It is not, however, merely to early rising that they owe their 'cuteness. A total absence of idleness, and the fact of being constantly thrown on their own resources in cases of minor difficulty, aid materially in sharpening their wits. You may see these latter influences operating in the difference between soldiers and sailors, when placed in situations where they have to shift for themselves. Some of their anecdotes bearing upon 'cuteness are amusing enough. I will give one as an illustration.—Owing to some unknown cause, there was a great dearth of eggs in one of the New England States, and they consequently rose considerably in price. It immediately occurred to a farmer's wife, that, if she could in any way increase the produce of her hens, it would be a source of great gain to her; she accordingly fitted the bottom of each laying hen's bed with a spring, and fixed a basin underneath, capable of holding two eggs. In due time, the hens laid; but as each hen, after laying, missed the warmth of the precious deposit, she got up to look if it was all right. To her astonishment, no egg was to be seen. "Bless my soul!" says the hen, "well, I declare I thought I had laid an egg. I suppose I must be mistaken;" and down she went to fulfil her duties again. Once more she rose to verify her success. No egg was there. "Well, I vow," quoth Mrs. Hen, "they must be playing me some trick: I'll have one more shot, and, if I don't succeed, I shall give it up." Again she returned to her labours, and the two eggs that had passed into the basin below supporting the base of her bed, success crowned her efforts, and she exclaimed, "Well, I have done it this time at all events!" The 'cute wife kept her counsel, and said nothing, either to the hens or to her neighbours, and thus realized a comfortable little bag of dollars.—I give the anecdote as narrated to me, and I must confess I never saw the operation, or heard the remarks of the outwitted hens. I insert it lest in these days of agricultural distress (?) any farmer's wife be disposed to make a trial of a similar experiment.[[CO]]
I proceed to consider the energy of the Republicans, a quality in which they may challenge comparison with the world. No enterprise is too great for them to undertake, and no hardship too severe for them to endure. A Yankee will start off with his household gods, and seek a new home in the wilderness, with less fuss than a Cockney would make about packing up a basket of grub to go and pic-nic in Richmond Park. It is the spirit of adventure that has enabled them to cover a whole continent in the incredible manner which the map of the United States shows. The great drawback to this phase of their energy is the total absence it exhibits of those ties of home to which we so fondly cling in the old country. If we were a nation of Yankees, I feel persuaded that in five years we should not have ten millions of inhabitants. No Yankee can exist without elbow-room, except it be the more degraded and rowdy portion of the community, who find a more congenial atmosphere in those sinks of vice inseparable from large towns. This migratory spirit has caused them to exhibit their energy and enterprise in those countless miles of rail and telegraph, which bring the citizens of the most distant States into easy communication with Washington and the Eastern cities. The difficulty of procuring labour is no doubt one cause of the very inefficient way in which many of these works are performed; and it also disables them for executing gigantic works with the speed and certainty that such operations are completed in England. The miniature Crystal Palace at New York afforded a convincing proof of what I have stated; for although it was little more than a quarter of the size of the one in Hyde Park, they were utterly foiled in their endeavours to prepare it in time. In revenge for that failure, the Press tried to console the natives by enlarging on the superior attraction of hippodromes, ice-saloons, and penny shows, with which it was surrounded, and contrasting them with the "gloomy grandeur" of the palace in London. Gloomy grandeur is, I suppose, the Yankee way of expressing the finest park in any city in the world.
Among other remarks on Americans, I have heard many of my countrymen say, "Look how they run after lords!"—It is quite true; a live lord is a comparative novelty, and they run after him in the same way as people in England run after an Indian prince, or any pretentious Oriental: it is an Anglo-Saxon mania. Not very long ago, a friend of mine found a Syrian swaggering about town, fêted everywhere, as though he were the greatest man of the day; and who should the Syrian nabob turn out to be, but a man he had employed as a servant in the East, and whom he had been obliged to get bastinadoed for petty theft. In England we run after we know not whom; in America, if a lord be run after, there is at all events a strong presumption in favour of his being at least a gentleman. We toady our Indian swells, and they toady their English swells; and I trust, for our sake, that in so doing they have a decided advantage over us.
I have also heard some of my countrymen observe, as to their hospitality, "Oh! it's very well; but if you went there as often as I do, you would see how soon their hospitality wears off." Who on earth ever heard such an unreasonable remark! Because a man, in the fulness of hospitality, dedicates his time, his money, and his convenience to welcome a stranger, of whose character and of whose sociability he knows nothing whatever, is he therefore bound to be saddled with that acquaintance as often as the traveller chooses to visit the American Continent? Is not the very idea preposterous? No man in the world is more ready to welcome the stranger than the American; but if the stranger revisit the same places, the courtesy and hospitality he receives must, in justice, depend upon the impression which his company has left on those upon whom he inflicted it. No doubt the scanty number of travellers enables Americans to exercise more universal hospitality than they could do if the country were filled with strangers in the same way as Great Britain is. The increased travelling of late years has necessarily made a marked difference on that point among ourselves, and doubtless it may hereafter act upon the United States; but the man who does not admit hospitality to be a most distinctive feature of the Republic, at the present time, must indeed be rotten in the brain or the heart.
With regard to the political character of the Union, it is very much in the same state as that of England. The two original parties were Whig and Democrat, the former being synonymous with the Tory party in this country—i.e., an honest body of men, who, in their earnest endeavours to keep the coach straight, put the drag on so often that the horses get restive sometimes, and start off at score when they feel the wheel clogged. The Democrats are more nearly represented by a compound of Whig and Radical—i.e., a body of men who, in their energetic exertions to make the coach go, don't trouble themselves much about the road, and look upon the drag as a piece of antiquated humbug. Sometimes this carelessness also leads to the team-bolting; but in the States there is so much open country that they may run away for miles without an upset; whereas in England, when this difficulty occurs, the ribands are generally handed over to the Jarvey of the opposite party. This old state of affairs is entirely changed in both hemispheres; each party is more or less broken up, and in neither country is there at present any distinct body sufficiently numerous to form a strong government.
In consequence of these disruptions, it may be imagined how difficult it would be to give any accurate description of the different pieces of crockery that constitute the political "service." Formerly, the two cries of "Protection to Home Manufacture" and "Free Trade" were the distinct rallying points. At present there are Slaveholders, Slavery Extension, Free-soil, Abolitionist, Annexationist, and Heaven alone knows how many more parties, on the question of Slavery alone, into which the Democratic or dominant party is divided, independent of those other general political divisions which must necessarily exist in so large and varied a community. From the foregoing you will observe that, to say a man is a Democrat conveys no distinct idea of his politics except that he is not a Whig; and the Whigs also have their divisions on the Slave question.
But there is a party lately come into the field, and called the Know-nothings, which requires a special notice. Their ostensible principles have been published in the leading journals of this country, and carry a certain degree of reason upon the face of them, the leading features being that they are a secret society banded together for the purpose of opposing the priestly influence of the Humanists in political matters: for prolonging the period requisite to obtain the rights of citizenship; and for the support of the native-born American in opposition to all other candidates for any public situation that may be contested. Such is the substance of their manifesto. Their opponents say that they are sheer humbugs, and brought into life by a few old political hacks for their own selfish ends. Owing to the factions in the old Whig and Democratic parties, their opponents believe they may succeed for a year or two, but they prophesy their speedy and total disruption. Time will show—I am no prophet. There is one point in their charter, however, that I cannot believe will ever succeed—viz., naturalization or citizenship. Congress would be loth to pass any law that might tend to turn the stream of emigration into another channel, such as Australia or Canada; and individual States would be equally loth to pass such a local law for the same reason, inasmuch as if they did, the emigrants would move on to those States where they obtained most speedily the rights of citizens. The crusade against the Romanists is also so opposed to the spirit of a constitution which professes the principle of the equal rights of man, that it is more than probable they may ere long divide upon the unsolvable question of how to draw the line of demarcation between the influence of the priest and the opinion of his flock. As far, therefore, as I am capable of judging, I do not believe they have a sufficiently broad and distinct basis to stand upon, and I think also that the fact of their being a secret society will rather hasten their end than otherwise.
The last point I shall allude to is the future prospects of the Republic; a question which doubtless is veiled in much obscurity. The black cloud of the South hangs perpetually over their heads, ever from time to time threatening to burst upon them. In the Free States many feel strongly the degradation of being forced to aid in the capture of the fugitive slave; and the aversion to the repulsive task is increasing rather than decreasing. The citizens have on many occasions risen in masses against those who were executing the law, and the military have been brought into collision with them in defending the authorities. The dread of breaking up the Union alone prevents that clause being struck out from the Constitution, by which they are compelled not merely to restore but to hunt up the fugitive. The "Freesoilers" also feel indignant at seeing their nation turning virgin soil into a land of Slavery; the Nebraska Bill has strengthened that feeling considerably. The Abolitionists are subject to constant fits of rabidity which increase intensity with each successive attack. Thousands and thousands of Northerns, who writhe under the feeling that their star-spangled banner is crossed with the stripes of the slave, turn back to the history of their country, and recalling to mind the glorious deeds that their ancestors have accomplished under that flag, their hearts respond—"The Union for ever!"
But perhaps the strongest feeling in the Republic which tends to keep things quiet, is that the intelligence of the community of the North, who are opposed both to slavery and to the fugitive law, foresee that if those objects are only to be obtained at the price of separation from the South, greater evils would probably accrue than those they are anxious to remove. However peaceably a separation might be made in appearance, it could never take place without the most bitter feelings of animosity. Junius describes the intensity of the feeling, by saying, "He hated me as much as if he had once been my friend;" and so it would assuredly prove. Squabbles would breed quarrels, and quarrels would grow into wars; the comparative harmony of a continent would be broken up, and standing armies and fleets become as necessary in the New World as they unfortunately are in the Old. If the South are determined to perpetuate Slavery, the only way it will ever cease to stain the Union is by the force of public opinion, and by the immigration of the white man gradually driving the negro southwards from State to State. As his value decreases, breeding for the market will gradually cease; and he may eventually die out if the millennium does not interfere with the process.
Another, possible cause for division in the Union may come from California, in which State a feeble cry has already been heard of—"a Western Republic." The facility of intercourse afforded by railroads seems likely to stop the swelling of that cry; but if California did separate, it would not be attended with those evils which a disruption of the Southern States would inevitably produce. The only other chance of a division in the Republic which I can conceive possible is, in the event of a long war with any great maritime power, for ends which only affected one particular portion of the States; in which case the irresistible influence of the all mighty dollar might come into powerful action. The wealth of America is her commerce; whatever checks that, checks the pulsations of her vitality; and unless her honour was thoroughly compromised in the struggle, neither North nor South would be disposed to prolong a ruinous struggle for the sole benefit of the other. The prospects of such a contingency may, I trust, be deemed visionary. France is not likely to come in contact with the Union; and the only other maritime nation is Great Britain, whose interests are so identified with peace, that it is hardly possible she should encourage any other than the most friendly relations. Neither party could gain anything by a war, and both parties would inevitably suffer immensely; and although I fear there is but too strong evidence, that many ignoble minds in the Republic make blustering speeches, and strive to excite hostile feelings, the real intelligence and wealth of the States repudiate the unworthy sentiment, and deprecate any acts that could possibly lead to a collision between the two countries. Besides all which, there is that strong affinity between £. s. d. and dollars and cents, whereby so strong an influence is exercised over that commercial body which constitutes no unimportant portion of the wealth and intelligence of both nations.