Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Harriet Martineau

CHAPTER III. MORALS OF POLITICS.

"'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends

Upon that law as on the best of friends;

Whence, in a state where men are tempted still

To evil for a guard against worse ill,

And what in quality or act is best,

Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,

He fixes good on good alone, and owes

To virtue every triumph, that he knows."

Wordsworth.

Under a pure despotism, the morals of politics would make but a very short chapter. Mercy in the ruler; obedience in his officers, with, perhaps, an occasional stroke of remonstrance; and taxpaying in the people, would comprehend the whole. Among a self-governing people, who profess to take human equality for their great common principle, and the golden rule for their political vow, a long chapter of many sections is required.

The morals of politics are not too familiar anywhere. The clergy are apt to leave out its topics from their list of subjects for the pulpit. Writers on morals make that chapter as brief as if they lived under the pure despotism, supposed above. An honest newspaper, here and there, or a newspaper honest for some particular occasion, and therefore uninfluential in its temporary honesty, are the only speakers on the morals of politics. The only speakers; but not the only exhibitors. Scattered here and there, through a vast reach of ages, and expanse of communities, there may be found, to bless his race, an honest statesman. Statesmen, free from the gross vices of peculation, sordid, selfish ambition, cruelty and tergiversation, are not uncommon. But the last degree of honesty has always been, and is still, considered incompatible with statesmanship. To hunger and thirst after righteousness has been naturally, as it were, supposed a disqualification for affairs; and a man, living for truth, and in a spirit of love, "pure in the last recesses of the mind," who should propose to seek truth through political action, and exercise love in the use of political influence, and refine his purity by disinfecting the political atmosphere of its corruptions, would hear it reported on every hand that he had a demon. Yet one who is aware of the enthusiasm with which the Germans hail the words of Posa at every representation of Don Carlos; one who has seen how American officials are supported by the people, on the supposition that they are great men, (however small such men may really be,) one who has watched the acceleration, within our own time, of the retribution which overtakes untrustworthy public men, whatever may be their talents and their knowledge, in contrast with the comparative stability of less able, but more honest men, can doubt no longer that the time is at hand for the advent of political principle. The hour is come when dwellers in the old world should require integrity of their rulers; and dwellers in the new world, each in his turn a servant of society, should require it of each other and of themselves. The people of the United States are seeking after this, feebly and dimly. They have retained one wise saying of the fathers to whom they owe so much; that the letter of laws and constitutions is a mere instrument; with no vitality; no power to protect and bless; and that the spirit is all in all. They have been far from acting upon this with such steadiness as to show that they understand and believe it. But the saying is in their minds; and, like every other true thing that lies there, it will in time exhibit itself in the appointed mode—the will of the majority.

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SECTION I.
OFFICE.

I was told two things separately, last year, which, if put together, seem to yield an alarming result. I was told that almost every man holds office, some time during his life; and that holding one is the ruin of moral independence. The case is not, however, nearly so bad as this. There is a kind of public life which does seem to injure the morals of all who enter it; but very few are affected by this. Office in a man's own neighbourhood, where his character and opinions are known, and where the honour and emolument are small, is not very seductive: and these are the offices filled by the greater number of citizens who serve society. The temptation to propitiate opinion becomes powerful when a citizen desires to enter the legislature, or to be the chief magistrate of the State. The peril increases when he becomes a candidate for Congress; and there seems to be no expectation whatever that a candidate for the presidentship, or his partizans, should retain any simplicity of speech, or regard to equity in the distribution of places and promises. All this is dreadfully wrong. It originates in a grand mistake, which cannot be rectified but by much suffering. It is obvious that there must be mistake; for it can never be an arrangement of Providence that men cannot serve each other in their political relations without being corrupted.

The primary mistake is in supposing that men cannot bear to hear the truth. It has become the established method of seeking office, not only to declare a coincidence of opinion with the supposed majority, on the great topics on which the candidate will have to speak and act while in office, but to deny, or conceal, or assert anything else which it is supposed will please the same majority. The consequence is, that the best men are not in office. The morally inferior who succeed, use their power for selfish purposes, to a sufficient extent to corrupt their constituents, in their turn. I scarcely knew, at first, how to understand the political conversations which I heard in travelling. If a citizen told another that A. had voted in a particular manner, the other invariably began to account for the vote. A. had voted thus to please B., because B.'s influence was wanted for the benefit of C., who had promised so and so to A.'s brother, or son, or nephew, or leading section of constituents. A reason for a vote, or other public proceeding, must always be found; and any reason seemed to be taken up rather than the obvious one, that a man votes according to the decision of his reason and conscience. I often mentioned this to men in office, or seeking to be so; and they received it with a smile or a laugh which wrung my heart. Of all heart-withering things, political scepticism in a republic is one of the most painful. I told Mr. Clay my observations in both kinds. "Let them laugh!" cried he, with an honourable warmth: "and do you go on requiring honesty; and you will find it." He is right: but those who would find the highest integrity had bettor not begin their observations on office-holders, much less on office-seekers, as a class. The office-holder finds, too often, that it may be easier to get into office than to have power to discharge its duties when there: and then the temptation to subservience, to dishonest silence, is well nigh too strong for mortal man. The office-seeker stands committed as desiring something for which he is ready to sacrifice his business or profession, his ease, his leisure, and the quietness of his reputation. He stands forth as either an adventurer, a man of ambition, or of self-sacrificing patriotism. Being once thus committed, failure is mortifying, and the allurement to compromise, in order to success, is powerful. Once in public life, the politician is committed for ever, whether he immediately perceives this, or not. Almost every public man of my acquaintance owned to me the difficulty of retiring,—in mind, if not in presence,—after the possession of a public trust. This painful hankering is part of the price to be paid for the honours of public service: and I am disposed to think that it is almost universal; that scarcely any man knows quiet and content, from the moment of the success of his first election. The most modest men shrink from thus committing themselves. The most learned men, generally speaking, devote themselves, in preference, to professions. The most conscientious men, generally speaking, shun the snares which fatally beset public life, at present, in the United States.

A gentleman of the latter class, whose talents and character would procure him extensive and hearty support, if he desired it, told me, that he would never serve in office, because he believes it to be the destruction of moral independence: he pointed out to me three friends of his, men of remarkable talent, all in public life. "Look at them," said he, "and see what they might have been! Yet A. is a slave, B. is a slave, and C. is a worm in the dust." Too true.

Here is a grievous misfortune to the republic! My friend ascribes it to the want of protection from his neighbours, to which a man is exposed from the want of caste. This will never do. A crown and sceptre would be about as desirable in a republic as caste. If men would only try the effect of faith in one another, I believe they would take rank, and yield protection, with more precision and efficacy than by any manifestation of the exclusive spirit that was ever witnessed. Of course, this proposal will be called "Quixotic;" that convenient term which covers things the most serious and the most absurd, the wisest and the wildest. I am strengthened in my suggestion by a recurrence to the first principles of society in the United States, according to which I find that "rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;" and that the theory is, that the best men are chosen to serve. Both these pre-suppose mutual faith. Let the governed once require honesty as a condition of their consent; let them once choose the best men, according to their most conscientious conviction, and there will be an end of this insulting and disgusting political scepticism. Adventurers and ambitious men there will still be; but they will not taint the character of the class. Better men, who will respect their constituents, without fearing or flattering them, will foster the generous mutual faith which is now so grievously wanting; and the spirit of the constitution, now drooping in some of its most important departments, will revive.

I write more in hope than in immediate expectation. I saw much ground for hope, but very much also for grief. Scarcely anything that I observed in the United States caused me so much sorrow as the contemptuous estimate of the people entertained by those who were bowing the knee to be permitted to serve them. Nothing can be more disgusting than the contrast between the drawing-room gentleman, at ease among friends, and the same person courting the people, on a public occasion. The only comfort was a strong internal persuasion that the people do not like to be courted thus. They have been so long used to it, that they receive it as a matter of course; but, I believe, if a candidate should offer, who should make no professions but of his opinions, and his honest intentions of carrying them out; if he should respect the people as men, not as voters, and inform them truly of his views of their condition and prospects, they would recognise him at once as their best friend. He might, notwithstanding, lose his election; for the people must have time to recover, or to attain simplicity; but he would serve them better by losing his election thus, than by the longest and most faithful service in public life.

I have often wondered whether a gentleman at Laporte, in Indiana, who advertised his desire to be sheriff, gained his election. He declared in his advertisement that he had not been largely solicited, but that it was his own desire that he should be sheriff: he would not promise to do away with mosquitoes, ague, and fever, but only to do his duty. This candidate has his own way of flattering his constituents.

A gentleman of considerable reputation offered, last year, to deliver a lecture, in a Lyceum, in Massachusetts. It was upon the French Revolution; and on various accounts curious. There was no mention of the causes of the Revolution, except in a parenthesis of one sentence, where he intimated that French society was not in harmony with the spirit of the age. He sketched almost every body concerned, except the Queen. The most singular part, perhaps, was his estimate of the military talents of Napoleon. He exalted them much, and declared him a greater general than Wellington, but not so great as Washington. The audience was large and respectable. I knew a great many of the persons present, and found that none of them liked the lecture.

I attended another Lyceum lecture in Massachusetts. An agent of the Colonisation Society lectured; and, when he had done, introduced a clergyman of colour, who had just returned from Liberia, and could give an account of the colony in its then present state. As soon as this gentleman came forward, a party among the audience rose, and went out, with much ostentation of noise. Mr. Wilson broke off till he could be again heard, and then observed in a low voice, "that would not have been done in Africa;" upon which, there was an uproar of applause, prolonged and renewed. All the evidence on the subject that I could collect, went to prove that the people can bear, and do prefer to hear, the truth. It is a crime to withhold it from them; and a double crime to substitute flattery.

The tone of the orations was the sole, but great drawback from the enjoyment of the popular festivals I witnessed. I missed the celebration of the 4th of July,—both years; being, the first year, among the Virginia mountains, (where the only signs of festivity which I saw, were some slaves dressing up a marquee, in which their masters were to feast, after having read, from the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, and that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;) and the second year on the lakes, arriving at Mackinaw too late in the evening of the great day for any celebration that might have taken place. But I was at two remarkable festivals, and heard two very remarkable orations. They were represented to me as fair or favourable specimens of that kind of address; and, to judge by the general sum of those which I read and heard, they were so.

The valley of the Connecticut is the most fertile valley in New England; and it is scarcely possible that any should be more beautiful. The river, full, broad, and tranquil as the summer sky, winds through meadows, green with pasture, or golden with corn. Clumps of forest trees afford retreat for the cattle in the summer heats; and the magnificent New England elm, the most graceful of trees, is dropped singly, here and there, and casts its broad shade upon the meadow. Hills of various height and declivity bound the now widening, now contracting valley. To these hills, the forest has retired; the everlasting forest, from which, in America, we cannot fly. I cannot remember that, except in some parts of the prairies, I was ever out of sight of the forest in the United States and I am sure I never wished to be so. It was like the "verdurous wall of Paradise," confining the mighty southern and western rivers to their channels. We were, as it appeared, imprisoned in it for many days together, as we traversed the south-eastern States. We threaded it in Michigan; we skirted it in New York and Pennsylvania; and throughout New England it bounded every landscape. It looked down upon us from the hill-tops; it advanced into notice from every gap and notch in the chain. To the native it must appear as indispensable in the picture-gallery of nature as the sky. To the English traveller it is a special boon, an added charm, a newly-created grace, like the infant planet that wanders across the telescope of the astronomer. The English traveller finds himself never weary by day of prying into the forest, from beneath its canopy: or, from a distance drinking in its exquisite hues: and his dreams, for months or years, will be of the mossy roots, the black pine, and silvery birch stems, the translucent green shades of the beech, and the slender creeper, climbing like a ladder into the topmost boughs of the dark holly, a hundred feet high. He will dream of the march of the hours through the forest; the deep blackness of night, broken by the dun forest-fires, and startled by the showers of sparks, sent abroad by the casual breeze from the burning stems. He will hear again the shrill piping of the whip-poor-will, and the multitudinous din from the occasional swamp. He will dream of the deep silence which precedes the dawn; of the gradual apparition of the haunting trees, coming faintly out of the darkness; of the first level rays, instantaneously piercing the woods to their very heart, and lighting them up into boundless ruddy colonnades, garlanded with wavy verdure, and carpeted with glittering wild-flowers. Or, he will dream of the clouds of gay butterflies, and gauzy dragon-flies, that hover above the noon-day paths of the forest, or cluster about some graceful shrub, making it appear to bear at once all the flowers of Eden. Or the golden moon will look down through his dream, making for him islands of light in an ocean of darkness. He may not see the stars but by glimpses; but the winged stars of those regions,—the gleaming fire-flies,—radiate from every sleeping bough, and keep his eye in fancy busy in following their glancing, while his spirit sleeps in the deep charms of the summer night. Next to the solemn and various beauty of the sea and the sky, comes that of the wilderness. I doubt whether the sublimity of the vastest mountain-range can exceed that of the all-pervading forest, when the imagination becomes able to realise the conception of what it is.

In the valley of the Connecticut, the forest merely presides over the scene, giving gravity to its charm. On East Mountain, above Deerfield, in Massachusetts, it is mingled with grey rocks, whose hue mingles exquisitely with its verdure. We looked down from thence on a long reach of the valley, just before sunset, and made ourselves acquainted with the geography of the catastrophe which was to be commemorated in a day or two. Here and there, in the meadows, were sinkings of the soil, shallow basins of verdant pasturage, where there had probably once been small lakes, but where cattle were now grazing. The unfenced fields, secure within landmarks, and open to the annual inundation which preserves their fertility, were rich with unharvested Indian corn; the cobs left lying in their sheaths, because no passer-by is tempted to steal them; every one having enough of his own. The silvery river lay among the meadows; and on its bank, far below us, stretched the avenue of noble trees, touched with the hues of autumn, which shaded the village of Deerfield. Saddleback bounded our view opposite, and the Northampton hills and Green Mountains on the left. Smoke arose, here and there, from the hills' sides, and the nearer eminences were dotted with white dwellings, of the same order with the homesteads which were sprinkled over the valley. The time is past when a man feared to sit down further off than a stone's throw from his neighbours, lest the Indians should come upon him. The villages of Hadley and Deerfield are a standing memorial of those times, when the whites clustered together around the village church, and their cattle were brought into the area, every night, under penalty of their being driven off before morning. These villages consist of two rows of houses, forming a long street, planted with trees; and the church stands in the middle. The houses, of wood, were built in those days with the upper story projecting; that the inhabitants, in case of siege, might fire at advantage upon the Indians, forcing the door with tomahawks.

I saw an old house of this kind at Deerfield,—the only one which survived the burning of the village by the French and Indians, in 1704, when all the inhabitants, to the number of two hundred and eighty, being attacked in their sleep, were killed or carried away captive by the Indians. The wood of the house was old and black, and pierced in many parts with bullet-holes. One had given passage to a bullet which shot a woman in the neck, as she rose up in bed, on hearing the tomahawk strike upon the door. The battered door remains, to chill one's blood with the thought that such were the blows dealt by the Indians upon the skulls of their victims, whether infants or soldiers.

This was not the event to commemorate which we were assembled at Deerfield. A monument was to be erected on the spot where another body of people had been murdered, by savage foes of the same race. Deerfield was first settled in 1671; a few houses being then built on the present street, and the settlers being on good terms with their neighbours. King Philip's war broke out in 1675, and the settlers were attacked more than once. There was a large quantity of grain stored up at Deerfield; and it was thought advisable to remove it for safety to Hadley, fifteen miles off. Captain Lothrop, with eighty men, and some teams, marched from Hadley to remove the grain; his men being the youth and main hope of the settlements around. On their return from Deerfield, on the 30th of September 1675, about four miles and a half on the way to Hadley, the young men dispersed to gather the wild grapes that were hanging ripe in the thickets, and were, under this disadvantage, attacked by a large body of Indians. It was afterwards discovered that the only way to encounter the Indians is in phalanx. Captain Lothrop did not know this; and he posted his men behind trees, where they were, almost to a man, picked off by the enemy. About ninety-three, including the teamsters, fell. When all was over, help arrived. The Indians were beaten; but they appeared before the village, some days after, shaking the scalps and bloody garments of the slain captain and his troop, before the eyes of the inhabitants. The place was afterwards abandoned by the settlers, destroyed by the Indians, and not rebuilt for some years.

This was a piteous incident in the history of the settlement; but it is not easy to see why it should be made an occasion of commemoration, by monument and oratory, in preference to many others which have a stronger moral interest attaching to them. Some celebrations, like that of Forefather's Day, are inexpressibly interesting and valuable, from the glorious recollections by which they are sanctified. But no virtue was here to be had in remembrance; nothing but mere misery. The contemplation of mere misery is painful and hurtful; and the only salutary influence that I could perceive to arise from this occasion was a far-fetched and dubious one,—thankfulness that the Indians are not now at hand to molest the white inhabitants. Then occurs the question about the Indians,—"where are they?" and the answer leaves one less sympathy than one would wish to have with the present security of the settler. The story of King Philip, who is supposed to have headed, in person, the attack on Lothrop's troop, is one of the most melancholy in the records of humanity; and sorrow for him must mingle with congratulations to the descendants of his foes, who, in his eyes, were robbers. With these thoughts in my mind, I found it difficult to discover the philosophy of this celebration. A stranger might be pardoned for being so slow.

One of the then candidates for the highest office in the State, is renowned for his oratory. He is one of the most accomplished scholars and gentlemen that the country possesses. It was thought, "by his friends," that his interest wanted strengthening in the western part of the State. The people were pleased when any occasion procured them the éclat of bringing a celebrated orator over to address them. The commemoration of an Indian catastrophe was thought of as an occasion capable of being turned to good electioneering purposes.—Mr. Webster was invited to be the orator, it being known that he would refuse. "Not I," said he. "I won't go and rake up old bloody Indian stories." The candidate was next invited, and, of course, took the opportunity of "strengthening his interest in the western part of the State." I was not aware of this till I sometime after heard it, on indisputable authority. I should have enjoyed it much less than I did, if I had known that the whole thing was got up, or its time and manner chosen, for electioneering objects; that advantage was taken of the best feelings of the people for the political interest of one.

The afternoon of the 29th we went to Bloody Brook, the fearfully-named place of disaster. We climbed the Sugar-loaf; a high, steep hill, from whose precipitous sides is obtained a view of the valley which pleases me more than the celebrated one from Mount Holyoke, a few miles off. Each, however, is perfect in its way; and both so like heaven, when one looks down upon the valley in the light of an autumn afternoon,—such a light as never yet burnished an English scene,—that no inclination is left to make comparisons. The ox team was in the fields, the fishers on the banks of the grey river,—banks and fishers reflected to the life,—all as tranquil as if there was to be no stir the next day.

On descending, we went to the Bloody Brook Inn, and saw the strange and horrible picture of the slaughter of Lothrop's troop; a picture so bad as to be laughable; but too horrible to be laughed at. Every man of the eighty exactly alike, and all looking scared at being about to be scalped. We saw, also, the long tables spread for the feast of to-morrow. Lengths of unbleached cotton for table cloths, plates and glasses, were already provided. Some young men were bringing in long trails of the wild vine, clustered with purple grapes, to hang about the young maple trees which overshadowed the tables; others were trying the cannon. We returned home in a state of high expectation.

The morning of the 30th was bright, but rather cold. It was doubtful how far prudence would warrant our sitting in an orchard for several hours, in such a breeze as was blowing. It was evident, however, that persons at a distance had no scruples on the subject, so thickly did they throng to the place of meeting. The wagon belonging to the band passed my windows, filled with young ladies from the High School at Greenfield. They looked as gay as if they had been going to a fair. By half-past eight, our party set off, accompanied by a few, and passing a great number of strangers from distant villages.

After having accomplished our drive of three or four miles, we warmed ourselves in a friendly house, and repaired to the orchard to choose our seats, while the ceremony of laying the first stone of the monument was proceeding at some distance. The platform from which the orator was to address the assemblage was erected under a rather shabby walnut-tree, which was rendered less picturesque by its lower branches being lopped off, for the sake of convenience. Several men had perched themselves on the tree; and I was beginning to wonder how they would endure their uncomfortable seat, in the cold wind, for three hours, when I saw them called down, and dismissed to find places among the rest of the assemblage, as they sent down bark and dust upon the heads of those who sat on the platform. Long and deep ranges of benches were provided; and on these, with carriage cushions and warm cloaks, we found ourselves perfectly well accommodated. Nothing could be better. It was a pretty sight. The wind rustled fitfully in the old walnut-tree. The audience gathered around, it were sober, quiet; some would have said dull. The girls appeared to me to be all pretty, after the fashion of American girls. Every body was well-dressed; and such a thing as ill-behaviour in any village assemblage in New England, is, I believe, unheard of. The soldiers were my great amusement; as they were on the few other occasions when I had the good fortune to see any. Their chief business, on the present occasion, was to keep clear the seats which were reserved for the band, now absent with the procession. These seats were advantageously placed; and new-comers were every moment taking possession of them, and had to be sent, disappointed, into the rear. It was moving to behold the loving entreaties of the soldiers that these seats might be vacated. I saw one, who had shrunk away from his uniform, (probably from the use of tobacco, of which his mouth was full,) actually put his arm round the neck of a gentleman, and smile imploringly in his face. It was irresistible, and the gentleman moved away. It is a perfect treat to the philanthropist to observe the pacific appearance of the militia throughout the United States. It is well known how they can fight, when the necessity arises: but they assuredly look, at present, as if it was the last thing in their intentions:—as I hope it may long be.

The band next arrived, leading the procession of gentlemen, and were soon called into action by the first hymn. They did their best; and, if no one of their instruments could reach the second note of the German Hymn, (the second note of three lines out of four,) it was not for want of trying.

The oration followed. I strove, as I always did, not to allow difference of taste, whether in oratory, or in anything else, to render me insensible to the merit, in its kind, of what was presented to me: but, upon this occasion, all my sympathies were baffled, and I was deeply disgusted. It mattered little what the oration was in itself, if it had only belonged in character to the speaker. If a Greenfield farmer or mechanic had spoken as he believed orators to speak, and if the failure had been complete, I might have been sorry or amused, or disappointed; but not disgusted. But here was one of the most learned and accomplished gentlemen in the country, a candidate for the highest office in the State, grimacing like a mountebank before the assemblage whose votes he desired to have, and delivering an address, which he supposed level to their taste and capacity. He spoke of the "stately tree," (the poor walnut,) and the "mighty assemblage," (a little flock in the middle of an orchard,) and offered them shreds of tawdry sentiment, without the intermixture of one sound thought, or simple and natural feeling, simply and naturally expressed. It was equally an under estimate of his hearers, and a degradation of himself.

The effect was very plain. Many, I know, were not interested, but were unwilling to say so of so renowned an orator. All were dull; and it was easy to see that none of the proper results of public speaking followed. These very people are highly imaginative. Speak to them of what interests them, and they are moved with a word. Speak to those whose children are at school, of the progress and diffusion of knowledge, and they will hang upon the lips of the speaker. Speak to the unsophisticated among them of the case of the slave, and they are ready to brave Lynch-law on his behalf. Appeal to them on any religious or charitable enterprise, and the good deed is done, almost as soon as indicated. But they have been taught to consider the oratory of set persons on set occasions as a matter of business or of pastime. They listen to it, make their remarks upon it, vote, perhaps, that it shall be printed, and go home, without having been so much moved as by a dozen casual remarks, overheard upon the road.

All this would be of little importance, if these orations consisted of narrative,—or of any mere matter of fact. The grievance lies in the prostitution of moral sentiment, the clap-trap of praise and pathos, which is thus criminally adventured. This is one great evil. Another, as great, both to orators and listeners, is the mis-estimate of the people. No insolence and meanness can surpass those of the man of sense and taste who talks beneath himself to the people, because he thinks it suits them. No good parent ventures to do so to his youngest child; and a candidate for office who will do it, shows himself ignorant of that which it is most important he should know,—what fidelity of deference every man owes to every other man. Is such a one aware that he is perpetually saying in his heart, "God! I thank thee that I am not as other men are?"

The other festival, to which I have alluded, was the celebration of Forefathers' Day;—of the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. I trust that this anniversary will be hailed with honour, as long as Massachusetts overlooks the sea. A more remarkable, a nobler enterprise, was never kept in remembrance by a grateful posterity, than the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers; and their posterity are, at least, so far worthy of them as that they all, down to the young children, seem to have a clear understanding of the nature of the act, and the character of the men. I never beheld the popular character in a more cheering light than on this occasion; and, if I happened to be acquainted with a misanthrope, I would send him to Plymouth, to keep Forefathers' Day. Every fact that I review, every line that I write, brings back delightful feelings towards some of the affectionate and hospitable friends through whose kindness I saw and learned whatever I learned of their country; but to none am I more thankful than to those who took me to Plymouth, and those who welcomed me there. It was an occasion when none could be on any other terms than pure brotherhood with all the rest. It was the great birth-day of the New England people; and none could fail to wish the people joy.

My party and I reached Plymouth from Hingham the day before the celebration. As we drew near the coast, I anxiously watched the character of the scenery, trying to view it with the eyes of the first emigrants. It must have struck a chill to their hearts;—so bare, so barren, so wintry. The firs grew more and more stunted, as we approached the sea; till, as one of my companions observed, they were ashamed to show themselves any smaller, and so turned into sand. Mrs. Hemans calls it, in her fine lyric, a rock-bound coast; naturally enough, as she was told that the pilgrims set their feet on a rock, on landing; but that rock was the only one. The coast is low and sandy. The aspect of the bay was, this day, most dreary. We had travelled through snow, all the way behind; snowy fields, with here and there a solitary crow stalking in the midst; and now, there was nothing but ice before us. Dirty, grey ice, some sheeted, some thrown up by the action of the sea into heaps, was all that was to be seen, instead of the blue and glittering sea. A friend assured me, however, that all would be bright and cheering the next morning; informing me, with a smile, that in the belief of the country people, it never did rain or snow, and never would rain or snow, on Forefathers' Day. This is actually a superstition firmly held in the neighbourhood. This friend pointed out to me, in the course of the afternoon, how the green grass was appearing through the snow on Burial Hill, on whose slope the descending sun, warm for December, was shining. We mounted Burial Hill; and when I trod the turf, after some weeks' walking over crisp snow, I began to feel that I might grow superstitious too, if I lived at Plymouth.

Upwards of half the pilgrim company died the first winter. Fifty-one dropped in succession; and the graves of most of them are on this hill. Burial Hill was probably chosen to be a memento mori to the pious pilgrims; its elevation, bristling with grave-stones, being conspicuous from every part of the town. But, lest it should exhibit their tale of disaster to their foes, the Indians, the colonists sowed the place of their dead with corn; making it, for honest purposes, a whited sepulchre. From this eminence, we saw the island in the harbour where the fathers landed for service on the first Sunday after their arrival; also, the hill on which stood a wigwam, from whence issued an Indian to hold the first parley. A brook flowed between the two hills, on which stood the Indian and the chief of the intruders. Governor Winslow descended to the brook; bridged it with stepping-stones, in sight of the Indian; laid down his arms, and advanced. The meeting was friendly; but there was so little feeling of security, for long after, that when half the colonists had perished, the rest were paraded round and round a hut on Burial Hill, to conceal the smallness of their numbers from the vigilant Indians.

We went to the Registry Office, and saw the earliest records of the colony,—as far back as 1623,—in the handwriting of the fathers. Among them is a record of the lots of land appointed to those who came over in the Mayflower. (Little did the builders of that ship dream how they were working for immortality!) Sometimes a cow is appointed, with a lot, to six families. Sometimes a black goat. The red cow is ordained to be kept for the poor, to calve.

The rock on which the pilgrims first landed, has been split, and the top part, in order to its preservation, removed within an iron railing, in front of Pilgrim Hall. The memorable date of the landing, 1620, is painted upon it; and the names of the fathers, in cast-iron, are inserted into the railing which surrounds the rock.

Within the Hall, a plain, spacious building, erected within ten years, to serve as the scene of the festivities of Forefathers' Day, and also as a Museum of Pilgrim curiosities, is a picture, by Sargent, of the Landing of the Pilgrims. Samosat, the Indian chief, is advancing, with English words of greeting,—"Welcome, Englishmen!" Elder Brewster, and the other fathers, with their apprehensive wives and wondering children, form an excellent group; and the Mayflower is seen moored in the distance. The greatest defect in the picture is the introduction of the blasted tree, which needlessly adds to the desolation of the scene, and gives a false idea, as far as it goes. I could not have anticipated the interest which these memorials would inspire. I felt as if in a dream, the whole time that I was wandering about with the rejoicing people, among the traces of the heroic men and women who came over into the perilous wilderness, in search of freedom of worship.

Forefathers' Day rose bright and mild. I looked out towards the harbour. Every flake of ice was gone, and the deep blue sea rippled and sparkled in the sun. The superstition was fated to endure another year, at least. All Plymouth was in a joyous bustle, with lines of carriages, and groups of walkers. After breakfast, we proceeded to the church, to await the orator of the day. We were detained on the steps for a few minutes, till the doors should be opened; and I was glad of it, for the sun was warm, and the coup d'œil was charming. There was one long descent from the church down to the glittering sea; and on the slope were troops of gay ladies, and lines of children; with here and there a company of little boys, playing soldiers to the music of the band, which came faintly from afar. Of real soldiers, I saw two during the day. There might be more; but none were needed. The strangest association of all was of a Pilgrim Ode sung to the tune of "God save the King!" an air which I should have supposed no more likely to be chosen for such an occasion than as an epilogue to the Declaration of Independence. It did very well, however. It set us all singing so as to drown the harmony of the violins and horns which acted as instigation.

The oration was by an ex-senator of the United States. It consisted wholly of an elaboration of the transcendent virtues of the people of New England. His manner was more quiet than that of any other orator I heard; and I really believe that there was less of art than of weakness and bad taste in his choice of his mode of address. Nothing could be imagined worse,—more discordant with the fitting temper of the occasion,—more dangerous to the ignorant, if such there were,—more disgusting to the wise, (as I know, on the testimony of such,)—more unworthy of one to whom the ear of the people was open. He told his hearers of the superiority of their physical, intellectual, and moral constitution to that of their brethren of the middle and southern States, to that of Europeans, and all other dwellers in the earth; a superiority which forbade their being ever understood and appreciated by any but themselves. He spoke especially of the intensity of the New England character, as being a hidden mystery from all but natives. He contrasted the worst circumstances of European society, (now in course of correction,) with the best of New England arrangements, and drew the obvious inferences. He excused the bigotry of the Pilgrim Fathers, their cruel persecution of the Quakers, and other such deeds, on the ground that they had come over to have the colony to themselves, and did not want interlopers. He extenuated the recent mobbing practices in New England, on the ground of their rarity and small consequences, and declared it impossible that the sons of the pilgrims should trust to violence for the maintenance of opinion. This last sentiment, the only sound one that I perceived in the oration, was loudly cheered. The whole of the rest, I rejoice to say, fell dead.

The orator was unworthy of his hearers. He had been a senator of the United States, and had, I was told, discharged his duty there; but he was little fit for public life, if he did not know that it is treason to republicanism to give out lower morals in public than are held in private; to smile or sigh over the vanity of the people by the fireside, and pamper it from the rostrum; to use the power of oratory to injure the people, instead of to save. In this case, the exaggeration was so excessive as to be, I trust, harmless. No man of common sense could be made to believe that any community of mortal men has ever been what the orator described the inhabitants of New England to have attained. I was deeply touched by the first remark I heard upon this oration. A lady, who had been prevented from attending, asked me, on my return, home, how I liked the address. Before I could open my lips to reply, her daughter spoke. "I am heart-sick of this boasting. When I think of our forefathers, I want to cry, 'God be merciful to us sinners!'" If the oration awakened in others, as I believe it did, by force of contrast, feelings as healthful, as faithful to the occasion as this, it was not lost, and our pity must rest upon the orator.

I am aware,—I had but too much occasion to observe,—how this practice of flattering the people from the rostrum is accounted for, and, as a matter of fact, smiled at by citizens of the United States. I know that it is considered as a mode, inseparable from the philosophy of politics there. I dissent from this view altogether. I see that the remedy lies, not wholly where remedies for the oppression of severe natural laws lie,—in a new combination of outward circumstances,—but in the individual human will. The people may have honest orators if they choose to demand to hear the truth. The people will gladly hear the truth, if the appointed orator will lay aside selfish fears and desires, and use his high privilege of speaking from the bottom of his soul. If, in simplicity, he delivers to the people his true and best self, he is certain to gain the convictions of many, and the sympathies of all; and his soul will be clear of the guilt of deepening the pit under the feet of the people, while trying to persuade them that they are treading on firm ground. What is to be said of guides who dig pitfalls?

The day closed delightfully. Almost everybody went to pay respect to an aged lady, then eighty-eight, a regular descendant of one of the pilgrims. She was confined to the sofa, but retained much beauty, and abundant cheerfulness. She was delighted to receive us, and to sympathise in those pleasures of the day which she could not share. I had the honour of sitting in the chair which her ancestor brought over from England, and of feeling the staple by which it was fastened in the Mayflower.

The dinner being over, the gentlemen returned to their several abodes, to escort the ladies to the ball in Pilgrim Hall. I went, with a party of seven others, in a stage coach; every carriage, native and exotic, being in requisition to fill the ball-room, from which no one was excluded. It was the only in-door festival, except the President's levee, where I witnessed an absolutely general admission; and its aspect and conduct were, in the highest degree, creditable to the intelligence and manners of the community. There were families from the islands in the bay, and other country residences, whence the inhabitants seldom emerge, except for this festival. The dress of some of the young ladies was peculiar, and their glee was very visible; but I saw absolutely no vulgarity. There was much beauty, and much elegance among the young ladies, and the manners of their parents were unexceptionable. There was evidence in the dancing, of the "intensity" of which we had heard so much in the morning. The lads and lasses looked as if they meant never to tire; but this enjoyment of the exercise pleased me much more than the affectation of dancing, which is now fashionable in the large cities. I never expect to see a more joyous and unexceptionable piece of festivity than the Pilgrim ball of 1835.

The next day, the harbour was all frozen over; and the memory of the blue, rippling sea of Plymouth, is therefore, with me, sacred to Forefathers' Day.

I was frequently reminded by friends of what is undoubtedly very true, the great perils of office in the United States, as an excuse for the want of honesty in officials. It is perfectly true that it is ruin to a professional man without fortune, to enter public life for a time, and then be driven back into private life. I knew a senator of the United States who had served for nearly his twice six years, and who then had to begin life again, as regarded his profession. I knew a representative of the United States, a wealthy man, with a large family, who is doubting still, as he has been for a few years past, whether he shall give up commerce or public life, or go on trying to hold them both. He is rich enough to devote himself to public life; but at the very next election after he has relinquished his commercial affairs, he may be thrown out of politics. I see what temptations arise in such cases, to strain a few points, in order to remain in the public eye; and I am willing to allow for the strength of the temptation.

But the part for honest men to take is to expose the peril, to the end that the majority may find a remedy; and not to sanction it by yielding to it. Let the attention of the people be drawn towards the salaries of office, that they may discover whether they are too low; which is best, that adventurers of bad character should now and then get into office, because they have not reputation enough to obtain a living by other means, or that honest and intelligent men should be kept out, because the prizes of office are engrossed by more highly educated men; and whether the rewards of office are kept low by the democratic party, for the sake of putting in what their opponents call 'adventurers,' or by the aristocratic, with the hope of offices being engrossed by the men of private fortune. Let the true state of the case, according to each official's view of it, be presented to the people, rather than any countenance be given to the present dreadful practice of wheedling and flattery; and the perils of office will be, by some means, lessened.

The popular scandal against the people of the United States, that they boast intolerably of their national institutions and character, appears to me untrue: but I see how it has arisen. Foreigners, especially the English, are partly to blame for this. They enter the United States with an idea that a republic is a vulgar thing: and some take no pains to conceal their thought. To an American, nothing is more venerable than a republic. The native and the stranger set out on a misunderstanding. The English attacks, the American defends, and, perhaps, boasts. But the vain-glorious flattery of their public orators is the more abundant source of this reproach; and it rests with the people to redeem themselves from it. For my own part, I remember no single instance of patriotic boasting, from man, woman, or child, except from the rostrum; but from thence there was poured enough to spoil the auditory for life, if they had been simple enough to believe what they were told. But they were not.

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SECTION II.
NEWSPAPERS.

Side by side with the sinners of the rostrum, stand the sinners of the newspaper press. The case is clear, and needs little remark or illustration. The profligacy of newspapers, wherever they exist, is a universal complaint; and, of all newspaper pressed I never heard any one deny that the American is the worst. Of course, this depravity being so general throughout the country, it must be occasioned by some overpowering force of circumstances. The causes are various; and it is a testimony to the strength and purity of the democratic sentiment in the country, that the republic has not been overthrown by its newspapers.

While the population is so scattered as it now is, throughout the greater part of the Union, nothing is easier than to make the people know only one side of a question; few things are easier than to keep from them altogether the knowledge of any particular affair; and, worse than all, on them may easily be practised the discovery that lies may work their intended effect, before the truth can overtake them.

It is hard to tell which is worst; the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true. It is no secret that some able personage at Washington writes letters on the politics and politicians of the general government, and sends them to the remotest corners of the Union, to appear in their newspapers; after which, they are collected in the administration newspaper at Washington, as testimonies of public opinion in the respective districts where they appear. It is no secret that the newspapers of the south keep out of their columns all information which might enlighten their readers, near and afar, as to the real state of society at home. I can testify to the remarkable events which occur in the southern States, unnoticed by any press, and transpiring only through accident. Two men were burned alive, without trial, by the gentlemen of Mobile, just before my arrival there; and no newspaper even alluded to the circumstance, till, many months after, a brief and obscure paragraph, in a northern journal, treated it as a matter of hearsay.

It is no secret that the systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honourable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have. Though a faithful public servant should be able to endure all the consequences of faithful service, yet there are many cases where men, undecided as to their choice of public and private life, are fixed in favour of the latter by this one circumstance. It is the one obstacle too much. A public man in New England gave me the history of an editor of a newspaper, who began his professional course by making an avowed distinction between telling lies in conversation and in a newspaper, where every body looks for them. Of course, he has sunk deeper and deeper in falsehood; but retribution has not yet overtaken him. My informant told me, that this editor has made some thousands of dollars by his abuse of one man; and jocosely proposed, that persons who are systematically railed at by any newspaper, should lay claim to a proportion of the profits arising out of the use of their names and characters.

The worst of it is, that the few exceptions to this depravity,—the few newspapers conducted by men of truth and superior intelligence, are not yet encouraged in proportion to their merits. It is easy to see how a youth, going into the wilds, to set up a newspaper for the neighbouring villages, should meet with support, however vicious or crude his production maybe; but it is discouraging to perceive how little preference is given, in the Atlantic cities, to the best journals over the worst. Still, there is a preference; and it appears to be on the increase; and that increase, again, is in proportion to the intrepidity of the paper in discussing affairs as they arise.

There will be no great improvement in the literary character of the American newspapers till the literature of the country has improved. Their moral character depends upon the moral taste of the people. This looks like a very severe censure. If it be so, the same censure applies elsewhere, and English morals must be held accountable for the slanders and captiousness displayed in the leading articles of British journals, and for the disgustingly jocose tone of their police reports, where crimes are treated as entertainments, and misery as a jest. Whatever may be the exterior causes of the Americans having been hitherto ill-served in their newspapers, it is now certain that there are none which may not be overpowered by a sound moral taste. In their country, the demand lies with the many. Whenever the many demand truth and justice in their journals, and reject falsehood and calumny, they will be served according to their desire.

This desire is beginning to awaken. Some months before I left the United States, a man of colour was burned alive, without trial, at St. Louis, in Missouri; a large assemblage of the "respectable" inhabitants of the city being present. No one supposed that anybody out of the State of Missouri was any further implicated with this deed, than as men have an interest in every outrage done to man. The interest which residents in other States had in this deed, was like that which an Englishman has in a man being racked in the Spanish Inquisition; or a Frenchman, in a Turk being bastinadoed at Constantinople. He is not answerable for it, or implicated in it, as a fellow-citizen; and he speaks his humane reprobation as a fellow-man. Certain American citizens, out of Missouri, contrived, however, to implicate themselves in the responsibility for this awful outrage, which, one would have thought, any man would have been thankful to avoid. The majority of newspaper editors made themselves parties to the act, by refusing, from fear, to reprobate it. The state of the case was this, as described to me by some inhabitants of St. Louis. The gentlemen of the press in that city dared not reprobate the outrage, for fear of the consequences from the murderers. They merely announced the deed, as a thing to be regretted, and recommended that the veil of oblivion should be drawn over the affair. Their hope was widely different from their recommendation. They hoped that the newspapers throughout the Union would raise such a chorus of execration as would annihilate the power of the executioners. But the newspapers of the Union were afraid to comment upon the affair, because they saw that the St. Louis editors were afraid. The really respectable inhabitants of that disgraced city were thrown almost into despair by this dastardly silence, and believed all security of life and property in their State to be at an end. A few journals were honest enough to thunder the truth in the ears of the people; and the people awoke to perceive how their editors had involved themselves in this crime, by a virtual acquiescence,—like the unfaithful mastiff, if such a creature there be, which slinks away from its master's door, to allow a passage to a menacing thief. The influence of the will of the awakening people is already seen in the improved vigour in the tone of the newspapers against outrage. On occasion of the more recent riots at Cincinnati, the editorial silence has been broken by many voices.

There is a spirited newspaper at Louisville which has done its duty well, on occasions when it required some courage to do it; informing the Cincinnati people of the meanness of their conduct in repressing the expression of opinion, lest it should injure the commerce between Ohio and Kentucky; and also, justifying Judge Shaw of Massachusetts, against the outcries of the South, for a judgment he lately gave in favour of the release of a slave, voluntarily carried into a free State. Two New York papers, the New York American and the Evening Post, have gained themselves honour by intrepidity of the same kind, and by the comparative moderation and friendliness of their spirit. I hope that there may be many more, and that their number may be perpetually on the increase.

The very best newspaper that I saw in the United States was a single number of the Cleveland Whig, which I picked up at an hotel in the interior of Ohio. I had seen spirited extracts from it in various newspapers. The whole of this particular number was valuable for the excellence of its spirit, and for its good sense. It had very important, and some very painful subject matter,—instances of overbearing the law,—to treat of. It was so done as nearly to beguile me, hungry traveller as I was, of my dinner, and of all thought of my journey.

One other remarkable paper lies before me: remarkable for its professing to be conducted on principles of exact justice, and for its accordance with its principles to a degree which has hardly been dreamed of in a publication of its kind. There is something heroic in the enterprise, which inspires a strong hope of its success. If the ability be but sufficient to sustain it,—of which there seems no reason to doubt,—there can be no question of its acceptableness. The just and gentle construction of human actions, and the cheerful and trustful mood in surveying natural events, are more congenial with the general mind, than captiousness and distrust towards men, and despondency under the government of God. Such men as the editor of the Boston Reformer are sure to command the sympathies of men, however they may appear to run counter to the supposed tastes of newspaper readers. The following notice to correspondents is a novelty in its place,—more striking than any announcements in the news columns.

"To correspondents.—Our paper is no vehicle of vulgar abuse, or spiteful attacks on persons or institutions. Our design is to avoid everything which appeals to or pleases any bad propensity in our nature. Doubtless there are a thousand petty annoyances somewhat grievous to be borne; but we cannot go about to redress them. The best way is to forgive and forget them. We cannot waste our strength on little matters. We know no way to do good to man, to make society really better, but to suppress our anger, keep our temper, show an elevated mind and a good heart. We must look for the good, not for the bad in men, and always put the best construction we can on all their doings."—Boston Reformer.

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SECTION III.
APATHY IN CITIZENSHIP.

In England the idea of an American citizen is of one who is always talking politics, canvassing, bustling about to make proselytes abroad, buried in newspapers at home, and hurrying to vote on election days.

There is another side to the object. A learned professor of a western college told me abundance of English news, but declared himself ignorant of everything that had passed in the home portion of the political world. He never took any interest in politics. What would be the use of his disturbing himself? How far does one man's vote go? He does more good by showing himself above such affairs.

It was communicated to me that there are more modes of political action than one: and that, though this professor does not vote, he uses his utmost influence with the students of his college, in favour of his own political opinions; and with entire success. If this be true, the gentleman falls short of his duty in one respect, and exceeds it in another.

A clergyman in the north was anxious to assure me that elections are merely personal matters, and do not affect the happiness of the people. It matters not to him, for instance, who is in office, and what party in politics is uppermost: life goes on the same to him. This gentleman had probably never heard of the old lady who said that she did not care what revolutions happened, as long as she had her roast chicken, and her little game at cards. But that old lady did not live in a republic, or perhaps even she might have perceived that there would have been no security for roast chickens and cards, if all were to neglect political action but those who want political power and profit. In a democracy, every man is supposed to be his own security for life and property: and, if a man devolves his political charge upon others, he must lay his accounts for not being so well taken care of as he might be. So much for the selfish aspect of the case;—the view which might have been presented, with illustrations, to the old lady, if she had happened to live in a republic.

The clergyman ought to see further. He ought to see, in virtue of his office, how public morals must suffer under the neglect of public duty by respectable men. If such men were to perform the duties of citizens as conscientiously as they do those of husbands, fathers, and pastors, and leave it to the knaves to neglect the duties of citizenship, the republic might go on as well as a republic with knaves in it can go on. But if the case is reversed,—if the knaves are eager to use their political rights for selfish purposes, and the conscientious in other respects are remiss in the duties of citizenship, the pastors may almost as well leave off preaching. All good pastoral influence will be borne down by the spread of corruption. The clergy may preach themselves hoarse to little purpose, if they live, and encourage others to live, in the avowed neglect of the first duty of any one relation; and the exercise of the suffrage is the first duty of republican citizenship.

A naval officer, a man of an otherwise sound head and heart, told me, very coolly, that he had never voted more than twice in his life. His defence, in answer to my remonstrance, was, that he had served his country in other ways. In as far as this might be meant to convey that he could not vote at New York when in India, the excuse must be admitted as valid: but, if it was meant to apply to elections going on before his eyes, it was much the same as if he had said, "there is no occasion for me to be a good father, because I have been a good son."

A member of Congress gave me instances of what would have been the modifications of certain public affairs, but for the apathy of the minority about the use of their suffrage. If citizens regulate their exertions by the probabilities of immediate success, instead of by their faith in their own convictions, it is indeed no wonder if the minority leave everything to their adversaries; but this is not the way for men to show themselves worthy of the possession of political rights. This is not the way that society has advanced. This is not the way that security for life and property has been obtained for those idle citizens who are now leaving that security to the mercy of those whom they believe to be the enemies of society.

A public man told me that it would be a great point gained, if every citizen could be induced to vote, at least once a year. So far is it from being true that all Americans are the bustling politicians the English have been apt to suppose. If such political bustle should be absurd, the actual apathy is something worse. If it were only borne in mind that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, surely all conscientious men would see the guilt of any man acquiescing in the rule of governors whom he disapproves, by not having recorded his dissent. Or, if he should be in the majority, the case is no better. He has omitted to bear his testimony to what he esteems the true principles of government. He has not appointed his rulers; and, in as far as he accepts their protection, he takes without having given, he reaps without having sown; he deprives his just rulers of a portion of the authority which is their due—of a portion of the consent of the governed.

There is another cause for the reluctance to vote which is complained of by the best friends of the people; but it is almost too humbling and painful to be discussed. Some are afraid to vote!

This happens not in the country, nor among the strength of the population in the towns: but among the feeble aristocracy. There is not, in the United States, as with us, a system of intimidation exercised by the rich over the poor. In the country, there are no landlords and tenants at will. In the towns, the tradesmen do not stand in need of the patronage of the rich. Though they vote by ballot, and any man who chooses it may vote secretly, (and many do upon occasion,) there is rarely any need of such protection. But there is no reason why the gentry, who may be afraid of hurting one another's feelings, should not use their power of secret voting, rather than neglect the duty of giving their suffrage. If the educated and principled men of the community, as they are esteemed, fall back into idleness and silence, when the time comes for a struggle for principles, and there is a danger of disappointing expectations, and hurting feelings, their country has little to thank them for. They are the men from whom the open discharge of duty is looked for; they are the men who should show that political obligation is above private regards. If they have not the virtue to do this, and take the consequences, let them avail themselves of the secrecy of the ballot-box, which in England is desired for the protection of those whom bad arrangements have made dependent for bread on the rich and powerful. At all events, let them vote, or be ashamed to accept the privileges of citizenship without having discharged the duties.

The fear of opinion sometimes takes the form of an almost insane dread of responsibility. There are occasions when public men, unable to judge for themselves of particular classes of circumstances, are obliged to ask advice of their friends and supporters. Happy he who obtains a full and true answer from any one! The chances against this are in proportion to the importance of the case. I knew of one such instance, the result of which more than one is, I trust, now grieving over in his inmost heart. An eminent statesman was hesitating whether to offer himself as a candidate for a very high office. He requested the opinion and advice of a number of gentlemen in public life, his supporters. All were of the same opinion; that he should not stand. No one of them chose to take the responsibility of telling him so. Some of them wrote ambiguous answers, hoping that he would infer that they thought ill of his chance. Others rather encouraged the enterprise. The illustrative details which might be given,—showing the general uniformity, with particular diversity, of the conduct of the advisers,—would be amusing if they were not too sad. Suffice it that no one, as far as I could learn, could get over his fear of responsibility so as to be faithful. They allowed their idol to make a fool of himself. If he should henceforth be sunk in political scepticism, perhaps these gentlemen may find that in shunning one kind of responsibility, they have incurred another, far heavier.

It is felt, and understood, in the United States, that their near future in politics is indiscernible. Odd, unexpected circumstances, determining the present, are perpetually turning up. Almost every man has his convictions as to what the state of affairs will be, in the gross, a century hence. Scarcely any man will venture a conjecture as to what will have happened next spring. This is the very condition, if the people could but see it, for the exercise of faith in principles. With a dark and shifting near future, and a bright and fixed ultimate destiny, what is the true, the only wisdom? Not to pry into the fogs and thickets round about, or to stand still for fear of what may next occur in the path; but to look from Eden gate behind to heaven gate before, and press on to the certain future. In his political as in his moral life, man should, in the depth of his ignorance and the fallibility of his judgment, throw himself, in a full sense of security, upon principles; and then he is safe from being depressed by opposition, or scared by uncertainty, or depraved by responsibility.

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SECTION IV.
ALLEGIANCE TO LAW.

It is notorious that there is a remarkable failure in this department of political morals among certain parties in the United States. The mobbing events of the last few years are celebrated; the abolition riots in New York and Boston; the burning of the Charleston Convent; the bank riots at Baltimore; the burning of the mails at Charleston; the hangings by Lynch-law at Vickesburgh; the burning alive of a man of colour at St. Louis; the subsequent proceedings there towards the students of Marion College; and the abolition riots at Cincinnati. Here is a fearful list!

The first question that arises is, who has done these things? Whose hands have lighted green fagots round a living man? and strung up a dozen or twenty citizens on the same gallows? and fired and razed houses; and sent a company of trembling nuns flying for their lives at midnight? Here is evidence enough of ignorance,—of desperate, brutal ignorance. Whose ignorance?

In Europe, the instantaneous and natural persuasion of men who hear the tidings is, that the lowest classes in America have risen against the higher. In Europe, desperate, brutal ignorance is the deepest curse in the cursed life of the pauper and the serf. In Europe, mobbing is usually the outbreak of exasperated misery against laws which oppress, and an aristocracy which insults humanity. Europeans, therefore, naturally assume that the gentry of the United States are the sinned against, and the poor the sinners, in their social disturbances. They draw conclusions against popular government, and suppose it proved that universal suffrage dissolves society into chaos. They picture to themselves a rabble of ragged, desperate workmen, with torches in their hands; while the gentry look on in dismay, or tremble within their houses.

It is not so. I was informed, twenty times over, by gentlemen, that the Boston mob of last year was wholly composed of gentlemen. The only working man in it was the truck-man who saved the victim. They were the gentlemen of St. Louis who burned the black man, and banished the students of Marion College. They were the gentlemen of Cincinnati who denounced the abolitionists, and raised the persecution against them. They were the magistrates and gentry of Vickesburgh who hanged way-farers, gamblers, and slaves in a long row. They were the gentlemen of Charleston who broke open the Post Office, and violated its sacred function, to the insult and injury of the whole country.

The case is plain. There are no paupers to rise against oppressive laws in a country, where the laws are made by all, and where pauperism is thereby excluded. There is no degraded class, subject to insults from the highest, which can be resented only by outrage. The assumption is a false one, that ignorance and poverty, knowledge and wealth, go together. Mobbing for European causes, and in European modes, is absolutely precluded where political rights are universal, and political power equally diffused through all classes.

The very few European causes which are in analogy with United States mobbing, are those riots for opinion, which bear only a subordinate relation to politics; such as the Birmingham riots, and the attempt of the Liverpool merchants to push Clarkson into the dock. The cases are very similar. The mobs of America are composed of high churchmen, (of whatever denomination,) merchants and planters, and lawyers.

One complete narrative of a riot, for the fidelity of which I can vouch, will expose the truth of the case better than a list of deeds of horror which happened beyond my sight. It is least revolting, too, to treat of a case whose terror lies in its existence, more than in its consequences. The actors in the riot, which it was my fortune to understand, were scarcely less guilty than if they had bathed their hands in blood; but it is easier to examine, undisturbed by passion, the case of those whose hands are, to the outward eye, clean.

A very few years ago, certain citizens in New England began to discover that the planters of the south were making white slaves in the north, nearly as successfully as they were propagating black slavery in the territories of the south and west. Charleston and Boston were affectionate friends in old times, and are so still, notwithstanding the hard words that passed between them in nullification days: that is, the merchants and professional men of Boston are fond of Charleston, on account of their commercial relations. This attachment has been carried to such an extreme as to be almost fatal to the liberties of some of the best citizens of the northern city. They found their brothers dismissed from their pastoral charges, their sons expelled from colleges, their friends excluded from professorships, and themselves debarred from literary and social privileges, if they happened to entertain and express opinions unfavourable to the peculiar domestic institution by which Charleston declares it to be her intention to abide. Such is the plea of those citizens of Boston who have formed associations for the purpose of opposing, by moral influence, an institution which they feel to be inconsistent with the first principles of morals and politics. For a considerable time before my visit to that part of the country, they had encountered petty persecutions of almost every conceivable kind. There is no law in Massachusetts by which the free expression of opinion on moral subjects is punishable. I heard many regret the absence of such law. Everything was done that could be done to make up for its absence. Books on any subject, written by persons who avow by association their bad opinion of slavery, are not purchased: clergymen are no longer invited to preach: the proprietors of public rooms will not let them to members of such associations; and the churches are shut against them. Their notices of public meetings are torn in the pulpits, while all notices of other public meetings are read. The newspapers pour contempt and wrath upon them in one continued stream. Bad practices are imputed to them, and their denial is drowned in clamour. As a single instance of this last; I was told so universally in the south and west that the abolitionists of Boston and New York were in the habit of sending incendiary tracts among the slaves, that it never occurred to me to doubt the fact; though I was struck with surprise at never being able to find any one who had seen any one who had actually seen one of these tracts. Nor did it occur to me that as slaves cannot read, verbal messages would be more to the purpose of all parties, as being more effectual and more prudent. Mr. Madison made the charge, so did Mr. Clay, so did Mr. Calhoun, so did every slave-holder and merchant with whom I conversed. I chose afterwards to hear the other side of the whole question; and I found, to my amazement, that this charge was wholly groundless. No Abolition Society of New York or Massachusetts has ever sent any anti-slavery paper south of Washington, except the circulars, addressed to public officers in the States, which were burnt at Charleston. The abolitionists of Boston have been denying this charge ever since it was first made, and offering evidence of its groundlessness; yet the calumny is persisted in, and, no doubt, honestly believed, to this hour, throughout the south, whither the voice of the condemned, stifled by their fellow-citizens, cannot reach.

Only mortal things, however, can be really suffocated; and there has never yet been an instance of a murder of opinion. There seemed, in 1835, so much danger of the abolitionists making themselves heard, that an emphatic contradiction was got up, it was hoped in good time.

The abolitionists had been, they believe illegally, denied by the city authority the use of Faneuil Hall; (called, in memory of revolutionary days, the "Cradle of Liberty.") Certain merchants and lawyers of Boston held a meeting there, in August, 1835, for the purpose of reprobating the meetings of the abolitionists, and denouncing their measures, while approving of their principles. The less that is said of this meeting,—the deepest of all the disgraces of Boston,—the better. It bears its character in its face. Its avowed object was to put down the expression of opinion by opprobrium, in the absence of gag laws. Of the fifteen hundred who signed the requisition for this meeting, there are many, especially among the younger and more thoughtless, who have long repented of the deed. Some signed in anger; some in fear; many in mistake; and of each of these there are some, who would fain, if it were possible, efface their signatures with their blood.

It is an invariable fact, and recognized as such, that meetings held to supply the deficiency of gag laws are the prelude to the violence which supplies the deficiency of executioners under such laws. Every meeting held to denounce opinion is followed by a mob. This was so well understood in the present case that the abolitionists were warned that if they met again publicly, they would be answerable for the disorders that might ensue. The abolitionists pleaded that this was like making the rich man answerable for the crime of the thief who robbed him, on the ground that if the honest man had not been rich, the thief would not have been tempted to rob him. The abolitionists also perceived how liberty of opinion and of speech depended on their conduct in this crisis; and they resolved to yield to no threats of illegal violence; but to hold their legal meeting, pursuant to advertisement, for the despatch of their usual business. One remarkable feature of the case was that this heavy responsibility rested upon women. It was a ladies' meeting that was in question. Upon consultation, the ladies agreed that they should never have sought the perilous duty of defending liberty of opinion and speech at the last crisis; but, as such a service seemed manifestly appointed to them, the women were ready.

On the 21st of October, they met, pursuant to advertisement, at the office of their association, No. 46, Washington Street. Twenty-five reached their room, by going three-quarters of an hour before the appointed time. Five more made their way up with difficulty through the crowd. A hundred more were turned back by the mob.

They knew that a hand-bill had been circulated on the Exchange, and posted on the City Hall, and throughout the city, the day before, which declared that Thompson, the abolitionist, was to address them; and invited the citizens, under promise of pecuniary reward, to "snake Thompson out, and bring him to the tar-kettle before dark." The ladies had been warned that they would be killed, "as sure as fate," if they showed themselves on their own premises that day. They therefore informed the mayor that they expected to be attacked. The reply of the city marshal was, "You give us a great deal of trouble."

The committee-room was surrounded, and gazed into by a howling, shrieking mob of gentlemen, while the twenty-five ladies sat perfectly still, awaiting the striking of the clock. When it struck, they opened their meeting. They were questioned as to whether Thompson was there in disguise; to which they made no reply.

They began, as usual, with prayer; the mob shouting "Hurra! here comes Judge Lynch!" Before they had done, the partition gave way, and the gentlemen hurled missiles at the lady who was presiding. The secretary having risen, and begun to read her report, rendered inaudible by the uproar, the mayor entered, and insisted upon their going home, to save their lives. The purpose of their meeting was answered: they had asserted their principle; and they now passed out, two and two, amidst the execration of some thousands of gentlemen;—persons who had silver shrines to protect. The ladies, to the number of fifty, walked to the house of one of their members, and were presently struck to the heart by the news that Garrison was in the hands of the mob. Garrison is the chief apostle of abolition in the United States. He had escorted his wife to the meeting; and, after offering to address the ladies, and being refused, out of regard to his safety, had left the room, and, as they supposed, the premises. He was, however, in the house when the ladies left it. He was hunted for by the mob; dragged from behind some planks where he had taken refuge, and conveyed into the street. Here his hat was trampled under-foot, and brick-bats were aimed at his bare head; a rope was tied round him, and thus he was dragged through the streets. His young wife saw all this. Her exclamation was, "I think my husband will be true to his principles. I am sure my husband will not deny his principles." Her confidence was just. Garrison never denies his principles.

He was saved by a stout truckman, who, with his bludgeon, made his way into the crowd, as if to attack the victim. He protected the bare head, and pushed on towards a station house, whence the mayor's officers issued, and pulled in Garrison, who was afterwards put into a coach. The mob tried to upset the coach, and throw down the horses; but the driver laid about him with his whip, and the constables with their staves, and Garrison was safely lodged in jail: for protection; for he had committed no offence.

Before the mayor ascended the stairs to dismiss the ladies, he had done a very remarkable deed;—he had given permission to two gentlemen to pull down and destroy the anti-slavery sign, bearing the inscription, "Anti-Slavery Office,"—which had hung for two years, as signs do hang before public offices in Boston. The plea of the mayor is, that he hoped the rage of the mob would thus be appeased: that is, he gave them leave to break the laws in one way, lest they should in another. The citizens followed up this deed of the mayor with one no less remarkable. They elected these two rioters members of the State legislature, by a large majority, within ten days.

I passed through the mob some time after it had begun to assemble. I asked my fellow-passengers in the stage what it meant. They supposed it was a busy foreign-post day, and that this occasioned an assemblage of gentlemen about the post-office. They pointed out to me that there were none but gentlemen. We were passing through from Salem, fifteen miles north of Boston, to Providence, Rhode Island; and were therefore uninformed of the events and expectations of the day. On the morrow, a visitor who arrived at Providence from Boston told us the story; and I had thenceforth an excellent opportunity of hearing all the remarks that could be made by persons of all ways of thinking and feeling, on this affair.

It excited much less attention than it deserved; less than would be believed possible by those at a distance who think more seriously of persecution for opinion, and less tenderly of slavery than a great many of the citizens of Boston. To many in the city of Boston the story I have told would be news: and to yet more in the country, who know that some trouble was caused by abolition meetings in the city, but who are not aware that their own will, embodied in the laws, was overborne to gratify the mercenary interests of a few, and the political fears of a few more.

The first person with whom I conversed about this riot was the president of a university. We were perfectly agreed as to the causes and character of the outrage. This gentleman went over to Boston for a day or two; and when he returned, I saw him again. He said he was happy to tell me that we had been needlessly making ourselves uneasy about the affair: that there had been no mob, the persons assembled having been all gentlemen.

An eminent lawyer at Boston was one of the next to speak upon it. "O, there was no mob," said he. "I was there myself, and saw they were all gentlemen. They were all in fine broad-cloth."

"Not the less a mob for that," said I.

"Why, they protected Garrison. He received no harm. They protected Garrison."

"From whom, or what?"

"O, they would not really hurt him. They only wanted to show that they would not have such a person live among them."

"Why should not he live among them? Is he guilty under any law?"

"He is an insufferable person to them."

"So may you be to-morrow. If you can catch Garrison breaking the laws, punish him under the laws. If you cannot, he has as much right to live where he pleases as you."

Two law pupils of this gentleman presently entered. One approved of all that had been done, and praised the spirit of the gentlemen of Boston. I asked whether they had not broken the law. Yes. I asked him if he knew what the law was. Yes; but it could not be always kept. If a man was caught in a house setting it on fire, the owner might shoot him; and Garrison was such an incendiary. I asked him for proof. He had nothing but hearsay to give. The case, as I told him, came to this. A. says Garrison is an incendiary. B. says he is not. A. proceeds on his own opinion to break the law, lest Garrison should do so.

The other pupil told me of the sorrow of heart with which he saw the law, the life of the republic, set at naught by those who should best understand its nature and value. He saw that the time was come for the true men of the republic to oppose a bold front to the insolence of the rich and the powerful, who were bearing down the liberties of the people for a matter of opinion. The young men, he saw, must brace themselves up against the tyranny of the monied mob, and defend the law; or the liberties of the country were gone. I afterwards found many such among the young men of the wealthier classes. If they keep their convictions, they and their city are safe.

No prosecutions followed. I asked a lawyer, an abolitionist, why. He said there would be difficulty in getting a verdict; and, if it was obtained, the punishment would be merely a fine, which would be paid on the spot, and the triumph would remain with the aggressors. This seemed to me no good reason.

I asked an eminent judge the same question; and whether there was not a public prosecutor who might prosecute for breach of the peace, if the abolitionists would not, for the assault on Garrison. He said it might be done; but he had given his advice against it. Why? The feeling was so strong against the abolitionists,—the rioters were so respectable in the city,—it was better to let the whole affair pass over without notice.

Of others, some knew nothing of it, because it was about such a low set of people; some could not take any interest in what they were tired of hearing about; some had not heard anything of the matter; some thought the abolitionists were served quite right; some were sure the gentlemen of Boston would not do anything improper; and some owned that there was such bad taste and meddlesomeness in the abolitionists, that people of taste kept out of the way of hearing anything about them.

Notwithstanding all this, the body of the people are sound. Many of the young lawyers are resolved to keep on the watch, to maintain the rights of the abolitionists in the legislature, and in the streets of the city. Many hundreds of the working men agreed to leave their work on the first rumour of riot, get sworn in as special constables, and keep the peace against the gentry; acting vigorously against the mob ringleaders, if such should be the magistrates of Boston themselves. I visited many of the villages in Massachusetts; and there everything seemed right. The country people are abolitionists, by nature and education, and they see the iniquity of mob-law. A sagacious gentleman told me that it did him good to hear, in New York, of this mob, because it proved the rest of Massachusetts to be in a sound state. It is always 'Boston versus Massachusetts;' and when the city, or the aristocracy there, who think themselves the city, are very vehemently wrong, it is a plain proof that the country people are eminently right. This may, for the humour of the thing, be strongly put; but there is much truth in it.

The philosophy of the case is very easy to understand; and supremely important to be understood.

The law, in a republic, is the embodiment of the will of the people. As long as the republic is in a natural and healthy state, containing no anomaly, and exhibiting no gross vices, the function of the law works easily, and is understood and reverenced. Its punishments bear only upon individuals, who have the opposition of society to contend with for violating its will, and who are helpless against the righteous visitations of the law.

If there be any anomaly among the institutions of a republic, the function of the law is certain to be disturbed, sooner or later: and that disturbance is usually the symptom by the exhibition of which the anomaly is first detected, and then cured. It was so with free-masonry. It will be so with slavery; and with every institution inconsistent with the fundamental principles of democracy. The process is easily traceable. The worldly interests of the minority,—of perhaps a single class,—are bound up with the anomaly:—of the minority, because, if the majority had been interested in any anti-republican institution, the republic would not have existed. The minority may go on for a length of time in apparent harmony with the expressed will of the many,—the law. But the time comes when their anomaly clashes with the law. For instance, the merchants of the north trade in products which are, as they believe, created out of a denial that all men are born free and equal, and that the just powers of rulers are derived from the consent of the governed; while the contrary principles are the root which produces the law. Which is to be given up, when both cannot be held? If the pecuniary interest of merchants is incompatible with freedom of speech in fellow-citizens, which is to suffer?—The will of the majority, the lawmaker, is to decide. But it takes some time to awaken the will of the majority; and till it awakes, the interest of the faction is active, and overbears the law. The retribution is certain; the result is safe. But the evils meanwhile are so tremendous, that no exertion should be spared to open the eyes of the majority to the insults offered to its will. There is no fear that the majority will ultimately succumb to the minority,—the harmonious law to the discordant anomaly: but it is a fearful thing, meantime, that the brave should be oppressed by the mercenary, and oppressed in proportion to their bravery; that the masters of black slaves in the south should be allowed to make white slaves in the north; that power and wealth should be used to blind the people to the nature and dignity of the law, and to seduce them into a preference of brute force. These evils are so tremendous as to make it the duty of every citizen to bring every lawbreaker, high or low, to punishment; to strike out of the election list every man who tampers with the will of the majority; to teach every child what the law is, and why it must be maintained; to keep his eye on the rostrum, the bench, the bar, the pulpit, the press, the lyceum, the school, that no fallacy, no compromise with an anomaly, no surrender of principle be allowed to pass unexposed and unstigmatized.

One compound fallacy is allowed daily to pass unexposed and unstigmatized. "You make no allowance," said a friend who was strangely bewildered by it,—"you make no allowance for the great number of excellent people who view the anomaly and the law as you do, but who keep quiet, because they sincerely believe that by speaking and acting they should endanger the Union." This explains the conduct of a crowd of "excellent people," neither merchants, nor the friends of slave-holders, nor approving slavery, or mobbing, or persecution for opinion; but who revile or satirize the abolitionists, and, for the rest, hold their tongues. But is it possible that such do not see that if slavery be wrong, and if it be indeed bound up with the Union, the Union must fall? Is it possible that they do not see that if the question be really this,—that if the laws of God and the arrangements of man are incompatible, man's arrangements must give way?—I regard it as a false and mischievous assumption that slavery is bound up with the Union: but if I believed the dictum, I should not be for "putting off the evil day." Every day which passes over the unredressed wrongs of any class which a republic holds in her bosom; every day which brings persecution on those who act out the principles which all profess; every day which adds a sanction to brute force, and impairs the sacredness of law; every day which prolongs impunity to the oppressor and discouragement to the oppressed, is a more evil day than that which should usher in the work of renovation.

But the dictum is not true. This bitter satire upon the constitution, and upon all who have complacently lived under it, is not true. The Union is not incompatible with freedom of speech. The Union does not forbid men to act according to their convictions. The Union has never depended for its existence on hypocrisy, insult, and injury; and it never will.

Let citizens but take heed individually to respect the law, and see that others do,—that no neighbour transgresses it, that no statesman despises it unrebuked, that no child grows up ignorant or careless of it; and the Union is as secure as the ground they tread upon. If this be not done, everything is in peril, for the season; not only the Union, but property, home, life and integrity.

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SECTION V.
SECTIONAL PREJUDICE.

It is the practice at Washington to pay the Members of Congress, not only a per diem allowance, but their travelling expenses; at so much per twenty miles. Two Members of Congress from Missouri made charges widely different in amount. Complaints were made that the Members were not confined to a mail route, and that the country had to pay for any digressions the honourable gentlemen might be in the humour to make. Upon this, a Member observed that, so far from wishing to confine the congressional travellers to a mail route, he would, if possible, prescribe the condition that they should travel, both in coming and going, through every State of the Union. Any money thus expended, would be, he considered, a cheap price to pay for the conquest of prejudices and dispersion of unfriendly feelings, which would be the consequence of the rambles he proposed.

The Members of Congress from the north like to revert to the day when there were only two universities, Harvard and Yale, to which all the youth of the Union repaired for education. The southern members love to boast of the increase of colleges, so that every State will soon be educating its own youth. The northern men miss the sweet sounds of acknowledgment which used to meet their ears, as often as past days were referred to—the grateful mention of the New England retreats where the years of preparation for active life were spent. The southern men are mortified at the supposition that everything intellectual must come out of New England. When they boast that Virginia has produced almost all their Presidents, they are met by the boast that New England has furnished almost all the school-masters, professors, and clergy of the country. While the north is still fostering a reverence for the Union, the south loses no opportunity of enlarging lovingly on the virtue of passionate attachment to one's native state.

There is much nature and much reason in all this. It is true that there is advantage in the youth of the whole country being brought together within college walls, at the age when warm friendships are formed. They can hardly quarrel very desperately in Congress, after having striven, and loved, and learned together, in their bright early days. The cadets at West Point spoke warmly to me of this. They told me that when a youth is coming from afar, the youths who have arrived from an opposite point of the compass prepare to look cold upon him and quiz him, and receive him frigidly enough; but the second Sunday seldom comes round before they wonder at him and themselves, and acknowledge that he might almost have been born in their own State. On the other hand, it is true that it would be an absurdity and a hardship to the dwellers in the south and west to have no means of educating their youth at home; but to be obliged to send them a thousand miles in pursuit of necessary learning. It is also true that medical colleges should abound; that peculiar diseases, incident to climate and locality, may be studied on the spot. In this, as in many other cases, some good must be sacrificed for the attainment of a greater good.

The question is, need sectional prejudices increase under the new arrangements? Are there no means of counteracting this great evil, except the ancient methods? Is West Point the last spot whereon common interests may rally, and whence state jealousies may be excluded?

I should be sorry if the answer were unfavourable; for this Sectional Prejudice, carried beyond the point of due political vigilance, is folly,—childish folly. Events prove it to be so. Deadly political enemies meet at Washington, and snarl and declaim at one another with mighty fierceness. They find themselves, some sunny day, lying on the grass under the shade of a tree, at the country-house of an acquaintance; they rise up cordial friends. They have actually discussed the question of questions, the American System and Nullification; and yet they rise up cordial friends. Again; a Boston gentleman and his lady travel for health through the south and west. They hear abuse of their State and city in abundance by the roadside; but their hearts are touched by the hospitality and friendliness they meet under every roof. Again; the planter carries his family to a Rhode Island bathing place, for the hot season: and there he finds some to whom he can open his heart about his domestic troubles, caused by slavery; he gains their sympathy, and carries away their esteem. The sectional hatred, if not an abstraction, is founded mainly on abstractions, and gives way at once when the parties are confronted. Does it not deserve to be called childish folly?

Yet "hatred" is not too strong a term for this sectional prejudice. Many a time in America have I been conscious of that pang and shudder which are felt only in the presence of hatred. I question whether the enmity between the British and the Americans, at the most exasperating crisis of the war, could ever have been more intense than some that I have seen flashing in the eyes, and heard from the lips, of Americans against fellow-citizens in distant sections of their country. I have scarcely known whether to laugh or to mourn when I have been told that the New England people are all pedlars or canting priests; that the people of the south are all heathens; and those of the west all barbarians. Nay, I was even told in New York that the Rhode Island people were all heathens, and the New Jersey folks no better. Some Baltimore ladies told me that the Philadelphia ladies say that no Baltimore lady knows how to put on a bonnet: but that the Philadelphians have something worse the matter with them than that; for that they do not know how to be hospitable to strangers. Without stopping to settle which is the gravest of these heavy charges, I am anxious to bear my testimony against the correctness of either. I saw some pretty bonnets, most becomingly worn, at Baltimore; and I can speak confidently to the hospitality of Philadelphia.

Trifling as some instances appear of the manifestation of this puerile spirit, it sometimes, it always, issues in results which are no trifle;—always, because the spirit of jealousy is a deadly curse to him who is possessed by it, whether it be founded on fact, or no. It cannot co-exist with a generous patriotism, one essential requisite of which is an enlarged faith in fellow-citizens. All republicans are patriotic, more or less frequently and loftily. If every American will look into himself at the moment he is glowing with patriotism, he will find his sectional prejudices melted away and gone, for the season. The Americans feel this in their travels abroad, when their country is attacked. They yearn towards the remotest dwellers in their country as if they were the nearest and dearest. Would they could always feel thus at home, and in the absence of provocation!

The most mortifying instance that I witnessed of this sectional prejudice was at Cincinnati. It was the most mortifying, on two accounts; because it did not give way before intercourse; and because its consequences are likely to be very serious to the city, and, if it spreads, to the whole west. One may laugh at the untravelled citizen of the south who declares that he knows the New Englanders very well. "How should you know the New Englanders?" "O, they drive about in our parts sometimes:"—"they" meaning the Yankee pedlars with wooden clocks for sale. One may laugh at the simple youth on board a steam-boat on Lake Erie, who warned me not to believe anything the Huron people might tell me against the Sandusky people, because he could tell me beforehand that it was all false, and that the Sandusky people are far better than the Huron people. One may laugh at the contemptuous amazement of the Boston lady at my declaration that I liked Cincinnati; that wild western place, where she believed people did not sit down to dinner like Christians. All mistakes of this kind, it is clear, might be rectified by a little travelling. But it is a serious matter to see the travelled gentlemen, the professional men of such a place as Cincinnati, setting up their sectional prejudices in one another's way.

Cincinnati is a glorious place. Few things can be conceived finer than the situation of this magnificent city, and the beauty by which she is surrounded. She is enthroned upon a high platform,—one of the rich bottoms occurring on the Ohio, which expand the traveller's notions of what fertility is. Behind her are hills, opening and closing, receding and advancing; here glowing with the richest green pasturage, and there crested and ribbed by beeches which seem transplanted from some giant land. Wherever we went among these hills, we found them rounding away from us in some new form of beauty; in steep grassy slopes, with a running stream at the bottom; in shadowy precipices, bristling with trees; in quiet recesses, pierced by sunset lights, shining in among the beechen stems, which spring, unencumbered by undergrowth, from the rich elastic turf. These hill-sides reminded me of the Castle of Indolence, of the quiet paths of Eden, of the shades that Una trod, of Windsor Forest,—of all that my memory carried about undulating wood-lands: but nothing would do; no description that I am acquainted with is rich enough to answer to what I saw on the Ohio,—its slopes, and clumps, and groves. At the foot of these hills runs the river, broad and full, busy with the commerce of the wide West. A dozen steam-boats lie abreast at the wharf, and many more are constantly passing; some stealing along, unheard so far off, under the opposite bank; others puffing and ploughing along the middle of the stream. Fine, level turnpike-roads branch off from the city among the hills, which open so as to allow a free circulation of air over the entire platform. Cincinnati is the most healthy large city in the United States. The streets are wide; and the terraces afford fine situations for houses. The furnishing of the dwellings is as magnificent as the owners may choose to make it; for commerce with the whole world is carried on from their port. Their vineyards, their conservatories, their fruit and flower gardens delight the eye in the gorgeous month of June. They have a native artist of great genius who has adorned the walls of their houses with, perhaps, the best pictures I saw in the country. I saw their streets filled with their thousands of free-school children. "These," said a lady to me, "are our populace." I thought it a populace worthy of such a city. There is no need to speak of its long ranges of furnaces, of its shipping, of its incredible commerce in pork, of its wealth and prospects. Suffice it that one of its most respected inhabitants tells that when he landed in Ohio, less than fifty years ago, it contained fewer than a hundred whites; and buffalo lodged in a cane brake where the city now stands; while the State at present contains upwards of a million of inhabitants, the city between thirty and forty thousand; and Cincinnati has four daily, and five or six weekly, newspapers, besides a variety of other periodicals.

The most remarkable circumstance, and the most favourable, with regard to the peopling of Cincinnati is, that its population contains contributions of almost every element that goes to constitute society; and each in its utmost vigour. There are here few of the arbitrary associations which exist among the members of other societies. Young men come with their wives, in all directions, from afar; with no parents, cousins, sects, or parties about them. Here is an assemblage from almost every nation under heaven,—a contribution from the resources of almost every country; and all unburdened, and ready for natural association and vigorous action. Like takes to like, and friendships are formed from congeniality, and not from accident or worldly design. Yet is there a tempering of prejudices, a mutual enlightenment, from previous differences of education and habits,—difference even of country and language. Great force is thus given to any principle carried out into action by the common convictions of differing persons; and life is deep and rapid in its course. Such is the theory of society in Cincinnati; and such is, in some degree, its practice. But here it is that sectional prejudice interferes, to set up arbitrary associations where, of all places, they should be shunned.

The adventurers who barbarize society in new places, have gone westward; and, of the full population that remains, above one-fifth are Germans. Their function seems to be, everywhere in the United States, to develope the material resources of the infant places in which they settle; and the intellectual ones at a more advanced stage. They are the farmers and market-gardeners here. There are many English, especially among the artizans. I saw two handsome white houses, on the side of a hill above the river, with rich ground lots, and extensive garden walls. These are the property of two English artizans, brothers, who emigrated a very few years ago. An Englishman, servant to a physician in Cincinnati in 1818, turned pork-butcher; was worth 10,000 dollars when I was there, and is rapidly growing rich. There are many New Englanders among the clergy, lawyers, and merchants; and this is the portion of society that will not freely mix with the westerners. It is no wonder if the earliest settlers of the place, westerners, are proud of it, and are careful to cherish its primitive emblems and customs. The New Englanders should not take this as an affront to themselves. It is also natural enough that the New Englanders should think and speak alike, and be fond of acting together; and the westerners should not complain of their being clannish. I was at a delightful party at the house of one of the oldest inhabitants, where a sprig of the distinctive buck-eye was hung up in the hall, and a buck-eye bowl of lemonade stood on the table. This was peevishly commented upon by some of eastern derivation: but I thought it would have been wiser to adopt the emblem than to find fault with it. Cincinnati has not gone to the eastern people: the eastern people have gone to her. If they have adopted her for their city, they may as well adopt her emblems too, and make themselves westerners at heart, as well as in presence. These discontents may appear trifling; but they are not so while they impede the furtherance of great objects. I was told on the spot that they would be very transient; but I fear it is not so. And yet they would be very transient if the spirited and choice inhabitants of that magnificent city could see their position as it is viewed by people at a distance. When I was one day expressing my admiration, and saying that it was a place for people of ambition, worldly or philanthropic, to live in, one of its noblest citizens said, "Yes, we have a new creation going on here; won't you come and dabble in the mud?" If they will but remember that it is a new creation that is going on, and not a fortuitous concourse of atoms; that the human will is, or may be, the presiding intelligence; that centuries hence, their posterity will either bless their memories with homage like that which is paid to the Pilgrim Fathers, or suffer the retribution which follows the indulgence of human passions, all petty jealousies will surely subside, in the prospect which lies before every good man. In a place like Cincinnati, where every man may gratify his virtuous will, and do, with his own hands, the deeds of a generation, feelings should be as grand as the occasion. If the merchants of Genoa were princes, the citizens of Cincinnati, as of every first city of a new region, are princes and prophets at once. They can foresee the future, if they please; and shape it, if they will: and petty personal regards are unworthy of such a destiny. It is melancholy to see how the crusading chiefs quarrelled for precedence on the soil of the Holy Land: it would be more so to see the leaders of this new enterprise desecrating their higher mission by a like contention.

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SECTION VI.
CITIZENSHIP OF PEOPLE OF COLOUR.

Before I entered New England, while I was ascending the Mississippi, I was told by a Boston gentleman that the people of colour in the New England States were perfectly well-treated; that the children were educated in schools provided for them; and that their fathers freely exercised the franchise. This gentleman certainly believed he was telling me the truth. That he, a busy citizen of Boston, should know no better, is now as striking an exemplification of the state of the case to me as a correct representation of the facts would have been. There are two causes for his mistake. He was not aware that the schools for the coloured children in New England are, unless they escape by their insignificance, shut up, or pulled down, or the school-house wheeled away upon rollers over the frontier of a pious State, which will not endure that its coloured citizens should be educated. He was not aware of a gentleman of colour, and his family, being locked out of their own hired pew in a church, because their white brethren will not Worship by their side. But I will not proceed with an enumeration of injuries, too familiar to Americans to excite any feeling but that of weariness; and too disgusting to all others to be endured. The other cause of this gentleman's mistake was, that he did not, from long custom, feel some things to be injuries, which he would call anything but good treatment, if he had to bear them himself. Would he think it good treatment to be forbidden to eat with fellow-citizens; to be assigned to a particular gallery in his church; to be excluded from college, from municipal office, from professions, from scientific and literary associations? If he felt himself excluded from every department of society, but its humiliations and its drudgery, would he declare himself to be "perfectly well-treated in Boston?" Not a word more of statement is needed.

A Connecticut judge lately declared on the bench that he believed people of colour were not considered citizens in the laws. He was proved to be wrong. He was actually ignorant of the wording of the acts by which people of colour are termed citizens. Of course, no judge could have forgotten this who had seen them treated as citizens: nor could one of the most eminent statesmen and lawyers in the country have told me that it is still a doubt, in the minds of some high authorities, whether people of colour are citizens. He is as mistaken as the judge. There has been no such doubt since the Connecticut judge was corrected and enlightened. The error of the statesman arose from the same cause; he had never seen the coloured people treated as citizens. "In fact," said he, "these people hold an anomalous situation. They are protected as citizens when the public service requires their security; but not otherwise treated as such," Any comment would weaken this intrepid statement.

The common argument, about the inferiority of the coloured race, bears no relation whatever to this question. They are citizens. They stand, as such, in the law, and in the acknowledgment of every one who knows the law. They are citizens, yet their houses and schools are pulled down, and they can obtain no remedy at law. They are thrust out of offices, and excluded from the most honourable employments, and stripped of all the best benefits of society by fellow-citizens who, once a year, solemnly lay their hands on their hearts, and declare that all men are born free and equal, and that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This system of injury is not wearing out. Lafayette, on his last visit to the United States, expressed his astonishment at the increase of the prejudice against colour. He remembered, he said, how the black soldiers used to mess with the whites in the revolutionary war. The leaders of that war are gone where principles are all,—where prejudices are nothing. If their ghosts could arise, in majestic array, before the American nation, on their great anniversary, and hold up before them the mirror of their constitution, in the light of its first principles, where would the people hide themselves from the blasting radiance? They would call upon their holy soil to swallow them up, as unworthy to tread upon it. But not all. It should ever be remembered that America is the country of the best friends the coloured race has ever had. The more truth there is in the assertions of the oppressors of the blacks, the more heroism there is in their friends. The greater the excuse for the pharisees of the community, the more divine is the equity of the redeemers of the coloured race. If it be granted that the coloured race are naturally inferior, naturally depraved, disgusting, cursed,—it must be granted that it is a heavenly charity which descends among them to give such solace as it can to their incomprehensible existence. As long as the excuses of the one party go to enhance the merit of the other, the society is not to be despaired of, even with this poisonous anomaly at its heart.

Happily, however, the coloured race is not cursed by God, as it is by some factions of his children. The less clear-sighted of them are pardonable for so believing. Circumstances, for which no living man is answerable, have generated an erroneous conviction in the feeble mind of man, which sees not beyond the actual and immediate. No remedy could ever have been applied, unless stronger minds than ordinary had been brought into the case. But it so happens, wherever there is an anomaly, giant minds rise up to overthrow it: minds gigantic, not in understanding, but in faith. Wherever they arise, they are the salt of their earth, and its corruption is retrieved. So it is now in America. While the mass of common men and women are despising, and disliking, and fearing, and keeping down the coloured race, blinking the fact that they are citizens, the few of Nature's aristocracy are putting forth a strong hand to lift up this degraded race out of oppression, and their country from the reproach of it. If they were but one or two, trembling and toiling in solitary energy, the world afar would be confident of their success. But they number hundreds and thousands; and if ever they feel a passing doubt of their progress, it is only because they are pressed upon by the meaner multitude. Over the sea, no one doubts of their victory. It is as certain as that the risen sun will reach the meridian. Already are there overflowing colleges, where no distinction of colour is allowed;—overflowing, because no distinction of colour is allowed. Already have people of colour crossed the thresholds of many whites, as guests, not as drudges or beggars. Already are they admitted to worship, and to exercise charity, among the whites.

The world has heard and seen enough of the reproach incurred by America, on account of her coloured population. It is now time to look for the fairer side The crescent streak is brightening towards the full, to wane no more. Already is the world beyond the sea beginning to think of America, less as the country of the double-faced pretender to the name of Liberty, than as the home of the single-hearted, clear-eyed Presence which, under the name of Abolitionism, is majestically passing through the land which is soon to be her throne.

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SECTION VII.
POLITICAL NON-EXISTENCE OF WOMEN.

One of the fundamental principles announced in the Declaration of Independence is, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. How can the political condition of women be reconciled with this?

Governments in the United States have power to tax women who hold property; to divorce them from their husbands; to fine, imprison, and execute them for certain offences. Whence do these governments derive their powers? They are not "just," as they are not derived from the consent of the women thus governed.

Governments in the United States have power to enslave certain women; and also to punish other women for inhuman treatment of such slaves. Neither of these powers are "just;" not being derived from the consent of the governed.

Governments decree to women in some States half their husbands' property; in others one-third. In some, a woman, on her marriage, is made to yield all her property to her husband; in others, to retain a portion, or the whole, in her own hands. Whence do governments derive the unjust power of thus disposing of property without the consent of the governed?

The democratic principle condemns all this as wrong; and requires the equal political representation of all rational beings. Children, idiots, and criminals, during the season of sequestration, are the only fair exceptions.

The case is so plain that I might close it here; but it is interesting to inquire how so obvious a decision has been so evaded as to leave to women no political rights whatever. The question has been asked, from time to time, in more countries than one, how obedience to the laws can be required of women, when no woman has, either actually or virtually, given any assent to any law. No plausible answer has, as far as I can discover, been offered; for the good reason, that no plausible answer can be devised. The most principled democratic writers on government have on this subject sunk into fallacies, as disgraceful as any advocate of despotism has adduced. In fact, they have thus sunk from being, for the moment, advocates of despotism. Jefferson in America, and James Mill at home, subside, for the occasion, to the level of the author of the Emperor of Russia's Catechism for the young Poles.

Jefferson says,[7] "Were our State a pure democracy, in which all the inhabitants should meet together to transact all their business, there would yet be excluded from their deliberations,

"1. Infants, until arrived at years of discretion;

"2. Women, who, to prevent depravation of morals, and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the public meetings of men;

"3. Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of things with us takes away the rights of will and of property."

If the slave disqualification, here assigned, were shifted up under the head of Women, their case would be nearer the truth than as it now stands. Woman's lack of will and of property, is more like the true cause of her exclusion from the representation, than that which is actually set down against her. As if there could be no means of conducting public affairs but by promiscuous meetings! As if there would be more danger in promiscuous meetings for political business than in such meetings for worship, for oratory, for music, for dramatic entertainments,—for any of the thousand transactions of civilized life! The plea is not worth another word.

Mill says, with regard to representation, in his Essay on Government, "One thing is pretty clear; that all those individuals, whose interests are involved in those of other individuals, may be struck off without inconvenience.... In this light, women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved, either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands."

The true democratic principle is, that no person's interests can be, or can be ascertained to be, identical with those of any other person. This allows the exclusion of none but incapables.

The word "almost," in Mr. Mill's second sentence, rescues women from the exclusion he proposes. As long as there are women who have neither husbands nor fathers, his proposition remains an absurdity.

The interests of women who have fathers and husbands can never be identical with theirs, while there is a necessity for laws to protect women against their husbands and fathers. This statement is not worth another word.

Some who desire that there should be an equality of property between men and women, oppose representation, on the ground that political duties would be incompatible with the other duties which women have to discharge. The reply to this is, that women are the best judges here. God has given time and power for the discharge of all duties; and, if he had not, it would be for women to decide which they would take, and which they would leave. But their guardians follow the ancient fashion of deciding what is best for their wards. The Emperor of Russia discovers when a coat of arms and title do not agree with a subject prince. The King of France early perceives that the air of Paris does not agree with a free-thinking foreigner. The English Tories feel the hardship that it would be to impose the franchise on every artizan, busy as he is in getting his bread. The Georgian planter perceives the hardship that freedom would be to his slaves. And the best friends of half the human race peremptorily decide for them as to their rights, their duties, their feelings, their powers. In all these cases, the persons thus cared for feel that the abstract decision rests with themselves; that, though they may be compelled to submit, they need not acquiesce.

It is pleaded that half of the human race does acquiesce in the decision of the other half, as to their rights and duties. And some instances, not only of submission, but of acquiescence, there are. Forty years ago, the women of New Jersey went to the poll, and voted, at state elections. The general term, "inhabitants," stood unqualified;—as it will again, when the true democratic principle comes to be fully understood. A motion was made to correct the inadvertence; and it was done, as a matter of course; without any appeal, as far as I could learn, from the persons about to be injured. Such acquiescence proves nothing but the degradation of the injured party. It inspires the same emotions of pity as the supplication of the freed slave who kneels to his master to restore him to slavery, that he may have his animal wants supplied, without being troubled with human rights and duties. Acquiescence like this is an argument which cuts the wrong way for those who use it.

But this acquiescence is only partial; and, to give any semblance of strength to the plea, the acquiescence must be complete. I, for one, do not acquiesce. I declare that whatever obedience I yield to the laws of the society in which I live is a matter between, not the community and myself, but my judgment and my will. Any punishment inflicted on me for the breach of the laws, I should regard as so much gratuitous injury: for to those laws I have never, actually or virtually, assented. I know that there are women in England who agree with me in this—I know that there are women in America who agree with me in this. The plea of acquiescence is invalidated by us.

It is pleaded that, by enjoying the protection of some laws, women give their assent to all. This needs but a brief answer. Any protection thus conferred is, under woman's circumstances, a boon bestowed at the pleasure of those in whose power she is. A boon of any sort is no compensation for the privation of something else; nor can the enjoyment of it bind to the performance of anything to which it bears no relation. Because I, by favour, may procure the imprisonment of the thief who robs my house, am I, unrepresented, therefore bound not to smuggle French ribbons? The obligation not to smuggle has a widely different derivation.

I cannot enter upon the commonest order of pleas of all;—those which relate to the virtual influence of woman; her swaying the judgment and will of man through the heart; and so forth. One might as well try to dissect the morning mist. I knew a gentleman in America who told me how much rather he had be a woman than the man he is;—a professional man, a father, a citizen. He would give up all this for a woman's influence. I thought he was mated too soon. He should have married a lady, also of my acquaintance, who would not at all object to being a slave, if ever the blacks should have the upper hand; "it is so right that the one race should be subservient to the other!" Or rather,—I thought it a pity that the one could not be a woman, and the other a slave; so that an injured individual of each class might be exalted into their places, to fulfil and enjoy the duties and privileges which they despise, and, in despising, disgrace.

The truth is, that while there is much said about "the sphere of woman," two widely different notions are entertained of what is meant by the phrase. The narrow, and, to the ruling party, the more convenient notion is that sphere appointed by men, and bounded by their ideas of propriety;—a notion from which any and every woman may fairly dissent. The broad and true conception is of the sphere appointed by God, and bounded by the powers which he has bestowed. This commands the assent of man and woman; and only the question of powers remains to be proved.

That woman has power to represent her own interests, no one can deny till she has been tried. The modes need not be discussed here: they must vary with circumstances. The fearful and absurd images which are perpetually called up to perplex the question,—images of women on wool-sacks in England, and under canopies in America, have nothing to do with the matter. The principle being once established, the methods will follow, easily, naturally, and under a remarkable transmutation of the ludicrous into the sublime. The kings of Europe would have laughed mightily, two centuries ago, at the idea of a commoner, without robes, crown, or sceptre, stepping into the throne of a strong nation. Yet who dared to laugh when Washington's super-royal voice greeted the New World from the presidential chair, and the old world stood still to catch the echo?

The principle of the equal rights of both halves of the human race is all we have to do with here. It is the true democratic principle which can never be seriously controverted, and only for a short time evaded. Governments can derive their just powers only from the consent of the governed.