How is it that in America the masses can be disciplined so readily to take their side, and to engage so heartily in the fray, moving together as mysteriously as the swallows that with scarce audible twitterings gather in thousands, plume their wings for flight, seem to hesitate for a brief hour, and the next are gone? We, indeed, have of late been aping some American practices, and trying our hands at the caucus, and the three hundred, and what not. I suspect it is a very feeble imitation, and I suspect that one of my American friends was right when he said with a laugh: “Your fellows don’t know their business; they don’t understand what they are talking about. They’re first-rate at turning out steel pens and such small ware, but they’d better leave our political machinery alone. You’re too crowded up in your little island to find room for one of our big fly-wheels!” But how is all this enthusiasm for politics kept up with comparatively so little appeal to the lowest selfishness? and how are these immense numbers manipulated, the vast armies handled as skilfully as if they were soldiers on parade? It is all inexplicable to large numbers of wiseacres in England, who will persist in talking of petty “motives” and “reason” as if they were the prime factors in every social problem.
And this leads me to touch upon another matter, on which I feel myself profoundly ignorant, and which I am sure that others here are quite as ignorant about as I am. We are told that in America there is a recognized profession of politics, just as here there is a medical profession or a legal profession, or, if this is putting the case too strongly, just as here there is the profession of journalism. How in the world do the members of this profession get along? A new President is elected, and we are told that all the old officials are turned out. Where do they go? What becomes of them? What is the effect upon the executive? With us the patronage of the government, at any rate in the civil service, has been reduced to a minimum. Our executive is to a very great extent, indeed, independent of the government of the day. “Men may come and men may go,” but permanent secretaries “go on for ever.” So do commissioners and their clerks, and the thousands of stipendiaries to whom it matters not one straw whether the Radicals are in or the Tories. With us, when a man has gained an appointment by passing a good examination at eighteen or nineteen years old, it is his own fault if he ever loses it. Practically, there is no getting rid of him as long as he can do his work; he is as safe as a judge, and irremovable. But in America, we hear, every four years they shuffle the cards, and away they go! What results from this? Am I wrongly informed? or is there more absolute patronage, patronage pur et simple, in the hands of the President of the United States than in any other hands on the face of the earth? Assuming that it is so, what, I ask, must be the effect upon the moral sentiments of the people at large, inevitably brought day by day and hour by hour into relations with a class of eager office-seekers, hungry, alert, jealous, disappointed, unprincipled, or vindictive, according to their success or failure, in getting what they consider their due. Do the “outs” accept the logic of facts without demur, and forthwith betake themselves to other callings?
That in every change in the chief magistracy of a nation every stipendiary of the executive, from the postman to the judge of the supreme court, should get his dismissal, and the Democrat clerk in the custom-house who was behindhand with his work on Monday evening should leave his arrears to be made up by his Republican successor on Tuesday morning; that when President A enters upon his office, a new game should be begun, and the pieces be all set up again, regardless of the position in which the knights or the pawns were when President B was checkmated,—all this seems to us, from our point of view, not only difficult to understand, but difficult to imagine. Surely, theory and fact in this matter must differ very widely. Am I only exposing my ignorance?
I have used the terms “upper and middle classes” on a previous page. When I have asked Americans what the subtle barriers are that in American society separate class from class, they have replied more than once, “In America there are no classes! We have no differences of rank with us.” Strange! And yet we hear of colonels and generals and senators often enough, and I am much mistaken if such titles are at all less esteemed on that side of the water than on this. Be it as it may, however, rank and title may be shadows, but class differences are substantial things. With us the titular aristocracy constitute a class, an inner circle, that at one time united in itself shadow and substance, and now tends to become less exclusive and less influential, however loudly some may complain that
... in these British islands
’Tis the substance that wanes ever, ’tis the symbol that exceeds.
We love rank, because we have a lingering suspicion that it somehow symbolizes wealth, or power, or brilliant intellectual gifts, or great public services, that have forced their possessors into the front rank at some time or other, and received their due recognition in the shape of titular distinction conferred either recently or in days gone by. But if a title is found to be dissociated from any nobleness of character, and is unsupported by brain power or purse power, it will not save a man from humiliating snubs, or give him the entrée to the drawing-rooms of the upper classes. For we have more than one upper class among us, as other nations have had and will continue to have while the world lasts. In that social world where Mrs. Grundy bears sway, our titular aristocracy undoubtedly are the acknowledged leaders, and to them great homage is paid. But it is not only because a man is an earl, or a lady is a duchess, that the one or the other is surrounded by a little court, approached with deference and treated with studied respect, but because both the one and the other are rich enough to “support the title,” as we say. Yes, it is true that in some sense or other
Our nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly
In presence of the social law, as most ignoble men.
You may protest that society in England is under the dominion of a plutocracy, then. Yes! and No! Yes! in so far as it is true and always must be true, that no man or woman can live on familiar terms, and keep up the habitual intercourse with the leisure classes, without a certain amount of money. No! in so far as it is also true that money alone, however abundant it may be, will never, among us, give any one an introduction to what we call society. I have heard of cases, and I know of one, where a millionaire from our colonies took a palace in London, and lived en prince; was visited by no one, failed to get into any but a third-rate club, found no one to entertain and but few people to speak to; and finally has gone back from whence he came, astonished, disappointed, and soured. They tell me that wealth in America will gain admission to any society for any one. I have been repeatedly assured by intelligent Americans that this is so; yet I cannot understand that it should be so. I can quite understand that, whatever a man’s rank, or gifts, or prospects may be, he would find it very painful to mix with the upper ten thousand if he could not afford to pay for cab-hire, or keep up his subscription at the club, every day finding it hard to get his dinner, and every night perplexed de lodice paranda; but I can no more understand how a mere expenditure of cash could get X, Y, or Z into the best society, than I can understand how a payment of, say £10,000, would get an average cricketer into the All-England eleven, or a second-rate oar into the University crew. The Corporation of London is a plutocracy; but society, while accepting his lavish hospitality, treats even the Lord Mayor of London de haut en bas. The Lady Mayoress receives ambassadors with condescension; next year some young attaché stares at Mrs. Tomkins, and wonders where he has met that woman.
Who are the upper classes in America? It is nonsense to say there are none. Not to speak of those states in pre-Christian times that tended more or less to become dominated over by an oligarchy, Athens was at least as pure a republic as America is; her people were as proud, as self-asserting, as audaciously enterprising, as ambitious, as shrewd in commercial ventures, as greedy for money, and as lavish in spending it, as the Americans are; yet the “first families” among the Athenians were as haughty as Spaniards, as exclusive as the old French noblesse, and bragged of their ancestry as absurdly as Scotchmen do. If a loud-voiced, bawling demagogue came to the front by sheer force of will and impudence, his political opponents never allowed the populace to forget that he was brought up in a tan-yard. Demosthenes gives point to his most withering sarcasms against Æschines by reminding his audience that he was the son of a school-mistress, and had to scrub the ink off the desks at which his mother taught the dirty little urchins; and who that has read the “Clouds” can forget Strepsiades’s doleful lamentation over his fatal mistake in marrying a fine lady with a pedigree, and begetting a son who did not take after his father? There must be an aristocracy in America who stand upon their birth rather than their mere wealth, yet how little we hear of them. What recognition do they receive? How is it they so seldom come to be leaders? How is it that Hyperbolus seems to push aside Cimon, and Cleon is quite too much for Alcibiades?
It used to be said that no two Englishmen could be found to maintain a conversation together for five minutes without one asking the other what he thought of the weather. It is true still; but there is another question that of late years has become the stock question when two people meet one another, and that is, “When are you going away?” If a man replies boldly that he is not going away at all, he is looked upon as the very impersonation of eccentricity. “Not going away! Why, what are you going to do?” This “going away” means leaving our country-houses when the flowers are in their splendour and all nature bids us stay where we are, and starting off for Norway or Switzerland to spend our money among strange people, drink bad wine, get in late for table-d’hôte when we are faint and weary, or find ourselves five flights of stairs from our pocket handkerchief in a towering edifice without a lift. But go where we will, we are sure to find ourselves not two chairs away from American tourists; they are everywhere. Sir James Ross used to say that if ever he reached the North Pole he would be sure to find a Scotchman sitting upon it. I don’t know what has become of all the Scotchmen; they and the gypsies have grown rarer since I was a boy; but you can never escape from Americans. Of course there are Americans and Americans; they differ from one another as much as any other people do, as much and no more; but this is true of all the transatlantic tourists, they are abundantly supplied with money, and they do not grudge spending it; in fact, if we were to judge by the Americans we meet with in Europe, we should be forced to the conclusion that all Americans are rich, even very rich. But when I have asked them how clergymen and doctors and lawyers and elderly people with strictly limited incomes live in the United States,—such people as among us live in comfort with a couple of female servants, or even keep a pony chaise,—I have found my tourist acquaintances very much amused at my supposing that in America helps could be got to stay in such a household. “Are there, then, no small people in America?” I have asked. The answer has been more often than not, “If there are, we don’t know them.”