointment to be
called "Right Honorable."  Being Privy Councillors, they have access under certain regulations to the Queen's presence; but only those
sit at her Privy Council table who are specially summoned. In
America the great body of honorable and influential citizens who can
have access to the President may be considered his Privy Council, and
this includes whoever is worthy, and who is requested by the President
to give him information or suggestions. When President Grant
called in the Quakers to advise him about Indian affairs, they were
of his Privy Council, in the English sense. In England the majority
of Privy Councillors are peers, and the members of the Cabinet are
almost invariably attached to this effete body, which, however, has a
few duties left to it, and certain committee work to do. We have
reason to remember it, for the celebrated " Orders in Council " passed
during the French and English wars in 1806, to the annoyance of our
ship-owners. For thirty years there has been no meeting en masse of
this large Privy Council, which is one of those cumbrous and useless
appendages to a useless monarch, embarrassing the study of the
English constitution, and accomplishing no good to man nor to the
nation.




TIE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            161
Looking back over the later days of the Privy Council we have no
reason to wonder that it was overthrown by a small minority within
it. Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor of Charles II. was one of the last
of the great councillors, and he was impeached of high treason on the
ground of common fame, without the examination of witnesses by the
Commons; upon which the Lords resolved that he could not be committed in the absence of any special charge of treason. The articles
of impeachment, which were seventeen in number, might have been
drawn closer, and several transactions of Clarendon been more fully
known, as subsequently revealed. There is good reason for believing
that he was the principal adviser of a standing army to be raised and
maintained by a forced contribution, and of the corrupt sale of Dunkirk to the French King. In his secret correspondence with the
French court, he betrayed state matters, which it was the interest of
the country should be concealed; and was not only himself a traitor,,
but made the King a similar delinquent, by soliciting money from the.
King of France to minister to the licentious profusion of his own.
Sovereign. Claren(Con was thus guilty of the enormous iniquity of
rendering a lavish Prince dependent on the wages of a foreign power,
to enable him to elude the control of Parliament. Avarice was his
flagrant vice; and it was observed by Evelyn, who was friendly
towards the Chancellor, that he " never would nor did do anything
but for money."  He had, too, the weakness of ostentation; built a
large house- Dunkirk I-louse, it was called from its surmised origin
-of unparalleled magnificence, storing it with choice pictures and
furniture, that excited the.surprise of all who remembered his recent
poverty. Parliament felt so strongly hostile to him, that Charles
declared his inability to protect him, and advised his withdrawal from
the kingdom. This advice he adopted, and on a dark November
night he etcaped to France. Hle was old and infirm, vastly proud
withal, and, after bearing his misfortunes with little dignity, died in
exile sevean years after. In those days the Privy Council chamber
was also a torture chamber.
After the Stuarts were expelled in 1688, a section of' the PriVy
Council took charge of the State, and, with a single exception, England has be#'. governed by a Prime Minister and Cabinet ever since.
The exception was on the death of Queen Anne, the year after South
Carolina was settled, when the Cabinet had resolved to restore the
Stuarts to the English throne. Two Dukes of, the Privy Council
strode ii.t>o the Cabinet meeting, and a general meeting of' the:Privy
21




162    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Council was summoned, so that, despite the treason of the Cabinet,
the Hanoverian succession and the era of Victoria was ensured.
The English Sovereign does not attend Cabinet meetings, and therefore the Prime Minister rules in her name, doing pretty much as he
pleases, consonant with the support of the House of Commons. This
custom began with George I., who could not speak English, and lhe
therefore kept away from the Cabinet. In former (lays when a
minister ruled adversely to the House he lost his head. Now he only
loses his official head. Ministers are not responsible for their acts
in these days, although they make great show of responsibility.
To make this subject as plain as possible I propose to compare the
material features of the official life of a Prime Minister with the same
features of the life of an American President. And first, the beginning of an administration.
In 1868 General Grant was elected President. On the fourth of
March, more than three months afterward, he was inaugurated. The
author was a witness of this state ceremony, and it was pronounced
the finest pageant of its sort ever seen at the capital of the republic.
Multiplied ways of travelling, increased speed, low excursion fare,
and a more nomadic and inquisitive spirit, augment the visiting
crowds to Washington city every four years, so that it is wise to say
that each quadrennial inauguration is more extraordinary than the
previous one. When Jefferson was inaugurated, as has been often
told, there was no procession; the President, in a homespun suit, - the
best " protection" to American industry,- rode unattended on his nag
to the Capitol, and hitched his horse to the palings outside. Within,
he took the oath of inauguration in calm dignity, uttering an address,
which, for concise, clear statement, and frank expression of great
truths only yet half popularized, far exceeded the literary merits of
his Declaration of Independence. After Jefferson, the government
became gradually more federalized; and Jackson, fond of personal
parade, made his inaugurations triumphal receptions. Harrison and
Taylor, being military heroes, got the dramatic support of the military
spirit.  Then the inaugurations were partisan merely, down to
Lincoln, when the North showed its enthusiasm. At last we have
come to Grant, and to his inauguration came represcntatives from
thirty-five millions of people. The contiguous State of Pennsylvania
alone is now almost as populous as the republic of Washington, and
the neighboring city of Baltimore- only one hour fiom the capital
— is as large as.all -the great American cities, in 1776. Of course




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.             163
the inauguration was a great gathering, by physical as well as sympathetic reasons. It was an entirely hearty inauguration, the testimonial of intellect to modesty, and not, like that of Lincoln, a turnout of drollery to see'Old Abe;" or like that of Harrison, a pantoinime of" Hard Cider." I saw here the most distinguished Americans, and if Gen. Grant had been a Protestant Bishop, he could not
have been spoken of with more heartfelt respect. No grisly humor
attached to him; no nickname gave him fictitious popularity. He
refused to let the light of military victory shine upon him, and in his
unobtrusive manner he came shyly with a friend to the Senate
Chamber and read his little speech, and again withdrew to duty. It
is only a high plane of citizenship that can appreciate such silent
character, and every eye that quietly looked upon Grant ridingC on the
avenue was a huzza without passion. The age of hero-worship
seemed to have expired, and that of business to have begun.
Did you ever go to one of the modern Sunday night preachings in
a theatre? There is a mixed audience come to the worship of novelty; the gilt and mirrors and fictitious laces round the private boxes
shine and shimmer, and down through the painted scenes comes a
preacher with a Bible, and says': -
" Let us pray!"
So seemed to me this inauguration, all spangled with triumph, as
Grant came to his people and asked strength to do his simplest and
best. No rhetoric, no gesture, no "deportment," nothing of the
French melodramatic, nor of the old Pagan Republic, but a revival
of Jefferson, without Jefferson's idealisms. The President-elect rode
to the Capitol with Gen. Rawlins, his Galena townsman. Two good
nags drew his carriage. A long procession went before and behind.
He subscribed to the civil forms of the occasion, bowing to the popular salutations, and his dress was plain black, without a tittle of the
soldier in it. There was much music, ringing of bells, banners, and
huzzas but the intensest study was the shy little man in the carriage, without a flush on his face, but with deep, reflective marks
there, made by poverty and war. When he arrived aIt the Capitol, he
found the top, the stairs, the projections, the balustrades, the abutments of th$f large marble edifice as full of people,-s a candy capitol
might be of flies. The area before the Capitol,.s clear, save of a
few; but in the park beyond, the trees were full of clinging human
fruit, and between the huge sitting-statue of Washington and the eye
a silent, orderly multitude looked up to where the long facade of the




164    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Capitol projected its three great porticoes. The middle portico was
the focus of all rays of light, of music, of attention. Two long
flags drooped down the central Corinthian columns, and between them
burst the peal of invisible drums beaten in the rotunda, From the
bases of these columns fell a temporary flight of stairs to a platform
railed, and draped in colors. This was all, except the stately building reaching to the clouds, and the peering, tiptoe multitude on
trees, fences, carriages, and house-tops, while amongst the mass on
frail scaffolding of timber, photography, like a carrier pigeon
perched, to seize the spectacle, and fly down the generations with it.
Grant alighted in presence of all these, and with Senator Cragin, of
New Hampshire, a gentleman, with large, baldish, florid forehead,
he walked out of the view of the people, they huzzaing. The Senate
was a packed mass of ladies in the galleries, and on the floor folks
of distinction, amongst them the gold-fringed, sworded, cocked-hatted members of foreign legations.  The new Vice-President, Colfax, made a little speech, and the retiring Vice-President, MIr. Wade,
went out of what is called active life. Grant entered the Senate,
with lis usual shy unconsciousness, bowed to the chair, and sat
awhile, suffering examination.  When the time came to go before the
people, he was prompt and sedate. The procession moved deliberately through the long lobby and aisle to the rotunda, where the band
of music made the iron ribs of the dome overhead tingle, and, filing
to the left, the President-elect walked into the daylight, descended
the flight of stairs, and stood before the roaring, surging people.
There were the judges in their long, black robes, to administer the
oath of office; there was his wife, happiest joy of all, her love and confidence crowned in this,- poverty appeased and obscurity vindicated;
there she stood amongst her relatives, by her father, and her sister's
husband, with her pride too big not to beam except for tears; - there
was everybody of honorable descent, talent, or station, and the air
was full of glad salutations, the people saying for the moment unselfishly:" IHail, our accepted one!"
The music throbbed its last; the huzzas ceased; the General took
the oath of office to Chief Justice Chase, with his arm and spread
hand lifted. I-e looked iup to the large presence of the Chief Justice,
burnt by the fire of battle — the Judge possessed by gentler inspirations. All grave and grand allegory was depicted in their two
figures, - the burning torch of the wilderness was inverted, and the




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            165
slayer without a sword took the oath of peace. Together they stood,
who came to these two magistracies by different roads, - the younger
man by the harder and the wearier route, - one taking all the dignities
of the other; and now, that the conflict of their ambition is over,
how like they are in wishes, in wisdoms! The one by the study of
books, the other by the study of active life, stand now upon the same
results, both progressive, both conservative, and probably mutual
admirers. General Grant drew forth his speech carefully, and folded
it back, wetting his finger at his lip. Then he read in a quiet way,
audible near by, no further; and while he did so his daughter was
passed to his side, and she put her hand upon his arm as if to support him. So he stood, strengthened by childhood, looking into the
multitude and pronouncing his designs, like the captain of a shipl
plunging out of battle into storm.
The President then rode to the White House, his official residence,
at the head of the procession of firemen, soldiers, political clubs,
militia, and mounted citizens. Hie found this building ready for his
occupation, having been evacuated the previous day by the former
President. That night he completed the list of his Cabinet, and next
day sent it to the Senate, which, sitting with closed doors, confirmed
it. The same day, or a day or two afterwards, there was a Cabinet
meeting, and a new American administration had fairly commenced.
Let us now turn to England and describe the inauguration of Sir
Robert Peel, the first Prime Minister elected in the reign of Queen
Victoria.
When thle girl Queen came to the throne, she found the WVhig party
in power, with Lord Melbourne Prime Minister.  The Queen's
childish associates and her family had all been WVhigs in feeling, and,
knowing little of politics, she threw herself, with all a woman's
fervor, upon the Whig side. Her household was filled, according to
custom, with ladies chosen from the great Whig families, and these,
being almost as wily politicians as their husbands and fathers, made
the Queen an enthusiast in their cause. She disliked the name of
" Tory" or "' Conservative," - the latter word being a liberalized
form of the former, — and was particularly opposed to the leading
conservative statesmen. In the enjoyment of the society of her distinguished and obliging household, the young girl seemed to have no
apprehension of any violent change in her confidantes dependent
upon the whim of politicians, or the exigencies of state. This was
to be part of her destiny, however; for in 1839, Lord IMelbourne,




166    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the Whig Prime Minister, announced in the upper house, a fact
long patent, that the Whig ministry did not possess the confidence
of Parliament, and that they had resigned.
But an unexpected determination of the Queen arrested the popular judgment and restored them to power. Her Majesty refused to
dismiss the ladies of her household, considering them probably not
politicians of any party. This, however, Sir Robert Peel made an
indispensable concession ere he would undertake to form a new
ministry; and the Queen, not acquiescing, and resorting to the
advice of Lord John Russell, a Whig, who approved her determination, the old whig ministry was reinstated. A Cabinet Council
mooted the point in dispute, and agreed that the constitutional usage
of changing the servants of the royal household on a change of ministry extended only to those who were members of Parliament, not
to ladies. Parliament appears to have acquiesced in the ministerial
version of the prerogative, being doubtless reluctant, if dissentient,
to press an adverse construction on a question so personal to a girlish sovereign. It had the effect of prolonging the existence of the
ministry for two years longer, though the votes of the Commons had
designated its incompetence to administer the affairs of the nation.
There is little doubt that, in a constitutional point of view, the
Queen was wrong, and was made the instrument of the wily Whigs.
Besides this, she was blunt with Sir Robert Peel, and told him that
she entirely approved of the conduct of the retiring ministers. The
Queen lived to regret her folly, and Peel had the satisfaction in two
years more of seeing the country sustain him. The Whigs were
routed, and a change of ministers became compulsory. The Qudeen,
meantime, had been married, and, under the discipline of a husband, had learned to leave state affairs entirely to the Cabinet, so
that when Sir Robert Peel came to the palace a second time, obedient
to her summons, she was resigned to lose her old acquaintances
of four years, from the Mistress of the Robes, who may be called the
Female Prime Minister of the household, down to the Ladies of the
Bedchamber.
Scarcely a word was spoken at the dinner-table, when the Queen
took her last meal with her old household, and, when she was with
ladies afterwards, tears and regrets broke forth with little restraint;
these were natural and amiable.  It was no fault of hers - nor
of theirs —that their connection was made dependent on the state of
political parties; the blame rested elsewhere, though the suffering




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            167
was with them. Everybody pitied the young sovereign, and sa.w and
felt the hardship; but there were many who looked forward cheer,
fully to an approaching time wVhen she would know a new satisfaction
in reposing upon an administration really strong, efficient, and supported by the country, and on a household composed of persons
among whom she could make friends without the fear of their
removal from any other cause than her wish, or their own.
Somewhat resembling the above is the scene between Mr. Duane,
Secretary of the United States Treasury, and President Andrew
Jackson. The latter wanted to use the former for a partisan object,
and Mr. Duane would neither be used, nor would he resign, but
insisted upon being dismissed by the President. The Secretary gives
the following as part of the conversation Jackson had with him:" President.' I suppose you mean to come out against me?'
"Secretary. -' Nothing is further from my thoughts; I barely
desire to do what is now my duty; and to defend myself if assailed
hereafter.'
"President. -'You have been, all along, mistaken in your views.
Here is a paper that will show you your obligations; that the executive must protect you.'
" Secretary. -' I will read it, sir, if such is your wish; but I cannot anticipate a change of opinion.'
" President. -' A secretary, sir, is merely an executive agent, a
subordinate, and you may say so in self-defence.'
"Secretary. -' In this particular case, Congress confers a discretionary power, and requires reasons if I exercise it.  Surely, this
contemplates responsibility on my part.'
"President. —'This paper will show you that your doubts are
wholly groundless.'
S' ecretary.-' As to the deposits, allow me, sir, to say my decision is positive. The only question is the mode of my retirement.'
"President. -' My dear MIr. Duane, we must separate as friends.
Far from desiring that you should sustain any injury, you know I
have intended to give you the highest appointment now in my gift.
You shall have the mission to Russia. I would have settled this
matter before but for the delay or difficulty' (as I understood Mr.
President),' in relation to Mr. Buchanan.'
"Secretary.-' I am sincerely thankful to you, sir, for your kind




168    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
disposition, but I beg you to serve me in a way that will be truly
pleasing.  I desire no new station, and barely wish to have my
present one blameless, or free from apprehension as to the future.
Favor me with a written declaration of your desire that I should
leave office, as I cannot carry out your views, as to this (deposits),
and I will take back this letter.'' President.-' Never have I had anything that has given me
more mortification than this whole business. I had not the smallest
notion that we could differ.'"
Afterwards the President sent a note to 3Mr. Duane, which concluded with the well-known words, " I feel myself constrained to
notify you, that your further services, as Secretary of the Treasury,
are no longer required."
To proceed with the installation of Sir Robert Peel as Prime
Minister: Parliament opened; the two leaders of the rival parties,
Russell and Peel, met each other cordially in the House of Commons, and shook hands. When the Commons went up to the Lords'
chamber, it was found that the Queen's speech was read by permission, as. she had declined to open Parliament herself, on account of
the partisan character of the speech which had been composed for
her by the old Whig ministers retiring; also, perhaps, because she
felt somewhat ashamed of her self-will two years before. The first
votes taken in both houses showed that the Whipg ministry could not
work harmoniously with either body. In a few days a Whig minister
in each house declared that the ministers had resigned their offices.
Then the old ministers, in plain clothes, took carriages, and drove
up to the Queen's palace. A great crowd stood around the gate,
cheering, groaning, laughing at the retiring administration; and the
dejected ministers, being formally introduced into the presence of
the Queen, delivered up their seals of office. In a short time, the
victorious new ministers drove up in splendid state coaches, and
were cheered with the greatest enthusiasm by the crowd. They were
obliged to wait until the Queen had taken an affectionate leave from
the old ministers. Finally, Sir Robert Peel, the new Prime Minister,
for whom the Queen had sent by the advice of his rival, was admitted
to see Victoria, and she gave him her hand to kiss. The Duke of
Wellington, who was to be a colleague of Peel's, was also admitted,
with three or four other members of the incoming Cabinet, and they
all reverently kissed the Queen's hand. The Queen and her husband




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            169
then went to another apartment, and organized a formal meeting of
the Privy Council. The members of the new Cabinet came in and
took the oath of Privy Councillors " to advise the Queen according
to the best of their cunning and discretion; to advise for the Queen's
honor and the good of the public without partiality through affection,
love, meed, doubt, or dread; to keep the Queen's counsel secret, to
avoid corruption, to help and strengthen the execution of what shall
be resolved; to withstand all persons who would attempt ttie contrary; and to observe, keep, and do all that a good and true councillor ought to do to his sovereign lady the Queen."
After taking the oaths, the new Cabinet took lunch with the Queen
and the rest of the Privy Council, and high-bred conversation upon
state topics was indulged in, every effort being made to conciliate
the shy young Queen, particularly by the new Tory young ladies of the
household, her ancient aversion, whom the Ministry had also introduced to her. These she wvas:pow compelled to accept for her everyday attendants and acquaintances, not mistress of her own household, though a Queen. Everybody was very stately and deferential
to her nevertheless, and at last the new Cabinet withdrew masters of
the state so long as the Commons should agree to leave them there.
The new ladies of the household were left behind; for now the palace
was their home.  Immediately the Whigs vacated some sixty great
offices of government, and Peel and the Tories possessed themselves
of them. Sir Robert Peel, master of the situation, now took his
place in the House of Commons, on the front bench, to the right of
the Speaker. A new Lord Chancellor presided over the peers, and
the Duke of Wellington took the ministerial bench in that house.
Crowds were in attendance on all these occasions to see the ceremony of installation of a new government; the streets.were full of
pictures of the new Cabinet ministers, and in Parliament the late
ministry began to assail the new.
Amusement for observers was afforded on the revolution in the
ministry in seeing the eminent men of the country change seats on
the reassembling of Parliament. The new Tory ministers had lost
no seats in the process of their re-election; and they, therefore, assembled their whole number,  Some of the Whigs went over and
occupied the front benches of opposition; some seemed at a loss
where to place themselves after having sat in the same seats for ten
years, with only a short interval. One or two members, too radical
to belong to any party, would not move, but sat composedly among
22




170    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the Tories. The next interest for strangers was in hearing the
Prime Minister's statement as to how the new government meant to
proceed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer arose and said he must
ask a vote of twelve million five hundred thousand dollars to carry
on the new government. With this large grant requested, the new
government was fairly installed and thrown upon the resources of its
own ability and the support of its party.
The same is the procedure at the present time. The Queen reigns;
the Prime Minister rules; the House of Commons, holding the pursestrings of the monarchy, dismisses Prime Ministers at will. If the
Prime Minister holds to his dangerous eminence, despite repeated
warnings from the tellers of Commons, revolution is imminent. The
Prime MIinister may prorogue Parliament, or he may dissolve it and
demand a new election, but in the end he must yield to public
opinion, and the Queen, for her own safety's sake, must bid him
good-by.
I have given an instance of the Queen's disagreement with a Prime
MIinister.  To show another curious instance of the jealousy with
which the Cabinet watch the Queen's movements; we may cite the
incident of Victoria visiting King Louis Phillippe, of France, in 1843,
as expressed in the diary of a Mr. Raikes, a bosom-friend of the
Duke of Wellington:" I went down," says Raikes, " to Walmer Castle, and found the
Duke walking with Mr. Arbuthnot on the ramparts, or, as it is
called, the platform, which overlooks the sea...... After the
company had departed, at ten o'clock, I sat up with the Duke and
Arbuthnot till twelve o'clock talking on various topics...... I
see that the government was evidently opposed to the Queen's visit
to Eu, in France. It was a wily intrigue managed by Louis Phillippe, through the intervention of his daughter, the Queen of the
Belgians, during her frequent visits to Windsor with King Leopold,
and was hailed by him with extreme joy, as the first admission of the
King of the Barricades within the pale of legitimate sovereigns. The
Duke said,'I was never let into the secret, nor did I believe the
report then in circulation, till at last they sent to consult my opinion
as to forming a regency during the Queen's absence. I immediately
referred to precedents as the only proper guide. I told them that
George I., George II. (George III. never went abroad), and George
IV. had all been obliged to appoint councils of regency; that Henry
III., when he met Francis I., at Andres, was then master of Calais,




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.              171
as also when he met Charles V., at Gravelines; so that in these
instances, Calais being a part of his dominions, he hardly did more
than pass his frontier, - not much more than going from one county
to the next. Upon this I decided that the Queen could not quit this
county without an Act of Regency. But she consulted the crown
lawyers, who decided that it was not necessary, as courtiers would
do.' I myself (resumes Raikes) did not believe in her going till
two days before she went. Peel persisted afterwards that he had
told me of it; but I knew I never heard it, and it was not a thing to
have escaped me if I had."
This will be curious reading for many Americans, who suppose that
a Queen is guardian of all her private movements, and is not only
absolute in her own realm, but free to visit every other. Few persons would think of questioning the movements of an American
President, and an English Prime Minister is also free to visit whither
he will.' WVe have never had, however, an instance of a President
going abroad during his term of office, but if the Chief Magistrate
would like to go to Mexico, Cuba, or Canada, for a short trip, few
would object, provided he left the public business in good hands.
Quarrels between Cabinet' officers are not rare in either America
or England, and it sometimes takes all the shrewdness of a President
to prevent his administration from falling to pieces.
During the midst of the great civil war in the United States, the
Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury were reported
to be at variance, and in the middle of summer Washington was
thrown into a ferment by the resignation.of MIr. Chase, as Secretary
of the Treasury. The publication, some weeks before, of the " Pomeroy Secret Circular," in the interest of Mr. Chase as a Presidential
candidate, had created much talk and considerable bad feeling in the
party. The President, Lincoln, however, took no part in the discussion or criticism.which followed. " On the contrary," says Carpenter, the artist, " he manifested a sincere desire to preserve pleasant
relations, and harmonize existing differences in the Cabinet. In
proof of this, I remember," continues the same authority, " his
sending one day for Judge Lewis, the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue, and entering into a minute explanation of a misapprehension which he conceived the Secretary of the Treasury to be laboring
under, expressing the wish that the Commissioner would mediate on
his behalf with Mr. Chase."
Many sincere friends of Secretary Chase considered his resigna



172    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WVITH THE OLD.
tion at this juncture unfortunate and ill-timed. The financial situation was more threatening than at any period during the war. MIr.
Chase's administration of the Treasury Department, amid unparalleled difficulties, had been such as to secure the confidence and
satisfaction of the masses, and his withdrawal, at such a time, was
regarded as a public calamity, giving rise to the suspicion that he
apprehended national insolvency. The resignation, however, had
been twice tendered before. The third time it was accepted. During
this period, MIr. Carpenter, an artist at the White House, says,
" I never saw; the President under so much excitement as on the
day following the event. Without consultation or advice, so far as
I ever could learn, he sent to the Senate, the previous afternoon, the
name of Ex-Governor Tod, of Ohio, for the successorship.  The
nomination was not popular, and great relief was experienced the
next morning when it was announced that Governor Tod had declined the position.  Mr. Lincoln passed an anxious night.  I-e
received the telegram from Governor Tod declining the nomination,
in the evening. Retiring, he laid awake some hours, canvassing in
his mind the merits of various public men. At length he settled
upon Ion. William P. Fessenden, of Maine, and soon afterwards
fell asleep. The next morning he went to his office and wrote the
nomination. John Hay, the Assistant Private Secretary, had taken
it from the President on his way to the Capitol, when he encountered
Senator Fessenden upon the threshold of the room. As Chairman
of the Finance Committee, he also passed an anxious night, and
called thus early to consult with the President, and offer some suggestions. After a few moments' conversation, 3Mr. Lincoln turned to
him, with a smile, and said, " I am obliged to you, Fessenden, but
the fact is, I have just sent your own name to the Senate for Secretary of the Treasury. Hay had just received the nomination from
my hand as you entered." MSr. Fessenden was'taken completely by
surprise, and, very much agitated, protested his inability to accept
the position. " The state of his health," he said, " if no other consideration, made it impossible."  Mr. Lincoln would not accept the
refusal as final. He very justly felt that with Mr. Fessenden's
experience and known ability at the head of the Finance Committee,
his acceptance would go far towards re-establishing a feeling of
security. IHe said to him, " Fessenden, the LORD has not deserted
me th'usfar, and he is not going to now. You must accept! "
They separated, the senator in great anxiety of mind. Through



THIE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.           173
out the day Mr. Lincoln urged almost all who called to go and see
Mr. Fessenden, and press upon him the duty of accepting. Among
these was a delegation of New York bankers, who, in the name of
the banking community, expressed their satisfaction at the nomination. This was especially gratifying to the President, and in the
strongest manner he entreated them to see MBr. Fessenden, and assure
him of their support."
In England Cabinets often fall apart, because the Prime Minister is
deserted by some one strong colleague whose ability or influence
is necessary to conciliate the House of Commons. The defeat of a
ministry in Parliament is held to be quite as disgraceful as the
repudiation of an administration at the polls in this country. The
defeat and retirement of Earl Grey, the chief supporter of the
beneficent Reform Bill of 1832, is as affectirg as the retirement
of some American Presidents.
The old statesman, now in his seventy-first year, had to take leave
of pow;er. He was worn and weakened by the toils and responsibilities of office, and he was conscious of having fallen somewhat behind
the time, earnest as he was in saying that the times went too fast,
and not he too slow. The close of his term of power was mortifying,
if not ignoble, in its character, affording but too much excitement to
the taunts and vindictiveness of adversaries, -taunts and triumphs
which were not spared even on this occasion. Twice he rose and
murmured a few words, stopped and sank down upon his seat. The
House cheered him, and he seemed unable to rise. The Duke of
Wellington occupied a few minutes in presenting petitions, in order
to give Lord Grey time to recover himself. When the old man rose
a third time, he spoke feebly and tremulously, but he gathered
strength as he proceeded, and spoke s6 as to interest all feelings, of
friend or foe, except where overpowering prejudices hardened some
hearts and minds against all reverent emotions and clear convictions.
The Duke of Wellington vehemently asserted that Lord Grey had
deserted his sovereign, and his review of Lord Grey's Government
was little short of malignant. " The old man retired," says the historian, " amidst universal if not unmingled sympathy and respect, to
enjoy the repose which his years required, in the bosom of a family by
whom he.was adored. IHe had had the last experience of civic glory."
This sad departure from the glory of power is compared by Miss Martineau, in her admirable book called the " History of the Peace," to
the insult which the same Earl Grey poured out upon Mr. George




174    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Canning, when the latter was routed as Prime Minister three years
before. At that time Canning sat in the House of Commons and
Grey in the House of Lords, and the latter made a speech upon the
demise of the former's administration, cold, hard, cutting, and cruel,
so that the thought of it rankled in the victim to the last. They
never spoke to each other nor met again.
The extremest personal instance we have had in America of a dispute between Presidents was in 1869, when the incoming and the
outgoing Presidents not only refused to speak to each other, but
would not ride to the inauguration ceremony in the same carriage,
nor, in fact, in the same procession.
As an instance of violent rupture in an American Cabinet we may
cite the famous contest in the administration of President Jackson,
over the character of Mrs. Eaton, whose husband was a Cabinet officer.
The latter had married a tavern-keeper's daughter, and the wives of
his colleagues would not visit her. President Jackson sympathized
with the lady, and strove in vain to raise Mrs. Eaton to the level of
her political sisters. The result is humorously told by the biographer, Parton: —
" Could the Cabinet be other than an unharmonious one? It was
divided into two parties upon the all-absorbing question of Mrs.
Eaton's character. For MIrs. Eaton were Mr. Van Buren, Major
Eaton, Mr. Barry, and the President. Against Mrs. Eaton were
MIr. Ingham, MSr. Branch, Mr. Berrien, and the Vice-President. The
situation of poor Eaton was most embarrassing and painful, for the
opposition to his wife, being feminine, it could neither be resisted nor
avenged. He was the most miserable of men, and the more the fiery
President -strove to right the wrongs under which he groaned, the
worse his position became. The show of civility kept up between
himself and the three married men in the Cabinet was at last only
maintained on occasions that were strictly official. Months passed,
during which he did not exchange a word with Mr. Branch, except
in the presence of the President.
" After enduring this unhappy state of things for nearly a year, the
President's patience was completely exhausted, and he was determined that his Cabinet should either be harmonized or dissolved. For
the next fifteen months there was the semblance of harmony among
the members of this ill-assorted Cabinet. The President, however,
did not often consult the three gentlemen who had families. The
time-honored Cabinet Councils were seldom held, and were at length




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            175
discontinued.  Mr. Van Buren maintained and strengthened his
position, as the President's chief counsellor and friend. The President spoke of the Secretary of State by the name of'Van,' and
called him'Matty' to his face.  It was decreed that Jackson's
Cabinet should be dissolved upon this question. A dissolution of the
Cabinet, except at the end of a presidential term, had never before
occurred in the United States, and has occurred but once since. So
unexpected was this event (the general public having received no
intimation of the Eatonian scandals, and not immediately discerning
the connection between the Cabinet explosion and iMr. Calhoun's
pa'mphlet), that a slight rumor of some approaching change was ridiculed in the Jackson papers, within three days of the announcement
of Mr. Van Buren's resignation. It produced a prodigious sensation.
At that day all official distinctions were more valued than they now
are, and a Cabinet Minister was regarded as an exceedingly great
man. It seemed as if the republic itself was shaken, when the great
city of Washington was agitated, as all the hive is wild when the
queen bee is missing. It added to the effect of the dissolution, that
the leading editors would not, and the editors-in-ordinary could not,
give ally sufficient explanation of the event. Some vague allusions
to'Madame Pompadour' found their way into print, but the Jackson papers hurled fierce anathemas at those who gave them currency."
The English Privy Council bears the same relation to the Cabinet
that the hand does to the mind, the former body having the power to
do what the latter body conceives to do. It often happens that an
influential Privy Councillor is a member of the Cabinet, though he
has no department to control, as if, for example, Mr. A. T. Stewart,
of New York, being a friend and preferred confidant of President
Grant, were to go into the Cabinet while he had no office to administer. To be struck off the sovereign's list of Privy Councillors is an
extreme example of the royal displeasure, and no instance of the
kind has happened since 1805. The Privy Council exists six months
beyond the death of one sovereign into the reign of the successor.
The present large dimensions of the Privy Council would be a reason
for dispensing with it in administration, if there were no other, for it
is not adapted for despatch or secrecy. In the Privy Council of
Victoria, are Judges, Bishops, the Speaker of the Commons, the Ambassadors, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the Paymaster of
the forces, and many other persons. Members of the Royal Family




176    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
are not sworn in as members of this body, hut are merely introduced,
except the brothers of the sovereign, who must take the oath. The
Queen, in Privy Council, can issue proclamations binding on the
subject, and in extraordinary emergencies, or, when Parliament is not
sitting, may even issue orders in contravention of law. Still, in any
such extreme cases, the Privy Council must seek indemnification of
Parliament. The Queen, in Council, appoints the Sheriffs for England and Wales, regulates quarantine, and lays or removes embargoes; but the Cabinet is generally at the bottom of these acts. The
Privy Council has considerable control over insignificant colonies,
and is supposed to be absolute over the Channel islands, which lie
between England and France, and are of Norman population. Whatever the sovereign can do in person, as marrying off her daughters, is
done in Privy Council. The Privy Council meets once a month, or
oftener, at the Queen's Palace, six members constituting a quorum,
and it generally consists of the Cabinet, the Archbishop of Canterbury (who is the highest churchman in England), and the great
officers of the Queen's household. Every member of the Privy Council ranks higher than a Judge or a Baronet, and. one degree lower
than a Knight of the Garter. When the Queen is not present this
ceremonious old body is called the Lords in Council. Acts of Privy
Council effecting important matters are considered in these days extraordinary and almost arbitrary, and if promulgated without the
consent of the ministers would probably lead to the resignation of the
Cabinet, and to a panic throughout England. It sometimes happens
in America that the President and Cabinet resolve upon some momentous act, which is more properly, perhaps, the province of the legislative body.
The most important act ever agreed upon by a President and
Cabinet was the Act of Emancipation, the subject of many eulogies
and paintings, and of this Mr. Lincoln has left us an account in his
own homely words: —
"It had got to be midsummer, 1862," he says. "Things had
gone on from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the
end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing! That we had about played our last card, and must change
our tactics or lose the game! I now determined upon the adoption of the Emancipation policy, and without consultation with,
or the knowledge of, the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of
the proclamation, and, after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            177
meeting upon the subject. This Cabinet meeting took place, I think,
upon a Saturday.  All were present, except Ir. Blair, the Postmaster-General, who was absent at the opening of the discussion, but
came in subsequently. I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved
upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice,
but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order after they had heard it read.
"Various suggestions were offered. Secretary Chase wished the
language stronger in reference to the arming of- the blacks. Mr.
Blair, after he came in, deprecated the policy, on the ground that it
would cost the administration the fall elections.  Nothing, however, was offered that I had not already fully anticipated and settled
in my own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke.'He said, in substance:'M r. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of
the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that
I fear the effect of so important a step. It may be viewed as the
last measure of an exhausted government; a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia
stretching forth her hands to the government.' His idea was that it
would be considered our last shriek on the retreat (this was his precise expression).'Now,' continued Mr. Seward,'while I approve
the measure, I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue until you can
give it to the country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest disasters of the
war.'
" The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with
very great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought
upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was, that I
put the draft of the proclamation aside. From time to time I added
or charged a line, touching it up here and there, anxiously watching
the progress of events. Well, the next news we had was of Pope's
disaster at Bull Run. Things looked darker than ever. Finally,
came the week of the battle of Antietam. I determined to wait no
longer. The news came, I think, on Wednesday, that the advantage
was on our side. I was then staying at the Soldier's Home, three
miles out of Washington. Here I finished writing the second draft
of the preliminary proclamation; came up on Saturday, called the
Cabinet together to hear it, and it was published, the following
Monday.
23




178    THE NEW WORLD UCOMPARED WITH THE OLD.
4 "At the final meeting of September 20th another incident occurred
in connection with Secretary Seward. I had written the important
part of the proclamation in these words:' That on the first day of
January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, ot designated
part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against
the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free;
and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize the freedom of such
persons, and will do no act, or acts, to repress such persons, or any
of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.'
When I finished reading this paragraph, Mr. Seward stopped me, and
said,'I think, Mr. President, that I should inSert after the word
" recognize," in that sentence, the words "' and maintain."' I replied
-that I had already fully eonsidered the import of that expression in this
eonnection, but I had not introduced it, because it Was not my way to
promise what I was not entirely sure I could perform, and I was not
prepared to say that I thought we were exactly able to' maintain' this.
"But Seward insisted that we ought to take this ground, and the
words finally went in.
" As nearly as I remember, I sat, at the time, near the head of the
Cabinet table; the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of
War were at my right hand, the others were grouped at the left.
"' Secretary Stanton, whom I usually found quite taciturn, referred
to the meeting of the Buchanan Cabinet, called upon the receipt of
the news that Col. Anderson had evacuated Moultrie and gone into
Fort Sumter.'"'This little incident,' said Stanton,' was the crisis of our. history,
the pivot upon which everything turned. Had he remained in Fort.Moultrie, a very different combination of circumstances would have
arisen. The attack on Sumter, commenced by the:South, united the
North, and made the success of the Confederacy impossible. I shall
never forget our coming together'by special summons that night.
Buchanan sat in his arm-chair in the corner of the room, white as a
sheet, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth. The dispatches were
laid before us, and so much violence ensued that he had to turn us all
out of doors."'
The Act of Emancipation will always be regarded as of Mr. Lineoln's own contrivance, assisted therein by prominent members of
Congress and of his Cabinet. It was proclaimed rather as an act of




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            179
war than of justice, and is one of those few great tableaux of our
history which are displayed, not upon the floor of legislation, but in
the secrecy of executive council. The correspondingly great act of an
English Prime Minister was the Reform Bill of 1832. This was the
work of Earl Grey and his Cabinet, acting in the name of King
William  IV., Victoria's predecessor.  At the same time, Lord
Brougham was Chancellor, Lord Durham was the Lord Privy Seal,
and Lord Althorpe was Chancellor of the Exchequer. This bill was
the English act of emancipation to several millions of English people,
who had no part in their government. It rescued Parliament from
the control of the landed aristocracy, and made it more the representative of the nation. It also improved the morals of the government,
and corrected much of its extravagance and corruption. For twenty
years the abuses in public institutions, chartered. companies, the
church establishment, in charitable foundations, the management of
the public revenue, and crown revenues, had been a constant subject
of exposure in England. It was discovered and shown that the government had not fulfilled its legitimate purposes; that it had been
carried on more for the benefit of the Cabinet administrators than the
community; that public services were extravagantly, unequally, or
inadequately paid; that public money was squandered in the maintenance of sinecures and undeserved pensions; and that peer and
commoner, their relatives and dependents, participated in the general
corruption. Even the ministry of the Duke of Wellington had not
been free from opprobrium. Official patronage was abused, and Cabinet ministers were found creating offices and putting their sons into
them, and then abolishing the offices and receiving in lieu compensa*tion pensions. The progress of this Reform Act was much slower
and more complicated than the American act of Emancipation. The
first step was to get the conservative ministry out, which was accomplished by defeating the Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister, in the
House of Commons, on a motion, made from the liberal side, to examine the accounts of his civil list'. The King then requested of Lord
Grey to "form a government."  Lord Grey replied that he would
undertake this task, provided a reform bill should be made a question
for Cabinet consideration. The King, who was afterward called "The
Reform King," immediately consented to this proposition, and delight
was exhibited over the whole nation. Only the aristocracy and the
parasite supporters of their political party felt sullen at their threatened loss of power. Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, took charge of




180    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the bill in the House of Lords, and Lord John Russell, though not a
Cabinet minister, presented the bill in the House of Commons. In
these days of democratic triumph in England, that Reform Bill does
not seem to have been a sweeping measure; but in 1831 it was considered by the aristocracy no less than revolutionary. Indeed, as
Russell read the list of boroughs to be disfranchised, the members
from those boroughs thought he was jesting, and interrupted him with
laughter.
For seven nights the bill was bitterly debated, and nearly eighty
speeches were delivered upon it; the whole country was aroused;
political unions were formed over all the kingdom; vast masses of
disfranchised men, like our Wide-Awake and Union Leagues, prepared to march upon London by tens of thousands to present their
mammoth petitions to Parliament.
In the fullest House of Commons ever known to have divided on a
vote, the ministers, with three hundred and two members voting for
their bill, had still a majority of only one vote. At the next stage of
the bill the ministers were defeated by a majority of eight votes; then
the Tory, or Conservative, party refused to vote supplies to the ministers; the ministers, therefore, determined to resign, and waited on
the King to give up their seals of office; the King refused to accept
their resignations, seeing how fearfully the country was excited, and the
ministers then advised him to dissolve Parliament. To this the King
was loth to consent, for Parliament had scarcely yet begun the business of the session, and the average duration of an English Parliament is more than three and a half years. While the ministers were
reasoning with the King to thus precipitately break up Parliament,
both bodies were in session, having been up nearly all night in a state
of the highest excitement.
In the House of Lords the aristocrats were even saying that the
King had not the right to dissolve Parliament. Hearing this, the
old monarch cried out that he would show them what he could do,
and said that, if he could not have a state coach promptly, in which
to proceed to Parliament, he would take a hack. Cannon boomed,
after the usual habit, as the King drove rapidly to the House of
Lords, where was happening the riotous scene which I have described
at length in the fourth chapter of this book.
One peer, Lord Mansfield, had to be pulled down to his seat by
those around him befoL he would stop his speech, even in the King's
presence.




THE PRIME MINISTER AND TIlE CABINET.            181
That day, the 22d of April, 1831, was the political crisis of the
history of England in the nineteenth century.
A general election was ordered all over the country. It was attended with the extraordinary agitation which will be described in a
succeeding chapter.
The reformers were successful all over the country, and in two
months a new HI-ouse of Commons assembled, pledged to support the
new Reform Bill. For two and a half months the hot debate ragted in
that chamber, and then Earl Grey's ministry and the bill were sustained by three hundred and forty-five votes against two hundred and
thirty-six in the opposition. The country was covulsed with joy, and
the whisper now was, " What will the House of Lords do?" A member of the Cabinet, attended by a hundred Commoners, carried the
bill up to the surly Lords. Only one Bishop voted for the bill; twentyone Bishops voted against the bill. The churchmen, less liberal than
the secular aristocrats, defeated the cause of reform, and the House
bf Lords rejected the Reform Bill by forty-one votes. The country
was in gloom, and curses loud and deep were uttered against Lords
temporal and Lords spiritual. Then the King prorogued Parliament,
or adjourned it for a long recess, in order that the Lords might hear
the growls of the people. Riots occurred all over the kingdom in the
interval; then, after reassembling, the House of Commons passed
the bill the second time. Again a member of the Cabinet carried
the Reform Bill up to the House of obdurate aristocrats. After a long
delay the bill was again defeated in the House of Peers by thirty-five
votes.
Now the last desperate measure of the Cabinet was suggested, to
create enotigh new peers to outvote the unyielding aristocrats. The
King fought hard against this extreme measure, and, at last, he sent
a circular letter, dated from his palace, to each of the peers. The
Duke of Wellington, always an inveterate enemy of the people, accepted the suggestion of this letter, by absenting himself fromn the
upper house when the vote was taken, and one hundred peers followed
his example. The Reform Bill was finally passed, after more than two
years' struggle, by both houses, and the King appointed a commission to signify his royal assent to it.
Such was the manner, and attended by such excitement, in which a
little, incomplete measure of justice was forced by a Prime Minister
and his Cabinet upon a weak King, an illiberal aristocracy, and a servile House of Commons; but more was accomplished than the mere




182    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
passage of this act. It showed how agitation, organization, and outcry, even from the disfranchised classes, could make themselves felt
in a partial and narrow government. It was the same agitation which
accompanied the proclamation of the Emancipation Act in America.
In the Cabinet there are often disagreements upon matters of vital
consequence to the nation. At one time Lord John Russell denounced
Lord Palmerston, and compelled his retirement, for interfering in the
politics of the Continent without consulting his superiors. Prime
Ministers have frequently prosecuted the editors of the country for
speaking harshly- of them and their official acts. In former days, and
even within.the past twenty years, Prime Ministers were in the habit
of using money to corrupt Parliament, and it was in this way that,
against the will Df the English people, Lord North continued himself
in power during the whole of the American Revolution, bribing Parliament to endorse him, and wheedling the King.
Parliamentary corruption, under George II., had become an undisguised element in the government, and still more dangerous to civil
liberty was the retention in its service of a body of hireling public
writers. For these practices Sir Robert Walpole appears to have
been justly reprehensible. Both Mr. Hallam and Lord John Russell
admit the corruption of this minister, but the latter doubts whether
his government was more so than that of the half century which preceded and that which followed it. The direct bribery of Parliament
is supposed, by M!r. Hallam, to have continued to the end of the
American war.
If we examine the list of American Presidents and contrast it with
British Prime Ministers, we shall probably find that the latter affords
the most renowned names. Many of our American Presidents have
been.the accidental suggestions of party conventions. An English
Prime Minister must be strong enough to " form a government;" yet
the American President who, next to Washington, most commands
the respect of the world, was one of those very accidents, and he was
ushered from obscurity to history on the shoulders of a party wherein
not one man in ten thousand had ever heard his name. An English
Prime Minister may be everything but obscure. Mr. Canning, one
of the greatest, was even poor. But amongst English Premiers have
been found poets, historians, jurists, novelists, and men of manifold
acquirements; our Presidents of late years have not been remarkable
either for the extent or the variety of their learning.
The English government, as influenced by " party," should be con



THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.           13
ceived of as a pedestal of bronze, whereon, according as oircumstances urge, one or other party leader is uplifted; it is of little
moment whether to-day Lord Derby, or to-morrow Lord John Russell, or the next day Mr. Gladstone, takes his stand thereon, the
pedestal will still remain solid and unshaken. This kind of government would not suit a democracy; for who could have formed a
ministry in 1861? We should have fallen into anarchy at that time
had we been obliged to depend upon the influence of mere statesmen,
none of whom were of the same mind. But the constitution so
clearly prescribed the time and method of electing a President, that
the country, or that part of it which sustained the Union, was in no
doubt about whom to rally. In England, where there is such uncertainty., the King is still at the head of the nation. The King never
dties, and if he lose his sanity, as has happened with some English
Kings, a Regent is appointed to govern in his name.
In the thirty-eighth Congress a bill was introduced by some admirers of the English government and particularly supported by Mr.
George H. Pendleton of Ohio, providing that the President's Cabinet
officers might have seats in Congress, and leave to debate there.
This proposition was debated with much earnestness, but in the end
it' proved to have no popularity.
General Garfield, one of the warmest supporters of this bill, said
in the debate:" The British ministry is nothing more nor less than' a committee
of the House of Commons.' I believe that no nation has a ministry
so susceptible to the breath of popular opinion, so readily influenced
and so completely controlled by popular power, as is the ministry of
Great Britain by the House of Commons. Let one vote be given
against the plans of that ministry, and it is at once dissolved. It exists by the will of the House of Commons.
" It does not, therefore, become gentlemen to appeal to our ancient
prejudices, so that we may not learn anything from that great and
wise system of government adopted by our neighbors across the
sea."
To this it was answered that what the United States needed was
not quicker susceptibility to feel the breath of popular opinion  and
MIr. S. S. Cox, also of Ohio, and a member of Mr. Pendleton's party,
made a very humorous and vigorous speech against the movement, in
which he said: -
" If the Executive, by its Cabinet, were in contact with the Legis.




184    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
lature, the people would lose, through the aggressions of power, and
the persuasions of corruption, their share of the government, and
the Legislature, representative of their interests, would become the
pliant instrument of the Executive. The democratic element of our
institutions would be expunged, and the power which in England
reached Parliament and people to corrupt and enslave would here be
used for the same purpose."
Very frequently American Cabinet ministers visit Congress, in
which, by rule, they have the right of access; but no particular attention is paid to them. During the trial of the Impeachment of
Andrew Johnson, nearly all the Cabinet Ministers were present in
the Senate, and some gave testimony. Ministers are responsible here
no more than in England, where, according to the best authorities in
law, ministerial responsibility, in the modern constitutional sense,
cannot exist, from the fact that the- law does not recognize a " ministry," but only individual advisers of the crown, whether presiding
over a department or not.  Impeachment is not restricted to the
ministry; every high officer of state may be brought before the
supreme court of law, as was the case with Warren Hastings, the
Scotch Lords in 1715, and in 1746 with the four Scotch Lords Balmerino, Cromartie, Kilmarnock, and Lovat.
Thus, on the impeachment of Sir Adam Blair and some others
for high treason, the House of Lords, after full deliberation, resolved
to proceed on the impeachments. The opinion of Blackstone, that a
Commoner cannot be impeached before the Lords, for any capital
offence, is contrary to the latest resolution of the supreme tribunal.
Frequently the statesman in England, whom the King called to
"form a government" is not at the head of the political party to
which he belongs. An attempt was made in America, on the election
of Thomas Jefferson, to set aside the public will by a shrewd bargain
between the Whigs and Aaron Burr, who was an unscrupulous adherent of Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson arranged with the governors of
the neighboring States to march their militia upon Washington city
if this plot should be consummated.
But one of our Presidents has been assassinated, and we have never
given his widow a pension. When Percival, who had been Prime
Minister and Speaker of the House of Commons, was shot dead in
the' lobby by a lunatic,' the grant of Parliament mounted up to this,
- Fifty thousand pounds for the children; two thousand pounds a year




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.            185
to their mother, -this two thousand pounds per annum to revert to
the heir on the death of the widow, to be enjoyed by him for life;
and one thousand pounds a year for life to the eldest son, on his coming of age. When this grant was made, no one dreamed of the destination which awaited a part of this monstrous provision. In the
shortest possible time that decency would permit, Mr. Percival's widow
married again. The wife of Mr. Lincoln repeatedly petitioned Congress for a pension of five thousand dollars a year. Apprehensions,
which revived the case of the widow of Percival, militated against
this moderate request.
Notwithstanding the almost powerless condition of the monarch in
England, the present Queen, with all her virtues, has been three
times subject to attempts upon her life. Before her marriage she was
annoyed by lunatics who wanted to wed her, and who stopped her
horse or stole into her palace. A boy, named Oxford, fired two pistolshots at her as she was riding near Hyde Park with her husband in
1840. Oxford was put in a lunatic asylum for twenty-seven years,
and then expelled forever from British possessions. He seems never
to have been a lunatic, and he ascribed his crime to inordinate vanity,
probably the inspiring principle of Booth's assassination. After the
Queen had been several times fired upon subsequently, Parliament
passed an act punishing her persecutors with flogging as well as perpetual imprisonment amongst lunatics. President Lincoln was fired
upon one night as he rode to the Soldier's Home; but the perpetrator
of the act was not discovered, and news of the incident was suppressed. A deliberate attempt was also made upon the life of
President Jackson. There are few sovereigns in Europe who have
not been attacked, and Prime Ministers have been repeatedly
mobbed. The Duke of Wellington had to nail up his windows at.
Apsley House to resist volleys of stones, and Lord Castlereagh, a
high Cabinet officer, was driven by public execration and his own perversity to commit suicide; the nation rejoiced over his death as if a
battle had been gained over a foreign enemy.
The British Cabinet holds its meetings at the Foreign Office, which
corresponds to our State Department, or at the residence of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has an official residence close by
the Houses of Parliament and the' Queen's city palace, in a little lane
called Downing Street, which is, in truth, the Capitol of England.
No instance is on record in recent times of an English Cabinet
minister revealing the secrets of Cabinet meetings. Lord Brougham
24




186    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
once charged this upon Lord Durham; but it proved to be a slander.
It was Parliament in England which abolished slavery in the British
colonies at the suggestion of the Cabinet, nearly thirty years in advance of America. The slave-trade had been abolished in 1807, and
by a later statute, following the example of the United States, declared to be piracy; but the act of 1833 abolished slavery itself in
the West Indies. The eight hundred thousand slaves were not at
once declared free, which would have been precipitate, and tended to
disorder, but their gradual emancipation was definitely prescribed.
All children under six years of age, or born after August 1, 1834,
were declared free! All registered slaves above six years became
apprenticed laborers, divided into two classes. The term of apprenticeship of one class, namely, those employed in agriculture, expiring
in 1838, and of the other class two years later. These terms of apprenticeship were anticipated by the masters setting the negroes free
before the expiration of them. The most difficult question to settle
with the planters was the amount of compensation to be paid to
them as the price of emancipation. At first a loan of fifteen millions
of pounds was thought of; but this was deemed an inadequate equivalent, and subsequently the loan was transmuted into a gift of twenty
millions of pounds. It was by the proceeds of slave labor in the
West India Islands that the fine future of William E. Gladstone, the
present distinguished English statesman, was acquired. His father
gave him five hundred thousand dollars during his lifetime, and left
him much by will.'He went to Parliament at the age of twenty..
three, was a member of the administration at twenty-five, and at
twenty-nine denounced emancipation in a speech. He has lived to
become almost a radical.
We are in the habit of considering William Pitt the greatest of
English ministers, but the doubtful results of his policy upon English
happiness has gone far to impair his reputation. He was the statesman of a selfish period.'He had no popular sympathies," says one
critic, " though he certainly would have had if the people had ever
come before his eyes, or he had had that high faculty of imagination
which might have brought them before the eye of his mind. To him
the people were an abstraction, and he had no turn for abstrac.
tions."
A Prime Minister has, practically, no such absolute power over the
Cabinet as a President, although he is generally obeyed by his colleagues. A rupture in an American Cabinetwould be a public scandal,




THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE CABINET.              17
but in England a similar breach might overthrow the Prime Minister.
The study of politics in any country shows that jealousy, envy, and
intrigue are associated with the dispensation of power. John Bright
remarked in 1868: - " I have seen so much intrigue and ambition and
selfishness and inconsistencies in the character of many statesmen, so
called, that I have always been rather anxious to disclaim the title."
Mr. Disraeli, once Prime Minister, avows for himself pretty much what
Mr. Bright charges. He says: "The truth is, a statesman is the
creature of his age, the child of circumstances, the creature of his
times. A statesman is, essentially, a practical character, and when
he is called upon to take office he is not to inquire what his opinions
might or might not have been upon this or that subject. He is only
to ascertain the needful and the beneficial, and tle most feasible
manner in which affairs are to be carried on. I laugh at the objections
against a man, that, at a former period of his career, he advocated
a policy different to his present one. All I seek to ascertain is,
whether his present policy be just, necessary, expedient. Whether
at the present moment he is prepared to serve his country according
to its present necessities."
Frequently a British King and his Prime Minister are on ill-terms
with each other. George III. upbraided Pitt bitterly, and Queen
Victoria, as we have seen, disliked Sir Robert Peel for many years.
Scarcely more confidence has marked some American Cabinets.
Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson, in Washington's administration,
were almost enemies. Andrew Jackson was, perhaps, the most
exacting master of a Cabinet that we have ever had. Hle ruled
by prerogative almost entirely, and we have this sketch of his manner in office, in the diary of a witness: —
"Cabinet Council, the fourth of May, 1838. Present, the Secretary
of State, Livingston; of the Treasury, MIcLane; of War, Cass. The
Maine boundary question was under consideration. lMr. Livingston
had asked me for a rule to draw up some lines upon a map. After
some minutes' search I entered the President's office with a rule in my
hand. The map was on the table before the President. Mr. Livingston was at his side, looking over the map with him, and making
some remarks on the measure under consideration. He had just
uttered the idea that its adoption would, probably, raise a clamor,
when the President interrupted him with the words,' I care nothing
about clamors, sir, mark me! I do precisely what I think just and




188    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
right.' As he uttered the last, his forefinger came down perpendicularly upon the map."
The English people have looked at our form of government, simple
as it seems to be, with a good deal of curiosity. One of the latest
of them, the popular writer, Mr. Anthony Trollope, says of this
subject: —
"It will be alleged by Americans that the introduction into
Congress of the President's ministers would alter all the existing
relations of the President and of Congress, and would, at once, produce that parliamentary form of governm:ent which England possesses, and which the States have chosen to avoid. Such a change
would elevate Congress and depress the President.
"No doubt this is true. Such elevation, however, and such
depression seemed to me to be the two things needed."








7                                      2
3                     4
z- ---— ~ —- --    B                                     __-___- _.____
I, 
C                                          7
ECCLESIASTICAL EDIFICES.
1-Winchester Cathedral, England. 2 —Rheims Cathedral, France. 3-Notre Dame, Paris.
4-Trinity Church, New  York. 5-Interior of St. Paul's, London.
-St. Sophia Mosque. 7-St Peters, Rome,
~T~fr~n~~f~n;  2
LLL~~~~~~~~Li% ~ ~ ~ ~
1illi ~         ~             ~~   ~i'~..
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ECLSASIA E DFCS
1-~i ncetrCterl nln.             2-hisCterl  rne  -NteDmPr
4 —Trinity Church, ~New York. 5 —Interior of St. I'au~~~~~~s,  London.
6 —S t.      ~     ~ SohalIsu.?S.Ptr oe




CHAPTER VII.
CHURCH AND STATE..An account of the established church in England, and of its influence upon America. -
Sketches of the church dignitaries, cathedrals, and parish institutions of the United
Kingdom.
BY this time we have seen the complicated character of the British
government: a Queen with immense revenues, yet ruled entirely by
a partisan Prime Minister and a Privy Council. But the Queen at
her coronation, as has been described, is invested with a spiritual as
well as a temporal sceptre. She stands at the head of the Established
or Government Church of England, - a feature of national life which
is comparable with nothing in this country.
Let us begin the examination of the subject of Church and State
by some geographical notices.
Forty miles from London, near the mouth of the River Thames, is
the old town of Canterbury, which stands upon the flat lands of the
county of Kent, a snug little old-fashioned town, out of which rises
the enormous bulk of a great cathedral, so high, broad, and venerable that it has been likened to a natural mountain upheaved there.
About two hundred miles north of London, in the middle of the
large county of York, stands the city of York, once potential, now
merely venerable, and this old town is also ridden by the towers and
walls of a mighty cathedral.
These two cathedrals give the names to the two greatest dignitaries of the Established or Government Church of England. At the
head of this Church is the Queen. She is its Pope, exercising nominal sovereignty, both temporal and spiritual, as the Czar of Russia
is the sovereign head of the Greek Church. Below the Queen are
the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the former being known as
the " Primate of all England," the latter as the "Primate of England." These two dignitaries keep their name and rank precisely as'their predecessors bore them when the Roman Catholic Church was
the Church of England, and a long and bitter quarrel on the score
189




190    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of precedence between the two primates was settled by a Pope of
that day. The Archbishop of Canterbury is altogether the most
powerful of these two churchmen, and far from being content to reside
in the little town of Canterbury, he inhabits a palace in London,
while the Bishop of London is altogether his subordinate.
He is the first peer of the realm, and has precedence over all government functionaries, and the entire clergy. In rank he comes immediately after the Princes of the Blood. He is privileged to have
eight chaplains, whereas a Duke may only have six -at most. His title
is "His Grace and Most Reverend Father in God."  He subscribes
himself " By Divine Providence, Archbishop;" whereas other bishops
only write " By Divine permission." When speaking of him and the
Archbishop of York, the wonted form of expression employed is,
H lie is enthroned;" whereas the other bishops -are merely said to be
"in-stalled."T-he title of a Bishop is " Right Reverend Father in God," and
he ranks after a Secretary of State, if the latter be a Bishop; otherwise after Marquises younger sons.
The Bishop of London is the "' Dean in Ordinary" of the Chapelroyal. He nominates a sub-dean. The royal domestic chaplain is
the " Clerk of the Closet;" and has the right to say grace at the
Queen's table. With him officiate forty-eight other chaplains, who
celebrate divine service daily in the Chapel-royal. The Queen's
palace is thus kept as resonant with prayers and chantings as
the Vatican at Romie. At the Chapel-royal seats are appropriated
to the nobility; the service is chanted by boys three times a day, and
great jealousy is exercised with regard to the admission of strangers.
The Bishop of London lives in a fine residence in the fashionable
Part of the town, close by the Queen's palaces; he is paid fifty thousand dollars a year.
The residence of the great Archbishop of Canterbury is a quaint
old brick palace, within sight of the Houses of Parliament, and on the
opposite side of the river, in the district called Lambeth. It is surrounded with large grounds, and its brick towers are conspicuous
above the verdure which surrounds it. For six hundred years the:Archbishops of Canterbury have lived on this spot. There are
twenty-five thousand volumes in the library of this palace, and its
tenant, besides the fine archiepiscopal home, had an income of seventyfive thousand dollars in gold a year. In a pleasant old parish church,




CHURCH AND STATE.                    191
adjoining Lambeth Palace, several of the Archbishops of Canterbury
are buried.
No information regarding the number of persons belonging to the
Episcopal Church and those adhering to other religious creeds in
England, is given in the latest official census books. It appears,
however, from the returns of the Registrar-General, that, in the year
1861, out of a total number of one hundred and sixty-three thousand
seven hundred and six marriages, one hundred and thirty thousand
six hundred and ninety-seven were solemnized according to the rites
Of the Established Church: these figures refer only to England proper.
In 1860 there were fifty-four thousand and nine churches in the United
States, with property valued at one hundred and seventy-one million
dollars, and church accommodation for nineteen millions of people.
This shows that we have a church to about every five hundred and
eighty persons. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States may be considered as a legitimate branch of the Established
Church of England, except in the political affiliations of the latter.
There are nearly two thousand two hundred Protestant Episcopal
Churches in the United States; and the membership is supposed to
be about eight hundred thousand; their church property was valued,
in 1860, at twenty-two millions of dollars.
At the time of the Revolutionary War, there were not more than
eighty clergymen of the Church of England established north of
Maryland and Virginia; in the two latter States they had legal
establishments of their own, but in the Northern States were supported by missionary societies in the mother -country. The largest
grant of land ever made to an American church has now become the
famous Trinity Church Corporation of New York city; the original
grant, however, was inconsiderable. The first independent Protestant
Episcopal Bishops of the United States were consecrated in the
old Palace of Lambeth, which we have described, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to a special act of Parliament. Two
of these Bishops were Philadelphians, and one represented Trinity
Church, New York.
The following is a part of the ceremony, at the installation of an
English Bishop, as performed at the present day, by the Archbishop
of Canterbury: -
"After the Gospel and the Nicene Creed and the Sermon are ended the
elected Bishop (vested with his rochet) shall be presented by two Bishops unto
the Archbishop of that province (or to some other Bishop appointed by law



192   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ful commission), the Archbishop sitting in his chair, near the holy table, and
the Bishops that present him saying: -
"' Most Reverend Father in God, we present unto you this godly and welllearned man to be ordained and consecrated Bishop.'
" Then shall the Archbishop demand the Queen's mandate for the consecration and cause it to be read. And the oath touching the acknowledgment of
the Queen's supremacy shall be ministered to the persons elected, as it is
set down before in the Form for the Ordering of Deacons. And then shall
also be administered unto them the oath of due obedience to the Archbishop,
as followeth:" The Oath of Obedience to the Archbishop. -'In the name of God, I, N.,
chosen Bishop of the Church and See of N., do profess and promise all due
reverence and obedience to the Archbishop, and to the Metropolitical Church
of N., and to their successors. So help me God, through Jesus Christ.'
"Then the Archbishop and Bishops present shall lay their hands upon the
head of the elected Bishop, kneeling before them upon his knees, the Archbishop saying:"' Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a Bishop in the Church
of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. And remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is given thee by this imposition
of our hands, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and
love, and soberness.'
" Then shall the Bishop elect put on the rest of the Episcopal habit, and,
kneeling down, Veni Creator Spiritus shall be sung or said over him, the
Archbishop beginning, and the Bishops, with others that are present, answering, by verses, as followeth: -
"' Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestialfire.
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
Who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart.
"' Thy blessed Unction from above
Is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Illumine with perpetual light
The dulness of our blinded sight.
"' Anoint and cheer our soiled face
With the abundance of thy grace.
Keep far our foes, give peace at home
Where thou art guide, no ill can come.
"I Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And thee, of both, to be but One.
That through the ages all along,
This may be our endless song:
" C Praise to thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.'"




CHURCH AND STATE.                    193
From the three American Bishops, apostolically consecrated as
above by the English Primate, have sprung the more than forty
Bishops who administer the affairs of the American Protestant Episcopal Church at the present time. The Protestant Episcopal Church
in America, relieved from its association with politics, has become
one of the most flourishing and popular denominations in the republic, - a fact which s. nificantly shows the ability of any Christian
church to support itself without the assistance of the temporal government.
There is an ostensible division of the territory of the United States
into parishes, accCdring to the polity of the American Episcopal
Church. But this is very different from the English parish system,
and also quite different from the civil parishes of Louisiana.
An English parish may be considered as an ecclesiastical territory,.
like the Papal rtate, yet, by the changes of time, it has become a
temporal as well as a spiritual community. By the common law,.
every land-ow-ner or lease-holder residing in a parish is a parishioner.
Every parishiont'nhas the right to take part in the parish church government, provw id he fulfil the obligations which the parish imposes.
upon him. A rmeeting of parishioners constitutes a vestry, and the;
rector, or parson, presides over the same. The Church in England,.
being recogni ed by civil law, has power over all parishioners, whether
they be Christians or Jews. The vestry, or the minister, or both, appoint church-wardens, who keep the Church in good repair and take
care of its furniture. Every parish has one Church, and some have
two. The assembled vestry, or the church-wardens, levy the churchrates upon all lands and houses in the parish, and these rates are recovera'cle at law. But no church-rates are paid upon royal property,
ecclesiastical property, or by the h' patron," - he who owns the parish
Churchi and appoints the pastor. All persons must pay these churchrates, whether they bel.ig to the Established Church or not; Jews,
Dissenters, and Catholics must thus pay for the support of a Church
with which they have no sympathy, perhaps, in any respect. This is
one of the crying evils of the British government, and every year
motion is annually made in Parliament to abolish these despotic
church-rates.
Quakers, by special statute, can make the parish pay back the
church-rates which have been extorted from them. In several thousand English parishes Dissenters, Jews, and Catholics make a majority
in the parish vestry, and summarily reject the church-rates; in other
25




194    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
words, they meet as part of the Church, and vote against paying any
money to the Church.
Out of the popular unwillingness in England to pay rates to the
support of the Church have grown many notable lawsuits, chief of
which was the great Braintree case, which passed from court to court
like any civil case. This suit arose on this wise:The parish Church of Braintree being ve- much out of repair,
a monition issued from the Consistorial Court of London, commanding the church-wardens to summon a vestry for a specified day and
hour, and ordering the parishioners then to attend, and make a
church-rate. A vestry having been convened, a-rate was proposed
and seconded. An amendment, in effect, " that no rate be granted,"
was moved and seconded, and, on a show of hands, carried. The
majority of the parishioners who had negatived the granting a rate,
having quitted the vestry, the church-wardens in the minority continued to remain in the vestry, and reproposed and carried the
necessary rate. The legality of the rate thus made was argued in
the Consistorial Court of London before Dr. Lushington, who decided
that the rate was invalid. From this decision an appeal was prosecuted in the Arches Court, and the Dean of Arches, reversing the
decision of Dr. Lushington, held that the rate was a legal and valid
church-rate.
The decision of the Arches Court was brought under the consideration of the Court of Queen's Bench upon motion for a writ of
prohibition restraining the judge of the Arches Court, the churchwardens of Braintree, and all other persons, from proceeding in the
matter of the rate.
The Queen's Bench decided that the rate was well made, and
refused the writ of prohibition. A writ of error was brought on the
judgment in prohibition, and the Court of Exchequer Chamber
affirmed the decision of the Queen's BenAe. Upon further appeal
to the House of Lords that judgment was reversed, and it is now
finally settled that the minority of the vestry have no power to bind
the majority, and that a church-rate at common law can be legally
imposed only by a majority of the parishioners duly convoked and
assembled in vestry for that purpose.
In many respects the Church of England has been liberalized by
act of Parliament.  In 1854, the arrogant regulations of the two
established universities were rescinded, and in 1869, Mr. Gladstone,
the Prime Minister, struck a vital blow at the Irish Church, a branch




CHURCH AND STATE.                    195
of the English Church establishment. So bitterly did the Bishops
and some of the peers oppose this measure in the House of Lords,
that a new creation of peers was threatened. And, curiously enough,
the champion of the Irish establishment, in all its uncharitableness,
was a statesman of Jewish extraction, whose race had been denied
civil toleration in England clown to the time of Cromwell, and had
been kept out of Parlianment even in MIr. Disraeli's lifetime. The
career of the Jews in England, where they have risen to great power,
and within a few years past have been admitted to many dignities, is
not the least significant thread in the liberalization of England.
A rich Jew of Amsterdam, Manasseh-ben-Israel, had previously
petitioned in vain the "Long" and the 1" Barebones " Parlialnents.
Cromwell was more tolerant. He succeeded, notwithstanding the
violent opposition he had to contend with, in establishing that, by
his special commission, Jews might settle in England. Manassehben-Israel received a pension from the Protector.
Jews, who have lived seven years in any English colony, are
naturalized, ipso jure.
The pertinacious opposition against the admission of Jews to
Parliament had partly a secret reason; it was feared that if the formule of religious oaths were removed opulent Mohammedans and
Hindoos might succeed in buying their way to Parliament; hence,
only by special resolution of either house are the words " On the true
faith of a Christian" omitted in favor of Jews; the entrance to
Parliament remaining still barred to Mohammedans and Hindoos.
This latter question is to the Englishman what the question of
Chinese and Japanese naturalization is to us. If England could be
republicanized, as many Americans suppose, the heathens in her
single colony of India would outvote the entire British race.
Cromwell, whom I have referred to above, was a dissenter, and
there is -no ecclesiastical, nor even civil recognition of his administration kept in England.
Notwithstanding his stern and victorious Protectorate, both the
man and the era of the Commonwealth are omitted from all legal
documents, and many so-called historical documents of England.
The reign of Charles II. is reckoned from the lea. th of his father,
the decapitated king. Thus, almost the only years, eleven, in which
the English people have been classed as citizens and not as subjects,
and represented at the head of the State by a hero of their own class,
are swept away from their records by a fulsome and futile act of




196    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
stultification. At the present day the criminal King, Charles I., is
called 1" the martyr " in magazine articles and novels, while the body
of Cromwell lies in a ditch amongst the remains of many other men
as far in advance of English literary sentiment at the current time
as their era is remote. And amongst a certain kind of celebrations
patent still in England is that of " The Restoration," which may be
described as the transition from glory to the shambles. There is not
a statue of any English republican set up in London, except, perhaps, Milton. On the contrary, the meanest of the Stuarts and
Hanoverians are well commemorated. It is certain that if " reform"
means anything in England, it will some day make sentiment, and at
Charing Cross the effigies of the regicides may be expected to stand,
within our own century perhaps, on the site of their brutal executions.
The history of the dissenting denominations in Great Britain is
far more vivid and interesting than that of the Established Church.
The English Reformation was unaccompanied by the stirring episodes which marked the German reformation. The English clergy in
the main part quietly consented to be transferred from allegiance to
the Pope to the control of the King, and the immense ecclesiastical
estates with which William the Norman had invested his bishops
were distributed amongst the nobles, to appease their scruples. The
king himself took the lion's share. The great Abbey lands, which
were almost at a stroke transferred from the Church to the State,
have been mainly absorbed in the large manors of the aristocracy;
some of them have found their way to colleges, schools, and charities,
and others belong to the crown lands down to the present time. But
the remains of the beautiful Gothic edifices, which belonged to the
Catholic age of England, are objects of beauty and interest over all
the kingdom, covered with green ivy, which clambers up the long
shafts and traceries of their portals, and blows in and out of the
rich oriel windows suspended above. The American visitor beholds
them almost with superstition; for our ruins are confined to certain
Indian mounds and the old stone windmill at Newport.
The English Reformation, indeed, was not at first a rebellion in
doctrine, but a civil contention with the Pope. One of the best continental critics has said of it, that " the haughty sentiment of the
Englishman, fancying for himself a national God of his own, a Deity
providing for the affairs of other nations by the way merely, was
loth to endure that a foreign prince beyond the realm should exer




CHURCH A.ND STATE.                   197
cise any jurisdiction upon his spiritual concerns." No sooner had the
King asserted his own independence than he began to persecute the
dissenters from his own church most unmercifully. The history of
these persecutions is intimately woven with the settlement of the
United States.
By the Act of Uniformity, it was enacted that no person should
thenceforth be capable of holding any ecclesiastical promotion or
dignity; or of consecrating or administering the sacrament, until he
should be ordained priest according to Episcopal ordination; and,
with respect to all ministers who then enjoyed any ecclesiastical
benefice, it directed that they should, within a certain period, openly
read morning and evening service according to the Book of Common
Prayer, and declare before the congregation their unfeigned assent
and consent to the use of all things therein contained, upon pain of
being ipso facto deprived of their spiritual promotion. This act is
really the test-act of the English hierarchy. By its enforcement in
1662, two thousand four hundred of its most efficient and devoted
ministers were deprived of all promotion.
In the year 1789, the Dissenters made-an application to Parliament
for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the old spirit
was at once revived. A torrent of insult and abuse was let loose
upon the petitioners; a cry was raised that the Church was in danger,
and a meeting was held in Manchester, "to consider of and consult
about the impropriety of the application to Parliament of the Protestant Dissenters to obtain a repeal of those salutary laws, the Corporation and Test Acts, the great bulwarks and barriers for a century
and upwards of our glorious Constitution in Church and State." The
High Church party carried the day, and the Dissenters were defeated.
Among the resolutions passed at this meeting was the following:
"That the religion of the State be the religion of the magistrate,
without which no society can be wisely confident of the integrity and
good faith of the persons appointed to places of trust and power."
This meeting was followed by the formation of a " Church and King
Club," the members of which wore uniforms with a representation of
the Collegiate Church engraved upon their buttons; and the standing
toast at their numerous convivial meetings was, " Church and King,
and down with the Rump." As a counterpoise to the operations of
this club, some of the more moderate Churchmen and Dissenters,
zealous reformers, resolved to form an association of their own, and




198    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
hence was begun the "Manchester Constitutional Society," which
soon comprised a considerable number of members.
The exclusiveness of the established clergy is sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that they do not allow the bodies of Dissenters to
be interred in their church-yards. It would seem that there is no objection to the burial in such church-yards of Dissenters who have been
baptized in infancy; the only service, however, allowed at the burial
is that of the Church of England. A bill tending to modify this was
thrown out. Statutes against blasphemy have been in force even in
our century. In 1824, eleven clerks at Carlisle were sentenced to
fines and imprisonment for having sold Tom Paine's works. The
Lord Chancellor Eldon, in 1822, refused protection to the copyright
claimed il Byron's " Cain," because the book was of a blasphemous nature.  The same Lord Chancellor, in the following year,
rejected the prayer of Dr. Lawrence, the celebrated physician, for
protection against the infringement of copyright of his lectures, because he denied therein the immortality of the soul. Under the same
system  Shelley was even deprived of the guardianship of his own
children, as being a blasphemer.
In the British navy there is no recognition of aner other worship
than that of the Established Church, and no permission even to Roman Catholic sailors to absent themselves from its habitual celebration on board ship.
In the British army the practice is somewhat more diversified.
Under the general orders of the service, Roman Catholic soldiers have
for some time been everywhere exempted from attending the service
of the Church. In Ireland their officers resort to their chapels in
company with them, in order to prevent their being tampered with
by political harangues; but the precaution hardly meets the supposed
necessity, as the sermons are often in Irish. There was, until recently, no similar exemption for Protestant Dissenters, probably because no rule of their religious communities in general forbids their
attendance at the worship of the Establishment, but in July, 1839, an
order was issued forbidding the exaction of compulsory attendance
from any soldier of a persuasion other than that of the Church.
At each military home station divine service is performed by local
clergyomen of the Church Establishment, in England; and in Scotland, either by those of the Establishment, or of the Episcopal com.
munion, as the regiment may be Scotch or English. Episcopalians
and Roman Catholics were entitled, in Scotland, before the recent




CHURCH AND STATE.                     199
order, to repair to their respective churches. The troops stationed in
the forts in Scotland are allowed the services of a Presbyterian clergyman at the public expense. Thus it would appear that the principle of the army is, a full toleration of all Dissenters, a recognition of
the Established Church of Scotland, in Scotland, and of the Church
of England generally.
While Ireland has been saddled with an expensive Church establishment, and the English Dissenter must pay his church-rates annually, the Scotch people, more fortunate, are permitted to have a
different doctrine and organization. While King Henry VIII. and
his Archbishop, Cranmer, were establishing a gorgeous Episcopacy in
England, John Knox, a Scotch clergyman, who had been travelling
on the Continent, returned to Edinburgh, and founded the Calvinistic
Church. As Scotland was not definitely annexed to England until a
comparatively recent period, it was permitted to have a separate
Church establishment.
The Scotch Church is a perfect democracy, all the members being
equal, none of them having power or pre-eminence of any kind over
another. There is in each parish a parochial tribunal, called a Kirk
session, consisting of the minister, who is always resident, and of a
greater or smaller number of individuals, of whom, however, there
must always be two selected as elders. The principal duty of the
latter is to superintend the affairs of the poor, and to assist in visiting the sick The session interferes in certain cases of scandal, calls
parties before it, and inflicts ecclesiastical penalties. But parties
who consider themselves aggrieved may appeal from the decisions of
Kirk session to the presbytery in which it is situated, the next highest
tribunal in the Church The General Assembly, which consists partly
of clerical and partly of lay members, chosen by the different presbyteries, boroughs, and universities, comprises three hundred and
eighty-six members, and meets annually in May, and sits for ten
days; but it has been the custom to appoint a commission, to take up
and determine any matters it may have left undecided. The Assembly is honored during its sittings with the presence of the representative to the Queen, who bears the title of Lord High Commissioner. He cannot interfere in any way with its proceedings. All
matters brought before the Assembly are decided, after debate, by a
vote. The dissenters from the Church are very numerous, and are
variously estimated as comprising from one-half to two-thirds of the
-entire population. The largest body is the Free Church, formed




200    THE NEWV WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
from a secession in 1843. Next is the United Presbyterian Church,
recently formed from an amalgamation of several bodies of seceders,
some dating as far back as 1741. The Established, the Free, and
the United Presbyterian Churches may be said to divide the Scottish
nation among them. In doctrine they are identical, and only differ
as to the propriety of their relation to the State.
There is an Episcopal Church in Scotland which includes a large
portion of the nobility and gentry, and is said to be growing. Its
members were estimated, in 1863, at twenty-two thousand.
The Scottish establishment has commonly been jealous, in the extreme, of admitting either the term or the idea of regal headship.
In the " Second Book of Discipline " it is stated that " it is a title
falsely usurped by Antichrist, to call himself the head of the Church."
Some of the English sovereigns have been enthusiastic advocates of
their Church establishment, chief of whom was James I., a Scotchman.
In a controversy between some of his northern sages, when the
question was " whether the practice of smoking tobacco was a sin,"
the respondent maintained that it was lawful to get drunk with
brandy, but not to smoke; because the H-oly Scripture saith, "that
which proceedeth out of the mouth defileth a man, while that which
entereth into it doth not defile him." King James was the oracle, -
the type of his time, -its pedantry, ignorance, and superstition.
This "wise fool," as Sully termed him, dedicated one of his literary
performances to Jesus Christ. When James left his Scotch throne
to become King of England, the Presbyterians expected that he
would protect their theology in that country; the King's reply was,': No Bishops, no Ring."
To the English Church we owe the noble translation of the Bible,
which all English-speaking denominations use; and also the beautiful prayers of the Episcopal liturgy. The English Church is entitled
to high respect for its venerable character.
It is the eldest of free churches that revolted from the Catholicism
of Rome, commencing in the denial of the papal supremacy by Henry
VIII.; but it was not till the next reign that the theology of Protestantism really began to be introduced. Under King Henry innovations had been limited to the sovereignty of the Church and its temporalities, but under Edward VI. a new doctrinal worship was sought
to be raised on the basis of the ancient religion. This was the vital
commencement of the existing liturgy and ecclesiastical establish



CHURCH AND STATE.                       201
ment, of which the chief founder was Archbishop Cranmer, assisted
by the zealous reformers, Bishops Hooper, Ridley, and Coverdale.
The Established Church had its period of persecution in the reign
of Queen Mary, and against its independence was directed that grand
armada which perished in the English seas, and marked the last
tableaux of the greatness of Spain. Several of the English sovereigns have not been believers in the theology of the church of which
they were the head. James II. was a Catholic; William III. was a
Calvinist; and Queen Victoria is said, with good reason probably, to
be a believer in Spiritualism.
From the American Episcopal prayer-book have been expunged
those prayers and ceremonials which refer to the connection between
the Church and the State. From an English Liturgy in the Congressional library, I quote some prayers in use to this day in the English
Church.
PRAYER ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF CHARLES I.
" Infatuate and defeat all the secret counsels of deceitful and wicked men
against us: abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their devices. Strengthen the hands of our gracious Sovereign Queen Victoria, and
all that are put in authority under her, with judgment and justice to cut off
all such workers of iniquity as turn Religion into Rebellion, and Faith into
Faction; that they may never again prevail against us, nor triumph in the
ruin of the Monarchy and thy Church among us. Protect and defend our
Sovereign Lady the Queen, with the whole Royal Family, from all treasons
and conspiracies. Be unto her an helmet of salvation, and a strong tower
of defence against the face of all her enemies; clothe them with shame and
confusion, but upon Herself and her Posterity let the Crown forever flourish."
PRAYER ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF DRIVING OUT THE SON  OF THE
ABOVE KING CHARLES I., NAMELY, JAMES II.
" We bless thee for giving his late Majesty, King William, a safe arrival here,
and for making all opposition fall before him, till he became our King and
Governour. We beseech thee to protect and defend our Sovereign Queen Victoria, and all the Royal Family, from all treasons and conspiracies. Preserve
her in thy faith, fear, and love; prosper her Reign with long happiness here
on earth, and crown her with everlasting glory hereafter."
PRAYER ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE GUNPOWDER
PLOT.
" 0 God, whose name is excellent in all the earth, and thy glory above the
heavens; who on this day didst miraculously preserve our Church and State
26




202    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
from the secret contrivances and hellish malice of Popish conspirators; and
on this day also didst begin to give us a mighty deliverance from the open
tyranny and oppression of the same cruel and bloodthirsty enemies. We
bless and adore thy glorious Majesty, as for the former, so for this late marvellous loving-kindness to our Church and Nation in the preservation of our
Religion and Liberties. And we humbly pray, that the devout sense of this
thy repeated mercy may renew andl.increase in us a spirit of love and thankfulness to thee its only Author; a spirit of peaceable submission and obedience to our gracious Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria; and a spirit of fervent
zeal for our holy Religion which thou hast so wonderfully rescued, and established a blessing to us and our posterity. And this we beg for Jesus Christ
his sake. Amen."
PRAYER FOR THE LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND.
" Almighty Gcd, from whom all power is derived, we humbly beseech thee
to bless thy Servant the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and grant that he may use
the Sword which our Sovereign Lady the Queen hath committed into his hand,
with justice and mercy, according to thy blessed Will, for the protection of
this People, and the true Religion established amongst us. Enlighten him
with thy Grace, preserve him by thy Providence, and encompass him with thy
Favor. Bless, we beseech thee, the whole Council; direct their consultations
to the advancement of thy Glory, the good of thy Church, the honor of her
sacred Majesty, and the safety and welfare of this kingdom: Grant this, 0
merciful Father, for Jesus Christ his sake, our only Saviour and Redeemer.
Amen."
It is a singular fact that the English statesman, who is chiefly
responsible for the breaking up of the Established Church in Ireland,
has always been a rigid defender of the Established Church in England. Mr. Gladstone wrote a book upon the Church and the State,
about thirty years ago, which is useful, as showing the views of an
enlightened Englishman upon a subsidized religion. Of the divorce
between Church and State, as practised in our country, he said: —
"We must not imagine that the present condition of the United
States can afford a conclusive test of the effects which are to be generally anticipated from the absence of public religion.  In the great
society of nations, the customary rule will very much modify the
temper even of those who depart from it. Perhaps the greatest portion of the real change will be suspended until such departure has
become, or tend to become, the rule. If the day shall ever come when
North America, still adhering to her present maxims and policy, shall
lead the world; when in religion, in art, in science, in morals, in
manners, she shall give the tone to Europe instead of receiving it
from Europe; when the old civilization shall have fallen into decrep



CHURCH AND STATE.                   203
itude, and shall at a distance and feebly tread in the guiding footprints of the young one, - that day, and none earlier, will make full
proof of the results of the divorce of religion from the State."
That day has quite come. The combined churches of America.
outnumber those of England. The religious sentiment of this country is as influential, and its missionary and charitable establishments
as enterprising and complete, as the combined " establishments" of
the United Kingdom.
The same distinguished statesman thus affirms the natural reliance
of religion upon government, which may interest the American
reader unused to seeing statesmen express themselves upon such
questions: —
"It is clear that God has relations and reckonings with men in
their national capacity. How are those relations to be conducted by
a government which has not a religion? The law is not the act nor
the voice of an individual, nor of a number of individuals as such;
but it is a public instrument, p)roceeding from a public power, and
that power the greatest upon earth; and yet, under the proposed
system, that power will be without religion.
"The union is to the Church of secondary though great importance.
Her foundations are on the holy hills. Her charter is legibly
divine. She, if she should be excluded from the precinct of government, may still fulfil all her functions, and carry them out to perfection. Hler condition would be anything rather than pitiable, should
she once more occupy the position which she held before the reign of
Constantine. But the State, in rejecting her, would actively violate
its most solemn duty, and would, if the theory of the connection be
sound, entail upon itself a curse."
The practical piety of the English Church people has never been
questioned by any observer, but the subsidization of religion by the
State has led to the gravest political and moral evils in England.
The dignitaries of the Church are themselves members of a great
political corporation, and, as such, bound up with the parliamentary
government. The hereditary aristocracy looks on the Church as its
domain; it grants out, by the agency of the Cabinet, all the places in
the gift of the Crown, and both in the Chapters and in the Bishops'
sees has its members and partisans combined into one serried phalanx.
The Church has consequently become a thoroughly mundane and political institution, and cannot any longer assert for itself an existence
apart from the State. This is the testimony of a distinguished Eng



204   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
lish critic. In the bosom of the English Church itself, there is the
strife of party, its members being divided into the "high church,"
the " broad church," and the " low church."  These parties have also
been styled the " attitudinarians," the';latitudinarians,"  and  the
"platitudinarians."  The distinctions between them  are not, however, readily appreciable; of so subtle and dialectic cast are they,
that only the initiated can rightly enter into them.
Political ballads and speeches upon the subject of the Church are
as familiar in England as they are with us, upon the Lobby, the
Caucus, and the Nominating Convention. Here are some instances of
songs sung by the Orthodox undergraduates of Oxford University: —
" Old mother Church disdains
The vile dissenting strains
That round her ring;
She keeps her dignity,
And, scorning faction's cry,
Sings with sincerity.'God save the king.'
"Sedition is their creed;
Feigned sheep, but wolves indeed,
How can we trust?
Gunpowder Priestly would
Deluge the throne with blood,
And lay the great and good
Low in the dust.
"History, thy page unfold;
Did not their sires of old
Murder their King?
And they would overthrow
King, lords, and bishops too,
And, while they gave the blow,
Loyally sing."
The above song, it need scarcely be said, is sung to the music of
"God save the King," which is the national anthem  of England.
The following partisan-ecclesiastic hymn is also curious, and not
very respectful: —
" Peers, knights, and squires in league combined,
Protect your Good Old Mother;
For should the beldame slip her wind,
You'll ne'er see such another.




CHURCH AND STATE.                      205
" Two hundred years and more the Dame
Has tightly held together;
Her glorious motto,' Still the same,'
In spite of wind and weather.
"' Her babes of grace, with tender care,
She feeds on dainty dishes;
And none but they have had a share
Among the loaves and fishes!"
Not only is the Church degraded by this familiar mention, but the
churchmen themselves, driven into partisanship, have become the
most reactionary and intolerant class of English subjects. Of the
great English reforms, such as the Reform bills of 1832 and 1867, few
churchmen have been supporters; they have always been the latest to
hear the cry of the poor, as in the last days of the corn laws; and
of the degradation of ecclesiastics into politicians, we require no
better examples than were afforded us during the struggle over the
Irish Church in 1869 in all the English newspapers.
At what we should call a Church Conference, a Bishop -not a
dissenter - publicly wished that " Bill" Gladstone, as he elegantly
called the Prime 5Minister, might go to what IMr. MIantilini, with regard for the feelings of his wife, called the demnition bow-wows;
but the Bishop of Cork named the place more directly. The same
Bishop said in the same Church conference, "The bill had yet to
go through the House of Commons, where it would be licked into
shape. When it went into the House of Lords he trusted it would
be licked in another sense. He hoped they would lick it like a bear,
and leave nothing but the bare skin, and make Mr. Gladstone a pres,
ent of it to stuff and put in his museum, and, as Milton said,' grin
on it."' The assembled clergy applauded his grace, whereupon a
Mr. Puxley added, " Let them hope that their dear Queen, God
bless her! would not perjure herself. Let her own good sense tell
her whether it is right for her to perjure herself. It was a cowardly
thing of Gladstone to take this opportunity, when a poor woman
was on the throne, to confuse her, and endeavor to make her commit
perjury. If Prince Albert were living he would not dare do it. The
poor Queen relied on her ministers to advise her, and Gladstone, the
traitor, the renegade, was one of them."
Very many of the English clergymen pay no further attention to
their churches than to draw the stipend thereof, but employ curates
to read the prayers and the sermons.




206    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
The "Pall Mall Gazette" said, in 1869, that in England, from
London to the Land's-End, there is hardly a Bishop fit for work. The
Bishop of Winchester, eighty years of age, is disabled by paralysis.
The Bishop of Salisbury has broken down, both in body and mind.
The Bishop of Bath and Wells is also disabled. As for the Bishop
of Exeter, he is now in his ninetieth year, and for at least ten or
twelve years has quite withdrawn from visitations and confirmations.
Yet these prelates cannot be induced to resign.
American readers are not unaware that the rectorships of English
churches are considered both political and ecclesiastical offices. In
every administration there is a Lord Chancellor, who has at his disposal about seven hundred "livings" belonging to the crown, and
when the clergyman of a parish dies during his term of office,
the Lord Chancellor fills the place with one of his partisans or
friends.
Besides the rights of presentation pertaining to the Queen, the
Lord Chancellor, the Prince of Wales, the higher clergy, and the
chapters, there are three thousand eight hundred and fifty peers,
peeresses, baronets, parsons, gentlemen and gentlewomen, in the enjoyment of such patronage. How very intimately the Established
Church is bound up with the governing class may, from this simple
fact alone, be readily apprehended.
Archbishops and Bishops are nominally elected by the Deans and
Chapters, but are really appointed by the Prime lMinister, in the
Queen's name. It is a quaint subject for an American to thinl of a
politician distributing bishoprics. A civil commission of lay politicians, called the " Ecclesiastical Commissioners," keeps the Church
straight, and watch out for its estates, sales, etc..
The British curates are a poor class of people, who are about as
well paid as country preachers in America.
"Convocation" is a kind of effete ecclesiastical Parliament. A
few years ago this body met, and in its two bodies, the Upper House
(composed of an Archbishop and his Bishops), and the Lower House
(composed of Deans, Archdeacons, Proctors, and Clergy), a book
called " Essays and Reviews," indicted by free-thinking clergymen,
was condemned; the proposition was entertained of reforming the
Book of Common Prayer; the marriage of a man with his deceased
wife's sister was laboriously discussed, and some little harmless
flunkeyism was addressed to the Queen.
English rectors and ecclesiastical officers are good fox-hunters, and




CHURCH AND STATE.                     207
they amuse themselves in ways which an American clergyman would
hardly pass favorably upon. But they are eminently " conservative"
in all matters of opinion, and this, in England, covers multitudes of
sins.  Some persons may be curious to ascertain the difference
between the forms and doctrines of the Roman Catholic, and the
English Established Church. The liturgy of the former is in Latin;
of the latter, in English. The English Church forbids the veneration of images of saints, and of the Virgin, and denies the doctrine of transubstantiation, or that the body of Christ is not actually
present in the Lord's Supper. But the confessional has not been
abolished in the English Church. It has simply fallen out of use,
and a relic of celibacy remains in the fellowships of the colleges.
In no nation in Europe is the State so closely identified with the
Church as in England, and in none apparently is the time more distant when State and Church will be divorced. The English Church
Establishment extends to all its vast colonies, to India and to Canada. We have but to cross the line of the St. Lawrence to find how
closely it is identified with the army, the Governor-General, and the
office-holding classes.
The architecture of English churches is of amazing splendor to an
American. The largest and finest of our church edifices are exceeded
by the smallest English cathedrals, many of the latter having required a century to construct them.
I-Iow many have heard of Ripon Cathedral? Yet its nave is a hundred and seventy-one feet long, and ninety-seven feet wide, and its
towers are one hundred and sixty-one feet high.
The Cathedral of Litchfield is three hundred and seventy-five feet
long; its roof is sixty feet high; it has three spires, one of which is
one hundred and eighty-three feet high.
The towers of Worcester Cathedral rise to the height of a hundred
and sixty-two feet.
Gloucester Cathedral is four hundred and twenty feet long; eightyfour feet high; and its towers rise to the height of two hundred and
twenty-five feet.
Westminster Cathedral, as has been recited, is four hundred and
sixteen feet long; two hundred and three feet wide, and one hundred
and one feet high; and St. Paul's cathedral cost nearly four millions
of dollars in the time of Queen Anne.
The latter is the only great church which has been built in England




208    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED) WITH THE OLD.
in Protestant times, all the others having been Catholic property
before the time of Henry VIII.
An American in England can employ his time delightfully in passing from town to town, looking at the quaint or grand churches and
church-yards. There are no such fine public cemeteries in England
as we possess; for we commit our dead, in all the great towns, to
beautiful parks. In all England there is scarcely one noble civil
cemetery like ours at Boston, Rochester, Louisville, or Cincinnati.
Canterbury, the ecclesiastical city, of which the great Archbishop
is the representative, was once a rival in influence of London and
Winchester. It was eclipsed, however, on the extinction of the
Kingdom of Kent, by the royal cities of London and Winchester,
and in spite of the great reputation of Archbishops Lanfranc and
Anselm, Canterbury itself was comparatively little heard of until
the murder of Becket in the cathedral (1170) lifted it at once to an
equality with the most sacred shrines of Europe. St. Augustine, the
former patron saint, gave place to the new martyr, and pilgrimages
were made to his shrine from all parts of England, one of which was
made the thread of the " Canterbury Tales," one of the earliest epic
poems in the English language. At present, Canterbury contains no
more than eighteen thousand people. Pleasant glimpses of life in
the old town may be found in Dickens's novel of "'David( Copperfield."
On the site of its fine cathedral stood the earliest Christian church
in England. The present cathedral is one of the finest and oldest in
England.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has charge of twenty other Bishops,
while the Archbishop of York controls only seven. The former has
for his Dean, the Bishop of London; for his Chancellor, the Bishop
of Winchester; for his Vice-Chancellor, the Bishop of Lincoln; for
his Precentor, the Bishop of Salisbury, and for his Chaplain, the
Bishop of Winchester. He crowns the sovereign of England, while
the Archbishop of York crowns the sovereign's consort.
York Cathedral, called the MIinster, from the word Monasterum, is
a magnificent old pile of magnesian limestone, finished about twenty
years before the discovery of America. Its roof is a hundred feet
above the floor, clear space; its nave and aisles are one hundred and
four feet broad; the length of the cathedral is four hundred and
eighty-six feet; its transepts are two hundred and twenty-three feet
long, and ninety-four feet broad; its towers are two hundred and one
feet high. There is a peal of twelve bells in its tower, one of which




CHURCH AND STATE.                     209
weighs twenty-two thousand pounds. Not many years ago a religious
luhatic burnt the massive timber roof of this old cathedral, and it
cost, to replace the same, three hundred and twenty-five thousand
dollars. It is a singular commentary upon English society that Sir
Edward Vavasour gave the stone to restore this cathedral about
ttw-enty years ago from the same quarry from which his ancestors had
built it in the fourteenth century. The jurisdiction of an Archbishop
is called his " Province," of a Bishop, his " See;" the, latter holds
his own courts. The three greatest Bishops are those of London,
Durham, and Winchester. Durham is worth forty thousand dollars
a year, Winchester. thirty-five thousand dollars, and Ely, twenty-seven
thousand five hun ~ ed.
The salaries of tome of the London churches are appended as
matters of curiosity: St. Olave, 9,455.dollars; St. Botolph, Bishop's
Gate, 8,250 dollars; St. MIarylebone, 6,250 dollars; St. George's,
Hanover Squ'are, 3,500 dollars.
One of the most delightful cathedrals in England is that of Winchester, which is within an hour's ride of Southampton, where many
Americans disembark.  It is the longest cathedral in England,
namely, five hundred and sixty feet, of which three hundred and
ninety feet can be seen at once, from the entrance; the nave is
seventy-eight feet high, and with i4s aisles eighty-six feet wide; the
breadth of the transepts is two hundred and eight feet, and its unfinished tower is one hundred and thirty-five feet high.
Besides their salaries, the English Bishops have charge of a great
many churches, and "present" to them, often it is supposed for a
consideration. The colonial Bishop of Quebec get 9,950 dollars a
year; of Toronto, 6,250 dollars; Montreal, 4,000 dollars; Nova
Scotia, 2,750 dollars; Newfoundlandt, 6,000 dollars; Jamaica, 15,000
dollars.; Barbadoes, 12,500 dollars. American Episcopal Bishops
seldom receive above 5,000 dollars. A Bishop has a council of his
own called " the Dean and Chapter," the latter composed of Canons.
A Dean gets about 5,000 dollars a year, and a Canon 2,500 dollars.
Westminster Cathedral has'a Dean with 10,000 dollars a year. An
Archdeacon and a Rural Dean are the Bishop's judicial1 officers and inspectors. A church parson is called a Rector. To see something
of the life of a British rector, read Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte
Bronte.
The following was the Irish Church Establishment a few years ago,
27




210    TIIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and it was probably not materially changed down to the time fixed
for the disestablishment of the same: -
Archbishop of Armagh Jwith Clogher,  Primate,        Salary,~12,087
Bishop of Meath, with Clonmacuoise,.                  "    4,068
"    Derry and Raphoe,                              "    8,000
"    Down, Connor, and Dromore,."    4,204'    Kilmore, Ardagh, and Elphin,.      ",253
"    Tuam, Killala, and Anchonry,.     "    4,600
Archbishop of Dublin, with Glandelagh, and Kildare,    "    7,786
r"    Ossory, Leighlin, and- Ferns,..      "    4,200
("    Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore,.  "    5,000
"     Cork, Cloyne, and Ross,.      "    2,498
"' Killaloe, Kilfenora, Clonfert, and Kilmacduagh,  "    3,870
(" Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe,.             "    4,973
The above makes about three hundred and thirty thousand dollars
a year paid to twelve bishops, or nearly enough to discharge the
salaries of all principal executive officers of the government of the
United States, who reside in Washington.
The total revenues of the Irish Established Church, in 1861, were
nearly three millions of dollars, and there were alleged to be nearly
seven hundred thousand communicants, or about fifteen members to
every one hundred Roman Catholics. There were nearly as many
Presbyterians in Ireland as Churchmen, and there were only three
hundred and ninety-three pews in all Ireland. The latter fact shows
that there must have been very little encouragement to do business
in that island.
The Irish Established Church has been a scandal and an oppression
almost from its beginning, and hundreds of murders and crimes have
been committed in the attempts to collect tithes from the unwilling
people. Although the government has done everything in its power
to discourage Catholicism and promote its own Church, the latter is
always in straits, and it is now about to be given up. Such is the result of mingling temporal and spiritual government.
The Roman Catholic Irish Church is under four Archbishops, of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin, and Tuam, and twenty-three Bishops. Among
the whimsicalities of the English government is the support of a
Catholic college, called Maynooth.
The support of the College of  aaynooth was originally undertaken
by the Protestant Parliament of Ireland, in the anticipation, which
has since proved miserably fallacious, that a more loyal class of




CHURCHI AND STATE.                    211
priests would be produced by an education at home than by a foreign
one, and that a gradual mitigation in the features of Irish Romanism
would be produced, when its ministers were no longer familiarized
with its condition in continental countries, where it still remained the
religion of the State, or was brought into contact with the revolutionary principles then so prevalent in France. " Instead of which it has
been found," says Gladstone, " that the facility of education at home
has opened the priesthood to a lower and less cultivated class, and
one more liable to the influence of secondary motives."
In amount this grant is niggardly and unworthy. In principle it
is wholly vicious; and it can hardly fail to be a thorn in the side of
the State of these countries, so long as it may continue.
There are but eight Roman Catholic Bishops in the United States.
I give their. names and addresses below: —
Most Reverend Jos. S. ALEMANY, San Francisco, Cal.
"c cc   FRANCIS N. BLANCHET, Portland, Oregon.
PETER R. KENRICK, St. Louis, Mo.
~"    "    JOHN MCCLOSKEY, New York city.
cc"   "    J. M. ODIN, New Orleans, La.
cc"   "    JNO. B3. PURCELL, Cincinnati, Ohio,
"     "    MARTIN JOHN SPAULDING, Baltimore, Md.
"     "    JAMES DUGGAN, Chicago Ill.
Within the past few years a strong Roman Catholic movement has
taken place within the English Church, and led by Dr. Pusey and
other " High Churchmen," a Ritualistic party has sprung up, with
imitators in America. An infidel movement, led by Bishop Colenso,
has also been one of the results of putting politicians into the pulpits. A very interesting article in the "New York Tribune" in June,
1869, gave the complete status of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world.
While the breach between the Roman Catholic Church and the
Protestant Churches is at present either fully as wide as it was three
hundred years ago, or even wider, there are some notable exceptions.
There are men and parties in several of the churches that have gener.ily been accounted among Protestants that regard a union with
Rome as practicable and desirable. Others, while not going so far,
consider the difference between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox
Protestant Churches as insignificant in comparison with those which
separate the Orthodox Protestants from the Rationalistic tendencies
of modern times, and they, consequently, advocate a coalition of all




212    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Christians who believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures, against those who deny these docrines. Guizot,
once Prime Minister of France, is one of the best-known representatives of this class of men, and he, at a recent meeting, expressed the
opinion that Pinus IX., in convoking the Council of 1869, exhibited
an admirable wisdom, and that "from this assembly, perhaps, will
issue the salvation of the world; for our societies are very sick; but
for great evils there are great remedies." Guizot is a Protestant.
In Germany, a Protestant writer, Reinhold Baumstark, has issued a
pamphlet on the Council, which breathes a similar spirit, andchas had
a very wide circulation. But nowhere, outside the Roman Catholic
Church, was there so friendly a disposition towards the Council and
towards the object of its convocation, as among a part of the Ritualists of the Church of England. There is an organized.party, counting such men as Dr. Pusey among its members, which is even now
ready to recognize an honorary Presidency of the Pope over the entire
Christian Church, and which believes that the thirty-nine articles of the
Church of England can be harmonized with the decrees of the Council
of Trent. This party hopes and prays for the success of the Council,
and some of its members advocate the sending of representatives to
Rome to stipulate the conditions of their submission. All of which is
interesting reading, to say the least.
The most vigorous and prosperous denomination in America is the
Episcopal Methodist, with its own Bishops. And it is a curious fact
that, while John Wesley and the British Methodists have never had
Bishops, the republican Methodist Church has a hierarchy. This
church was a secession, or rather a revolution, from the English
Established Ctiurch.
The great sepulchre of the Dissenters in England is Bunhill Fields
burying-ground, where are buried Bunyan and all the great lights of
the independent churches.
Church and State has several times crept into American?olitics,
as in the contentions over the Bible in the public schools, the AntiCatholic party of 1844, etc.  Our people have been wise enough
heretofore to respect the clergy in all religious questions, and to
entertain a wholesome jealousy of them in politics. Tile latest politico-theological movement is to insert the name of the Deity in the
Constitution.




CHAPTER  VIII.
THE OFFICE-HOLDERS AND THE OFFICES IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.
An account of the executive departments and their occupants.- A sketch of the civil
service in both countries, and an account of the judiciary.
A STRANGER visiting Washington city requires no guide to show
him the public offices. They stand revealed above the outlines of
the straggling city, and are chiefly enormous temples in Greek and
Roman architecture, perverted into the abodes of business clerks.
Conspicuous amongst these buidings is the Treasury, an expensive
edifice of granite, surrounded with huge monolithic columns, which
stands immediately under the windows of the President's House; the
Patent Office and the Post Office, which occupy an eminence in the
middle of the city; the War and Navy Departments, and the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, - plain brick edifices adjoining
the President's House; the State Department, in the environs of the
city; and the Agricultural Building, near the Potomac River.
The principal government buildings in England, corresponding to
our " Departments," lie in central London, and particularly in the
neighborhood of the Houses of Parliament, upon a broad street
called Whitehall. Some of the very largest offices, however, connected with the government, lie in remote parts of London, and others in the suburbs. The head-quarters of the Army and Navy, the
Treasury, and the Palaces make one general group, as with us. The
Treasury is a vast building, but is not as imposing as our own Treasury, and in it are housed the Board of Trade, the Home Secretary,
and the Privy Council. In the council-room of the Lords of the
Treasury, and at the head of their table, stands to this day the empty
throne of the Queen. Any account that I might give of many of these
departments would be obsolete in a short time, for magnificent new
edifices are now being constructed, and several of the old buildings
will speedily be demolished.
These new Public Offices of Great Britain, now nearly completed,
will make one vast edifice in Italian architecture, to contain Foreign,
213




214    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Colonial, East India, and many other bureaux and departments.
The site of the building cost two hundred thousand dollars, and on
the structure one million dollars have already been expended. About
the old offices many curious recollections cluster, some of which are
associated with important episodes in American history; but it may
safely be said that the earlier generations of American legislators
provided for their public buildings in a more generous manner than
any other people.
In the old Colonial Office, which stands in Downing Street, just
off Whitehall, Nelson, England's greatest sailor, and Wellington, her
greatest soldier, met the only time in their lives. They were in an
anteroom waiting to get an audience with the Secretary of the Colonies; just as, during our civil war, many of our ablest generals became acquainted with each other while awaiting an audience at the
WVar Department.
The public business of the United States, since the civil war, has
outgrown even the noble dimensions of our public buildings, and new
structures are loudly demanded by the heads of Executive Departments. Mlany persons think that the soberest of our Executive Departments, architecturally, are quite as consistent and effective as our
~more ambitious structures; that the Navy Department is in better
taste thlan the Treasury, and the War Department, in its plain brick
dress, is better than the great classical Patent Office.
The English government, like our own, is much cramped for room
to accommodate its officials, and the India Board is driven into a
hotel, just as our State Department inhabits an Orphan Asylum. WVe
pay, at Washington, about two hundred thousand dollars a year in
rents, which would suffice to construct one fine new department annually.
MIany public buildings in America are constructed under contracts,
and the cry is often raised that peculation occurs between the officials
and the contractors; but the history of public edifices in England is
marked by the same excess of appropriation over estimates. It is
only in severe despotisms, such as the French and Russian Empires,
where the cost of public works is unchallenged. The number of civil
officials employed in Great Britain considerably exceeds the census
of the same class in the United States.
The total number of officers in the United States Customs, during
the administration of Washington (then called " the External Revenue"), was seven hundred and thirteen less than the present force




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   215
of the New York Custom-house, and their annual compensation
amounted to 439,567 dollars; the number of officers ill the Internal
JRevel:ue was four hundred and ninety-three, and their compensation
was 113,000 dollars; the number of officers connected with the Landd
Office eight, and their annual compensation 4,7 Go5 dollars; the number
of Postmasters nine hundred and ninety-four, with all annual compensation of 69,900 dollars; while in all other departments of the civil
establishment, including the officers at the seat of government, and
in diplomatic service, there were foul hundred and fourteen receiving
annually a total of 445,000 dollars. These were the small beginnings
of a service which now numbers more than fifty-three thousand persons, and whose annual compensation amounts to about 30,000,000
dollars.
The English census, of 1851, gave sixty-four thousand two hundred and twenty-four salaried civil functionaries, - a' goodly crowd of
officials, assuredly, considering the vast number of town and nmunicipal offices, purely honorary, and the total absence of government
railway functionaries, etc., with which the continent swarms. The
average salary of mere clerks, in England, being paid in gold; is
higher than the remuneration of the same class in the United States.
In the higher offices, the salaries in England are from three hundred
to five hundred- per cent. greater than in our own country. Let us
take the case of the judiciary in both countries.
The judicial system of England is much involved, the number and
variety of courts being very great. There is an Attorney-General,
as with us, but he is not a member of the Cabinet; the English have
also a Solicitor-General, and a Queen's Advocate. The Attorney and
Solicitor-General have seats in Parliament, and are subject to the
mutations of politics. All prosecutions in England are made in the
name of the Queen. An English indictment is headed, " The Queen
versus.-.. "  In an American indictment, in a Federal
Court, " The United States versus   -   -      "  Our judicial institutions are derived almost directly from the English. We have a
National series of Courts, and a series of State Courts; Courts of
Equity or Chancery, and Courts of Common Law. The Supreme
Court of the United States is composed of a Chief Justice, with a
salary of 6,500 dollars a year, and seven Associate Justices, with 6,000
dollars a year; there is also a local Supreme Court for the District of
Columbia, with extensive jurisdiction, whose Chief Justice is paid
4,500 dollars a year, and his three Associates, 4,000 dollars each;




216    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
there is a separate Orphan's Court, a separate Levy Court, and there
are about sixty United States District Courts distributed over the country, each having a Judge, with not more than 4,000 dollars a year, an
Attorney and a Marshal, whose fees often far exceed the salary of the
Judge. The United States is divided into eight circuits, to which
the Supreme Court Judges pay annual visits. The United States has
been exceedingly fortunate in the character and longevity of its Chief
Justices, Marshall, Taney, and Chase having been men of irreproachable lives, and wide experience in almost all the fields of human
duty; each of these Chief Justices had been an active politician, and
reached his place in the line of political promotion. The United
States Judges hold office during life, or good behavior; they are
appointed by the President. The Judges of the State and County
Courts, in America, are almost all elected by the people, and frequently improper persons mount to those sacred offices on the shoulders of a partisan rabble; the basest instance of this sort on record
has occurred in our own generation, when a speculator, without other
acquirements than ill-gotten money, has deliberate partnership with a
Judge on the bench, and dictates his own decrees of spoliation.
The United States cannot be sued by a citizen, but Congress has
established a Court of Claims, consisting of five Judges, which investigates claims for money due by the Federal Government. Its decisions, however, are not always final, as they can be reversed by Congress.
It is treason to kill a superior judge, in England, where treason is
not strictly limited to levying war against the State, as with us; no
person has ever been convicted of treason in America, although there
have been several trials on indictments for the offence.
The highest Judge of Common Law, in England, the Lord Chief
Justice of the Queen's Bench, is paid 40,000 dollars a year; the
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas is paid 35,000 dollars a year;
the Chief Baron of the Exchequer is also a Judge, with the salary of
35,000 dollars a year; there are twelve Associate Judges, with
25,000 dollars a year, each; these fifteen Judges constitute what may
be called the Supreme Court of England, and, like our Supreme Justices, they travel through. the kinlgdom, which is divided into eight
great circuits; every Judge taking his Marshal with him, and before
the day of railroads the entrance of a Judge into a County seat to
hold assize was made the occasion of pompous celebration; the




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   217
Lord Lieutenant and the Sheriff, with an armed band, escorting the
Judge into the town.
The dignified manner of conducting law proceedings in England,
tends to create a deep impression. The Judges do not sit in resplendent chambers; the localities which serve as law courts at W~estminster have not an imposing aspect; but the rich official costume of
the Judges, and the wigs and gowns of the Barristers are calculated
to establish a salutary restraint between the Judge, the parties interested, and the public. This outward dignity is ordinarily combined
with great calm and gentleness on the part of the Judge, and with an
utter absence of all prejudice as against the accused, in the conduct
of the proceedings. Of brow-beating on the part of the presiding
Judge, and high-sounding invectives launched by the public prosecutor against the accused, there is in England no trace.
This has not always been the case, however, especially in times of
political excitement and persecution. In the indictment against Sir
Walter Raleigh, Sir Edward Coke began his speech for the prosecution with these words: "Thou art the lowest and most abominable
traitor that has ever lived; I am at a loss for words to mark out thy
viper-like treason; I will prove that never a more detestable viper
lived in the world than thou. Thou art a monster; thou hast an
English face, but a Spanish heart; thou viper, I thou thee, thou
traitor." Coke behaved in the same way towards Essex. The name
of Jeffreys, an English Judge, has become infamous through all the
nations.
In the United States, the Supreme Court thereof, at Washington,
is at the head of the entire Federal Judiciary system, and takes cognizance of cases arising, both in law and in equity. The English
have two great and distinct systems of jurisprudence.
At the head of the Equity Courts is the Lord Chancellor, or President of the House of Lords; he is a partisan officer, and loses his
place when his party goes out of power. The other Equity Judges
hold their places for life; they are named as follows: the Master of
the Rolls, the Lords Justices of the Court of Appeal in Chancery,
two in number; the Vice-Chancellors, three in number; the Chancellor always receives a peerage. The Lord Chancellor is'the bestsalaried officer in England; of the fifty thousand dollars a year
which he receives, twenty thousand is paid him for presiding over
the IIouse of Lords. The [Master. of the Rolls gets 30,000 dollars
a year; the two Justices of Appeal get 30,000 dollars a year each;
28




218    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and the three Vice-Chancellors 25,000 dollars a year each, or as
much as the President of the United States. After fifteen years' service, or when disabled, the Judges both of Equity and Common Law
receive handsome annuities. The Master of the Rolls retires upon
18,750 dollars a year; the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench upon
19,000 dollars a year; the Lord Chancellor upon 25,000 dollars a
year; the Judges of Appeal, upon 18,750 dollars a year; and the
Associate Judges of the higher courts upon 17,500 dollars a year.
It is these enormous annuities which make the English government
so costly; but, we take the other extreme in America, and pay no
pensions in any but the military services, and give our greatest
officials such paltry salaries, that we may well wonder that corruption
is not more general amongst them. Attached to these courts in
England are numerous officers; for example, there is an AccountantGeneral attached to the Equity Court, who takes charge of the vast
property under its control; this officer has had as much as two billions and a quarter of dollars' worth of property lodged in his charge;
he is paid 15,000 dollars a year salary and keeps twenty-six clerks,
several of whom receive 4,000 dollars a year. Another officer attached to the Equity Court is the Clerk of the Petty Bag, who makes
out certain great writs, and is paid 3,000 dollars a year. There are
also two officers called Masters in Lunacy, who look into the estates
of lunatics. There are also eleven Commissioners in Lunacy, three
of whom must be physicians, and three barristers, who are paid 7,500
dollars a year pach, and who investigate the conduct of lunatic asylums.
In America almost every State has its own lunatic asylum, and
many of the larger cities have corresponding municipal institutions.
In some of the States there are salaried officers who have charge of
their inspection. The government of the United States maintains
one excellent insane asylum near Washington, where are placed the
insane of the army and navy, and of the District of Columbia.
There is also, substantially, a Court of Bankruptcy, in England,
whose Commissioners receive ten thousand dollars a year, and have
plenty to do.
Imprisonment for debt is still the rule in England, although it has
been abolished in almost all civilized countries. The principal London jail for debtors, in Whitecross Street, has been examined at great
leisure by Mir. George Francis Train, and some other American gentlemen involuntarily residing in England. Almost every vestige of
imprisonment for debt has disappeared from all the States of the




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND- IN ENGLAND.   219
Union. After the civil war in the United States, Congress passed a
bankruptcy law, fair and equitable to both debtor and creditor. The
English have also a court for the relief of insolvent debtors.
WVe shall now consider some of the governmental departments and
bureaux in both countries. Several bills have been introduced into
the American Congress to establish a department of IIome Affairs;
but none of these propositions have been entertained.
The British Home Secretary is the great police officer of the kingdom, and has charge of the militia, prisoners, and almost all minor
matters of internal government. He has police authority over the
entire United Kingdom, except Ireland, which is ruled by a Lord
Lieutenant. The following are the bureaux under the control of the
Home Secretary:1. Tle. Police Courts establishment. A newspaper called the
"'Police Gazette," is published in London twice a week, and is distributed gratuitously; it contains lists of stolen property, suspected
offenders and deserters from the army and navy. Bow Street has
been, for a century, the great head-quarters of the English police
system; it is said to have the shrewdest police detectives in the
world, The English police frequently come to America to apprehend
felons, and the case of the murderer of Muller, who was seized on
his arrival in New York in 1865, is still fresh in the memory ef the
reader. London and vicinity, like New York and vicinity, constitutes
a grand police department, which is controlled by two commissioners
appointed by the Home Secretary; each of the Commissioners receives
six thousand dollars a year and house-rent.
The London police establishment costs about two million dollars
a year, and employs about six thousand men. The Home Secretary
appoints four Inspectors of Prisons, who make the tour of all the
jails in England and Wales every year; they receive four thousand
dollars a year and travelling expenses. There are also Directors of
Prisons appointed by the Home Secretary.
2. Inspectorships of Factories,.Mines, etc. —Labor in mills is
minutely regulated by law in England; small children are forbidden
to work, and the government exercises a humane fatherhood over the
daughters of operatives; so in mines, children under ten years of
age cannot be apprenticed to work in them, and Inspectors make the
rounds of all the mines in the kingdom, and report annually upon the
condition of their laborers in the collieries. There are also Inspectors
of Anatomy, who see that the medical students dissect no body




220    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
which has not been obtained by fair means; it was formerly a custom
in Encland to kill people for the sake of selling their carcasses to the
medical schools.
3. Registration Office. -Births, marriages, and deaths are minutely and promptly registered in England, as in almost every civilized
government except America. The Registrar-General takes charge of
the census in England.
4. Tithe, Copyhold, and Enclosure Commissioners. -Tithe Commissioners arrange for the commutation of church-rates; the Enclosure Commissioners see that land and commons are kept well
fenced, and they attend to drainage; they receive seventy-five thousand
dollars a year, but the office will probably be abolished.
The majority of the duties entrusted to the English Home Department reside in the separate States in America, and there has always
been a strong party in the republic to protest against the transfer of
any of these functions to the Federal government. After the extinction of slavery, a counter-movement was developed in favor of stripping the States of many of their old privileges, and centralizing them
in the Federal government. This is, perhaps, one of the leading
issues in the politics of the present day; whether the States shall
retain many of their former powers, or sink into mere counties, subject to the powerful sovereignty of the Federal State.
The Poor-Law Board, in England, exercises an important influence
on the condition of the poor throughout the United Kingdom; the
head of the Board is styled its President, and his office is considered
a partisan one; he receives a salary of ten thousand dollars a year.
Ireland has now a special commission of this sort. There is also a
National Board of Health, - whose President receives ten thousand
dollars a year, - and a Special Commissioner of Sewers.
A Metropolitan Building Commission sees that only safe houses
are put up in London. This subject is entirely a matter of municipal
control in America; in the larger cities, the construction of wooden
buildings is now generally forbidden.
A great number of Commissions of Inquiry are appointed in England by the executive government; in America the duties which
they perform are intrusted to Committees of Congress.
The American Patent Office is both a great national edifice, and a
great national instrumentality. It is almost the only bureau in the
executive government, which is self-supporting. The building is four
hundred and six feet long, and two hundred and seventy-five feet




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   221
deep. MIodels of all patents issued in the United States are here
exhibited, in four great galleries, which are unitedly more than thirteen hundred feet long.  About fifty thousand patents have been
issued by this office, since 1836, while in England, not much more
than half this number ale recorded. In 1860, only about three thousand patents for inventions were issued in England. In the same
year, four thousand eight hundred and nineteen were issued in America. The American Patent Office has an income of about two bhurdred
and fifty thousand dollars a year. Around the building swarm a host
of patent agents. It has a fine library for the use of inventors, and
is one of the most unique and characteristic places of resort in the
United States.
The English Patent Office is under the control of the Courts, and
is not, as with us, subject to the Home or Interior Secretary. There
is a museum of patents in London, which would be insignificant,
except that it contains some historical models, such as Arkwright's
original spinning and carding machine, Trevithicek's original locomotive, W]att's beam engine, and Millar's first steam  engine for ships.
The South Kensington Museum. may be called the English Patent
Office, and grand museum of English science and art besides.
The Public Record Office, in England, is an immense establishment, - a vast fire-proof edifice in Chancery Lane, where are stored
the most ancient, uninterrupted, and complete series of archives in
the world; a fine reading-room is connected with the Record Office.
America is sadly in need of a building of this sort, and we have no
adequate organization nor place, for preserving, indexing, and making available, our colonial and historical documents. The British
burned some of the best American Records in 1814. Public attention has been awakened t6 the necessity of collecting and preserving
American documents, and all the great States in the Union now
have historical societies, with libraries and officers.  Mr.  William
H. Seward, our most distinguished Secretary of State, has taken the
lead in encouraging a national taste for the collection and preservation of American antiquities.
The English government has expended more than two million dollars in Commissions of Inquiry affecting the public records.
In the chapter upon Finance, the reader will find a sketch of the
Custom House and Internal Revenue offices; in the chapter on. Colonies and Territories, offices in Ireland, and Consuls and Ainbassadors will be described.  Other subjects, affecting the relation of




222    TIIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
oIfice-holders to offices, are distributed through the book, and can be
readily found by the help of the index.
Agriculture, in England, has not been so intimate a subject of government investigation and control in the last twenty years as it formerly was. The main interests of England, at present, are her mines,
her manufactures, and her commerce. While she is using every energy
to preserve these, the peculiar condition of her landed classes makes
agriculture a matter of individual encouragement. But in the United
States, our great staples for export come from the ground, not from
the mills; we have established agricultural colleges in all the larger
States, subject to their control, and these are -endowed munificently
with national lands.  A special department has been created at
Washington, to exercise vigilance over our agricultural interests; to
direct immigrants in the choice of lands; to import seeds, and scatter them over the country gratuitously, and to encourage the introduction of new fruits, grains, and plants.
The Commissioner of Agriculture receives about four thousand
dollars a year, and has a large number of employes, entomologists,
statisticians, chemists, etc.
The Agricultural Building standcs over the Tiber Canal, on a high,
breezy knoll, a few minutes' walk from Pennsylvania Avenue, and
close by the Smithsonian Institute. It is a brick building, trimmed
with brown stone, three stories high, exclusive of the attic, under a
Mansard roof. It is a hundred and sixty odd feet wide, and surrounded by a farm of nearly forty acres. The building cost one hundred and forty thousand dollars, for its construction, furniture, and
complete outfit, being almost the only public building that has not
cost more than the sum voted for it. The terraces in front of this
building are in excellent taste, and the farm is to be laid off in arboreta, to represent every tree capable of being adapted to our climate.
Fish are also to be artificially spawned here. The building, within,
is practically a museum of American cereals, fruits, birds, insects,
etc.; a laboratory for the analyzation of soils, and a library. It is
very interesting, and seems to be shrewdly managed.
The timber interests of the United States have not been guarded
for government uses, as in England, where there are large forests,
nominally belonging to the crown, which are nurseries of ship timber. The naval exigencies of the future are already agitating the
minds of men of foresight, and the eastern part of the United States
is almost as bare of good timber as are the British islands at present.




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   223
The Chief Clerk in the English Admiralty Office gets 5,000 dollars
a year; his first class clerks receive from 3,000 dollars to 4,300 dollars a year; his third class clerks receive 1,050 dollars.
The Chief Clerk of the American Navy Department gets 2,200
dollars a year; other clerks receive from 1,800 dollars to 1,200
dollars a year. The chiefs of naval bureaux get 3,500 dollars a year.
In the British Museum, which corresponds to our Congressional
Library somewhat, the salaries of attendants are from 1,500 dollars
to 400 dollars. In the House of Commons, the clerks receive from
5,000 dollars to 1,250 dollars. In every large American city, the
government has built an edifice for the Post Office and the Customs.
In the English Custom's Department, clerks receive from 1,500
dollars to 800 dollars. Gaugers receive from 2,500 dollars to 725
dollars. American Custom's clerks are paid from 1,800 dollars to
1,300 dollars a year. Gaugers are paid about the same sums.
In the English Exchequer, a chief clerk receives 4,500 dollars; a
common clerk, from 700 dollars to 1,750 dollars. The chief clerks of
the Treasury Department of the United States receive 2,200 dollars
a year, and subordinate clerks from 2,000 dollars to 1,000 dollars a
year.
In the English Inland Revenue, which corresponds to our Internal
Revenue, clerks receive from 4,000 dollars to 650 dollars. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue, in America, gets 4,000 dollars a year,
which sum is supposed to keep him pure, amidst all of the assaults
of the "Whiskey Ring," and other immaculate organizations.
In the English War Department, salaries range from 4,000 dollars
for first clerks, to 450 dollars for messengers. In America, salaries run
from 2,500 dollars to 725 dollars. Female clerks are employed in
many American Departments. They are paid from 1,200 dollars to
600 dollars a year. Copyists are paid ten cents per hundred words.
Clerks in the English Treasury and War Office have seven weeks'
holidays during the year; in the Post Office a month; in the Home
Office about eight weeks; in the Customs near five weeks.
In the United States civil service, twenty-eight days is the average
holiday; we give Jack too much work, and little play, and have,
therefore, a good many dull boys.
American clerks take their stations at nine o'clock, and quit them
either at three or four o'clock. No English clerk, in the civil service,
begins work before ten o'clock, and the majority do not begin work
until twelve o'clock; they quit work either at five or seven o'clock.




224:   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Little pains are taken, in America, to provide the public with information upon the statistics, and other concerns of government.
Every two years a great " Blue Book " is published, with the name
and the salary of each official, and we take a decennial census at
considerable expense; the last of which filled nearly three thousand
pages, and comprised five bulky volumes. The government publishes
no "Moniteur," like France, nor "Gazette," like England, but
advertises its wants in the daily newspapers at Washington and other
cities.
The English keep a State Paper Office; this has been for three
centuries a depository of the official correspondence of the country;
all the great state papers are classified and examined by clerks in
this department. The State Paper Office has been combined with the
Public Records Office in London.
The United States government has all the facilities for advertising
its own sales, and proposals for purchase, either in the "' Globe,"
which prints the debates of Congress, or from the government printing office; but these advertisements are generally used as party patronage, and distributed amongst the stipendiary press.
The " London Gazette" is the authorized medium for making
known to the public state intelligence, orders in council, etc. A full
series of the " Gazette," from its commencement, may be found in
the Library of Congress, at Washington.
In this " Gazette" are inserted all Royal Proclamations, Acts of
Council, Diplomatic Dispatches, Laws signed by the Queen, Appointments under the State, and Court Decrees. Copies of this important
paper are transmitted to all friendly governments.
Every year the " Gazette" office publishes a book of state intelligence, well indexed, costing one dollar and a quarter. The English
monarchy is popularly supposed to spend a great deal of money in
corrupting the journals of its own and of rival countries.
The Stationery Office of England is almost as old as the United
States government. It purchases wholesale all stationery, and this
single duty involves a national outlay of nearly one million and a
half of dollars. There are two leading officers of this department:.
Storekeeper, with the salary of two thousand dollars a year, and twenty-four clerks, three examiners of paper, and about twenty warehousemen; Comptroller, four thousand five hundred dollars a year's
salary, and a residence.
The Treasury Department controls the Stationery Office.  Sta



OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   225
tionery in America is given out by separate officers in each of the
Executive Departments, and much fraud and scandal attend the purchase and distribution of it. WVe should have a Stationery Office.
In England the government keeps its own mill to make bank-note
paper. We are about to adopt the same system.
The English Board of Trade and Plantations, which formerly was
of great consequence, and which regulated many of our American
Colonies, is now entrusted with a part of the inspection of railways,
with the collection of statistics upon trade, and with many other matters which apparently belong to different departmnt departments; for instance,
it has charge of the
Corn Returns' Office. -This bureau takes charge of the statistics
of the price of corn, - corn, in England, being a word used to signify
grain.
Registry of Designs' Office.-Designs, or patterns as we would
call them, being of great consequence in connection with English
manufactures, this office registers original designs, charges a fee, and
gives a copyright upon the design of from nine months to three:
years.
Joint Stock Companies' Registration Office. —The English haven
found, as we shall find, that stock companies must be watched, and,.
therefore, they compel the registration of every corporate company,.
its designs, and its members, and also compel the payment of a fee
for registration. These registry papers are open to inspection on the:
payment of a fee.
Department of Science and Arts. - This subject will be considered
more particularly in the next chapter.
Coal WMidppers' Office. - An immense amount of coal is discharged'
from vessels at the wharves of London. The laborers who, unload.
the coals were required to be registered; for this purpose the Board of
Trade appointed three commissioners, the city of London one,.and the
Coal Factory's Soci2ty one. Only registered persons were employed,
and a fee was charged to pay the expense of this coal whippers' commission.
-Merchant-Seamen's Registration.- English seamen must register,
procure a ticket, and generally pay a fee.
The Trinity.House. —There are three institutions bearing this
name in England, one at Hull, one at Newcastle, and one in London.
The principal one is in London, and its revenues amount to one mil-.
lion and a half of dollars a year.




226    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Trinity House has charge of the commercial navy of the country,
the keeping of light-houses, pilots, navigation laws, and the regulations about ballastage. This institution shows how thoroughly republican is the seamanship of England. The seamen have made
England the great nation that she is, -the greatest nation in the
modern world. In America we have of late paid little national attention to our mariners.
The London Trinity House is a corporation composed of thirty-one
elder brethren and a limited number of younger brethren, selected by
ballot from the masters of British vessels. This corporation is thoroughly republican, and its constitution shows that the vital concerns
of seamanship require the actual administration of the working seanen. This corporation also gives relief to worn-out seamen, and its
establishlment in I-lull relieves upward of a thousand persons a year.
Trinity IIouse is subject to the Board of Trade in most matters.
~We have permitted all the affairs of our merchant marine to run
down. All the strong specific legislation is for the manufacturers.
The English Treasury is the chief department of the English government; and, since the civil war in America, the Treasury is the
chief department of the American government. In the chapter on
Finance we shall consider this department in both governments.
The English Post Office, which now forms one of the great public
departments, was not established till the seventeenth century. In
1649 a weekly delivery of letters to all parts of the kingdom was instituted, and in 1657 the office was placed upon nearly the present
plan. In 1784 mail-coaches were first run, and the sluggish pace of
the post was greatly accelerated. Gradual improvements and changes
continuedl to be made till 1840, when the new system of a uniform
rate of postage and the principle of prepayment was brought into
operation. The history of the English Post Office is very interesting,
and is fully related by Harriet Martineau. Here are some of the
main items in it:Coleridge, the poet, when a young man, was walking through the
Lake District, in the North of England, when he one day saw the
postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman
turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she
could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the
letter was from her brother, Coleridge paid the postage, in spite of
the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman
was out of sigllt,. sheshowed Coleridge how his money had been




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   227
wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There
was an agreement between her brother and herself that, as long as
all went well -with him, he should send a blank sheet in this wsay once
a quarter; and she thus ha(l tidings of him without expense of postage. Most people would have remembered this incident as a curious
story to tell; but there was one mind which wakened up at once to a
sense of the significance of the fact.
It struck lMr. Rowland I-ill that there must be something wrong in
a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to
gratify their desire to hear of one another's welfare. He immeliately
proposed a reform in the whole postal system. MIr. IIill proposed to
reduce the cost of all letters not exceeding half an ounce in weight to
a penny. The shock to the Post Office of such an audacious proposal
was extreme.
" He kept the idea in circulation, however, and at last it was adopted.
No one has done so much as Mr. Rowland Hill in our time in drawing closer the domestic ties of the nation, and extending the influences
of home over the wide-spreading, stirring, and most diverse interests
of social life in our own country. And from our own country the
blessing is reaching many more, and cheap postage is becoming established in one nation after another."
Benjamin Franklin is generally alleged to have been the founder
of the American Post Office, but since the adoption of railways we
have made our main strides in republicanizing the Post Office, which,
however, does not pay its expenses to this day, but leaves a large
deficit to be made by Congress. We have adopted many good ideas
from the English, such as maintaining a money-order system, postal
cars, and a free delivery by carriers. No Post Office is better administered than ours, except with regard to extravagance  The English
have a pneumatic despatch for mails in great cities.
Letters are inviolate in England, and cannot be opened except by
the Secretaries of State and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Between 1843 and 1853 only six letters were opened. We are even
more particular in America, although we have seized telegraphic
despatches in two or three instances. There is a movement now in
all the nations to make the telegraph adjunct to the Post Office. Mr.
E. B. Washburne is at the head of this movement in America.
The English Post Office is subordinate to the Treasury; the leading
officers of the Postal Department receive ten thousand dollars, six
thousand dollars, and four thousand dtIllars a year. The Postmaster



228    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
General receives twelve thousand five hundred dollars a year. Nearly
twenty thousand persons are connected with the English postal service, and their combined salaries exceed three millions of dollars.
The mails leave London twice a day for all parts of the kingdom
and for the continent, except for the small islands which lie near by
the English coast.  Through the postal-order system of England
fifty millions of dollars are transmitted every year. The Franking,
privilege covers petitions to Parliament, and letters between the
various departments. One feature of the English postal system is
that of stamped newspapers, which go through the Post Office several
times for the price of the original stamp. The poste restante of
Europe is equivalent to our general delivery window.
The postage collections in the United States on the correspondence
exchanged with Great Britain and countries on the continent of
Europe, amounted to $1,090,244.03 in 1868, and the postages collected in Europe amounted to $616,223.73. The excess of collections
ina the United States was $474,020.30.
The estimated amount of United States postage upon the letter
mails exchanged with Great Britain and the continent of Europe was
$793,700.64; in the same year with Canada and the British North
American Provinces, $176,179.55; and with the West Indies, Brazil,
3Mexico, Japan, and China, and Central and South America, $128,098.87; making in all $1,097,979.06.
The number of letters exchanged with foreign countries (exclusive
of the British North American Provinces) was 11,128,532; of which
5,900,307 were from, and 5,228,225 received in the United States.
The postal franking system is the great cause of the annual
deficit in the American Post Office. The Postmaster-General in 1868
said: -
" I have had occasion frequently during the past year to call attention of members of Congress to the use of their names in sending
mailable matter free under a fac-simile frank. Three dollars will buy
the fac-simile frank of any member of Congress, and the use of it by
claim agents and business men in cities in sending books, periodicals,
letters, and business circulars, defrauds the department out of immense sums of money. It is estimated that the loss of the department, by this species of abuse of the franking privilege, has amounted
toTrom one million to one million and a half of dollars during the
past year."
The crowning shame of America is her debauched and partisan




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   229
civil service, which has been almost entirely reformed in England,
where it had to make a long struggle before it could be purified and
origanized upon a business and non-partisan basis.
The mismanagement of the Crimean war gave rise to this now
well-known agitation for administrative reform, which resulted in
the partial opening up of the appointments in some, and the complete
opening in others of the public departments.  ISr. Layard was the
first to raise this important matter. 3Ir. Gladstone, " heartily wished
him God-speed," and said that he saw with unfeigned satisfaction
that the state of public feeling was likely to take the direction given
to it by MIr. Layard. He believed, in contradistinction to the popular opinion, that the system of patronage was the weakness, not the
strength, of the executive. What he wanted was a change in the
basis of the whole system of the civil service; perfectly free competitions for admission by the test of examination, and subsequent promotion by merit and efficiency alone. The public, he held, had a
right to be served by the best men it could get for the price it
offered. And he contended, not only that the existing system did
not give the best men, but that it created a vast mass of collateral
evils connected with the dispensation of patronage, which kept a
large class of men in a state of expectancy wasting their lives in
solicitation. How truly can we say this of our American civil service
at present!
The term " civil service" is a phrase popularly used for general
convenience, and represents the large body of men by whose labors
the executive business of the country is carried on. It has been
officially stated that the civil service of England includes more than
fifty thousand officers, which would make a class more than twice as
numerous as the clergy.  Deducting, however, four thousand as
office-keepers, messengers, etc., seventeen thousand as inferior revenue
officers, postmen, etc., and fifteen thousand artificers and laborers
employed in the various government dock-yards, we may calculate
that there are, in round numbers, seventeen thousand civil servants of
the higher class who are engaged in the various public offices of the
United Kingdom. The civil service was in a condition quite as bad
as ours at present when the reformers took hold of it.
For many years the unsatisfactory condition of the permanent civil
service had attracted considerable attention, as well out of Parliament as in, until, in 1853, a commissioner was appointed with a view
to the improvement and reorganization of that body. In the same




230    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
year Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan addressed a
report to the Lords of the Treasury, stating their opinion that " the
right of competing for appointment in the civil service should be opea
to all persons of a given age, subject only to the necessity of giving
satisfactory references to persons able to speak to their moral character."  The Queen's speech, at the opening of Parliament in 1854,
contained the following passage: "The establishment required for
the conduct of {he civil service, and the arrangements bearing upon
its condition, have recently been under review, and I shall direct a
plan to be laid before you which will have for its object to improve
the system of admission, and thereby to increase the efficiency of the
service."  No such plan was laid before Parliament, but on the 21st
May, 1855, her Majesty issued an order in council, appointing commissioners for conducting the examination of young men proposed to
be appointed to any of the junior situations in the civil establishments, and authorizing them to give certificates of qualification before such young men entered on their duties. After due consultation
with the heads of the several departments of the civil service, a
scheme of examinations was prepared, and the first examination took
place on the 30th June, 1855, since which time examinations have
been held nearly every week. The principle of examination has not
only been twice affirmed by resolutions of the House of Commons,
but has been formally sanctioned by two acts of Parliament.
Government situations in England are ordinarily obtained in this
way. A member of Parliament, whose political opinions coincide
with those held by the party in power, is asked by an influential constituent to get a place in government office for a relation or a friend.
The member of Parliament applies to the parliamentary Secretary of
the Treasury, who has the distribution of patronage, or to the political
head of some department. The Secretary of the Treasury, or the
head of the department, willing to gratify a parliamentary constituent, accedes to the request, and presents the member's protege with a
nomination to one of the junior clerkships in his gift. The person
nominated does not, however, as a matter of course, enter the public
service, for no interest, however powerful, can confirm an appointment unless the nominee is able to obtain a certificate of fitness from
the Commissioners of the Civil Service appointed by the crown.
Before granting their certificate the Commissioners ascertain:
First. That the nominee is within the limits of the age prescribed
for the department to which he desires to be admitted.




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.    231
Secondly. That he is free from any physical defect or disease
which would be likely to interfere with the proper discharge of his
duties.
Thirdly. That his character is such as to qualify him for public
employment.
Fourthly. That he possesses the necessary knowledge and ability
for the proper discharge of his official duties.
Great pains are taken in England to see that a clerk has been honest in his previous career, and this form of letter is always addressed
to his previous employers: —
"CIVIL SERVICE CO.MMISSION, S. W.
" SIR  - Mr. -, a candidate for the junior situation of, having stated
that he was employed by, I am directed by the Civil Service Commissioners, to request that you oblige them by filling up and returning to me, in the
enclosed envelope, the' statement' hereto annexed. The postage need not
be paid. I am to add that your answer will, if you desire it, be regarded as
confidential, and that the word' confidential' should in that case be written
on the envelope. The favor of an early answer is requested.
" I am, sir, your obedient servant,
" QUESTIONS.
" st. Are you related to the candidate? If so, what- is the relationship?
"2d. Are you well acquainted with the candidate?
"3d. Will you have the goodness to mention the dates of his entering and
quitting your employment, and his reasons for leaving?
" 4th. How long have you known him?
"5th. Is he strictly honest and sober, intelligent and diligent?
"6th. Do you believe him to be free from pecuniary embarrassment?
" 7th. What do you know of his education and acquirements?
" 8th. Has he ever been in the service of the government? and if so, in
what situation?
"9th. What has been the state of his health since you have known him?
"10th. Are you aware of any circumstance tending to disqualify-him for
the situation which he now seeks?"
This reformed civil service has been one of the greatest blessings
that was ever conferred upon England.
In 1865, it appeared that the total number of nominations since the
commencement of the civil service in May, 1855, ambunted to twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and sixty-three.  The number of




232 THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD).
competitors for the superior situations, in 1864, was seven hundred
and ninety for two hundred and fifty-one places, out of which five
hundred and seventeen received nominations. Of the remaining two
hundred and seventy-three, two hundred and forty-one fell below the
standard of competence, nineteen failed in respect of age, five in iespect of health, and eight in respect of character. For the inferior
offices, - letter carriers, etc., - out of two thousand three hundred
and eighty-four, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-one certificates
were granted.
The practice of renominating unsuccessful candidates within a short
time after their failure having led to abuses, the Lords of the Treasury
have fixed three months as the shortest period after which they will
grant a second nomination, and in the Admiralty and War Office an
interval of six months is required. A third chance is rarely offered
to the unsuccessful candidate.
We have no such examinations in the United States, but appointments depend upon favor.
The most important competitive examination that has taken place
in England, since the establishment of the commission, was that for
eight vacancies in the office of the Secretary of State for India. It
was thrown open to all comers; and, out of seven hundred and eightynine applicants, no less than three hundred and thirty-nine actually
presented themselves for examination at Willis' rooms, London, on
the 18th of January, 1859. The examination lasted three days, six
hours each day, interrupted only by a break for refieshment, and on
the 11th.of February the names of the successful competitors were declared. Seven of the successful candidates offered themselves for a
voluntary examination in extra subjects, and obtained honorary additions to their certificates for proficiency in Greek, Latin, German,
French, Political Economy, Euclid, Algebra, etc. The total of marks
was one thousand five hundred and fifty, but the highest only reached
one thousand one hundred and thirty, while the lowest was eighty-four.
Of the successful competitors one was a sub-editor of a newspaper,
one a school-assistant, two were school-masters, and three clerks.
In contradistinction to the above examination take the testimony
of MIr. S. M. Clarke, who filled a high government place in America.
He says: —
"I was referred for examination in August, 1856, to a Board of Examiners appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury, consisting of
MIr. Rodman, then Chief Clerk, and Major Barker and Mlr. 5AcKean,




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   233
two prominent fourth-class clerks.  The'full particulars of such
examination' were as follows: I was instructed by the then Secretary to appear before this board at a given time and place to be examined. I put in my appearance at the time and place stated in my
instructions. Major Barker commenced the'examination' by saying,' You are from New York, I believe, Mr. Clarke?' I replied that
I was. He then commenced a detailed narrative of his first visit to
New York, and gave me an interesting and graphic account of the
disturbance created in his mind by the' noise and confusion' of the
great city. The delivery of this narrative occupied, as nearly as
I remember, about half an hour. I listened to it attentively, endeavoring to discover some point in his discourse which had reference
to my' examination.' I failed to discover any relevancy, and therefore made no reply. At the close of his narrative, without any further question, he said to his associate examiners,' Well, gentlemen,
I presume there is no doubt but that Mr. Clarke is qualified.' Whereupon they all signed the certificate, and my'examination' closed."
All American statesmen have borne testimony against the custom
of appointing partisan clerks.
Mr. Nathan Sargent, Commissioner of Customs, tells this little
incident of his own career:
" General Taylor, through Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State, first
tendered me the office of Secretary of the Mexican Commissioners;
which I declined on the ground that I did not understand the Spanish language. General Taylor was pleased to say that I was the first
man he ever knew who declined an office because he did not consider
himself fit for it; and then offered me the office of Recorder of the
Land Office, which I should have declined if I could without giving
offence."
To General and President Andrew Jackson and his vindictive nature we owe the demoralized condition of the civil service. He was
the first President to turn everybody out of office who would not become his personal follower and clacquer. His best friends protested
against it in vain, amongst them Major Lewis Jackson, his relative,
who said:"I embrace this occasion to enter my solemn protest against it;not on account of my office, but because I hold it to be fraught with
the greatest mischief to the country. If ever it should be carried
out in extenso, the days of the republic will, in my opinion, have
been numbered; for, whenever the impression shall become general
30




234    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
that the government is only valuable on account of its offices, the
great and paramount interest of the country will be lost sight of, and
the government itself ultimately destroyed.  This, at least, is the
honest conviction of my mind with regard to these novel doctrines of
rotation in office."
After Jackson began his partisan and personal proscription, the
city of Washington was seized with panic, and all enterprise there
declined. The system of proscription is still in vogue, and Washington energy continues to be depressed.
"Thirty-three houses," said a newspaper, just after Jackson's proscription began, " which were to have been built this year, we learn,
have been stopped in consequence of the unsettled and uncertain
state of things now existing here; and the merchant cannot sell his
goods or collect his debts from the same cause. W~e have never
known the city to be in a state like this before, though we have known
it for many years. The individual distress, too, produced in many
cases by the removal of the destitute officers, is harrowing and painful. MIany of the oldest and most respectable citizens of Washington,
those who have adhered to its fortunes through all their vicissitudes,
who have' grown with its growth and strengthened with its strerigth,'
have been cast off to make room for strangers, who feel no interest in
the prosperity of our infant metropolis, and who care not whether it
advances or retrogrades."
In spirited words the virtuous Josiah Quincy condemned this quadrennial revolution in the public departments. Speaking of a dead
office-holder, he said:"The poor man shall hardly be dead, he shall not be cold long,
before the corpse is in the coffin, the mail shall be crowded to repletion with letters, and certificates, and recommendations, and representations, and every species of standing sycophantic solicitations,
by which obtrusive mendicity seeks charity, or invites compassion.
WVhy, sir, we hear the clamors of the craving animals at the treasury
trough, here in this Capitol. Such running, such jostling, such wriggling, such clambering over one another's backs, such squealing because the tub is so narrow, and the company is so crowded."
Ienry Clay bore similar testimony to the system of rotation in
office:
"' t is a detestable system, drawn from the worst periods of the
Roman republic, and if it were to be perpetuated —if the offices,
honors and dignities of the people were to be put up to a scramble,




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   235
and to be decided by the results of every presidential election, - our
government and institutions becoming intolerable, would finally end
in a despotism as inexorable as that of Constantinople."
A movement is now on foot, at the head of which is 1Mr. Jcnckes,
of Rhode Island, to reform the civil service, in America; but this has
been attacked, by 3Mr. WVoodward, Democrat, of Pennsylvania, and
by General Logan, Republican, of Illinois, on the ground that a permanent civil service is a European and monarchical institution.
Appealing to a prejudice, these gentlemen are doubtless fearful
that, by reforming the civil service, their hold upon the small offices,
as a means of partisanship, may be imperilled.
Another crying evil, in America, is the miserable salaries paidc by
government. MIy impulse has once been, that the clerks of the government are paid enough. By an actual inquiry into the subject, I
am satisfied that the salaries of the majority of clerks in Washington
are insufficient, and the argument that plenty of people are waiting
to take less seems to me to be conceived without regard to the
respectability and honor of the public service. I know from experience that three thousand dollars is a little sum to keep even a very
little house, and a very little family, in Washington, while the American boarding-house is a " hash house" of character, particularly in
Washington. The system of " shaving " salaries in vogue in Washington is an evidence of the incompetence of hire. Four-fifths of all
the salaries are hypothecated before the month is half over, and the
clerk pays ten per cent. a month for the advance. The result is beggary at the end of the year, misery, and a collection among the other
imlpoverished ones to send the bankrupt home. I know that this is
poor saving on the part of the government. If those extravagant
fees were cut down, such as are received by the Sergeant-at-Arms of
the House, and officials with perquisites, and if the useless officeholders were discharged, the salaries of really useful clerks could be
advanced to suit the times, without loss to the government. MIeanness is not economy. The excess of single men in government service has led to a social debauchery. The back alleys of the town
swarm with the abandoned, and these are supported upon the wages
of men too poor to marry, but human en6ugh to sin.
This is the testimony of the Secretary of the Interior, who
said:" The income of office will not equal the outlay, if the incumbent
lives in a style at all compatible with the proprieties of his position,




236    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and the relations which a decent regard to to the just claims of society compel him to maintain. The high offices of the country should
be open to the poor as well as to the rich; but the practical effect of
the present rate of compensation will soon be to exclude from executive councils all who have not ample resources independently of their
official salaries.
" It is a singular and disreputable anomaly, that the chiefs of bureaux
of the WVar Department each received in pay and emoluments, during
the last fiscal year, a larger compensation than the Chief Justice of
the United States. Recent legislation recognized the just claims of
the Judges of the District Courts, and of the Supreme Court of this
District; but Congress, in the absence of political pressure, omitted
to make a becoming provision for the Justices of the Supreme Court
of the United States."
The same Secretary made this suggestion: —
" The proposition to erect and furnish houses for the Vice-President
and Cabinet ministers may not meet with more favor now than when
it was originally made. I earnestly recommend, therefore, that fifty
per centum be added to their present salary, and to the Justices of
-the Supreme Court. It will even then be much less than is allowed
to officers of a similar grade, by any other first-class government.
The cabinet ministers will not receive more than is now paid, in
coin, to several of our foreign representatives,.who discharge much
less laborious duties, in capitals not more expensive than Washington. Since the salaries in question were fixed at the present rate,
Congressmen have, by successive statutes, nearly quadrupled their
own, and I do not doubt that the members of that honorable body
will render, in some degree, to others, the justice already secured
to themselves."
To show how small salaries debauch public officers, let me cite the
following statement of an old office-holder, at Washington, to whom
I applied for information as to the difference between the nominal
salaries of government officials and their actual incomes:" State Department: the salary of the Secretary is eight thousand
dollars a year, but he actually costs the government nearer eighty
thousand dollars a year.
"1 Many of the clerks about the establishment never think of moving without retainers, and poor devils, why should they? for the average nominal salary of State Department clerks is about fifteen hundred
dollars. Think of it, thirty dollars a week! thirty dollars a week in a




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   237
city where the whole of this sum is demanded for the merest accommodation; and yet a clerk in the State Department is liable to make
the acquaintance of Ministers Plenipotentiary, and of Secretaries of
Legation. In fact, the affairs of our State Department can be known
to almost any prying foreigner, who has only to apprize himself of
the necessities of a State Department clerk, to find the key to the
bottom of our archives. There is a gentleman of the State Department, whom I know, with a salary of, say forty dollars a week. He
has, according to the best of my information, about ten children;
this gentleman I believe to be a faithful and devoted servant of his
Department,yet his salary, reduced to gold, is about six pounds a week,
and, reduced to English marketing, it is about three pounds a week.
Now, to bring disgust to the face of a confidential clerk of the English Foreign Office, tell him  that his correspondent in America
receives three pounds a week' to do plenty of work, and keep his
counsel.
" We have had some good foreign secretaries in our country, but
as things stand at present it is a rich man's office. Seward, probably
our best secretary, got even with his mean salary, by going freely
into the pleasures of office; his printing at the congressionaI office
cost the government considerably more than Lord Stanley's salary,
and the pleasant old gentleman would hardly cross the river to
Arlington, without getting the loan of Welles' most luxurious steamer. Looking upon his salary as zero, he gave bountiful encouragement to the Atlantic Telegraph, and to the Foreign Steamship companies, and an American hardly ever went abroad but he met some
jolly bearer of despatches for the State Department, watching the
CAN-CAN at the Ball Mabille, and assisting our formidable Secretary
of State to help somebody to get something for his keeping the
United States out of a foreign war.
"' As to Mr. Gideon Welles, about whom I have just spoken, people say that he was not a very efficient officer. History will not join
in this verdict, but he was so poor, after serving the government
eight years, that he had to fire up a fine vessel-of-war to take his
household furniture from Washington to New London.
I" In the hottest time of the war, when to know which way Mr.
Stanton's nose turned up was worth a thousand dollars an hour to
contract-hunters, the salary of clerks stood at a starvation figure,
and yet fifty per cent. of these clerks were under temptation to
reveal the secrets of their bureaux.




238    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH.THE OLD.
" I can tell you two or three cases, but you will not care to print
them, because you can l-lear of thousands of the same kind in a day's
excursion around Washington.
"There was Th —, a first-class penman and book-keeper who had
been turned out of the Interior Department for political suppositions,
and he became so poor, in 1862, that he went to the wharves on the
Potomac and got a job as a stevedore on an army supply vessel.
When he had worked there like a Mick for several months, the
quartermaster, an old brute, came out one day and asked, with an
oath, if there was any man in the gang who could write. Thspokd out; accoutred as he was, he plunged in, made a magnificent
assistant, and for all his labor and responsibility received what?' Six hlundred and fifty dollars a year!
" Amongst the contract-hunters who came to that wharf was a
shipping merchant from a northern city. He became acquainted with
Thl's condition and ability; the government clerk and the merchant struck a partnership. In eighteen months Thll --  was worth
eighty thousand dollars, and this was not probably a third part of the
gains of his moneyed partner.
" Here somebody made two hundred thousand dollars; here something lost it. I think it was the mean nation,'which paid a mall
thirteen dollars a week, when lie had thirteen chances a day to hook
thirteen thousand.
"Need I remind you of the case of young -L, a navy clerck,
who obtained more than a hundred thousand dollars by forgery, which
required him to imitate about thirty names on each set of a series of
warrants, which ran through two months. He was in love with a
beautiful girl; his salary was a thousand dollars a year; he was
liable to be chucked out of place to-morrow, though he did liis best.
Hle hooked the money; he married the girl; they took him almost
from her side at the altar to the penitentiary.
"Of course he was a regular bad'un, but how did he get into the
government service? and what an accident that they got him out!
"On which hobservation, ask Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island.
"And now, my dear sir, to comne to the Treasury, I feel as if I
were measuring up the ocean in a gill measure to try to tell you the
stories of its civil list with one steel pen.
"Go there, and on a marble plate in a prominent room, printed at
his own suggestion in golden letters, you will see a name amongst
several, which is an index to the kind of precocious villainy which




OFFICES, ETC., IN AMERICA AND IN ENGLAND.   239
storms the party-caucus and manages the civil services. Mention it
to any observer in Washington, and he will say,' Dog! he enrichedl
himself upon plundered cotton; he used his office merely to catalogue
the claims against the Treasury, and resigned it to prosecute them.'
In this case original sin was doubtless sufficient to account for the
man, but had he been hauled into court, and made to face the penitentiary, his plea of excuse would have been:-'"' Good people, how could I maintain my honors with my appearance and thirty-five hundred dollars a year?"'
Here I leave my ancient office-holder and correspondent.  tIe
writes not elegantly perhaps, but with a cheerful indignation which
may bring this subject home to the reader. In the civil service of
our government are many accomplished and faithful men, to whom a
civil service bill would be a relief, a social promotion, and better
compensation. It is well known that the executive departments are
overcrowded by the unscrupulous greed of merely political Congressmen to pension their retainers, and worse, upon the Federal service.
The people must cry out for this reform; it might be called the vital
reform of all the reforms needed. WVith the drones out of government service we could afford to pay the true clerks well, and the Executive Departments would cease to be mere soup-houses, where the
unworthy crowd out the poor.
The English government has passed through this question, and the
reformed civil service has proved to be a decency and a blessing on
which the whole kingdom applauds itself; scrupulous, intelligent,
orderly, patriotic, working clerks have replaced the old party hacks,
and the vast clerical operations of the British kingdom are responsibly conducted by gentlemen almost as well paid as the clerks of private employers.
In the account of London offices, above given, little is said about
their architecture; but as a rule they are not finer buildings than
our own.
The building of the General Post Office in London stands in the
densest part of the old city, near St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a fine
building, but not more remarkable than the General Post Office in
WVashinfgton. Generally considered, the public offices of London do
not present as imposing appearances as the departments at Washington; all great London buildings, whether constructed of marble or
granite, tarnish and blacken in that sooty atmosphere, while the
public buildings of Washington compare in size and style with




240    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the largest of the world, yet keep almost as white as if freshly
erected.
One of the largest public offices in London is called the Somerset
House. It stands upon the Strand, or on the bank of the Thames, and
contains several of the greatest offices of the government. The In.
land or Internal Revenue Office occupies nearly one-half of the building; the Audit Office and part of the Admiralty and several other
bureaux are established here. About nine hundred government officials have desks in Somerset House, and their combined salaries are
nearly one million and a half of dollars a year. The leading* Commissioner of Internal Revenue gets the highest salary in the building,
or twelve thousand five hundred dollars a year; the same officer in
the United States receives six thousand dollars a year. In the basement of Somerset House are presses and fonts of type to make
stamps, stamped labels, etc. So large is Somerset House that it contains thirty-six hundred windows.
Another great government office in London is Burlington House,
formerly the residence of a nobleman, situated on the street called
Piccadilly; it covers one hundred and forty-three thousand square
feet of ground, and cost seven hundred thousand dollars in gold.
It is not one of the good signs of the times in America that everybody
wants office, and the unscrupulous methods by which offices are obtained strikes every stranger at Washington. "A universal thirst
after salaried public employment," says Montalembert, " is the worst
of all social maladies; it infects the whole body politic with a venal
and servile humor, which in no way excludes, even among those who
may be the best paid, the spirit of faction and anarchy. It creates
a crowd of hungry suitors, capable of every excess to satisfy their
longings, and fit instruments for every base purpose as soon as they
are in place. A population of place-hunters is the most despicable
of all people. There is no ignominy of which it is not capable."








_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  _ _ _ _ _  ft                     -:-h  _
4~~~~-Bne 
MONUMENTAL STRUCTURES.
1-Alexander Column, St. Petersburg. 2-Column Vendome. 3-Arc De Triomphe, Paris,
4-Bunker Hill Monument. 5-W-ashington Monument. 6-Statue of Columbus.




CHAPTER IX.
NATIONAL ARLT AND EDUCATION.
The schools, universities, and institutions of art and literature in England and America. -
A particular account of Oxford and Cambridge.
EWE have now reached a subject in which the extremes of poverty
and munificence are manifested by our country.  Compared with
Great Britain, or, indeed, with any modern nation, we are splendidly
endowed with elementary schools, and enjoy in cheap and convenient
variety all the advantages of public libraries and popular literature.
The Amnerican people give voluntary and general support to the
printing-press, which may be called the main engine of republicanism.
But to the very highest developments of education, and to monumental
art, the State does not think it wise to extend its organized assistance.
We are, therefore, in the infancy of a great state, if measured by our
architectural monuments and by our largest universities. The demands of the period with us are not for culture, but for usefulness.
The most imposing of our institutions is, perhaps, the Patent Office,
-that mighty depository of the mechanical triumphs of our nation,
displayed in the course of our grand campaign toward reducing the
wilderness and utilizing the products of the ground. But the most
thorough and beneficent of our general i l:;titutions is, undoubtedly,
our vast system of commoni schools; for which we tax the people, in
lieu of the gric'ous churc i-rates levied upon unwilling millions of
Englishmen.
In 1865 there'were twe. re thousand nine hundred and fifty schools,
or departmen:s of schools, for the laboring classes in all Great Britain, taught by t bout twelve thousand teachers, and attended by one
million two hundred:.ncd forty-six thousand children.
In the Stat Oi N' -:  York, alone, in 1862, there were one million
hree hundred  and twventy-three thousand scholars of the public
schools.
The British gox..' nment made the first grant for general education
in the year 1834;  me sum was one hundred thousand dollars. Ina
31                              241.




242    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
1853 the vote of money was one million three hundred thousand dollars, and at present it amounts to three million dollars and more a
year. In twenty-three years the government has spent thirty-four
million dollars for educational purposes, of which two-thirds went to
the Church of England's schools, and the rest was distributed amongst
the dissenting denominations and Catholics. Public schools in England are called National Schools; and educational administration in
England is confided to the Education Department,- a branch of the
Privy Council, —but the actual work is done by its Secretary, and a
large number of Inspectors.  The latter are paid two thousand two
hundred and fifty dollars a year each, with travelling expenses, awhile
the Secretary of the Committee receives six thousand dollars a
year. America has a stronger exhibit to make.
There w-ere more than one hundred and thirteen thousand schools
in America in 1860, employing one hundred and forty-nine thousand
teachers, and attended by nearly five and a half millions of scholars,
and nearly five millions of these scholars attended the public schools.
There were in America, besides, twenty-seven thousand seven hundred
and thirty libraries, containing about thirteen and a half millions of
volumes, and four thousand and fifty-one newspapers, circulating nine
hundred and twenty-eight millions of copies a year. There were, also,
four hundred and forty-five colleges in America, in 1860, attended by
fifty-five thousand students.
Nearly the whole of this noble system of schools is the work, not
of the nation, but of the separate States and cities; for the general
governme~nt leaves to the people, in their corporate capacities, the
regulation of all those affairs not strictly delegated to the Federal
State.  In Great B3ritain the State is made the encourager and conservator of education and art, as well as of industry, and the public
schools feel the contact of this patronage.  The National Schools of
England are little more than pauper institutions, and take hold of the
popular affections as do the work-houses and the agencies of out-ofdoor relief. But the common schools of the United States, maintained by the will of the people, partake of our republican spirit, and
l~re comparable to the best private schools in the world. The sons
of the rich are sent to them as well as tlhe sons of the poor, and in
this way the successive generations of the republic begin, equalizerc
in charity, nationalized in manners, and taught to remember the
rights of Cll and to be self-reliant, rather than to depend upon aclventitious conditions, Into this great hopper of the public schools every




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                   243
inimmigrant or native mother pours her children. They emlerge with
all their original individualities, but bereft of most of their superstitions and arrogances, ready to tak-e their places in the line of citizenship.
E.ducation in England, as I have said, is not managed by the cities
or tlie States as with us; it is a national affair, and is managed b.y a
Committee of the effete Privy Council. Upon this Committee sit the
Lord President of the Council, the Secretary of State, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, andl four other eminent members of the govern;ment.
About three millions and a half of dollars are now voted for national schools, to which the children of citizens in middle life seldom
go; and, with the usual regard paid in England to authority, the
school-teachers frequently have residences built for them.
The Secretary of the British Education Board receives a salary of
six thousand dollars a year, and there are a great number of School
Inspectors, who receive, besides travelling expenses, two thousand
two hundred and fifty dollars a year apiece.
At the Philadelphia High School, which was one of the best institutions of its kind in America, the Principal is paid only two thousand two hundred dollars a year, and has no official residence. In
fact, no officials in America are given official residences, except the
President and some of the State Governors.
When Washington city was planned, spaces were left to accommodate the different States with sites for residences for their Senators
andc Representatives. None of the States, and none of the Congrcssional Districts have been generous enough to avail themselves of
these opportunities, and, as a consequence, many members of Congress, and even some of the cabinet officers, are unable to bring their
wives to Washington city.  Licentiousness is, therefore, said to
abound under the shadow of the Capitol, and wve have it on the authority of a Senator, that one of the Representatives from one of the
greatest whiskey-distilling districts in the United States recently
turned Ihis house into a gambling-saloon, andi tlere plundered his
friends whom he had invited under his roof.
In the year 1860, before slavery was abolished, one person in six
of the entire American population attended school.  Since that time
a noble series of elementary scihools have been established in the
South by the Freedmen's Bureau, and by the magnificent bequest of
IMr. George Peabody, an American banker, of London, who had previously endowed the latter city with cheap lodgingr-houses. The need




244    TIiE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
in England is for life, for shelter; the cry in America is for light, for
schools. In the year 1860 there were one million two hundred and
eighteen thousand persons in the United States who could not read
and write. Of these not quite one-half, or about one person in forty
of the native population, were native Americans.
The condition of the people is far different in Great Britain. A
recent report of the British Registrar-General shows that thirty-two
and seven-tenths per cent. of the male minors who married in 1841
were obliged to sign the register with marks. This proportion diminished year by year till 1866, when it was twenty-three per cent.
The progress of education among women has been still greater.  In
1841 forty-eight and eight-tenthls per cent. of minors were unable to
write their names; but in 1867 there were only twenty-three per cent.
In the whole quarter of a century, from 1842 till 1866, the proportion
of men who write has risen from being only two-thirds to be threefourths, and of women, from being a half to be two-thirds. But the
spread of education over the kingdom has been very unequal. It
appears fioln a Parliamentary return, issued in the session of 1867,
that more than a third of the Welchmen who married in the- year
1865 had to " make their mark;" very nearly a third of the men of
Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk were put to the same
predicament; more than a third of the men of Suffolk, thirty-five per
cent. of the men of Bedfordshire, thirty-eight per-cent. of the men of
Staffordshire, and forty per cent. of the men of Monmouthshire.  In
all Lancashire one man in every four who married had to "' make his
mark."  Foremost among the ignorant districts, so far as concerns
women, stands South Wales, with more than half its women unable
to write their names; and in North Wales, AMonmoutlshire, Staffordshire, and Lancashire the number exceeds forty-six in one hundred.
In Bedfordshire, two women in every five who married in 1865 had
to make their mark. In the eastern counties, alid in many counties in
the southern half of England, more women signed the marriage register in 1865 than men.
With regard to the British army the proportion of ignorant men is
not less formidable. Of every thousand recruits examined in the year
1864 in English districts, two Ilundrecl and thirty-nine were unable to
read or write, thirty-seven able to read only, and seven hundred and
twenty-four able to read and write. In Scotch districts the numbers
were respectively, one hundred and sixty-three, one hundred and fiftyseven, and six hundred and eighty. In Iristl districts the result ap



NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                245
pears as three hundred and eilghteen, one hundred and four, and five
hundred and seventy-eight.  Compared with the results for 1861,
there is a decrease il the proportion of uneducated in England, but
scarcely any difference in Scotland and Ireland.
There is no more remarkable indication of the needl of public or
common education in England than the numerous dialects which pervade the rural counties. MIany of these are not merely the mal-pronunciation of habit, or the terms of locality, but coarse anid harsh
vocabularies, unintelligible to English-speaking people.  Even in
London, the large population called " Cockneys" speak a dialect not
above the elegance of an American negro slave's in former days.
Wherever one goes, throughout the British Islands, lie finds dense
ignorance, rude or servile mannerisms, and gross appetites. A small
portion of the people are educated far above the needs of magnanimity, and they despise their common countrymen, while the poor are
thrown together in parish or National Schools, unleavened in most
cases by the companionship of the children of the better classes. By
these.strong walls, built between the various grades of childhood, the
" conservatism" of England is thought to be secured; but it is the
pride of a wealthy American father, in all but exceptional cases, to
commit his son to the public teacher, and let him enter into competition with the average human nature on trial there. The result has
proved, according to the best testimony, that there is less selfishness,
haughtiness, and vice in the American common schools than at Eton
or Harrow, the nurseries of the British aristocracy.
There were in America, in 1860, in addition to the scholars of the
public schools, nearly half a million lads and girls attending private
academies, of which latter there were nearly seven thousand established. There were, besides, upwards of four hundred and fifty incorporated colleges attended by fifty-six thousand students. These
academies and colleges, collectively, had an annual income of more
than twelve millions of dollars. These institutions are not associated
with the public school systems of the different States; many of them
are richly endowed by religious bodies, by the legislatures of the
States, or by private benefactors. Almost every State has one or
more universities, and those of some of the newest of the States
compare favorably with the best in the land. Amongst the most
flourishing and individual of these schools are the University of
Michigan, at Ann Arbor, the Cornell University, at Ithaca, New York,
and Oberlin College, in the State of Ohio. Taken together, the pri



246    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITI THE OLD.
vate or pay schools of the United States are, alone, probably more
numerous and better attended than the private schools of England.
Counting our vast system of public education at nothing, the pay
schools of America match those of Great Britain, omitting the British National Schools. The American colleges of some single States,
if collected into groups or universities, would outnumber the colleges
of Oxford and Cambridge together. Ohio, for example, has forty-five
colleges, with more than seven thousand students. All New England
is in one point of view a grand academy, to which go scholars from
all parts of the republic. In England there are particular schools of
great antiquity and of rich revenues, which engage in the preparation
of boys for college; a few of these may be enumerated.
Christ's Hospital in London, otherwise known as the Blue Coat
School, is purely a charitable establishment; the pupils have retained
their distinctive dress, a blue gown, yellow leggins, and no hat, ever
since its foundation, and are obliged to wear this dress continuously,
even in vacation. At the universities these charity scholars are
known by their long hair. Charles Lamb went to this school, as well
as Coleridge and Leigh Hunt. Its revenues are more than three hunired thousand dollars annually. At the opposite end of London,
beside Westminster Abbey, is a school of a very different sort; it is
called Westminster, and was once the Court School; for a long time
it rivalled Eton, but was lately reported to be in a terrible state of
decay. " The position of the school in the heart of a great city," says
a critic, "1 had doubtless something to do with corrupting the boys'
morals, but would not entirely account for their low and ungentlemanly habits; nor could their general ignorance of everything but
vice be attributed to any other cause than gross neglect on the part
of those who had control over them." At this school were trained
Ben Jonson, Cowper, Gibbon, Lord John Russell, and many boys
destined to greatness; the institution is three hundred years old.
Charter House School, in London, was the nursery of John Wesley,
Thackeray, Blackstone, and Havelock; it was founded in the year
1611. I visited it in 1863, and found the names of Martin and John
Van Buren on its registry book. At St. Paul's School, under the
shadow of the great cathedral, were educated Milton and Marlborough.
The two most renowned country schools in England are those of
Harrow and of Eton, the latter situated close by the Queen's palace
of Windsor. Harrow has the reputation of being a great place for
the quasi-aristocracy,- the sons of rich commoners, — as Eton is




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.              247
for the sons of noblemen. Eton was founded fifty years before the
discovery of America; at present it has nearly eight hundred scholars, and is richly endowed. Here were scholars many future prime
ministers, and great churchmen and soldiers: Wellington, Hallem,
Chatham, Fox, Canning, and Admiral Lord IHowe.
The best idea an American reader can get of these British schools
and of the two great universities will be afforded by Charles Astor
Bristed's " Five years at an English University," and for pleasant,
pure reading there are no books more popular than those of Mr.
Thomas Hughes, " Tom Brown at Rugby School," and " Tom Brown
at Oxford." The first of these books is a conscientious account
of an American boy's experience at Cambridge, and I have availed
myself of it freely in.describing life at that great university.
American criticism is generally adverse to the social life of English
schools, as indeed is much of the ingenuous portrayal of the same
by the late English novelists.
The Etonian boys of nineteen are as old in appearance as the New
Yorkers or Bostonians of twenty-one. They all wear white cravats
and men's black beavers; caps are forbidden; to be an " Eton man"
is a badge of high-breeding though not always of good-breeding. The
school, perched on the Thames by the base of Windsor, is a sort of
juvenile court. A feature of all these schools is the interest endowed
for them in the great universities. Out of its seven hundred odd
pupils only about one-tenth are collegers. These collegers are the
nucleus of the whole Etonian system, and the only original part of it,
the paying pupils (called oppedans, or town boys) being, according
to general belief, an after-growth. The collegers are educated gratuitously, and such of them as have nearly but not quite reached the
age of nineteen are elected, when a vacancy occurs, to go to King's
College at Cambridclge, and they are there provided for during life, or
until marriage.
Amongst the many colleges of America there are two which have
heretofore taken precedence over all others, by reason of their age
and fine endowments, and by the eminence of their alumni. A long
day's ride from Washington city, but little further from New York
than is Oxford from the city of London, stands Yale College, in the
pleasant town of New Haven, the city of the Elms, -a series of
venerable or modern buildings in the green public squares, with
churches and houses of justice or legislation intermixed.
Yale College, like Harvard, is named for a private benefactor,




248    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Elihu Yale, who was born at New Haven in 1648, and lies buried at
WVrexham, in North Wales. He quitted America when a child, and
never returned to Connecticut; he rose to be governor of the East
India Company, and became rich; his united bequest to Yale College
amounted, however, to only about five hundred pounds. The conception and infancy of the college date back about one hundred and
eighty years; but the earliest of the present buildings at New Haven
were finished about the year 1780. Nearly eight thousand persons
had graduated at New Haven up to the year 1862; there were about
forty-five instructors in the college at that time and six hundred
students. As at Harvard, there is an academic department at Yale,
besides colleges of law, science, medicine, and theology. There are
forty thousand books in the college library, besides several subsidiary
libraries belonging to societies. The alumni of the college have made
it several handsome bequests,- more than two hundred thousand dollars having been given in two separate subscriptions. Yale, however,
is not so richly endowed as Harvard. It is, if not more conservative
in politics than Harvard, more conservative in its religion, still adhering to the forms and doctrines of the Congregational Church. In
both these great American universities there is a radical and a staid
faction, contending for their control; at present the more radical
university seems to be about as far ahead as Oxford outstrips Camdridge in material things; but both these universities are firmly established, and their interior policy and regimen attract almost -as
much attention in America, as do Oxford and Cambridge in England.
It would be very pleasant in this chapter to sketch the pleasant
College of Dartmouth, in the lowlands of New Hampshire; the University of Pennsylvania, in the heart of the great city of Philadelphia;
Brown University, on the heights above Narragansett Bay, and Ithaca
University, on the green slope of Cayuga Lake. I have only room,
however, for an outline of the American Cambridge.
Three miles from Boston city, on the banks of the broad, brackish
River Charles, in the midst of the pleasant suburb of Cambridge,
stands Harvard University. The town of Cambridge was named
after Cambridge in England, by the founders of the college which
stands here, many of whom had graduated at the English University
of that name. Cambridge town, in England, at the present time, is
probably not as populous as Cambridge in Massachusetts. Several
years ago the two Cambridges had but about two thousand difference




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                249
in population. John -Harvard was born in Middlesex County, England, the county in which London stands, in 1638. He died at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and left about eight hundred pounds to found a
college, and also a small library; but Cambridge University was
really the work of the settlers of Boston and the town round about;
it properly began six years after the settlement of the Boston region.
This college received a limited State support down to the year 1814;
but the bulk of its wealth was the gift of private individuals. It has
received bequests amounting to more than one million of dollars; in
its library are about one hundred and twenty-five thousand volumes.
There are more than a dozen large buildings upon the fourteen acres
which constitute its premises, and one of its colleges is in Boston city.
It has about seven hundred and fifty students, generally speaking.
In theology it is generally considered a Unitarian institution; but the
sentiment of its undergraduates, alumni, and patrons has grown
more and more progressive, until at present its President is a young
man, and its overseers and corporation belong to what is called the
advanced or youthful party, in politics, philosophy, and religion.
From Yale and Harvard let us turn to the two ancient universities
of England.
Cambridge is fifty-seven miles from London. Oxford is fifty-two
miles from London. Cambridge dates back to about the year 1230,
A.D. Oxford is said to have been a seat of learning as early as the
year 802, A.D.
The Associations of both Oxford and Cambridge are scholastic,
and historical in a high degree. Cromwell three times represented
Cambridge in the House of Commons, and Bacon, Newton, Coke,
Dryden, and Byron were among the graduates of this venerable
university. At Oxford were burned Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer,
the earliest Bishops of the English Church. The library at Cambridge contains more than two hundred thousand volumes; the Bodleian Library, at Oxford,: contains nearly three hundred thousand
volumes. The revenue of Oxford is two million three hundred thousand dollars in gold, a year. It has thirty-five professors, numerous
tutors, six hundred " Fellows," and thirteen hundred students. The
revenue of the university-proper, however, is only about thirty-eight
thousand dollars a year; the rest going to separate colleges, to prizes, and to fellowships. At Cambridge there are seventeen colleges.
Government gives the professors about six thousand dollars a year,
collectively, and the revenues of the university proper are thirty
32




250    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
thousand dollars a year.  Both colleges have had magnificent
bequests. One museum, at Cambridge, is endowed with five hundred
thousand dollars in gold, and one college has a separate library of
fifty thousand volumes. Oxford has a nmagificent printing establishment and a theatre connected with it. At both colleges there are
professorships of Arabic, Sanscrit, and other oriental branches.
Both these universities originated in monastic schools, which, after
a. time, had secular imitators; these latter hired inns, and other
buildings, where they lived in association, with superintendents,
stewards, and other officers appointed by themselves. From those
poverty-stricken inns have grown up the vast series of colleges
which constitute these two noble universities, both of which, by right
of usefulness, of intelligence, and of property, are represented in
the Parliament of Great Britain. For many years, Mr. Gladstone,
the present enlightened Prime Minister, was elected by Oxford University.
The great University of Oxford possesses nineteen colleges, and
five halls, presided over by their respective "Heads." The university
has always been governed by statutes of its own making, which in
1626 were digested into a code.
The style of the corporation is, "The Chancellor, MIasters, and
Scholars of the University of Oxford."  The Chancellor holds his
office for life, is usually a nobleman of distinction, who has been a
member of the university, is elected by the members of Convocation,
and attends only on extraordinary occasions. The Vice-Chancellor,
the highest resident officer, is annually nominated by the Chancellor
from the Heads of Colleges, but of late has generally held office by
reappointment for four years. He convenes all courts and meetings,
enforces the laws, punishes delinquents, licenses taverns in the city,
and is a magistrate for Oxford, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire. He
appoints four deputies, or pro-vice-chancellors, from the Heads of
Colleges, who exercise his power when he is unwell, or necessarily
absent from the university.
The following are the names of the colleges composing the
Universities of Oxford, with the students, as reported a few years
ago:University,.72
Balliol,.                                 101
Merton,.                     45
Exeter,.                                  171




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                    251
Oriel,..                       87
Queen's,.                                     63
New,.                                     34
Lincoln,.                                    40
All Souls,.....    4
Magdalene,                                    55
Brasenose,.99
Corpus,.                                     47
Christ Church,.211
Trinity,.                                    81
St. John's,.49
Jesus,..                                     44
Wadham,.72
Pembroke,.66
Worcester,.68
Halls:St. Mary's,                                   18
Magdalene,                                    73
New Inn,                                6. 
St. Alban,.                                    9
St. Edmund,.                                 22
Litton's,.5
Balliol, judged by the standard of the class lists, and University
prizes, is a far better college than Christ Church, or Brasenose, or,
indeed, any other in Oxford.
Take one college at Oxford, to example the rest, - Christ Church:
It was commenced by Cardinal Wolsey, in 1526, but when the King
disgraced him, the former seized the funds appropriated to building the college, and changed its name from Cardinal's to King's.
One side of this college is four hundred feet long, broken in the centre by a bold gateway, over which rises a tower and dome, containing
a bell which weighs seventeen thousand pounds, and whose clapper
weighs three hundred and forty-two pounds; every night, at ten minutes after nine, this bell, by one hundred and one strokes, gives notice
to all the colleges to close their gates.
The gateway under the great bell leads into a vast court, more than
two hundred and forty feet square, and surrounded with superb architecture; in the centre of the court plays a fountain, and from one
corner of it, where stands a statue of Cardinal Wolsey, a beautiful
staircase leads to the College Hall, which is one hundred and fifteen




252    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
feet long, forty feet wide, and fifty feet high, and finished by Wolsey himself. In this hall the English sovereigns are received when
they visit Oxford, and  many plays have been enacted here before the
kings. A Cathedral is attached to this college, and fine stone cloisters.
A magnificent Portrait Gallery, of historical personages associated
with this college, is one of its attractions. A meadow of fifty acres
extends from the college to the pleasant river's brink, and promenades under elm-trees lead to tlie junction of the Cherwell and Isis,
where lie mooired the barges from which the collegians cheer the
racing-boats, while the green meadows are on racing days crowded
with spectators. From this college Locke was expelled; here Cranmer
was confined before hisexecution; here William Penn attacked the
Christ Church students, and tore their white surplices from their backs.
These are but a few of the larger features of this magnificent college,
which is replete with exquisite patches of stained glass, and quaint
or florid sculpturing. An American scholar can spend a month in
Oxford, inspecting Christ's Church and other colleges, and here, in
1869, appeared many of our Yale and Harvard boys, to watch the
university boat race between Harvard and Oxford. In and around
all these colleges will be seen the students in their academical costumes, which are not worn in America except on show occasions, and
then in a very modest and reduced form.
The English academical costume consists of a gown, varying in
color and ornament according to the wearer's college and rank, but
generally black, not unlike an ordinary clerical gown, and a squaretopped cap, which fits close to the head like a truncated helmet,
while the covered board which forms the crown measures about a
foot diagonally across. To steal caps and gowns is no more an
offence against the eighth commandment, in Cambridge, than to steal
umbrellas.
A remarkable class of men at the English universities are the
"Fellows," who reside in the university, and devote themselves to
teaching or to learning. The Fellows, who form the general body
from which the other college officers are chosen, consist of those four
or five Bachelor scholars in each year who pass the best examination
in classics, mathematics, and metaphysics. This examination being a
severe one, and only the last of many trials which they have gone
through, the inference is allowable that they are the most learned of
the college graduates. They have a handsome income, whether resident or not; but if resident, enjoy the additional advantages of a well



NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                 253
spread table for nothing, and good rooms at a very low price. The
only conditions of retaining their fellowships are that they take orders after a certain time, and remain unmarried. Of those who do
not fill college offices, some occupy themselves with private pupils;
others, who have property of their own, prefer to live a life of literary
leisure, like some of their predecessors, the monks of old. The eight
oldest Fellows at any time in residence, together with the Master,
have the government of the college vested in them. We have no such
leisurely class in America; all who live in the college are undergraduates. Yet it might be well for our literature if some such fellowships were attached to our universities, that some excellent
students might have leisure for authorship. There are, nevertheless,
many drones and hangers-on about the English universities.
Oxford has numerous professors, who are utterly unoccupied. They
are engaged in spasmodic efforts at getting hearers, and are forced,
against their will, into lazy apathy. " As a whole," says one critic,
" the public teaching of the university is unwillingly contemptible.
6' One must either pity the men who have no one to teach, or one
must despise the men who continue the same functional gabble to
successive aspirants for a certificate.
" Some of the ablest Oxford professors lecture to women and
strangers. I have gone in to a lecture on a subject of the profoundest interest, and I have seen there three or four Fellows, and so forth,
of the lecturer's college, one or two citizens, and an ambitious undergraduate, who took notes for ten minutes, and slept for fifty. It is
in vain that founders of professorships annex penalties to a slovenly
performance of public offices."
The sums of money invested in these fellowships is very great.
Rich men, dying, endow so many fellowships in this college.
There is no less than a sum of four hundred thousand dollars per
annum bestowed on those who desire, or receive, as the case may be,
eleemosynary aid in Oxford as undergraduates.
The annual value of the fellowships and college headships, buildings included, is at least seven hundred thousand dollars.
The annual value of ecclesiastical benefices connected with the
colleges is at least one million dollars, and the income of the university, including its trust estates, according to one estimate, will bring
the gross total to not much less than two million five hundred thousand dollars per annum.
It was the case a few years ago, and probably will continue in the




254    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
English universities, for the university to control much of the city in
which it stands. The town officers are sworn in by, and subject to,
the university authorities, and the Proctors have a right to enter
almost any house or premises, put down all disorderly houses, and
expel from the place all the notorious prostitutes, of whom there are
many hundreds, as well known as if they were under a Parisian registration.
It may be that these sensual attractions partially account for the
unproductiveness of many Oxford fellowships, for a recent graduate
of Oxford says:"' I find my own university, the richest in the world, - far richer in
its income than all the universities of continental Europe from St.
Petersburg to Cadiz, - far behind, in its literary labors, some of the
smallest of most modern establishments in the pettiest German principality or dukedom."
The cost of education at Oxford, payable in gold, is fully twice as
much as the combined fees at Yale or Harvard. It can rarely happen
that the annual expenditure of an undergraduate's residence is less
than one thousand dollars at Oxford, and, according to the best testimony, the opportunities to spend money there are very considerable,
though, out of this annual expenditure, college bills amount only to
between four hundred and five hundred dollars. These bills include
tuition provided by the college, rent of rooms (unfurnished, the furniture being purchased and transferred on entering and leaving rooms);
kitchen and buttery, —-the former of these two providing dinner,
the latter commons and beer. The college does not supply the undergraduate with tea, coffee, or sugar; but most of the colleges arrange
for the undergraduates' washing and coals, and these items are included in the bill.
This is an outline sketch of the great University of Oxford, which
is typical of the peculiar nation of which it is one of the ornaments.
Its separate colleges have local and particular connections.
For instance, Exeter College has a large west country connection,
and a very considerable clerical one.
Balliol and University are strongly occupied by a Scotch and north
of England connection. Jesus is almost entirely Welch. Trinity is
powerfully Wykehamist.
Queen's is eminently limited to Cumberland, Northumberland, and
Westmoreland. Brasenose is a good deal beholden to Manchester,
and so in their degree with the rest.




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                 255
DoWxn to 1832 there were in England but two ancient universities.
In that year a university for the study of theology was founded in
Durham. The Bishop of the diocese is the "' visitor," and the Dean
the " Warden."  It is now attended chiefly by the sons of wealthy
farmers. The London University was founded by royal charter on
the 28th of November, 1836. It is empowered to confer the degrees
of master of arts, and of doctor of laws, of medicine, and of science.
There are two colleges in direct relation with it, nanlely, University
and King's College. The Fellows and the Chancellor are nominated
by the Queen; the Vice-Chancellor by the Senate.
The first view of Cambridge, town and university, is quite as
quaint, if not as fine, architecturally, as Oxford. Like almost all
old English towns there are narrow and winding streets of crazy old
buildings, filled with ancient sign-boards. Among these narrow, ugly,
and dirty streets are tumbled in, as it were at random, some of the
most beautiful academical buildings in the world. However their
style of architecture may vary, according to the period at which they
were built or rebuilt, they agree in one essential feature: All the colleges are constructed in quadrangles, or courts; and, as in course of
years the population of every college, except one, has outgrown the
original quadrangle, new courts have been added, so that the larger
foundations have three, and one has four, courts. Sometimes the
" old court," or primitive part of the building, presents a handsome
front to the largest street near it; but frequently, as if to show its
independence of, anid contempt for, the town, it retires from the street
altogether, showing the passer-by only its ugliest wall and smallest,
shabbiest gate.
When MIr. Bristed appeared before this old university and selected
the college he meant to attend, he wrote a very pithy description of
the place: —
" You enter by a portal neither particularly large nor very striking
in its appearance, but rather the reverse, into a spacious and elegant
square. There are neat grass-plots and walks, a fountain in the centre; on one side stands a well-proportioned chapel; in one corner you
catch a glimpse, through a tantalizing grating, of a beautiful garden,
appropriated to the delectation of the authorities. In a second
court you find sounding and venerable cloisters, perhaps a veritable
structure of monkish times, if not, a satisfactory imitation of that
period. And you look on the walls, here rich with sculptured ornament, there covered with trailing and festooning ivy."




256    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
At Cambridge, as at Oxford, there are many colleges, and all these
colleges have equal privileges and rights, with one exception; and,
though some of them are called halls, the difference is merely one of
name. But the halls at Oxford, of which there are five, are not incorporated bodies, and have no vote in university matters; indeed, are
but a sort of boarding-house, at which students may remain until it is
time for them to take a degree. "I dined at one of those establishments," says Mr. Bristed. "It was very like an officers' mess. The
men had their own wine, and did not wear their gowns."
Mr. Bristed spent five years at Cambridge, and it is his opinion that
an English university course is far more thorough and effective than
one at Yale or Harvard.
" Were I to be questioned by an educated foreigner - an Englishman, or Frenchman, German, Hollander, or Dane - upon the standard of scholarship in our New England colleges and universities, I
should be obliged to answer," he says, " not having the fear of the
American public before my eyes, that it was exceedingly low, and
that not merely according to his idea, but according to the idea of a
boy fitted at a good school in New York. When I went up to Yale
College in 1835, the very first thing that struck me was the classical
deficiency of the greater part of the students and some of the instructors. A great many of the freshmen had literally never heard of such
a thing as prosody; they did not know that there were.any rules for
quantity. - It may be imagined what work they made with reading
poetry. Nor could their teachers, in many instances, do much to help
them. One of our classical tutors did not know the quantity of the
middle syllable in profugus, - almost the first word in the lEneid.
The etymological part of Greek grammar (to say nothing of the syntax) was very imperfectly understood by the majority, and of those
who made pretensions to scholarship there were not ten in a class
who could recite three consecutive sentences of decent Latin prose.
"Yale is the largest college in our country, and one of the two
most distinguished. The result of my inquiries has not led me to believe that Harvard is any better off. That the other colleges throughout the country, many of which derive their instructors from these
two great New England colleges, are, if anything, in a worse state,
may be easily inferred."
Mr. Bristed's testimony as to the relative morality of the English
and the American universities is severely rendered against the former,
and what he says will be confirmed by any traveller who is informed




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                257
upon the social life of the young men of the higher classes in the
British Islands.
The American graduate, who has been accustomed to find even
among irreligious men a tolerable standard of morality, and an ingenuous shame in relation to certain subjects, is utterly confounded at
the amount of open profligacy going on all around him at an English
university; a profligacy not confined to the "'rowing" set, but including many of the reading men, and not altogether sparing those
in authority. There is a careless and undisguised way of talking
about gross vice, which shows that public sentiment does not strongly
condemn it; it is habitually talked of and considered as a thing froml
which a man may abstain through extraordiinary frigidity of temperament or high religious scruple, or merely as a bit of training with
reference to the physical consequences alone; but which is on thewhole natural, excusable, and perhaps to most men necessary. Some
instances of representative wickedness at Cambridge are of a sort to
make an American turn up his eyes. Let me give them as cited from
the authorities:"You want to know what this row was between Lord Gaston and
Brackett,- -well, it happened this way: Brackett had brought his
choere atmie down froml London. Gaston made her acquaintance.
Brackett goes there one night and finds the door locked; so he kicked
the door. open, and gave Gaston a black eye. Then Gaston wanted
to challenge him, and said he didn't care whether he was turned out
of the university or not (this is the penalty for being concerned in a
duel); but his friends agreed that, as Brackcett was going into tlhe
church, they had better makl it up," etc.
"A young woman of p: ~vious good character went to a fellow of
King's College to procure' an order of admission to the chapel on
Sunday evening. He made her drunk and seduced her. The reader
will probably agree with me, that if the corporation of King's had expelled him from their body it would not have been a punishment
beyond his deserts. What did they do?  They suspended him from
his fellowship for two years, which was equivalent to a fine of four
thousand pounds or thereabout."
Not less repulsive is it to an American to find English university
students taking reactionary positions in politics. The same authority
says:
"' I first had full personal experience of the uncharitableness shown
by;these youthful Tories towards their liberal countrymen. Many of
33




258    TIHE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
them, who seemed to have taken up the Romish idea that a blind
devotion to their church establishment could atone for any irregularity in their lives, looked upon a Liberal as no better than a Dissenter,
and a Dissenter as only one step above an Atheist. A professed
Radical was regarded as a strange monster always to be suspected."
It would be a grievous offence in the eyes of American students if
I omitted mention of the great rowing matches at the English universities. At Oxford these take place upon the Isis; at Cambridge,
upon the Cam. The Cam being a very narrow stream, scarcely wider
than a canal, it is impossible for the boats to race side by side. The
following expedient has therefore been adopted: they are drawn up
in a line, two lengths between each, and the contest consists in each
boat endeavoring to touch with its bow the stern of the one before it,
vwhich operation is called bumping; and at the next race the bumper
takes the place of the bumped. The distance rowed is about one
mile and three quarters.
Yale and Harvard race each other upon the beautiful lake called
Quinsigamond, near Worcester, Massachusetts,-a lake which is about
half a mile wide. During the race on the Cam there is wonderful
activity and excitement, and the river brink is alive with people and
nags. One account says of the scene in racing week that, -
"Men and horses ran promiscuously alone the banks, occasionally
interfering with each other.  A  dozen persons might have been
trampled under foot, or sent into the Cam, and no one would have
stopped to render them assistance. The cockswain of one of the
boats looked the very personification of excitement; he bent over at
every pull till his nose almost touched the stroke's arm, cheering his
men meantime at the top of his voice. The shouts rose louder and
louder.' Pull, Trinity!'' Pull, Keys!'' Go it, Trinity!'' Keep on,
Keys!'' Pull, stroke 1'' Now, No. 3!'' Lay out, Greenwell I' For
the friends of the different rowers began to appeal to them individually.'That's it, Trinity!''Where are you, Keys?'' Hurrah, Trinity!
inity!! inity!!!' and the outcries of the Trinitarians waxed more
and more boisterous and triumphant, as the men, with their long,
slashing strokes, urged their boat closer and closer upon the enemy.
"Cambridge was turned into a show place for that day only. Goldembroidered gowns of noblemen mingled with the red gowns of
Doctors of Divinity and Physic. Crowds of well-dressed strangers
thronged the beautiful college gr6unds, looking as unamused as the
great Anglo-Saxon race usually does when it gets together in a crowd.




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.               259
The Senate House was thronged. All manner of big-wigs graced the
scene, and augmented the dignity of the Duke of Northumberland.
Some one of the Royal Family was there, - I forget who, but recollect two officers pushing the people out of his way. Prince Albert
came up to be made something or other, and put on some extraordinary dress.  Illustrious foreigners were not wanting.  Edward
Everett and Baron Bunsen were created D. C. L.'s, and had red gowns
put over their diplomatic uniforms." The scandalous conduct of
some members of Oxford University to our distinguished countryman,
when the same degree was conferred on him there some time later, is
notorious.
In 1865 and'66 I wrote for the" NewYork World " accounts of the
races at Lake Quinsigamond, and my companion was an Englishman,
whom I may call Tom Brown. There were many cabs and stages
between Worcester and the Lake, but quantities of strange vehicles
also, which could be enumerated under no possible head, - buggies
served up at the country blacksmith's, dearborns which might be laden
with hay, but which creaked abominably under the human freight of
the father of the family, peak-visaged, and calculating costs upon the
rump of his horse, as upon a slate; the old lady meditating applebutter and the cost of education.
With these went ponies and saddles, which ought to have been
" fit into the revolutionary war," and furniture carts in which halftipsy sons of sires were singing in their sleep. The road was undulating, and parallel with a railroad, and a part of the way went across
some swampy bottoms, and at last struck a hill-top, whence the
sweep of hills to the north and south was as beautiful as-the roll
of the WVest Riding moors. Below lay the lake, dark and shining like
ebony, and to the right meandering among many islets, and everywhere shadowing woods of chestnut and oak, but to the left, a single
reach of unbroken water, rising straight to the further distance,
where in the end of the perspective the buoy lay, like a white feather.
A causeway divided this clear arm of the lake from the west, in
which was an arch, through which a small steamboat was now.passing.
Tom Brown saw all this at a glance, and that nature which beats
down all reticence and prejudice brought from his lips an honest
admission:" I say! this thing can't be beat, out of Westmoreland. Who the
deuce wouldn't row his arms off here?"




260    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
The carriages and nags were all collected along the causeway, and
in the woods on either side; a railway turn-off to the right was dropping passengers by hundreds, who filed across the meadows and the
road, and went down a slope into the woods. The scene was orderly,
yet animated, and nobody was visible who seemed to be poor or outcast.
"Where are all your beggars?" said Tom Brown; "don't they
come to see your races?"
" There are no beggars here."
We two left the crowd to the left, and went down to see the boats.
They lay in a couple of unostentatious plank-houses, on the brink of
the lake, and were rakish shells, each resembling a very long, and
pointed cigar, scooped out in the middle, and guided by a rudder not
bigger than a sheet of foolscap.
Tom Brown said they were neither quite so long, nor quite so narrow, as the highest university barges. Their crews were dressing as
he approached, in handkerchiefs, silk shirts, and cotton drawers.
They looked like work, and he bet his money on Yale.
The scene along the lake borders was neither so eccentric, nor so
densely peopled, as upon the Cherwell, or the Cam, during the British
university races, but the knobs and capes of the lake were plentifully inhabited, and all the woodsides bordering it revealed groups
of spectators, while the surface of the water was spotted with swiftdarting craft, from the skeleton boat, manned by the single, conceited
oarsman, in red shirt, to the punt giving lodgment to a family.
The brass band, on the boldest cape, played fitful airs, chiefly military, but spending most of their time in picking out the tubes of their
cornets with pen-knives, and little attention was paid to the Worcester regatta, for nobody in the country has much interest in what
Worcester is doing; but by and by the college boats came on the
ground.
Then the excitement rose to fever heat, though Tom Brown
remarked that the disorder was not so coarse as in England, where
ladies and grandfathers wagered, and " demmes " were as frequent
as compliments.
They gave the stakes to the keeping of one of the many Generals
floating about, and scarcely had the agreement been made, when the
signal gun reverberated, and the two college crews came dashing up
the lake.
Tom Brown watched the scene with his old interest. The scream




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                261
of the partisans, the waving of ladies' cambrics, the flutter, and thunder, and alarm were lost on his ears. He only saw the two long,
lean, rakish shells dart forward, the oarsmen bending, till from waist
to scalp their bodies lay horizontally; and then the quick, vehement
erection, which made the tough oars quiver, and gave the craft
an impetus, like the ricochet of a shell, while every oar-lock vibrated.
Head and head they come, the swifter, but more fitful sweep of
Harvard giving them for a time the advantage; but the dip of Yale
is like the method of the piston, -certain, equal, and irresistible,
and as they pass, so bending to their task, that they only feel the
proximity of the world, and divine the direction, and hearing, as folks
in a vacuum, the peal of the cheers on shore, the twelve rowers put
their souls in then shaft, and feel their hearts beat at the top of the
paddles, and only know.that the air is cloven, as by two lean and
famished birds, and count, from time to time, the call of " steady,"
from the tremulous coxswain.
Still, the cries of the cape, left far behind, reach up to them, but
they have only intuitions, no sense, nor perception, nor cognition.
Away and'away, each can hear the breathing of the other; the buoy
boat approaches; the woods draw nearer; the winds are so still, that
the hard-drawn breath of every toiler is plainly noted while they
ride. Fiercely pulls Harvard, with the reputation of its old pulls
dependent upon it.
Regularly and strongly labors Yale, too well indoctrinated, to do
other than feather every oar, and make every stroke a reputation of
its predecessor.
And so, passing the stake boat, Tom Brown saw every impetus
give Yale her golden hope, till, with wild gratulation, she returned
past the cape, and shot across the starting-rope, like a flashing
pendulum.
Directly, the victors returned, the flags they fought for borne
before them, and beaten HIarvard Wvent soberly home, hopeful of a
better year.
That night the boys made the town of Worcester ring. They
burst the door-panels, and shied their pillows into the street.
Leaving the universities we come to the public libraries, of which
the largest in America is the Congressional Library in the Capitol at
Washinaton. It now contains, in round numbers, about one hundred
and eighty thousand volumes, which is more than that of Harvard




262    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
College, which outnumbers all others in the Union, except this. But
let us compare it with some European libraries: 
VOLUMES.
The Imperial Library, in Paris,                1,084,000
" Royal Library, in Munich,.                  818,600
"Library of the British Museum, in London,     615,000
" Bodleian, in Oxford,.282,000
" University Library, in Cambridge,            200,163
" Arsenal Library, in Paris,..                208,000' Royal Library, in Berlin,.                  510,000
" Imperial Library, in Vienna,...     370,000
" Royal Library, in Dresden..                 302,800
"University Library, in Gottingen,.          305,000
" Grand Ducal Library, in Darmstadt,.          304,000
"Royal and University Library, in Breslau,.    352,000
" Town Library, in Brussels,.              210,000
" Vatican, in Rome,...                   324,000
Imperial Library, in St. Petersburg,.    475,000
" Royal Library, in Copenhagen,.              428,000
Some notice of the British Museum has already been made, in the
chapter on London; we could have no such library and museum in
America, even if we collected in one spot all the pictures, libraries,
and scientific collections in the republic. The National Gallery, and
the Kensington Museum contain the great art collections of London;
they are spacious edifices, and our collected art treasures would probably make a sorry show in them. A small, but promising Art Gallery has recently been endowed, in Washington City, by W. W. Corcoran, a banker. An Academy of Design was erected in New York,
a few years ago; but its annual exhibitions attract no such attention
as those of the Royal Academy, in London. American artists have
attracted attention abroad chiefly for their landscapes, and some of
our sculptors, as Story, Powers, and Miss Hosmer, are well known
in England, but we have neither the institutions nor the patrons to
encourage art in America; some of our best artists, as Boughton
and Vedder, live abroad, and rely upon foreign support.
American medical education was confined to Philadelphia for many
years, where there are two renowned colleges, the Jefferson and the
medical department of the University; but medical students generally resort to the greatest cities, where they have a versatile practice in the hospitals, and New York seems to have had the favor *f
medical students since the civil war.




NATIONAL ART AND EDUCATION.                263
St. Baltholomew's Hospital in London contains five hundred and
eighty beds, and it relieves seventy thousand patients a year, and has
an annual income of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Guy's
Hospital is endowed with more than one million dollars. MIedical students pay two hundred dollars a year for lectures, practice, and all
privileges. St. Thomas HIospital has an income of one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year; it receives fifty thousand patients annually, and its splendid new hospital, which stands immediately opposite the Parliament Houses, was built out of a part of about one
mnillion and a half of dollars which it received from a railroad company for its former building at London Bridge.
We have several law schools in America, and young men generally
read law in the offices of attorneys with us, while in England they
live together in great buildhigs.
The Inns of Court. There are four great Inns of Court in London:
Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn; these
Inns are voluntary households of law students and lawyers. The annual yearly rental of the offices in the Inns of London is more than
five hundred thousand dollars.
Monumental art in America is ambitious, but not of a remarkably
national character. In London there is a statue of George Peabody,
by an American - Story; but this is almost the only case of American sculpture getting government patronage abroad.
I sometime ago spent part of a day in the shaft and workshops of
the Washington MIonument, — a mournful instance of the shortlivedness of public impulse, and the defects in the machinery of miscellaneous private enterprise. This monument is already raised to
the height of one hundred and seventy-five feet. It has cost nearly
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and is raised to more than
one-third its total height. The foundations are perfectly secure, and
capable of supporting all the height yet to be added. There are
stones from  all parts of the world, ready to be inserted in the
shaft, or subsidiary temple; but work has been suspended upon it for
about twelve years.
The monument was discouraged, because the people believed that
the contributions being dropped into post-office boxes, all over the
country, were stolen and never applied to the edifice, and also because
the artists and art critics kept up a steady fire of deprecation upon
the plan of the monument. This plan was an obelisk, surrounded
with a Greek temple. There is no notion at present of adding the




264    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
temple, but the monument association hope to raise money enough
to finish the obelisk. It is easy to do this, and it ought to be done,
for the unfinished shaft in the capital city is a record of popular impotence worse than if a monument to Washington had never been
begun. This age and people are no exception to the human passion
for monumentalization. If ten thousand churches and schools would
give twenty-five dollars apiece, this monument could be finished.
The interior of the shaft is of twenty-five feet diameter, between
the inner sides of the walls, and so thick are the walls that the exterior diameter is fifty-five feet. The material is marble, from Maryland. Within, there is a yawning chasm of shaft, very impressive to
look up into, and see at the farthest height a scaffold hung, from which.a rope droops dizzily, and on the floor the dampness splashes, and the
darkness lies all round the year, save when some melancholy visitor
puts hlis head within, and feels dejected over the suspended gratitude
of the land of Washington. I hope no more great monuments will
be commenced, but hope a feeling will be revived to see this one finished. The memorial stones to decorate some portions of the shaft
represent all companies, lands, and ages, — lava from Vesuvius,
aerolites shaken out of crazy satellites or planets, rocks of copper
and of porphyry stones from Jerusalem and Mecca,- everything but
the Pope's stone, which not the builders, but the mob rejected.
The finest monument in America is probably the Washington
monument at Richmond, Virginia, unfinished. In the great city of
New York we have but one fine public statue, while the United Kingdom is a great museum of colossal ornamental works. The Albert
Memorial, the finest monument erected in our generation, stands in
Hyde Park, London, and it cost six hundred thousand dollars. It is
a splendid Gothic canopy and spire, and it is one hundred and sixty
feet high, and covers, with its flights of steps, a square of one hundred and thirty feet each way; colossal groups of statuary surround
it; the Prince Consort is enshrined above. Close by this magnificent
monument stands the marble arch, which cost four hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.




CHAPTER X.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, COUNTIES, AND PROVINCES.
Sketches of some American states and some English counties, with their comparative
populations, rights, and resources.
THE names of American States perpetuate the Indian names of
their great rivers and lakes, or bear the names of their colonial proprietors. The English Counties retain their old Saxon names, some
of them as Kent, Sussex, and- Su'vey having been Saxon kingdoms.
In America a State has jurisdiction over all the incorporated cities
within its boundaries, but in Engcland many of tile large towns rank
as " Counties Corporate," and the officials of the surrounding County
cannot control them. We have in this country different laws in the
different States, and even different codes of law. In Louisiana,
justice was administered by the code Napoleon instead of the English
common law. So in England there are old distinctions of privilege
and administration between the great Counties, but these are of little
consequence to our inquiry, and need not be recited. The English
County, like the American State, is mainly a judicial district, but it
has less independence. A State with us exercises large powers of
sovereignty, charters railway and traffic companies, and between its
pretensions and the progress of the Federal government has arisen
our most deadly collision. As in A-merica, the administrative districts of England are these Counties, corresponding to our States;
the County Governor is called the Lord Lieutenant; the Sheriff and
his deputies constitute the main constabulary force; the other officers
of County governments are Justices of the Peace, Coroners, and Knights
of the Shire. The police system, Jhowever, throughout all England is
controlled by the Home Secretary, a member of the Cabinet. There
is no voting by ballot, in any of these Counties; those only count as
electors who can vote for Parliament members; few of the County
offices are elective, but are held at the disposal of the King's ministers. With us a State is a turbulent and organized territory, having
all its own machinery driven by its own will. An English County is
34                              265




266    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITHI THE OLD.
an ancient territory which sends a part of the members to Parliament. The Lord Lieutenants hold their offices for life; and, unlike
our State Governors, neither receive salaries nor are strictly accountable for their party politics.  When a vacancy occurs in a Lord
Lieutenancy, by death or resignation, it is filled by the Cabinet, which
is a political body; but only four cases are on record of the removal
of these officers for opposing a dominant national administration.
W~hen a Lord. Lieutenant is appointed, he appears before the Queen's
Council and takes the oath; a Lord Lieutenant, however, has military
authority mainly, while the Sheriff of each County is the principal
judicial officer; both Lord Lieutenants and Sheriffs are considered to
belong to the Lord Chancellor's department, the latter officer being
the great conservator of the peace. An English Sheriff is in almost
all respects like the Sheriff of an American County; he executes all
processes of the King's Courts, serves writs, arrests, takes bail, has
charge of jails, and is responsible for the execution of criminals; like
the Lord Lieutenants, Sheriffs are appointed by the Queen's administration on nomination by the County Judges; several persons are
generally nominated, and the Queen designates who shall serve by
pricking the parchment list with a punch opposite his name. The
Sheriff gets no salary; he serves one year, and is, during that time,
the most eminent subject in the County; except for this social consideration. few persons would care to serve as Sheriffs. Several ladies
have filled this office in past times.
In the County in which London is situated the citizens have the
chartered right to appoint their Sheriffs, and, in the County of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales names the Sheriff, for he is the Duke of
Cornwvall. Lancaster, in England, used to be the property of a
nobleman, who became King, and it is governed, in part, by a separate Cabinet officer, as the private appendage of the sovereign.
The English County, like the American State, is a district of historic, and not of legislative construction; the Counties, therefore, are
very unequal in size. From time immemorial, England has had forty
Counties, and Wales, twelve. The largest of all the English Counties
is Yorkshire, which has about the area of Connecticut and Rhode
Island together, and is for convenience divided into four districts,
three of which are called Ridings, —a corruption of the word
" Tithings," which latter means a district composed of three I-Iundreds. In the State of Delaware, in the United States, Counties are
also divided into Hundreds. None of these small divisions, in Eng



LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.           267
land, have the right to create railway monopolies like some of our
States, or to embarrass traffic passing across them.  The general
Parliament is their Parliament in all matters affecting great interests.
Each English County is bound to maintain a Jail and House of Correction; both Counties and towns can be compelled to erect Lunatic
Asylums; these institutions are visited periodically, by the Justices
of the Peace; they are maintained by rates levied on the County or
town, and over the whole series of them, Parliament, or the Cabinet
exercises the rights of inspection and interference. Within the past
ten years the condition of English prisons has greatly improved; all
the greater penitentiaries and the convict stations are out of control
of the Counties, and belong to the government.
In no part of England is flogging now permitted, and steps have
been taken to abolish it in the Army and the Navy; but on the convict stations flogging is in full vogue, though the sentiment of the nation is expressed against it even there. We retain the whipping-post
in but one State, Delaware. In each of the three court-house villages of Delaware the whipping-post is an old and familiar ornament.
It was removed from Wilmington, the principal city, many years ago,
but you can see it in Georgetown and Newcastle, and in Dover, the
State capital. The legislators, if in session, at the time of court,
can hear the screams of the whipped in the green jail-yard, behind
the State House, and if they like, look out of the Representatives'
Hall, upon the flogging. This whipping-post looks like an old pump
without a handle or a spout, the fissure in which the handle, if
supplied, would work, being devoted to the pillory board, which is
passed through and pegged fast. In this board the offender's head
and wrists are locked tight, and he stands in the hot sun, or rain, as
it may be, exposed to the taunts of tavern loafers, - his friends,
probably, yesterday or to-morrow. To the sides of the whippingpost, three feet above the ground, a pair of iron clamps are fastened;
these pass over the wrists of the condemned, and are locked to staples
below, so that he stands with his back bowed, hugging the post.
Behind him stands the Sheriff, or his deputy, applying the raw-hide.
The boys, the negroes, sometimes the girls, come round to be amused,
for in a dull town like Dover, a whipping is a fall of manna in -the
wilderness. The consequences of the punishment do not stop with
the bloody bare back of the criminal; they extend to the young spectators, and make them coarse and insensible; they give the State a
name, which its neighbors abhor, and involve our common nationality




268    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
in the shame of their stripes. They brutalize the State of Delaware;its women and its men together sharing the effects of the infliction,
which is morally worse than to be whipped. White men are said to
be seldom beaten here.
At the town of New Castle, some cunning imitator of the virtues
of the guillotine has invented a cat-o'-nine-tails, with wire extremities, every blow of which cuts into the tendons like a knife-blade,
and often into the loins. More than twelve (one hundred and eight)
blows of this instrument are said to be perilous to life.
The pillory is no less brutalizing, being a blow at one's pride,
which is the last article of man that a good State can appeal to, and
to the spectators it makes a ribaldry of punishment, so that they
laugh at the pilloried one, and do not pity him.
The people of Delaware, from the Governor down, argue for the
continuance of these two Asiatic institutions, saying, chiefly, that
the whipping-post is a better preventative than the jail, and that only
negroes " catch it."
The most populous County in England is Lancaster, which in 1861
had two and a half millions of people, or was about equal to the population of Ohio in 1860. The second County, in populousness, was
Middlesex, in which the bulk of London lies, with two and one-fifth
millions, or a million and a half less people than New York State,
in which the American London lies. The third County, in rank, is
York, with a little above two millions, somewhat greater than Illinois. The fourth County is Surrey, also embracing a part of London, which contains one hundred and fifty thousand less people than
Alabama. Stafford and Kent follow next, being about as populous
as Wisconsin and South Carolina. Wales, altogether, contains about
one million one hundred thousand'people, or about as many as
Tennessee. The smallest English County is Rutland, which has onesixth the population of Delaware. Warwick has a third as many
people as Rhode Island. England and Wales are more densely populated than any other country in Europe, except Belgium, containing
about. three million seven hundred and forty thousand houses, and
upwards of twenty millions of people, or nearly three hundred and
fifty to the square mile. In many English Counties the population is
decreasing. England has doubled in population in the course of half
a century; the women outnumber the men, in England, five per
cent.
Passing from State to State, in America, the traveller sees few




LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.    269
strikino differences in the garbs, the habitations, or the farms of the
people; but in England there are customs and traditions inherent in
each County, which the laboring people preserve from year to year.
These are of infinite amusement to the American, and in the small
space of England proper there is more variety of life and condition
than in all America. Almost every parish has its common, where
pasture the cows, asses, and goats of the poor. Every parish has
one church, and of these, alone, there are twelve thousand in England; they are frequently of great antiquity, dating back to the
earliest days of Christianity in Britain, and their picturesque towers,
and roofs of thatch, or tile, or slate, are studies for wayfarer and
architect alike. In every parish there is a work-hofise, and many of
the poor are also paid weekly stipends, who do not inhabit this
asylum. " To come upon the parish," is the English phrase for relying upon charity. [Not only are there commons in the villages, but
along the roadsides in many parts of England there are barren tracts,
which yet give root to bushes of furze, whose beautiful yellow flowers
make their lonesomeness bloom. Gypsies and cricketers betake
themselves to these commons and wastes, for England has been a
favorite kingdom for the former named these many centuries.
Throughout the whole of these Parish and County jurisdictions, the
power of the landholder shows itself, interwoven with all the conditions of life, and responsible for the most of them.
The large manufacturing cities of England lie, in many cases, upon
the manors of these aristocrats, and when the manor of Mlanchester
was subsequently purchased by the Corporation, in 1845, the purchase
money amounted to no less than one million of dollars. The power
of the English magistrate is dependent upon his wealth and rank
more thoroughly than upon his office, and, in fact, like the Swiss landlords, who are also magistrates, and pass upon the justice of their
own accounts, the English magistrates are mainly taken up with the
conservation of their own laws, lands, and privileges. They control
the church " living," in many cases, and it is to their interest to enforce the church-rates, which pay the salary of their parson, - perhaps a relative. They keep game, and much of their administration
is the punishing of "poachers " upon it. By the theory of English
law, the sovereign is the only person who has the right to pursue
game, and whoever wishes to acquire such right must obtain a license
from the crown. This right has been transmitted to the landed gentry, and Blackstone says that " the only difference between the old




270    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Norman forest laws, and the new game laws, is that formerly there
was only one great hunter through the land, whereas, at present, a
petty Nimrod reigns in every manor-house. To be able to shoot a
partridge upon land which he leased, required, down to 1830, fifty
times as much income as to be a parliamentary elector. At present a
man may shoot game on his own land, by buying a license, or he may
lease a field for shooting to a licensed gunner. In this way the great
landed proprietors frequently receive large sums of money every year,
by selling out a week's or a month's shooting on their grounds.
Dealing in game is allowed by license and trade certificate, but
poaching by night and killing game out of season are punished
severely. The game laws have made almost as many criminals in
England as the use of alcohol. The prevalence of game in America
has made our laws lax in respect to it, and in the eastern part of the
United States there is probably less game at present than in Great
Britain, where it i's preserved. We have no such oppressive land
monopolies as the English, and need fear the inauguration of no such
game laws as have been maintained with them; but a land without
birds is almost as poor as a land without trees. We are taking steps
in many of the States to guard the fish and the game, and not to rob
posterity altogether.
In America we find that very small States retard the interests of
their greater neighbors. Delaware maintains the whipping-post, because she has not the population to support large penitentiaries and
State institutions. But in England there is among the governing
classes a strong preference for little jurisdictions and small constituencies.
One of the most noteworthy points of a late address of Mr.
Gladstone was that portion of it in which he spoke most strongly in
behalf of small nomination boroughs. He said he regarded them as
supplying the race of men who were trained to carry on the government of the country, the masters of civil wisdom, like Mr. Burke,
Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. Pelham, Lord Chatham, 5Mr. Fox, Mr.
Pitt, Mr. Canning, and Sir Robert Peel, all of whom sat first for small
boroughs. If there was to be no ingress to the IHouse but one, and
that one the suffrages of a large mass of voters, there would be a
dead level of mediocrity. The extension, the durability, of our liberty were to be attributed, under Providence, to distinguished statesmen introduced into the House at an early age. But large constitu



LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.            271
encies would not return boys, and therefore he hoped the small boroughs would be retained.
Two of the most alarming evils of our American system of government are, the corruption of the State Legislatures, and the application of universal suffrage to the selection of Judges and the disposition of municipal finances. In the great cities, particularly in the
greatest of our cities, the taxes are imposed by partisans chosen from
the destitute and debauched classes, and it seems impossible, according to present indications, that New York city will ever get, by the
present system, a purer form of government.
Justices of the Peace, in England, are selected from the richest
and most respectable people.  Rich merchants, clergymen, great
landed proprietors, and leading lawyers are invested with this office;
they are generally appointed for the whole County, by the Lord Chancellor, on formal application from the candidate himself. There are
about eighteen thousand Justices in England, only thirteen hundred
of whom -are paid, and yet nearly one-half are arduously engaged in
dealing out justice  So honorable is the possession of even a petty
office esteemed in England! These Justices of the Peace are the minor
magistrates of the kingdom, and commit all paupers, keep the highways free, demand bail, and have jurisdiction over the small offences
of everybody but peers. These Justices need not give open hearings; they have no control over cases affecting bequeathed property,
but can compel the payment of tithes and wages, and they arbitrate
between master and workman. Like all other subjects these Justices
of the Peace are answerable to the law; but their motives are considered in extenuation of their acts. The combined Justices of the
Peace in one County appoint the Constables thereof, but great variety
in the manner of appointing and controlling the police exists amongst
the different Counties.
London, excepting the city proper, is divided into twenty-three
district courts, whose magistrates are paid salaries, and unlike our
American police justices they must be barristers-at-law of seven
years' standing.
Within the Counties, Coroners, Knights of the Shire, Poor-law
"Unions," and Boards of Health are elected by the freeholders of the
County. In the large towns the " gentry" are no longer the Justices
of the Peace, magistrates being appointed for that purpose. About
the office of Justice of the Peace, Lord Coke says, " that if it is administered in a fitting manner the whole of Christendom has not its




.272    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD..equal." It is a pity that this sentiment does not control the appointment of petty magistrates in the United States. A property qualification is required for this office throughout England, except in the
case of peers.
Eilghteen or twenty towns constituted municipal Counties, chief of
which are London, York, Chester, Bristol, Nottingham, Exeter, and
Newcastle. These Counties have their own sheriffs, coroners, and
militia. But now upwards of two hundred towhs in England are
not subject to the government of the Counties in which they are situ.
ated. The tax-payers elect a Mayor, who serves for one year, and
can be a magistrate for a year succeeding. The town government
consists of a Board of Aldermen and a Council. The Mayor presides
over the Council. Aldermen serve for six years. Common Council
meets once a quarter. Except in some minor details, where some
musty old privilege or nuisance is tolerated or compromised, English
municipalities at the present day are nearly counterparts of our American city governments; but, in our American cities, we attach too
little importance to the municipal legislatures, and in the English
cities they attach too much. We consign the vast property interests
of beautiful cities, like New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, to
bodies of councilmen who often have no interests in the town, and no
acquaintance with decent society.
The least consequential cities of England are guarded in all their
municipal interests with that jealous respect for property rights which
is characteristic of the entire English government.
A representative American State may be cited to show how our
separate sovereignties are governed.
As an example, take the State of New York. It has had six distinct forms of government, - Dutch, English, Revolutionary, - besides three Constitutions, and another Constitution proposed (1867).
In a few paragraphs I will consider these various forms of government, in order to show the democratic growth of State government.
The Dutch established civil government in 1621, - nearly two hundred and fifty years ago,- on the basis of the Dutch Roman Law,
with a Director-General and Council, and embarrassed right of appeal
to the home government of Holland. New York (Amsterdam) city
was incorporated in 1653.
The English captured the colony in 1664, and governed as arbitrarily as the Dutch for twenty-seven years. The Captain-General, who
was much the same officer as the Captain-General of Cuba in 1869,




LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.            273
held his office during the pleasure of the English government, and
received twelve thousand dollars a year, exclusive of fees. His council consisted of about a dozen members, and every councillor was
called " The Honorable."
During the Revolution, the British set at rest most experiments
upon the temporary form of government by capturing the city and
establishing martial law in it. What New York State has grown to
be in our day is a more interesting consideration.
The New York Civil Service List is a book of six hundred pages,
very carefully edited, and a model for the United States Blue Book,
which is much less satisfactory.
It is at once a history of the State, and a personal record of all its
officials, from the year 1621 to the present time. As I look over this
book I am reminded of how far enterprise, State pride, and talent go,
to diminish the political and social sins of New York State.
A stranger, unacquainted with the inside affairs of the worst-governed city in the New World, looks in vain for the outward evidences
of decadence. He sees the lamps d-uly lighted every night far into
the nakei country, until the whole island blazes. A policeman is
never out of sight. Gangs of workmen go steadily up the streets,
iaying huge cubical blocks of paving-stone. One never feels able to
believe his body endangered here, provided he shall not go into dens
of danger. The magnificent Court House rises slowly to completion.
The Central Park grows more elaborate; the town strides past it;
the city ge( a surer, grander hold upon the island every year, encroaching on 5he purlieus, fixing the sockets of its East River bridge
to cross an arm of the salt sea, and casting its determined eye upon
Hell Gate, resolving that some day the "' Great Eastern" ship shall
tread up Lyng Island Sound, as up the long nave of some cathedral,
to anchor fa.:t at the piers of the city. Like Paris, New York is a
better protectr of the stranger than of her own citizens. To the one
she turns her monuments; to the other, her tax-gatherers.
In like manner with the State. At Albany they are laying the
piers of the great State Capitol, to rival the Hotel de ville of, Paris in
its mediaeval elaborateness.
The Civil Service List which I take up shows that. the State of
New York Probably exercises more powers of sovereignty than any
State in Am -'ica, Massachusetts scarcely excepted. The Governor
appoints foreign commissioners, wreck-masters, and other:dignitaries.
The G-vernor's staff have actual duties andmaterial to consider,
85




274    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and are not, as in many States, altogether ornamental appendages.
They are Brigadier-Generals, and are salaried, as well as their aides.
The State has a Bureau of Military Statistics, with a museum of trophies and mementoes. The Secretary of State is a powerful officer,
with diversified duties. The canals of the State are its property, and
the chief sources of its revenue and corruption.
Bank and Insurance Companies are put under rigid censorship.
There are three immense State prisons, in the three corners of the
triangle, the newest of which is at Clinton, near Lake Champlain,
among the Adirondacks. The Superintendent of Schools has more
multifarious duties, if he performs them well, than the similar officer
of many kingdoms.
The Regents of the University are general custodians of the higher
academies and State colleges, who receive no salaries. -There is also
a Board of Railroad Commissioners. The State holds and restricts
the city of New York, very much as an army holds a hostile town in
time of war, being as jealous of the city as is the English government
of London.
The salary of the Governor of New York is 4,000 dollars; and
on'the last popular vote for this office eight hundred and fifty
thousand ballots were cast. He has a private Secretary and private
Door-keeper. The Lieutenant Governor gets six dollars a day; four
of the Governor's staff get 2,400 dollars each a year, and their aides
get 1,800 dollars; the Secretary of State gets 2,500 dollars; the
Comptroller and Treasurer, 2,500 dollars each; the State Engineer,
2,500 dollars; the Auditor of the Canal 2,500 dollars; the Attorney-General, 2,000 dollars; Canal Commissioners, 2,000 dollars each; several
Canal Appraisers, 2,000 dollars and expenses; the Superintendent of
Insurance companies, 5,000 dollars; and of banks, 5,000 dollars; three
Prison Inspectors, 1,600 dollars; Superintendent of Schools, 2,500
dollars; Inspector of Gas-metres, 1,500 dollars; Judges generally
3,500 dollars; Members of the Legislature three dollars per day, and the
Speaker four dollars.
These salaries are inadequate, in the main, to keep honest poor men
in office, and it is notorious that, in the general demoralization of a
commercial age, New York has one of the most corrupt Legislatures in
America.
There are in New York nineteen incorporated cities, of which
Ogdensburgh is probably the smallest. The terms city, town, and
village have more definite and traditional meanings in this State than




LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN TIIE STATES, ETC.             275
we generally allow in our loose commonwealths. Above all other
political powers in the State are these two,- The State Capitol and
Tammany I-Hall.
In 1860 New York State contained three million eight hundred and
eighty thousand seven hundred and thirty-five inhabitants, and next
year will probably show four million five hundred thousand, allowing
the same increase as in the previous decade. This is one-fourth more
people than Scotland, and, as New York is about one-fourth greater
than Scotland, their relative density is nearly the same. It is about
a million less than the diminishing population of Ireland, and, the
changes being the same, in another ten years New York will be more
populous than Ireland. It is nearly one-third the population of
Spain. It is half a million past that of Portugal. It is almost exactly that of Belgium, and a third greater than HI-olland, the parent
country of New York. It is a million past that of.Sweden. It is a
fourth the population of Prussia. It is double that of Switzerland,
and, if we estimate the present population of London at three millions,
it is London and a half, and it is one-half more people than composed the United States in the war of the Revolution, and four and
a half times all the people on the Pacific coast of the United States
at the present day.
The property of the State Government of New York is about
eighty millions of dollars. It owns about three thousand miles of
railroad, or nearly as much as Prussia.
With powers of such magnitude, far exceeding those of the most
powerful County in England, it is refreshing to mark the ignorance of
some British commentators upon our States, one of whom, l[r. Allthony Trollope, says: -
" Nothing has struck me so much in America as the fact that the
State Legislatures are puny powers. The absence of any tidings
whatever of their doings across the water is a proof of this. Who
has heard of the Legislature of New York or of Massachusetts? It
is boasted here that their insignificance is a sign of the well-being of
the people; that the smallness of the power necessary for carrying
on the machine shows how beautifully the machine is organized, and
how well it works.' It is better to have little governlment than great
Governors.' That glory, if ever it were a glory, har- come to an end.
It seems to me that all these troubles have come upon the States,
because they have not placed high men in high places. The less of
laws and the less of control the better, providing the people can go




276    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
right with few laws and little control. One may say that no laws
and no control would be best of all, —provided that none were
needed. But this is not exactly the position of the American people."
The same writer is more to the point when he says that " the two
professions of law-making and of governing have become unfashionable, low in estimation, and of no repute in the States. The municipal powers of the cities have not fallen into the hands of the leading
men. The word politician has come to bear the meaning of political
adventurer, and almost of political blackleg. If A calls B a politician,
A intends to vilify B by so calling him. Whether or no the best
citizens of a State will ever be induced to serve in the State Legislature by a nobler consideration than that of pay, or by a higher tone
of political morals than that now existing, I cannot say. It seems
to me that some great decrease in the numbers of the State legislators
should be a first step toward such a consummation. There are not
many men in each State who can afford to give two or three months
of the year to the State service for nothing; but it may be presumed
that in each State there are a few. Those who are induced to devote
their time by the payment of sixty pounds can hardly be the men
most fitted for the purpose of legislation.
" It certainly has seemed to me that the members of the State Legislatures and of the State governments are not held in that respect, and
treated with that confidence, to which, in the eyes of an Englishman,
such functionaries should be held as entitled."
The Channel Islands, which lie in the British seas, are regulated
internally by their old Norman laws. The writs of the great courts
of Westminster are not served here, but the Queen's commission
must be produced. Parliament must mention the islands by name, if
they are to be governed by any of its acts. For a good account of
Guernsey, one of these islands, read Victor Hugo's story of " The
Toilers of the Sea."
The Isle of MIan, in the Irish Sea, is governed by its own Legislature, composed of two bodies, the " Council," and the "I-House of
Keys," and by a Queen's governor. An inhabitant of Man is called
a MIanx-man.
Scotland retains many individual customs.  The government
grants about one-third of the benefices of its established church.
Common law and equity are not under two heads as in England, and
every act of Parliament applies to Scotland, unless the terms of the




LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.            277
law make the exception. There is no grand jury in Scotland, nor
must the petit jury unanimously agree. The Supreme Court in civil
cases is the Court of Session, consisting of thirteen judges, with
"inner" and "outer" houses, and the Court of Justiciary is the
supreme tribunal in criminal cases, composed of five select judges of
the Court of Sessions. The head President of the Court of Sessions
gets 27,000 dollars a year; he is the head of the select bench. The
Lord Justice Clerk gets 22,500 dollars, and is at the head of the
minor bench. The other judges get 15,000 dollars a year. The law
officers are the Lord Advocate, with salary and fees of 15,000 dollars
a year, and the Solicitor General, with 5,000 dollars a year. The
revenue of the English Established Church in Ireland, up to the time
of its legislated decease in 1869, was nearly three millions of dollars
in gold a year.
The Scotch people gave a dynasty - and the worst one - to the
English throne, and being a shrewd and business-like people, they
have greatly prospered by the union between the two ancient kingdoms. They retain their national church, and have no foreign Lord
Lieutenant to preside over them; on the contrary, the English royal
family has a residence in Scotland.
Very different in intention and reception is the government of Ireland. Practically, the government of Ireland and every step of imnportance connected with it, are under the immediate control of the
English Cabinet. On matters of revenue, the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland is instructed to correspond with the Treasury; but on all other
subjects with the Home Secretary of State, who is deemed personally
responsible for the government of Ireland, and is in close correspondence with the Lord Lieutenant, advising him, and keeping him informed of the views and opinions of the Cabinet upon all the more
important questions connected with his government. For the issue
of instruments under the Great Seal of Ireland, he receives Her
Majesty's authority by warrants under her sign manual. No person
professing the Roman Catholic religion can hold the office. The
Lord Lieutenant's duration of office depends upon that of the ministry of which he is a member. His salary has generally been one
hundred thousand dollars per annum, with a residence in Dublin
Castle, and another in Phcenix Park.
All acts of Parliament extend to Ireland, unless they be expressly
excepted. There is a special Privy Council for Ireland, consisting
of fifty-eight members, each member of which is entitled''Right




278    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Honorable." There is a Secretary of State, removable like the Lord
Lieutenant, on a change of administration, with a salary of fifteen
thousand dollars a year, and a permanent under-Secretary with ten
thousand dollars a year.
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is thus one of the most important
officers of the British government. He has the highest salary, - even
above the Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minister; he can pardon
criminals in Ireland; he has charge of the police, and is the superior
of the army general in command of Ireland. He is, in short, a military governor, and keeps Ireland in subjection, prevents insurrection,
and exercises the pretence of civil powers, but the reality of arbitrary
ones.
I feel the same disinclination to compare the behavior of Ireland
and Scotland as parts of the British Kingdom that I should to compare Esau alid Jacob, Ishmael and Isaac. Two warm temperaments,
one burning to genius, the other to business, the Scotchman has
become prosperous by submission, the Irishman wretched by resistance.  Neither had a like religion with the nation that absorbed
them. The Scotch Presbyterian is no less a foe to the English
hierarchy than is the Irish Catholic; but the Scotch were never the
creatures of demagogues, the, dust of faction, nor the forward partisans
of their ecclesiastics.  Democratic in church government, every
Scotchman thought for himself in civil government; every Scotchman
saw that the geographical modern law forbade England and Scotland
to be two governments, and he worked for his place in the compound
government.
Two destructive things have underlain Ireland: a priesthood controlled from abroad, and an unstable national character. The Irishman has genius, wit, music, valor, -but not convictions. He follows
leaders everywhere, and is betrayed by them or betrays them. It is
impossible to believe that, under any circumstances, Ireland or England could have been happy or peaceful, divided.  The Irishman
would have been, abroad, the Northman pirate preying upon his
neighbor; at home the Orange and the Ribbon bands exterminating
each other. To this irreconcilable enemy the arrogant Englishman
must be either a master or a victim. Yet Irish individualism has
been one of the glories of the English nation. Grattan, Wellington,
Goldsmith, proclaim it. The Irish nation, like the Jewish race, seems
fated to illustrate all lands, and control, as a unity, in none. They
are to England what the American Indian is to us: the theme of




LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.            279
allegory and dramas the type of generosity and valor, but also the
race of short truces and frequent forays. In peace they fall into
tribes and plunder each other. In war they violate international
law and the terms of hospitality, moving upon England by way of
Black Rock in Canada. Dispersed among the other races, they are
an element of vigor and industry; but collected, as in the great American cities, they make us write such verdicts against them as we do,
with pity. No American can speak in praise of English rule in Ireland. No American can speak in praise of Irish behavior under
England. Two men have lived in Ireland who rank as benefactors:
Father Mlathew, the apostle of temperance, and Daniel O'Connell,
who procured the enfranchisement of Irish Catholic subjects. O'Connell showed all the genius of his race, amongst whom he was a gentleman, and also all its turbulence. The latter years of his life were
passed in nervous retirement, and after his discharge from jail in Ireland for agitating for the repeal of the act of union between Ireland
and England, these are the particulars of his life, well told by an
historian:" Released from jail one evening, he went home to his own house.
The next morning early, he went back to his prison, to be carried
home in triumph. The whole city of Dublin was abroad to see; and
it was two hours from the time when the procession began to leave
the jail gates before the car could be brought up. The car - invented
for the occasion, and never seen again but at his funeral -lifted
him a dozen feet over the heads of the crowd. He stood at his full
height, and was crowned with the repeal-cap. He was portly, and
apparently in good health; but his countenance wore, that anxious
expression which was now becoming habitual to it.
"He was invited to England, and feted there, and made- use of for
the anti-corn law cause. But he was never really formidable again,
and he knew it. He had no policy, no principle, nothing to repose
upon; and only his ingenuity and audacity for a resource. Then he
was seen in London streets, walking slowly and stooping, while supported by two of his sons; and members of the House complained
that they could not hear his now short speeches, because of the
feebleness of his voice. He retired to Hastings, on the coast. IHe
desired that the newspapers might be kept away from him, and fal
tidings of Ireland. No one was to be admitted who would speak of
Ireland. HIe so watched the countenance of his physician when
looking at his tongue, and was so alarmed by any gravity of coun



280    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
tenance at the moment, that his physician had to remember to look
cheerful and pleased.
" Next he went abroad, hoping to reach Rome, and die under the
blessing of the Pope. But he sank too rapidly for this. He was
carried to Paris, Marseilles, Genoa; and then he could go no further.
"' The final symptoms, consequent on a long decay of the digestive
functions, came on in May, 1847; and on the fifteenth of that month
he died."
This is, perhaps, a severe treatment of the character of O'Connell,
who- is now a feature of statuary in Dublin, but Harriet Martineau
says thus further of him: —
" Ireland has been abundantly cursed with barbarous despots, but
it may be doubted whether any one of them, in the long course of
centuries, has perpetrated such effectual cruelties as the despot whom
his victims called their Liberator, and hoped to see their King."  He
was, in the opinion of this writer, the pervertor of the seriousness which
covered the Irish nation after Father Mathew's discourses, into mis —
chievous political intemperances. The latter days of O'Connell were
clouded by the calumnies of the hot-headed "' Young Ireland " party,
of whom Miss Mlartineau says: " The latest phase of the lives, and
opinions, and influences of the Young Ireland party, tells the moral
very well: John Mitchell, a fanatical champion of the slave-power in
America; MIeagher, in military command in the service of the north;
O'Brien, issuing his manifesto from Ireland, in behalf of tht Confederates and their despotism, and the Irish in New York, slaying negroes in the streets, and rising up against law and order, - these are
apt illustrations of the spurious kind of Irish patriotism, which would
destroy Ireland by aggravating its weakness, and rejecting the means
of recovery and strength!"
I have referred thus particularly to O'Connell and Ireland, because
he was the Irish Calhoun, advocating the withdrawal of Ireland from
the English Parliament, while Smith O'Brien and John Mitchell were
like the later State-Rights party in America, making their appeals to
the sword. For a thorough idea of Irish politics, though a partisan
one, read the story of the " Knight of Gwynne," by Charles Lever,
which recites the condition of Ireland in 1800, when her Parliament
was merged with that of England, through the efforts of an Irish
statesman, Castlereagh.
We live, at present, at a period of American history, when the




LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE STATES, ETC.            281
central government is all-powerful, but it must ever be remembered,
-and this we shall see further when we come to France, - that liberty in a republic is best guarded, when by means of cities and states,
power is distributed throughout the territory, instead of residing in a
single spot. This is the comment. of the wise and discreet De
Tocqueville, the best foreign observer upon America:"The Union is a great republic, in extent, but the paucity of
objects for which its government provides, assimilates it to a small
State. Its acts are important, but they are rare. As the sovereignty
of the Union is limited, and incomplete, its exercise is not incompatible with liberty; for it does not excite those insatiable desires of
fame and power which have proved so fatal to great republics. As
there is no common centre to the country, vast capital cities, colossal
wealth, abject poverty, and sudden revolutions, are alike unknown;
and political passion, instead of spreading over the land like a torrent of desolation, spends its strength against the interests and the
individual passion of every State.
" Nevertheless, all commodities and ideas circulate throughout the
Union as freely as in a country inhabited by one people. Nothing
checks the spirit of enterprise. The government avails itself of the
assistance of all who have talents or knowledge to serve it. Within
the frontiers of the Union the profoundest peace prevails, as within
the heart of some great empire; abroad, it ranks with the most powerful nations of the earth; thousands of miles of its coast are open
to the commerce of the world; and, as it possesses the keys of the
globe, its flag is respected in the most remote seas. The Union is as
happy and as free as a small people, and as glorious and as strong as
a great nation."
36




CHAPTER XI.
BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.
Sketches of the leading towns and cities of Great Britain and Ireland, and their points of
similarity with places in America.- A chapter to supply the place of a map. - Glimpses of daily life in Gown and country.
IN the United States the loudest roar is in the conflict of parties;
next is the clash of great interests; then the challenge between city
and city. In cities modern freedom began, where in Italy and Flanders the tradesmen bought their liberties of their Lords, and maintained them by courage or advantageous alliances. In England, as
we have seen, there are now many municipalities like our own, —
small republics in the heart of the British Empire, - and also a few
old-time cities, like London, governed by their guilds or tradescompanies. Of cities of the latter sort we have no examples, nor
are any of our cities independent of the State in which they are situated, but derive their charters from the States, and acknowledge the
same as liable to be altered by the State Legislatures. English cities
have this important advantage, - that they are, in nothing material,
subject to the County which encloses them. The greatest of the
English cities is called the Metropolis, and the secondary cities go by
the name of the Provincial cities. Middlesex, the County of London,
is called the Metropolitan County, and the other rural districts are
called Provinces. London is the British metropolis in all respects
of population, commerce, legislation, money, capital, and social influence. WVe have no undisputed metropolis in America, and it is
affectation or bluster for any one city to allege it. New York is at
present the commercial metropolis, and Washington is the political
metropolis..But San Francisco has commercial opportunities which
almost outpromise New York, and if, in the destiny of events, Havana should become ours, it may yet lay claim to this title. Neither
the political nor commercial pivot of the United States is yet fixed
with certainty, but this is a common point in Great Britain, long ago
ascertained.
282




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BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL.CITIES.   283
An American visiting England will disembark at Southampton,
on the south coast, or at Liverpool on the north-west. He may also
find steamers to Cork, and to Londonderry, in Ircland, or to Glasgow, in Scotland, or even to London. But practically, all great
passenger trade between the United States and Great Britain goes to
Liverpool, which is the seaport of ]Manchester, Bradford, Leeds,
Sheffield, and Birmingham, and which grew into importance almost
entirely by the American trade. When steamship commerce began
across the Atlantic, the city of Bristol made earnest show of rivalry
with Liverp.ool. Bristol equipped a steamship, and sent it to New
York, but before it could get off, the Liverpoolers despatched an old
tub of a tug, which barely lived to New York, but beat the Bristol
ship some days, and exhausted the glory of the feat. Bristol had,
in 18G1, but one hundred and fifty-five thousand people, while Liverpool had four hundred and forty-four thousand. Bristol has no such
series of great towns in the rear of it as Liverpool, nor a railway
system exhaustive as her rival's; but Bristol is still the third city in
England, commercially, and inhabited by a more generous and benignant people than Liverpool; it never produced, in our periods of
trouble, such enemies as the Lairds and the Spences. Liverpool is
one of the most depraved and selfish cities in the world, having
neither the independence of Manchester, nor the beauty of Bristol.
Southampton and Hull follow Bristol, in importance, as commercial
towns in England, the former having about fifty thousand people, and
the latter, one hundred thousand.
The city of Baltimore in America has recently made earnest strides
toward commercial importance, and sanguine expectations have been
formed of the growth of Norfolk, Charleston, and Portland. There
are many remarkable harbors in America which have declined in
importance by reason of the decline of our commerce; witness Newport, New Bedford, and New London.  As a rule, the ports of
Europe are poor compared with those of America in depth of water
and extent of anchorage ground.
In populousness, the principal American cities stand to British
cities, thus:



284   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
MANUFACTURING CITIES.                          COMMERCIAL CITIES.
America.           Great L'ritain.         Great Britain.          America.
Philadelphia,  600,000 Manchester,   475,000  Liverpool,    445,000 Baltimore,    300,000
Cincinnati,   275,000 Birmingham,  300,000  Glasgow,        390,000 Boston,        200,000
Pittsburg,            Dublin,        265,000  Bristol,      155,000 New Orleans,  150,000
Alleghany,    200,000 Leeds,         210,000  Belfast,      155,000 Buffalo,       85,000
etc.,             Sheffield,     190,000  Newcastle,    115,000 Charleston,    45,000
Louisville,     80,000 Wolv'rhampt'n,150,000  Plymouth             Richmond,       45,000
Newark, N.J., 110,000 Bradford,      110,000     and        115,000 Portland,      30,000
Albany          0     Stoke,         101,000  Devonport,           Cleveland,      70,000
90, 000
and Troy,             Preston,        94,000  Hull,         100,000 Detroit,       50,000
Providence,    55,000 Bolton,         85,000  Portsmouth,   100,000 Chicago,       300,000
Lowell,         40,000 Blackburne,    70,000  Sunderland,    85,000 St. Louis,    200,000
Manchester,   25,000 Merthyr-         85,000  Edinburgh,    170,000 Milwaukie,     60,000
Pa if.,  risley,  55,000, Cork,  75,000 San Francisco, 120,000
Paisley,        55,000 IoX
}Dundee,        95,000
Aberdeen,      75,000
Southampton,  50,000
Greenock,       45,000
In the above list I have given the presumed population of both
British and American cities, in 1866. The census has not yet been
taken  in America, for 1870, and  between  the jealousy of American
cities it is probable that some persons may take exception to my figures. I think that the above estimates are nearly correct, however,
for many cities in both countries have fallen off in the past ten years
rather than increased.   Some towns, like Edinburgh and Dublin, are
neither commercial nor manufacturing towns, or are both.
Over the broad belt of the United States reside probably thirty-five
millions of people. In the small British islands dwell thirty millions.
There  are  two  main islands of the United  Kingdom, Great Britain
(which comprises England, Wales, and Scotland) and Ireland. For
the channel and sea which divide these two islands substitute the
plains and deserts west of the Mississippi, and we may construct an
Ireland on the Pacific coast of the United States. Then Galway
would occupy the place of San Francisco, and Galway has but twenty



BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   285
three thousand inhabitants. Portland, in Oregon, might be compared
to Londonderry, or Derry, which has twenty thousand inhabitants.
Dublin, the end of the chief ferry between England and Ireland, resembles in place Virginia City, the first town reached on the Pacific Railroad, after passing the desert. Cork might be put in place
of Guaymas, our probable port on the South Pacific, and the terminus of a projected railway.
Following out the same fancy, and returning to the more populous
island of Great Britain, we shall see that Wales is attached to England like a pair of promontories. Call the northern promontory of
Anglesey, Kansas, and the southern promontory of Pembroke, Texas;
then Leavenworth will compare with Holyhead, the ferry slip to Dublin, and Austin or Houston will stand in stead of Pembroke, a great
naval station of England. Salt Lake city is merely an island in the
desert, like the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
The Mississippi River, dividing the United States north and south,
is our coast line. For the Ohio River substitute Bristol Channel;
then Cincinnati becomes the city of Bristol. For the Illinois River
substitute the Mersey; then St. Louis becomes Liverpool, and Chicago
is Manchester. St. Paul in Minnesota is Glasgow in Scotland.
Behind Chicago, manufacturing articles for it to despatch westward
across the plains is a cluster of rising cities, Detroit, Toledo, Fort
Wayne, Cleveland.  Behind Manchester, manufacturing goods to
swell its mighty contribution westward, are Blackburn, Bolton, Preston, Rochdale.
Following the south coasts of Great Britain and the United States
eastward, Galveston will become Plymouth, and New Orleans Southampton; Portsmouth in England stands for Mobile, and Brighton
for Pensacola. Turning Florida and proceeding up the coast of the
Atlantic, the Gulf Stream is the Strait of Dover as the Gulf of
Mexico was the English Channel; London becomes Savannah; the
Humber is the Chesapeake, and upon its various streams are Hull,
its Norfolk; Nottingham, its Richmond; Sheffield, its Washington;
Leeds, its Baltimore, and York, which is as much like York, Pennsylvania, or Lancaster, or Harrisburg, as anything I can think of;
Newcastle-upon-Tyne is Philadelphia, both great coal ports. Edinburgh is New York, Providence is Dundee, Boston is Aberdeen, and
Portland is Inverness. Birmingham is tributary to Bristol Channel,
and compares in position with Pittsburg.
The above may enable the reader, without consulting the map, to




286   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
keep the geography of England in mind, and there are some curious
facts with regard to the colonization and civilization of the United
Kingcdom which readily adjust themselves to the above comparisons.
England, like the United States, was settled and christianized from
the East; the south-eastern parts of both empires were first settled;
in the north of England as in the north of the United States, Calvinism took permanent root, while the Established or Episcopal
Church fixed itself in the Southern States as in the south of England.
These and many other reflections will occur to the student of a suggestive turn of mind. In this little United Kingdom dwell more
than thirty millions of people. Leaving out New York and Massachusetts, there are as many people in the British Isles as in the United
States; there are two hundred and thirty-nine people to the square
mile in the British Kingdom, and in England and Wales three hundred and forty-seven to the square mile. Yet the greatest length of
Great Britain is only six hundred and eight miles, about as far as
from New York city to Toledo, Ohio; while the greatest width is
two hundred and eighty miles, or the distance from New York city to
Elmira. In one place the island of Great Britain is only thirty-three
miles wide, or the distance from Washington to Baltimore, and the
tides of the North Sea and the Atlantic rise within eighteen miles of
each other.
In the New England States of America, there are about fifty people to the square mile; in the Middle States and Ohio, seventy; in
the North-western States, twenty-two; and in California, two.
Before the civil war the population of our Southern States was only
half as dense as that of Russia in Europe.
In England proper, and Wales, live twenty millions of people, or as
niany as inhabit our Middle, Southern, and seven North-western States.
Turkey is more densely peopled than our six Middle States. England and Wales comprise fifty-eight thousand three hundred and
twenty square miles, or five thousand less than the New England
States. Scotland contains about three millions of people on half
the area of New England, which latter has about the same number
of people. Ireland contains more than five and a half millions of
people, or about the population of our seven North-western States.
There were in 1861 three millions seven hundred and thirty-nine
thousand five hundred and five inhabited houses in England and
WVales. Wales alone contains about one million one hundred thousand people, or less than Massachusetts.




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   287
We divide America superficially into the New England, the Middle, the Southern, and the Western States. England proper is
divided into the Northern Counties, the Midland Counties, the Eastern Counties, the Southern Counties, and the Western Counties. Our
boundary lines between these sections are the Hudson, the Potomac,
the Ohio and the Alleghany Rivers; the corresponding rivers of England are the Humber and Mersey, the Thames, and the Severn. The
eastern part of the United States is separated from the valleys of
the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence by the Appalachian Mountains,
generally called the Alleghanies; so the most important range of
British mountains guards the coast of the western channel, and
forms the interlinking Pennine, Cambrian, and Devonian ranges. Of
these latter the highest peaks are in Wales, where Mount Snowdon
is three thousand five hundred, and seventy-one feet high. The
highest peaks of the Alleghanies are in western North Carolina,
where, under the general name of the Black Mountains, they rise to
the altitude of six thousand seven hundred and fifty-five feet. In
Vermont the Alleghanies rise in Mount Mansfield to four thousand
two hundred and seventy-nine feet, in Maine to Mount Katahdin,
five thousand three hundred and eighty-five feet, and in New Hampshire to Mount Washington, six thousand four hundred and ninetysix feet. The hilghest mountains in Scotland rise to less than four
thousand four hundred feet, and the highest in Ireland to three thousand four hundred and four feet. Scotland is the White Mountain
region of America; Wales is the Adirondack country. The Blue
Mountains of the United States, which are called the Highlands in
New York, are also matched by a secondary range in England, which
crosses that kingdom north-eastward. The larger English rivers are
of nearly equal lengths with our Eastern streams; the Severn is
longer than the Hudson, and the Thames larger than the Merrimac.
A most thorough and complex system of canals connects all the rivers
of England, and the interior of that island is a minute web of mutually contributing streams. But the British canals are not upon the
grand scale of the Erie, the Pennsylvania, or the Potomac canals in
America. They scarcely compare with the Chesapeake and Delaware,
the Rondout, or the Raritan canals. Few masted vessels are to be seen
crossing from river to river by these British canals, but chiefly small
barges laden with coal or crude metallic freight. Much of the canal
is creek; for what are called rivers in England are often no bigger
than the Conestoga or the Brandywine creeks. The Avon, whereon




288    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Shakespeare lived, is in many places a winding brook merely, and the
same we have seen to be true of the Cam at Cambridge. English
scenery, however, arranged upon this miniature scale, is more various
and compendious within a small circuit than we find it in America.
The arms of the salt sea, the mountainous hills, the ancient village,
the barren moors, the bald tableland, the sequestered valley, the forest,
are frequently found within the compass of a morning's ride. Not
all the industry of a dense population has assimilated these various
features to a uniform appearance; but in America nature is planned
upon a broad scale, and the equal institutions and ages of the people
have made all the dwellings, all the farms, all the villages within a
wide circuit, look like counterparts of each other.
If we wished to select that one American city close about which
lie the most diversified sceneries, it would probably be Boston.
The sea and the mountains are its neighbors; lakes and broad, salty
marshes are also amongst its intimate associations; the largest
manufactories and some of the most cultivated farms are. in its
neighborhood; whaling and fishing ports are within easy reach;
large islands like Nantucket lie not far over its horizon; university
life can be studied in its environs; cattle, horses, and sheep of the
best breed known to Europe have been imported by its gentlemenfarmers. The States of Rhode Island and New Hampshire are
within thirty miles; Mlaine, Connecticut, and Vermont are not
beyond the average of twice that distance; the Merrimac, the Connecticut, the Narragansett are within picnicking distance by steam.
But measure these by the country charms of London. Not five,
but ten, dissimilar counties lie within twenty miles, and eight of
them radiate from London like the spokes from a wheel-hub. Boston
has been called the " Hub of the Universe," but probably by some
one who had ambitiously likened it to London. In these English
counties all varieties of dialect, avocation, and landscape lie; the people differ in any two of these counties more than in any two American States, and their products are more unlike than those of Connecticut and Delaware. Suppose we undertake to make the circuit
of some of these counties hastily.
-Berkshire, a county to the west of London, is celebrated for its
pigs, many of which have been imported into America; they have
thick jowls, short snouts, and upright ears; the best breed is black,
with white spots. A Berkshire man says, " I telled him so smack
to his head;" meaning, " I said it to his face." Windsor and Read



BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   289
ing are the leading towns here; the latter is about half the size
of Reading, Pennsylvania; the American Reading deals chiefly in
beer, the English in biscuits; both of them are in counties called
Berks.
Buckinghamshire, within half an hour north-west of London, is a
great pasture county, and on its one hundred and fifty thousand acres
of meadows feed twenty thousand milch cows, and it sends, also,
to London, a hundred thousand dollars' worth of ducks every year.
Straw-plait and thread-lace are its manufactures; its county-seat is
the most uninteresting town in England. This county is commonly
called Bucks.
Oxfordshire, between Berks and Bucks, one hour from London, is
rivete(l to both those counties by the Chiltern Hills, nine hundred
feet high. It is a poor county. Oxford city is described in the chapter on the Universities.
Kent, which comes quite up to London, is one of the richest counties in the world, as well as one of the most historic. It forms the,
south bank of the River Thames, from London to the sea, and like a
cape thrusts itself to within sight of France. The river MIedway,
flowing through it, reaches the sea just at the mouth of the Thames;
and at the mouth of the Medway is Sheerness, the great dock-yard;
and up the Medway, ten miles, is Chatham, a naval station. The
mouth of the Thames goes by the name of "The Naze."  In the
interior of Kent are the sizable towns of Rochester, Maidstone, and
Canterbury.  Dover, on the coast, maintains steam ferries, with
Calais, in France, opposite, and many watering-places lie along the
Kentisht water line. This is the greenest and foggiest county in
England, and a good deal of it is agueish. It used to be a kingdom,
by itself, and is full of Roman camps, ruins of abbeys, and old
battle-fields. Cherries and hops are the great products here; there
are sixty thousand acres planted in hops, which is half the hop crop
of all England. Hop-picking in Kent is a more sprightly scene than,
grape-picking in France. We raise the main quantity of American
hops in the interior of New York State. Paper is the chief manufacturing product of Kent.
The County of Sussex swings round south of Kent, and faces
France by the English Channel. Hastings, where William the Conqueror landed, is in this county; also Chichester, where there is a great
cathedral, and Lewes, the prettiest town in South England, where the
breed of Southdown sheep was first developed, by Ellman. Here, also,
87




290    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
is Brighton, the Long Branch of London, and the greatest wateringplace in the kingdom, witha population of seventy thousand, and with
forty thousand visitors a year. It is very expensive, costing a third
more than hotel prices in London. It is more than a hundred years
old, as a fashionable place, is very ugly, has a beach of "shingle,"
poor to American notions, and a long pier reaching out to deep
water. The South-downs, in Sussex, is a range of chalk heights,
fifty-three miles long, within sight of the sea. Sussex is a county of
relapsed industry, but very peculiar.
Hampshire continues the circle round London to the south-west.
It is commonly called Hants, and in the centre of it is the old
Saxon capital of Winchester, one of the most interesting cities of
England, while on its coast line are Southampton, and Portsmouth,
large commercial and naval cities. In Winchester, Alfred the Great
was born, and Canute was buried; it was founded before the Christian
era; William the Conqueror thought it second only to London in
importance; here Philip and Mary, the tyrannical royal pair, were
married; Izaak Walton, prince of fishermen, is buried in the cathedral; the income of the latter edifice is one hundred and ten thousand
dollars a year. There is an ancient school here, feeder to Oxford.
Winchester has only fourteen thousand inhabitants, at present; the
name of the town means "' camp on the downs," and Chester everywhere means camp, as Manchester, " camp of tents."  Portsmouth,
like the name of all towns ending with 1" mouth," signifies the place
at the mouth of the port or river;, but we have misapplied the term
in America. Portsmouth stands on an island three miles long, and
two and a half miles wide; it contains seventy-two thousand people;
its harbor is two miles wide, and on the other shore is Gosport. The
Isle of Wight makes a breakwater for Portsmouth, and the channel
between Wight and the shore makes the celebrated roads called Spithead, the Hampton Roads of England. Portsmouth is strongly fortified, and invested with shipping. New York is not as well defended.
Its dockyard contains one'hundred and twenty acres, and is the
longest in England. Here lies Nelson's ship, the Victory, in which
he died, and here, according to English history, Jack Aitken was
hanged for burning down the ropery, in 1776, at the suggestion of
Silas Deane, the American agent at Paris. For more about Portsmouth, see the chapter on the Army and Navy. Southampton stands
at the head of a beautiful sound called Southampton Water, sixteen
miles from Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. It was the original nurse




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   291
of British commerce. It has nearly eight times the population it
contained in 1840. Its environs are very beautiful, and its docks are
spacious.  The Isle of Wight is to the English coast very much
what Staten Island is to New York, excepting that the latter is much
smaller. Its scenery is renowned throughout the world; it is the
site of one of the Queen's palaces, the seat of many beautiful villas,
amongst which is that of the poet Tennyson, and at Cowes, its chief
town, the famous Royal Yacht Club has its head-quarters.
Hertfordshire, north of London a few miles, is commonly called
Herts. It contains many beautiful gardens, and orchards, which
supply London with fruit; the English apples are far inferior to those
of America, being watery, and lacking flavor. Enormous quantities
of hay and straw are sent from Herts to London, but the remarkable
product of the county is malt, and the town of Ware, which lies in
this county, is the chief seat of the malting trade in Great Britain.
The beautiful Abbey of St. Albans, a favorite resort of American
and British artists, is in Herts, about thirty miles north of London.
Bedfordshire, also north of London, is almost exclusively an agricultural county; a good deal of freestone and lime goes thence to
London, and there are fine old Roman ruins in the county.
Essex, to the east of London, holds the mouth of the Thames, on
the north, as Kent does on the south; the two counties are of much
the same size. Broad marshes from the North Sea extend into
Essex, and many inlets and streams penetrate it. It was the land of
the Great Briton King Caractacus.  Large numbers of calves go
firom Essex to London. It is a wheat county, and it produces, besides,
the British oyster, that small and coppery mollusk, which is the delight of London cockneys, and which, they insist, has no equal in the
world for flavor. An American, used to the great oysters of New
York waters, and the delicious bivalves of the Chesapeake, can
scarcely be persuaded to touch the British " Native" oyster. Our
American oysters have been transplanted to the coasts of France and
Belgrium, and to the Baltic; but the British epicure, with national obstinacy, clings to his domestic oyster, which will neither make a soup,
a roast, a broil, or a fry.
The counties which have been above enumnerated, immediately
enclose London, and minister to its appetites; t.ey send tons of
rabbit, hare, pheasant, and partridge, to the great metropolis, and
although almost within sound of its bells, they retain to this day,
their ancient dialects and peculiarities. Tens of thousands of their




292    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
inhabitants have never visited London; others have entered the city
but once, as on the occasion of the coronation of the Queen.
There are two provincial cities of England which may be said to be
of even rival political consequence with London: these are Manchester and Birmingham. Since the development of steam, and its application to machinery, these two great cities have, in a manner, resumed
the activity, individuality, and influence which the great cities of the
middle ages exercised. Neither Ghent, Bruges, nor Florence, were
more aggressive in their best days, when their guilds maintained the
honor of the corporation, than Manchester and Birmingham, with their
powerful trades-unions, their debating societies, their political associations, and the community of sentiment which exists between employers and employed. These two cities may almost be said to have
solely accomplished the success of the three great English movements
of our century, namely, Parliamentary Reform (first, in 1832, second in 1867), the repeal of the Corn Laws, and Free Trade. And,
it is probable that, but for the influence of Manchester and Birmingham, which were sturdily in favor of American union and prosperity,
and were represented in Parliament by clear heads and eloquent
tongues, the separation of our republic would have been recognized
by the British Prime Minister, and the woes of the North and the
South prolonged in consequence.
The attitude of Manchester, in particular, partook of the sublime;
by the loss of American cotton many of her mills closed, and tens
of thousands of operatives were thrown upon public charity. Nevertheless, the sacrificing spinners and weavers never ceased to bid
America God-speed, and to decry any recognition of her ruin.
Birmingham  suffered less, but her spirit was the same, and the
behavior of these hives of operatives was in striking contrast with
the base and envious expression of Liverpool, a city which had fattened by her relations with the United States, and which had equipped
the slavers which assisted to plant the curse of slavery in America.
As early as 1708 slave-ships from the Mersey sailed to Africa, took
aboard human cargoes, and delivered them up in Virginia and the
Carolinas, whence the vessels returned laden with tobacco, sugar,
and the native products of the infant world. In 1752 there were one
hundred and one slave-dealing houses in Liverpool.
But two other cities exercise an approximate influence in English
politics with Manchester and Birmingham, and that is of an entirely different character, namely, Edinburgh and Dublin, the latter by




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.    293
means of its turbulent populace and its discontented newspaper press
having largely assisted to shorten the days of the Established Church
in Ireland. The political influence of Edinburgh is of an intellectual
sort, its solid and massive thinkers making themselves felt through
their periodical reviews and bookls of political philosophy. Counpared with the political status of American cities, Edinburgh holds
the rank of Boston, the seat of original thought; Dublin the place
of a former Charleston, South Carolina, the abode of destructive agitation; while MIanchester and Birmingham resemble Chicago and the
great cities of the north-west, powerful by their numbers and decided
in their convictions; London is New York, tradesman-like, rich, conservative, and merged in its vast accumulations.
Pittsburg has been called the American Birmingham, but, while
their branches of industry are the same, their appearances are wiclely
different. Birmingham  stands upon a great plain nearly at the centre of England and Wales, its multitude of chimney-stacks vomiting
bituminous smoke, its mighty suburb of Wolverhampton seeming to
be one of its volcanic children.
The manufacturing industry of the town is chiefly the growth of
the present century. Its manufactures comprise almost every description of iron and steel goods, brass and iron founding, saddcllery, firearms, cutlery, gold, silver, plated, bronze, ormolu, and japanned
wares; papier-mache goods, toys, jewelry, electro-plated goods, buttons, steel pens, glass, tools, steam-engines, and machinery of all
kinds. The steam-engines employed in its factories are supposed to
have a force of between six thousand and seven thousand horse-power,
and the annual values of its manufactures have been estimated at
five million dollars. The immense coal and iron beds of the district
by which Birmingham is surrounded may be viewed as the main
source of its prosperity, which has also been greatly aided by canals
communicating with the Thames, Mersey, Severn, Trent, and I-lumber,
and more recently by railroads, which bring the metropolis and all
the great towns of the north of England within a few hours' journey.
This town is supposed to have been a place where arms were manufactured by the ancient Britons.
Wolverhampton, close by, is no less busy; the smelting of iron
ore, and its conversion into pig, railroad, sheet, hoop, rod, and nail
iron, boiler-plates, castings, etc., constitute its staple manufacture
and trade; and almost every article produced from brass, steel, and
tin is made in Wolverhampton to a greater or less extent. The




294    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
facilities enjoyed in carrying on these important trades are very
ample, and the advantages of canal communication have long been
possessed by these twin cities.
Like Birmingham, Pittsburg stands in the heart of the great
bituminous coal regions; it also has its energetic suburbs, one of
which takes the name of its English rival. Much of its prosperity is
due, like Birmnignham's, to the completeness of its canal and water
navigation, and, like Birmingham, it manufactures enormous quantities
of ploughs, stoves, nails, bolts, cannon, railroad iron, engines, boilers,
and whatever iron can be wrought into. But the natural site of Pittsburg is far more magnificent than that of Birmingham.
Pittsburg in winter is the grandest coup d'eeil of American industry. You sail up the brown current of the Ohio, round the capes of
mighty hills, past islands in fertile sleep under the snows, till before
you, like a portent of some vast volcano, a wall of darkness rises
against the sky. You cleave this wall, guided by the lurid lighthouses of riverside furnaces, and the snow on either side is pitted and
flecked with showerhig bitumen. Down the sluices of the river the
frequent steamers swing, pitchily breathing; huge vats and flats of
coal go round the headlands in tow of some Hunnish tug; the vineyards far'up the hills should bring forth in this atmosphere such
scorched wine as they have in Eblis; gulfs and pits gap out of the
hill faces; human insects move along the cindery cliffs; a railway
train darts up the brink, like a dingy flash of lightning; suddenly,
through the deepening twilight of a terrified mid-day, the outlines
of something in dim relief stand across the horizon, carved against
the mountain background. Two pale, diverging perspectives enclose
it, - they are rivers; a blackened tower, and ribbed buttresses crown
it, - a cathedral; a fringe of lace blows round this funeral city,the white and carved line of steamboats; from either side a riven
amphitheatre of mountains, their blasted summits bare, their slopes
the jaws of mines, their bases dense with population, enclose this
city, and leaping from its plain to them, the bridges stand like the
ribs of burnt rainbows, or, standing at anchor, hear the railway
trains rush through them like the roar of fire. Drawing yet nearer
the clumped furnaces fall apart, and by their blaze you see the high
hotels, the spires, the broad-paved levee. You hear the hammers,
the cheer of stevedores, the whistle of uninterrupted engines; you
smell the burning coke kilns, the gases of the ores and coals; by
memory you know that at every ticking of the clock a pound of nails




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   295
drops out of the din, a pocket-knife and plough every minute, a mile
of railroad iron an hour, a steam-boiler a day, a steam-engine twice a
week.
Entering the city, still dark, - except on Sundays or holidays,
when a shaft of clear sunlight sometimes stabs through the smoke, —
you see chiefly rectangular streets; at one end of the town is the confluence of railroads; at the other the confluence of rivers. The Pan
Handle, the Wheeling, the Connellsville, the Pennsylvania Trunk,
the Alleghany Valley, the Chicago and Fort Wayne, the Erie, the
Youngstown and Cleveland, the Tuscawaras and Cleveland, join in
the main into one union depot, sentinelled by a great grain elevator.
Beyond this depot, six miles in the country, the huge stock-yards lie.
Down the Alleghany, oil and lumber pour by day and darkness; down
the lMonongahela, coal and iron in uninterrupted continuity; to the
eastward, for two hundred and fifty miles, there is no considerable
city.  Nine daily papers control this great territory, representing all
party shades.
As a curious instance of opposite nomenclature we may note
that the large hotels of Pittsburg take the sounding names of the
"Monongahela," and the "St. Charles," while the principal hotel of
Birmingham is called the' Hen and Chickens."
Manchester has also its American rivals in the series of cotton
manufacturing towns which surround Boston, one of which, in New
TIampshire, ambitiously calls itself Manchester. With the English
city, however, the history not only of the cotton manufacture, but of
the application of steam to spinning and weaving, will always be
identified.
In 1763, the first spinning-jenny was constructed by Thomas
Highs, a reed-maker, at Leigh, in the environs of Manchester. This
was improved upon by James Hargreaves, of Blackburn, close by the
same city, in 1767. Richard Arkwright, in 1769, took out a patent for
spinning by means of rollers, which, in 1799, received considerable
improvements from Samuel Crompton. Arkwright's patents were set
aside, in 1781 and 1785, by the influence of Sir Robert Peel, in which
latter year the Rev. Edward Cartwright invented the power-loom,
and the trade being thus set free and furnished with the needful
machines, other inventions and improvements followed, and a rapid
increase in the cotton trade was the consequence. In 1789, the first
steam-engine for spinning cotton was erected in Manchester, and
from that year, the manufacturing prosperity of the town may date




296    THIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
its rise. At present two hundred and fifty large mills are engaged in
the making of textile fabrics in Manchester, which employ about
fifty thousand persons; one hundred and fifty mills and thirty-five
thousand persons are employed in cotton spinning and weaving; fi-ve
mills and three hundred persons in woollen anld worsted spinning and
weaving; fifty-five mills and eight thousand persons in silk-throwing
and small wares; five mills and one thousand five hundred persons in
flax-spinning, and forty works and three thousand five hundred persons in printing calicoes, etc. Besides these distinguished branches
of industry, Manchester has extensive machine shops, chemical
works, breweries, and numerous other industrial establishments.
Lowell, which has been called the American Manchester, contains
less than one-tenth the population of the English city; thirteen millions of dollars are invested in its cotton mills; it has thirteen thousand looms, the same number of operatives; four hundred thousand
spindles, and it makes two and a half million yards of cotton goods
a week; more than half a million of dollars are invested in its
machine shops. All English visitors to the United States have remarked the superiority of Lowell over Manchester in the cleanliness
of mills and operatives, and in the intellect and decorum of the latter.
Mr. Anthonv Trollope says:  "Women's wages, including all that
they receive at the Lowell factories, average about fourteen shillings
a week, which is, I take it, fully a third more than women can earn
in ~Manchester. But if wages at Manchester were raised to the Lowell
standard, tile MIanchester women would not be clothed, fed, cared for,
and educated litke the Lowell women. The fact is, that the workmen
and the workwomen at Lowell are not exposed to the chances of an
open-labor market. They are taken in, as it were, to a philanthropical manufracturing college, and then looked after and regulated
more as girls and lads at a great seminary, than as hands by whose
industry pro_;it is to be made out of capital. Lowell is the realization of a commercial Utopia.
"The States in these matters," continues the same superficial observer, " have had a great advantage over England. They have been
able to begin at the beginning. Mlanufactories have grown up among
us as our cities grow,- from the necessities and chances of the times.
When labor was wanted, it was obtained in the ordinary way; and so
when houses were built, they were built in the ordinary way. We
had not the experience and the results either for good or bad, of
other nations to guide us. The Americans, in seeing and resolving




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   297
to adopt our commercial successes, have resolved also, if possible, to
avoid the evils which have attended those successes. It would be
very desirable that all our factory girls should read and write, wear
clean clothes, hlave decent beds, and eat hot meat every day. But
that is now impossible.  Gradually, with very up-hill work, but still,
I trust, with sure work, much will be done to improve their position
and render their life respectable; but in England we can have no
Lowells."
Manchester in England is very old, historically, but it obtained
corporate powers and privileges so recently as 1840; it is said to
have traded with the Greeks of Marseilles in woven goods very early
in the Christian era; like almost all the weaving interests of England,
however, it received its most valuable accessions of workmen from
France and Flanders; and thus, the Huguenots, whom Louis XIV.
expelled, raised against France so rich an empire that it could subsidize all the armies of Europe. The greatest names of Manchester
are, perhaps, the greatest of Great Britain also, in practical usefulness and wise statesmanship, - Sir Robert Peel and Richard Cobden;
to support the measures of these arose the greatest English orator of
the century, - John Bright.
As Manchester was the birthplace of many appliances in the cotton manufacture, America produced the cotton gin, without which
looms, mules, and' spools would have been valueless. America is also
author of the sewing-machine, which makes every home a miniature
Manchester. In 1830, the first railroad in England was opened from
Manchester to Liverpool. The cotton manufactures have permanently added two millions to the British population.
Liverpool is merely the port of entry and departure for the staples
and manufactures of Mlanchester and its progeny. At the time of the
American Revolution, Liverpool had a population of seventy-five
thousand, and Manchester zealously contributed troops to put down
the American rebels.
The exports of Liverpool exceed those of all other British ports
combined; its docks and basins cover several hundred acres, and the
Albert dock and warehouses alone cost two and a half million of dollars. Both Liverpool and Manchester are monotonous cities, but the
former has some pleasant environs, and it possesses in St. George's
Hall the finest edifice in the United Kingdom; it is the richest corporation in the kingdom, London excepted; and the income of the
municipality is nearly one and a half million of dollars a year; there
38




298    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
are fourteen miles of quays in Liverpool, all of which are controlled
by the Dock Committee and the Corporation, jointly.
Birkenhead, the Jersey City of Liverpool, since the formation of
its docks, has progressed so rapidly, that in a few years it must
prove both a commercial rival and an auxiliary to Liverpool. Upwards of one hundred and twenty-five million dollars have been expended upon the improvements of the Mersey and the formation of
twenty-four docks, whereby a stormy estuary and an unsafe anchorage
have been converted into the most perfect harbor ever constructed.
The Mersey is a short arm of the Irish sea, and the city stands almost in sight of the river's mouth. The ships from Liverpool were
always competitors of those of New York; the American clipper
ships outsail the English, but in the celebrated contest between
the great Collins' steamship line of New York, and the Cunard line
of Liverpool, the superior vigilance, economy, and caution of the
English prevailed over our rash management; by accident we lost
two of our finest steamers; our government subsidy was withdrawn,
and the Collins' line disappeared from the sea. Scarcely inferior
to its American trade is Liverpool's commerce with Australia.
Bristol has ceased to be a formidable rival to Liverpool, and it occupies the same relation in commerce to that city, which Philadelphia
now yields to New York. The Bristol docks were first opened in
1809, and the old channel of the Avon was converted into one floating harbor about three miles in length. The existing manufactures
of the city are glass, brassware, pens, sheet lead, zinc, spelter, chain
cables, anchors, machinery, drugs, paints, dyes, floor-cloth, earthenware, refined sugar, starch, soap, spirits, tin, copper, and iron wares,
bricks, beer, porter, pipes, tobacco, and hats. Hull is the principal
English port on the North Sea, and stands in a similar relation to
the other English seaports that Buffalo holds to America; which latter yields competition on the ocean, and aims to secure the traffic
of the lakes, as IIull of the North Sea. The ships of Hull ply to
Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Baltic; it was the city of Robinson Crusoe.
What Manchester is to the cotton trade, Bradford and Leeds are
to the woollen trade. These towns lie in the great County of York,
beside which nestles little Lancaster, indented and busy as New
England, while York well compares with New York State. In this
county is the beautiful Vale of York, the finest stretch of land in
England. Wolds and moors are features of this county. This is




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   299
the county of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood, as is New York of Leatherstocking and Rip Van Winkle. York City used to be the rival of
London in social and aristocratic attractions. Yorkshire is the Pennsylvania as well as the New York of England, being full of coal and
iron, lead, jet, alum, and marble, and its agriculture and manufactures are equally celebrated. In this county are the great towns of
Sheffield, noted for its steel, Bradford, for its worsteds, and Leeds,
famed for its cloth. York is the greatest of woollen countries. There
are in the coal field of Yorkshire and its two adjoining counties,
Nottingham and Derby, five hundred and forty-one mines, producing
twelve and a half million tons of coal a year. The Flemish introduced the woollen trade here. The Yorkshire sea-coast is bold and
noble, and wrapped in bracing atmospheres; in thre inland west of the
county are mountains high as the Alleghanies. Everybody knows
the character of Yorkshire hams and rams.
According to the census made in 1861, Yorkshire contained nearly
two millions of acres more than either Lincolnshire or Devonshire,
the next largest English counties. It is half as large as Holland,
and about the size of the Peloponnesus of Greece; it contains five
thousand nine hundred and sixty-one square miles, and two million
and fifteen thousand five hundred and forty-one people.
W~e have no places for woollen work which compete with Leeds and
Bradford; New England manufactures more woollen goods than either
Philadelphia or New York, which two take the next rank. Philadelphia has probably more money invested in the woollen trade than any
other American city.
Bradford contains nearly one hundred and twenty thousand people,
and received its first steam-engine in the year 1800; from this town
come to America iron plates, bars, railway tires, and cannons; every
rill for miles around is dammed up to supply the water, and every
drop is economized.
The staple manufactures of Bradford are worsted stuffs and
mixed worsted, alpaca and mohair, and also cotton and silk fabrics.
There are not less than one hundred and twenty mills in the
parish for spinning and weaving worsted, etc. Broad and narrow
cloths (employing six extensive mills), wool-cards, and ivory and
horn combs are made in great quantities, and in the town and
vicinity are extensive dye-works. The cotton manufactures are of
recent introduction, but are making rapid progress. The neighborhood abounds in coal, and about three miles south-east are the Low



300    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
moor iron works, and a mile east the Bowling iron works, both of
which are on a very extensive scale.
The position of Leeds in a coal district, and having ample means
of communication with both seas and with numerous great seats of
commerce, lhave been the sources of its eminence as a seat of manufactures. Its principal woollen fabrics consist of the finest broadcloth, kerseys, swandowns, and beavers; it makes also carpets, blankets, camlets, and shalloons, and large quantities of unfinished stuffs
are brought from  Bradford and Halifax to Leeds to be finished.
Linen, yarn, canvas, sacking, and linen cloth are the chief flaxen
goods produced. Besides the above enumerated branches, Leeds has
also extensive factories for locomotives, machinery, and tools, chemical works, glass houses, potteries, tobacco mills, and soap works. It
is connected with the North Sea by the Aire and Calder navigation,
and with the Irish Sea by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
There are mailny other secondary cities of note in England, but it
would be tedious to consider them all. Sheffield is suggested to us,
however, whenever we take up our knife at dinner. The cutlery
of all kinds made at Sheffield has lon( been famous as among the
best in the world. Other important manufactures are heavy iron
and steel goods, plated wares, fine metallic instruments, printing
types, forks, files, and steel. Coal is abundant, and some is mined
in the vicinity. The Don is navigable, and the canal basin is available for vessels of fifty tons. The mass of American cutlery is made
in Connecticut, and at Rochester, Pennsylvania, penknives are made
that rank with Sheffield.
Our manufactures, indeed, are slowly, but undoubtedly catching up
to England's, protected by partial legislation; but our shipping, that
was endeared to us by American hardihood and triumph, has wellnigh given up the ocean. WVe may be said to have a navy which is
without a commerce to protect.
In 1860, all the United States manufactured one hundred and fifteen millions of dollars' worth of cotton goods; while England exported more than three times this value in 1866, besides the enormous
quantity of cotton goods consumed by her thirty millions at home.
The United States manufactured less than seventy millions of dollars' worth of woollen goods in 1860; while England exported alone
nearly one hundred and nine millions of dollars' worth in 1866.
England exported in 1866, seventy-four millions of dollars' worth
of iron and steel; in 1860 the United States manufactured nearly




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   301
double this amount. In all the above figures it must be remembered
that the whole manufacture of America is given, and only the export
manufacture for the United Kingdom.
In 1866, England produced one hundred and two millions of tons
of coal; in 1860, the United States produced more than nineteen
millions of tons. England exports nearly ten millions of tons of
coal every year, or more than half the quantity we mine.
Apprehensions exist that the coal of England will not last till the
end of the next century; the American coal-field is well-nigh inexhaustible. The magnificent deposit of anthracite coal in the American Middle States, which saves the clear skies of our Atlantic cities,
is almost unknown in England. Coal in America at the pit's mouth
costs nearly the same as in England, but our freights and distances are
far greater. Cheap transit is one of the most involved and pressing
problems for our nation.
Scotland may be said to have two distinct metropolises: Edinburgh, which is the literary, social, and art metropolis, with a population of about one hundred and seventy thousand, and Glasgow, the
commercial metropolis, with a population of four hundred thousand.
These two cities lie nearly opposite each other. Edinburgh, near the
Firth of Forth, - an arm of the North Sea, - and Glasgow, on the
River Clyde, which receives the tides of the Atlantic. The distance
between the cities is about fifty miles. Edinburgh is a most beautiful city, and, like Boston in the United States, it is called the modern
Athens, as much from the resemblance of its site to that of the capital of Attica, as from any supposed conceit that its people resemble
the Athenians in intellect and civilization. GlasgTow lies flat and
monotonous, though in its environs are some pleasant ranges of
hills. Edinburgh is a city of antiquities; like Quebec it has its old
town and its new town; its principal street, called High Street,
passes from the castle, which stands four hundred feet in the air
upon a rock, to Holyrood Palace, where Mary, Queen of Scots, was
reproved by John Knox, and where her favorite, Rizzio, was stabbed
in her presence.  In both Edinburgh and Glasgow are beautiful
monuments of Sir Walter Scott, that in Edinburgh being a Gothic
edifice, two hundred feet high, with fifty-six statues in its various
niches, besides the statue of the author and his dog, in the canopy
below.
In Edinburgh is the former Parliament House of Scotland, now
occupied by the Courts of Justice. The hall of the extinct Parlia



302    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ment is a splendid apartment, one hundred and twenty-two feet long,
and forty-nine broad, with an oval roof of sculptured oak. Both
these Scotch cities have universities, that of Edinburgh having been
patronized by Oliver Cromwell; it has thirty-two professors, and
eight hundred students, and a library of one hundred thousand volumes. Glasgow University was a dark and gloomy building, in
Elizabethian architecture. Benjamin Franklin, himself, fixed the
lightning rod over its cupola. A splendid new university building
will shortly (1869) be opened in Glasgow, to cost one million and a
half of dollars. Glasgow has a Cathedral, which is the finest Gothic
edifice in Scotland; it is a hundred and fifty-five feet long, or fortytwo feet shorter than Trinity Church, New York. The River Clyde
passes through the city of Glasgow, flowing westward, and is crossed
by fine bridges; it has twenty feet of water at high tide, but is entirely
artificial, at Glasgow, having been dredged and excavated. Several
miles below Glasgow are the great steamship-yards, chief of which is
that of the Napiers. Glasgow ranks fourth among the export ports of
the United Kingdom, and Greenock, its main harbor, twenty miles
down the Clyde, is of more commercial importance than Bristol.
What Greenock and Port Glasgow are to Glasgow, is Leith to Edinburgh; it has been the port of the latter old city since the time of
Robert Bruce; it contains thirty-four thousand people, has spacious
docks, and two of its piers are one thousand yards long, each. Agood sketch of the celebrated fishwomen of Leith may be found in
Charles Reade's novel of " Christie Johnstone."  In Glasgow is buried John Knox, the Calvin of Scotland; in Edinburgh are kept the
crown jewels of Scotland, the crown itself being old as the days of
Bruce. Below Glasgow, on the Clyde, is the highest chimney in the
world, towering above the great chemical works of the Tennants; it
is four hundred and thirty-five feet high. The chief streets of Glasgow are Argyle and Buchanan. The streets of both these Scotch
cities present, after dark, the wretched spectacle of thousands of
females, drunken, wanton, or destitute, and it is curious, that in this
kingdom, where the code of religion and morality is written with the
harshness of Draco, the other extreme of licentiousness can also be
witnessed to greater excess than even in London or Dublin. Scotland, indeed, is by nature the poorest part of the British Kingdom,
and far more sterile than Ireland; the appetites of its people are
grosser also than those of the Irish; but the practical intellect, the
ingenuity, and the industry of the Scotch have made them eminent,




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   303
and influential in English Councils, while the refractory, combative,
and generous Irish have been well-nigh expatriated.
Glasgow means the "Dark Glen."  Here James Watt made his
first model of a steam-engine. When Cromwell visited this town, upwards of two hundred years ago, he went to service in the cathedral,
when the preacher, Zacharie Boyd, denounced him in the most abusive
terms, so that the Protector's Secretary proposed to have him shot.
Cromwell replied. "He's a fool, and you're another. I'll pay him
out in his own fashion." This he did by asking Boyd to dinner, and
concluding it with a prayer which lasted three hours.
Edinburgh derived its name from Prince Edwin, of Northumbria,
who lived in the seventh century, and founded it; the city was completely destroyed in 1544, but after the Reformation, the bigotry of
the Catholics, the intolerance of Knox and the Reformers, the civil
feuds amongst the nobles to obtain the Regency, made the town unsafe, and it has declined, to be at present of far less mercantile
importance than Glasgow, its rival.
Greenock, the chief port of Glasgow, maintains steamship communication with New York; it contains forty-two thousand inhabitants;
here James Watt was born, perhaps the greatest benefactor England
ever had. It is remarkable that the Scottish Parliament refused to
the last to allow a harbor to be constructed at Greenock, and that the
English Parliament granted this privilege immediately after the
union; hence, arose Glasgow, and that splendid Scottish marine,
which supplies the great empires of the world. The steamships which
run from New York to France are all built upon the Clyde.
Paisley, well known to the ladies who wear its shawls, has risen
into importance within the past half century, chiefly by imitating the
fabrics of India, Cashmere, and China; this town may almost be said
to be a suburb of Glasgow. North of Edinburgh, on the North Sea,
are the cities of Dundee, Aberdeen, and Inverness, all old cities.
Aberdeen furnishes the best granite in Great Britain,- a reddish stone,
out of which were built the docks of Sebastopol, and many of the
finest edifices in London. Here, as in almost every city of England
and Scotland, there is a bran-new statue of Prince Albert, -the
most prudent and virtuous prince, probably, ever connected with the
English. monarchy. The harbor and pier of Aberdeen cost nearly a
million and a half of dollars.
Dundee contains thirty thousand people,- more than Aberdeen. It
is the third city in Scotland; it is the principal manufacturing mar



304    THE NEW -WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ket of linen, using one hundred and thirty thousand tons of hemp,
jute, and flax, a year, and running two hundred and three thousand
spindles; it also makes one thousand tons of marmalade every year,
out of sugar, oranges, etc., and one million and a half of jars are
brought every year from Newcastle, to enclose this luxury. Inverness is comparatively a small town; but it is singularly remarkable
for the beauty of its women, and for the purity in which its people
speak the English language. Its manufactures are mainly Scotch
plaids, brooches, stockings, kilts, and fowling-pieces. A large part
of the business of this town is letting out moors and fishing streams
for the aristocratic proprietors. Inverness is the city of Macbeth,
who seems to have been much libelled by Shakespeare, as he was a
pious and wise chief.
Perth, situated on the North Sea side of Scotland, inland from
Dundee, contains the principal penitentiary of Scotland. Ayr, on
the western coast, about thirty miles below Glasgow, was the home
of Burns and Wallace.  The home of Burns is now a tavern, but
there are many memorials to his memory close by, amongst which are
the celebrated figures of "Tam O'Shanter," and " Souter Johnnie,"
by James Thom, who carved "Old Mortality" and his pony, for
Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, who did some fair work for
Trinity Church, New York, and cut the hideous figure of Washington, which disgraces the City Hall Park, New York.
Perhaps the principal public work of Scotland is the Caledonian
Canal, which connects the Atlantic and German Oceans, and was
opened in 1822.; its total cost was nearly six and a half millions of
dollars; it is twenty feet deep, fifty feet broad at the bottom, and
twenty-three miles long, exclusive of the streams into which it flows,
at either end; it takes only forty-eight hours to pass through Scotland by this canal. Another great public work is the Crinau Canal,
nine miles long, which crosses one of the numerous, annoying peninsulas of Scotland. Both of these canals are under government control.
John O'Groat's House was the most northerly habitation in Scotland, and, like Land's End, the most southerly promontory of Great
Britain; it has enjoyed considerable notoriety.
Scotland is noted for its beautiful scenery, and the Highland Railway affords splendid opportunities to examine the country. The
finest river steamboat in Europe is the " Iona," which traverses the
"firths" and sounds of the Scottish coast; but she bears no com



BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   305
parison with second-rate, or even third-rate, passenger steamboats in
America. There is not probably a single line of steamers in Europe
which would please an American, save, possibly the French steamers
from Marseilles to Italy, and the Orient. One of the pleasures of
travel in Scotland, and indeed in all Europe, is the excellence and
thoroughness of the guide-books, - a department of literature which
has scarcely had its beginning in America. The smallest and most
insignificant county in England has been more perfectly delineated
than the cities of New York and of Washington. Ai American
travelling over thousands of miles of country is unable to learn
anything whatever of the towns which he passes.  Scottish live
stock is tolerably well known to Americans, particularly the Clydesdale horses, and the cattle of Fife and Aberdeen. There are six
millions of sheep in Scotland. Every American child is familiar with
the Shetland pony.
Scottish manufactures rival those of York and Lancashire. There
are thirty-one ship-building yards on the Clyde, from which came in
1863, a hundred and seventy steamers, representing one hundred and:
twenty-four thousand tons. Enormous quantities of fish are caught,
on the Scottish coast, the value of which in 1867 alone amounted to.
nearly two and a quarter millions of dollars. The manufacture of:
snuff-boxes is quite a feature of Scottish industry, and furnishes %a
curious clue to British habits. There are one hundred and ninety
flax factories in Scotland, and a hundred and seventy cotton factories,,
running altogether nearly two millions of spindles.
The country is richly endowed with coal and iron. The Scotch in.
modern times have been the most remarkable people of Europe. Not
a nation, but only a provincial kingdom, and with an almost sterile
territory, they have yet a literature comparable with any land's, an
independent character, and a national faith, and they are recognized
throughout the world by their philanthropic discoveries and applications. They build the cheapest and best steamships; they make
splendid sailors, and steadfast soldiers; their business talents are of
the shrewdest so:t, and if, as Doctor Johnson said, " a Scotchman's;
best prospect w,. the highway to England," England may be glad
that the Scotchman took that road. No nobler intellectual statures
ever walked any path tahn Robert Burns, James Watt, John Napier,.
Walter Scott, and Willijm Hamilton.
Yet the condition of the lower orders of Scotch is in many places
terrible. Drink and poverty are the sources of their grief, and the
39




306    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
most startling crime in British history is attributable to Scotland, —
that of Burke and Hare, who killed human beings by wholesale to
sell their carcasses to the surgeons. Scarcely less terrible than
crime in Great Britain is justice. In no country are punishments
so merciless and speedy, and until 1869 all executions took place in
sight of the people on the open pavements.
At the execution of Burke, at Edinburgh, in January, 1829, the
spectacle of popular rage and vindictive exultation was fearful.
Shouts arose from a multitude, vast beyond precedent, -shouts to
the executioner of " Burke him! give him no rope! Burke him!"
and at every convulsive throe, a huzza was set up, as if every one
present was near of kin to his victims. When the body was cut
down, there was a cry for "one cheer more!" and a general and
tremendous huzza closed the diabolical celebration.
The early history of Scotland was as tumultuous and unpromising
as that of Ireland, and the country was only pacified when the Scotch
Parliament was transferred to London, and the weak race of Scottish
Kings passed to England, to annoy the people there for more than a
century. Scotland has never contested British domination like Ireland, but neither Irish nor Scotch are considered by Englishmen to
rank with themselves; England is the kingdom to which both defer.
It is the richer, the more populous, the more eminent in literature
and achievements. More than all, it is the kingdom of the language.
The railway system of Great Britain, which connects the provincial cities, deserves some mention here. It is not comparable to
ours for length of rail, but it is a cheaper and more beneficent system,
in that it does the work of England more thoroughly than our railways; that its companies are not corrupting monopolies like ours,
and that they are more under the control of the central legislature.
There were two railway gauges in England for a long time; but
the narrow gauge finally triumphed as in this country; the Great
~Western Railway in England is the principal broad-gauge road, like
the Erie,'.and Atlantic and Great Western, in America. As long ago
as 1845, Richard Cobden moved in Parliament to adopt the broad to
the narrow gauge throughout England, but without success. At the
present time both England and America, therefore, are troubled with the
conflicting arrangements of two entirely different series of railways,
whose cars cannot be transferred either in commercial or military




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   307
necessities. The long saloon car is unknown in England, the cars
being I" carriages" there, with doors in the sides, and half the people
ride backward. The cars are classified, and one pays according to
his pride or comfort.
In 1833-4 there was but one railway in England, running from
Liverpool to Manchester, and a short one of seven miles in Scotland.
Ten years later, railways were extended into almost every part of the
kingdom, and speculation ran high. Americans familiar with the
gigantic lobbying schemes of railway projectors during the construction of the Pacific Railroad can appreciate this account of the same
excitement in England. The journals of 1844 tell us that three hundred and thirty-two new railway schemes were proposed before the
month of October in that year, involving a capital of 1,354,750,000
dollars, and for which upwards of 115,000,000 dollars would have to
be deposited before an act of incorporation could be applied for. A
multitude of other schemes were in an incipient state; and there
were sixty-six foreign railway projects in the English market. It
was believed that altogethei. the number of printed plans and charts
which would be brought to the door of the Bbard of Trade, by the
expiration of the closing-day, would be eight hundred and fifteen.
The number which succeeded in obtaining admission was above six
hundred. The closing-day was the 30th of November. "As the
summer closed and the autumn wore on, the most desperate efforts
were made," says Miss Martineau, " to get ready these plans. One
lithographic printer brought over four hundred lithographers from
Belgium, and yet could not get his engagements fulfilled. The
draughtsmen and printers in the lithographic establishments lived
there, snatching two or three hours' sleep on the floor or on benches,
and then going dizzily to work again. Much work was executed imperfectly, and much was thrown over altogether. Horses were hired
at great cost, and kept under lock and key, to bring to town at the
last moment plans prepared in the country  Express trains were
engaged for the same purpose; and there were cases in which railway directors refused such accommodation to rival projectors."
Meanwhile the British country gentlemen had no good opinion of
the noisy innovation, and there are people in England to this day
who look upon the railway system  as a calamity. They love to
remember the old Tory days of ignorance, contentment, and repose,
when only "gentlemen " talked politics, and Manchester was a
market town.




308    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
In those early days of the railway, land-owners were groaning
over the spoliation of their estates, for which no pecuniary award
could be any compensation. Their park walls were cut through,
their " dingles and bosky dells" were cut through, and their choicest
turf, and their secluded flower-gardens. A serious conflict took
place on one occasion, in Lord Harborough's park in Leicestershire,
between his lordship's tenantry and the railway surveyors, with the
force they assembled. Railways were to run, not only along the
southern margin of the island, and round the bases of the misty
Scottish mountains, but through the vale on which Furness Abbey
had hitherto stood shrouded, and among old cathedrals, of which the
traveller might soon see half a dozen in a day. It was on EasterMonday, 1844, that excursion-trips with return-tickets were first
heard of. Here began the benefits of cheap pleasure-journeys to the
hard workers of the nation. The fares were much lowered; yet the
extra receipts on the Dover line for three days were three thousand
five hundred dollars, and on the Brighton line nine thousand seven
hundred and fifteen dollars. "The process had begun from which incalculable blessings were to accrue to the mind, morals, and manners
of the nation. From this time, the exclusive class was to meet the
humbler classes face to face."
The excursion system has not been carried to a like perfection in
America, and our ordinary railway fare, with no better accommodation than the English second-class, is thirty per cent. dearer.
The fastest trains in England carry the Holyhead and Dublin mails,
and go a mile a minute, including stoppages. They are subsidized
with large sums of money by government. Our best railway speed
is thirty miles an hour, and our rolling stock is more cumbrous and
expensive than abroad.
To cross from Wales to Dublin, Ireland, takes four hours; for
every minute behind time, the postal authorities fine the steamboat
company seven dollars, except in cases of fog. This line of steamers
is the finest in the waters of Great Britain, but they do not bear comparison with our Hudson River and Sound steamers. It is three
hundred and thirty miles from London to Dublin, and it takes ten
hours to accomplish the journey.
The Irish coast is most beautiful to look upon after quitting the
smoky and hazy shores of England, and no one who has seen the
glorious groups of mountains which environ Dublin wonders that the
Irish love their beautiful island. Kingstown is tMe port of Dublin,




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   30
as Queenstown is of Cork. Kingstown harbor embraces two hundred
and fifty-one acres, and Parliament advanced two and a half millions
of dollars toward Improving it. Dublin is six miles distant, and two
and a half millions of passengers pass over the connecting railway
every year. The city of Dublin contains about two hundred and
fifty thousand inhabitants, considerably less than Baltimore. It lies
in the midst of most noble scenery, the mountains forming vistas for
many of its streets, and the little River Liffey passes through it, and
is crossed by many bridges. It is melancholy to enter the ancient
Parliament House of Ireland, now a grand bank, and many an Irishman has had such musings in its deserted House of Lords, as Gibbon
while sitting on the Capitoline Hill at Rome. Most of the public
buildings of Dublin suggest the Englishman's domination. The bank
of Ireland cost half a million of dollars; the Four Courts cost one
million of dollars. Overhanging the town is the castle, where the
Lord Lieutenant lives. It is to Ireland what the Moro Castle is to
Cuba, and thence issue all the orders to the military and police.
The Lord Lieutenant is almost a sovereign, and here he holds court
in grand style. No seat of learning in the world can boast a longer
roll of great alumni than Trinity College of Dublin, which covers
thirty acres of ground, and was founded by Queen Elizabeth. Its
library contains most noted manuscripts, and in its museum is the
genuine harp of Brian Boroimhe, which is nearly a thousand years
old; there is a Catholic University in Dublin also. Dublin contains
monuments to Nelson and Wellington, who are perpetuated in almost
every city of Great Britain and her colonies. Nelson's Pillar is a
hundred and thirty-four feet high; the Duke of Wellington's Obelisk
is two hundred and thirty-five feet high.
Every citizen of Dublin boasts as much about the Phoenix Park,
as a New Yorker about the Central. The Phoenix Park is more than
twice as large as the Central Park, a fact which seems to be forgotten
by New Yorkers, when they claim to have the largestpark extant.
The Central Park contains eight hundred and forty-three acres; the
Phoenix Park seventeen hundred and fifty-nine acres. The Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland has a residence in the Phoenix Park, but the
NewYork Park, in its architectural adornments, is altogether superior
to its Irish rival.
Amongst the monuments of Dublin is one to O'Connell, erected in
1869. There are two Protestant cathedrals in Dublin, Christ Church
and St. Patrick, the latter having been almost entirely restored by




310    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the brewer Guinness. Dublin contains many institutions of learning,
and beneficence. The word Dublin means, the Blackwater.  The
scenery in the neighborhood of this beautiful city is comparable to
any in the world, and the names of many of the neighboring localities are more beautiful than those of our Ameiican Indians. But
everywhere some memento is visible of the conquest and resistance
of the Celt to the Saxon: military roads scaling the mountain heights,
barracks of soldiery, multitudes of spies. In every Irishman's heart,
the capital of his empire is not London, but Washington. Americans
know Dublin for its porter, as much as for almost any other product.
London is thought to produce the best brown stout, Dublin the best
porter, and Burton, Nottingham, and Edinburgh, the best ale.
Belfast is a sprightlier city than Dublin, with about half the population. The name of the town means, the mouth of the ford. It lies
at the base of a tall, steep ridge of hills, the highest of which reaches
the altitude of one thousand one hundred and fifty-eight feet. Its
harbor is called Belfast Slough, and is an exceedingly fine one, with
twenty-three feet of water at high tide; about seven thousand vessels
enter and clear from this important harbor every year; the value of
its exports is forty-five millions of dollars, and its customs duties
amount to nearly two millions of dollars. In Belfast, and throughout
the north of Ireland, the working of patterns on muslin, with the
needle, employs as. many as three hundred thousand persons; but the
great trade of this important city is in linens. The largest flax-mill
in the world is that of the Messrs. Mulholland; it gives employment to about twenty-five thousand persons, which is probably the
greatest number employed by any private firm in Christendom.
Sixty-five millions of yards of linen are exported from Belfast, annually, and three millions of pounds of yarns and threads. Flax yields
from thirty to thirty-five " stones" per acre, and there were nearly
one hundred and fifty thousand acres of it under cultivation in 1861.
In all Ireland there are less than a hundred spinning-mills, and about
seven hundred thousand spindles. Flax is to Ireland, indeed, what cotton and corn are to America, and it is probable that before long twothirds of that great island will be given up to its cultivation. Not
only is Belfast noted for its commerce and its flax manufactures, but
many important branches of manufacture and chemistry are developed
here, - in particular, the making of starch. From this neighborhood
come some of the hardiest elements of population in America. In
Belfast and Derry originated such families as those of Alexander




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   311
T. Stewart, of New York, George HII. Stuart, of Philadelphia, and
John W. Garrett, of Baltimore; the first, our prince of commerce,
the second of philanthropy, and the third of railway enterprise. As
an instance of Belfast enterprise, I may mention that, in 1867, I found
in Cincinnati, one of the largest pork-packing establishments, under
the management of a Belfast firm of merchants; they came out annually, packed their pork, and shipped it home to Ireland, and
although during that year they lost eighty thousand dollars, they
were back again the ensuing winter, as cheerful as ever. What are
called in America the Scotch Irishmen were originally Protestant
Irish, who emigrated from the north of Ireland to Scotland, which
lies across the North Channel, no more than forty miles from Belfast,
and returned again after the religious feuds had subsided. Except
as regards " society" and politics, Belfast takes precedence of Dublin. Here, however, the most bigoted intolerance prevails amongst
both Catholics and Protestants. It is noted for the number of its
Orangemen, so called for William, Prince of Orange, who drove the
last Catholic King of England from his throne. Orangemen in the
United States take the name of the American Protestant Association.
Cork, in -the south of Ireland, is the city which will be forever associated with the expatriation and griefs of hundreds of thousands of
Irish Americans. Whatever interest may attach to Plymouth Rock,
to Jamestown, to St. MIary's, Cork will ever be the fond and lingering
thought of the more recent millions of American citizens, whose parents, or who themselves, took passage from this port, for the New
World, many of them never to see their native land again; many
never to see land at all, but to die at sea, bequeathing their children
to the new continent they struggled so hard to reach. Cork is in
some respects a handsome city, in others, very dirty; it has about
eighty thousand inhabitants, the population of Buffalo, and its surrounding scenery is very beautiful; there are but seven feet of water
at Cork, at low tide, and the Cunard steamers, and others, which
trade to America, stop at Queenstown, ten miles distant, a noble
harbor, whose splendid sceneries are disgraced by the great convict
prison on which they look, and where eight hundred political prisoners, and criminals, toil together, adjudged by a Christian nation to a
common penalty. The chief exports of Cork are emigrants and butter.
About midway between Cork and Dublin are Waterford and Wexford, two important towns, at the latter of which is an exceedingly




312    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
bad bridge, built by Lemuel Cox, an American bridge-builder. Waterford has one of the finest harbors in the United Kingdom.
There are many towns in the interior of Ireland whose mention
would be familiar to the reader, but their importance exists rather in
the fond memory of the immigrant, than in any respect pertinent to
our theme. For example, there is Limerick, on the Shannon, which
has about the population of Syracuse. Limerick has nineteen feet of
water at high tide, and ought to have been a great American port
but Galway and Cork have superseded it; fish-hooks and lace are
the characteristic manufactures here.
Galway is a town that at one time bade fair to be the great port
of the British Islands in American trade. Over one of the gates of
the town stood, until recently, the following inscription, which might
be appropriately set over the gates of New York:"From the ferocious O'Flahertys,
Good Lord, deliver us."
Galway is said to be the ancestral place of the great Lynch family,
many thousands of whom are in America; in the thirteenth century
they came to Ireland, from Linz, in Austria, where, by their bravery,
they won the privilege of taking a lynx for the crest of their coatof-arms.
Vessels drawing fourteen feet of water enter Galway, and the
Adriatic, the fastest ship in the world, built in New York, but now
owned in England, once crossed the Atlantic, from Galway to St.
John's, Newfoundland, in little more than four days.
The last Irish city which we will notice is Londonderry, where the
steamships from Montreal and Portland touch on their way to Liverpool. The bulk of the town stands more than a hundred feet above
the River Foyle, which is very wide. Here, also, Mr. Lemuel Cox put
up a bridge of piles, novel in Europe, at an expense of eighty thousand dollars; it proved to be a nuisance, like the Long Bridge at
Washington, and was taken up some years ago. This town has been
the theatre of the most miserable and desperate religious wars, and
its fortifications bear characteristic names, such as "Hangman's
Bastion," "Coward's Bastion," etc.
Ireland has beautiful scenery, and hospitable and impulsive people,
merry if miserable. It has pleasant old ruins of abbeys and castles,
and these attest that almost all its history has been war, religion, and




BRITISHPROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   313
song.'Itis' the only musical part of the British Empire; for naturev
seems to have labored so perseveringly upon the Englishman's
stomach, that- she forgot to give him an ear; his throat, however,
is powerfully, if not delicately, constructed. The lyrists of the
British Empire have been Moore, - Irish, - and Campbell and Burns,
-Scotch. The Englishman is the solid and epic personage, and in
every variety of life is self-contained and individual, - in Milton and
Shakespeare, as in the commonest cockney, clinging to his own appetites, opinions, and selfishnesses, a kingdom in himself. "~ My
mind to me a kingdom is," says the British poet; and there he struck
the great kev of observation. Solid, beefy, of strong brew is the
Englishman. Behold all things created for his use! Got of the
Roman race, he is in many things more Roman than his Celtic neighbors. In haughty power of intellect and force he surveys the world,
and compels or advises it to his own model.
It is fortunate for America that the controlling element of her
national character is derived from this strong-stomached stock, and
it makes the nucleus of all other races here, though all are valuable
in compounding with it. Wherever any other race than the AngloSaxon constitutes a local majority in America, there is some defect,
either of stupidity, socialism, or corruption.
" Ten years ago," says Dilke, " the third and fourth cities of the
world, New York and Philadelphia, were as English as our London;
the one is Irish now; the other all but German. Not that the
Quaker City will remain Teutonic. The Germans, too, are going
out upon the land; the Irish alone pour in unceasingly. All great
American towns will soon be Celtic, while the country continues
English; a fierce and easily-roused people will throng the cities,
while the law-abiding Saxons who till the land will cease to rule it.
Our relations with America are matters of small moment by the side
of the one great question: Who are the Americans to be?"
This quotation indicates the shrewdness, and the mistake by its
very shrewdness, of the British intellect in observation. The history
of the American (so to speak) race is, that the first or second
generation holds to the towns, and the second or third rambles
toward the frontiers. Every race alike becomes restless here. The
native American is the tarantula; whom he bites must dance. We
are a race of town-makers. The most contented father has the most
restless child; a mighty impulse animates us all, - to go somewhere,
to begin something! What we have begun our European accessions
40




314    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
finish, but all that we do is on the basis of democracy. The republic is not a name with us, as with the French; it is a great permeating fact. The Englishman's mind is a kingdom, indeed; the American's is a republic.
Another distinction of the English character which we have
retained is the love for municipal or local self-government. The
perversion of municipal institutions to political ends has occasioned
the sacrifice of local interests to party purposes, which have been
frequently pursued through the corruption and demoralization of the
electoral bodies This was the language of the Commission on
English Municipal Reform:  "In conclusion," they say, " we report
that there prevails among the inhabitants of a great majority of the
incorporated towns of Great Britain a general, and, in our opinion,
a just, dissatisfaction with their municipal institutions, a distrust of
the self-elected municipal councils, whose powers are subjected to no
popular control, and whose acts and proceedings, being secret, are
unchecked by the influence of public opinion; a distrust of the
municipal magistracy, tainting with, suspicion the local administration of justice, and often accompanied with contempt of the persons
by whom the law is administered; a discontent under the burdens
of local taxation; while revenues that ought to be applied for the
public advantage are diverted from their legitimate use, and are
sometimes wastefully bestowed for the benefit of individuals, sometimes squandered for purposes injurious to the characterand morals
of the people. We, therefore, feel it to be our duty to represent to
your Majesty, that the existing municipal corporations of England
and Wales neither possess nor deserve the confidence and respect of
your Majesty's subjects; and that a thorough reform must be effected
before they can become what we submit they ought to be, useful and
efficient instruments of local government."
Upon this proposition the old Saxon idea of local self-government
was adjusted so as to purify the cities, and the remarks of the
British historian are indices of the strange form of government which
prevailed almost down to our time.
"It was a great thing," says Miss Martineau, " to see our country
planted over with little republics, where the citizens would hence-'
forth be trained to political thought and public virtue; but it seemed
a pity that the city feasts must go, the processions be seen no
more, the gorgeous dresses be laid by, the banners be folded up,
the dragon be shelved, and St. George never allowed to wear his




BRITISH PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL CITIES.   315
armor again; and the gay runners, in their pink and blue jerkins,
their peaked shoes and rosettes, and their fearful wooden swords,
turned into mere weavers, tinmen, and shoemakers. Already some
of us may find ourselves discoursing eagerly to children, as Englishmen used to do to wondering Americans, of the sights we once saw
on great corporation days."
Since the American civil war the tide has set strongly toward governing every part of the United States by one absolute Legislature,
and a central Executive. This is not Anglo-Saxon freedom, which
in an essential degree consists of local government, with a central
directory. The continental nations, and notably France, tried the
contrary, and made a dismal end. " The republic, one and indivisible," was only another form of saying, "a strong central government," and municipal and local institutions perished under the iron
hand of the one absolute Legislature. The hardest thing to capture
is an archipelago, because tyranny must divide to do it; so a republic should have many centres, with one Providence watching over
all.
There is no space in this chapter to describe the internal life of
English communities; that will be touched upon in the chapter upon
the " Influence of Government on the People." The essential feature
of English cities is repose; of American cities, action.
" It is not impossible," says a French critic, " to conceive the surpassing liberty which the Americans enjoy; some idea may likewise
be formed of the extreme equality which subsists amongst them; but
the political activity which pervades the United States must be seen
in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot upon the
American soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused
clamor is heard on every side; and a thousand simultaneous voices
demand the immediate satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion around you; here, the people of one quarter of a
town are met to decide upon the building of a church; there, the
election of a representative is going on; a little further, the delegates
of a district are posting to the town, in order to consult upon some
local improvements; or in another place the laborers of a village
quit their ploughs to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of declaring
their disapprobation of the line of conduct pursued by the government; whilst in other assemblies the citizens salute the authorities of
the day as the fathers of their country. Societies are formed which




316    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
regard drunkenness as the principal cause of the evils under which
the state labors, and which solemnly bind themselves to give a constant example of temperance."
It might be well if there was more concern upon the question of
temperance in England; for the vice of all the British Islands is the
abuse of the stomach and the brain, over-eating and over-drinking.
We might be said to be a nation of " gulpers," in that we eat too
fast; but the British are a nation of guzzlers and gluttons, in that
they eat too much.








1                                              2
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CHAPTER XII.
BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.
An examination of the British possessions and their relative value as compared with the
unorganized and territorial parts of the United States. -Treatment of the natives of
India and of the American Indians. -Mr. Seward's purchases of Alaska and St.
Thomas. - The conquests of England and America from the Spanish.
IN this chapter there will be little reference to Australia or to
&Inada, which will be specially treated in the latter part of the book.
Their interests enter into immediate rivalry with ours, and are so
vigorous and large that they cannot well be considered within the
limits of the present examination.
The British possessions may be divided into three classes: European, Asiatic and African, American and Australian. By her
European possessions, England is put into close relation with continental politics. By her Oriental possessions she measures her civilization with that of antiquity. By her acquisitions in the new worlds
of America and Australasia, she becomes mutual or rival pioneer
with the United States.
If we could express the surface of the globe by a flat plain, with
the United Kingdom at its centre, the latter would seem to be a tiny
fruticose cluster of islands, clipped from the jagged vine of Europe.
Three great colonial appendages would be at once manifest: India,
to her south-east; British America, due west; and Australia, upon
the extended line of India, and twice the distance of the other two.
For the rest of her possessions, scattered about the globe, they would
separately seem as tiny as her parent self.
The table hereto appended exhibits in concentrated form the
Colonial Empire of this mighty kingdom, by which it will be seen
that the destiny of England is to colonize the world, as our separate
American destiny has been to give liberal institutions to the western
hemisphe'P817




318   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Date and Mode                                    rom       Imports
POSSESSIONS.                 of             Area.   Population. the British   into Do.
Acquisition.                               Kingdom.
Sq. miles.  Number.          ~            ~
India..............                              956,436  144,948,356   23,748,180   46,873,208
NORTH AIMERICAN:
Capitulation....1759
Canada...............           and
Cession........1763      331,280    2,881,862   ~4,382,473  ~;3,067,918
~~~New Brunswick......27,027                     252,047      476,600      540,552
New Brunswick......                               18,671      330,857    1,263,198      152,948
Nova Scotia.nd.  Settlement.....1497               2,173       84,386      160,131       64,876
Prince Edw'd Island.                               40,200      122,638      429,415     343,678
Newfoundland....                                                              -           10,487
British Columbia and  Settlement..                213,000       29,671      202,474      26,804
Vancouver Island....             0__,
Total North American
Colonies.................................      6.32,361    3,701,461    6,917,291    4,207,263
Bermuda.............  Settlement-....1609           24       11,451       39,696        6,462
Honduras............. Cession........1670        13,500       25,635      130,426      220~,7
WEST INDIES:
Bahamas.............. Settlement.... 1629         3,021       35,487      417,326    1,385,646
Turks Islands.............. 1629                  4,372        12,961       2,547
Jamaica...............  Capitulation.....1655       6,400      441,264      642,785      723,153
Virgin Islands.........                               57        6,051.
St. Christopher...                                    103       24,440      77,890       166,960
Nevis.................. Settlement.....628             50        9,822       11,714      20,536
Antigua.............. "16....163            183       37,125       64,999      176,739
Iontserrat............. "            1632           47        7,645         834        14,927
Dominica..............Cession.......1763            291       25,666       21,107      48,910
St. Lucia...............   Capitulation... 1803     250       29,444      26,623       -98,597
St. Vincent............. Cession........1763        131       31,755       35,817      140,701
Barbadoes.............. Settlement.....1605          166      152,757      366,05.3     702,318
Grenada....................1605       133       36,955       56,920      97,477
Tobago................  Cession.....1763             97       15,410       17,990      43,059
Trinidad.......       Capitulation....1797       1,754       84,438      430,815      637,816
British Guiana.........1803                       76,000      155,026      741,493    1,729,151
Total, West Indies........................        88,683    1,097,627    2,925,327    5,988,537
Falkland Islands...... Cession........1837          7,600          648       1,040        17,325
AUSTRALASIA:
Ne* South Wales...... Settlement....1787        323,437      411,388    4,349,371    3,319,628
Victoria..............       "....1836      86,831      626,639    7,147,216    7,680,332
South Australia............ 1836                 383,328      156,605    1,741,691     964,895
Western Australia.....           "....1829     978,000       20,260      100,075      104,673
Tasmania..................1803           26,215       95,201      283,056     403,559
New Zealand.............. 1839    106,259      201,712    2,606,994    1,186,085
Queensland...........        "....1859    678,000       87,775      713,545     240,550
Total of Australasia.....................    2,582,070    1,599,580   16,941,948   13,899,729
Hong Kong............ Treaty.........1843             29      125,504                  -
Labuan................ Cession..1846          45        3,345     -               1,153
Ceylon................. Capitulation...1796     24,700    2,049,881      904,255    2,420,056
Mauritius..............1810          708      322,517      595,462    1,311,787
Natal................. Settlement....1838         14,397      158,580      369,990      160,271
Cape of Good Hope.... Capitulation...1806       104,931      267,096    1,700,574    1,968,217
St. Helena........... Settlement. 1651               47         6,860       59,332       14,281
Gold Coast.............       ".... 1661      6,000      151,346  No returns received.




BRITISH  COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  319
Date and Mode ]Exports
POSSESSIONS  Mof  Area.from    Imports
POSSEISSIONS.        of         Area.  Population. the British  into Do.
Acquisition.                    Kingdom.
Sq. miles. Number.    ~        ~
Sierra Leone.......... Settlement.....1787]    468    41,806   144,081    39,433
Gambia...............    lG....1631  20      6,939    67,915    29,823
Gibraltar............. Capture.......1704.   1  16,643 No returns received.
Malta.................      1800   115    143,970    36.292   835,946
Entire British dependencies...................................   4,425,327    154,527,956    56,575,807    77,993,568
The total area of the United States and territories, inclusive of
Alaska, is upwards of three million five hundred thousand square
miles, or nearly three-fourths of that. of the British colonies.
The European possessions of Great Britain are more important in
a naval and military point of view, than by any considerations of
revenue or dimensions. A few islands in her immediate seas were
acquired at a very early period of her history.  Heligoland, a little
island two miles and a half in circumference, lies in the North Sea,
off the mouths of the important German rivers Elbe and Weser; it
was captured from Denmark subsequent to the American Revolution,
during the French wars, and at the peace, in 1814, was ceded to the
British government.  It is a watering-place, with three thousand in,
habitants, chiefly fishermen and pilots.  Gibraltar was wrested from
Spain, in 1704; it contains fifteen thousand inhabitants, has withstood frequent sieges, and has been of the utmost military consequence since the beginning of modern times; its possession has
always been a source of bitterness between England: and Spain, and
many English statesmen are of the opinion that it should be restored.
The Ionian Islands, which were conquered in the Napoleonic wars,
were ceded to Greece, a few years ago, with their two hundred and
thirty thousand people. Malta is even a more important station than
Gibraltar; it occupies a central point in the Mediterranean Sea, on
the great overland highway to India, and has been successively occupied by all the great nations of antiquity.  In the year 1800 the
English took possession of it, suppressed the Knights of St. John,
and fortified it in the strongest manner; it contains about one hundred
and thirty thousand persons, and is about as large as Staten Island,
in New York harbor. All these home possessions are administered by
royal Governors.
All the foreign colonies of England are called "Provincial Estab



320    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
lishments," with the exception of Sierra Leone, in Africa, which is
an English Liberia, peopled with emancipated negroes, and particularly with the descendants of those American slaves who joined the
British army and navy during the American Revolution; of these,
four hundred were transported, and ten years later, more than one
thousand negroes, of the same origin, who had settled in Nova Scotia, with the white Tories, were sent to Sierra Leone, at their own
request. This colony, like Liberia, cannot be said to have proved successful; it is a charter government, specially incorporated like a city,
or a trading company. The other British colonies, in Africa, are the
Gold Coast, the Cape of Good Hope, and Natal, besides two islands in
the South Atlantic, off the African coast, Ascension, and St. Helena.
The Cape of Good Hope was treacherously seized by the English, in
1806, when its legitimate Dutch colonists were.entirely republicanized, and about to adopt a declaration of independence from Holland,
after the example of the United States. England has two hundred
and eighty miles of gold coast in Western Africa, populated by three
hundred thousand people, and captured from the Dutch one hundred
years before the American Revolution. The English rule here has
been of a barbarous character, and on one occasion they put a native
King to death with more agonizing tortures than Cortez inflicted
upon the Montezuma; part of the family of the King of Ashantee
has been educated in England.  In 1868 the King of Abyssinia,
who was said to be successor of the Queen of Sheba proposed marriage to Queen Victoria, and no notice being taken of his proposition,
he imitated the example of Napoleon, and seized, as hostages, all the
English in his dominion. With the usual decision of the English
ministry, an army was despatched to Abyssinia, which penetrated to
the capital of the incensed suitor, killed him, routed his army, and
brought his son to Lonn to London to be educated. No positive determination has yet been made, as to colonizing Abyssinia by the English,
for English sentiment in our day is averse to conquering more colonies.
The above colonies are all administered by royal Governors, appointed by the English Cabinet, who convoke legislative assemblies,
which can enact ordinances not repugnant to the laws of England,
corresponding in this respect with the power granted by Congress to
the Territorial Legislatures of the United States. In 1782, after the
successful revolution of the Americans, an act was passed, entitled
" Statute George III., c. xii.," which was of the utmost consequence to
all the colonies of England, and which goes by the name of the " Co



BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  321
lonial Magna Charta."  It provides " that the King and Parliament
of Great Britain will not impose any duty, tax; or assessment whatever, payable in any of His Majesty's colonies, provinces, or plantations." Thus the American revolt was not merely an incidental
blessing to civilization, but it directly enfranchised the vast possessions of England, present and future, and made Anglo-Saxon liberty
a characteristic of all the English colonies. From all the courts of
the British colonies appeals lie to the Queen in Council, or to the
Court of Queen's Bench, in London, and as a last resort to the House
of Lords. None of the acts of the British Parliament are binding
upon the colonies, unless the latter be specially mentioned. The
Governor of every colony has the right of pardon, and the privilege
of nominating to the civil posts. He has his own Cabinet Council,,
which is sometimes a Court of Appeal, but the Bishops and the important Judges are appointed in London. Canada and Jamaica have
the oldest Colonial Parliaments amongst the British colonies; the'
constitution of Jamaica is two hundred years old; the Governor, or'
Captain-General, is also Commander-in-chief, and Vice-Admiral; he'
appoints his Privy Council arbitrarily; the upper legislative houseconsists of certain office-holders, and of members whom the Governorappoints for life; the lower house is elective.
The Governors of all the British colonies are appointed for six:
years; the salary of that of Jamaica is 30,000 dollars a year; of'
Gibraltar, 25,000 dollars; of the Cape of Good Hope, 25,000 dollars;.
and the Governor of the Little Bermuda Islands, off the American.
coast, receives three-fifths as much salary as the President of the.
United States; the Governor of Canada received 35,000 dollars be —
fore the Dominion was organized, and the combined salaries of thel
British Colonial Governors, in North America, were considerably
above 100,000 dollars a year.
But the mosl extraordinary salary paid to any British official; is
that given to the Governor-General of India, namely, 125,000 dollars.
a year, with.; grand palace and establishment at Calcutta, and' a
country residence at Barrack-Pur.
The Brii;sh Empire, in India, is an episode in history, which for
gorgeous romance is not equalled by.the story of Cortez, or of Alexander. Beginning with a little trading company, in the time of
Queen Elizabeth, it obtained permission to take shelter along the,
shores of the Indian Ocean, and from those paltry settlements has.
grown the conquest of India, the subjection of its dense population,,
41




322    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and the mingling of cold English characteristics, with the luxurious
barbarian splendor of Asiatic despotism. All modern nations, prior
to the settlement of America, derived their riches from India and
the East, and the opening up of ocean communication with it, by
turning the Cape of Good Hope, was esteemed not less remarkable
than the discovery of America, which immediately preceded. The name
of Vasco de Gama took rank with that of Columbus, and the great
Portuguese epic poem was written by Camoens, to celebrate his
voyage. For a long time the French, the Portuguese, and the English
contended for precedence in India, and after the death of the last
Great Mogul, who died at Delhi, in 1707, his mighty empire of the
Orient fell into anarchy and sloth, and became the prey of European adventurers. It was during the French and Indian War, in
which Washington rendered his earliest services to his country, that
the British General Clive finally wrested Hindostan from French and
native alike, enriching and ennobling himself to so great a degree
that he became the victim of jealousy and slander, and committed
suicide. During the American Revolution, the able and cruel Warren Hastings became the first Governor-General of India, and he,
also, was made the subject of reproach, and brought to England for
trial, closing his almost imperial life in mortification and neglect.
After the American Revolution, Cornwallis, who had surrendered at
Yorktown, became Governor of India, and he proved one of the
most amiable and beneficent officials who has ever been sent there.
Some Americans may be curious to know the subsequent career of
our old and unfortunate antagonist, and it is nowhere better expressed than in MIiss 5Martineau's excellent history: -
" Cornwallis," she says, " had never approved the American war,
and had avowed his disapprobation at the peril of his interests; but he
did not suffer the less keenly, when his surrender at Yorktown proved
the death-blow of the English power in America, and caused a change
of ministry and of measures at home. Hiis virtue, however, his disinterestedness and prudence, appear to have been so unquestionable,
that he did not suffer,politically, or in personal character, for this
misfortune; and soon after, he was Governor-General and Commander-in-chief of Bengal. The war with Tippoo distinguished his administration; and we see him the hQst of Tippoo's two sons, the
hostages put into the hands of this kind-hearted and generous nobleman.'When the Irish rebellion of 1798 broke out, we find him appealed to, to go -and see what could be done; and the testimony




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES. 323
is universal as to his benevolent endeavors to put down violence,
soften rancor, and rectify injustice on every hand. This was an
extraordinary life of service and dignity to have been lived by a man
whose qualifications were his virtues, rather than his talents. Disinterested, moderate, prudent, brave, and benign, he commanded confidence on every hand."
Lord Cornwallis had many successors, prominent among whom
were the Duke of Wellington, before his European renown began,
and Viscount Canning, who was the Governor-General when the
celebrated revolt of 1857 broke out. A correspondent of the London
"Times" visited Governor Canning during this revolt, and his
recollections of the vice-regal palace may be appropriately inserted
here:
" A residence not altogether unbecoming the Viceroy of India, but
at the same time by no means overwhelming, splendid, or in faultless
taste. The general effect is nearly spoiled by a huge dome, perfectly' bald,' rising out of the centre of the roof, like a struggling balloon.
"Placed in the midst of a large open space, with green lawns, not
very extensive, but covered with fine, clean-shaven sward, and aqueducts around it; and almost within an arrow-shot of the Hooghly,
the Government House should be as cool as any house can be in Calcutta; and the great number of windows on the side elevations give
it an appearance of airiness which the'sunny side' by no means
deserves. If that dome could be removed, or put straight, or something be got to sit on it, taking it all and all, as seen from the exterior.
of the fine gateways which lead to the entrance, the Government
House reflects credit on the engineer's officer who designed and built
it, at the cost of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
"At the gateways, with nothing more formidable than canes in their
hands, wer.e real sepoys, - each in' shape and hue' so like a British
soldier when his back is turned, that at a sudden view he would beguile; tall, broad-backed, stiff-set, but with lighter legs than the
Briton, and a greater curvature in the thigh. There he is, doing his
regulation stride, saluting every white man who enters, civilian or
soldier, dressed after the heart of army tailors, pipe-clayed, and:
cross-belted, and stocked, and winged and facingled, every button
shining, every strap blazing, and each bit of leather white as snow,
— the sepoy of whom his officers and those around him, contenting
themselves with that fair outer show, know as little, if we believe




324    TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
what we hear, as they do of the Fejee Islanders. They cleaned the
outside of the platter, and cared little for what was within. Having
whitened their sepulchre, they were satisfied. But it was not the
outer portals of the Government HIouse only that were trusted to
sepoys. At the doorway, at the reception rooms, in the corridors,
paced up and down the old troopers of the body-guard, dressed somewhat like our lancers; tall, white-mustachioed veterans, on whose
hearts glittered many medals, clasps, and crosses, won in action
against Sikh and Affghan. I am not sure whether my own feeling of
mild surprise, that at the Viceroy's palace not a single English
domestic was visible, would not be shared in by most of my countrymen. White-turbaned natives, with scarlet and gold ropes fastened
round the waist, glided about in the halls, and some of the more important added to the dignity of their appearance by wearing large
daggers in their cummerbands. At' half-past six o'clock I waited
upon Lord Canning, whom I found immersed in books and papers,
and literally surrounded by boxes, labelled'military,''political,''revenue,' etc., etc."
The Indian revolt, which shook the British empire in India from
circumference to centre, is supposed to have been a Mohammedan
conspiracy, assisted by certain singular superstitions of the Hlindoos
that the Raj, or reign of the East India Company, was to conclude at
the end of a hundred years, and it is remarkable that although the
revolt was suppressed, the hated Raj did cease within the period
mentioned, for in 1858 the Home Government mustered the East
India Company out of existence, and succeeded to its vast but costly
possessions. The real cause of the outbreak, however, was the introduction of greased Enfield cartridges into the sepoy service; for,
precluded by their religion from  biting off these cartridges, the
sepoys became mutinous, and at Meerut, near the great city of Delhi in north-western India, the British officers attempted to punish
the disobedient heathen; they revolted on the field of parade, massacred the Europeans, and within a few days captured the city of
Delhi, committing terrible atrocities almost immediately throughout
the whole of Bengal, and in other provinces a mighty ferment took
place; the whites were butchered everywhere; a general and his
army surrendered and were put to death, while the British race in
India and at home was in consternation. General Havelock and Sir
Colin Campbell raised the siege of Lucknow and relieved Delhi,
capturing the aged King of the latter city, the heir of the Great Mogul,




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  325
who was sentenced to perpetual banishment, and died in exile in
1862. At the time of the outbreak there were two hundred and thirty-two thousand native troops in Bengal, and forty-five thousand
Europeans; five years afterward the European troops were doubled,
and the natives cut down to one-half; the great army of Bengal was
practically disbanded.
At that wofiul period in the history of British colonization hulndreds
of thousands of Englishmen began to doubt that the domination of
their empire in the Orient was either a glory or a blessing; yet, so
costly have been British investments in Hindostan, and so thoroughly are the politics and commerce of England interwoven with it, that
to break the tie would be almost as dangerous as we believed the extinction of slavery by the North. The English debt amassed for India
alone amounts to 600,000,000 dollars, while 250,000,000 dollars are
invested in India railways, and 100,000,000 dollars in. India banks
and stocks. The English have built six thousand miles of railroad
in Hindostan, and eleven thousand miles of telegraph, achievements
which compare with our Pacific Railway, and overland wires. At the
present time (1869) there are twenty-four millions of acres of cotton
under cultivation in India, and the products of that extraordinary
land are almost representative of every zone; domesticated in that
vast territory the elephant is docile as the mule; the mountains rise
higher than elsewhere on the globe, eighteen peaks reaching elevations of more than twenty thousand feet, and the highest attaining a
point of more than twenty-eight thousand, nearly five times the
height of Mount Washington; almost every description of cereal,
fruit, and tree, grows on the plains or mountain slopes of Hindostan,
and the dense population of that subjugated empire is gifted, patient,
meditative, and laborious, almost beyond example; their literature is
older than the Scriptures; in a far-past age their forefathers were
active and ambitious, as their legends. show, but when they had settled upon the fertile plains of the Ganges and Hindus they sat themselves down to a long trance of reminiscence, philosophy, and piety;
out of which they have not wakened for these two thousand years.
If the scholarship of Europe be right, the plains of India gave birth
to the great western races which now dominate the earth; there we
learned'many of our most practical principles, -the rotation of
crops, the finer arts of weaving and embroidering, the propagation
of many plants and trees which now give shade to the nations of the
earth. The rivers of Hindostan compare with the Mississippi, the




326    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Missouri, and the Colorado; the sacred Ganges is nearly two thousand miles long, and the Hindus one thousand seven hundred; the
former drains five hundred thousand square miles of fruitful land,
the Hindus four hundred thousand. From the earliest ages the
muslins of Dacca, the shawls of Cashmere, and silks and tapestries
of Delhi have been known to Europe; with them were draped the
palaces of the Roman Emperors, and down to our day they adorn
alike the shoulders of the Queen and of the President's wife. An
American may note how singularly the Hindoo system of Caste resembles the distribution of labor in our modern manufacturing establishments. In India every village is like an American township, - a
neighborhood rather than a town, each with its head inhabitant, its
register of real estate, its brahmin or priest, its school-master,
astrologer, and barber; and these trades descend from father to son,
in uninterrupted continuity, till it may be said that for two thousand
years each family in India has been slowly plodding over the same
task, until the thought and spirit have departed; ingenuity there is
none; only dexterity of hand, and melancholy perseverance; without
factories, and with the rudest tools, these mild-eyed natives still produce carpets, scarfs, saddles, and weapons of such exquisite perfection that they have astonished the eyes of Europeans. In the same
manner De Tocqueville pointed out the tendency of modern government and manufactures to relieve the citizen of all responsibility,
and set him to.work upon some separate part of machinery, so that
by long and patient industry his mind ceases to labor, his hands
grow automatic, and his children follow along in his trade and condition, - and this is Caste in Hindostan.
"' In proportion," says this incisive critic, " as -the principle of the
divisiori of labor is more extensively applied,the workman becomes more
weak, more narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advance~, the
artisan recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount of capital
employed more considerable, wealthy and educated men come forward
to embark in manufactures which were heretofore abandoned to poor
or ignorant handicraftsmen. The magnitude of the efforts required
and the importance of the results to be obtained attract them. Thus
at the very time at which the science of manufactures lowers the
class of workmen, it raises the class of masters.
"The master and the workman have, then, no similarity, and their




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES. 327
differences increase every day. They are only connected as the two
rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills the
station which is made for him, and out of which he does not get;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other, and seems as much born to obey as that other is to command.
" What is this but aristocracy?
" I am of opinion," he concludes, "upon the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of
the harshest which ever existed in the world; but at the same time
it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless
the fridnds of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in
this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and
aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted that
this is the channel by which they will enter."
It is over this ancient race of Hindoos, who remind us, in their
personal graces, gentleness, and beauty, of the race of the
Incas, that the young and unrelenting Anglo-Saxon has fastened his
chain. His establishment begins in London under the ostensible
sceptre of the Queen, where the' Secretary of State for India, a politician, who has perhaps never visited the Orient at all, receives his
salary of 25,000 dollars a year, and his under Secretary is paid
10,000 dollars; both of them rotate out of office, when there is a
change of party. But there are, also, two permanent Secretaries
besides, who do the real work of administration, and the Home Secretary has a council of fifteen members, each receiving 6000 dollars a
year. From this small office in London the mind must next pass a
fourth way round the globe, to where, at Calcutta, the Governor-General holds the highest office, filled by an uncrowned head,' in the
world, excepting only the American President.  He has a Privy'Council of five members, nominated from London, and when he
adds several persons of his own selection to these, he makes a Legislative Council, in which are both Europeans and Hindoos, the former
predominating. Receiving orders from  this great Governor and
Council, are minor Governors for the great departments of Madras,
Bombay, and Bengal; but the ostensible administration throughout
India is in the hands of the hereditary and despotic Indian princes,
who are thus upheld in nominal importance, as Cortez and Pizarro
upheld the Incas they had enslaved, and ruled the enslaved people
through them. Around these Indian despots are their nobles, and




328    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
all the gorgeous pageantry of an Eastern Court; but politicians in
England are directing the entire government. The civil service of
India is divided into two parts, of which the covenanted civil service
is entirely European, and the members have passed examination in
London; there are eight hundred of them, with salaries ranging from
1,500 dollars to 40,000 dollars annually. The uncovenanted civil
service is composed of Europeans, Eurasians, or half-breeds, and
natives, more than six thousand in number, some of whom are paid
as low as 600 dollars a year. There is, besides, a relentless army of spies
and police employed in exacting taxes from the native population, and
here we may remark, that whereas land in England has been almost
exempt from  taxation, in subject India the principal revenue is
derived from it. The article of second importance from which revenue is derived is opium, which is manufactured by the government,
and forced upon China and India. If the United States would make
a monopoly of whiskey, and force the Indians to consume it, we
should have a government on the plains very much like that of the
British in Asia.
Contrast the worst treatment of the savage Indians of our frontiers with the ordinary behavior of the English to the Hindoos, and
we shall have reason to be glad that we have not utterly disgraced
our race and age, whereas, according to a report of Judge Malcolm
Lewin, of Madras, torture was there, until 1856, an ordinary means
of government. "Corruption and bribery remained paramount
throughout the whole establishment; violence, torture, and cruelty
are the chief instruments for detecting crime, implicating innocence,
and extorting money; exposure to the sun; putting pepper and
chillies in the eyes; scearing the breasts with hot irons; nipping the
flesh with pincers; fastening the aggravating poolay insect upon the
navel, - these were alleged to be a part of the system of government,
known and acknowledged as an engine for realizing the public'
revenue."
" WVhen Neill,"  says  Russell, the  "Times" correspondent,
"marched from  Allahabad, his executions were so numerous and
indiscriminate, that one of the officers attached to his column had to
remonstrate with him, on the ground that if he depopulated the
country he could get no supplies for the men."
Captain Bruce, a British authority, has said more comprehensively
of British rule in India, that if " our empire in that country were
overthrown, the only monuments which would remain of us would




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES. 329
be broken bottles and corks. Along the whole coast our government
is popular, because the people share in the advantages of a flourishing trade. But in the interior we are hated. There is a grinding
system of exaction; we take nine-tenths; and the natives feel the
privation of honors and places of authority more than the weight of
imposts. One of them compared our system to a screw, slow in its
motion, never violent or sudden, but always.screwing them down to
the very earth."
Another reprehensible feature of British rule in India is the promiscuous purchased, or enforced concubinage between the British
officers and native women,- a feature of Indian life so palpable and
unchallenged that officers and their mistresses are equally received at
the receptions of the Governor-General. This condition of morals
under the eye of the Established Church, which has its hierarchy in
India, is more depraved than the worst periods in the history of
American slavery. This subject has been thoroughly treated by
Mlrs. Roberts, an English writer, to whom we owe this picture of the
Governor-General's Court:
" The suites of apartments devoted to large evening parties occupy
the third story. The bail-room, or throne-room, as it is called, is
approached through a splendid antechamber; both are floored with
dark polished wood, and supported by Ionic pillars, leaving a wide
space in the centre, with an aisle on either side-; handsome sofas of
blue satin damask are placed between the pillars, and floods of light
are shed through the whole range from a profusion of cut-glass
chandeliers and lustres; formerly the ceilings were painted, but the
little reverence shown by the white ants to works of art obliged
them to be removed, and gilt mouldings are now the only ornaments.
The throne, never particularly superb, is now getting shabby; a
canopy of crimson damask surmounted by a crown, and supported
upon gilt pillars, is raised over a seat of crimson and gold; in front
there is a row of gilded chairs, and it is the etiquette for the Viceroy
and the Vice-Queen, upon occasions of state, to stand before the
throne to receive the presentation. There is, however, nothing like
a drawing-room held in this court; no lord chamberlain, or nobleman,
in waiting, or any functionaries corresponding with these personages,
except the aides-de-camp, who are seldom very efficient, being more
intent upon amusing themselves than anxious to do honors to the
company. In these degenerate days so little state is kept up, that,
42




330    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
after the first half-hour, the representatives of sovereignty quit their
dignified post and mingle with the assembled crowd.
"There is no court-dress, or scarcely anything to distinguish the
public rights at Government House from a private party, excepting
that until lately no gentleman was permitted to appear in a white
jacket. An attempt was made by Lady Hastings to establish a more
rigid system of etiquette; she had her chamberlain, and her train
was held up by pages. An intimation was given to the ladies
that it was expected that they would appear in court plumes, and
many were prevented from attending in consequence of the dearth of
ostrich feathers, the whole of the supply being speedily bought up;
and as it was not considered allowable to substitute native products,
there was no alternative but to remain at home. The extreme horror
which European ladies entertained of appearing to imitate the natives,
banished gold and silver from their robes; not contented with the difference in the fashion of their garments, they refused to wear any
articles of Indian manufacture, careless of the mean effect produced
by this fastidiousness."
Quite different from the British government in India is the American control of the almost utterly savage tribes of American Indians.
At present, all Indian affairs are managed by a Commissioner at
Washington, who is subject to the control of the Secretary of the
Interior, —a Cabinet officer. The present Commissioner of Indian
Affairs (1869) is himself an Indian, and an accomplished officer of the
United States Army, - Colonel Parker, a chief of Iroquois, the most
renowned confederation of savages ever known on the Western Continent. With him, as consulting or active missionaries, are associated members of the philanthropic sect of Quakers, fast friends of the
Indians, and every energy of the government is devoted to conciliating and caring for those unstable wild-men, who have, it is feared,
been too often made the victims of designing traders.
In 1869, while preparing this chapter, I waited upon Mr. Taylor,
the retiring Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and obtained from him
his experience in the Indian office. At that time violent counsellors
had proposed to transfer the management of the Indians to the War
Department, and the Commissioner's remarks were mainly directed
to combating this proposition.
In the Indian office proper there are about four hundred and fifty
employes, only about fifty of whom are employed in the general
office, the rest being distributed over the country at the various In



BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES. 331
dian agencies, some as instructors in practical mechanics, menders
of tools for Indians, interpreters, millers, missionaries, school-masters, etc.
The salaries of these vary from 3,000 dollars to 360 dollars, the
former sum being paid to the Commissioner, the latter to some of the
half-breed interpreters.
In a few moments I was introduced to Mr. W. G. Taylor, the
Commissioner. He is a middle-aged gentleman, of a singularly benevolent face, formerly a Methodist clergyman, and afterward a
member of Congress from East Tennessee. Owing to the war, he
was driven to the mountains by the rebels, and upwards of a year
ago he took charge of this important bureau, in which he has a conscientious missionary interest. It is a popular belief, however, that
among the older attaches of the bureau, those who belong to what is
called the " Indian Ring," a system of plunder has long been
practised. The Commissioner, being a subsidiary officer to the Secretary of the Interior, has but little more than nominal jurisdiction, but
his probity and humanity are potent among all who know him, and
as fairly as any man beneath Hercules can labor in this Augean
stable, Mr. Taylor has given it his diligence and sagacity. Few men
have more thoroughly mastered the diplomacy of the plains, and the
grand council which he recently held was one of the largest collections
of Indians ever assembled on the face of the globe,- possibly the
very largest.
It was on the occasion of their cession of lands to the Pacific
Railway, - that fiery track which flashe~ the signal that the domination of the red man exists no more. And possibly it was the unconscious assemblage of the Indian at his own funeral. There, he
bade farewell to the buffalo, and put upon the prairie a swifter stallion than his own wild pony, welcoming to the plains with his homely
formulae of pipes and presents, the courser that is to put a belt around
the world.
I had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Taylor at some length, while
he gave the fresh expression of his opinions, as the latest observer,
upon the status of the Indian on this Continent.
A part of the conversation I think worthy of reproduction, as the
most popular form in which I can transfer some intelligent estimate
of the relation of the Indian to the present generation and its succeeding one.




332    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"M 3Ir. Taylor, have you been much personally among the Indians?"
"Yes, sir. I have spent considerably more than half the time
since I entered upon the duties of this office among the Indian tribes
on their reservations."
" You find much hardship and complaint, - do you not? "
"CCMuch, sir. The buffalo as a reliable article of subsistence no
longer exists. In five years I believe that a herd of buffalo will not
anywhere be seen. The Indians are reduced for supplies to the antelope, the deer, and occasionally to elk. Looking at this hard destiny,
they naturally lay it at the white's man's door, to whom, chiefly,
their poverty is due."' How so, sir?"
" Well; the wild animals fly before civilization. The steam-engine
and the wild buffalo cannot exist in the same perspective. If they
could, our people would turn out to kill the game for mere sport's
sake, while to the Indian, these great buffalo preserves are his precious herds, from which to draw subsistence."
" The Pacific Railway is really an offensive encroachment to the
Indian?"
"Yes; it is something that offends their vanity by impeaching
their right of possession. As we would like no man to make a road
across our lot, they hold their reservations to be absolute property,
as indeed they are, given them in exchange for government. WVe
projected the Pacific Railroad into their country without their permission, and the grand council that we held two or three years ago was
to arrange for their removal, and compose them to it."
"Do the Indians object to taking new reservation? "
"Certainly, when they must do it at our convenience. No people
are more fondly attached to the graves of their forefathers. DWe fix
them upon reservations, and as our resistless population catches up to
their frontiers, - our vanguard, often made up of ruffians and insolent
people, - collisions ensue, and then the government dispossesses the
Indian, and pushes him further toward the Pacific. The Indian mind
is not so obtuse that it cannot see that the world must end somewhere. Where will they push the Indian, when he gets to the
end?"
"You think that many of the Indian wars begin by our disregard
of the Indian's rights?"
" I do. The majority, if not all,of the Indian wars, either begin in




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  333
this way, or by a failure on the part of the United States to perform
its stipulations. Take the war at present (18.69) going on, at a large
expense. WVe wanted the lands of the Cheyennes and Arrapahoes, for
the purposes of the Pacific Railroad; we said to these tribes, in
grand council,' We will give you other lands, and teach you upon
them how to till the ground, for which we will give you ploughs and
seed, and also sheep and cattle, by which you may be fed, till your
land becomes productive.' Therefore the Indian consented to be
removed, and he remained upon his distant reservation peaceably, so
long as we fed him according to contract. Suddenly, our appropriation ran out, and we said to the Indian,'We shall now be unable
to feed you; our money is gone.' Unable to live without nourishment, the Indians, in melancholy bands, roamed back to their former.
lands, and what did they behold? Our people, pushing out along the
spine of the railway, following up the beds of the streams, and the
fertile belts, had already overflowed the country. Surprised and
jealous, the Indians regarded it all with wonder and mortification.
" WVell, they are hungry, and into some isolated house they go, and
say,' We are hungry! We want food!' Here is cause for affront.
Perhaps the food is refused; then they take it. Or perhaps too
much is exacted. Perhaps there is a lone woman in the house, and
some of the young savages offer violence. In any event bad feeling
begins, and war ensues, involving millions of dollars. Now, had the
Indians been sustained by the government as we promised, all collision would have been prevented,"
"Whose fault was it that the appropriation ran out?"
"The fault of the false position of this bureau. The government
has never had an uniform policy toward the Indians; a succession
of expedients has been adopted from time to time, to satisfy the
Indians, but the Commissioner of the bureau is without influence,
either with Congress or the President. He is an officer of the Secretary of the Interior, who meantime is busied with the vast and complicated affairs of his other bureaux, and courtesy and custom demand.
of the Commissioner that he should have no independent dealings,
but make all his applications to the Secretary only. In fact, MBr.
Townsend, the Indian Bureau, ought to be an independent department."
"Are its functions so relatively important?"
"Yes, sir; we have as many treaties with the Indian nations as we
have with foreign nations. An Indian cannot understand why a




334    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
political dead lock at the Capitol should make the government break
its word. Hle demands the fulfilment of a promise as between man
and man.
"If the Indian Bureau were even as independent as the Agricultural Bureau, I could go to Congress and tell them the necessities,of my department. Now I must often delay, to satisfy courtesy
at the expense of nmisunderstanding, massacre, and expensive warfare."
" Have you any notion of what should be a definite policy toward
the Indians?"
"It is the province of statesmanship to meet this' question. I am
satisfied that the transfer of this bureau to the War Department
would be unjust, provoke the helpless massacre of the Indians, and
be altogether the most unstatesmanlike way to deal with them.
Heretofore, we have kept the Indians in the surf of civilization, driving them ahead of us, so that their habits have not ceased to be nomadic. A Christian policy toward them would teach civilization to go
beyond them, and leave them enclosed by it. The Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Choctaws, are examples of what the stable, stationary Indian can do."
"Does -hy great percentage of the Indian's money get to
him?"
"There is reason to believe that traders get the bulk of it. Our
laws about entering the Indian reservations are honored chiefly in the
breach. Any man can trade on a reservation by getting a judge and
two citizens to certify that he is an honest man. With two barrels
of -whiskey in a wheelbarrow, and some beads, the trader comes
into the reservation, takes a squaw to protect himself, and begins the
systematic work of swindling.
"The cost of the Indian military expeditions is enormous. For
example, the military expenditures on account of the Indians, in the
territory of New Mexico alone, have exceeded four millions of dollars every year, since its acquisition from Mexico. Gen. Sumner
proposed to buy out all the white citizens, and give the territory in
its entirety to the Indians.
" There are, in all the United States, about three hundred thousand
Indians, or not three times the population of Delaware. Ninety odd
thousand of these are in the Indian Territory, where are all the civilized tribes. The Sioux are the largest of all the tribes, probably numbering twenty-five thousand, I suppose."




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  335
" You feel, therefore, Mr. Taylor, that this Indian problem is not
too vague for statesmanship to take up?"
"No, sir; but it is too grave a subject to be treated as a fragment
of a duty, hidden away in a recess of the Interior Department.
Whatever defects have existed here are allowed to moulder, and
grow in the dark. Congress cannot dismiss this subject in an hour's
debate. Only by a familiar knowledge of the Indian character can
we treat with the Indian, as an enlightened responsibility demands
that we should, so that the ground may not descend to us, with his
curse upon it."
"You have never employed Indians in the bureau clerically?"
"No, sir."
" Those who come to Washington, -do they accomplish any good
result?
"Yes; they go home with formidable stories of the white man's
powers, which dispose the tribes to peace. The Indian is very ignorant, except of that which is demonstrated to his senses. Hearing of
the big lodges, the great canoes, and the mighty encampments does
them good in a pacific way."
Since the United States became a nation, it has, in general, made
acquisitions of territory, by peaceful purchase, the exception having
been the war with Mexico, but even in this case a formidable portion
of our people denounced the war, and in the end we paid liberally for
the territory subtracted, or, in terms, one hundred dollars to every
white man resident in the whole conquest.
The United States acquired Florida in perhaps a more irregular
manner than any of its territory. Napoleon Bonaparte, anxious to
raise money, prevailed upon the Spaniards to give him Florida, and
immediately sold it to us; but this irregularity led to such uncertainty
in the titles of property, that to this day the State is very sparsely
settled, and in our haste to occupy it we offended the Indians, so
that it is computed that the Seminole War alone cost us thirty million dollars, besides the loss of many valuable lives.
The entire purchase-money for Louisiana was fifteen million dollars; but at that time Louisiana was not the name of a State, as now;
it represented the vast tract of country lying on the lower Mississippi and the Gulf.
Fifteen millions of dollars were paid to Mexico for California, so
that thirty-seven millions, including seven millions for Alaska, is the
sum total of our national acquisitions in real estate.




336    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Negotiations were entered into by MIr. W. H. Seward, our Secretary of State, in 1868, to buy the Island of St. Thomas, in the West
Indies; but Congress, holding that the Secretary had no right to spend
money without authority, refused to ratify the purchase, and this led
to considerable ill-feeling, on the part of the Danish government.
The people of St. Thomas testified their wish to become citizens of
the United States, by voting almost unanimously for annexation.
Mr. James Parton, an industrious author, has taken position that
good. faith requires us to ratify the treaty, and he urges the following
considerations:
" That we cannot repudiate Mr. Seward's bargain without inflicting
a very great and irreparable injury upon a respectable nation, our
good friend and ally.
"That if, after paying for Alaska, we refuse to pay for these islands, we stand dishonored before mankind, as having one rule for
the strong and another for the weak.
"' That, however erroneous may be the system which permits the
Executive to commit the country to purchases of land, we have no
right to hold Denmark responsible for that system, nor to reform it at
her expense.
" That, when a foreign government has so much as delayed the
ratification and execution of a properly concluded treaty with the
United States, we have felt ourselves to be grossly wronged, and were
willing to seek redress by violence.
"That these islands, in the opinion of professional men, have a
great and peculiar value, which renders their acquisition highly desirable."
The advice of Washington, in the Farewell Address, is conservatively just upon this, as upon almost every international question: -
"It is our true policy," he says, " to steer clear of permanent
alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we
are now at liberty to do it, for, let nme not be understood as capable
of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements.  I hold the maxim
no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is
always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements
be observed, in their genuine sense; but in my opinion it is unnecessary, and would be unwise to extend them."
Far different from the conquest of India was the peaceful discovery
and settlement of Australia by England, and relative results have
proved it no less beneficent.




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  337
Victoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India
alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the dependencies of
Great Britain.
A party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra banks, mooring their boat
to the forest-trees, and they formed a settlement upon a grassy hill,
behind a marsh, and began to pasture sheep where MIlelbourne, the
capital, now stands. In twenty years Melbourne became the largest
city, but one in the southern hemisphere, having one hundred and fifty
thousand people within her limits. Victoria has grander public
buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a greater
income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and she pays to
her Governor fifty thousand dollars a year, or one-fourth more than
even New South Wales. When looked into, all this success means
gold. There is industry, there is energy, there is talent, there is
generosity and public spirit; but they are the abilities and virtues.
that gold will bring, in bringing a rush from all the world of dashingfellows in the prime of life. The progress of Melbourne is that of
San Francisco. " Some of the New South Welsh," says Mir. Dilke, an.
author, " shutting their eyes to the facts connected with the gold rush,.
assert so loudly that the Victorians are the refuse of California, or;'Yankee scum,' that when I first landed in Melbourne, I expecte4.
to find street-cars, revolvers, big hotels, and fire-clubs, euchre,
caucuses, and mixed drinks.  I could discover nothing American
about Melbourne except the grandeur of the public buildings and the
width of the streets, and its people are far more thoroughly British,
than are the citizens of the rival capital. In many senses Melbourne
is the London, Sydney the Paris, of Australia."
Liberia is the only American colony that has ever been planted on.
a foreign continent. This government is almost an exact reproduc —
tion in miniature of the United States. It was established for the purpose of building up an independent nation of English-speaking Africans;
but the emancipation of the whole race, during the civil war, rendered.
foreign exile unnecessary and unpopular. The whole revenue of.
Liberia is not above sixty thousand dollars a year. Its most dis —
tinguished president has returned to America, and is a resident of
Washington. Great Britain has probably met no more formidable
opposition, in any of her Oceanic colonies, than in New Zealand, or
Tasmania, where war with the native Maoris still continues.  The
lesser British colonies in Asia, Polynesia, and the southern hemi —
sphere, do not require description, as their government has been
43




338    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
already described. In a future chapter upon South America, the British islands in the West Indies will be noticed. One of the most celebrated insular colonies of England is Mauritius, or Isle de France,
off the coast of Madagascar; it is described in the pretty French story
of "Paul and Virginia."  This island and its accessories were captured from the French, in 1810, by a grand expedition. It contains
less than two hundred thousand persons, yet pays its Governor
thirty-five thousand dollars a year. All the more important British
colonies are assessed the salaries of their governors.  Under a
democratic form of government, where the people have liberty to go
at large, and to agitate as they please, it is not wonderful that the
inherent lust to conquer should frequently develop itself in unauthorized expeditions to the weaker coasts and islands in our
neighborhood. Cuba, Central America, parts of Mexico, and Canada
have, at different times, been partly possessed by bands of fillibusters; the Sandwich Islands are held in request by many of our manifestdestinarians, and American adventurers have stormed the walls of
Pekin. Our government has, in every case but one, disavowed these
enterprises; for the belief in the American mind that we shall peaceably succeed to the dominion of all North America is too settled to
exhibit itself in these merely boyish amusements. On this continent
awe are the colonizing race, as the British in the East. Dutch, French,
Portuguese, and Spanish have borne away.prizes in past generations,
hut the only colonies which promise permanently to endure have
been planted by the Anglo-Saxon race.  Sixty years ago, France
possessed two-thirds of North America. Her colonists could assimilate with the savages, but not without losing their own civilization;
and the agile French half-breeds of Hudson's Bay have become the
pliant instrulments of the organizing English mind.
"There was once a time," says De Tocqueville, sadly, " at which
we also might have created a great French nation in the American
wilds, to counterbalance the influence of the English upon the destinies of the New World. France formerly possessed a territory in
North America, scarcely less extensive than the whole of Europe.
The three greatest rivers of that continent then flowed within her dominions. The Indian tribes which dwelt between the mouth of the
St. Lawrence and the delta of the Mississippi were unaccustomed to
any other tongue but ours; and all the European settlements scattered
over that immense region recalled the traditions of our country.
Lauisbourg, Montmorency, Duquesne, Saint Louis, Vincennes, New




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  339
Orleans (for such were the names they bore) are words dear to
France and familiar to our ears.
"But a concourse of circumstances, which it would be tedious to
enumerate, have  deprived  us of this magnificent inheritance.
Whllerever the French settlers were numerically weak, and partially
established they have disappeared; those who remain are collected on
a small extent of country, and are now subject to other laws. The
four hundred thousand French inhabitants of Lower Canada constitute, at the present time, the remnant of an old nation lost in the
midst of a new people.
"The impulse of the British race in the New World cannot be
arrested. The dismemberment of the Union, and the hostilities which
might ensue, the abolition of republican institutions, and the tyrannical government which might succeed it, may retard this impulse,
but they cannot prevent it from ultimately fulfilling the destinies to
which that race is reserved. No power upon earth can close upon
the emigrants that fertile wilderness which offers resources to all industry, and a refuge from want. Future events, of whatever nature
they may be, will not deprive the Americans of their climate, or of
their inland seas, of their great rivers, or of their exuberant soil.
Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy be able to obliterate
that love of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise which seem to
be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish that
knowledge which guides them on their way."
What is to be the fate of the British colonies?  In India and
China, where the British constitute a mere garrison, and handful of
hangers-on, it is impossible that they can keep root save by constant
and wearisome struggles. Australia is almost ripe already to drop
from the parent bough, and plant her own. offspring in the island
seas. Canada must also quit the bough, and she can but obey the
law of gravitation, which will bind her to our destinies. For the
lesser colonies of England, they may be retained so long as British
commerce maintains its sway, but these scattered over the surface
of the earth will not, of themselves, make an empire.
The United States, compact, individual, youthful, enterprising, expects to construct an empire by no such piecemeal lprocess. She has
but to open her gates, and the human sluices fiom both worlds pour
in and people her. Her system of admitting new States into her
counsels is wisely representative. The Territories of the United
States are governed by a Magistrate appointed by the President, and




340    THIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
under him an embryo Legislature meets; in Congress they are represented by a delegate, who can speak upon all matters affecting
his Territory, but cannot vote. When the Territory shows signs of
strength and empire, it is admitted into the Union, if its constitution
is a proper one and its population adequate. Thus the work of local
self-government extends itself westward. First, we formed the nation
out of thirteen colonies; then we formed our wild regions into Territories, and they organized themselves and came to the capital to solicit admission; then we acquired more domain, and it developed into
Territory and State successively. This process of absorption and
organization will continue till we shall have formed this continent
into infinite self-governments, with a. common intelligence directing
the vital life of all, while all shall be free to lead the separate existence of neighborhoods.  England, on the contrary, conquers to bend
and drain. We invite new lands into our family, and we help and
influence them.
At present (1869) there are waiting for admission to the republic
nine Territories, each pressing every energy to meet the requirements of the law and be recognized as integral parts of the United
States.  Our hardest territorial problem is the Indian, and that is a
problem which the Englishman has in every colony. Providence
reserved for our nation chiefly the naked and fertile land; had he
packed it with people of ancient civilizations we should have the
work before us that is making the Englishman despair. And what
is to be our population?
An editorial writer in the " Chicago Tribune," has made a conservative answer to this question, when he says, that "it is highly
improbable.that the population of the United States, by the impending census of 1870, will fall short of forty millions, and it is quite
likely to reach forty-one millions."  Let us compare these figures
with those presented by other civilized powers, in order to obtain at
a glance their relative ranks in the scale of nations:Population.    Sq. Miles.
Russia in Europe                 70,000,000    2,066,000
Russia in Asia....      8,500,000    5,748,000
Russia total                  78,500,000   7,814,000
United States....     41,000,000    3,000,0C0
Alaska purchase....     75,000      500,000
United States total..    41,075,000    3,500,000




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES.  341
Population.    Sq. SMiles.
France....  39,500,000      207,000
Austria....  36,000,000      230,000
Great Britain..                30,000,C00     123,000
German Confederation.          29,500,000     190,000
Italy...                        26,000,030     118,000
Spain...               18,000,000     183,000
Brazil.....   9,000,000    2,973,400
Mexico.8,000,000                              830,000
In the table we have not added to Great Britain her foreign colonies and possessions. If all the subjects, Christian and Pagan, of
the Queen of Great Britain, scattered over the world, were included,
the number would exceed one hundred and sixty millions, and the
area under her sway eight million square miles. But her Christian
subjects are less than thirty-five millions of souls, which places the
number still below that of the United States.
All the above enumerated population, except Russia, have their
laws framed by legislative bodies elected by the people. It will
therefore be perceived that in point of population the United States
stands at the head of the self-governing powers. This is not remarkable to Americans, as we have, many years ago, accepted our
destiny to be at the head of powers and civilizations; still the curious facts of future decades are interesting.  On the basis of the
average increase of the last eighty years, the United States will have
in 1880 the surprising number of fifty-six million four hundred and
fifty thousand; in 1890, it will have seventy-seven million two hundred and sixty-six thousand; and in July, 1900, no less than one
hundred million three hundred and fifty-five thousand nine hundred
and eighty-five people.
And what attached these people to us?
In part, undoubtedly, our zone, and the natural endowments of
this portion of the globe. In part, and of late years, our vindicated
national character and the safety of our institutions. But the magnet
in America is that we are a republic! A republican people! Cursed
with artificial government, however glittering, the people of Europe,
like the sick, pine for nature with protection, for open vistas and
blue sky, for independence without ceremony, for adventure in their
own interest, - and here they find it!
We can therefore be thrilled with the idea of an empire which can-.not soon dissolve. But a more melancholy vision rises upon the eye




342    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of the Englishman, and is gracefully expressed in a passage from one
of his representative journals:"The sceptre may pass away from us; unforeseen accidents may
derange our most profound schemes of policy; victory may be inconstant to our arms; but there are triumphs which are followed by no
reverses. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. These triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our
morals, our literature and our laws!"
Looking back to the severance of our colonies from England, we
can feel how memorable was that step to the progress of mankind, by
observing in the literature and politics of all lands the reverence paid
to our resolution. The better Englishmen find consolation for it in
the improvement of our race and the growth of liberty; the.meaner,
like Browne Roberts, in the apparent calamities of our allies.
" Upon this Armerican war," he says, " the resources of our country
had been poured forth with a lavish hand, and its termination left her
in a state of great exhaustion, with her most bitter enemies exulting
on all hands at her temporary humiliation. This exultation, however, was amply compensated for a few years after, in the calamities
both of France and Spain; the former of these countries having
learned, from contact with America, those revolutionary principles
which soon deluged her own soil with blood, and the latter experiencing an equally prejudical effect in the loss of her South American
colonies, which were not long in following the example of independence given them by their brethren of the North."
We can at this interval, and in the light of our beneficent influence in accomplishing just those things which are above decried,
recall with curiosity, but without emotion, the speech which old King
George III. made to the first American Minister he was obliged to
receive:
"In thus admitting their separation from  the Crown of these
kingdoms, I have sacrificed every consideration of my own to the
wishes and opinions of my people. I make it my humble and earnest
prayer to Almnighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils
which might result from so great a dismemberment of the empire;
and that America may be free from the calamities which have formerly proved in the mother country how essential monarchy is to the
enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Religion, language, interest,
affections, may, and I hope will, yet prove a bond of permanent union




BRITISH COLONIES AND AMERICAN TERRITORIES. 343
between the two countries. To this end neither attention nor disposition on my part shall be wanting."
This speech and this farewell have yet, to be repeated by many
British sovereigns.




CHAPTER XIII.
THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.
Notices of the technical institutions of war of either country, and the composition of the
army and navy. - Representative episodes and personages of the services of the two
nations.
"THE Army and the Navy" is always the favorite toast at an
English banquet. The Englishman believes that his army is as
invincible as his navy, and holds the name of Wellington to be as
eminent in the history of warfare as that of Napoleon. The experiences of the Crimea somewhat unsettled this patriotic superstition,
but the success of the Abyssinian and Indian wars have pretty well
restored the equanimity of the Briton's belief in the invincibility of
his "foot-soldiery."
The Anglo-Saxon has always been a combative, not to say a military, race. The same impulse which led to Anglo-Saxon love of
liberty, early declared itself in opposition to standing armies at
home; and this is the distinguishing peculiarity of both our nationalities, that we have a fixed dislike to a permanent soldiery upon
land, and a reverence for the prowess of our navies.
The British Navy is a permanent institution, and is not, like the
Army, allowed on sufferance, and renewed from year to year. Seamen
have civil privileges beyond those of the soldiery, and in the Navy
" seniority " determines promotion and not purchase.
We have the same inherited notions in America with regard to our
Army and Navy; our Legislatures dislike standing armies, and seldom make objection to the permanence of the Navy. As the law of
England recognizes no other permanent armed force on land than the
National Militia, the American Republic places its chief dependence
upon its volunteers.
The Army, as it stood before the war, was the smallest organization
consistent with public safety in time of peace. We had, in 1860,
eleven thousand eight hundred and forty-eight enlisted men, and one
thlousancl eightyT-three commissioned officers. In July, 1866, Congress
344




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MILITARY INSTITUTIONS.
1-W~oolwvich Academy, England. 2-School of St. Cyr, France.
3-W~est Point, New York.








THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY. 345
discussed very fully what should be its future Army, and, after a long
debate in both Houses, passed the law of July 28, 1866, fixing the
military peace establishment. That law authorized five regiments
of artillery, ten of cavalry, and forty-five of infantry. The minimum
strength and the maximum strength of a regiment of each arm of the
service was fixed, so that the Army might contain eighty thousand
three hundred and seventy enlisted men as the maximum, while the
minimum strength was forty-seven thousand two hundred and seventy
enlisted men. Whether it should be in fact the larger or the smaller
number, or any intermediate number, was left to the discretion of
the President of the United States.
In March, 1869, as the records of the War Department showed, we
had a chain of fortified posts along our coast, extending from Eastport, in Maine, on the Atlantic, to Sitka, in Alaska, on the Pacific,
mounting three thousand two hundred and fifty coast guns; and we
had enough enlisted men in the artillery to enable us to put two men
to each gun.
The present Army of the United States consisted of nearly fifty
thousand men, until the spring of 1869, when, on complaint in Congress of its expensiveness, it was reduced to about thirty-five
thousand.
The British Army, in 1868, consisted of one hundred and forty
thousand men; there were sixty-five thousand soldiers in India alone.
It is upon the militia force of the United States that we place our
chief dependence, and this was estimated in 1868 to consist of three
million three hundred thousand men.
During the civil war in the South which lasted from 1861 to 1865,
the Northern and Border States contributed nearly two million seven
hundred thousand men to the service of the National Government;
Massachusetts furnishing twenty thousand more soldiers than composed the standing army of England; four of the States gave to the
army one-fifth their entire population; during the same period the
Southern States had four hundred thousand men almost constantly in
the field.
Great Britain draws but one in two thousand from production,
and keeps but one hundred and eighty-eight thousand regular troops
in time of peace, at a yearly cost of seventy-one million dollars. In
1867-8, even these figures were reduced fifteen per cent.
Great Britain's Army, including the forces in India, is estimated at
one hundred and eighty-eight thousand regulars, one hundred and
44




346    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
thirty thousand regular reserve, and one hundred and eighty-four
thousand last reserve. Of the first reserve, all except two thousand
regulars are pensioners and militia; while the last reserve is made up
of fourteen thousand yeomanry, and one hundred and seventy thousand volunteers.  The British Army recruits fourteen thousand
annually, out of a population of twenty-nine million. These recruits,
of course, go into the regular Army, where they serve twelve years;
the reserves being, with the exception of the pensioners, little more
than voluntary organizations under the patronage of the government.
The English Militia establishment is a small affair, comprising in
1867 forty-two regiments, with about ninety thousand officers and
men; seven of these regiments are in Lancashire and eight in
London.
At a great review of militia, held the same year, fifty-two thousand
men were in line in Scotland and Ireland.
Great Britain pays in pensions more than ten and one-half millions
of dollars a year.
The English Militia was allowed to fall into decay after the expulsion of the Stuarts, on account of the supposition that it was controlled by the old Tory landed gentry, who were not favorable to the
revolution; still militia officers receive salaries, which is not the case
in America, except when the militia are called out by the Governor.
All the English militia officers, down to Captain, must have a property qualification, and a Colonel receives three thousand dollars a
year. Nearly all the officers are Justices of the Peace; they are appointed by the Lords Lieutenant, or County Governors, who are the
commanding officers in each county, and all the militia are under
control of the Home Secretary, who is a member of the Cabinet in
London. The English yeomanry is a separate body, now of little
practicable account, which originated when Napoleon Bonaparte
threatened to invade England.
In Ireland there are nearly thirteen thousand policemen acting as
soldiers. In India there are upwards of one hundred thousand native
troops, most of whom are heathens.
Oiut of every thousand recruits of the British Army, three hundred
and twenty are Irishmen, and a hundred and twelve Scotchmen.
England has also a volunteer force of a hundred and sixty thousand men, but these are mainly holiday soldiers, like the militia
soldiers of our larger American cities.
Parliament votes large sums to support-and encourage the English




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  347
Militia and volunteers; in 1867 one million eight hundred thousand
dollars was the parliamentary grant to the volunteers alone.
In the same year the total cost of the British Army was seventy
millions of dollars. Prior to the civil war in the South, the United
States Army consisted of only fourteen thousand men. Prior to the
American civil war, we had no military rank higher than that of
Lieutenant-General by brevet, but the remarkable services of Lieutenant-General Grant, and the increase of our regular Army, led to the
revival of the rank of General, and in the same period we created
Admirals in the naval service.  The latter innovation was made
chiefly on account of the embarrassments of our naval officers abroad
in mingling familiarly with those of European nations, but the new
distinction in the Army was meant to be an extraordinary form of expressing the national gratitude to General Grant.
VWhile no movement has been made against the dignity of our
Admirals, considerable feeling has been manifested against continuing the grade of General. After General Grant was elevated to the
presidency, MBr. Butler, an ex-General of volunteers, made a formal
attack upon the pay and perquisites of officers of the regular Army,
and he gave this exhibit of the financial situation of our line officers
as he proposed it. It is probable that his figures are as nearly accurate as those of any authority we can summon.
A Brigadier-General, chief of the department, has $7,606.50 if he
is stationed at Washington; a Colonel has 4,392 dollars; a LieutenantColonel, 3,826 dollars; a Major, 3,537 dollars; a mounted Captain,
2,725 dollars; a Captain, not mounted, 2,605 dollars; a First Lieutenant mounted, 2,177 dollars; a First Lieutenant, not mounted, 2,137
dollars; a Second Lieutenant mounted, 2,177 dollars; a Second Lieutenant, not mounted, 2,077 dollars. So that a Second Lieutenant, just
out of school, gets 2,000 dollars a year, and this is outside of his commutation for his forage, and outside of his allowance for travel.
Abuses having crept into the Army, Mr. Butler, himself an officer
of experience, proposed that the permanent Army establishment be
fixed as follows. I use his own terms:C" I have fixed the pay of each grade of officers in this form, subject, of course, to the better judgment of the House: LieutenantGeneral to have 12,000 dollars a year, -4,000 dollars more than the
Speaker of this House, and 4,000 dollars more than the Vice-President; Major-General, 7,500 dollars; Brigadier-General, 5,000 dollars; Colonel, 3,500 dollars; Lieutenant-Colonel, 2,750 dollars;




348    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Major, 2,500 dollars; Captain, mounted, 2,000 dollars; Captain, not
mounted, 1,800 dollars; Adjutant, 1,800 dollars; Regimental Quartermaster, 1,800 dollars; First Lieutenant,, mounted, 1,600 dollars;
First Lieutenant, not mounted, 1,500 dollars; Second Lieutenant,
mounted, 1,500 dollars; Second Lieutenant, not mounted, 1,400 dollars; Chaplain, 1,200 dollars; Aide-de-camp to Major-General, 200
dollars in addition to pay of his rank; Aide-de-camp to BrigadierGeneral, 150 dollars in addition to pay of his rank; Acting Assistant
Commissary, 100 dollars in addition to pay of his rank; and that
these sums shall be in full of everything.
"Then I provide that commutation for fuel, quarters, forage,
rations, longevity-rations, servants' clothing, pay and rations, and
everything of that sort in the way of allowances, shall be done,
ended, cease, be got rid of, cut off, and put a stop to. [Laughter.]
I provide that that great abuse shall be finally brought to an end, if
it is possible to be done by legislative act. I have provided, however, when officers travel they shall have ten cents per mile."
It is probable that the future regular Army of the United States
will be organized upon Mr. Butler's plan, although the grade of
General has been transiently retained, at the request of President
Grant, in favor of General Sherman, his successor.
The Commander-in-chief of the British Army is generally a member of the royal family, and at present he is the Duke of Cambridge,
the Queen's cousin, a gentleman who, being disqualified as a member
of the royal family from marrying an English woman, has children
by a virtuous lady, who are yet illegitimate before the law. Down to
the year 1846 the Commander-in-chief was a member of the Cabinet,
but he is now controlled by it; at the same time he has the high
privilege of personally communicating with the Queen, in whose
name he issues all his orders. His military Secretary is an important personage, with a salary of ten thousand dollars, who holds
levees at which officers and others having business to transact, find
access to him. His campaigns are generally planned by the Secretary of War; but in the field he is supreme, and the enormous patronage of his office makes him powerful in peace as in war, as he
recommends for all military appointments and promotions, and makes
all the fees and percentages out of his own great office. He has no
control whatever over the general finance of the Army, and cannot
move his troops without the consent of the Secretary of War.
The position of Commander-in-chief of the British Army has been




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  349
frequently abused, and in 1809 Col. Wardell, a militia officer, made a
direct impeachment in Parliament of the Duke of York, the King's
son and Commander-in-chief. He indicated a house in Gloucester
Place, splendid with carriages, servants, and fine furniture, as the
nest of the'corruption he spoke of. In this house, he said, the Duke
of York had placed his mistress, - a woman named Mary Anne
Clarke, — who was in the habit, as could be proved, of selling
offices in the Army by means of her favor with the Commander-inchief. Mrs. Clarke had, in one instance, taken a bribe of five hundred pounds, which she paid over to a silversmith as part-payment for
a service of plate, -the Duke of York discharging the remainder.
Other cases were detailed, which convinced the hearers, in the midst
of their consternation, that there must be some ground for the charges.
The positions laid down by Colonel Wardell were, that Mrs. Clarke
possessed the power of military promotion; that she took money for
the use of that power; and that the Commander-in-chief shared the
money. There were further allegations of Mrs. Clarke having been
bribed by clergymen and gentlemen to procure appointments in the
Church and the State; but the military abuses were those that the
HIouse had first to deal with.
This denunciation of the regular Army by the militia much resembles the raid on the regular Army officers by the volunteers in
1868-9.
The Generals on the English home service, comprising the "home
staff," are appointed as commanding officers over the several districts,
England and Wales being divided into five districts, Scotland and
the Channel Islands into three, and Ireland forming a chief district,
with five subdivisions. The greater colonies have in like manner
their foreign staffs.
An English Field-IMarshal, acting as Commmander-in-chief, receives
about eighty-two dollars a day in gold, but if he be below the rank
of Field-SMarshal he receives forty-seven dollars a day; a General
receives twenty-eight dollars a day; a Lieutenant-General nineteen
dollars; a IMajor-General nine dollars; a Brigadier-General seven dollars; a Colonel six and a half dollars a day. To all the above seven
hundred and fifty dollars a year are paid, as an additional allowance;
the above are all staff officers.. Cavalry Colonels in the field receive
forty-five hundred dollars a year; Lieutenant-Colonels about seven
dollars a day; Infantry Colonels receive twenty-five hundred dollars
a year; Lieutenant-Colonels four dollars and a quarter a day; Privates




350    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
in the field receive from twenty-five to thirty-seven cents a day.
Officers attached to the Queen's household troops are paid much
better, Colonels receiving as high as nine thousand dollars a year.
After serving eighteen years, or if disabled or dismissed by reduction of the Army, officers are permitted to retire on half-pay, a
Colonel's half-pay being nearly four dollars a day, a Captain's about
a dollar and seventy-five cents a day; besides, Parliament grants
about seventy-five thousand dollars a year for extra pensions, which
is distributed in sums of five hundred dollars to retired officers of
high rank.
The most extraordinary feature of the English military service
to an American observer is the purchase and sale of officers' commissions. Except a few distinguished cadets from Sandhurst College, and occasional appointments of non-commissioned officers for
remarkable services, all the military commissions in the British
Army are paid for, and the rate is fixed by law. A man can buy the
rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Life Guards for about thirty-seven
thousand dollars, and in the Foot Guards for forty-five thousand
dollars; in the Dragoons thirty thousand dollars. A Captain's commission brings nine thousand dollars in the Dragoons, twenty-four
thousand dollars in the Foot Guards, and seventeen thousand five
hundred dollars in the Life Guards and Horse Guards. This is considered to be a good investment for one's money, as it pays him a
good interest, gives him rank and employment, and opportunities for
distinction.  There are generally a great number of candidates
ready to buy commissions; they must apply to the Commanderin-chief, who, when opportunities arise, selects those whom he thinks
fit for commissions.
When an American officer resigns his commission he has no interest in its transfer, and he thus loses not only his yearly salary, but
the capital it represents. An Army Colonel, who was about to resign
in 1869, said to me that he was not only losing some five thousand
dollars a year, but the eighty thousand dollars in capital which it
represented.
While an Army commission in America is thus more or less dependent upon temporary political feeling, its possession may be said to
confer even more honor than under a monarchical government; for
in a republic, where there are no titles of honor, the Army and the
Navy confer almost the sole consideration.
A recent Army critic, Wraxall, speaks in the following satirical




THE  3RITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  351
yet truthful way, of the semi-aristocratic organization of the English
Army:" An English officer's education is expressed by so many pounds
sterling. Lord Tuppingliham has been a very tiresome fellow, from
the day when, to the horror of the Earl's servants, he could walk
alone. He revelled in mischief of all kinds before he could write his
name. You know the wondrous splutter upon paper which stands for
his venerable name even now, in his thirty-second year. It was impossible to cram any serviceable knowledge into his head. But then,
of what use was knowledge to the head that bore aloft, along the
broad pavement of Piccadilly, such a hat? Knowledge is the necessity of the head that wears no hat. Lord Tuppingham went to Eton
and learned boating. He went to Cambridge and learned smoking,
and drinking, and the elements of gambling. He reached London,
prepared to hold a command in the Army, to patrol the Haymarket,
and mortgage his estates in St. James Street. On more than one
occasion, while the play ran high, he would composedly eat plover's
eggs that had just cost him one hundred pounds each. Now, with the
vices, and not the studies, of Eton and Cambridge, he was'fit for
nothing but the Army.' Brave, he certainly was. He thrashed a
drayman at college, and will be a prominent figure if his regiment go
to the war. But then, suppose he has his men the wrong way; suppose that his cards and wine have been cultivated at the expense of
his military duties; suppose that he is put on the staff before he is
able to understand one of the vitally important duties of a staff
officer? Lives are lost. The blood of lion-hearted men, and his
own, flows in vain. Of one hundred and sixteen staff officers sent
originally with the British Army to the Crimea, one hundred and
nine were Lord Tuppinghams!"
Another extraordinary feature of the English Army is the military
hierarchy or priesthood, composed of various ecclesiastics of the
Established Church, who have actual rank as Field-Marshals, Generals, Colonels, Captains, Cornets, and Ensigns, and truly may be
said to belong to the church militant.
Both England and America, and indeed all civilized nations, have
military institutions for the education of young officers, and it may
truthfully be said, that those of America have obtained reputation
equal to those of any Continental power, and superior to that of
England. The Academy at West Point is better known in Europe
than any military school in England, and the periodical arrival of




352    THIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
our Naval School fleet in European waters is made a subject of curious and reverential scrutiny. These institutions fully bear out the
democratic character of our government.  Some of the worthiest
officers in our service have been of the poorest origin; amongst these,
dismissing all recent prejudices, may be mentioned the names of
Ulysses S. Grant, and T. Jonathan [" Stonewall "] Jackson.
These fountains of honor in America are the Mlilitary Academy of
Wrest Point, and the Naval School at Annapolis.
The United States Military Academy at VWest Point, on the Hudson River, fifty miles above New York, is the place where the officers
of our regular Army are educated; they are nominated to West
Point by members of Congress, each Representative having the right
to select one lad to be a cadet every two years. The candidate so
nominated undergoes an examination, physical and mental, and if
accepted, passes through the long and exacting course of studies;
if he graduates successfully, he is made an officer in the Army, and
his subsequent career depends upon the exigencies of the service and
his own ability. There are also numerous private and State military
institutions in various parts of the Union, prominent among which
are the Military Academies at Lexington, Virginia, and Frankfort,
Kentucky.
In 1868, the Military Committee of Congress proposed to encourage the formation of private military schools throughout the country,
and introduced a bill to provide colleges with military professors
from the regular Army. The bill was disapproved, and in the debate
considerable dislike of military establishments was exhibited.
In England there are several military schools, which cost altogther
nearly nine hundred thousand dollars a year. Besides the Council
of Military Education, there is the Royal Military Academy at
~Woolwich, the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, the Royal
Hibernian Military School at Dublin, the Military Medical School,
and the Department for the Instruction of Artillery Officers, and
there are also schools and libraries in all the British garrisons,
besides a military branch of the Chelsea Asylum, at London, which
educates five hundred boys a year.
To show the efficiency of West Point, I need only cite General
Garfield's remarks upon its record during the civil war: —
" Among the field officers, I find that of the whole number, three
hundred and forty-nine thousand one hundred and thirty-five are
from West Point, - thirty-nine per cent. Of the general officers,




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  353
twenty-five in all, twenty-one are from West Point, and four only from
civil life. Of the Army staff, numbering six hundred and eightyone persons, two hundred and seven are from West Point, and four
hundred and seventy-four from civil life, those from West Point being
thirty and a half per cent. of the whole number. Of the staff
department proper, however, embracing  the Adjutant-General's
office, the Engineer Corps, etc., two hundred and forty-nine officers in
all, two hundred and twenty-nine are from West Point, and only
twenty from civil life."
The picturesque and historical associations of West Point are far
more remarkable than those of the English military schools, which
are generally situated upon barren heaths like Sandhurst.
The Royal Military College at Sandhurst is about as old an institution as West Point, having been founded in 1799; it is controlled'
by a board of military officers of high rank, appointed by the Queen; 
at the head of it is a Governor; it has also a Lieutenant-Governor,
a Major, two Captains, and Civil Professors who teach mathematics,,
drawing, military surveying, the modern languages, the classics, and
the art of fortification.
The cadets are divided into seniors and juniors. There are but.
fifteen seniors, who are already commissioned officers in the Army,,
having served four years and exhibited high abilities. Unlike West
Point, Sandhurst is self-supporting, its expenses of eighty-five thousand dollars a year being defrayed by the junior gentlemen cadets,
one hundred and eighty in number, These junior cadets are eitherthe sons of noblemen or the sons of officers, a few of whom pay
nothing, being the children of distinguished military men who have
died in distress. The cadets are admitted between the ages of thirteen and fifteen years by nomination from the Governor of the college to the Commander-in-chief. An aristocratic atmosphere surrounds Sandhurst, as it is the intention of the English government to
keep the Army pretty well under the control of the upper classes, and
fill it with the younger sons of noblemen.
The Corps of Royal Engineers is one of the most admirable organizations in the English Army; it was for many years engaged in the
survey of the entire United Kingdom; to it is attached the Corps of:Sappers and Miners; most of the great fortifications in England and
in the Colonies, such as the powerful fort at Point Levi, opposite
Quebec, are executed by the Engineer Corps.
In 1860 the English government spent ten millions of dollars in new
45




354    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
fortifications; in 1861 eleven millions of dollars for the same object,
and subsequently, down to 1866, ten millions of dollars more. At
Portsmouth, which is one of the nearest seaports to London, eight
millions of this money were expended, and at Plymouth, which is also
on the southern coast of England, near Lands-End, one million and a
half were also spent in fortifications; at Gravesend, which lies on
the Thames River, more than thirty miles below London, one million
of dollars were expended; at Pembroke, which lies at the southern
tip of Wales, one million and a half were spent in sea walls; at
Dover, the nearest town to France, one million and a quarter were
spent; at Cork, where much of the American shipping enters, nearly
three hundred thousand dollars were expended; at Portland, which
lies nearly opposite Cherbourg, the great French naval station, one
million and a half were expended; one million and a quarter of dollars were laid out on the forts of Sheerness, near the mouth of the
Thames.
During the same period we Americans have nearly lost our faith
in mere walls of stone, believing iron-clad ships to be the only invulnerable fortifications; we continue work, however, on the powerful
fort at Sandy Hook, at the entrance of New York harbor, and unto
this day the great Stevens' Battery at Jersey City is undergoing con-struction, superintended by General George B. McClellan, one of our.ablest military engineers. The Stev-ens' Battery was the conception
and the -undertaking of a private American citizen, -a fact which
shows in a.marked manner the power of our government to enlist the
voluntary support of its citizens, and is also an evidence of the enterprising character of the rich capitalists of New York.
If the expectations of the contrivers of the Stevens' Battery be not
too sanguine, it vwiU be an invulnerable and perfect defence of the
vast interests of New York, —a floating Cherbourg or Cronstadt
steaming at will through the deep waters of New York Bay, and defying, the fleetsof Europe to capture, for a second time, the city which
was the seat of British occupation during nearly the whole of the
Revolution.
Chatham, to which.reference 1as been made in the chapter on
English Provinces, is the leading:naval station at the mouth of the
Thames, as is Fortress MIonroe at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.
The great event in:the -history of Chatham and its dockyard was
the burning by the Dutch fleet of many English ships-of-war lying.here in ordinary..Qn the 7th of June, 1667, De Ruyter, with a fleet




TIlE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  355
of sixty ships of the line, anchored at the mouth of the Thames. The
English vessels in that river had retired, and the Dutch Admiral accordingly commenced operations in the MIedway, first attacking the
little fort at Sheerness, which was abandoned after a defence of an
hour and a half. Although the preparations and object of the enemy
had been long known, scarcely any defence had been organized.
"The alarm," says Evelyn, " was so great that it put country and
city into a panic, fear, and consternation, such as I hope I shall never
see more; everybody was flying, none knew why or whither." After
the fall of the fort the Zealand and Frieseland ships joined De
Ruyter, whose fleet, now seventy-two ships of the line, blockaded the
mouths of the two rivers. The attack on the ships at Chatham was
made on the 12th of June. The English fleet lay between Gillinghamr
and Chatham, - within the chain that at Gillingham Fort stretched
across the river. Two large ships, the " Mlatthias" and "Charles
V.," were placed as near this defence as posssible, so as to bring
their broadsides to bear on the enemy. The chain, however, was
speedily broken and the two guard-vessels set in flames by fire-ships.
The next day, three eighty-gun ships, " the largest and most powerful
of England," which lay off Upnor Castle, were also destroyed by
the Dutch fire-ships. This disgrace was comparable to our feeling at
the burning of Washington in 1814.
The English consider their greatest naval station to be Portsmouth,
on the coast, south of London. Portsmouth harbor more amply combines spaciousness with security than any other in the kingdom.
Though less than a quarter of a mile wide at the narrowest part of
its entrance, it gradually expands to an extreme breadth of about
four miles, and has an extreme length of about four and a half miles.
Its outline is varied by headlands and creeks, and it is so thoroughly
landlocked that even during violent storms vessels ride here in perfect security. Horsea, Pewit, and Whale Islands cover three small
bays within the harbor; but everywhere the waters are so free from
impediment, that even a ship of the largest size may make sail in
any state of the tide. The current of ebb, being much stronger than
that of flood, prevents any serious accumulation of sand, and keeps
the entrance free and open. Yet the depth of the channel at the
mouth, in low-water spring tides, is only twelve an:l a half feet; and
the width at the same place, between the buoys, is only about ninety
yards; so that first-rate ships, or the large steam-packets of the




356    THE,'NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Royal Steam Company, which draw seventeen feet of water, only occasionally can enter.
English, and indeed European ports at large, bear little comparison
with those of the United States. There are probably no roads in the
world superior to Hampton at Fort Monroe, and no ports outside of
the American continent like those of New York and San Francisco.
In Portsmouth lies the hulk of the ship " Victory," in which Nelson
died.
Nelson is the greatest name in the British Navy, or, indeed, in the
naval history of the world. In gallantry and the capacity to inspire
courage, he reminds us somewhat of Decatur; but his field was wider
than Decatur's, although he was the American's inferior in coolness,
discretion, dignity of character, and muscular power. Nelson remarked of Decatur that his exploit in cutting the frigate Philadelphia
out of Tripoli harbor was equal to any episode in naval history.
Nelson, like Decatur, fought altogether in the era of sailing vessels.
1His father was a clergyman, and the young Nelson commanded a
frigate during the American Revolution; but it was during the Napoleonic wars that he won immortal renown, by the victories of the Nile,
Copenhagen, and Trafalgar; at the former he almost annihilated the
French fleet; at Copenhagen, where he fought the Danes without a
previous declaration of war, he refused to retire from action when his
superior officer made the signal, but, putting his hand to his only re-.maining eye, he looked at the discouraging flag with the blind socket
of the other, and made illustrious the expression, " I don't see it  "
Fort hese two victories he was generously rewarded, and raised to the
peerage; but his wounds, his restless temperament, and his licentiousness would have made his latter days wretched, but for his death in
the hour of victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain at
Trafalgar.
Hearing that these fleets lay in the harbor of Toulon, he offered
his service to the Admiralty, and for fourteen months never left his
ship but three times, and never longer than one hour; in a storm the
enemy evaded him, when he cruised up and down the Mediterraneau
in search of them, went to the West Indies, to Ireland, along the
Atlantic coast of Europe, but failed to discover them. Sick and
spent, lihe returned to his home at Merton, near London, when suddenly he was told that his adversaries had been seen in Cadiz harbor
outside of Gibraltar. He immediately started for Portsmouth, where
he ordered his coffin to be embarked with him; it had been con



THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  357
structed out of the main-mast of a captured French ship-of-war, and
he set sail amidst the greatest enthusiasm. Villeneuve, the French
Admiral, was told in Cacliz, by an American, that Nelson was waiting for him outside with his fleet just beyond the horizon; this disturbing news was denied. On the 19th of October, 1805, the French
fleet was seen coming out of Cadiz. They faced each other two days
afterward, Villeneuve mustering forty sail-of-the-line and frigates;
Nelson thirty-one. Collingwood was Nelson's second in command,
a noble and virtuous character, and they fired the first shot at noon.
One hour and a quarter later a musket-ball struck Nelson's epaulette,
and broke his spine. At half-past four o'clock, just after the last shots
were fired, Nelson expired, and by that time the combined French and
Spanish fleets were sunk, dispersed, or captured, the Spanish Admiral
was mortally wounded, and Villeneuve a prisoner. The French Navy
appeared no more upon the sea during the reign of Napoleon.
Villeneuve was murdered in Paris, as he returned from captivity,
while Nelson's memory was lavishly honored; and when he was interred under St. Paul's Cathedral, the sailors who bore his coffin rent
in pieces the flag which enclosed him and kept them for mementoes.
His brother was made an Earl, and given thirty thousand dollars a
year; his sisters were presented with fifty thousand dollars each, and
one hundred thousand was given them to buy an estate. But the
earnest request which Nelson had made in his will, that his. concubine,
Lady Hamilton, should be maintained by the nation, could not be
respected; she died miserably.
Far otherwise was Wellington honored when he returned to London
after the battle of Waterloo. He had been absent from England five
years. In his characteristic manner, he landed at Dover at the earliest possible moment, went straight to London, and walked into the
House of Lords. He had left the country Sir Arthur Wellesley; he
returned a Duke. As soon as the sloop-of-war conveying him was
seen off Dover, at five in the morning of the 28th of June, the
sea and shore resounded with the salutes fired from the ships and
from the cliffs. Multitudes came thronging to the landing-place; and
they carried the hero on their shoulders to his inn, amidst a roar of
acclamation. That same evening, he was told by the Lord Chancellor, in the presence of a crowded House of Lords, that his was the
only instance, in the history of the British Peerage, of an individual
being, at his first entrance into that House, a Baron, a Viscount, an




358    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Earl, a {Marquess, and a Duke, - each rank being won by distinct
services to the country.
Royal personages had had all the dignities heaped upon them by a
single gift; but no simila, instance existed of rising by patriotic service through all the ranks, before taking a seat among the peers.
Then followed city and royal banquets, given in his honor, at which
the royal family were solicitous to pay their tribute of homage to one
who stood high above the patronage of potentates. It was in 5May,
while in Paris, that his highest title was conferred upon him; and
Parliament voted him two and a half millions of dollars, for the purchase of an estate and the support of his rank. An unprecedented
offer of homage was inade, in a resolution that a deputation from the
House of Commons should wait on him, on his return, to congratulate
and compliment him. Wellington, on being requested to appoint a
time, begged leave rather to go himself, and pay his respects in person; and he appeared in the middle of the House, in the afternoon of
the 1st of July. His address was simple and earnest; and it ended,
like most of his public speeches, in a declaration that he was always
ready for the service of his sovereign and his country.
The French force on the field of Waterloo was about seventy-two
thousand men; the army under Wellington, sixty-eight thousand; the
Prussians bringing thirty-six thousand more in the evening. Napoleon had two hundred and forty pieces of cannon; Wellington, one
hundred and eighty. The loss, in killed and wounded, of the Allies
was nearly eleven thousand, besides six thousand Prussians. That
of the French was forty thousand.
The total armament of Julius Coesar, when he invaded Britain in
cavalry and infantry, amounted to thirty-two thousand men, conveyed across the channel in eight hundred first-class vessels. The
number of vessels employed by William the Conqueror amounted to
three thousand, but of which only between six hundred and seven
hundred were of a superior construction. Supposing the Normans
trebled in number that of the Romans, it must have fallen below one
hundred thousand, or barely one-twentieth of the population of England.
Until within a recent period of a few months, flogging has been a
feature of the entire British service.
" I have more than once heard it argued," says a British officer,
" whether a strong man could bear more than nine hundred lashes,
without being taken from the halberds. The punishment, too, did




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  359
not necessarily cease when the delinquent's suffering overcame his
physical endurance, and nature could bear no longer; but if the
entire sentence was not carried into execution the first time he was
tied up, a second, and possibly a third, time, after allowing a sufficient
interval for the cure of his back in the hospital, was he brought out to
receive the residue. Thus as the first two hundred and fifty or three
hundred lashes gave the greatest pain (after which the flesh becomes
numbed to further blows), the strong man took the whole of his punishment at once, without, comparatively speaking, feeling the last
half of it; while the weaker man, though guilty of the same crime
only as the strong one, was twice or thrice made to endure the acute
torture attending the first strokes of a fresh flogging. In many regimenlts, too, it was the custom to flog by the tap of a drum,- that
was, for a drummer to stand by and give the time to him who wielded
the cat, by tapping on the drum-head with a single drumstick, at
measured intervals of about two seconds. Sometimes these intervals
were longer; and I have heard of half-minute time being practised,
though I never saw it, which must have prolonged the torture to a
most unnecessarily cruel extent. Yet excess of punishment had by
no means the desired effect of repressing crime; the reverse was the
fact. Flogging was too often witnessed to be greatly dreaded, and
too indiscriminately inflicted to be considered at all degrading. The
worst regiments in the service were those whose Colonels were
too liberal of the lash; and, on the contrary, the best were those
where there was but little flogging."
From this cruel infliction, Americans can understand why so many
British sailors and soldiers have deserted to our milder service, and
these desertions led to the assertion of the right of search which led
to so many difficulties between America and England.
Far different is the treatment of the common soldier by the United
States. During the civil war our Sanitary and Christian Commissions
were allowed free access to the soldiery, and beautiful and compassionate women, a republic of Florence Nightingales, brightened the
battle-fields and the hospitals.
The most remarkable scientific and philanthropic monument of any
war is the Army and Navy MIelical Museum at Washington, which
occupies the sacred. fane, formerly the theatre, where President Lincoln was assassinated.
The contentents of the building are now of the aggregate reminder of
the bruises, wounds, and agonies of the entire struggle for the Union.




360    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
In the Army Medical Museum are deposited the names and casualties of every stricken soldier, and it is a perpetual miniature of
that vast field of war, whose campaigns of beneficence followed in
the footsteps of its heroes, and death and mercy went hand in hand.
Here are sixteen thousand volumes of hospital registers, forty-seven
thousand burial records, two hundred and fifty thousand'names of
white, and twenty thousand names of colored, soldiers, who died in
hospitals. Iere are the names and cases of two hundred and ten
thousand and twenty-seven men, besides, discharged from the army
disabled. Here are names and statements of one hundred and thirtythree thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven wounded men brought to
hospital, and the particulars of twenty-eight thousand four hundred
and thirty-eight operations performed with the knife. Read over
these figures again to get a conception of the infamy of war, and the
heroism of man. In them the butchered hecatombs of bullocks and
heifers slain for our appetites seem to find approximation. In one
year, - so methodized and perfect are the rules and registers collected
in this fire-proof building, - forty-nine thousand two hundred and
twelve cases of men, widows, and orphans demanding pensions have
been settled in this edifice. If you look through the lower floors, you
will see a hundred clerks searching out these histories, cataloguing
them, classifying them, bringing the history of the private soldier down
to the reach of the most peremptory curiosity, and assisting to " heal
the broken-hearted, and set at liberty them that are bruised."
It is this museum which is at once the saddest memorial of the
common soldier, and'the noblest monument to the army surgeon. It
contains a complete history of the surgery of the war, illustrated by
casts, models, photographs, and preparations. There are here nine
hundred medical pathological preparations, and two thousand eight
hundred microscopical preparations. There is no similar Army
Medical Museum  in the world, and from Baron Larrey, down to
Nelaton and Joubert, the published reports of this collection have delighted and surprised the sarans of the world. Scarcely a leading
surgeon in Europe but has written praises and sent them here.
Among the curious facts shown here are these: the average life of
an American is forty years, which is better than in Prussia, and corresponds with the average in England, Wales, and France. The rate
of mortality in America, in the working period of life (between
fifteen and forty-five), is higher here than elsewhere in the world.
Not so in childhood and advanced years, where the insurance offices




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.   361
seem to get the weather side of us. The mean age of a generation in
America is between thirty-two and thirty-three years. The average
age of all the soldiers of the late war was from  twenty-three to
twenty-six years; so that the average soldier is scarcely eligible to
the House of Representatives. This is a higher average than the
Prussian soldiery, twenty-three and a half, or the British, twentythree. The average heighth of American men is sixty-eight inches;
of recruits to the regular Army, sixty-nine inches; of recruits to the
volunteer Army, sixty-seven and a half inches. Forty-seven nationalities fought on the Union side in this war, and the average of nearly
three hundred and fifty thousand of them in height was sixty-six and
three-quarter inches.  So we are an inch and a half higher than
British soldiers, and two and four-fifths higher than French. Average
chest of American soldiers is thirty-five inches, of senators thirtyeight and a half; so that a life-time of politics only blows one up
three and a half inches. Minnesota had the tallest men in the army,
and New Hampshire the shortest, -a singular fact against our traditions. Kentuckians had the best chests, and Massachusetts men the
smallest. Senators weigh on the average one hundred seventy-one
and a half pounds, and soldiers one hundred forty-seven and a half.
A million drafted men, examined and reported upon, show that we
are the best fighting nationality in the world, and have no right to
be excused in any considerable percentage. Only three in a thousand
of us have not good patriotic chests, and four and a half per thousand
of us are deaf. About two and one third in a thousavd are nearsighted; so that it is somewhat remarkable that so many eye-glasses
are worn; and the varicoceous people are even in smaller fraction. A
club-foot is one in a thousand; but imbecility, as all are aware, is
more common, and goes two better. In Delaware and Missouri
nobody much goes insane, but New Hampshire and Rhode Island
stand well along, nearly three to the thousand. In IMassachusetts,
so itching is the temper of the people, nearly four in a thousand
have skin diseases.  Iowa and Kansas are exempted from vicious
diseases, while the highest rate, thereof, was, of course, in the District
of Columbia. Eighteen men to the thousand could not bite cartridges,
though they were probably equal to beef-soup.
To return to the Army and Navy.
The total number of screw steamships afloat in the Navy of the
United Kingdom is three hundred and forty-one; building, twenty-one.
46




362    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
The total number of paddle steamships afloat is seventy-three; building,
one. The grand. total of effective sailing-ships afloat is thirty-eight,
and the grand total of steam and sailing is four hundred and seventyfour.
In 1861 the whole United States Navy consisted of forty-one menof-war, chiefly sailing vessels. At the end of the war the Navy consisted of seventy-five monitors, four hundred and one screw or paddle
steamers, and one hundred and twelve sailing-vessels, carrying in all
four thousand four hundred and forty-three guns. In 1867, there
were two thousand forty-eight officers, of all ranks, including one
Admiral [Farragut], one Vice-Admiral, and twenty-seven Rear-Admirals. There were thirteen thousand six hundred men, and the
naval expenditure, for the year ending June, 1867, was about fortythree and one half millions of dollars. We had eight dock-yards. In
1867 the English Navy cost about fifty-five millions of dollars, and
was composed of sixty thousand sailors and mariners.
The number of first-class cadets admitted into the English Navy,
in the year 1866, was one hundred and sixty. The Military Academy
at West Point will be described in the probable chapter on the French
Army. It is as beautifully situated as any castle on the Rhine.
Scarcely less picturesque is the site of the United States Naval
Academy, at Annapolis, on the beautiful sheet of -water called Chesapeake Bay, some forty miles from Washington.
It takes two hours to make the trip, of which one hour is spent between Washington and the place called Annapolis Junction, and
another between the Junction and Annapolis. The Junction is a
tavern, a station, and some woodsheds pitched in a piece of woods,
near by which, on a plain, are uneasy indications of the impending'
birth of a town. The Annapolis road is not the property of the
Baltimore and Ohio Company, and it is a profitable corporation. It
traverses the ridge of the long and narrow neck between the Patuxent and the Severn Rivers, a neck of glades, swamps, scrub-pine
and sassafras timber, and silent remindings of a past agricultural
vigor, sapped by tobacco and smitten by war. A half-dozen of stations,
incomplete unless there be a tavern-bar somewhere around, stand at
the crossings of desert roads, and all the way one sniffs the air of the
salt bay and its back waters. The sky and the horizon grow cool
and vague, and we see, or imagine, watery mirages in the air. An
appetite for shell-fish is discovered coming to one, a suggestion of
yellow perch, and insane cravings to wade along some shallow beach
J "'~" i"'~17 "~` "`""~ ~"        ZD




THIE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  363
with an umbrella and a fishing-rod. By the time you have got the
appetite very bad you are at Annapolis.. A brief sketch of the town
may serve to freshen up the duller routine of our statistics.
From the venerable State HIouse steeple I took this sketch of the
old revolutionary city, in the summer of 1869: -
N'ot above half a mile from boundary to boundary, by any diameter,
the snuggest of little cities sat, to the water's edge on three sides,
upon a mound-like peninsula. At the top of the mound, in the
middle of the town, was the State Capitol. Two wide salt coves,
coming in from the Severn, approached each other, and by the narrow
neck between them came in the railway and the common road. These
broad coves widened and narrowed like a chain of miniature lakes,
and lying, as they did, in the greenest of foliage, I lilkened them to
the Lakes of Killarney. The peninsula of the city itself, and the bay
of the Chesapeake and Severn into which it protruded, reminded me
of Monaco, the little principality city, on the Mediterranean. The
shape of the peninsula is a broad lance-head, pointing, not out toward
the bay, but toward the opposite side of the Severn, which is here
about a mile and ahalf wide. On the blunt point of the peninsula is
the Naval Academy. At the outlet of the cove, to the right, is the
Priests' College, occupying the mansion and homestead of Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton. At the outlet of the cove, to the left, is St.
John's College, the oldest continuous institution of Maryland. Behind the State Capitol is the parish church of St. Ann's. Facing the
Chesapeake is the market and inlet. Two miles outside is the bay.
These are the main features of the little city of Annapolis, whose
natural position is one of the shrewdest pickings from nature.
A series of green capes, golden-edged with beaches, introduce the
bay. Behind the White light-house, on the further cape, and the
light-ship moored upon the outer bar, one sees the blue-wooded line
of Kent Island, the Plymouth Rock of Maryland, and the long, fruity
peninsula of the Eastern Shore, that pleasant bar which keeps the
Atlantic back from the noblest of our eastern estuaries. Far up and
down this silent mirror of water the eye can ramble from spit to spit,
from islet to island, guessing the mouths of many rivers, watching
the tacking of pungies, and the steamers putting in at pleasant landings; and at the piers of the Naval Academy, with their gay buntings
spread and flowipg, lie at their cables the school fleet, a little navy
of itself. There, at the wharf, is the frigate Constitution, in which
IIull, Bainbridge, and Stewart won redeeming honors in our second




364    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
war. Beyond is the Macedonian, which Decatur took from the British
off the Azores in the fall of 1812. There, also, are the Dale, the
Savannah, and the Santee, such models of wooden ships as made the
hearts of our fathers rise. Further in the channel is the yacht
America, which outsailed the English Navy in a race, and then, as a
blockade-runner, outsailed our steamers. All these constitute the
school fleet, which is (Aay) within a couple of weeks to spread sail
and take the midshipmen to some distant seas.
President Polk established the Naval School at Annapolis in 1845;
it includes about a hundred acres of ground, and its buildings are spacious and comfortable; they surround a large square of green, open
on the water side, and near by is a beautiful park for the entertainment of the cadets. Here, as at West Point, splendid balls are frequently given; for, with all our republican jealousy of a standing
Army, and a permanent Navy, the young officers of both services hold
the highest rank in social life.
Every year a number of eminent gentlemen are invited by the
President of the United States (who has the appointment of a few
cadets at large) to visit West Point and Annapolis, and report upon
their condition; the people are thus kept informed of affairs in
these nurseries of our united services, and the public jealousy is allayed.
The Board of Visitors, for Annapolis, in 1869, expressed themselves as delighted with the efficiency of the school: —
" We doubt," they say, " if any institution in the world affords
equal facilities for the theoretical and practical study of steam, and
the steam-engine. There is, on shore, an edifice called the " steam,
building," in which a marine engine, complete in all its parts, even to
the screw propellor, is kept ready for use, and open to the midshipmen. The department is well supplied with models, and drawings,
and contains boilers in several stages of construction. The text-book
in use, in 1869, was' lrain Brown upon the Steam-Engine,' an
English work, deficient in some respects, and erroneous in others.
It contained no analysis of American coals, nor any table showing
their relative efficiency. The dozen lines devoted to anthracite coal
contain several inaccuracies. It had no list of our ships, and its long
list of British ships contains the names of many that are not in the
service, and its table of engines in ships makes no mention of the
boilers attached, which are the real exponents of the power of the
machine. Some capable officer could be selected to prepare a text



THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY. 365
book on the subject, which would be very valuable, not only to the
Academy, but to many other American schools.
" The police of the grounds and buildings is admirable. Tobacco
in every form and intoxicating liquors of every description are positively forbidden. Regular instruction is given in dancing, boxing,
and small and broad sword exercise, and all are required to submit to
gymnastic training. Ball-playing, and rowing are encouraged. The
result of all this care is a remarkably fine physical development, with
instances of superior gymnastic skill and strength, and a very satisfactory general condition of health. During the year 1869, out of
nearly four hundred students and officers, there was only about two
per cent. excused from duty by reason of ill-health."
The amount of money expended, since the civil war, upon all
buildings at Annapolis, including the wholly new, and the alterations,
is about two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
At West Point and Annapolis the government has property worth
not less than three millions of dollars.
The school at Annapolis is unique and remarkable, amongst all the
nations; but West Point resembles, in many respects, the great military schools of Europe.
The United States Navy is recruited by voluntary enlistments,
while in France a naval conscription takes place in all the seaport
towns, and in England the terrible press-gang formerly kidnapped
watermen wherever they could find them.
An English authority says, of the straits to which the British Navy
has been reduced by abandoning impressment, that in 1869, "in the
absence of a compulsory conscription like that of France and Russia,
our greatest difficulty had been in promptly increasing the regular
Af:my by voluntary enlistment. It drove the government to the establishing of recruiting depots on the continent, and in the colonies,
and to the hire of the Turkish and Sardinian contingents. But these
first obstructions had been surmounted, and in the spring of 1856,
England was ready with an array of vastly augmented armaments,
naval and military. She had begun the war with a nucleus of only.
ten thousand gallant men. It had been augmented to one hundred
thousand, of which seventy thousand were in the Crimea, in renovated health, strength, and discipline, ready to open the campaign.
Our ships-of-war, when hostilities commenced, only numbered two
hundred and twelve; when the war ended they numbered five hundred and ninety.'The trident of Neptune is the sceptre of the.




366    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
world,' and Queen Victoria certainly wielded it, when at the grand marine display, at Spithead, after the peace (April 23d), she reviewed a
fleet extending twelve miles, mustering three thousand eight hundred
guns, forty thousand men, moved by a steam power of thirty-three
thousand seven hundred and twenty horses. It was science, riches,
and the heart of the people in the cause that had extemporized this
magntficent novel review."
It was the scarcity of seamen to fight her battles during the Napoleonic wars, which caused England to advance the arrogant doctrine
of the right of search, which was one of the causes of the second
American war.  Almost within cannon sound of the Capitol, the
frigate Chesapeake was boarded, members of her crew ironed, and
carried away, and some of them were afterward hanged. This, and
other outrages, led to the eloquent reproaches of Richard Rush: —
" lMen are the property of the nation. In every American face a
part of our country's sovereignty is written. It is the living emblem
- a thousand times more sacred than the nation's flag itself- of its
character, its independence, and its rights.
"'But,' say the British,' we want not your men; we want only
our own. Prove that they are yours, and we will surrender them.'
Baser outrage! more insolent indignity! that a free-born American
must be made to prove his nativity to those who have previously violated his liberty, else he is to be held forever as a slave! That before a British tribunal - a British boarding-officer - a free-born
American must be made to seal up the vouchers of his lineage, to
exhibit the records of his baptism  and his birth, to establish the
identity that binds him to his parents, to his blood, to his native land,
by setting forth in odious detail his size, his age, the shape of his
frame, whether his hair is long or cropped, his marks, like an ox or
a horse of the manger, - that all this must be done, as the condition
of his escape from the galling thraldom of a British ship!"
The United States possesses seventeen million dollars of cannon, shell, and ball, which are not in use. We rifle fewer cannon,
in proportion, than either England or France.
There are two steam rams in the British Navy, - the Scorpion and
the Wivern, - both of which were built for the revolted government
of the Southern States, during the American civil war.
The swiftest vessel-of-war in the world is the American Steam
Sloop Wampanoag. No approach to this vessel, either in speed, or
economy of fuel, or length of time of steaming at a high rate of
-- --— 2~ —  -r- r  I v~~rvrr ~lb ~~ V1 ~~~~ L~VVID




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY. 367
speed has ever been made. The engineering journals of England
have questioned the veracity of the captain, by inventing the statement that the speed was obtained by the assistance of sails, not
knowing how else to account for it, and they declare the speed impossible under any other circumstances. It is well known in America, that no canvas was carried, - in fact, could not be carried at the
speed; for when it was attempted to'ascertain the vessel's speed,
under steam and sail combined, the vessel's speed was so great, under
steam alone, that the velocity of the wind was insufficient to -add
more power.
The Wampanoag is three hundred and thirty-five feet long, fortytwo feet in breadth, and she draws eighteen and and one-half feet of
water. The fastest steamers in English waters are the British mail
vessels, which ply between Holyhead and Dublin across the shortest
breadth of the English Channel; they were constructed under a guaranty to run twenty miles an hour; they are three hundred and
twenty-seven feet long, thirty-five feet in breadth, and displace nineteen hundred tons. The fastest of these mail steamers runs fourteen
and one-half geographical miles an hour, or crosses the Channel in three
hours and fifty-five minutes. The Wampanoag runs sixteen and
three-fourths geographical miles an hour, and yet displaces four thousand two hundred and fifteen tons. The Wampanoag runs at double
the speed of the English mail steamer in proportion of size of boiler
to vessel; it will thus be seen that the United States Government in the national navy-yards can construct swifter vessels than
the best private ship-builders in England, whether on the Clyde, the
Mersey, or the Thames, the Wampanoag being still a new vessel.
Indeed, the hulls of United States ships and steamers have always
been more beautiful and adapted to a higher rate of speed than those
of any nation; our clipper ships led the mercantile navy of the world
in speed; and the yacht America, which is now a part of the school
fleet of the naval academy at Annapolis, carried off the honors over
all England in English waters. The fastest merchant ocean steamer
ever built was the Adriatic of the " Collins' Line."  She was built for
speed without regard to economy, and so completed the ruin of her
owners. She is now the property of an English corporation. Her
highest speed was less than sixteen miles, while the Wampanoag's
was seventeen and three-quarter miles an hour. These results show
that American naval constructors retain their superiority, notwithstanding the fact that we nave no steamers carrying the national




368    THE NEW WORLD' COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
flag on the Atlantic except those of the American Navy. The
destruction caused by Southern privateers with the ungenerous aid
of English ship-builders and English ports, drove all our better ships
off the sea between the years 1861-5, or compelled their owners
to sell them to foreign governments.
Since the close of the war, the high tax upon all articles entering
into the composition of a ship has made it unprofitable to build
vessels in this country. Our exports as well as our imports are
now chiefly in foreign bottoms. The carrying trade between the
United States and Europe is almost literally in the hands of Europeans. Were it not for the few ships still employed in the China
trade, and the stand we are making by the establishment of a line of
steamers on the Pacific, the coastwise trade, which is retained by the
exclusion of foreign competition, would seem to be about all that can,
under existing legislation, be relied upon for the employment of
American shipping. This lamentable condition of things is justly
a source of mortification to every American who remembers the past
enterprise and beauty of our mercantile marine. The legislation of
the country has recently been entirely in the interests of the manufacturing classes. Europeans do no longer say " Who reads an
American book? " but," "Who sees an American ship?"  This prostration of our marine is at this time to be especially deplored, in view
of the magnificent opportunities opening to us on the Pacific Ocean,
where we possess in a higher degree than any nation the confidence
of the Oriental nations. Our ship-yards are going to decay, and we
have not the privilege of importing the materials to construct ships,
nor to buy foreign ships free of duty. At the same time we are importing immense quantities of trivial articles, which add nothing to
our power and dignity of true enjoyment. The Secretary of the
Treasury reported in 1869, that, two-thirds of the importations
of the United States consist of articles which, in economical
times, would be pronounced luxuries. The war and a redundant
currency have brought about unexampled  extravagance, which
can only be satisfied by the most costly products of foreign
countries.  No exception could be taken to such importations
if they were paid for in our own productions. This, unfortunately is not the fact. They are annually swelling our foreign debt,
without increasing our ability to pay it.  There is no department of the government which is conducted with proper economy.
The habits formed during the war are still strong, and will only yield




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.   369
to the requirements of inexorable law. History affords no parallel
case of a nation so fond of the sea as the Americans, and with such
a genius for building ships, which has yet discouraged its sailor boys
so entirely, and so fully succeeded in legislating its flag off the ocean.
WIe send our mail-bags to Glasgow, to Liverpool, to Southampton,
to Brcmen, to tlamburg, to Antwerp, and to Brest in foreign ships;
in foreign ships they return to us; the coastwise trade is all that we
keep, and even this reservation was thrown up to the commercial interests by a member of Congress from Pennsylvania, in 1868, while
he asked for increased tariff for his manufactures.
The most grievous feature of the decline of American commerce
is, that it has discouraged our boys from  going to sea, so that we
can scurcely be said at present to have any native seafaring element;
our nary is mainly manned by foreigners and negroes, and the maritime amusements which were formerly characteristic of the youth
of all our cities are now almost entirely confined to New York city.
The English, on the other hand, take every opportunity to encourage
cruising, boating, and yachting, in order that the ancient naval spirit
of their islands may never be broken nor weakened. There are some
fifteen yacht clubs in England giving employment to over one thousand persons. The Royal Yacht Club numbers over two hundred
and fifty members, the greater portion of whom are representative
men in the Kingdom of Great Britain. Hon. Earl Vane is the Commodore. Fifty-nine vessels, all told, including yawls, cutters, schooners, and steamers constitute this yacht club.
The British Navy has a nomenclature mainly derived from mythology, from the names of the royal family, or from certain waspish
and formidable qualities, natures, and elements.
The American Navy was in great part baptized in honor of the
beautiful Indian nomenclature of our streams and mountains, but in
1869 a Mr. Borie, temporarily Secretary of the Navy, adopted in bulk
the copyright titles of a large number of British ships, at which the
country's good taste and individuality was justly incensed. I append
the namles of the very largest vessels of the two navies.
AMERICAN.                        BRITISH.
COLORADO, Screw-frigate, 3,425 tons, MINOTAUR, 6,221 tons, screw, 1,350
52 guns, some of them firing shot of   horse-power, 36 guns, 400 feet long,
2,206 pounds, or about the weight   59 beam, iron-clad.
of 7 cook stoves.
47




370    TIlE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
AMERICAN.                        BRITISH.
ROANOKE, 3-turreted monitor, 3,435  BLACK PRINCE, 6,109 tons, 41 guns,
tons, 615-in. pivot guns, 350 horse-   1,250 horse-power.
power.
NEW IRONSIDES, Iron-clad frigate, NORTHUMBERLAND, 6,621 tons, 1,350
3,486 tons, 16 guns, 600 horse-pow-   horse-power, 26 guns.
er.
Other names of British ships are Royal Alfred, Agincourt, AEtna,
Royal Oak, and Viper. The iron-clad ram Dunderbur~, formerly in
our Navy, is now the largest iron-clad in the Navy of France, which
purchased her for two millions of dollars; she carries 16 guns, and
has a burthen of 5,090 tons.
In 1869 there were thirty armories and arsenals belonging to the
United States, employing nearly sixteen hundred persons, of whom
more than one-third were machinists and armorers. The combined
monthly pay of all these persons was about ninety-four thousand
dollars.  In the same year the Surgeon-General's department cost
sixty-five thousand dollars.
The great English musket and rifle factory at Enfield is modelled
after our armory at Springfield. The American Army is at present
armed with the Springfield breech-loading rifle, which is pronounced
a better weapon than either the Needle or Chassepot gun.
A fine opportunity was afforded us of studying the relative merits
of the French and British services during the Crimean War. While
the British Navy acquitted itself with distinction, the organization
and the handling of its Army were far inferior to the French, and
the entire war upon the English side may be stid to have been a
tissue of disasters, while the French came out of it with glory at the
crowning period of the siege of Sebastopol; the French captured the
Malakoff, the most powerful redoubt, while the English assault upon
the Redan was attended with miortification and repulse.
Russell, the "Times" correspondent was obliged to bear this testimony to the merits of the French: —'At five minutes before twelve o'clock, the French, like a swarm
of bees, issued forth from their trenches close to the Malakoff,
scrambled up its face, and were through the embrasures in the twinkling( of an eye. They crossed the seven metres of ground which
separated them from the enemy at a few bounds; they drifted as
lightly and quickly as autumn leaves before the wind, battalion aftet




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.   371
battalion, into the embrasures, and in a minute or two after the head
of their column issued from the ditch, the tri-color was floating over
the Korniloff Bastion. The musketry was very feeble at first,indeed, our allies took the Russians by surprise, and very few of the
latter were in the Mialakoff; but they soon recovered themselves, and
from twelve o'clock till past seven in the evening the French had to
meet and repulse the repeated attempts of the enemy to regain the
work, when, weary of the fearful slaughter of his men, who lay in
thousands over the exterior of the works, and despairing of success,
the Muscovite General withdrew."
The same author speaks thus of the failure at the Redan after the:
English were driven out: —
"The scene in the ditch was appalling, although some of theofficers have assured me that they and the men were laughing at the
precipitation with which many brave and gallant fellows did not,
hesitate to plunge headlong upon the mass of bayonets, muskets, and
sprawling soldiers, - the ladders were all knocked down or broken,.
so that it was difficult for the men to scale the other side, - and the
dead, the dying, the wounded, and the uninjured were all lying in;
piles together. The Russians came out of the embrasures and plied'
them with stones, grape-shot, and the bayonet, till step by step, pelt-.
ing each other with huge stones, they retired, slipping and tumbling.
into the ditch, where many poor fellows were buried alive from the
scarps giving way. Then came the fearful run for life or death, with
men rolling over like rabbits, then tumbling into the English trench,,
where the men lay four feet deep on each other."
Captain George B. McClellan, an American officer, says that the~
failure of the English assault may be attributed partly to the fact,
that their advanced trenches were too small to accommodate the:
requisite force without confusion, in part to their not being pushed'
sufficiently near the Redan, but chiefly to that total absence of con-.
duct and skill in the arrangements for the assault, which left the,
storming party entirely without support. Had it been followed at
once by strong reinforcements, it is almost certain that the English
would have retained possession of the work.
British criticism upon this war is of a very dolorous character.
One authority mentions that'" the natives preferred the French uniform
to ours. In their sight there can be no more effeminate object than a
warrior in a shell jacket, with closely shaven chin and lip, and
cropped whiskers. He looks, in fact, like one of their dancing troops,,




372    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and cuts a sorry figure beside a great Gaul in his blazing red pantaloons and padded frock, epaulettes, beard d'Afrique, and well-twisted
moustache. The pashas think much of our men, but they are not
struck with our officers. The French made an impression quite the
reverse. The Turks could see nothing in the men, except that they
thought the zouaves and chasseurs of the French dashing-looking
fellows; *and they considered their officers superior to ours."
For a fine piece of description, I instance a part of Russell's most
famous letter upon the sailing of the British fleet up the Black Sea,
at the commencement of the Crimean War:
" It was a vast armada. No pen could describe its effect upon the
eye. Ere an hour had elapsed it had extended itself over half the
circumference of the horizon. Possibly no expedition so complete
and so terrible in its means of destruction, with such enormous power in engines of war, and such capabilities of locomotion, was ever
yet sent forth by any worldly power; for the conjunction of such a
corps d'elite - the whole disposable British army - with a fleet of
such strength, and an artillery of unequalled range, had assuredly
no parallel in history. Its speed was restricted to four miles and a
half per hour, but with a favoringwind it was difficult to restrain the
vessels to that rate, and the transports set no sail.'" The French fleet was visible, across the whole diameter of the
circle,- that is, they had a front of some eighteen miles broad, and'gradually the irregular and broken lines tapered away till they were
lost in little mounds and dots of smoke, denoting the position of the
steamers far down below the horizon. The fleet, in five irregular and
straggling lines, flanked by men-of-war, and war steamers, advanced
slowly,.filling the atmosphere with innumerable columns of smoke,
which gradually flattened out into streaks, and joined the clouds,
adding to the sombre appearance of this well-named' Black' Sea.
The land -was lost to view very speedily beneath the coal clouds and
the steam clouds of the fleet, and, as we advanced, not an object was
visible in the Ihalf of the great circle which lay before us, save the
dark waves and the cold sky.
" Not a bird flew, not a fish leaped, not a sail dotted the horizon.
Behind us all was life and power, — vitality, force, and motion, - a
strange scene in this so-ealled Russian Lake!"
The question is frequently asked, which nation would have the
victory if England and America were at war. In such an event it is
probable that there would;be no victory, but only mutual disaster.




THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN ARMY AND NAVY.  373
The American volunteer soldier of the present generation has no superior in any land, either in military experience, in ability to endure
fatigue, in intelligence, in versatility, or in bravery, and notwithstanding our commercial misfortunes, the American Navy may be said, at
present, to be better than at any time in its history. When we invented the monitor, we demolished with her one turret the navies of
the globe; their wooden fleets fell to pieces, and they hastened, at
vast expense, to rebuild them on American suggestions. We have no
need to go to war with England, and we need have no fear of a foreign nation invading us. De Tocqueville forty years ago spoke in
this manner of our impregnable position:-'-Placed in the centre of an immense continent, which offers a
boundless field for human industry, the Union is almost as much insulated from the world as if its frontiers were girt by the ocean.
Canada contains only a million of inhabitants, and its population is
divided into two inimical nations. The rigor of the climate limits
the extension of its territory, and shuts up its ports during the six
months of winter. From Canada to the Gulf of Mexico a few savage tribes are to be met with, which retire, perishing in their retreat,
before six thousand soldiers. To the South, the Union a point of
contact with the Empire of Mexico; and it is thence that serious hostilities may one day be expected to arise. But for a long while to
come the uncivilized state of the Mexican community, the depravity
of its morals, and its extreme poverty, will prevent that country from
ranking high amongst nations. As for the powers of Europe, they
are too distant to be formidable.
" The great advantage of the United States does not, then, consist
in a Federal Constitution which allows them to carry on great wars,
but in a geographical position which renders such enterprises extremely improbable."




CHAPTER XIV.
BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.
The national debts, revenues, and expenditures of the two countries; their prospects for
solvency, and their different systems of money management.
WITH a nation, as with a man, there can be no true independence,
unless its credit be good, and its dealings just.  It may be valorous
as Paraguay, but who will lend it money unless it has thrift, resources, and business honor? It may have the genius of Ireland, but the
world will not respect it, if it is perpetually impoverished. All society,
all government, turn upon money as the pivotal principle; for it is
the unit of prosperity, and with a modern state, even more than with
an individual, is the vital element of greatness. With money laid up
by the father of Frederick the Great, modern Prussia was enabled to
take rank among the great powers. With money, England subsidized
all Europe to make war upon France, and by her purse rather than by
her sword, overthrew the greatest military genius of history. In England, the management of the national finances has always been intrusted to the most powerful statesman of his party; but in America, we
have always considered the management of foreign affairs to be the
most honorable post in the Cabinet, until, when the civil war of 1861
broke out, we learned for the first time that the exchequer was even
more important than the map of the campaign.  Within five years
our- public debt bounded from less than sixty-five millions to about
two billions and eight hundred millions of dollars. From being the
least involved of all great states, we found ourselves'deeper in debt
than any, except Great Britain. The national debt of the United
States, on the 1st of July, 1869, was two billion four hundred and
eighty-nine million two thousand four hundred and eighty-one dollars,
having been reduced in four years, more than the English debt in fifty.
The whole of this debt was incurred in the struggle to maintain our
nationality intact. Little, or none of this mighty indebtedness was
incurred in harassing our neighbors of other nations, in paying subsidies to the mercenaries and refugees of other Christian lands, or in
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BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               375
jealous interferences with the regimen of our continent. A part of
it was loaned for internal improvements; the rest to save the republic for posterity. After the Revolution, in 1789-91, the debt of the
United States was about seventy-five and one-half millions; by 1812
it had declined to forty-five and one-fourth millions; the second war
with England brought it up to one hundred and twenty-seven and
one-third millions by 1816; in 1836, this debt had been reduced to
two hundred and ninety-one thousand dollars, or within the compass
of a private citizen to pay it all without embarrassing himself; by
1846 the debt had risen, through the purchase of territory, Indian
Wars, etc., to sixteen and three-fourths millions, and at the end of
the Mexican War, in 1849, it was sixty-four millions of dollars, or
little more than half the annual interest upon our present public
debt. Among the many considerations arising out of our embarrassed
situation, the patriotic mind can take refuge in this, that the interest
of the cost incurred in war with a portion of our own nation was
twice the whole principal of the cost incurred in war with the
strongest power, next to ourselves, on the North American continent. With the North and South united, the cost of warfare on this
continent will always be petty compared with the expense of conquering ourselves. Now let us see how the morality and extent of
this account compares with that of our mother and rival. How did
the British acquire their vast debt?
In the year 1689 the whole British debt was three million three
hundred thousand dollars. The nation had expelled its last tyrant,
and bade fair to have a prosperous future, but the new King had a
passion for war, and in a few years he had run up this debt seventyfive millions of dollars, - for what? To maintain the balance of power
on the Continent of Europe, where England had no possessions, but
where this Dutch King had.
Queen Anne must needs win great victories under Marlborough,
and she added one hundred and ninety millions to the debt.
When the American Revolution began, the whole debt of England
was six hundred and forty-two millions of dollars; to conquer America, England doubled this debt in nine years. In the next nine years
of peace, the debt was increased only twelve millions of dollars.
Then commenced that fatal series of wars, in which England, instigated by aristocracy and envy, strove to suppress the French Republic and France.
At the end of those tremendous and illiberal efforts, the English




376    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
debt had reached the monstrous figure of four billions and two hundred millions of dollars [4,200,000,000].
In fifty years this English debt has been decreased only three hundred and thirteen millions of dollars. The Crimean War alone ran
up this debt about one hundred and fifty millions.
From 1793 down to 1814, England paid in subsidies alone two
hundred and thirty-one million four hundred and forty-seven thousand
two hundred and ninety-five dollars, most of it to worthless Bourbon
princes, and semi-civilized adventurers and courtiers of Eastern
Europe.
The manner in which money was raised to meet the expenses of
the American civil war attests at once the power and the weakness
of our form of government. While the nation was rocking on the
brink of ruin, and friends and enemies abroad alike gave up our
cause, the people voluntarily came forward and took the bonds, - that
was the power of the republic! But as it was contrary to our
cherished notions of a popular government to wrest such vast amounts
of money from the people, we were compelled to offer larger rates of
interest than any other great state, - that was the weakness of the
republic in time of unexpected war. As a consequence, while our
capital debt is only five-sevenths that of England, we pay from ten
to fifteen millions more interest annually. American rates of percentage were esteemed so high that in almost every town in Christendom there was some one who gladly became interested in our securities. Prior to the war we solicited loans from Europe to carry on
the great corporate enterprises endorsed by the several States of the
Union, but at present there are thousands of Germans, Englishmen,
and French, who hold, so to speak, mortgages upon our national life;
these had faith in the government to lend it of their savings, and it
is just this part of our indebtedness which troubles us the most; for
to pay the interest on those foreign bonds we must ship large quantities of coin to Europe, which is lost to circulation here. America
is no longer political and social authority only in the Old World, but
its finances are consulted thrice every day in every stock market in
Europe; the most interesting news which is transmitted by the
cable is not. the number of people at the Boston Music Jubilee, nor
even the opening of the Pacific Railroad, but the regular monthly
statement of the public debt. We have passed out of the boyish
time of national life, when we are esteemed by our genius, our
cheerfulness, or courage; we have come to man's estate, with the




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               377
burden of our past struggles to carry, our business responsibilities to
meet, and our solvency to be vindicated for the honor of ourselves,
and the capital of our children. The past history of our Union has
been toucling and resplendent with single episodes; we have given
promise of much; we have attracted many poor an(l prudent Europeans to share our citizenship; but it is part of our destiny, our lot
amongst the nations, the necessity of the state, as of mankind, to hold
up our faith by our sacrifices, or otherwise be rejected from the front
rank of creditable nations, all of whom tread the same embarrassed
path. It must be confessed that in financial matters we are not considered abroad to be beyond criticismn for the wisdom of our administration thereof. As in private life the last test of confidence is to
loan one money, so in national life the last evidence of wisdom is to
know how far to put the state in debt, and how well to recover it to
independence.
Two men will always be mentioned with prominence in connection
with American finance: Salmon P. Chase and Jay Cooke; — the first,
as the contriver of our present monetary system, and the latter as
the practical banker who popularized it. BMr. Chase's first loan was
for eight million dollars, at twenty years, at six per cent.; the capitalists came forward with twenty-seven million dollars.  WVhen upwards
of twenty-one million dollars had been borrowed from the banks,
Congress authorized a loan, and at last passed a National Banking
Act, providing for a system of National Banks, based upon government securities; this system has well-nigh superseded the State and
local banks of America, so thatwe may be said to have partially returned to the banking system which President Jackson broke up in
1833.
The Chase banking system may be said to be as follows: Capitalists buy United States bonds and deposit them with the Treasurer
of the United States, for which they receive not exceeding ninety
per cent. in national bank-notes, whereby they are authorized and
enabled to commence the business of banking. They receive six per
cent. interest in gold on the amount of bonds purchased and deposited. As to the permanent efficiency and economy of the Chase
banking system, great difference of opinion exists, and in a merely
descriptive book of this kind it is impolitic to take issue thereon.
The subject of finance is more imperfectly understood with us than
almost any other. Multitudes of speeches have been made pro and
con, and the majority of our people seem to think that we can meet
48




378    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the burdens of a great debt by some such patent-right contrivances
as have made us eminent in mechanics. A French critic has expressed it by saying that we have no financiers, but only a great many
financial inventors. IMr. IIugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury
in 1869, thus expressed himself on the banking question:"In no other country was so large a capital ever invested in banking under a single system, as is now invested in the national banks;
never before were the interests of a people so interwoven with a
system of banking, as are the interests of the people of the United
States with their national banking system. It is not strange, therefore, that the condition and management of the national banks should
be, to thein and to their representatives, a matter of the deepest concern. That the national banking system is a perfect one, is not asserted by its friends; that it is a very decided improvement, as far as
circulation is regarded, upon the systems which it has superseded,
must be admitted by its opponents."
In the admirable preface with which Harriet Martineau introduced
the American edition of her history, she probably came as near. the
representative expression of English financiers, as any authority
that I might quote. " There is the vital subject of the currency,"
she says, " which it concerns every republican citizen, at all times,
to attend to, when there is a danger (and there always is a danger) of
a too free resort to paper money for relief from any embarrassment.
" It seems to me that no thoughtful citizen of any nation can read
the story of the years before and after Peel's Bill of 1819, extending
over the crash of 1825-6, without the strongest desire that such risks
and calamities may be avoided in his own country, at any sacrifice.
There are several countries under the doom of retribution for the
license of an inconvertible paper currency; and of these the United
States is unhappily one. This passage of English history may
possibly help to check the levity with which the inevitable' crash' is
spoken of by some who little dream what the horrors and griefs of
such a convulsion are. It may do more, if it should convince any
considerable number of observers that the affairs of the economic
world are as truly and certainly under the control of natural laws
as the world of matter without, and that of the mind within."
The centre of gravity of the English state government, like ours,
lies in its financial system; the administration of the revenues pertaining to the state alone, without any co-operation on the part of
local governing bodies. " Municipal" taxation is wholly distinct;




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.              379
the state deriving nothing therefor; the coffers of the state, however, often afford aid for municipal purposes. The Prime Minister
is generally the first Lord of the Treasury, and under him comes the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is real Secretary of the Treasury.
Exchequer is a word derived from the checkered table-cloth over which
the Norman kings and their clerks managed the revenue. As the
Chancellor has to propose to Parliament the estimated expenses, or
" Budget." of the State, he must be a commoner, for the House of Com-.
mons has exclusive legislation over raising revenue. Three junior
Lords, one for each kingdom, constitute the commission of the Treasury.
The great branches of income flowing into the Treasury are paid
into the public account at the Bank of England, with the authority
of the Comptroller-General of the Exchequer, by the departments at
which they are collected; and all payments on the public account are
made pursuant to the warrant or order of the Board of Treasury;
those relating to the larger items of expenditure, specially Voted or
sanctioned by Parliament, are made by the Comptroller-General; and
all the civil salaries, allowances, and incidental charges, which were
formerly paid at the Exchequer, are now paid by the Paymaster-General, upon special authorities from the Treasury, by drafts on the
Bank of England. No moneys voted by Parliament can be drawn
from the Exchequer without the warrant of the Treasury Board,
nor can any payment be made from the Civil List without the same
authority.
The " Budget " is the expenditure, as annually estimated by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer; being only granted for one year, it
necessitates the annual assembling of Parliament. From the time
of Charles II., it has become the usage to grant supplies to the crown
only for specified purposes. Clarendon styled this " a republican innovation." In war times an extraordinary credit is usually granted
to the crown, enabling it to prosecute the war even during the recess.
Ministers who, like Pitt, can reckon upon a majority in the lower
house, have even emancipated themselves from all granting by Parliament. In 1797, without the cognizance of the Commons, he granted
to the Emperor of Germany, by way of subsidy, six millions of dollars, and to the Prince of Conde, one million dollars. A large majority in the Cofmmons subsequently sanctioned this unconstitutional
mode of procedure as having been compelled by urgent necessity.
In like manner, the Parliament, in 1859, sanctioned many millions'
excess of expenditure on the Budget of 1857.




380    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
The Parliamentary Committee of Ways and Means is charged with
examining the measures which the Chancellor of the Exchequer deems
necessary to cover the state expenditure.
The Committee of Supplies is charged with settling the amount of
the government requirements in the respective departments; its resolutions are introduced at the end of the session by the " Consolidated
Fund Appropriation Bill," whereby the government is authorized to
expend, for the purposes specified in the bill, the several amounts
granted in Committee of Ways and Means.
The Bank of Ellgland was first incorporated in 1694, with a capital
of six millions of dollars, the whole of which was lent to the government. Its charter has been renewed from time to time. The profits
of the corporation arise principally from its transactions as bankers,
its discounts and money dealings, from  the large balances of the
public moneys in its hands, from the interest of three per cent. on
the fifty-five million and seventy-five thousand dollars invested as a
permanent loan to the government, redeemable on the termination of
the charter, and from the remuneration made by the government for
the trouble and expense of managing the payment of dividends and
the transfer of stock; for this latter duty the corporation is paid by
a percentage, upon which a reduction was made in 1834, and a further reduction in 1844, in consideration of a release from stampduties (which amounted to about three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars per annum), and the amount now actually paid by the public
is about five hundred thousand dollars yearly. On an average of ten
years the losses from forgery cost the bank two hundred thousand
dollars of this sum.
This bank corporation has recently established branch banks of
deposit and -issue at the following large provincial towns. These
banks open accounts with individuals on the approval of the corporation, and, by offering a place of secure deposit and increased facilities of discount, promote the interests of the merchants and traders
in their locality. They also receive dividends and effect purchases
or sales in the funds:Manchester,       Birmingham,           Leeds,
Liverpool,         Swansea,             Leicester,
Bristol,          Newcastle-on-Tyne,    Norwich,
Portsmouth,       Plymouth.
The Bank of England is am institution almost precisely like the old




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.             381
United States Bank, which Andrew Jackson suppressed; it was
founded by a Scotchman more than two hundred years ago, and,
according to his will, no Scotchman can be a Director in it. It is
managed by a Governor, Deputy-Governor, and twenty-four Directors, eight of whom go out every year, and all of them must be
Stockholders.
It pays seven per cent. dividend annually, and employs nine hundred persons, whose combined salaries are about one million and fifty
thousand dollars a year.
Its bank-note circulation is upwards of ninety millions of dollars;
there are about two hundred and eighty-four thousand stockholders;
and eighty-six millions of dollars in bullion lie in the vaults.
The building covers four acres, and is situated in the heart of Old
London; it is a copy of a Roman temple.
The Directors meet in a spacious parlor. The machinery for
weighing sovereigns throws pieces of full weight into one box, and
rejects those of light weight into another; ten of these machines
have almost human intelligence, and weigh seventy thousand sovereigns a day.
When we consider the mighty power of this Bank of England, our
thoughts revert to that other institution, which so warmly enlisted the
support of Henry Clay and the American Whig Party, now standing
in solemn majesty, in the heart of " Old Philadelphia," degraded to a
mere Custom House, and thus described by Mr. Dickens: -
" Looking out of my chamber window before going to bed, I saw,
on the opposite side of the way, a handsome building of white marble, which had a mournful, ghost-like aspect, dreary to behold. I
attributed this to the sombre influence of the night, and on rising in
the morning looked out again, expecting to see its steps and portico
thronged with groups of people passing in and out. The door was
still tight shut however; the same cold, cheerless air prevailed;
and the building looked as if the marble statue of Don Guzman
could alone have any business to transact within its gloomy walls.
I hastened to inquire its name and purpose, and then my surprise
vanished. It was the tomb of many fortunes, the great catacomb of
investment, - the United States Bank."
It is not improbable that the Bank of England is also destined to
be deserted sooner or later. Mr. Robert Lowe, an able member of
the English Cabinet, gave notice of some such intention in the
summer of 1869.




382. THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"The Bank of England system," says Mr. John D. Watson," largely
permeates the financial, industrial, and even the social relations of
that country, and has a potency compared with which the enormous
power of the old Bank of the United States was as nothing. But
there is a deep and increasing feeling of opposition to the bank in
English financial circles. It is objected, and with good reason, that
its management is illiberal and narrow; that it fails to keep pace
with the progress of commercial enterprise, and that its whole policy
seems to consist in embarrassing trade by making money artificially
dear at the very time when it should be cheap, and cheap at the time
when it should be dear. It deals with gold at one time as a mere
commodity, and at other times as money, and seems to be only influenced by the one idea of retaining a certain quantity of it in England,
irrespective of the true interests of the business community. In
fine, it is now claimed that the time has arrived for establishing free
trade in money and in banking, the same as in other departments of
business."
The Bank of England is the principal bank of deposit and issue,
and the most extensive in Europe, both in its capital and its money
transactions. It enjoys exclusive privileges of banking, which, so
far as they may be considered monopolies, may be justified by the
advantages and safeguards which the corporation affords to the
public. The promissory notes issued by the Bank are declared a
legal tender, but by an act passed in 1819 the bank and its branch
establishments are compelled to change its notes for gold on demand.
The corporation is restricted from engaging in any commercial undertaking other than dealing in bills of exchange and in gold and silver,
and in advancing money at interest upon valuable securities.
As connected with the state, the corporation transacts the whole
of the banking business of the government; it has the management
of the public debt, receiving and paying the chief part of the annuities due to the public creditors; it gives circulation to the Exchequer
bills, and -makes advances upon them for the public service, and
also upon the prospective produce of certain branches of the revenue.
It is the banker of the Treasury, the public balances being in its
hands. For individuals, the corporation also acts as an ordinary
bank of deposit, and makes advances to its depositors, but chiefly in
times of difficulty, when extraordinary discounts are required to sustain mercantile credit.
In place of the ol(l United States Bank, the American edifice under




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               383
which the great transactions of our government are guarded, is the
Treasury building at Washington. The entire structure of the
American Treasury covers an area of five hundred and twenty
by two hundred and seventy-eight feet, including two large courts.
The Grecian Ionic order of architecture has been adopted, but it has
been treated in many respects as a Roman order, being mounted on
a podium or basement, crowned with an elegant balustrade. On the
eastern side of the building is a colonnade composed of thirty pillars,
extending a distance of three hundred and thirty-six feet north and
south. On each of the other sides is a portico surrounded by a pediment. Each shaft of the columns of the porticoes is a single block
of stone thirty-two feet in height and four feet six inches in
diameter. The buttress caps, which partially include the steps of the
porticoes, are single slabs of granite, each twenty feet square by two
feet in thickness. The granite used in the construction of this building was quarried on Dix's Island, off the coast of Maine, and
brought hither at great expense. iM~ost of the larger slabs were cut
after their arrival in Washington, as the risk of transporting them in
arough state was much less than if the stone had been dressed.
Fronting the north entrance is a large fountain, the central base of
which is twelve feet in diameter, and five feet high, and was cut from
a single block of granite.. The wing is sixty-five by one hundred
and ninety-five feet, with a slight projection at the front and rear.
The vault resembles a huge safe without shelves.or drawers. It is
composed of five thicknesses of metal, two of which are of the very
best case-hardened, spring steel. The size of the vault is thirteen
feet wide, thirteen high, and eighteen long, and it is secured by two
massive doors, furnished with combination locks of the latest
approved patterns.
Independent of the national banking system, the treasury is the
head-quarters of all the great monetary operations of the government. Here is paid interest upon the public debt; here are received
the immense collections from duties on imports, and receipts from the
internal revenue; here have been printed, recorded, and issued, the
bonds, legal-tender notes, and fractional currency of the United
States; here have been deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars
arising out of the sale of cotton captured during the civil war; here
may be seen valuables found by the armies in their destructive
marches through the South, as well as the remnant of the gold and
silver coin taken from Jefferson Davis; here, also, the United States




384:   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
issues and guarantees the bonds of the Pacific and other railways
subsidized by Congress.
While the Treasury is the centre of national business, the various
mints at Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York, and Denver are
engaged in coinage to the amount of millions of dollars every year.
The Philadelphia Mint is surpassed by none in the world for the excellence of its machinery, and the beauty of its work. The U. S.
Assay Office is in the Sub-Treasury, in New York, a grand building,
which cost nearly one and a quarter millions of dollars.
The total amount of gold that was found and coined in the United
States, east of the Mississippi River, from the earliest times up to
the 30th of June, 1868, was nineteen million seven hundred and
twenty-one thousand four hundred and twenty-five dollars. The total
amount of gold found in all America, between its discovery and 1868,
was nine billion one hundred and seven million seven hundred and
twenty-five thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine dollars, while all
Europe, Russia in Asia, and the Australasian Islands, including Australia, produced but two billion seven hundred and seventy-six million one hundred thousand dollars in the same time. Counting the
American national debt as coin, it would take one-fourth of all the
gold mined on the hemisphere to pay it off; but General Grant said
in his inaugural, that it was to this " strong box" of nature that he
looked for relief. When America was discovered, there were but
sixty millions of gold in Europe, and one hundred and forty millions
in silver. California and the territories round her have produced
one thousand millions of dollars in gold in twenty years. 1Iumboldt
and Chevalier estimate the yield of Mexico, in silver and gold, to have
been, since the Conquest, three billion two hundred and thirty million
dollars. In the same time Peru and Bolivia together have produced
two billion seven hundred and forty-five million two hundred and
twenty-one thousand six hundred and forty-five dollars. Sixty-one
million dollars was the largest annual annual gold yield ever made in
Australia. California has several times produced ninety millions of
gold a year.
The English Mint is situated close by the Tower of London, four
or five miles from the Treasury Building. The Chief of the Mint is
called the " Master;" his salary is seven thousand five hundred dollars a year. Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir John Herschel have filled
this office, which is not a partisan one. The machinery is very intricate; the dies are hardened by a secret chemical process.




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               385
The great private mart of America for loans and banking is
Wall Street, New York, which is in communication with Washington
by a multitude of wires, and every operation of the government
is watched by determined assiduity and cunning.
The London Royal Exchange, described, in part, in the first chapter
of this book, is managed by a committee of nine members, the chairman of which is generally a member of Parliament; there are about
nineteen hundred members and subscribers, and the expenses are
fifty thousand dollars a year. Upstairs are Lloyd's Subscription
Rooms. The great business is done here on Tuesday and Friday,
late in the afterboon, in a large open court, or quadrangle, ornamented with statues. Here, standing against the several pillars, one can
see the Rothschilds, the Browns, the Barings, and all the great
representatives of money.
The London Stock Exchange, the greatest ready-money mart of
the world, stands opposite the Bank of England. It has about eight
hundred and ffty members, all of whom must be re-elected every
year in committ:te of thirty. Fifty dollars is the yearly due. Strangers are not arnitted- and, if discovered, are rigidly expelled. Bankrupts can never be readmitted until they have paid about thirty cents
on the dollsr. Foreigners must have resided in London five years tcb,
be eligible for membership, and forty-five hundred dollarj' seoaritymust be entered for every new member. The broker's coamisslon on;
home securities is one-eighth per cent.
The greatest case - of "bulling and bearing" ever knoown in the
London Stock Market was in 1814, when a person, in a nondescript
uniform, appeared at Dover, opposite the French coast, and another
at Northfleet, both having French money and anxious looks, and both
declared that they were going with all speed to London to announce
the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. The allies of these false witnesses in the Stoc.z Exchange made all the splutter and excitement they
could over this news, but Parliament and the Courts of Law took
prompt cognizance of the crime, and found that at the head of it was
Lord Cochrane, an ex-Admiral in the Iritish Navy, a member of the
House of Commons, and an active nobleman. He was condemned to
a year's imprisonment, a fine of five- thousand dollars, and to stand
in the pillory. His professional career was stopped for a quarter of
a century, and he was expelled from Parliament. This, officer had
captured Mobile in our late war; he made heroic efforts to
raise his character to honor again, commanded the fleets of Chilian
49




386    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and of Greek independence, and was at last ennobled under another
title, Lord Dundonald.
There is scarcely a foreign governme.nt debt, scarcely a European
railway, mine, navigation, or trading company, that is not daily dealt
in in London. But not only is London the financial centre of all
European joint stock enterprises, but it is so likewise of those of
almost every country on the American Continent.
A membership of the New York Stock Exchange is property, now
worth seven thousand dollars, - that is, by purchase from a retiring
member. The initiation fee, without purchase, is limited to ten thousand dollars. The number of members will probably be limited, so
that in future the value of the seat may be considerably increased.
The most extraordinary attempt ever made in America to affect the
stock and gold market was in the midst of the civil war, when a
startling proclamation appeared in the New York papers, signed
"Abraham Lincoln," decrying the war as a failure, and ordering out
a large levy of men. It was presently discovered to be a forgery,
and was traced to a young man named Howard, a journalist, who
had been made the instrument of Wall Street gamesters, and whose
occupation gave him knowledge of the great news combination called
the Associated Press. He was.promptly arrested, and sent to a military fort in the harbor of New York, where he remained many
months. His poverty, and the escape of his instigators, excited sympathy after a time, and by the exertions of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
and others he was released on parole.
It is not disputed that scandalous advantage was taken of the
American government by its own officials, in the Treasury, as well as
by outside operators during its time of trial, and subsequent to the
war. Punishments in this country for offences against the state have
always been lightly inflicted, and in the change of parties the public
enemy is generally pardoned, but under the stern and relentless government of England, there is no offence like that against the state!
Smuggling, is not a mere misdemeanor, punishable with forfeiture as
here, but a high crime! Every headland of the United Kingdom is
patrolled by -coast guards, day and night. The inevitable sailor, with
the telescope under his arm, keeps a look-out on every sail. Illicit
stills are pursued into Irish and Scotch fastnesses, and vengeance
without remorse is dealt out to the most trifling offender.'The Lighthouse, and Coast Survey Bureaux, as well as the Revenue
Cutter:Service, are, in America, in charge of the Treasury Department.




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.              387
The United States Revenue Cutter Service comprises twenty-five
steamers, and seventeen sailing vessels. Of the six steamers on the
lakes, all but one are at present (1869) out of commission, or not in
use.
The United States attempted to organize a survey of its coasts in
1807, but did not really begin to accomplish anything before 1832.
Our coasts and bays are surveyed in the same manner as the public
lands. A Swiss mathematician, F. R. Hassler, managed the coast
survey for eleven years, and he was succeeded by A. D. Bache, a
descendant of Benjamin Franklin. The first base line for survey was
measured by Hassler, on Fire Island beach, outside of Ne.w York
harbor. France and England preceded us in establishing Hydrographic Bureaux. Before the coast survey was organized a private
surveyor, Edmund M. Blunt, undertook to prepare charts of important harbors and waters at his own expense, and the "American
Coast Pilot," prepared by the Blunt family, had become a book of
nine hundred and twenty-six pages in 1867.
The American Light-house Board was organized in 1852 after England and France had set the example. Our light-houses were miserable
until we adopted the French system of lighting. We actually subjected our vessels to the dangers of running aground on imperfectly
lighted coasts, rather than import the Fresnel light from France;
this might be called Protection to Shipwreck, Commodore MI. C.
Perry ordered the first Fresnel lights for trial, and they were placed
on the Highlands of Neversink, New York harbor. Many anecdotes might be told of the difficulties which philanthropic men have
had to impress upon Congress the necessity of these great public
labors. Some years since there was an endeavor made to get a lighthouse placed on the Execution Rocks, a reef, one short mile north of
Sands Point, in Long Island Sound, but it did not succeed, although
asked for by a large commercial interest, until the steamboat on
which there was a member of Congress, on his way to Washington,
struck on these rocks, immediately after which an appropriation was
made for the building of a light-house at this place.
In 1852, the bill for creating the Light-house Board was pending
in Congress, but, being opposed by parties interested in keeping up
our bad system, its passage was doubtful, The Baltic steamer was
then at Washington, and sailed for New York. Off Sandy Hook she
was detained by a fog, and could not run for want of proper buoys.
A meeting of the passengers, among whom were several members of




388    THE NEW'WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Congress, was called on board, and their attention particularly
directed to this defect, and, on their returning to Washington, they
caused the above-named bill to be passed. Punch says, to make
railroad travelling safe, put a director on the locomotive. To get
a bill through Congress, let the members see the necessity practically.
We had, in 1866, four hundred and thirty-one light-houses, all of
which have lenses. We have a few reflector lights, but they are
range lights, not included in the four hundred and thirty-one.
If the four hundred and thirty-one houses were fitted with reflectors, to correspond in power with the lenses, they would consume
about one hundred and sixty thousand gallons of oil annually. The
consumption of the lenses is sixty-five thousand, with greatly increased light.
The number of light-stations extinguished in the civil war was one
hundred and thirty-five; eighty of which have been restored. The
work of restoration is going on.
The Drummond light was invented. by Lieutenant Drummond, of
the British Army, more than thirty years ago; he was engaged in
making a survey of Ireland, and wishing to get as long a base as
possible for his triangle, he endeavored to establish signals between
two distant mountains, and in this endeavor he invented the Drummond light.
Every energy of the English government is bent toward increasing
its commerce; for manufactures readily follow if there be buyers in
foreign parts, and cheap and plentiful ships to transport the goods;
to this end harbor and pilot duties are kept down to the lowest figure;
while our government has done little of late toward encouraging our
merchant marine.
The New Orleans charges for bringing in and towing out a ship
of a thousand tons amount to over 2,500 dollars; those of New York,
to about 676 dollars; and those of Boston, to about 569 dollars.
The lowest of these figures would be extravagant in England.
In inland improvements, the United States compares well with
England, both in the extent and cheapness of its canal and railway
system, which, however, is not subordinate to the general government
as in Europe.
The cost of the 14,247 miles of railroad existing in 1867 in England
was nearly 2,500,000,000 dollars, while the 39,276 miles of the same
year in the United States cost only 1,700,000 dollars. The English




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               389
roads earned less than eight per cent. on the cost, while in the United
States the earnings were nearly twenty-five per cent.; but the net
earnings of the English roads are fully one-half of the gross receipts,
while on our roads they are less than one-third, being not more than
thirty per cent. IMuch of this difference arises from the hirgh price
of materials under the tariff. The various items of cost per train
mileage of running trains upon the railroads of the State of New
York, amount in the aggregate to one hundred and sixty-six dollars,
while in Great Britain they are but sixty-one dollars and thirty-seven
cents.
There were in operation in all the States, on the 1st day of January, 1869, 42,255 miles of railway, the cost of which, at 44,000 dollars per mile, equalled 1,800,000,000 dollars.
The total amount of net tonnage transported over them for the
year equalled 75,000,000 tons, having a value of 10,472,250,000 dollars, a sum equalling six times their cost, and more than four times
greater than the whole amount of the national debt!
Historically, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad took precedence of
all others. The opening of its first section (twenty-three miles) took
place in 1830.
Massachusetts has one mile of railroad to 5.47 square miles of
territory. In the same ratio the whole Union would have 600,000
miles of railway.
The Pacific Railroad is probably the greatest monument of a nation's
beneficence which the history of man has to show. By the following
figures, which are taken from the report of a special commission appointed by the President, of which General G. K. Warren was President, it will be seen that the United Staten has endorsed the bonds
of the two corporations which make one grand trunk line to the
Pacific, to the amount of 53,000,000 dollars.
The aid in the shape of subsidy bonds and first mortgage bonds
received by each company was as follows: the UnioPi Pacific, 525
miles from Omaha to the base of the Rocky Mountains, at 16,000
dollars per mile, 8,400,000 dollars; 150 miles across the Rocky
Mountains, at 40,000.dollars per mile, 7,200,000 dollars; 360 miles,
extending to Ogden, at 32,000 dollars per mile, 11,520,000 dollars.
Total, 27,120,000 dollars. This is equal to 26,200 dollars per mile,
and the first mortgage bonds are issued in a like amount, -26,200
dollars per mile. Total, 52,400 dollars per mile. Subsidy bonds
received by the Central Pacific road, six miles from Sacramento to the




390    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
base of the Sierra Nevada, 16,000 dollars per mile, 96,000 dollars;
150 miles across the Sierra Nevada, at 48,000 dollars -per mile,
7,200,000 dollars; 585 miles thence to Ogden, at 32,000 dollars per
mile, 18,720,000 dollars. Total, 26,016,000 dollars, or 35,109 dollars
averaged upon each and every mile of the road. First mortgage
bonds in a like amount, 35,109 dollars per mile. Total subsidy and
first mortgage bonds on each and every mile of the road, 70,218
dollars.
The same commission reported that nearly fourteen millions of dollars would be required to bring the Pacific railroads.up to the best
standards of construction and equipment.
To institute any comparison between American and English public
works would be vain, the one being a broad continent, and the other
a narrow island.
The canals of New York are over 900 miles long. They have cost,
with their several enlargements, not less than 35,000,000 dollars, and
with the river navigation and railway system of interior New York,
would probably make the sum more than 200,000,000 dollars.
Some minor items of expenditure in America and England may be
interesting.  In 1860, 12,206 American vessels entered United
States ports, exceeding the number of foreign vessels by nearly
2,000; in six years thereafter American tonnage decreased more than
forty per cent., while foreign tonnage increased nearly eighty.
The coinage of England and America is quite different. America,
like France, has adopted the decimal system in money, except that
we divide the hundred into four parts, and coin dollars, half dollars,
and quarter dollars, while the French properly divide it into fifths,
and coin Napoleons, demi-Napoleons, and five-franc pieces. The
English, however, have the old embarrassing system of pounds, shillings, and pence; there is no such thing as a pound in coin, but a
sovereign, which is equal to about a sixpence less than a five-dollar
gold piece. The English shilling is nearly equal to our quarter dollar, and is quite a different thing from the York shilling, which is
equivalent to the old Mexican twelve-and-a-half-cent piece. It is
probable that before long we shall all adopt the French system in
money, in measure, and in weight, in which case it might be well to
call the great standard coin " The Peace;" then it could be said that
the empire was indeed the Peace, for it is more a piece of money, than
a piece of principle.
In 1868 the British government expended six millions of dollars in




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.                 391
public buildings and works, which was much greater than our expenditures counting out the railways.
The interest and the management of England's permanent debt in
1868, was 115,000,000 dollars; 1,500,000 dollars was spent in giving
pensions; 4,000,000 dollars went to what is called the "packet
service." It cost twelve and a half million dollars to collect the customs and internal revenue. The expenditures exceeded the revenue
in that year six and a half million dollars.
One million paupers were fed in that year, and upwards of twenty
thousand persons convicted of crime.
There are held of our bonds, 600,000,000 dollars in Europe, and
250.000 dollars of other American securities, thereby increasing our
debt to Europe 70,000,000 dollars a year. The British revenue is
almost entirely derived from  Custom House duties and excise, or
home taxation; the latter brings nearly 100,000,000 dollars a year;
the Post Office clears 25,000,000 dollars, while ours gets in debt; the
English receive nearly 50,000,000 dollars from the sale of stamps.
All the property in the United States is said to be worth twenty
billions of dollars [20,000,000,000].
The English revenue from customs is nearly altogether derived
from the duties upon a few articles, none of which compete with home
products. The figures of customs revenue for two years are thus
given: -
1867.        1868.
Sugar and molasses..5. ~5,647,787    ~5,582,473
Tea.....      2,658,716    2,827,317
Coffee...                       397,190      390,161
Corn meal and flour.              797,639      869,323
Spirits.....                 4,173,027    4,298,403
Wine.                            1,391,192    1,468,993
Tobacco and snuff                 6,455,011    6,542,250
Other imports.....             577,666     581,481
Sundries.....                 200,838      104,580
Total customs.. ~22,299,066   ~22,664,981
The expenses of collecting this revenue are small, compared to
those of collecting duties on several thousand different articles, as we
do in America. Our tax list makes a book nearly as large as
Webster's Dictionary, and is annually changed to suit the interests
of legislators and their constituents. The whole financial system of
England runs smoother and more equally than ours. Ninety-six per




392    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
cent. of the revenue from English excises is collected from spirits,
malt, and licenses. The income tax is a fraction over two per cent.;
yet the revenue from that source is equal to that collected in the
United States, where the rate has been generally five per cent.
England has tried both systems, - a tariff upon all articles of import,
and a tariff upon a dozen leading articles, - and has found the latter
to be the cheapest, and to produce fully as much revenue. One of
the ablest men connected with the United States Revenue Bureau is
David A. Wells. At his suggestion we reduced the tax on whiskey
from two dollars to fifty cents a gallon, and we increased the revenue
vastly by the change.
The annual interest on the British debt is about one hundred and
thirty millions of dollars [130,000,000]. The British people pay
about four and a half dollars a head in gold every year, man', woman,
and child, to meet the interest on this national debt.
The joint stock companies that failed in Great Britain between
August, 1862, and 1869, amounted to four hundred and eighty in
number.
The American receipts from all national taxes in 1860 were
77,000,000 dollars; in 1868, from internal revenue alone, they were
191,000,000 dollars; and in 1866, from the same bureau, 309,000,000
dollars; from all sources in 1868 they were 300,000,000dollars.
The vital defect in the American government is its civil service,
which is in great part a body of merely partisan stipendiaries.
Had Great Britain appointed such a class of men as we have, to
collect her revenue, she would have been bankrupt thirty years
ago. It is useless to qualify this strong expression; all Americans
know that our revenue service, whether under Mr. Johnson or General Grant, is rotten throughout; that the question is, "What is
the office worth?" and that this does not mean, " What is the salary
of it to me?" or, "What is it worth to the government?" but " I-ow
much can I steal by it?" Our revenue service is venal as that of
Russia. No man as President, no Congress, can take higher rank in
the future, than by completely abolishing the system of makinlg partisan appointments to assess and collect the public taxes.
The observing De Tocqueville, whom I have so frequently quoted,
seemed to foresee from the character of our civil service in Jackson's
administration what would be its efficiency in coming times:"I conclude," he says, "without having recourse to inaccurate
computations, and without hazarding a comparison which might




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               393
prove incorrect, that the democratic government of the Americans is
not a cheap government, as is sometimes asserted; and I have no
hesitation in predicting, that if the people of the United States is
ever involved in serious difficulties, its taxation will speedily be increased to the rate of that which prevails in the greater part of the
aristocracies and the monarchies of Europe."
The most sanguine expectations of the Americans as to paying off
the national debt are based upon the value of the public lands, and
the increase of immigration. During the era of slavery, our reliance
to meet the cost of our imports from Europe was by. the export of
cotton. During our civil war, the utmost energies of England were
put forth to make her colonies cotton plantations, and thereby rid
herself of dependence upon the United States. The success which
attended those efforts is probably one of the vital causes of the decline of American commerce and industry.
In 1864, we were told that thirty-nine sources, exclusive of the
United States, contributed to the supply of cotton at Manchester;
that Australia, Jamaica, French West Indies, Greece, Turkey, Brazil,
Portugal, Morocco, Egypt, Italy, Austria (on the Adriatic), Hayti,
Malta, Japan, China, and Venezuela were among the producers; that
the average fibre of foreign cotton, in fourteen instances, was equal,
for average purposes of manufacture, to the American fibre; and that
in several, and in fact most, of the countries named cotton can be
cultivated and exported to England at cheaper rates than American
planters can afford.
It would be neglect to quit this great and involved subject without reference to the two contending principles which are now
dividing parties, communities, and even families in the United States,
- those of Free Trade, and High Tariff, or" Protection."  The English people long ago determined this issue, and there is practical Free
Trade throughout the British dominions, a Tariff being imposed upon
a few articles, - chiefly those of luxury, - and directed to obtaining
revenue rather than to nursing the home manufactures and products
of Great Britain. The American Tariff is more partial, and is not
only directed toward the collection of revenue on our frontiers, but
toward placing an embargo upon many articles of foreign manufacture,
so that our people shall be compelled to purchase at home, and
thereby encourage, enrich, or " protect" the native miner and manufacturer. In the early history of the country, our statesmen were
divided upon the subject of the Tariff, the agricultural representatives
50




394    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
holding that, as good government was based upon the principle of
the greatest good to the greatest number, no specific interest should
be protected by the Tariff, but that the people should be free to buy
in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest.
The other sentiment took the position that, as our nation was in
its infancy, and as its manufactures were vital to its happiness and
independence, these should be protected against foreign competition,
until they were able to stand alone. Amongst the advocates of the
latter sentiment, none were more eminent and eloquent than Henry
Clay; for he coupled with his High Tariff ideas the generous principles of Internal Improvements; but it is well known that he failed to
reach the goal of his aspirations, - the Chief Magistracy, - notwithstanding the powerful special interests he favored. It was after the
rise of the Republican, or Anti-slavery party in the North, that the
Iigh Tariff interest attained its principal political triumphs; for the
North, needing all its energies to meet the rebellion, was little disposed to divide upon the minor Tariff issue. When the rebellion had
been quelled, it was found that the High Tariff men were uppermost,
constituting a majority in the Senate and the House, and up to the
present writing (1869) they have succeeded in holding the Tariff up
to the very highest notch. They are powerfully seconded by such
vigorous journals as the New York "' Tribune," edited by Horace Greeley, one of the ablest journalists that any nation ever had, while on
the other hand, the "' Evening Post " of New York, edited by William
Cullen Bryant, the poet, and the North-western press at large, are
radical advocates of Free Trade.
Symptoms of dissatisfaction with the various tariffs are manifesting themselves on every hand; in New England, Edward Atkinson,
himself a manufacturer, has declared for Free Trade, on the ground
that our manufactures will better thrive by the ingenuity and perseverance of their mechanics and capitalists, than by waiting like
Lazarus, at the gate of the government, and asking to be subsidized.
Still more remarkable is it that William Lloyd Garrison, Henry
Ward Beecher, and the leading pioneers in the anti-slavery cause are
also earnest advocates for the complete emancipation of trade and
commerce on this continent. This is but natural, for in England
Emancipation and Free Trade went hand in hand; the same banners
marshalled the armies of both reforms, and men found it impossible
to be advocates for freedom in the moral and political world, and yet
decry its blessings in the world of commerce. At the present writ



BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.                395
ing (1869) the extreme Tariff men hold the whip-hand in America;
the manufacturers themselves seek admission to Congress, that they
may influence their interests there, and when upon a recent occasion
Mr. David A. Wells, the special Commissioner of the Revenue, advocated the reduction of certain import duties, a bill was passed by the
House forthwith to strike out the salary for his office.
In England, at the time Free Trade was popularized, it was not
the manufacturers, but the agriculturalists, who opposed it. They
argued that the right little, tight little Island of Great Britain, having
few acres to spare, could not grow wheat in competition with the barbarous Russian and the sleepless American, unless a High Tariff
were put upon it, to " protect the British farmer."
Since the repeal of the " Corn Laws " in England, agriculture, so
far from being crushed out, has attained perfection and importance
beyond all its previous career.
" As the development of manufactures," says a recent historian,
" was the grand economical feature of the last century, that of agriculture appears likely to become the distinctive feature of the present. The pernicious spell of protection is dissolved; something like
a scientific education is now to be obtained by the next generation
of farmers; and our sanitary researches are about to provide an ample
supply of the first requisite of increased production. We may hope
soon to see the agricultural population once more gaining on the
manufacturing, and the rural laboring-class ceasing to be the opprobrium of our polity."
It is to be lamented that, by the collision of private and partisan
interests, this merely economical question has become a subject of
bitterness rather than of fair and philanthropic inquiry. In the period
we have reached, it is manifest that these industrial questions are to
be examined, and place-hunters and partisans, on both sides, will
doubtless attempt to turn them to their own mercenary uses. The
great question is, will the people be happier with a High Tariff or a
Revenue Tariff?  What are the natural relations of the American continent and the American mind to manufactures?  Is the manufacturing or the agricultural interest most prejudicial to our individual
manhood. and our institutions?  Must our manufacturers cling to the
skirts of partisanship? Are the ingenuity and the perseverance requisite for mechanical excellence best protected by playing the sycophant to legislation, or by being cast aloof upon their own resources,




396    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
like the typical American character?  And is it Democratic or Republican to bolster up one interest and neglect the rest?
He would be a rash man who should undertake to settle this question in the limits of a chapter. The English have settled it in favor
of Free Trade, and amongst the latest English tourists in our country,
has been one, Mr. Charles IW. Dilke, who has in his book, entitled
"Greater 1Bitain," given liberal interpretation to the arguments of
American protectionists.
"' Those who speak," he says, "of the selfishness of the Protectionists as a whole, can never have taken the trouble to examine into the
arguments by which Protection is supported in Australia and
America. In these countries Protection is no mere national delusion; it is a system deliberately adopted with open eyes as one
conducive to the country's welfare, in spite of objections known to all;
in spite of pocket losses that come home to all. If it be, as we in
England believe, a folly, it is, at all events, a sublime one, full of
self-sacrifice, illustrative of a certain nobility in the national heart.
The Australian diggers and Western farmers in America are setting
a grand example to the world of self-sacrifice for a national object;
hundreds of thousands of rough men are content to live - they and
their families - upon less than they might otherwise enjoy, in order
that the condition of the mass of their countrymen may continue
raised above that of their brother toilers in Old England. Their
manufactures are beginning now to stand alone; but hitherto, without Protection, the Americans would have had no cities but seaports.
By picturing to ourselves England dependent upon the city of London,
upon Liverpool, and IIull, and Bristol, we shall see the necessity the
Western men are now under of setting off Pittsburg against New
York and Philadelphia.
" It would seem," he continues, " as though we Free Traders had
become nearly as bigoted in favor of Free Trade as our former
opponents were in favor of Protection. Just as they used to say,'We are right, why argue the question?' so now, in face of the
support of Protection by all the greatest minds in America, all the
first statesmen of the Australias, we tell the New England and the
Australian politicians that we will not discuss Protection with them,
because there can be no two minds about it among men of intelligence
and education.
" As far as we in our island are concerned, it is so manifestly to
the pocket interest of almost all of us, and at the same time, on




BRITISH AND AMERICAN FINANCE.               397
account of the minuteness of our territory, so little dangerous politically, that for Britain there can be no danger of a deliberate relapse
Jnto Protection; although we have but little right to talk about Free
Trade so long as we continue our enormous subsidies to the Cunard
liners.
"' The American argument in favor of Prohibition is in the main, it
will be seen, political, the economical objections being admitted, but
outweighed. Our action in the matter of our postal contracts, as in
the case of the factory acts, at all events shows that we are not ourselves invariably averse to distinguish between the political and the
economical aspect of certain questions."
Mr. Dilke makes one curious argument, and upon a curious premise: that the western farmers are all Tariff men.
" The tendency, according to the Western farmers of Free Trade,"
he says, 1" in the early stages of a country's existence, is to promote
universal centralization, to destroy local centres and the commerce
they create, to so tax the farmer with the cost of transport to the
distant centres, consequent upon the absence of local markets, that
he can but grow wheat and corn continuously, and cannot but exhaust
his soil. With markets so distant, the richest forest lands are not
worth clearing, and a wave of settlement sweeps over the country,
occupying the poorer lands, and then abandoning them once more."
I cannot better conclude this chapter than by quoting from the
scholarly and philosophical author of'"England's Greatness."
" Whether reciprocated, or not, Free Trade, like many other virtues,
has inherent advantages; may be administered in any quantity, and
be proportionately remunerative.  In its practical application it is
irrespective of time or place, of old or young communities; to small
or large States, it is correspondingly beneficial. Nations which trade
the most will profit by it the most; but those of less traffic will
benefit in proportion to the extent of their commerce.
"England, being the most mercantile community, is the most interested in its adoption; and being also the most prosperous, a forward
example by her is likely most to fix attention, and be followed.
Ireland was cramped and irritated, and driven to the verge of rebellion by the oppressive and pernicious nature of the protective system.
The opening of her trade was the first step in her conciliation, and
in drawing into more friendly sympathies with England the middle
classes of her population. The same maladies continued for a longer
period to alienate and retard the progress of British North America,




398    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and our West Indian Colonies, and which was alleviated by similar
remedies. Their trade was fettered; they were limited in their
markets, both for the sale and purchase of goods; they were constrained to trade only with the mother country, to buy dear and sell
cheap, and the injury to both was aggravated by distance and
freightage."








2
I"                      III           fjI jj         -
a2 —
H ili i s               i
_ _  ii                         _m,!
NATIONAL SHRINES.
1-Faneuil Hall, Boston. 2-State House, Annapolis. 3-State IHouse, Philadelphia.
4-Napoleon's Tomb. 5-Tower of London.




CHAPTER1 XV.
POLITICS AND POLITICAL PARTIES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.
A revelation of the rise and principles of the whig, tory, conservative, liberal, republican,
federal, radical, chartist, and whatsoever other parties have existed in America or
England. —An electioneering campaign in England from the proclamation of an
election to the close of the poll. -The philosophy of party organizations in a free
state.
THE history of English politics may be said to have commenced
with the expulsion of James II., the last of the male Stuarts, for
prior to that time there had been revolution; and the conflict of sects
and families, but not organized party politics as we comprehend it.
When James Stuart was driven-out of England into exile, the House
of Commons obtained the assent of his dethroner, William, Prince of
Orange, to a Bill of Rights, whereby Parliament and people were
given leave to assemble, to. petition, and to speak and print as
became them, being subjects. Then began the fermenlt of parties
and leaders, and there had already existed the nicknames of Whig
and Tory, and many of the conditions of party organization.
" Whig " was a word derived from a whey, or whig, of sour milk drunk
by the hunted Scotch Covenanters; and " Tory" was either the name
of a robber or of a robber band, or of a robber's challenge to stand and
deliver. On general principles it may be said that a "Tory" was an
advocate of the monarchy in all its despotic prerogatives, and a
" Whig " an advocate of monarchy limited by Parliament, by a lenient
aristocracy, and by law.
But after the Stuarts had been expelled a large portion of the
Tories sympathized with them, and endeavored to intrigue for their
restoration; these were called Jacobites. At the same time a few
Tories preferred that the Stuarts should not return, but that the
house of Hanover should reign; these were called Hanoverian Tories.
The conflicts of these three parties were long, and extended to
bloodshed and warfare. The Jacobites rallied around the " Pre399




400    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
tender," as one of the Stuarts was called, when he landed in Scotland, and were defeated, hanged, and banished by hundreds. They
settled in Mlaryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, and in many other
American States, furnishing us with some splendid family stock.
Our American ancestors were partisans of one or the other of
these two English parties, Whig and Tory, and we gave these names
in the Revolution to patriots and loyalists, respectively. After the
Revolution we dropped for a while the old distinctions and became
Federals, and Republicans, followers of Hamilton or Jefferson relatively; but after some time the word Whig was revived to indicate
the successor of the first Federal party, while the term Republican
became radicalized into Democratic. Thus, even at the present day
there are mournful old men in the United States who say with some
sorry fondness: " I was an old-line Whig!" thereby expressing a
Scotch term of almost lost antiquity.
In Engcland these two terms continued uninterruptedly down to the
passage of the Reform Bill, when they were exchanged for Liberal and
Conservative; but, meantime, the structure and policy of both parties
changed repeatedly, the two organizations striving less for principles
in the end than for power and the continuance of it.
It is easy to imagine the causes of origin of the two early parties
in the United States; one was not all cured of reverence for English
government; the other wanted a new pattern of nation, in part
Roman, in part Saxon, in part original and philosophic.
"The deeper we penetrate into the working of these parties, the
more do we perceive," says De Tocqueville, "that the object of the
one is to limit, and that of the other to extend the popular authority.
I do not assert," he adds, " that the ostensible end, or even that the
secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy
or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties,
and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are
the main point and the very soul of every faction in the United
States."
We cannot more agreeably obtain the status of those two early
organizations led respectively by the greatest of Americans, than in
the words of the same sprightly authority: —
" The party which desired to limit the power of the people endeavored to apply its doctrines more especially to the Constitution




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   401
of the Union, whence it derived its name of Federal. The other
party, which affected to be more exclusively attached to the cause of
liberty, took that of Republican. America is the land of democracy,
and the Federalists were always in a minority; but they reckoned
on their side almost all tlie great men who had been called forth by
the WVar of Independence, and their moral influence was very considerable. Their cause was, moreover, favored by circumstances.
The ruin of the Confederation had impressed the people with a dread
of anarchy, and the Federalists did not fail to profit by this transient;
disposition of the multitude. For ten or twelve-years they were at,
the head of affairs, and they were able to apply some, though not all,
of their principles; for the hostile current was becoming from day to,
day too violent to be checked or stemmed. In 1801 the Republicans.
got possession of the government; Thomas Jefferson was named
President; and he increased the influence of their party by-the weight.
of his celebrity, the greatness of his talents, and the immense extent.
of his popularity.
" The means by which the Federalists had maintained their position were artificial, and their resources were temporary; it was bythe virtues or the talents of their leaders that they had risen to.
power."
This statement is incisive; for it may be said that the Constitu —
tion of the United States and the Farewell Address of Washingtom
bear the Federal imprint and the tone of Hamilton, while the Declaration of Independence and the American policy were the legacy of
Jefferson. Hamilton, mastering or sharing the convictions of Washington, impressed himself upon the Federal compact and the earlystate, while Jefferson, with whom had been, doubtless, the practical.
sympathies of Franklin, gave the country original republicanism, and.
made the American character more pronouncedly democratic than the
teachings of our Constitution. To Hamilton we owe the state as a.
fabric, to Jefferson the people as a conviction.
The great event which influenced the formation and consolidation,
of political parties in England and America -and throughout the:
world, indeed -was the French Revolution, in part the child of our.
own, but made a monster of good and evil by the philosophers and
magi who had predicted it, and who became its tutors, and also bythe resentment of France against an obdurate aristocracy. When,
the Revolution began, a powerful party hailed it in America, and a
less powerful party in England. Fox and Jefferson gave it counte



402    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
nance, and at first human millennium seemed to have come; but the
embittered Tories of the monarchy and aristocracy in England, fearful that their turn was next to be, laid the basis of an opposition
which never ceased till France was prostrate. They first incited the
French aristocratic exiles to annoy France, and they subsidized the
German powers against her, till the public exasperation of the Republicans ran to bloody excesses, - then with denunciations of these by
Burke and others, they fired the English heart. The old national
animosity succeeded to popular sympathy with a redeemed people,
and England plunged into that costly generation of slaughter which
made the meteor reputation of Bonaparte, and turned the human
sluices of Europe into the channels of American emigration. During all that time the Tory party held the English government in their
iron grip, while they poured money abroad like water; but in the
reign of George IV., when France was ruined, Englishmen, with
their usual envy, turned against their continental allies, and to break
up the Holy Alliance or league of continental monarchs, the Tory
party under Canning almost dissolved, and under Peel and Wellington even favored Catholic emancipation in the British realms. The
sentiment of Europe is, that England went mad during these French
wars, and the very excesses of the Revolution are now more readily
excused than the bitter hate of its reactionary rival. A local historian of Manchester gives this illustration of the Tory party's proscriptive fashion of subduing sympathy for France.
" iMany of the older inhabitants of Manchester will recollect seeing,
in the public houses of their younger days, boards bearing the inscription' No Jacobins admitted here.' These boards date their origin
from the year 1792; and so late as 1825, there was one of them in a
public house in Bridge Street. They were put up to prevent the discussion of reform principles in bar-parlors. WVe are told that shortly
after the government proclamation mentioned above, and to prevent a
meeting announced to be held to raise a subscription for the sufferers
by war in France, a tax-gatherer, accompanied by several other persons, went round the town to all the inn-keepers and publicans, advising them, if they had any regard for the renewal of their licenses,
to suffer no societies similar to the constitutional to meet in their
houses; and obtained the'signatures of one hundred and eighty-six
inn-keepers and publicans to a document, the import of which was as
follows::' We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, being licensed
inn-keepers and alehouse-keepers, within the towns of Manchester and




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   403
Salford, justly alarmed, at the treasonable and seditious conduct of a
well-known set of daring miscreants, who have called a public meeting to be held on Tuesday next at the Bull's HI-ead Inn, in Manchester, for the avowed purpose of assisting the French savages, as well
as with a sincere desire of introducing similar calamities to the inhabitants of this happy and prosperous country, as those that now
exist in France, take this very necessary opportunity of publishing
to the towns of Manchester and Salford in particular, and to the
whole kingdom of Great Britain in general, our detestation of such
wicked and abominable practices. And we do hereby solemnly declare, that we will not suffer any meeting to be hell in our houses, of
any clubs or societies, however specious or plausible their titles may
be, that have a tendency to put in force what those infernals so
ardently and devoutly wish for, namely, the destruction of this count
ty; and we will be ready on all occasions to co-operate with our
fellow-townsmen in bringing to justice all those who shall offend in
any instance against our much admired and most excellent constitution."  This document is dated, "Manchester, September 13th,
1792."
The United States also sympathized with France, until the behavior of her Minister in America and the insolent demand of a
loan which her representatives made of ours, provoked the country
into a wounded neutrality, if not to resentment. But by our general sympathy with the French people, whether under the republic,
the consulate, or the empire, we have kept our record clear with
France, and were enabled to possess ourselves of Louisiana, her colony.
Every subsequent revolution of France, as in 1830 and 1848,
created ferments in England, and led to semi-republican or ultra republican parties, chief of which was that of the " Chartists," who
demanded five radical points of reform, namely: manhood suffrage,
annual Parliaments, vote by ballot, remuneration of members of Parliament, and the abolition of the property qualification. The Chartists
being mainly laboring men, were unfortunate in their leaders, and
lacking a solid and persevering organization were intimidated by the
Londoners and by the soldiery. They had prepared a petition, which
was to be rolled into Parliament like a huge cartwheel, and which was
said to contain five millions of names. The petition was subjected
by Parliament to a thorough examination. "It weighed," says an
authority, " not five tons, but under five hundred weight. The signatures were not five millions, but about a million and a half; and these




404    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
were' not all genuine. The Duke of Wellington's name occurred
seventeen times; the Prince Consort's and even the Queen's pretended
signature was there,' and those of the ministers. There were nicknames, jests, and even indecent terms; and whole sheets were in the
same handwriting. The five points were not likely to be obtained
in such a way as this; and this is, in fact, the closing scene of the
Chartist agitation in England.
" The proceedings of that day were watched from all parts of
Europe; and the result produced as strong an effect on observers as
perhaps any one of the revolutions of the time. The peace had been
kept without the appearance of a single soldier, and by the citizens
themselves re-enforcing the civic police. From that day it was a
settled matter that England was safe from revolution. There were
no causes for it, no elements of it; and there was a steady and cheerful determination, on the part of the people, that there should be none.
No sovereign and no polity were ever safer at any time than the
Queen and the constitution of England in the revolutionary years of
1848-9."
But not always by the same management are political demonstrations suppressed in England, as witness the celebrated massacre in
1819, where the people in Manchester, meeting to' consider the Reform Bill, were sabred by the militia, so that the field was called
"Peterloo."  Of this disgraceful act Bamford, the Manchester historian, says: " On the breaking of the crowd, the yeomanry wheeled;
and dashing wherever there was an opening they followed, pressing
and wounding. IMany females appeared as the crowd opened; and
striplings and mere youths were also found.  Their cries were
piteous and heart-rending, and would, one might have supposed, have
disarmed any human resentment; but their appeals were in vain.
Women, white-vested maids, and tender youths were indiscriminately
sabred or trampled on, and we have reason for believing that few
were the instances in which that forbearance was vouchsafed which
they so earnestly implored. In ten minutes from the commencement
of the havoc, the field was an open and almost deserted space. The
sun looked down through a sultry and motionless air; the curtains
and blinds of the windows, within view, were all closed. A gentleman or two might occasionally be seen looking out from some houses
of recent erection, near the door of which a group of persons (special
constables) were collected, and apparently in conversation; others
were assisting the wounded or carrying off the dead. The hustings
b U  IV -IV    IV0-II




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.    405
remained with a few broken and severed flag-staves erect, and a torn
or gashed banner or two drooping; while over the whole field were
strewed caps, bonnets, hats, shawls, and shoes, and other parts of
male and female dress, trampled, torn, and bloody. The yeomanry
had dismounted; some were easing their horses' girths, others adjusing their accoutrements, and some were wiping their sabres. Several
mounds of human beings still remained where they had fallen, crushed
down, and smothered; some of these were still groaning; others with
starling eyes were gasping for breath; and others would never breathe
more. All were silent, save those low sounds, and the occasional
snorting and pawing of steeds. Persons might sometimes be noticed
peeping from attics, and over the tall ridgings of houses; but they
quickly withdrew, as if fearful of being observed, or unable to sustain the full gaze of a scene so hideous and abhorrent."
This is the language of a native Englishman, and it shows that the
great American " mob," which is always a startling feature of an
English book, is sometimes a more innocent organization than an
English constabulary.
"Young England" was another party, springing out of the Tories,
which proposed, from a different motive, to grant principles somewhat akin to Chartism; in short, it proposed to resume a mild feudal
or landed control, a benignant despotism over the poor, and let them
help the Tory party to destroy the Whigs.
The true " Radical" party of England is the joint product of very
liberal middle-class people in the cities, and of the more intelligent
and public-spirited manufacturers; with these affiliate a few literary
and scientific men, and it is powerfully recruited from the young
tradesmen and clerks and from  the better working-classes.  The
Radical party was so named by Pitt in 1798, when he denounced it,
and at that time it included even a Duke of Norfolk. The Radical
party of England at the present day is not, like " Chartism," "Independentism," etc., begotten of semi-French philosophy, nor of the
miseries of the working-classes, but of the experience of America and
of the practical philanthropy of the manufacturing mind in England.
It is almost identical with the " Manchester School," and its expounders came from both the other parties; for it has sometimes acted
with one, sometimes with another: coalescing with the Whigs, it carried the Reform Bill; with the Tories it wrought out Catholic emancipation and the Repeal of the Corn Laws. It is a cautious, businesslike, vigorous party, and at present seems in a fair way to swallow




406    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the Liberal party with which it is allied uneasily. When one sees
"Punch " and tihe " Times," after twenty years of scurrility, to praise
John Bright, he may know that to be a Radical is almost fashionable
now. Even the " Saturday Review," a representatively vicious English periodical straining to be a more snarling sort of " Times," says
that within a few years the whole scheme of Conservative belief is
shaken to the foundation. " Things which a short time ago were accounted very dreadful are now spoken of as the most natural and innocent things in the world. Men like Mir. Bright, who were deemed
a pest to decent society, are now flattered and courted, and hold themselves out successfully as the kind patrons of the government. There
is scarcely any political opinion held so steadfastly in England that
we cannot now easily conceive it fading away, and there is no man of
anything like real intellectual force whose career we can anticipate.
Changes in the relations of the governed to their governors, in the
relations of the poor and the rich, in the relations of the Church to
the State, and to modern thought, -changes that a short time ago
seemed quite chimerical, - now float before every one as entering the
range, not only of possibility, but of a not very remote probability."
An American sometimes speaks of his political traditions, meaning
that his father was of the same party with himself; but there is no
place where opinion differs so widely as at an American breakfasttable. We'hear of "old line" Whigs —but where are the young
Whigs?-and of " straight-out " Democrats; but the present anti-Democratic party in America derives its best strength from the sons of
the enthusiasts for Jackson. An opinion here invites no spleen; an
American father is apt to think his son individual and pluckful if he
differs from his " traditions."  From the son-in-law of Thomas Benton, the sturdiest Democrat in America, came the first Republican
candidate for the Presidency; and it frequently happened in the civil
war, that from the same hearthstone went a son into the army of the
North, and one into the army of the South. The politician in America begins almost in the cradle; but the party man in England began
in his great-grandfather. None are politicians there, in any influential sense, unless they are rich or " gentle;" and until within a few
years past politics in England were guided entirely by "family"
considerations. The House of Bedford is always Whig, - why so?
Family! The King once cut off the head of John Russell, and that
made the Russells Whigs for indefinite futurity.
The House of Derby is always conservative, - why? The Stanleys




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.    407
rallied round their sovereign, and that circle can never untwist.
When we find a person of this type in America, we generally exhibit
him as a spectacle, and treat him mildly and kindly, saying, " Lo!
the poor Indian!"
There is a reason for all this English doggedness, curious as it
may appear, as there is reason, also, for our family centrifugalism.
We have no very strong family instinct after the second generation;
we quit the family hearthstone in New York, or New England, or
Maryland, and occupy some frontier neighborhood, so that our " traditions" are soon lost, and we then take party positions, not according to our memory, but according to our newspaper, our pastor, our
prejudice, our immediate interest, and often according to our impulse
of principle. We often vote many ways in our lives, going about
from party to party as we like; sometimes because we love the candidate, sometimes because we feel the sweep of public revolution,
sometimes because we have "' read up" some question and changed
convictions upon it.
But in cramped England there is no moving to far frontiers; there
is little change of occupation or interest; the close boundaries of the
island keep us to our neighborhood, and the roof-tree, like a warning
tombstone, points out the party affiliations we must assume. It says,
" Here my ancestors were Whigs! here are all their portraits! out of
their party they chose their boon-companions, and of the same are
my friends yet. It is abandoning the graveyard, it is apostasy to
acquaintanceship, it is infidelity to superstition, to vault because of
an author or an idea from the venerable of the old to the apparent of
the new!"
Nevertheless, in England as here, there are politicians, who, by
dint of the lust of power, of the hate of the rival family's promotion, and by wider experience in the world of easy pivots, often conclude to reverse an ancient principle to avoid the loss of place.
These struggle hard to carry their party over, and generally succeed,
after a tremendous culinary tempest, by appealing to the same old
clique-spirit.  " If the family of De Bodford, Whigs, cater to the new
public sentiment, and elect their man, then I, De Squodford, Tory,
must come down from court and privilege, and submit to be patronized, or to be sulky. Never! I will accept the hateful innovation
first."
It has thus happened that the Liberal party has often been conservative, and the Conservative party truly magnanimous. At different




408    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
times both have been for land, both for Free Trade. "Can any one
be so blind," says Lord Brougham, " as to believe that if Burke and
Fox had been ministers of George III., they would rather have
resigned than make an attempt to subdue America?" — "  No!" says
Junius, the covert satirist, "Mr. Pitt and Lord Camden were to be
the patrons of America, because they were in the opposition."
Party spirit in England is equally unscrupulous with politician
spirit here.
The WVhigs attempted to get into office in the time of George IV.,
by means of the public sympathy over the trial of Queen Caroline,
his wife, just as the Republicans in America attempted to secure the
Presidency by the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. The Tories, to
get Lord Melbourne's Cabinet out, got a Mrs. Norton to accuse him
of criminal conversation with her, just as the American Jeffersonians
accused HIamilton of a female intrigue, to drive him from office.
French Democracy, in England, was most successfully argued by
Jeremy Bentham, and a Jew, Ricardo. Major Cartwright was the
earliest and most persistent American Republican in Enoland. Joseph Ilume was one of the earliest Radicals. There have been many
small parties in England, organized upon special issues, and in the
humbler walks of English life almost every grade of opinion may be
found; but in England, as here, the two great parties of Liberal and.
Conservative keep their ranks closed, though they sometimes change
the mottoes on the banners, and the tune upon the drums.
The apparent failure of the efforts made in New England, and some
of the MIiddle and Western States, ten years ago, to annihilate the
trade in spirituous, and even in malt liquors, has recently (1869)
been revived, — in ]Massachusetts particularly.  At one time the
State of Delaware maintained the anomaly of a prohibitory liquor
law, and, at the same time, whipping-posts and pillories; a man could
be egged in the market-place, but nowhere egg-nogged. The temperance question is a test question with a large minority of voters, in
such States as Maine and 1Michigan, where they have refused to vote
their party ticket without a temperance declaration appended to its
platform. In England, attempts were made, as recently as 1869, to
pass a 1" permissive bill " through Parliament, making it possible to
embarrass or prevent the sale of liquors in any parish where twothirds of the poor-rate payers said nay. The bill was lost by a
decisive vote, though in England, as in America, the women, en
masse, petitioned for the prohibition.  Beer (strong ale) and gin




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   409
are the national drinks in England, as lager beer and whiskey are
with us.
Mr. John Bright has several times proposed, in England, to raise
a party cry of " A Free Breakfast Table," with the object of taking
the taxes off tea, coffee, and sugar. While there are stronger reasons
for prohibitory liquor laws in England than with us, - as there the
percentage of drunkards is greater, and is, even with women, large, -
their enactment is probably very far off; for excepting a certain portion of the Dissenters, there is no great moral reform element. in England, at all corresponding with the Puritan and the Methodist elements here.
The Native American, or " Know Nothing" party, of 1844, revived
in 1855, was a formidable expression of the prejudice of the nativeborn and Protestant elements against the rapid inroads of foreigners
upon citizenship, and the suffrage, and against the supposed aggressions of the Catholic Church. In 1844 the party culminated in fbrmidable riots, and in 1856 it reared itself again upon a secret order,
like that of the Jesuits it denounced. The prudence of the people
believed that, with some drawbacks, immigration was still the great
current of our nation's wealth and life, and not to be discouraged;
and also that Protestantism could get no advantage in politics. The
great party melted away as speedily as it arose, and few of its leaders
now care to shoulder their propositions propounded at that time.
Another American party was raised against Free Masonry, which
developed William H. Seward and Thaddeus Stevens.
In England there have been popular outcries against the Jews and
Catholics, and "No Popery" is still a bitter whisper amongst the
Dissenters. In 1850, the Pope proclaimed a Catholic Hierarchy for
Great Britain, which caused the Queen to go beside herself, and she
hastened to Lord John Russell to ask if she were supreme within
her own realms. A terrible tempest of prejudice followed, and an
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy bill was passed through Parliament, which
became a dead letter like many American laws; everybodg yrew cool
and remorseful, and the Pope's cardinals, etc., were unmolested.
The question of the ballot for women is advocated in England by
John Stuart Mill, a political economist, as here by a number of able
men and women; but in either country its triumph seems a long way
off. Its adoption would certainly be the most formidable change ever
witnessed in society and morals, probably to the advantage of men,
52




410    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and to the injury of women. We should cease to get drunk, and they
would cease to be gentle.
Free Trade, is, as we have said, no longer the policy of any party
in England; but in America it has developed into a formidable
party question, although it was formidable here nearly forty years
aro: -
"On the 1st October, 1831, the Free Trade Assembly, which,"
says De Tocqueville,'" according to the American custom, had taken
the name of a convention, met at Philadelphia; it consisted of more
than two hundred members. Its debates were public, and they at
once assumed a legislative character. The extent of the powers of
Congress, the theories of Free Trade, and the different clauses of the
Tariff were discussed in turn. At the end of ten days' deliberation,
the convention broke up, after having published an address to the
American people, in which it declared: —
" I. That Congress had not the right of making a Tariff, and that
the existing Tariff was unconstitutional.
" II. That the prohibition of Free Trade was prejudicial to the
interests of all nations, and to that of the American people in particular."
With its usual tact, the Democratic party, which has now been out
of power several years, is setting sail toward Free Trade, with the
hope of luring to its organization the million or more of Republican
Free Trade voters. This was a Democratic principle long ago, and
in the " late" war, we carried at our mast-heads: " Free Trade and
Sailor's Rights;" but the Democratic party in 1868 declared for'' Protection" in its platform, while the Republicans were afraid to
speak of the subject at all. The politicians on both sides wanted
both, or neither, or either; but both of them wanted the people. A
movement has been made amongst the Irish voters in America, in
favor of " Protection," it being argued to them that a High Tariff will
cripple England; and thus it is possible that we may yet see old eastern Whigs and Irishmen coalesce against southern Democrats and
western Republicans. The Free Traders are as yet of both great
parties here, led mainly by James W. Grimes, James Brooks, Horace
White, Murat Halstead, William C. Bryant, Henry Ward Beecher,
and William Lloyd Garrison.
I have already alluded to the opinion, generally prevalent, that Sir
Robert Peel was the first of English statesman. Let us see what
were his public acts: —




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THIE SEA.    411
He improved the administration of law, and renovated the police;
he brought England from an -inconvertible to a sound currency; he
obtained Catholic Emancipation; he carried Free Trade for England; he refused a peerage, and enjoined his children to remain commoners.
WVhen Preel died, a small but respectable party was organized upon
his memory and policy, and its adherents were called " Peelites;"
they were utilitarians, and believed in reduced armies and navies,
non-intervention, and a simple government, but in part administered
by bureaucracy.
While these are the leading English parties, there is also amongst
the disfranchised in England, a formidable organization, which seeks
to give the working-man a separate power in the administration of
labor. It is this vast organization which is underlying England, like
internal fire, sometimes forgotten, but always present, and only
smouldering. When the Chartist excitement in England was highest,
the operatives threatened to quit work over the whole kingdom unless
their demands were acceded to.
The Trades-Union system, of America, exists in even stricter organization. than in England, and enters as a power into politics, but
generally, it must be confessed, in the interests of labor and poverty.
At present the Trades-Unions of the United Kingdom are by some
thought to be its greatest apparent danger. They are an imperium
in imnperio, in which insufferable tyranny is exercised by workingmen
over their fellows, from which there seems to be no escape but by the
gradual process of education.
The laws provide protection and remedy; but recourse to that protection is prevented by the same oppression. " It is remarkable,"
say's Harriet M3artineau, " that the one intolerable despotism which
at this day exists in England is found, not in the government, not in
the land-owners, not in the old-fashioned rural districts, but in the
modern democratic towns, -the despotism  of working-men over
fellow-workers in their own class, and their own trade. This is a
peril which may occur in a republic, and especially, if the employers
possess the sort of monopoly created by a Protective system." In
the United States the Federal government has already come into direct confict with the Trades-Unions, which latter assumed to regulate
prices, and prescribe the color of trades-employes in the government
workshops. It is not probable that the dignity of a State will consent to compromise upon this question with merely masonic bodies,




412   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
confederated- not only in their own private interests, but against the
wider interests of labor at large.
The following was the great popular hymn, sung at the mass meetings to agitate for the Reform Bill, and it is as historic in England
as is John Brown's song with us:"Lo! we answer! see, we come,
Quick at Freedom's holy call:
We come! we come! we come! we come!
To do the glorious work of all;
And hark! we raise from sea to sea
The sacred watchword, Liberty!
"God is our guide! from field, from wave,
From plough, from anvil, and from loom,
We come, our country's right to save,
And speak a tyrant faction's doom.
And hark! we raise from sea to sea
The sacred watchword, Liberty!
" God is our guide, no swords we draw,
We kindle not war's battle-fires;
By union, justice, reason, law,
We claim the birthright of our sires.
We raise the watchword, Liberty!
We will, we will, we will be free."
Except at the period of the civil war, the lyric has played a small
part in American politics. Our national anthem is itself an adaptation. We have had, outside of the slavery discussion, no such energetic poet as the English Corn Law rhymer, Elliott. Perhaps the
only American who sent his muse upon partisan errands was Charles
G. Halpine, a naturalized Irishman, who gained an important local
office in New York, the Registership, valued at forty thousand dollars
a year, and almost sheerly by the popularity of his rhymes on partisan
topics.
The foreign element in England does not play a like important
part with ours, and there are, therefore, no such pieces of literature
there as this of General Halpine.  The allusions to the wigwam, etc.,
are merely local to New York: —
"Say, here! How is it, mistherAre you for the Boy, or no?
For he's bound to be Re-gisther,
Let the wind blow high or low.




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   413
All the Germans an' the Irish here
For him have dhrawn the skean,
For Von Halpine trinks zwei lager bier,
And Miles he'wears the green.'
"' He's too young'?  Your granny's sisther!
I tell you'tisn't so;
An' he's bound to be Re-gisther,
Let the wind blow high or low.
All the Celtic and the Teuton vote
Are friends of his, I ween,
For Von Halpine schpeist mit pretzel brodt,
And Miles on mild poteen.
"Oh, the Wigwam wants a glysther
For to purge away her ills;
So we'll make him our Re-gisther,
An' he'll bate even Radway's pills.
All the girls are for him; this is how
That wondher came to pass, -
Von Halpine liebt ein blond-e frau,
And Miles an Irish lass.
"May my tongue be all a blisther
If I tell a lie to you,
For he's bound to be Re-gisther,
And we all must put him through.
Oh, he suits the men of every race,
This gossoon undefiled,Von Halpine schpeist mit Schweitzer Kaase,
An' the Boy on p'raties biled.
"So here's to Hans von Halpine,
And to Miles who wears the green;
Fill your can and dhrink it all, man,
Or in Rhine wein or poteen;
For Miles he fit mit Sigel,
And mit Asboth trinks poteen;
And you can't find Halpine's equal
For'a-wearing of the green."'
The Irish Catholic vote, in Parliament, is frequently a balance of
power which an English politician must consult. The press of London,
even more perhaps than that of New York, is written up by Irishmen,
and Irish rioting in London has been witnessed in nearly equal magnitude with that of the draft riots in New York, in 1863.  We have
this race of combative people distributed amongst us; but had we an
Ireland in America, returning upwards of one hundred Irish mem



414    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
bers to the House of Representatives, we should find the Irish problem difficult indeed to solve. Foreigners are naturalized in England
with great nicety of discrimination, and by Act of Parliamelnt for
each individual case. The Home Secretary may also give a certificate, affording limited privileges to to the alien, and the crown may, by
patent, create " Denizens." But of wholesale naturalization, such as
we extend, there is no instance in English history. It is easy for a
foreign prince to reach the English throne, but hard for a foreigner to
become an English subject. The greatest immigration to England
was from the Low Countries, the Rhine and France, during the religious wars. The right of exile is always respected there.
By English law, extraordinary and unwonted means of influencing
political elections are forbidden, such as torchlight processions, parades, bands of music, the wearing of emblems, free-lunches and
free-whiskey; and although the latter of these clauses is often avoided,
it must be confessed that an English campaign is generally left more
to the taste, and less to the excitement, of the elector than with us.
Huge torchlight processions and sensuous political exhibitions have
been carried to excess here; to their abuse we owe the frequent riotous behavior of excitable classes of our people. The English candidates address the people, and frequently the opponents speak together; in general, with personal courtesy the one toward the other, a
chairman being appointed. Each candidate has his election agents,
who get out his bills, visit the people, and canvass the district, and
these must be paid their salaries through an auditor, who is appointed
by the government returning officer.
The place of nominating candidates is called the " Hustings," and
is generally a mere platform, or booth, where the Sheriff reads his
proclamation ordering an election, the people standing by. If only
the number of nominations are made that will fill the seats, they are
both (or all) declared elected..If there be more candidates than
seats, the Sheriff asks for a show of hands and declares who is
elected; but if his count is disputed he orders a poll. The election
is then adjourned till the polling day, and meantime, all the arts of
wheedling, " seeing," etc., are employed. At the election the
borough, or county, is divided into districts, and there is a poll in
each, where all vote, but not by ballot, and this enables every bystander to hear the choice of every voter. The poor protest against
this, because their employers or landlords can punish them afterward
by way of revenge for an adverse vote. The English, allege, how



POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.    415
ever, that a stealthy vote takes away a man's independence; but this
seems no worse than taking away both his independence and his
farm.
A candidate for office in America is generally earnest to obtain the
vote of some party nominating convention, or, on rare occasions,
private citizens in concert nominate him, and procure him the support
of a newspaper and a purse; he then takes the " stump," or makes
speeches to those he solicits for his constituents.  The party convention plays a lesser part in England; the candidate himself presents
his name to the electors, and organizes his committee to help him
canvass the district.  Here is an illustration: —
" TO THE ELECTORS OF THE EASTERN DIVISION OF STAFFORDSHIRE.
" GENTLEMFN: I take this early opportunity of announcing myself as a
CANDIDATE to REPRESENT your important District in the ensuing PARLIAMENT.
" For upwards of twenty years I have been connected with the county, and
have furthered its canals, railways, waterworks, and public enterprises generally. My interest in the progress of the county is close, personal, and
permanent.
" My political opinions are Liberal, and I have always given an active and
consistent support to the principles advocated by the great Liberal party.
" I am a warm supporter of Mr. Gladstone, and should vote for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. This measure of justice conceded, the constitutional rights so long suspended will again be enjoyed by the people of
Ireland in common with the other subjects of the Queen.
" I am prepared to support in Parliament an extensive scheme of National
Education, believing as I do that knowledge is not merely power, but wealth,
and that to educate the people is to increase their own means of enjoyment,
while substantially adding to the productive riches of the country.
" Should you do me the honor to return me to Parliament as your Representative, the task of watching over the important local affairs of a county,
in the prosperity of which I am so deeply interested, would be at all times a
natural anid agreeable duty.
"I am, gentlemen,
"Your obedient servant,
" JOHN ROBINSON M'CLEAN,
"Bridgeman Place, Walsall.
" 10th July, 1868."
The want of the ballot in England is, next to the want of electors
and a true electoral spirit, the pressing need. With us the pressing




416    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
need is some way of escape from the thraldom of caucuses and
nominating conventions, wherein our candidates are really selected,
and we have no hope but that one of these may be a good one.
There is no such thing in England as a vast nominating convention
to adopt a platform and candidates. From his residence in London
the head of the party summons his supporters to a private banquet,
and there the policy stealthily agreed upon becomes the platform of
the party. Says Brougham, "The game which falls a sacrifice to
party are the noblest principles; the nation is deluded, and its
aristocratic masters ascribe to it their own opinions. The nation
itself is nothing but a toy and tool of the aristocracy."
In America the game which falls sacrifice to party is the public
revenue and the public franchises; but through the strife of parties we
generally get the man of our choice, and a promise, at least, of the
policy we wish. The English have the defective system, and we
have the defective character under the system. The people can
reform our politics if they will, but only revolution, or the submission of the aristocracy, can reform the English system.
We all remember how the anti-slavery movement began in this
Northern country; an author or two, a preacher or two, a newspaper
or two, a novel or two, and the Quakers, - these began it. The opposition to the anti-slavery party was tremendous, and it came oftentimes from the most pious citizens; all the religious denominations
were conservative; all the staid populations were deprecatory of this
agitation; violence, rail-ridings, tar and feathers, were employed to
stop the hubbub; it went on; it conquered the quiet elemtnents one
by one; the politicians felt the slow shifting of the wind and tacked
over; we suddenly found we were all " there," when each one thought
only himself " there."
Not without parallel is the case of the Reform Bill in England,
which I reproduce from various authorities to show how a political
reform must be carried in England: the under masses make a noise
and threaten slaughter, and the upper classes relent in time, the
politicians of each party taking position according to the best contingencies. With the latter part of the year 1816 arose a popular
demand for a reform in the English parliamentary representation. "At
this time," says Bumford, in his "Life of a Radical," " the writings
of William Cobbett suddenly became of great authority; they were
read on nearly every hearth in the manufacturing districts of South
Lancashire, in those of Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham; also in




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.    417
many of the Scottish manufacturing towns. Their influence was
speedily visible. HIe directed his readers to the true cause of their
sufferings, - misgovernment, - and to its proper correction, - parliamentary reform. Riots soon became scarce, and from that time they
have never obtained their ancient vogue, with the laborers of
England."  "Let us not descend to be unjust," says one, " let us
not.withhold the homage which, with all the faults of William Cobbett, is still due to his great name. Instead of riots and destruction
of property, IIampden Clubs were now established in many of our
large towns, and the villages and districts around them! Cobbett's
books were printed in a cheap form; the laborers read them, and
thenceforward became deliberate and systematic in their proceedings.,
N'or were there wanting men of their own class to encourage and.
direct the new converts; the Sunday schools of the preceding thirtyyears had produced many working-men of sufficient talent to become
readers, writers, and speakers in the village meetings for parliamen-.
tary reform; some also were found to possess a rude poetic talent,.
which rendered their effusions popular, and bestowed an additional.
charm on their assemblages; and by such various means anxious.
listeners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn friom the:
cottages of quiet nooks and dingles to the weekly readings and discourses of the Hampden Clubs. One of these clubs was established
in 1816, at the small town of MIiddleton, near Manchester; and 1,,,
having been instrumental in its formation, a tolerable reader also, andc
a rather expert writer, was chosen Secretary. The club prospered;:
the number of members increased; the funds, raised by subscription:
of a penny a week, became more than sufficient for all outgboings;
and taking a bold step we soon rented a chapel, which had been given.
up by a society of Kilhamite Methodists. This place we threw open.
for the religious worship of all sects and parties, and there we held
our meetings, on the evenings of Monday and Saturday in each:
week. The proceedings of our society, its place of meeting,- singular as being the first place of meeting occupied by Reformers (for so in,
those days we were termed), together with the services of religion
connected with us, drew a considerable share of public attention to
our transactions, and obtained for the leaders some notoriety. Several meetings of delegates from the surrounding districts.were held at
our chapel, on which occasions the leading reformers of Lancashire
were generally seen together."
From these little assemblies, as with our anti-slavery lyceurns, the




418    THE NEWN tWORLD COMPAlRED WVITH THE OLD.
WOrk of reform began, and by dint of vigorous meetings, with opposition of all sorts, even to armed force, the workingmen's movement rolled on till it reached Parliament, with cries of distress and
with petitions, slowly turning the hearts of the middle class, and, at
last, after fourteen years it passed the House of Commons and went up
to the Lords. There it was turned back, amidst the execrations of
the people, who heard of its failure with despair.
The confusion in the nation that resulted in this failure is thus
ably told by Cooke, who, though a partisan, is yet sufficiently accurate -
"The I-louse of Commons immediately passed a vote of confidence
in those ministers who had carried the Reform Bill. The King interposed a short prorogation, expressly for the purpose that the bill
might be again introduced. The speech was'couched in terms which
plainly indicated that the sovereign continued faithful.  Every
method was adopted which could palliate the news of the rejection
of the bill, and avert the thunder-storm  which threatened. The
Whigs were in a great measure successful; the lightning did not
strike the lofty towers of our monarchy, nor strip off the Gothic
fretwork of our House of Peers; but strange sights were seen
throughout the nation; and a voice had gone forth which told that
the end was not yet. In London, tens of thousands of men, marching in close array and crowding all the avenues to the palace; the
hbouses of the Tory peers in a constant state of siege, the peers
themselves venturing abroad at the danger of their lives; in the
metropolis of a generous people, the Duke of Wellington, whose
reputation is his country's glory, unable to appear without insult
andcdangter; in a metropolis of a people remarkable for their respect
to the laws, Lord Londonderry struck senseless from his horse by a
flight of:stones; in the country, Nottingham Castle, the ancient possession of -the Duke of New Castle given to the flames; Derby in the
power of the mob, the gaol destroyed, the houses of the known Tories
demolished; the city of Bristol on fire, and Sir Charles Wetherell
fleeing in disguise byr the light of the conflagration. Men of all
grades banded totgether in unions, pledged at any cost to obtain Parliamentary. reform:; -a hundred and fifty thousand assembled at Birmingham and threatening to march upon London, — these were the
signs of the times, varied by public meetings all over the country,
comprehending nearly the whole mass of the middle classes, and a
large portion of the.aristQeracy, who joined in the expression of in



POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.    419
dignant surprise, that a'whisper of a faction' should be allowed to
render abortive the express desire of a nation."
The same writer continues: "W Vell was the national sentiment expressed and sustained by the press. Morning and evening did these
batteries of reform pour their incessant fire, and the noise reverberated through the kingdom. A very large majority of the journals
were in the interest of the WVhigs and the people, but the combined
powers of all the rest of these shrink into insignificance, when
compared with that of the leader of theim, a paper which, in the
pride of conscious power, had styled itself the leading journal of
Europe. Never was there so tremendous a party engine as the period
of which we are now treating presents.  The receptacle of talent
sufficient to form three brilliant reputations, backed by the admiration, the applause, the obedience of a nation, it is impossible to look
back upon its career without strong excitement; to see it guiding,
counselling, exhorting, exciting, moving onwards, exulting in its own
might; crushing at a blow the incipient reputation of any Tory in
whom it discerned talent that might render him  formidable, yet
stooping to cherish and to draw forth into blossom the smallest bud
that might be discovered amongst its own party.
"Its advocacy of the party it espoused was not confined to forcible leading articles, and to able argument; in all those numberless
acts by which a party may be strengthened or injured this journal
was perfect. The principal conductor of that paper appeared, placed,
like the listener in the ear of Dionysius, in a focus of sound, whither
the most secret whisper and the loudest clamor were alike wafted.
Yet great as was the influence of the'Times,' it only blew the
flame, - it did not ignite it. The' Times' was supporting the Duke
of Wellingcton's administration, and repeating his declaration against
reform without disapproval, when it caught the murmur of the coming storm, and with infinite tact prepared to ride it."
Other symptoms of this great political period in England liken it
to the news in the North at the capture of Fort Sumter.
The mail roads were sprinkled over for miles with people who were
on the watch for news from London; and the passengers on the tops
of the coaches shouted the tidings, or threw down handbills to tell
that the Ministry had resigned. Then was there such mourning
throughout England as had not been known for many years. Men
forsook their business to meet and consult what they should do. In
some places the bells tolled; in others they were muffled.




420    THIE NTEW WORLD COMPARED WITII THE OLD.
The ministers resigned on Wednesday. On the morning of Thursday the news reached Manchester. It was circulated with inconceivable rapidity, and created a sensation beyond description. Its effect
upon the markets was startling. Orders were at once countermanded.
The shopkeepers left their places of business, and ran about asking,
"' What is to be done now?"  The working-people in every part of
the town gathered into little knots, and expressed their hatred of those
whose intrigues had prevailed over the voice of twenty-four millions
of people. A public meeting was held in the -Town Hall, and a
petition to the House of Commons'unanimously agreed to. The
petition prayed the House of Commons that they would assert their
own collective dignity, and the indefeasible right of their fellow-subjects by determined adherence to the bill, and by refusing to vote
any supplies until a measure essential to the happiness of the people
and the safety of the throne should be carried into a law.
By such determined proceedings must, every reform be carried in
Great Britain, and yet the triumph of the Reform Bill is hailed with
joy by almost every Englishman now. In 1866, when John Bright was
hailed by his constituents of Birmingham with the gladness of a
mighty multitude, a scene transpired to show how well the English
masses recollected that vital campaign. It was an open-air meeting;
two hundred thousand people were present; all was enthusiasm.
The incident was thus described by an eye-witness:"It was at Newhall Hill that the most interesting event of the day
occurred. This spot was, thirty-four years ago, the scene of the celebrated meeting of the union. The purpose of the assembly of the
7th of May, 1832, was to petition the House of Lords to pass Earl
Grey's Reform Bill. The hill at that day was unbuilt upon, and covered twelve acres in extent. In dismissing the meeting its chairnan,
Mfr. Atwood, used these words:'My good friends, before we depart
I will call upon you again to exhibit a spectacle of loyalty and devotion. Our good King is entitled to the deepest gratitude of his people. I therefore desire that you will, all of you, take off your hats,
and that you will lift up your eyes to heaven where the just God
rules over heaven and earth; and that you will, all of you, cry out
with one heart and voice, " God bless the King! "' The united prayer
went up with aE sound as of thunder. It was upon this spot where
the meeting to which we have thus alluded was held, that an event
occurred to-day to which allusion must be made. Here four crossroads meet, and as far as the eye could reach there was but one dense




rOLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   421
mass of people, —every avenue being choked with human beings.
The carriage containing Mr. Bright was here stopped, and the honorable gentleman mounted the seat of the vehicle, and, amid the
greatest excitement and cheering, pointed with his hand up Newhall
Hill. The allusion was understood by the thousands who witnessed
the act, and it was the signal for some of the most deafening
cheers we have ever heard."
During the American war I attended several of the great meetings
of sympathy with the United States, at Exeter IHall and at St.
James' Htall. There were no bands, no banners, - only representative
orators like Bright, Thompson, Stanfield, and Beals, and an immense
outpouring of the working-classes, all earnest, decorous, and honest.
I felt that others might claim to be our friends, but that these were
so. Amongst them were various young " snobs" and students, saying surly things against America and making diversions. One of
these said:" That Lincoln's only a rail-splitter and a boatman."
" Well!" said a workingman, "I think the Americans were quite
right in doing honor to a poor man, one of themselves."
"Who's here for America?" said the other, — " Nobodies like
Newman Hall."
"Newman Hall a nobody," said the workingman, quickly, " then
perhaps you are nobody! And what is Baptist Noel?"
" Oh! Baptist Noel is a gentleman, I confess! "
Baptist Noel, though a friend of America, was the relative of a
nobleman, and not the former fact, but the latter, made him a gentleman.
To sketch an English election is a legitimate topic of this chapter;
but I know of no place where there is a consecutive account of an
actual parliamentary borough contest to be found, and therefore rely
upon that of Thackeray in his story of " The Newcomes," which is circumstantial, life-like, and curiously descriptive of English manners
and habits. The occasion was a family quarrel between Colonel Tom
Newcome and his nephew Sir Barnes Newcome, which led to the
former going into the latter's district with an eccentric electioneering
friend, Fred Bayham, to beat Sir Barnes for Parliament: -
" There were four candidates in the field for the representation of that
borough. That old and tried member of Parliament, Mr. Bunce, was
considered to be secure; and the baronet's seat was thought to be
pretty safe, on account of his influence in the place. Nevertheless,




422    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Thomas Newcome's supporters were confident for their champion, and
that, when the parties came to the poll, the extreme Liberals of the
borough would divide their votes between him and the fourth candidate, the uncomproniising, Radical, Mr. Barker.
" In due time the Colonel and his staff arrived at Newcome, and resumed the active canvass which they had commenced some months
previously. The lawyer, the editor.of the' Independent,' and F.
B., the adventurer, were the Colonel's chief men. His head-quarters
(which F. B. liked very well) were at the hotel where we last -saw
them, and whence issuing with his aide-de-camp at his heels, the Colonel went round, to canvass personally, according to his promise,
every free and independent elector of the borough. Barnes, his relative and opponent too, was canvassing eagerly on his side, and was
most affable and active; the two parties would often meet nose to
nose in the same street, and their retainers exchange looks of defiance. With Mr. Polts. of the'Independent,' a big man, on his
left; with Mr. Fredereck, a still bigger man, on his right; his own
-trusty bamboo cane in his hand, before which poor Barnes had shrunk
abashed ere now, Colonel Newcome had commonly the best of these
street encounters, and frowned his nephew, Barnes, and Barnes's staff
off the pavement. With the non-electors, the Colonel was a decided
favorite; the boys invariably hurrahed him; whereas they jeered and
uttered ironical cries after poor Barnes, asking,'Who beat his wife?
WVho drove his children to the work-house?' and other unkind personal questions. The working-man upon whom the libertine Barnes
had inflicted so cruel an injury in his early days was now the baronet's
bitterest enemy. He assailed him with curses and threats when they
met, and leagued his brother workmen against him. The wretched
Sir Barnes owned with contrition that the sins of his youth pursued
him; his enemy scoffed at the idea of Barnes's repentance; he was
not moved at the grief, the punishment in his own family; the humiliation and remorse which the repentant prodigal piteously pleaded.
No man was louder in his cries of mea culppa than Barnes; no man
professed a more edifying repentance. He was hat in hand to every
black coat (preachers), established or dissenting. Repentance was
to his interest, to be sure; but yet let us hope it was sincere. There
is some hypocrisy, of which one does not like even to entertain the
thought; especially that awful falsehood which trades with divine
truth, and takes the name of tHeaven in vain.
"The Roebuck Inn, at Newcome, stands in the market-place, directly




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   423
facing the King's Arms, where, as we know, Colonel Newcome and
uncompromising toleration held their head-quarters. Immense banners of blue and yellow floated from every window of the King's
Arms, and decorated the balcony from which the Colonel and his assistants were in the habit of addressing the multitude. Fiddler's and
trumpeters arrayed in his colors paraded the town, and enlivened it
with their melodious strains. Other trumpeters and fiddlers, bearing
the true-blue cockades and colors of Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart.,
would encounter the Colonel's musicians, on which occasions of meeting it is to be feared small harmony was produced. They banged
each other with their brazen instruments. The warlike drummers
thumped each other's heads in lieu of the professional sheepskin.
The town-boys and street blackguards rejoiced in these combats,
and exhibited their valor on one side or the other. The Colonel had
to pay a long bill for broken brass when he settled the little accounts
of the election.
" In after times, F. Bayham was pleased to describe the circumstances of a contest in which he bore a most distinguished part. It
was F. B.'s opinion that his private eloquence brought over many
waverers to the Colonel's side, and converted numbers of the benighted followers of Sir Barnes Newcome. Bayham's voice was indeed magnificent, and could be heard from the King's Arms balcony
above the shout and roar of the multitude, the gongs and bugles of
the opposition bands. Ile was untiring in his oratory, undaunted
in the presence of the crowds below. He was immensely popular,
F. B. Whether he laid his hand upon his broad chest, took off his
hat and waved it, or pressed his blue-and-yellow ribbons to his bosom,
the crowd shouted,' I-Iurra! silence! bravo! Bayham forever!''They would have carried me in triumph,' said F. B.'If I had but
the necessary qualification I might be member for Newcome this day,
or any other I chose.''" I am afraid in this conduct of the Colonel's election MSr. Bayham
resorted to acts of which his principal certainly would disapprove,
and engaged auxiliaries whose alliance was scarcely creditable.
Whose was the hand that flung the potato which struck Sir Barnes
Newcome, Bart., on the nose as he was haranguing the people from
the Roebuck? How came it that whenever Sir Barnes and his friends
essayed to speak, such an awful yelling and groaning took place in
the crowd below, that the words of those feeble orators were inaudible? Who smashed all the front windows of the Roebuck? Colonel




424    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Newcome had not words to express his indignation at proceedings
so unfair.  When Sir Barnes and his staff were hustled. in the marketplace and most outrageously shoved, jeered, and jolted, the Colonel
from the King's Arms organized a rapid sally, which he himself
headed with his bamboo cane; cut out Sir Barnes and his followers
from the bands of the mob, and addressed those ruffians in a noble
speech, of which the' bamboo cane,'' Englishman,''shame,''fairplay,' were the most emphatic expressions. The mob cheered old
Tom, as they called him; they made way for Sir Barnes, who shrunk
pale and shuddering back into his hotel again,- who always persisted
in saying that that old villain of a dragoon had planned both the
assault and the rescue.
"' When the dregs of the people, - the scum of the rabble, sir,
banded together by the myrmidons of Sir Barnes Newcome, attacked
us at the King's Arms, and smashed ninety-six pounds' worth of glass
at one volley, besides knocking off the gold unicorn's head and the tail
of the British lion; it was fine, sir,' F. B. said,' to see how the
Colonel came forward, and the coolness of the old boy in the midst
of the action. He stood there in front, sir, with his old hat off, never
so much as once bobbing his old head, and I think he spoke rather
better under fire than he did when there was no danger, Between
ourselves, he aint much of a speaker, the old Colonel; he hems and
haws, and repeats himself a good deal. He hasn't the gift of natural
eloquence which some men have.  You should have heard my
speech, sir, on the Thursday in the Town Hall, - that was something like a speech. Potts was jealous of it, and always reported me
most shamefully.'
"In spite of his respectable behavior to the gentlemen in black
coats, his soup tickets and his flannel tickets, his own pathetic lectures and his sedulous attendance at other folks' sermons, poor
Barnes could not keep up his credit with the serious interest at Newcome, and the meeting-houses and their respective pastors and frequenters turned their backs upon him. The case against him was too
flagrant; his enemy, the factory-man, worked it with an extraordinary
skill, malice, and pertinacity. Not a single man, woman, or child in
Newcome but was made acquainted with Sir Barnes's early peccadillo.
Ribald ballads were howled through the streets describing his sin
and his deserved punishment. For very shame, the reverend dissenting gentlemen were obliged to refrain from voting for him; such as
ventured, believing in the sincerity of his repentance, to give him




POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.    425'
their voices, were yelled away from the polling-places. A very great
number who would have been his friends, were compelled to bow to
decency and public opinion, and supported the Colonel.
"Hooted away from the hustings, and the public places whence the
rival candidates addressed the free and independent electors, this
wretched and persecuted Sir Barnes invited his friends and supporters
to meet him at the Athenaeum Room,- scene of his previous eloquent
performances. But, though this apartment was defended by tickets,
the people burst into it; and Nemesis, in the shape of the persevering factory-man, appeared before the scared Sir Barnes and his puzzled committee. The man stood up and bearded the pale baronet.
He had a good cause, and was in truth a far better master of debate
than our banking friend, being a great speaker among his brother
operatives, by whom political questions are discussed, and the conduct of political men examined, with a ceaseless interest, and with an
order and eloquence which are often unknown in what is called superior society. This man and his friends round about him fiercely
silenced the clamor of'Turn him out,' with which his first appearance was assailed by Sir Barn/es's hangers-on. He said, in the name
of justice he would speak up; if they were fathers of families and
loved their wives and daughters he dared&them torefuse him a hearing. Did they love their wives and their children? It was a shame
that they should take such a man as that yonder for their representative in Parliament. But the greatest sensation he made was when in
the middle of his speech, after inveighing against Barnes's cruelty
and parental ingratitude, he asked,'Where were Barnes's children?'
and actually thrust forward two, to the amazement of the committee
and the ghastly astonishment of the guilty baronet himself.
"' Look at them,' says the man;' they are almost in rags; they
have to put up with scanty and hard food; contrast them with his
other children, whom you see lording in gilt carriages, robed in purple and fine linen, and scattering mud from their wheels over us humble people as we walk the streets; ignorance and starvation is good
enough for these, for those others nothing can be too fine or too dear.
What can a factory girl expect from such a fine, high-bred, whitehanded, aristocratic gentleman as Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet, but
to be cajoled, and seduced, and deserted, and left to starve? When
she has served my lord's pleasure, her natural fate is to be turned
into the streets; let her go and rot there, and her children beg in the
gutter.'           54




426    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"'This is the most shameful imposture,' gasps out Sir Barnes;'these children are not - are not -'
"The man interrupted him with' a bitter laugh.
"'No,' says he,' they are not his; that's true enough, friends.
It's Tom Marutin's girl and boy,- a precious pair of lazy little scamps.
But at first he thought they were his children. See how much he
knows about them! IIe hasn't seen his children for years; he would
have left them and their mother to starve and die, but for shame and
fear. The old man, his father, pensioned them, and he hasn't the
heart to stop their wages now. Men of Newcome, will you have
this man to represent you in Parliament?' and the crowd roared out,' No;' and Barnes and his shame-faced committee slunk out of the
place, and no wonder the dissenting clerical gentlemen were shy of
voting for him.
"A brilliant and picturesque diversion in Colonel Newcome's favor
was due to the inventive genius of his faithful aide-de-camp, F. B.
On the polling-day, as the carriages full of voters came up to the
market-place, there appeared nigh to the booths an open barouche,
covered all over with ribbon, and containing Frederick Bayham, Esq.,
profusely decorated with the Colonel's colors, and a very old woman
and her female aitendant, who were similarly ornamented. It was
good old Mrs. Mason, who was pleased with the drive and the sunshine, though she scarcely understood the meaning of the turmoil,
with her maid by her side, delighted to wear such ribbons, and sit in
such a post of honor. Rising up in the carriage, F. B. took off his
hat, bade his men of brass be silent, who were accustomed to bray'See the Conquering Hero comes,' whenever the Colonel or Mr.
Bayham, his brilliant aide-de-camp, made their appearance, — bidding,
we say, the musicians and the universe to be silent, F. B. rose, and
made the citizens of Newcome a splendid speech. Good, old, unconscious Mrs. Mason was the theme of it, and the Colonel's virtues and
faithful gratitude in tending her. She was his father's old friend.
She was Sir Barnes Newcome's grandfather's old friend. She- had
lived for more than forty years at Sir Barnes Newcome's door, and
how often had le been to see her? Did he go every week?  No.
Every month?  No. Every year?  No. Never in the whole course
of his life had he set his foot into her doors! (Loud yells, and cries
of'shame.') Never had he done her one single act of kindness.
Whereas for years and years past, when he was away in India,
heroically fighting the battles of his country, when he was dis



POLITICS, ETC., ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.   427
tinguishing himself at Assaye, and — and — Mulligatawny, and
Seringapatam, in the hottest of the fight, and the fiercest of the danger, in the most terrible moment of the conflict, and the crowning
glory of the victory, the good, the brave, the kind old Colonel, -
why should he say Colonel? why should he not say Old Tom at once?
(Immense roars of applause) - always remembered his dear old nurse
and friend.'Look at that shawl, boys, which she has got on! iMy
belief is that Colonel Newcome took that shawl in single combat,
and on horseback, from the prime-minister of Tippoo Saib. (Immense
cheers and cries of "Bravo, Bayham!") Look at that brooch the
dear old thing wears! (He kissed her hand while so apostrophizing
her.) Tom Newcome never brags about his military achievements,
he is the most modest as well as the bravest man in the world; what
if I were to tell you that he cut that brooch from the throat of an
Indian rajah? He's man enough to do it. (I" He is; he is;" from all
parts of the crowd.) What, you want to take the horses out, do you?
(To the crowd, who were removing those quadrupeds.)  I aint
a-going to prevent you; I expected as much of you. Men of Newcome,
I expected as much of you, for I know you! Sit still, old lady;
don't be frightened, ma'am, they are only going to pull you to the
King's Arms, and show you to the Colonel.'
"' This, indeed, was the direction in which the mob (whether influenced by spontaneous enthusiasm, or excited by cunning agents
placed among the populace by F. B., I cannot say) now took the
barouche and its three occupants. With a myriad roar and shout the
carriage was dragged up in front of the King's Arms, from the bal.
conies of which a most satisfactory account of the polling was already
placarded. The extra noise and shouting brought out the Colonel,
who looked at first with curiosity at the advancing procession, and
then, as he caught sight of Sarah Mason, with a blush and a bow of
his kind old head.
"' Look at him, boys!' cried the enraptured F. B., pointing up to
the old man.'Look at him; the dear old boy! Isn't he an old
trump? Which will you have for your member, Barnes Newcome or
Old Tom?'
" And as might be supposed, an immense shout of' Old Tom!'
arose from the multitude; in the midst of which, blushing and bowing still, the Colonel went back to his committee-room; and the
bands played' See the Conquering Hero' louder than ever; and
poor Barnes, in the course of his duty having to come out upon his




428    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
balcony at the Roebuck opposite, was saluted with a yell as vociferous as the cheer for the Colonel had been; and old Mrs. Mason asked
what the noise was about; and after making several vairi efforts, in
dumb show, to the crowd, Barnes slunk back into his hole again as
pale as the turnip which was flung at his head; and the horses were
brought, and Mrs. Mason driven home, and the day of election came
to an end.
"' Not exactly knowing what his politics were when he commenced
the canvass, I can't say to what opinions the poor Colonel did not find
himself committed by the time when the election was over. The
worthy gentleman felt himself not a little humiliated by what he had
to say and to unsay, by having to answer questions, to submit to
familiarities, to shake hands, which, to say the truth, he did not care
for grasping at all. His habits were aristocratic; his education had
been military; the kindest and simplest soul alive, he yet disliked all
familiarity, and expected from common people the sort of deference
which he had received from his men in the regiment."




CHAPTER XVI.
THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE TWO GOVERNiMENT3.
An estimate of the effect of the British monarchy upon the masses of the people, and of
the effect of the United States constitution upon the wealthy and intelligent. - The contrary considered. - How far are the representative English and American characters the
work of their governments.
WE have now nearly reached the end of comparison between England and America as nations. The term England has been used
throughout, as it was the parent kingdom and cast most of the institutions of its consorts, and the name is better known in America than
the proper title of " The United Kingdom."  There are many conditions of life in both countries for which the'state is not responsible.
There are many abuses in both countries neither anticipated in the
institutions of either, nor growing out of them. There is certainly
nothing evil in England for which America is responsible, unless it
be a part of her national debt contracted in one attempt to enslave
us, and in another to intimidate us, and the balance has been struck
by the present prosperous condition of British commerce, which nearly
absorbed the whole of our own during our latest struggle for existence. To America, on the contrary, England as a state is responsible for much that might have hindered our progress, not the least
remarkable of which endowments was slavery itself. Many reminiscences of her orin social life have retarded the true growth of this
country as a republic. We have had to weed out nearly all the distinctive English features of polity which remained after our war of
independence, - the love of broad estates, and the haughty wish for
many tenants and servants, for deference and distance between men,
and distance between governors and governed, for large state powers
reserved and held to influence public action, -the thousand little
things which make the English notion of essentials, but are to a new
and democratic state the conceits and trappings of a boy. We
shook off the state church, the privy council, primogeniture, the mystery of the "-presence," and kept chiefly the l3nglish common law for
429




430    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the administration of justice. And we have scarcely made a single
step backward toward England since that period, while England has
never made one great progressive step but in our direction, unless it
be Free Trade. The contest between the two sets of institutions has
been like the first trial between the paddle-wheel steamship and the
screw steamship. They were hitched together stern to stern, and
bets ran high as to how many screws the paddle-wheels could tow;
the little screw, however, carried off the elder style of ship before
they could adjust the bets. There can be no coming changes in the
English government which will not be in our direction. Already lifepeerages are mooted, and a life peer is only a longer sort of senator.
The ballot must come, also, for it is more necessary for England than
for us. Few men are in fear of losing farm or employment here for
voting against landlord or employer; besides, the ballot in England
would counteract servility, which permeates English society up to the
top grade of tradesmen, and often higher. A servile fellow would
carry a weapon with the ballot, with which he might give vent to his
feelings sometimes; for a thoroughly fawning nation is no improvement upon a treacherous one.
The principle of English government is, no matter how the lower
classes exist, so the ruling class is wise; but what wise man would not
wish to be rid of the responsibility of ruling a million of poor and vulgar
people? Our principle is, secure the greatestgood to the manuy, though
the few governors fare ill; for if it be so sweet in England merely to rule
and assume all the responsibility for the disfranchised, then our ill-paid
American office-holders must be partly paid in the pleasure of place.
The sensitiveness of English opinion upon the question of arming the
poor with the unit of government, the ballot, is ludicrous. An encyclopaedia issued by the Scotch publishers, Chambers, of London and
Edinburgh, and reissued here (1869), where it will do no harm, says,
"If the suffrage were universal, the laboring class interest would be
the predominant one, and serious would be the danger of class legislation as a result! "  This is written in England, where, of course,
there has never been class legislation! But class legislation is indeed serious, though it is questionable-whether the laboring men be
a class; for in America every man labors. The distress in England
is that there has been class government altogether, and the government of the smallest, least laborious, and therefore least humanized
class. If there be a vulgar class there, not fit to hold the unit of
government, they are vulgar because the government of the few wise




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 431
has never given them schools, nor access to social and administrative
opportunity. The few have not been wise enough to make the.many
worthy. The wise few have hidden their talents of charity in the
napkins of the court-table; they have been selfish, haughty, and unjust toward their fellow-countrymen, and the exodus from the British
kingdom to America is like that of the oppressed Israelites from
Egypt; in the western promised land they find no wise class to rule
them, but undertake to be that class themselves.
Let this be accounted for. If English institutions are superior
to ours, why have they failed to attract the millions of British subjects who have come to America?  With more land in North America than we have, with nearly all India and Oceanica, and parts of
all zones for colonies, why have the Queen's subjects failed to see the
advantage of dominions ruled by her own royally-appointed Governors,- themselves of the wise few, — and come instead to a land
where, if all English literature be true, there is corruption, violence,
instability, miasma,- a land, in short, such as Mr. Charles Dickens
sketched'in "' Martin Chuzzlewit"?
It was the magic name of Freedom that attracted them; not only
freedom in life, wages, and locomotion, but freedom in the higher
sense of equal chance before the law and before the fact, - the mention of a nation which was not diked and ditched with deference, and
tradition, and made impregnable to the lowly in its central citadels;
a nation where Silas Wright, or Carl Schurz, or David Broderick,
could be a senator or the peer of one. And by all recent accounts
of English critics, who have taken a marvellous liking to us of'!late,
we, thus composite, are the most enlightened nation on the globe; for
so we were named by Lord Houghton at a banquet in 1869.
What was the origin of this wise class in England, - too wise to be
of account with only the unit of government, one ballot, for a
weapon? Fischel, the German critic, says, upon authority, that
" after the battle of Tewkesbury, a Norman baron was almost as rare
in England as a wolf is now. When Henry VII. called his first Parliament, there were only twenty-nine temporal peers to be found; of
those twenty-nine not five remain, and they, as the Howards, for instance, are not Norman nobility. A peer with an old genealogical
tree is accordingly something unheard of; the real old families of the
country are to be found among the peasantry. The gentry, too, may
lay some claim to old blood. We owe the present peerage to three
sources: the spoliation of the Church under Henry VIII., the open and




432    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
flagrant sale of its honors by the elder Stuarts, and the boroughmongering of our own times.
"'Nothing is more amusing," he continues, " than to read the
apocryphal genealogies paraded in the peerage. The family of Lord
Holland (Fox), according to Collins'' Handbook of the Nobility,' were
a distinguished tribe in England previous to the Conquest; but the
Fox family itself, more modest, alleges that it derives its origin from
a certain Palafox, who, in 1588, was driven ashore from the Spanish
Armada. The real origin of the family is involved in obscurity;
according to some, the founder was a chorister of Salisbury Cathedral, in the reign of Charles II.; others contending that he was a
body-servant of this King."
Now, it has taken from two to five hundred years under the English government to make such laborers members of the ruling class,
and we often find them wise enough in twenty. There is an English
blacksmith, named Robert Collyer, in Chicago, whom we esteem good
enough to fill the pulpit of Theodore Parker. How many years
would it have taken him to have been wise enough to preach in the
Chapel Royal?
English institutions are of a character to repress the aspirations of
the lowly, and make them feel that the higher uses of man are too
high for them to strive for. The French authority we have so often
quoted admits that on passing from a country in which free institutions are established to one where they do not exist, the traveller is
struck by the change; in the former all is bustle and activity; in the
latter everything is calm and motionless. In the one, amelioration
and progress are the general topics of inquiry; in the other, it seems
as if the community only aspired to repose in the enjoyment of the
advantages which it has acquired. Nevertheless, the country which.
exerts itself so strenuously to promote its welfare is generally more
wealthy and more prosperous than that which appears to be so contented with its lot; and when we compare them together, we can
scarcely conceive how so many new wants are daily felt in the former,
whilst so few seem to occur in the latter. It cannot be our climate,
which few Europeans like, nor our race, which our parent race has so
frequently reprobated, that has made us reconstructors of the lost
commonalty of England, -" those Irishmen who only brawl, those
English helots who love only bitter beer," - it is the vigorous nature
of our institutions which are not reformatory but inspiring; which are
no royal charities, but which compel emulation by universal emulation.




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 433
"In no country on earth is an old nationality so soon absorbed as
in America," observes an Englishman. "I am inclined to think the
regard professed for England by American literary men is sentimental, and is produced by education and study, rather than by any
feeling transmitted in families or by society."
The men who founded our government were as thoroughly reviled
at the time by English critics as those who govern it now continue to
be by Englishmen; descendants of the kindred of " Praise God Barebones," and the reviled class of that time, they proved worthy of
De Tocqueville's splendid eulogium:" On the continent of Europe, at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, absolute monarchy had everywhere triumphed over the ruins
of the oligarchical and feudal liberties of the Middle Ages. Never
were the notions of right more completely confounded than in the
midst of the splendor and literature of Europe; never was there less
political activity among the people; never were the principles of true,
freedom less widely circulated; and at that very time, those principles, which were scorned or unknown by the nations of Europe, were:
proclaimed in the deserts of the New World, and were accepted as.
the future creed of a great people. The boldest theories of the
human reason were put into practice by a community so humble, that
not a statesman condescended to attend to it; and a legislationw
without a precedent was produced off-hand by the imagination of they
citizens."
Another feature of English government is, that, existing withreserved privileges for the few, who become the objects of all admiral
tion, the hearts of the whole middle class in England are turned'
upward toward the aristocracy and away from the poor- million at.
their feet. The dream of rank enters the brain of the tradesman,
and he takes a taste of its realities in advance by kicking the next:
class below him. There is not on the globe so cruel a race as the
English; they hang their criminals on the open street to make the
Eight of death popular; they give such sentences for petty offences
as are elsewhere given for the highest crimes; we can fight rebellion.
five years and hang no man; but for a freak of a few poor Fenians.
they are hung dangling over the battlements of Manchester jail.
Hawthorne, who had a literary weakness for the English nation, said
that " a true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. Beggars have heretofore
been so strange to an American that he is apt to become their prey,.,
55




.434    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
being recognized through his national peculiarities, and beset by
them in the streets. The English smile at him, and say that there
are ample public arrangements for every pauper's possible need; that
street charity promotes idleness and vice, and that yonder personification of misery on the pavement will lay up a good day's profit,
besides supping more luxuriously than the dupe who gives him a
shilling. By and by the stranger adopts their theory and begins to
practise upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment, or sometimes a too
late contrition. Years afterwards, it may be, his memory is still
haunted by some vindictive wretch whose cheeks were pale and hunger-pinched."
This sense of reduction to hereditary brutality is the reason, perhaps, of the fondness of the lower English classes for prize-fighting,
dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and jockeying at horse races; for many
of these poor beings, permeated, like the whole of society, with reverence for the aristocracy, feel honored to climb to the social place of
a ducal game-chicken or a royal bull-dog. Prize fighting in America
has, it is believed, never had an American votary; all our bruisers
have been imported, and have fought under "patronage."  Parliament adjourns to attend a horse-race; " Guy Livingstone" was a
popular book in England, brutal as it was, because it was a truthful
representation of English detestation for the poor and the plebeian.
One often hears, in that country, of some " gentleman" founding a
hospital or a- school; but what rich tradesman has done it, except
George Peabody, of Massachusetts, who went at once to the relief of
the -London poor and the unlettered freed negroes of America?
Another defect of the aristocratic government is, that it puts the
mind of -society upon trifles, to the prejudice of such manly questions
as should make citizens. Witness this royal farce:The Kingo of Hanover at the Prince of Wales' baptism, if I mistake not, was -very anxious to sign the paper before Prince Albert,
and when the Queen approached the table he placed himself by her
side, watching his opportunity. She knew very well what he was
about, and justas ithe Archbishop was giving her the pen, she suddenly, dodged.around the table, placed herself next to the Prince,
then quickly took the pen from the Archbishop, signed, and gave it
to Prince Albert, who also signed next, before it could be prevented.
"The Queen," said Wellington, " was also very anxious to give the
precedence.-at court to.King Leopold, before the King of Hanover,




TIlE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 435
and she consulted me about it, and how it should be arranged. I
told IIer Majesty that I supposed it should be settled, as we did at
the Congress of Vienna.' How was that,' said she, -' by first arrival?'
-' No, ma'am,' said I;' alphabetically, and then, you know, B comes
before II.' This pleased her very much, and it was done."
The above were grown-up people.
Throughout English society this reverence for triviality goes,
fostered by the form of government; for the huge and beefy Englishman would be almost devoid of a love of antiquity and sentiment,
were it not kept alive by the worship of a rich aristocracy descended
from antiquity. Hawthorne shows how this recognition of haberdashery is maintained at the banquets of the Lord Mayor,of London:" There stood a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind
his Lordship's chair. When the after-dinner wine was placed on the
table, still another official personage appeared behind the chair, and
proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous proclamation, ending in
some such style as this:' And other gentlemen and ladies, here
present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving cup,' - giving
a sort of sentimental twang to the two words, -' and sends it round
among you!' And forthwith, the loving cup —several of them,
indeed, on each side of the tables - came slowly down with all the
antique ceremony.
" The fashion of it is thus: The Lord Mayor, standing up and
taking the covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his
elbow, who likewise rises, and removes the cover for his lordship to
dlrink, which being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the
cover and receives the cup into his own hands. IIe then presents it
to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a draught; after which the third person goes throughll  a
similar manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole
company find themselves inextricably intertwxisted and entangled in
one complicated chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I
examined it critically, both inside and out, andl perceived it to be an
antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about
a quart of wine. Considering how much trouble we all expended in
getting the cup to our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves
with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the
original quart of wine being still in the goblet, it seemedl doubtful
whether any of the company had more than barely touched the silver
rim before passing it to their neighbors, - a degree of abstinence




436    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
that might be accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many
ingredients in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor.
Being curious to know all about these important matters, with a view
of recommending to my countrymen whatever they might usefully
adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving cup, and had no occasion
for another, -- ascertaining it to be claret of a poor original quality,
largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened."
Further than this, the court and aristocracy being the theme of all
panegyric, and their manners and habits matters of imitation, the
notorious vices of both in many cases tend to debauch an entire generation. We have no court in America, and no aristocracy that is
recognized except by itself. There have been chief magistrates who
had their troubles, domestic and otherwise, but they hid them from
the public eye, and suffered in silence, unwilling to be evil examples
to their generation. There has probably never been in American'society so flagrant cases of profligacy and meanness as have disgraced the English throne: William of Orange entering the kingdom
with his one wife and two mistresses; all the male Brunswickers unchaste, and the fourth George the hero of a divorce court. This
latter episode is worthy of reproduction, and is mildly told by a historian: -
" George III. died January 24, 1820, after a reign of sixty years.
HIe was succeeded by the Prince Regent, whose coronation was one
of the most magnificent that England had witnessed for many years.
Circumstances, however, occurred, that excited the populace, and revived unpleasant remembrances of the early career of the King.
When only Prince of Wales, George IV., in opposition to the Royal
3Marriage Act, had married Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Catholic. His father
refused to acknowledge the marriage; but many persons of the highest rank, members of the royal family even, showed their disapprobation of the statute by visiting that lady, and treating her as the
prince's lawful wife.  George, however, was faithless; and Mrs.
Fitzllerbert left him forever. Embarrassed with debts to the amount
of more than six hundred and thirty thousand pounds, the Prince, in
1795, consented to marry Caroline, the second daughter of the Duke
of Brunswick, Wolfenbuttel. The Prince had concluded, from his
father's expressions, that his debts would be paid, and his income increased. I-Ie was disappointed; the income was indeed raised from
seventy-five thousand to a hundred and thirty-eight thousand pounds;
but this increase was applied to the liquidation of his debts. The




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 437
Prince became embittered against his young wife; bickerings arose,
and a separation followed. After dwelling many years upon the
continent, Caroline heard of the death of George III., and hastened
to England to claim a share of the throne of her husband. She was
threatened with a prosecution if she presumed to set foot in the
country; but she heeded not. Her arrival was welcomed with enthusiastic joy by the opposition and the bulk of the people.
" A bill of pains and penalties against her was introduced in the
House of Lords on July the 5th, 1820. Brougham and Denman were
her counsel; and by.their address and eloquence they laid the foundation of their future advancement. Week after week the examination of evidence continued; but if the Queen's conduct had been
unbecoming, that of her husband was notoriously worse The public, therefore, paid little attention to the charges against her; but
denounced the injustice of the divorce, and the cruelty that ever since
that event had surrounded her with spies, and by a variety of means
had blackened her reputation in the face of Europe. The ministers
became alarmed at the general clamor, and still more at the increasing diminution of their supporters in the Lords. At the second
reading the bill was passed, by a majority of twenty-eight; but at
the third reading, out of two hundred and eighteen peers, the ministers had a majority of only nine. They therefore deemed it prudent
to abandon their project. A general illumination announced the joy
of the people. Woe to the windows that were dark that night!
" In the following year the coronation took place, and Caroline presented herself at the Abbey gates, but was repulsed by the guard.
The shock was too much for her; in a few days she closed her unhappy career. The populace paid to her remains the last rough
tribute of their sympathy. Her body was to be interred in her
native land; but orders were given that it should not pass through
the city. The crowd determined that it should, and, after much
tumult and some conflicts with the military, they gained their
point."
The United States government calls private citizens of exalted
vigilance and wide experience to political place, whatever be their
grade in social life; the citizen is therefore always alert for the business of his commonwealth, and ascends to public position without
embarrassment. Seldom is this true of England; few school-masters, like Amos Kendall, or shop-clerks, like Abraham Lincoln, or
merchants, like Stewart, are called to the ear of the Queen. In Bel



438    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
fast A. T. Stewart might have grown richer than at present, but the
Queen would never have become his guest.
I walked down Broadway not long ago, and coming to the corner
of where Stewart's white quadrangle of iron rises, I saw the merchant himself standing in the middle of the street, directing some
stone-pavers. Here was the man whose income is said to have exceeded that of the Marquis of Westminster or the Duke of Bedford.
Every day he accumulated the yearly salary of the Secretaryship of
the Treasury he was obliged to decline. This retail store alone is
said to involve him in a daily expenditure of ten thousand dollars.
Since the beginning of commerce there was probably never so great
a merchant, neither in Tyre nor Alexandria, Venice nor London.
And there he stood, a facile-faced, bargaining-eyed man, of light complexion, up to, or above, the good average height of slender men,
consumed with the laying of a block of stone, and speaking about it
to laborers and passers-by. While he stood there in plain business
clothes, with a silk hat on his bhead, a pleasant spectacle to be one's
uncle, both on account of good face and good purse, I saw a clothingstore man of lower Broadway pass by, who returned an income of
above three hundred thousand dollars. Only three hundred thousand
dollars! The poor fellow looked at Stewart with such shrinking yet
worshipping envy that I felt for him out of the depths of my soul.
The possessor of certain nickels, I ran my hand in my pocket, and
held them securely for fear this desperately poor man with only three
hundred thousand a year would rush upon me and rob me. From
this depth of sympathy I was again recalled to the study of Mr.
Stewart and his three millions of dollars, -as much money laid by as
the whole United States could save out of its vast revenue every
month. A splendid instance of self-denial he seemed to me, to have
the purchase-money of so much pleasure or glory, and still to be a
plodding business man; to be childless, and yet so devoted to the
accumulation of fortune. I stepped into his store, and all its vast
lower surface moved and glistened with color and invitation. Feeling like one who was entering some grand court of sovereigns, I
passed by altars of gift-offering to the open area at the middle of the
store, where, looking up through six floors of costly goods, through
ships, villas, villages of upholstery, through armies of shirt-muslin
and miles of silk stockings, and every floor moving, rustling, chattering, bargaining, I began to realize, like General Grant, that the
mind which could direct all this, like the instinct which propelled the




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 439
million-legged spider, might be able to get to the heart of the government finances, and distribute us back to specie payment. Down the
store directly the owner walked, as plain as the plainest customer
who wanted a yard of musquito netting; and almost incredulously I
saw him stop to speak with an Irish woman who was underrating the
cost of a yard of ribbon.
Owing to the more natural and practical basis of parties in America, party spirit seldom becomes unsocial; while in England parties
growing out of social and family life often become completely
estranged, and on trivial questions exhibit the malevolence of personal enemies. Old age and riches, seldom separated, are the requirements of distinction amidst these institutions of primogeniture.
Youth is intimidated, and fresh and earnest individuality looked upon
with suspicion. Sidney Smith, bearing testimony upon this point,
alleges that it is always considered as a piece of impertinence in
England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any
opinions at all upon important subjects; and in addition he is sure
to be assailed with all the Billingsgate of the French Revolution.
Jacobin, Leveller, Atheist, Deist, Socinian, Incendiary, Regicide,
were lately the gentlest appellations used; and the man who breathed
a syllable against the senseless bigotry of the Georges, or hinted at
the abominable tyranny and persecution exercised upon Catholic
Ireland, was shunned as unfit for the relations of social life.
The prevalence of crime in England is in great part the result of
the aristocratic government, and so is much of the prevalent atheism
there the fruit of an Established Church, with a proud hierarchy, and
an inquisitive eye upon the price of rectorships. Throughout the
cities of England there are clubs of socialists and infidels, some of
which have sent itinerant missionaries to the United States to debauch
the moral sentiment here. One of these blasphemous fellows was a
certain Joseph Barker, who began public life in one of the workingmen's sceptical associations, turned dissenting preacher, again turned
atheist, and made the tour of the United States, discussing the validity of the Scriptures with whatever clergymen cared to enter his
arena. He returned to England just prior to the civil war, and attempted to obtain ordination in the Established Church, but this was
refused until he made several defences of slavery, and attacks on the.
American character, when it was understood that the authorities relented, and ordained him. These associations of sceptics are multifold, in London, and the poor are mainly their supporters. The




440    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
indignation of the English Republicans against their political aristocracy is always apt, in fervent minds, to extend to their ecclesiastical aristocracy; for the British Bishops are greater enemies of free
institutions than the British Nobles, if possible. Hence Thomas
Paine, an Englishman, and an ardent friend of freedom, was driven
by the despotism of peers temporal and peers spiritual to embrace
both their systems in his vigorous denunciations. His bones, which
had lain in America, were exhumed by William Cobbett, another
English radical, and carried home triumphantly to excite the popular
favor.  Cobbett arrived at Liverpool, from America.  As he purposed making a public entry into Manchester, with Paine's bones,
great political disturbance was anticipated, and the borough-reeves
of Manchester and Salford wrote to him, so that he altered his intended route.
The policy of the English aristocracy, in foreign affairs, during the
past ninety years, is condemned by all recent writers, at home as well
as abroad. To save their class privileges they embarked in the wars
against France, which prodigiously increased their colonies and commerce; but the former class of acquisitions has already proved burdensome. The'efforts of England were impotent to suppress France;
and having sealed Napoleon in the rock of St. Helena, she was most
forward to recognize his nephew, and second him in another foolish
war, whereby the march of Christianity to the Bosphorus was postponed. Had England been a popular government when the French
Revolution began, she would have been the friend of France, and
assisted the latter to liberalize the world. Out of the struggles of
Pitt and the aristocrats to subdue Democracy, came the English debt
which vastly increases the burdens of the poor; and her long struggle
demoralized the people, so that M3iss Martineau ascribes the inauguration of the crimes of the century to her disbanded troops. Compare the orderly conduct of the volunteer soldiers of the South and
North, after our civil war, with the behavior of the enforced levies of
England when Napoleon had been subduedcl: —'" Such scenes of violence went forward, in different parts of the
country, that many began to be of Romilly's opinion, that the English character had undergone some unaccountable and portentous
change.
"Portentous these horrors were, but not unaccountable. Many
soldiers had become weary of the war, which to them had been thus




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 441
far all hardships and no glory. They deserted; they could not show
themselves at home, the penalty for desertion being death.
"They gathered together in gangs, took possession of some forsaken house among the hills, or of caves on the sea-shore, and went
forth at night, in masks and grotesque clothing, and helped themselves with money and clothes wherever they could find them, sacrificing life where it Was necessary to their objects."
This demoralization, like aristocracy itself, seems to have become
hereditary in- a land of caste; and British crime, paxtaking of the
spirit of material improvements, has become formidable by science.
The account of " London Labor and the London Poor," by the Mayhew brothers, shows that thieves are born into an aristocracy of their
own, reared from the cradle by their fathers, and, in the process of
British colonization, distributed round the globe to make property
everywhere their prey.   Paris knows the Chevalier d'Industrie
Anglais, as thoroughly as we know the British burglar. In 1869 a
bank was robbed in New York, by English thieves, and the newspapers were replete with descriptions of their exquisite implements, and the coolness of their preparations. Their tools were fine
as the best products of Sheffield; they were of all kinds, heavy, light,
coarse, fine, - about four hundred pieces in all, - designed and fitted
for every professional exigency, with the nice discrimination of a
dentist's set of instruments. Most of the articles were specially
made for the business, it would seem, by skilled manufacturers, in
this country or abroad. The " jimmies" for prying open doors were
of the finest steel, beautifully finished, each of two pieces, which
screwed together. There were fine steel bars, one and one-half inches thick, and four feet eight inches long, chiselled-edged at each end,
and unscrewing in the middle., All the implements, including the
powerful jack-screw, were constructed to be taken apart, in small
pieces, or packed into a close space, or carried about in pockets.
Nothing could have been more nicely contrived than the can with
a flexible tube, for filling safe locks with fine powder. The sledges
of soft composition metal, which gave out no ringing sound, the two
hundred brad awls, for fastening muslin against the windows, the
gum over-shoes, in which the robbers could move about noiselessly,
the thoughtful provision of strong cords, and of handcuffs, to gag
and fetter anybody who should intrude on them unawares, were artful and scientific. The master stroke of the whole was the opening
of the crack combination lock on the outer door. There were sever



i442    THE NEW  WORLD COMUPARIED WITH THE OLD.
al theories proposed, to account for this; but they are all based- on
the supposition that by collusion, or in some other way, the burglars
obtained the numbers of the combination to which the door was
locked on Saturday night. "But what if they had hit upon some
device to ascertain the combination, by manipulating the lock itself,
making it tell its own secret, and then opened the door as easily as
the man who had locked it? This is a flight of art, which the combination lock-makers had believed to be beyond. the reach of mortals."
Other than these evils are directly or partly due to the nature of a
government which makes the condition of life the accident of birth,
hedges round the few with laws and ceremonies, and, treats the bulk
of its fellow-men as unworthy of its franchises. Better than this,
great oligarchy is a throne where there is but one family ascendant
in a whole realm, and not a social and landed viceroy in every parish;
and it is remarkable that at this time the monarch of England is popular with English radicals, while the aristocracy is the object of their
attacks. A woman, and a good one, the Queen is removed from the
conflicts of politicians, and is the magistrate, though secretly under
their management. To her reach the sympathies of the people, though
they are as jealously kept from access to her as the Japanese from:
their heavenly Emperor. A chain of aristocrats guard her person,
arrogating to themselves the priestship of the temple, and often in
the doors thereof playing lewdness and robbery, like the sons of Eli.
Perhaps when the aristocracy is gone, the High Priest also may reel
in his chair; for many believe that the present English sovereign is
the next to the last.
Still, the English people are loyal to their sovereign; whatever she
may be, they believe that she is all to them.
" Though we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions,"
says Hawthorne, " and prove it by our readiness to shed blood, and
sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard in
an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system a force similar to that
of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human
hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood, — at
present in the flesh and blood of a woman, - and manages to combine love, awe, and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to
embody his mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred,
in a single person, and make her the representative of his country and
its laws."




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 443
Whether this be superstition or tradition, it is pleasing and curious
to us, but incompatible and undesirable in a land where the people,
and not the ruler, is the source of power. The Hindoo is as loyal
to his idol, but there is nothing in it, except that which he himself
implants.
But while loyalty abounds, charity fails; for with all the wealth of
England, - the richest country, in capital, on the globe, - there are
more poor, indolent, or wicked people in the United Kingdom than
in any Christian nation. Can that be a well-governed country which
is at once the richest and contains the most paupers? The kingdom
is cramped, but not so densely that this condition of things can be
accounted for:There must now be 75,000 beggars in London alone, collecting, in
the aggregate, several millions sterling a year. The paupers, on an
area of 78,000 acres, number 145,000, and cost ~1,300,000  a year.
But many who get out-door parish relief also beg from societies and
individuals. The real cost of the London poor, the money expended
unearned, in various ways, may count up to ~10,000,000. For the
past five years there has been a steady increase. Vagabondism and
ruffianism havte also made steady progress, not only in London, but in
the provinces. The Recorder of Manchester charged the Grand Jury, in
1869, that " in sobriety and general obedience to the law, Lancashire
was going backward." A London paper, of May, in the same year,
said,  If anlly one wants to see ruffianism in its most revolting state,
let him take a journey to St. James Palace, at eleven o'clock, when
the band plays. Here he will find an army of low-looking thieves
and vagabonds, - hale, strong-looking men and hearty youths, - who
follow up the band, shouting and cursing, and bonneting one another.
In no other capital of Europe would such things be permitted. The
band over, these fellows lie about St. James Park, on the grass, and
on the benches, and round about the ornamental water."
This is a picture: St. James Palace, music, and court, and in the
gardens thereof this army of paupers!
A member of Parliament, at about the same time, produced statistics to show how pauperism had increased during the last twenty-five
years. In 1844, the number of confirmed paupers was 800,000, and
they cost ~4,976,000; in 1854, the number was 864,000, and the expenditure was ~5,232,000; in 1864, the paupers had risen to 1,014,000, and the expenditure to ~6,423,000; and in 1867, there were
1,040,000 paupers, and their cost was ~6,939,000.




444    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
That nation may be strong, but not that people, where such things
are intermingled: the shining horses, the liveries, and the benignant
peers, gliding through aisles of abandoned poor; the richest men in
Europe, cheered or hated by the worst, and all fellow-countrymen!
It is these latter who do the fighting of England, the bleeding, and
the suffering, while those —a handful -direct the. empire, and hold
it in their power to crush states and risings for freedom.
Let us take two examples of the "wise few," who are reared to
statesmanship, and both of them eminent, and compare them with a
pair of men who should have belonged to the opposite class. The
first is Francis Bacon, whom Dr. Samuel Tyler, an American jurist,
has thus depicted: —
"At this juncture in the progress of thought (1620), the most
majestic and prophetic mind known to the history of philosophy rose
up to lead men in the new career of investigation which had been
begun. Trained fn the practice of a jurisprudence the most technical, and in its routine the most servile, and the most obedient to authority and traditional usage of any which has been established
amongst men, we see the remarkable spectacle of a Lord Chancellor
of England laying aside for the moment the King's seals, to become
the keeper of the seals of nature. And, in a majesty of diction unparalleled in the history of philosophy, this great thinker proclaimed
to the world a new method of philosophy to guide the mighty spirit
of inquiry which was abroad over the field of observation. Philosophy, no longer confined to the schools, is led forth by a politician
and lawyer, out from the confines of authority, into the amplitudes.
From this moment the freedom of the human mind was established.
This man of business, this accomplished courtier, this cunning lawyer, this consummate orator, this leader in the affairs of the world,
appears on the stage of philosophical thought, with a more comprehensive grasp of thinking, and a greater forecast than any one of
even the many trained, especially to philosophy, who had preceded
him."
Yet this courtier and noble, whose powers of mind have never
been eclipsed, proved to be one of the most venal and corrupt politicians in history. He was convicted of base ingratitude, of tortures
and thefts, and he belongs to that great array of men, educated for
statesmanship, who were not fit to rule, because they considered only
themselves and their class.
One other sketch of the I" wise few" is afforded by Mr. Kinglake,




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 445
in his summary of Gladstone, - a partisan sketch, but suggestive, as
showing how the mere study of politics makes the strongest and
purest mind qualmish and diplomatic, and cautious almost to superstition:" He was famous for the splendor of his eloquence, for his unaffected
piety, and for his blameless life; he was celebrated, far and wide,
for a more than common liveliness of conscience. IHle had once imagined it to be his duty to quit a government, and to burst through
strong ties of friendship and gratitude, by reason of a thin shade
of difference on the subject of white or brown sugar. It was believed
that if he were to commit even a little sin, or to imagine an evil
thought, he would instantly arraign himself before the dread tribunal
which awaited him in his own bosom; and that, his intellect being
subtle and microscopic, and delighting in casuistry and exaggeration, he would be likely to give his soul a very harsh trial, and treat
himself as a great criminal, for faults too minute to be visible to the
naked eyes of laymen. His friends lived in dread of his virtues, as
tending to make him whimsical and unstable, and the practical politicians, conceiving that he was not to be depended upon'for party
purposes, and was bent upon none but lofty objects, used, to look
upon him as dangerous."
To these two natures, the one powerful and corrupt, the other
learned and conscientious, and both qualified at great expense expressly to guide a state, oppose two other Englishmen who were
sprung from lowly walks, - the one a farmer's son, the other the child
of a cotton-spinner, and both of them learned how to rule a state by
contact with labor, rather than by the mastery of diplomacy: —
M' ir. Cobden and Mr. Bright," says Kinglake, 1" were members of
the House of Commons. Both had the gift of a manly, strenuous,
eloquence, and their diction being founded upon English lore, rather
than upon shreds of weak Latin, went straight to the mind of their
hearers. Of these men, the one could peirsuade, the other could
attack; and, indeed, MIr. Bright's oratory was singularly well qualified
for preventing an erroneous acquiescence in the policy of the day; for,
besides that he was honest, and fearless, - besides that, with a ringing voice, lie had all the clearness and force which resulted from his
great natural gifts, as well as from his one-sided method of thinking,
— he had the advantage of being generally able to speak in a state
of sincere anger. In former years, whilst their minds were disciplined by the almost mathematical exactness of the reasonings on




:446    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH -THE OLD.
which they relied, and when they were acting in concert with the
shrewd traders of the North, who had a very plain object in view,
these two orators had shown with what a strength, with what a masterly skill, with what patience, with what a high courage, they
could carry a great scientific truth through the storms of politics;
they had shown that they could arouse and govern the assenting thousands who listened to them with delight; that they could bend the
House of Commons; that they could press their creed upon a prime
minister, and put upon his mind so hard a stress, that, after a while,
he felt it to be a torture, and a violence to his reason, to have to make
a stand against them.
"-Nay, more! each of these two gifted men had proved that be
could go bravely into the midst of angry opponents, could show
them their fallacies, one by one, destroy their favorite theories
before their very faces, and triumphantly argue them down. These
two men were honestly devoted to the cause of peace. There was no
stain upon their names."
It was Richard Cobden, self-made, to whom Sir Robert Peel gave
credit for the act which has made Peel's name eminent; and whatever Gladstone has accomplished has been in the path indicated and
smoothed by Bright and Cobden thirty years ago.
We have had two men in America who were reared in the school
of the wise few: John Quincy Adams and William H. Seward. Both
were students in statesmanship, travellers in foreign lands, men of
ample fortunes, and of the best social rank that we have. Mr. Adams
was particularly of spotless character, and learned in all branches,
economical or elegant. His education did not change his popular
sympathies; for he was illustrious in the dignity of his life and his
earnestness for freedom; but it did not enable him to conduct a more
brilliant administration than Presidents of less acquirement, who better knew the needs and temper of the people.
Mr. Seward is the most admired in England of all our public men.
He was an European politician, of all the boldness and finesse of
Palmerston, and his opportunities were abundant as his promotion
was long here. He rendered valuable services, and obtained the
gratitude of his countrymen; but in those features of his policy
wherein he followed English precedents he lost confidence, and the
nation did not endorse him. He engaged in subtle treaties without
the knowledge of Congress, and attempted to make grand strategy
of politics, whereby, after the English fashion, a party leader might




THE PEOPLE AS -AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 447
change sentiment when he pleased, and compose principles according
to the condition of his liver.
It cannot be affirmed that we are ruled by the "wise few," in
America; for the public sensitiveness is delicate and arbitrary here,
and we are frequently too uncharitable toward our public servants.
Indeed, we find that the wisest few who do rule us'are often below
the average morals and intellect of the mighty mass. De Tocqueville
remarked this: -
" On my arrival in the United States, I was surprised to find so
much distinguished talent among the subjects, and so little among
the heads of the government. It is a well-authenticated fact, that at
the present day the most able men in the United States are very rarely
placed at the head of affairs; and it must be acknowledged that such
has been the result in proportion as democracy has outstepped all its
former limits. The race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most remarkably in the course of the last fifty years."
At the same time, the race of American citizens has undoubtedly
advanced; rulers and ruled were long approaching each other, and
the level has been nearly reached.
" The mass of the citizens," says the same authority, " are sincerely disposed to promote the welfare of their country; nay, more,
it may even be allowed that the lower classes are less apt to be swayed
by considerations of personal interest than the higher orders; but it
is always more or less impossible for them to discern the best means
of attaining the end which they desire with sincerity."
The cure for this must be in the more thorough education of the
people in subjects of government, in our schools, and in the civil service; and the latter can only be accomplished by a grand awakening
of public sentiment to meet and overthrow the managers of politics.
Hitherto it has been true that " the people have neither the time not
the means which are essential to the prosecution of an investigation
of this kind; their conclusions are hastily formed from a superficial
inspection of the more prominent features ofa question. Hence they
often assent to the clamor of a mountebank who knows the secret
of stimulating their tastes, whilst their truest friends frequently fail
in their exertions."
This is still true in a marked degree. The politicians have coaxed
from the people reservation after reservation of wisdom, until our
benches of court are the stake of political parties, and hints have




448    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
even been made toward throwing the Supreme Court into the
scramble.
Chancellor Kent says, in speaking with great eulogium of that
part of the Constitution which empowers the executive to nominate the judges: " It is indeed probable that the men who are best
fitted to discharge the duties of this high office would have too much
reserve in their manners, and too much austerity in their principles,
for them to be returned by the majority, at an election where universal suffrage is adopted." This is not foreign but domestic authority, and it is true that we have reduced to the general ballot too many
cloistered offices which should have been forever kept without the political arena. During the trial of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson,
and afterward, certain unruly representatives, of the type of which
De Tocqueville speaks below, amongst which was one Ingersoll of Illinois, from the whiskey-distilling district of Peoria, even insulted the
Senate.
" On entering the House of Representatives, of Washington, one is
struck by the vulgar demeanor of that great assembly. The eye frequently does not discover a man of celebrity within its walls. Its
members are almost all obscure individuals, whose names present no
associations to the mind; they are mostly village lawyers, men in
trade, or even persons belonging to the lower classes of society. In
a country in which education is very general, it is said that the representatives of the people do not always know how to write correctly.
" At a few yards' distance from this spot is the door of the Senate,
which contains within a small space a large proportion of the celebrated men of America. Scarcely an individual is to be perceived in
it who does not recall reminiscences of an active and illustrious career.
The Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose language would
at all times do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates
in Europe.
"What, then, is the cause of this strange contrast, and why are
the most able citizens to be found in one assembly, rather than in
the other? Why is the former body remarkable for its vulgarity and
its poverty of talent, whilst the latter seems to enjoy a monopoly of
intelligence and of sound judgment? Both of these assemblies emanate from the people; both of them are chosen by universal suffrage;
and no voice has hitherto been heard to assert, in America, that the
Senate is hostile to the interests of the people. From what cause,




THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 449
then, does so startling a difference arise? The only reason which
appears to me adequately to account for it is, that the House of Representatives is elected by the populace directly, and that the Senate
is elected by elected bodies."
Since De Toequeville's time the politicians have assumed to manipulate even the Senate, and some of-them have cried for its extirpation. Only a grand rising of the people fi'om their homes can rout
these traders in office, few of whom command the respect of the homes
of the land, but are elected by default of honest votes.' In the United States the persons who engage in the perplexities
of political life are individuals of very moderate pretensions. The
pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and of great
passions from the pursuit of power; and it very frequently happens that
a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the state until he has
discovered ilis incompetence to conduct his own affairs!!"
If this were true forty years ago, when written, how much truer
to-day! Recent travellers have noticed the same fact, that, with a
government that is of the best nature, the citizens fail to perform
their duties at the polls, and bequeath to the basest dregs of society
the sacred offering of the ballot. The government, in its nature, is not
responsible for this neglect; for it was considered, at its foundation,
that the slight and infrequent duty of supporting it with his choice
would be gladly undertaken by every man who had an interest or a
pride in his nationality. We have been prospering in our private
business, and the state has hitherto been of little importance to any
of us pecuniarily; but the state is now growing greater than the nation, and the cry to every holder of the ballot must go up:"Help us, or we perish!"
Mr. Trollope, in 1862, noticed the carelessness of our people in this
respect, and ascribed it mistakenly to a dislike for our form of government.  "In all governmental matters," he says, " the people of the
nation have been strangely undemonstrative.  They have assented to
a system which has been used for transferring the political power of
the nation to a body of trading politicians, who have become known
and felt as a mass, and not known and felt as individuals. I find it
difficult to describe the present political position of the States in this
respect.
" The millions of the people are eager for the Constitution, are proud
57




450    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of their power as a nation, and are ambitious of national greatness.
But they are not, as I think, especially desirous of retaining political
influence in their own hands. At many of the elections it is difficult
to induce them to vote. They have among them a half-knowledge
that politics is a trade in the hands of the lawyers, and that they are
the capital by which those political tradesmen carry on their business. These politicians are all lawyers. Politics and law go together as naturally as the possession of land and the exercise of
magisterial powers do with us."
Seven years afterward, Mr. Sprague, Senator from Rhode Island,
discovered the same fact of the lawyers.
Many of our social errors in America are not ascribable in any
respect to our government, while they afford pretext for attacks upon
it. We have been so engrossed in business that we have become
unsocial in all public places. Russell, of the "' Times," remarked in
Montreal that the Americans usually came into the salon singly;
each man, with a bundle of newspapers under his arm, took a seat at
a vacant table, ordered a prodigious repast, which he gobbled in
haste, as though he was afraid of losing a train, and then rushed off
to the bar or smoked in the passages, never sitting for a moment
after his breakfast. The Englishmen came in little knots or groups,
exhibited no great- anxiety about newspapers, ordered simple and
substantial feasts, enjoyed them at their ease, chattered much, and
were in no particular hurry to leave the table. " The taciturnity of
the American was not well-bred, nor was the good humor of the
Briton vulgar."
Our national manners will compare favorably with those of most
nations, and are far more courtly than those of the average Englishman. Woman is respected here; there is frank equality accorded and
demanded between men; but it is natural that in a new, rough country, rough people should sometimes get into the marts and capitols.
As a general rule our present politicians are among our worst-bred
men, their associations being the worst. More men eat with their
knives in Washington than in any city in America. That I may not
be accused of speaking severely of the English lower classes only, I
will give this instance of the worst-mannered man I ever saw in any
country: -
I was writing and making notes in the library of Congress, while
compiling this book, and while most busily engaged a shadow from:behind fell upon my table. Thinking it some friend who was privi



THE PEOPLE AS AFFECTED BY THE GOVERNMENTS. 451
leged to take the liberty, I did not look up for some seconds or minutes. The hand from behind picked up a piece of my manuscript,
read it over, took up a second, and so forth, until finally I turned
round, irritated.
There stood a total stranger, —a large, politician-like, coarsegrained, impudent-eyed man, — coolly reading my manuscript. it was
so outrageous a violation of decency and so rascally a liberty, that I
felt the blood go up my face like the hoisting of the British standard.
" Is that your conception of manners, sir? " I said to the man.
He looked at me like a stone with a smile on it, for a few minutes,
and then said, with a contemptuous voice:" My God! I reckon everything here is public property, aint it?
I reckon'taint no use to put on airs here, be it? I guess not!"
Not deigning me another word, this republican genius went round'
all the circuit of the tables, peering in the notes and pages of every
reader, lady or man, and at the end, giving me a half-defiant yet impassive look, went out at a floundering stride.
Two days afterward I saw this man, walking between two Representatives, go into the White House. He was pointed out to me as a
man who had captured a valuable revenue office.,
Now, consider this type of man a representative unit of the two, oir
three thousand visitors at the White House daily. If he sees a doormarked:
"Publia not admitted bore,"
that is the particular door which he means to go through. If he
cannot go through it he will peep through it. He means to "' make
a low" about it. His impudent stare and the coarse "feel" of
his hand is upon every face or object he sees. The only sort of
grace he possesses is an adjunct to cunning, when, on occasion, he
can wheedle, or flatter, and put his soul through degrading gymnastics, creep on his belly, kneel and crawl like a snake,  anything but
hear a " No " said without insolence or malignity.
Such is England as affected by her government, such America.
We shall have grave questions to meet, which will try the virtue of
our institutions; we are opening wide the gates of suffrage, heretofore ajar, and inviting hoary heathenism to become units with us in
self-government. But we cannot have issues in the future more dismaying than England in the present, - all sympathy for her! - thus
summed up by one of her best missionaries of peace: —




452    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED- WITH THE OLD.
"For the United States there is no Catholic question, no Irish
Church or Scotch Church question; no difficulties between Church and
State, or Church and Dissenters, or about national education, on account of religious differences and claims. For the United States
there is no such question of Representative Reform as convulsed
Great Britain thirty-five years ago, because the republic has not yet
outgrown any of its principles of representation, as England had.
For the United States there is no peril of exhaustion and decay by
an inappropriate and corrupted poor-law, such as that which was
truly called the gangrene in the social life of England, which it was
equally dangerous to remove and to let alone. The success with
which the reform was at length accomplished may interest American
readers; but it is to be hoped that there will never be reason for any
closer sympathy. In the same way the United States have no
colonial troubles to manage, no conquered countries -territories conquered centuries before the present generation saw the light-to
elevate, to attach, and to make free and happy; and the best friends
of the republic will ever pray that no generation of the citizens will
in any age bequeath such an inheritance of difficulty and pain to its
posterity. The United States have no such mass of heterogeneous
and unsystematized law as England still has to digest, consolidate,
and arrange; nor such anomalies of jurisdiction and administration
to reconcile or abolish. The United States have no such relics of
feudal times as the game laws; no such associations in our irritable,
unhappy, and perverse portion of the country as Orange Societies,
land Ribbon Societies, and Whiteboys in Ireland."




CHAPTER XVII.
AMERICA AND ENGLAND AS INFLUENCED BY EACH OTHER.
The critics of each country upon the other. - Causes of our mutual estrangement and consequences of it. - American ideas in England and British emigrants in America. - The
peacemakers.
WITH the preceding hasty survey of England, as a subject of curiosity to us, we may conclude by a few inquiries as to which nation
owes most to the other. And here is the present quality of exchange:
our money is exported to England as to the richer country in accumulations, and British people are exported to us as to the richer country
in prospective riches, and the better in present opportunity. England
affects us as a powerful state, where the people are organized most
efficiently for war and melted into its thunderbolts. The figure that
struck Webster was of British drums following the course of the sun
around the earth; the picture that Byron saw of America was: —
"One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart, and nursed in the devotion
Of freedom."
These are the distinctions: when we are menaced by war, civil or
foreign, by debt, by any of those things which test the fabric of the
state, we recall the prescriptions of England, - her energies drilled,
her people bred to the sea and to harness, like so many blooded
animals, her powers for despotism or for peace alike kept under the
watchful lash or goad of the monarchy; when England is at peace, -
and peace is the wish of all the better nations now, - she looks at
her festering masses, ignorant, striving in vain for release from vice,
and from hard labor underpaid, for a better life and a better chance,
and she has but to follow their trail to muse upon the nation that is
the consuming problem of her existence.
It has been often said that we, of all nations, should have been
allies, - parcels of each other, with a common antiquity, and a like
453




454    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
religion, literature, and common law. But there is no great nation
that can be the friend of England, as there has never been any such
which could abide her arrogant and jealous temper. She has impulses
of good, and sympathies for the weak, but no conception of the
friendship of equals, no magnanimity to see the standard-bearer of
her language widen its destinies and accommodate itself to its mission.
Before we took up arms, she seemed to apprehend the future that
might open to us, and exerted all the violence of her prerogatives to
depress us. When we revolted, she used her energies almost to exhaustion to conquer us, and when from time to time she was repulsed,
she only lessened in her offers of peace the number of patriots she
intended to hang.
For that period, and the period succeeding, the present generation
of Englishmen is not accountable; only a few live who remember
her bullying and her outrages upon the high seas, her orders in Council, the burning of our Capitol, the wasting of our coasts.
Failing in both attempts, she opened upon us by such unity and
concert the more offensive batteries of the most servile press in
Europe, that we have a national indictment against England which is
for the present, at least, committed to every American memory. It
is not an indictment which can come to trial; but it cannot come to be
explained away. There is no error in the assurance of it, however it
may be drawn. And that it was not the mere verbiage of irresponsible people came to proof in the latest and last crisis of our nation,
when England put her fleets and stores of arms to sea with less intention to assist our malcontents than to crush the principle that both
of us represented. We are not to be persuaded in a day nor a year
that it is possible for us to be the natural allies of a state guilty of
this long vindictiveness. The London " Times" assumed it, when in
answer to the speech of Hon. Charles Sumner on England's responsibility for the ravages of the Alabama, that paper said, " WVe cannot
be made to pay for our sentiments." The long abuse of us and the
last assault upon us are directly charged by the American people to the
living generation of England, and to our grievance is added suspicion
of the hasty and servile congratulations which are now tendered us.
There is no foreign subject on which the representative intelligence
of America is more informed than this. We know every man who
said good words for us at the right time; we know the friendship of
the English workingmen, - the only nobility that we recognize as of




AMERICA AND ENGLAND.                   455
any consequence to us; and we know, as even meaner than the pseudo:
nobility, the miserable class of British tradesmen who are unworthy
of any class, as they are of none, parasites of aristocracy, whether
they write leaders in Furnival's Inn, or write law in Gray's Inn Lane,
or write books by Blackheath, or write invoices fiom Blackwall. Mr.
Dickens, on his second and financial errand to America, thought that
a comet had better fire the earth than America and Engrland go to
war; but of the fourteen millions of people added to America since
his first visit, not one could have taken encouragement to come
amongst us for anything that Mr. Dickens had written.
It was as if England had planted buoys along all our coasts and
placarded them  with: " Keep off!"  "M Ian-eaters dwell here!"' Beware of the Mob!"' Violence ashore!"  And suddenly by an
illumination of victory over a purified republic and a rescued state, we
had read from the same missionary beacons: " Happy Land!" " Everlasting Alliance!" "' Same Shakespeare! "'Give us your hand! "
A state debauched in honesty like this must either have a heartless
national character or a treacherous government, - and it can take its
choice!
The true index to British dislike of us was doubtless inspired by
the suspicious malevolence of an aristocracy for a republic. The
literary war upon us began with old Doctor Johnson, pensioned by
Lord Bute, who attacked us during our Revolution, and George III.
gave the true index to the fear of the aristocracy, when, on receiving
our first ministers, he muttered " in deep emotion " his conviction that
the monarchical was the only proper form of government.
Since that time we have been, not the victims, but the objects, of
constant scurrility and concerted evil prophesying. Our own behavior in return has been hospitable, conciliatory, at times mildly
reproachful.
All attempts made to endow scholarships of American history and
literature at Oxford and Cambridge Universities have been rejected,
and upon what other ground it would be hard to say, than that of
repugnance to permit America to be understood, at her best, by young
Englishmen. Yet this British nation, so meanly illiberal in its sentiment, is forever lecturing us upon the beauty of reciprocity; it seems
that trade ought to be free current, but not history and morals. On
the other hand there are many thousand Americans who look upon
English p6litical history, since the close of the French and Indian war,
as well-nigh a useless study in our colleges, and one that had better




456    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
be displaced by the study of European continental politics. The
economic history of England began at the suppression of Bonaparte,
and is of vast interest, while all its triumphs have been the rebuke
of the previous century of English glory. The name of Pitt is
pigmy beside that of Peel; Wellington's hollow squares disappear in
Watt's hollow cylinders; the live men of England are civilized from
America, and every great advance movement in England, for eighty
years, has been in despite of the literature which has wasted so
much advice on America. The tune of the creature has changed of
late, but not his appetite, and it is unlikely that America will pay as
much heed to English adulation in the future as she gave to English
jealousy in the past.  The "Times," which is of late our sweetheart, said of us no longer ago than 1863, in its praise of Russell's
diary:"' The United States have been a vast burlesque on the functions
of national existence, and it was M1r. Russell's fate to behold their
transformation scene, and to see the first tumbles of their clowns and
pantaloons. It was time for him to coime away, though the shame of
his retirement was theirs. He did his duty while he was with them,
and he has left them a legacy in this' Diary."'
Gather together all the literature of bigotry since the Reformation,
and there will not be any parcel so filthy as fifty years of British
comment on America, which served, like garbage in general, only to
fertilize the land on which it was shed. As the blood of the martyrs
was the seed of the church, the ink of British critics was the seed of
America. And this being discovered, the British sweetheart asks us
now to be thankful for it. At which characteristic impertinence we
shall be probably magnanimous enough to smile. A thorough brief
upon this subject is the work of Henry T. Tuckerman, entitled
"America and her Commentators," which, it is to be regretted, closes
before the period of that climatic vituperation during the war, when
almost every chip-monk and bull-frog between John O'Groat's and
Land's End swelled the riot of denunciation. It was a chorus like
that the devils raised in Longfellow's " Golden Legend " around the
cross they are striving to hurl from the cathedral: —
John Bull.   "Hasten! hasten!
Oh ye spirits!
From its station drag the ponderous
Cross of iron that to mock us
Is uplifted high in air!




AMERICA AND ENGLAND.                     457
Aristocratic voices.   "Oh, we cannot!
For around it
All the Saints and Guardian Angels
Throng in legions to protect it;
They defeat us everywhere! "
So rallied the desperate minions of aristocracy around the American flag, and, failing to rend it, Mr. Russell, their ablest and most unprincipled emissary, lugubriously added:"I never could meet any one in the States able to account for the
insignia on that flag, though it has been suggcested that they are an
amplification of the heraldic bearing of George Washington. Strange,
indeed, if the family blazon of an English squire should have become
the flaunting flag of the Great Republic, which, with all its faults, has
done so much for the world, and may yet, purged of its vanity, arrogance, and aggressive tendency, do so much more for mankind!
Not excepting our own, it is the most widely spread flag on the seas;
for whilst it floats by the side of the British ensign in every haunt of
our commerce, it has almost undisputed possession of vast tracts of
sea in the Pacific and South Atlantic."
No clearer indication can be had of the self-conviction of England
as to her treatment of America than her universal speed at the close
of our war to borrow our military inventions and extend her navy;
the great inquiry of the English press became:" How many troops can the Yankees put in the field?  How many
ships on the sea?"
Then came the almost enforced confederation of the Canadas and
neighboring colonies; and to this day the fear of suffering some
physical return for her brutal treatment of America is apparent
throughout the wide range of English periodicals.  In ludicrous
avarice, even greater than this fear, the Southern bondholders in.England meet to ask the Federal Government to pay the notes of
hand cashed by them for the price of our assassination. Impudent
servility on the one hand, alarmed spite on the other, - these are the
leading traits of the English nation as instanced in intercourse with
us. None but a rare Christian man could forgive such a character,
if he met him in social life; and yet perhaps America can rise to this
rank and forget this uncivil nation.
The question is put:  "Does it become us as a great state to be
sensitive to abuse?"  Perhaps not; yet complaint is made of us
that we lack identity, and therefore cannot be a strong and sensitive
58




~458    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
state. English comment is worth just this to us: it teaches us not
what we are, but who are the English people. What generous natures,
open sentiments, philosophic cheerfulnesses, and cosmopolitan educations must they have who canl devote fifty years of journalism to
our aggravation, and yet have never produced one philosophic treatise
upon America out of the Bibliotheque they have made upon us!
For two centuries previously the English berated France in the same
way, and at the spectacle of her heroic Revolution they beggared
themselves willingly to pluck the eagle's feathers from her wing. It
is. this state, where every strata of society is skewered through with
the cold pulse of aristocracy, which claims to be our only blood relative and progenitor; but except in a certain practicality of head and
a similar language we are no longer Englishmen here, but have been
humanized with all the tempers of the world. Our race resembles
more the Saxon-English of the time of Alfred than the fictitious
Englishman of to-day.
" The superior candor of the French writers on America is obvious
to the most superficial reader," says AIr. Tuckerman. "' The urbanity
and the philosophical tendency of the national mind account for
this more genial and intelligent treatment; but the striking difference
of temper and of scope between the French and English travels in
America is accounted for mainly by the comparative freedom from
political and social prejudice on the part of the former, and the
frequent correspondence of their sentiments with those of the inhabitants of the New World."
The difference between a French and an English aristocrat is, that
one accepts the situation, and the other compels it. A thorough
English democrat, like Cobden, makes use of America for suggestion
rather than for demonstration, and is hence not more disinterested,
perhaps, but more liberal and sensible.
Beyond the dislike of the dominant aristocracy, the English people have accustomed themselves, through years of cavilling and
meddling with mankind, to become the worst observers in the world,
and the most disagreeable travellers. This is their reputation in
every country of Europe; waiters and commissionaires run for them,
but everybody else runs the other way. Their innumerable guidebooks of other lands are illustrations of bad digestion, bad manners,
and no philosophy; and the majority of their commonplace books
of travel are directed entirely toward the aristocratic market.
The memorable papers which first established the reputation of




AMERICA AND ENGLAND.                   459
Dickens curiously indicate the prevalence of this deprecatory and
venal spirit in English writers on America, at a late period. The
elder Weller, in suggesting to Samivel his notable plan for the
escape of Pickwick from the Fleet Prison, by concealing himself in a' pianner forty," significantly adds:  "Have a passage ready taken
for'3Ierriker. Let the gov'ner stop there till iMrs. Bardell's dead,
and then take and let him come back and write a book about the'Merrikens as'11 pay all his expenses, and more, if he blows'em up
enough."
The man who could write this passage six years before he himself
wrote just that sort of book could scarcely have been careful about
what the world said of his literary integrity. We have had all sorts
of tramps and eavesdroppers amongst us from the land of our natural
ally, and they appear to have been of little account at home, by English report. Ashe, one of the most noted of them, is openly described as a swindler; Faux as "low;" Parkinson was "a common
gardener;" Fearon "a stocking-weaver."  Cobbett, who is the last
person to be suspected of aristocratic prejudices, and was the most
practical and perverse of democrats, observed, in reading the fastidious comments of one of these impudent travellers upon an American
meal, that it was " such a breakfast as the fellow had never before
tasted;." and the remark explains the presumption and ignorance of
many of this class of writers, who, never before having enjoyed the
least social consideration or private luxury, became, like a beggar on
horseback, intoxicated therewith.
Our ladies were particularly taken to task by Mrs. Trollope, a sort
of peripatetic lady whose fortune was made by our sensitiveness; and
we have since had an expiatory sort of book from her son Anthony,
whom I have frequently quoted in this compilation. Mr. Tuckerman
sums up the second Trollope thus interestingly:"Mr. Trollope seems extremely afraid of giving offence. continually
deprecates the idea, and wishes it understood that it is very painful
to him to find fault with anybody or anything in the United States;
but he must censure as well as blame, and he means no unkindness.
All this, however amiable, is really preposterous. It presupposes a
degree of importance as belonging to his opinions, or rather a necessity for their expression, which seems to us quite irrational in a man
of such common sense, and who has seen so much of the world. It
is amusing, and, as a friend remarked,'comes from his blood, not his
brain.' It is the old leaven of self-love, self-importance, self-assertion,




460    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of the Englishman as such. If he had passed years instead of
months in America, and grown familiar with other circles beside the
circle of litte'rateurs who so won his admiration in Boston, he would
have found all he has written of the spoiled children, the hard
women, the despotic landlords, disgusting railway cars, western
swindlers, bad architecture, official peculations, mud, dust, and
desolation of Washington, misery of Cairo, and base, gold-seeking
politicians of America, overheated rooms, incongruous cuisine, and
undisciplined juveniles, thoroughly appreciated, perfectly understood,
and habitually the subject of native protest and foreign report."
Enough of these wailing travellers; and it is scarcely necessary to
consider the late English panegyrics upon us, which are as worthless,
excepting, perhaps, the manly book of Charles W. Dilke, who recognizes the fact that America and England are not of the same blood:
"America is becoming not English merely, but world-embracing in the
variety of its type; and, as the English element has given language
and history to that land, America offers the English race the moral
directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind through Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through America, England is speaking to the world."
De Tocqueville ascribes our alleged sensitiveness to criticism, to
the nature of our government.
" Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their
country and of themselves. An American leaves his country with a
heart swollen with pride; on arriving in Europe he at once finds out
that we are not so engrossed by the United States and the great
people which inhabits them as he had supposed, and this begins to
annoy him."
There are, undoubtedly, Americans, who are fascinated by the
higher social life of England, its juicy chops and steaks, its large
estates, luxurious life, and high-born manners; but a still larger
number are fascinated by Paris and the Continent; we go where we
can get the most for our money, if pleasure be the object. IIawthorne, while Consul at Liverpool, saw even more decided preference
for England amongst certain eccentric people.
"After all these bloody wars and vindictive animosities, we have
still an unspeakable yearning toward  England.  When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but
trailed along with them others, which were never snapped asunder by
the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the




AMERICA AND ENGLAND.                    461
original soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by
the edge of the sword.
" A mere coincidence of names," he says, " a supposititious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently engraved coat-of-arms has
been half scrubbed out, a seal with an uncertain crest, an old yellow
letter or document in faded ink, the more scantily legible the better,
~ rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected drawer, has been potent
enough to turn the brain of many an honest Republican, especially
if assisted by an advertisement for lost heirs, cut out of a British
newspaper.'It has required nothing less than the boorishness, the stolidity,
the self-sufficiency, the contemptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity,
invariably blind of one eye and often distorted of the other, that
characterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great nation in
our own right, instead of continuing virtually, if not in name, a
province of their small island. WVhat pains did they take to shake
us off, and have ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them!
It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, rather, the
providence of God, who has doubtless a work for us to do, in which
the massive materiality of the English character would have been too
ponderous a dead weight upon our progress."
One of the most ingenious passages in De Tocqueville is that
wherein he accounts for the assumptions of many hair-brained
Americans in Europe, where, it is possible, that some of his type
may still go, carrying all their provincialism with them.
"An American," says this pointed writer, " is forever talking of the
admirable equality which prevails in the United States; aloud he
makes it the boast of his country, but in secret he deplores it for
himself; and he aspires to show that, for his part, he is an exception
to the general state of things which he vaunts. There is hardly an
American to be met with who does not claim some remote kindred
with the first founders of the colonies; and as for the scions of the
noble families of England, America seemed to me to be covered with
them. When an opulent American arrives in Europe, his first care
is to surround himself with all the luxuries of wealth; ha is so afraid
of being taken for the plain citizen of a democracy, that he adopts a
hundred distorted ways of bringing some new instance of his wealth
before you every day. His house will be in the most fashionable
part of the town; he will always be surrounded by a host of servants. I have heard an American complain, that in the best houses




:462    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of Paris the society was rather mixed; the taste which prevails there
was not pure enough for him; and he ventured to hint that, in his
opinion, there was a want of elegance of manner; he could not
accustom himself to see wit concealed under such unpretending forms.
"These contrasts ought not to surprise us. If the vestiges of
former aristocratic distinctions were not so completely effaced in the
United States, the Americans would be less simple and less tolerant
in their own country; they would require less, and be less fond of
borrowed manners in ours."
Since De Tocqueville's time we have grown more self-possessed,
more attached to our institutions, and more cosmopolitan within ourselves. We have our own celebrities, and do not go in multitudes to
look at foreigners, who mortify us for it. Our attention is turned
from Europe to the near Orient, whence are to come the problems of
multitude and mode which will speedily overflow the Rocky Mountains, and meet Europe half way on the plains of the Missouri.
Destinies of colossal magnitude tower in that Asiatic mist, and with
youth, but canfidence, we accept them. This hemisphere was laid
away for no one race; the pilgrims and they of the caravans of the
earth have seen our star, and at last the English Magi also.
And ours is the government of which Emile de Girardin in " La
Liberte " says (1868): "The population of America, not thinned by
any conscription, multiplies with prodigious rapidity, and the day
may before seen, when they will number sixty or eighty millions
of souls. This parvenue is aware of his importance and destiny.
Hear him  proudly exclaim,'America for Americans!' See him
promising his alliance to Russia; and we see that power which
well knows what force is, grasp the hand of this giant of yesterday.
" In view of his unparalleled progress and combination, what are
the little toys with which we vex ourselves in Europe? What is this
needle gun, we are anxious to get from Prussia, that we may beat her
next year with it? Had we not better take from America the principle of liberty she embodies, out of which have come her citizen
pride, her gigantic industry, and her formidable loyalty to the destinies of her Republican land?"
Since America was discovered she has been a subject of revolutionary thought in Europe. The mystery of her coming forth from
vacancy, the marvel of her wealth in gold and silver, the spectacle
of her captives led through European capitols, filled the minds of
men with unrest; and unrest is the first stage of revolution. Out of




AMERICA AND ENGLAND.                      463
her discovery grew the European reformation in religion; out of our
Revolutionary War grew the revolutionary period of Europe.  And
out of our rapid development amon6g great states and happy peoples,
has come an emigration more wonderful than that which invaded
Europe from  Asia in the latter centuries of the Roman Empire.
When we raised our flag on the Atlantic, Europe sent her contributions; it appeared on the Pacific, and all orientalism felt the signal.
They are coming in two endless fleets, eastward and westward, and
the highway is swunfg between the oceans for them to tread upon.
We have lightened Ireland of half her weight, and Germany is
coming by the village-load every day. England herself is sending
the best of her working-men now (1869), and in such' numbers as to
dismay her Jack Bunsbys.  What is to be the limit of this mighty
immigration?  There is extant a calculation made by the late Elkanah Watson. In the year 1815, writing on the progress of the population of the United States, he said: —
1" In 1810 it was seven million two hundred and thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and three.  The increase from  1790, the first
census under the Constitution, has been about one-third at each
census. Admitting that it will continue to increase in the same
ratio, the result will be as follows: —
"In 1820 Watson predicted..  9,625,734, and it was in fact 9,638,151
In 1830   "       ".. 12,833,645, and it was in fact 12,866,020
In 1840   "       ".. 17,116,526, and it was in fact 17,062,566
In 1850   "       ".. 23,185,368, and it was in fact 23,191,876
In 1860   "       ".. 31,753,824, and it was in fact 31,445,089
In 1870   "       ".. 42,328,432
In 1880   "       ".. 56,450,241
In 1890   "       ".. 77,266,989
In 1900   "       ".. 100,355,985"
The accuracy of these calculations is truly wonderful, and gives
authority to the four latter predictions. Mr. Watson added: —
"It would be almost presumptuous to stretch our minds through the
ensuing century; and yet, taking as a basis one hundred million at
the close of this century, and, in consideration of dense population,
intestine and foreign wars, a possible subdivision, in consequence,
with several republics, we will suppose the increase will be one-third
in each twenty years for forty years, one-third the next thirty, and
one-fifth for the next fifty years. It will stand thus: -




464    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"For 1930, in round numbers.               133,000,000
For 1940.                                177,000,000
For 1970.                                236,000,000
For 2000.                                283,000,000
- equal to the population of China."
But by the year 1900, what will be the drained population of China?
In the first five months of 1869, nearly one hundred and fifteen
thousand emigrants landed in New York.
Astounded at this increase, the timid are reflecting that it will do
the country more evil than good. They are producing Old Malthus
again, that sensitive British statistician, who wanted the human race
to stop, for fear it would over-populate the world. By that time, perhaps, the world will stop; but we are not the people to stop it. Even
the hopeful MIr. Dilke found one " old fellow who said to me,' I don't
want the Americans in 1900 to be two hundred millions; but'I want
them to be happy.' "
Now, IMr. Dilke, pray let us grow, -or is this the beginning of a
new series of British predictions?
The influence of England upon America is now almost entirely of
a passive character. We read some of her books, and sorry are we
that we do not always pay for them; but the British author never
could have expected so many readers under this form of government;
at least he said as much. CWe buy a great deal of iron, and so forth,
in England, and we like Spurgeon's Sermons, because we think he is in
earnest. gWe are obliged to English capitalists who made their money
out of us, for returning some of it at ten per cent. to give us railroads. We watch the reform question in England, and like MIr.
Goldwin Smith and other highly-educated gentleman to come to teach
us to be more profoundly and thoughtfully educated. We admire the
learning of England,- for she has more learned men though not
more learning men than we, - but we do not always take the advice
of 3Mr. Carlyle. We print paper for the New York " Tribune " in
the Falls of Niagara, and then allow the Falls to " shoot " themselves. Finally, we wish no war with England; for that would be
too much in the line of her policy, and it would be foolish. We prefer to read instead what MIr. Russell said about that visionary war in
1864.
" If the American civil war were over in 1865," said Mr. Russell,
"there would probably be six hundred thousand men under arms,
and there would be at least two hundred thousand more men in the




AMERICA AND ENGLAND.                     465
States, who had served, and would take up arms against England with
alacrity. A  considerable portion of that army would indeed seek
their discharge and go quietly back to their avocations; but the Irish,
Germans, etc., to whom the license of war was agreeable, would not
be unwilling to invade Canada, and a percentage of Americans
would doubtless eagerly seek for an opportunity of gaining against
a foreign enemy the laurels they had not found whilst contending
with their fellow-countrymen.  Commerce, indeed, would suffer; the
Americans would find for the first time what it was to enter upon a
quarrel, single-handed, with the British nation. They have hitherto
met only the side blows and stray shots of the old mother country;
and they believe they have encountered the full weight of her arm,
and the utmost extent of her energies. The wicked men who are
striving to engage the two States in a quarrel which'would cover the
seas of the world with blood and wreck, cannot be deterred from
their horrible work by any appeals to fear or conscience; but the influence of the past and of the Christian and civilized people of the
ex-United States will, it is to be hoped, defeat their efforts, seconded
though they may be by the prejudice, religious animosity, and national
dislike of a portion of the people."
This wicked class has cleaned its pipes and commenced a new tune.
It -followed MIr. Russell out of the country, as the children followed
the Pied Piper. We hear its tootings on the other shore, to which our
backs are turned for the present, and, remembering its half century
of warnings and invocations, we are reminded of the best known
poem in the language: —
"'Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!'
This was the peasant's last good-night, -
A voice replied far up the height:' EXCELSIOR! "
~9








PART II.
FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE.
467












g     - = —= -  =
NATIOTNAL_ INSTITUTIONS.
1 —otel (es In alides, Paris. 2-Hotel Dieu, Paris.  3-Hospital at Cincinnati
4-Greenwich Hospital, London.
=,1 _lsl  ___.      _             _
iri        IIP




CHAPTER XVIII.
NEW YORK AND PARIS.
The chief cities of the American and the European continents.
" NEW YORK and Washington Through Line " indicates the indifference of the majority of American travellers to whatever lies between.
Two hundred and twenty-six miles apart, the fast trains traverse this
distance in nine hours, which is perhaps equal to the highest speed
attained on American railways; the passenger lies down in the
sleeping-car at Washington at his usual bedtime, and while he
dreams, his boots are blackened, and when he wakens it is at New
York. His fare is eight dollars.
"Through Night Service, London and Paris in nine and a half
hours," indicates no stopping-place between, for the majority of
English travellers. The distance is about twenty-five miles greater
than from Washington to New York, and there is the rough Strait of Dover between, the most travelled and the most tempestuous ocean ferry in
the world, the average time to traverse which is one hour and a half.
The first-class fare is about fourteen dollars. The European speed
is noticeably greater, taking the changes of baggage and passengers
into consideration. As we must pay extra fare for a sleeping-car,
the European must pay an extra fee to the steward on the boat, and
both extras are vicious in system. The second-class carriages, which
cost from two to three dollars less, to Paris, are more comfortable than
our regular first-class cars. The Straits of Dover are as annoying
on this line as -were the former ferries at Philadelphia and Havre de
Grace.
There are four routes from London to Paris, and the shortest I
have indicated; there is but one route, pIractically, from Washington
to New York. The ride between both pairs of cities is marked by
strong and variable scenery, and the American can trace resemblances
between the steep white bluffs and rolling seas of tho strait and the
strong scenery at the head of the Chesapeake; between the flat and
469




470    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
fertile fields of New Jersey and the wide and cultivated plains of
France. There are a dozen important towns between, but either the
city of Philadelphia or Baltimore outnumbers the combined cities
between London and Paris, while London and Paris, massed together
with their interlinking cities, make five and a half millions of city
folks, and Washington and New York, including Brooklyn massed in
the same way, make two and a third millions.
In some small degree London may be likened to New Yolk, and
Paris to Washington. To the former two there is the same gathering of masts, the same smell of the sea, the same commercial dictatorship; a like assemblage of daring capitalists and capital; similar
opinions upon subjects of trade; a thunderous newspaper press; and
that hold upon much of the country that the lender has upon the
borrower, and the buyer upon the producer. The similarity in the
landscapes of Washington and Paris has been remarked, - the same
broken and lofty amlphitheatre of wooded hills, the same running
river, almost equal distance from the salt water, large public buildings, bureaucracy in the administration, soldiers in the streets and
forts on the heights; and Paris, like Washington, is the spot toward
which the continent faces. Its "decrees" can move gold up or
down; its attitude in finance or toward war makes emotion from the
North to the Black Sea. For the rest, Washington is only the skeleton of Paris, - and yet as a skeleton not without resemblance: its
broad avenues converging upon areas strategic either for picturesqueness or for military operations, - but Paris is clothed with centuries
of power and adornments; her population is greater than that of
the -whole assembled States of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the
District of Columbia. In 1820, after the desolating wars of Bonaparte,'her population was but seven hundred and fourteen thousand;
in 1866 her population was two million one hundred and fifty thousand. The population of New York, Brooklyn, and their suburbs is
now about one million and a half.
To compare the natural site of New York with that of Paris would
be unjust to the latter. If neither city existed, and some fisherman
on the island of New York were transported to Paris, he would see a
fiat plain, bordered by hillocks, divided by a clear, running stream,
and the whole, at some considerable distance, walled round with
pleasant rolling heights of grass and wood. If he were to embark in
his boat for the sea, he would pass by crooked courses through a valley and plain, soft, fertile, and hill-bound, like that behind him, and




NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                    471
receiving frequent accessions from pastoral rills and little rivers, till,
after two or three days' sailing, he would emerge into a wide and
gentle bay with white bluffs of shore, and headlands for its gates
almost in sight of each other. The headland to the right would be
the site of I-Iavre, and that to the left, of Cherbourg. Between Paris
and the sea he would have passed a space left between picturesque
heights, and this would be the site of Rome. Ilis comment upon all
this would have been: " It is a pastoral, and a grape and grain-growing region, but tame for a fisherman! "
If New York were also merely its foundation, and the pastoral
peasant of the valley of the Seine were suddenly to be placed above
it, he would feel the strong, salt neighborhood of the sea, and see a
long, canoe-shaped island, just loosened astern from the solid land,
moored in twice its width of water, and pointing its prow into a wide
bay. This island is thirteen and a half miles long, and of an average
breadth of more than a mile and a half; its entire surface of twentytwo miles is bold and granitic, and in profile resembling the cartilagineous back of a sturgeon. Its highest altitude above the tide is
two hundred and thirtv-eight feet. A wide, salt river flows down
either side; to the right the majestic Hudson, a mile wide, unbroken
by an island; to the left, the deep East River, a third of a mile wide,
with a chain of slender islands abreast.
The opposite slopes of the Hudson River are high aind imposing,
and like driven " Palisades" of rock they stretch far rearward to the
north till lost to view; the opposite slopes of the East River are
green knolls that rise gracefully from the water. But where the two
rivers unite at the prow of the island to enter the bay, a sentinel
height stands on either side, and between these the island of the city
points to the sea. Astern of this island, tidal channels make up from
either river to its neighbor, and discharge in sluices at opposing
tides; ahead of this island opens the beautifiul bay, fifteen miles in
circumference, and showing occasional small islands above its surface; at the foot of this bay, one island, almost mountainous, stands
in the way, so that the waters are cramped into a strait less than two
miles wide, with one small islet in the middle and bold steeps on
either side; passing this strait, the waters again expand into a
broader bay with less precipitous shores, where they receive aeces.
sions from other rivers, and move on by sandy spits and beaches to
the ocean. But even at the ocean side one towering height holds




472  THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
guard, and shows itself to sails far off upon the sea. The ocean
itself is only eighteen  miles distant from  the island of the city.
All this would the fisherman of the Seine behold, and feel the briny
air, like the breath of this strong seaboard landscape, - a nature cast
in hardy countenance, yet with a largeness and breadth that touch
the intellect of the beholder, and make him  feel that he who could
live in the sight of this scenery should have high thoughts and enterprises.  But as this water-bound island has two rivers, so it has two
aisles to the sea; for where the tidal channels in  the  rear make
sluices by their opposing tides, another bay opens out from  the river
of the East, -  a little archipelago indeed, -  and this again narrows
to a slender channel, through which, when one has passed, a most
beautiful Sound or inland sea extends eastward to the Atlantic, like
the long inundated  nave of a cathedral.  This Sound is one hundred and ten miles long, and from  two miles to twenty miles wide.
The  land between the two outlets  to  the  ocean  is Long  Island,
which is one hundred and forty miles long, and twelve miles wide.*
" The author may be pardoned for citing some verses which he published a short time
ago, if they help to make plain the topography of New York. The subject of the poem
is "Pan Building the City": -
" Then, for the gateways of the city, reach
A hundred leagues of golden-grained beach, -
Long Island, stretching to Montawk away,
And Jersey, shining to the Cape of May;'Twixt either, jutting o'er the ocean's brink,
Stands nature's grandest lighthouse, Naversink.
Within, five rivers break into the land,Five mighty fingers, whose blue-veined hand
Makes a broad bay, by virgin zephyrs kissed,
Slender, but granite corded at the wrist:
The Narrows, fastest gate of Freedom. Thence,
Craggdd for picturesqueness and defence,
Dividing walls go sweeping,- to the left
By the great palisaded fresh sea cleft;
And on the right, where stark bare islets swell,
Like drifting souls caught in the gates of hell,
Burst by contending tides, which smoothly bound
In soft horizons, a most slumb'rous Sound,
Heir of the long green valleys; set between,
One island, like an arrow-head shot down,
Studded with lights and tints like diamond-sheen,
Lengthwise a sceptre, profiled like a crown,
Groom to the sea and of the land the Queen:'Behold! Great Pan!' the Tritons cried,' your town!'




NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                     473
It is this canoe-shaped island which is covered by the city of New
York, - the third city of the civilized world in rank of population, the
second in commerce, and the first in opportunities. There is no harbor in Europe at all comparable with it, and Rio de Janeiro, Havana,
and San Francisco are the only comparable ones in the world. The
Sound, which constitutes one of its ocean approaches, is a miniature
Mediterranean, bordered with large towns and  cities, receiving
tributary rivers from old and populous valleys, and carrying an
inland and coastwise commerce, which is, of itself, no despicable
navy. The River Hudson is the American Rhine, and to masculine
tastes its sceneries are, if not so various, more grand and striking
than those of the German river. The mainland between river and
Sound, from which New York island is detached, is composed of
lofty and rugged hills, holding large lakes in their hollows. The
sea-coasts hereabout are renowned for their beaches and the infinite
varieties of game and shell-fish which harbor in them. The flat-lands
at the end of the heights on the opposite bank of the River Hudson
constitute the State of New Jersey, - one of the most extensive
gardens of fruit and vegetables in the world. And the whole of the
island of the city is accessible to its piers by the largest shipping
afloat. No docks are requisite here, as in Europe, to give rest to
vessels; they swim to the brink of the city, and shelter there like the
ducklets beneath their mother. There is but one dock, in the English
sense, at New York, - and that is at Brooklyn.
For the present let us suspend a description of the human covering
of this island, and, leaving it in a state of nature as our supposititious
peasant beheld it, recall the circumstances of its discovery and settlement.
The year the translation of the English Bible began (1607), EIenry
Hudson set sail to make a name and place in America. On his second
voyage, in 1609, lie entered the bay of New York, in a vessel called
the Half Moon, and the savages from the shores swarmed out in their
canoes, to see what could be done in the way of trade and stealing.
This adventurous man, with a name which seems quite sonorous now
Profound the ocean, bowing at its doors;
Eternal as the eternal world its floors;
Dyed in the plumages of birds its skies;
Calm sheltered, like the strength in tender eyes;
In infinite sublimest sceneries pent;
Potential to inspire or make content;
It diadems the virgin continent!"
60




474    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ascended the river which commemorates it as far as Albany; thus
discovering — and apparently by collusion- both the metropolis
and the State capital. On his report, which was probably as sanguine as that of any man who has been to New York, the Dutch East
India Company sent two vessels out to make a settlement, for the
purpose of prosecuting the fur-trade, — a business which afterward
made John Jacob Astor the richest New Yorker, though he got his
furs elsewhere. New York was thus settled fronm New Amsterdam,
in Holland, in the year 1614, and it grew steadily and stolidly, under
Dutch government, for fifty years. It was named New Amsterdam;
and old Amsterdam, its colonizer, then had twenty thousand ships
and one hundred thousand sailors of her own. The population of old
Amsterdam, the parent of New York, was 261,455, in the year 1865,
or less than that of Brooklvn.
The English captured this town in 1664, and, ten years later,
changed its name to New York. Almost all the Dutch, including
their Governor, held over, and it is to their blood that New York
owes much of her commercial spirit. The most characteristic act
James II. ever did for her was to forbid her a printing-press. The
first grammar school was established in 1702, the first newspaper in
1725, and Columbia College, of New York, dates back to 1754. The
city was prompt to revolt against British oppression, and suffered
more than any other in the colonies; for more than seven years the
British held it, and made it a prison and a garrison, while the most
stirring deeds of the conflict were enacted in the neighborhood.
Hence departed the enemy's fleets on almost all their expeditions,
and, with Newport, then the rival of New York, the island city felt
the hardest burdens of the conquered. On the 25th of November,
1783, the red-cross flag sailed from New York Bay, and immediately
afterward the army of Washington marched over that part of the
island that we have called the stern, and entered the battered old
barrack village. At that time, by the closest computation, it was
fifty per cent. worse off than if it had never been settled at all. The
true age of New York city, therefore, is no more than ninety years;
for in ten years after the evacuation it had doubled its population.
It had enough bricks together to make it the seat of government for
a little while; and here Washington, in his becoming velvet breeches
and his hair in a bag, walked out near the spot where the " Bulls " and
" Bears " contend at the present day, and said most reverently, as if
he were taking a sacrament, the oath of Chief Magistrate. Here




NEW YORK AND PARIS.                   475
Hamilton wrote the'" Federalist," and Talleyrand saw him, with his
books under his arm, going to court. Here sprang up, at the beginning of the country, the created politician, - the splendid head and carriage of De Witt Clinton; the agreeable face, and, behind it, the long,
organizing head of Hamilton; the lithe, suave, cold-blooded person
of Burr; the big joints and battle-inviting face of George Clinton; the
gentleman, Livingston; the Man, Jay.
To this day these peculiarities remain: New York is the home of
organizing politicians and organizing commercial merchants. With
a nucleus of Dutch and conservative English elements, its proximity
to New England has made tributary to it all that thrifty race of individual people who live on the Sound and its inflowing rivers. Brooklyn is more nearly the metropolis of New England than Boston; for
Boston is chiefly itself.
This is a city, therefore, of exclusively commercial origin. An idea
pervaded almost every other colony. In New England they wanted
to form a Calvinistic nation; in Maryland, a school of Catholic toleration; in Delaware, a Swedish sub-nationality; in Virginia, a landed
aristocracy; but here, to New York, they came solely to trade, to
barter, to grow rich; and they have achieved it, they and their heterogeneous posterity. To this day there are no names more honored
than those of the old Dutch settlers, Stuyvesants, Roosevelts, Livingstons, Courtlandts. Their names exist in streets and squares and
" slips" and ferries. They loved their holidays and social glasses,
and New York has more holidays, commercial as she is, than any
American city; she is also one of the most convivial of our cities,
albeit keen at a trade and particularly keen at a speculation. She is
a popular city amongst Americans, and probably the most popular;
for there is little jealousy, amongst her genuine natives, of any other
municipality in the east, however it may be arrogated by naturalized
people from other States, who bring their love of jealousy with them
when they settle here. Politically, New York is conservative in its
professions, but radically American in its impulses. It is the most
thoroughly municipal of all our cities, and also the most cosmopolitan
of them all; no New Yorker asks one's origin, though, if he finds it
to be Manhattan Island, he is glad. The town is corruptly governed,
because it is governed exclusively by politicians and the lower orders;
but on any great national awakening there is a marked discrepancy
between the votes and the attitude of New York. Her militia is
organized in the dullest periods of peace; her people know what is




476    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
abroad, and feel the first breath of national indignation; when her
Mayor consented to see the Union broken up, her soldiers were on
the march to restore it. Monumentally, she is the foremost of all
cities on the western continent, and, considering the character of the
age, New York is probably more representative of it, for her time of
life, than any city in the world. IIHad she existed in the age of
Gothic cathedral building, she would have piled up an edifice greater
than Cloione, MIilan, or Winchester.
New York, in a Word, is essentially self-possessed, human, undegenerate, in the prime of youthful manhood, based upon no idiosyncrasy, warmed by no fever, the outgrowth of her splendid situation,
educated without a teacher, magnanimous by her circumstances, the
best exemplification of a mercantile republic, with a rabble beneath
but a sound head above. No law can make her other or better, but
such law as is the expression of her nature. She is wild in some
things, and has her portion of the extravagances and vices; but compare these with their cotemporary fellows of London and Paris!
When it is remembered that she is the third city of the world, and
that human nature is not all good, let the mind rest for hope upon
her splendid charities, her ready hand and liberal purse, her general
co-operation, in great things, with the country of which she is a part.
And what American would blot her out,- her sails, her waters, her
ferment, her clear American head? Who would strike out her " Tribune," or even her " Herald," so like herself, at least in enterprise?
There is much to grieve missionaries in New York; but she is much
larger than the missionary's own family, and even there all may not
be perfect. When the missionary wants a text for a sermon on
depravity he goes to New York; when he wants a collection for his
poor church he goes to New York; in any event he goes to New
York, and that is what it is to have almost a metropolis.
The city of New York, as I have said, embraces the whole of this
lance-shaped island, but the densely settled city covers only the lower
half; yet the entire island is lighted with lamps, supplied with
water, and given paved streets far into the open country. The small
channel which divides the island from the main land to the north is
called by the two Dutch names of Harlem and Spuyten Duyvil rivers;
across this channel lie extensive suburbs; several bridges cross it;
amongst them that which does no other work than bring the water
for the city from lakes thirty-two miles distant, and which of itself
cost nine hundred thousand dollars, while the whole aqueduct of




NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                   477
which it is a part cost thirteen million dollars, and will cost twenty
million dollars with its extensions. The eight arches of this bridge,
of hewn masonry, are each one hundred feet high. Where the Harlem River debouches into the East River, the confluence of tides from
the Sound and the Bay produces a whirlpool called Hell Gate, which
has been a source of vast expense, by reason of the protracted efforts
to blast certain rocks in its eddies. Below and above Hell Gate, on
the islands which lie in the East and Harlem Rivers are placed the
county charities, the hospitals, insane asylums, prisons, houses of
correction, etc., and they constitute the most magnificent series of
charities on the globe, whether considered architecturally or by their
efficiency. The foreign traveller, proceeding up the Sound in the
mighty steamers which quit the North River, turn the point of the
city, and pass the whirlpool, might suppose these great battlemented
buildings to be the palaces, fortresses, and barracks of some secure
potentate. Along both sides of the East River as we descend it,
warehouses, mills, villas, and blocks of dwellings come to the water's
edge, and at piers of piles or stone, thousands of steamers and vessels
are loading and discharging cargo; there are of these piers, par excellence, about one hundred and twenty on both rivers, and in the
large tidal docks between, thousands of smaller tugs and vessels lie,
fifteen hundred boats alone being engaged in the fish and oyster
trade. Opposite the island of New Yorlk, on the shore of Long Island,
is a series of large towns, making one consecutive city for many
miles; but the largest of the series is Brooklyn, which comprises a large
city, formerly separate, called Williamsburgh, the latter lying on the
slopes of East River, while Brooklyn proper clambers up the heights
at the river's mouth, and extends along the bay, looking down upon
New York as the Rhenish castle of Rolandseck looks down upon the
island of Nonnenwerth. Between Brooklyn and WVilliamsburgh lies
the United States Navy Yard, in a deep inlet where, in ships and
shops, government has property worth twenty-five millions of dollars.
Brooklyn (Dutch word Breucklen, broken land) was a mere village
in 1816, and it is now larger than Naples, Madrid, or Lyons, a complete city in itself, with its own Aqueduct, City Hall, and Academy of
Music; between it and New York innumerable steam ferry-boats,
looking like great ivory terrapins, ply swiftly, and fly their gay flags
till it seems that a monstrous breed of butterflies is flaunting between a couple of rose-bushes. Below Brooklyn, the bold shores are




478    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
full of villas, and on an eminence amongst them, in view of the
ocean, is the Cemetery of Greenwood, three hundred and thirty acres,
perhaps the most beautiful that exists. It is Brooklyn that is an offshoot of New York, and the abode of her merchants, clerks, and
working people; it has been called a city of lodging-houses, and also
a city of churches, and it is the Passy of Paris, - the city of homes
on the hill. It lies in the same State with New York, and has the
same police regulations and the same police force, fifteen hundred
men in all.
Brooklyn has ambitious hopes of excelling New York in population. New York, according to the Hon. Demas Barnes, has room for
a final population of only 1,872,000, counting twelve lots to the acre,
and twelve persons to the lot. Her population in 1800 was 60,000;
in 1820, 123,000; in 1840, 312,000; and in 1860, 814,000; and the
same rate of increase would give her, in 1870, 1,300,000; and in
1880, 2,083,000; which would be more than she could accommodate. She would be completely full in ten years (from 1869), unless
her increase was diverted.
All the ferries across the River Hudson, in 1868, carried 26,524,000
passengers; those to Brooklyn across the East River carried 51,550,000, almost twice as many. If to these we could add the arrivals by
rail and by steamboat, the total number of persons entering New
York might be obtained.
Since the consolidation with Williamsburgh, in 1855, the following
was the rate of Brooklyn's increase:In 1855, 174,800; in 1860, 267,000; and in 1865, 350,000; and at
three per cent. less than the above increase it would be: in 1870,
450,000; in 1880, 1,000,000; in 1890, 2,200,000; and in 1900,
4,800,000. This suburb of New York, therefore, compares with any
of the outer districts of London.
Brooklyn paid taxes as follows: in 1855, upon 123,311,000 dollars,
and in 1868, upon 149,293,000 dollars. This should have been over
200,000,000 dollars for 1868, which, at two per cent. taxation, would
yield a revenue of 4,000,000 dollars. But take it at the above
average, and Brooklyn will have, in. 1880, 330,000,000 dollars; in'
1890, 720,000,000 dollars; and in 1900, 1,580,000,000 dollars, -or an!
amount equal to the wealth of the nation in 1810. Brooklyn already
has about the same wealth and banking capital which New York had
in 1830.
At the tip of the island of New York is a green park and an old




NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                   479
fort, turned into an immigrant depot, the whole going by the name
of The Battery. From this point the eye can wander at will over
the city of Brooklyn, and its Bay Ridge, till it stops at the Narrows,
where the mountainous Staten Island almost closes the bay, and here
are the defences of iNew York on that side, while the Sound also has
its fortresses, in all twelve forts, and nearly two thousand guns.
New York is one of the most exposed cities in the world, being but
two hours' steaming distance from sea; but the character of the channel is in favor of the city's defence, and this sweeps under the guns
of a powerful fort, raised almost at the edge of the ocean on Sandy
Hook or Spit. Staten Island has been compared to the Isle. of Orleans, and to the heights of Genoa and Palermo, for the splendor of
its villas and the beauty of its shores; behind it, a stealthy passage
called the Kills (Dutch) gives still a third outlet to the sea, and at
either end of the Kills, through the State of New Jersey, two rivers
come down from the West: the Raritan and the Passaic, - on the
former of which stands the city of Newark, nine miles from New
York, with one hundred and twenty thousand people; arnd the latter
falls in a cataract of seventy-two feet, twice that distance from the
same city. The State of New Jersey faces New York on the opposite side of the wide North River, and a craggy height called
Bergen, on that side, corresponds to the heights of Brooklyn, the
two making a pair of great jaws, between which the island of
New York lies like a human tongue. At the foot of Bergren heights,
on the brink of the river, lie Jersey City and Hoboken, with
perhaps fifty thousand people, and here, as on the east side, the
ferry-boats ply incessantly throughout the twenty-four hours of the
day and night. The North River is the great highway to the West
and the lakes; it is lined with populous towns, and for one hundred
and fifty miles is navigable for steamers which can carry eight hundred passengers, and give them each a bed. Down this river tugs
and tow-boats bring fleets of barges from Buffalo, and even from
Chicago, which have come by way of the Erie Canal,- a work completed in 1825, amidst well-merited rejoicings. Twelve steam railroads
enter New York, Brooklyn, and the Jersey cities. This city started
the first packet line to Europe, and here were made the first experiments in steam navigation, resulting in the first successful steam vessel in the world ascending the North River. The commercial energy
of the city, though greatly discouraged during the civil war, and by
the subsequent apathy of the national government, is still remarka-.




480    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ble. At one private shop here there is a dry dock four hundred by
one hundred and twenty feet in dimensions, which cost two million
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The Sailors' Snug Harbor,
on Staten Island, is a richly endowed charity for the mercantle marine, with vaster property in New York real estate than all the possessions of the English Trinity House.  The pilot boats, clipper
ships, and yachts of New York are the fastest in the world, and,
anterior to the civil war, the steamships of the city were superior to
any afloat. One of the richest maritime corporations in existence is
the Pacific Mail Company, with steamers which ply to the Isthmus of
Darien, to San Francisco, and to China, some of them costing upwards
of half a million of dollars.
When we come to examine the internal structure of New York, we
shall find that it has two distinct arrangements of streets. Those of
the upper and superior part of the island are rectangular, and consist
of amply wide streets, named by numbers, running across the narrow
island, the maximum number of which is in the neighborhood of Two
Hundredth Street; these are crossed by twelve avenues, eight hundred feet apart, which will eventually reach to the northern end of
the island, and these again will be diagonally crossed by a grand
boulevard drive, the longest of its kind in Christendom.
The lower and pointed end of New York is the old city, and its
streets have accommodated themselves to the converging shores of
the city, so that many are cramped and crooked. From the Battery,
where we have stood, at the cape of the island, a single broad, straight
street, the axis of the island, runs along the summit of the central spine
for two miles and a half; this is called Broadway, and it is the zodiac
of New York, - the belt of all clustering and brilliancy, - so that a
foreigner, who had explored the city, said almost with truth: —
" New York is, among cities, what one of the lower order of molluscous animals, with a single intestinal canal, is to a creature of a
higher development, with various organs, and full of veins and arteries. Up and down the Broadway passes the stream of life to and
from the heart, in Wall Street. In the narrow space from water to
water, on either side of this dry canal, there is comparatively little
animation, and nothing at all to reward the researches of a stranger."
When Broadway has passed up half a mile from the Battery, it
receives a sizable street from the east, which abuts upon a very handsome church, with a tall spire, and a graveyard and monuments
around it. The church is Trinity, the richest of Protestant Episco



NEW YORK AND PARIS.                   481
pal corporations; the street is Wall Street, the money market of
America.
Half a mile further up, Broadway passes a green triangular park
of elkven acres, the acute angle of the same pointing toward the battery; this is the City Hall Park, the Charing Cross of New York,
the Place du Palais Royal. Here the street railways converge, the
newspapers are issued, the cabs wait, the eddies of people form, the
City Hall, the courts, the telegraphs, the steam fire-engines, the hotels are clustered; it is a cheerful chaos. The City Hall dates back
to 1803; the new court-houses behind it have been years building,
have cost vast sums extravagantly, and the end is not yet, either in
beauty or hooking. The new Post Office will stand before the City
Hall at the point of the Park, and will be the largest building of
its kind extant.
While Broadway continues straight on for a further mile and a
half, lined with stately banks, hotels, shops, and theatres, another
wide avenue starts from it at the Park, and sweeps to the east by a
long arc, so that it rejoins Broadway nearly two miles further on;
this is the Bowery, the Cheapside of New York, - the Boulevard du
Temple, - where the German, Jewish, and cockney element resides,
and it is as busy and more idiosyncratic than its great rival.
Broadway and the Bowery meet upon an oval park, three miles
from the Battery, and here uniting, they make one street, possessing
the'characteristics of both, which crosses the island obliquely, by a
course of three miles further, till it reaches the sparsely built districts, and then becomes a highway to Albany The oval park first
cited is called Union Square. It is capable of being made the finest
place in the world, and here stands the only equestrian statue in New
York,- a Washington, twenty-nine feet high, including pedestal,
which cost thirty thousand dollars.
At Union Park the city assumes much the appearance of parts of
Paris, fine shops, cafes, and hotels, being intermixed with the opera,
the circus, theatres, and assembly halls. A third of a mile further
up Broadway there is another square, called Madison, of ten acres,
where the resemblance to Paris is even more striking, and the theatres, hotels, and caf6s are as fine as any in the world. Here Broadway, continuing on obliquely, is crossed by the noblest avenue of
residences in the city, the world-noted Fifth Avenue, bordered entirely by churches and residences for a mile and three-quarters, and at
that distance, caught between Fifth and Eighth Avenues, and clipped
61




482   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
by Broadway, the Central Park stands, in the centre of the island,
the pride and monument of the city; eight hundred and sixty-eight
acres of rock, lake, and rolling table-land, rising in places to the
height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet. It is two and a half
miles long, and half a mile wide; in the midst of it is a gigantic
reservoir, around which wind thirty-five miles of carriage-drive, footpath, and bridle-road. It is a model of exquisite engineering, and
its bridges, cascades, and copses, malls, gondolas, swans, museums,
and flocks of deer and sheep stand in profile between the city and the
sky, as in the hanging gardens of Babylon. All the suburbs of the
great city are revealed from this pleasure height; all its wealth of
water wherein it stands, maritime like Venice, and mountainous like
Brescia. The city of the island —which, to the lament of its inhabitants was not originally named "lManhattan," after its Indian
site - has had its troubles: its fire (1835), which burnt twenty millions of property; its cholera, its panics, and its riots; but when its
second conflagration came, gold came also from its kindred harbor
on the Pacific, and its triumphs have since been those of Antony, its
charms like Cleopatra's. The whole island was originally bought for
twenty-four dollars; its assessed property tax was lately about
twelve millions. It has three hundred churches. Its real estate is
esteemed the most secure and profitable investment in America.
There are computed to be two hundred and twelve miles of streets
in the city of New York, of which eighty-one miles are in block,
andl five miles in wooden pavement. The remainder are either subjected to cobble-stones, or await pavement.
The amount of money to be raised by taxation, in the city of New
York, in 1869, and expended under the direction of the Common
Council, was four million one hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars and seventy-five cents.
The amount to be raised in the same way, during the same period,
and expended under the direction of the Board of Supervisors, was
one million three hundred and two thousand four hundred and ninetyeight dollars and forty-eight cents.
The assessed valuation of real and personal estate, in New York
city, for the year 1869, will be about one billion dollars, an increase
of ninety million dollars over the assessment of 1868.
All the great series of works now undertaken in New York come
under the two heads of increased communication and improved
lodgings. The little spike-shaped island of Manhattan is over-popu



NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                   483
lated, at the lower end, and at the upper end completely absorbed by
speculators in city lots. There is almost universal desire expressed
to live cheaply in town, or to get safely and expeditiously out of
town.. Yet, at present, there is no city in the world which it is so
difficult to quit. The depots of the two steam railroads which have
their termini on the island are three or four miles from the seat of
business. But one horse railroad traverses the entire longitudinal
extent of the island. These are the only'land outlets for nearly a
million people, - two steam roads, and one tram road. On the water
side there are about twenty regular ferries; but a ferry involves the
breaking of bulk, the changing of seats, a scramble and accident, and
it makes the city doubly dear to fifty per cent. of those who would
otherwise get away. With the present facilities for doing business,
and residing in or near New York, one must take his choice of these
three extreme cases:
1. Take the horse cars, and stand up for sixty minutes, holding to
a strap, doubtful about one's pocket-book, oppressed with stench;
dismount near a depot, walk to it in the dismal suburb, and stand
the chance of having missed the train. Catching the train, stand up,
perhaps, again, and dismount in some deep defile, with the road to
one's home pointing upwards at an angle of forty-five degrees, and no
conveyance waiting. Total time from business to bed, two hours.
Total effect, disgust; perhaps to redound upon one's children and
wife, in satiety and a bitter spirit. Repeat this trip next morning,
and keep at it twelve times a week.
2. Walk to a ferry down dismal streets, and squeeze through a gate,
carrying one's parcels, baggage, etc. Across the river stand in a
gang, and rush for a seat in the cars. Stand or sit in the cars, as the
lottery directs, and, dismounting about dusk somewhere ten or twenty
miles from New York, walk home, imagining each bush a highwayman. If one misses the night-boat or the night-train there is no
alternative but to stay in the city all night, to the distress and apprehension of his family. If he goes ddwn to the ferry late, he may
beguile himself with dreams of garroters.
3. Pay from eighteen hundred dollars to four thousand dollars a
year in the city for house rent; or,
4. Board, and eat "hash."
These are the alternatives of life in New York, — a city with the best
markets in the world, yet expensive without parallel; or a suburban
home of difficult and irregular accessibility. A stranger looking at




484    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the various and exquisite shapes of the villas about New York, and
seeing the picturesque perches of the villages, is unable to feel the
penalty of a winter in the suburbs. The metropolitan problem has
always been how to put steam highways down this long, pin-shaped
island, already swamped with vehicles, and clamoring for streets.
The problem is nearly solved; for at last a tunnel underground has
been duly chartered by the Legislature of New York, and the experiment of a mid-air railroad has proved a success. I have seen the
cars travelling twenty feet above ground safely and swiftly, and apparently with inconvenience to nobody; and I have ridden in them
to my exceeding profit; for the whole panorama of the street is exposed, from house-cornice to curb-stone. The rails are supported by
single posts of iron, of the girth of a common street lamp-post, and
the effect of a cross-section is that of a series of very tall and narrow letters T. Before next winter (1869) this "air-line" railroad
will be in operation from the Battery to Central Park. In three or
four years the tunnel will be finished, and from breakfast to business,
from the last tableau of the theatre to one's country home, will be but
a step and an express train.
Our I" palaces" in America are for the masses of the people,our great hotels, - and even for the poor. What Mr. George Peabody imperfectly, but generously, provided for the London poor, Mr.
Alexander T. Stewart has more wisely provided for the poor of New
York: mammoth hotels arranged in series of apartments, with tables
d'hote on the French plan. Table d'hote means the host's family
table, where all are invited to eat in common. The two splendid
hotels of Mr. A. T. Stewart will cost six millions of dollars, and they
compare with the palaces of emperors in size and convenience.
They are six stories high, fire-proof, built of iron, and two hundred
and five feet long by one hundred and ninety-two feet deep, covering
forty-one thousand square feet.  They are provided with steam
elevators to ascend to the lofty floors, and with spacious court-yards.
Three dollars a week will pay the expenses of each person in these
splendid palaces. Mr. Stewart is an Irish-American, and the richest
dry-goods merchant in the world. His income in 1869 was upwards
of three millions of dollars. The Metropolitan Hotel, for the general
public in New York, cost one million of dollars with its furniture;
and its water and gas pipes measure twelve miles; it has thirteen
thousand yards of carpet, and nearly five hundred rooms. The St.
Nicholas Hotel cost one million, and has six hundred rooms. Even




NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                   485
larger hotels are in course of construction at present (1869), and
perhaps the noblest hotel of them all is the Fifth Avenue, named for
the street on which it stands. The Grand Hotel in Paris cost about
two and a half millions of dollars, and is arranged somewhat on the
American plan. Instead of' one great office, it has offices on every
floor.
If the experiment of Mr. Stewart fails, it will be because the
people of New York are neither metropolitanized nor republicanized
enough. For great cities, cheapness must come from organization,
as Paris has long ago learned.
The effects of these lodging-houses and these multiplied railways
upon the social life of New York may well awaken inquiry. The
solution of the first must lie more largely in the cookery than in the
morals. The question of the age is this: " Has hash had its day?"
For, as a friend of mine in New York on whom I called, said
grimly:" We are moving our boarding-house for the ninety-fifth time.
We can't stand the hash. And," he concluded, " now I know why
the'andering Jew was named Ahas(h)ueras!"
Such is New York in epitome: the Hercules of cities,with its hands
full of golden fruit, and its labors only begun. How will it compare
in another century, when our civilization is softened, with Paris, the
metropolis of art and pleasure?
All the years of glory have burst upon Paris, and more than two
millions of people, exclusive of three hundred thousand strangers,
make it their home. The visitors here equal the population of St.
Louis, Chicago, or Cincinnati.
A hundred miles by river from the sea its water highway is a running stream, moving at the rate of forty inches in a second; and in
its widest part this is only six hundred feet across. Yet by various
devices steamboats and tugs ascend to Paris, few in number, and of
shallow draught; but there are a million of people here that never
saw a full-rigged ship, except one old mock-fiigate that stands for a
bathing-house and cafe, rotting at her cables. Lyons and Rouen are
far better interior sites for a city; but Paris hli  grown rich circumstantially.
When Julius Coesar, before Christ's birth, invaded Gaul, he found
the banks of the Seine to be a dense forest, broken by gloomy
marshes, while in the middle of the river a fierce tribe of Gauls,
called Parisii, worshipped under Druid priests. Five hundred years




486    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Of Roman conquests found the city scarcely bigger than this little
island, and its aqueducts and baths in part remain to-day. The first
prominent Christians here were St. Denis, and St. Genevieve, and
the latter, a beautiful young girl, converted King Clovis, the final
conqueror of the Romans, and became the patron saint of Paris.
The great Charlemagne did not love Paris, and after a while the
Normans sailed, or poled, up the river, and burnt it. At last, when
the kings would not help them, the Parisians proposed to whip the
Normans on their own hook, and their most successful leaders founded
the Capet dynasty, which confirmed Paris as the capital, and began
the line of kings which, in our own day, the people have beheaded or
driven into exile. While the British Empire dates from a conquest
by foreigners, the French took its rise fiom a war of independence.
Thereafter the priests and the kings endowed Paris with rich monasteries, abbeys, and palaces. Out of it went crusaders, long armies
of invasion, and parties of faction bent on spoil and murder. Its
greatest patrons were Francis I., Henry IV., Louis XIV., and the
Napoleons. The histories of all these battered times have been more
fully written than the romance of any modern city, by Dumnas, and
Sue, and Hugo. The grand revolution, the most wondrous and
glorious ferment of men that the world ever knew, was entirely
Parisian in origin, and, during twenty years of victory over the combined tyrants of the world, Paris was the government and pulse of
France. Bonaparte beautified her; Louis Philippe, the citizen-king,
turned her superfluous palaces into public picture-galleries, fortified
her, and made her the railway centre of the kingdom; the existing
ruler has taxed every chestnut-roaster and washerwoman to make her
gorgeous. Her influence in arts, letters, thoughts, examples, sympathies, and arms is foremost amongst the cities of the world; and
this can be ascribed only to the fact that she is the capital of a great,
elastic, courteous, gregarious, and intellectual nation, the head of
the Celtic races.  Our American estimates of her are all derived
from the English, who have made war upon her, whether her government was free or despotic.
Let us go up among the windmills of Montmartre, - a hill that retains the same relation to Paris that Central Park Heights has to
New York, being the highest ground, and standing on the northern
flank of the city. Down beneath us, on the slopes of a ridge of
hills like ours, and in the level valley of the Seine, Paris stretches in
an atmosphere, pure and clear as Philadelphia's, every one of its hun



NEW  YORK AND PARIS.                   487
dred domes, spires, and towers, cut sharp against the rolling and
wooded horizon, and the river bending almost through the middle,
flowing from east to west, and spanned by thirty bridges, like some
crystal ladder. In the centre of the whole, the Seine makes two
small islands, each of the size of three of our city blocks, and of
these, the larger and lower one is ancient Paris, the Island of the
City, where the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the Courts of Justice
lie. You can see from your perch on Montmartre Hill, the two,
grand gothic towers, and the leaping buttresses of the former, its.
great flamboyant window aflame, and half a thousand carved saints:
in its canopies and pinnacles. The Palace of Justice is marked by
the dark towers of the Conciergerie prison, where Marie Antoinette
suffered for the sins of her class. A swaying, lofty, dense mass of
venerable houses chokes up the quays, and this was once the great.
Paris, —no more to day than the two glasses of your spectacles
dropped in the middle of a large newspaper. Look now at the dense
environs of this island, and its companion the island of St. Louis.
Both shores of the Seine are populated four miles across, and for six:
miles lengthwise of the river. Within these square miles of yellow,
stone houses (of the average height of six stories), two concentric
streets, a hundred feet wide, planted with shade-trees, make the circle,
of the city. They are called Boulevards (Bulwarks), or streets built,
on the site of ancient walls (Boule, wall, and vert, green). The inner
set describes a circle, with the Seine for its diameter, at least four
miles in length, and you can see the eternal multitude of men and
women, from where you stand, strolling down the splend'id avenues of
the gilded theatres, hotels, and caf6s, making life the pursuit of happiness. Traversely crossing these Boulevards, two mighty streets go,
straight as arrows, across Paris. One of them cuts the island of the
city nearly in half, and is called the Boulevard of Sebastopol; the
other passes on the north side of the Seine, at right angles to its
rival, and leaves a broad shelf between itself and the river. This is
the famous Rue de Rivoli, whereon those wonderful palaces of the
Emperor, the Tuileries, and the Louvre stand, as well as the gardens
of the Palace, and of the Champs Elysees, and at one end it is
bounded by the Arch of Triumph; at the other by the monument of
the Bastile. For pleasure-seekers, these Boulevards, and the Rue
Rivoli, make the whole of Paris.
The annexed diagram will convey some idea of the relative post-.
tions of the principal streets of Paris:



488    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
SOUTH.
t.
J   Champ Elysee,
To Vincenne.    a       SElNE  RIVER.    >       To Bois de Boulogne.
e~              Bef linue Rivoli.'.
RAST.                                                  WEST.
0 ORTH.
NORTH.
But these are new streets, with the smell of paint upon them. The
labyrinthine and venerable quarters lie away yonder across the river.
If you look from  Montmartre again, you will see three separate
domes; the middle one, rising from a green garden, is the Palace of the
Luxembourg, and it divides the southern side of the river into two very
different halves, of which that to the right is the old aristocratic
quarter, the Faubourg (or suburb) St. Germain, with the dome of
Bonaparte's -tomb dominating it; and the other is the students'
quarter, or the Quartier Latin, high over which the Church of St.
Genevieve, or the Pantheon, lifts its fluted dome of granite. Beside
Napoleon's tomb, the tall circle of the World's Exhibition stood in
1867. The half of the Seine nearer to you is the larger and more
populous. That side of it to the right is the English and foreign
aristocratic quarter; in the middle is the quarter of shops and hotels,
with the lorette, or gay, or "fast" quarter, between it and the eye.
Next, to the left, is the manufacturing district, the densest of all;
and then the terrible suburb of St. Antoine, out of which the Red
Republicans come when a throne is to dash to pieces. Around the
city, on our own side of the Seine, there are steep hills extending
afar off into the country, and two of these are cemeteries packed
with the common and the eminent dead; the further ones are fortified, and their lean bastion towers pierce the sky.
On this hill,.under the creaking windmills, was fired the last cannon for France, when Bonaparte went down; with twenty flogged
despots lunging at him. This city, in the blue air below, has wild
and.painful contrasts in it. The highest genius, the wildest ignorance, prevail here. A martial city, where to be brave is to be hu



NEW  YOREK AND PARIS.                  489
man, and men are born with polish, like a varnished boot, woman
has no separate existence but as man's momentary creature, to command his brief admiration and be forgotten. Five thousand girls a
year come to Paris. They can earn no more than thirty cents a
day, and one-third earn but twelve cents. In a city of twenty thousand students, and three hundred thousand rich, pleasure-seeking
strangers, the temptation to accept a profitable friendship is not long
declined. Moreover, matrimony is often a commercial contract here.
Women are cheap, and those who would be wives must pay their
way. When he proposes marriage, the gallant young Frenchmen
calls up his lady's father, and demands that her " dot," or apportionment, be settled. If it is insufficient, he can refuse her hand. It is
men who give the " mitten " here. Out of this commercial matrimony
respect is seldom generated; love did not inspire it; therefore husband and wife will love elsewhere. The man sees a face worthy to
wear, not to wed, and gallantly spends his wife's money to engage it;
the wife, freshly entered into the world from the parent's rigid custody, has all her coquetries, and love of dress yet to ensue. There is
a double marriage with many a couple here. No such crimes as
breach of promise of marriage, or seduction, are known to Salic or
Gallic law. Hence infanticide is an hourly act, and seven thousand
foundlings a year go into pauperism. The Frenchman is a natural
gambler, and every cafe' is a gambling-house, where you dare not
show the money for which you play. The treason of the State
Church to the nation, in the French Revolution, has made scepticism
almost national in Paris, and Sunday, in French acceptation, is a day
that is consecrated to horse-racing. Among the noble classes of
France the most accomplished courtiers of the world are to be
found, and intellect is the prince of qualifications in society. Foreigners are always welcome at the most brilliant seances. It is
neither polite nor safe to quarrel here. A blow is a high crime.
The mode of settling differences is the duel. Every day in the year
there is a hostile meeting; but it is not generally a barbarbarous one like
those in pioneer states. You are not forced to fight, if you put yourself in the way of a challenge, by any personal fear, or moral cowardice, but by society, that holds it worst of all to be a coward.
Wealth buys a husband and pleasures here, but not recognition.
Spirit, wit, talent, and person are welcome anywhere in Paris. It is
a society to disgust an Englishman.
"Paris," says Jules Janin, its liveliest and most incisive critic,
62




490    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
"is the history of all the provinces, of all the men, of all the passions
of France. He who would be thoroughly acquainted with the great
city of Charlemagne and of Napoleon, would be, at the same time,
the most learned antiquarian and the greatest politician in the world."
With more fervor, Victor Hugo calls it " the model city; that
pattern of well-formed capitals; metropolis of the ideal; august
country of the initiative of impulse and enterprise; centre and abode
of mind; a native city; a hive of the future, compounded of Babylon and Corinth."
There is no city of modern times that, by its mere mental and
magnetic influence, so controls its empire as Paris. London, as a
corporation, is a grand piece of feudal furniture, her oracle being the
united voice of her shopkeepers. New York is essentially a vast
port for the United States, but her opinion is not of binding consequence upon the national destinies. Rome is beloved and impotent
in Italy, like the beautiful portrait of something dead. But Paris is
generally the will of France. Her impulses obtain, from Brest to the
Alps, almost awful respect. She rules by no chicanery, nor tradesman's fear, nor ecclesiastic's nod, but by her electrical beauty and
mind, —a Cleopatra conquered, but then most conquering.  The
quickness and truthfulness of her perceptions, her sensitiveness for
France's sake, without selfishness for herself; her proud and undisputed conceit of standing guard for the country, keeping its honor
bright, and its rank the noblest; her courage tremendous, yet sagacious, with which, when France suffers insult, she transforms herself
from her summer carnival to a fortress of barricades, and every smile
of yesterday looks frosty down a bayonet. Not in these grand popular resistances only, but in defence of the nation's art, ethics, and
philosophy, Paris is the same vigilant, magnetic, conscientious sentinel. Her university, and schools of science, art, and philosophy are
inhabited by thousands of ardent youths, wearing the perpetual
flush of high spirit and patriotism; and these, not their instructors,
are the faculty of France. Before their united indignation, any professorship is put to rout. In 1863, a contest raged three days in the
Faubourg St. Germain, because a professor in the Art School spoke
with palpable disrespect of Eugenie Delacroix. When Victor Hugo
began to write for the stage, the students carried him to success
against the fiercest conservative opposition from priest, courtier, and
literary rival. The schools are to-day the only element of Paris
that the Emperor has despaired of controlling. In vain was Labou



NEW YORK AND PARIS.                    491
laye threatened for his lectures eulogistic of the Republic of America. Vainly does the crown destroy the Professorship of Renan.
Yet these mercurial boys, transformed Parisians from the day they
cross the barriers, stand in military silence when acknowledged genius comes to teach them. At L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, when Gerome
enters, there is that respect that the masters love to receive, like the
breaking of the wands of the rejected suitors, in Raphael, when Joseph is wedded to the virgin. At every birthday of Beranger, the
best of all the lyrists freedom has had, the students used to carry
him the circuit of the Boulevards, and crown him with laurel. The
Institute of France is the galaxy of great intellects, that Louis
Napoleon would enter when he proffered the life of Caesar for a vote.
He has no seat there. The journalism of the city is not journalism
in either the English or American sense,- the collection of news
and correspondence, -but a medley of the most scholarly editorial,
and the wittiest running commentary upon the topics of the day.
The newspaper is the bellows here; the book is the coal of fire. The
literature of France has produced, in this reign, two pre-eminent
books, - the " Miserables," by Victor Hugo, and the " History of the
Consulat and Empire," by Thiers; but it is doubtful that, except in
painting, the arts and literature stand as high as in the reign of Louis
Philippe, and during the Republic of 1848-50. The most courted
receptions here are those of the great authors, sarans, and painters.
The returns for literary labor are princely. The jealousies of scholars are seldom coarsened by asperities, and the government of Paris
labors to conciliate men of talent. Six public libraries, open free to
all, contain one million six hundred thousand volumes; three vast
picture-galleries, free to all, contain forty-eight thousand paintings,
and statues of every age; A menagerie, and garden of plants, free
to all, numbers one thousand three hundred living animals, and eleven thousand trees and plants. These give no idea of the inexhaustible arena of art and thought treasures gathered here, dispensed as
freely as the elements of the world. And this is the glory of Paris,
not her cloisters of nameless shames, the deceitfulness of the love of
her men and women, nor —as some out of freedom's countenance
would have us believe -the ungovernable nature of her citizens, but
in the majesty and brightness of her intellect, and the love of country
that inspires it. You read here no petty jealousy of Lyons, Lille,
Rouen, and Marseilles. Confident in herself and her rightfulness,




492    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Paris marches on; and when America has such a metropolis she will
find no discussion as to her title.
It is consequent upon such a city as I have described that it should
stand arrayed against the present government of France. Paris has
never been else than republican. She shared in the ardor with which
the people at large welcomed back Louis Napoleon,- the name of
Bonaparte, and a republican. author, - to the people's cause. In
his scheme of usurpation she was incorruptible; he usurped France
by baptizing her Boulevards with Parisian blood, and all the fianchises of the city fell at once; her present government is a dual one,
there being two administrative heads, -the Prefect of the Seine,
and the Prefect of the Police, neither of them Parisians. Paris is
really a department now, and not a municipality. Five thousand
policemen, or sergeants de ville, armed with swords and pistols; five
hundred mounted policemen; a garrison varying from thirty to sixty
thousand troops, - these inspire obedience here, but no terror. The
city, as the sentry of France, keeps picket duty, but does not fire on
the enemy. Her caprices, when they come, will be as organized and
desperate as ever. She has seldom returned a government member
to the Corps Legislatif, or lower house, and one of the chief glories
of the Emperor's reign has been the eloquence of the Parisian
deputies, Favre, Carnot, Picard, Thiers, Ollivier, Pelletan, Gueroult,
Pages, the first living orators of Europe. To avoid exciting Paris
unduly, she has been undisturbed in those more refined patriotisms
which are her pride. The effort of the government is to destroy her
influence without, by embarrassing communication through the mail
and the press, and by exciting jealousies against her. In superficial
respects it has succeeded; in realities, Paris is yet the watch-tower
of the country.
I can only try in some figures to give an idea of the splendor of
Paris. Here there are forty-two licensed theatres, fifty-four licensed
halls, eight race tracks, and sixty-four churches. The city is supplied with water by four artesian wells, that are one thousand eight
hundred feet deep, and required seven years to bore them; by six
steam-pumps on the Seine, and three aqueducts; and it consumes
every day four hundred and eighty thousand cubic feet of the worst
water in the world. The Ourcq aqueduct is eighty miles long, and
cost five million dollars. Three new aqueducts have been "decreed"
to bring water fiom  the head-waters of far streams, to measure
unitedly two hundred and sixty miles, and to cost twelve millions of




NEW YORK AND PARIS.                   493
gold dollars. One of these is under way. The sewers and subterranean streets of Paris measure, altogether, the incredible length of
four hundred and five miles, and yet are so admirably constructed
that one hundred and fifty workmen manage thcm. The catacombs
under the city contain bones and skulls that represent the bodies of
one million two hundred thousand dead men.  There are eighty
thousand manufacturers of all sorts here, and of these only eight
thousand employ more than ten persons; the various departments of
clothing manufacture involve a capital of fifty-five millions of dollars; the building interests of all sorts, thirty millions; gloves,
millinery, etc., thirty-two millions; jewelry and personal ornamentation, thirty millions; the printing, book-binding, stationery, etc., of
all sorts, twelve millions; the Custom House of Paris takes a million
and a half dollars a year; the octroi, or municipal tax, imposed upon
wines, forage, and eatables entering the gates, amounts to the sum
of nine and a half millions; tobacco, pawn-brokering, and undertaking (burying the dead) are here government monopolies.  The
tobacco factory hires two thousand five hundred hands, half of them
women, and no man can sell a cigar in France that is not bought
there; nor can anybody keep a tobacco-shop except by appointment.
Old soldiers and their orphans get the shops. One of them on the
Boulevard has a net income of thirty-six thousand dollars a year.
A government funeral costs from three and a half dollars to fifteen
hundred dollars. There are nine classes of funerals. The hospitals
of Paris, with its other public charities, cost three and a half millions
of dollars a year. There are five thousand persons in prison here at any
time, and thirty thousand enter the prisons during a year. The great
government pawn-shop, or Mit. de Piete, lends five million dollars a
year on one million five hundred thousand articles. The stall rents
of the principal markets make three hundred thousand dollars annually. There are only five butcheries in Paris, and together they
cost three and a half millions. of dollars.
I recommend the gentlemen of the New York Common Council to
move out here, if indeed the majority of them are not here already in.spirit; for the freedom and munificence with which the Emperor uses
other people's money requires some help from the builders of the
Metropolitan Court House, and the Harlem bridge. The Rue Rivoli
cost thirty millions of gold dollars; five new bridges three hundred
thousand dollars apiece; the new Louvre palace, fourteen millions of
dollars, though the Emperor alleged that it should cost but five mil



494    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
lions; the imperial stable cost six hundred thousand dollars, and
one carriage in it eighteen thousand dollars; one hundred and eighty
carriages and three hundred grooms are among the purchases of the
Emperor.
The new opera house cost five and a half millions of dollars; the
great central market, twelve millions, with the demolitions it
necessitates; the Boulevard Sebastopol, twenty-five millions; the
Boulevards Hausmann, Mhalsherbes, and Beaujou, sixteen millions;
the avenues concentrating at Arc de Triomphe, ten millions; the Rue
Lafayette, four millions; Boulevards Magenta, Richard Lenoir,
Prince Eugene, and St. Germain, twenty-two millions; five new
churches, one million and a half; the belt railway around Paris,
three millions; the great exhibition three millions. Here are one
hundred and forty-nine millions of dollars, not including the vast
sums spent in perfecting the military organization, and supplying the
luxurious tastes of a parvenue court, that when it came to France
could hardly pay its fare.
These disbursements the city of Paris has to pay, besides contributing her quota to the universal building schemes that agitate all
the empire.  Twenty-five per cent., tWo-thirds of it direct, is the
actual government levy upon the average of incomes, besides the
optional fines one must pay for'being conscripted, and relieved from
National Guard duty. The revenues of Paris, in 1862, were seventyfive millions of francs, or fifteen millions of dollars. The expenditures for the same year were two hundred and five millions of
francs, or forty-one millions of dollars, making a debt of twenty-six
millions in one year, and more, by thirty-six millions, than all Switzerland spent in the same year; thirty-one millions more than all
Denmark, and thirty-four millions more than all Sweden and Norway. Since 1862 the budget has been even-more staggering, and
the government is charged with incurring vast expenses not referred
to in it.
A twenty-fifth of all the French nation lives in Paris; twenty-four
twenty-fifths of all great Frenchmen live there, twenty twenty-fifths
of all sad, sinning Frenchmen live there. Genius and shame,mysteries to each other, and therefore half affinities, - redeemed by
love of abstract truth and love of country, survive in Paris the
almost universal licentiousness. A stranger arriving there on Sunday, cries aloud:" The city is doomed I It has reached the pitch of
Babylon and Sodom I "




NEW YORK AND PARIS.                   495
But the secret of her preservation lies in this: that licentiousness
in Paris slays only the body, and not the citizen. The Parisian's intellect does not expire in a debauch. His loves are all caprice, and
what he loses of deep affection for his wife and home, he seems, by
some anomaly of his nature, to add to his patriotism and abstract
reverence. For, what the old Roman writer had to say, is patent yet:
"The Gauls are a warlike and gregarious race, jealous of all but
their women. These have no other law but the whim of their master,
whom they love too gratefully. The men have chiefs; but these are
not hereditary, and last only with their talent for war and government.
The people are subordinate only to their country; mutinous against
even their priests; and when they become warlike without a cause,
the best cause their chiefs and priests can see is - the enemy."




CHAPTER XIX.
NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.
The Emperor of France, his origin, adventures, official and private life, and his predecessors
on the throne. -Notes upon members of his family, and particularly upon his American
relations.
ON the site of some ancient brick tile yards (Tile-ries), which had
moulded and baked tiles for the roofs of Paris for four hundred years,
Catharine de MIedicis began to build the Palace of the Tuileries (pronounced Twill-e-rie), in 1567, twenty years before Virginia was discovered and named. In this palace, his birthplace, dwells Charles
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, aged sixty-one years (1869), Emperor
of the French, by the title of Napoleon III. He has the largest
salary of any monarch in Europe: five millions of dollars in gold per
annum, direct revenue, besides the income of certain crown domains,
the confiscated lands of the Orleans family, and other matters, bringing a gross salary or civil list of eight million four hundred thousand
dollars; and yet the debts charged against this revenue already
amount to twenty million dollars.
The palace itself stands on the flat banks of the river Seine, a quay
on one side, a street on the other, and a garden in front. The rear
of the palace is flanked by side walls, which in turn connect with a
series of palaces called the Louvres, the whole enclosing two immense
courts. The width of these palaces and gardens is nearly one thousand feet, and the entire length is more than half a mile. Within
them are contained every necessity of an Emperor, - the home of his
court, his state apartments, chapel, theatre, vast stables, enormous
and invaluable museum, relics of art and virtuoso, a great library, a
garrison, triumphal arches, flowers, fountains, drives, trees, cafes. A
part of the palace which the present Emperor built cost twelve and a'
quarter millions of dollars, and one hundred millions have been estimated as the value of the combined palaces and collections. To
open a street, the Rue Rivoli, beside this palace, cost thirty millions
of dollars, and caused the destruction of a thousand houses.
496




11
REGALA  STATE.
REGALIA OF STATE.
1-Queen's Diadem. 2 and 3-Queen's Coronation Bracelets. 4-Prince of Wales Crown.
5-Old Imperial Crown. 6-Queen's Crown. 7-Spiritual Sceptre. 8-Temporal
Sceptre. 9-Bishop's Hat. 10-Pope's Hat. 11-Regalia of Scotland.








NAPOLEON III. AND- NAPOLEONISM.            497
The Emperor's "stud" consists of three' hundred and twenty
horses; he has one hundred and eighty carriages, and three hundred
grooms. His special State Carriage cost eighteen thousand dollars,
and the body of it is almost entirely plate glass; a gilt eagle is at each
corner; it is lined with white satin covered with gold bees, and the
straps and cords are of gold lace. The Tuileries contains the Throne
Room, carpeted with Gobelin tapestry, which for this and three adjoining rooms cost two hundred thousand dollars. The hangings are of
dark-red Lyons velvet, inwrought with gold palm-leaves and wreaths.
The throne itself is canopied with the same material, inwrought with
small medallions of the letter " N," and the drapery suspended from
it is studded with golden bees. Three steps lead to the Throne,
which is a richly carved chair, backed by drapery representing an
escutcheon, - the imperial eagle encompassed by a wreath, surmounted by a helmet with the imperial crown; through this escutcheon
passes a cross made by a sceptre and a hand of justice.
To know how the Emperor looks holding court in this palace, I
addressed a letter to Colonel John Hay, who was for a long time
Secretary of Legation and Charge' d'Affaires at the Court of the
Tuileries, during the MIinistership of Messrs. Dayton, Bigelow, and
Dix, and he very kindly forwarded me a circumstantial description..
The occasion was the presentation of General Dix and his legationa
at Court, in the year 1866: --
" A few days after his presentation to the Marquis de Merstiers,
General Dix received a letter from the Grand Master of Ceremonies,,
informing him that he would be received by the Emperor on Sunday,,
the 23d December, at two o'clock.  He afterwarda received a
note from the Duke de Tascher la-Pagerie, stating that the Empress
would receive him immediately after his audience with the Emperor.
Colonel Hay hired a carriage and two servants, in the Rue Boissy
d'A nglais, for himself and the associate Secretary, Hoffman. It was
a highly respectable seeming affair, not fresh enough to look hired,
with a couple of owlishly solemn flunkies that seemed to have been in
the family for at least a generation. They went to the General's,
and in a few moments came in the Baron de la Jus, Master of Ceremonies. He said he was very much crowded to-day with besogne,
that he had five ministers to bring to the palace, and that therefore
we would please excuse his hurry. Upon which we all rose and went
to the door, where we found a court carriage, the imperial arms blazing on the panels and the harness, drawn by four horses, and accom63




498    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
panied by two mounted outriders; everything covered with tawdry,
tarnished gold lace. It seemed like the triumphal car in a flourishing
circus. Into this vehicle mounted the General and the Chamberlain,
Hoffman and Hay following in their sham-private remise. All were
in army uniform. They had the honors of a stare from the English
on the asphalt of the Champs Elysees, as the party lumbered down
to the Tuileries.
" We were shown into a warm, cheery anteroom, with a superb
wood fire and a view of the Tuileries Gardens, the Avenue, and the
Arc de Triomphie. The Columbian Minister and several violetcolored Chamberlains were there. WVe talked small talk. The Chamberlains all looked alike. in their violet coats and imperial mustaches. You never know which one you are talking to.
"Fane, the British Minister ad interim, came in.  I-Ie was coauthor, with Owen Meredith, of' Taunhiiuser.' Hay presented him
to General Dix. They talked Alabama, Fenians, and stuff. Then a
stiff, gaunt Bavarian, Pergler de Perglas, and his Secretary, who seemed
moved by rusty springs. Several more, - a Peruvian; a blue-blooded
Brazilian. Bigelow, our.retiring minister, at last, a head taller than
anybody.' There came some more violet people, and moved us into a larger
salon. There we were presented to the Duc de Cambaceres, —a
jaunty old gentleman, lean and shaven and wigged.  He bowed
lavishly, and begged us to sit down; which we wouldn't.
"Bigelow in a few moments was called for to make his parting
speech. When his audience was over, General Dix, followed by Hay
and Hoffman, was then ushered into the PRESENCE. The General
looked anxiously around for the Emperor, advancing undecidedly,
until a little man, who was standing in front of the Throne, stepped
forward to meet him. Everybody bowed profoundly as the Duc de
Cambaceres gave the name and title of the General. The little man
bowed, and the General, beginning to recognize in him a dim likeness
to the Emperor's portraits, made his speech to him, - in English, as
was proper. The Emperor listened like a wooden man.
"I looked around the room, admiring, as I always did on great
ceremonial occasions in France, the rich and tasteful masses of color
which -the various groups of great officers of the crown so artistically present. Not a man's place is left to accident. A Cardinal
dashes in a great splash of scarlet. A Cent-garde supplies an exquisite blue and gold. The yellows and the greens are furnished by




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.                  499
the representatives of law and legislation, and the lasters of Ceremonies fill up with an unobtrusive violet. Yet these rich lights and
soft shadows are accessory to the central point of the picture, — the
little man who is listening, or seeming to listen, to the General's address.
"The General finishes, -hands his sealed letter of credence to
the Emperor.  He receives it, and gives it to the Duke of Bassano,
who stands at his right.  The heavy Dutch face breaks up with ungainly movements of the mustache and the eyelids.  He speaks in
a wooden voice, rather rapidly, and not very distinctly. He slurs
half his words, as rapid writers do half their letters. IHe makes his
set speech (French, of course), which (with the General's) is published the next day in the' Moniteur.' He then drops his official
manner, and comes, sidelong, up to us, and talks, in English now,
which he speaks with great satisfaction and bad grammar, about the
coming Exposition and the American milice, etc., etc. After the
General he turns to the Secretaries. lie tells Hay he is very young
to be Col-o-nel, and talks a little about the war, etc., etc., etc.
" He bowed, and we bowed, and backed out of the door, everybody
bowing.  We were then taken to the apartments of the Empress.
She was charming, in a lilac walking-dress and invisible bonnet. She
had just come from church, and received in her promenade costume.
Time has dealt gently with her. She is still full of those wheedling
fascinations that won her a crown. She was especially gracious to
the General; talked of Johnson, and the' swing around the circle,' etc.
" The Secretaries came in for their share of smiles and pleasant
words. She spoke English with a charming Castilian accent, which is
prettier than the French.
"We left the graceful blonde Spaniard, and passed down through
avenues of flunkeys.  Found at the door the Chief Piqueur, to whom
we gave two hundred and fifty francs! (fifty dollars!) Then took
the General in our carriage (the Emperor brings him to the palace,
but lets him find his own way back, you know), and drove back to
the Rue de Presbourg, Place de l'Etoile, the residence of the American Minister." *
~ As a companion to the above sketch, I give the scene of the introduction of the American
Minister, Rush, to the Prince Regent George IV.:" The Ambassador was received by the Prince Regent, almost alone, the Foreign Seeretary, however, being present. Advancing with the letter of credence in his hand, signed by
James Monroe, Mr. Rush stated in a very few words what its purport was, adding that he




500   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
From this immense- palace, shooting its truncated pavilions into
the sky, made brilliant by the most brilliant court in Europe, and
resonant in all its courts with the beating of drums and the coming
and going of couriers, it is a long descent to take up thq life, family,
and adventures of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
He is one of three presumed  heirs to the French  crown.  The
originally anointed and so-called" legitimate" royal family is represented by the Count de Chambord, whom some call Henri V., now in
exile; he represents the Bourbon family, who were driven out of
France by revolution in 1830. The constitutionally appointed royal
had been directed by the President to use all his endeavors to strengthen and prolong the
good understanding that happily existed between the two countries. The Prince took the
letter, handed it to Lord Castlereagh, and spoke briefly and courteously of his desire to
maintain and extend the friendly relations existing between the two nations. Thatwas the
formal reception, but the Prince detained his new acquaintance to congratulate him on his
arrival, and to inquire particularly for Mr. Adams, and other American diplomats, going
as far back as Mr. Pinckney and Mr. King, and particularly eulogistic of the beauty of
Mrs. Patterson, afterward Marchioness Wellesley, and her sisters, the Misses Caton, of Maryland. A word or two more about the climates of the two countries closed the audience.
The new Neapolitan Ambassador was received immediately after the levee, which succeeded.
Mr. Rush presented his Secretary of Legation and one of the attache's to the Prince, who
was King in all respects except the mere title. When the levee was over, Mr. Rush had to
perform a duty imperative upon every foreign minister, after having been received by the
sovereign. This was to' call'- which means to write his name in a book at the residence
of each - upon every member of the royal family. As there were then seven royal dukes
and their five sisters, besides Prince Leopold (afterwards King of the Belgians), and the
wives of the Dukes of York and Cumberland, he must have had a long drive that day. The
letter of credence from our republican President commenced by stating the names and
offices of the writer and receiver, addressed the latter as' Great and Good Friend,' and
ended by' Your Good Friend, James Monroe.' When the British Sovereign sends a letter
of credence to the President of the United States, it commences and ends precisely in the
above manner. When sovereign writes to sovereign, the letter begins,' Sir: My 1brother.'
It may be remembered how, in 1853, the Czar Nicholas, in reply to Louis Napoleon's letter
announcing his election to the French throne, did not address him as' My brother,' but as
My friend' (Mon ami); how Napoleon, with a grim smile upon his unimpressible face said,'Ah! this is well, - our brothers are accidents born to us; but we choose our friends;' and
how, not very long afterward, he contrived the Anglo-French alliance, which poured the
thunders of war upon the Crimea, humbled the might of Russia, and broke the heart of
Nicholas. It is dangerous to jest with a tiger." - Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie.
Mr. Motley's reception by Queen Victoria, was officially announced in the London " Gazette," of Tuesday, June 22 (18C9), as follows:" WVINDSOR CASTLE, June 18.
"This day, had audience of Her Majesty, John Lothrop Motley, Esq., Envoy Extraordinary, and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America, to deliver his credentials; to which audience he was introduced by the Earl of Clarendon, K. G., Her Majesty's
principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs."




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              501
family is represented by the Count of Paris, - who was an aide-decamp to General McClellan in 1862, - now also a French exile; he
represents Louis Philippe and the Orleans family, driven out by revolution in 1848.
Louis Napoleon represents the Corsican family of Napoleon Bonaparte, and he is the nephew both of Napoleon and of Josephine, his
wife; for Napoleon compelled his younger and better brother, Louis,
to marry Hortense, the unwilling coquette and daughter of Josephine
by her first husband. Hortense had been a milliner girl, and Louis
had been an artillery cadet. They soon hated each other; but she
had three children who took the name of Napoleon, and the present
Emperor is the third of these. His father was King of Holland at
the time of his birth, but soon gave up that throne, and separated
from his wife, who had also illegitimate children, notably one born in
1811, or only three years after the Emperor, who was the son of
Hortense and the Count de Flahault; this was the celebrated Duke
de Morny, afterward President of the Corps Legislatif, who was
adopted by a nobleman of Mauritius for the sum of eight hundred
thousand francs, and to whom Hortense left of her fortune eight thousand dollars a year.
Many Frenchmen believe that Louis Napoleon is also illegitimate;
he certainly has not French features, nor spirit; but Napoleon Bonaparte believed that he was, and great rejoicings were made at his
birth; for at that time he was one of the heirs of the throne, as the
sons of Lucien and Jerome Bonaparte had been declared ineligible on
account of their common marriages, Jerome marrying Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore, Maryland, and Lucien marrying Christine Boyer,
and refusing the crowns of Italy and Spain rather than divorce her.
Two years after his birth Louis's mother left her husband, and when,
four years afterward, the great Napoleon was exiled, she took her children to Arenenberg, in Switzerland, where she had an estate. There
young Louis and his brother had tutors by the Lake of Constance,
and we have several glimpses of how Louis behaved himself.
At one time he paid his court to a married woman who lived on the
Mainau island. As soon as the lady's husband detected the intrigue,
and learned that his wife at times went to Arenenberg by night in a
boat, he locked up his faithless better half. The latter jumped out of
window, and broke her legs. This lady's daughter married a general
officer; but her mother's blood flowed in her veins, and she eloped
with an adjutant of her husband's. When the latter heard that the




502    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
bird had flown, he contented himself with exclaiming: "' Poor adjutant! how unhappy you will soon feel i"  This lady, who possessed
a fascinating beauty and a wonderful clear complexion, was just of
the age to be the daughter of the man at Arenenberg whom her
mother blessed with her love. Persons living at Arenenberg can:
perfectly well remember how the elder came across to the chateau in a
boat on those evenings when Hortense held large receptions; and
Louis Napoleon was thus enabled to slip unnoticed from the salon,
and secretly pay the honors to the pretty woman who visited him.
The prince, in his youth, was a passionate billiard-player, and
frequently went over to Constance to play there. On one occasion
he had a dispute with a butcher's journeyman in Leo's coffee-house.
From words they came to blows; and there are people still living
in Constance who can remember Louis being thrashed by the
butcher.
Growing older he was sent to Augsburg, in Bavaria, to school, and
proved tolerably apt. When, on September 2, 1862, the old pupils of
the Augsburg Gymnasium from 1807 to 1828, four hundred and fifty
in number, assembled at Augsburg, Napoleon III. sent his ex-schoolfellows five hundred bottles of champagne, and the following letter,
in which five thousand francs for the poor of Augsburg were enclosed: -
" ST. CLOUD PALACE, August 80, 1862.
" MONSIEUR LE PRESIDENT:- 1 have heard with the greatest interest of an
assemblage of the former scholars of the Augsburg Gymnasium, who wish to
celebrate by a banquet the memory of former student-years passed together,
- and wish at least, as an ex-pupil, to take part in thought at this pleasant
festival. I have never forgotten the time which I spent in Germany, where
my mother found a noble hospitality, and I enjoyed the first benefits of education. Exile offers melancholy, though useful, experiences; it teaches us to
become better acquainted with foreign nations; to estimate their good qualities Fid worth at the right value; and if we are hereafter so fortunate as to
tread once again the soil of our native land, we still retain the most friendly
recollections - which keep alive in spite of time and politics - of the regions
in which the years of youth were passed. Your meeting affords me the opportunity to express these, my feelings, to you. Receive them as a ifroof
of my hearty sympathy, and the esteem with which I am your well-disposed
A NAPOLEON."
When Louis was still the homeless son of the Count de St. Leu,
he said at a masked ball in Florence to Fenimore Cooper, the Amer



NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              503
ican novelist, " The world is little more than a masquerade."  When
still quite a boy, he went on to say to Mr. Cooper that he had also
performed a masquerade, though unconsciously. During the few
days between his father's abdication of the throne and the incorporation of Holland with France, he was titular King of Holland; and,
in that quality, was one morning, just as he was eating some cakes,
requested to receive a deputation. While the orator was praising
the virtues of the abdicated King, his father, the thought of being
deprived of his cakes produced such a violent effect upon him that he
burst into a loud roar. " The gentlemen of the deputation, and all
the courtiers present," Louis Napoleon went on to say, " outvied
each other in exclamations of delight at my excellent and gentle
temper, as if it had been so affected by love for my father. But I
had played my first masquerade."
Louis Napoleon, according to some autnorities, was very piously
trained by his mother. He was expected to pray, on his knees, every
morning and evening. Hortense frequently went to the chapel of
Schwaderloh, where she confessed to the chaplain, who was acquainted
with the French language. In the evening, too, when she went on
the lake with Louis, she often let her guitar fall, and prayed fervently,
to which the evening bells from nearly twenty village-churches certainly invited her.
Hortense was undoubtedly an accomplished woman, and fond of
her children, but absorbed in pleasure; and the two brothers took
lessons in soldiering, so that when a revolution broke out in the Pope's
government, both the boys endgaged in it, when the eldest died of
fever and fatigue, and Louis would have died but for his mother.
After this, the son and mother wandered about, expelled from place
after place, Bohemian in every sense but poverty, and always finding
rest at last in Arenenberg. The young man kept at his studies, and
pondered upon what use the world had for him, when, in 1832, the
captive son of Napoleon Bonaparte died at Vienna, and this made
Louis the heir of the Bonaparte party, if there should be any left of
it. From this time forward he began to court publicity, to publish
democratic books, and military essays; in short, to draw upon himself
the attention of whatever Frenchmen were dissatisfied with the government of Louis Philippe. In 1836 he so far satisfied himself that
he had partisans in France, that he put himself at the head of a set
of adlventurers, and attempted to seize the fortified city of Strasbourg.'The failure was ridiculous, and he was marched to Paris, but




504    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
the government was afraid to try him by a French jury, on account
of the popularity of his family; so he was shipped off to the United
States, at the age of twenty-eight.
When Louis was preparing for the Strasbourg affair, and friends
warned him of the dangerous nature of the undertaking, he said,
"The French will understand me, even if it fails; the rest of the
world will take me for a fool - and that is good."
"How could you hope," said his aunt, " to govern this ungovernable land, even supposing that a coup de main succeeded?"
"'My dear aunt, there is a very simple way of governing France,
- she must have a war every three years."
At New York, Louis was an object of interest; but his stay was
short.
He went to Baltimore, and visited his brother-in-law, Murat. The
latter was thirty-five years of age at the time, and had passed through
a life of adventure. Born at Milan, in 1801, as the son of Generalof-Division Joachimn Murat, he was afterwards Duke of Cleve, and
Crown-Prince of Naples; but after the death of his father he returned
to the obscurity of a poor life. On passing over to America, he existed for years as postmaster in a small town, until the European
movement of 1830 urged him back to the Old World. Once again a
bright star seemed to have arisen for him, when he commanded the
foreign legion in Belgium, in 1831.  But this part was speedily
played out, and the Colonel soon exchanged the sword for the pen
again. He returned to America, which country he was so thoroughly
acquainted with, that he wrote a book about it, in favor of slavery.
He became first a lawyer in Georgia, and then a planter in Florida;
but neither profession was very flourishing. Hence he proceeded
with his family to Baltimore, where the Pattersons gave him  a
chance. Supported by them, he started as a merchant in Baltimore,
and in a short time made a very considerable fortune. One day
the ex-Prince of Cleve was standing at his desk, and looking through
the glass door at the office in which hlis clerks were at work; Summlerson, the head clerk, came in, and announced a stranger: "' Mr.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, from Europe."
The brother of the above Murat married in America, as also did
Jerome Napoleon, that younger brother of the first Emperor, who
fired the first shot at Waterloo; the latter was requested to divorce
hiswife by his brother, and he cravenly did so, marrying the daughter
of the King of Wurtemberg, by whom he had children, now in high




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.             505
favor in Paris, while Jerome Patterson Bonaparte still lives in Baltimore, and is said to bear a striking resemblance to his immortal
uncle.
On the day when the death of old Prince Jerome, ex-King of Westphalia, became known in Paris (1863), his wife, Madame Patterson,
then nearly eighty years of age, might be seen going through the
streets in her usual dress, quite careless, as if nothing had happened.
She was aware of the death; but what was Jerome to her, from whom
she had been parted for fifty-five years? "Everybody," says an
anonymous writer, " was acquainted with Madame Patterson's eccentricities, in Baltimore. The lady might frequently be seen making
purchases at the public market; she frequently, too, collected her
own rents, and dabbled in the funds. She always wore an elegant
coronet, glistening with diamonds of the purest water. Her arms
were white and plump as those of a girl of sixteen. She was a most
zealous royalist, and considered republics low. Her greatest ambition
was to hear from her grandson, Jerome, who was serving in the
French army. He received the greater portion of her income. She
is supposed to have left him her considerable fortune, as she was on bad
terms with her son. He always kept too expensive a house for her.
He is a thorough gentleman, and a member of the Baltimore aristocracy, although he is not remarkable for anything beyond a passion
for fine horses. He is considered the best judge of horses in Baltimore, and keeps a magnificent stud.
"In order to save the expense of a separate household, Madame
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte lived in a boarding-house, where
everything was on the cheapest and most modest scale. For this
reason she was considered miserly. She could be seen daily on the
wharves, in the business regions, and on the Exchange. She had
the sum of five hundred thousand dollars at her disposal at any
moment.
"In her religious views she was as original as on other points.
She went daily to church, accompanied by a negro, who held an open
umbrella over her. The negro had a prayer-book under his arm, and
was elegantly dressed, like a dandy. Madame Patterson was supposed to be an admirer of Tom Paine; and, though she attended
church daily, she abused the clergy terribly.
" Her grandson, whom she educated at the military school of West
Point, is serving as an officer in the French army. She has been
64




506    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
estranged for years from her brothers, who are respectable merchants
in Baltimore."
All of which, being in the library of the Capitol, is here reproduced,
and left for solemn reflection.
Louis Napoleon was summoned home to see his mother die, and he
was by her side when she expired, at the age of fifty-four. Immediately afterward, Louis Philippe demanded his expulsion from Switzerland, and he was forced to go to England, where he meditated his
destiny anew.
" What he always longed for," says Kinglake, " was to be able to
seize and draw upon himself the wondering attention of mankind;
and the' accident of his birth having marked out for him the throne
of the first Napoleon as an object upon which he might fasten a
hope, his craving for conspicuousness, though it had its true root in
vanity, soon came to resemble ambition; but the mental isolation in
which he was kept, by the nature of his aims and his studies, the
seeming poverty of his intellect, his blank, wooden looks, and above
all, perhaps, the supposed remoteness of his chances of success,
these sources of discouragement, contrasting with the grandeur of
the object at which he aimed, caused his pretension to be looked upon
as something merely comic and odd. Linked with this, his passionate desire to attain to a height from which he might see the world
gazing up at him, there was a strong and almost eccentric fondness
for the artifices by which the framer of a melodrama, the stagemanager, and the stage-hero, combine to produce their effects."
In England, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte became a subject of curiosity, and there he published the " Idees Napoleonnes,". which attracted
attention, chiefly in France. He became acquainted with many young
noblemen, and during a period of riot was sworn in as a London
constable. In 1840, the remains of the first Napoleon were brought
home to France with much pomp, and Louis hastened to take advantage of the revived popularity of his family name, by hiring a steamboat, filling it with a recruited party of his adherents, and making a
descent upon the town of Boulogne. The patience of Louis Philippe
now gave out, and after a trial, when the filibuster broke down in
making a speech, he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment -at
Ham, a fortress. He worked at authorship here for five years, and
then escaped. Immediately afterward, his father, Louis, died at Leghorn, in Italy, aged sixty-eight. Lucien Bonaparte died in 1840, and




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              507
Joseph in 1844. The latter lived long at Bordentown, in New Jersey, and he was perhaps the best of his family.
The English papers, now very deferential to Louis Napoleon, were
in these days very sharp on Louis Napoleon. "Punch " represented
him running through the streets of Boulogne, with an eagle under his
arm, and his uncle's hat on the point of his sword. In another article,
cle, headed " The Marriage Market," the later Prince President was
represented as a desirable bridegroom. The firm of Coburg, which has
from time immemorial been prepared to supply all the courts of Europe
with brides and bridegrooms at the shortest notice, feels the liveliest
pleasure at Louis Napoleon's election as President, because he is still
a bachelor; and as the firm has not as yet supplied a Presidentess, it
will be proud to serve his republican highness most promptly and
respectably. This was resolved on at a family congress, somewhere
in Saxony, as "Punch" happened to know.
In 1848, the French people found Louis Philippe intriguing for a
more arbitrary government, and they drove him out of France. A
republic was declared, and Louis Napoleon hastened to Paris, where
the provisional government, being acquainted with his ambitious designs, and his unscrupulous character, ordered him to quit the country. His old fellow-filibusters, the gamblers in his name and star,
Persigny, MIaupas, and De Morny, set the wires to work, however,
and he was elected a deputy to the National Assembly from four
places. His character and patriotism being challenged, he gave up
his seat temporarily, and left the country; but his crafty agents remailed behind to manage his brightening fortunes. Three months
afterward he was again elected to the Assembly by five places, and
he returned, took his seat, and offered himself to the French people
for the Presidency. By the popularity of his name, and the notoriety
of his adventures, as well as by the dexterous and active management
of his friends, he was elected to the Presidency of the Republic by
five and a half million out of seven and a half ihillion of votes.
Victor Hugo describes his inauguration:" It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. It was beginning to
grow dark, and as the great hall of the Assembly was hidden in semiobscurity, the chandeliers were let down from the roof, and candles
placed in the tribune. The President gave a signal; a door on the
right opened, and a young man dressed in black, with the star of the
Legion of Honor on his chest, rapidly advanced into the hall, and
ascended the tribune. All eyes were fixed upon this man. His pale,




508    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
sickly-looking face, with the projecting, thin cheeks, which stood out
the more in the lamp-light, his large, long nose, his upper lip overshadowed by a mustache, a lock of hair hanging over a narrow
forehead, his eyes small and dim, his whole appearance timid and
shy, - not the slightest resemblance with the Emperor,- such was
the citizen Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.' During the murmur which arose upon his entrance, he remained
for some minutes, with his right hand thrust into his buttoned-up
coat, stiff and motionless on the tribune, whose three sides bore the
dates' 22, 23, 24, February,' above which the words'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity' were inscribed.
" When silence was at length restored, the President of the
Assembly tapped several times with his mallet on the table in front
of him, and said, when perfect quiet prevailed,' I will read the form
of oath, which is to this effect:' In the presence of God, and before
the French nation, which is here represented by the National Assembly, I swear to remain faithful to the sole and indivisible Republic,
and to fulfil all the duties imposed on me by the Constitution.'
The President stood as he read this binding oath, after which, citizen
Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte raised his right hand, and said,
in a firm, full voice,' I swear.'
"The President of the Assembly, still standing,. continued:' We
call God and men as witnesses of the oath just sworn.'
" The National Assembly accepted the oath, and ordered it to be
printed in the'Moniteur,' and published in the same manner and
form as the discussions of the Legislative Assembly.
" The matter now appeared settled, and it was assumed that citizen
Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, from this time up to the second
Sunday in May, 1852, President of the Republic, would descend from
the tribune. But he did not do so; he felt an internal impulse to
bind himself, if possible, more tightly, —to add something to the
oath which the Constitution had demanded from him, and to prove
how arbitrarily this oath was interpreted by him.
" He requested permission to address the Assembly.'Speak,'
said the President;'you have the word.' A deeper silence and
greater attention than before prevailed. The citizen Louis Napoleon
unfolded a paper and read a speech. In this speech, by which he
appointed a chosen body of his own friends to offices, he said: —
"' I wish, in union with you, representatives of the citizens, to
establish society upon its true basis, to introduce democratic institu



NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.            509
tions, and discover means calculated to alleviate the sufferings of a
noble and intelligent people, which has just given me such a marked
proof of its confidence.'
" But that which especially struck every one, which each stamped
on his memory, and which found an echo in the heart of every honorable man, was the e'xplanation with which he commenced his address.'The voice of the nation and the oath I have just taken rule my
future conduct. My duty is clearly laid down for me; and I shall
carry it out as a man of honor. I shall regard all those as enemies
of our country who seek by illegal measures to alter that which the
whole of France has established.'
"When he had finished his speech, the Constituent Assembly rose,
and raised, as if from one mouth, the loud shout of' Long live the
Republic!'"
The President, who was called "Prince" in social intercourse, was
given a fair opportunity to make good his better promises, and for a
little while he lived in apparent quiet at his palace of the Elysee, not
far from the Tuileries. To most people he seemed dull and slow;
but those who knew best his subtle and silent character feared most
that, when thus phlegmatic, a storm was moving in the fog.
"There were always a few who believed in his capacity," says
Kinglake, "and observant men had latterly remarked that from time
to time there appeared a State Paper, understood to be the work of
the President, which teemed with thought, and which showed that the
writer, standing solitary and apart from the gregarious nation of
which he was the chief, was able to contemplate it as something external to himself. His long, endless study of the mind of the first
Napoleon had caused him to adopt and imitate the Emperor's habit
of looking down upon the French people, and treating the mighty
nation as a substance to be studied and controlled by a foreign
brain."
The policy of the President, however, was stubbornly adverse to
republicanism; he suppressed the rising of the republicans in Rome
by a forced intervention, and his plotters were at work throughout
France to fill the army with ambitious dreams, and break the confidence of the people in the republic. He and they resolved upon a
coup d'etat, or armed overthrow of the government, on the 2d of
December, 1851, and one by one the Generals of the Army were
bribed over to assist the President in breaking the oath he had taken.
The work was to be done by Maupas and St. Arnaud. Maupas




510    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
assembled twenty Generals, whom  he had under his command,
and gave them to understand that they might soon be called upon to
act against Paris, and against the Constitution. They promised a
zealous and thorough-going obedience, although every one of them,
from  MIaupas downwards, was to have the pleasing shelter of an
order from his superior officer; they all seem to have imagined that
their determination was of the sort which mankind call heroic; " for
their panegyrist relates with pride, that when Maupas and his twenty
Generals were entering into this league and covenant against the
people of Paris they solemnly embraced one another."
From time to time the common soldiery were gratified with presents
of food and wine, as well as with an abundance of flattering words;
and their exasperation against the civilians was so well kept alive,
that men used to African warfare were brought into the humor for
calling the Parisians "Bedouins."  There was massacre in the very
sound. The army of Paris was in the temper requiredff for, during
Louis Philippe's time several bitter conflicts had taken place between
the people and military, and the latter had been worsted.
The night before the coup d'etat, proclamations were stealthily
prepared by the conspirators, and placarded about the city.
By these proclamations the President asserted that the Assembly
was a hot-bed of plots; declared it dissolved; pronounced for universal suffrage; proposed a new constitution; vowed anew that his duty
was to maintain. the Republic; and placed Paris and the twelve surrounding departments under martial law. In one of the proclamatio s he appealed to the Army, and strove to whet its enmity against
civilians by reminding it of the defeats inflicted upon the troops in
1830 and 1848.
The same night all the leading republican deputies, and the influential men of Paris not in the plot, were seized and hurried off to prison,
as well as all the Generals of the Army, and the National Guard, who
could not be bought over.
The object of these night arrests was that, when morning broke,
the Army should be without Generals inclined to observe the law,
that the Assembly should be without the machinery for convoking it,
and that all the political parties in the state should be paralyzed by
the disappearance of their chiefs. The number of men thus seized
in the dark was seventy-eight. Eighteen of these were members of
the Assembly.
Whilst it was still dark, Morny, escorted by a body of infantry,




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.             511
took possession of the Home Office, and prepared "to touch the
springs of that wondrous machinery, by which a click can dictate to
a nation. Already he began to tell the forty thousand communes
of the enthusiasm  with which the sleeping city had received the
announcement of measures not hitherto disclosed.
" When the light of the morning dawned, people saw the Proclamation on the walls, and slowly came to hear, that numbers of the
foremost men of France had been seized in the night-time, and
that every General to whom the friends of law and order could look
for help was lying in one or other of the prisons.
"The newspapers, to which a man might run in order to know, and
know truly, what others thought and intended, were all seized and
stopped."
Paralysis, as had been supposed, seized the city; nobody could be
found to head a demonstration, or to propose any measure of action.'
In the course of the morning, the President, accompanied by his
uncle, Jerome Bonaparte, and Count Flahault, the father of his bastard half-brother, and attended by many general officers, and a
numerous staff, rode through some of the streets of Paris. " It
would seem that his theatrical bent had led Prince Louis to expect
from this ride a kind of triumph, upon which his fortunes would hinge;
and certainly the unpopularity of the Assembly, and the suddenness
and perfection of the blow which he had struck in the night, gave
him fair grounds for his hope; but he was hardly aware of the light
in which his personal pretensions were regarded by the keen, laughing people of Paris."
A part of the Assemblygot together, however, and upon the motion of the illustrious Berryer, they resolved that the act of Louis
Bonaparte was a forfeiture of the Presidency, and they directed the
judges of the Supreme Court to meet and proceed to the judgment of
the President and his accomplices. "These resolutions had just
been voted, when a battalion of Chasseurs de Vincennes entered the
court-yard of the Mayoralty, and began to ascend the stairs. One of
the Vice-Presidents of the Assembly went out and summoned the
soldiers to stop and leave the chamber free.
"Presently afterwards, several battalions of the line, under the
command of General Forey, afterward conqueror of Mlexico, came
up, and surrounded the Mayoralty where the Assembly was meeting.
The Chasseurs de Vincennes were ordered to load. By and by, two
Commissaries of Police came to the door, and, announcing that they




512    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
had orders to clear the hall, entreated the Assembly to yield. The
Assembly refused. The whole Assembly declared that they resisted,
and would yield to nothing short of force. In the absence of Dupin,
MI. Benoist d'Azy had been presiding over the Assembly, and both
he and one of the Vice-Presidents were now collared by officers of
police, and led out. The whole Assembly followed, and, enfolded
between files of soldiery, was marched through the streets. General
Forey rode by the side of the column.
"At night a large number of the windowless vans, which are used
for the transport of felons, were brought into the court of the barrack,
and into these the two hundred and thirty-five members of the Assembly were thrust. They were carried off, some to the Fort of
Mount Valerian, some to the Fortress of Vincennes, and some to the
prison of Mazas. Before the dawn of the 3d of December all the
eminent members of the Assembly, and all the foremost Generals in
France were lying in prison; for now (besides General Changarnier
and General Bedeau, General Lamoriciere, General Cavaignac, and
General Leflo, and besides Thiers and Colonel Charras, and Roger
du Nord, and Miot and Baze, and the others who had been seized the
night before, and were still held fast in the jails) there were in
prison two hundred and thirty-five of the representatives of the people, including, amongst others of wide renown, Berryer, Odillon
Barrot, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Gustave de Beaumont, Benoist d'Azy,
the Duc de Broglie, Admiral Cecile, Chambolle, De Corcelles, Dufaure, Duvergier de Hauranne, De Falloux, General Lauriston, Oscar
Lafayette, Lanjuinais, Lasteyrie, the Due de Luines, the Duc de
Montibello, General Radoult-Lafosse, General Oudinot, De Remusat,
and the wise and gifted De Tocqueville.
"' Amongst the men imprisoned there were twelve statesmen, who
had been cabinet ministers, and nine of these had been chosen by
the President himself.
"These were the sort of men who were within the walls of the
prisons. Those who threw them into prison was Prince Louis Bonaparte, Morny, Maupas, and St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, all acting
with the advice and consent of Fiulin de Persigny, and under the
propulsion of Fleury."
A portion of the citizens got together, and threw up some barricades between the Hotel de Ville, or City Hall, and the wide Boulevards.
Notwithstanding the panic of the coup d'etat there was a rem



XAPOLEOV III. AV!) XJA:JV i   Is8.  1       *1 513
hant of the old insurrectionary forces, which was willing to try the
experiment of throwing up a few barricades; and there was, besides,
a small number of men who were impelled in the same direction by
motives of a different and almost opposite kind. These last were
men too brave, too proud, too faithful in their love of right and freedomn to be capable of acquiescing for even a week in the transactions
of the December night. The foremost of these was the illustrious
Victor Hugo. lHe, and some of the other members of the Assembly
who had escaped seizure, formed themselves into a Committee of
Resistance, with a view to assert by arms the supremacy of the law.
This step they took on the second of December.
By their personal energy these men threw up a slight barricade
at the corner of the Rue St. Marguerite.  Against this there.
marched a battalion of the 19th Regiment. " And then," says Kinglake, "there occurred a scene, which may make one smile for a,
moment, and may then almost force one to admire the touching
pedantry of brave men, who imagined that, without policy or war —
like means, they could be strong with the mere strength of the
law."  Laying aside their firearms, and throwing across theirshoulders, scarfs, which marked them as representatives of the peo-.
ple, the Deputies ranged themselves in front of the barricade, and one
of them, Charles Baudin, held ready in his hand the book of. the Con —
stitution. When the head of the column was within a few yards of:
the barricade, it was halted. For some moments tl:ere was silence.
Law and force had met. On one side was Code Democratic, which
France had declared to be perpetual; on the other, a battalion of the
line. The officer in command refused to concede what logicians
call the " major premiss."  He gave an important sign. Suddenly
the'muskets of the front rank men came down, came up, came level,
and in another instant their fire pelted straight into the group of the
scarfed deputies. Baudin fell dead, his head being shattered by more
than one ball. One other was killed by the volley; several more were
wounded. The book of the Constitution had fallen to the ground,
and the defenders of the law recurred to their firearms. They shot.
the officer who had caused the death of their comrade.
There was a fight. of the Homeric sort for the body of Charles.
Baudin. The battalion won it; four soldiers carried it off.
The greatest barricade was raised across the Boulevard in the east —
ern quarter of Paris, and against this the main army of the usurper was.
65




514    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE. OLD.
directed. Victor Hugo himself describes the scene, and frdin him tie
subjoined account is mainly taken: —
" Facing this little barricade, at a distance of about a hundred and
fifty ytards, was the head of the vast column of troops, which now
occhpied the whole of the western Boulevard, and a couple of fieldpieces stood pointed toward the barricade. In the neutral splace,
between the barricade and the head of the column, the shops, and
almost all the windows, were closed; but numbers of spectators, including many women, crowded the foot-pavement. But westward of
the point occupied by the head of the column, the state of the Boulevards was different. From that point home to the Madeleine, the
whole carriage-way was occupied by troops; the infantry was drawn
up in subdivisions at quarter distance. Along this part of the gay
and glittering Boulevard, the windows, the balconies, and the foot
pavements were crowded with men and women, who were gazing at
the military display. These gazers had no reason for supposing that
they incurred any danger, for they could see no one with whom the
army would have to contend. It is true that notices had been placed
upon the walls, recommending the people not to encumber the streets,
and warning them that they would be liable to be dispersed by the
troops, without being summoned; but of course, those who had
chanced -to see this announcement naturally imagined that it was a
menace addressed to riotous crowds which might be pressing upon the
4roops in a hostile way.
i"' Suddenly, the troops at the head of the column faced about and
opened fire; some of the soldiery fired point blank into the mass of
spectators who stood gazing upon them from the foot-pavement, and
the restaof the troops fired up at the gay, crowded windows and balconies. The impulse which had thus come upon the soldiery, near
the head of the column, was a motive akin to panic, for it was carried by swifticontagion from man to man, till a column of some sixteen thousand men, facing eastward toward St. Denis, was suddenly
formed as it were into an order of battle fronting southward, and
busily firing into the crowd which lined the foot-pavement, and upon
the men, women, and children who stood at the balconies and
windows on that side of-the Boulevard.
"When there was no longer a crowd to fire into, the soldiers would
aim carefully at any single fugitive who was trying to effect his
escape; and if a man tried.to save himself by coming close up to the
troops and asking for;nercy, the soldiers would force or persuade the




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              515
suppliant io keep off and hasten away, and then, if they could, they
killed him running. This slaughter of unarmed men and women
was continued for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.
" It was thus the Prince President was keeping his oath, and meantime the police offices in his interest were at work.
" Great numbers of prisoners were brought into the Prefecture of
Police; but it appears to have been thought inconvenient to allow the
sound of the discharge of musketry to be heard coming from the
precincts of the building. For that reason, as it would seem, another
mode of quieting men was adopted. Each of the prisoners destined
to undergo this fate was driven with his hands tied behind him into
one of tfe courts of the prefecture, and then one of the Maupas
police officers came and knocked him on the head with a loaded club,
and felled him, - felled him in the way that is used by a man when
he has to slaughter a bullock."
At the.same time the soldiery continued their butchery, and one
officer declared that his regiment alone had killed two thousand four
hundred men. "Supposing that his statement was anything like an
approach to the truth, and that his corps was at all rivalled by others,
a very high number would be wanted for covering the whole quantity of the slaughter."
In the army which did these things the whole number of killed
was twenty-five.
Paris being thus crushed, France was to be wheedled by Morny,
the new Secretary of the Interior.
Morny, stealing into the Home Office, had entrusted his orders, for
instant and enthusiastic support, to the zeal of every prefect, and
had ordered that every mayor, every juge de paix, and every other
public functionary, who failed to give in his instant and written
adhesion to the acts of the President, should be dismissed.
In France, the engine of state is so constructed as to give the
Home Office an almost irresistible pbwer over the provinces, and the
means which the office had of coercing France were reinforced by an
appeal to men's fears of anarchy, and their dread of the sect called
"Socialists."  Forty thousand communes were modestly told that
they must make swift choice between socialism, and anarchy, and
rapine on the one hand, and on the other a virtuous dictator and lawgiver, recommended and warranted by the authority of Monsieur De
Morny.
Every department which seemed likely to move was put under




516    TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
martial law. Then followed slaughter, banishment, imprisonment,
sequestration, and all this at the mere pleasure of Generals.
"Speaking within the limits of historical truth," says the London
" Times" of that date, "and upon the evidence of many eye-witnesses of these events, we affirm, that the bloody and treacherous
deeds of the 4th of December will be remembered with horror, even
in that city which witnessed the massacre of St. Bartholomew and
the'Reign of Terror.'
"None will ever know the number of men, who, at this period,
were either killed, or imprisoned, in France, or sent to die in Africa
or Cayenne; but the panegyrist of Louis Bonaparte, Granier de
Cassagnac, acknowledges that the number of people who were
seized and transported, within the few weeks which followed the 2d
of December, amounted to the enormous number of twenty-six
thousand five hundred.'" Some thousands of Frenchmen were made to undergo sufferings
too horrible to be here told, enclosed in the casemates in the fortresses, and huddled down between the decks of the Canada and the
Duguesclin.  These hapless beings were, for the most part, men
attached to the cause of the Republic. It would seem that, of the
two thousand men whose sufferings are the most known, a great
part were men whose lives had been engaged in literary pursuits;
for amongst them there were authors of some repute, editors of newspapers, and political writers of many grades, besides lawyers, physicians, and others whose labors in the field of politics had been mainly
labors of the intellectual sort. The torments inflicted upon these
men lasted from two to three months."
The massacre having been effective, Louis Napoleon submitted to
the nation that he be declared President for ten years. The choice
given to the electors did not even purport to be anything but a choice.
between Louis Bonaparte and nothing. According to the wording,
of the Plebiscite, a vote given for any candidate other than: Louis.
Bonaparte would have been null.
An elector was only permitted to vote'" yes," or vote " no," and it
seems plain that the prospect of anarchy involved in a negative vote
would alone have operated as a sufficing menace.
One thing only remained to do, - to go through the appearance of
legitimizing the Empire, -- and this was submitted to a like farcical
form of vote.
"Let us do homage to Napoleon!!!"  Thus ended the litho



NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              517
graphed circulars of the prefects after the coup d'etat. The three
marks of admiration were generally taken for a Roman III., "and
this," says one, " gave the Prince the idea of calling himself Napoleon
III., which was the origin of many difficulties, as diplomacy had
never recognized a Napoleon II."
To cover this murder with glory was the next thing, and a pretext
was found for embroiling England with France in a war against
Russia, whose Emperor had addressed the new Emperor cavalierly.
A short time after the coup d'etat, the Queen's speech announced to
Europe " that the Emperor of the French had united with Her Majesty
in earnest endeavors to reconcile differences, the continuance of which
might involve Europe in war; " and she declared that" acting in concert
with her Allies, and relying on the Conference, then assembled at
Vienna, Her Majesty had good reason to hope that an honorable
arrangement would speedily be accomplished." The war with Russia
and great glory followed, and the blood-stained government was
secured. Perjury had been confirmed, and the adventurer was the
richest Emperor in Europe.
The French imperial succession is circumscribed very nearly as the
first Napoleon arranged it, the families of Louis and Jerome Bonaparte
being the only recognized channels of entail, and the descendants of
all the other brothers merely belong to t the "Family of the Emperor,"
- simple subjects with precedence above the high dignitaries. The
imperial dignity is hereditary in the male and legitimate descendants
of Napoleon III., in the order of primogeniture. If he shall have
no male child, the Emperor may choose to adopt any of the male
descendants of Napoleon I.; but this privilege of adoption does not
belong to his successors. If he should die without a successor, born
or adopted, the Presidents of the two legislative chambers, jointly with
his Council of State, elect a Sovereign, and submit the choice to a
vote of the people. In December, 1852, Napoleon nominated his
Uncle Jerome, and the male and legitimate descendants of his
marriage with Catherine of Wurtemberg. This would have made
Prince Napoleon Joseph, born 1822, the heir, - commonly called
Prince Napoleon, - but in 1853 the Emperor married Eugenie Marie
de Montigo, of Spain, and her child, Napoleon Eugene Louis, - or
the Prince Imperial, - born 1856, is heir to the purple.
As early as 1848, Napoleon offered his hand to Eugenic, in
London; but she is said to have declined it, with the words: —
"You will go to Paris, and strive there to acquire power, become




518    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Consul, President, or Dictator. Supposing you have attained your
first object, will you remain standing? Will it satisfy your ambition?
Will you not rather soar higher? You will! But, in that case, what
a burden a wife will be to you! If a man wishes to become Emperor,
he must leave the choice of an Empress open. But if you were to be
unsuccessful in your efforts, — if things did not go as you wished;
if France did not offer you what you expect from her,- then, but
only then, return; then I will give you an answer to your offer;
then remember that a heart beats in my bosom, which feels it has the
strength to requite you for all your grief and all your foiled expectations."
This sounds like an extract from a play at the Porte Saint Martin,
but it is solemnly put down by reverend clergymen, like Mr. J. S. C.
Abbott, and ought to be valid. Had Mr. Abbott himself made that
response, its authenticity could have been sworn to.
Eugenie, like every woman connected with the Bonapartes, except
Marie Louise, who supplanted Josephine, was pretty and interesting,
and the physical and mental superior of any Empress in Europe.
She was sixteen years younger than her husband, and her child is
like her, smart, and forward, and spirited. Eugenie has, it is said, a
striking likeness to the celebrated Queen of Scots; the same nose,
the same characteristic eyebrows, the same golden hair, the same
white complexion.
As a girl she was very rich, and had an income of five hundred
thousand francs. She is said to have assisted Louis Napoleon during
the presidency by selling a valuable set of pearls. The latter had
left London owing three years' rent, without counting his numerous
tradesmen's bills.
The Parisians do not like the Empress, as she is a devoted adherent of the Pope; but considering her place and her origin, she has
certainly been a brilliant woman, and given the lustre of beauty and
benevolence to the dynasty. Her son has a dangerous path before
him, and she must often lament that he was born upon such heights
of dizziness. At present, all of them have means and pleasure in
abundance. Their palaces are numerous; but St. Cloud is their
suburban palace, and Fontainebleau and Compeigne their principal
summer chateaux. The Emperor is an abstruse politician, sufficiently
French himself to take naturally to war, oratory, and public excitement, and sufficiently Dutch, perhaps, to blend with these brilliant
parts the cold, phlegmatic judgment of the house of Orange. In




NAPOLEON. III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              519
America he would be called an astute, selfish politician, anxious to
achieve public glory, provided it were attributed to himself. In
Europe he receives the additional significance of descent, which on one
side makes him hated by the aristocrats, and on the other reverenced
by the ignorant peasantry. Between the two the Republicans recognize his adroitness, upbraid him as a traitor to the liberties of his
country and of Europe, and employ all the abilities they can command with safety, to destroy the illusion of his name, and to counteract the power of his policy. He also is conscious of his weakness and his strength, and is no despiser of his enemies. Perhaps he
feels that
"Things bad begun make bad themselves by ill; "
and he is at work industriously to make his reign an example of
beneficence and glory, so that its remembrance shall be its bulwark
when his crafty hands are folded upon his breast.
The Emperor's mode of life is, for periods, very regular and
moderate. Ile rises at an early hour, and spends a very considerable
portion of the day at his study-table. His learning is great, and
his education was a conscientiously German one. He speaks French,
German, and English well, understands Latin and Italian, has carefully studied geography, history, and social economy, is well versed
in mathematics and physics, and is a well-trained artillery officer.
He very moderately indulges in the joys of the table; but in other
indulgences is far from blameless. In his character he unites the
cold tranquillity and unbending obstinacy of the Dutchman with the
lively resolution of the Frenchman. In the Italian campaign of
1859 he is said to have displayed much cold resolution. As to his
real talent as commander, the voices of the French officers are
greatly divided. Many assert that he possesses it, and that himself
drew up in great measure the plan of that campaign, while others
ascribe the plan to Marechal Niel, although they allow the Emperor
to be possessed of the valuable quality of recognizing the excellence
of other plans, subordinating himself to them, and carrying them out
energetically. He is, at any rate, a goods if not a brilliant, soldier,
and possesses the confidence of his army, if he does not arouse its
enthusiasm. He has not the least wit or talent for declamation; has
no fancy, artistic talent, or the slightest taste for any art; and
though he may favor the arts, and lavish millions on prominent
artists, ho only does so because he believes that it heightens the lustre




520    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of his government. He is very cold toward the creations of the
poetic art, and even in his youth he did not write a single verse,
though he translated many German lines into French. Thus,.for
instance, he translated Schiller's " Ideal" in his Strasburg prison.
Napoleon, as a rule, enjoys excellent health. It is true he no
longer has the elasticity of youth, and the signs of age are gradually
becoming more prominent. His back is getting bent, his step more
measured, his eye watery, his forehead wrinkled, his hair scanty,
and his expression weak. But, then, the Emperor was never a handsone man.
Strollers in the forest of Fontainebleau notice, on returning at a
late hour, a lighted room in the corner of the chateau, with the windows usually open to admit the evening breeze. The inhabitants
know it to be the Emperor's study; and when they wish to learn
whether the Emperor is at a concert or ball, they take a glance at the
eastern pavilion, where the lamp frequently burns till one A. M.
The Emperor rises at an early hour, and takes a sharp walk with an
adjutant or the Imperial Prince. He returns at eight o'clock. He
goes through the letters with his private secretary, and the newspapers, especially the London "Times" and a German journal.
After this, he breakfasts with the Empress and the Prince. As a rule,
only three persons are invited to breakfast, generally belonging to the
department. At noon the auditor of the Council of State attends
him in his Cabinet, with the despatch-bag from Paris.  Very frequently a minister works with the Emperor till two o'clock; then he
rides out with the Empress and his guests. At the dinner-table there
is very great ceremony, in which the Imperial Prince takes but little
pleasure. The ladies and gentlemen are in full dress; and the Pre-.
feet, Gelleral, Bishop, or other notabilities of the department, occupy
the seats of honor. If, after dinner, there is no soire'e, concert, or
ball, the guests do what they please. The evening parties are
neither musical nor learned, but all the more amusing. There is generally a good deal of noise near the Empress' salon; for the Imperial Prince has his guests too, who are apt to forget rank, etiquette,
and discipline. The party breaks up at eleven o'clock, after the Empress has arranged the programme for the next day, which, however,
binds nobody. The Emperor often rides out in the evening. On his
return, at eleven o'clock, he is accustomed to arrange his work for
the next day in his Cabinet.
The principal other ladies of the imperial family are the Spanish




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLI:ONISM.            52
mother of Eugenie, who has become very rich by speculating on government secrets, and whom the Parisians call the "Crocodile;" the
Princess Mathilde, Prince Napoleon's sister, who is divorced from her
Russian husband, Prince Demidoff; Clotilde, daughter of the King of
Italy, who is married to that gifted sensualist, Prince Napoleon,
nineteen years her senior; the latter is the most popular member of
the imperial house.
The national republican song of France, the " Marseillaise," has
been set aside by the Emperor, for a song composed by his mother,
Hortense, entitled " Partant pour la Syrie."
So much of politics has been said in this book that my lady readers
may be diverted by some notes of a visit that I made to the tombs
of the Emperor's mother and grandmother, Hortense and Josephine,
in the year 1864. They lie buried in the little village church of Rueil,
nine miles from Paris, and I passed through the town with some
friends to look first at their home of Malmaison, near by.
Stealing away from the church square, passing a flower and vegetable market, turning into the high road again, and leaving Rueil behind, we came at last to a green lane with high stone walls on either
side, and, after a few moments' thoughtful walking, stood at the gate
of Malmaison.
Malmaison had received its name "Mala-Domus," from having
once been the home of Norman adventurers, who had been cursed by
the people. But since that time it had been exorcised and sanctified
as a monastery, and finally had been turned into a country-house.
Bonaparte, before embarking for Egypt, had written to Josephine to
secure a country residence for his return. She hesitated some time
between Ris and Malmaison, but decided in favor of the latter.
When the General became First Consul, he installed himself in the
Luxembourg; but the Palace of the MIedicis was only his political
residence; his leisure hours were spent at Malmaison. The dignified
silence and severe etiquette which became afterward the law at the
Imperial Palaces of St. Cloud and the Tuileries were then unknown.
It was at that time not an uncommon thing to play at "prisoner's
base" here. On one side were Bonaparte, Lauriston, Rapp, Eugene,
and the Demoiselles Anguie; on the other, Josephine, Hortense,
Jerome, Madame Caroline Murat, Isabey Didelot, and DeLacay. They
were all young people. The game would be followed by a cotillon,
and in the evening by a play performed by themselves.
66




522    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
After many pleasant years passed here with Josephine, the house
was given to the Empress after her repudiation. When Bonaparte
resolved to divorce Josephine, childless to him, Hortense and Eugene,
her own children, were, strangely enough, selected by the Emperor to
convey the sad intelligence to the Empress; but he knew that he could
rely upon their boundless devotion. The scenes that followed have
been described by a Prefect of the Palace, in his "] Memoirs."  The
same children were also summoned to be present at the nuptials of
the Emperor and Maria Louise, and the Queen of Holland, Hortense,
was one of the four to bear a corner of the mantle of the Empress,
who usurped the place of her own mother.
~Malmaison now belongs to Louis Napoleon. An old wounded
grenadier kept the lodge, but was prohibited from granting us admission; so he chatted with us as we looked through the bars upon the
o1013ngr, white building, steep-roofed, and flanked by turrets and huge
chimneys. A carriage passed round the smooth lawns; there were
few large trees save beyond the house, where a beautiful wood bordered a hill-side; but close by the gate were flower-beds, whose perfumes blew upon us, as if to give us some sweet thing to carry across
the seas. Here Josephine received visits from the Czar, and King-of
Prussia; but all her days were sad ones. She could not drive from
her mind the memory of the grand court, and her sunburnt soldier,
slumbering beside his young princess, and the gossip of the court
ladies pitying her, who used to be their Queen. Here she died, in
the arms of her children, in the spring of the year, in the month of
3M!Kay, neither poor nor unloved, but repudiated! Soon after her entombment the beaten Conqueror came back from Waterloo, and bade
his few attendants adieu from this threshold, and turned into the
deserted place to see the relics of the only being who ever loved him.
Soon he lay on the rock of Saint Helena, and she was at rest in the
vault of Rueil.
Critics have been divided as to the influence and merits of Josephine, but the ladies cling devotedly to the superstition of her. goodness. Whatever be the cold historic truth, this remains: he was a
tryant, she was unhappy. With all our reasoning, we feel that Josephine is the only soft, human episode in the biography of Bonaparte.
Love, redeeming love, whether in cottage, or palace, covers a multitucle of sins. We turn with relief from the glaring sun of Austerlitz,
from the glory of Marengo, and the marvel of Jena, and the long,




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              523
bloody trail of Moscow, to this fond, foolish, beautiful woman, the
thought of whom lightened the conqueror's bivouac dreams.
Returning to the little church of Rueil, we turned at the end of
the mass, to the high altar, and saw set in the wall, on either side,
the tomb of Josephine to the right, and that of her daughter Hortense to the left. The first of these was the grandmother, the second, the mother of the present Emperor of the French.
The tombs were each of Carrara marble, fifteen feet high perhaps;
Josephine's was by Castellier, and represented the Empress in the
long, rich robes of the court, kneeling upon a cushion, and with
clasped hands, before a marble prie-dieu. The latter was too low.
The statue, while not a chef d'oeuvre, was a correct and pleasing
one, representing a beautiful woman, with a saddened, resigned face,
and it was enclosed by columns and an entablature, the latter
oddly carved. Below was this inscription:A.
Josephine.
Eugene. Et Hortense.
1825.
HIer son and daughter raised the monument. The tomb of the
beautiful, wilful, and gifted Hortense stood opposite.
The remains of Queen Hortense were transferred from Switzerland
td Rueil, by Count de Tascher de la Pagerie, her- cousin (Josephine
was a De Tascher, de la Pagerie), and were deposited in a catacomb
opposite to that of the Empress Josephine, in this ancient church of
the Lords of Burenval. A mausoleum was raised over the vault in
1845, by Bartolini, of Florence; but one of the first melancholy
duties of Louis Napoleon was to save the Church of Rueil from the
ruin by which it was threatened.
Partner in brightness and sorrow  with Josephine was Marie
Antoinette, her predecessor upon the throne, and there is an anecdote told about the present Emperor and those beheaded Bourbons
which may be worth relating:When Hortense went to live in the palace in the Rue d'Anjou St.
Honore, she found that Louis XIV., and Marie Antoinette were




52-1   TIlE NEWV  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
buhried at no great distance from the Madeleine church-yard. An old
royalist, Duseausaux, had guarded and tended the graves for upwards
of twenty years. HIe had a cottage close by. Hortense visited him,
and asked to be shown the graves. She at once shared with the old
man the duty of keeping this grave in order, and it continually grew
more and more charming; ere long it was entirely concealed by a
mound of Parma violets. The old man died, and Hortense became
the sole keeper of the graves. The children accompanied her when
she visited them from time to time; they did not know who slept
beneath the flagrant violets, —they only saw the tears in their
mothcr's eyes, and clasped their hands as they saw their mother clasp
hers.
" Louis'Napoleon," says a rapturous Englishman, "praying at the
grave of Louis XIV. and 5Marie Antoinette, and not knowing for
whom he prayed! What a picture!"
The Court of the Tuileries alone might fail to satisfy curiosity in
a volume, and it has been the subject of many; and the subordinate
palaces of the Emperor would of themselves make the whole contents of a book like this. Each of the imperial country residences
have immense forests attached, that of Fontainebleau being sixtythree miles in circumference, and containing forty-two thousand
acres.
In the year 1863 I made the tour of the forest of the Palace of
Compeigne, and resided ini the town of the palace for two months. A
description of this imperial residence will conclude the chapter. WVe
reached the edge of the forest at a little village called St. Sauveur, at
nightfall, and in the morning we entered one of the straight, deep
defiles of the ancient and wonderful forest of Compiegne. When I
would think of any vastness achieved by nature and artifice combined, I recall the long, canopied continuity of shade through which
we made this days journey. Here is a solid forest, fifty miles in
circumference, patrolled, and guarded, and worked by eight hundred
men, producing every year seven hundred thousand francs' worth of
wood, and three hundred thousand in game. It is traversed by three
hundred and sixty roads, meeting at two hundred and ninety carrefours, all arranged in such superb geometry, that from each carrefour
you can see down straight lines of verdure, in from eight to twentyfour directions, and from horizon to horizon. Twenty-seven brooks
wind through this wonderful forest; sixteen lakes glass it; nine vil



NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              525
lages are pent up in its perpetual shadows; fourteen hunting-lodges
stand by its waysides, where all the night the baying of hounds
startles the lonely traveller; two ranges of not inconsiderable mountains, curtained with foliage, shut in most of its area; the ruins of
eleven castles and abbeys are buried in its fastnesses or crown its
steeps; a real Roman road, with Roman villages disentombed beside
it, passes through its largest diameter; and where its mighty oaks,
and elms, and beeches, and maples darken and murmur now, there
have their ancestors held this realm for all the Christian era. It is
this that makes the Forest of Compiegne remarkable in France; but,
to me, the crowning wonder was the patient labor and embellishment
which had softened such wild nature to its own conceit. Over every
roadway the huge trees had been taught to arch in perfect aisles; so
that the whole seemed some Druidical Cathedral, where every open
carrefour was a lantern, and whose choirs were the million birds
that trilled all day, while at night the cuckoo shouted her stentorian note, and the owl laughed like a maniac unchained. Still in
these miles of lofty arbor the wild boar made his home unchallenged,
save once a year, when the Emperor and his game-keepers come up
to Compiegne with horn and rifle, and the woods are filled with galloping courtiers. We walked among the hares and rabbits, and
heard the whirr of pheasants, and now and then a fox stared down
the long carpet of grass, amazed at the distinctness of the distance:
but it is at bodily peril that you discharge a pistol, or stone a wren,
or light a fire, or pluck a twig in this Imperial domain. The laws
are written at every carrefour, where, also, fndex-boards relieve you
from the dread of wandering astray and purposeless, and while this
vast shadow-land is clean and thrifty as a lady's lawn, yet you will
roam for hours and hours and see no human face, nor hear the reverberations of an axe. We call our western hemisphere a land of
boundless forests; but I have never found in it a roof of shade like
this of Compiegne. Industry has reduced our woodland to " scrub;"
the "' wilderness " of Virginia is chiefly brush-land, swamp and barren,
and even in Mlichigan, the lumberman's State, it is rare to see a
square mile of stalwart towering tree-boles. The Forest of Compiegne isonly sixty miles from Paris, and it is not so large as that of
Fontainebleau, but for quality the aboriginal Indians might have
been proud of it.




52G    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
In the middle of this deep forest at the little village of St. Jean
an Bois, we found this sign set up against an inn:*          THE DOCTOR LARREY,
~ A FAcMOUS AMERICAN DENTIST,
Now making a tour of the
*        DEPARTMENT OF THE SEINE AND OISE,
will be here
*          ON THURSDAY AND FRIDAY NEXT,.
and at
*      PIERREFONDS FOR THE WEEK SUCCEEDING. 
~ M. Gardette, the Priest, and M. Bouille, the Aubergiste,
are his references.
Our little party, solemnized by our insignificance amid this vegetable sea, came now and then to relics of a former era. At Champlieu
we found a Roman theatre in perfect restoration, guarded by an old
veteran, who talked of Leipsic and Waterloo; and near Fontenoy a
score of laborers were working with pick and shovel in a Roman village to find material for Louis Napoleon's " Life of Coesar." For
this book there must have been, at one time or another, ten thousand
men employed. I saw about a regiment of them digging up the
palace of the Caesars in Rome, and from Marseilles to Calais they
unearthed every old coin, pot, and spear-head. At Pierrefonds we
saw the most original and beautiful restoration in France, — the
feudal castle of that name battered down by Richelieu's order, but
the designs for which, being happily preserved, it had been rebuilt by
the Emperor with all the massive elaborateness of its model, complete in buttress, battlement, postern, portcullis, donjon, chapel, and
moat, so that if gunpowder could be abolished to-day, Pierrefonds
would be less pregnable than Fort Richmond, or Drury's Bluff. Of
this revived castle is to be made a mediaeval arsenal, bristling with
armor, and lances, and axes; and as we strangers gazed upon it in
the sunset, sharply cut, machicolated, graceful, yet serene, we
looked into each other's eyes.




NAPOLEON III. AND NAPOLEONISM.              527
There were but twelve thousand souls resident in the town of
Compiegne, but it had a historical reminiscence for every man. By
the aid of Lambert de Ballyhier, conscientious antiquarian, we made
every dumb wall speak. Here were wide convents used for no better
purpose than storing pork and flour, groined cloisters for horse-stalls,
and ruined abbeys in the midst of the town eaten by ivy. Standing
by the river's side, haunted by pigeons, is the very tower whose
draw-bridge, raised by treachery, gave the Maid of Are to Burgundy
and Britain. She said her last prayer in liberty here, in the church
of St. Jacques, and on the bare heights across the Oise the besieging
armies pitched their tents. In this chateau lived the son of Charlemagne, whose father gave him the world, but whose feeble hands
could not retain it. Beyond the village, at Choisy lay the body of
the wife of Pepin, and at Villers Cotterets, not far away, Dumas, the
novelist, was born. The forest, whose black edges made night perpetual on our east, had been the seat of desperate robbers, hedged in
castleholds whose memory lived in every peasant's fears. Here, by
Compiegne, Bonaparte received Marie Louise, pouring the perjury of
love into her ear; and once in twelve months the dissolute and varnished court of the present adventurer congregates here to hear lewd
plays, and to coquette in the forests. There is a museum in the old
Hotel de Ville, filled with the relies of this region, and every Sunday
the military band gives practice in the chateau gardens.
Ensconced in the deep forest with our pipes and books, we might
lie all day, approached by none save perhaps a strolling wood-cutter,
or a woman beating her panniered donkey. Still, the strong call of
the cuckoo drove away all this, and the herds of deer came upon us
unaware, and gazed and burst into the covert. The violets soon
began to weave devices in the moss, and buttercups came, as at home,
to look for tardy summer; then there were stawberries on the knolls,
and so, pace by pace, the warm weather fell upon Compiegne, and
brought upon us the noisy and imperious court.




CHAPTER XX.
THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.
A comparison of bereaucracy under the empire with simple Jeffersonian administration in
America. -The legislature, the ministry, and the departments.
IN France, and upon the continent of Europe, which, willingly or
unwillingly, looks to France for example, we shall find an innumerable    beof officials, infinite jurisdiction, the pomp of government,
andsubiqnu~itJs uniforms, so that it is almost as impossible to get out
of Yerpment as to get out of nature there; at the birth-couch the
officer steps in to enrol the name of the child for the conscription, and a certificate of birth or paper " de naissance " must be
carried upon the person perpetually by every French man and French
woman; at the grave the government is near by to prescribe the cost
of the funeral, and unwilling to release its hold even upon the carcass
of the subject.
The first great distinction between France and the United States, in
the mind being that one is a personal, and the other a popular government, the more visible distinction is that France is a bureaucratic
government, and the United States is merely a constrained federal
administration, omitting to take cognizance of any matters save those
which affect its own dignity and permanence, and leaving to the
people, in their local and individual way, to carry out their own
fortunes and the destinies of the state.
Bureaucracy is derived from the French word bureau, a writingdesk or a business office, and signifies that kind of government where
a'host of officials, responsible only to their respective chiefs, interfere
with, and control, every detail of public and private life. In France,
bureaucracy is the distinguishing feature of the government, and
also in the German States, where critics call it vielregieren, or much
government. There is little bureaucracy in the United States; for
Jefferson overthrew it in his simple definition of free government,
notwithstanding which, the motto of the " Congressional Globe" to
the present day is, "We are governed too much."
528




~ ~ /-_J-"' ~:-~- _ -:I~.... —-------—`
L'TI!I`lllil:i
1                                       2~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~?
I i i I,~ ~ ~ ~: —..:-_: —~-::_~,:-2~i —-—:..:,',...
Hi~, ~~~l~~~~~r~ ~-:'-~-<..... HO
GREAT STATE CEREMONIES.
1-The Fite at Venice. 2-The Pope Blessing on Christmas-Day. 3-Coronation
of the Queen of England.








THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                    529
An American visiting'France is apt to fall in love with the admirable system of protection afforded there, the regulation of monopolies
by government, the safety of the person, the splendor and dimensions of the national enterprises, the civility and the rich costumes
of the police, tle railroad guards, the firemen and the merchant
captains, and he insensibly thinks of the coarse equality of subordinates at home, the brusqueness of officials, the unrestrainable avarice
of corporations, the facility for contriving monopolies, the cheapness
of life, and the petty penalty for violence against the person. But
the observing man, looking beneath society, and above his own transient convenience, will ascribe to bureaucracy all the misfortunes of
France since the downfall of the first Napoleon.  That sleepless
a-nd versatile suggester covered France with administration, and
gathered into his imperial hand the skeins of the largest and the least
of his infinite establishments. He accustomed every Frenchman to
look to the government for relief in every inconvenience, and at
every time of deprivation. He took from the people the consciousness and the necessity of individual exertion, and he put a bureau
at every elbow, and an official in it, to anticipate the wishes of his
subjects; the consequence is, that the individual character of Frenclhmen is almost extinct, and they are unstable as petted children.
HIavingc several times conquered opportunities for free government,
and being in large majority sincere wishers for a Republic, they fasten
upoln the Republic, when they get it, the whole burden of their necessities, stiile it with bureaux, and make it ridiculous by compelling it to
be the vehicle of their dreams and experiments. A Republic that
shall keep bread cheap, hold corn in " Warehouses of Abundance,"
and s-upport " National Workshops," is bound to become the victim
of its magnanimity, to arouse expectations that cannot but be disappointed, and to disappear at last under the anarchy of its upbraiders.
The founder, expositor, and administrator of that restricted Republicanism  which  alone is durable, Thomas Jefferson, taught the
Americ en people that the best government is that which is least seen,
and, adopting his sentiments, the American people have become the
most self-reliant, adventurous, and enterprising: people on the globe.
Always out of sight of their government, yet finding it strong when
there is real necessity, they have fewer officials and smaller expenses
than any great nation, and are a rebuke to bureaucratic despotism,
which, except in England, characterizes the whole of Europe.
In all France there are five hundred and thirty-four thousand eight
67




530    TIIE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
hundred office-holders, exclusive of servants, counting neither the
Army nor the Navy; the salaries of the clerks at the departments in
Paris alone amount to one million three hundred thousand dollars a
year. The Emperor's household consists of an immense number of
officials, amongst whom are twenty-five physicians and surgeons,
sixteen aides-de-camp, and eight chaplains and ecclesiastics; the
Empress has, a lady reader, and the Emperor's son has three tutors.
The Minister of State is also the patron of letters, theatres, and
science. All the monuments, museums, palaces, and schools of fine
arts, are controlled by the Minister of the Imperial household. The
Emperor's body-guard consists of two hundred and twenty-two
mounted men, gorgeously apparelled; the Empress has also her own
escort, and the Imperial Guard  consists of eight regiments of
infantry, six of cavalry, two of Gendarmes and Chasseurs, and sixteen batteries of artillery.  There is no such array of gorgeous
official costumes in England as we find in France, where it is a stated
belief that fine uniforms give dignity and effect to authority, - a
statement disputed by a French traveller in America:"I amn inclined to believe that the influence which costumes really
exercise, in an age like that in which we live, has been a good deal
exaggerated. I never perceived that a public officer in America was
the less respected whilst he was in the discharge of his duties,
because his own merit was set off by no adventitious signs."
We are getting out of our attachment to non-uniformed officials
since Mr. James Fisk, the steamboat 1" Admiral," and the " Imperialist" newspaper have developed amongst us; but it is remarkable that
with more uniforms we have less respect for our officials than we
used to have when they wore plain citizen dress.
The possession of office in France, as in most of the monarchies in
Europe, is considered somewhat of an aristocratic distinction, and
lihence De Tocqueville says:"I look upon the entire absence of gratuitous functionaries in
America as one of the most prominent signs of the absolute dominion
which democracy exercises in that country. All public services, of
whlatsoever nature they may be, are paid; so that every one has not
merely a right,.but also the means of performing it."
If De Tocqueville lived in our time he would see that many of our
officials are so'indifferently paid that they are, in all but name,
reduced to the means of gratuitous functionaries, while they achieve
no corresponding  distinction.




TIHE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                   531
France is at present undergoing a radical change of government;
but tlhe reforms proposed by the Emperor have not, at this writiln,
cone into effect, and, judging by the inconstant and despotic course
of Napoleon, there is less probability of their continuing, than of
Lis whole government being swept away by sonic attempt that he
mal.y nalke to resume his autocratic authority. W5e are assured,
however, that they are to consist of self-government by the two
legislative bodies; the selection of a ministry from the two chambers;
more independence in proposing amendments to laws; the right of
interpellation, and of voting the yearly budget in detail; open sessions
of the Senate except by its own wish to the contrary; the right of
legislators to address questions to the government as in En(land, and
co-operation of the CORPS LEGISLATIF with the Emperor in initiating
new laws. These reforms will bring the government very nearly to
the condition in which it stood under Louis Philippe, and will reduce
the Emperor almost to a limited sovereign. When this programme
shall be carried out, as it doubtless will be before this book goes to
press, France will compare with America, as De Tocqueville drew
the distinctions thirty years ago in the following six paragraphs:"The sovereignty of the United States is shared between the
Union and the States, whilst in France it is undivided and compact;
hence arises the first and the most notable difference which exists
between the President of the United States and the King of France.
In the United States the executive power is as limited and partial as
the sovereignty of the Union in whose name it acts; in France it is
as universal as the authority of the state. The Americans have a
federal, and the French a national government.
"Sovereignty may be defined to be the right of making laws; in
France the King really exercises a portion of the sovereign power,
since the laws have no weight till he has given his assent to them;
he is, moreover, the executor of all they ordain. The President is
also the executor of the laws, but he does not really co-operate in
their formation, since the refusal of his assent dloes not annul them.
" But not only does the King of France exercise a portion of tIle
sovereign power; he also contributes to the nomination of the Legislature, which exercises the other portion.  Ile has the privilege of
appointing the members of one cllhamber, and of dissolving the other
at his pleasure; whereas the President of the United States has no
share in the formation of tile Legislative body, and cannot dissolve
any part of it. The King has the same right of bringing forwaitd




532    TIiE NEW WVORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
measures as the chambers, - a right which the President does not
possess. The King is represented in each Assembly by his ministers,
whlo exclain his intention, support his opinions, and maintain the
principles of the government. The President and his ministers are
alike excluded from Congress; so that his influence and his opinions
can only penetrate indirectly into that great body. The King of
France is, therefore, on an equal footing with the Legislature, which
can no more act without him than he can without it. The President
exercises an authority depending upon that of the Legislature.
"The President of the United States is a magistrate elected for
four y5ears. The King of France is an hereditary sovereign. In the
exercise of the executive power the President of the United States is
constantly subject to a jealous scrutiny. HI-e may make, but he
cannot conclude, a treaty; he may designate, but he cannot appoint,
a public officer. The King of France is absolute within the limits of
his authorityj. The President of the United States is responsible for
his actions; but the person of the King is declared inviolable by the
French charter.
" The King's government in France penetrates in a thousand
different ways into the administration of private interests. Amongst
the examples of this influence may be quoted that which results from
the great number of public functionaries, who all derive their
appointments from  the government.  This number now  (1837)
exceeds all previous limits; it amounts to one hundred and thirtyeight thousand nominations, each of which may be considered as an
element of power. The President of the United States has not the
exclusive right of making any public appointments, and their whole
lumber scarcely exceeds twelve thousand."
In this chapter we are to consider the French administration as it
has existed for nineteen years, and as much of it will continue to
exist, notwithstanding any modifications which may be adopted.
The Constitution cf France bears the date of 1852, and was
"decreed" by Louis Napoleon, in virtue of the powers delegated to
him by the French people. There are five powers in the state: the
EExecutive; the 2lMinisters, whom he solely nominates; his Council of
Stalte, preparing laws under the direction of himself and ministers;
a Legislative Body, and a Senate. The government in its general
working is one of the most arbitary and despotic in the world, but at
the present writing the Emperor has made another of his frequent
promises of reform; for, by the elections of 1867, it was evident that




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                   533
a tremendous reaction had commenced against his government, - the
harbinger of an oft-postponed revolution.
By the Constitution of 1852, the Emperor is irresponsible; his
person is inviolable; he has the right to pardon criminals; to make
treaties, and to confer honors and dignities; he he has the sole initiative
in legislation; le commands the Army and Navy; no law-is valid
unless sanctioned by him; no person can hold any office without
taking the oath of fidelity to him; and he nominates to all charges,
appointments, and offices, whatsoever.
The Emperor's ministers receive twenty thousand dollars a year,
and are eleven in number, as follows:M1inister of State (Premier); Minister of Justice land Keeper of
the Great Seal; 3Minister of Finance; Minister of the Imperial
House; President of the Council of State; Minister of War; Minister of Marine and Colonies; Minister of Foreign Affairs; Minister
of the Interior; and Minister of Agriculture, Commerce, and Publie Works. The Minister of State is the medium of communication
between the Emperor and the other ministers, as also with the
Council of State, the Senate, and the Legislative Body; he has, besides
exclusive direction of the official newspaper, which is called the
"4 Moniteur." These ministers are responsible to the nation, but only
for their individual acts, and the Senate is the only body which can
accuse them, -the Senate itself being, like themselves, the creature
of the Emperor. In the Council of State there are about fifty members, each with a salary of five thousand dollars. These Councillors
prepare projects of law, to be laid before the Legislative Body.
The French Senate is composed of the Cardinals, Marshals, and
Admirals of the realm, and, besides, of a number of other members
nominated by the Emperor. Every Senator holds for life, unless he
resigns, and his salary is six thousand dollars a year. The Senate
is a more powerful body than the Corps Legislatif, which is precisely
contrary to the condition of things in all constitutional governments, as in England and the United States. The object of the
Emperor in the composition of his Senate seems to have been to
place all apparent legislation in the hands of his favorites, and leave
the people little to do except to vote for representatives, who are
themselves powerless. The Senate is the only body that can receive
petitions, or change the fundamental law, and no vote of the Legislative Assembly is effective without the Senate's sanction. The Emperor nominates the President and Vice-President of the Senate, each




534    TtIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
for the period of one year. They are charged especially to oppose
all laws contrary to freedom of conscience, to the constitution,
religion, and the equality of citizens before the law.
The members of the Legislative Body are elected by universal
suffrage; there are upwards of ten millions of voters in France,
about three-fourths of whom appear at elections. Every member
sits six years, and receives an annual salary of five hundred dollars;
if five members request it, the public may be excluded; and thus it is
in the power of the Emperor to keep all obnoxious proceedings
silent, for he is also the custodian of the public press; besides, he
nominates the President and Vice-President of the lower house, and
they keep such order as he wishes, ruling down, and ruling out, and
menacing members, and having large garrisons of troops at their
command, within a few yards of the legislative. palace. It is thus
apparent that the government of France is merely an Emperor and
a series of ceremonies. There is an abundance of voting, but little
fair representation, and the only privilege of the people is revolution,
unless the Emperor occasionally should agree, of his own pleasure,
to loosen the cords of his despotism. Nevertheless, immense interest is taken by Frenchmen in their elections, and, under the menace
of the Emperor, a splendid galaxy of opposition orators has arisen
in the lower house.
To ascertain the popularity of some of the leading governments
of the world, we subjoin an account of the number of representatives in the lower and the upper house (1867), and the number of
people to one representative, in the popular branch of the Legislature.
Lower House. Upper House. acepresentulation to
United States,.   241      68        124,000
Great Britain and Ireland,.     658     462         45,000
France,...   376       169       100,000
Brazil,...... 122            60        62,000
Canada,.                      181      78          2,000
Switzerland,.                    128      44         20,000
Chili,....98   20                                 20,000
Prussia,....432               255         52,000
Spain,. 350     396         85,000
Italy,..... 493       283        40,000
Austria,..                  203      122        98,000
Belgium,....116  58   42,000
North German Confederation,.   280      43       100,000
Sweden,.... 185   119                               22,000




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                  535
Lower House, Upper House.  Population to
Denmark,.101   59    14,000
Holland,...... 72                  89        51,000
Portugal,..... 154  115    28,000
The upper house of the Legislature, or Senate, consists of life
members appointed by the Emperor. He appoints his Ministers
without consultation, and the principle of the responsibility of the
Ministers to the Corps Legislatif, though strongly demanded by
Thiers and others, is denied by the constitution. It is only the
bourgeoise, or manufacturing, mechanical, and mercantile classes of
the cities and towns, amongst whom a liberal party can be formed.
Even upon these, the Emperor can bring to bear an enormous power
of corruption and intimidation. "We can best conceive its extent,"
says the " New York Tribune," " by imagining a President of the
United States to have so changed the constitution that he could only
be resisted by revolution; who called upon the people once in six
years to vote for him, or for chaos; who wielded a power of patronage corresponding, not merely to that of our National Government,
but of our States, counties, and cities as well; who controlled the
army, the police, the courts, the press, the clergy, and the schools;
who made every official a spy on every other, and on the people; who
suspended newspapers at pleasure, and suppressed public meetings
at will; and, finally, who limited the National Legislature to simply
advising what should, or should not, be done, without aspiring to
criticise the constitution (which is the Emperor), on pain of treason.
Such is to-day the consolidated despotism of France,  one of the
most absolute the world has ever known."
This despotism is more thorough in that there is no nobility, worthy
the name, associated with it; the aristocracy of the kingdom at the
revolution, and their descendant), retain their titles by courtesy only.
There is no capitol building, distinctively so called, in Paris; the
Senate meets in the Palace of the Luxembourg, and the public is not
admitted to witness its deliberations, while the Representatives meet
in a separate palace, more than half a mile distant; these two
palaces are on the unpopular side of the River Seine, and when the
Emperor opens the two houses, he does not visit their chamber, like
the Queen of England, but they are obliged to come to his Palace of
the New Louvre, where, sitting upon his throne in gorgeous ceremony,
he hears the newly elected members advance and take the oath before




536    THIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
him. As in England, each Legislative Body subsequently discusses,
and votes an address in reply. The debates in both houses are
reported by stenographers, but the daily newspapers can only take
the official reports, and publish them in extenso, or if any particular
subject is discussed, they must print the whole of what is said about
it, so that the Emperor shall have the last word. The legislative
body, or lower house, is divided by lots into nine bureaux, or committees, each of which elects its own President and Secretary. To get
an amendment to any bill proposed from the Council of State, the
Legislative Body must send three of its members to the palace, to
plead their amendments before the Council of State.
The palace of the Legislative Body was begun A.. D., 1722, and
partly built by Mansard, for the Dukes of Bourbon; it was bought
for one million one hundred thousand dollars forty years ago, and is
an imposing structure on the banks of the Seine, facing, with its
Corinthian portico, a bridge, which crosses to the front of the
Emperor's Palace Gardens, -the site of the revolutionary guillotine.
Without, are statues of Sully, Colbert, and other statesmen; within
are several large apartments; and in the various salons are busts,
statues, reliefs, and paintings emblematic of the growth of French
law and civilization. The Legislative HIall, which corresponds to our
old Hall of Representatives, is ornamented with twenty-four marble
columns, and has five hundred seats, rising in tiers, from the President's chair; the walls and ceiling are decorated in crimson vlvet and
gold; there are galleries and tribunes for the diplomatic body, the
imperial family, and the officers of state; a library of sixty-five
thousand volumes is connected with the building, and near by the
President of the body has a palace.
While the Legislative Chamber is ostensibly open to the public,
little accommodation is really afforded the people. The deputies are
allowed two tickets per day, which they sell to parties who resell them
through their a(gents. The seats for spectators will not accommodate
nearly the number which would be present, if the daily allowance of
tickets were represented by their holders at one time. There are two
hundred and ninety-two members in all, and two small galleries will
fall far Sllort of accommodating twice that number. Therefore it is
that there is a great rush of spectators to be present at one o'clock
precisely, when the doors are opened, and generally many ticketholders haive to go away without entrance for want of room  for
them. "If you cross the bridge in front of the palace at one




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                    537
o'clock P. at., each day," says a writer in the "~ Hartford Post," " you
will be importuned by several -persons who want to sell you tickets
(or' Billets pour la Seance du Corps Legislatif,' as they say); and I
understand they have sometimes got as high as eighty francs (sixteen dollars) for each of them.
" The President, Mr. Schneider (1869), a little, old, but good-looking, white-haired Frenchman, with a German- name, generally springs
a stationary silver bell, when he calls the members to order; if that
is not sufficient he raps upon the desk, and he had occasion to do so
quite often, the aforesaid armed men calling out, or ejaculating something I did not distinctly hear, but which the members seemed to. In
front of the President's desk is the' Tribune,' or platform, on which
some of the orators take their stand when they address the audience.
On each side, and in front of the Tribune, are the desks of the stenographic reporters, etc. The President wears a red scarf over his right
shoulder, extending below the waist on the left side. Of the officers
dressed in black broadcloth, with' swallow-tailed' coats, and white
cravats, and carrying a sword, I counted twelve. Besides these were
quite a number of messengers or pages, dressed in a uniform of red
and' blue, with trimmings of gilded lace."
The French Senate meets in the old Palace of the Luxembourg, in
the midst of the Students' Quarter near the university. It was built
two hundred and fifty years ago. The French Senate, in 1847, consisted of three hundred and five peers. Behind the palace are large
gardens, and within it is a spacious court; the building is surmounted
with Mansard roofs and pavilions, and a part of it is occupied by
magnificent state apartments, and a superb picture-gallery; here
Napoleon was divorced from Josephine; in the Gardens, Marshal
Ney was shot. The Senate Chamber is semi-circular, vaulted, ninetytwo feet in diameter, and the ceiling, supported by columns, is richly
painted; in a recess are the elevated seats of the President and
Secretaries, flanked by statues of monarchs, priests, and politicians;
there are one hundred and sixty-five seats for Senators, besides seats
for the Emperor's Ministers, near the President's chair; the library
here consists of forty thousand volumes.
While there is a nominal aristocracy in France, and many of the
Admirals, Marshals, and other officials have titles, aristocratic distinctions are really swept away, save in so far as to make the semblance
of a court. A vast order of knighthood is the Legion of I-Ionor,
where ribbons are much coveted by American piano-makers, and the
68




538    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
venders of sewing-machines. The most formidable question in "' the
trade" of recent days has been whether Chickering had more ribbon
than Steinway, and in the discussion of it the subject of red tape
was almost completely neglected.
The Legion of Honor, of France, is presided over by th::l Emperor,
as Grand Master,. but is administered by a Grand Chancellor and
Council; it pays pensions to officers and soldiers of distinction, and
its members number about fifty-seven thousand, divided into five
orders, each privileged to wear a ribbon, cross, or other decoration.
No French subject is allowed to wear a foreign decoration without
government authority.
In the payment of pensions and salaries in France, and all European States, the tendency is toward extravagant sums in high places,
and parsimony toward the lower office-holders; while the reverse is
the case here, as De Tocqueville exemplified many years ago, when he
said:" It must, however, be allowed, that a democratic state is most
parsimonious toward its principal agents. In America, the secondary officers are much better paid, and the dignitaries of the administration much worse, than they are elsewhere."  He gave this example
to bear out his statement: —
UNITED STATES.
Treasury 1Department.
Messenger,.$700
Clerk with lowest salary,......  1,000
Clerk with highest salary,.....          1,735
Chief Clerk,.2,000
Secretary of State,..                              6,000'The President (Andrew Jackson),.                     25,000
FRANCE.
Xlinistere de Finances.
Huissier,                                           1,500 fr.
Clerk with lowest salary,.... 1,000 to 1,800 fr.
Clerk with highest salary,...... 3,200 to 3,600 fr.
Secr6taire-g6n6ral,                                20,000 fr.
The Minister,.80,000 fr.
The King (Louis Philippe),.12,000,000 fr.
We shall now proceed to examine some of the departments and
bureaux of the French Government.




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                    539
It is the pride of the French Government, above that of every other
nation of Europe, that it is the most thorough encouracger of education, of art, and of literature. It is with education alone that we
are mainly concerned in America, having but recently created a
bureau in the interest of the same, at Washington; but this is
simply a bureau of inquiry, of suggestion, and of statistics, while
in Fiance the central government is the Director-General of all
education within the empire, and has organized it upon the mathematical principles of its army and its police. Napoleon I. established one Imperial University, consisting of all the academies in
France, and in 1852 the present Emperor restored this system; so
that at present there are sixteen academies, of which Paris is the
central and eminent one. When we speak of the University of
Paris, therefore, we mean only the Academy of Paris, a component
part of the grand National University; this and all the other schools
of France are subordinate to the Minister of Public Instruction,
whose council is impartially composed of five Catholic ecclesiastics,
one minister of the Lutheran, one of the Calvinistic, and one of the
Jewish creed, three Senators, three Councillors of the State, three
members of the Court of Cassation, five members of the Institute
of France, two heads of private schools, and eight InspectorsGeneral, all appointed by the Emperor for one year. Each of the
sixteen  universities of France has, subordinate to it, lyceums
(grammlar schools), colleges, and primary schools. Every university
has faculties, either of medicine, law, literature, or sciences; for
example, there are six faculties of Catholic theology, and two of
Protestant theology, nine faculties of law, three of medicine, and
six of science and letters; each of these, except Protestant theology,
is maintained in the Academy of Paris. The Academy of Paris is
situated in a series of buildings, scattered through what is called
the Latin Quarter of the city, chief of which is the Sorbonne, called
for a gentleman of that name, who founded a school there six hundred years ago. The present Sorbonne building was erected by Richelieu, the great Prime Minister; it is a vast, dingy building, enclosing
wide courts, including a fine ihurch, and owning a library of eighty
thousand volumes. Richelieu is buried in the chapel. At the Sorbonne
the faculties of science, letters, and theology lecture. The celebrated
colleges of medicine and law are close by the Sorbonne; in the latter
there are eighteen professors, and two thousand students; in the
former fifty-seven professors and tutors, and three thousand students.




540    TIIE NEIW  WORLD COMPARED WITH TIIE OLD.
Many medical students go from the United States to Paris, and the
total cost of their tuition for four years is two hundred and fifty-five
dollars. The College of Medicine is the most celebrated school of
its kind in the world, having adjunct to it magnificent dissectingrooms and vast hospitals; there are twenty-eight thousand physicians
and apothecaries in France; of the Paris hospitals the Ilotel Dieu
contains eight hundred and twenty-eight beds, and twelve thousand
patients annually, attended by thirty-three Augustinian nuns. A
separate chapter might be made upon the hospitals of Paris alone.
They comprise hospitals for foundlings, schools for midwives, cloisters for sick children, soup-houses, and nurseries, where poor workingwomen deposit their babies in the morning, return to suckle them at
the proper hours, and take them home in the evening, paying four
cents a day.
The charities of Paris, and of France generally, are remarkably
original and efficient; many of the almshouses are organized upon
plans which might well be imitated in America, and the whole system
of public and private schools is worthy the attention of enlightened
humanity. The schools of Paris and France are the perfection of
human encouragement; one of the grammar schools has forty-two
professors, three hundred and seventy boarders, and five hundred day
scholars; equally large are some of the private schools, one of which
-the College Stanislas -has one hundred and thirty professors,
and twelve hundred boarders and day scholars. There are also many
free schools, many schools which give valuable prizes to pupils,
schools of music, declamation, commerce, design, night schools, and
adult schools. Prize students at the Fine Arts College are sent to
Rome to study at the expense of the state. There is a special school
to encourage the study of ancient manuscripts in the libraries; of
military and staff schools, there are many extraordinary ones, particularly the Polytechnic School, where two hundred and sixty pupils
have the advantage of twenty professors, and pay each but two hundred dollars a year; besides all these, the libraries, museums, and
collections of Paris are interesting in the highest degree; the whole
city, indeed, is a prodigious university, where learning and talent
receive higher rewards than anywhere upon earth; so that, in our
day, France stands at the head of nations in the arts, literature, -and
oratory. The highest prizes in the Paris lyceums, in the year 1866,
were taken by the Masters Beckwith, two American lads. At the pinnacle of the entire intellectual fabric stands the Institute of France,




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                  541
founded in the period of the Republic, A. D., 1795, and composed of
two hundred and twenty-three members, two hundred and twenty-five
correspondents, thirty-one associates, thirty-five free academicians
and seven secretaries; these are divided into five academies, each of
which gives annual prizes, and one of them is specially charged with
the composition of the French Dictionary. and with the extension and
purification of the language. The Emperor labored long in vain to
become a member of the Institute of France, while some of his most
dignified enemies hold seats within its charmed circle.
The only secret society in France, permitted by law, is that of the
Free-3Masons, which has five hundred lodges.
Religion in France is neither free as in the United States, nor is
there a State church, as in England, while the Emperor and his
household, and most of the great officers of the State, are Catholics.
All religious sects are tolerated and supported by government, and
yet no congregation can meet, no church can change its pastor,
except by government permission. The Protestant and the Jewish
religions are both supported by law, and at least one of the Emperor's ministers (Durny) is a Protestant, but the Pope is bound by
his agreement with the first Napoleon to relinquish the temporal
power within France, and the Emperor nominates to all the dignities
of the Papal Church. The Calvinist Protestant Church has one thousand and forty-five places of worship in France; the Lutheran Church
four hundred and three places of worship, and the Church of England about forty. There are alleged to be nearly thirty-six millions
of Roman Catholics in France, but in this number all are counted
who are not members of some other distinctive faith. A recent
inquiry resulted in the conclusion, that of these more than twelve
millions professed no faith whatever. The number of French
Protestants is less than eight hundred thousand, and of Jews and
other creeds one hundred and five thousand. The Catholic clergy
comprise one hundred and twenty-four thousand, including fifty
thousand monks, or nuns. The salary of the Catholic Archbishop
of Paris is ten thousand dollars a year; the whole cost of religious
worship in France is under ten million of dollars annually. The most
remarkable cathedrals on the American continent are probably those
of Montreal, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, of New York; the
latter (incomplete) is three hundred and thirty-two feet long, one
hundred and seventy-four feet wide, and it is flanked by two towers,
each three hundred and twenty-nine feet high; it contains one hun



542    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
dred and three windows of stained glass, and it is built in the
middle pointed Gothic style of the thirteenth century, of a beautiful
crystalline white marble.
Notre Dame, of Paris, is three hundred and ninety feet long, one
hundred and forty-four feet wide, and its two towers are each two
hundred and four feet high, while its spire is two hundred and eighty
feet high; it is in florid-pointed architecture, with flying buttresses,
and will hold twenty-one thousand persons. The great cathedrals of
Rouen, Chartres, Amiens, Rheims, and Strasbourg are far more florid
and elaborate than the Gothic cathedrals of England; they are
exceeded in beauty only by the cathedrals of Cologne, Milan, and
Brussels.
Napoleon is a canon of the Lateran Church in Rome, as successor
of the most Christian Kings. As such, he once sent twenty-five thousand francs to Rome; Henri IV., and the following kings, up to Louis
XIV., sent each four thousand louis d'or; but Charles X. reduced
the sum to twenty-five thousand francs. Louis Philippe declined the
honor of the canonry. -The garrison of Rome is mainly French, and
Napoleon has been repeatedly blessed by the old bankrupt pontiff.
There are fifteen Catholic Archbishops and sixty-nine Bishops in the
empire, all of whom are nominated by the Emperor, and canonically
inducted by the Pope; six of these hold the rank of Cardinals in
the Senate. When the French Revolution broke out, the Catholic
Church in the kingdom had a revenue of seven hundred and fifty million livres, but at present the state assumes the responsibility
of maintaining worship, and it has appropriated to itself the revenues
of the Church.
There are few nobles in France under the empire, and they are
mainly distinguished officers of the Army and Navy, and statesmen
but recently promoted to honors.
The office of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of France is very
elaborately organized: the commercial department alone has twentyeight Consul Generals, eighty-seven Consuls, seven hundred and
seventy-five Consular Agents. The Minister's Department, or Hotel,
cost one million dollars, and it is situated in a narrow street of the
old aristocratic quarter. France supports very expensive embassies at
all the great capitals, her Ambassador at St. Petersburg receiving
sixty thousand dollars a year; at London, fifty-five thousand dollars;
at Rome, twenty-eight thousand dollars; and at Rio de Janeiro,




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                   543
Washington, and lMexico, seventeen thousand dollars each; the American Ministers at London and Paris receive about the latter figure.
There are about eight thousand five hundred miles of railway in
France, which pay five million dollars in taxes annually, and which
have received one hundred and fifty million dollars from the government; they carry one billion four hundred million passengers annually, by means of seventy-two thousand trucks, carriages, and
engines. A railway girdles Paris, which cost nearly four million five
hundred thousand dollars. Government reserves the right to exercise espionage, inquiry, and at times arbitrary control, over all the
private corporations in the empire; the stage-coaches, called "diligences," the hacks, the omnibuses, whatever undertakes in a corporate capacity to minister to the uses of citizens, is brought under the
strictest government control. There are thirty-one lines of omnibuses in Paris, controlled by a single company, whose charter expires
in the year A. D. 1910, and which has five hundred omnibuses,
carrying eighty million passengers a year, for six cents each
passenger, inside seats, and three cents outside. There is also a great
hack company, which pays the city of Paris four hundred thousand
dollars a year; the omnibus company pays the city two hundred
thousand dollars annually for its monopoly. The French hacks were
introduced into the United States in 1869, and also the English
Hansom cab. There are one hundred and fourteen thousand horses
in Paris, and more than sixty thousand vehicles; yet eighty-seven
years before the discovery of America there was not a carriage of
any kind in France. -There are about four thousand five hundred
post-offices in France, with thirty thousand employes; in all France
there are about one thousand one hundred newspapers and periodicals, nearly six hundred of which are published in Paris. The receipts
of the French post-office are about seventeen million dollars annually. The money-order system  of the French post-office passes
the boundary of France, and commutes with the post-offices of many
other countries. There are sixty-two thousand five hundred miles of
telegraphic line in France. A message sent from one quarter of Paris
to another costs ten cents for twenty words. A telegraphic despatch
from Baltimore to Washington, D. C., cost ten cents for ten words.
The fortifications on the French frontier, mainly the work of Vauban, a Republican in a royal age, are among the strongest in the
world.
Louis Philippe fortified Paris at suggestion of Napoleon. The




X514    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE  OLD.
fortifications cost twenty-eight million dollars, and are armed with
nearly three thousand mortars, cannons, and howitzers, and two
hundred thousand muskets. The garrison of Paris is never less than
thirty thousand men, besides forty thousand National Guards, or
Compulsory Miilitia, four thousand four hundred and forty one Gendarmes, or Government Police, four thousand five hundred and ninety
IMunicipal Police, and one thousand three hundred paid firemen, besides an unknown number of spies, secret agents, etc., etc. Some of
the barracks of Paris are very beautiful; one is seldom out of the
sight of a soldier or out of the sound of a drum in France, in any hour
of the year.
The monetary system of France, and that of weights and measures,
is one of the most thorough in the world; for measures the spherical
distance from the equator to the pole was taken and divided in ten
million equal parts; each part is called a metre; the square and cube
of a metre were made the standards of surface, capacity, and solidity.
The weight of a cube of distilled water at the temperature of 39.2~
Fahrenheit, was made the unit of weight. A metre is about thirty-nine
and one quarter inches, English measure. A hectare is about two and
a half acres. A litre is about a pint and three quarters. A kilogramme is about two and one-fifth pounds.
Paris is very indifferently lighted with gas, except on the public
streets, where there are twenty-nine thousand gas-burners, owned by a
company whose charter expires A.D. 1906. This gas is furnished to the
city of Paris, and government of France, for three cents per cubic metre,
but the cost to private individuals is six cents for the same quantity.
This company pays forty thousand dollars a year to the city, and all
its pipes and accessories revert to Paris on the expiration of its charter, the city paying for the same four hundred thousand dollars.
In 1866, government extorted from the city of Paris three million
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; the budget of the city itself
balanced at nearly forty-four million dollars. Taxes are levied
throughout France upon windows and furniture. The debt of the city
is upwards of forty million dollars. Nearly eighteen million dollars
are collected at the gates of Paris, by what is called the octroi.
Every town in France pays a large part of its expenses by thus
enclosing the town with toll-gates, and making the farmers pay as they
enter. Paris, like Philadelphia and Boston, has gradually absorbed
all the. suburbs which lie within its fortifications.
Three remarkable government factories in France are those for




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                  545
making experimental porcelain, gorgeous tapestry and carpets, and
snuff and tobacco; the latter is a government monopoly, and its
sales amount to twenty-eight million dollars annually.
Wrine is also provided with a special market in Paris, and its sale
put under government control. The wine crop of France is raised
upon eight hundred thousand acres, and it is worth one hundred
million dollars annually, out of which forty million dollars are taken
by national and municipal taxes.
It was only in 1863 that the government relinquished its control
of the bakers, whom it formerly compelled to sell bread at its own
appraisement. The price of bread in Paris is about four cents a
pound at present.
In 1865 there were one hundred and thirty-three thousand two
hundred and twelve persons pensioned by France, at an expense of
nearly fifteen millions of dollars a year; this alone represented a
capital of nearly one billion five hundred million dollars.
Like the American government, and unlike other governments of
Europe, generally speaking, the French raise loans from the population
at large, instead of from a few rich capitalists. The system has worked
successfully. None of the greater governments of Europe pays as high
rate of interest as does the United States.
Some of the great stock enterprises of France are very remarkable,.
The Credit Foncier of Paris is a Stock Company, with a capital offorty millions of dollars, which lends money for first mortgages; upon,
real estate, for not more than five per cent. a year. This mortgage
must be extinguished by the borrower in payments of from one to two
per cent. a year upon the sum he received. The company meantime
issues bonds of twenty dollars and upwards to equal the amount of
its loans; if a mortgagor fails to pay up his annuities his property is
liable to be sold at auction. The government owns ten millions of
stock in this company, and the Emperor names its governor and two
sub-governors; there are besides fifteen directors. The Sinister of
Finance has authority over the company; so that here, as almost everywhere, the state regulates even the corporate financial transactions
of the people. The main office of the company is in a fine building
in Paris; but it has branch offices in a majority of the departments.
Another great French company is the Credit Hobilier, with a capital
of twelve millions of dollars in one hundred and twenty thousand
shares of one hundred dollars a share. It bids for government loans,
69




546    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and is a mammoth stock-broking corporation, but it does not make
bargains, either optional, or on time, like private brokers.
A curious banking corporation in Paris, also under the control of
the Minister of Finance, is the Comptoir National d'Escompte, with a
capital of eight millions of dollars, and several branches. It discounts
bills due at a hundred days, and bearing two endorsements, for France
and for foreign parts due at sixty-five days. It receives deposits and
pays two per cent. upon them, and discounts for goods deposited il
government warehouses.  It charges four per cent. for such discounts.
An institution partly of banking and partly of beneficence is the
Caisse des Retraites pour la Vieillesse, which keeps money for people
against old age, giving them four and a half per cent. compound interest,
and paying the full sum back at death to the depositor's heirs. After
reaching fifty years, the depositor gets an annuity of not more than
three hundred dollars a year  The funds are invested in Rentes.
At the head of this government insurance company is the Minister
of Agriculture and Commerce. It generally has on hand about one
million of dollars and upwards.
The above concern is joined with two other semi-government offices,
the Caisse d'Amortisements, which conducts the reduction of the
national debt, and the Caisse des Depots et Consignations, which pays
four and a half per cent., chiefly upon deposits by public functionaries,
and people who have received legal awards or damages. This caisse,
or office, generally has on hand from one to two millions of dollars.
It also is combined with the government substitute-office, called the
Dotation de l'Armee, which receives annual subscriptions from young
men who expect to be drafted, and pays three and a half per cent.
upon deposits by soldiers and officers of the army.
Four hundred and sixty dollars is the present price of a substitute.
The great pawn-broking shop of Paris is a bureau under the
Minister~ f the Interior and the Prefect of the Seine; it is managed
by a director, and a council of twelve persons, one of whom is the
Prefect of Police; it was founded during the American Revolution, for
the benefit of the hospitals.
It advances four-fifths upon the value of gold and silver articles,
and two-thirds upon the value of all other articles. It has one great
bureau and twenty-two smaller ones, besides agents in different
quarters of the town. Three thousand articles are pledged every day,
two thousand dollars being the largest sum loaned, and it charges




THE FREFNCH GOVERNMENT.                  547
about nine per cent.; after fourteen months all unredeemed'articles
are sold.
There are forty-five of these excellent institutions in the different
cities of France.
The total receipts in seven years, of the Dotation de l'Armee,
ending in 1862, amounted to nearly ninety million dollars, so that
the conscription itself is a profitable though cruel source of revenue.
Even funerals are monopolized in Paris by a private company,
which is obliged to pay government eighty-two and a half per cent. on
the produce of funeral ornaments, and fifteen per cent. on articles
furnished; the cheapest funeral costs less than four dollars, including
the religious ceremonies.
Private slaughter-houses are prohibited in Paris, and vast government butcheries accommodate the butchers, and help the revenues of
the state.
The judicial system of France is little like our own. The Minister
of Justice, one of the Emperor's Cabinet, is the supreme head of all
the judicial courts, and of all public worship. The High Court of
Justice judges without appeal, or remedy,- all persons accused of conspiracies against the Emperor, and the security of his state; it has
ten judges and four deputy judges, annually appointed by the
Emperor, and divided into two chambers, one to prosecute, the other
to give judgment, through a jury composed of thirty-six officeholders.
The French Court of Cassation is ostensibly the highest court of
appeal, but really it is a department of government, to inspect the
administration of justice in the other courts; but when it annuls a
decision of a lower court, the case is not then determined, but
returns to another court of the latter class. Sixty advocates have
the monopoly of practice before the Court of Cassation, which latter
has a President, three Vice-Presidents, and forty-five Councillors:
attached to it are an imperial prosecutor, with six general advocates,
and other officers; eleven judges present are necessary to confirm a
judgment; the members of this high tribunal wear a red gown,
doubled with white fur, and a violet velvet cap.
The next court in rank is the Court of Accounts, which has jurisdiction of the accounts and expenses of the empire.
There are twenty-seven Courts of Appeal in France, each composed
of a First President, several Presidents, a number of high Councillors,




548    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and various subordinate officers; the Court of Assize is the only
French court in which trial by jury prevails, and in which are tried
all criminal cases excepting offences against the state; the civil tribunals of France hear and determine about one hundred and fifty
thousand lawsuits every year, and the criminal courts try about
four thousand cases.
In each department of France, - eighty-nine in number, - there is
a Court of Original Jurisdiction; that of the department of Paris is
composed of one President, eight Vice-Presidents, fifty-five Judges,
twenty-four Procureurs, and forty-three Registrars; this court decides,
without appeal, actions relating to the person, or to personal property to the amount of three hundred dollars.
A most extraordinary court is the Tribunal of Commerce, which
exists in all large towns, and is composed of the heads of mercantile
houses, elected for two years, at a meeting of influential merchants,
a-list of whom is drawn up by the Mayor (Prefect), and approved by
the Minister of the Interior; the object of these courts is to put corn.
mercial disputes and differences under the adjudication of the merchants themselves. The Tribunal of Commerce of Paris is composed of thirty Judges, and Deputy Judges, and a President; attached
to it are ten police officers, who arrest persons for debt. There are
about one thousand five hundred stock companies formed every year
in Paris, and there are one thousand six hundred cases of bankruptcy
within the same period. These latter matters come before the Tribunal of Commerce. There is one great police tribunal in Paris, corresponding to our police courts; there are twenty judges of the
peace, one hundred and twenty-two notaries, eighty appraisers and
auctioneers, who are exclusively government officers, one hundred
and fifty sheriffs' officers (Huissiers), who protest bills, and a board
of masters and foremen, called Prud'hommes, who amicably settle
disputes about wages, strikes, apprenticeships, etc., etc.
There are nine hundred legal advocates in Paris, and upwards of
two hundred solicitors and attorneys (avoues); the advocates have
a bureau for gratuitous advice to the poor, open every Saturday.
The Palace of Justice, which is to Paris what the Tombs Court is to
New York, the great centre of police hearings and confinements,
is a large building on an island in the Seine, where are also the
police head-quarters of Paris. Very many courts, both high and low,
and several prisons, cluster about this ancient pile, and here Marie




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                    549
Antoinette and the Girondins were imprisoned. Across the way is the
Tribunal of Commerce; not far off is the Morgue, or dead-house.
Sumptuous barracks and superb new architectures give dignity and terror to this neighborhood of crime, destitution, and dispute, where
have been enacted, through successive ages, the long drama of tyranny,
torture, and despair, which makes so much of the literature of France.
Near by is the Cathedral, and that Chapel, where are kept, according
to the superstition, the very relics of the crucifixion of Christ. It is
upon this spot, also, that the enthroned Master of France visits,
through his satellites, the penalties of his vengeance upon the
enemies of his dynasty; for, as close by the Palace of Justice and the
prisons stands the Hotel de Ville, or City Hall of Paris, the objective
point of all popular uprisings, the capitol of the capital city, so
Napoleon has chosen the favorite haunt of his enemies to keep his
household of police agents, who are to feel in secret the pulse of Paris.
Paris has two district administrations, like New York; the Prefect
of the Seine is the Mayor; the Prefect of Police is the superintendent thereof, and he has charge of the eight prisons of Paris, and of all
the spies, prostitutes, scavengers, firemen, policemen, bill-posters,
vagrants, lotteries, gamblers, and whatever belongs to the political,
sanitary, or criminal administration of the department. The Prefect
of the Seine is the'superintendent of all public works, establishments,
churches, markets, hospitals, public festivals, etc., etc.; under him
are an immense number of officials. The annual jury list of the
department of Paris contains two thousand jurors; ecclesiastics,
school-masters, domestics, workmen, and illiterate people are excluded
from serving on juries.
There are more than four hundred prisons in France, occupied by
about seventy-one thousand people, and there is one convict station
at Toulon. One great prison of Paris is modelled on the American
solitary-cell plan. Condemned persons are publicly executed by the
guillotine. Imprisonment for debt has been recently abolished in
France. To take out any patent in France requires the payment of
twenty dollars a year. Authors pay nothing for copyright. To
carry a gun costs five dollars a year.
Nothing would more astound an American in France than to observe the singular administration of justice, wherein the judge browbeats the witness, bullies and inveigles the prisoner, and uses every
energy to make him convict himself. In all political trials, this is
eminently the case, as witness the following scene: —




550    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
PARISIAN POLICE COURT. -A citizen is charged with having excited the citizens to hate each other, etc., etc. Prisoner. I move
that my trial be postponed. My lawyer is not ready. President.
When will he be ready?  Prisoner. Perhaps in three or four years,
Mr. President. (Great surprise on the bench, anid laughter in the
audience.) Prisoner. Let me explain; I have confidence only in my
young nephew, who has just commenced studying law. He needs
time, but I tell you, Mr. President, he will make a fiist-rate lawyer.
Another prisoner is accused of having uttered seditious cries.
President. Do you admit the charge?  Prisoner. I had drunk a little
too much last night. President. What did you shout? Prisoner. I
shouted Vive la Republique! President. Have you previously been
condemned on the same charge? Prisoner. Yes. President. When?
Prisoner. About eighteen years ago. President. What seditious
cries did you utter at that time? Prisoner. You must remember
what it was, for you yourself sentenced me. President. What seditious cries did you utter? Prisoner. Well, I shouted then Vive
l'Empereur! (Loud laughter in the audience.)
In like manner the police of Paris is protected in all its proceedings, requiring no warrant to enter any house, or search any baggage. To strike a French policeman is a high crime, but he has
little responsibility, if he unjustly maltreats a citizen, or stranger,
and during times of political excitement, the police and soldiery are
encouraged to be merciless and aggressive, for the highest crime in
France is to manifest ill-will to the imperial dynasty. Dr. Johnson,
of Paris, a celebrated physician and journalist, gave an account, in a
recent letter, of the treatment of an American, Mr. J. Q. A. Warren,
of Boston, lay the imperial police, during the election riots of 1869:"Mr. Warren was proceeding along the Boulevard Montmartre, in
company with another American, when he saw the police chasing the
crowd, and they turned into a side street, the Rue Richelieu, to get
out of the way. They had not got far when they heard the beat of
a drum. This was followed by a rush of police agents, and before
they had time to remonstrate, or to state wh9 they were, they were
struck several times, and Mr. Warren was knocked down. His friend
owed his exemption from further ill-usage and imprisonment, to th6
fact of his wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor; but Mr.
Warren, as he was trying to rise to his feet, was seized and dragged
to the Mairie in the Rue Droupt. When he arrived there he found
the large court-yard full of prisoners and policemen. After a delay




THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                  551
of about half an hour, he was taken to the Inspector's room and
searched. All his papers and money were taken from him. After
his name, address, and signalement had been taken down, his papers,
and, as he supposed, his money, were replaced in his pockets; but he
discovered subsequently that his funds had not been restored. A
further examination was made of his person for weapons, after which
he was transferred to another room, which was crowded with prisoners of almost'every station in life. After remaining there about
half an hour, the prisoners were formed into a body, numbering
about seven hundred, and marched, guarded by soldiers and policemen, to the Conciergerie prison at the other side of the river.
"This was about one o'clock at night. During the march the
utmost brutality was exercised toward the prisoners, and they were
driven and pushed along like a herd of cattle. Mr. Warren was so
badly bruised and hurt that he had to be supported by two of the prisoners. His shirt and clothes were covered with blood from the effect
of the blows which had been wantonly inflicted upon him in the yard
of the Mairie, by one of the Sergeants de Ville. After they reached
the Conciergerie, about three in-the morning, he fainted away, and was
conveyed for the night to a separate cell, where he was attended by
the surgeon of the prison, who administered chloroform and stimulants to him. He remained in the Conciergerie with the other prisoners, until seven o'clock on Friday evening, and they had nothing
all this time but a little soup of the weakest kind and some hard
bread. As evening approached, they were informed that they were
about to be transferred to the fort at Bicetre, in the suburbs of
Paris; on learning which, Mr. Warren managed to get a scrap of
paper, and wrote a letter to Dr. Johnson, informing him of his
position. The doctor immediately forwarded it to Mr. Washburne,
the American Minister, and at half-past twelve the same night, Mr.
Frank Moore, Assistant Secretary to the Legation, went to the Prefecture, and demanded his release. He was told that it was then too
late to do anything in the matter, but that it would be attended to
early in the morning.
"Shortly after he had despatched this note to Dr. Johnson, Mr.
Warren and the other prisoners were transferred in the close prison
carriages to the fort at Bicetre. They were kept standing in one of
the casemates there, suffering from the heat and thirst consequent
upon overcrowding, until nearly midnight. The roll was then called,
and the prisoners were marched, eight at a time, accompanied by a file




552    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
of soldiers, to the Inspector's room, in another building, where their
names, addresses, and personal descriptions were entered in a book.
This done, they were conveyed to a second casemate, and in proceeding to it each prisoner stopped by order, and picked up a bundle of
straw, which, with a blanket, was to constitute his bed. There they
were left in quietness for the rest of the night, but without food or
drink. The heat and odor of the place were insufferable, and were
aggravated by the fact that all the necessities of nature had to be
provided for in that crowded apartment. To men accustomed to
every luxury, as many of those confined there were, the sufferings
endured during this memorable night must have been a terrible ordeal.
It is stated that three of the prisoners died at the Conciergerie, while
at Bicetre a fourth lost his senses, and committed suicide.
"On Saturday noon an order reached the fort directing the release
of 3Mr. Warren. He was summoned to the Directors' room, and the
formality of entering in a book his name, personal description, and
address in Paris, having been again gone through, he was told that he
would be released the same evening. He was then taken back to the
casemate, where he received a little food, and at six o'clock he was
released and escorted to the railway by a corporal. Fortunately
a little silver, sufficient to pay his fare, which he had in one of
his pockets, had escaped or had not tempted the cupidity of his
captors."
These notes will convey some imperfect idea of.the civil administration of France, a government which seeks to satisfy the wants of
the people, by making them dependent upon it, and so robbing them
of self-reliance and personal energy, so that they are but parts of its
mighty machinery, whereof there is but one engineer, and he the sole
hero of France, - Louis Napoleon, the wily egotist.
The government is " an immense tutelary power," after the prophecy of De Tocqueville, " which takes upon itself alone to secure their
gratifications, and to watch over their fate.
" That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It
would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary,
to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.
For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses
to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it pro



THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.                   553
vides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their
industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances. What remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking, and all the trouble of living?
" Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man
less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself.
The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has
predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as
benefits. After having thus successively taken each member of the
community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It
covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated
rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds
and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the
crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and
guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly
restrained from acting; such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates,
extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be
nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which
the government is the shepherd."
This is the remarkable prophecy of a French author, who has been
accused of rebuking republicanism, while he was really its most
thoughtful and observing friend, and who lived down to Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat, and died sorrowful because of it, and with sad
contempt for its author. Let him be also the exponent of the chances
of this violent dynasty for long life and for historic honor:"Although this government has established itself by one of the
greatest crimes recorded in history, nevertheless it will last for some
length of'time, unless it precipitates itself to destruction. It will last
till its excesses, its wars, its corruptions, have effaced in the public
mind the dread of socialism, -a change requiring time. God grant
that in the interval it may not end in a manner almost as prejudicial
to us as to itself, - in some extravagant foreign enterprise. We know
it but too well in France, - governments never escape the law of
their origin. This government, which comes by the army, which can
only last by the army, which traces back its popularity, and even its
70




554    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH.THE OLD.
essence, to the recollections of military glory, - this government will
be fatally impelled to seek for aggrandizement of territory and for
exclusive influence abroad; in other words, -to war. That at last is
what I fear, and what all reasonable men dread as I do. War would
assuredly be its death; but its death would perhaps cost dear."




CHAPTER XXI.
POIITICS AND POLITICIANS OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT.
A sketch of the leading public men of France, and of the parties which they represent, with
a brief statement of the present political issues of Europe at large.
EUROPE may be compared to a crab, both in appearance and in
sensibility; all alive at a touch from without, yet within of feeble
circulation, and at all points wearing the articulated armor of war.
The most sensitive and mobile part of this irregular aggregation of
unlike states is France, which is inhabited by the most democratic
and courageous population of Europe, and which is accustomed to
consider itself the leading state of civilization. In every political
respect this assurance is well founded; for there is but one state
which can, by its own internal convulsions, make Europe rush to
arms, and this is France. Prussia, Austria, and Italy may make war
together; tremendous mutiny may shake the British Empire in India;
Germany may move in solid body upon Denmark; the Kaiser and
the Czar may crush out the MIaygars, and Spain may expel its Queen,
and still Europe will stay at home and read the tidings without
anxiety; but when Paris rises and France concurs, the European
world feels sympathy, the people of every state start to arms, and
the stock markets of Christendom are seized with panic.
The cause of this is, that France is truly the state by which statesmen steer; it is not her rulers which men dread, but her people and
her ideas; and therefore the ruling and wealthy classes of neighboring nations are always satisfied to see France securely folded in the
arms of some despotism, whether this be the Bonapartes' or the
Bourbons'.
By a different process the people of the neighboring states are
readily able to soothe themselves when some adventurer or some reactionist seizes France; the self-complacency and egotism of the
French people is irritating to the Germans, their highly civilized
neighbors, who are at heart as anxious for free institutions as the
French, and by turning to account the national jealousy of their peo555




556    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
ple, the monarchs of France and Germany are able in the last resort
to destroy sympathy between Saxon and Celtic republicans, and make
them enemies instead of allies. With all this, the people who do not
love the French, feel the contact, the magnetism, and the example of
France, where there are politicians more than the equals of monarchs
in organizing and in oratory, and where party spirit is not the blind
rancor of traditional classes, as in England, but the intelligent apprehension of men-and issues. To us, in America, there is no politics
in Germany; we know nothing about it, nor about Austrian, Scandinavian, and Greek politics; but a French politician has the world for
his theatre, and for his fellow-actors the most formidable partisans in
Europe. Associated with France in accord upon almost all questions
of political principle are Italy and Spain; like political parties exist
in each, at the same time arrayed upon different sides of the same
general issues, for they are all of what are called the Latin races,
and geographically they uphold France as a pair of supporters in
heraldry bears up a shield. At the present time we see in Italy, in
Spain, and in France, a Bourbon party, a Bonaparte party, a Republican party, and a Democratic party, and the head-quarters of all these
parties is in Paris, or close by; there exist the political journals
which encourage party spirit; there speaks the talent which turns
bias into conviction and hope into enthusiasm; thence go the suggestions and the apostles of politics, Louis Blanc to England, De
Tocqueville and Genet to America, Bernadotte to Sweden. When
Beranger writes a Republican song the winds blow the music of it to
all the peoples; when Henri Rochefort publishes a saucy journal the
Atlantic cable keeps America informed as to its contents. The French
elections are the only elections that are of consequence to us or to
Europe; yet France in her totality is not a state as profoundly agitated in things political as America; for a Republic has no other
national life than politics. Paris is earnest in behalf of the state,
but the rural provinces of France are, pervaded by dense ignorance,
social, political, and economical; and. it is this element on which
Bonapartism relies to maintain itself in its bad eminence. Glory can
reach further than truth, and to this day there are said to be numbers of people in France who vote for the candidates of Napoleon
III., under the impression that he is the veritable banished man returned from St. Helena.
The Imperial party of France and of Europe is almost entirely a
personal party, with the bulk of it composed of the army, the navy,




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 557
and the office-holders, and the rural farmers and village folks closing
in by a sort of stupid necessity; there also vote with this party a
majority of the commercial classes, who are not admirers of the empire, but support it, rather than risk violent change and financial embarrassment. The chances are immensely in favor of any party that it
is in; for it has all the fears of prosperous and timid people to argue
upon, and all the machinery of office to use. It is computed that two
millions of votes go to the Emperor from people who take his wages and
eat his potage. The army is powerfully in his favor, and is kept continually whetted against the people, and enlivened by bounteous treatment; the clergy are not with him of choice, but prefer him to a more
liberal alternative; the conservative masses who have a dread of socialism, radicalism, and irreligion cling to Bonaparte as the most endurable horn of the dilemma; but the genuine Imperial party is made
up of that small body of soldiers of fortune and adventurers who,
knowing the lurking love of millions of French for the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, rallied round his exiled nephew, became members
of his invading corps at Strasbourg and Bologne, and who prepared
the way to the coupo d'etat of 1850; all of them  are politicians,
equally desperate with the heroes of revolutionary leagues in Mexico
and the South American Republics, but often men of exquisite manners and good education. There are besides, incorporated with this
party, many marshals and statesmen, who are ready to serve France
under any administration, and others who owe the Emperor personal
gratitude. In these notices we are in part indebted to Victor Hugo,
in part to Mr. Kinglake.
Most intimately associated with the Emperor was his illegitimate
brother, the Duke de Morny, child of Hortense Beauharnais by the
Count of Flahault, and a family name was purchased for him by Hortense's imperial father-in-law; to him, to Persigny, and to St. Arnaud,
Louis Napoleon owes his largest meed of gratitude. Morny was a
man of great daring, and gifted with more than common powers of
fascination. He had been a member of the Chamber of Deputies in
the time of the monarchy; but he was rather'known to the world as a
speculator than as a politician.  "He was a buyer and seller of
those fractional and volatile interests in trading adventures which go
by the name of' shares.' He knew how to found a' company,' and he
now undertook to establish institutions which were destined to be
more lucrative to him than any of his former adventures."
Morny, when twenty-seven years of age, was a master in all bodily




558    TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
exercises, a passionate steeple-chase rider, a clever racket player, an
excellent shot, an incomparable sportsman, and renowned for his successes in the salons and boudoirs; he concealed under frivolous
habits, and the rather English elegance of a man of fashion, the happiest qualities of mind and character. At an early age, he saw that
the world progressed with every new government that sprang up,
and that French society was being transformed. "The Old World,"
(these were his words) "sacrificed everything to form, and the thing
itself was of little consequence; a scoundrel with good manners was
preferred to a well-bred man of honor. All these ideas were filtered
into me, and my ears were rendered only too sensitive. In order to
be able to live with others, and correct my judgment, I have been
obliged to educate myself from the beginning again." He was President very long of the Corps Legislatif, made an immense fortune,
and married a Russian Princess of surpassing grace and beauty.
Persigny, however, was the arch-spirit at the elbow of Louis Napoleon.
His true name is Fialin, and he was born in 1808; originally he was
a Radical Socialist, but for forty years he has been a Bonapartist politician. He married a grand-daughter of Marshal Ney, and received
from the Emperor at his wedding a gift of one hundred thousand dollars. Louis Napoleon was, in 1848, elected to the National Assembly by three departments, through Persigny's manceuvres. In the
session of June 13, the validity of these elections was discussed, after
Lamartine had declared, on the previous day, that he should apply
the law of 1832, excluding all the Napoleonides from France, against
Louis Napoleon, until the Assembly revoked it. The debate was
long and animated,. and Louis Blanc, the Socialist, was decidedly
in favor of admitting the Prince. He employed the memorable
words:
"Let us guard against giving pretenders greater dimensions by
removing them. It is a good thing to see' them close by, for then
they appear to us as they really are. What did the uncle of Louis
Napoleon say? He said,'The Republic is like the sun.' We will
let the Emperor's nephew approach the sun of our Republic. I am
convinced that its beams will kill him."
The prophesy was reversed. The beams of Louis Napoleon's sun
killed the Republic.
Guizot expressed his opinion about Persigny in the following
words: "Persigny is no statesman; he is a diplomatic gamrin."
Calm judges, however, admit that, with all his errors, Persigny is the




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 559
very ablest man in the Napoleonic party. He has been Ambassador
to Russia and to England.
Two distinguished partisans of the Emperor hwae been liaupas and
Fleury, the latter being thus described:-    K
"The man who was the most able to make the President act, to
drive him deep into his own plot, and fiercely carry him through it,
was Major Fleury. Fleury was young, but his life had been checkered. HI-e was the son of a Paris tradesman, from whom, at an early
age, he had inherited a pleasant sum of money. He plunged into
the enjoyments of Paris with so much ardor, that that phase of his
career was soon cut short; but whilst his father's friends were no
doubt lamenting ten times a day that the boy had' eaten his fortune,'
young Fleury was at the foot of the ladder which was destined to
give him a control over the fate of a mighty nation."
He enlisted in the army as a common soldier; but the officers of
his corps were so well pleased with the young man, and so admired
the high spirit with which he met his change of fortune, that their
good will soon caused him to be raised from the ranks. It was perhaps his knowledge about horses which first caused him to be attached
to the staff of the President.
Maupas, one of the most despised of the Bonapartists, as the
chief of his police spies, and a fit successor to Fouquier Tinville, has
been sketched in aquafortis by Kinglake:" This person had been Prefect of the Department of the Upper
Garronne. Of him, his friends say that he had property, and that he
had never been used to obtain money dishonestly.
" His zeal had led him to desire that thirty-two persons, including
three members of the Council-General, should be seized and thrown
into prison on a charge of conspiring against the government. The
legal authorities of the department refused to suffer this, because they
said there was no ground for the charge.
" Then this Maupas, or De Maupas, proposed that the want of all
ground for accusing the men should be supplied by a stratagem, and
with that view he deliberately offered to arrange that incriminating
papers and arms and grenades should be secretly placed in the
houses of the men whom he wanted to have accused. Naturally, the
legal authorities of the department were horror-struck by the proposal, and they denounced the Prefect to the Keeper of the Seals.
Maupas was ordered to Paris. From the indignant and scornful
presence of M. Faucher he came away sobbing, and people who




560    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH TIIE OLD.
knew the truth supposed him to be forever disgraced and ruined; but
he went and told his sorrows to the President. The President of
course instantly saw that the man could be suborned. He admitted
him into the plot, and. on the 27th of October, appointed him Prefect
of Police."
A gentler spirit, who is now a member of the Emperor's ministry,
is Victor Duruy, a Protestant. Duruy, the Minister of Instruction,
characterized the Emperor in the following words: "The most liberal
man in the empire is the Emperor."
Duruy owed his present appointment to a clever and opportune bit
of flattery. He said about the Emperor's " Julius Caesar:" "I could
not have written it better myself. I say this to the author, not to the
Emperor."
Duruy is the author of a biography of Napoleon III., which, so
soon as he became minister, he introduced into the French schools as
a standard historical work. He has also charged the common-school
histories of France with adulation of the Emperor, whom he appears
sincerely to admire.
Drouyn de L'huys, the leading Napoleonic diplomatist, is sixty-four
years old, and he was not an actor in the coup d'etat; neither is he at
present in the favor of the Emperor.
Drouyn de L'huys inherited from his father a fortune of four million francs. His father was a great miser; and after his death a cask
was found in his cellar, containing a million in gold.
With his wife, Drouyn afterwards married a fortune of two hundred
thousand francs a year. He was, under Guizot, Director of Commerce
in the foreign ministry, but voted with the opposition, so that Guizot
at length let him drop. It is said that Guizot formed the following
judgment about him: "The man wants to be a minister, and is not
even a good clerk." When Drouyn quitted the ministry and the
Senate, in 1854, he was so opposed to the existing system, that he had
engraved on his cards, " Non-Senator."  When, in September, 1862,
Louis Napoleon offered him the portfolio of foreign affairs, which he
had thrice held, he replied, "I shall not accept it to-day; but I may
do so to-morrow."-" What do you mean by that? " Napoleon asked.
"I must first know the conditions. I will not enter on office through
a door where I shall be obliged to stoop." When he eventually accepted the portfolio, in October, he said, "I am willing to be the
driver, but I must protest against the string being pulled in the middle of the drive, and being ordered to turn back."




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 561
Thouvenel has been another leading minister of the Empire, and
an anecdote in his life shows that there is petticoat government even
in France.
Two months before the Emperor himself dismissed Thouvenel, the
latter not only sent in his resignation, in consequence of a violent
scene with Eugenie, but declared that he would leave Paris and
France, unless satisfaction were afforded him. Upon this, Eugenie
stated she was sorry for having gone too far, and insulted a tried
servant of the Emperor. After giving this explanation, however, the
Empress seized her son's hand, hurried to the Emperor's Cabinet, to
which he had retired after the above scene, and said to him, "You
are deceived, Louis. Thouvenel wishes to induce you to overthrow
the papacy, because social order and the existence of our dynasty
depend on its preservation."  The Emperor answered, " Who tells
you that I wish to overthrow the Pope? "-" Yes, I am sure they
want to destroy the papacy," the Empress interposed. " Calm yourself, madame," the Emperor continued;," everything will be arranged
in accordance with your wishes."
Both Eugenie and the young Prince Imperial figure unduly in the,
political gossip of the empire.
The Imperial Prince attended one of the recent series of manceu-.
vres at Chalons, on horseback, and always dined by the Emperor'sr
side. At the grand dinner, with which the manceuvres concluded,
Marshal Randon rose and said, "I drink the health of the Imperiatl
Prince, the hope of the army." All present joined in.. The little,
Prince, for whom his father poured out some champagne, drank a fewdrops, and -replied, without any suggestion, " I drink the health of:
the army, and hope to become a good soldier."
As a soldier and a writer, the Emperor is without doubt clever, likes
all his family.
The Napoleonides were all authors. It is well known that thefirst Napoleon wrote tragedies.  His brother Joseph published, in
1799, a romance,- " Moyna;" Lucien Bonaparte wrote a ro-.
mance, -" Stellina" - and an epic poem, pointed against his brother,l
" Charlemagne; or, the Liberated Church," the honorarium for which
was the principality of Canino, given him by the Pope. Louis
Bonaparte (the father of Napoleon III.) wrote a romance - " Marie; "
then another, " The Torments of Love; or, the Dutchman; " and
lastly a work, —"Holland under Louis." Achille Murat, the son
of the ex-King of Naples, who went to America in 1821, wrote a
71




562    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
book about America.  The works of Napoleon III. are well
known.
St. Arnaud, properly named Leroy, who was Minister of War at
the time of the coup d'etat, and Commander-in-Chief of the French in
the Crimea, was also a brilliant writer, though unprincipled, and
Kinglake says of him what may almost as truthfully be said of Louis
Napoleon's writings: -
"It would be impossible for the most skilful novelist, for the most
practised and successful elaborator of dramatic incidents, to exceed
in tragic power the effect De St. Arnaud's correspondence has upon
the mind of the attentive reader. With all the charm of familiar
pleasantries, unguarded verdicts on men and events, playful endearments, realizing most completely the strictly private nature of
these letters, now given to the world, there is. a dark figure in the
background, to which the eye turns constantly.  This figure —
struggling with an inexorable disease, impelled hither and thither by
an ambition that knew no bounds; heroically rising to do battle,
with the livid. hues of death upon its brow — is that of the Marshal."
Passing by the Napoleonist party for the present, we come to the
other two personal parties of France. the Bourbons and the Orleanists.
The House of Bourbon, which has intermarried with almost all
the old Catholic dynasties of Europe, derives its name from the
castle of Bourbon, in the centre of France; the Seignors of this
castle intermarried with the royal family, Capet, six hundred years
ago, and a branch of the House mounted to the throne in the person
of the Huguenot King, Henry IV.; one of the grandsons of Henry
IV. was Louis XIV., the Grand, and another was Philippe, Duke of
Orleans; hence arose from the same stock the rival houses of Bourbon and Orleans. When Louis XVI. was condemned to death by the
Republicans, the Duke of Orleans voted for his execution; when
Charles X., the last reigning Bourbon, was driven from France, Louis
Philippe, Duke of Orleans, accepted his crown. The Bourbons intermarried with the royal families of Naples, Parma, Placenza, and Spain,
while the House of Orleans intermarried with the royal family of
Belgium. The highest family connection of the Bonapartes is the
House of Savoy, - the oldest in Europe and now dominant in Italy,
-if we omit the marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte with the House of
Hapsburg, which gave him a child, whose mother afterward married




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 563
her Chamberlain during her husband's life.  Harriet Martineau
affectingly describes the exodus of the last Bourbon King from
France in the person of Charles X.:"When the train arrived on the heights above Cherbourg, the
spectacle that met the eyes of the travellers was very affecting.
The vessels in the harbor carried the tri-color, all but two, — two
ships in the distance, whose sails were hung out, and all evidently
ready for immediate departure. These were A'merican vessels engaged to carry the royal family into exile. The travelling-party
drove through the town without stopping, and immediately went on
board the' Great Britain,' the soldiers on the quay presenting arms,
and their officers saluting in grave silence, as. the exiles passed. An
officer waited on the King, to inquire whither he should have the
honor of escorting him.'To Spithead, England,' was the reply."
The French clergy has been at all times even a more formidable
enemy of liberal institutions than the French nobility, and in the
indignation of patriotic sentiment against them arose much of that
infidelity and irreligion which char~acterize a large minority of
Frenchmen. The first Napoleon adroitly managed to encourage the
national priesthood, while he intimidated the Pope, and he extorted
from the latter the privilege of regulating the churchmen within his
own dominions; there are, therefore, two religious political parties of
French Catholics, - the Gallicans and the Ultra-Montanes, - which, in
some degree, correspond to the Ghibellines and Guelphs of feudal
times; the Gallicans are headed, of course, by the Emperor, and
while they recognize the primacy of the Roman Pontiff over the
universal church, they assert the independence of national churches
in self-government and local discipline; the Ultra-Montanes are
headed by Montalembert and others, who hold that the Papal prerogative should have more weight than the self-government of
national churches. Montalembert, a brilliant orator and writer, and
a most consistent and uncompromising advocate of his church, and
of religious and political liberty, stands at the-head of a small, but
intellectual body of Catholics, who claim that worship should be free,
not subject to political restrictions, and who also belong to the radical
opposition party in politics, holding the Emperor's coup d'etat to have
been a usurpation which neither the present age nor posterity will
forgive  Montalembert is an admirer of the English government,




56(4    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
and during the American civil war he wrote a most vigorous pamphlet in favor of the Union, and the triumph of its arms.
The Legitimate party of France is still of some decaying social
prominence, and at the head of it stands the Count of Chambord,
the grandson of the last- Bourbon King, now (1869) forty-nine years
of age; he goes by the name, among his party, of Henri V., but he
dare not appear on French territory, and spends his time alternating
between Venice, Vienna, the German gambling baths, and London,
holding, as he goes, pompous drawing-rooms, attended by.a few sentimental old nobles; like all the later French Bourbons he is an imbecile, and being childless, he consented a few years ago to combine
the claims of his. line with that of the Orleans family, so that at
present the Count of Paris, Lduis Philippe's grandson, and formerly
aide-de-camp to General Geo. B. McClellan, may be considered, next
to the Napoleons, the favorite of the whole limited monarchical party
for the succession to the crown of France; the latter —young, not
yet in the prime of life - has passed his years for the most part in
England and in Spain; he has intermarried with his cousin, a member of the House of Bourbon, and bides his time, in the possession
of wealth, if not of contentment. Louis Napoleon,-who was treated
with too tender consideration by Louis Philippe, has pursued the
Orleans family with zealous severity; he confiscated their vast private
estates; he forbade the King of Italy to receive the chivalrous young
Orleanists into his army as volunteers in the war of 1866; and when
these princes espoused the cause of the Union Army in 1862, the
Emperor hastened to make overtures to England to recognize the
disruption of the United States. A prince of this sort may wear the
conceit of Augustus, and write the life of Caesar; but he will fail to
receive the serious admiration of the worthy part of mankind. The
Orleans princes, whose grandfather was a school-teacher, and whose
fathers were sent to the public schools, while the children of a
reigning King, have behaved with such dignified, yet Republican simplicity as to obtain praise in mouths of wisest censure; the mass of
Amni ieans at this day are undoubtedly their well-wishers, if not their
parts.
M. Berryer, who died recently, was born in 1790, and was one of
the most amiably bigoted of royalists and legitimists, besides being
the most fervid and classical orator of France; lie owed his- popularity
to the uprightness of his life, and the honesty of his convictions, and
also to the pains he took to defend people of all parties, whom the




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 565
government prosecuted. He defended Louis Napoleon after the failure of the Boulogne filibustering raid, and he defended Montalembert when prosecuted in 1848. Berryer is one of those characters
who seem irreconcilable with popular government, preferring the feeling of loyalty to that of independence, and wishing to be a subject,
though of an unworthy King. The young imbecile, who goes by the
name of Count de Chambord, he called to the end of his days, Henri
V., and addressed a dying letter to him in the terms of'" Henri, O
mon roi!"
Guizot, the head of Louis Philippe's cabinet, was born in 1847, in
the south of France, and is a Protestant. He is: an unloved, austere,
scrupulous, and educated man, an author and historian of rare accomplishments, and a writer upon American history. As a politician
he has been voted into obscurity, under the empire. Thiers, who was
associatedwith him under the Orleans government, was born in 1797,
of poor mechanical parents, and is considered one of the most formidable debaters, and one of the best politicians in France. He was
the French Palmerston, the positive man of a negative and commercial sovereign, and he is the author of the greatest historical work
which recent France has produced, while he has also made the most
comprehensive and nettlesome speeches against Louis Napoleon from
his place in the Corps Legislatif. Thiers made his entrance into public
life as a journalist, like the best of French politicians, and was an
ally of Armand Carrel, who perished in a duel with Emile de
Girardin, the best of living newspaper editors in France, and perhaps
in the world.
Girardin, like several eminent Senators of the United States, is an
illegitimate son, and a smart, unstable politician. It was he, though
Republican, who nominated Louis Napoleon for President, and he was
the earliest to turn' against the arch-traitor.
Girardin is a man past middle age, and of middle height. His hair,
which is scanty behind, but fuller on the temples, falls in a carefully
folded curl over his forehead, under which, clever but unsteady eyes
stand forth. The slight squint in one eye produces a disagreeable
impression; but even more disagreeable is Girardin's harsh voice,
especially when he is speaking loudly and eagerly. Girardin appears
most pleasant and natural when alone. In the Chamber he often
produces. the effect of an actor, through the tricks he employs, owing
to his deficiency in oratory.
Girardin is immensely rich. As he was accused of venality, he




566    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
said in the Chamber, " I am accused of mercenary motives in order
to estrange the sympathies of the nation, although those who spread
these wretched calumnies know as well as you, gentlemen, that there
is no one rich enough to buy me. My ambition has nothing in common with avarice. All France cannot offer me a post which would
secure me even one-half of my income." Other great journalists of
France are Picard and Pelletan, both obdurate Democrats.  De
Tocqueville made a comparison between French and American
journalists, which was truer of forty years ago than of the present
day: —
"The characteristics of the.French journalist consist in a violent,
but frequently an eloquent and lofty manner of discussing the politics
of the day; and the exceptions to this habitual practice are only
occasional. The characteristics of the American journalist consist
in an open and coarse' appeal to the passions of the populace; and
he habitually abandons the principles of political science, to assail
the characters of individuals, to track them into private life, and
disclose all their weaknesses and errors."
The narrow jealousy with which Napoleon and the monarchs of
Europe regard the newspaper press is really a cause of its power.
The enlightened mind of the greatest of French critics upon America
observed that:-' The extreme license of the press tends indirectly to the maintenance of public order.  The individuals who are already in the
possession of a high station in the esteem of their fellow-citizens are
afraid to write in the newspapers, and they are thus deprived of the
most powerful instrument which they can use to excite the passions
of the multitude to their own advantage.
"The personal opinions of the editors have no kind of weight in
the eyes of the public; the only use of a journal'is, that it imparts
the knowledge of certain facts, and it is only by altering or distorting
those facts that a journalist can contribute to the support of his own
views.
"But, although the press is limited to these recourses, its influence
in America is immense. It is the power which impels the circulation
of political life through all the districts of that vast territory. Its
eye is constantly open to detect the secret springs of political designs, and to summon the leaders of all parties to the bar of public
opinion.  It rallies the interests of the community round certain




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 567
principles, and it draws up the creed which factions adopt; for it
affords a means of intercourse between parties which hear, and which
address each other, without ever having been in immediate contact.
When a great number of the organs of the press adopt the same line
of conduct, their influence becomes irresistible, and public opinion,
when it is perpetually assailed from the same side, eventually yields
to the attack. In the United States, each separate journal exercises
but little authority; but the power of the periodical press is only
second to that of the people."
The Republican party of France is properly the Orleans party,
believing in a constitutional government, and if necessary, a citizen
King. The Democratic party is the old party of the Revolution,
which has learned little more moderation and caution than the Bourbons. The American Republicans, except in the indicated permanence
of their institutions, are little remarked in France, although the
resident American population of Paris is from five to fifteen thousand.
It is ordinarily no more than the former figure. It supports in the
city of Paris eight special restaurants, four American physicians,
four dentists, and five banking-houses. It has no newspaper, truthfully speaking, the Franco-American being printed, not in Paris, as
alleged, but in London, and folded in Paris. The Paris "Times" is an
English weekly, dated at Paris, likewise, and devoted to praising all
the hotels which will advertise. "Galignani's Messenger" (pronounced
Gally-nanny) is the only daily paper in the English language published on the continent,if we except the " Levant Herald," at Constantinople, which is sometimes a daily and sometimes a monthly. The
Galignanis were Italians, resident in England, and in 1814, when
Napoleon was beaten to Elba the enormous number of Englishmen
that came pell-mell to Paris, to triumph in the humiliation of France
and see its monuments, suggested to them a bookstore and readingroom, and afterward a news circular. This was a mere tract at first,
but in the long peace that ensued twenty thousand Englishmen a year
crossed the Straits of Dover, and ten thousand of these settled in
Paris; the little daily paper grew apace, until now it is of ordinary
size, and the subscription price of it is thirty dollars a year in
gold.
It is cheaply edited, beinrg in great part reproductions or translations of news, and editorials from French, German, and English
journals; and is so closely managed that if you desire to buy five




568     THE NEW WORLD COMIPARED WITH THE OLD.
copies of any number you must order them the night before issue.
The Galignanis report an income of twenty-five thousand dollars a.
year. The senior brother has been decorated with the cross of the
Legion of Honor, and, together, they have founded a small hospital
for Englishmen at Neuilly, near Paris. Their guide-book of Paris
is the best in the English language, and they have published better
editions of Byron than any English house.
The Galignanis, however, neither in their paper nor themselves, are
of the slightest political influence in France, but are a copartnership
of shrewd and prudent money-makers, who are probably Imperialists,
if anything, and who take particular care to stir up no imperial enmity to their flourishing trade. The French Republicans, indeed, get
little sympathy from any recognized American official instrumentality
in France, and the Imperial government seems to master all our ministers in turn, so that even General Dix, when he gave up his mission
on the eve of an important French election, devoted his last official
appearance to a eulogy upon the Emperor. We generally send amiable gentlemen to represent us abroad, but seldom gentlemen who seem
to be aware of political proprieties.
These defects of understanding in our agents are particularly annoying if not embarrassing to French republicans, who expect countenance, certainly not opposition, from us, as the model nation by
whose example they appeal.
Chief amongst the radical Democrats is probably Jules Favre, the
great classical advocate of Paris. This orator is the Mirabeau of the
era: the man who means mischief to the empire, and never conceals
it; who never took the personal oath to the Emperor, but evaded it,
by standing up in his seat and saying: ( Je jure." He is an old-time
Republican, austere and bilious, and a long hater, who will never
serve when appointed on any committee to the throne, but maintains
himself prince-like, by the practice of law, and is the conscience
of the fuiture and the past, in the face of this temporary despotism.
Standing in court, on a trivial political cause, his presence is like that
of Daniel Webster, in the height of his national fame, pleading a
civil matter. Favre is scarcely more than fifty-five. His voice is
clear, and powerful as Spurgeon's. His separate arguments, on
whatever subject, are monuments of pure and beautiful construction,
and with a wit that is of the basis of cold steel, he flashes it so
dexterously that you do not see the murder in it. Out of this deadly




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE' CONTINENT. 569
by-play, rising into gladiatorial stature, he gives direct and thunderous
assault, never faltering, nor gathering breath, his eyes burning yellow under their inexhaustible reservoirs, flinging a baneful light upon
the arena, and his own goodly height, rising and expanding till, in
the end, there is no audience, nor disputant, nor tribunal, but only
this magnificent intellectual engine, silent at the.foot of the pyramid
of argument he has spontaneously erected.
This is Jules Favre, with his grayish-brown hair pushed straight
back, leonine, like Calhoun's, - more imperial in the minority, than
he who decrees and it is done.  He is of the temperament of
Thomas H. Benton, with the elastic manners and facilities of Clay,
provided you tell them both to carry their point without awakening
a lion in the same room, that would be apt to eat them if he got
up.
The oratory of France in the present age is far in advance of that
of all contemporary legislative bodies, and immeasurably fine by the
side of that of the American House of Representatives, where it is
still the rule, as M. De Tocqueville remarked, that " there is hardly a
member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home without
having despatched at least one speech to his constituents; nor who
will endure any interruption until he has introduced into his harangue
whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the States of
which the Union is composed, and especially the district which he
represents. He therefore presents.to the mind of his auditors a succession of great general truths (which he himself only comprehends
and expresses "confusedly), and of petty minutie, which he is but too
able to discover and to point out. The consequence is that the
debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed,
and that they seem rather to drag their slow length along than to
advance towards a distinct object."
The Democratic party of France includes some terrible spirits, and
no less terrible superstitions, of which latter are Socialism and
Communism.
Communism is a more radical and extravagant form of Socialism,
the latter aiming to redistribute property and labor, and organize
society upon the principle of co-operation instead of by competition
as at present; the Communist, however, proposes to abolish domestic
government, parental authority, and the relation of husband and
wife. The Socialist does not strike at the roots of domestic life, but
argues that many of the vicissitudes and privations of the bulk of
72




570    THE NEW' WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
mankind are due to the unequal distribution of the soil; the Socialist,
therefore, is merely a very radical Republican, but the Comnmunist often urges that nbt alone are the distinctions of wealth unfair, but
that the family relation itself is artificial. The greatest of the
Socialists is Louis Blanc; the most illustrious of the Communists was
Fourier, while the father of the latter sect was St. Simon.
Louis Blanc was born in Spain, in 1813, and in early life was a
lawyer's clerk, and a teacher; later he became an editor, an author,
and an orator, and in 1848 lie was driven from France to London,
where he became a remarkable journalist and historian, writing with
facility in both languages; his history of the French Revolution is a
book of immense research, and in part is probably the best account
of that great popular uprising. Blanc, has hundreds of thousands
of disciples among the French working-men; his principal socialistic
work is entitled I" The Organization of Labor," and it advocates the
absorption of the individual in a vast " solidality," where each would
receive according to his needs, and contribute according-o his abilities. A huge series of national workshops were actually constructed
in Paris, upon Blanc's plan; but they proved unsuccessful, and were
abandoned. Louis Blanc has shown much dignity of character, and
his life has probably been useful to mankind; his writings have been
translated into almost all languages, and he has adherents in every
country, even in England.
St. Simon was a French nobleman, descended from Charlemagne,
born at Paris in 1760, well educated, and given a commission in the
French army, which he accompanied to America, and he fought with
distinction at the capture of Yorktown, receiving the personal encomium of Washington; he sympathized with the French Revolution,
became immensely rich, and set himself to work with a wonderful
method and perseverance to discover and elaborate a system of reorganizing society and government; in the prosecution of this inquiry
he spent enormous sums of money in entertaining men of science
and of literature, and finally he became poor, to hunger and beggary;
the latter part of his life was made comfortable, and he became the
head of a sect which still exists to hold his name in reverence. The
story of St. Simon's life is entertaining and startling beyond that of,
almost any man of letters. His theory was, that religion ought to
direct all the social forces toward the moral and physical amelioration of the class which is at once the most numerous and the most
poor; he conceived a social hierarchy, which should direct this amel



POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 571
ioration, - a new spiritual church, sanctifying science and industry,
regulating vocations, fixing salaries, dividing heritages, and taking
the best measures to make the labors of each conduce to the good of
all. St. Simon's system is therefore reactionary against the Christianity which pays no attention to science; for he conceived that
Christianity was-by nature progressive, and meant to be modified by
the changing circumstances of times and countries, whereas he
alleged that it had been stiffened into dogmas, and that its clergy
was ignorant of the thoughts, manners, and studies of modern
times.
Fourier died in 1837; he. had been a merchant's son and a
traveller, and in the Revolution had lost both his fortune and his
liberty; but while employed at Marseilles in superintending the
destruction of an immense quantity of rice, held for higher prices in
time of famine until it had rotted, his attention was called to the
frauds and duplicities of commerce, and he set to work to invent
some plan, whereby the people might be made independent of grasping capitalists; the consequence was, his system of Socialism, which
he elaborated by patient years of thought and writing, living meantime in the most frugal manner, alone, and befriended chiefly by his
own enthusiasm; at the close of his life a small group of intellectual
men gathered around him, learned of his system from his own lips,
and became its apostles. Amongst these were some Americans, who
translated and published one of his large books in New York. Fourier
believed that association would produce general riches, honesty,
attractive and varied industry, peace, health, and happiness; he
therefore projected associations, or phalansteries, to consist of four
hundred families, or eighteen hundred persons, living in one immense
edifice in the centre of a large and highly cultivated domain, furnished
with workshops, studios, and instruments of industry and amusement. When the earth is covered with such palaces, they will unite
in groups and series under a unitary government; there will be but
one language; the only armies will be great armies of industry, to
irrigate, drain, and plant. Fourier does not make war directly upon
morals or religion. The property of his associations is to be held in
shares, five out of every twelve shares of which are due to labor, four
to capital, and three to talent. In his phalansteries the expense of
living would be reduced two-thirds, and the products of labor quadrupledcl.
Fourier and his disciples have worked incessantly to obtain enough




72    THE: NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
capital to make experiments upon this plan; an eccentric Englishnman - Robert Owen - started three phalansteries, one in America,
one in Scotland, and a third in England.
The most remarkably educated of all Socialists was Auguste
Comte; the most extravagant, was probably Proudhon. Auguste
Comte, one of the pupils of St. Simon, is the author of what is
called the " Positive Philosophy," which has an immense number of
disciples in France,. and throughout the world; he considers theology
and metaphysics to be disturbing elements in civilization, and proposes a new religion, and a new philosophy, based entirely upon
discovering the laws of phenomena, and discarding as vain all.inquiries into the causes and essences of things.
The extraordinary dissemination of socialistic principles from
France throughout the world is attributable to the success of the
French Revolution, which broke up the great landed estates of the
aristocracy, redistributed property in small parcels, and immensely
elevated the condition of the laboring classes.  Panting for still
more extended benefits, radical Republicans of France have conceived
the distribution did not go far enough, that the Revolution became
conservative too soon, and that the evils of mankind can in great part
be avoided by annihilating the property, and even the family institution.
One of the strictest and most penurious business men this country has had —Stephen Girard —was at the same time a Jacobin
Republican; his vessels were named the I" Voltaire," the " Rousseau,"
and the "MIontesquieu." He directed in his will that no clergyman
should be allowed to enter the grounds of the Girard College, which
he endowed, and the only religious people in whom he had any confidence were the Quakers.
Socialistic experiments have been frequently made in this country,
and some of them continue to this day, while in some places Communism has been mixed with extreme superstition. The most successful phalanstery that we have, is of the latter class, and it is called
the Oneida Community, wherein gross sensuality, blasphemy, and
industry are about equally represented. Of communistic associations
organized directly upon the plans of Robert Owen and Fourier, we
have had recent examples in the environs of New York, at Red Bank,
and at Modern Times. While it is common to say that France is
eminently the land of Socialism, the remark is not unfrequently made
in Europe that America is also filled with socialistic biases; in 1866




41~~~~~~~T1
"';  iI
2.
~=.5......        _ _ _  _................
4
tIALLS (14 LEGISLATION.
1-The Saloon of State, Paris.  2-The Senate of France.  3-The House of
Commons, London.  4-The House of Representatives, Washington.








POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 573
Mr. Hepworth Dixon filled a large book with accounts of communistic
sects and bands which he had visited in the United States. It is
not improbable that, as our country grows more densely populated,
we shall have in some form socialistic agitations amongst the workinig people, and these may become embittered by the strides of great
corporations and by combinations of capitalists to affect the prices of
the necessaries of life.
The French student, and the student-class generally on the continent of Europe, is more liberal and generous than the student-class
of England, where reaction begins in the nursery.
It was to me almost incomprehensible to witness one day, before
L'ecole des Beaux Artes, a prolonged riot between the art-students
and the Sergeants de Ville, all because of an obnoxious professor.
What had he done? Insulted them, refused their sketches, made
unfair discrimination in awards?
No! His crime was far greater. He had expressed a doubt of the
power of Eugene Delacroix; and for this transgression of the truthful
perception of art he was mobbed, and his resignation demanded.
We once had a riot in our own country over the disputed merits of
two actors; but it was international, not iesthetic, and its heroes were
butcher bqys. Shall we ever reach that enthusiasm for art when we
will stand guard over a picture with cudgels, or break a statue simply
because it is bad?
The irreligious: party of France is represented by such men as
Ernest Renan, the author of the' Secular Life of Christ."  Napoleon
III. expressed to the Italian ambassador in Paris his displeasure that
Renan had been granted a decoration by Victor Emmanuel. "Sire,"
the envoy replied," we believed we were acting in accordance with
your intentions, as you, in your speech from the throne, entered
decidedly on the liberal path." —" I shall turn back," Napoleon said
to this; "the nation are ungrateful; by granting their wishes, it
only makes their mouths water for fresh concessions."  To which the
envoy retorted, "The people of Paris will soon take occasion to display their ingratitude; and they will elect Picard " (the government
candidate), " and not Pelletan." -" You are mistaken," the Emperor
replied.' Pelletan will be elected, and I shall be glad at its happening; for the result of this election will prove that the destructive
parties in France still have a broad bottom, and that I~ am still a
necessity."




57et  TIIE NEW WORLD' COMPArIED WITH THE OLD.
A fierce political campaign in France was well exemplified in the
election of Louis Bonaparte for President, when, through the exer.tions of Persigny, legions of emissaries were sent into the country
to work on the fancy of the people by fabulous promises, pamphlets,
and songs. Peddlers of every description smuggled his portrait into
everybody's hands; upon snuff and work boxes, upon everything
that offered the space, appeared the inevitable physiognomy with the
goat's beard and mustache. An army of organ-grinders was sent
through all the towns, and sang, to the tune of the " Trois couleurs,"
the praise of the hero of Boulogne and Strasbourg. Absurd rumors
were spread about: at one place it was said the candidate intended
to give a million to the troops; at another, that he had promised a
milliard to the workmen. Electoral committees, agents, newspapers,
- all praised the man who was scarce able to keep his English milliner and his horse, and who was still in debt for the brilliantmounted grand cross of the Legion of Honor, and the plumed hat in
which he looked like a circus-rider. The organ-grinders sang in the
streets of all large towns, " Francais, voulez-vous du bon, Choissez
Napoleon!"
The elections in France for the Corps Legislatif, in 1869, resulted
as follows: government candidates elected, one hundred and ninetythree; opposition candidates elected, ninety. The number of the opposition party in the previous Corps Legislatif was forty-five. This
result gave the greatest alarm to the Bonaparte party, and led to the
proposed reforms as cited in the preceding chapter; for although
Napoleon's candidates were still in the majority, even a loss of position is scarcely less a disaster where one's enemies are so uncompromising.
"On how many votes can the Opposition count? " Napoleon asked
Persigny, prior to a previous election to the Legislative Assembly.
"They will get twenty-five," Persigny replied.
"That is a great deal too many," the Emperor said, earnestly.
"The Opposition which eventually overthrew the Restoration was at
first only seventeen strong."
The main features of the late Parisian elections, according to a
newspaper correspondent are, on the one side, the annihilation of the
government interest in that great city, and on the other side the coldblooded and successful resolution of the electors to send to the House
not only decided opponents, but the most dangerous, the most
inimical, or, as is said in Paris, the most " irreconcilable " of oppo



rOLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 575
nents. MIM. Garnier-Pages and Carnot are eliminated, not as suspected, but as not sufficient for the deadly war. Bi. Gueroult is
swept away for parleying with Prince Napoleon, as Ollivier did with
the Emperor. M. Jules Favre is in danger for having shown too
much politeness to M. Rouher, and for having asserted in the House
that habit of complimentary exordium, which is a rule and an ornament of the bar. And if you will get at the true reason for the
clean sweep of the Parisian representatives, you will find in the end
that they are blamed and dismissed for having sat six years in the
House without having contrived any great and decisive event, and
for having confronted the government during six years without having
been able to overthrow it.
In 1863 about five million three hundred thousand electors voted
for official candidates, and one million eight hundred thousand against
them. This year (1869) we have about four million electors true to
official or agreeable candidates, and three million two hundred thousand against them; and that is to say, only a majority of about eight
-hundred thousand voices is left in France to the existing government.
"The last of the public political meetings," says the correspondent, " was held last night, the law forbidding any assemblages of this
sort during the five days next preceding the opening of the polls.
The first day on which they were permitted was the 2d of May
(1869). During this fortnight we have had in the Department of the
Seine two hundred and fifteen of these meetings. The restrictions
with which the law that permits them hedges them about have hitherto
been noticed. Considering the irritating nature of these restrictions,
and considering that all persons taking part in them, under the age
of forty-nine years, namely, nine-tenths of all the participants, were
exercising their rilght of assembling for the first time in their lives, it
ought to be admitted that the Paris people have creditably carried out
their share of the experiment. And even the authorities - considering what they are — almost deserve a good mark. They have not
dissolved more than twenty or thirty meetings during the fortnight."
When we pass French politics and come to the wider arena of European politics, we shall find that Italy is the most restless state in
Europe,- the land of MIazzini, Garibaldi, and their great party of
compatriots; while Switzerland is the neutral ground where the discontented public spirits meet,- Poles, Bohemians, 1Magyars, Germans, and French; that little space of mountain land, as in the days
of the Griitli, is still the scene of holy midnight conspiracy, and the




576    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
nost remarkable of its refugees has been Joseph Mazzini, born in
1808, the founder of the Young Europe Party,- an ardent, eloquent,
and unfortunate patriot and author, and the political father of Garibaldi, whose political views he has himself expressed as follows:"The birth and growth of national life in Italy were Republican,
and gave origin to our Communes before the days of Rome. Our:national life was Republican, and creator of the idea of unity in
Rome, before the Empire; and Republican in its new birth and growth
in our cities of the Middle Ages, repealing the Italian mission in
Europe, and extending the link of moral unity from people to people, through religion, art, industry, and commerce. All our great
records are Republican, and nearly all our great men, whether of heart
or intellect, were Republicans. The tendencies and customs of our
civil life, and of our dawning social institutions, are. Republican.
Italy.has had Patriarchs, but no patriciate condottieri; merchant
rulers who had raised themselves above their fellow-citizens, by arms
or wealth, but not an aristocracy similar to those of other European
lands, compact, united, guided by universally accepted leaders, and'
directed by a single political aim."
Garibaldi, one of the most famed names in modern history, was a
poor fisherman's boy, born in Nice, sixty-one years ago. The first
thing remembered of him is that he nearly lost his life, to save
a poor washerwoman from drowning. He saw his country divided
into twenty little states, each subject to a tyrant whose power lay
in mercenary foreign soldiery; and foreign kings, under the affectation of a protectorate, commanded these petty tyrants, so that the
people were kept poor, ignorant, and servile. Great, fat convents and
abbeys, free from taxation, covered the land, the occupants of which
held fealty only to the Pope, and these had no sympathy with freedom. Garibaldi learned to hate the name of the King. He became
a Republican while yet a boy, and, visiting Rome, saw that ancient
and glorious city, the natural and traditional capital of Italy, full of
ignorance and violence. He joined a secret society of patriots, was
detected by spies, and.compelled to fly to a foreign land.
He became a sailor, and, after many voyages, arrived in South
America, where the people were throwing off the yoke of their
despots. He raised the flag of the Republic of Uraguay, put to sea
in a schooner, and fought several desperate engagements. At last
shot down on his deck, he was dragged ashore, chained in a dungeon,
and tortured; but escaping, raised the Republican flag again, and




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 577
battled till the day of independence. Then, in 1848, with his Italian
troops he sailed from South America for his own country, carrying
back his wife Anna, a noble and courageous woman, who had ridden
often into action at his side. Soon afterwards the people rose against
their tyrants, over all the peninsula. Garibaldi marched to Rome
at the head of'his command. There Frenchmen and Neapolitans had
beleaguered the city. The Pope had run away. Garibaldi beat the
French and the Bourbons in several splendid engagements. Finally
enormous numbers overturned the Roman Republic.
Garibaldi took to the mountains for the cause of the union of
Italy, saying in his proclamation, " I offer you hunger, thirst, cold,
war, and death; he who accepts these terms, let him follow me!"
His conduct in this desperate engagement was the perfection of gexneralship. Sherman never moved men more skilfully, nor did Sheridan
ever make more sagacious battle. The Austrians, the French, and
the Neapolitan mercenaries closed round his gallant little band;*
and the hero's wife, refusing to desert him, died of hunger and fatigue:
at his side.,Death was proclaimed to whoever should give him shelter now. He escaped at last and sailed for New York, an exile. For
three years he worked with Signor Meucci, his countryman, on Staten
Island; and seeing, at last, the people's cause rising again, he re —
turned to Nice, his birthplace.
In 1859, Italy declared war. Garibaldi's services, were gladly-.Lccepted against the Austrians, and his command was called " The
Hunters of the Alps." He did the severest and noblest service of
the war. In 1860, in the month of November, Garibaldi sailed by
night, through the foreign fleets at Genoa, with a handful of brave
men, landed at Sicily, drove out the mercenaries, marched through to
the island, conquering, crossed the Straits, advanced upon Naples,
and gave half of the whole country to Victor Emmanuel. HIis campaign, in this case, was equal to any of Napoleon Bonaparte's. Still
the superstition of Europe maintained the Roman State, -a patch,
a blot, upon the map of Italy. In 1862, Garibaldi, with the watchword of "Rome, or death," moved upon the imperial city. The
minister of the King, Ratazzi, a pupil of the Jesuits, and then, as
now, a paid creature of Louis Napoleon, ordered regular troops to
capture Garibaldi.
The hero would not permit his volunteers to fire upon their countrymen, who, not so generous, shot down two hundred of the red-shirts,
and kept Italy disunited still.
73




578    THIE NEW W5ORILD COMPARED WVITII THE OLD.
The present Kingdom of Italy, twenty-four millions of men, has
grown out of four millions, and of these fifteen millions were the gift
of Garibaldi, single-handed. He would never accept money, nor a
title. They wished to make him Duke of Naples. He preferred,
instead, to be a simple farmer, upon the Island of Caprera, where he
has remained with his sons, in virtuous, manual labor, study, and
thought.
The appearance of the man is beautiful and simple, like his life.
He has a pair of soft, kind, brown eyes; his head is a little bald; a
gray curling beard encircles his brown face. His dress is quiet, like
his manner. His home is a rocky island, almost valueless, but by
his loving consecration. All these Italian patriots are enemies of
Louis Napoleon. Garibaldi said of him, at Varignano: -
"' IIe has destroyed two republics, -the French andI the Roman.
The third, the MIexican, will repay him for all. There is a God and
a judgment."
Whcen Garibaldi was told that Drouyn had been appointed a minister, he said l:"'Of what consequence is it who is the valet?  Tell me that
another man has become the master, and I shall be glad."
It would be an unpardonable omission to make no biographical
mention, in this book, of De Tocqueville, whose observations have,guided us so frequently, and he may be presented as the best type of
the philosophic, moderate, yet liberal statesman that France or Eu-:rope can show.
De Tocqueville was of gentle family, and great grandson of the
intrepid lawyer who defended Louis XVI., and he inherited fine
estates -in Normandy. In early youth he engaged in politics with
matchless ardor, and with an ambition the more intense that it was
absolutely free from the slightest taint of personal interest. He pursued this noble enterprise for fifteen years, in the contests of Parliament'ary debate, in the paroxysms of revolution, in the ranks of a
Constituent Assembly, in the service of the President of the Republic,
and in the direction of the Department of Foreign Affairs.  He
witnessed the catastrophe which extinguished the liberties of his
country, and realized the darkest of his own marvellous predictions;
but subjection to despotic power wasted him like an incurable disease, and amongst the causes which doubtless contributed to exhaust
his delicate and sensitive frame was the ever-recurring thought that




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND TIIE CONTINENT. 579
lie who survives the freedom  and the dignity of his country has
already lived too long.
AM. De Tocqueville was not thirty years old when his great work on
-America appeared. HIe awoke one morning, like Byron, and found
himself famous.
The publication of his last book, in 1856, was followed, in 1857,,by his last journey to England. The reception he met with here was
in fact the last triumph of his life. He was received on all sides with
demonstrations of respect and affection; and when the time came for
his return to Normandy, the Lords of the Admiralty, hearing that
there was no direct steam communication from England to Cherbourg,
placed a small vessel at his disposal, which landed him within a mile
or two of his own park. Three years afterwards he died.
The Free Trade party of France is small but enthusiastic, and
they have the disadvantages of free traders in all lands, to make
popular an intricate and statistical subject, to make common people
think a step further than what is apparent, and to meet the national
antipathy of France for England, in whose interest, it is argued by
French protectionists, the advantage of reciprocity would be. The
most illustrious names amongst French Free Traders, are those of
Frederick Bastial and Michel Chevalier, the latter still living at the
age of sixty-three; he visited the United States under the Orleans
government, to inquire into our system of canals and railways. He
is a Professor in the College of France, an anti-Socialist, and an
Orleanist. Chevalier, and a few other Frenchmen, are favorably
impressed toward England, and look to it for economical suggestions.
The vast questions of continental policy with which the European
people have to deal have little interested the native American heretofore, yet amongst us are representatives of all these nations, and
to their kinfolk is due at least some sympathy, and perhaps some
inquiry.
We sell much of our crops to those people; we buy much of one
sort or another back from them; we look to them for the grand caravans of emigration that are to make ports on our eastern slope, and
States on our western. Also, with or without our will, we are partners in the topics which arise here. Busied with our vast material
concerns, we still insensibly derive from Europe the social, refining,
and intellectual confitures that comfort life, if they do not shape it.
I have never heard of a man that cracked his head studying Ameri



580    TIIE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
can politics, until he got to the financial question. But the study
of Europe, as I have said, is very much like the study of a crab.
There are so many, legs, all moving, and so much hard shell, and
such an infinity of articulations and spikes, that one does not.know
where to take hold of the creature first. We have a broad zone of
continent; its outlines are clear; we interlap with nobody that we
fear. How to get money to build our railroads, and how to whip the
Indians mercifully, are our only unevadable topics.
But here are eight or nine great races, each of them nearly of the
size of all our population, interlocked, intersubjugated, cramped, trying each for itself to get out into comfortable daylight, like so many
eels out of a box. Then every race wants to get out in its own way;
to extend its boundaries according to what it calls the natural law of
development; to collect all its natural family, with all their hereditary
traps and acres, and afterward to rule them all together by one Federal will. In this aspiration it surely happens that each race will get
on the toes and outrage the proprieties of every other race. Geography is too much for them. Upwards of two hundred millions of people, dwelling in a space considerably less than that occupied by our
thirty-five,, will make the most refreshingly incomprehensible wriggle
and ferment in the world, when they all get going; and this is just
their present condition. They all have their traditions. They differ
in religion somewhat; in temperament vastly more; in their ideas of
propriety, reverence, and comfort more than all. Let us see how
preposterously unlike are some of their claims.
The farthest off of the great agitations, and one which may yet
culminate in the earliest crisis, is Pan-Sclavism, or the extrication and
consolidation of all the Sclave races in one empire. There are in
Europe eighty millions of Sclaves, half of them in Russia, where they
are the dominant race; the rest in Austria, Turkey, and Prussia.
The Czar of Russia is a Sclave; so are the Poles, the Moravians, the
Bohemians, and the Servians. They have their poets, and stumpspeakers, and great literati, and castle-builders, and are all imbued
with the idea that the time has come to unite and make the great
Eastern nation of Europe. When you read of revolts in Servia, and
a dozen other dimly known states in the south of Europe, you may
set them down to the general insubordination of Pan-Sclavism. In
the great city of Prague, which is the Philadelphia of Austria, second only to Vienna, the people refuse to hear speeches made in the
German language. No country but Switzerland has ever been well




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 581
governed where there is more than one legal language; still, the
Bohemians of Austria, four millions strong, write novels in their own
Tcheck tongue, and insist upon making the laws in it. To carry out
the dream of Pan-Slavism would despoil Prussia and totally disrupt
Austria and Turkeys, and brineg Russia almost out to the Atlantic
Ocean, or within three hundred miles of France. WVestern Europe
would submit to massacre rather than see it; yet at least ten millions
of Sclaves are on the verge of revolt for this idea, and you might set
all the stump-speakers and missionaries and newspapers of the world
to persuading these that they were, unreasonable, to no effect whatever. Again, inside the movement for Pan-Sclavism two or three agitations for individual territorial empire are afoot. The Poles, who
are Sclaves, want any alliance but Russia, which is also Sclave. The
Poles want a republic of aristocrats, to meet on horseback once.a
year in the open air in a vast cavalry legislature, and hoist the venerable flag of Poland again. The Russians want the Pan-Sclave
empire to take the name of Russia, and be ruled by the Czar. One
war of races, and two wars of dominion, lie in the single issue.
The next great question is that of all Germany, or united " Fatherland." In the heart of Europe are forty-five millions of Germans.
They have never had a single nation, though they all speak alike, and
have the same literature. For seventy years they have all sung songs,
declaring that they would be one people. Now, they swear that this
grand consolidation shall be deferred no longer. Encouraged by the
victories of Prussia, they declare that there shall be no exception to
a total blending of all the German provinces.
When this shall happen, there will be a nation close beside France
fifteen millions stronger than she. Away will go France's supremacy
in the affairs of Europe. She will have no influence as in the past
over this divided family, and possibly will have to give up the city
of Strasburg, and provinces on the Rhine that she has held more than
a century.  Sooner than do this every Frenchman will die on the
Rhine, or across it.  It was the cry of " Faderland " that robbed
Denmark of Schleswig, four years ago. The same idea threatens to
absorb Holland. It might even disrupt Switzerland, and put Prussia
along the line of the Alps, neighbor to Italy, for half the Swiss are
Germans. Yet the Germans everywhere are arming for this idea.
There are three millions of needle-guns ready for the war to-day; a
million of Chassepot rifles, and no end of infernally ingenious artil



5S2    THIE NEWT WORLD COMPARED WITH TIlE OLD.
lery. The Pan-German empire would take the city of Vienna out of
Austria, and make Amsterdam a port of Berlin.
" Italy shall be free," is only another way of saying that all Italian
people shall subscribe to one government.  The exceptions to a
united Italy at present are the city and small environing state of
Rome, the Istrian coast, and the city of Trieste, which are Italian
in blood and langzuage, and the mountain region north of Venice as
far as the Tyrol. It is Roman territory, however, that the Italians
first demand, on grounds of tradition as well as of policy. Rome is in
tradition, more than all Italy besides; it was once the world. The
Italians feel that they have no natural or consecrated capital without
it. The Roman people are continually crying:  "Brethren, come
over and deliver us from these mercenary soldiers!" and the Roman
ecclesiastical government is, besides, an intestine enemy to the unity
of Italy.
Italy could do without Rome if she could do without memory and
heart. And it would not be an arduous task to overrun all the State
of the Church, but unfortunately, the question of religion is a concern
of government in Europe. Nearly all the sovereigns hold title from
the Pope. One is " Most Catholic Majesty;." another, " Holy Apostolic Majesty;" a third, " Defender of the Faith;" and another,
" Eldest Son of the Church."  Napoleon was married by the Pope in
person. Francis Joseph of Austria owes many a good turn in land
and matrimony to the same pontiff. Spain is attached to this century
only by the lessening link of the Church. Each of these powers
would go to war with Italy in the Pope's behalf. Besides, the conservative sentiment of Europe is against Italy in this matter; Kings
and Princes somehow feel that when the ancient Church goes down,
reverence for more worldly titles will lessen. Kings are also as
superstitious as anybody, and, having very little idea of getting to
heaven on their own merits, prefer not to strike the only man on
earth who keeps a passport office. Napoleon is, like all French
sovereigns who have lived before him, the worst enemy of Italy,
because her ally. If his son should die —and he will never have
another - Prince Napoleon would be Emperor, and Prince Napoleon
is son-in-law to the King of Italy. Therefore King Victor Emmanuel
dare not go to war with the Pope, and offend his strong kinsman.
The Italians have great expectations of their town, Brindisi, which
will be, as in the Crusades, the place of debarkation for Suez and thm




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 583
East, after the completion of the Alpine tunnel. Brindisi is six hundred miles nearer Suez than is Marseilles. The Alpine tunnel is to
be more than seven and a half miles long.
By Pan-Hellenism  I express the aspiration of all the Christian
people east of Italy and south of Austria, for independence. The
war in Crete was an exhibition of Pan-Hellenism. About four hundred years ago the Turks first got into Europe, nearly at the time
that Columbus got into America. They conquered all of what is now
Turkey in Europe, and Greece, and the outlying islands, and established among Christian people their intolerant and almost barbarous
worship and government. For four hundred years the people revolted
and submitted alternately. At last Greece was made free; but the
big powers, like England, were afraid to give her much territory, as
she was a first-class commercial country, and might like to adopt a
republican form of government. Therefore they saddled upon her
a little German prince, made her pride of state wretched, and ever
since have propped up the sick Turk, to the disgrace of Christianity
and humanity.
A large proportion of the people of Turkey, all the Greeks, Cretans,
and other islanders are Greek Christians, which is one of the three great
Christian families. They want to build up the Christian Confederation of Greece, to include the whole of Turkey, and drive the Turk
into Asia again. In this desire they have only two friends. Russia
and the United States; because the Catholic, powers have no more
sympathy with the Greek Church than with the Mohammedan. The
Russian royval family invariably intermarry with Protestant Princes.
It is for this Pan-Hellenic idea that all south-eastern Europe is in
ferment, and on this question all Europe may be involved in war.
Western Europe fears, in the expulsion of the Turk, the advance of
Russia to the Mediterranean. France, England, Italy, Turkey, and
Spain would probably meet in this issue Russia, Prussia, Austria, and
Greece.
All the great peoples of Europe are curiously interested and
amazed in the rise of America, and their rulers at present compete
for our friendship. " Europe," said the Prince Talleyrand, long ago,
"must have an eye on America, and take care not to offer any pretext for recrimination or retaliation. America is growing every day.
She will become a colossal power, and the time will arrive when (discoveries enabling her to communicate more easily with Europe) she
will want to say g word on our affairs, and have a hand in them.




584    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Political wisdom requires therefore of the government of the old
continent to exercise the most scrupulous care lest any pretext be
given for any such intervention. When America acquires a foothold
in Europe, it would be all over with peace and security for a long
time."
I close this chapter with an entertaining account of the greatest of
French Republicans at home, General Lafayette, as described by
William II. Seward, then (1833) a correspondent of the " Albany
Evening Journal." The sketch will serve to illustrate the character
of a pure Franco-American republican, and also to illustrate the
household life of a French nobleman.
"We were met," says Mr. Seward, " by a servant of Gen. Lafayette who waited with a plain, neat coach, to carry us to LaGrange, his
estate. We entered the domain as soon as we left the village, and a ride
of something more than half a mile brought us to a grove, so rich and
dense as to exclude the chateau from view. A winding of the road
now discovered to us a venerable castle, built of stone, on the three
sides of a square with anl open court in the centre. The chateau is
three stories in height, and at each angle is flanked by a circular tower.
It is surrounded by a moat or canal filled with water, and traversed
by bridges. An ivy clusters upon its front wall, which was planted
by Charles James Fox. The coach stopped in the paved court, at
the entrance of the chateau. We entered a large hall containing a
grand staircase in the centre. At the foot of the stairs were two
small brass cannon, mounted, and facing each entrance. The cannon
bore inscriptions, stating that they were captured from  the royal
troops by the people of Paris in the revolution of the three days, and
presented to Gen. Lafayette. Over them, and in front of the ascent
of the stairs, is a triumphal ornament composed of flags taken from
the royal troops in the same revolution. At the top of the staircase
is an ornament, not less appropriate and characteristic; it is formed
of the graceful foldings of our own standard, with its stars and
stripes. We were received by Madame Maubourg, the General's
oldest daughter, and by two of his grandsons. The lady spoke to us
in English, but, being unaccustomed to the language in ordinary
conversation, she found it so difficult that she gave me to understand
we must use my bad French instead of her difficult English. She is
a middle-aged woman, plainly dressed, exceedingly well-informed,
vivacious, and agreeable. In half an hour the General appeared,




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 585
well, cheerful, and animated, and we passed an hour in conversation
upon French and English politics.  The apartment which is the
common parlor is still more plainly furnished than the rooms in the
General's house in town. The floor is of polished oak. The room
contains a bust of Washington at the age of fifty-eight, and portraits
of all the Presidents of the United States except the present incumbent (Jackson). The General informed us that one of the latter
had been forwarded by his friends in America, but had been lost
on the way; he had written for another, but it was not yet received.
"' In the course of the morning (afternoon) the several members of'the family appeared, and warmly welcomed us to La Grange. The
conversation was redundant in incidents of the Revolution. The General alluded to the difficulty he encountered in learning the English
language, so as to pronounce it well, saying, that soon after he joined
tht American army he was requested to name the watchword for the
day. He gave " Paris." He was himself challenged by an American sentinel, and pronounced a spy, because he pronounced the password Pa-re. He alluded to Col. Burr's visit to France; said he did
not visit the colonel at Paris,- he could not - he had recently killed
one of his friends (Hamilton), and conspired against another (Jefferson). I mention this as an evidence of the catholicism of the General's attachment to Ameiica, which embraced these two rival politicians, and widely opposed statesmen, without marking by a single
expression his consciousness of their mutual opposition to each
other. After sitting two hours, the General called a domestic, and
proceeded to show us to our rooms. The one prepared for S - was
in the first story, comfortably warmed, in consideration of his ill
health. He conducted me through long winding corridors of brick
pavement, to the the tower in the angle of the chateau in the third story,
saying,' You see, sir, that this is a very old house.' But although
it was old, it was, in all that concerned the comfort of guests, perfectly au fait.'We dine,' said the general,' at half-past six. Here are
paper and materials for writing. My library is on this floor; if you
want anything, you will ring for a servant.' I wanted no books. I
was reading the choicest history and character from the lips of Lafayette himself, and husbanded my time so as to lose nothing of the
precious treasure. He spoke again in our interview this afternoon,
and very freely of Louis Philippe; said that he distinctly engaged
to him, that the new monarchy should be surrounded by republican
institutions, to be of temporary duration, and to prepare the way for
74




586    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
a republic; but he had a chosen to build up a dynasty, and had made
a bad choice.'Had he fulfilled his engagements,' said Lafayette,'he might have been King twenty-five years; but to secure the support promised him by the other powers of Europe, he preferred building up his own dynasty, to make it perpetual. In the former case,
the great revolution of France would have ended in four acts. Now
it would be five. The people would be educated and prepared for a
republic in twenty years. When that time should come France would
not be content to be governed by kings. Louis Philippe and his
family were sure to come down some time, and that not distant; he
(Lafayette) did not think they had twenty years to reign.
" One cannot be an hour at La Grange, without discovering that
Lafayette and his family are all American in their attachments and
feelings. The conversation is animated beyond measure when it
turns upon American affairs, reminiscences, anticipations, and hopes.
The drawing-room is adorned with pictures of the American Presidents; the grand staircase with the American flag; the antechamber
with busts of Washington and Franklin, and American maps. The
library contains a choice collection of American books, and the sleeping-rooms have no pictures but those of American battle-fields, naval
victories, landscapes, Mount Vernon, Hancock's house, Quincy, etc.,
etc. Would there were among American statesmen such lofty and
exclusive devotion to the republic! At the dinner hour we met the
entire family, consisting of twenty-two persons. The dining-room
was a large and plain apartment on the ground floor. The General
occupied the centre; on his right, Madame Maubourg, at the upper
end of the table, and Madame Perier at the other end of the table.
The dinner was served with a degree of republican simplicity which
would shame our dinners in our cities. The viands were good, and
the wine abundant; all, with the exception of a bottle of champagne, and a bottle of Madeira, the produce of La Grange. The
General told many anecdotes of his tour in the United States, and
expatiated upon the different parts of the Union. That spot, of all
others, which he most admired, was Goat Island, at Niagara Falls.
He described its beauties to his family, and said that he never thought
of it, without feeling a desire to purchase it, and make it his resi-!
deuce. MIadame Maubourg, by whose side I had the honor to be
seated, interested me exceedingly. She described to me the Castle
of Olmutz, and her stay there with her mother and sister during the
imprisonment of her father, anTl I felt that I had not now a wish




POLITICS, ETC., OF FRANCE AND THE CONTINENT. 5~7
ungratified, since I had seen the hero, and the survivors of the
three heroines of that dungeon.'I will subscribe,' said Lafayette
to the agent of the Prussian government, who proposed to him, a
renunciation of his republican principles, as a condition for his release,'I will subscribe no declaration inconsistent with my duties as
an American citizen.' Such was his language forty years ago, when
the American Republic was in its infancy.'I rill not support,'
said lie, in 1830,' a government which is inconsistent with my principles as an American citizen.'  Was ever human character, through
all vicissitudes, so consistent as that of Lafayette?  Madame Maubourg said that the most sincere and unmingled pleasure she had ever
enjoyed was in reading the American newspapers which recorded her
father's arrival and progress through the United States. It was the
triumph,'the reward, the crown of a life of sacrifices, perils, and sufferings in the cause of human freedom.
"The General's tour was spoken of with no more apparent self-complacency than if it had been a ride in his little glass coach from La
Grange to Paris, and the revolution of the three days was treated with
no more effort at effect than if it had been an election of a Congressman in our own country. The party (rather the family) remained at
the table about an hour and a half, and then retired to the drawingroom, where the evening was spent in free and unrestrained conversation. The ladies, as if they were the females of a farmer's family, had
their sewing and knitting-work; the elder being employed principally
in the homely operation of mending, with conversation upon books
and music and the newspapers, which were by turns resorted to. At
precisely ten o'clock each of the younger members of the party saluted the General, who retired upon taking leave of us for the night,
and sayingT to us that we should take breakfast at ten o'clock.
"The General said he rose every morning at six, and I found all
the gentlemen had been abroad over the plantation. From breakfast
the ladies retired to the shade-trees on the lawn in front of the chateau.
MlIademoiselle Clementine, the daughter of George Lafayette, and an
adopfed daughter of the General, accompanied us in a long walk over
the grounds, until we reached a small artificial lake, containing several
islands planted with evergreens.
" On our return to the chateau we found the General waiting for
us. He first exhibited to us the beautiful barge which had been presented to him by the Whitehall boatmen, after they had won the boat
race against the Thames barge. He has built a house over it, with




588    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
a substantial tiled roof, and enclosed by a network of iron which excludes it even from the touch. He next walked with us through every
department of his farming affairs, which were in the most perfect
order. He showed an entire familiarity with the whole, and is passionately fond of the pursuit. His horses, cattle, sheep, and swine
were all housed and taken care of in the most systematic manner. I
could not but mark the economy which prevailed. Even the acorns
were all hoarded as food for the swine. The farm attached to the
chateau contains about eight.hundred acres. Besides this, he has
another and larger farm in the south of France. George Washington
Lafayette resides there during the summer and takes charge of it.
The care of La Grange is intrusted to one superintendent. Regular
daily accounts are kept, and these are carefully posted and examined
every Saturday. A portion of the concern, such as the dairy, etc.,
and the use of what is required in the family, is subject to the supervision of his daughters. I was struck by the homage paid him by
every domestic and laborer. It was merited, for his manner toward
them was parental.
" At dinner he descanted to his family in glowing terms upon the
homage universally exhibited in America to the soldiers of the Revolution, as witnessed by him on public occasions.
" On parting with the General, I said to him that we had a long
time anticipated his return to America to spend the evening of his
days there.'My dear sir,' replied he,'I should be very sorry to
think that I shall never see America, but you know how it is. I am
confined to France for two or three years to come by my office, as a
member of the House of Deputies, and what may happen within that
time God only knows."'








_ AP~                     ~. -..'~.  _ / -:',.h,::1                                           2
4
REPRESENTrATIVE HOMES OF CfTIZENS.
1-Palace of the Prince of Prussia. 2-Duke of Wellington's Home,
8-Chateau of Duke de Lynnes, France. 4-Residence of A. T.
Stewart, New York. 5-Home of Bayard Taylor.
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StwrtNwYuk    -on   fByr   alr




CHAPTER XXII.
A GENERAL VIEW OF CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT.
The nations of Europe paragraphed, with particular accounts of the salaries of sovereigns,
and sketches of diplomatic life, and biography.
To institute a comparison between Europe and America, geographically, would be for the sake of familiar illustration, rather than to
prove any definite resemblance. Both continents face upon the Atlantic, and as we recede from the sea into each we approach, at opposite points of the compass, the frontiers. Russia is the Great West
of Europe, stretching to its Rocky Mountains, vast, rolling, cold.
The Mediterranean is its Mexican Gulf; Spain is an exaggerated
Florida, projecting into the sea; the Baltic is the Great Lakes; the
Danube is the European Ohio River, and the Valley of the Black Sea
is the Mississippi Valley; the Rhine is the Susquehanna of Europe;
the Alps are its Alleghanies, in which are the sources of the greater
streams; Paris is New York, and Great Britain is New England.
Chicago becomes Dantzic; St. Petersburg, Milwaukee; Odessa, Galveston; Constantinople, New Orleans; Venice, Mobile; Lyons,
Philadelphia; Copenhagen, Buffalo; Vienna, Cincinnati. The most
highly civilized regions are on the ocean; the most growing, formidable, and warlike, near the frontiers; grain and kine come from the
plains of Russia, as from the prairies of America; fruit and manufactures from the valleys of the Atlantic. Three interior cities compete with jealousy for precedence: Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis,
- St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna. The money is in the cities by the
sea; the energy of improvements, in the far interior; but there is no
vast emigration to the interior of Europe, as to the interior of America, unless it shall hereafter come from Asia.
Let us pass in review the most characteristic governments of
Europe.
The Emperor of Russia, past fifty years of age, had for a mother,
a Prussian Princess, and his wife is a daughter of the Grand Duke
of the semi-extinct State of Darmstadt. HIe belongs to the Hoqse of
589




590    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Romanof, and he is almost completely Teutonic in blood and origin.
The Emperor's lands, forests, and salary, amount altogether to twentyeight million five hundred thousand dollars a year.   His direct
income from the state is about eight million dollars annually. There
are four million Protestants in Russia, but the Jews are excluded.
Finland and Poland have partially independent governments. In
Russia there is an extraordinary mixture of liberalism and despotism,
the ballot and the ukase, so that the mighty empire, which comprises
one-seventh of the territory of the globe, is really the most imperfect, and the most colossal of civilized states, deriving the most
philosophical of its notions from the Germans, its financial theories
from the French and Dutch, and its military spirit from its own
Tartars.
The Government of Russia is an absolute hereditary monarchy.
The whole Legislative, Executive, and Judicial power is united in
the Emperor, whose will alone is law. There are, however, certain
rules of government which the Sovereigns of the House of HolsteinGottorp have acknowledged as binding. The chief of these is the
law of succession to the throne. Another fundamental law of the
realm, proclaimed by Peter I., is that every sovereign of Russia, with
his consort and children, must be a member of the Orthodox Greek
Church. The Princes and Princesses of the Imperial House, according to a decree of Alexander I., must obtain the consent of the
Emperor to any marriage they may contract; otherwise the issue of
such union cannot inherit the throne.
The administration of the empire is entrusted to four great boards,
or councils, possessing separate functions, but centring in the
"Private Cabinet of the Emperor."  The first of these Boards is the
Council of the Empire. The second is the Directing Senate. The
third College is the Holy Synod. The fourth Board of Government
is the Council of Ministers. The latter is divided into twelve departmients, as follows: -
The Ministry of the Imperial House.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Ministry of War.
The Ministry of the Navy.
The Ministry of the Interior.
The Ministry of Public Instruction.
The Ministry of Finance.
The Ministry of Justice.
The Ministry of the Imperial Domains.




CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT.              591
The Ministry of Public Works.
The General Post Office.
The Department of General Comptrol.
The Emperor of Austria belongs to the House of Hapsburg, which
intermarried with the House of Lorraine in France. Napoleon compelled this house to renounce the Imperial Crown of Germany, and
in 1804 its heir assumed the name of Emperor, or Kaiser, of Austria;
the heir of the present Emperor is eleven years old, and his mother
is a Bavarian. The Empire consists of a German Monarchy, and a
Hungarian Kingdom, each possessing its own laws, parliament, and
ministers; in the German Monarchy there are fourteen Provincial
Congresses (Diets), partly clerical and aristocratic, and partly popular, while at Vienna there is a Central Diet (Reichsrath), consisting
of a House of Nobles, and Clergy, and a Lower House elected by the
fourteen Provincial Diets. In Austria the Catholics outnumber the
Greeks, Jews, and Protestants, nearly two to one; one of the Catholic Archbishops receives sixty-three thousand dollars a year. The
Austrian Government pays eight per cent. for its later loans; the
navy of the state carries less than one thousand guns. Austria is
now a constitutional government, forced to become so by the deserved
misfortunes of its rulers, and at the head of its statesmen is Baron
Von Buest, a Saxon, and the enemy of Bismarck, who was received
by the Emperor of Austria, after Bismarck had' almost annihilated
him, and now displays his diplomatic abilities at the head of the
second state in Germany. Both Buest and Bismarck were aristocrats, with little love of the people; but both have been forced by
different fortunes to help the popular cause.
The North German Confederation, of which Prussia is the bulk, is
composed of about twenty states, exclusive of those which Prussia
absorbed, which have formed themselves into an " eternal union,"
whereof the KiiJg of Prussia declares war, concludes peace, and appoints ambassadors; he commands besides all the naval forces, and
the military rules of his kingdom extend to the whole federation.
The King of Prussia, who represents North Germany, belongs to the
House of Hohenzollern; so called for a family castle, near the Danube.
The first King of Prussia was crowned seventy-five years before the
American Declaration of Independence; the early rulers of Prussia
saved their money, and Frederick the Great used it to enlarge his'state by war. Since the war of 1866, Prussia contains a population
of twenty-three millions. The King receives about two million five




592    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
hundred thousand dollars a year. The heir to the Prussian Crown is
now nearly forty years old, and his wife is a daughter of Queen Victoria. The Prussian Legislature is composed of a House of Lords
and a Chamber of Deputies, and the government is partly Parliamentary like that of England, while in parts it resembles the arbitrary
government of Louis Napoleon. There are ten members of the
Prussian Cabinet; every province of the kingdom has a Governor,
with a salary of forty-three hundred dollars per annum. The royal
family belongs to the Calvinistic Church. The Navy carries less
than six hundred guns, and is manned by less than four thousand
conscripted sailors and marines; the biggest ship (1867) in the Prussian Navy carries sixteen guns of seven tons each, but many ironclad vessels of greater power and armament have since been built for
Prussia by the English.
Count Otto Von Bismarck, who, next to Frederick the Great, has
been the greatest aggrandizer of Prussia, is Minister of Foreign
Affairs; he is fifty-six years old, well educated and despotic; but
the latter part of his life has been marked by respect for popular
rights, and by enormous devotion to the interests of Prussia. In
1869, Bismarck presented his budget, and replying to the strictures
of Doctor Lowe, a Republican, he made a speech from which we glean
a paragraph to show the good-humor, and the style of speaking of the
great Prussian Premier:" The last speaker appears to have been pretty sharply cut by what
I said yesterday about eloquence. [Laughter.] He draws upon his
imagination to find expressions that never fell from my lips. My
whole life shows that I intend to adhere to a strictly parliamentary
system. To prevent parliamentary power fiom -becoming too strong
does. not mean to contest it. We would bring upon us the dangers
of dilletanteism in politics if the strong overbalancing power lay in
the parliamentary assembly, as it certainly is not at present. This
speaker left the stand with his ceterum censeo against the army
budget. I would venture to go surety for the security of the state,
according to his meaning, if a victorious army could be held at bay
on the borders of a state through the power of eloquence. [Laughter.]
The history of Rome tells us of a case in which the enemy was kept
off by the mere power of eloquence; but this enemy was composed
of very uneducated people. [Great laughter.] "
The King of the Netherlands belongs to the House of OrangeNassau, and.his mother was the daughter of a Czar of Russia; he




CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT.             593
married a daughter of the King of Wurtemberg, and his son, the
heir, is an Admiral in the Dutch Navy. The King receives two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and the rest of the royal family
receive one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars collectively
every year. The private fortune of the royal house amounts to about
ten million dollars, which was amassed by the grandfather of the
present King in mercantile speculations; the present King's uncle continues these speculations, and is even richer than the King. The
Senate of the Netherlands consists of thirty-nine members, elected
by the Provincial Legislatures from among the largest tax-payers;
the House of Representatives consists of seventy-two paid members
elected, by ballot, from those who pay taxes amounting to fifty dollars
per year. There are seven ministers in the Cabinet, each receiving
one thousand dollars per annum. The government is closely modelled after that of England. There are nearly sixty thousand men in
the Army, and nearly one'thousand guns in the Navy. The government
clears about two million dollars a year from its colonies, but makes
little or nothing upon its American colonies.
Switzerland is a United Confederacy, made so by a civil war of
1848. It has no Executive, strictly speaking, but both legislativel
and executive authority is vested in a State Council, and a Federal
Council (Nationale Rath), the first of forty-four members, chosen bythe twenty-two Cantons of the Republic, the second, chosen in direct
election by all the citizens; the United Chambers are called the Federal Assembly, a committee of which represents the Supreme Government; the President and Vice-President of this Committee of Seven
are the first magistrates of the Republic; they serve for one year for
two thousand dollars, and one thousand seven hundred dollars, respectively. There is also a Federal tribunal, which is a High Court of
Appeal, and arbitrates between the Cantons. Switzerland presents
the anomaly of a state, where Protestants and Catholics are nearly,
equally divided, and only the baneful order of Jesuits is excluded, a
complete toleration prevailing. The revenue of the state is upwards
of five million dollars, and the expenditure little more than four million dollars (1863); the Republic had a surplus of assets in 1861 of'
nearly two million dollars. An honorable instance of Swiss patriotism is that of the purchase by the nation of the estate of Griitli for
eleven thousand dollars. Griitli is the spot on Lucerne Lake where
the Swiss patriots swore to free their country from Austrian rule; to,
prevent its falling into the hands of a speculative hotel company, the;
75




594    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
people, by subscription, bought it and gave it to the nation. There
is no standing army in Switzerland, but every man must bear arms
when called upon; and in 1862 there were three hundred and forty
thousand men ready to send out, or ten times the standing army of
the United States. Out of two million five hundred and thirty-four
thousand five hundred and forty-two inhabitants, less than one-fifth
are without land; there are eight hundred and twenty miles of railroad in Switzerland.
The King.of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II., is nearly fifty years old,
and is an elective King, the son of one Austrian Archduchess, and the
husband of another; one of his daughters is married to Prince Napoleon, and another to the King of Portugal; his heir is twenty-seven
years old, a Major-General, and the origin of the House is a German
Count, who, in the eleventh century, established himself at the foot
of the Alps. In 1864, the King gave up six hundred thousand dollars of his income to the almost bankrupt country, and-he contents
himself with about one million seven hundred thousand dollars, while
several of his relatives receive smaller sums. He has nine ministers.
The Roman Catholic is the established religion, with forty-five Archbishops and one hundred and ninety-eight Bishops. There are sixtyfive provinces in Italy. The government is a moderated form of the
French Empire, with certain English adaptations attached to it. Not
only are all worships tolerated in Italy, but the bloated estates of
priests have been confiscated to support public education, and to help:the thirteen National Universities.  The Italian Navy consisted:(1866) of one hundred and six war vessels, carrying one thousand'four hundred and sixty-eight guns. By the last census, Italy, as a
kingdclom, contains nearly twenty-two millions of people; there are
nearty four hundred newspapers in the nation, and a sea-faring population lof one hundred and sixty thousand, capable of making a
greater navy than Austria and Prussia combined.
The Pqpe of Rome has an income from his own little state of
655,000 (dollars a year; but contributions from abroad swell it to
5,000,000 dollars. A Pope is elected by the ballot of Cardinals,
each Cardinal writing his own name and that of his candidate
on a ticket, every Cardinal saying a prayer as he votes.  The
present is the two hundred and fifty-eighth Pope.  The present,Pope is seventy-seven years old; he has six ministers, at the head of
which is Antonelli, -the son of a wood-cutter, -a man of bad family,
-the most hated of..all.the parasites of European despots, and who is




CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT.             595
believed to have gained immense riches by filching the revenues of the
mendicant Pope. The Pope is absolute, irresponsible, and infallible,
never seeking advice but from his college of less than fifty Cardinals,
all but thirteen of whom are Italians and Princes of the Church.
The Pope expended in 1864, as in most other years, three times his
income, and he is in debt in every part of the world; yet he kept, in
1860, twenty-five thousand soldiers, upon less than seven hundred
thousand inhabitants. There are only eighty-four miles of railroad
in his state, which generally loses money, and the Jesuits seem to have
mastered the old man. The Jesuits numbered, in 1863, seven thousand five hundred and twenty-nine, the majority of whom were in
France, while three hundred and fifty were in America. The Pope's
winter palace, called the Vatican, contains four thousand four hundred and twenty-two rooms, and is one thousand one hundred and
fifty-one feet long, and seven hundred and sixty-seven broad; his
principal church (St. Peter's) cost fifty million dollars, covers eight
acres, and required three hundred and fifty years to build and finish it.
The King of Portugal receives 410,000 dollars a year, of which he
returns nearly 100,000 dollars to the educational bureau; but his
court costs the state 760,000 dollars annually.
The Sultan of Turkey is said to receive 48,000,000 dollars a year, or
three-fourths the whole revenue of his dominions; his Grand Vizier
gets 65,000 dollars annually, and his ministers from 50,000 dollars to
41,000 dollars each, a year.
The King of the little State of Greece gets 274,000 dollars a year,
in addition to 60,000 dollars from other sources.
The Grand Duke of Baden receives 313,000 dollars a year for himself and family.
The King of Wurtemburg receives 370,000 dollars a year.
Bavaria has the most aristocratic army, in officers, in Europe, and
its King receives for himself and family 1,250,000 dollars a year.
King Ludwig stole besides, from the public exchequer, nearly 640,000
dollars to support Lola Montez and his other mistresses, which sum he
was obliged to return from his private purse, under threat of revolution.
The Catholic Church in Bavaria is endowed with 42,000,000 dollars'
worth of property.
The Prince of Schwarzburg Rudolstadt, with 72,000 subjects, has
60,000 dollars a year salary, exclusive of real estate revenues; the
Prince of Schwarzburg Sondershausen, with 65,000 people, has
112,000 dollars a year, or one-fourth the revenue of the country be



596    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
sides the revenue of immense private estates derived from his predecessor, who insisted upon brewing and selling all the beer in his
dominions.
The Prince of Reuss-Schleiz, with 83,000 people, receives 100,000
dollars a year, and owns almost his entire state.
The Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, with 31,000 people, has 125,000
dollars a year, and his crown domains are mortgaged to the amount
of 2,500,000 dollars.
The most starveling and pitiable Prince of Lippe-Detmold, with
108,000 people, who was obliged to sell part of his territory to
Prussia, gets 50,000 dollars a year.
The Prince of Waldeck, whose ancestors sold 1,225 of his subjects
to England to subdue America, three-four1ths of whom never returned,
has 58,000 subjects, and 186,000 dollars yearly salary, yet he is so
poor that he must keep gaming-tables and sell mineral waters.
The Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, with 138,000 people, gets 108,000
dollars a year.
The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, brother of Prince Albert of England, has 160,000 subjects, and about 80,000 dollars a year
salary.
The Duke Anhalt, with 182,000 people, gets 150,000 dollars a year,
and owns private estates, in various parts of the world, of more than
200 square miles of land; these miserable Princes, in anticipation of
being driven out to grass, have managed to sweat, to steal, and to pick
from their subjects large sums of money to lay up nest-eggs in
foreign parts. A poor Prince was never known to escape from his
country; a rich Republican exile has never been seen.  While
Joseph Bonaparte lived at Bordentown upon a vast estate, MIoreau,
the French Republican, and victor of Hohenlinden, lived opposite
Trenton in a cottage, just able to find his bread. When Prince Albert
married the Queen of England, with true German princely thrift, he
made the first demand upon Parliament for a large annuity, and
spent his married life in laying up the ingots for future use.
The Duke of Saxe-Weimer gets, out of his 278,000 people,
thousands of whom are coming to America, 205,000 dollars a
year.
The Duke Saxe-Meningen gets 94,000 dollars a year.
The Duke of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, with 98,000 people, gets the
enormous sum of 1,110,000 dollars a year, or seventy dollars for
every soul, and while on the one hand he is losing a thousand people a




CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT.              597
year bound to America, on the other he is selling parcels of his property to Prussia.
The Duke of Brunswick, who was driven out of his little realm by
a riot in 1830, took with him enough extorted money to live in Paris
at the rate of 1,000,000 dollars a year, while the present Duke gets
175,000 dollars annually out of 282,000 people; in 1850 one-fifth of
all the births in his duchy were illegitimate.
The Duke of Oldenburg, with 295,000 people, receives 156,000
dollars a year.
The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who claims to be the only
reigning family in Europe of Sclavonic origin, and to be the oldest
sovereign house in the Western World, and who calls himself Prince
of the Vandals, supports a feudal state of 550,000 people, has a
salary of 600,000 dollars a year, owns a railroad fifty-fiVe miles long,
and his estates comprise one-fifth of his realm, and are wortlh
60,000,000 dollars. IIn 1860 one child out of every three and eighttenths in his domains was illegitimate; only one-half his people
can read, and his government imposes restrictions upon marriage,
so that he is indeed King of the Vandals! In 1864 his Diet passed
a law investing all landed proprietors with power to condemn their
laborers, for simple " neglect of service," to a week's imprisonment,
and twenty-five blows with a stick. In one district of HIesse-Cassel
young girls were, until a. recent period, shipped to England, to be
sold into infamy for the price of an export duty.
The King of Saxony receives 640;000 dollars a year, out of
2,225,000 population.
The King of Denmark gets 350,000 dollars a year, and his heir
14,000 dollars, levied on 1,608,000.people.
The King of Belgium receives for himself 550,000 dollars annually,
and, including the expenses of his court, 840,000 dollars.
Such are some of the monstrous figures which are paid to the
Sovereigns of Europe, and in view of these we are seriously advised
by certain adventurers that Imperialism is the panacea for all the
errors of a Republican people.. The combined scandals of every Republican administration, from the days of Washington to the present
time, will not match'the vices of one generation of some of the
pettiest ducal houses of Europe. In'1869 the banished King of
Hanover was driven by the Prussians to Vienna; but though banished
he was ilot beggared, for he and his ancestors had put by certain
little morsels for rainy days, and from all these sources the bereaved




598    THE NEW")ORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
monarch has a little competence, of which no one can deprive him, of
about 1,500,000 dollars per annum.
Some time ago, before one of the chancery courts in London, a suit
in which the King of Holland was plaintiff, and the Bank of England
defendant, was heard and decided.  It was a demand for a little sum
of 3,000,000 dollars.
In the year 1783 a large sum was realized out of the revenues of
the then Electorate of Hanover, which George III. invested in bank
annuities. It now amounts to 3,000,000 dollars in gold, and was
specifically designed to cover the exigencies of the King and Queen
of Hanover, as well as the minor princes and princesses:  In 1867
the King of Prussia protested against this sum being paid to the
King of Hanover; but the English courts decided it to be his property.
The following were the amounts of the principals of the national
debts of the great states of Christendom, in 186.7:Great Britain and Ireland,                   $3,907,500,000
United States,......    2,775,000,000
France,....   2,700,000,000
Russia,.....1,325,000,000
Austria,....                         1,250,000,000
Italy,......  1,180,000,000
Spain,.......   800,000,000
Holland,....    42;,000,000
Turkey,.....   350,000,000
Prussia,.                              295,000,000
Portugal,.....      235,000,000
Bavaria,....    250,000,000
Belgium,....    140,000,000
Brazil,.....                           120,000,000
Peru,.....       108,000,000
Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales,
Queensland,      ~....             86,000,000
Denmark,.......    75,000,000
Canada,.......75,000,000
Sweden,......33,000,000
Norway,......7,500,000
Chili,.....          18,000,000
Argentine Republic,......                 25,000,000
Switzerland,......                             800,000
The following are the amounts of annual interest on the debts of a
few of the principal states (1867).




CONTINENTAL FINANC-E AND GOVERNMENT.    599W
United States,.$140,000,000
Great Britain and Ireland,.               130,000,000
France,.                                         125,000,000
Italy,......                     85,000,000
Austria,.                                         65,000,000
Russia,.                                          55,000,000
Turkey,.                                          17,000,000
Spain,.20,000,000
Prussia,.                                         10,000,000
Holland,....                                     12,500,000
Brazil,.10,000,000
Peru,                                              10,000,000
Canada,.3,750,000
Portug al,                                          7,000,000
Switzerland,.                                        15,000
To form an idea of the relative cost of some of the leading governments of the world, we cite from  the statistics of 1867, the expenditure per head of population: -
New Zealand,.        (per head, annually,)   $62.00
Great Britain,...          "  "              16.12
United States,...               "      15.00
Canada,...  "                                    4.72
France,.                        "   "       "         10.08
Russia,." c                                 "          4.06
Italy,....                                  "          6.18
Brazil,....      "   "       "          2.90
Victoria (Australia),            "   "       "         24.00
New South Wales (Australia),    "        "             26.60
Prussia,....          "     "              6.68
Sweden,.                       "        "              2.76'
Austria, 5.                                             5 "   ".26
Peru,.. -..        "   "       "          8.51
Switzerland,..                 "        "   "          1.66
A good idea of the business prosperity of a country may be obtained from statements of the value of its exports.  A country which
imports more than it sends away is, for the time being, certainly getting out of pocket. Appended are. the values of the total exports
and imports of some of the great countries as they were in 1867:Total Imports.    Total Exports.
United States,...   $400,000,000       $275,000;000
Great Britain and Ireland,.   1,475,000,000   1,195,000,000




600   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Total Imports.   Total Exports.
France,...       685,000,000       790,000,000
Germany,...       750,000,000       700,000,000
Austria,.                       120,000,000      155,000,000
Belgium,                        250,000,000       235,000,000
Italy,.....       195,000,000       140,000,000
Russia,..                     125,000,000       125,000,000
Holland,....             180,000,000       150,000,000
Canada,.                        80,000,000        65,000,000
Chili,.....     25,000,000        30,000,000
Brazil,.....       60,000,000        75,000,000
Spain,.....     85,000,000        60,000,000
India,.....       250,000,000       350,000,000
China,.....     22,000,000        170,000,000
Australia,...       145,000,000       140,000,000
Here is what soldiering alone has cost France under Napoleon III.:
Crimean war,.$269,000,000
Italian "........ 69,000,000
Chinese "...  33,200,000
Occupation of Rome,.10,000,000
"   " Syria,.5,600,000
Mexican war in aid of Maximilian,                 120,000,000
Extra refreshments,...                      18,000,000
The total fiddling,.                       $524,800,000
Not one of these wars was of any material advantage to France,
nor to anybody befriended, the Italian war included, which had to be
fought over again in 1866.  As to the Mexican war, modern times
have seen no such melancholy failure.
In 1851, when the Emperor had just taken his
throne, France owed.$. 1,069,127,472
In 1861, when our civil war began, France owed. 1,943,835,383
In 1867. France owed...... 2,700,000,000
Or the annual interest upon.this debt is $125,000.000, or about
$3.28 for every man, woman, and child in France.
The revenue of France, in the year 1867, was about three hundred
and seventy-five millions of dollars; seven and one-half millions of
dollars in excess; or it cost every human being in France tell dollars
to be protected by the central government.




CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVEiRNMENT.            601
The greatest banking-house in Europe., and one which is intimately
identified with the politics of all the leading nations, is that of Rothschilds.
The family of Rothschild was founded by Meyer Anselm, of Frankfort, who died in 1812. He was born in the Jews' alley, was brought
up to be a priest of the Hebrew faith, but becoming a money-broker,
he was employed to raise a loan to relieve Frankfort from an invasion
of French Republicans; here Rothschild became associated with
American history, for the money he obtained from the Elector of
Hesse-Cassel, to aid Frankfort, was doubtless the indentical gold
paid by Great Britain to hire Hessian troops to subdue her American
colonies. The Elector had in his possession about five millions of
dollars, and when at a later date Napoleon marched upon him, Rothschild became the repositor of this immense sum, for which he paid no
interest. It is therefore remarkable that the greatest banking-house in
Europe owes its beginning to the hire of British mercenaries against
the United States, and the sums thus infamously paid by England
were efficacious, fifty years afterward, to give the first Jew admission
to the English Parliament, in the person of a grandson of Meyer
Rothschild.
The five sons of the first Rothschild scattered over Europe: Nathan
going to London, Solomon to Vienna, James to Paris, and Charles to
Naples, while the fifth son, Anselm, remained with the old man at
Frankfort. All these united in the wealthiest copartnership of the
present, or probably of any other age; in 1848 they lost forty million dollars by the revolution against Louis Philippe and' his allies;
but their solvency after this disaster was their greatest advertisement.
Anselm died childless, leaving a fortune of fifteen million dollars.
Nathan, the eighth Rothschild, distributed the enormous subsidies
which the British gave the Germans to war against France, and one
of these payments, after the treaty of Toeplitz, amounted to sixty
million dollars in gold. This same Nathan made one million of -dollars by obtaining the' result of the battle of Waterloo several hours
before the English government.
The Emperor of Austria made Nathan a Baron of the Empire, and
this title descended to his eldest son, Lionel, who was the first Jew,
as we have said, to enter the British Parliament, and he represented
London city for several years.  The Rothschild cousins all intermarry, and as they obtain all the good loans of Europe, and refuse
all the bad ones, their house seems destined to last as long as that of
76




602    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Hapsburg, or Savoy, unless, like all royal lines, they suffer premature mental degeneracy.
When Foulci, French minister, brought on the tapis the conversion of the rentes, he only employed Pereire, French banker, in the
operation, which terribly offended Rothschild. Fould, who heard of
this, and was afraid of Rothschild's influence, hastened to pay him
a visit, but was very coldly received. In alarm he drove to the Emperor, and said to him: -
"Sire, I have made a mistake in passing over Rothschild in the
conversion of the rentes. I am afraid he will pay us for it, for though
he cannot upset the operation, he can injure it."' Leave me to act," Napoleon replied, " I take the affair on myself."
The Emperor sent for Rothschild, and said to him: -
" How is it with your chateau of La Ferriere?  I hear that it is
finished, and splendid beyond all description."
"It is worth looking at, sire, although it is an exaggeration when
people say that it cost five-and-twenty millions."
"Twenty-five millions! it must really be something wonderful!
Within a week I will come with the Empress to La Ferriere, and
breakfast there. After breakfast we will go out shooting."
Rothschild offered no obstacle to the conversion of the rentes.
Two money-dealers - Rapallo and Solari —advanced Louis Napoleon the funds for his Strasburg filibustering attempt. They
went into speculations, which the confusion in the money-market
produced by the expedition would render profitable. The money
they advanced to the Prince is said to have amounted to a million of
francs (two hundred thousand dollars).
Louis Napoleon wanted three hundred thousand dollars, in order
to become President. Thiers procured him the sum, and merely took
a simple acknowledgment from the Prince. Not a word was said
about interest.  The President could not sufficiently express his
gratitude, and pressed Thiers' hand, with a tear of emotion in his
eye What a different man was this from the old bearded Jews,
to whom Louis Napoleon had often applied in vain!
Eugenie has insured her life in the Paris Company, the Nationale,
for two million francs. The original proposal was for five millions, or
one million dollars; but the company only accepted two, of which
it reinsured one with other offices.  The Germania, at Stettin,
accepted one hundred thousand francs. The Empress's proposal was




CONTINENTAL FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT.             603
signed by Napoleon as her guardian. The insurance is in favor of
her natural heirs, or of her son in the first instance.
The richest state at present on the Continent is Prussia, having
more surplus money in its treasury, than any other, and every day
increases its importance. The " Zollverein" is a mutual Customs
League, dating in its incipiency from 1828, and owing its origin to
Prussia, the most advanced state in Germany; it was reformed and rearranged in 1867,and now comprises most of the German States,
Austria excepted. It is composed of delegates with a central government at Berlin, and has a common exchequer, into which all customs are paid, and thendistributed pro rata amongst the different
states according to population. The chief sources of German revenue are import and export duties, and taxes upon spirits, wine,
beet-root sugar, and tobacco. There are two hundred and fifty-two
beet-root sugar factories in Prussia alone. The object of the" Zollverein " is to dispense with custom-houses between the petty states
of Germany. A note in the next chapter will further speak of Germany and Eastern Europe.




CHAPTER XXIII.
THE NEW  WEST AND THE NEW  EAST.
Some notes upon the Western territories and coasts of the United States, and the problems
of civilization in Eastern Europe. - Advances of America and Europe toward the Pacific.
- The contest for preponderance in Asia.- Inquiry into the permanence of Russia's
friendship for America, and into the stability of the British Empire in Polynesia and
North America. - America's diplomatic relations with the world.
RUSSIA and the United States have been occupying the attention of
the world for a century, and within the past twenty years have been
curiously studying each other.  Apparently  antipodes in origin,
religion, mission, and position, they have the sympathy of magnetic
poles with each other, - farthest apart, yet closest in communication, - and each is assured that the axis of empire passes through
itself. They have never been rivals; if they have not always pursued the same principles, their separate material ambitions have
commanded mutual respect. We shall all be glad in America when
Russia absorbs the Turk, and Christianity resumes the capitalship
of the Greek empire on the Bosphorus, and Russia has voluntarily subscribed to the " Monroe doctrine" by parting with her only possession on the American continent. It seems to be without the range
of probabilities that our two empires can collide; the superstition in
the American mind that we are the gigantic twins of Christendom,
starting from Europe in opposite directions to mould the destinies,
the one of the West the other of the East, has well-nigh reached the
American heart, and when we read of our mutual fleets in the Dardanelles manning the yards and mingling hurrahs and -" hourras,"
we feel a thrill akin to that of a lover discovering reciprocal passion
in his sweetheart.
The differences between the American and the Russian States are
not so profitable subjects for investigation as their resemblances.
Each has a work to do, and its temperament and system are adapted
to its separate mission.  The tribes which accept civilization at the
point of the Russian's sword would b& irreverent scholars of the
604




— ~ —-~-                  I..__.:.
—,~__~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ —-1-~~_-..~~~ — — ~~ ~,.......'"':"l. —r-  ~'  -;- - -— ~ —- k~ —:.   ~S~
_=_=
tfARi~ORS AND FO0l-~TRE$$E~.
1 —hrenbreftstein. 2 —Gibraltar. 3 —The Narrow-s. 4Iortress    onr-oe.
5 —Citadel, Quebec.








THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.                605
American ballot. -Russia must civilize the nations in bulk; we
initiate them into Republicanism, man by man. And who can say
that the condition of the Asiatic is not improved by the prowess of
Russia as much as the European by the institutions of America?
These are some of the resemblances between the United States and
Europe in which Russia takes a prominent place: -
The same geographical and ethnological circumstances mark both.
The Atlantic coasts are jagged and broken, and they. were first
civilized by various races, so that there had nearly been as
many distinct nations in Florida, Louisiana, Canada, Virginia,
and New York, as in Spain, France, England, and Holland. The
interiors of the two continents are broad, compact, of vast agricultural resources, similarly marked by plains, prairies, steppes, and
irrigated by an immense river system, and the aborigines of both
continents, entering from  the frontier, had to be pushed back,
absorbed, or civilized from the Atlantic. The Gulf of Mexico and
the Mediterranean, on the south, were first discovered, developed,
and became the seat of the mythology of their respective continents;
Mexico and Italy, Cuba and Sicily, recall each other as do the cities
of Rome and Mexico, the careers of Romulus and Cortes, Columbus
and 1Eneas, the Buccaneers and the Saracens; the northern races
triumphed over the Latins, the Saxon over the Spaniard and Gaul
in both cases. The Gulf and River of St. Lawrence and their lakes
suggest the English Channel, the North and the Baltic Seas; St.
Petersburg, in its rapid rise, growth, and influence, may be likened
only to Chicago, at the heads of these frozen courses, respectively.
The dense population, the more perfect cities, the historic landmarks
and memorials are by the slopes of the Atlantic; Russia, like the
American Western States and Territories, busied with its immense
material projects, has also a like imperfect social organization;.the
principle of civilization, and the germ of art and literature are in
both cases at war with the rapacity of the savage, the violence of
the pioneer and outlaw, the heathen tradition of the Mormon or the
Turk, the anarchy of the Mexican or the Tartar; the knout' and
"Judge Lynch " suggest each other; and as America is retarded, in
its march to the South and the Isthmus, by European influences in
the West Indies and the indolent patriotism of Mexico and Spanish
America, so Russia is pushed out of the short course to the Indies by
Turkey and " balance of power," and compelled, like the United
States, to go overland to the Pacific. The lines of Ural and Rocky




606    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
M-Iountains stand between America and Russia, and their broad frontier empires; out of these two ranges come their precious minerals;
beyond them lie their grandest problems and resources; by the
Caspian Sea, the largest inland salt lake in the world, Russia has a
natural highway toward the Pacific, as have we by the Missouri, the
longest of all rivers, and the Caspian is connected by canal directly
with the Baltic, as is the Missouri with the St. Lawrence; and by the
Amoor River, which they have navigated at low water for two thousand miles, the Russians have hopes of a better route than the
Pacific Railroad's to reach the Pacific Ocean by steam. The Isthmus
of Suez, purchased by an enterprising Frenchman, to the surprise and
jealousy of Russia and England, and successfully pierced by a canal,
reminds and warns us of the impending fate of the Central -American
Isthmus, which offers Europe the sole remaining and shortest route to
the Pacific, and of the late design of France to seize MIexico and
Central America also. The latest aspect of European emigration to
America, the Scandinavian, and the settlement of large numbers of
Swedes and Norwegians about the peninsulas of Michigan, WVisconsin, -and Minnesota, show us how remarkably America has become a
reproduction of Europe. Not more truly does the blowing seed seek
like soil to that of its birthplace, than does every European race find
a land like its native land in America.
A paragraph upon the races of Europe and America will indicate
another analogy in our Continents: North America has (1860) nearly
fifty millions of people, more. than three-fifths of whom are in the
United States; and Europe has two hundred and eighty millions,
nearly one fourth of whom (sixty-seven millions) are in Russia. Of
the five great types of man, two are practically absent from our Continent, the Mongol and the Malay, and three are absent from Europe,
the American, the African, and the Malay. The great problems of
the United States have been the American Indians and the African,
- to subdue the one and to fix the status of the other; the great
problem of Europe has been to resist and expel the Mongol and hisCaucasian kin. For a thousand years the Moor and the Turk have
been the insoluble element of Europe, irreconcilable, intractable, incapable of conversion. At times Christendom has united against
them; oftener divided its energies against itself. In America we
have never had a distinctive war of races or of religions. Until these
years in which we write, we have never had upon this Continent a
decided and organized heathen element, and we fondly hope that even




THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.               607
the Chinese will be made useful and peaceable in the crucible of our
tolerant institutions.
There are three great subdivisions of Christian Europeans generally
received, whom we shall call, for crispness, Germanes, Sclaves, and
Latins. The Germanes make the great bulk of our American population, and they comprehend the offspring of Germans, English, Scandinavians, and Dutch. The Latins are those nations which are derived
from the mixture of the ancient Romans with peoples who make the
modern nations of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; of these we
have a small percentage in America blended with us. The last great
division of Sclaves is almost entirely absent from America: namely,
the Russians, Poles, Moravians, Bohemians, Croats, etc. These latter, situated in the east of Europe, have never felt the great impulse
of Western emigration, and Russia is the New World to them, being
comparatively sparsely peopled, having vast reserves of land in Asia,
and ambitious prospects in Turkey and the Orient. From the Latins,
South arid Central America have been peopled, by amalgamation with
Indians and negroes. It may be broadly said, therefore, that the
three great groups of civilization are, 1. The United States, Great
Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, and Australia. 2. South and Central
America, France, Italy, and Spain. 3. Russia and her dependencies.
It is these immense human families, artificially or geographically separated and intermixed, which are contending for dominion. The
Latins are practically out of.the contest; in South America they are
fixed, and busied with their own concerns; in Europe they are poor
colonizers, but enterprising adventurers. The Germanes are divided
into three vigorous commercial families: 1. The (North) Americans;
2. The English; 3. The true Germans, including the Dutch prospectively. The Russians (4.) are a mighty unit, bearing southward
and eastward at once. And the prize of all these four colonizing
and commercial powers is the trade of America, Asia, and Polynesia.
In America there are but two: promising contestants for trade and
influence, the United States and England, Russia having withdrawn
from the contest, and France having been beaten off the Continent by
American diplomacy and Mexican- perseverance. In Southern Asia
there are four contestants: England, which possesses the Indian Empire; France, which has seized the most available route overland
through the isthmus of Egypt; Holland (or the Netherlands),which possesses Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and other colonies in the Indian Ocean,
confining a population of eighteen millions; and Russia, whose em



608   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
pire extends in fact to the Pacific Ocean and in the near future to the
Indian Ocean. In the Pacific Ocean these four powers are squarely
met by the United States, which, without possessions or the wish for
them, has paramount influence in Japan, the favor of China, the
friendly countenance of Russia, and good feeling with all the great
English colonies planted there..The United States is the only power
on the Pacific which has not beei guilty of intrigue, of double-dealing, of envy and of bitterness, and it has taken the front rank in
influence without awakening the dislike of any of its competitors,
possibly excepting those English who are never magnanimous. After
years of Portuguese wheedling and Dutch cringing, the Americans
stepped in with the cordial manliness of their character, and carried
home as guests many Princes and scholars of the Japanese Empire,
since which time we have been on frank terms with Japan, and the
Japanese are becoming our fellow-citizens in California. After years
of English and French cannonading and blustering, marked by the
disgraceful imposition of opium upon China, and the occupation of her
ports, an American Minister has quietly gained the confidence of the
Chinese, and he is teaching the nations how universally captivating
are the principles of a republic, and how much better is citizenship
than diplomacy to understand and reach the affections of jealously
civilized people.
Since the consolidation of the greater part of Germany under the
mailed hand of Count Bismarck,* it is not improbable that Holland
* I have perhaps passed over German politics too hastily, and therefore summarize it in a
note:The reigning houses of Austria and Prussia had honorable origins. Rudolph, of Hapsburg, called to the Kaisership of Germany in the year 1273, for his valor and virtues,
founded a line which united with the House of Lorraine, in 1740; the twenty-six sovereigns of these lines have ruled for average terms of twenty-two years. The House of
Hohenzollern began with one of Charlemagne's Generals, and was afterward given control
of certain Baltic provinces by the Hapsburg Emperors. The three predecessors of Frederick (II.) " the Great " established a standing army and a handsome treasury, with which
Frederick, the cotemporary of Washington, increased his kingdom from two and a half
millions of people to five and a half millions. By other additions, and by the war of
1866, Prussia became a stronger power than Austria, with nearly twenty-three millions of
people.
The rivalry between Austria and Prussia began in Frederick's time. Prussia had
Protestant and liberal institutions, and aspired to become the leading state in Germany.
Her people were mainly of the German race, while Austria, governing a variety of dissimilar people, and inheriting absolute ideas upon monarchy and religion, grew away from
the age and its sympathies. The German republicans, in 1848, mastered both dominions,
and offered the crown of consolidated Germany to the King of Prussia, who, had he
accepted it, might have anticipated the results of Sadowa by eighteen years, and didensed




THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.                               609
and her colonies in the East will become subordinate to the polity of
Prussia, and Amsterdam  and Rotterdam  either yield to Bremen and
Hamburg, or become partners with them  in the same clear-headed
Saxon nationality.  Bremen is coming up at present as the German
Liverpool, and her great maritime company of the North German
Lloyd maintain about a dozen fine'steamships in the American trade.
The Netherlands Trading Company, with head-quarters at Amsterdam,
with Bismarck. When Austria and Prussia, acting in concert, forced Schleswig and Holstein
from Denmark, in 1864-5, their rivalry could no longer smoulder, and they prepared for
war. The speedy result was the complete humiliation of Austria, and the advancement of
Prussia to the head of all the German peoples. The French people, jealous of Prussia's
promotion, were clamorous for war, and a dispute over the little state of Luxembourg seemed
likely to produce a rupture, but Napoleon held back, and subsequently Austria conceded
liberal institutions to her subjects, rebuffed her reactionary clergy, and granted the Hungarians their ancient privileges, while Prussia greatly improved the material affairs of
North Germany; and, by the peace, France also seems about to realize under Napoleon a
more liberal charter than she has enjoyed for thirty years. Since Sadowa, and, by reason
of th" peace which has prevailed on the continent, Spain also has accomplished a tranquil
revolution, and expelled the disgraceful woman whose career at her court resembled that of
Messalina. Even Denmark, humiliated and reduced, seems happier than before her partition, and in the autumn of 1.869 the only agitations in Western Europe seemed to be,
among the Sclavonic races of Austria, several millions in number, which dislike the German
language, laws, and character, and in Italy, which is dissatisfied with the foreign and
priestly occupation of Rome. It is remarkable that this liberalization of Europe has not
rewarded, but obscured, the careers of these three great pioneers of liberty and nationality;
Kossuth, Mazzini, and Garibaldi. Kossuth is still in exile, although Hungary is as far
redeemed as the majority of her people seem to wish, and the favorite of the hour is Deak,
the moderate leader. A paragraph upon Magyar and Selave politics may not be out of
place. The leading names in Hungary, after Kossuth, are Batthyanyi, Teleki, and Deak.
Casimir Batthyanyi belonged to an ancient family, and was made Minister of Foreign
Affairs during Kossuth's insurrection; he died in exile; his kinsman, Louis,.became the head
of the revolutionary government, proved incompetent, and notwithstanding his moderation,
the Austrians executed him. After the " pacification " of Hungary, the moderate party of
that kingdom was led by Franz Deak, an eloquent lawyer, and the extreme party by
Ladislas Teleki. The latter died in 1861, and Deak lived to see the complete triumph of his
policy in 1867. The object of Deak was to preserve Hungary as a component of the Austrian Empire, but to retain all its ancient privileges of a separate ministry, all in short that
Hungary rebelled to recover in 1848; this would never have been granted but for the
reverses of Austria in 1866, when Von Beust, the new Austrian Prime Minister, advised it.
At present Transylvania, Crotia, and Sclavonia, non-Hungarian provinces, are united with
Hungary against their will, and sit in the Hungarian diet at Pesth. The Sclave population
of Austria outnumbers both the German and the Magyar elements, separately; the Sclaves
hate the Germans, and they made the Hussite celebration at Prague, in 1869, an occasion of
political manifestation. While progress continues to be the rule for the present, it must not
still be inferred that Europe is at peace. A hundred little questions perpetually in ebullition, may coalesce and make a maelstrom at any instant. In general terms, it may be said
that Norway has now the freest government in Europe, and the Papal States the most
illiberal.
77




610    TIIE NEW WORLD COSIPARED WITI-I THE OLD.
has a capital of sixteen millions of dollars, and its shares sell at 149,
with annual dividends of ten per cent. Its capital is Batavia, with a
population of one hundred and twenty thousand, the emporium of
island India, as Hindostafi is of mainland India. Singapore is the
British rival of Batavia on the Indian islands. Prussia, Holland,
Hanover, Bremnen, Hamburg, Oldenburg, and North Germany, unitedly possess about six thousand four hundred and sixteen vessels of all sorts, of one million one hundred and seventeen thousand tons altogether. Prussia has never had colonies, but the Dutch
are old hands at establishing distant empires, and they are noted as
amongst the most unfeeling, tyrannical, and phlegmatic taskmasters
in the world. Holland is probably losing rank amongst commercial
nations, and can only be electrified by the energy, statesmanship, and
resources of Germany. But even thus absorbed she can be no match
for the United States, England, and Russia, in controlling the Pacific
and Indian seas.
At the southern part of Germany, with her outlet upon the Adriatic, Austria, like Prussia, stands without a colony, yet with no
insignificant commerce, and with a naval spirit which availed in
1866 to redeem the disaster of Sadowa, by the victory of Lissa.
Austria possessed, in 1864, nine thousand six hundred and fortythree vessels in her commercial marine, of three hundred and thirty-,one thousand two hundred and eighty-seven tons, and manned by
4thirty-seven thousand men.  Her Bremen is the city of Trieste,
which stands nearly opposite Venice, at the head of the Adriatic, and
Jher naval station is Pola, seventy-five miles further south. Trieste
is the head-cuarters of a celebrated maritime company, called the
Austrian Lloyd, which has a fleet of seventy-four steamers, plying to
all parts of the Mediterranean, and competing with the maritime
companies of Genoa and Marseilles. The only outlet besides the
Adriatic, for.Austria, is the Danube River, which gives unreliable and
roundabout access to the Black Sea and Wcstern Asia. Two thousand vessels, of eight hundred thousand tons, of all nations, navigated the Danube, in 1860. The Turks had undisputed possession of
the Black Sea (which is about twice the size of Lake Superior) until
the beinning of the American Revolution, when Russia obtained the
privilege of trading in it. Since that day, the Russian, like the
American eagle, has crossed the continent, and drawn near the tropics. The Danube Steam Navigation Company, of Vienna, advertised,




THE NEW  WEST AND TftE NEW  EAST.              611
in 1869, that it possessed one hundred and forty light draught steamsl-lips.
Austria can probably never become a great naval power, unless by
some good fortune she could reanimate and conciliate the Italians,
who owe her so long and so remorseless misery. Italy has one
hundred and sixty thousand superior sailors, and Greece has twentyfive thousand admirable watermen. The prostrate condition of Italy,
and the cramped and unprofitable state of Greece, are the results
of the short-sighted and greedful policy of what has been called, for
a century, the'" statesmanship " of the Great Powers. Afraid to give
Greece a republic, and to accord her space commensurate with her
spirit, they have fastened to her destinies, now a crowned beerdrinker, and now a mere lad of a decayed house, subjected Christian
Crete to massacre, and kept in pinafores the countrymen of Ypsilanti
and Bozzaris. Their alliances have been with IHaynau and HIapsburg, instead of Garibaldi and Cavour, and at the end, behold! Italy
regenerated, but in rags; the Russia they were at such pains to summon against the march of republican France, grown aware of its
power, and threatening to devour them; and the Austria, with which
their holy alliances were made, which had a monarch ready for every
dilemma, and a groom for every princess, smitten one blow by the
stripling Prussia of yesterday, has tumbled into a heap of old purple
clothes, and pawnbrokers' tickets. The sympathies of the American
people are with Greece and Italy, but with the fate of the provinces
of Austria the same statesmanship must deal which first violently
flung them together. Common sense would seem to indicate that the
first step would be for the German part of Austria to join the North
German confederation; the second, for the HIapsburgs to retire upon
their laurels, —Mexico, Sadowa, Pesth, - and lastly to make Hungary
a new state, with such neighbors as will share her fortunes, and quietly permit her and Greece to consume as much of Turkey as will
agree with them; the residue, being Italian, will fall by gravity to
the Kingdom of Italy.
As we appi'oach Russia, going eastward, we feel a similar sensation
to that with which we pass the River Mississippi, and enter upon the
broad plains of the United States. Behind us, on either hand, are
Berlin and Vienna, the last great cities of elderly Europe, like Chicago and St. Louis. Before us, wider apart, on the verge of this
mighty empire, are Warsaw and Pesth, which, like our battle-fields
where perished two rude but gallant Indian tribes recall their names




612    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WVITH THE OLD.
as we pass through, - Poland, the land of Kosciusko; Hungary, the
land of Kossuth. Pesth is one hundred and seventy-one miles east
of Vienna, and possesses one hundred and thirty thousand people.
Warsaw is three hundred miles east of Berlin, and contains two hundred and forty thousand people.
We have crossed the frontier of Russia, and spread before us to the
Pacific Ocean, to- the Arctic Sea, to the streams which flow into the
Indian Ocean, the domain of Russia lies, — in round numbers, eight
millions of square miles. Before us is Kiev, perhaps the future capital of Russia, on the latitude of Brussels, Newfoundland, and Vancouver. Due north of Kiev, six hundred and fifty miles, is St.
Petersburg, the present capital, on the latitude of Greenland, and
Mt. St. Elias, Russian America. Due south of Kiev, two hundred
and fifty miles, is Odessa, the great grain port of Russia, on the latitude of Switzerland, Quebec, and Portland, Oregon. Due east of
Odessa, eight hundred miles, is Astrachan, on the Caspian Sea,
twelve hundred miles south-east of St. Petersburg, and on the air
line between these two latter cities stands Moscow, four hundred
miles from the capital. East of Moscow, two hundred and fifty miles,
is Niznii Novgorod; west of Moscow, five hundred miles, is Riga.
These seven cities are, in present or future importance, the most considerable of Russia. Moscow was the old capital, and is at present
the main manufacturing city of Russia, - its Philadelphia, with four
hundred thousand people. It is very nearly at the centre of Russia,
near the sources of its river systems, and at the junction of its railway system, and besides its industrial and historical attractions it is
the seat of Russia's greatest university. Niznii or Nijnii (lower)
Novgorod is the seat of an immense intercontinental fair, held for a
month every summer, during which the population of forty thousand
rises to two hundred thousand; every great nation being represented
in it, from America to China. The mighty River Volga, the largest in
Europe, flowing past Novgorod, and close by Moscow, reaches from
near St. Petersburg to Astrachan, twenty-three hundred miles.
Astrachan is the Omaha of Russia, with forty thousand people; it
stands on the delta of the Volga, and receives from Persia, on the
opposite shore of the Caspian Sea, silks, precious drugs, and the
manifold products of the East. Kiev, on the Dnieper River, is admirably situated for a political capital to control the politics of Turkey,
Poland, and Hungary together, and it contains about one hundred
thousand people. It is the city where Christianity was first pro



THE NEW  WEST AND THE NEW  EAST.               613
claimed in Russia; has a university and a sanctuary, and is altogether better adapted for an influential capital city than St. Petersburg. Riga is on the River Dwina, five miles from the Gulf of Riga,
and three hundred and seventy-six miles on the way to middle Europe, from  St. Petersburg; it is a sort of Baltic Quebec, with one
railroad, like the Grand Trutnk, and its exports, amounting to twenty
million dollars, go chiefly to England; they consist of flax, hemp,
linseed, corn, timber, tallow, and tobacco. It is a dingy, gloomy
town, cold and unbeloved. Odessa has one hundred and twenty thousand people, mainly Jews, Greeks, and Italians. It is a free port,
and owes its prosperity largely to a French nobleman, the Duc de
Richelieu, who was expelled from France in the Revolution, and made
Governor here by the Czar Alexander; but the town is older than the
Christian era, and it is now the third commercial city of Russia,
outranked only by St. Petersburg and Riga.  The English nearly
destroyed its fleet in 1854, and shot Richelieu. The city, itself, like
Chicago, has poor river communication with the interior, and but two
railways, one still incomplete. The surrounding soil is arid and
poor; building stone lies close by, out of which many handsome edifices have been constructed, and, like Chicago in former days, Odessa
has exceedingly poor water; the former city stands on a prairie, while
Odessa is upon a cliff, and its harbor is better than that of Chicago,
being very deep, seldom frozen, and capable of holding two hundred
-vessels. The roads around and in Odessa are almost impassable in
muddy weather, and the thermometer' frequently rises there in suminer to 120~. The city exports about twenty million bushels of wheat
a year, and this comprises half its entire exports, which are valued
at thirty million dollars annually, or two-thirds more than its imports.
America sends thirty-one per cent. of all the wheat imported into the
English United Kingdom, and Canada seven per cent.; Germany and
Russia together send about as much as all America combined.  The
growth of Odessa bears no proportion to that of our great Western
cities, and as an example of the latter we may cite Chicago, the
Odessa of the North-west.
Chicago is now the most extensive grain and lumber market in the
world. In 1838 the first shipment of wheat consisted of seventyeight bushels; in 1862 there were exported in flour and grain of all
kinds from the port fifty-six million four hundred and eighty-four
thousand one hundred and ten bushels. During the year there were
shipped one million eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand one




614    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
hundclred and sixty-four barrels of flour. In 1863, one million five
hundred and thirty-seven thousand eight hundred and sixteen barrels
of flour, or flour and grain of all kinds equal to about fifty-five
million bushels.
The receipts of lumber in Chicago in 1865 were six hundred and six
million six hundred and forty-two thousandcl three hundred feet;
shingles, three hundred and four million two hundred and sixteen thousand; lath, sixty million three hundred and forty thousand; sent by lake
and railroad transportation to all points in Illinois, to Indiana, Ohio,
New York. and westward to Iowa, Missouri, Dakota, Nebraska,
Kansas, and the lower Mississippi. The trade in staves, railroad
ties, telegraph posts, fence posts, and other similar materials, is very
extensive, and the amount of capital invested in the lumber traffic
immense.
Chicago city holds an equally leading position in the pork and beef
trade of the West, and next to New York is the greatest cattle market
in the United States. The trade is also very extensive in salt, lead,
hides, tallow, the products of the dairy; orchards, in distilled spirits,
and other articles. The lake tonnage of the port, in 1864, was two
million one hundred and seventy-two thousand eight hundred and
sixty-six tons in arrivals, and two million one hundred and sixty-six
thousand nine hundred and four in clearances, and during the season
eight thousand nine hundred and thirty-nine vessels and propellers
arrived, and eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-four cleared,
the tonnage engaged wholly in the Chicago trade amounting to one
hundred and ninety-eight thousand and five.
The cost of buildings erected in the city, in 1865, was seven million
five hundred and ten thousand dollars, and the number in 1866 was
nine thousand.
The wholesale dry goods business forms a large interest, the sales
having reached thirty-five million dollars a year, and the trade in
boots, shoes, and clothing, twenty-five million dollars. The neighborhood of Chicago is fruitful of large and vigorous municipalities.
Springfield, the capital, near the geographical centre, in the rich and
beautiful valley of the Sangamon, is one of the handsomest cities in
the West, and rapidly_ increasing in population, wealth, and refinement. Galena, Aurora, Quincy, and Alton on the Mississippi; Cairo
at the mouth of the Ohio, and Peoria on the Illinois, are enterprising
and growing cities.
The educational interests of the State are in a most flourishing




THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.                615
condition, nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-three school-houses
having been reported on 30th September, 1866, with six hundred and
fourteen thousand six hundred and fifty-nine pupils, and over seventeen thousand two hundred teachers; the revenue for the year ending
30th September, 1866, in support of the school interest, amounting to four million four hundred and forty-five thousand one hundred
and thirtv dollars.
In 1860, there were in the State eighteen colleges, two thousand
nine hundred students, and an income of ninety-seven thousand four
hundred and twelve dollars; two hundred and eleven academies with
thirteen thousand two hundred and five pupils, and an income of two
hundred and thirty-three thousand two hundred and sixty-two dollars.
There were at the same time eight hundred and fifty-four libraries,
two hundred and forty-six of which were public; two hundred and
forty-three for schools; three hundred and thirty-nine for Sundayschools; seven college and nineteen church libraries; with a total of
two hundred and forty-four thousand three hundred and ninety-four
volumes.
The finances of the State of Illinois are in a very encouraging condition, and the debt contracted in the construction of its extensive
railroad lines is being speedily reduced by annual payment of the
interest and gradual liquidation of the principal.
St. Petersburg, in its origin, reminds one of Washington City, and
while it has grown to be one of the most magnificent cities in the
world, it is bleak, expensive, unloved, and a perpetual sacrifice to
the great interests of the empire. As Washington was selected for
our capital in deference to General Washington, St. Petersburg was
made the capital of Russia by the direct order of Peter the Great, the
Russian Washington. Peter, who died seven years before the birth of
Washington, inherited a cramped empire, at war with the Poles, the
Tartars, the Turks, and the Swedes; but he had the advantage of a
honrogeneous race for his subjects, and his state, like England, Sicily,
and France, owed its original vigor to an infusion of Normans. He
was an intellectual savage, of fierce appetites and boundless aspirations, and he modelled his empire upon the dictates of his personal
will, without regarding the natural or national bent of his people.
Engaged at that period in war with the disciplined Swedes, Peter
founded his capital upon Swedish soil, and proceeded to conquer his
way to the coasts of the Baltic, the Black, and the Caspian Seas. He
visited civilized lands and imported their arts, their artists, and their




616    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
disciplinarians, and he had himself been in part the creation of
German, Genevese, and Scotch adventurers. He married his Swedish
mistress, executed his own son, became a ship carpenter in Holland,
was made a Doctor of Laws by Oxford University, and died drunk.
The Russians are, like himself, a savage people, ardent for acquisitions, mental and material, and deriving them from the more polished
world, but revealing the seams of these enforced additions, - a people
whose destinies have grown too fast for their education, and who
behold themselves masters of a seventh part of the globe, and yet
have created nothing and discovered nothing; but who borrow on the
left hand the appliances of civilization to subjugate barbarism on the
right hand. Their dynasty is German, and in crimes, in acquisitiveness, in cold, calculating, unfeeling, mathematical ability, it may be
considered the extreme development of Teutonic statesmanship;
the people are Sclaves, and their obedience bears out the derivation
of their name; their civilization, as far as it goes, is Latin, at court
French, in trade Greek and Jewish, in commerce Italian. But all
the elements of civilization are uneasily at work in Russia, - a literature, a democracy, an opposition party on every question, - and it
may prove that with so much cleared from her path by the foresight
and ferocious energy of her Czars, Russia is to realize within her
boundaries a lustrous civilization, when Western Europe has passed
to languor and decay.
The wife of Peter the Great died intoxicated, like himself, and the
successor, Catharine II., who paved the way for Russia to oppose the
French Revolution, was an infamous woman of ability, successful iln
her favorites. Paul, who followed her, hated England and its policy
in Europe, and was strangled by his family; and Alexander, the subjugator of Napoleon, became afterward a religious fanatic, and an
enemy of popular progress everywhere. Nicholas was a surly tyrant,
who discovered in his war with the Western powers, that Europe was
not endowed with the weak heart of Asia, and when France,
England, and Italy invaded Russia on the South, the mighty empire
proved to be almost bankrupt in purse, and its seat of danger perilously remote from its seat of power. The present Emperor, of a
more cheerful heart, has made his reign beneficent by abolishing serfdom, and by happy coincidence, at nearly the same time that slavery
ceased in America, twenty-two millions of bondmen recovered their
freedom in Russia; soon afterward, the Dutch emancipated throughout
their dominions, and except in Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and




THE NEW  WEST AND THE NEW  EAST.               617
Brazil, slavery perished amongst the Christian nations of the earth. St.
Petersburg is scarcely older than Pittsburg or Cincinnati, and occupies
amongst cities of modern growth a place half-way between New York
and Chicago. It has about the population of Philadelphia, is about the
same distance from its seaport, Cronstadt, as New York from the
ocean, covers forty-two square miles, is fifty-six feet aobve the sea,
and contains sixty-four public squares, and five hundred streets. It
is like Chicago in its temporary bridges of piles, is intersected with a
river and water courses, built upon a marsh, and while the thermometer varies between 99~ and — 51, the ice in the river Neva is frequently a yard and a half thick! There are many enormous things
in St. Petersburg,- a street of palaces one hundred and thirty feet
wide and four miles long, a palace seven hundred feet square, which,
when full, in the court season, contains six thousand inhabitants, a
library of four hundred and fifty thousand volumes, immense government factories of bronzes, mirrors,tapestry, porcelain, playing cards, -
for Russia is a high-tariff country, where every domestic industry is
" protected," - and a freshet every year; but the magnificent city is
gray, sombre, cold, dreary, - a metropolitan Sitka,- and it is very
far removed from the great destinies of Russia, so that not improbably, the capital of Peter the Great will one day be left to its own
resources, and Kiev become the ruling place.
Within the Russian Empire the disaffected party at present is the
nobility, which seems to perceive that the present drift of'polity
there is to raise the common standard of citizenship by education and
reward, and quietly soften all distinctions between the autocrat and
the populace; but so stupendous are the projects of Russia, and her
energy in developing them, so uniform is her success, and so much
wider than any internal dissensions are her exterior interests, that
there can scarcely be said to be any disaffected organization in Russia. The struggle of the empire is to get a solid footing on the sea.
Arid at present Russia is using every power to conquer her way to
the Indian Ocean, where Western Europe and particularly England,
have everything to fear from her advent. To be a great empire she
must abut upon the temperate seas; for at present she is in the plight
of Canada, frozen up on the east and the west all winter long, and
the inland waters to the south of her are held by her rivals. In past
times Russia was one of the great highways between India and Europe; the traffic which afterward took the routes of Venice, Constantinople, Egypt, or the Cape of Good Hope, once climbed the Volga and
78




618    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
sought the outlet of the Baltic. To recover the trade of the East, the
precious commerce ill gold, gems, spices, drugs, coffee, cotton, and
fabrics of fine wool and silk, - Russia is resolved to become a commercial power on the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and here she becomes
a party to the great " Eastern Question."
The United States now possesses two lines of communication with
the Pacific Ocean, the Panama Railroad and the Pacific Railroad, and
these are the only avenues yet open on our continent; the Panama
Railroad was finished in 1855, and it is forty miles long.*  The Isthmus of Suez furnishes, at present, the only rival steam communication
between Europe and the Pacific, and the Suez Railroad was opened
in 1858. Two years previously, one M. de Lesseps, a Frenchman,
planned and obtained a charter for a ship canal through the isthmus,
and the same year which witnessed the opening of the Pacific Railroad recited the triumph of this canal, which had been at the beginning pronounced impracticable by George Stephenson, the English
engineer, and regarded to the last by Enoglish writers and politicians
with jealousy and mortification.  Its total cost was about eighty millions of dollars. Its success seems to have been complete, and it will
probably be considered the most extraordinary monument of the
reign of Napoleon III., replacing as it does the canals of Pharaoh,
Trajan, and Amrou.
Having denounced the Suez Canal as visionary and unprofitable,
no sooner is it done than the English are crying aloud for a highway
of their own to India, and this they propose to secure by a railroad
from Constantinople to the Euphrates River, thence connecting with
steamers to Kurrachee or to Bombay; they now remember bitterly how
they called the Pacific Railroad in 1858 a " speculator's dream;" yet
the latter road, five hundred miles longer than their long contemplated one, is as accomplished as the English character, while India
and England are united only by telegraph poles, and by the permission of the French canal-makers. The proposed Euphrates route
would revive long-decayed cities of antiquity, and would drain the rih
regions of Persia, Arabia, and Asia Minor; it is to the interests of
civilization to see it opened up, but France and Russia would make
" In 1695 the Scotch organized a Darien Company to occupy and control the Isthmus of
Panama. Four millions anti a half of dollars were subscribed, and twenty-five hundred
men actually founded on the isthmus the " city " of New Edinburgh. They were opposed by
a bigoted home government, deserted by the American colonies of England, and finally
driven off by the Spanish.




THE NEW  WEST AND THE NEW  E AST.              619
of its concession by Turkey a political affront, and either threaten or
bribe the Sultan to refuse it. Russia, meantime, has also projected
a route to the Indian Ocean from the head of the Caspian Sea, to pass
through Persia; for Persia is as dependent upon Russia for existence
as is Turkey upon England, while Egypt is allied with France. And
this is the great " Eastern Question," of which we hear so much:
Shall England, France, or Russia, or any two of them, become paramount in the politics of Egypt, Persia and Turkey, so as to control
the highways and trade of the East?
So far as Persia is concerned, the nearest great neighbor of British
India, this precedence is already settled: Russia by a series of wars,
lasting nearly forty years, and by subsequent intrigue at the Persian
Court has completely succeeded in making Persia her creature. The
Shah surrenders deserters from  the Russian army, and permits the
building of Russian ships-of-war in his ports of Resht and Astrabad.
Persia is a despotism, corrupt like Efgypt and Turkey, with a population of ten millions and an army of one hundred and twenty thousand
men, thirty thousand of whom are cavalry equal to the Russian Cossacks. Between Persia and India stands only the dreary waste of
Afghanistan to protect British India from the Russian, and the fortified town of Herat, near the Persian border, is the only considerable
bulwark that the English have against Russia. The latter power is
constantly inciting her vassal, Persia, to capture this place. The
most amusing thing in Teheran, the capital of Persia, is to see amongst
the mud residences of its one hundred thousand people the big advertising palaces of the Russian and the English ambassador, each striving to outwit, or outbid, or o'utthreaten the other. At present, the
British believe that by eight years of inglorious warfare they have
impressed themselves upon the resolute Afghans; but Mr. Dilke, an
English traveller, showed the hollowness of this assurance in 1867;
for the Afghans are mere dependents of Persia, and Persia is the vassal of Russia. In 1866 the Russians occupied much of Turkestan,
the region north of Herat, and at the present writing they are probably not more than two hundred miles from Peshawur, the most northwesterly British outpost. Able to meet the English in front with
Persians, Afghans, and Cossacks, and to stir up a 3Mohammedan mutiny in their rear, the perilous days of British India seem to have
come. And if, as diplomatic rumor runs, the French in Egypt, and
the Russians in Persia, are ready to act in concert at the proper time,
it is hard to say what defensive course the British can adopt. They




620    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE -OLD.
have been hitherto unable to obtain a practicable concession of the
Euphrates route, owing, it is supposed to the influence of French
Egypt upon Turkey.
Egypt is nominally an hereditary Viceroyalty of Turkey, its reigning family being descended from Mehemet Ali, a Turkish general;
but it is really more powerful than Turkey itself, having an army
arranged and drilled by European tactics, and a navy of seventy-three
vessels of war and transports. Its population is about five millions,
and its chief cities, Cairo and Alexandria, contain, respectively, two
hundred and fifty thousand and one hundred thousand inhabitants.
France has loaned Egypt about forty millions of dollars; and the
Egyptian army is largely officered by French emissaries and adventurers. Turkey nominally controls thirty-five millions of people, but
only two-thirds of these are, in any sense, Mohammedans, and there
are so many mutinous Christians of the Russian church, and independent princes, and heterogenous tribes, that Turkey is in reality one of
the weakest, most impoverished, and, least effective states in the world.
WFith a nominal army of one hundred and forty-eight thousand men,
and three hundred thousand reserves, and with a navy of about forty
wooden steamers and iron-clads, Turkey was obliged to seek the assistance of Egypt to suppress the Cretan revolt of 1868. Her finances
stand lowest in Europe. The English have built her ships, and guaranteed her loans, but she has even greater obligations to Egypt, for
the Egyptian tribute is all-essential to her, and Egypt, backed by
either of the Great Powers, could speedily rise to opulence and power
on the ruins of Turkey. The English have abundant reason to fear
that notwithstanding the alliance of the Crimean war, France and Russia mean to work in harmony, and leave England out " in the cold."
Russia and France aFe commercially weaker than England; their objects and routes do not conflict with each other, but both conflict with
England. They are both interested in seeing her defeated in opening
the Euphrates railway, and they can work upon her through Turkey's
obligations to Egypt. Many Englishmen are urging that the concession of this route be forced from Turkey; but a step' so bold would
probably lead to general warfare amongst the three great Jesuits and
expose their double dealing.
The study of this Eastern Question is complicated by a great schism
between the orthodox and dissenting Mohammedans (Sonnites and
Shiites), who hate each other as fiercely as Greek and Catholic Christians; the Persians and Afghans are dissenters; the Turks, Egyp



THE NEW WEST AND TIHE NEW EAST.               621
tians, and Hindostans, are orthodox. Amongst them all, the military
prowess of Russia is irresistible.
" The vast experience of the Russians in wars, conducted alike
upon the grandest and the most limited scale, - at one time carried
on by great masses on the level and unobstructed plains of Europe,
at another, by small detachments in the rugged mountains of Caucasus and Asia Mlinor, or on the fiontiers of Tartary and China; the
great perfection to which military science has been carried in her
schools and special corps; the intelligence, skill, and courage they
have so often evinced, both in attack and defence," *   all these considerations render probable what proportions a campaign between
Western Europe and Russia would assume on the plains of Asia.
England has grown well weary of contemplating a struggle of this
magnitude, and her pacific attitude of late years has made the
nations of the continent believe that she is anxious to retire from the
field of European~ politics. An English authority, citing this superstition, thus quotes it and comments upon it:"' If I were an Abyssinian, or a Hindoo, or even an American,' says
the Frenchman,'I might, perhaps, care what England thinks; but
being a European I do not.'' A power that does not fight is no
longer a power. She may still be summoned to European Congresses, - so is Turkey. Her envoys may be listened to with an
affectation of respect, - so was the envoy of Greece.  But the
moment will come when each country of Europe has to support its
counsel with the sword. France will throw hers into one scale,
Prussia hers in another, and on one side or the other Russia will fling
hers, and probably Austria hers, and even Italy hers. But England!
England knows, and Europe knows, that in that supreme moment
the power which used to subsidize one-half the continent, and fight
the other, must abandon the place which she has ceased to be able to
maintain by force. She must renounce her political authority, and
shelter herself behind an impotent neutrality.  There aTe men in
both parties like Mr. Bright, and Lord Stanley, who look forward
contentedly to such an hour; but the mass of Englishmen do not.
They do not want to resume the old system of perpetual interference,
but they want to be free to declare war, when interest or honor bid
them."
The extent of the jealousy of the English toward the Russians
can be understood from  Mr. Dilke's way of stating the Eastern
s General George B. McClellan.




622    TIHE NEW WORLD COMIPARED WITH THE OLD.
Question. "Drunken, dirty, ignorant, and corrupt, the Russian people are no fit rulers for HIindostan. A barbarous horde, ruled by a
German Emperor and ministry, who are as little able to suppress
degrading drunkenness and shameless venality, as they are themselves desirous of promoting true enlightenment and education. Russia must be beaten. A country that was fifty years conquering the
Caucasus, and that could never place a disposable force of sixty
thousand men in the Crimea, need give no fear to India, while her
grandest offensive efforts would be ridiculed by America, or by the
England of to-day."
Thus does the same gentle author refer to the Suez Canal, and his
French fellow-christians:" It is evident enough that the Suez Canal scheme has been from the
beginning a blind for the occupation of Egypt by France, and that,
however interesting to the shareholders may be the question of its
physical or commercial success, the probabilities of failure have had
but little weight with the French government. The foundation of the
Messagerie Company with national capital, to carry imaginary mails,
secured the preponderance of French influence in the towns of Egypt.' The English railway-guards have lately-been dismissed from the
government railway line, and a huge tricolor floats from the entrance to
the new docks at Suez, while a still more gigantic one waves over the
hotel; the King of Egypt, glad to find a third power which he can play
off, when necessary, against both England and Russia,'takes shares in
the canal. It is when we ask,' What is the end that the French have
in view?' that we find it strangely small by the side of the means.
The French of the present clay appear to have no foreign policy, unless it is a sort of desire to extend the empire of their language, their
dance-tunes, and their fashions;, and the natural wish of their ruler
to engage in no enterprise that will outlast his life prevents their
hlaving any such permanent policy as that of Russia or the United
States. An Egyptian Pachia hardly put the truth too strongly when
he said,' There is nothing permanent about France except Mlabile.'"
We may now profitably open the inquiry, What is the Pacific
Ocean, and why do the nations struggle for supremacy in it?  The
venerable and vigorous Atlantic Ocean, on which Christian civilization
first spread its sails, has been for nearly four hundred years the greatest
of the world's highways. Columbus had crossed it twenty-one years
before the Pacific was ploughed by Magellan; it has borne over the
seventy millions of men who people North and South America, and




THE NEW  WEST AND THE NEW EAST.               623
yet to the newer ocean of the Pacific it is only a larger sort of strait,
as narrow, between Brazil and Africa, as sixteen hundred miles, and
at the widest only a fifth part of the earth's circumference. The
Pacific, on which we are to try our fortunes, is at its greatest, - on
the latitude of the Isthmus of Panama, - ten thousand and five hundred miles wide, and its area comprises two-fifths of the surface of
the globe. The Pacific is in shape almost like a diamond, with the
corner toward South America missing. The north-east side of the
diamond is North America, the north-west side is Asia, the southwest side is the archipelago of the East Indies and Australia and
New Zealand. Across the widest diameter, due west from Panama,
is the riven isthmus of Malacca, through which the traders of Europe
have been wont to sail on their way to China. Close to the centre
of this ocean are the Sandwich Islands, where American influence has
long been paramount. Due west of the United States is Japan; on
the latitude of Mexico is China; on the latitude of Central America is Cochin China; the East India Islands are on the line of Peru;
Australia and New Zealand are on the latitude of Chili. Yeddo is
nearly west of San Francisco, Pekin of Salt Lake City, Hong Kong
of Havana, Manilla of Acapulco, Batavia of Pernamnbuco, Sydney of
Valparaiso, and Melbourne of Concepcion.
The American channel of the Pacific is nearly clear of islands, but
they abound toward Southern Asia and Australia. New Zealand,
the most isolated of all the great islands of the South Pacific, is
almost equidistant from Hindostan and South Patagonia, and is as
neighborly to the Southern polar Continent as to Australia, its British
kinsman. Sailing due west from San Francisco, we reach Japan; the
neatest mainland is China; descending the Chinese coast we come to
Cochin China; beyond is Malacca, which turning, we enter the Indian
Ocean, and reach Hindostan; off China in the Pacific lie the Philippines and numberless islands; off Malacca are the mighty series of
great islands, - the Great Antilles of the East, - Sumatra, Java,
Borneo, New Guinea, and Australia, and at last New Zealand, standing
sheerly off in the South Pacific. The struggle in Christendom, at
present, is that which agitated the world before the discovery of
America,- to possess this East. Let us, therefore, pass in crisp review
the above several groups of land.
Japan has an executive presumptive, educated in France. At its
head is the Mikado, the divine Emperor, and the Tycoon, the hereditary Executive; the government is a sort of heathen Enigland, with




624    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
an immense aristocracy of Princes or Daimios, some of whom have
revenues of four million dollars a year. The Japanese are the ablest
nation of Asiatics; they number almost as many people as the Americans, and their country is as large as all our Middle States. The
Americans are the most popular foreigners in the empire, and have
every reason to anticipate that the present intimate and profitable
relations with Japan will grow closer and vaster every year.
China is an absolute patriarchal government, deriving its religious
traditions, like Japan, from the philosopher and school-teacher, Confucius. The population is said to be four hundred millions, the area one
million three hundred square miles, and British influence is paramount
in Chinese commerce. The products of Japan and China are much
of the same sort: tea, tobacco, silk, and manufactured articles of
steel, staples, and wood. At the most eligible part of the Chinese
coast the British have an independent colony, Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, the British "factory" in China, was ceded to Great
Britain in 1841, and had a population in 1865 of one hundred and
twenty-five thousand, two thousand of whom were Europeans; it is
an island, lying close under the China coast, of twenty-nine square
miles' surface.
Cochin China, where the French have played the same avaricious
and unscrupulous part as the British in China, is a peninsula, south
of China,.and is said to contain thirty millions of people; it is in
products and civilization much like China.
The Philippine Islands, opposite Cochin China, are twelve hundred
in number, comprising one hundred and fifty thousand square miles
of land, and inhabited by five millions of people. They are therefore
as large as the six middle States of the United States, and two-thirds
more populous than all New England. Spain partly holds the Philippine Islands in subjection. Manilla, the capital, has one hundred
and fifty thousand inhabitants, twenty thousand of whom are cheroot
makers.  The people are industrious, and many Chinese -the
Anglo-Saxons of the East - are mixed with them. The revenue of
these islands amounts to eleven millions of dollars annually, and the
chief exports are sugar, tobacco, cigars, hemp, coffee, rice, dyewoods,
gold-dust, beeswax, and all tropical fruits. Americans and English
divide the business of these islands, the former growing more formidable every year. The Philippine Islands are nearer to New York
by San Francisco than to London by Suez. Papua, or New Gqinea,
between the Philippine Islands and Australia, is the second island




THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.               625
on the globe in greatness of dimensions, and is alternately mountain and
swamp; it is twelve hundred miles long and three hundred wide,
contains eight hundred thousand natives, and is claimed by the
Dutch; but its deadly climate has not encouraged foreign occupation, and its exports of ebony, pearls, spices, slaves, etc., go chiefly
to the neighboring islands.
Malacca, the most southerly tip of Asia, whose cape is nearly midway between British Calcutta and British Hong Kong, and is the
half-way place between London and San. Francisco by canal and sea,
is a British colony forty by twenty-five miles in dimensions, with
sixty: thousand inhabitants, and productive of little, although fertile.
Sumatra, separated by a navigable strait from the MIalacca mainland,
is a Dutch colony, with an area of one hundred and sixty-eight.
thousand square miles and seven millions of people, only two
thousand of whom are Europeans; it illustrates the prolific vegetation
and animal life of the East Indies, and its great staples are rice,
coffee, oil, ivory, drugs, india-rubber, spices, and tobacco. At thesouthern end of Sumatra, separated by a strait, is Java, which,
extends to the neighborhood of Australia, and contains more people
than all our middle States, one hundred and eighty thousand of
whom are Europeans, Chinese, and Arabians. It is the greatest.
Dutch possession, and in thirty years has sent to Holland one hun-.
dred and thirty million dollars. North of Java is Borneo, the third
island in size in the world, or as large as Virginia, North Carolina,.
Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas together, yet with only:
two million five hundred thousand people. It has been but little
explored, is unhealthy and very productive, contains all the precious
metals and gems, has two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese, and
is ruled jointly by Dutch, British, and natives.'Australia is the Pacific coast of England, —her California,.
Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, — the only one of her colonies
which has bounded, like states of the American nation, from desola-.
tion to opulence. Australia is half as large as all South America..
There are seven colonies in it, numbering unitedly (1862) one million
three hundred and thirty-six thousand one hundred and thirty-one
people. The Pacific States of America numbered at the same time
about eight.hundred thousand, but even at that time Australia's ratio
of increase showed decline, while the American Pacific region was
growing with undiminished vigor. Victoria, the most' flourishing
colony of Australia, contained five hundred and seventy-four thousand
79




026    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
people to California's three hundred and eighty thousand, and Melbourne, its capital, had one hundred and thirty-nine thousand nine
hundred and sixteen inhabitants to San Francisco's one hundred and
three thousand; three thousand and twenty-three vessels of nine hundred
and ninety-five thousand and eighty-two tons entered and cleared
from Melbourne in 1861, and three thousand eight hundred and
seventy vessels of one million three hundred and forty-two thousand
two hundred and ninety tons entered and cleared from San Francisco
in 1863.
Sydney, the second city of Australia, contains ninety-four thousand people, and has a university building five hundred feet long;
its bay is the best in Australia, and it may be called the Portland
(Oregon) of the British Pacific coast.
Australia has reached its present importance by the discovery of
gold, by the gratuitous shipment of British people to it, which still
continues, and by the influx of Germans and Chinese. But its
resources and promise are not to be compared with the American
Pacific; it is a narrow reef of fertile land, enclosing an immense
desert, so terrible that it has been proposed to pierce the reef and
admit the ocean; it has no good harbors, and dangerous coasts; at
one stretch for seven hundred coast miles not a drop of fresh water
flows into the sea; deluge and drouth alternate, so that once at
Sydney it did not rain for thirteen months in 1838-9; at a later
pekiod travellers found in a dry river-bed the footmarks of people
who had ascended it three years before to perish, and within the
past tbhree years one exploring party to the great interior desert, died
of thirst with their camels, while a second party, sent after them, was
nearlyAdivwned by a flood. The rivers of Australia are unreliable;
it hastcontributed no plant to agriculture, and its waters contain few
fish. Its stgp1e is wool, and it contains an immense number of
merino sheep, but frequently thousands of these die of thirst or by
the parchingaof the grass. Gold, coal, iron, and the metals distinguish Australia like California, though in less abundance and the
American possessions have, in addition, the richest quicksilver mines
in the world, magnificent timber forests, splendid rivers, and the
fruits of all pleasant lands.
There are but four hundred miles of railway in all Australia, - far
less than the amount:possessed by the infant State of Wisconsin.
The sums spent upon the Victorian lines have deterred the colonists from completing their xaiLw.ay system; ~10,000,000 sterling




THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.               627
were spent upon two hundred miles of road, through easy country in
which the land cost nothing. The United States have made nearly
forty thousand miles of railroad, for less than ~300,000,000 sterling;
Canada made her two thousand miles for ~20,000,000, or ten times as
much railroad as Victoria for only twice the money. Cuba has
already more miles of railroad than all Australia.
New Zealand is six thousand five hundred miles due west of South
America, and twelve hundred miles south-east of Australia; it consists of three islands with a total area of ninety-five thousand square
miles, one hundred and seventy-five thousand white inhabitants
(three-fifths males), and forty thousand fierce savages, who keep
constantly employed seventeen thousand British troops. New Zealand was settled by English and American whalers, who went ashore
for shelter and provisions, and courted the native women; the British took formal possession in 1840. New Zealand is a more available colony for commercial uses than Australia, having good harbors
and lands, water power, pleasant climate, and various cereals and
fruits, the whole set in most noble sceneries, with mountains that
reach the height of fourteen thousand feet. New Zealand is almost
as large as Great Britain and Ireland, and it hopes to be the British
island of the Southern Zone.  Hokotika, its chief town, had, in'
1866, ten thousand people, having grown more rapidly than San
Francisco; gold was the magnet that drew the people to New Zealand.
Now let us see what natural advantages America has to trade
with the above regions.
From London to Melbourne, Australia, via the Suez canal, is
three thousand three hundred and seventy-nine miles further than
from San Francisco to Melbourne, and three hundred and seventynine miles further than from New York by the Pacific Railroad.
Yokohama, Japan, is six thousand nine hundred and eighty-four
miles nearer San Francisco than London; Shanghai, China, four
thousand nine hundred and fourteen miles nearer; British Hong
Klong, three thousand three hundred and fourteen miles nearer;
Manilla, three thousand five hundred and four miles nearer; and
even British Singapore is four hundred and fifty-four miles nearer
San Francisco than London.  London, however, by Suez, is one
thousand seven hundred and nineteen miles nearer Calcutta than is
San Francisco. If war should ever close the Suez canal to England,
Calcutta will be four thousand eight hundred miles further from Lon



628    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
don than above, and fMelbourne's distance will be increased three
thousand miles.
The part of our country that must directly compete for the trade
of the East, is the States of the Pacific.
The Pacific slope of the United States is one thousand miles long,
and six hundred and eighty miles wide, with a shore line of two
thousand two hundred and eighty-one miles, and two harbors which are
scarcely surpassed on the globe. It has produced, since 1848, eleven
hundred millions of dollars in gold, and its agricultural capacity is
equal to the support of one hundred millions of inhabitants.
What has the East to reward us for commercial enterprise? The
soil of the Indies and of Southern Asia is characterized by a highly
developed force, pervading vegetation, by which an abundance of
aromatic and balsamic juices is yielded; it is marked by a gorgeous
vegetable and animal life, and the precious gems and metals are no
less distinctive of its soil, than are the labor, the patience, and the ingenuity of its people. By looking over the commerce of the United
States at the latest reports, we shall see that the products of the East
are the chief objects of expenditure with us.
Out of our total imports (one hundred and thirty-seven millions dollars) of 1869, the principal articles were, sugars seventy-three millions, coffee twenty-five millions, iron and steel goods twenty-one
millions, silk goods eighteen millions, dress goods fifteen millions,
tea eleven millions, linen goods ten millions, flax above ten millions, hides ten millions, wood seven and one-half millions. The
chief articles of export, out of a total export of three hundred and
forty-four millions, were cotton one hundred and sixty-two and onehalf millions, petroleum thirty millions, tobacco twenty-five millions,
wheat twenty-four millions, flour nineteen millions, lumber nine
millions, lard nine millions. The imports exceeded the exports by
ninety-three millions; the duties on the imports were one hundred
and fifty millions; one half upon tea, coffee, sugar and molasses;
and eighteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-five foreign vessels
were engaced in the whole trade above represented, to nine thousand
nine hundred and seventy-four American vessels. The East is in want
of just those things which we possess, and the basis of reciprocal trade
is laid in nature. To show the prolific vegetation of the East it only
needs to be remembered that, by the necessities of the American war,
India cotton increased in amount from twenty-five million dollars in
1859, to one hundred and ninety million dollars in 1864, and the pop



THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW  EAST.               629
ulation of the city of B'ombay rose from four hundred thousand to one
million.
Southern Asia and the East India Islands produce about six millions dollars of gold annually; Australian gold was discovered by a
returned California miner, and the total gold and silver yield of
Australia and New Zealand in sixteen years has been nearly nine
hundred million dollars.
What have we done to secure the trade of the East? We have established a flourishing empire on the Pacific; we have entangled ourselves in none of the jealousies of the Europeans in the East; we
have bribed nobody, and so have not a career of prosperity founded
upon the perishable pinions of duplicity; and we have set on the
Pacific one of the greatest maritime companies of the earth, and connected it with the Atlantic by railroad.
The Colorado, the first steamer of this China line, - which is liberally subsidized,  made her first voyage to Shanghai in twentyseven days, and returned from Japan in twenty-one. The trade of
America with China quadrupled the year this steamship line was introduced. The China steamer, America, for example, is three hundred and eighty.feet long, fifty feet beam, has thirty-two feet depth
of hold, and six decks. Her measurement is five thousand six hundred tons, and her engines are of two thousand horse-power. She
was built by Steers, at Greenpoint, New York city, and is fitted up
in magnificent style.
What remains to be done?
To deal generously and equally with Eastern people amongst us;
to respect their religion, their dress, and their peculiarities of manner, and to give them a chance. Also, to lose no time in purchasing
the first right of way through the Isthmus of Central America, that
we may not find ourselves outwitted like England, at Suez. Already Europe is looking covetously toward this narrow bulwark, the
remaining short cut to the Orient.
In the spring of 1863, an Englishman, Captain Marshall, was in
Paris, who entertained the idea of piercing the Isthmus of Panama,
and was the author of a book called, " The Fate of the Pacific." On the
eve of his leaving Paris, he sent a copy of his book to the Emperor,
and, on the next morning, received an invitation to attend the Tuileries.
When he entered Napoleon's cabinet, he found him perusing the
last pages of his work. As usual, Napoleon looked sorrowful and




630    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
worn. " The man has but little rest and little amusement, and will
not yet learn from the other princes how a monarch can render his
life easy and agreeable." --  Your work has so interested me," said
Napoleon, " that I have devoted a portion of the night to it. The
Panama question is one of those, however, which have always occupied
me, as you can convince yourself by looking over my books." Louis Napoleon then went into all the details of the matter, and asked the
captain whether he was disposed to take the bearings again on the
spot. Captain Marshall replied, that he desired nothing more.. The
Emperor drew a draft on the banker, Pereire; and, on the same evening, the Englishman proceeded to Havre, and thence to Central
America. Lastly, to become absolute on the American Pacific, we
must possess by persuasive means, the harbors of Vancouver, so as
to be ready for that Pacific Railroad which will unite Lake Superior
with the India. Canada, thus losing the last chance of Empire in
America, will close her eyes and take the inevitable-separate leap.
The latest English authority, Dilke, says:" The future of the Pacific shores is inevitably brilliant; but it is
not New Zealand, the centre of the water hemisphere, which will
occupy the position that England has taken in the Atlantic, but some
country such as Japan or Vancouver, jutting out into the ocean from
Asia or from America... The political power of America in the
Pacific appears predominant; the Sandwich Islands are all but
annexed; Japan is all but ruled by her, while the occupation of
British Columbia is but a matter of time, and a Mormon descent upon
the Marquesas is already planned. The relations of America and
Australia will be the key to the future of the South.
"If, as is probable, Japan, New Zealand, and New South Wales,
become great manufacturing communities, San Francisco must needs
ill time take rank as a second, if not a greater, London.
" Russia and England are said to be nearing each other upon the
Indus; but long before they can meet there they will be face to face
upon the Amoor; Anglo-Saxon America representing England."
In general terms we may conclude that up to the present hour the
liberality of our institutions, the vigor of our race, and the resources
of our empire, have made us the most generally enlightened people
onr the globe, and we impress mankind as being the safest, and the
strongest of contemporary nations. No other government in North
America can be said to be successful; we are regarded in the Southern American continent, as the common friend and protector of all




THE NEW WEST AND THE NEW EAST.                           631
there, and our American policy has been at all times positive, yet
magnanimous.* In this prosperous period we shall find old friends
presuming, and old enemies suave, and many offers will be made us
to go into business, politics, intrigue, warfare, adventure. But all
that we are, we have become single-handed, accepting for teachers
the original precepts of our Republican Fathers; and happy shall we
be if we make all our national emulations subordinate to happiness
and liberty, and guide our future foreign policy by the laws of sincerity, reciprocity, and peace.
"Our commercial policy,"  said  Washington, "should hold  an
equal and impartial hand; neither seeking, nor granting exclusive
favors or preferences, for it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another, and it must pay with a portion of its
independence for whatever it may accept under that character."
I "In all history nothing can be found more dignified than the action of America upon
the Monroe doctrine. Since the principle was first laid down in words, in 1823, the national
behavior has been courteous, consistent, firm; and the language used now that America is
all powerful, is the same that her statesmen made use of during the rebellion, in the hour
of her most instant peril. It will be hard for political philosophers in the future to assert
that a Democratic Republic can have no foreign policy." - Dilke.




CHAPTER XXIV.
EUROPEAN AMERICA.
A sketch of those portions of the Western Continent which are governed by European
princes, or are subordinate to European influences: Spanish America, Brazil, and the
subject West Indies - The commerce of our continent and the contestants for it - The
American republics, our wards - Conclusion.
IF Africa and Arabia were out of the map, Asia would bear a
noticeable resemblance to North America, and Australia to South
America, the long-ruptured peninsula of Malacca, Sumatra, and
Java answering to Panama and Central America, when we shall
sever them by canals. Europe would be an exaggerated copy of
Alaska, ravelling off into the western ocean; Kamschatka is the
counterpart of Greenland; Japan of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia;
the Indies of the West and the East make archipelagoes between the
two pairs of continents; the United States would then correspond to
the broad belt of China, Turkistan, Persia, and Asia Minor, Mexico
to Hindostan, and Siberia to British America. There are six considerable governments in Australia as in South America. Patagonia
terminates one continent as Van Diemen's Land tLe other. In the
East India Archipelago as many nations are represented as in the
West India Islands; the Dutch government in Java is as avaricious
as the Spanish in Cuba.
The spirit of political independence is almost as active in Spanish
South America as in English Australia, and self-dependence and
dignity are correspondingly wanting in both. The capitals of Sydney,
Melbourne and Adelaide, suggest the similar situations of Rio de
Janeiro, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso. Batavia is the HIavana of
the East Indies, Singapore the Panama.
The dreams in which England has indulged as to her empire on the
St. Lawrence, Russia is repeating upon the Amoor. Pekin and
Washington are upon nearly the same line of latitude; Havana and
Hong Kong are upon another line; Constantinople and San Francisco
are also parallels.
But Asia is almost all heathen, and America is almost entirely
632




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                   633
Christian. There are but three families of our race influential in
America, - English, Spanish, and Portuguese. There are three races
with infinite families in Asia, - Caucasian, Mongol, and Malay.
Asia is ridden by Europe in the nineteenth century as tyrannically as
America was ridden by Europe in the eighteenth. There is no discoverable unity of life, purpose, or coalition amongst the races of Asia;
Confucius, Mohammed, Brahma, Zoroaster, Buddha, have planted
it with their traditions, and a tangled outgrowth of creeds inexplorable
and indestructible as its jungles covers Asia with gorgeousness which
is yet darkness. With a single clue like Aladdin's lamp, the European
scholar explores, as in a cavern, the pathway of some seer or
sage; gems of thought, poesy, and science sparkle about him as he
advances; but the darkness closes up behind and before, and
humanity despairs. In South and Central America the Christian
faith, however misinterpreted, binds all the people to one ultimate
civilization of " peace on earth and good-will to men." The feuds
of Spanish America, which seem to us so frequent, bear no proportion
to the interminable savage warfares of Asia, and are scarcely more
bloody than the steady strifes of Europe, and they will be found in
almost every case to arise, whatever be their pretexts, from the
mortal collision between Americanism  and Europeanism, between
Society and Priest, Man and Prince, Equality and Vanity, Republic
and Tradition.
Let us arrive at some distinct notions of our continent.
For all exterior purposes the United States acts through three
cities, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Quitting New
York, southward, by sea, the nearest foreign soil is the Bermuda
Islands, belonging to England, distant, say, eight hundred miles, and
from England five thousand four hundred and fifty miles; the next
foreign port is Nassau, in the Bahama Islands, about nine hundred
miles from New York, and six thousand two hundred and fifty-five
miles from England, which also owns them. Nearly eleven hundred
miles from New York is Havana, which is about seven hundred miles
from New Orleans, and less than two hundred miles from an American
post in Florida. Nassau and Bermuda are merely coaling and military stations for British trade and war; they hang upon the verge
of the United States, like groups of camp followers, to pick up a dishonest living when we are too much engaged to attend to them.
England maintains steamship connection with Bermuda from Halifax,
-and with Nassau from St. Thomas.
80




634    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Havana is the third port in the North American seas in point of
promise and position, ranking after New York and San Francisco,
and while it could be put by rail and ferry via Florida within three
days' journey of the capital of the United States, it is as far from us
in freedom and influence as Spain, which is its master. It is a city
of two hundred thousand people, holding the bones of Columbus, and
it is the key to the American continent, distant from New Orleans no
farther than from New York to Cleveland, from Vera Cruz not so
far as from New York to Chicago, from Panama and from St.
Thomas the distance of New Orleans from Neiw York, while the
island of Cuba, on which Havana stands, is only one hundred and
twenty miles from the %Mexican mainland, and one hundred and forty
from the American.
Standing at Havana one might be said to be at the most central
city of the world; he will be on the longitude of Columbus, Ohio, and
of Macon, Georgia; England will be six thousand five hundred miles
distant; the steamship routes to New Zealand, to San Francisco, to
Japan, to Valparaiso, to Rio de Janeiro, to Spain, to New Orleans,
to Mexico, and to New York, will converge at his feet. Wherever
the isthmus between the two Americas may be cut, Havana will be
the neighboring great city; for it has the only great port in the tropics. It is this island which is engaged, while we write, in one of its
many hopeless struggles with Spain, and it is doomed perhaps almost
in the sight of our coasts, and despite our sympathies, to relapse into
bondage anew. Here at Havana is the proper place to consider the
condition of our continent in relation to the United States and to
Europe.
Out of the entire population of America (seventy-five millions)
the United States possesses fully one-half. Other English-speaking
countries and colonies make nearly five millions more. Spanish countries and colonies make about twenty-five millions. Portuguese Brazil
possesses eight millions, and is somewhat stronger in numbers than
Mexico. More than sixty millions are nominally republicans; about
twelve millions are adherents of monarchy; the rest are merely colonists. Assuming the population of the globe at one billion, Americans of all sorts make more than one-thirteenth of mankind; they
have nearly four times the territory of Europe, and nearly a fourth
of Europe's population. Great Britain, France, and Spain, together,
outnumber all Americans between Alaska and Patagonia.
The two great divisions of the American continent may be likened




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    635
to two large clusters of grapes, united by a jagged tendril; the southern cluster is compact and symmetrical, and it is suspended much
farther eastward than the larger and more ravelled northern continent. There are six nations in the tendril between the two clusters,
and there is also a web of islands spun, farther eastward, between the
clusters. The tendril, quitting the United States on the Pacific side,
comprises  Mexico, Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, and it joins the southern cluster at New Granada. The
web, quitting the United States at Florida on the Atlantic side, comprises the Bahamas, the Great Antilles and the Little Antilles islands,
and it is spun to the southern cluster at Venezuela. Between the
web and the tendril lie two oval seas, the Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean Sea, which are nearly sundered by the island of Cuba.
The Gulf of Mexico is five times the size of the Baltic Sea, and is encompassed by three states only, the United States, Mexico, and Cuba.
The Caribbean Sea is the greatest inlet on the Western Hemisphere, sixteen hundred miles wide by one thousand miles in diameter,
and it empties into the Gulf Stream with the force of three thousand
Mississippi Rivers, drawing upon the South Atlantic Ocean to supply
this volume, and therefore the waters of the Amazon and Orinoco
Rivers really flow into the Gulf of Mexico, return round Florida, and
sweep along the coast of the United States northward, warming our air
and mitigating our climate. In fact, therefore, the Gulf is the pool of the
Mississippi and Rio Grande, while the Caribbean Sea is the pool of
the Amazon and Orinoco; the river.which they both form is the
ocean river of the Gulf Stream, whose shores are civilization.
In this web of islands, the WVest Indies, began the life of both
Americas. There Columbus saw land; there Spain began her baneful and brilliant Western Empire; thence Cortez departed for Mexico,
De Soto for the Mississippi, Balboa for the Pacific, and Pizarro for
Peru. The history of the United States was separated by a beneficent Providence far from this wild and cruel history of the rest of the continent, and, like a silent seed, we grew into empire, while empire itself,
beginning in the South, was swept by so interminable hurricane that
what of its history we can ascertain is read by the very lightnings
that devastated it. The growth of English America may be likened
to a series of lyrics sung by separate singers, which coalescing at last
make a vigorous chorus, and this, attracting many from afar, swells
and is prolonged, until presently it assumes the dignity and proportions
of epic song. Spanish America began like the celebration of a won



636    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
drous mass; the relics, the trophies, the perfumes, and the gorgeousness of the highest piety and power were expressed in it. To its
proportions the Israelitish song on the farther shore of the Red Sea
was the anthem of a handful of savages. But in the ecstasy of the
celebration, frenzy came over the singers; the hyssop ran blood;
blasphemy took the place of praise, and the coals from the overthrown
altar set the cathedral aflame. The first tragedy was the massacre
of the innocent natives, or their reduction to slavery; the second was
the fruit of the monopoly of all the New World claimed by Spain,
whereby the Buccaneers of other nations ravaged the Spanish coasts
for one hundred and seventy years, and left the pirates for their progeny; the third was the introduction of African slavery; the fourth
was the universal revolution against Spain; the fifth was the war of
races, and the present is the war of all these precedents.
When the English settled America they were new experimenters on
the seas; when the Dutch settled it they were a new nation, snatched
from the jaws of Spain; when the Portuguese settled it they were
flushed with their great achievement of doubling the Cape of Good
-Iope, and ardent for larger dominions; when the French settled it
they were the nation of military chivalry, without other purpose than
not to be all forestalled; but when the Spanish settled it they bore
title-deeds from God, stamped by his vicar, to reward them for saving his earthly kingdom from Jew, heretic, and infidel. Not colonization, but treasure, was their object; not a home, but only gold. They
were the best sailors and soldiers of Europe, and while they ransacked the new hemisphere for the precious gems and metals, they offered land to the apostate Jews and 3Ioors of Spain, that these might
make food to sustain the Spanish soldiery. These and other renegades made the pilgrim fathers of Spanish America, and having no
women to marry they cohabited with Indians. Priests in multitude
soon appeared to convert savage and half-breed; the Pilgrim fathers
hung out the sign of the three golden balls, and when the Spanish
troops, laden with gold and gems, reappeared, they gambled them
away, or parted with them to these pawnbrokers. A race with scarcely
a civilized component in it sprang up,.- negro, Indian, Jewish, 3Moorish, Spanish, - and not a ray of light fell upon this offspring of lust
and greed but what the church afforded, and the church itself shared
in the lust and avarice of the time and clime. Three aristocracies
appeared after a chaos of crime and war, wherein every nation of
Europe had taken part, - rich tradesmen and planters of renegade




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    637
descent, Spanish officeholders and their descendants, and Spanish
churchmen, - all indolent, proud, and rich, in the midst of slavery.
But, gorged with greed, broken by the climate and by excesses, the
Spanish race was also changed, and when the great upheaval of
the French Revolution came, Spain, the mother country, was the easy
prey of her neighbors: her Kincgs were set aside, her soil overrun,
and her colonies revolted. We can imagine the dignity of the
Spanish American revolutions by the races which performed them. Laden with ten times the burdens of the British colonies, the Spanish Americans took up arms at first, not for freedom, but for the deposed Spanish
King. Their torch of liberty was lighted at length, not from America,
but from France. Yet their ally was not France, but England; for
when Napoleon was overthrown, the English, studying the situation
in the light of profit and loss, concluded to ally themselves with
Portugal and with the Spanish republics, as against France and Spain,
now allies. Therefore English adventurers and English secret
money were the life of the war of independence in the South. The
naval hero of Peru and Chili was the same Lord Cochrane whom we
have seen, in a previous chapter, expelled from Parliament. Miranda
and Bolivar, South American leaders, always had British protection
in the last resort. And one of the earliest powers to recognize
the independence of our neighbors was England.  In this policy England has learned that a service to freedom is never without
profit; for her hold upon the trade and affection of Brazil and Spanish Amherica generally is complete, and she has felt the return wave
of benefit in her own ameliorated charity and constitution. British
capital yields in no place safer returns than in South American investments, and her material influence in our tropics and southern
hemisphere very nearly balances our own moral influence. Still the
great sympathetic fact even in these devastated republics is that we
are not only a variety of Englishmen, but also the great republic.
Let us now proceed to review the countries to the south of us.
And first the West Indies, as the key to the tropic mainland.
Cuba has more area than South Carolina, and more inhabitants
than Virginia, these latter constituting one-fourth of all the colonial
subjects of Spain, now five millions in number, or less than one-third
the number in Spain herself. Half the one million three hundred and
fifty-nine thousand people of Cuba are whites, and more than a fourth
slaves. Cuba is as long as from Boston to Detroit, and of only forty
miles' average breadth. Its long mountain range reaches heights of




638    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
six thousand nine hundred feet; its railways date back to 1838, and
are now quite numerous. Only nine thousand of its children go to
school. It has been permanently settled for more than three centuries
and a half. Its government is a despotism, in the Spanish rendering
of the word, and despotism aggravated by corruption. Mfore than a
hundred years ago, the English took Havana by siege and assault.
Havana contains two hundred thousand people, and ranks tenth
amon, t cities of population on the American continents, while in
position and harbor it is second to none.
Hayti, east of Spain, is nearly the size of Scptland, or of South
Carolina, and it has nearly the population of Wisconsin. In 1843
the island divided into two governments, Hayti; Negro French, French
and Dominica, Negro Spanish, Spanish, both anarch-ies and despotisms, alternately, and the United States has been repeatedly
offered the protectorate or purchase of both.
Porto Rico is half the size of Massachusetts, and has half as
many people as Georgia. Half the imports and exports are from
Great Britain. It is Spanish and slave.
Jamaica, the largest British island in the West Indies, is smaller
than Massachusetts, and has about the population of West Virginia.
It lies south of Cuba. As a colony of note, the English pronounce
it a failure, and their administration of it, coupled with the name of
Eyre, its satrap, is a reproach to them.
The lesser islands of the West Indies reach up to Florida, -the
Bahamas, and down to Venezuela, - the windward and leeward " Lesser Antilles." In possession they are either Danish, British, Frenc'h,
Dutch, Swedish, or Venezuelan.
The Swedish island of St. Bartholomew —her only colony —has
eighteen thousand people, and an area of thirty-five square miles,
and here slavery was abolished in 1848. Sweden was the first antislavery state.
The Danish islands are St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John. St.
Thomas is the great entrepot for British steamers, and the focus of
their radiating lines, and it has a commodious harbor. It stands in
the elbow of the Antilles, nearest Europe, and its people, with decided enthusiasm, voted to be annexed to the United States, in 1868,
notwithstanding British commercial influence.  The Dutch islafids
are Saba, St. Eustatius, Buen Ayre, Curacoa, and Oruba. They are
in nothing considerable, except as exhibiting the hard, stolid government of the Dutch, which has been compared to the respect felt by




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    639
the fish for Jonah, in its belly. The French islands are Deseada,
Guadeloupe, Marie Galante, and Martinique. St. Martin'belongs to
both French and Dutch. The French are the best-regulated islands in
the West Indies; their occupants are citizens of them, not mere traders
in them. Martinique was the native land of Bonaparte's Josephine,
and is fifty miles long by sixteen wide. The British islands are
Barbuda, St. Christopher, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbadoes, St. Vincent, and Trinidad. Barbadoes is populous,  nlightened, has newspapers, and is freer from storms than its neighbors.
Magarita and Tortuga are the principal Venezuelan islands. All
these islands produce sugar, tobacco, rum, and the other luxuries.
The main land of Southern North America is, in misfortunes, a
proper preface to the history of Spanish America. Mexico is a federative Republic of nineteen'States, each State with a Legislature,
and the President and Vice-President are elected by a federal Congress. Juarez, at present the President, and as well known for his
virtues as Lopez of Paraguay for his crimes, was born in 1807. The
nation was established in 1821; its- area is about equal to all that
part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, and its population is about one-fifth of ours. In 1866 the revenue was sixteen
and one-half million dollars, and the expenditure nearly double.
The debt, according to Juarez' computation, was thirty-five million
dollars, while the French government, and its gamblers in Mexican
concerns, claimed the liabilities of the republic to be three hundred
and twenty million dollars. Napoleon even claims the cost of the
war he made against the Mexicans to be a Mexican obligation. It
will lie more heavily upon the conscience and the solvency of his
own reign. The pure whites of Mexico are only three hundred thousand in number. The President is an Indian. Mexico is shortly to
open a line of railway from Mexico city to Vera Cruz, three hundred
miles. The celebrated Tehuantepec ship canal route passes through
southern Mexico. M. hMichael Chevalier thinks it the best.
Guatemala, the next neighbor to Mexico, is larger than Louisiana, and nearly as populous as North Carolina; it is an oligarchy,
with a petty tyrant at the head of it, and may be considered, scarcely
excepting Paraguay, as the worst government in America. The Jesuits
are all powerful; the English do three-fourths of all the commercial
business. The capital city contains sixty thousand people. Through
this state a ship canal is conitemplated by foreign engineers. Balize,




640   THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
a coast strip of Guatemala, is an English colony of twenty thousand
people, double the area of New Jersey.
Honduras is nearly as large as Pennsylvania, and has more inhabitants than New Hampshire; it is a republic. Nicaragua, the state
which sought the aid of General William Walker in 1855, is a semiliberal republic, with the population of Arkansas, and the area of
Michigan; through it passes the American route to the Pacific, called
by the name of the state.
San Salvador is a small state on the Pacific coast, larger than New
Hampshire, and with three hundred thousand people. It has the
highest population in Central America.
Costa Rica, the last state in North America, going southward,
contains half as many people as Connecticut, and is half the size of
MIaine; it has a revenue of about one hundred thousand dollars, and
three-fourths of its imports came from England. IIon. E. G. Squier
is the best authority on Central America.
New Grenada, next beyond Costa Rica, the nearest state in South
America, has as many people as Ohio, and as much land as Texas,
Louisiana, and Mississippi together. It is one of the most liberal and
enlightened states in South America, and its government is a federal
union of state sovereignties, almost precisely like the United States.
The great sites of Panama and Carthagena are in the Granadian
confederation. There is every variety of climate in it; the Andes moun-'tains rise to the heighth of eighteen thousand feet, and through their
ridges run the Rivers M{agdalena and Cauca, navigable for five hundred
miles, northward to the Caribbean Sea. Bogota, the capital, stands
higher above the sea than the highest passes of the Alps, yet in perpetual salubrity, the Magdalena and the great River Orinoco flowing
from the foot of its plateau to outlets twelve hundred miles apart; it
has forty thousand people, and is very picturesque; the fare from the
Caribbean coast to Bogota is said to be one hundred and thirty dollars in specie.
Venezuela, the nesxt state to the east, is more than ten times the
size of Ohio, and has more thanthe population of Massachusetts,
and it has a coast line of sixteen hundred miles. Its exports
amount'to six and a half million dollars annually; its interior is
forest and mountain, in great part unexplored, and the tropical animals are found in the jungles and morasses of the Orinoco, which,
flowing parallel to the sea, empties its great bulk of nineteen hundred and sixty miles, by many mouths, into the ocean between British




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    641
Guiana and British Trinidad. The Orinoco is navigable to Angostura. Caraccas, the city of Bolivar and earthquakes, has forty thousand people, and stands sixteen miles from its Caribbean seaport,
La Guayra, which has but six thousand people. Triniidad, an English
island above referred to, is nearly half the size of Connecticut, and has
nearly the population of the District of Columbia; it is the second
British West India island in importance, and its chief town, the Port
of Spain, is one of the finest in the whole archipelago.  Angrostura
is the Venezuelan chief city of the Orinoco, two hundred and fifty
miles from the sea, and with water two hundred and fifty feet deep
at the city; it is now recovering from the long night of civil war.
Simon Bolivar the " Liberator" of Northern South America died
in 1830, at the age of forty-seven. He had wealth, family, and education, corresponding to Washington's. In 1816 he proclaimed the
abolition of slavery, probably the first to do so on the continent.
He liberated Venezuela, New Grenada, and Peru, and Bolivia is named
for him. As a soldier, he was famed for his perseverance and his
long marches; as a statesman, he had well-meant egotism, and little
judgment. His memory is revered, but he was in nothing like Washington, to whom he has been compared. Bolivar is said to have written late in life, to General Flores, of Ecuador: " This country will
inevitably fall into the hands of the unbridled rabble, and become
the prey of petty tyrants of all colors and races. The Europeans will
not deem it worth while to conquer us. America for us is ungovernable."
Guiana, the territory on the Atlantic coast between Venezuela and,
Brazil, is in many respects a counterpart of Louisiana; a rich, un —
healthy delta-land along the Atlantic, with muddy and yielding banks
and streams, which come down from  savage interiors laden with
detritus. The British, Dutch, and French divide amongst them this
region, the French making it a depot for their most infamous criminals, and their most eminent patriots. The French part is large as Ohio,
and contains twenty-five thousand people, and it is the only mainland of the American continent held by France. Dutch Guiana is
large as Tennessee, and has half the population of Delaware; throurgh
Parimaribo its capital, with eighteen thousand inhabitants, Dutch
Guiana does a great trade with the United States. British Guiana
is about the size of Maryland, though the English claim land enough
from Brazil and Venezuela to make it big as Kansas; sugar, rum, and
timber are its products; it contains one hundred, and fifty thousand




642    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
people, and its capital, Georgetown, with twenty-five thousand people, is intersected by canals, like Amsterdam. Dutch task-mastership and greed have left imprint over all Guiana, and we can imagine,
from the present condition of the country, what New York might
have looked like had it continued a Dutch Colony.
Let us now, from the margin of Brazil, retrace to Panama, cross the
American railroad, and descend the line of nations on- the Pacific
coast. First Ecuador, nearly five times the size of New England,
and with the population of New Jersey, Guayaquil for its port,
Quito for its capital, one of the dullest states, even in South
America.
Quito stands in the air half as high again as the Tip-Top House on
Mit. Washington, and at two-thirds the height of Mont Blanc. It has
fifty thousand people, is very difficult of access, and its port of
Guyaquil, itself sixty miles from the ocean, is two hundred miles
distant. Mr. Frederick Hassaurek, our late minister resident there,
reports that one hundred and twenty pianos have been dragged to
that difficult height, that the people conceive the only great nation
besides themselves to be the French, and that, lying upon the Equator,
nature is yet more attractive there than man. Guyaquil stands on
the best river on the Pacific coast of South America; the river is
navigated by American steamers, and the town of twenty thousand
people is lighted by American gas, preserved by a Baltimore steam
fire-engine, and made occasionally noisy by an American iron foundry. But the English do the commerce.
Peru, the ancient El Dorado, commemorated so well by Prescott,
is now in as sorry plight as Rome to bear so rich a name. Peru has
more than twice the area of Texas, and more than ten times that of
New York, while its population is nearly equal to Ohio's; its coast
line is one thousand six hundred miles long, but it has not a singlegood harbor. Guano islands, lying in Peruvian waters, contain, even
at present, it is thought, fifteen millions of tons, and good guano sells
for sixty-five dollars a ton in England. Peru has mountains which
reach the altitude of twenty-two thousand feet, and cities, like Cuzco,
higher than the Great St. Bernard. Among the valuable deposits of
Peru is nitrate of soda, a powerful fertilizer, of which there are sixtythree million tons in the country. Guano absolutely supports the
state of Peru, its revenue of twenty-one and one-fourth million
dollars, in 1862, being three-fourths obtained from the sale of
this article. The Republic, like Elijah, is fed by the ravens. The




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                   643
whole of Peru's debt of one hundred and fifteen million dollars is secured
by these guano islands. Here is a beneficent bird of freedom, indeed,
which not only perches on the standard of Peru, but lends it money.
There is no religious toleration in Peru, and though the constitution
is based upon that of the United States, the exceptions seem to make
the government. Here, then, is a rich country a beggar, for want of
peace and enterprise.
Lima, the capital, the handsomest of Pacific coast cities, is six
miles from the ocean port of Callao, with which it is connected by a
railroad, owned by three persons, and this is said to net them fifteen
thousand dollars a day. It has a very agreeable climate, and one
hundred thousand people. Peruvian steamers connect at the border
of Brazil with Brazilian steamers on the Amazon, and ascend to Jaen,
only two hundred miles from the Pacific coast, or twenty-four hundred from the mouth of the Amazon!
Bolivia has the population of Illinois, and the area of all our
Atlantic and Gulf Southern States, except Texas. It has no seaport
worth speaking of, and only a desert sea-coast on the Pacific, its
natural outlet being the Amazon also. Its capital, Chuquisaca, with
twenty-five thousand people, stands nine thousand feet above the sea
in a territory of silver mines, and its second city, Potosi, with thirty
thousand people, stands four thousand feet higher, on a mountain
pierced with five thousand mines, which has yielded two billion
dollars, and its deposits are inexhaustible. Bolivia is the South
American Minnesota, the La Plata rising in it as well as the Amazon.
Chili is a long veneered and bevelled strip of Pacific coast and
Andes, one hundred and twenty miles wide and ten times longer, lying
in the relative southern latitude of California. It is undoubtedly the
most prosperous republic in South America, and, with the area of New
York, New England, and Pennsylvania, has the population of Massachusetts and Connecticut. It has several seaports, chief of which is Valparaiso, with nearly one hundred thousand people, situated ninety miles
from Santiago, the capital. In 1866 the Spanish bombarded it, and
destroyed ten million dollars' worth of property. Santiago is grandly
and beautifully situated on a terrace of the Andes, and is in social
complacency and education the Boston of South America, with a rich
population of one hundred and ten thousand. A sketch of Chili was
published by D. J. Hunter, in New York, as late as 1866.
The Chilian President is elected by Electors, as with us, and holds
five years. The Senators, twenty in number, sit nine years; the




644    THE NEW  WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
Deputies (Representatives) sit three years. The President has four
Cabinet Ministers, and also an auditory Council, composed of cabinet, judges, ecclesiastics, and civilians. It will thus be perceived
that the Chilian government is less representative than ours. The
railways of Chili are four hundred miles'in length, and will soon be
one thousand miles; and the merchant marine comprises two hundred
and sixty vessels and three thousand soldiers. Two thousand Germans have settled in Chili, and are active politicians; December,
January, and February are the summer time there; the people are
scarcely taxed at all; tobacco is a government monopoly; American
patents are popular; the mint of Santiago is the finest edifice in
South America; a Yankee established the first printing-office in 1812;
the state has a homestead law; it is proposed to stretch an American
telegraph on land from Panama to Valparaiso; the portraits of Washington and Lincoln are placed side by side in the Chilian Foreign
Office by law; an American town in Chili is Caldera, with a railroad
fifty miles long leading to silver and copper mines; religious toleration was stingily granted in Chili very recently.
Patagonia, which terminates the continent of South America, contains one hundred and twenty thousand people, or one being to three
square miles, and is a region of desolate steppes and of volcanoes, intersected by the broad Straits of Magellan, where the Chilians are about
to put tow-boats to speed vessel navigation. These straits are three
hundred miles long and from five to thirty miles wide. Off these
straits in the Atlantic are the Falkland Isles, two hundred in number,
with the aggregate area of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, belonging to England, and settled, to be of use to her commerce,
as late as 1833; they now contain seven hundred people. These are
the only settled islands in the Southern oceans, except Juan Fernandez, four hundred miles off Chili, settled by Americans and Sandwich
Islanders, and the St. Felix isles, also in the Pacific. The Galapagos
Islands are on the equator, almost due south of New Orleans. The
Cape Verde islands stand in the Atlantic between the mouths of the
Amazon and the Mediterranean, nearly midway, and the Azores
between the mouths of the Mediterranean and the Chesapeake. Turning into the Atlantic Ocean and ascending, we come to the Argentine
Republic, lying between Chili and the great River La Plata, the
noblest of South American streams. Two cities hold the gulfy outlet of the La Plata, - Montevideo in Uruguay, and Buenos Ayres in
the Argentine State.




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                     G15
The Argentine Republic, which is the Chili of the Atlantic coast,
has as great a population as Missouri, and it is nearly five times the
size of all our Middle States. There are eighty thousand Italians in
it, an(l sixty thousand French and pure Spanish. Its foreign debt is
owing mainly to the English and the Brazilians, and the English
have subscribed nearly the Whole capital for its six hundred. and
fifty miles of railroad projected or accomplished. The city of Buenos
Ayres once beat off the English; vessels must anchor at low water
there from five to nine miles off shore, and at high water from a mile to
three miles; the population of the city is one hundred and twenty-five
thousand, and French and English newspapers are published.
Uruguay, probably to be soon absorbed by Brazil, or to lead to
another war between Spanish and Portuguese South America, is
nearly as large as the two Carolinas, and has about one-third the population of South Carolina. In 1865 Uruguay exported first in quantity to France, second to England, third to Italy, and fifth to the
United Stastes. MIontevideo, its qapital, has nearly fifty thousand
people. The La Plata River has three great arms inland, two of which
pierce to the depths of Brazil, and yet both flow to sea through
Uruguay and the Argentine Republic; caught between the forks of
the upper two, seven hundred miles from the sea, is the so-called republic of Paraguay, which is ten times the size of Massachusetts, and as
populous as Indiana; one half the state belongs to the bloody dictator
Lopez, one of those demons of wickedness who choose the name
of republic to make mankind despise it. Ile inherited the country
from his father, who had it willed to him by the executors of the
fiendish Francia, the first usurper of the republic.  Paraguay is the
most despotic state on the American continent, and it is about passing into the hands of its own people, unless its conquerors quarrel
over it and Brazil succeeds in annexing the whole as well as Uruguay.
The quarrel on the La Plata is primarily between the Portugnese
and Spanish Atlantic empires, intensified by the desire of the Brazilians to have the free navigation of the La Plata, and by the efforts
of despots, like Rosas and Lopez, to prevent it. The behavior of
Paraguay, however, was as insufferable to her Spanish allies as to
Brazil, and they have made common cause against Lopez. Two
American Ministers disagreeing in this war, we may take the opinion of Professor Agassiz: -
"'In her conflict with Paraguay, Brazil may truly be counted
among the standard-bearers of civilization. The facts which have




646    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
come to my knowledge respecting this war have convinced me that it
originated in honorable purposes, and, setting aside the selfish
intrigues of individuals, inevitably connected with such movements,
is carried on with disinterestedness. It deserves the sympathy of
the civilized world; for it strikes at a tyrannical organization, half
clerical, half military, which, calling itself a republic, disgraces the
name it assumes."
Brazil is two thousand six hundred miles long, and two thousand
five hundred miles broad, not so broad as the United States by three
hundred and fifty miles, but longer from north to south by one thousand miles, exclusive of Alaska. Brazil has nearly one hundred
thousand square miles more area than the United States, but, counting Alaska, we have about five hundred thousand square miles in excess. It has been settled about three hundred and forty years,
and has a population of eight millions, or less than that of New
York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio combined. It forms a frontier of every
nation in South America but one, Chili, and is, generally speaking,
exempt from the drouths and earthquakes which annoy them. In
1868 its public debt was about two hundred and forty million dollars, and its expenditure was double its revenue.  It is the only
large state in Christendom which maintains slavery at home, only half
its population being free, and it has fewer children at school than the
State of Iowa. Its river system, long unimproved, has been at
length opened to the world, but the La Plata River, which is the
Mississippi of the South Temperate Zone, debouches through foreign
states, and in time of sullenness or war is closed to Brazil. Three
or four railways penetrate a little distance into the country from the
coast; the humid soil and luxurious vegetation make good common
roads almost impossible. The exports of Brazil are valued (1860) at
about sixty-five million dollars, or one-sixth of those of the United
States. Immense portions of the interior are unexplored; the mouth
of the greatest river of Brazil is directly on the line of the equator;
the capital, Rio de Janeiro, is upon a latitude corresponding to that of
Havana in our hemisphere, and is the largest city of South America,
with the population of Baltimore. Its harbor is superior to those of
New York, San Francisco, or Havana, being only a mile wide at the
outlet, very deep, and girdled with mountains, while its surface of
seventeen miles by twelve, is made picturesque by islands, one of
which is nearly half the size of New York Island.
Rio stands four miles from the ocean around seven hills, like Rome.




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                     647
A mountain within sight sends fresh water by an aqueduct; gas
lights the streets, fountains play in the squares; opera, libraries, and
colleges exist as in our northern cities; the city has been the capital
since 1822, when Brazil became independent. Bahia City, also on
the coast, has one hundred and twenty-five thousand people; Pernambuco, the sugar-mart, one hundred thousand, and Para, at the mouth
of the Amazon, thirty thousand. The Amazon River drains an extent of country equal to all Europe, and affords inland navigation of
fifty thousand miles, twice the circumference of the globe; from its
sources the Pacific Ocean is visible; it is navigable for three thousand three hundred and sixty miles from the Atlantic! yet its seaport, Para, does a business in imports and exports amounting to only
two millions of dollars yearly. It requires two weeks to ascend the
Amazon to the Peruvian line; poor steamers traverse it, but the English are already preparing to make it a highway. There is not a
decent hotel nor a large town on the river; mosquitoes are its bane;
the river bottom is unreliable. The Brazilian people are a weak race,
with poor morals, worse courage, and abominable nastiness. The
virility of the children is lost by the proximity of slaves and the universal incontinence; the Spanish allies of Brazil on the La Plata
despise the morals of the latter's soldiery. What of strength there
is in the nation is a popular and prudent ruler, and good foreign
advisers, chiefly English. The nation has never passed through the
bloody centuries of its Spanish neighbors, and peace has generally
favored it. It was a colony of Portugal till 1807, when Bonaparte
invading the mother country, the royal family set sail, and raised the
throne anew in Brazil. The King of Spain was at the same time on
the point of sailing for Peru. When the time came to return to Portugal, the King was loth to make the exchange, and he finally endeavored to marry his daughter to her uncle, and so keep Portugal in the
family, while his son Pedro kept Brazil. Pedro was unfortunate and
was driven out, and the present well-behaved King is his son, Pedro
II. A branch of the family still keeps Portugal, also, and the English,
whose bond of attachment is port wine and bills of lading, are the patrons of both countries. King Pedro II., of Brazil, is allied by marriage
with the Orleans family of France, and his wife is the sister of
"Bomba," ex-tyrant of the Sicilies.  His salary is four hundred
thousand dollars a year, and his wife's fifty thousand dollars. The
palace in Rio is an old stone and stucco building, painted yellow, two
and three stories high, a hundred feet wide, and six hundred feet deep,




648    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
connected by a gallery with the royal library and chapel. Here all
the court ceremony of the Braganzas is kept up, —a guard of
halberdiers, state liveries of green trimmed with silver, lancers,
state coaches, robing rooms.
Brazilian Senators are selected by the Emperor from a number
nominated in election by the people. The Representatives are not
directly elected. Every inscribed voter must vote under penalty.
Only Catholics can be Representatives. There are seven ministers,
-one of " Justice." The police administration of Brazil is despotic.
People are impressed into the army. The "' native" race is uppermost. Titles of nobility are not hereditary.
The railroad from Rio to the River Parahyba, sixty-seven miles, was
built by American engineers. The first steamer of the Pacific Mail
Company which sailed to China took, on her maiden trip from New
York, Louis Agassiz and a company of American naturalists, who
explored the Amazon. Agassiz introduced the American lyceum
lectures into Brazil, and for the first time the ladies there attended
them. MIrs. Agassiz ascribes the evils of Brazil to slavery, to the
character of the clergy, to the want of education, to Portuguese civilization, and to the non-popular form of the government.
There remains to be considered only the influence of the United
States in the waters of America. England is now the leading power
amongst our associate republics. Let us instance her steamship
lines.
And first, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, with headquarters at Southampton, England; it has an annual aggregate subsidy from the British government of one million three hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, and twenty vessels of twenty-nine thousand
four hundred and fifty-four tons, nine thousand three hundred and six
horse-power, and one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven men.
They nmake two trips a month between England and Aspinwall in
twenty-two days, stopping at St. Thomas and Carthagena. Six
branch lines go from St. Thomas to Nassau, Jamaica, Barbadoes,
Tobago, Porto Rico, Havana, and Vera Cruz; the whole
converging at St. Thomas, the island which Mr. Seward wisely
wished to buy, and which Congress would not. The same company
sends a monthly steamer to Brazil by Lisbon, and it touches along
the Atlantic coast. A third British line, the Pacific Steam Navigation Compl)any, has the monopoly of mails and passengers along the
Pacific coast of South America from Panama to Valparaiso. A




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    619
fourth line leaves Liverpool every fifteen days for Northern Brazil.
A fifth British line leaves London and Antwerp for the ports of Brazil.
A sixth leaves Panama for New  Zealand, making the longest
unbroken steamship passage in the world, six thousand six hundred
miles. The Cunard line, with twenty-two vessels, is heavily subsidized to New York. The Mlontreal ocean line, subsidized by Canacla,
owns eighteen steamships. The Inman line with seventeen steamers,
the Williams and Guion, the Anchor, the London, and the National
lines send together at least a steamer a day to New York, so that
there is probably in the American trade one hundred British steamships. The Spanish run a semi-monthly line between Havana and
Porto Rico and Cadiz. The Germans run eleven steamers from
Hamburg to New York, and a line from Hamburg to New Orleans,
and a line of nineteen steamers from Bremen to New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans. The French despatch a heavily subsidized
weekly line from Havre to New York and a monthly line from Bordeaux to Brazil and Buenes Ayres. The aggregate of all these
vessels is probably not below one hundred and fifty, of two hundred
thousand tons' capacity, and manned by twelve thousand men.
To this large mercantile steam navy of Europe, employed in the
waters of the American continent, we oppose only three steamers
which sail to St. Thomas and the ports of Brazil, three which run
to Havana, three steamboats to St. John, New Brunswick, and the
Pacific Mail Steamship line to Yokohama and Hong Kong. Three or
four slow, irregular, and aged steamers to Liverpool, Bremen, or
Antwerp, keep up the infrequent apparition of our flag on the
Atlantic. The rest is our coastwise commerce, from which foreign
bottoms are excluded. There are causes and explanations of this
maritime poverty, but no American can forget that he was formerly
a citizen of the second commercial power in the world, and no republican will forget that on this continent, particularly, every American
flag in sight at a masthead is an encouragement to the self-governing.
In the old Spanish days Chili communicated with Spain once a
year. In 1840 a /Mr. Wheelwright, of Rhode Island, began steam
navigation on the Pacific with two small English-built steamers, the
"Peru" and the " Chili;" out of this experiment has come the
Pacific Steam Navigation Company, before mentioned, and now
entirely English, which connects every port between Patagonia and
Panama. The Chilian subsidy to this line is nearly sixty thousand
dollars a year; during the numerous revolutions and wars along the
82




650    THE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITH THE OLD.
coast, these steamers make immense sums by transporting troops and
munitions of war. The fares on the line are among the highest in the
world, costing from Panama to Valparaiso two hundred and thirty
dollars in the cabin, sixty dollars in the steerage, and for freight
eighteen dollars per ton, and so large are the dividends that they
are announced secretly. The fare from Panama to Lima is one hundred and thirty-five dollars, and cabin to Guyaquil seventy-five
dollars. Complaint is made of the food and the rate of fare by the
people on the line, and competition by an American line has long
been hoped for. A small native Chilian line began in 1851 to run to
ports south of Valparaiso, and, with a capital of seventy-four thousand
dollars, it cleared forty thousand dollars in two years. The Chilian
government offered, in 1853, a subvention of sixty thousand dollars a
year for a French line which should make eight yearly voyages between Valparaiso and Liverpool around Magellan; and in 1865 the
Chilian Congress offered one hundred thousand dollars yearly. So
much have our interests on the Pacific declined, that, in 1863, to
thirty-six thousand nine hundred and three letters carried by the Pacific
Steam Navigation Company on account of Europe, two thousand
seven hundred and sixty-nine only were credited to the United States.'" Thus England, France, and Germany," says Don Ramon Paez, in
1868, " have secured the monopoly of the South American trade, with
total exclusion of this country, which has to pay cash for what the
former obtain in exchange for the produce of their manufactories. All
these nations, moreover, appoint permanent representatives, chosen
from among their ablest diplomats, and keep them there as long as
they choose to remain, while America has sent few, as yet, but brokendown and quarrelsome politicians."
Amongst her export friends, England rated, in 1868, Germany as
the first, British India as the second, United States third, Brazil tenth,
Canada twelfth, New Granada fifteenth, Cuba and Porto Rico seventeenth, British West Indies nineteenth, Argentine Republic twentieth,
Chili twenty-third, Peru twenty-seventh, Mexico thirty-first, and
Uruguay thirty-third. In the same year the British rated amongst
the nations from whom they took imports, the United States first,
France second, Germany third, Brazil tenth, British West Indies four-i
teenth, Chili seventeenth, Peru eighteenth, Cuba and Porto Rico
twentieth, British Guiana twenty-fifth, British North America twentysixth, New Granada thirty;first. By that time France had become
the second mercantile marine power on the seas, superseding the




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    651
United States; she had of steamers four hundred and seven, of one
hundred and thirty thousand tonnage; England two thousand nine
hundred and thirty-one, of nine hundred thousand tonnage; France
had fifteen thousand six hundred and thirty-seven sailing vessels, and
England twenty-eiaght thousand seven hundred and seventy-three.
Beside these figures we may well be amazed at our place in the
waters of America.
The American ship is America's only foreign possession. Wherever it appears, it is a colony, an apostle, an invitation, an ambassador. It was an American ship that reinforced Garibaldi at Messina,
that destroyed Miramon at Sacrificios, that carried the last Bourbon
from France, and that covered Kossuth with its flag. We shall cease
to regret the rebellion only when that familiar hull is frequent again,
and when in every port to which we go our colors shall appear among
the masts.
The political anarchy of Spanish America is apparently as incurable as its social components are incapable of union. The Spanish
American, as we comprehend him, is not worthy of absorption into a
country whose institutions have been vindicated by its people. But
Spanish America is endeared to us by cousinly geographies, by the
sympathy we hold with every rod of both Americas, and by the belief
we have that to this tenacious sympathy an according destiny must
come. This belief is implanted in every American boy; it continues
equal and undaunted amidst the scepticisms of old age; it is chastened, perhaps, but not forgotten, after wasting war. With the multitude it is mainly a material ambition; with practical statesmen, a
consideration of mankind's opportunities postponed by our inaction;
in minds of rarer nature, it is a waiting yet an ardent faith. While
it is a national faith, it is also a republican faith, steadily ignoring
the possibility that either Canada, or Cuba, or Brazil can continue subject or independent monarchies. Not that the democratic spirit can suffer from the contiguity of such examples, but that the democratic spirit
will not rest while it may influence. And perhaps the American
de'sire for universal dominion on this continent is only a ruder form
of the democratic spirit, - the missionary ship which bears our principles.
Canada and Brazil are equal failures as governments, - safer but
duller realms than Mexico, - disappointing the immigrant with their
political atmosphere, and mocking his dreams.  But the United
States' spirit always discriminates between the achievements and the




652    TIIHE NEW WORLD COMPARED WITII THIE OLD.
capacities of our neighbors, between a torpid present and a future
which may be made,alvanic by our contact. The American spirit
leaps up at every project of colonization or commerce in the foreign dominions of this continent; in our practical homesteads the
infrequent imagination becomes almost the poet's, at the mention of
some impending " annexation;" but all these ardent aspirations
cluster about The Ship!
The ship is the American spirit abroad. The flag which arouses
it never waves so handsomely as at the masthead. WVith shipping
we can put the republic at the piers of every city on the New Continent, and make paramount again our waning prestige at Valparaiso,
Callao, Rio, and on the La Plata. Our warlike marine does not carry
our institutions; its sailors are neither colbnists nor traders; they do
not, like our merchant sailors, sow principles in their enterprises and
plant them together.
Railroads across the continent are triumphs of perseverance; canals
ensure union no less than wealth; but the interior works of many
aged and tottering nations are also wonderful, dragged to the light
by some indomitable traveller, who tells of the extent of their fields
of tea, their boundless harvests, and their vast methodized and
frugal toil. Still, the reader will ask for their ships; for, with wings,
Holland is greater than China without them.
This is the strong wish of the national heart, the cry of the new
crusader, with " God wills it" upon his lips, as he sees the continent
which he can regenerate falling to dulness, or to anarchy, or back
to its illiberal origin.  Restore  our commerce on the sea.  If
our ship-yards cannot be repeopled, bring ships, meantime, from elsewhere, that the sailor's spirit may not die.  At this time there are
two hundred thousand American men bred by or upon the salt water,
who are about to put by the tiller for the plough, there being no
chance for them on their native element. They are of the mettle of
Ward, of Rhode Island, who made the American climate better known
in China than any Minister Plenipotentiary we ever sent there; who
could barely read, yet he led the armies, and espoused the sister of
an Emperor.
When our commerce shall revive by a return of wisdom and patriotism to Congress, our interest in the kindred states of our continent will also revive.  We have had experience with Spanish
America already; we have met it, with many of its evils, in California, Louisiana, and  Florida, and  its hosts of anarchy have




EUROPEAN AMERICA.                    653
vanished at our coming.  As late as 1789 a Capuchin priest arrived
at New Orleans, charged by King Charles IV., of Spain, to set up the
Holy Inquisition in the province of Louisiana. We may imagine
what would be the condition of the Mississippi Valley at this interval
of only eighty years, when it has developed under toleration to be
a greater empire than Spain, had that holy beneficence been permitted to naturalize itself amongst us. The priest was kidnapped by
the Spanish governor, Miro, and sent home, with the apology " that
the mere name of the Inquisition uttered in New Orleans would not
only check immigration, but would drive away the people who have
already come."
In like manner we shall find the perversities sown by monarchy,
military government, and a corrupt priesthood, to fly before us when
we arrive, in the destiny of things, at Havana, at Comayagua, at
Tehuantepec, or elsewhere. All philosophical foreign observers have
remarked upon the power of the North American character to civilize
and to organize new communities. Froebel, who was in California in
1850, thus published this judgment in London: " The whole process
of development through which the social life of California has passed
in a few years is a striking and most instructive instance of the
origin, organization, and improvement of human society, from motives
of advantage and necessity; while the result bears a strong testimony
in favor of the political and social forms and usages of the North
Americans, without which the Californian experiment could never
have succeeded. No European nation would have had sufficient
experience and skill in self-government. to answer the wants of a
situation such as that of Californian society in its nascent state."
The American feeling is no less earnest, decided, and yet affectionate, toward British, than toward Spanish America.
We have come to the period when the grandchildren of British
loyalists in Nova Scotia cry aloud for our star to arise; when British Columbia pines for the delay of our coming; when Quebec lifts
up her voice in open day to ask release from England, and Toronto
murmurs " Amen."  But we should be worth coming to without warfare; our invitation should have no less dignity than our sword.
" Peace," says Senator Sumner, " is for us a universal conqueror.
Through peace the whole world will be ours.  Filled with the might
of peace, the sympathy we extend to the struggling will be next to
alliance."








INDEX.
-46.                     progress of, retarded by English " endowments," 429; freedom of institutions of, an
attraction to the world, 431; De TocqueARISTOCRACY, English, fruits of, 35; shadow    ville's eulogium on the founders of, 433;
of, 63; its fear of America, 64; its origin,   the highest offices in, accessible to all, 437 
65; derivation of the word, 66; the Eng-   party spirit in, seldom bitter, 430; scientific
lish the wealthiest in Europe, 71; nmean-   operations of English burglars in, 441;
ing of the prefixes von and de on the con-   John Quincy Adams and William H. Sewtinent, 71; sangre azul, 71; life of the    ard tested by an American standard, 446;
British, 74; sources of its influence, 81;   exclusion of the ablest men from the presia relic of barbarism, 82; " Romances " of,   dency, 447; House of Representatives, 448;
107; servility'~f the people to, 159.     Senate, 448; apathy of citizens in their
ALBERT, PRINCE, courtship, 52; marriage, 55;   civic duties, 449; national manners in, 450 
death, 59; monumental inscription over,   Webster and Byron, 453; two attempts of
60.                                       England to crush by force, 454; batteries
AMERICA, titles in, an English'legacy, 62;   of English detraction of, 454; motive of
malevolence of the English aristocracy to-   England's policy in the late civil war, 454;
ward, 64; life in, contrasted with English    English congratulations understood in,
stagnation, 72; judicial system of, 215;   454; the index of British dislike of, 455;
treason in, 216; patent office, 220 - public   "reciprocity," 455; "America and her
records of, burned by England, 221; navy    commentators," by Henry T. Tuckerman,
department, pay of the clerks of, 223;   456; a chorus of English defamation, 456;
post-office, 227; postage collections in, 228;   worth of English criticism of, 458; looking
franking system of, 228; civil service of,   toward the orient, 462; immigration to,
228; reform of, 235; compensation of pub-   463; English misgivings of, 463; Talleyrand
lic officers in, 236; office hunting in, 240;   quoted on the treatment of, by Europe,
art in, 241; colleges of, 247; boat race at   583; geographical parallel with Europe,
Quinsigamolnd, 259; Congressional library    589; advancement of interests of, in the
at Washington, 261; medical education in,   East, 608; influence of, in American
262; administration of States of, 265; two    waters, 648.
great dangers to the government, 271; the  ARNOLD, BENEDICT, 63.
State of New York cited as an example of ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE, 65.
a separate sovereignty, 272; comment of ALABAMA, cruise of, 64.
De Tocqueville on government of, 281; AUTHORS AND NOVELISTS, rush of, from Engcomparison of American cities with British,   land to America, 64.
284; the cotton gin, 297; sewing machine, D'ARBLAY, MADAME, description of the Eng297; manufactures of, 300; nationality of,   lish aristocracy during she American revan amalgam of different races, 313; ten-   olution, 69.
dency of the government toward centraliz- ALFRED, KING, 66.
ation, 315; a French writers sketch of life  ARISTOTLE, 66.
in, 315; consequences of the revolt of, from  ASTOR, JOHN JACOB, 72.
England, 321; control of Indian tribes by  ABCHITECTURE, GREEK, akin to Greek freethe government, 330; interview of the au-   dom, 91.
thor with Mr. Taylor, the retiring Indian  ALMANAC BRITISH, the, on the defective concommissioner, on Indian affairs, 331;   struction of the houses of parliament, 118.
" manifest destiny " of, 338; fortifications  ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY, 133.
in, 354; the fighting material of, 360; ARMADA, SPANISH, the, 201.
cause of the decline of American shipping, "ARMY AND NAVY," the feeling in America
368' "who sees an American ship?" 368;   regarding, inherited from  England, 344;
probable result of a war between, and Eng-   American and British armies described,
land, 372; De Tdcqueville on the impreg-   345; pay of American superior officers,
nable position of, 373; finances of, 377;   347; of British officers, 349; purchase of
offences against the State in, 386; native   their commissions by the latter, 350; Waxand foreign tonnage in 1860, 390; the coin-   all an army critic, on the organization of,
age of, 390; De Tocqueville quoted on the    351; military hierarchy of the English arcivil service of, 392; the cotton crop of,   my, 351; West Point, 351; American
393; the agitation of the free trade or pro-   school fleet, 352; Gen. Garfield on the effitection policy, 393; sympathy of, with   ciency of West Point, 352; flogging in the
France, 403; political traditions in, of no    British army, 358; the right of search,
account, 406; the trades union system in,   359; treatment of the soldier by the United
411; the Irish element in, 413; beginning    States, 359; the American steam sloop
of the anti-slavery movement in, 416; not    Wampanoag, the fastest vessel afloat, 366;
responsible for English shortcomings, 429 i   superiority of American naval construc655




656                               INDEX.
f tion, 367; nomenclature of the navy in  BOURBONS, the, sketch of, 562.
England and America, 369.               BERRYER, M., the French advocate 595.
ANNAPOLIS, sketch of, 363; naval academy  BADEN, pay of the grand duke of, 546.
at, 364.                                BAVARIA, income of the king of, and characAUSTRIA, a comparative list of popular rep-   ter of the army of, 595; the catholic
resentatives in the government of, 534;   church in, 595.
government and fortunes of, 591; commercial status of, 610.                                     Ci
AUSTRALIA, comparison of, with South America. 632.                                CORPORATION OF LONDON, mode of receiving
AGASSIZ, Professor, on the character of the    the queen, 45.
Paraguayan war, 645.                     CROWN, ROYAL, of England, 51.
CARLOTTA, empress of Mexico, 52.
CALVERTS, the, 63.
COMMONS, HOUSE OF, in England, the centre
BANK OF ENGLAND, capital of, 29.            of power, 40; controlled by the aristocracy,
BUCKINGHAM PALACE, state dinner at, 56.      63; composition of, 119; persons ineligible
"BRIGADIER GENERALS " in America, 63.        to, 120; mode of resigning a seat in, 120;
" BEST FAMILIES " in America, 63.            what each member represents, 121; origin
BEALES, 64.                                  of, 123; history of, 123; manual of, 130;
BRIGHT, JOHN his opinion of English church    first beginnings of, 130; ceremonial oband state, 65; opportunity of, 124; speech-   served in organizing, 131; articles in the
es of, 144; his opinion of statesmen, 187;   pressconcerning,seldomansweredbymematthe triumph of the reform bill, 420.     hers, 133; lobbies, 133; powers of, 134;
BARONETS, what they are, 66; how created, 69.   etiquette of, 137; description of a scene
BLACK PRINCE, the, the first Duke in Eng-   in, 138; manners of, sketched by Mr. Grant,
land, 67.                                 a veteran reporter of, 140; attractions of,
BEDFORD, DUKE of, 68; estate of, 72; how    membership in, 147; power over Prime
acquired, 73.                              Ministers, 170; salaries of clerks in, 223.
BARON, title of, 68.                       CARLYLE, THOMAs, a worshipper of aristocraBARRY, SIR CHARLES, architect of the British    cy, 63.
houses of parliament, 90.                COBBETT, WILLIAM, how he attacked the arisBOROUGH, what it is, 122.                    tocracy, 64; the writings of, of great auBANCROFT MR. GEORGE, on the death of Lin-   thority, 416.
coin, 145.                               COBDEN, RICHARD, 64; 65; 124.
BLIUE BooxK,American, 224.                 COTTON, an enemy to British aristocracy, 64.
BRISTED, CHARLES ASTOR, 247; comparison  CHURCH, DISSENTING, the, a relentless enemy
by, of English and American university    of the British aristocracy, 65; Oliver
education, 256.                            Cromwell sprung from, 65.
BRITAIN, GREAT, principal cities of, com-  CROMWELL, OLIVER, no recognition of his rule
pared with American, 284; railway system    in English legal or historical documents,
of, 306; table of foreign possessions of,   195; anecdote of, 303.
318; and European, 319; colonies of, in  " COUSIN," the term as used between soverAfrica, 320; war of, on Abyssinia, 320;   eigns, 68.
salaries of colonial governors, 321; Indian  CHATHAM, LORD, bibulous propensities of,
empire, 321; the Indian revolt, 324; in-   80.
vestments of, in Hindoostan, 325; invasion  CAPITOL at Washington, construction and
of, by Julius Ceesar, 358; by William, the    cost of, 83; dome of, 84; surpassed only
conqueror, 358; the marine of, 361; na-    by Westminster, 85.
tional debt of, 375; proportion of popular  CLARKE, MR., American architect, 84.
representatives in the government as com-  "CHARING CROSS," London, 87.
pared with other countries 534.          CHAUCER, GEOFFREY, 81.
BRITISH COLONIES, fate of, 334.            CHANCELLOR, THE LORD, English, povwer and
BRYANT, WM. CULLEN, a radical advocate of   patronage of, 95.
free trade, 394.                         CENSUS, TEI AMERICAN, 120; the English,
BENTHAM, JEREMY, an advocate of French    215.
democracy, 408.                          CONGRESS, THE AMERICAN, power of, 134;
BUMFORD, extracts from his work, " lfe of a    difference between, and parliament, 134;
radical," 415.                             debates in, 134; committee duty in, 136.
BROOKLYN, city of, 477.                    COUNTY, what it is, 121; in England and
BUONAPARTE, Charles Louis Napoleon, empe-   Wales; in Ireland; in Scotland, 121.
ror of France, history of, 496; Victor Hu- CITY,. what it is, and free cities, what 122.
go on the inauguration of, 507.          CINQUE PORTS, THE, what they are, 122.
]BRAZIL, table of popular representatives of,534  CLUB LIFE in England, 126.
BELGIUM, list of popular representatives of, CABINETS, the existence of such a body un534; income of the king of, 597.          known to English or American law, 154;
BLANC, LOUIS, in favor of admitting Louis   importance of the selection of, in England,
Napoleon to the national assembly, 558.   156; the American constitution on, 156;




IN DE X.                                  657
intrigues within, 157; the English twice  CHANINELISLANDS, THE, 276.
the size of the American, 159; incidents in  CLYDE, THE, ship building on, 303.
the history of, 160; differences in Ameri-  CORNWALLIS, LORD, sketch of, by MissMarcan, 171; corruption in the English, 182;   tineau, 322.
debate on the proposition of Mr. Pendle-  " CASTE " in India, 326.
ton regarding the American, 183; mem- CHATHAM, burning of, by a Dutch fleet, 354.
bers of, not ministerially responsible, 184; CESAR, JULIUS, armament of, in the invaplaces of meeting of the British, 185; mem-   sion of Britain, 358; the invasion of Gaul
bers of the American, during the impeach-   by, 485.
ment of Andrew Johnson, 184.             CRIMEA, England and France in, 370; Cooke,
CHASE, SECRETARY, resignation of, 171; bank-    Jay, 377.
ing system of, 377.                      COAST SURVEY, the bureau of, 386.
CANNING, MR. GEORGE, enmity towards, of CHARTIST PARTY, THE, of England, 403.
Earl Grey, 174.                          COOKE, quoted on passage of English reform
Cox, S. S., HON., humorous speech of, against   bill, 418.
right of members of the cabinet to seats  CHAMBERS, ROBERT, on extension of British
in congress, 183.                          suffrage, 430.
CASTLEREAGH, LORD, suicide of, 185; resl-  CANADAS, confederation of, 457; number of
dence of, in India, 323.                   representatives of, 534.
CANTERBURY, ARCHBISHOP OF, 189; dignity  CHAMBORD, DE COUNT, head of the legitimist
of, 190; income of, 190; residence of, and    party in France, 563.
state, 190; ceremony of the installation of COOPER, FENNIMORE, conversation with Louis
a bishop by, 191.                          Napoleon, 502.
CHURCH, THE ESTABLISHED, in England, sta- CASSAGNAC, GRANIER DE, 516.
tistics of marriages in, 191; Episcopal CHILI, comparative number of popular repchurch in America, an example of the wis-   resentatives in the government of, 534.
dom of separating church and state, 191;  CLERGY, THE FRENCH, composition and charan English parish, 193; action of the dis-   acter of, 563.
senters, 191; the lawsuit of Braintree, COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM, French, 669.
194; the Irish church and Mr. Gladstone,  COMTE, AUGUSTE, sketch of, 572.
194; the champion of the Irish church a  CHICAGO, trade of, 613.
Jew-.M. Disraeli, 195; intolerance of, in  COSTA RICA, 649.
England, 198; the Scotch church, 199;
theology of the English church introduced
under Edward VI., 200; extracts from the:English liturgy, 201; regarded by the aristocracy as part of their domain, 203; po- DISRAELI, IHON. BENJAMIN, thrift of, 64;
litical ballads of, 204; character. of the    a " Right Honorable," 65; address on the
churchmen, 204; patronageof, 206; Brit-   death of Lincoln, 142; sketch of, 146; his
ish curates, 206; the "convocation,": 206;   opinion of statesmen, 187; champion of
confessional in  207; salaries of Eng-   the established church, 195.
lish bishops, 206; the life of an English  " DUKE " AND" COUNT," what these titles sigrector depicted in Mrs. Gaskill's " Char-   nify, 67.
lotte Bronte," 209; salaries of Irish bish-  DERBY, EARL OF, estafe of, 72; sketch of, 145.
ops, 210; the Irish church establishment, DEVONSHIRE, DUKE OF, furnishes an exempli210; the Presbyterians, 210; the Ritualis-   fication of the British aristocracy, 74.
tic party, 211-12; Bishop Colenso, 211; DUBLIN, Lord Mayor of, 133; city of, 292.
breach between the Protestant and Roman  DISSENTERS, THE, effort for the repeal'of the
Catholic churches, 211; Dr. Pusey, 212.    test and corporation acts, 197; sepulchre
CATHEDRAL ENGLISH, 307; Canterbury and    of, at Bunhill Fields in England.
York, 208.                               DEPARTMENTS, PUBLIC, English and AmeriCRANMER, Archbishop, 201.                    can, salaries in; hours of work, and holiCHURCH, THE ROMAN CATHOLIC, in Ireland,   days in, 223.
210; Maynooth, 210; in the United States, DELAWARE, STATE OF, whipping-post in, 267.
211.                                     DE TOCQUEVILLE, on the tendency of modern
CHURCH, the Methodist Episcopal in Amer-   government, 326; on the decline of French
ica, 212.                                 influence in America, 338; impregnability
CHURCH AND STATE in America, 212.           of the United States, 373; on the signifiCUSTOMS, THE UNITED STATES, 214; number   cance of American parties, 400; on the ofof officers in, and in the internal revenue,   flee of president in America, 447; on the
and their pay, 215; and connected with   relative composition of the House of Reprethe land office, and their pay; and in   sentatives and the Senate in America, 448;
other departments, including the post-   on Americans abroad, 460; on the absence
office, 215.                               of gratuitous functionaries in America, 520;
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL, anecdote of, 226.         on the salaries of officers in France and the
CRIMEAN WAR, effect of in England, 229.      United States, 538; compares the French
CLAY, HENRY, on rotation in office, 234; an    with American journalists, 566; on Ameriadvocate of a high tariff, 394.            can oratory, 569; sketch of, 578.




658                               I N D E X.
DUNDERBERG, an American ironclad, 370.       of, since the abandonment of impressment,
DICKENS, CHARLES,On the old United States    365; navy of, in the Crimean war, 365;
bank, 381; a tool of the English aristocra-   right of search claimed by, 366; royal
cy, 431; disparagement of America by,   yacht club of, 369; nomenclature of na455  curious illustration of the venality    vy, 369; budget of, 379; permanent debt,
of, 459.                                   of, 391; and revenue, 391; interest on the
DILKE, CHARLES W., MR., quotations from,   national debt, 392; "Young England,"
on American protectionists, 396-397; quo-   405; the radical party in, 405; party dogtations from, America and England not   gedness in, 407; the temperance question
of the same blood, 460; a mouthpiece of   in, 408; the cry of " no popery " in, 409;
English jealousy, 622; quotation from, on    woman suffrage in, 409; the trades union
the future of the Pacific, 630.            in, 411; Harriet Martineau on the workDRUMMOND LIGHT, THE, how originated, 388;   ing of the, 411; political elections in, 414;
DENMARK, number of popular representatives    attendance of the author at anti-slavery
in government of, 535; cost of its king,   meetings in, during the American war,
597; West India Islands of, 638.          421; sketch of an English election scene
DROUIN DE L'HuYS, sketch of, 560.            in, from  Thackeray, 421; attrition of
DIX, General, a specimen of American. diplo-   America on, 430; blight of the aristocracy
mats abroad, 568.                          on the industrial classes of, 431; instituDE LACROIX, EUGENE works of, cause of an    tions of, in an American crucible, 432; naemeute in Paris, 573.                      tional cruelty, 433; profligacies in high life,
436; episode in the rule of the Prince Regent, 436; "primogeniture" in, 439; the
prevalence of crime in, 439; the chevalier
ELIZABETH, QUEEN, of England, 67.            d'industrie anglais known in Paris, 441;
EARL, title of, in England, 68.              the English idea of loyalty a substantial
EMIGRATION, causes of, in Great Britain, 81.   embodiment, while the American is an abEMANCIPATION, ACT OF, American, 178.         straction, 442; a London scene from a loENGLAND, the passage of the reform bill a    cal journal, 443; criminal statistics, by a
crisis in the affairs of, 181; nature of the    member of parliament, 443; Bacon and
government of, 182- judicial system  of,   Gladstone Instanced as representative men,
215-16; treason in, 2i6; Sir Edward Coke's   444; Cobden and Bright also adduced as
style of browbeating at the trial of Sir Wal-   illustrations of another side, 445; stormy
ter Raleigh, 217; and at the trial of Essex,   look-out for England, 461; no sympathy
217; Jeffreys, 217; salaries of judicial of-   due to her from America, 454; systematic
ficers in, 217; imprisonment for debt in,   malignity of, to America, 455; hypocriti218; George Francis Train in, 218; home    cal pretensions of friendship understood
secretary of, has charge of the police of,   in America, 456; origin of war of, with
219; and of several public bureaux in,    Russia, 517; geographical comparison of,
219-20; patent office of, 221; public rec-    with America, 589; bound over to keep
ord office of, 221; the agricultural inter-   the peace, 621.
est in, 222; admiralty office in, 223; sala- EUROPE, public libraries of, 262; guide book
ries of clerks in public offices, 223; inland    of, 305; three great subdivisions of races
revenue of, 223; British museum, 223;   of, 607.
state paper office of, 224; stationery office, EDINBURGH, CITY OF, its influence in English
and treasury office, 224; board of trade    politics, 292; historical associations of,
and plantations, 224; post-office, 226; let-   301.
ters inviolate in, 227; reform  of the civil ENFIELD, English musket and rifle factory,
service in, 229; government situations in,   370.
230; commissioners of civil service, 230; EUGENIE, the French empress, 499; romanpublic education in, and in America, 241;   tic response of, 517; scene in the French
educational statistics of the British army,   cabinet, 561.
244; national schools of, 245; universi-  EXPORTS and imports of some of the great
ties, 249; colleges, 250; morale of English    powers in 1867, 599.
university life, 257; boat racing, 258; law  EASTERN QUESTION, THE, 618.
schools in, 263; Albert memorial in Hyde  EGYPT, present status of, 620.
Park, 264; counties in, compared with  EAST, the struggle for the possession of, 623.
American States, 265; English magistrates,
269; game laws in, 269; justices of the
peace in, 271; Lord Coke's opinion of that                   F
office, 271; municipal counties of, 272;
coal fields of, 301; municipal reform  in, FONTHILL ABBEY, 74.
314; Miss Martineau on local self-govern-  Fox, CHARLES JAMES, his manner of life, 79.
ment in, 314; intemperance in diet, a na- FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 81; alleged to have
tional defect, 316; rule of, in Hindoostan,    been the founder of the American post328; settlement of Australia by, 336; mili-   office, 227.
tary schools of, 352; treasure expended  FAWKES, GUIDO, 92.
by, on fortifications, 353; straits of navy  FERRERS, EARL OF, a noble executed, 110.




INDEX.                                     659
FRANCHISE, the extension of, 124; provisions  GLADSTONE, WILLIAM E., a champion of the
of, 125, abuses of, 125.                  established church in England, 202; a beFLAG, THE AMERICAN, 150.                    liever in the union of church and state,
FESSENDEN, HON. WM. P., 172.                202; advocate of administrative reform,
FREE TRADE, OR A HIGH TARIFF, one of the    229; an advocate of small nomination
great questions in America, 393; the ef-   boroughs, 270.
fect of free trade in England, 395; Mr. GLASGOW, CITY OF, the commercial metropoCharles W. Dilke on the question of, 397;   lis of Scotland, 301.
the author of England's greatness on the  GIRARDIN, EMILE DE, quotations from, on
same subject, 397; the convention at Phil-   American progress, 462; sketch of, 565.
adelphia, 410; the democratic party sail- GEORGE IV, prince regent of England, receping toward free trade, 410; argument to   tion by, 499.
the Irish element that a high tariff will GALIGNANI'S MESSENGER, origin of, 567.
cripple England, 410.                   GARIBALDI, sketch of, 576.
FRANCE, the French revolution, 401; the im-  GERMANY, the unity of races of, a question
perial succession of, 517; compared with    disturbing Europe, 581; rulers of German
the United States, 528; De Tocqueville on    principalities, and their income, 595; sumthe same subject, 531; proportion of pop-   mary of politics of, NOTE, 608.
ular representatives in the government to  GREECE, Pan-Hellenism, one of the questions
the whole population as compared with    agitating Europe, 583; salary of the king
the ratio in other countries, 534; popular    of, 595; watermen of 611.
education in, 539; charities of, 540; state  GOVERNMENTS OF LEADING POWERS, comparaof religion in, 541; railways, omnibuses,   tive cost of, per capita on their subjects,599.
post-offices and telegraphs, money order  GUATAMALA, state of, 639.
system of, 543; weights and measures of, GUYANA, state of, 641.
544; factories of, 544; creditfoncier, 545;
credit mobiliert 545; pawnbroking shops                     X
of, 546; conscription in, 547;judicial system  of, 547; imprisonment in, for crime, HUGO, VICTOR, reference to, in connection
549; scenes in pollce courts,550; the concier-   with his description of the sewers of Paris,
gierie, 551; De Tocqueville quoted on the    33; his work, " The Toilers of the Sea,"
civil administration of, 552; the warlike    contains a good. description of Guernsey,
movements of France of world-wide signifi-   276; quotation from, on the inauguration
cance, 555; free trade party of, 579; cost of   of Louis Napoleon, 507; at the barricades,
thewars to, initiated by the present ruler    513; description of a scene at, 514.
of, 600.                                HUGHES, THOMAS, his manner of attacking
FISK, JAMES, "admiral," effect of develop-   the aristocracy, 64; a reference to his
ments of, 530.                            works, 247.
FLEURY, MAJOR, career of 559.             HASTINGS, battle of, 64; its consequences,65.
FAVRE, JULES, sketch of, 668.             HEWITT, WILLIAM, 77.
FOURIER, sketch of, 571.                  HASTINGS, Marquis of, an exemplar of British aristocracy, 80.
HAMILTON, Duke of, a specimen of English
aristocracy 80.
GEORGE III., of England, the grandfather of HASTINGS, WARREN, impeachment of, 111;
Victoria, 40; speech of, to the first Ameri-   end of his career, 322.
can minister, 342.                      HILL, ROWLAND, improvement in the postal
GUIZOT, description by, of an English state   system effected by, 227.
dinner, 57; an advocate of christian unity  HINDOSTAN, " caste " in, 326.
against modern rationalism, 22; his opin- HALPINE, CHARLES G., how he rhymed himion of Persigny, 558; sketch of, 565.     self into office, 412.
"GENTLEMAN," different meanings of the  HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, quotations from,
word in England and America, 93.          on the idiosyncracies of English charGRAFTON, Duke of, his pension, 70.          acter, 483; description by, of an English
GIRARD, STEPHEN  fortune of, 72; remark-   lord  mayor's banquet, 435; quotation
able will of, 572.                        from, on English loyalty, 442; on the atGORDON CASTLE, N. P. Willis' visit to, 77.  traction and repulsion of England and
GIBBON, the historian, 80.                  America, 460.
GLOBE, the, 134.                          HUDSON RIVER, the, 471.
GRANT, MR. JAMES, a veteran English re- HUDSON, HENRY, his discoveries in America,
porter, quotations from, 99; 145-5.       273.
GRANT, GENERAL, as a " king " in a remodel- HORTENSE, mother of Louis Napoleon, 501;
ed government, after the style in England,   at the graves of the Bourbons, 523.
151; the inauguration of, 162.           HOLLAND, comparative list of popular repreGREY, EARL, retirement of, 173.             sentatives in the government of, 535; probaGARFIELD, GEN., of Ohio, quotations from    ble subordination of, to Germanunity, 608.
his speech on the bill to give members of HANOVER king of, income of, 598; a nestthe American cabinet seats in Congress, 183.   egg, 59k.




660                                INDEX.
HAVANA, city of, 634.                       the organ of state intelligence, 824; sooty
HONDURAS, state of, 640.                    appearance of the public buildings, 239;
Burlington house, 240; Somerset house,
I           -            240.; St. Bartholomew's hospital, 263;
district courts in, 271; royal exchange of,
INTELLIGENCER, NATIONAL, formerly an influ-   385; notable case of bulling and bearing,
ential organ at Washington, 135.          385; the financial centre of the world, 386;
INAUGURATION of Jefferson, 162: of Tay-   as compared with New York, 470.
lor; of Lincoln, 162; of Grant, 163.    LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, father of, 41; on Mr.
IMPEACHMENT, cases of, 185.                 Chase's administration of the treasury deIRELAND, government of, 277; compared with    partment, 172; his account of the act of
Scotland, 285; national character of the    emancipation, 176.
people, 278; O'Connell, 279; Miss Marti- LEOPOLD, of Belgium, his part in bringing
neau, reference to some of the public men    about the marriage of the queen of Engof, 280; " the knight of Gwynne," by Le-   land, 52.
ver, a good picture of Irish society as for- LUTHER, MARTIN, 60.
merly constituted, 280; coast of, 308; chief LAND, number of proprietors of, in England,
cities of, 309; scenery and characteristics    72; in Ireland and Scotland, 72; the eneof, 312.                                  my of the people in England, their friend
ITALY, a comparative list of popular repre-   in America, 72.
sentatives of, in the government of, 534; LAws of entail and primogeniture in Engone of the most restless states of Europe,   land, 72.
575; the unity of, impossible without LONGWORTH, of Cincinnati, large estate of, 72.
Rome, 582; government of, 594; its ma- LAWSUIT between Talbot and Berkeley, 74.
rine capacity, 611.                     LYNDHURST, LORD, an American tory, 81.
INTERNATIONAL ANALOGIES, Europe and Amer- LADIES, the presence of, in parliament, 100.
ica, 606.                               LONDON, BISHOP OF, 190.
INDIES, WEST, the, 635.                   LAND OFFICE in America, number of officers
in. and their compensation, 215.
J- -                   LAYARD, MR., connection of, with administrative reform in England, 229.
JOHNSON, SIR JOHN, an example of the at- LOWELL, the American Manchester, 296.
tractions of English aristocracy, 63.   LIBERIA, the only American colony, 337.
JOHNSON, DR., a notetaker in the English  LIGHTHOUSE BUREAU, the, 386.
house of commons, 134..           LONGFELLOW, HENRY, quotation from  the
JACKSON, ANDREW, President, scene in the    " Golden Legend " of, 456.
cabinet of, 167; sympathy for Mrs. Eaton, LONG ISLAND, 472; the Sound, 472.
174; dissolution of his cabinet, 175; sketch  LAFAYETTE, GENERAL, an account of a visit
of his manner in office, 187; proscriptive    paid to him, in France by Hon. William H.
policy of, 233.                           Seward during a European tour, 584.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, firmness of, 184.
JAMES I., a Scotchman, and a pedant, 200.
JOSEPHINE, last days of, 522.
MOORE, THOMAS the Irish bard, satirizes
Washington, 24.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, 40.
KENT, Duke of, the father of queen Victoria, MANCHESTER, city of, in England, the growth
poverty of, 40.                           of the American staple, cotton, 65; its inKENT, Duchess of, an income procured for,   fluence during the American civil war, 292;
by her daughter Victoria, 45.             the spinning jenny, 295; tory tactics in,
KINGSLEY, CHARLES, sycophancy of, 64; his   during the French revolution, 402; masopinion of the aristocracy, 65.           sacre of the people in, 404.
KNIGHTHOOD, orders of, 81.                MAINE, State of, how the name is derived, 67.
KENT, chancellor, on the appointment of MARQUESS, the title of, 68.
judges by the executive, 448.            MARLBOROUGEI, DUKE OF, his estate, 76.
KINGLAKE, sketches of Louis Napoleon by, MACKENZIE, DR. SHELTON, 144.
506; 509.                               MONARCHY, English, doomed, 149.
MARTINEAU, MISS HARRIET, quoted from, 157,
IT r173, 378, and 440.
MAYNOOTH, hopes of, a failure, 210.
LONDON, city of, the interest of the city  MAURITIUS, or Isle de France, 338.
for Americans, 24; general description of, MCCLELLAN, CAPTAIN GEORGE B., on the con26; the " season" in, 34; literature of,   duct of the English forces during the Cri34; no such metropolis probable in Amer-   mean war, 371.
ica, 35; tower of, 47; government build- MONEY, uses of, 374.
ings in, 213; police of, 219; public bu- MIN,'the English, 384.
reaux under charge of the home secretary, MAYHEW Brothers, the, account by, of Eng219; customs of, 220; London Gazette,   lish crime, 441.




IN DE X.                                   661
MolWT, 504.                                PARLIAMENT HOUSES, British cost of, 34; in
MORNY, DUC DE, origin of, and usefulness to    Melbourne, 85; Ottawa, 86; description
the French emperor, 557.                   of the English, 89; officers of, 96; ceremoMALMAISoN, 521.                             nies of, 97.
MAUPAS, DE, sketch of, 559.                PARLIAMENT, English, the, prorogation or disMONTALEMBERT on public office hunting,240;   solution of, 44; forms of proceedings in,
sketch of, 563.                           111; how often reorganized, 121; county
MAZZINI, GUISEPPE, sketch of, 576.          members of, how elected, 122; character of,
MEXICO, 639.                                up to the year 1830, 123; directory of, 126;
must be opened by the queen, 131; manN1-IT                     ner of business in, 132; etiquette of, 133;
difference between, and congress, 134; has
NELSON, highest motive of, 64; character and    no printing office like that at Washington,
death of, 356.                             135; committee duty of, compulsory, 136;
NEW  ENGLAND, Manchester  cotton, and    " the mace," 136; want of representative
Presbyterianism, three great enemies of   character, 149; dissolution of, 180; bribearistocracy, 65; the temperance movement   ry in, 182; abolition of the slave trade
in New England, 408.                       by, 186; admission to, of the Jews, exNORMAN BARONS, how they acquired their   ceptional, 195; Committee of ways and
local names, 66.                          means, and of supplies, importance of, 380.
NEW YORK, derivation of the name, 67; city  PEEL, SIR ROBERT, defeat of, 65; policy of,
of, how composed nationally, 121; popu-   as prime minister, 81; sketch of, 147; inlation of the state of, 275; stock exchange,   auguration of, 156-8-9; public acts of, 410.
386;. canals of, 390; as compared with  PROTESTANTISM, headquarters of, in London,
London, 470; island of, 471; verses on, by    35; breach between, and Roman catholithe author, 472; drawbacks of a residence    cism, 211; and rationalism, 211; Guizot's
in, 483; A. T. Stewart's residences in, for    opinion of the ecumenical council, 212;
the poor, 484.                             Reinhold Baumstark on the same, 212.
NOBLEMEN, English, estates of, 72.         PALMERSTON, LORD, sketched by Bancroft,
NOBILITY and gentry, crimes of the, 80.      143; heartlessness of his character, 145.
NATIONAL ERA, formerly published at Wash-  PRIME MINISTER AND PRESIDENT, similarity
ington, 135.                               between the offices of, 151; 157; 173; 186.
NORTH, LORD, character of his administra-  PITT, WILLIAM, Right Hon., questionableness
tion, 182.                                 of his policy, 186.
NATIVE AMERICAN, or know-nothing party,409  PROTECTION, meaning of, in England, 80.
NAPOLEON, JEROME, 504.                     PRESIDENT, the American, contrasted with
NEW JERSEY, State of, 473.               I  the English sovereign, 150; room of, in the
NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION, number of   capitol, 98; mode of election of, 154; chief
popular representatives in the government    clerks of, 155; his cabinet meetings, 155;
of, as compared with other states, 534;   material features of this office and that
how composed, 591.                         of prime minister in England contrasted,
NAPOLEONIDES, all authors, 561.              162; cases of assassination of, and attempts
NETHERLANDS, king of, his income, 593;   at, 184-5.
status of, 593.                          PARTON, MR., biographer, views of, on the
NATIONAL DEBTS of the several great powers,   purchase of Alaska, 336.
598; and annual interest on, 599.        PRIVY COUNCIL the English, its relation to
NEW GRANADA, 640.                            the cabinet, i7'5; what it is, and what it
does, 176.
Q)                      PRESBYTERIANISM in Ireland, 210.
POSTMASTERS, number and compensation of,
"OLD PARR," 46.                             in the United States, 215.
O'CONNELL, DANIEL, 131.                    PEABODY, MR. GEORGE, beneficence of, 243.
ORATORY, American and European, char-  PITTSBURGH, city of, a great American workacter of, 141.                            shop, 294.
ORLEANISTS, the, 562.                     PORTSMOUTH the greatest naval station in
ONEIDA COMMUNITY, the, sketch of, 672.      England, 355.
PACIFIC RAILROAD, the, 389.
Tp                      POLITICAL PARTIES, history of, in England
and America, 399; De Tocqueville on
PEERS, origin of, 66; Irish and Scotch 120;   American parties, 400.
trial of one in the house of lords, 10A.  PRINCE OF WALES, scene at baptism of, 434.
PARIS, sewers of, 33; compared with Wash- PARIS, COUNT DE, 501.
ington, 470; early history, 486; influence, PATTERSON, MADAME, eccentricities of, 505.
490; what was said of the old Gauls, said to  PRESS, the English, spirit of, 507.
be applicable to the modern Parisians, 495; PHILLIPPE, LOUIS, 507.
fortifications of, and guard, 543; taxes of, PRUSSIA, comparative list of popular repre544; administration of, 549; American    sentatives of, in the government of, 534;
population of, 567.                       government and status of, 592.




662                                INDEX.
PORTUGAL, list of popular representatives in RAILWAY SYSTEMS of New York and London
the government of, 535; annual cost of   compared, 469.
the king of, 595.                       RENAN, ERNEST, representative of French free
PERSIGNY, DUC DE, 558.                      thinkers, 573.
PRINCE IMPERIAL, the, of France, response of, RUSSIA, character of the government and
at a banquet, 561.                        people of, 590; relations of, with America,
PAN-SCLAVISM, one of the great questions of   604; empire of, 611.
Europe, 580.                            ROTHSCHtDS, the, rise of, 601.
PAN-HELLENISM, another of the questions
likely to disturb Europe, 583.                             S
PEREIRE, French banker, anecdote of, 602.
PERSIA, condition of, 619.                ST. PAUL'S, London, view from, 24; the
PACIFIC OCEAN, the, 622; "the fate of the    grandest protestant church in the world,
Pacific "-Anecdote of Napoleon, 629.      31; cost of, 31.
SCHOOLS OF AMERICA, superior to English, 35.
Q                       SUSSEX, Duke of, at the coronation of the
queen, 43.
QUEEN OF ENGLAND, her household, 37; num- SOULT, MARSHAL, at the coronation of Victober of troops guarding, and palaces of, 37;   ria, 46.
manner of presenting addresses to, 44; STEWART, A. T., income of, 51; nomination
coronation of, 46; courtship and marriage    of, for secretary of the treasury, 156; a
of, 52; children of, 59; empire of, 60;   hypothetical case, 175; scene in front of
opening parliament, 99; veto power of,   the store of, on Broadway, New York, by
112; contrasted with the American presi-   the author, 438.
dent, 150; her maids of honor, 165; visit SOVEREIGNS  the English,  grand  offices
of, to Louis Phillippe, 170; hasa spiritual   around, 6; smaller offices, the " spoils "
as well as temporal power, 189; " clerk of   of the successful party, 70.
the closet" of, 190; the present queen  SOCIETY, ENGLISH, anomalous condition of,
thought to be a believer in spiritualism,   80.
201; extract from a speech of, on the re- " STRAND, THE," in London, 86.
form in the civil service, 230.         SENATE, the American, modeled after the
QUAKER MEETING, a, 118.                     English house of lords, 113; physically, a
QUARTERLY, LONDON, on the acoustics of the    fine body of men, 114.
parliamentary buildings, 118.           SPEAKER, in the house of commons and in
QUINCY, JOSIAH, on public office, 234.      congress, 115; 119; 128; 131.
STATE, in America, how formed, 121.
SUTTON, MR. RICHARD, one of our earliest
short-hand reporters, 135.
ROME, ANCIENT, population of, Note, 26; SMALLEY, MR. GEORGE, quotation from, degovernment of by the pope, 594.           scriptive of Castellar's oratory, 141.
REPRESENTATIVES, HOUSE OF, American, how  STANLEY, LORD, sketch of, 146.
composed, 120; speakers of, 130.        SUFFRAGE, UNIVERSAL, in America and EngREPRESENTATION, inequality of, in England,   land, 148.
123.                                    SEWARD, HON. WM. H., interest taken by, in
REFORM BILL, the English, effect of its pass-   American antiquities, 221; sumptuous
age, 124; for Ireland and Scotland, Note,   style of, 237; describes a visit made by
125; passage of, 181; character of, 181;   him in France to Gen. Lafayette, 584.
popular hymn of, 412; popular excite- SCOTLAND, some individual customs of, 276;
ment preceding the passage of, 418.       chief cities of, 301; national character of
REVIEW, WESTMINSTER, the, quotation from,   the people, 305; condition of the lower
on election bribery, 129.                 orders, 305.
REPORTERS, newspaper, 144.                SANDHURST, English military college of, 453.
REVIEW, SATURDAY, quotation from, on the  SPRINGFIELD, American armory at, 370.
impotency of parliament, 149; on the  SPRAGUE, SENATOR, opinion of lawyer poliradical party, 406.                       ticians, 450.
RESTORATION, the, what it means in English  SWITZERLAND, number of popular represenhistory,.tatives of, in the government, 534; a neuREFORMATION, the English, 196.              tral ground for the restless spirits of EuRITUALISM in America, 211.                  rope, 575; government and status of, 593.
REVENUE, the American internal, 215.      SPAIN, comparative list of popular represenROBERTS, MRS., picture of the governor's   tatives in the government of, 534; the
court in India, by, 329.                  Spanish race in America,-Spanish-AmeriRUSSELL, MR., American correspondent of   can revolutions, 637.
the London Times, quotations from, scenes  SWEDEN, number of popular representatives
in the Crimean war, 370; 372; on the    in the government of, 534; the first antimanners of Americans, 450; " legacy " to   slavery state, 638.
America, 456; on the American flag, 457; ST. ARNAUD, sketch of, by Kinglake, 662.
on war with America,. 464.               ST. SIMON, sketch of, 570.




INDEX.                                   663
SAXONY, cost of the king of, to the state, 597.   in, and in Europe, 384; internal improveSAN SALVADOR, 640.                         ments in, 388; a comparison between, and
SOUTH AMERICA, states of, 642.             France, 528; proportion of representatives
in, to the entire population, as compared
Tr                       with other countries, 534; relations with
Russia, 604.
TOWNSEND, G. A., description of an English      X           T7
anti-slavery meeting during the war, by,
421; of an incident in Broadway, N. Y., VISCOUNT, title of, 68.
by, 438; a circumstance at the capitol at VON BISMARCK Count, sketch of, 592.
Washington, 450: at the forest of Com- VENEZUELA, 646.
peigne, 524.
THACKERAY, WM. M., quotation from the
" Newcomes," descriptive of an English
election scene, 421.                   WASHINGTON CITY, description of, 21; muniTHAMES, the, 27.                           cipal government of, 23; Moore's verses
TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, description  of the   on, 24; compared with European capitals,
"white house," 37; on the American form    24; during the recess of congress, 148;
of government, 188; ignorance of, regard-   public offices in, 213; insane asylum of,
ing American state government, 275; view    219; effect of Jackson's policy on the forof American politicians, 276; quotation   tunes of, 234; morality of, 242; art galfrom, on American civic apathy, 449.     lery of, 262; Washington monument, 263;
TIMES, the London, 64; 135; ou the coup   army and.navy medical museum in, 359;
d'etat of Louis Napoleon, 511.           treasury building at-the focus of the
TRINITY CHURCH, New York, income of, 72;   financial operations of the government,
the original grant of land to, 19-20.    383; a skeleton of Paris, 470; bureau of
TENNYSON, ALFRED, verses by, on Victoria's   education at, 539.
reign; on Prince of Wales' bride, 711.  WELLINGTON, DUKE OF, present at the birth
TAYLOR, GENERAL, 233.                      of queen Victoria, 40; at the coronation
TAYLOR, MR. W. G., late Indian commission-   of, 46; ball given by, 57; 67; action of,
er at Washington, D. C., interview with   on the corn-law, 80; opposition of, to the
the author regarding Indian affairs, 330.    reform bill, 124; his unfitness for governTRIBUNE, CHICAGO, extract from, being a   ment, 157; bitterness of, to Lord Grey,
table of population of the various great   173; an inveterate enemy of the people,
powers, 340.                             181; great unpopularity of, 185; honors
TREASURY DEPARTMENT, various bureaux in   conferred on, after Waterloo, 357.
charge of, 386.                        WILLIAM, of Normandy, unable to read,66; his
TARIFF, the American, 393.                 armament on the invasion of England, 358.
TUCKERMAN, HENRY T., his work entitled  WALES, PRINCE OF, state bulletin announcing
"America and her commentators," com-   birth of, 58; titles of, by inheritance, 49.
mended, 456; on the superior candor of WADE, JOHN, an English historian, 69; 123.
French critics on America, 458; on Trol- WESTMINSTER PALACE, bad site of, 88; hislope, the second, 459.                   tory of, 91.
THIERS, M., the career and character of, 565. WESTMINSTER, MARQUIS OF, extent of his esTALLEYRAND, PRINCE, on the policy of Eu-   tate, and how acquired, 72; income of;
rope toward America, 583.                country seats of, 72.
TURKEY, SULTAN OF, income of, and of his WOLSEY, CARDINAL, 76.
chief officers, 595.                   WILLIS, N. P., description by, of English,
high life, 77.
TUJ                    WEST, BENJAMIN, 81.
WALTER, THOMAS W., American architect, 84.
UNIVERSITY, what it is, 122; theuniversities  WHITEHALL, in England, 87.
of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Dub- WILLIAM THE FOURTH, anecdote of, 103.
lin, represented in parjiament, 122.   WASHBURNE, E. B., MR., at the head of a
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, 135.                    movement to connect the telegraph and
UNIFORMITY, ACT OF, commonly called the   post-office, 227.
test act, 197.                         WELLES, GIDEON, an efficient officer, 237.
UNITED STATES, THE, judicial system of. 215- WEST POINT, 351.
16; imprisonment for debt in, 218; insol- WALL STREET, the great American mart for
vent debtors, 219; agricultural interest in,   loans and banking, 385.
222; the timber interest in, 222; govern- WATSON, ELKANAH, on the progressive inment advertisements, 224; appointments   crease of the American population, 463.
to office in, 232; total area of, 319; ac- WURTEMBURG, KING OF, income of, 6595.
quisition of territory by, 335; great future
of, a consequence of the system of govern-.2
ment, 339; marine of, 362; armories and
arsenals of, 370; national debt of, 374; YELVERTON, MRS., 110.
interest, 376; mints of, 384; gold coined  YORE, ARCHBISHOP OF, 189.








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