WHY AN UNREASONABLE FANCY WAS ACTED ON—THE HISTORY OF THE CAUSE OF
AMERICAN PROGRESSIVENESS—WHAT PASSES IN AMERICA IMPORTANT TO US—THE
NORTHERN STATES SOWN BROADCAST WITH HOUSES.
I had had good times at New York, and I was rather eagerly looking
forward to good times at Washington, and so was somewhat disinclined to
tarry on the way thither. Still I thought it would be unwise to lose
an opportunity which offered itself for seeing something of the second
city of the Union, which lay upon my route. I therefore stopped at the
place, and having secured comfortable quarters at the best hotel (in
America there is a wider difference between the best and second-rate
hotels than there is elsewhere), I sallied forth to get some idea of
the external appearance of the town. There are occasions, it is said,
when imagination overpowers our judgment, and makes fools of us all.
I now became, I suppose, an illustration of this process. As I walked
along the streets they appeared to me distressingly straight. Their
nomenclature, too, was painfully dull and formal. This is a place,
I began to think, where men and women profess a form of virtue too
exalted for ordinary mortals. Such a city as this appears to be, must
be inhabited by people who are not so human as to err, nor so divine
as to forgive. If I had not been alone, it would probably have been
impossible for so groundless a fancy to have taken possession of my
mind. Still I was rational enough, when I had finished my breakfast
the next morning, to think of delivering some of my letters of
introduction. It seemed best to begin with one addressed to a gentleman
whose official position need not now be mentioned. On finding the house
I was in search of, I sent in my letter. The gentleman was not himself
at home, but his wife opened the letter, and sent out to say that she
would see me. I have not the slightest idea that she had any thought of
being rude or discourteous. If so, I should not say anything about what
passed; for then it would have been the only instance of discourtesy I
met with in my travels through the United States, and a single instance
of discourtesy would be obliterated by the recollection of helpfulness
and kindness everywhere else. It was, however, an instance of precisely
what my fancy had been suggesting of the kind of virtue which would be
the natural growth of the place. ‘Sir,’ said the lady, without asking
me to be seated, or taking a seat herself, and in a tone and with a
manner which proclaimed that she belonged to the order of beings who
cannot err, and who regard the disposition to forgive as one of the
weaknesses of ordinary mortals: ‘Sir, I will not attempt to conceal
from you that our feelings are completely changed towards Englishmen.
Formerly we used to think that England was always on the side of right.
But since we found that, during the late war, she sided with the
South, our opinion of England has been reversed; and the reversal of
our feelings has accompanied the reversal of our opinion.’
[Sidenote: _How a Fanciful Idea was Confirmed._]
‘Madam,’ I replied, ‘it is true that there were many in England who
felt towards the South, just as the schoolboy feels, while he reads
Homer’s “Iliad,” about Hector, when he finds him battling manfully
against destiny and a host of heroes. His sympathies, if he has any
generosity in his character, are naturally enlisted on behalf of the
brave man who is acquitting himself so well, and who must in the end he
overwhelmed.’
With these two little speeches the brief interview ended. For the
moment my fancies seemed hard and established facts. What could I gain
by remaining longer in such a place?—and so I left it by the first
train.
People look upon the progressiveness and enterprise of the Americans as
if it were something _sui generis_. This, however, is a mistake; the
difference is only one of degree, and not of kind. The character of the
American, just like every other product, whether in external nature
or in man, is the result of a chain of precedent events. In his case
the links of this chain can be traced back to dates and events long
anterior to the dawn of history, or even to the twilight of tradition,
but which, thanks to modern science, are not altogether irrecoverable.
Philology reveals to us that race of mankind to which the American
belongs, seated at a very remote date somewhere in Central Asia. As
there is no ground for supposing that it came from the South, which was
occupied by another and very different branch of the human family,
or from the West or the North, for reasons with which the philologist
and ethnologist will be familiar, we must conclude that if it had not
sprung from the soil, it must have come from a more distant east. If
then the Aryans of Central Asia had been the product of a migration, of
course only those had come who had had the enterprise and the hardihood
to go in quest of a new home. This then was the spirit which presided
over the race at its birth, and launched it upon its long career. Again
and again—we know not how often, for the records of history had not
yet begun—the same process must have been repeated. Of this hardy and
enterprising race, the most hardy and enterprising again renewed their
westward movement. All the while the characteristics of the advancing
race were being confirmed and strengthened; the infirm and feeble in
body or purpose were ever being left behind, and the primeval and now
hereditary impulse to move on at all risks was becoming in those who
from time to time sought new homes an ever-strengthening instinct.
At last—and this is when ordinary history first takes cognisance of
them—we find them settled on the southern and northern shores of the
Baltic.
[Sidenote: _The Cause of American Progressiveness._]
After a time the day arrives for another movement, for another
winnowing and sifting, far more searching than any of the previous
ones. Greater hardihood and enterprise are needed than were ever called
for in any of their past movements. The sea has now to be crossed—a new
form of danger to be confronted. Those who venture in their open and
half-open boats on this great enterprise, to establish a new home for
themselves on the other side of the storm-swept waste of waters, must
be men who know no fear, and in whom the instinct of moving onward is
irrepressible. The result of this supreme effort is the great English
nation—the product of all that is best in Angles, Jutes, Saxons,
Danes, and Northmen. Such was the long process by which the men were
formed who fought at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; at Blenheim, and
Ramilies, and Malplaquet; at Trafalgar, and at Waterloo; on the Ganges,
the Nile, and the St. Lawrence; who produced a Bacon, a Shakespeare,
and a Newton; who first tried men by their peers, and first governed
themselves by their representatives; who broke the papal yoke, and
established freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and of
commerce. In their little island they proved themselves the grandest
race the world had seen.
But the great drama was not yet complete. The original impulse had
ever been gaining strength, and now appeared to culminate. But it was
not so. One more effort had to be made. In grandeur and hardihood it
transcended all that had yet been achieved. Not a narrow sea, but the
broad Atlantic had to be crossed; not a small island, but a new world
had to be occupied. The English race must itself be sifted, and none
but those who have nerve as firm as that of the Pilgrim Fathers, and
the most active instinct of progression, can take part in this mighty
enterprise. And so it comes to pass that America is peopled with that
which is most enterprising and progressive in that race in which these
qualities had been most highly developed. In these respects she
receives the cream of the cream, the purest selection of that which was
most select.
[Sidenote: _The Cause of American Progressiveness._]
The long series is now completed. The circuit of the world has been
made. The hardy, the inventive, the go-ahead American looks out on
the Pacific and towards that side of the old continent from which his
first ancestors started on the long career which in his person is now
consummated.
The like of this has not been done by any other race of men, or in
any other part of the world. In human history it is something quite
unique. It is the main stream in the history of man. All other series
of events—as, for instance, that which resulted in the culture of
mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of Rome—only
appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with it,
or rather as subsidiary to it. Their true place in history is that of
affluents to this main stream. And even Christianity itself, which
so loudly proclaims its indifference to all national or ethnological
distinctions, and its equal regard for every branch of the human
family, while it has been rejected by the race to which it was first
revealed, has become to the more advanced parts of the Teutonic race,
in a greater degree than to any other people, their educator and their
strength.
A moment’s comparison of the tone in which we write and speak about
America with the tone in which we write and speak about other
countries, and of the feelings with which we regard what is passing
there with the feelings with which we regard what is passing elsewhere,
will show that we look upon American events as fraught with a greater
amount of good and of evil to ourselves, than what is happening in
all the world besides. Much, for instance, has of late been said and
written about what is called the resurrection of Italy, but who expects
from that resurrection anything that will affect either the hopes or
the fears of mankind? Everybody, however, feels that the future of
humanity will be greatly influenced by, and in no small degree depend
upon, what is going on in America. Or if we turn to that country which
has hitherto been more influential than any other in disturbing, or,
which it claims as its right, of directing the course of events on the
Continent of Europe, we do not find any causes now in operation which
we can suppose likely to result in improving the material circumstances
of the French petty proprietors, that is, of the bulk of the French
nation, or in giving them more freedom and intellectual energy than
they at present possess. The form and character of their government,
their church, the division of property that obtains among them, the
accepted arrangements and spirit of society, all tend to immobility.
In America everyone understands that the stream is all the other way.
Mental activity is universal. Public opinion is the opinion of those
who in the open arena of public discussion are able to influence the
greatest number; and public opinion sweeps away every obstruction.
[Sidenote: _The Northern States sown with Houses._]
The aspect of the country between Philadelphia and Baltimore took me
very much by surprise, as I suppose it would anyone whose previous
travels had been confined to Europe. I had imagined that old and
densely peopled countries, like England and France, must necessarily
present to the eye of the traveller an appearance of their being
more closely inhabited than a new country like America. But the very
reverse of this is the case, and most strikingly so. All the way from
Philadelphia to Baltimore I found the country sown with houses. This
arises from the fact that every 100 or 150 acres belong to a separate
proprietor (large estates being unknown) who has his house upon his
small farm, which he cultivates with his own hands and the assistance
of his family. As far as the eye can range over the country you see
these white farmhouses. And you may now see them all the way from New
York to Omaha on the Missouri, 500 miles beyond Chicago, and 1,500
from New York. The traveller in the United States generally derives
his idea of the wealth of the people from what he sees in the towns.
The rapidity of their growth, the amount of business done in them,
the dimensions of their shops, the goodly appearance of the houses of
their merchants, justify him in supposing that the Americans are a
very wealthy people. But all this wealth of the towns is in fact only
a measure of the wealth of the country. The towns become wealthy and
flourishing in proportion to the wealth of the country. These tens of
myriads, then, of farmhouses, each of which is evidently the home of
a well-to-do family, and of which one is never out of sight in the
settled districts of the North, are the truest and most interesting
indications of the nature and of the amount of the riches of the United
States.