It may not be beneath the dignity of history to state that, while the new century was inoculated with virus taken from various sources, pure and impure, political, monetary, and social, its first year witnessed the earliest introduction of vaccination for small-pox in this country, to which it worked its way four years after its first discovery by Edward Jenner in England.
Of course it first took near Boston, where it has since continued to break out in various eruptions, whose vesicles, always surrounded by a rose-hued areola in the eyes of home nurses, it never allowed any one but itself to puncture.
Meanwhile, however, the political crust, broken and cracked in 1797, again heaved anew; muttered thunder rolled off from the press; party lava reddened the sides of the political Vesuvius, over whose cindered lips soon poured the hot melted streams of rage, which left, as they cooled, nothing of the late Federal party but scoria and ashes.
The first Adams was banished from his much-loved Presidential Eden, and a flaming sword with many blades—alien law, sedition act, personal desire for office, supposed sympathy with England, and suspected antipathy to France—was set at the door, turning every way, and prohibiting his return any way.
CHAPTER V.
THE CHIEF AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The Cereals and Serials of the last Century.—Hares caught before cooked.—Useless Indians put under Ground.—Human Bones the Phosphates of History.—The Statecraft of Washington, Jefferson, and Others.—The Automatic Workings of Governments exposed.—What small Brains rule.—Description of our Government Machine.—Its Merits and Demerits.—The Disadvantages of frequent Changes of official Workmen.—How the Machine-Oil is stolen.—The Inventions of the Eighteenth Cycle of Time.—An American Noah inebriated by the Cotton-Gin.—How Ham laughed and how Japhet put a Blanket over the Patriarch.—The Growth of Commerce.—The Notions which Importations put in and on the Heads of the Young People.—Paris supplies the Mistakes of Nature.—Of Dress.—Hoops, Head-Gear, Coats, Vests, Tights, etc., descanted upon.—Improvements in Roads and Means of Transit.—The Journey from New York to Boston in 1732.—The Road-Maker and Vehicle-Propeller as Leaders of Civilization.—The great Invention now needed.—The Populations of New York and Boston in 1700.—Description of the Former in that Year by an English Traveller.—Slave-Market in New York in 1711.—Manufactures and their Growth.—The Habits of the Period described.—Improvements in Morals, and wherein.—A general Review of American Literature and Book-Making through the Century.—The first American printed Volume; and how fast and long it ran.—Earliest Original Book of Poems; by a Woman, with a touching Specimen therefrom.—An Account of the leading Writers on Theology, Political Science, Government, Natural Science, Natural History, of Novels, etc.—The American Joss; its Worshippers, and their Treatment.
Before turning our backs upon the eighteenth and leaping upon the engine-driven nineteenth century, to be borne swiftly through its rapidly changing scenes, it is well to take a hurried glance backward over the path we have traversed and to pick up a few waifs strewn along the wayside.
The largest American products of the last century were material. Cereals were common and abundant; serials uncommonly few. The Western lobe or half of the world’s brain did not work so actively as the Eastern. Our forefathers were occupied with the earnest business of first catching their hare before preparing to cook him. They improved the breeds of useless Indians by putting them thoroughly under ground. They disposed also of not a few Englishmen and Hessians during the last quarter of the century by converting them at Saratoga, Princeton, Eutaw Springs, Yorktown, and elsewhere into good compost, making our soil historically fruitful.
Human bones are the phosphates of history. They quicken a rich heroic growth over sterile soils. Our ancestors enriched many American fields in this way. It is not Quaker husbandry, and Quaker phosphates are few; but for all that, the seeds which they raise and sell never do as well as when sown in these phosphated furrows.
A large crop of political principles was gathered in by such laborers as Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Jay, Patrick Henry, and others, unpractised in other fields, but yet found to be efficient and skilful. They learned the old art and mystery of government so readily, and showed its workings with such unreserve, that statecraft,—which theretofore had been, in spite of its pretentious parade, mainly a system of mutual imposition and overreaching,—saw itself suddenly exposed to popular inspection, and made a subject of vulgar, every-day comment. Like the automatic chess-player, which seemed such a mystery in its curious, systematic, intelligent work, these old automatic, governmental machines were found to be contrivances, very common when taken apart; in fact, like the wonderful chess-player, kept slyly in motion, by a very ordinary chap, boxed up inside and moving from his hidden quarters, springs invented by a person whose name was concealed, and which kept the pieces going just as well as if the operator had a brain to work with. The machine which our forefathers finished in 1789,—scorning to take out a patent for it, or in any way to make it exclusively their own,—apparently complex but really simple, and open to inspection in all its parts, consisted of a stiff popular main-spring, distributing its propelling forces through primary wheels and political chain-work, which runs from the main wheel to smaller state wheels, and so back and through governors and assemblies of ingenious cogged and racket motions, securing thus a free yet regulated movement to all the parts. It is a good machine, although operated at a great disadvantage by reason of the frequent changes in the hands employed, who have scarcely time to learn their business before they are required to give another set a chance. It is inexpensive, notwithstanding that some of the workmen are learning the kingly trick of considering as their own a good share of the oil which, in fact, belongs exclusively to its owners, and is intended only to keep the machine running. Of course foreigners found not a little fault with this American product, alleging defects which seem very great when viewed under European lights. At first they expressed as many objections to it as the cotton-planters to Whitney’s gin; but it is now very manifest that, while taking exceptions to the political machine, these foreign gentlemen have copied the planters’ example of getting up, as soon as they conveniently could, very palpable imitations of the deprecated plan.