1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century

by Henry Hartshorne

This mention of Abraham Lincoln suggests some retrospection. I remember that when, sixteen years ago, in 1915, our national debt was all finally paid off, great exultation was felt. In a Fourth-of-July oration at Omaha, the speaker, a young colored lawyer, referring to the civil war of 1861-65, as so largely adding to the national debt, said that his grandfather was one of the first men of color who ever sat in the Senate of the United States. Now, there are eight colored Senators, and fifteen members of the House. Of direct African descent also, are the Governor of Louisiana, and the Mayor of the city of Richmond, Virginia; the immediate predecessor of the latter having been a member of one of the oldest historical cavalier families of that State. The general officer in command at West Point, too, is a colored gentleman, of excellent reputation and qualifications. All prejudice of race, in fact, has now very much disappeared, and is looked back upon as a preposterous error of the past. Indian members of Congress number this session at least seven—two Senators, Cherokees, and five members of the House from the two new States formed from what was once the Indian Territory. The white population of those States is also well represented in the Senate and in the House.

We learn that the United States of South America are at present holding their eighth biennial Congress at Lima, Peru. Brazil continues friendly; but the people of that nation still treasure the traditions and usages of their Empire. The constitutional limitations of Brazil, nevertheless, make it imperial only in name and form; it is as liberal as was the government of Great Britain in the latter days of its monarchy.

We thought it a great deal for the English people, twenty-five years ago, to abolish the place of the House of Lords in their government; or even, before that, so completely to disestablish the once powerful Church of England. But the monarchy! What seemed so permanent as that? Who would have thought, fifty years ago, in good Queen Victoria's reign, that some persons then living might come to know of her throne being as vacant, nay, as utterly overturned, as the Palace of the Cæsars!

It is one evidence of the old conservatism of the British nation, so terribly shattered now, that the rank, titles, and estates of the nobility are still left to them; with the qualification, that the eldest son is entitled by law to only twice the share of each of the other heirs of the estate; and the whole of any property may be sequestered, by legal process, for debt.

Probably, now, the exodus of British nobles to this country, as well as to the continent of Europe, so active already during the last decade or two, will increase considerably. Marriage of American ladies with lordlings, earls, and even dukes, is scarcely very rare at present; it may be expected soon to become almost as common, at least, as such titles are. It is whispered that it is not entirely impossible that the ex-king and queen, with the royal family, may come hereafter to reside at New Belgravia, in California, where several thousands of acres have been latterly bought and occupied as estates, by English noblemen; or, perhaps more probably, in Loudon County, Virginia; where the Dukes of Cambridge and of Devonshire both own splendid properties.

No wonder that the Republic of Great Britain and Ireland should differ chiefly from ours, in the greater share of power allotted to the Upper House. If men of rank will (as some of them have already done) wisely accept the inevitable change, and, with full loyalty to the Republic, seek, or allow themselves, to be elected to places in the new Parliament, they may, as Senators, exercise a power and skill in legislation, which will be beneficial not only to their own order, but to their country. They have the advantage of us, in England, in the presidential term being ten years; ours, with difficulty, having been prolonged only to eight. I believe that the preservation of the rank and property of the aristocracy during the critical times just past, and, indeed, the bloodless character of the revolution altogether,—have been mainly due to the sagacious policy of a number of noblemen of large influence;—especially the Argylls in Scotland and the Derbys and Dukes of Northumberland and Bedford, in England, in timely bending to the storm; yielding, step by step, what must be yielded, and so keeping more than if they had resisted all changes to the bitter end.

Especially do they now reap a reward for the good work of the Anglo-Irish Landlords' League; who, with their fitting motto, "Noblesse oblige," so liberally purchased from the old landlords, some years since, most of the properties in the distressed and disturbed parts both of England and Ireland, and sold them out in small farms to the peasantry. Glancing the other day, in our library, at Hack Tuke's pamphlet of 1880, on the Distress in Ireland, it is gratifying to know that, to-day, nearly three-fourths of the whole island are possessed by independent peasant farmers.

And India! It reads almost like one of Southey's or Edwin Arnold's oriental poems to peruse the account of the splendid coronation of the Afghan Emperor of All India. Retribution here, indeed, for the folly of that charlatan prime minister who once prated about a "scientific boundary" of the British Empire of India. Another instance of the "slow grinding of the mills of the gods," which is so very sure.

Good news continues to come from France. Republican principles were never stronger; not a ghost of imperialism, and scarcely a thought of monarchical reaction, appears. Bourbons and Bonapartes alike are politically and sentimentally dead. Evangelical protestantism is spreading and deepening in its influence. The extreme intolerance of Romanism which prevailed for a while is giving way to a more reasonable freedom of conscience for all religions. Yet I doubt whether any city in Europe has fewer Roman Catholic worshippers than Paris, unless it be Rome; where the hatred of all relics and reminders of the old papal days is intense and pervading. It is to be wished that the Italian Republic were as settled and conservative as is that of the French. Spain is now going through its anti-Catholic fever; the banishment of all priests for five years seems an extreme measure; but, after it, there is room for hope that better days than those of Isabella of Castile await this long fallow but once intellectually fertile land. The annexation of Portugal is expected at least as soon as the present king dies; certainly no heir of his will ever wear a crown.