FEINBERT/WHITMAN LITERARY FILE Prose "Slang in America" (Nov. 1885). North American Review. BOX 34 FOLDER 6 Printed copy. Seventy-First Year. Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur. Vol. 141: No. 5. THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. EDITED BY ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE. November, 1885. I. Progress of Democracy in Europe . . . . EMILIO CASTELAR. II. Recollections and Letters of Grant . . . . . ADMIRAL AMMEN. III. Slang in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WALTL WHITMAN. IV. Statecraft and Priestcraft . . . . . . . REV. DR. PHILIP SCHAFF. V. Style and the Monument . . . . . . . . . NO NAME ESSAYS. VI. Abraham Lincoln in Illinois . . . . . ELIHU B. WASHBURNE. VII. United Bulgaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . EUGENE SCHUYLER. VIII. Race Prejudice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GAIL HAMILTON. IX. A Letter to the People . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMES PARTON. X. Shall Silver be Demonetized? . . . . . . . . . . A SYMPOSIUM. E. P. HILL, ALEXANDER DELMAR, WILLIAM A. PHILLIPS. XI. Notes and Comments. REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER, SENOR M. ROMERO, MARY GAY HUMPHREYS, J. B. JEANCOURT NEW YORK: No. 30 LAFAYETTE PLACE. LONDON : THE AMERICAN EXCHANGE. PARIS : THE GALIGNANI LIBRARY BERLIN. A. ASHER & CO. GENEVA : J. CHERBULIEZ. ROME : LOESCHER & CO. MELBOURNE: W. ROBERTSON. YOKAHAMA AND SHANGHAI : KELLY & WALSH. Single Numbers, 50c. Published Monthly. Per Annum, $5. Volume 140 of the North American Review. NOW READY, COMPLETE JANUARY Vituperation in Politics. Bishop F. D. Huntington. Froude's Life of Carlisle. Frederic Harrison. The Reunited Union. Henry Watterson. William Herschel's Star Surveys. Richard A. Proctor. American Labor Organizations. Richard J. Hinton. Socrates, Buddha, and Christ. W. L. Courtney. The Increase of Wealth. Michael G. Mulhall. The Evidence of the Senses. Prof. John Le. Conte. FEBRUARY How Shall the President be Elected? Pres. F.A.P. Barnard, and others. Holmes's Life of Emerson. George Bancroft. New Departures in Education. Prof. G. Stanley Hall. The Certainty of Endless Punishment. Rev. Dr. W. G. T. Shedd. Theories regarding the Sun's Corona. Prof. C.A. Young. Shall Clergymen be Politicians? Rev. Dr. H. J. Van Dyke, Jr.; Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. MARCH Future Retribution. Archdeacon F.W. Farrar. The Moral Aspects of Vivisection. Prof. Noah K. Davis. Buddhist Charity. Prof. F. Max Muller. The Revival of Sectionalism. Murat Halstead. Mind in Men and Animals. George John Romanes. The Use and Abuse of titles. President D.C. Gilman. Speculation in Politics. Judge John.A. Jameson. Railway Land-grants. John. W. Johnston. APRIL The Study of Prison Management. Charles Dudley Warner. The Law's Delay. Chief-Justice T.F. Hargis. Free Thought in American. Robert Buchanan. Characteristics of Persian Poetry. Ainsworth R. Spofford. The Agricultural Crisis in England. William E. Bear. How to Reform English Spelling. Prof. T.W. Hunt. The Army of the Discontented. T.V. Powderly. Comments. MAY Has Christianity Benefited Women? Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Bishop J. L. Spalding. Industrial Co-operation. David Dudley Field. Success in Fiction. James Payn. What is Academic Freedom? Prof. Andrew. F. West. The New Buddha. Robert Buchanan. Why Crime is Increasing. President J. L. Pickard. Superstition in English Life. Rev. T.F. Thiselton Dyer. Comments. JUNE Shall Silver be Demonetized? Prof. W.G. Sumner, and others. The Tardiness of Justice. Judge W.L. Learned. Prohibition in Politics. Gail Hamilton. What is the Catholic School Policy? M. C. O'Byrne; Bishop John J. Keane. The Swearing Habit. Edwin P. Whipple. French Spoliation Claims. Edward Everett. How shall Women Dress? E. M. King, and others. Comments. Price, unbound, $2.50; bound in cloth, $3.50; in half morocco, $4.00. Binding-Cases, For Home Binding, Suitable For Any Volume, 60 Cents. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price. Address The North American Review, 30 Lafayette Place, New York. -------------- Copyright by Allen Thorndike Rice; 1885. Entered at the Post-office at New York, and admitted for transmission through the mails as second-class matter. SPECIAL NOTICES. The December Number of the North American Review will be issued on Thursday, the 25th of November. On and after the first of January, 1886, the North American Review will appear on the first of the month of which it bears date, instead of on the 15th of the preceding month as hitherto. In answer to inquiries by mail I now take pleasure in announcing that I have completed arrangements with General G. T. Beauregard for a series of four articles on the war between the States. The first article is a history of the Shiloh campaign. It will appear in the January number. The other articles are on the "Defence of Charleston, " "The Drury's Bluff Campaign," and the Defence of Petersburg." ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE. Volume 140 of the North American Review. NOW READY, COMPLETE. JANUARY. Vituperation in Politics. Bishop F. D. HUNTINGTON. Froude's Life of Carlisle. FREDERIC HARRISON. The Reunited Union. HENRY WATTERSON. William Herschel's Star Surveys. RICHARD A. PROCTOR. American Labor Organizations. RICHARD J. HINTON. Socrates, Buddha, and Christ. W. L. COURTNEY. The Increase of Wealth. MICHAEL G. MULHALL. The Evidence of the Senses. Prof. JOHN LE CONTE. How Shall the Presiden Holmes's Life of Emerso New Departures in Edu The Certainty of Endle Theories regarding the Shall Clergymen be Pol Future Retribution. Ar The Moral Aspects of V Buddhist Charity. Prof. The Revival of Sectiona Mind in Men and Anim The Use and Abuse of Speculation in Politics. Railway Land-grants. A Study of Prison Man The Law's Delay. Chie Free Thought in Ameri Characteristics of Persi The Agricultural Crisis How to Reform English The Army of the Disco Comments. Has Christianity Benefi Industrial Co-operation. Success in Fiction. Jam What is Academic Free The New Buddha. ROB Why Crime is Increasi Superstition in English Comments. Shall Silver be Demone The Tardiness of Justic Prohibition in Politics. What is the Catholic S The Swearing Habit. ] French Spoliation Clai How shall Women Dre Comments. Price, unboun BINDING-CASES, F Add Entered at the Post-office 1 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCXLVIII. NOVEMBER, 1885. THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. CONTINENTS are like nations, as nations are like individuals. They have their own intellectual and moral character as well as their physical idiosyncrasies. To deny the ministry and the end fulfilled in course of time by these great portions of earth's expanse is to shut one's eyes to truth. Asia may be called, from its historic character, the continent of castes and of changeless empires ; African propaganda, that is by Egypt and Carthage, concentrated itself, manifesting the spirit of humanity there for many ages and with more terrible turmoil than among any other peoples. No other races in all history had the same advantages, because of not surviving to see the days of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Finally, when history seemed about to be completed and conscience was at last set free, appeared the American continent, which we may truly call the continent of the future, because of its liberty, its democracy, and its republics ; and which, perhaps to-morrow, when the new frontiers of civilization, Oceanica and Australia, VOL. CXLL.—NO. 348. 28 410 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. have become more intellectually and morally developed, may be for these peoples all that Europe has been for America. None can know what new shapes human societies will take in their progressive development, and what aspect the universal spirit will assume when it has incarnated through laws and institutions all the ideas unmasked by the genius of science, and scattered them broadcast as though by spiritual communion among future peoples. We must not set aside the historical character superimposed by the ages upon the continents, if we desire to understand the evolution in their midst, of an element like democracy. By democracies we mean those societies in which the members have equal liberties, and equal participation, direct or delegated, in the government. Of course societies so advanced are not apparent, except in the fullness of times greatly enlightened by religion or by science. The ancient world was never fully democratic, because its very democracies rested upon a basis so contrary to all equality as slavery. Yet the relatively republican and democratic peoples of antiquity, in spite of this cancer in the vitals, gave to man in times long past his greatest honors, his brightest radiance of spirit. This is proved by the mere utterance of names like those of the Hellenic republics and the Republic of Rome. Likewise in the Middle Ages. The cities of the League of Lombardy, the Hanseatic cities of Germany, the Hispanian municipalities, the Helvetic cantons, the Dutch Republic, and as a general rule all the relatively free cities of that marvelous period, have brought to humanity its most precious riches, its most glorious titles. The mariner's compass, faithful to one fixed point throughout the long and tempest-tossed voyage of the navigator, was poised between two indefinite deeps. The art of printing which saved from oblivion the works of the intellect and placed its thoughts within reach of the multitude ; the bill of exchange which so prodigiously facilitated commerce and augmented the circulation of products ; the historic and artistic Renaissance which resuscitated the perfect Greek statue and brought back a spiritual glory to modern painting, embellishing the diadem which humanity wears, sovereign-like, over all the inferior beings of earth ; the religious, intellectual, and moral education of those pilgrims destined to prepare the New World for the Rebublic and for liberty—all these sublime achievements bring to mind that swarm of republican or municipal towns, Amalfi, Flor- THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. 411 ence, Strasburg, Pisa, Genoa, Toledo, Geneva, Neufchatel, the remembrance of which is like a star of divine inspiration on our brow, and to be cherished like the sacred fire of science upon our hearthstone. Three chief elements have gone to constitute modern Europe —ancient Rome, the Catholic Church, the barbaric invasions. Every people owes its primary education in some measure to various institutions which it preserves and perpetuates, even when they embarrass and handicap the further development of this education. This has happened with regard to the three component factors of European civilization, the Roman, the Ecclesiastical, and the Barbarian, which have endured and continued far beyond the necessary and the useful, because they once served to initiate Europe into the modern culture. These three elements will sooner or later prove themselves wholly contrary to true democracy. The Roman element, notwithstanding its splendor, brought us, with the Empire, a terrible and absurd form of monarchy. The Germanic element, notwithstanding its individualism, brought us the iron nobility of feudalism with its castes and strifes. The ecclesiastical element, the most republican and democratic of all, this, with its absolute authority, brought us an intellectual and moral submission irreconcilable with all human rights. It is necessary to measure the grandeur of these three colossal forces : A monarchy which could lift itself up as the natural head of all political organizations in the popular superstition ; an ecclesiasticism which—in both its Byzantine and Roman form—believed itself the depository of all the wisdom transmitted from heaven, of all the morality necessary to regulate life, and of all the secrets which exorcise death and dispense immortality ; a feudalism sown in the seed by the Germanic races and afterwards definitively brought to fruit by the Norman irruption at the beginning of the ninth century ; a feudalism which recognized force as its only law, and gave the palm and the crown always to the strong. We must study these well-nigh incommensurable forces, and estimate their stature and their prestige in order to comprehend the vigor of a democracy which has been able to smite them down and to set upon the enormous ruins of their altars, their shrines, their temples, their pal-aces, the prodigious growth of its own new edifice. Truly the development of democracy in our modern Europe may be compared, in the time and forces employed, to a geological 412 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. evolution. From the fifth century of the barbarian irruptions, when our whole planet seemed completely unhinged and disordered, until the century that completed the millennium of their tenure of the land, and the Last Judgment seemed at hand, theocracy and feudalism divided our soil. From the Crusades, when the idea of equality among men first began to be practically seen upon the level deserts of Asia, after having been preached with futility by the Christian religion ; from the Crusades until the Reformation and the Renaissance, when liberty of conscience and reason awoke from sleep ; and from the Reformation and the Renaissance until the revolutions amid which the modern nations were founded and progressive democracy prevailed, what labor and what effort ! What a series of sacrifices consummated by the martyrs of thought and by the heroes of progress, for the sake of rooting up those three colossal privileges, guarded by the nobility, the monarchy, and the church! Human right consecrating the freest faculties, opening the infinite for its expansion, organizing human societies so that they could be joined to immortal principles of justice, and calling all citizens to a universal coparticipation in the government ! It was necessary for the metaphysical sciences to lay aside their scholastic formula to which the secular religious authority clung ; for the physico-mathematical sciences to burst the crystal vault, the pneumatic structure, beneath which, motionless, like a sepulchral stone, lay this earth, to-day launched by the astronomers into the cerulean ether and eternal motion ; for the arts to come forth out of the sanctuary and the liturgies which held them enshrouded, like those Byzantine and hieratic figures, rigid as corpses, sepultured by theocracy over its changeless altars— corpses now resuscitated and infused with a living and divine spirit by the inspiration of the great artists and the oracular poets ; for the Reformation to deliver the sacred books to the people and to make every man a priest able to receive upon his brow the flames of the Holy Spirit and the ideas of the Divine Word ; for industry with her forces to arm our hands with the thunderbolt—all these were necessary for the establishment of these great democracies which sum up and complete the social creation, just as the human species, following after so many inferior species, sums up and completes the whole terrestrial creation. Democracy has such virtue that it has created not only the individual being called the citizen, but also the collective being THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. 413 called the nation. Before democracy attained to public life there were states, empires, monarchies, but not nationalities. And so among all peoples the democratic movement is united to the national movement. Switzerland constitutes the republican cantons against Austria and her tyrant dukes ; Holland, her Calvinist republic against Philip II. and his formidable generals ; England, her first republic and her great an antimonarchical revolution against Richelieu and Louis XIV., the natural protectors of the Stuarts ; America, her republics in open and decisive combat against the respective mother countries ; France, her gigantic and never-to- be-forgotten struggle against the coalition of all the kings ; Spain, her war of independence ; Greece, her quarrels with the Turks ; Italy, her strife with the Austrian ; Sweden and Norway, combating at once the Russian and the German influence ; Hungary, obtaining by treaty her autonomic government from the enormous empire which enslaved her—indeed, the sum of all individual liberties will bring about sometime and to every place the indispensable national liberty which completes and perfects them. Therefore in Europe the democratic movement cannot be separated from the national movement. And this explains the necessity felt by all democracies for constituting themselves nations first of all, and also the reason of the inconsistency unfortunately committed by some democratic peoples in adopting the form of government denominated monarchy, in itself incompatible with all democracy. When they have obtained their life and their rights after an obstinate struggle, they find themselves obliged, by forces over which they have no control, to adopt a military organization such as the monarchy or the empire ; that is to say, having to placate European diplomacy and to ingratiate themselves with the great powers, they accept the political organization best suited to the exigencies or impositions of their protectors. Various recent examples demonstrate the mathematical truth of our observation. If there ever were peoples democratic by nature and tradition, surely they were the Italians and the Greeks. The republic in both has produced—not, as in Spain, or France, or Germany, a great reflex aspiration of superior minds, and a great instinctive aspiration of the liberal multitude, but— the most glorious and most vivid recollection and the brightest page of their history. Wherever we look in time and space we find Italians and Greeks—in the shades of their heroes, in the 414 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. rains of their monuments, in the chants of their literatures, and in the genius of their republics. And yet Italy has adopted the monarchical form, and, among its representatives, a union indispensable for sustaining itself on the field of battle ; and Greece has found herself constrained, much against her will, to ask a monarch of the boreal regions of Europe, because without the monarchical form she could never have placated European diplomacy. Here we have the reason of the incredible inconsistency of which some democracies are guilty in submitting to or adopting the monarchical government. It cannot be denied that, for temporal and spacial realization, any ideal must be reduced to narrow limits, like all things else that are to be molded to the living and imperfect reality. For this chief reason the European democracies are divided into pure and mixed. Pure democracies are those which obey the three prime democratic principles, viz. : 1st, the principle of individual rights ; 2d, the principle of popular sovereignty ; 3d, the principle of universal suffrage—incorporated in their most natural and appropriate form, the republican. In the light of this true and concise definition it will be observed that there are only two pure democracies in Europe, the Swiss and the French. In other nations democracy has had to accommodate itself to the last remnants of ancient societies, personified by the respective monarchies, and with the last political privileges entailed upon either the decadent aristocracy or the preponderating middle classes. England, Spain, Portugal, and Italy are mixed democracies, and so are all the other monarchico-parliamentary nations where democracy has to adjust itself to the conditions offered by the nobility and the middle classes, as in the English monarchy, or by the middle classes alone, as in the Latin monarchies. Sometimes democracy adopts the imperial form, or, rather, submits itself to a dictatorship more or less apt to be lifelong and hereditary, such as France adopted yesterday under the Bonapartes, and to-day Germany under the Brandenburgs. By the complications of their parties the French made it impossible to govern themselves like a republic ; and so they preferred to establish an empire which maintained universal suffrage and assumed a certain popular aspect pleasing to a people of democratic tendencies, rather than to retrocede to a monarchy which represented only the privileges of the middle classes. Almost the same thing is happening to-day THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. 415 in Germany. The German democracy made a supreme effort in 1848 to found, on its own principles, that unity which is the soul of a nation. But more lately, convinced, like Italy, that it was necessary to confide this work to a monarchical power strong enough to cope with the intrigues of diplomatists and to win the victory in a contest of war, she elected the King of Prussia, that most intrinsically German of all the German territories, on the throne of which the Reformation was represented by the Elector of Brandenburg, and philosophy by Frederick the Great. But as the Germanic races, though more individual, are less democratic than the Latin races, the national party of Germany unfortunately adopted the imperial form of government, the reverse of the national party of Italy, which adopted a progressive parliamentary form. Such is the condition of democracy in Europe—the democracy that rules in all our states, more or less pure, or mixed with this or that institution alien to its nature and traditions, except in two only, Russia and Turkey. In less than a century we have progressed from absolutism which denied the sovereignty of the nation, to mixed democracies which allow a certain degree of national right to men, and a more or less extensive or restricted participation by the citizens in the government. In less than a century our political forms have been evolved from pure monarchies to mixed democracies, then in less than another century we shall pass from mixed democracies to pure democracies. A series of revolutions, linked together as though planned by a single mind and wrought out by a single will, explains this gradual emancipation, which has had to depose feudalism, theocracy, and monarchy in order to found over their portentous debris the perfect fullness of its rights. Each great cycle of history traversed by civilization has emancipated some one human faculty or power. The discoveries of the pilots and navigators in America and Asia emancipated nature, so to speak, burst the narrow limits which bound the ancient institutions, and provided unknown lands for the sowing of the new ideas. As exploration widened the horizon and transformed nature, which is the spirit's organism, even so the Renaissance gave new life to the sensibilities and the imagination ; that is to say, the purely aesthetic faculties of our spirit. The Reformation, in its turn, emancipated man's moral faculties, especially the conscience. Following the emancipation of the conscience, which 416 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. converted every soul into a temple, came the triumph of philosophy, which banished scholastic formula and unshackled reason, of all man's faculties the chief, and, in truth, superhuman or divine. Sensibilities, conscience, reason, and all the powers of the intellect at last unfettered, one more faculty remained to be set free, that which completes and realizes all the rest, that which most strongly urges them to action, that which we call the will. To accomplish the emancipation of the will of the people, all Christendom was overwhelmed with revolutions. Many of these were frustrated, like the revolution of the peasants in Germany, of the Comuneros in Spain, of the Fronde in France ; but many others triumphed and prevailed, creating the popular will, that organ indispensable to democracy. The first modern revolution was the Dutch, which expelled the traditional Burgundian dynasty from their narrow but wonderful little district. The second revolution was the British, which overthrew the Stuarts and laid the foundations of parliamentary regimen in Europe. The third was the great American Revolution, which startled the Old World with the remarkable spectacle of its trilogy of personal liberty, a pacific democracy, and a stable republic. The revolution which condensed all these ideas, and which may be called the motor of universal democracy in Europe, was the French Revolution, whose crests rose to the heights of Sinai and Calvary, the typical mounts of revelation. With all these antecedents, with all these efforts, it would be strange indeed if democracy failed to succeed in Europe. Our old continent is not by nature so prepared for the evolution of progressive democracy as the new continent. The ancient institutions, many of them crumbling, others almost destroyed, have vitality enough still to hinder and sometimes to check its progress. But let us note the fact that all reactions have a transitory character, and that all revolutions begin by establishing themselves uneasily, and end by taking vigorous root. Europe has seen three reactions during the nineteenth century : the Brumaire, or the first Napoleonic reaction ; the reaction of 1815, or the Holy Alliance ; and lastly, that of 1850. And yet, though each appeared so strong and prevailed for so long a time, they could not stop the movement of democracy toward its emancipation. Bonaparte dragged the body of the republic, hung, as it were, to the tail of his apocalyptic horse, and endeavored to revive the Empire and the Pontificate a THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. 417 la Charlemagne ; but he only revived the revolution of Mirabeau and of Robespierre, and carried, on the points of his bayonets, throughout all Europe, the very ideas he sought to destroy. Out of the Napoleonic wars were born the constitutions of Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, natural consequences of the revolution which was thought to be extinguished. So in 1815, the Holy Alliance in its pride again sealed the sepulcher of the people, and again set up the dominion of despots. But within five years the Spanish Revolution of 1820, then the Hellenic uprisings, and the repeated proclamation of our code of 1812 away over in Sardinia and Sicily, disconcerted the Bourbon reaction in France and again brought forth the development of democracy in Europe. When the restored Bourbons thought they had finally settled their peace with the hated intervention of European powers, assured their own perpetuity by the birth of an unexpected heir, and magnified their glory by the seizure of Algiers, then the revolution of 1830 overwhelmed them, emancipated France anew, and brought Belgium into the concert of free nationalities. This revived and consolidated constitutional institutions in the whole of Western Europe. The result of this movement was to bring about the rather premature democratic revolution of 1848, which, having anticipated its proper season, and the ripeness of the times, was nipped in the bud by the cold of the new Napoleonic reaction of 1850 and others which accompanied it. Yet it finally sprang up again, ten years later, in Italy. The republican restoration then and there begun was stimulated and established by the great Spanish movement just after the year 1868. It was a saving movement in every sense, and was crowned with victory, all the way from the nationalization of Hungary and some other peoples even to the triumph of the republic in France, the liberal rule in Austria, and unity in Rome and Germany. The wind of revolution which sprang up on the banks of the Seine at the beginning of the century tore from the heads of European kings their crowns of divine right, as the wind of revolution which sprang up shortly before on the sacred shores of the Potomac scattered the American republics over an entire continent. And so the revolution of 1848, unrecognized in its beginnings, founded mixed monarchies in place of pure ones, and converted mixed democracies into pure democracies, repelling the factors of reaction and impelling the factors of progress. 418 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. A revelation of the human spirit had flashed like the lightning out of heaven without having been able to attain unto the perennial light of day in history. The bewildering rapidity of the change, and the sudden reverses succeeding to that change, served to fix the belief that the former had been a sterile and fleeting storm rather than a regenerating and fecundating shower. The deliberately and openly achieved death of the second French Republic, in which we all had placed such hope ; the rupture of the advanced parties of Madrid, staining its streets once more with liberal blood ; the exodus of German democrats to the four quarters of the earth, to wander in bitterness of spirit on the shores of strange rivers ; the disappearance of those glorious visions of Mazzini in Rome, Guerazzi in Florence, Manini in Venice, Poerio in Sicily, and Garibaldi in all Italy ; the predomination of the Cossacks over the but newly emancipated cities of the Danube, and of the Croatians over the cities newborn on the lagunes of St. Mark ; the dark and terrible day of Novara, the sharp reports of the musketry at Vienna; the re-establishment of theocratic power in the Rome of the tribunes—all these partial eclipses of the progressive ideas seemed, in the world's eyes, to presage the eternal and lugubrious night of universal reaction. But before one decade of this reaction had passed, the problems put forth by the vanquished revolution began to awaken in every conscience. Italy initiates the movement in 1859—Italy, the sybil of poetry and history. The victory over the Austrians on the plains of Lombardy, and Garibaldi's triumph on Sicilian waters, roused a national activity sufficiently powerful to redeem the whole peninsula, short of Venice, walled in by diplomatic superstitions, and Rome equally walled in by religious superstitions. The protest of Prussia, it is said, checked the French and Italian armies, or, rather, the revolutionary armies on the fields of Solferino, thus leaving the work of redemption incomplete—undoubtedly because Prussia did not know that Providence had assigned to her the great destiny of completing it. So it happened that as the sword and scepter of Savoy were the instrument of the revolution and of the unity of Italy, the sword and the scepter of the Brandenburgs were the instrument of the revolution and of the unity of Germany. The policy of Metternich, outliving that great abettor of European revolution, was overthrown on the field of Sadowa. The Christian peoples of the Balkans, living under a hated oppression, were filled with hope. Hungary, so long THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. 419 martyred by the Hapsburgs, those jailers of the people, and by the Romanoffs, those miserable executioners of Austria's revenge —Hungary constituted herself a free nationality. The sergeants of the German reaction, the Kings of Hanover, Wurtemburg, Saxony, and Bavaria, like the Grand-Dukes of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany, were violently dethroned or attached with their broken armies to the triumphal car of Prussia. And as the German movement followed after that of Italy, it in turn was followed by that of Spain, which was like the former in fighting to achieve the great aims of 1848, viz. : the dethronement of the Bourbons. Yet it differed from them in proceeding from the people spontaneously, moved by its own will and conscience, instead of from powers and governments already organized. The Spanish Revolution gave such sovereign impetus to European opinion that Napoleon III. in France endeavored to check it by an extension of liberty, and by acceding to the presence of Emile 011ivier in his parliament of usurpation. Seeing that liberty grew and turned against him, he sallied forth to a war where he lost the crown which, as the nail of servitude, he had fastened upon France, thus leaving place and opportunity for the third republic to be definitely founded. This providential appearance of a pure democracy coincided with the rupture and overthrow of theocratic power in Rome. The extravagancies of demagogic communists, and the reactionary confederation of monarchs, have tried in vain to dishonor or to overwhelm the republic ; but the prudence of the republicans has saved it. Not so in Spain, where the first republic was frustrated ; but the restoration everywhere demonstrates, as it did in those already frustrated, that the x in our political problem will be determined in the final triumph of democracy and the speedy establishment of a living republic. Meanwhile from one end to the other of this new Europe blows the air of hope. Serfdom in Russia is no more. The great aspirations of Poland are not extinguished, though tyrants have buried her body alive and set her spirit like an extinct star in the Pantheon of a dead epoch. Greece has grown strong and democratic in proportion to the growth of her fundamental institutions. Servia, Montenegro, Roumania, and Roumelia, have become nations. The Turkish Empire and the Russian Empire will shortly dissappear, one by force of internal revolutions, the other by force of European war. Germany will become parliamentary and liberal as soon as the 420 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. imperial and Caesar-like prestige dissappears with those who now wear it. Belgium and Holland approach daily nearer to pure democracies. The Helvetic republics, on their Alpine heights, will grow in vigor as a lesson and an example to all. Italy, constituted a progressive nation, and France a democratic republic, will prove to be necessary organs of universal progress. In virtue of the electoral reforms lately promulgated, a great democracy will take the place of the English aristocracy. A confederation of free peoples will advantageously supplant the monstrous Austrian Empire. And before our century is ended, the great revolutions of America and France will have given all their fruits to Christianity, founding glorious amphictyons of free peoples and nations in the Old World as well as in the New. My calm faith in universal progress inspires these well-founded hopes. It matters not that monarchies still survive on the shores of our revolutions. These monstrosities came forth from the thick, dread, lower atmosphere, and cannot breathe long in another, purer, more bracing air. They resemble, as they pass from the ancient superstitions to modern rationalism, from an absolute to a parliamentary character, those monsters of the deep so terrible and devastating in the waters, which, raised to an atmosphere that they cannot respire, lose first their strength and then life itself. Monarchical faith still shines, but only like those distant stars which the astronomers tell us are apparent to our retina long after they have become extinct and all trace of them in the heavens is lost. The final triumph of universal democracy is already as fully assured as if its blazing track in the pathway of history had already swept into full possession of the hopes, sympathies, and institutions of the nations. EMILIO CASTELAR. RECOLLECTIONS AND LETTERS OF GRANT. PART II. FROM Rome, Italy, March 25, 1878 I received from General Grant a letter of eight pages, from which the following extracts are taken : " MY DEAR ADMIRAL: " I have received three interesting letters from you since my last to you. You must excuse this, and continue to write, because I am always glad to receive your letters, as are all our family, and they all read them ; and then, too, I am writing to so many persons that I cannot be prompt in my replies. The winter's trip has been the most pleasant of my life. It has been entirely outside the usual course of travelers abroad, and has opened a new field. . . . The officers without exception were agreeable, and did all they could to make us feel at home. Captain Robeson, the commander, was most attentive both to his guests and to his duties. I judge a more safe commander of a ship could not be found. The second officer, Lieutenant Caldwell, is a very superior man in education and acquirements, and especially so in all scientific subjects, and professional ones too. He is very much such a man as General Comstock who served on my staff, and whom you remember! If you don't remember him, you do his horse, at least. . . . " The reader will be able to appreciate the sly humor of the General when informed that I knew General Comstock for years, both before and when he was with General Grant. During the winter of 1866 I rode a very powerful gray horse of his to Silver Springs, to pay a visit to F. P. Blair. The horse was very restive, and, going out, his perspiration so softened the reins that they would slip through my fingers. Coming into the city, he ran away with me three times, and would have broken my neck had I not been a good rider. The story of this ride, as told by me to Mr. Blair and General Grant, afforded them great amusement ; indeed, I have no recollection of seeing General Grant laugh so heartily as when the story of the ride was recounted, which he called for from time to time. To resume, the General writes : " But my impressions of peoples are, that in the East they have a form of 422 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. government and a civilization that will always repress progress and development. Syria and Asia Minor are as rich of soil as the great North-west in our own country, and are blessed with a climate far more suitable to production. The people would be industrious if they had encouragement, but they are treated as slaves, and all they produce is taken from them for the benefit of the governing classes, and to maintain them in a luxurious and licentious life. Women are degraded even beneath a slave. They have no more rights than the brute ; in fact, the donkey is their superior in privileges. " I was in Constantinople at a very interesting time historically. The Russian army was but a few miles outside, and there was no barrier to their entrance. But the stolidity of the people is such that in the five days I spent in Constantinople I should never have discovered of the people—outside of the Sultan and a few of the high officials—that anything unusual had happened." He spent some days at Athens, and expresses great sympathy for the Greeks. Writing of Athens, he says : " Considering that there was not a house where the present city stands forty-five years ago, and that the opposition of the Turks has kept them from communication with the balance of Europe except by sea, they have certainly made wonderful progress. I hope they may have their territory increased as one of the effects of the present war, so as to give them more Greek population, more area, and a full chance to develop. It seems to me England and the balance of Europe, except Russia, is interested in seeing such a consummation. . . ." From St. Petersburg, Russia, he writes six pages, mostly in regard to his own private matters, and of something that had been published respecting them. Although, of course, entirely proper to publish, those parts are passed over. He writes : "I do not remember where my last letter to you was from. Since leaving Paris, however, I have traveled through Holland, North Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and a portion of Russia. The New York Herald,' which comes by the same mail as your letter, gives an account of a portion of my visit to Germany. The statement is given very correctly, though, from comments I see in other papers, the correspondent has fallen into some errors in regard to what I said about military matters. I never said, for instance, that my loss from the Rapidan to the James River, including killed, wounded, and missing, was less than 40,000—that 39,000 would cover the whole. What I did say was, that, since Taylor's and Welles' letters, the public seem to have fallen into the idea that I had lost 100,000 men in getting to the south side of the James, where I could have gone by boat without loss, and ignore the fact that Lee sustained any loss. . . . But it is only just to the Herald' correspondent to say that I have not seen his letter, but only the criticism of the `New York World.' Probably he has been correct in his statement. I have seen his Berlin letter, sent I think from Hamburg, giving an account of the receptions, dinners, review, Bismarck conference, etc., and they are correctly stated. There might be some question about the propriety of some things stated, but RECOLLECTIONS AND LETTERS OF GRANT. 423 they are nevertheless correct as far as my memory could verify them. I hope I will find the other letter equally correct. " I have been very much pleased with the people in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. They are a free, intelligent, honest, and industrious people. My reception among them was most cordial, as indeed it has been everywhere. Here in Russia I have been surprised at the cordiality, though there has always existed a traditional friendship between the two countries. To-morrow we start for Warsaw ; from thence to Vienna. We will rest in Austria until about the right season for visiting Spain and Portugal. Then I will have been in every country in Europe, in Egypt and Africa, and a little bit of Syria and Asia Minor; not much for an old tar,' but a good deal for a landsman. . . ." From Gibraltar, November 15, 1878, the General writes : " On my arrival here, three days ago, I found your letter of the 21st of October, and the very kind letter of the Secretary of the Navy, tendering to me the use of the 'Richmond' for an eastern tour. I wrote to the Secretary at once, and said that I should have cabled, only that I had previously sent a message to you saying that I had determined on not going home by way of China and Japan, at least for this winter, and that no doubt you had communicated the message. I received your previous letter of the 15th of October also. It seems a long journey to go from here to San Francisco by water for so little as there is to see along the coasts. If I were alone, or with a party of gentlemen that could penetrate the interior of countries passed through, I would not hesitate. " We came here, making our first stop in Spain at Victoria. The young King, hearing that I was on my way to Madrid, invited me to stop there, where he was inspecting and reviewing some 26,000 troops. I stopped two days. The Spanish troops make a splendid appearance. The next stop was at Madrid, for a week. Madrid is improving rapidly, and has evidently improved much in the past few years. It is now a beautiful city, with horse-cars running to every part. I saw but little evidence of improvement, however, elsewhere than in Madrid. It is hard to fortell the future of Spain. The people are good enough, if, as you say, they could get any return for their labor. But as it is, there seems to be no integrity among the ruling class. Those who do work receive but the barest subsistence. If a man raises a pig he cannot kill and eat it with-, out paying equivalent to five dollars of our money. The revenue officers are so abundant that there is no chance of escaping any tax except by bribery, which is resorted to to the extent of depriving the government of a very large percentage of its revenues. There is the greatest discontent, and the least thing would start a revolution." From Peking, China, June 6, 1879, the General writes : " MY DEAR ADMIRAL : " I have now been in Peking three days, and have seen all there is of this forsaken city. Since our arrival we have received an American mail, and with it your two letters of the 6th and 17th of April. I am delighted that you consented to be our representative at the Congress [in Paris] to discuss the ques- 424 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. tion of the Interoceanic Canal, because I do not believe there is another American who understands the relative advantages of the one feasible route over all others, nor who can state the advantages and obstacles in the way of other routes as clearly as you can. . . " I have found China and the Chinese much as you have often described it and them. It is not a country nor a people calculated to invite the traveler to make a second visit. But they are a people of wonderful shrewdness and industry, and are rapidly monopolizing the trade, as carriers, merchants, mechanics, market gardeners, and servants, from Bombay eastward. Then, too, their leading men seem to have a thorough appreciation of the necessity for internal improvement, such as railroads, etc., but have a horror of introducing them with foreign capital and under foreign control. Their idea seems to be rather to educate a sufficient number of their own young men abroad to fit them as engineers, machinists, soldiers, sailors, etc., and then to make their improvements with their own men and means. My belief is, that, in less time from now, than the half century since you and I first went to J. D. White's school in Georgetown, elapses, Europe will be complaining of the too rapid advance of China. . . ." From Tokio, Japan, the General wrote very interesting letters, the first dated July 16, the last August 7, from which I quote : " Your letter of the 2d of July reached me a few days since. After two days' reflection on your suggestion of the part I should take, or consent to take, if offered, in the matter of the Interoceanic Canal via Nicaragua, I telegraphed to the Secretary of the Navy, Washington : Tell Ammen approve —Grant.' I hope you received the dispatch. On the 27th, two weeks after this leaves Yokohama, we sail for San Francisco. " I do not feel half as anxious to get home as I did eighteen months ago. There is no country that I have visited, however, this side of Europe, except Japan, where I would care to stay longer than to see the points of greatest interest. But Japan is a most interesting country, and the people are quite as much so. The changes that have taken place here are more like a dream than a reality. They have a public school system extending over the entire empire, affording facilities for a common school education to every child, male and female. They have a military and a naval academy that compare well with ours in course taught, discipline, and attainment of the students. They have colleges at several places in the empire on the same basis of instruction as our best institutions. They have a school of science which I do not believe can be beat in any country. Already the great majority of their professors—even in teaching European languages—are natives, most of them educated in the very institutions where they are now teaching. But I hope soon to see you, and then I will say more than I care to write in the limit of a letter. . . . " From San Francisco, California, September 28, 1879, the General writes: " We arrived here on the 20th, after a most pleasant and smooth sail of RECOLLECTIONS AND LETTERS OF GRANT. 425 nineteen days from Yokohama. . . . I do not know the present prospects of the Interoceanic Canal. I approve, however, what you have done in the matter, and if the people of the United States will take hold of the Nicaragua route in earnest, the only practicable route comparatively, I will give all the aid in my power. . . . I shall not start east before about the 27th of November. Even then I do not expect to go east of Chicago before the holidays, but if I could do any good for the canal enterprise by doing so, I would go earlier. . . ." There was a change, however. General Grant reached Philadelphia early in December, and was good enough to write one of our friends in common, and myself, to meet him. Never have I seen such an extraordinary demonstration as his reception on that occasion. Arriving an hour or so after it commenced, several hours passed before we could reach the hotel, by reason of a procession miles in length. Were it possible for such things to have " turned his head," he would have been bereft of reason. Although we sat when we dined at the hotel at a private table with the General, it was quite impossible to have any intelligent conversation on the important matter of a ship canal. The discussion was adjourned until he could come to Washington some time thereafter. At the latter place, meeting a Senator in the confidence of General Grant, the Senator inquired why we were interfering with General Grant in favor of the Nicaragua Canal. They wanted him for the Presidency, and we should let him alone. I said : " Senator, there are a great many who would make good Presidents, you among the number ; I will be glad to vote for you if nominated, but General Grant only, in my belief, can speedily bring about the construction of the Nicaragua Canal, so important to our National interests. Why do you not let him alone to do it ?" General Grant had in the mean time been prevailed upon to go to Mexico to forward the inception of railroads, no doubt greatly to the conjoint interests of the two peoples, nationally and other-wise ; but this was the merest pigmy in result, beyond a doubt, if compared with opening the Nicaragua Canal, and securing on the Isthmus a moral and material control of American interests, in lieu of European interests, so clearly expressed in the closing sentence of his published article on the canal question, hereinafter quoted. I am aware that when in Washington about the 1st of January, 1880, General Grant received discouragement at the State Depart- VOL CXLI.—No. 348. 29 426 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. ment. This I know from a conversation with him immediately after a two hours' visit to the Secretary of State. Thereafter, we found General Grant well disposed towards the Nicaragua Canal, but, so far as I know, he was in no degree active to bring about its construction. After a little sojourn in Florida and on the Island of Cuba, he went to Mexico, no doubt paving the way to the promotion of mutual national interests, and brought about, as he has done wherever he has gone, a more kindly feeling, and one of more intimacy and confidence between those in power. Indifferent in a great degree as to parties and their dominancy, and ignorant of other than what seems to me national interests in the broad sense of the term, I trust that gentlemen who are learned in such matters, and the well-meaning public of whatever party, will pardon a few remarks on questions which I frankly admit have not seriously engaged my attention. Had not circumstances, partly apparent to all, served as a prevention, there are substantial reasons for believing that General Grant would have taken positive action looking to the construction of the Nicaragua Canal, and that a fair statement, laid before the American people, would have brought superabundant capital to execute a work that, even with very low rates of tolls, would be remunerative to a degree ; and, by reason of its relative economy of construction, actually freed from any possible rivalry. How glorious might have been the final days of General Grant had he not swerved from his intended purpose, as expressed in his telegram from Japan, and explicitly reiterated in his letters from San Francisco and Chicago. Even now, the water-way for the traffic of the world across this continent might be an accomplished fact —a grand. work and fitting monument would it have been, through all ages ; a proper culminant for the life of this man of grand ideas and unsullied purpose. What is known now as to final location would have been established in 1880, had the work been taken in hand at that time. Bounteous Nature has extended Lake Nicaragua to within twelve miles of the Pacific coast. From the lake, following a line of seventeen and one-quarter miles in length, admirably located to effect surface drainage, with only one cut of forty-one feet in depth, the rudimentary harbor of Brito is reached. Looking to the eastward, over the magnificent sheet of water known as Lake Nicaragua, its surface lying only one hundred and ten feet RECOLLECTIONS AND LETTERS OF GRANT. 427 above the level of the sea, we find the outlet of the superfluous waters, known as the river San Juan. In strong and steady volume it flows onward towards the Atlantic, its waters clear as crystal, unvexed at all times by floods. Should Nature have brought it as an estuary to within less than twenty miles of Graytown and yet interposed no cuts of great depths, leaving to man to complete the water-ways from sea to sea, where is the dolt who could not see that these water-ways would be made, and soon too, whether by us or by others ? This eastern extension of summit level exists as an actuality only in part, but can be made practically a reality by the expenditure of a sum certainly not exceeding eight millions of dollars. The connection by canalization of this magnificent summit level, extending so nearly from sea to sea, has not an opposing obstacle or difficulty, in the engineering sense of the word. Labor only, and that almost wholly mechanical, is requisite, and that too in as healthy an intertropical country as is known, possessing, in addition, exceptional advantages to ensure satisfactory sanitary conditions throughout, from sea to sea. Of no value whatever would it be to endeavor to trace the influences and the pitfalls by which General Grant was beset and diverted from a cherished purpose, indicated in what has been presented and ably stated in his article on the Nicaragua Canal published in the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW of February, 1881. The closing paragraph is as follows : " I have formed the opinions expressed in this article, not from a hasty consideration of the subject, and not without personal observation. While commanding the army of the United States, my attention was drawn to the importance of the water communication I have here discussed. During my administration of the government, I endeavored to impress upon the country the views I then formed; and I shall feel that I have added one more act of my life to those I have already recorded, if I shall succeed in impressing upon Congress and the people the high value, as a commercial and industrial enterprise, of this great work, which, if not accomplished by Americans, will undoubtedly be accomplished by some of our rivals in power and influence." Throughout the entire article from which the above is taken the intelligent reader will find a wealth of wisdom and of suggestion, closing with the special warning of the consequences which will arise from neglect. Will the legislators of the American people heed it ? The reader may well suppose that the package of letters, ex- 428 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. tracts from which have now been made public for the first time, was put away with an indescribable feeling of sadness. Persons who knew General Grant slightly, and others who never met him, may form from these papers a more definite idea of some of his thoughts and his life, without disguises or concealment. Personally, his wants were of the simplest. Even before his voyage around the world, the ordinary use of liquors, or even of the lightest wines, had been laid aside. To him personally, the plainest house, with abundant light and air, and furnished in the plainest manner, would have been as acceptable as a palace. I have only seen in other persons a rudimentary development of what has seemed to me for years his most remarkable trait : an apparent absence of a feeling of resentment toward those who had maligned and injured him, either through a blind prejudice, or maliciously, to promote their own ends. Let the reader consider whether he knows a single human being, high in position, strong in will, clear in object, and honest in purpose, who has risen to this perfection. Personal recollections, given in a magazine, should not be diverted into other eulogiums to swell the countless number that meet the eye at home and from abroad. Grant's travels had made him akin to all peoples, as the reader may see even in the brief extracts from letters hastily written by him as he journeyed. His trials of his last fifteen months, which came upon him as suddenly as a clap of thunder, have justly excited the compassion of the whole world ; the surrounding facts are so astounding that they actually seem incredible. No one who was ever near General Grant would conceive for a moment that he would have intentionally wronged a human being. His sorrows became the sorrows of humanity around the wide world. Glorious instinct of the human heart that makes all men akin ! No former associate of General Grant would be so unjust to his memory as not to recognize the fact that he had an ambition far above all suspicion. His ambition, above all, was to do what was right. It was engraven on his soul ; it was evidenced in every act of his life, from the cradle to the grave. No more baseless, senseless cries ever vexed the land, and the ears of those who knew General Grant well, than " the danger of the third term ; " that " if he ever got into the White House he would never leave it alive." Nor were these senseless cries believed RECOLLECTIONS AND LETTERS OF GRANT. 429 save by a certain number who seem to believe everything that is uttered vehemently. In the Southern States those who had fought against him, and, on previous elections, either voted against him or had refrained from voting, which was largely the case, had laid aside life-long prejudices, and were more than any others inwardly longing for his nomination. They had, in fact, firmly resolved to support him. A gentleman of high position in the South, who had fought against General Grant, and had refrained from voting when he was a candidate, wrote me confidentially, desiring to know whether he would be a candidate before the convention at Chicago. He asserted most earnestly that, if a candidate, many thousands of men of influence and position would break away from the support of any candidate the Democratic party might name. It is well known to the public that General Grant had no admirer more ardent than Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, and it will be admitted that he was a power in himself throughout the South. Shortly after the termination of the proceedings that placed Mr. Hayes in the Presidential chair, Mr. Stephens told me that many excited Southerners came to him demanding to know what Grant meant by bringing troops to Washington. Was it his purpose to seat Mr. Hayes ? " Not at all," said Mr. Stephens ; " General Grant intends to prevent disorder, and to suppress anarchy, if in his power, should it be necessary." Already it seems forgotten that we owe the memory of General Grant great reverence for his unheralded acts on that occasion. It was a very painful and critical condition. Had a civil war once begun on the right of succession to the Presidency, no human being can say when it would have terminated and what would have been the resulting consequences. It is not at all unlikely that it would have been more bloody and more deplorable than the one lately passed through; for, in the Middle, Western and Northern States, at least, it would have been neighbor against neighbor. The strife would have unloosed the worst elements of society. Thankful we may be that General Grant was equal to the occasion, as Chief Magistrate, in what we may well regard as a fearful crisis. When it was a question of the nomination for a third term, we may believe without a doubt that, had his political friends been willing to take up any other candidate that would have been generally acceptable, General Grant would have been grateful for this action, even though he might be possessed of a thorough con- 430 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. viction that, if nominated, his election would be a foregone conclusion. He must have known that a very large number of his former political enemies in the Southern States were actually longing for his nomination, to enable them to give him an immense spontaneous support. Early in the fall of 1884, a gentleman of Washington received an invitation from General Grant, then in New York, to accompany him up the Hudson River. On the return of this gentleman, he informed me confidentially of the supposed gravity of the ailment of the general. Some months later, the daily papers contained contradictory notices of his condition, and even when the inexorable hand of death was upon him there were cheery reports of his recovery ; then for months messages of grief and pain flew to the four quarters of the globe, and when the sands of life were almost run, as did the brave Manrique of Spanish fame, the dying general may well have said : " 0 Death, no more, no more delay ; My spirit longs to fly away, And be at rest ; The will of Heaven my will shall be— I bow to the divine decree, To God's behest." Death came at last, and the weary body was at rest. Then were heard solemn requiems throughout this broad land, and far beyond, around the wide world, wherever were the habitations of civilized men, again were heard the solemn anthems ; beneath the venerable roofs of ages, through the long dark aisles of saintly places, among the tombs of the great and long-departed, the echoes lingered long in their solemn reverberations. Now they have died away, and their memory is joined to the long procession of the venerated past. DANIEL AMMEN. WASHINGTON, D.C., August 10, 1885 SLANG IN AMERICA. VIEWED freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is the culling and composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for Language in the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so much ; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror. The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the organic Universe, brought up to date ; for all are comprehended in words, and their backgrounds. This is when words become vitalized, and stand for things, as they unerringly and very soon come to do, in the mind that enters on their study with fitting spirit, grasp, and appreciation. Slang, profoundly considered is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain freedom and perennial rankness and protestantism in speech. As the United States inherit by far their most precious possession—the language they talk and write—from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthest removed from American Democracy. Considering Language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakspere's clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in prehistoric times gave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly the same impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally 432 The North American Review. active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize. To make it plainer, it is certain that many of the oldest and solidest words we use, originally generated from the daring and license of slang. In the processes of word-formation, myriads die, but here and there the attempt attracts superior meanings, becomes valuable and indispensable, and lives forever. Thus the term right means literally only straight. Wrong primarily meant twisted, distorted. Integrity meant, oneness. Spirit meant breath, or flame. A supercilious person was one who raised his eyebrows. To insult was to leap against. If you influenced a man, you but flowed into him. The Hebrew word which is translated prophesy meant to bubble up and pour forth as a fountain. The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit of God within him, and it pours forth from him like a fountain. The word prophecy is misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mere prediction; that is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greater work is to reveal God. Every true religious enthusiast is a prophet. Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, the Past as well as the present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. "Those mighty works of art," says Addington Symonds, "which we call languages, in the construction of which whole peoples unconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determined not by individual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations, acting to one end, inherent in the nature of the race -- those poems of pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words, but in living imagery, fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations, which we call Mythologies--these surely are more marvellous in their infantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the races which evolved them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology; the true science of Origins is yet in its cradle." Daring as it is to say so, in the growth of Language it is certain that the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recalling Slang In America. 433 from their nebulous conditions of all that is poetical in the stores of human utterance. Moreover, the honest delving, as of late years, by the German and British workers in comparative philology has pierced and dispersed many of the falsest bubbles of centuries; and will disperse many more. It was long recorded that in Scandinavian mythology the heroes in the Norse Paradise drank out of the skulls of their slain enemies. Later investigation proves the word taken for skulls to mean horns of beasts slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercised over the traces of that feudal custom, by which seigneurs warmed their feet in the bowels of serfs, the abdomen being opened for the purpose? It now is made to appear that the serf was only required to submit his unharmed abdomen as a foot cushion while his lord supped, and was required to chafe the legs of the seigneur with his hands. It is in embryons and childhood, and among the illiterate, we always find the groundwork and start, of this great science, and its noblest products. What a relief most people have in speaking of a man not by his true and formal name, with a "Mister" to it, but by some odd or homely appellative. The propensity to approach a meaning not directly and squarely, but by circuitous styles of expression seems indeed a born quality of the common people every where, evidenced by nick-names and the inveterate determination of the masses to bestow sub-titles, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Always among the soldiers during the Secession War, one heard of "Little Mac" (Gen. McClellan), or of "Uncle Billy" (Gen. Sherman). "The old man" was, of course, very common. Among the rank and file, both armies, it was very general to speak of the different States they came from by their slang names. Those from Maine were called Foxes; New Hampshire, Granite Boys; Massachusetts, Bay Staters; Vermont, Green Mountain Boys; Rhode Island, Gun Flints; Connecticut, Wooden Nutmegs; New York, Knickerbockers; New Jersey, Clam Catchers; Pennsylvania, Logher Heads; Delaware, Muskrats; Maryland, Claw Thumpers; Virginia, Beagles; North Carolina, Tar Boilers; South Carolina, Weasels; Georgia, Buzzards; Louisiana, Creoles; Alabama, Lizzards; Kentucky, Corn Crackers; Ohio, Buckeyes; Michigan, Wolverines; Indiana, Hoosiers; Illinois, Suckers; Missouri, Pukes; Mississippi, Tad Poles; Florida, Fly up the Creeks; Wisconsin, Badgers; Iowa, Hawkeyes; Oregon, Hard Cases. Indeed I am not sure but slang 434 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. names have more than once made Presidents. "Old Hickory," (Gen. Jackson) is one case in point. "Tippecanoe, and Tyler too," another. I find the same rule in the people's conversations everywhere. I heard this among the men of the city horse-cars, where the conductor is often called a "snatcher" (i.e. because his characteristic duty is to constantly pull or snatch the bell-strap, to stop or go on.) Two young fellows are having a friendly talk, and which, says 1st Conductor, " What did you do before you was a snatcher?" Answer of 2d Conductor, "Nailed." (Translation of answer: "I worked as carpenter.") What is a "boom" ? says one editor to another. "Esteemed contemporary," says the other, "a boom is a bulge." "Barefoot whiskey" is the Tennessee name for the undiluted stimulant. In the slang of the New York common restaurant waiters a plate of ham and beans is known as "stars and stripes," codfish balls as "sleeve-buttons," and hash as "mystery." The Western States of the Union are, however, as may be supposed the special areas of slang, not only in conversation, but in names of localities, towns, rivers, &c. A late Oregon traveler says: " On your way to Olympia by rail, you cross a river called the Shookum Chuck; your train stops at places named Newaukum, Tumwater, and Toutle; and if you seek further you will hear of whole counties labelled Wahkiakum, or Snohomish, or Kitsar, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium, and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What man, having the whole American continent to choose from, would willingly date his letters from the county of Snohomish or bring up his children in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think twice before he established himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle is sufficiently barbarous; Stelicoom is no better; and I suspect that the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma because it is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire horror." Then a Nevada paper chronicles the departure of a mining party from Reno: "The toughest set of roosters that ever shook the dust of any town left Reno yesterday for the new mining district of Cornucopia. They came here from Virginia. Among the crowd were four New-York cock-fighters, two Chicago murderers, three Baltimore bruisers, one Philadelphia prize-fighter, four San Francisco hoodlums, three Virginia beats, two Union Pacific SLANG IN AMERICA. 435 roughs, and two check guerrillas." Among the far-west newspapers, have been, or are, The Fairplay (Colorado) Flume, the Solid Muldoon, of Ouray, The Tombstone Epitaph, of Nevada, The Jimplecute, of Texas, and The Bazoo, of Missouri. Shirttail Bend, Whiskey Flat, Puppytown, Wild Yankee Ranch, Squaw Flat, Rawhide Ranch, Loafer's Ravine, Squitch Gulch, Toenail Lake are a few of the names of places in Butte county, Cal. Perhaps indeed no place or term gives more luxuriant illustrations of the fermentation processes I have mentioned, and their froth and specks than our Mississippi and Pacific coast regions, at the present day. Hasty and grotesque as are some of the names, others are of an appropriateness and originality unsurpassable. This applies to the Indian words, which are often perfect. Oklahoma is proposed in Congress for the name of one of our new Territories. Hog-eye, Lick-skillet, Rake-pocket and Steal-easy are the names of some Texan towns. Miss Bremer found among the aborigines the following names: Men's, Horn-point; Round-Wind; Stand-and-look-out; The-Cloud-that-goes-aside; Iron-toe; Seek-the-sun; Iron-flash; Red-bottle; White-spindle; Black-dog; Two-feathers of honor; Gray-grass; Bushy-tail; Thunder-face; Go-on-the-burning-sod; Spirits-of-the-dead. Women's, Keep-the-fire; Spiritual-woman; Second-daughter-of-the-house; Blue-bird. Certainly philologists have not given enough attention to this element and its results, which, I repeat, can probably be found working every where to-day, amid modern conditions, with as much life and activity as in far-back Greece or India, under pre-historic ones. Then the wit - the rich flashes of humor and genius and poetry-darting out often from a gang of laborers, railroad-men, miners, drivers or boatmen! How often have I hovered at the edge of a crowd of them, to hear their repartees and impromptus! You get more real fun from half an hour with them than from the books of all "the American humorists." The science of language has large and close analogies in geological science, with its ceaseless evolution, its fossils, and its numberless submerged layers and hidden strata, the infinite go-before of the present. Or, perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feeders of it, but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life. WALT WHITMAN. STATECRAFT AND PRIESTCRAFT. WHEN the Pharisees, who were opposed to the rule of the heathen Romans over the people of God, and the Herodians, who acknowledged the rule as legitimate, proposed the embarrassing question to Christ: "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?" he answered them with that unerring wisdom which characterizes all his sayings: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's." By this answer he refused to identify himself with either of the political parties, and cut off the suspicion of disloyalty either to the theocracy or to the Roman Government. He neither evaded nor answered the question, but he disposed of it so that nothing more could be said, and the defeated partisans "marveled, and went their way." He drew a clear line of distinction between the secular and the spiritual power, and enjoined loyalty and obedience to both in their proper sphere. He suggests in one single sentence the solution of one of the greatest problems of history. If men had always acted upon this view there would have been little or no conflict between church and state, and the history of Christianity would not be stained with the blood of heretics and dissenters. As man consists of body and soul, and is made both for time and for eternity, God, the absolute Sovereign of the world, established two kinds of government, though which, as his organs, he exercises his sovereignty and rules the nations of the earth. The spiritual government is vested in the church and intrusted with the religious and moral interest of men; the secular government is represented by the state and has charge over the political and material affairs of men. The one looks to their eternal, the other to their temporal welfare. The one is intended to make men good Christians and to prepare them for heaven, the other to make them good citizens and to protect them in all their earthly STATECRAFT AND PRIESTCRAFT. 437 relations. Without civil government there can be no security for life and property; even a bad government is better than no goverment or anarchy. Without religious and moral training we would be no more than rational animals. The state represents the law and uses forcible means, if necessary, to secure obedience it knows only justice, no mercy except in the exercise of pardon. The church represents the Gospel, and, agreeably to its constitution and design, employs the moral means of instruction, persuasion, and example in the ruling and training of its members. Church and state are both of divine origin. They proceed from the same God, and are the two arms of his power. The civil magistrate and judge are the two arms of his power. The civil magistrate and judge in his official capacity is clothed with divine majesty, and acts by divine divine right as much as the clergyman in the pulpit and at the altar. The state belongs to the dispensation of God the Father, the church to the dispensation of God the Son. The Father draws to the Son; political events prepare the way for religion. The whole history of the ancient world was a preparation for the coming of Christ. The church, though not of this world, is yet in this world, and consequently also in the state; while the state, on the other hand, is indispensable for the peaceable existence and successful operation of the church. The law was and is still a schoolmaster to lead men to the Gospel, and the life on earth is intended as a preparation for heaven. Good Christians will always be also good citizens, and religion is the best foundation for public and private virtue. Church and state, then, are distinct, like soul and body, but not antagonistic. They supplement each other, and, together, comprehend the totality of human interests. They act and react upon each other, they support and benefit each other, and are indispensable to each other's existence and prosperity in the present order of things. They should therefore live together in peace on the basis of a recognition of their mutual rights, duties and interests. Both flourish best in freedom and friendly independence. We have here, in brief, anticipated the American theory, but it can only be properly understood and vindicated as the result of a long historical progress. Church and state may either be separated or united. In the former case, the separation may be either hostile or friendly; in the latter case, the church or the state may be the controlling power. In the history of Christianity these four relations have gradually unfolded themselves in the successive ages and among 438 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. different nations: first hostile separation with persecution, then the rule of the church over the state, next the rule of the state over the church, and last peaceful independence and co-operation. The first relation was that of antagonism and persecution. It prevailed during the first three centuries till the reign of Constantine the Great. There was no hostility on the part of the church against the state; on the contrary, even under the tyrannical rule of Nero, Paul exhorted the Christians in Rome to obey the powers that be as the ordinance of God. In the first written prayer that has come down to us, in the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, there is a touching petition for the safety and prosperity of the Roman Government at a time when Domitian persecuted the Christians and practised all manner of cruelty. The Apologists of the second and third centuries point to the fact that the Christians pray for their rulers, pay their taxes, and are in all respects dutiful and orderly citizens, except that they could not share in the idolatrous rites connected with public offices and military spectacles. The hostility proceeded from the state, or rather from the pagan religion that controlled the state, and was interwoven with all the laws, institutions, traditions, and habits of the people. The old Roman Empire was very tolerant of individual, even atheistic opinions, and of old national forms of worship in the conquered provinces, as far as these did not interfere with the safety and interests of the state religion. But this toleration was not applicable to Christianity, because it claimed to be the only true religion for the whole human race, gathered its followers from Jews and gentiles, civilized and barbarians, and threatened all other religions with ultimate absorption. Hence the Christians, as soon as the distinctive character of their creed came to be understood, were not allowed to build churches, to hold property, to assemble in public, and efforts were made from time to time to exterminate their religion from the empire. It is a remarkable fact that the persecuting emperors (except Nero and Domitian) were among the best emperors- Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Decius, Diocletian- because they were most concerned to maintain the state on the basis of the ancestral religion. They persecuted in ignorance rather than in malice. It was good for Christianity to be exposed to this fiery trial, for it furnished the best opportunity of developing the passive virtues, of returning good for evil, of showing love STATECRAFT AND PRIESTCRAFT 439 to the enemy, and of providing its divine origin and indestructible character. This unnatural antagonism ceased with the conversion of Constantine, the downfall of paganism, and the elevation of Christianity to the throne of the Caesars. It was one of the grandest triumphs ever accomplished, after a conflict of three hundred years, and a triumph accomplished by purely moral means without shedding a drop of blood, except the blood of "the noble army of martyrs," which was the seed of the church. The second relation is the hierarchical principle, or the rule of the church over the state. It reached its perfection in the Latin Church during the middle ages. It is embodied in the canon law and the Decretals. Gregory VII. marks the beginning, Innocent III. the height, and Boniface VIII. the decline of the papal hierarchy. It was a reproduction of the Jewish theocracy on a larger scale, and a carnal anticipation of the millennial reign of Christ. It maintains the superiority of the sacerdotal over the royal office, of priestcraft over kingcraft. The popes compared the church to the sun, the state to the moon, which borrows her light from the sun. They claimed the two swords, the spiritual and the secular, and the right to make and unmake kings and to absolve subjects from the oath of obedience. At a period when the clergy possessed all the learning, intelligence, and moral power, the hierarchy was a wholesome check upon the military despotism of savage or semibarbarous rulers. The church was the chief light in the dark ages, and the mother of modern civilization. She produced the Christian state and brought the influence of justice and humanity to bear upon legislation. She abolished cruel laws and institutions, and secured protection to literary, benevolent, and charitable institutions. But when the different states and nationalities of Europe were sufficiently civilized to govern themselves, the rule of priestcraft had accomplished its mission, and became tyrannical and oppressive. The third relation is the government of the church by the civil power. It is called the Ceasaro-papal or Erastian theory. It dates from the Byzantine empire. Constantine the Great changed his religion, but not his views of absolute power. The head of the empire was also the Pontifex Maximus of the religion of the empire. He called the first oecumenical council, which decided the fundamental dogmatic question of the eternal divinity of Christ, and he considered himself a bishop of bishops in the external affairs 440 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW of the church. But it was difficult to draw the line of distinction between the external and internal affairs. His successors on the throne of Constantinople freely, and often arbitrarily, interfered with the internal as well as external affairs of the church during the doctrinal controversies of the Nicene, post-Nicene, and subsequent ages, and made their influence powerfully felt in the synodical definitions of the dogmas of the Trinity, the Person of Christ, and the worship of images. The imperial headship of the church passed from the Byznantine rulers to the Russian czars, who consider themselves the successors of the former. But their power is checked by the stationary character of the Eastern church, which adheres with unswerving tenacity to the seven ecumenical councils of old. The Erastian principle was asserted by the Protestant princes of the Reformation period, who assumed the rights of supreme bishops (sumnis episcopi), and claimed the right of reformation (jus reformationis) in doctrine as well as in discipline. They acted on the maxim that the owner of the region is the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus religio). This is the territorial system of church government. It was reluctantly conceded by the reformers, especially in those countries, as Germany and Switzerland, where the bishops opposed the Reformation; but they seriously regretted the abuses and the rapacity of the princes and civil magistrates in secularizing ecclesiastical property, often for their personal benefit. The system is an invasion of the sacred domain of conscience, which belongs exclusively to God, and not to any earthly sovereign. It restricts religious liberty, and justifies persecution of dissenters and non-conformists. It reduces the church to the humiliating condition of being the servant of the state or a department of civil government. In Prussia the Minister of Public Worship is also Minister of Public Education and of Medical Affairs. He is the agent of the king, and has in his hands all clerical and academic appointments. This system breeds hypocrisy or infidelity. It becomes an anomaly in the same proportion as the civil magistrate looses its confessional character, or exchanges one creed for another. Thus Elector Augustus of Saxony sold his Lutheran faith for the crown of Poland (1697), but still remained the head of the Lutheran Church. The Queen of England is supreme governor of the Episcopal Church of England, but she is also, nominally at least, the head of the established Presbyterian STATECRAFT AND PRIESTCRAFT 441 Church of Scotland, and as Empress of India she is the protector of the Hindoo religion as well as of the various Christian missions. The state-church system assumes that all citizens belong to the state church, except the Jews, who must be tolerated because they cannot be exterminated. But this assumption is more and more destroyed by the growing number of those who in any modern state profess other creeds or reject all creeds. Thus the bond of union in Europe is loosened with every concession made to dissenters, and the tendency of things is toward separation of church and state. Disestablishment has taken place in Ireland (1869), and will follow before long in Scotland, and at a more distant future also in England. On the Continent, free churches are multiplying to escape the control of a civil government which has become neutral or hostile to evangelical and orthodox religion, as is the case especially in Switzerland and Holland. In the new German empire no religious tests are required, and the imperial diet has nothing to do with religion. In this respect Europe is becoming Americanized. North America was destined to become a hospitable asylum for all fugitives from religious or political oppression in the Old World. In several colonies, especially in Massachusetts and Virginia, church and state were originally united as in Europe, and continued to be as long as the population was homogenous. In other colonies other creeds prevailed. The Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Baptists of Rhode Island favored religious liberty from the beginning, and never persecuted. When the colonies united in the War of Independence, and succeeded in establishing a national government, they excluded religious tests, and forbade Congress, by the first amendment to the Constitution, from ever making a law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This enactment puts all churches on a par before the law, and equally under the protection of the general Government. The separation of the two powers therefore differs widely from the ante-Nicene relation when the state was hostile to Christianity. The American Government of its own free motion not only grants toleration, but, what is far better, secures full liberty to the exercise of religion in any form at all compatible with public order and peace. The liberty of one church is the liberty of all. State and church are equally self-supporting and self-governing, equally independent, each in its own sphere, and equally helpful to each other - the state by protecting the church in her property VOL. CXLI.-NO. 348. 30 442 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW and rights, the church by strengthening the moral foundations of the state, and training the citizens to private and public virtue. This is the American theory and practice. It may not be the ultimate settlement of all the vexed questions involved in the relation, and we shall probably have a good deal of trouble yet with the Mormons, with marriage legislation, and with the public schools, where the civil and the ecclesiastical interests come in contact. But it is the only possible relation with us, and has so far worked very well. We will only point in conclusion to the advantages of the separation of church and state over the other systems which have prevailed or still prevail in Europe. The American system secures full religious liberty ; that is, not only liberty of conscience, which even despots cannot forbid, but liberty of public worship and organized action according to the dictates of conscience. Such liberty is either forbidden or entailed wherever the two forms of government are united. But it has become an essential element in modern civilization, and is making irresistible progress in Europe. It develops liberality for the support and spread of religion at home and abroad, while state-churchism makes men rely on the help of the government. In this country, the multiplication of churches, colleges, and benevolent institutions keeps pace with the immense progress of the country ; but in the rapidly increasing capitals of Europe it is next to impossible to build new churches by individual effort, and the nominally Christian magistrates become more and more indifferent to their duty toward the religion that they profess and are pledged to support. In Germany the government gives the people no chance to govern themselves ; the governing is all done by the king, the Cultusminister, the consistories, and the superintendents ; and where synods are allowed, their best decisions may be set aside by royal authority. The church has no voice in the election of a pastor, or of the professors of theology in the universities. The continental clergy are well educated and learned, but far behind the American clergy in organizing power, and in legislative and administrative ability. Freedom and independence are the best conditions for growth and prosperity, both to church and state. History is a progress of liberty and self-government. Philip Schaff. STYLE AND THE MONUMENT ----------- Among the many suggestions for a Grant Monument, and the rather confused gropings of public opinion as to where and what it should be, there has been a dangerous silence as to those large underlying considerations which ought to govern and guide the choice. One sees often and hears daily the demand that the tomb shall be "strictly American." "Give us," they say "something characteristically American." Now, the only "strictly American" monuments are Indian earth mounds and Central American buildings. The latter are impressive and elaborate enough for a great memorial purpose, but their primitive design and archaic embellishments render them as unfit for nineteenth-century American uses as a Japanese temple or a Cambodian pagoda. We are an unartistic people, with neither an indigenous nor an adopted art language in which to render grand thoughts. We are ignorant of the meaning and use of style--that spontaneous but concurrent mode which races of men have devised and accepted as the fittest expression of their race ideals. Till there is an American race there cannot be an American style. So and so many millions of English, Germans, Irish, Africans, Italians, and Chinamen, getting prosperous and fat on a rich new continent, may, for the purposes of popular expression, be called a people ; bound loosely together by a system of government they become a nation, but they do not make a race, and until they do, all talk of an American style is empty and idle. To demand a strictly American monument is about equivalent to inviting the eulogist General Grant to deliver his oration in a strictly American language. Not only have we no American style of architectural art, but there is not the smallest sign of the birth of a style or even of the desire for one. In later periods, when the composite elements of American populations are melted down into one race alloy, when there are no 444 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. more Irish or Germans, Negroes and English, but only Americans, belonging to one defined American race, that race will become conscious of its own ideals and aspirations, its own sentiments and emotions, and, as all other great races have done before it, will find its own fit means of expression. Just now we are as far from possessing style as the Germans ; rather farther than the Digger Indians. Artists we have whose work shows much personal originality, but there it all ends, and ends far short of a style. Not only are we innocent of all style of our own, but we are phenomenally ignorant and obtuse as to the requirements of the styles of other races and ages. We use them only to abuse them ; we adopt them only to mutilate and burlesque them. Our all but universal ignorance and misuse of art has its origin in the absence of that delicate sentiment of what is fit and appropriate which lies at the very roots of style. There must be a sensitive consciousness of the significance and relation of leading lines, in short, for composition, and an instinct for the harmony or inharmony of details, before an artist or a people can rightly use style. From Bangor to San Diego we seem never weary of contriving for ourselves belongings which are artistically discordant and customs which are wholly inappropriate. Perhaps a few instances may serve to make the writer's meaning a little clearer. The first great achievement of the American people was the Declaration of Independence, and this solemn, momentous act of national manhood has been celebrated for more than a century. There were a hundred ways, graceful and grave, in which Independence Day might have been commemorated and rendered sacred in the minds of our rather pert and unrespecting youth. Did we devise a manner of celebration noble and appropriate ? Did we even invent something "strictly American ?" No ! We went to the terrestrial and intellectual antipodes and imported a Chinese jollification by fire-crackers, deliberately choosing to offer as our tribute to Independence a senseless pandemonium of petty snappings, and the incense of evil smell. Then we took a hundred years to build a monument for the great soldier and statesman whom we delight to call the Father of his Country. And at last, produced-what ? Something whose inmost significance is essentially appropriate ? On the contrary, we have dedicated to Washington an obelisk-that symbol which STYLE AND THE MONUMENT. 445 pious worshipers of "bulls and tomcats" upon the Nile had consecrated as the special emblem of Generation, and the particular privilege of certain erotic potentates. It is idle to say that the obelisk has been habilitated and purged by its association with respectable graveyards, for its misuse there does not in the least save it from what Mr. Gladstone calls the "flagrant symbolism" made perpetual by its dedication to Osiris. For style in music alone we inherit from our Teutonic forebears a certain appreciation, in all other modes of artistic expression we are deaf, dumb, and blind. We are not quite like the Shah of Persia, who was profoundly touched by the tuning up of the great orchestra in Albert Hall, and bored to extinction by the rich poetry of the fifth symphony ; yet in the other arts we seem positively to enjoy the most egregious discord and to be unconscious of real harmonies. For instance, so universal a thing as a drawing-room is, with the rarest exception, a mere wreck of styles, a maelstrom into which all sorts of works of decorative and pure art are drawn and sucked down together into mutual ruin. Our rooms are like the tuning of the Shah's orchestra-a noisy discord of notes, each one perhaps tolerable in itself, but wretched when sounded together in violation of the fixed laws of harmony. There may be a dozen good drawing-rooms in America. Into one of these-in a Fifth Avenue palace-the writer stepped with astonishment a few months ago. A white, Louis XIV. oak room, with a boiserie of the chaste and exquisite carving ; a true, authentic example of the very acme of French decorative skill ; as fine a piece of the elegant wealth of ornament, with lively lightness, as the epoch of the Grand Monarque ever produced, and actually here in New York ! The ceiling is perfectly in keeping ; each dessus de porte the charming work of a good painter ; the movables and stuffs strictly de style. Here was the symphony, and not the tum-tum of the tuning-up jargon, and it occurred to the writer to see what society in general thought of it. One group of bediamonded women were unanimous that "it wasn't a patch on Mrs. ----'s boudoir." Now, Mrs. ----'s boudoir is nothing but the disjecta membra of a once important bank account ; it reeks money, it exudes costliness-very likely the chairs are stuffed with curled coupons-but to an art-loving mind it is a dreary, poverty-smitten waste. Another fair creature said the Louis XIV. 446 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. room was "cold as a palace." The verdict was unanimous. No one cared for the real poem in decoration ; every one preferred the glories of the neo-Pullmanic boudoir. What are you going to do with such a people ? In loftier matters, too, than decoration, we are hopelessly obtuse to the appropriate. Lately a statue of the "Puritan" was unveiled in Central Park with the ordinary amount of eloquence and ceremony which from time to time marks the conversion of that sylvan retreat into a sort of Madame Toussaud's. This particular work seems to the writer to be well up to Mr. Ward's high mark of excellence, even to possess some very unusual merits ; but the ceremony of unveiling would have thrown the whole "Mayflower" into fits. The solemn Puritan quenched within his English home-loving heart that fire of local attachment which is aflame in every true Briton, and came a sad and weary pilgrim to the inhospitable shore of a howling wilderness. To free himself from the English Church on one hand, and the freethinkers of his day on the other, he turned his back on all the charm of England, and accepted what even now can hardly be called gay, a life in Massachusetts. At last, here in the very capital of our dear bourgeois civilization, we erect a statue of this austere personage of two hundred years ago. We are not given to self-denials ourselves--we don't particularly care to make even small sacrifices for religion--we have changed all that; but one fine day we find ourselves ready with a fine work of art, appropriately swathed in its so-called veil, and then what do we do? We commit the ceremonies to an EPISCOPAL BISHOP and an AGNOSTIC !--the very two characters the poor Puritan went into banishment to get rid of. If we were to set up a statue of St. Thomas Aquinas to-morrow, ten to one we should ask Bob Ingersoll to make the oration, and invite Aimée to sing " Un mari sage." It has been said of us by transatlantic critics that Americans have talent, but never genius. This is most unfair; if for nothing else, we have a positive and unrivaled genius for the inappropriate. There is something wrong about the brain and nerve of a people who so signally lack all idea of the fitness of things, of what goes with what harmoniously, of what should and what should not be brought together. We show this failing in every department of life, in morals, in matter of the intellect, and in STYLE AND THE MONUMENT. 447 every possible phase of the pure or practical arts, in society, in dress, in taste, in everything. And for just this reason the proposal to make a great work of art gives to all artistic Americans the cold shudders. We know that we are in danger of a monster of conglomerate nature, something to cause years of mortification until public opinion shall wake up and demolish it. Let us for once approach the subject of a public monument with a little modesty. It might be most becoming to us. We don't know--we never tried it. Here we are about to build a great work, which, two thousand years hence, will be held to express the tribute of a people already rich and numerous, to the first soldier of a great war. It will reflect our place in civilization, our material status, our artistic judgment ; in short, it will stamp us as the monuments of other lands and civilization, mark the power and beauty or weak ugliness of their national spirit. Our choice lies between architecture and sculpture, or a union of both arts. Sculpture alone, even at colossal dimensions, is incapable of the solidity and breadth of mass desirable for the tribute of fifty millions of people. Architecture only can achieve the grand and stately proportions, the large tranquility an permanence of a truly great monument. The writer assumes, therefore, that those who are to choose for us will make the memorial a work of architecture, however much they may leave of the subordinate embellishments to sculpture or painting, or glass-making, wood-carving, or mosaic. And it is ardently to be desired that the deciding authorities should reflect most seriously on the various architectural styles, and the social life of which they were the just and fit expressions, in order that they shall choose that mode which most nearly harmonizes with our American history and ideals. First of all, let us hope that they will select a style among those which have culminated since the Christian era. This is Anno Domini, not the period of Thotmes II. We do not live in the soft Nilotic air and the dark voluptuous gloom of the sensual Egyptian religion. Nor is there in our type of mind and life the least affinity with the classic Greeks. They were a subtle, metaphysical people, satirical but poetic, full of doubt and fuller of belief ; yet, above all, positively inspired with a love and comprehension of art, with the most delicate and sublimated sense of its unities and its sacred requirements. 448 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. If the average Greek gentleman of the time of, say Praxiteles, should land at the Battery and make his way up Broadway, we can fancy his sufferings. It should seem that we had frozen our fingers too often in experimenting with the cold beauty of the Greek in New England villages to care to try it again. Behold a colorless little Massachusetts hamlet ; the bare boughs of its elms traced against a stone-gray winter sky, which has been carded into long, horizontal lines by the teeth of the East wind. A prim little Puritan maiden, sharp as a stock-broker, and with an unabridged dictionary of a mind, trips along between parallel banks of snow, and briskly mounts the steps of a white-pine Parthenon, the residence of her father, the leading deacon in the Second Congregational Church over the way. This family have lived in its classic structure for two generations, utterly unconscious of the pitiless humor of their situation. People with the smallest shred of sense of appropriateness would have torn down their Greek temple, or, being Yankees, sold it piecemeal for reputable kindling-wood. Let us have no Greek temple on the Riverside Drive. When we sit in white kitons in the cool of the day, within the classic shade of Jones' Wood, to discuss and speculate on the essence of tragic love, and, if baffled, adjourn to consult the oracle in Hoboken, it will be time to construct a temple of Niké Apteros over our warrior dead. The Renaissance certainly is better suited to sumptuous civic and domestic uses than to a great memorial ; it lends itself to the town-hall and the chateau, but it lacks the unity and grandeur, the deep-rooted power needful for a great tomb. The ornament is forever calling the eye away from the mass, and even the ornament is inferior to that of other styles. Such a splendid example as the palace in Seville, where the rich, freely drawn plateresco ornaments are massed on a building which inherits something of the solidity of Roman Spain, fails to hold a permanent place in one's heart. Of modern architects only the French can be said to have devised style, and their charming creations are too gay and bright with Gallic levity to be applicable to mortuary purposes. It is the style in which to house a pretty and witty woman, not to cover in the ashes of a hero. STYLE AND THE MONUMENT. 449 The choice would seem to lie between Gothic and Romanesque. It seems to the writer that this is neither the age nor people to meddle with Gothic art. To do Gothic work requires a Gothic heart, a Gothic head, and a Gothic hand. We are sophisticated, blasé, indifferent to nature, and conventional to the last degree. The men who awoke from the sleep of the dark ages and suddenly broke loose from the monastic authority, prerogative, and precedent, and within fifty years created a style and carried it to the consummate flower of its whole life, were simple, direct, and religious. They made a passionate appeal direct to nature to help them in their new ideal of ornamentation, and she showered her favors upon them. Of Gothic architecture we have done little more than to cobble up some unsuccessful plagiarisms in the way of churches, and to nail a few rather thin boards together into sad little suburban villas, having a certain sanctimony of English perpendicular windows. It has remained for England to demonstrate the inability of the modern mind to grasp the Gothic. Witness the vain repetition (as bad in art as in prayer) and long-drawn monotony of Westminster Palace, with its un-Gothic sameness of façade after façade. However, let us speak tenderly and humanely of poor Britain, for her crimes against the Gothic have met with the fullness of retribution in the Albert Memorial, a pretentious work only valuable as a warning to teach how a large idea can be belittled in execution. The colossal fire-gilt statue of the late Prince Consort sits under a lofty pinnacled canopy of iron. The figure, like most British sculpture, is graceless, inanimate, and devoid of all character save a certain well-nourished, after-dinnerish, Philistine placidity. Overhead the architectural design is crude as to its general mass, and loaded with coarsely designed, mechanical-looking ornamentation. Not only are the details wanting in all that nervous vim and sharp autographic character which is the joy of real Gothic, but they are unnecessarily vulgarized by a "swell" ostentation of gilt and a blunder of ignorant color. Fairly good work may be seen in certain portions of the relief frieze which surround the platform, but its merits are obscured by four allegorical groups which travesty respectively the four continents and resemble nothing so much as the triumphal entry of Barnum's circus into a provincial town. Ah, happy England ! As elsewhere the ivy hides under its 450 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. green compassion the multitude of your sins against art, so in London the blessed fog, a mercy in gray, as Mr. Whistler might truly call it, wraps its soft mystery around the great monument of Uxor. There is no particular reason given why miracles are never encored, nor is there any valid reason why a true Gothic artist might not appear on earth again suddenly, say in Harlem, only so far he has not. Even if he did, it is very questionable whether his style would be truly appropriate for the tomb of an American general of the nineteenth century. The phrase of national life and art to which we most nearly approach, the intellectual bent most akin to ours, is that of the middle periods of the Roman Empire. We are far more Roman than English; indeed, the most extraordinary feature of the American is his un-Englishness. The chief experiences of the Roman people were what ours have been -- war, trade, and sudden expansion into national greatness, an expansion so rapid and immense as to overshadow and mar the serenity and order of social like. Material prosperity and political administration were the leading pursuits. Rome and America have loved luxury and pomp. Each civilization might be called a political success: both must be judged social failures. Rome loved the big; it seemed in harmony with the prodigious growth of Roman populations and the gigantic spread of the imperial system. Size, brute mass, the big figures of the census are our pride. Like the Romans, we adore quantity. The splendid expansion of the Roman Empire gave an impetus to the production of architectural monuments in which bigness was realized at the occasional cost of greatness. In that they showed their inferior art perception to the Greeks, who only asked of their craftsmen greatness, rarely exacting bigness. American civilization and taste, American life and problems, are singularly Roman. Discussions in Roman history as to the ratios of the precious metals, and the endless assertions that the disturbance of the stability of those rations was due to the appreciation of gold on the one hand or to the decline in value of silver on the other sound tiresomely like the struggle of western Congressmen and "the Scholar in Politics" here and to-day. Monopoly and administrative reform brought about party changes then as now. In short, to no people or art, to no system of public monuments, to no canons of taste or crystallization of styles, can we turn and find ourselves less strangers than among Roman works. There alone STYLE AND THE MONUMENT. 451 are monuments adequate to express our thoughts, splendid enough to reach our ideals. Grant himself was not far removed from the type of the great Roman captain. Simple and direct, uncomplicated by the high- strung self-consciousness of the present age, of a singularity objective mind, free from the versatile intellectuality of the men who are governing and controlling Europe to-day, he went to his battles and conquests with the absorbed directness of a soldier of the second century. What, then, could be more fitting for the plain, material, American people to erect to this large-minded, but simple-minded hero, than the sort of monument which the Romans reared to their great dead? The designer of the Memorial, if he be a true architect, will find himself confronted with a sufficiently noble task, and he will derive additional inspiration from the chosen site on Riverside Drive. He will be building for thousands of years on a great spot. Soon the rising tide of houses will pour in a broad advancing wave over the whole island, and the Drive will be one of the finest civic displays in the world. The monument will have the good fortune of being visible and approachable from all sides, and no design will be fitting which does not oppose to all views fronts of equal value. This would seem to exclude a triumphal arch, either colossal like the Arc de l'Etoile, or in the more modest but equally effective proportions of that of Constantine, which, if placed with the axis of its opening to the drive, would be fine and noble from the north or south, but poor and meaningless from the east and from the river. A column like that of Trajan offers a certain probable artistic safety, as the scope for degrading and disgracing design is reduced almost to the minimum; but no column possesses a shadow of the grandeur of a great round building. Perfect unity and the equal grandeur from all axes of view is only attainable by a round structure, for even a pyramid, otherwise symmetrical, is singularly changed in its perspective as the light and shadow follow one another from face to face. The present Castle of San Angelo, which is the tomb of Hadrian, and was designed by that imperial architect for his own mausoleum, is an instance of the air of power and indestructibleness which 452 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW a broad, low, cylindrical structure possesses. Instances of similar round Roman tubes, though usually in hopeless ruin, are abundant enough. Whenever one sees these great stone drums, whether projected against a lighted sky, or with the dark girdling graduation of a day-time shadow, or burning in the east under attack of the level spears of the setting sun, they are eloquent of strength, sublime simplicity, and all but eternal permanence. Hadrian's tomb was once splendid with incrusting marble, rich with circling column and statue, and graceful with its great bronze fir-cone, towering aloft against the purple darkness of the Roman sky; yet after sixteen hundred years of fierce vicissitudes, with its statues trampled under Gothic feet, its marbles flung down and broken, it stands a mere naked drum of masonry, yet one of the grand structures of the world. Round Roman forms have the unique merit of concentrating all their effects in one single idea: the eye and the memory hold but one impression. Within the limits of the circular plan is room for abundant choice of style. Classic temples like that of Hercules (the so-called Vesta) in Rome, or the richer fragment at Tivoli, offer a type of the Greco-Roman structure capable of the acme of marble beauty, but unfit, by reason of the extinction of the classic spirit, for present use. The great solid cylinders, like Hadrian's tomb, make attainable the highest expression of dignity and permanence, and are adapted to abundant sculptural adornment. Yet even this type, with all its grandeur, is associated with a mode of structure which has been outgrown by the mechanical advances of modern civilization. This is still the age of bricks, but is also the day of Bessemer beams and of glass. So, while the ideas and forms of imperial monuments seen most fitting and available for us, the technical advantages of modern architectural engineering ought not to be sacrificed to any archaeological servility of treatment. Fortunately there exists the Romanesque style of architecture, which is not only a lineal descendant of the pure Roman style, but admirable adapted to the modernization of the great Roman forms. There is nothing in the round Roman motive which is not directly and readily expressible by the Romanesque, nor is their any wealth of decoration beyond its resources. It welcomes iron and glass, it is capable of large, massive surfaces of unbroken masonry, and permits the abundant admission of window openings. 453 STYLE AND THE MONUMENT. It covers at once the antique and the modern. It possesses all that is grandest in the Roman combination of wall and arch and pier, and inherits an abundant wealth of ornament which came down the full, yet turbid stream of oriental imagination and was filtered through the clarifying intelligence of the Byzantine Greeks. What therefore seems to the writer the most fitting tribute of the American people, and the grandest possible monument for General Brant, is a round Roman tomb of noble dimensions treated as to its details in Romanesque style. ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. PART II. THE second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress convened on the first Monday of December 1861. The Senators and Representatives of the rebellious States were no longer with us. The rumblings of treason, deep and significant, were everywhere heard. What was to be the outcome no one could tell. Anxiety and sadness say enthroned in both Houses, but there was faith unshaken and courage unsubdued. A state of things existed well calculated to shake the stoutest hearts. The loyal members of both Senate and House were closely organized to concert measures to meet the appalling emergencies that confronted them. It was determined that each House should appoint one of its members to form a committee to watch the current of events and discover as far as possible the intentions and acts of the rebels. This committee of "Public Safety," as it might be called, was a small one -only two members, Governor Grimes, the Senator from Iowa, on the part of the Senate, and myself on the part of the House. Clothed with full powers, we at once put ourselves in communication with General Scott, the head of the army, with head-quarters at Washington, and Chief-of-Police Kennedy, of New York City, a loyal and true man, with a skill unsurpassed by a Fouché or a Vidocque. He at once sent us some of his most skillful and trusted detectives ; and earnestly, loyally, and courageously they went to work to unravel the plots and schemes set on foot to destroy us. And never was detective work more skillfully and faithfully done, not only in Washington, but in Baltimore and Richmond and Alexandria. They were all good rebels ; they had long beards, and wore slouched hats and seedy coats ; they chewed tobacco and smoked cheap cigars ; damned the Yankees and drank bad whiskey ; and they obtained a great deal of valuable information in respect to hostile plans and schemes. ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. 455 As the 4th of March drew near, what occupied our most anxious thought was, how Mr. Lincoln could get to Washington and be inaugurated. Another committee was formed, one from each House, to look after that matter. Governor Seward was the Senate member, and I was put on on the part of the House, for the reason, perhaps, that I was from Illinois, a known personal friend of the President, who had been in close correspondence with him all winter. Associating ourselves together, we came to the conclusion that everything must be done with the most profound secrecy. Governor Seward, his son Frederic W. Seward, subsequently his Assistant Secretary of State, and myself were the only persons in Washington who had any knowledge whatever of Mr. Lincoln's proposed movements. That there was a conspiracy in Baltimore to assassinate him as he should pass through, there can be no reasonable doubt. We hoped he might be able to come through in the day-time from Philadelphia, taking a train secretly and cutting the wires, so that his departure could not be known. But General Scott's detectives in Baltimore had developed such a condition of things, that Governor Seward thought that the President-elect and his friends in Philadelphia should be advised in regard thereto, and on the nights of the 22d of February he sent his son Frederic W. over to Philadelphia to consult with them. Till now we had believed the President would come over from Philadelphia on the train leaving there at noon of the 23d. In the mean time the President had promised to run up to Harrisburg to attend a reception of the Pennsylvania Legislature at twelve o'clock on that day. Up to this time the situation had been fully discussed by the friends of Mr. Lincoln, in the light of all the information received, but no particular programme agreed upon. It was not until the party started for Harrisburg the next morning that the best method of getting to Washington was finally talked over. Mr. Lincoln had previously had a conversation with the detective, Pinkerton, and Mr. Frederic W. Seward in regard to condition of things at Baltimore. The Hon. Norman B. Judd, of Chicago, one of the most conspicuous and trusted friends of Mr. Lincoln, who had accompanied the party from Springfield, suggested a plan which, after full discussion by Mr. Lincoln and all his friends present, was agreed upon and successfully carried out. This plan, as is generally known, was that after the dinner which Governor Curtin had tendered to him had been finished, at six o'clock in the 456. THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. afternoon, he should take a special car and train from Harrisburg to Philadelphia to intercept the night train from New York to Washington. The telegraph wires from Harrisburg were all cut, so there could be no possible telegraphic connection with the outside world. The connection was made at Philadelphia. Mr. Lincoln was transferred to the Washington train without observation, to arrive at his destination on time the next morning without the least miscarriage, as will be state hereafter. On the afternoon of the 23d, Mr. Seward came to my seat in the House of Representatives and told me he had no information from his son nor any one else in respect of Mr. Lincoln's movements, and that he could have none, as the wires were all cut ; but he thought it very probable he would arrive in the regular train from Philadelphia, and he suggested that we should meet at the depot to receive him. We were promptly on hand ; the train arrived in time, and with strained eyes we watched the descent of the passengers. But there was no Mr. Lincoln among them ; though his arrival was by no means certain, yet we were much disappointed. But as there was no telegraphic connection, it was impossible for us to have any information. It was no use to speculate--sad, disappointed, and under the empire of conflicting emotions we separated to go to our respective homes, but agreeing to be at the depot on the arrival of the New York train the next morning before daylight, hoping either to meet the President or get some information as to his movements. I was on hand in season, but to my great disappointment Governor Seward did not appear. I planted myself behind one of the great pillars in the old Washington and Baltimore depot where I could see and not be observed. Presently the train came rumbling in on time. It was a moment of great anxiety to me. There has been a great deal printed in the newspapers about Mr. Lincoln's arrival in Washington, and about the "Scotch cap" and "bid shawl" he wore through Baltimore, etc., etc., most of which is mere stuff. I propose now to tell about his arrival at Washington from my own personal knowledge--what I saw with my own eyes and what I heard with my own ears, not the eyes and ears of some one else, As I have stated, I stood behind the pillar awaiting the arrival of the train. When it came to a stop I watched with fear and trembling to see the passengers descend. I saw every car emptied, and there was no Mr. Lincoln. I was well-nigh in despair, and when about to leave I saw slowly emerge from the ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. 457 last sleeping-car three persons. I could not mistake the long, lank form of Mr. Lincoln, and my heart bounded with joy and gratitude. He had on a soft low-crowned hat, a muffler around his neck, and a short bob-tailed overcoat. Any one who knew him at that time could not have failed to recognize him at once, but I must confess he looked more like a well-to-do farmer from one of the back towns of Jo Davies's county coming to Washington to see the city, take out his land warrant and get the patent for his farm, than the President of the United States. The only persons that accompanied Mr. Lincoln were Pinkerton, the well-known detective, recently deceased, and Ward H. Lamon. When they were fairly on the platform, and a short distance from the car, I stepped forward and accosted the President : "How are you, Lincoln ?" At this unexpected and rather familiar salutation the gentlemen were apparently somewhat startled, but Mr. Lincoln, who had recognized me, relieved them at once by remarking in his peculiar voice : "This is only Washburne!" Then we all exchanged congratulations, and walked out to the front of the depot, where I had a carriage in waiting. Entering the carriage (all four of us), we drove rapidly to Willard's Hotel, entering on Fourteenth Street, Before it was fairly daylight. The porter showed us into the little receiving-room at the head of the stairs, and at my direction went to the office to have Mr. Lincoln assigned a room. We had not been in the hotel more than two minutes before Governor Seward hurriedly entered, much out of breath, and somewhat chagrined to think he had not been up in season to be at the depot of the arrival of the train. The meeting of those two great men under the extraordinary circumstances which surrounded them was full of emotion and thankfulness. I soon took my leave, but not before promising Governor Seward that I would take breakfast with him at eight o'clock ; and as I passed out the outside door the Irish porter said to me, with a smiling face : "And by faith it is you who have brought us a Prisident." At eight the governor and I sat down to a simple and relishing breakfast. We had been relieved of a load of anxiety almost too great to bear. The President had reached Washington safely, and our spirits were exalted ; and with a sense of great satisfaction we sipped our delicious coffee and loaded our plates with the first run of Potomac shad. Mr. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress," has been led VOL. CXLI.-NO. 348. 31 458 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. into an error in speaking of the manner in which Lincoln reached Washington. He says : "He reached Washington by a night journey taken secretly, much against his own will and to his subsequent chagrin and mortification, but urged upon him by the advice of those in whose advice and wisdom he was forced to confide." The only truth in the statement is that he "reached Washington by a night journey taken secretly." I was the first man to see him after his arrival in Washington and talk with him of the incidents of his journey, and I know he was neither "mortified" nor "chagrined" at the manner in which he reached Washington. He expressed to me in the warmest terms his satisfaction at the complete success of his journey ; and I have it from persons who were about him in Philadelphia and Harrisburg that the plan agreed upon met his hearty approval, and he expressed a cheerful willingness to adapt himself to the novel circumstances. I do not believe that Mr. Lincoln ever expressed a regret that he had not, "according to his own desire, gone through Baltimore in open day," etc. It is safe to say he never had any such "desire." His own detective, Pinkerton, a man who had his entire confidence, had been some time in Baltimore, with several members of his force, in unraveling rebel plots, produced to him the most conclusive evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate him. General Scott's detectives had discovered the same thing, and there was a great deal of individual testimony tending to establish the same fact. While Mr. Lincoln would have confronted any danger in the performance of duty, he was not a man given to bravado and quixotic schemes, and what he subsequently stated touching this matter comprised really all there is in it. He declared: "I did not believe then, nor do I now believe, I should have been assassinated had I gone through Baltimore as first contemplated, but I thought it wise to run no risk where no risk was necessary." ("Lossing's Pictorial History of the Rebellion," vol. i. p. 279.) In the same paragraph Mr. Blaine says that "it must be creditable to the administration of Mr. Buchanan that ample provision had been made for the protection of the rightful rule of the nation" (p. 240). If Mr. Blaine means by this that Mr. Buchanan, driven by public indignation, had ordered a few straggling companies of regular infantry to Washington, that is one thing; but if he referred to the protection of the "rightful ruler' of the nation in getting to Washington, his good faith was imposed upon. I was in a position ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. 459 to know all that was going on in relation to Mr Lincoln's journey to Washington, and I never heard it suggested or hinted that Mr. Buchanan occupied himself with that matter. I am satisfied he had no more knowledge of Mr. Lincoln's movements than those of "the man in the moon." Mr. Lincoln remained quietly at his own home in Springfield during the Presidential canvass of 1860, but he watched narrowly all the incidents of the campaign. On the 26th of May he wrote me as follows : ". . . I have your letters written since the nominations, but till now I have found no moment to say a word by way of answer. Of course I am glad that the nomination is well received by our friends, and I sincerely thank you for so informing me. So far as I can learn, the nominations take well everywhere, and if we get no back-set, it would seem as if they were going through. "I hope you will write often; and as you write more rapidly than I do, don't make your letters so short as mine. Yours, very truly, "A. LINCOLN." Mr. Lincoln had his periods of anxiety and deep concern during the canvass. As chairman of the House Congressional (Republican) Committee, I was engaged at Washington during the campaign. On the 9th of September Mr. Lincoln wrote we as follows from Springfield : "Yours of the 5th was received last evening. I was right glad to get it. It contains the latest 'posting' which I now have. It relieves me some from a little anxiety I had about Maine. Jo Medill, on August 30, wrote me that Colfax had a letter from Mr. Hamlin, saying we were in great danger of losing two members of Congress in Maine, and that your brother would not have exceeding six thousand majority for Governor. I addressed you at once, at Galena, asking for your latest information. As you are at Washington, that letter you will receive some time after the Maine election. Yours, very truly, "A. LINCOLN." Though the election was over there came gloomy days for Mr. Lincoln, but he pondered well on the great problems before him. He had weighed well all the important questions which had arisen, and in him there was neither change nor shadow of turning. On the 13th day of December he wrote to me as follows : "HON. E. B. WASHBURNE: "My Dear Sir :-Your long letter received. Prevent as far as possible any of our friends from demoralizing themselves and our cause by entertaining propositions for compromise of any sort on slavery extension. There is no possible 460 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. compromise upon it but which puts us under again, and all our work to do over again. Whether it be a Missouri line or Eli Thayer's Popular Sovereignty, it is all the same. Let either be done, and immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold firm as a chain of steel. Yours, as ever, A. LINCOLN." As the time of the inauguration drew near there was an intense anxiety not unmingled with trepidation all over the loyal North as to how Mr. Lincoln might meet the approaching crisis. Many and varied were the speculations as to what course he would take. Looking at his character and life, many feared he had not fully comprehended the gravity of the situation. On the contrary, Mr. Lincoln had weighed the whole matter, and fully determined in his own mind what course he would pursue. In December, 1860, he wrote me the following letter : "Confidential. "SPRINGFIELD, Dec. 21, 1860. "Hon. E. B. WASHBURNE : "My Dear Sir : - Last night I received your letter, giving an account of your interview with General Scott, and for which I thank you. Please present my respects to the General, and tell him confidentially I shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can to either hold or retake the forts, as the case may require, at and after the inauguration. Yours, as ever, "A. LINCOLN." I cannot here recount all Mr. Lincoln's acts of kindness to me while President. He always seemed anxious to gratify me, and I can recollect of no single favor that I asked of him that he did not cheerfully accord. I will mention a simple incident. In the fall of 1863, my brother, General Washburne, of Wisconsin, was stationed at a most unhealthy camp at Helena, Arkansas. He was taken dangerously sick with malarial dysentery, and there was little prospect of his recovery unless he could be removed to some healthier location. I wrote to Mr. Lincoln, briefly, asking for a leave of absence for him for cause of health, and in due time I received the following reply: "Private and confidential. "EXECUTIVE MANSION, } WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 1863. } "HON. E. B. WASHBURNE: "My Dear Sir:-Yours of the 12th has been in my hands several days. Enclosed I send a leave of absence for your brother, in as good form as I think I ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. 461 can safely put it. Without knowing whether he would accept it, I have tendered the Collectorship of Portland, Maine, to your other brother, the Governor. "Thanks to both you and our friend Campbell for your kind words and intentions. A second term would be a great honor, and a great labor, which together, perhaps, I would not decline, if tendered. Yours truly, "A. LINCOLN." This last paragraph refers to a letter of the Honorable Thompson Campbell, whom I have before referred to in this paper, and in which we asked permission to bring him forward as a candidate for a re-election. On the 13th of February, 1861, the two Houses of Congress met in joint session to count and declare the electoral vote. As in all times of great excitement, the air was filled with numberless and absurd rumors, and few were in fear that in some unforeseen way the ceremony of the count might be interrupted and the result not declared. And hence all Washington was on the qui vive. The joint meeting was to take place in the Hall of the House of Representatives at high noon. An immense throng filled the House end of the Capitol. All the gilded corridors leading to the Hall of the House were crowded, and the galleries packed. Beautiful and gorgeously dressed ladies entered the Hall, found their way into the cloak-rooms, and many of them occupied the seats of the members, who gallantly surrendered them for the occasion. At twenty minutes after twelve the doorkeeper announced the Senate of the United States. The Senators entered, headed by their President, Honorable John C. Breckinridge, the members of the House rising to receive them. The Vice-President took his seat on the right of the Speaker of the House of Representatives (the Honorable William Pennington, of New Jersey). The joint convention of the two Houses was presided over by Mr. Breckinridge, who served out his term of Vice-President till March 4, 1861. The Honorable Lyman Trumbull was appointed teller on the part of the Senate, and Messrs. Phelps, of Missouri, and Washburne, of Illinois, on the part of the House. The count proceeded without incident, and the Vice-President announced the election of Lincoln and Hamlin. Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, then offered the ordinary resolution of notification to the President-elect, by a committee of two members from the House to be joined by one member from the Senate. Mr. Hindman, of Arkansas, one of the most violent and vindictive secessionists, insisted that the same committee 462 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. "inform General Scott that there was no more use for his janizaries about the Capitol, the votes being counted and the result proclaimed." Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania, responded that gentlemen seemed to trouble themselves a good deal about General Scott on all occasions. There was a certain feeling of relief among the loyal people of the country that Mr. Lincoln had been declared to be duly elected President, without the least pretense of illegality or irregularity. But I must bring this paper to a close. The rebellion, in April, 1865, was fast approaching an end. Having expressed a desire to be at the front, whenever that might be, when the hour of its final collapse might come finally to strike, General Grant had given me a pass of the broadest character, to go anywhere in the Union lines. The news of the fall of Richmond reached Galena at eleven o'clock Monday morning, April 3, 1865. I took the train "for the front" at five P.M., and arrived in Washington, Thursday morning, April 6th. I found that the President, Mrs. Lincoln, and a party of friends had left on an excursion for Fortress Monroe, City Point, and Richmond. Mr. Blaine joined me, and we made the trip together to City Point. On arriving there, late Friday afternoon, we found the President and party had returned from Richmond, and were on their steamer, the "River Queen," which was to remain at City Point over-night. In the evening Mr. Blaine and myself went on board the steamer to pay our respects to the President. I never passed a more delightful evening. Mr. Lincoln was in perfect health and in exuberant spirits. His relation of his experiences and of all he saw at Richmond had all of that quaintness and originality for which he was distinguished. Full of anecdote and reminiscence, he never flagged during the whole evening. His son Robert was in the military service and with the advancing army, and knowing that I was bound for the "front" the next morning, he said to me : "I believe I will drop Robert a line if you will take it. I will hand it to you in the morning before you start." I went to the wharf the next morning, and soon Mr. Lincoln came ashore from his steamer, with the letter in his hand. He was erect and buoyant, and it seemed to me that I had never seen him look so great and grand. After a few words of conversation, he handed me the letter, and I bid him what proved to be, alas! a final adieu. I made my way with all diligence and through much tribulation to the "front," and arrived at Appomattox in season ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. 463 to see the final surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, and General Lee and his associate generals prisoners of war. Returning to City Point, I found awaiting me there a small government steamer which was to take me to Washington. On arriving there I met the most terrible news that had ever shocked the civilized world : Mr. Lincoln had been assassinated. That was Saturday night, April 15, 1865. I gave directions to have the steamer proceed directly to Washington, where I arrived early Monday morning, April 17, and in season to participate in the stupendous preparations to do honor to the memory of the dead President. I was on the Congressional Committee to escort his remains to Springfield, Illinois, where I followed his colossal hearse to the grave. E. B. WASHBURNE. UNITED BULGARIA. In the spring of 1876 there was a feeble attempt at insurrection in two or three Bulgarian villages, which, as every one will remember, was put down by the Turks with massacres and burnings such as had not been known for nearly forty years.* Owing to the remoteness of this region, it was some time before any knowledge of these events reached Western Europe. Detailed information had, however, been received by the American missionaries, and by other Americans engaged in educational work at Constantinople. They endeavored to represent the state of affairs in Bulgaria to the English Ambassador, Sir Henry Elliott, who declined to listen to their statements or to report the facts to his government. Finally, after the London "Times" had refused to publish a cautious report on the subject from its correspondent, Mr. Gallenga, a letter from Constantinople embodying the main facts was published in the "Daily News." + As the truth of these statements was denied by the English embassy at Constantinople, the American gentlemen in question were in danger of losing credit, and , what was more serious, of having Robert College-the most praiseworthy American institution in the East- shut up by the Turkish authorities on the ground of their dissemination of false reports against the government. Under these circumstances the American Minister, Mr. Maynard, deputed me, although I had arrived in Constantinople only a few days before, to proceed to the interior of Bulgaria, and to ascertain, if possible, the exact truth of the case. Meanwhile, such was the excitement which even the first publication had caused in England, that the British Ambassador was instructed to send some one to Philippopolis for the same * In 1841, M. Blanqui was sent by M. Guizot to study the results of a similar massacre in Bulgaria. +Written by Mr. Edwin Pears, an eminent English lawyer. UNITED BULGARIA. 465 purpose. Mr. Walter Baring, one of the Secretaries of Legation, who was appointed to that duty, reached Philippopolis at about the same time as myself, and although our lines of investigation were in the main independent, we arrived at substantially the same result as to facts. Mr. J. A. MacGahan, then correspondent of the London "Daily News," was going to the Serbian frontier to write about the Serbian war with Turkey. He happened to go on the same railway train with me as far as Philippopolis, and, remaining there a day, became so interested in what he heard that he decided to put off his journey for a while and write of what he saw. It is chiefly through his letters that the English and the American public became aware of the manner in which the Turks had suppressed the disorders. As there was every reason for conducting my inquiries openly, Mr. MacGahan, Mr. Carl Schneider, the correspondent of the "Cologne Gazette," and, indeed, all who chose were allowed to be present. Two interpreters, of different nationalities, each speaking several languages, secured us against possible deceit. My preliminary report was given out for publication from the Legation during my absence and without my knowledge. It is unnecessary to recite now the story of what had already taken place or to tell of the horrors which still remained visible. Suffice it to say that the truth of the statements made by the American clergyman was abundantly proven. The state of the country, however, was then so unsettled- there was such abject fear on the part of the Christian population and such organized terrorism on the part of the Christian population and such organized terrorism on the part of the Mussulmans, with so great carelessness and inefficiency on the part of the officials- that it was impossible to resist the desire to do what we could to bring about a better state of things. The prisons were filled with persons accused of political offenses, who were being tried in batches before a commission composed of Mussulmans without regard to the ordinary forms of procedure; sentences of the most severe nature were given daily, and frequent executions were taking place. The Christian inhabitants were afraid to appear outside of their villages or to continue their agricultural labors; their cattle and horses had been stolen by their Mussulman neighbors, and their crops were not infrequently destroyed. What we could do in the way of representation to the local authorities or to the pashas was done, and in nearly all cases this produced an effect. The English 466 The North American Review. commissioner could indeed threaten in extreme cases with the displeasure of his government, but all that it was possible for me to do was to represent that the Porte was sincerely desirous of restoring order, and that by maintaining things in their actual position the officials were rendering a disservice to their own Government. In extreme cases it became necessary to obtain the good offices of the American Minister, as well as of the Russian Ambassador, with the authorities at Constantinople. I judged it better to communicate with my Minister by sending him open telegrams, stating exactly the facts, and what was best to do, in order that the Turkish authorities, who read every telegram before it was delivered, might have the advantage of complying with any request before it was actually made. I have every reason to believe that it was owing to the representations made by British and Russian Embassies and by the American Legation to the Porte that the greater number of untried political prisoners were released, that a new judicial commission was formed, and that about two hundred people already sentenced to death had their sentences commuted. Horses and oxen as well as agricultural implements were restored, and at the end of our six weeks' work the condition of the population was vastly superior to that in which we found it. I fully admit that, so far as I was concerned, I was, in so acting, going beyond and outside of my instructions; but it was a case where it was impossible for any man with human feelings to have done differently, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that my conduct was approved and supported both by the Minister at Constantinople and the government at home. I was even afterward thanked by Turkish officials for preventing them from acting so as to lose their places. The result of the official reports of Mr. Baring, of Prince Tserebelef, the Russian consul-general at Philippopolis, who accompanied me during a portion of my investigation, and of the other consuls, was that a conference of European powers finally met in Constantinople in the autumn in order to consider some scheme for the better government of the Bulgarian provinces. Before the meeting of the Conference, however, General Ignatief came to see me, and said that he was convinced that the Conference could do nothing unless some plan or scheme was placed before them at the beginning for their consideration; that they United Bulgaria. 467 would be too much hurried to work out any measure for the organization of Bulgaria. He suggested, therefore, that, as a person tolerably well acquainted with the present situation of the Bulgarian people, I should co-operate with Prince Tserebelef and another of his secretaries in preparing some scheme of government which could be submitted to the Conference for the approbation of the powers. As Mr. Maynard, the American Minister, saw no objection to my giving my advice and co-operation, we prepared first a plan of a constitution in general terms, which was submitted to Prince Gortchakoff before the Conference met. This having been approved by the prince, we then proceeded to draft a constitution in detail. The work was divided pretty equally between us, although we consulted together on every article. Others who had special knowledge were called in to assist us, including two attaches of the Russian consulate-general at Constantinople, who had lived for some time in various parts of Bulgaria and Macedonia, and Mr. MacGahan, who had won the confidence of all who knew him. Mr. Baring, the English secretary, was also invited to assist, but Sir Henry Elliott refused to allow him to give any aid, and kept him at Philippopolis. It was of course impossible for foreigners, even had they known the country much better than we did, to have drawn up a constitution thoroughly suited to the needs of inhabitants; but we were enabled in the end to draft a scheme which we thought would be acceptable to the powers and at the same time be capable of working fairly well. In some respects I was even less liberal than my Russian colleagues, for, taking into consideration the relative civilization of the country, I laid great stress on the introduction of local self-government, while diminishing the power of the general legislature. The chief officials still had to be appointed or confirmed by the Sultan. But we believed that the country could only learn to govern itself by beginning at the bottom and practicing self-government in the communes on the basis that had always existed, leaving to the future the possibility of giving more extended powers to the provincial assembly. A question at once arose about the boundaries of the new State; and here it was necessary to obtain assistance from Turkish official documents, especially from those which we considered the most accurate- the reports to the Minister of Finance- so far as they could be obtained. Kiepert's map and the reports of travelers 468 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. were taken for what they were worth. Before coming to any decision, an ethnological map of each district was made by Mr. Ternoff of the Russian consulate, together with a carefully prepared collection of vital statistics. There were several questions to be considered. In certain parts of what was evidently Bulgaria were large bodies of Mussulmans, some of them Turks, other Circassians, transplanted there after the Crimean war on the advice of the English embassy; and in some districts people called Pomaks, of Bulgarian origin, and speaking almost solely the Bulgarian language, but who had adopted the Mussulman religion at the time of the Turkish conquest for the sake of preserving their lands and personal freedom. It was of course impossible, in drawing the boundaries of a province, to leave small encloves, no matter what their population might be. It was known, for instance, that the village of Peristera was purely Greek, as was also that of Stenimakho, with its surroundings, which was even mentioned as a purely Greek town by Villehardouin after the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. In the towns on the Black Sea there was a numerical preponderance of Greeks, and there was also a Greek population extending for some miles inland on the sea-coast of the Aegean. It was considered necessary to give the future Bulgarian seaports both on the Black Sea and on the sea-coast of the Aegean. It was considered necessary to give the future Bulgarian seaports both on the Black Sea and on the Aegean; otherwise the same mistake would have been committed which was made by giving the Dalmatian sea-coast to Austria, while Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a similar population, were thus cut off from their natural outlets. Expecting that the Conference, and especially its English members, would be exceedingly critical, the boundaries were made rather too large than too small in order to allow room for cutting down. The question then came up, Shall Bulgaria constitute a single province? General Ignatief believed that the English would be unwilling to agree to a single province of the size suggested, and therefore proposed dividing it into two by the line of the Balkans. To this I replied that, if the English objected to a single province, it would be better to allow them the privilege of dividing the country into two, as thus there might be more yielding with regard to other parts of the constitution. My suggestion was accepted, and the constitution was presented to the Conference, giving one great Bulgaria with the constitution which we had agreed upon. Naturally the Conference objected, as we had UNITED BULGARIA. 469 foreseen, to many of the articles, and referred the whole back to the Russian delegates for revision. It was evident that, with all the subjects before the Conference for consideration, no great attention could be given to details, and the constitution was sent back arranged in a different order, written in somewhat different language, but with almost every detail substantially the same. This was accepted by the majority. The only serious change was in the boundaries. Here, as we had thought, the English insisted on two provinces instead of one; but, strangely enough, instead of dividing by the natural lines of the mountain range, the provinces were separated by a purely artificial north and south meridian line, which left nearly all the intelligence, culture, and business elements in the eastern province, and the wilder and less civilized part in the western half. It was evident that such a state of things could not have lasted long; and two provinces, while imposing greater burdens upon the population, than one, would give far more opportunity for intrigue to any foreign power that chose to adopt such means. Everything, however, was cut short by the refusal of Turkey to accept the results of the Conference. In this she was assisted by an intrigue of the English embassy. Lord Salisbury sustained the side of the Bulgarians, but his colleague, the English Ambassador, Sir Henry Elliott, was jealous of him, and succeeded, owing to his influence and long residence at Constantinople, in persuading the Turks that the real England would support them in any opposition they might make to Russia. Had the proposition of the Conference been accepted by Turkey, the state of affairs would have greatly differed from what it is now. Bulgaria, whether in two provinces or one, would have been immediately subject to the Porte, although with local autonomy; i.e., would have been in the same position in which Eastern Rumelia has been up to the present time. Both Roumania and Serbia would have remained tributary states, and not have become independent kingdoms. But the Conference, as we have seen, proved abortive, and the result was war, in which the Turks came to such straits that they were willing to accept almost any terms that Russia proposed. Among these was the creation of a great Bulgaria as one single tributary state, with boundaries somewhat enlarged beyond those proposed by the Conference. It was a great grief to those of us who are not Russians, but who are interested in the Christian peo- 470 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. ples of the East, and it was, it seems to me, a great mistake on the part of the Russian negotiators that provision was not made for giving Thessaly and Epirus, if not the town of Salonica, to Greece. But as Greece had been led by English promises to keep quiet, and as, more than that, the short-sighted policy of the Greek patriarchate at Constantinople had been, first, to hinder the formation of the Bulgarian exarchate and the separation of the Bulgarain church from the Greek, and then to claim the whole of Bulgaria, which they called by the ancient name Thrace, as Greek on account of its religion, the Russian negotiators were not inclined to interfere in favor of the Greeks. It may be allowable to say here, parenthetically, that the signature of the peace of San Stefano was first publicly announced at my house to General Grant, who was then in Constantinople, by Count Cortis, the Italian Ambassador, who had just received a telegram to that effect from General Ignatief. The English embassy did not receive the intelligence until the next morning, when it was already published in the newspapers. General Grant was very much interested in the Eastern question in all its details. He had acquired his knowledge with wonderful rapidity during his journey in the East, and, in spite of his taciturnity, had entertained us for an hour the day previous by telling us what he would have done had he arrived before Constantinople at the head of a victorious army. Without entering into details I may say that he would have occupied Constantinople with his troops, and, while making every provision for the safety of private and of governmental property, would have issued a proclamation leaving the ultimate arrangements to the European powers on one sole condition- "that the rule of the Turk in Europe was to be forever abolished." While the treaty of San Stefano kept very closely to the boundaries of Bulgaria as laid down by the Conference, there was one change of great importance; for, instead of being a self-governing Turkish province, Bulgaria was constituted into an autonomous tributary principality with a Christian government and a national militia. As is well known, this diminution of the territory of European Turkey was distasteful to the English Government as well as to Austria, and a congress of the European powers which had signed the treaty of Paris was called at Berlin for the purpose of revising UNITED BULGARIA. 471 the treaty of San Stefano. The result of this revision was to reduce very greatly the limits of Bulgaria, by cutting off the whole of Macedonia, by limiting the boundaries on the south-eastern side, and, further, by dividing the country into two parts by the line of the Balkans. The north-western portion was formed into an autonomous tributary principality under the name of Bulgaria, while the south-eastern part was made a province under a Christian governor, with a constitutional government, and placed back under the control of the Porte. Lest there should even seem to be connection between these two regions, this province was given not the name of Southern Bulgaria, but the misnomer of Eastern Rumelia. In this way that part of the country which had suffered least from the Turks, where the population was sparser and rougher, was given a practical independence, while Eastern Rumelia with a denser, more intelligent, more educated, and richer population, which had been the scene of nearly all the massacres of 1876, was made again a Turkish province. the country was thus burdened with a double government, and the tribute from Eastern Rumelia was fixed at a high rate. * In accordance with the terms of the treaty of Berlin, a constitutional assembly met at Tirnovo in the spring of 1879, formed a constitution, and elected as prince, Alexander of Battenberg, the son of Prince Alexander of Hesse, and therefore a cousin of the present Emperor of Russia. The draft of the constitution proposed by Prince Tcherkosky, the Russian governor, was by no means adopted in its entirety. The Bulgarian delegates showed themselves more independent than had been expected, and, partly under the influence of an American gentleman, the late Mr. E. M. Grant, introduced many exceedingly democratic features, in part to the advantage and in part also to the detriment of the country. The constitution as adopted was, as events proved, too liberal for a people not yet accustomed to self-government. Still, as a whole, it worked much better than even the most sanguine friends of Bulgaria had a right to expect. But its defects led the price to accept the advice of the foreigners who surrounded him, among whom the German consul was especially active, and in 1881 he was induced to issue a proclamation suspending the constitution for seven years, and assuming extraordinary powers for that time. * The revenue of the province was estimated at $3,680,000 (it is really about $2,760,000), and the tribute was fixed at $1,104,00. 472 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. His action was indeed ratified by a vote of a special assembly elected for that purpose, but the chief political men of the country declared at that time and afterwards that the elections to this assembly had not been free. However that may be, the prince before long saw his mistake, and being loyal to the best interests of the country, gave up the extraordinary powers that had been conferred upon him, and in 1883 restored the constitution with some very slight changes. Since that time, in spite of some checks, the condition of Bulgaria has been uniformly prosperous. Public order has been generally maintained everywhere, agriculture and commerce have prospered, the schools have increased, and the people lead a free and independent life. One sure evidence of the general good government is that the peasantry are constantly adding to their landed property, and that the area of cultivation has been greatly extended. In accordance also with the provisions of the treaty of Berlin, a European commission met at Philippopolis (the British members were Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and Lord Donoughmore) and a constitution or "organic statue" for Eastern Rumelia was adopted and put into force. The first governor-general appointed by the Porte, with the approval of the powers, was Prince Alexander Vogorides, by origin a Bulgarian, though of Greek education, who had been for many years in the Turkish diplomatic service under the name of Alako Pasha. On the expiration of his term of office in May, 1884, as some of the great powers objected to his renomination, he was succeeded by Gabriel Pasha Chrestovitch, also a Bulgarian by birth. The Rumelians had advantages over the Bulgarians--that their constitution had been more carefully elaborated with a view to the actual conditions and needs of the country, and that they had a more educated class of men willing to serve as functionaries without having recourse to foreigners, as was the case in Bulgaria. It would seem that the constitutional government in Rumelia worked better than in Bulgaria ; but there has always been great discontent, arising partly from the interference of the Porte, the non-approval of certain laws passed by the assembly, and the heavy tribute, and partly from a natural sympathy which led the inhabitants to desire union with their brothers across the line. It was felt that a double government imposed heavier burdens on the two provinces taken as a whole than would have been caused by a UNITED BULGARIA. 473 single government, and the custom's frontier prevented free trade between the members of what was practically a single people. The custom-houses were all the more disagreeable because they had not existed when both provinces were directly subject to Turkey. These in themselves were grievances, and every one at all acquainted with the situation of affairs saw that sooner or later the two provinces must become united, whether the Turks and the European powers were willing or not. But in addition to this there was a feeling of sympathy for the Bulgarian inhabitants of Macedonia. It had been promised that liberal institutions should be introduced into Macedonia by the Porte, and the bases of them were even agreed upon with the European powers. These institutions, however, have never been applied by the Porte. Not only has the old system of Turkish government been continued in Macedonia, but rumored intrigues of Austria, if not of other powers, have led the Bulgarians to believe that the fate of their compatriots in Macedonia might be permanently dissevered from their own. It is impossible to consider Macedonia as a single ethical region. The population of the northern part is Siberian, that of the extreme west Albanian, while the Greek element extends to some distance from the seaboard. The remainder, with the exception of the Turks, who are scattered here and there, is purely Bulgarian. So long as Bulgaria and Rumelia remained separated it was felt that if Austria should advance, as had been frequently rumored, to Salonica, the Bulgarians of Macedonia would be permanently separated from those of Bulgaria and Rumelia. The claims of Greece to a certain portion of this region are clear and well worthy of consideration, but their discussion does not enter into the present subject. Owing then to the pressure of all these considerations, the inhabitants of Rumelia peaceably arose on the 18th of September, but deposed the chief officials, and proclaimed their union with Bulgaria. This union is a manifest infraction of the treaty of Berlin, but it is not an infraction of the same kind as though one of the signatory powers of that treaty did some act contrary to its stipulations. Before that treaty was signed Rumania and Serbia had, de facto, obtained their independence, and that independence had been acknowledged by Turkey in the treaty of San Stefano, which had been duly ratified. The Porte had even sent ministers to Bucharest VOL. CXLI.--NO. 348. 32 474 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. and Belgrade previously to the signature of the treaty of Berlin. As neither Rumelia nor Serbia were allowed to be represented at Berlin and did not sign the treaty, the servitudes imposed upon them by the powers had no moral binding effect upon those countries, but were imposed only by the law of the strongest, and could be made effectual only by force or a threat of force. Such servitudes-- and the treaty of Berlin abounds in them--were as provisions by which Serbia was compelled to make a commercial treaty with Austria-Hungary, and by which it was obliged to build a railway to connect the Austrian lines with Constantinople and Salonica. Similar servitudes were imposed upon Roumania with regard to the navigation of the Danube and the treatment of Jews. In like way Rumelia had been recognized by Turkey as part of the autonomous principality of Bulgaria, and its subsequent status as a Turkish province was only brought about by the will of the great powers of Europe, contrary to the desire of the population. In uniting itself, therefore, to Bulgaria, Rumelia cannot be accused of a breach of any treaty stipulations, for it signed no treaty; but only of an offense against a rule laid down by the Great Powers, who thought that the situation which they created was absolutely necessary for their essentially selfish interests. It remains therefore to be seen how far the great powers will insist upon the continuance of a situation which they created in view of the supposed necessities of the year 1878. A similar state of things was enacted by the treaty of Paris in 1856, by which, or rather by a conference of the powers in 1858, under the terms of this treaty, Wallachia and Waldavia were made separate principalities, and their request for union was denied. Subsequently, indeed the very next year, 1859, they practically united themselves by electing the same man, Prince Cuzo as hospodar. In view of the accomplished fact, the powers refused to interfere, as the Porte had requested, sanctioned they double election, and subsequently permitted the union of the two principalities into the single principality of Roumania. EUGENE SCHUYLER. RACE PREJUDICE. It is marvelous to see the bland and benign unconsciousness with which high religious culture contradicts itself. "We think," says the Atalanta "Christian Index," "that the race lin is providential and that Providence Intended that it should be perpetuated." "Should be perpetuated!" cries the New York "Independent." "But it has not been perpetuated, It has been broken down." When? Where? How? In another paragraph in the self-same column, arguing very fairly against a law prohibiting the intermarriage of the two races, the "Independent" says, "If left to themselves without law on the subject, they will very seldom intermarry. The occasional and very rare exception to this remark would do the body-politic no harm." How can a race line be considered broken down so long as two races living in one community, in political unity and Christian fellowship, will, if left to themselves, very seldom intermarry--so seldom that intermarriage is the "very rare exception?" What prevents intermarriage but the color line; race prejudice? The Rev. W. Hayne Leavell, who was born and reared in the South, who is a Congregationalist, and eager to see Congregational institutions wax strong in the South, it is discontented with the policy adopted by the Home Missionary Society and the American Missionary Association. They, it would seem, have decided that they will not recognize the existence of so unchristian a thing as caste, race prejudice; therefore, all the churches which they will aid at the South must be open to black and white, without distinction. They will have mixed churches or non. They accept the "Independent's" statement that the race line has not been perpet- 476 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. uated; that it has been broken down. Like Sam Weller, they cast their eyes as far heavenward as to the ceiling and see no such line. Very well, says Mr. Leavell, then we must not hope for a successful propagation of our denominational principles among the ruling classes of the South, for they will not enter into church relations with the colored people. After churches are separately organized, and while they are separately maintained, they will recognize each other as Christian churches, and will affiliate in associations and conventions; but they draw the line at church relations. However unrighteous, says Mr. Leavell, this is a stubborn fact, and any one who has good knowledge of the Southern character will know that it is to remain as stubborn for all time to come. But what becomes of the statement that the race line is broken down? Mr. Leavell evidently does not think that race prejudice has ceased to exist because the missionary societies refuse to recognize it, or that the color line has faded out because the Christian statesman affirms that it is not there. Things are -- entirely apart from our recognition of them. The Rev. B.W. Pond, of Falls Church, Virginia, confirms Mr. Leavell's view, from the indications in his vicinity. He predicts that the proposed mixed Congregational churches will fail -- not more from caste spirit than from legitimate social instincts. The Congregational church in his vicinity was organized of Northern elements of the most thorough-going Northern antislavery sentiments. It has always held open doors to all, irrespective of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It has repeatedly extended cordial invitations to the colored people. Its members, in their private relations and standing with the colored population, are held in the highest esteem, and there is the least in the world of any airs or invidious discriminations against the colored or the poor. All is as free and gracious as spring water. Do they come? asks Mr. Pond. Not one, so long as there are colored churches in the town. Black men of large means and first-rate business talents, he affirms, are not wanting, but all the temptations of gain do not bring them and white men into partnership relations. If Congregationalism, with all the other problems on its hands, has this also of joining together that which apparently God hath separated, then indeed he thinks it has its hands full. RACE PREJUDICE. 477 So then it seems the race prejudice is not all on one side. The color line is as distinct for the blacks as it is for the whites. The colored people have as strong an objection to mingling with their Caucasian brethren as the Caucasians have to mingling with the Africans. Yet the eyes of the religious editor are so little trained to seeing, that, having drawn from his own breast the inference that race lines ought to be broken down, he refuses to see that his feet are entangled in them on every side, but lifts his eyes to heaven and affirms that race lines have ceased to be. Mr. Pond, with his "legitimate social instincts" is nearer the scientific truth than Mr. Leavell, with his possibly "unrighteous fact." It is not an unrighteous fact. It is an ethnological fact, utterly without moral quality. The old question, put in abolition days, "Do you want your daughter to marry a nigger?" was impertinent, irrelevant, ignorant. A "nigger's marriage had nothing whatever to do with a "nigger's freedom. The question was of political and personal liberty, not of social status. But when we come to this question of mixed churches, we come plumply and squarely upon the question of "marrying a nigger," and that, with all due respect be it said, is not a question with which the missionary societies have anything to do. It is for the missionary societies to help the Caucasian and the Ethiopian on and up to the highest character possible to each. It is no part of the business of the missionary societies to make the Ethiopian on and up to the highest character possible to each. It is no part of the business of the missionary societies to make the Ethiopian and the Caucasian one. It is wicked for the white man to enslave the black man, but it is not wicked for him to prefer a church composed chiefly of white people to a church composed chiefly of black people. It is wicked for the black man to cheat and murder the white man, but it is not wicked for him to choose teachers and preachers of his own color. The North may maintain that it is. The missionary societies may insist that it shall be, but the fact is not altered by our refusing to recognize it. The mission societies can just as easily change the Southern blacks into Southern whites as they can change the heart of the Southern white into an acceptance of social unity with the Southern black, or the Southern black with the Southern white. It is not a question of superiority or of inferiority, of right or wrong, of Christianity or paganism. The negro is superior to the white in some respects. In all respects much of his inferiority is doubtless due to his longer apprenticeship at barbarism, his longer ser- 478 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. vitude to degradation. If he is ever to be raised it is to be by education of himself; not by a crusade at the North against race prejudice at the South. It is just as Christian to gather the blacks in one church and the whites in another as it is to gather the blacks in one family and the whites in another. If the races are providential, the race line is providential. If it is God who made the white man white and the black man black, it is God who made each choose to consort with his own. To say that Providence intended the race line to be perpetuated is not to lay to Providence the bondage, injustice, and anguish which have attended its perpetuation. It is abundantly worth while to throw life and treasure and national existence into the resolution that no human being shall be enslaved. It is better to die a thousand deaths than to do this great wrong against man and sin against God. But it is not worth while to put even the contents of one contribution box into an attempt to secure by external pressure what is much better left to the working of natural cause, the adjustment of social relations. It is kicking against the pricks where there is no occasion to kick at all. No one man or one age can see the outcome of the large movement of all the ages. Whether, or how long, the race line is to be perpetuated we do not know. We do know that it exists. Thus far, it is not the separation of the races, but the intermingling of the races that has brought disaster. Greed, violence, cruelty forced the African and the American race into close contiguity, and such vials of wrath have been poured upon this nation in consequence that we might well have learned the lesson not only that God hath made all the races of one blood, but also that he had determined the bounds of their habitations, and that we cannot break those bounds with impunity. What is to be the final result, no man knows. We hope that God will yet make the wickedness of man to praise him; that this rapacious and bloody crashing and crushing together of the two races will yet be a blessing to both, after the woe and the curse have done their work. But while the great drama moves on with its long pain and its short, rapturous paeans, hardly affected by any single human effort, the chief help that each individual can lend is to preserve, clear and clean and tonic, his own little atmosphere of sound reason, just judgment, true sight. God alone sees the end from the beginning. We can hardly see an inch ahead; but if we see that inch, it is as good as a mile to RACE PREJUDICE. 479 prevent us from hitting our heads. The religious authorities may be wise or foolish. They are just as likely to be foolish as wise, but God has often chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. The missionary societies may act with or against the Divine purposes, but the Divine purposes are not baffled. Mr. Leavell is right and calm; right most of all in his calmness. It is not indispensable to found Congregational churches among the ruling classes of the South. I believe in the Congregational Church myself, because it comes the nearest to being no church at all, and therefore interposes the least obstructive machinery between man and his Maker. It recognizes Christ as the all in all, and thus most resembles the church which he founded. But if the Congregational societies think they must preach ethnological empiricism as religious duty, why -- still, God is great. The colored race will assimilate some Gospel. The white race will reject the empiricism; but Presbyterianism and Episcopacy and Methodism and even Roman Catholicism are vital with Christian truth -- good half-way houses to Congregationalism and the true Greek orthodoxy of the original Christian Church. Nor will it be bad discipline for the Congregationalists to tarry in Jericho until their beards be grown, and they have learned that while we have the right and are under obligation to demand in the South absolute political equality and civil rights for all, we have no right whatever to meddle with the social relations or the ecclesiastical affinities in the South; that we might just as reasonably refuse to help educate their ignorant mass unless the white will wear a three- cornered hat instead of a Derby, as refuse it unless the white and black will go to the same church; that, in short, the pigments of Providence are not obliterated because we stubbornly prove ourselves to be color-blind. GAIL HAMILTON. A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES UPON THEIR CONDUCT AS AN EMPLOYER. DEAR PEOPLE: You are the largest employer of human labor in the United States. You are also the richest and the most conspicuous. I wish to remind you, therefore, that your behavior in the character of employer, besides affecting the happiness and stability of tens of thousands of American homes, has even still greater importance as an example to other employers. The list of your servants is so long, dear People, that I will not attempt to give even a summary of its contents in this place. Think only for a moment how many soldiers and sailors, how many clerks and book- keepers, how many mechanics, teachers, lawyers, clergymen, contractors, agents, engineers, experts, men of science, men of business, look to you for the money that rewards their labor and gives them their standing in the community. Including the noble army of teachers, among the most important of all your servants, you are now paying monthly wages to more than a million men and women. Dear People, this is a heavy weight of responsibility, which should cause you to consider with seriousness and patience whether you have been doing your duty of late years to so vast a number of dependent families. Whether those families are stable, virtuous, and happy, or whether they are unsafe, over-anxious, and demoralized, depends considerably upon you. How you act, dear People, in your character as the employed, particularly when you deem yourselves unworthily or unjustly treated, all the world knows. You are, if I may be allowed to say so, a troublesome customer. If your wages are insufficient you make known your opinion on the subject in emphatic language, and sometimes in still more decided conduct. You frequently give utterance to remarks, and even emblazon them upon silken banners, so unreasonable and ridiculous, that nothing can excuse them A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE. 481 except the hardness of your lot, the bitterness of your feelings, and the difficulty of grasping all the facts involved. You sometimes go out on strike at the precise moment when it gives the greatest amount of inconvenience. You have been known to leave trains full of women and children on the track in the woods miles from their homes. You obstruct the streets with your processions, and make night hideous with noise and smoke. You stun the passer-by with thundering oratory. You buy and sustain newspapers conducted by professional workingmen of such inane stupidity and such savage temper as to excite in reflecting persons almost as much wrath for the conductors as compassion for you. There have been times, too, O People, when, under the sting of real or fancied wrong, you have committed outrages; your conduct has been cruel and monstrous. This I now say boldly to your face, because privately I have never had a word of censure for you. My sympathies have always been with you, even when my understanding has obliged me to conclude that you were in error. I know the universal hardness of the human lot. I concede, also, that if you had never protested with vehemence and resolution against the exactions of the employing class, your case to-day would be more deplorable than it was in the worst days of your fathers. People, I know what you have suffered in these and in former times in your character as the employed. Let me now ask you how you have behaved in your new character of employer. If I understand you aright, you desire from your employers these three things: Steady employment, just compensation, and human treatment. The question I propose to you is, Do you try to render these three when you are the master? First, as to reasonable steadiness of employment. I mean as steady and continuous as the nature of the work permits. You have probably not attentively considered what you do in holding over so many thousands of your employed the terror of the yellow envelope. Among the wrongs of which you complain you seldom experience just that particular kind of cruelty. It seldom happens to you to open a letter at breakfast-time from your foreman, informing you that, during the twenty-five years of service under his direction, you have performed your duties in the most exquisite and faultless manner, and that you are respectfully requested to resign your employment on the first of next month. Not many of 482 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. you, I say, know by experience what it is to be deprived suddenly and without cause of your whole revenue. Not many of you know what it is to live for months and years in daily dread of such a catastrophe. Not many of you know what it is to get up in the morning possessed of a modest income, upon which by long practice and habitual self-control you have learned how to support your family in decency and comfort, and to discover before the sun sets that that income has totally ceased. Ordinarily your employers know how to temper and soften such a stroke, and usually you yourselves know enough of the business in which you assist to foresee and parry it. Let me therefore tell you, as a mere piece of information, that when you suddenly and causelessly turn out of his place an elderly man fitted to it by long service, you are doing as cruel an action as an employer can do without violating the law. You are doing what an Irish landlord does when he evicts a good tenant because his crop has failed -- an act which Mr. Gladstone assures us is nearly equivalent to a sentence of death. You are doing what you would do if you were to suddenly deprive Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr, Astor of all his property, and all his income from every source, with a notice to leave his domicile within thirty days. Perhaps you do not remember the fine saying your friend, Benjamin Franklin, on this point, to the effect, that the All of one man is just as much to him as the All of any other man. You will tell me, perhaps, that the office-holders knew this liability when they stooped to accept service from you on such sad and degrading conditions. Allow me to reply, dear People, that it is this very fact which heightens their torment and strengthens my case against you. A moment's reflection will show you that no honest man will accept an office on such a precarious condition unless compelled by bitter and stern necessity, which is another way of saying, unless he is a person of a certain incompetency. This system adopted in your name tends (observe, I only say, tends) to exclude from your service all but two classes, unprincipled men, and persons left out of the other callings. Of necessity, dear People, your service as now constituted must be chiefly composed of men who either have failed or would fail in business of their own. The people who serve you, if they are honest, would abandon your service to-morrow if they dared confront an independent career and compete on equal terms for the A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE 483 prizes of life. On fair conditions you might have in your employment the very pick of the whole population. You need them, for in many branches of your service there is required the best science, tried ability, and incorruptible character. You not only need men who can construct fleets and command armies, but men who can control the Mississippi system of rivers, manage cities, and administer an estate the most varied, productive, and magnificent upon which the sun looks down. You need the elite of the human race. You choose to take up with a class tending below the average, and then torment them with the subtle, all-pervading anguish of uncertainty as to their means of living -- a kind of misery to which they of all men are most susceptible. If you had drawn into your service the admirable men of business and men of thought who abound in this country beyond all previous example, your treatment of them would be a matter of less importance. Take any of our legitimately successful men, not yet past their prime, put them down penniless and unknown in any part of the United States, and in thirty days he will have got himself into some path, the following of which will give him a desirable lot. You prefer, as it seems, to fill your offices with men and women who seek them and stay in them because they know they cannot make a desirable place for themselves, and these you keep in terror of dismissal. What is the price, dear People, which alone will procure men of genuine ability? What is that prize which nearly all good men desire, which most good men seek, and which a considerable number of good men attain? My answer to this question, if I had to answer it in a phrase, would be, a career leading to honor and stable domestic happiness -- a safe footing in the world, won by the fair exertion of our powers. You remember what Lamb said of the millionaires, that he was not content to escape poverty, but to place poverty at a sublime distance from him. We all want security as well as abundance, and this is the fundamental need of well-disposed men. It is the ceaseless quest of honorable security which keeps the world in motion. I have had the pleasure of knowing several persons eminently successful in the competitions of life, and I have often asked myself, "What are they after? Now that they have far more than enough, why do they still toil early and late, often putting all that they have gained to hazard?" Lamb has hit it in his happy humorous way. They have built 484 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. the citadel of safety, but they wish now to buttress that citadel about with strengthening masses, and still to extend the defensive works, until Want, the gaunt enemy of human peace, cannot get within sight or sound of its occupant. If I may quote a living witness, I will repeat the remark of a New York capitalist when an interviewer congratulated him on the completion of the huge edifice in which he had invested sundry superfluous millions. He betrayed at once the real and only rational motive of such an enterprise by saying, as he looked at its vast proportions, "This is not a bad thing for a man to leave his children." One of the ablest capitalists that ever lived on this island, after accumulating six millions to be divided among his three children, employed several weeks, and all the resources of an acute mind, in framing a document, the object of which was to secure to his children in any conceivable contingency, and in spite of any possible mismanagement, a small but sufficient annual income. He left them all his other millions unconditionally to squander as they might, but the small portion, this citadel of safety in the midst of his estate, he defended with such elaborate ingenuity that no lawyer, no creditor, and no son, has ever been able to break into it or get out of it. Such is the passion to compass the preliminary condition of human happiness -- safety. But, my dear People, all reasonable and sufficient safety you can bestow upon your faithful servants without putting them to the trouble of accumulation. The clerks, book-keepers, postmasters and lighthouse-keepers whom President Washington appointed and whom President Jefferson continued in office, enjoyed this fundamental condition of peaceful and virtuous living as completely as if they had possessed a competent estate. Being reasonably secure, they could give themselves wholly up to the performance of their duty, and the rational enjoyment of their existence. The strength of this passion for security is shown, dear People, by the very conduct of the unhappy men who are nominally your servants. The book-keeper of a private firm seeks security by rendering good service to his employers. He strives and expects to keep his place by making himself useful and agreeable, and we may lay it down as a rule, that a man will serve and obey the power that can remove him from his post. Do you possess that power over your servants, dear People? You ought to have it. It is your money that pays the office-holders. Do they then serve A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE 485 you? You cannot be ignorant that the smartest of them most assiduously serve, obey, and court the power, the party, the senator, the boss, the clique, the gang, the caucus, which gave and can take away their places. I will not say they are right in doing so. I merely remark that they will do so, in every instance. It is the law and inevitable tendency of things. Were those swarms of men whom Tweed appointed your servants or his? Dear People, you had the infamy of paying them. They plundered you, and obeyed him. They gave him millions, and made your chief city, with a site formed by nature to be the most attractive and pleasant capital of the earth, to be such a place that few live in it who can safely get away. On earth there is elsewhere no such combination of land and water, of river, inlet, and sea, of low land and high land; nowhere else such an opportunity for every kind of charm, convenience, and grandeur, as that of which Manhattan Island is the center. It was the business of your servants there to rise to the unequaled chance, and make New York peerless among cities. Whatever have they done to it? Let the report of Mr. Wingate's tenement-house commission answer the question. Permit me, dear People of the United States, to say a word also upon the wages you are paying those who have the pain of serving you. You possess a unique advantage over other employers in having a wages fund to draw from which is practically inexhaustible. In twenty years, besides paying an enormous army of employed persons with unfailing regularity, you have discharged two thousand millions of debt. You are the richest employer in the world, and therefore in fixing rates of compensation you need consider nothing except justice and propriety. The mere amount which you pay, if within the bounds of reason and right, is a matter of no moment to you at all. If at the beginning of the late war you could have hired a competent general at a million dollars a day, you could have paid the amount with ease, and saved a thousand millions through the bargain. You have but to ask yourself, in every instance, what is the sum of money per annum which will procure for me, in the long run, the ablest, purest, and steadiest service? People, I will take the liberty of saying that you have not yet learned the rudiments of the act of paying. When your own compensation falls below the line of propriety and justice, good heav- 486 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. ens! what an outcry is heard throughout the world. But when you are the paymaster, how do you comport yourself? I admit that you pay money enough in sum total to compensate all your servants in the most liberal manner. Oh yes, my dear People, the sum total of your payments is truly respectable and altogether sufficient for the servants you can profitably employ. It is the distribution of the sum which is so erroneous. You are paying twelve hundred dollars a year to copyists, who other employers get for half the amount; while you pay to the score of lawyers whom you employ as chief judges, attorneys-general and Cabinet ministers little more than it costs them for house rent. If any other client but you had to engage the pick of all the lawyers in the United States to go to a distant city for four years and devote himself exclusively to his client's business, with a month's vacation in summer, that client would have to pay that lawyer fifty thousand dollars per annum. He would find it to his advantage to pay that sum, with an occasional ten-thousand-dollar check by way of a refresher. On what ground can you expect to make a better bargain? The time was, dear People, when the honor of serving you was the richest compensation which ambition could covet. That honor was the supreme object of desire to many of the ablest men of our species. Within my own recollection (and I am not yet as old as I hope to be) the office of assistant alderman in the city of New York was one of such distinction that some of the first merchants of the city desired and sought it. The first young men once counted it an eminent felicity to serve as secretary to the political association of a ward. It was better than yachting. This is all now sadly changed. During the last fifty-six years, ever since that baleful spring of 1829, it has become every year less and less an honor to serve you, and men of ability now find it more convenient to cajole you into choosing dummies for high place, and to rule through them. Your pitiful pay, therefore, is now nearly all that the men in most responsible positions can receive by way of compensation for their services. It used to be a few thousands, plus distinction, opportunity, honor, and lasting remembrance. One hapless individual in your service, my People, has among his other duties that of entertaining for you, and in your name the representatives of foreign governments resident among us. It is his pleasant office to invite them to breakfast, dinner, and tea, to A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE. 487 open his house to them generally, and give them what little comfort he can during their residence at a capital which does not abound in the agreeable things to which they are accustomed at home. He has to be a father and friend to them all, and whatever he does in this way he does for you. As a citizen, Mr. Seward, or Mr. Bayard, or Mr. Frelinghuysen, is no more bound to ask a foreign minister to dinner than any other citizen. He does it wholly as your representative, and it is you who get the credit of it. People, when you invite a friend to tea you put before him the most luxurious spread which you can coax out of your refrigerator. Pork and beans may be your ordinary fare, but in honor of your friend and your house and the sacred rite of hospitality, you are content on this occasion with nothing short of chicken fixings and cranberry sauce. Rather than fail as a host you will spend half a week's wages on the feast, and subsist the rest of the week on the leavings. Do you ever pass around the hat among friends on the plea that you are going to entertain company and want to do the thing in style? But that is just what you do, O People, when you perform the duty of national hospitality through one of your servants. With infinite difficulty you get a man to serve who has plenty of money in the bank; t pay him his house rent, and let him meet the cost of entertaining your company out of his private fortune. Mr. Seward was a plain man, perfectly free from the spirit of ostentation. He lived at Washington in an ugly, old-fashioned, and not large brick house. He gave a diplomatic dinner every Saturday during the winter, and a reception in the evening. His salary averaged (in gold) about four thousand dollars a year, and I heard him mention that his expenses in Washington during his eight years of service as Secretary of State came to about twenty-two thousand dollars a year, in paper; say, about sixteen thousand in gold. Do not reply that he might have lived in a flat, and given your guests an oyster stew with cold slaw and crackers. Such a remark is frequently made in your name; but, People, it is beneath your intelligence. Politicians who talk so misrepresent your feelings. I am far from thinking that you begrudge fair compensation to any who serve you, whether of low or high degree. The erroneous system of payment has grown in part out of circumstances, but is chiefly due to the lack of a guiding principle, which perhaps might have been indicated in the Constitution itself. I beg to propose 488 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. for your consideration the simple and just rule which has always guided you in your private transactions, the rule of the market price. I mean that, as you buy every commodity at the price which other buyers pay, so you shall pay every grade of man what individuals and corporations have to pay for the same grade. In New York, for example, there are at least ten grades of book-keepers, and they are paid from five hundred to fifteen thousand dollars per annum. Do the same, my dear People, in your public business. At Washington and elsewhere, there are a few collectors, heads of bureaus and others, who ought to be men of business of the very first class, men who could, in private enterprises, become rich in a few years. Pay such men in honor and in safety the equivalent of a large capital; thus, as our President has happily stated it, putting the public service on a business footing. Finally, my dear People, you must learn how to treat your servants with politeness and consideration. If you are compelled to deprive a good man of his accustomed employment, you must learn to mitigate the stroke by the devices and allowances which the comity of private business has evolved. Do you suppose, People, that if the Chemical Bank or the Cooper Glue Works had a few clerks too many, that the manager would dismiss them ruthlessly and rudely, with no notice, without allowing reasonable opportunities to seek other employment? Do you suppose that any respectable and rooted establishment would turn an old man out of his place, like an old horse, to die on the high road? You know it would not. Why should you, the sovereign People of the United States, be less considerate, less humane, less polite than a bank? Why should you incur the shame of those heartless, brutal jokes of the newspapers, based upon the harrowing anxieties of aged clerks, whose calamity is that they have served you for a great many years? Is it a jest, or is it the fifth act of a tragedy, for an old man to be suddenly bereft of the only employment by which it is possible for him to subsist in honor and peace? Whatever they may suffer, it is you, the People of the United States, who are dishonored. Beat all the yachts that sail on the sea, you will have the respect of no worthy community on the globe while you treat old servants so. I can recall but one instance in which you behaved to discharged clerks with an approximation to decency. It was when General B. F. Butler procured the passage of an act giving two months' A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE 489 pay to five hundred poor fellows, to enable them to get out of Washington. For many years past, it has been with me an object of curiosity to ascertain the true causes of durable success in human affairs. I have discovered nothing which has endured long except through taking due and ample care of its agents and ministers--not merely in they heyday of their strength, but when through infirmity and age they have ceased to be interesting, and lost their efficiency. You turn such out to die! The institutions that endure put upon their breast the splendid star of promotion, or hide their lean, shrunk shanks with the superb mantle of a new dignity. The Catholic Church is strong because it offers to all who serve it, of every degree, a desirable lot as long as life endures. The Protestant system dissolves visibly before our eyes because it has no desirable places except for the gifted, the brilliant, and the young. The London "Times" is to-day the first journal of Europe, because its founder knew how to treat men, both during and after their period of efficiency. I frequently hear you, O People, utter disparagingly the name of Vanderbilt. I could not ask anything better of you than you should treat the men who serve you on the precise principle which guided the late commodore in his treatment of the men who worked for him, Before handing over his steamship to the government, he made it a condition that the officers and men should not be paid government wages, and he put this demand on the right ground. "I want my ship," said he, "to be sailed in the best way, by the best men, and the best men can't be got at the wages the government is paying." Enough; I could adduce the whole history of man, public and private, in support of the commodore's principle. If I could believe that your present childish system of appointments and removals were a thing of necessity in republics, I should be obliged to conclude that republican institutions, not being in harmony with the unchangeable circumstances of human life, ought not to endure. Do not cherish the delusion that this barbarism is democratic. It is the precise thing which is farthest removed from every good meaning of that word. It is the system of favoritism, accident, and corruption. It gives every man a chance at public employment except the man who ought to have it. The most debauched hereditary despot never appointed and never removed with anything approaching your reckless and cruel precipitation. It recalls VOL CXLI.--NO. 348. 33 490 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. to mind those periods in the decay of nations when mercenary favorites and volatile mistresses ruled and ruined. It savors of the time when Madame Dubarry gave Talleyrand a bishopric for an indecent jest. I remain, my dear People, as I have ever been, Yours truly, JAMES PARTON. SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? I. Of the questions involved in the "battle of the standards," the one which overshadows all others is that of the volume of money. It is the controlling factor in determining prices and wages, and thereby the burden of taxes and the relations of debtors and creditors. The question of how large the volume of money shall be arouses the passions of men, because it affects the most important human interests. It determines the sides which men, classes, sections, and nations respectively take, regarding the use of gold alone, or both gold and silver, as the metallic standard of the commercial world. In his report upon the Mint, 1791, Alexander Hamilton summed up the whole matter by saying, that "to annul the use of either of the metals as money is to abridge the quantity of the circulating medium." To effect that abridgment was the avowed object of the persons who, under the lead of Chevalier, originated, thirty years ago, the plan of employing one and the same metal in all commercial countries. They at first proposed that this metal should be silver, and they actually persuaded some European countries to demonetize gold. They soon, however, changed their tactics, and proposed the demonetization of silver as a more practical method of accomplishing the object of "abridging the quantity of the circulating medium." The motives of the men who have kept up the war upon silver down to the present time are the same as they were then, although not so openly avowed. Those who marshal, victual, and pay the forces by which this war is waged, formulate the battle-cries and direct the maneuvers, are the men who live upon fixed incomes; 492 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. bankers, as a class, those who hold credits secured upon the property of others, and those who own the enormous and almost fabulous public debts, not less of all kinds than forty thousand millions of dollars. It is in the interest of these classes of men to have as few dollars as possible, that each dollar may have an augmented command over the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life, and they know that there is no more direct road to an appreciated money than to strike down the monetary use of one of the metals. It could be easily shown -- if the brief space at my command would admit -- that there has been a continuous fall, since 1873, in the prices of all the principal commodities which enter into human consumption, excepting only the year 1880. The reaction which occurred in that year was more than balanced by the fall in the year 1884, which was larger than in any of the preceding years. The statistics of the value of the imports and exports of Great Britain, amounting to about $3,000,000,000 per annum, furnish data upon which safe estimates of the general range of prices can be made. From these data, it clearly appears that the purchasing power of money has steadily increase, and that it is now fully 25 per cent. greater than it was in 1860. Unless the settled judgment of mankind, that the price of commodities, labor, land, and all kinds of property depends upon the volume of money is a delusion, it must be obvious that the demonetization of silver and restrictions upon its coinage in important countries must have been one of the powerfully contributing causes of the fall of prices and depression of industries. Striking statements of the proportions and consequences of the fall of prices could be indefinitely multiplied; I must restrict myself to two or three. In the British House of Commons, May 8, 1883, the condition of India being under consideration, Mr. Cross said: "Debt is not so easy to pay as it formerly was. A pound of debt was discharged by the remittance of a sovereign's worth of produce; but, unfortunately for the debtor-nations of the world, a good deal more produce had to be remitted to discharge a pound of debt than when most of the debts of the world were contracted. This told heavily against India." Mr. Cross then read the following statement of the quantities of certain articles of Indian produce required to pay a pound sterling of debt in England, at the prices of 1883, as compared SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? 493 with the quantities which would have been required at the average prices of the preceding twenty-five years: At prices of At prices of preceding 1883. 25 years. Cotton ..................................... 44 pounds. 34 pounds. Wheat ......................................224 " 168 " Jute...... .....................................185 " 123 " Rice...... ......................................288 " 193 " Tea .............................................. 20 " 13 " Indigo ....................................... 4 1/2 " 3 1/2 " Mr. Cross was justified in saying, as he di after reading this statement, that "the strain on gold might well make debtors tremble." In the letter of February 11, 1885, addressed to Mr. Cleveland by ninty-five members of the last United States House of Representatives, it is said: "It can be shown that it will take more labor or more of the produce of labor to pay what remains of our national debt now than it would have taken to pay it all at the close of the war. Eighteen million bales of cotton were the equivalent in value of the entire interest-bearing debt in 1865, but it will take 35,000,000 bales at the price of cotton now to pay the remainder of the debt. Twenty-five million tons of bar-iron would have paid the whole debt in 1865. It will now take 35,000,000 tons to pay what remains after all that has been paid." The New York "Tribune" of January 8, 1885, says: "About the 13th of December (1884), the market for products touched the lowest level of prices ever reached in this country since records of prices began. The range of prices is now below that of October, 1878, then the lowest reached for many years. When the depreciation of paper currency vanished (October, 1878), it was found that prices were more than 15 per cent. below the special level of 1860, the last preceding year in which prices had been made in gold." Silver dollars, if they were current in the market at only their bullion value, instead of their face value, would still have a purchasing power greater than any kind of dollars had in 1860. In view of the disasters to debtors, taxpayers, industries, and all kinds of property, excepting only money, which the war upon silver has already caused, and the greater disasters which it threatens, and in view of the fact that an immense majority of the people of this country are debtors, taxpayers, or laboring men, how amazing does it seem that the administration of the national 494 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW finances is now, and for many years has been, in the hands of men who are subservient to the interests of the few money-lenders, and antagonistic to the interests of the great mass of the people who are engaged in productive industry, and who are compelled to borrow money. So long as men are selfish, and these conditions exist, we may expect that every discrimination which human ingenuity can devise will be invoked to depreciate the value of silver, and to make the silver dollar unpopular with the people. It is true that a silver dollar measured by a gold standard does not contain a dollar's worth of bullion at the present market price. This may be an evil, but so long as there is no disturbance in the parity of the coins of the two metals, and no possibility of such a disturbance for many years to come, it is an evil of trifling consequence compared with that which will result from the discontinuance of silver coinage. Complaint is made that silver is less convenient as to its portability than gold, but both metals, except subsidiary coin, are now chiefly used, and might be wholly used, not corporally, but by representative paper. The storage of silver requires larger vaults than the storage of gold, but if all the advantages in respect to convenience which are claimed for gold are conceded, they wholly fail to justify the disuse of silver, if gold alone is inadequate in amount to sustain prices at the level at which the vast debts of the world have been contracted. We may apply in this case the language of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, in a reply which he made in England, in 1764, to the complaints of the British Board of Trade, that the American Colonies were supplementing coin with paper : "However fit a particular thing may be for a particular purpose, whenever that thing is not to be had, or not to be had in sufficient quantity, it becomes necessary to use something else, the fittest that can be got in lieu of it." THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for June contained articles favoring a cessation of our present coinage, by Professor Sumner, President Walker, and Professor Laughlin. A reply to the arguments and statements of these three able writers, which rest to a degree upon widely different grounds, would fill many pages of the REVIEW. A brief allusion to them must suffice for the present. Professor Laughlin has been at the trouble of preparing a wood-cut, with the value of gold between 1870 and 1884 exhibited SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? 495 by a straight line as the standard of comparison, and with the value of silver relatively to gold during the same period exhibited by another line, which is of course very crooked and erratic; but he must know that if he had represented the value of silver by a straight line, and made that the standard for comparison, and had represented the relative value of gold by another line, the latter would have been equally crooked and erratic. But what is more important, and what the Professor may have failed to remember, is that if the general range of the prices of commodities to be represented by a straight line, the correspondence with it of a line representing the value of silver would be much closer than of a line representing the value of gold. Professor Sumner says that a fear that American money is to be depreciated by the continued coinage of silver is the reason "why so few are now willing to become creditors, and why industry and commerce are stagnant." With due deference to the opinions of so able a theorist as Professor Sumner, the least that can be said is that this statement shows a misconception of the situation as a matter of fact, and that it is erroneous as a matter of philosophy. Of the persons possessing moneyed capital, instead of there being only a few who wish to become creditors, or, in other words, who wish to loan it, they nearly all want to loan it. It is for this reason that rates of interest at central points are now merely nominal. This unprofitable situation of loanable capital is as conspicuous in Great Britain, where no silver coinage is either in progress or impending, as it is in New York or Boston. The cause of the almost universal desire in Europe and the United States to lend money, rather than to invest it in productive enterprises, or in purchases of any kind of property, is the common apprehension that money will appreciate in value, and that the position of a creditor with any tolerable security is more desirable than that of the holder of property. This is the true reason "why industry and commerce are stagnant," while interest-bearing deposits with bankers, trust companies, and savings-banks are multiplying. Nobody wishes to produce commodities, or to buy and hold them, while they are falling in price. A glut of loanable capital and low rates of interest are the inevitable final accompaniments of a shrinking volume of money, 496 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. and the consequent decline in market values, rendering investments in property unprofitable and hazardous. The British historian, Allison, said that the contraction of currency which attended the resumption of specie payments by the Bank of England, in 1821, caused as much loss to money capitalists by lowering the rate of interest as to producers by lowering the price of commodities. Professor Walker favors the abrogation of the Silver-Coinage law of 1878 upon the sole ground that a bimetallic arrangement with European nations is the indispensable condition to the safe use of silver in this country. This is in plain contradiction of the experience of mankind. From time immemorial both gold and silver have been used as money without bimetallic treaties. The relative value of gold and silver, distributed for a time by the disproportionate yield of silver following the discovery of America, finally settled in 1650 to between 15 and 16 to 1, and so remained for 225 years, although the first case of an international arrangement, the Latin Union treaty, did not occur till 1865. That treaty was between four contiguous countries, all of which were already on the double standard, and all of which had the same ratio, viz.: 5 1/2 to 1. It was made to secure a common use of the metallic money of the four countries, and had no reference to the general question of the metallic standards. The world has had a long experience, independently of international treaties, of that steadiness of the relative value of the two metals which results from the magnitude of their mass, representing the accumulation of ages, which is so vastly in excess of their annual production. No cause of equal magnitude, tending to disturb the relative value of the metals, as the transition of Germany from the single standard of silver to the single standard of gold, will probably recur for centuries. After that transition had spent its force we have the following record of the average gold price per ounce of the British standard silver during each of the past six years, in the London market, as given by the London "Economist," February 21, 1885: Years. Average price in pence. 1879............................................. 51 1/4 1880............................................. 52 1/4 1881............................................. 51 11/16 1882............................................. 51 5/8 1883............................................. 50 9/16 1884............................................. 50 11/16 SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? 497 These fluctuations, in the opinion of Professor Walker, are so intolerable, that in order to avoid them we must give up silver, unless there is a general coinage of it in Europe; and in the same article he admits that the abandonment of silver will result in "the enhancement of the burden of all debts and fixed charges, acting as a steady drag upon production," and that " suffocation, strangulation, are words hardly too strong to express the agony of the industrial body when embraced in the fatal coils of a contracting money." To such evils, by no means too vividly portrayed, may this country never be brought to submit, by false alarms, as to the danger of a single silver standard. That our present rate of coinage will ever result in such a standard is a remote and improbable contingency- even if it should occur, it would be a less misfortune than that of suffering our currency, by discarding silver, to be appreciated to any height to which selfish bankers and money capitalists in this country and in Europe may be able and disposed to carry gold. It is of infinite importance to maintain the steadiness of the value of our own currency, and of our own price. In comparison with this it is of little importance what the relation of value may be between our currency and that of foreign countries. N.P. HILL. II. The silver dollar of the United States always has been, and is, and always must be, worth a dollar, and -under existing laws- can never be worth less than a gold dollar; no man has ever lost a cent from the employment of the silver dollar as money; yet there issues from the banking centers a persistent clamor to demonetize this coin, a clamor which, strange to say, is strengthened by the ill-concealed sympathy of officials whose duty it is less to impugn the wisdom of our laws than to uphold them.* Money is a subject with which the most unlettered person is *For example, the Comptroller of the Currency, in his report for 1884 (pp. 20,21), impudently alludes to the "folly" of Congress with respect to the coinage of silver and its "ingenious" evasion of what presumes to suppose are natural laws. 498 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. apt to deem himself conversant. Does he not every day handle coins or notes; is he not familiar with their appearance and use; has he not been taught that money is merely "pieces of merchandise, weighed and verified by the States;" that the value of these pieces or coins conforms to the cost of their production; that the ratio of value between silver and gold is due to the relative cost of producing these metals; that paper notes are not money, but its representatives; and that their value is due to the probability of their redemption in coins? "Surely," he argues, "it requires no learning to comprehend such easy matters as these;" and forth- with he lends himself to swell a clamor against silver, which, if unfortunately it should bear any practical fruit, will despoil this mushroom philosopher of a material portion of his wealth, and, perhaps, fling him into a bankruptcy court. No man has ever seen money. He may have seen a part of it -- a fraction, or many fractions of it; but the whole of it he could not have seen, because money consists of all money, or all the money in a given country. The usefulness, function, and value of each piece depend upon the numerical relation which it bears to the whole, and it is impossible to use it as money, or to determine its relation to other things, without reference to the whole sum of which it forms a part. Money is not pieces of merchandise any more than acres are pieces of land, or minutes pieces of clocks. Money is a measure or an institution of law designed to measure the numerical relation called value. The value of a piece of money does not at all depend upon the cost of its production, or else it would be impossible to alter the value of coins by the emission or retirement of paper notes; whereas, in point of fact this has repeatedly been done since paper notes were first introduced. The value of a piece of money depends solely upon the numerical relation which it bears to the whole sum of money. The ratio of value between silver and gold has nothing whatever to do with the relative cost of producing these metals, which, by the way, no man has ever determined; it is the result of a conflict of national (not natural) laws, which reach back to very distant ages. Paper notes are not representatives of money, but fractions of money itself; and their value is not derived from the probability of their redemption in coins, but simply from their legal or customary recognition and the numerical relations which they bear to the whole number of "dollars" or other legal denominations of SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? 499 money, in which debts are payable by law -- or custom having the force of law. And, so far is money from being an easy subject to comprehend, it has been deemed worthy the serious attention of the most intellectual men of all ages, of Aristotle, Locke, Newton, Montesquieu, Humboldt, and Mill.* I am asked if, in my opinion, silver should be demonetized, meaning, I suppose, shall we demonetize the silver dollars. My answer is: If the government be authorized to supply the place of the coins (which would thus be withdrawn from circulation and from sustaining prices), if it be authorized to supply their place with additional paper notes, the same to be as full legal tenders and as irredeemable in any other money as the silver dollars are, it will work no direct harm to demonetize them. The silver dollars have done good service, and though the metal may have to be sold at a slight loss, it will pay off a large installment of the public debt. But if, as is more likely, the government fails to be so authorized, then to demonetize the silver dollars will be to diminish the money of the country about one-fifth and increase in like proportion the value of all interest-bearing securities, including bonds and mortgages and other evidences of indebtedness. It will also be to lower the prices of wheat, corn, fruits, hay, cotton, tobacco, sugar, wool, meats, butter, cheese, and all farm produce about one-sixth. It will still further depress trade by depriving our manufacturers and merchants of markets and our mechanics and laborers of employment. It will increase the moral hazard of insurance. In short, it will hand over from one-sixth to one-fifth of the wealth of the country substantially to the banks, and disarrange all those interests and relations of society upon whose permanency largely rests the welfare of the State. Even were the silver dollars supplanted by greenbacks, there is an indirect evil which would arise from the demonetization of silver, and which is well worth considering in this connection: the loss of our wheat market in Liverpool. At the present time we annually export about seventy-five million bushels of wheat and fifty million barrels of wheat flour to foreign countries, the largest proportion to Great Britain. Among the sources from whence that country derives important supplies of wheat are India, Aus- *For ample evidence concerning the nature and function of money the reader is referred to the writer's "History of the Precious Metals," "History of Money," and "Science of Money," New York, Scribner & Welford. 500 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. tria, and Morocco–all silver money countries. Were we to sell or threaten to sell our stock of silver dollars, which when melted would make about seven thousand tons of metal, the act would immediately affect the gold value of silver metal in England, with- out, for many years, if ever, disturbing its purchasing power over commodities in the countries named. The consequence would be that a given sum of gold in England would at once purchase much more wheat from India, Austria, etc., than from America, and our greatest market would be lost to us. The export of wheat from India increased from one million bushels in 1873 to forty- two million bushels in 1884. Late advices (1885) state that "the rains this year were tardy but copious, and there is every prospect of a good crop." Repeal the Bland bill, and within a year India will be able to land fifty million bushels of wheat in Liverpool at twenty-seven shillings, gold, the quarter (eighty-four cents a bushel), to say nothing of Austria, Morocco, and other silver-using and wheat-producing countries. Already the mere agitation of the subject has greatly depressed the price of wheat, and if the danger increases it will, no doubt, have its effect upon cotton and other crops in the production of which we have to compete with silver-using countries. The money of the United States at the present time is furnished partly by the government, partly by the banks, and partly by in- dividuals under a free coinage act copied from the statutes of Charles II. Owing to this pernicious distribution of the once royal prerogative of coining and regulating money, it is impossible to ascertain with precision how much money there is now, or how much there is likely to be, in the country, at any given time. In other words, the measure of value is so inexact and variable that no two persons would be likely to estimate it at the same sum. As nearly as the writer can determine, it consists at the present time of, nominally, about thirteen hundred million dollars, of which about forty-five per cent. is government-made money, consisting of greenbacks and silver coins, the latter increasing at about the rate of two millions a month ; twenty-three per cent. of private bank notes, decreasing at the rate of about two millions a month ; and thirty-two per cent of gold coined for banks and individuals, over the quantity coined, melted, exported, and circulated of which the government has no control. At the present moment it is lying in the Treasury and banks entirely inert, substantially none of it SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? 501 being in general circulation. Of the whole sum of money in the country probably not over nine hundred or one thousand million dollars are in general circulation, or operating to sustain prices. Assuming this estimate to be reasonably correct (I am aware that the estimate of gold differs from the "official" one) it follows that to demonetize say two hundred millions of silver dollars is to destroy one-fifth of the measure of value, and to undermine to this extent the basis of all contracts and bargains made since these sil- ver dollars were coined ; and this solely to the profit of the banks and other capitalists. More than this, it will practically relegate the future control of money to the banks, whose interests, at times, will lend them to as wild an inflation as now it invites to a ruinous contraction. They already have absolute control over their own notes, they have secured a large proportion of the gold coin and are trying to monopolize it all, and they are increasing their re- serves of greenbacks which are payable in coin. The only portion of the money of the country not amenable to their control is the silver dollars ; and this explains their hostility to them. Mark that I do not question the patriotism of bank officers as individuals. In this respect they are probably no worse nor better than other men ; but, as the officers of corporations, they have but one end to aim at, and that is to make profits. Contraction and the monopolization of gold promise these corporations a premium on that metal, an increase of the premium on consols, and perhaps a return to the State bank system and investment in seven per cent. securities. Hence their officers are unanimously in favor of con- traction. But if their shareholders were asked if they ever knew of a prosperous country with a diminishing money, and reflected how much more they would lose as individuals than they would gain as shareholders through the contraction of the currency, perhaps they would reverse their present policy, increase their note cir- culation, support the silver dollars, and promote an increased de- mand for discounts by imparting the hope of remunerative prices to the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, and the specu- lator. It is useless to discuss the objections, often frivolous and always sophistical, which have been urged against the silver dollars ; all these are met by the simple fact that nobody can get one and no- body will part with one for less than a gold dollar. If it be urged 502 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. that we cannot pay foreign balances with them, the answer is that we have no foreign balances to play, that the bulk of our import trade is with silver and paper money countries and not with gold ones, and that as to the latter, American silver dollars are worth to-day in Liverpool within an eighth of a cent as much as gold ones; and if, as will probably be the case, it is attempted to be proved that "the Treasury cannot force silver dollars into circulation," the answer is, that still less can it force gold dollars. The real offense of the silver dollars is not their color, size, design, nor value when melted. It is their number, the fact that they are issued at pleasure of the nation, the greater ease of circulating the silver certificates than the gold ones, and the obstacles which these circumstances offer to the design of further contracting the currency. Twenty years ago a similar clamor was raised against greenbacks, and if a new California were discovered to-morrow a similar one would be raised against gold. There will be no settlement of the laws relating to money until the government assumes entire control of it; and this is what should be done without further delay. The interests of society demand a precise, a stable, an equitable measure of value, and the government alone can furnish one. The preservation of our national unity invites the exertion of "a force which, like that of a uniform money, is all-pervading in its influence and constant in its operation." And when we come to the law of the matter, we have only to recall the words of the great Expounder of the Constitution: "Whenever paper is to perform the functions of coin, its regulation naturally belongs to the hands which hold the power over the coinage." The time has now come to adopt a settled policy on this subject. Let a commission be appointed by Congress to whom the entire subject of money shall be relegated. Clothe this commission with power to take evidence and instruct it to bring in a bill designed to permanently regulate the monetary system of the country. The researches of such a body cannot fail to prove as instructive as its labors will have to be conservative; for it will be obliged to conciliate a wide divergence of opinion and respect a vast structure of vested and expectant interests. And in order to be rid of those idle people who have swelled the clamor against silver by inventing evils which they never endured and confident that their pretensions could not be made good, I would give this same commission power SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED? 503 to audit any claims for losses which could be proved to have been sustained by any person from the use of silver dollars, the claims to be paid by the government out of the seigniorage derived from the fabrication of the coins. ALEXANDER DEL MAR, Mining Commissioner to the Monetary Commission of 1876. III. THE elaborate and persistent attempts made of late to discredit one of the standard American coins render it necessary to make the inquiry whether there is anything unlawful or dishonest in the coinage of the silver dollar. The Constitution of the United States gives to Congress the power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof." Those who are objecting to the standard silver dollar would, logically, object just as much to the exercise by Congress of this constitutional function. The essence of their demand seems to be that our coin shall be a mere commodity, not a standard. Since the foundation of the government the United States coin has been bimetallic -- gold and silver. The silver dollar is the unit of our values, the gold fives, tens, twenties, and fifties being multiples of it. Since our government first coined money the purchasing power of both gold and silver has fallen very much. Why not demand that gold and silver be put in both coins to bring them to the old value? The relative commercial value of gold and silver has changed more than once. Shortly after the discovery of gold in California and Australia, gold was, by the standards, relatively the cheaper metal. Since the application of machinery to silver mining, that metal has declined in commercial value; but the decline of silver in late years is largely due to the demonetization of silver by Germany, which thus ceased to be a buyer, and threw a large amount on the market. Owing to that fact, silver fell in 1876 to forty-six and a half pence per ounce. In 1881 it had risen to fifty-one and three-quarters pence. During the entire fifty years, from 1830 to 1880, the supply of silver was not sufficient, as Mr. Mulhall states that 5,230 tons of old candlesticks, etc., were during that period melted down for current uses. Coin, either of gold or silver, is the standard of weight and 504 fineness for a nation. There is no international standard. When the coins of any nation cross its frontier, they become, lit its wheat and beef, a commodity. Thus the United States is the largest producer of silver in the world ; during the past few years it has furnished one-half of the entire production. Our production of gold is also large. It is quite immaterial when we ship these to other countries whether we send the amount in coin or bullion. The Latin Union, France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, endeavor to maintain some uniformity of standards. The commercial value of their silver coin is slightly below ours. Britain has been the persistent advocate for a single gold standard for more than fifty years. Since that time silver has, at times, been dearer than gold, but her purpose was to strike down one of the standards, owing to the steady decline or great accumulations of both gold and silver. A nation which, like England, does not owe any other nation, and one to whom nearly every foreign nation is debtor, is of course deeply interested in keeping up the value of the metallic standards. Current business soon adjusts itself to tany standard, but with debts it is different; the creditor is interested in raising or keeping them up, the debtor in keeping them down. As the chief value of gold and silver comes from their use as coin, the discontinuance of one standard would greatly enhance the value of the other. Money has two kinds of value : gold and silver have their standards of weight and fineness, that is one kind ; the other kind consists in the volume of either or both there is in any one country. As a medium of exchange, the demand for it is governed by the amount in circulation. It is the same way with paper. It has, first, the value of the credit behind it, and then of the volume in circulation. Make money plenty, and it is cheap ; make it scares, and it is dear. Between 1873 and 1879, Germany, in the attempt to join England on a monometallic basis, sold 3,220 tons of silver. She seriously depressed her business, and has still some standard silver in circulation. Scandinavia has attempted to do the same. Austria has a silver standard. All the other nations, like the United States, are bimetallic. Russia has also attempted the single standard, but her circulation is chiefly irredeemable paper. The Asiatic nations are large customers for and users of silver. While Britain has a single gold standard, British India has a silver circulation of enormous proportions. China coins neither gold nor 505 silver, but has a large circulation of foreign silver. The annual report of the Director of the Mint, for 1883, shows the amount of coin of a few great nations. France had then of full legal tender a circulation $543,000,000 in gold, and $873,000,000 in silver. The United States at that time, $606,197,000 in gold, and $159,479,000 in silver. This latter has since become about two hundred millions. Great Britain, $587,683,000 in gold. Germany, $342,720,000 in gold, and $109,480,000 in silver. Mr. Mulhall states that the volume of paper money in the world is increasing much more rapidly than specie. In 1848 paper money was about twenty per cent. of all the money in use ; in 1880 it was thirty-eight per cent. It will thus be seen that France has a circulation of silver four times as great as ours, and it looks a little singular that the United States, the great silver-producing nation, should aid in driving silver from circulation, thus destroying the value of one of its chief products. This is not the first attempt to force the United States to adopt the single gold standard. A revision of the laws had been directed, and the report of the commission came before the Forty-third Congress. It had simply been authorized to make a code including the recent laws, and leaving out what had been repealed. No authority was given to make any change in legislation. The voluminous reports were read at night sessions, attended by few ; and, in fact, the writer, who attended many of them, found it, as doubtless other members did, impossible to follow the reading and know whether changes had been made or not, as a person to have done so would have been required to compare every section with the whole seventeen volumes. No act of Congress had ever passed demonetizing the silver dollar, or suspending its coinage. When the revision came to be printed, it was found that several changes had accidentally go in. One of these left out the provision for coining American standard dollars. If there has ever been anything dishonest connected with our standard dollar, it was that transaction. If any one ever velived the change resulted from "an accident," the powerful lobby and press used to prevent its remonetization were sufficient to dispel that idea. There was a strong popular sentiment in favor of correcting this "mistake." A number of bills were introduced. As the writer was a member of the Subcommittee on Banking and Currency, to whom they were referred, he claims to be tolerably familiar with VOL. VXLI.--NO. 348. 34 506 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. the history of the bill. As matured in the committee, and as it passed the House, the bill simply placed our silver coinage where it was before. In many countries, including Britain, coinage of gold and silver, according to the standard, was free. Our act was copied from an old English law. Any person could take gold and silver to the Mint and have it assayed and coined on paying mintage fees. That is the law in regard to gold now, and a man can deposit his gold bullion and get a certificate for it, which circulates as money. The Senate amended the House bill, striking out free coinage, and inserting a provision for buying silver bullion at the market rates, and coining two millions a month. It had been evidently expected by the enemies of the measure that this difference of opinion would cause the bill to fail, but as amended it became a law. Since then a continuous and persistent war has been made on the silver dollar. On the 31st of last October our circulation of national bank notes was $332,473,693, and of legal tender notes, $346,681,016. There is also an amount of State bank notes, old demand notes, and other currency. These, with the subsidiary silver, or "token coinage," and the gold and silver as already stated, constitute our business circulating medium. The silver certificates should not be added, as they represent standard coin in the treasury. As it is the banks and dealers in money that are carrying on the war against the silver dollar, if money is too abundant they can withdraw their national bank notes. The real secret of their hostility is because the silver dollar is the only part of the currency they are unable to control. To show that our circulation is not much too large, Mr. Mulhall gives the total amount of all kinds of money, gold, silver, and paper, per inhabitant, as in Britain, five pounds six shillings ; in France, ten pounds ten shillings ; in the United States, five pounds fifteen shillings. Holland, a mercantile nation, stands eight pounds five shillings. The nations having little business and no great amount of wealth have small amounts of circulating medium, Russia having only one pound fifteen shillings, a great part of which is irredeemable paper. The argument that the silver dollars are bulky and inconvenient is shallow. If silver certificates were issued in ones, twos, fives, besides the tens, the whole amount would pass immediately into circulation. Gold can hardly be said to circulate SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONITIZED? 507 except in certificates. A paper circulation that has standard coin behind it can scarcely be called in question. We freely store gold for everybody, surely we can store our own silver. To establish and maintain an international standard of money is impracticable. Changing standards is always a very doubtful expedient where great debts have been incurred, and we, as a nation, with our city, county, State, railway, and other debts, owe enormously. Gold may be discovered, or by improvements in machinery be mined in great quantities very soon, and once more disturb relative values. If the bimetallic standard can be maintained, it will materially aid one of our great industries. If a change in the standards must eventually be made, the United States should approach it cautiously. WILLIAM A. PHILLIPS. NOTES AND COMMENTS. I. MR. EDITOR: Cardinal Manning's article is very much to be commended. It is extremely temperate, and at the same time clear and firm on the right side. The moral power of corrupt passions in great cities has again and again proved itself to be more than a match for the moral power of the upper classes of society. It is remarkable how unanimous representative men are against gambling, crime, and vice, and every form of salacious immorality, and yet equally remarkable is the refusal of society in any concerted way to meddle with the subject ; and we perceive on every side that men's actions are more affected by the infelicity of those who seek to stay corruption than they are by the corruption itself. They know that thousands of men are ruined by intemperance, and in the case of London, uncounted thousands destroyed by licentiousness and every form of iniquity. And yet they never themselves institute one influence to suppress them, nor join with those who try to do so, but content themselves by standing off and criticizing the infelicity of those who are earnestly working for the suppression of vice. We have a parallel instance in the city of New York. There can be no doubt as to the abominations of dishonesty, of gamblers in every form and shape, but Mr. Cornstock has made himself the object of unlimited abuse, because in the employment of the law he has attempted to suppress, or, at any rate, to circumscribe the bounds of those overflowing fountains of public corruption. That the evil is great is admitted ; that it ought to be suppressed is admitted ; but the moment any man undertakes to suppress it, good men and moral turn from him, and are more severe on his methods than they are on the iniquity he is endeavoring to suppress. In all our great cities the dregs at the bottom of society are drawn up to the surface, causing a malaria of unhealth. It may be said that almost every modern city is built on the foundations of Sodom, and that the venomous character of wickedness at the bottom of society is in the proportion of the virtuousness of the top. In other words, men of intellect and piety refuse to exert any remedial influence which will oblige them to come into contact with men of corrupt animal passions. They separate themselves from their kind, because their kind are so wicked, and place themselves in the condition of the Scribes and Pharisees, against whom Christ uttered his maledictions. Their religion was without humanity. They served God by despising sinners. HENRY WARD BEECHER. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 509 II. MR. EDITOR : The "New York Tribune" published, on the 6th of July last, a telegram to the effect that General Diaz, President of the United Mexican States, was disposed to sell to the United States of America six of the Northern States of Mexico, for the purpose of obtaining the necessary funds to save the country from the financial crisis through which she was now passing. I stated, on the 21st of the same month, to a reporter of the Associated Press at this city, that I did not credit that rumor, because I did not think that any country having any self-respect should recur to suicide in order to surmount a difficulty of a transitory character. You addressed me, on the 24th of said July, a letter on the subject, stating that the friends of Mexico in this country believed that there was some foundation for the report, and that it seemed to them that although General Diaz might at first repudiate it, he would at last accept it in order to save, in this wise, the financial situation of Mexico, particularly if a favorable opinion of the matter could be formed in both countries; or in other words, that the President of Mexico wished to feel the pulse of the two nations concerning this important subject. I answered, on the 2d of the following August, that I had already heard from General Diaz, and that the report that he was willing to sell any portion of the Mexican territory not only had no foundation at all, but that, on the contrary, his ideas on this point were entirely in accordance with mine. Since the 24th of last July I addressed a letter to General Diaz, informing him of what was thought here to be his views on the subject, and on the 6th of August he wrote me a letter stating, "that if any person in the United States believed, in good faith, that he entertained the idea of selling any portion of the Mexican territory, he was wholly mistaken, as he had not only never uttered any word which might be construed in that sense, even at a great stretch, but had always, on the contrary, expressed himself, whenever speaking on the subject, in clear, precise, and even energetic terms ; that he attributed these reports to the policy of his enemies in Mexico, and, therefore, thought proper that those who had given credit to the same in this country should know the truth." Wishing, on one hand, to comply with General Diaz's desires on the subject, and, on the other to inform you of the result of this incident, I quote here the terms of the reply of the President of Mexico. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, M. ROMERO. MEXICAN LEGATION, Washington, D. C. III. In 1873 there were eighty Americans studying music in Milan. Out of this number have come Albani, Valleria, Miss Thursby, Miss Kate Smith, better known as Mlle. Caterina Measco, now singing in Europe, and Miss Josie Jones Yorke, still with the opera company of Carl Rosa in England. Since that time Paris has contributed Miss Van Zandt, Miss Emma Nevada and Miss Griswold, and to those, whose reputations belong to both continents, we add the names of 510 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Miss Kellogg, Miss Cary, Minnie Hauk, and Mr. William Candidus, and remembering how rarely the flower of success blooms, we gain some idea of the musical fertility of this country. No other nation has produced an equal number of singers of equal reputation in the same time ; but as a nation we have been the last to realize and profit by our own manifest advantage. It is as if we had left England to invent the cotton-gin, and France, McCormick's reaper. But there is another side which should appeal as strongly to our sympathies as this to our pride. At that time Milan was a representative musical center, but Florence, Naples, Vienna, and Paris had each its nucleus of American students. The greater number of these were sent there through the generous interest of friends at home. In many instances to do this involved on the part of affection much self-sacrifice. But few of these singers had undertaken a musical career save with the expectation of success in that high and brilliant sense that Patti and Nilsson represented. None other was worthy an American girl's ambition. Conviction, however, has its own slow but relentless force. It arrived in time with the knowledge that to be a great singer is to aim beyond the stars and hit the mark. Unwilling to endure the humiliation of a less brilliant homecoming, numbers of these students have preferred to remain abroad and hold leading positions in the inferior Italian towns. The unwritten tragedies of many of these self-imposed duties have been due in great measure to our national misconceptions. With the exception of church choirs there was no place in this country except for great singers. Music was an art to be seen rather than to be heard. The phenomenal or the marvelous alone could add to its value. Since that time, and especially in the few past years, a notable change has taken place in one point of view. There is a tendency to regard music as something desirable independent of individualities. This is due to the efforts of a handful of people, and notably those of Mr. Theodore Thomas in his orchestral concerts, and aided more recently by Dr. Damrosch in his season of German opera. These new conditions demand new provisions. Happily that period arises with our first moments of national leisure. A young nation is inevitably absorbed in providing for the necessities of its existence ; but, this work achieved, there arise new wants that prove as imperative as those which have before commanded attention. To these the increase of wealth and wisdom of the country alone can minister. It is the appreciation of these facts that has led to the musical projects on the part of a few public-spirited citizens of the United States. These have taken the form of an organization, with the following gentlemen as its corporators: Mayor William R. Grace, Mr. August Belmont, Mr. Joseph M. Drexel, Mr. Richard Irvin, jr., Mr. Francis B. Thurber, Judge William G. Choate, Mr. Theodore Thomas, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. Henry G. Marquand, Mr. Jesse Seligman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, of New York City ; Mr. Henry S. Higginson, of Boston ; Mr. Harrison Garrett, of Baltimore ; Mr. A. Howard Henken, of Cincinnati ; Mr. N. K. Fairbanks, of Chicago ; Mr. Leopold Wetherby, of St. Louis. The ultimate aim of this organization is a National Conservatory of Music, the initiatory step the National School of Opera. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 511 The address to the country takes the form of a demonstration of native capabilities and an exposition of new methods of representing operatic works in a season of American opera, to be inaugurated this coming winter. Of this, Mr. Charles E. Loder, so favorably known in connection with the Wagner concerts and with Mr. Theodore Thomas, will be the impresario, while Mr. Thomas will have the entire musical direction. The first consideration appeals not only to our national pride, but more shrewdly to our commercial trait of seeing what we have before we pay for it. The public is asked to interest itself in the new project only after being shown the sample. The second is of higher and wider interest in its relation to the musical development of this country. The first result of presenting opera as a musical and dramatic ensemble, which is the intention of Mr. Thomas, is the subordination of personalities to ends more distinctly musical. This is the reverse of the prevailing system, and in bringing the various parts into different and more harmonious relations, at once creates a different esprit de corps. Setting aside its value to music as an art, it is of sufficient interest to engage attention in the inducements thus offered to a large number of singers. The American student is amenable to motives of a certain dignity, as the numerous applications already made for positions in the chorus from numerous homes all over the land bear witness. Madame Marchesi, than whom there could be no more conclusive authority, has said that the United States is rapidly becoming the country to which the musical world will look for its singers, and accounts for the unusually good voices found among American girls, by the fact that they are taught to speak clearly and in no uncertain tones from childhood. The American voice has heretofore attracted attention by no means so flattering. But these words go far to compensate for less kind but equally truthful comment. It is these forecasts that warrant the generous enterprise of which the first branch established will be the National School of Opera. So far as its policy is outlined, it is to attempt only what can be done effectively. It is in this way that the great conservatories of Europe, although supported by government subsidies, have arisen. In this country, private enterprise must take the place of public funds. How much can be done will depend on the financial support received. But the country is proverbially liberal in operatic matters. A guaranty fund of $50,000 is often raised in this city for a single season of opera. In view of these facts, there seems to be no doubt that a project, appealing not only to our national pride and national sympathies, but becoming a necessity brought before us by the great law of supply and demand, will be generously upheld. As the incorporators are scattered over an extent of country and the business of organizing will require frequent meetings, the direction of the school has been intrusted to a board of trustees composed of the following persons : Mrs. August Belmont, Mrs. Wm. T. Blodgett, Mrs. Francis B. Thurber, Mrs. Thomas Ward, Mrs. Richard Irving, jr., Mr. August Belmont, Mayor Grace, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. Henry G. Marquand. In love of art, business ability, and social position, the board presents various elements that contribute to success in any undertaking. The domestic 512 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. culture of music as it were with us in a National Conservatory, where training in all the highest branches of music can be obtained, and in which it is hoped the school of opera will be merged, must have certain indirect but equally important results. One does not speak of an American school, but it is inevitable that a certain differentiation must in time result. It is quite as well if we hope it will result in our favor, and the star of music westward take its way. It is certainly do much toward creating a musical medium that will stimulate musical composition as well as musical execution. But the most beguiling view of the subject is not in the outlook for budding American talent, nor in our national glorification, but in the contemplation of the sum of human happiness which the wide diffusion of musical culture will increase. The most critical and appreciative audiences in the world are found among the blouses and nodding caps in the top-most galleries of little Italian theaters. An Italian peasant may make his mark, but he knows every phrase of his Verdi, Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti. The American has been to the public schools and has learned the value of primaries, but of music, as the Italian understands it, he agrees rather with Gautier, C'est le bruit qui coûte le plus d'argent. It is the touch of grace and joy that the arts alone can bestow, which the life of the American citizen lacks. It is this which the present project goes far to supply. MARY GAY HUMPHREYS. IV. MR. EDITOR: We notice at the head of the first article in the September number of your REVIEW the following quotation : "Les financiers soutiennent l'état comme la corde soutient le pendu."— Montesquieu. We venture, therefore, to address you a slight verification in the form of a history of this clever saying. It is incorrect to attribute it to Montesquieu, it having been uttered by Marshal Duc de Noailles in reply to an observation of King Louis XV., that the "fermiers généraux" (farmers of the taxes) were a support to the state. "Oui, Sire," replies the Duke, "comme la corde soutient le pendu." Our authority for this is Michaud's "Biographie Universelle," 1822, and following editions—articles on Noailles. The Marshal was long known under the title of the Due d'Ayen and famous for his "bons mots." He was the ancestor of the present Marquis de Noailles, formerly French Minister to the United States, and now Ambassador at Constantinople, and of his elder brother, the Duc d'Ayen, who has recent, through the death of his father, (ancien pair de France, member of the French Academy, etc.), succeeded to the title Duc de Noailles. J. BAUDRY JEANCOURT. PARIS, Office of "Galignani's Messenger," September 14, 1885. 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