[DA] When the assembly is in session, Richmond is full of country gentlemen from Western Virginia, real giants, taller, stouter, and broader than the giants who are exhibited among us for money. When I found myself surrounded by these men, with their loud voices and Herculean frame, I experienced the same feeling with the companions of Magellan, when they found themselves alone amidst a crowd of Patagonians. These good people, to testify their good will, lavish upon you the same weighty caresses, as those which the Spaniards at first took for blows, and when you feel their heavy hands fall like a sledge upon your European shoulders, nothing less than the frank smile that lights up their broad faces, would convince you of their friendly disposition. The first time I was in Richmond, I occupied the chamber, that had just been left by one of these gentlemen; wishing to consult some of the papers of the session, I sought in vain for any thing like his library. His whole parliamentary outfit consisted of a mass of empty bottles, a barrel of biscuit, a case of liquors, and the fragments of a huge cheese.
[DB] A gang of negroes rose against their masters in Southampton in 1831, and murdered several white families, without distinction of age or sex, and the alarm became general through the country. The murderers were soon captured and executed.
[DC] The respect of the Americans for old names and titles is shown in their retaining most of those that were in use under the English rule. Thus the States are divided into counties, and there are in several towns, for instance, in Charleston, a King's Street and a Queen's Street. In Virginia, there are Prince Edward's, Prince George's, King's and Queen's, King George's and King William's Counties. Georgia retained its name, even when at war with the monarch in honour of whom it bore it. I was very much surprised to hear a court of justice in Pennsylvania opened with the old French word oyez! oyez! oyez! repeated by the crier, without his understanding the meaning. The English received it from the Normans, and the Americans have retained it, because they received it from their fathers. In France we not only changed the name of Choisy-le-Roi into Choisy-le-Peuple, but we even suppressed the prefix of Saint, in the names of the Streets.
[DD] It is unnecessary to say that the author has here fallen into a gross error. Even in the affair of the convent at Charlestown, it was the supposed abuse of a particular institution, not the Roman Catholic religion itself, that kindled the flame.—Transl.
[DE] I doubt if the power of the community over the individual has been pushed to such an extent anywhere else as in New England; in Connecticut there were laws forbidding a person to continue tippling more than half an hour at a tavern, or to drink more than half a pint of wine, and it was ordered that taverns and victualling-houses should be closed at half past nine o'clock. No young man not married could keep house without the consent of the town; and no housekeeper could receive a young man to sojourn in his family without the same permission. Laws were made against swearing, lying, uttering false news or reports, or using tobacco without a certificate from a physician that it was necessary to health. Other regulations prohibited smoking in public places, and this very year the city government of Boston has forbidden smoking in the Mall, which, however, I do not consider a measure of excessive rigour. It is unnecessary to say that the laws of the New England colonies were extremely severe in religious matters; every individual was required to join some Congregational society, and no one was eligible to any public trust, unless he had so done. Dissenters were taxed for the support of the established church. Jews and Quakers were banished, and forbidden to return under pain of death. The Blue Laws of Connecticut contained some curious provisions in respect to marriage, and at Taunton, in Massachusetts, in 1836, two justices forbade the bans of matrimony, on the ground that the parties could not provide for themselves after the marriage, and that they had not sufficient discernment to enter into a contract of such moment.
[LETTER XXVII.]
SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.
Charleston, September 1, 1835.
The United States are certainly the land of promise for the labouring class. What a contrast between our Europe and America! After landing in New York, I thought every day was Sunday, for the whole population that throngs Broadway seemed to be arrayed in their Sunday's best. None of those countenances ghastly with the privations or the foul air of Paris; nothing like our wretched scavengers, our ragmen, and corresponding classes of the other sex. Every man was warmly clad in an outer garment; every woman had her cloak and bonnet of the latest Paris fashion. Rags, filth, and suffering degrade the woman even more than the man; and one of the most striking features in the physiognomy of the United States, is, undeniably, the change which has been introduced, in the train of the general prosperity, into the physical condition of women.[DF] The earnings of the man being sufficient for the support of the family, the woman has no other duties than the care of the household, a circumstance still more advantageous for her children than for herself. It is now a universal rule among the Anglo-Americans, that the woman is exempt from all heavy work, and she is never seen, for instance, taking part in the labours of the field, nor in carrying burdens.[DG] Thus freed from employments unsuited to her delicate constitution, the sex has also escaped that hideous ugliness and repulsive coarseness of complexion which toil and privation every where else bring upon them. Every woman here has the features as well as the dress of a lady; every woman here is called a lady, and strives to appear so. You would search in vain among the Anglo-Americans, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississippi, for one of those wretched objects, who are feminine only with the physiologist, in whom our cities abound, or for one of those haggish beldams that fill our markets and three fourths of our fields. You will find specimens of the former class only among the Indians and negroes, and of the latter, only among the Canadian French and Pennsylvania Germans; for their women labour at least as much as the men. It is the glory of the English race, that they have ever and every where, as much as possible, interpreted the superiority of the man to the woman, as reserving to the former the charge of the ruder and harder forms of toil. A country in which woman is treated according to this principle presents the aspect of a new and better world.
Figure to yourself an Irish peasant, who at home could scarcely earn enough to live on potatoes, who would look upon himself as a rich man if he owned an acre of ground, but who, on stepping ashore at New York, finds himself able to earn a dollar a day by the mere strength of his arm. He feeds and lodges himself for two dollars a week, and at the end of a fortnight he may have saved enough to buy ten acres of the most fertile land in the world. The distance from New York to the West, is great, it is true; but the fare on the great canal is trifling, and he can easily pay his way by the work of his hands. It is also true, that the poorest Irishman would not think of buying so little as ten acres; the least that one buys in the West is eighty. What of that? The savings of a few months will enable him to compass them; besides, Uncle Sam favours emigrants, and if, in theory, he does not sell his land on credit, he is, in fact, very indulgent to the pioneer who comes to subdue the savage wilderness, and he allows him to occupy the soil temporarily without charge. Thus the Irish, who would go to fisticuffs with any body for denying in their presence that the isle of Erin was a terrestrial paradise, and who, under the inspiration of whiskey, sing the glories of that first pearl of the sea, quit it by fifty thousands for the United States. On their arrival, they cannot believe their own eyes; they feel of themselves to find out whether they are not under some spell. They do not dare to describe to their friends in Europe the streams of milk and honey that flow through this promised land.[DH]