If the will of the people is supreme, then away with your high and life-long judges, or at least let them be elected by the people and for very brief terms. Let grand juries be voted a humbug, and trial by jury a nuisance. Let electoral colleges be abolished as meaningless and cumbersome anomalies. Let the President be the direct representative of a mighty people, and act without let or hindrance—only let him act with gigantic energy and swift execution. Let senatorial terms be dependent upon changing legislative majorities. In fact, let the two legislative houses, as being wholly useless and very expensive, be reduced to one. Let the representative be a tongue-bound deputy, and not a free, manly, self-acting agent. Let county boards of supervisors give way to the one man power of the county judge. And, in short, let us go on, as we have been going on, democratizing or popularising our institutions, 'improving,' or rather impairing and tearing down one after another of the venerable columns of the original system, until every safeguard of personal freedom is removed, and there shall be nothing left to restrain the giant sway of unmitigated and unmediatized public power. Then we shall have despotism or absolutism, pure and simple—and none the less so because it shall be democratic.
The London Times will have nothing to jubilate over if what it mistakenly calls our 'trial of democratic institutions' shall be unsuccessful. For in fact, our constitutional system was but the reproduction, in a broader field and on a grander scale, of the British Constitution, in all its essential features, differing only in what philosophic historians call 'accidentals.' And if that system finally fails here, The Times may have a 'most comfortable assurance' that it will fail in England. True, we have more rapidly departed from and defaced that system than the English, chiefly because, in escaping from the fogs of England, we left behind us that stolid conservatism, that bulldog tenacity for the old because it is old, which are instinctive in the narrow-minded islanders. But they, just as much as we, have lost out of mind the significance of the Christian idea. They, just as much as we, have become thoroughly paganized—have become saturated with the central idea of pagan civilization, that man is his own end, lives for himself alone, and not for God, and therefore is inferior to and must be the mere tool of the state. If Americans hold that the state can make right, as well as enforce it, so do the English. If divine sanctions have no longer any significance in America, so have they not in England. If expediency, and not God's truth, is the universal rule of action here, so is it there. If every American or 'Yankee' seeks his own end in his own way, regardless of his neighbor, his Government, and his God, so does every Englishman. The Englishman has no God except his belly or his purse. Years ago it was said by one of themselves, 'The hell of the English is—not to make money,' If the divine principle of charity is a myth, and selfishness rages against selfishness here, much more so with a people whose only God is Mammon. And finally, if inevitable dissolution shall overtake us, and we rush into absolutism as a refuge from anarchy, we shall have the melancholy pleasure—if it can be a pleasure—of hailing the almost simultaneous wreck of the British Constitution, whose noble ruins, no less than ours, would be mournful monumental witnesses to the glory of ages wiser and better than our own.
AMERICAN FINANCES AND RESOURCES.
LETTER NO. II, FROM HON. ROBERT J. WALKER.
London, 10 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly,
October 8, 1863.
In view of the fact that the people of the United Kingdom and of the United States are mainly of the same race, speak the same language, have the same literature, ancestry, and common law, with the same history for centuries, and a reciprocal commerce exceeding that of all the rest of the world, it is amazing how little is known in each country of the other. This condition of affairs is most unfavorable to the continuance of peace and good will between two great and kindred nations. It causes constant misapprehension by each party of the acts and motives of the other, arrests the development of friendly feeling, and retards the advance of commercial freedom. It excites almost daily rumors of impending war, disturbing the course of trade, causing large mercantile losses, and great unnecessary Government expenditures. If war has not ensued, it has led to angry controversy and bitter recrimination. It is sowing broadcast in both countries the seeds of international hatred, rendering England and America two hostile camps, frowning mutual defiance; and, if not terminating in war, must, if not arrested, end in embargoes and non-intercourse, or discriminating duties on imports and tonnage, greatly injurious to both countries. I know it has become fashionable in England and America to sneer at the fact of our common origin; but the great truth still exists, and is fraught with momentous consequences, for good or evil, to both nations, and to mankind. The United States were colonized mainly by the people of England. Ten of our original thirteen States bear English names, as do also nearly all their counties, townships, cities, and villages.
Leaving to Englishmen the task of disabusing the Americans in regard to their own country, I will endeavor to present, in a condensed form, some material and authentic facts as regards the United States, for the consideration of the people of the United Kingdom. I read and hear every day here predictions of our impending bankruptcy and national dissolution; our wealth and resources depreciated; our cause, our people, our armies, and Government decried; and a war in words and in the press prosecuted against us with vindictive fury. All this hostility is fully reciprocated in America; and if the war is not confined to words and types, it will not be the fault of agitators in both countries. So far as an American can, even in part, arrest this fatal progress of misapprehension, by communicating information in regard to his own country, is the principal purpose of these essays.
In answer to the daily predictions here of our impending ruin and national bankruptcy, I shall first discuss the question of our wealth, resources, and material progress.
Area.—The area of the United States, including lakes and rivers, is 3,250,000 square miles, being larger than all Europe. (Rep. Sec. of Interior and of Com. of Gen. Land Office for Dec. 1860, p. 13.)