The Year Of Our Lord 1874.
A general glance at the movements of the past year will scarcely prove encouraging, even to the most devout believer in the glory and the destiny of the golden century drawing so rapidly to its close. Our own nation, which—with steam, electricity, railroads, the newspaper as it stands to-day in all its power and pride (vide the current number of the New York Herald), and other great material developments of the age—may consider itself at will as either the mightiest product or the enfant gâté of the century, has not too great matter for self-congratulation. Our national year, that dawned on disaster, has struggled through a painful life only to close in gloom, with perhaps a faint though uncertain glimmer afar off of better times to come. The “Christian” statesmen who have had the country and its management all to themselves these many years past have left behind them a bitter legacy. The great scandals—for even scandals in these days have a greatness of their own—which at length broke up the ranks of the “Christian” statesmen were sufficiently touched upon last year, and are only called to mind here as tending in great measure to explain the year of national distress we have just passed through.
All through the winter months the poverty and misery of the masses in New York and other of our chief cities were unexampled in our history; nor was the revival of business during the spring, summer, and fall seasons of such a nature as to warrant the hope of being able to stave off a similar calamity in the early months of the coming year. The real cause of the distress is known to all—the general stagnation of business in 1873, resulting chiefly from the panic of the previous year, which in turn resulted from the corruption in high places of the national, State, and municipal guardians of the public trusts. Public confidence was shattered; business was at a standstill, the masses consequently idle, while a general reduction in the rate of wages begot strikes among such as were not idle. In this connection it may be well to call to mind what was generally observed at the time: the significant absence of the Irish and Catholic body from the seditious meetings; yet on that body fell the burden of the distress. What the disciples of the “Christian” school of statesmen, who gave cause for the sedition by their corruption and dishonesty, would be pleased to term their “foreign” faith, “foreign” education, obedience to the trained body-guard, the priesthood, of a “foreign” potentate, the Pope, alone prevented their falling in with the ranks of sedition. Yet the preaching and practice of the “foreign” faith, we are constantly assured, is the greatest danger to the republic.
The trials of the severe season, however, brought out into startling prominence one great fact: the willingness and resources of the public to encounter an unexpected demand of this kind. New York, for instance, was overrun with public charities and associations for the relief of the poor, the unfortunate, the maimed, the halt, the blind, the fatherless children, helpless women, and so forth. In short, there was scarcely a department of human misery which had not its corresponding asylum, aided in most instances by the State, erected often and paid solely by the State, as well as a variety of others set on foot and kept a-going by private philanthropy or charity. Money from public and private resources had been pouring into these asylums for long years past, without any startling demand being made upon them in return. Now was the time to prove the utility of those institutions, of which we were so justly proud. What was their actual condition? They were for the greater part found practically with exchequers already exhausted, without anything like adequate results being shown. An inquiry as to where all the money had gone succeeded in tracing considerable sums as far as the pockets of the directors, their wives, families, and friends, generally, after which all traces mysteriously [pg 562] disappeared. The good old maxim that “charity begins at home” would seem to have impressed itself as a necessary truth on the minds of the dispensers of our public charities, and it seems to have been carried out severely to the letter. One consolation was afforded the public, however. For some time past its conscience had been offended by the granting of certain sums—small enough indeed, in comparison with the necessities of the cases—out of the public funds to those social offences known as “sectarian” charities—sectarian charities!—and these sums, such as they were, had within the year been very judiciously and properly withdrawn, in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, as expounded by the men from whose ranks sprang the Christians of the Crédit Mobilier school. It was no small satisfaction to see, in the time of trial, that the public was justified in withdrawing from such institutions the State appropriations, on the ground that they were not distributed as in purely State asylums. How the “sectarian” charities contrasted with the others in the administration and distribution of their funds may be left to the records of the year to tell, as unfolded in the columns of the daily press. Whether a general remodelling of our public institutions, in view of the flagrant mismanagement exhibited last year, be not desirable, is left to the consideration of those most concerned in the matter—the public themselves. As they stand they are an eyesore to honest men, a standing breach of public confidence, and a gross violation of the public contract, to say nothing of what they may be in the eye of a heaven that seems to be getting farther and farther remote from the earth, whereon God once was pleased to walk with the father of mankind.
Our class of statesmen found an easy solution of what Mr. Disraeli esteemed the most difficult problem of politics—the feeding of a people by the government—by an increase of money; and an increase of money is the simplest thing in the world, when money is only so much paper stamped by the government with promise to pay at no very precise date. All that the government had to do in order to ease matters was to draw an unlimited number of I O U's on itself—itself being practically bankrupt for the time being, but relying on the prospect of something eventually “turning up” to its advantage.
The sad conflicts in Arkansas and Louisiana, the hostility between black and white, come in the same order. In this case, in Louisiana at least, the President and his advisers did not show themselves as well as in the quashing of the bill for inflation of the currency. While the party that had recourse to an absolute revolution in the State and in the face of the nation cannot but be condemned, inasmuch as the approaching elections might have peacefully served their purposes to the same end, much more is the government to be condemned which in the first instance gave its sanction and support to a great and standing wrong. Fortunately, but little blood was spilt; yet one drop in such cases is an indication of the neighborhood of a deluge. All hope for the dispersion of this impending deluge rests now chiefly with the party which was returned to power at the November elections.
If the year leaves us with so much to lament, so many vexed problems to solve, so many rocks ahead in our national course, and with only a half-confidence in the crew who are in charge of the ship of state to guide it over the unrevealed dangers of unknown seas, what shall be said of Europe, with its divided nationalities, ambitions, and policies, and only danger as a unit?
The general arming of the nations that began almost half a century ago, but was hurried into feverish activity since the Franco-German war, may now be said to be completed. Russia within half a dozen years will, if peace so far favors her, have three millions of soldiers in the field; France almost as many; Germany, by the enrolment of the Landsturm, has made itself a nation of soldiers; Austria, Italy, and the rest all follow in due order. All Europe is at this moment armed to the teeth, solely to preserve peace. One is irresistibly reminded of an old verse about a strong man armed keeping his house.
A set of fanatics assembled in London to sympathize with the Prussian government in its “struggle” with its Catholic subjects—that is to say, with the wholesale imprisonment of the Catholic bishops and clergy, the suppression of Catholic religious societies, the fining of Catholic ladies for presenting addresses of condolence to the imprisoned ecclesiastics. The meeting of sympathy called forth a very remarkable letter of gratitude [pg 563] from the German emperor, and occasioned a general jubilee on the part of the German official press. So far, so good. In the meanwhile a French bishop, thinking, probably, that it is hard for a man whose sole crime consists in the fact of his being a Catholic bishop to be imprisoned for that offence, ventures to deliver a mild opinion on the matter in a pastoral to his flock. Straightway comes out a Prussian official paper with an editorial that for solemnity and massiveness might have been written by the Emperor himself, warning, not the French bishop, but all France, that if it cannot restrain itself from that shocking habit it has acquired of using intemperate language against a neighboring and unusually friendly power, Germany, painful as the task may be to its feelings of humanity, will positively be compelled to take its own measures for its own defence. France immediately takes the hint, eats the leek with all becoming meekness, and a circular couched in the language of the Academy is despatched to the bishops generally, the plain English of which would be to hold their tongues on all German matters, unless, of course, they have something pleasant to say. That may be a very easy task for the bishops, but there still remain those bêtes-noirs of offending governments, the gentlemen of the press; and gentlemen of the press, in France as everywhere else, are unhappily distinguished not so much, perhaps, for having opinions of their own, as for giving vent to those opinions, and setting them down in indelible ink. M. Veuillot, the editor of L'Univers, is just one of these unfortunate beings. M. Veuillot has a rather strong way of putting things when it pleases him, and M. Veuillot is hardly the man to take a diplomatic hint. The sad duty becomes incumbent on his government, therefore, to give M. Veuillot and his paper a vacation of a couple of months. The vacation was called suspension. It was duly explained that the German government had had nothing whatever to do with the matter, though, strange to say, the French government had never thought of suspending M. Veuillot for hammering away at itself.
Belgium and Italy were threatened in like manner for allowing their subjects freedom of opinion in so important a matter. Even England was warned, but the warning had small effect.