A Residence in France / With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland

by James Fenimore Cooper

To the American, who is a little prone to pride himself on being derived from a stock of peculiar moral purity, this imputation on his origin sounds extraordinary, and is apt to excite indignation. I dare say you are not prepared to learn, that it was a common, perhaps the prevalent opinion of Europe, that our states were settled by convicts. That this, until very lately, was the prevalent opinion of Europe, I entertain no doubt, though I think the few last years have produced some change in this respect; more of the popular attention most probably having been attracted to us, within this period, than during the two centuries that preceded it. You will smile to hear, that the common works of fiction have been the material agents in producing the change; information that has been introduced through the medium of amusement, making its way where the graver labours of the historian have never been able to penetrate. Courier, the cleverest political writer France has produced, perhaps in any age, and a staunch republican, says, it would be quite as unjust to reproach the modern Romans with being descended from ravishers and robbers, as it is to reproach the Americans with being descended from convicts. He wishes to remove the stigma from his political brethren, but the idea of denying the imputation does not appear to have entered his mind. Jefferson, also, alludes to the subject in some of his letters, apparently, in answer to a philosophical inquiry from one of his friends. He estimates the whole number of persons transported to the American colonies, under sentence from the courts, at about two thousand; and, taking into consideration their habits, he was of opinion, half a century ago, that their descendants did not probably exceed the original stock. I do not know where Mr. Jefferson obtained his data for this estimate, but he did not show his ordinary acuteness in ascribing the reason why the convicts left few or no issue. Women were by far too much in request in America, during the first century or two of its political existence, to admit of the probability of men so openly stamped with infamy from obtaining wives, and I think there existed a physical inability for the propagation of the stock, since very few women were transported at any time. Within the last few months, two instances have occurred in the Chamber of Deputies, of members quoting the example of America, in enforcing their arguments in favour of the possibility of forming respectable communities by the transportation of criminals!

I had no intention of quoting any part of the controversy on finance, but, on reflection, it may serve a good purpose to give one or two extracts from the letter of Mr. Harris. In order that this may be done fairly, both as it respects the point at issue and the parties concerned, it will be necessary to make a brief preliminary explanation. M. Sauliner, the principal writer of the other side, had made it a charge against our system, that nearly all the public money was derived from the customs, which he assumed was a bad mode of obtaining revenue. Let this be as it might, my answer, was, that, as between France and America, there was no essential variance of system, the only difference lying in the fact that the one got all the revenue it could in this manner, and that the other got all it wanted. I added, a tax on exports excepted, that all the usual means of raising revenue known to other nations were available, at need, to the government of the United-States. To this latter opinion Mr. Harris took exceptions, saying, in effect, that the administration of Mr. Adams, the father, had been broken down by resorting to excises, stamp-acts, and direct taxation; and that since his unfortunate experiment, no administration in America had dreamed, even in time of war, of resorting to a mode of obtaining revenue which was so offensive as to produce the revolution of 1776! Of course Mr. Harris was reminded, that the stamp-act, of which the colonists complained, was repealed many years before the epoch of 1776; that the revolution proceeded from a denial of the right in parliament to tax the colonies at all, and not from any particular imposition; and that excises and a stamp-act had all been resorted to, in the war of 1812, without overturning the administration of Mr. Madison, or weakening that of his successor. But of what avail was a statement of this kind, in opposition to the allegations of one who appeared before Europe in the character of an American diplomate? Mr. Harris enjoyed the double advantage of giving his testimony as one in the confidence of both the French and the American governments—an advantage that a quotation from the statute-books themselves could not overcome.

Mr. Harris disposed of one knotty point in this controversy with so much ingenuity, that it deserves to be more generally known. Our adversaries had brought the accusation of luxury against the American government, inasmuch as it was said to furnish both a town and a country palace for the President—a degree of magnificence little suspected in France. This point was not treated as a matter of any importance by us, though General Lafayette had slightly and playfully alluded to it, once or twice. The words of Mr. Harris shall speak for themselves: "Le Général Lafayette paraît surtout avoir été frappé de l'erreur dans laquelle est tombé l'auteur de la Revue, à l'égard de la belle maison de campagne dont il a doté la présidence; et c'est peut-être là ce qui l'a porté à faire appel à M. le Général Bernard et à M. Cooper."

"L'erreur de l'auteur de la Revue, au sujet de la maison de campagne du président, est de très peu d'importance. Personne ne sait mieux que le Général Lafayette que la résidence affectée par la nation à son president, dans le District de Columbia, est située de manière à jouir des avantages de la ville et de la campagne."

Here you perceive the intellectual finesse with which we have had to contend. We are charged with the undue luxury of supporting a town and country house for a public functionary; and, disproving the fact, our opponents turn upon us, with a pernicious subtlety, and show, to such a condensing point has the effeminate spirit reached among us, that we have compressed the essence of two such establishments into one! Mr. Harris might have carried out his argument, and shown also that to such a pass of self-indulgence have we reached, that Washington itself is so "situated as to enjoy the advantages of both town and country!"

I have reason to think Mr. Harris gained a great advantage over us by this tour de logique. I had, however, a little better luck with another paragraph of his letter. In pages 22 and 23 of this important document, is the following; the state alluded to being Pennsylvania, and the money mentioned the cost of the canals; which Mr. Harris includes in the cost of government, charging, by the way, not only the interest on the loans as an annual burden, but the loans themselves. I translate the text, the letter having appeared in French:—"The greater part of this sum, about twenty-two millions of dollars, has been expended during the last twelve years—that is to say, while the population was half or two-thirds less than it is to-day, offering an average of not more than 800,000 souls, (the present population of Pennsylvania being 1,350,161:) It follows, that each inhabitant has been taxed about two and a half dollars, annually, for internal improvements during this period."

I think, under ordinary circumstances, and as against a logician who did not appear supported by the confidence and favour of the government of the United States of America, I might have got along with this quotation, by showing, that 800,000 is neither the half of, nor two-thirds less than 1,350,161; that Pennsylvania, so far from trebling, or even doubling her population in twelve years, had not doubled it in twenty; that Pennsylvania, at the commencement of the twelve years named, had actually a population more than twenty-five per cent. greater than that which Mr. Harris gives as the average of a period, during which he affirms that this population has, at least, doubled; and by also showing that money borrowed and invested in public works, which are expected to return an ample revenue, cannot be presented as an annual charge against the citizen until he is called on to pay it.

Having said so much about the part that Mr. Harris has had in this controversy, I owe it to truth to add, that his course has, at least, the merit of frankness, and that he is just so much the more to be commended than that portion of our ex-agents and actual agents who have taken the same side of the question, covertly.

I have dwelt on this subject at some length, because I think it is connected, not only with the truth, but with the character, of America. I have already told you the startling manner in which I was addressed by one of the first men in England, on the subject of the tone of our foreign agents; and since that time, occasions have multiplied, to learn the mortifying extent to which this unfavourable opinion of their sincerity has spread. If the United States has neither sufficient force nor sufficient dignity to maintain its interests abroad, without making these sacrifices of opinion and principle, we are in a worse condition than I had believed; but you will require no logic from me, to understand the effect that must be, and is produced, by this contradiction between the language that is studiously used—used to nauseous affectation—at home, and so much of the language that is used by too many of the agents abroad.

I very well know that the government of the Union guarantees neither the civil nor religious liberty of the citizen, except as against its own action; that any state may create an establishment, or a close hereditary aristocracy, to-morrow, if it please, the general provision that its polity must be that of a republic, meaning no more than that there should not be an hereditary monarchy; and that is quite within the limits of constitutional possibilities, that the base of the national representation should be either purely aristocratical, purely democratical, or a mixture of both. But in leaving this option to the states, the constitution has, in no manner, impaired the force of facts. The states have made their election, and, apart from the anomaly of a slave population, the fundamental feature of the general government is democratic. Now, it is indisputably the privilege of the citizen to express the opinions of government that he may happen to entertain. The system supposes consultation and choice, and it would be mockery to maintain that either can exist without entire freedom of thought and speech. If any man prefer a monarchy to the present polity of the nation, it is his indefeasible right to declare his opinion, and to be exempt from persecution and reproach. He who meets such a declaration in any other manner than by a free admission of the right, does not feel the nature of the institutions under which he lives, for the constitution, in its spirit, everywhere recognises the principle. But One, greater than the constitution of America, in divine ordinances, everywhere denies the right of a man to profess one thing and to mean another. There is an implied pledge given by every public agent that he will not misrepresent what he knows to be the popular sentiment at home, and which popular sentiment, directly or indirectly, has clothed his language with the authority it carries in foreign countries; and there is every obligation of faith, fidelity, delicacy, and discretion, that he should do no discredit to that which he knows to be a distinguishing and vital principle with his constituents. As respects our agents in Europe, I believe little is hazarded in saying, that too many have done injury to the cause of liberty. I have heard this so often from various quarters of the highest respectability,[^[29]] it has been so frequently affirmed in public here, and I have witnessed so much myself, that, perhaps, the subject presents itself with more force to me, on the spot, than it will to you, who can only look at it through the medium of distance and testimony. I make no objection to a rigid neutrality in the strife of opinions that is going on here, but I call for the self-denial of concealing all predilections in favour of the government of one or of the few; and should any minister of despotism, or political exclusion, presume to cite an American agent as being of his way of thinking, all motives of forbearance would seem to disappear, and, if really an American in more than pretension, it appears to me the time would be come to vindicate the truth with the frankness and energy of a freeman.