WASHINGTON—STYLE OF SPEAKING IN CONGRESS—CONGRESS NO NURSERY FOR
STATESMEN—SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON—EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN WASHINGTON—SOME
OPINIONS OF AN AMERICAN BISHOP—COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE—USE OF
THE DEPARTMENT—ITS MUSEUM GIVES AN IDEA OF THE VASTNESS OF THE
COUNTRY—ITS NATURAL ADVANTAGES—WHAT VARIETY OF PRODUCTIONS HAS
DONE FOR ENGLAND WILL BE REPEATED IN AMERICA—SPECIAL EXCELLENCE
OF CALIFORNIAN PRODUCTIONS—THE CALIFORNIAN HIMSELF—CALIFORNIA
COMPARED WITH ITALY—WHY COLOURED WAITERS PREFERABLE TO WHITE—NEGRO
FUNERAL WITH MASONIC HONOURS—AMERICAN BIRDS’ NESTS—BILL FOR MAKING
EDUCATION COMPULSORY—COLOURED SCHOOLS—COMPARATIVE INTELLIGENCE OF THE
NEGRO—VULGAR ERRORS ABOUT AMERICANS—NIGHT ATTENDANTS AT HOTEL READ
‘OLIVER TWIST’—CAPITOL—TREASURY—PATENT OFFICE—WHAT OUR DIPLOMACY IN
AMERICA SHOULD BE—USE OF ICED WATER.
While at Washington I was frequently present at the debates in both
Houses. I was not much impressed by the style of speaking either in the
Senate or in the Chamber of Representatives. I heard much good common
sense, and many of the attacks and defences which are necessary in
party warfare, but I heard no eloquence, and nothing even that on this
side we should call good speaking. Where eloquence was attempted, it
seemed to me to result in declamation. I went away with the idea that
both senators and representatives spoke, not like persons who were in
the habit of addressing cultivated audiences, but whose style had been
formed by the practice of canvassing-speeches and mob-oratory.
[Sidenote: _Congress no Nursery for Statesmen._]
The most striking difference between our parliamentary system and
the American Congress is, that ours is as perfect a school as is
conceivable for statesmanship, while theirs can never be anything of
the kind, except accidentally and in a very slight degree. With us
a man who is destined for public life enters Parliament while still
young. If there is anything in him, he is generally able to retain
his seat. Thus he is all his life through learning the routine of
administrative practice and the science of statesmanship. All along
every word he utters is set down in black and white, to stand in
evidence for or against him, and to be weighed by the House and by the
public. And it is the opinion of the House and public, thus formed,
that assigns him his place in the hierarchy of party. If he is capable
of becoming a statesman, with time and training he becomes one. If the
House and the country know that he has shown himself one of the ablest
men of his party, high office is his right. He has to thank no one for
it but himself. If he has proved himself the ablest man of his party,
the first place is his. He has established his claim to it in the face
of the world. Nothing of this kind goes on in the American Congress.
It may be said to have no personal continuity. A large proportion of
Congress—and this happens every fourth year—are new men, thrown up to
the surface by the action of local political causes in their respective
States; and most of these new men will themselves be superseded by
other new men in the ensuing Congress. The idea of forming statesmen
does not at all enter into the aim of the American Congress; it hardly
seems to regard itself as standing in need of statesmanship, wherever
and however acquired. It is rather a machine for ascertaining and
carrying out the opinions of the people. A successful local politician,
be he a grocer or a shoemaker, a rail-splitter or a tailor, will find
his way into the Senate.
The society of Washington, while Congress is sitting, is remarkable
for its great variety. There are the heads of the civil and
military departments with their subordinates; and the senators and
representatives from all parts of the Union, from California, the
great West, the highly educated States of New England, and from the
commercial and manufacturing States of New York and Pennsylvania.
At present we have only to regret the absence of the gentlemen of
the South. Many of these persons bring with them their families. The
society thus formed is not so vast as that anyone should be lost in
it; nor is there much tendency to break up into sets. The influence of
the White House, which acts as a centre, and the practice of general
receptions, which is universal among official people and persons of
distinction, prevent isolation. The variety just mentioned in the
component parts of the society of Washington is very perceptible, and
contributes largely to its interest and picturesqueness. The only
difference I observed between the manners of these republicans and our
own, was that they were easier and less constrained than we are; for
no one is haunted with the idea of maintaining or of establishing a
position, because no one supposes himself better than anybody else;
they appeared, too, to possess, in a greater degree than is common
among us, that great requisite of good breeding, the double facility
of being pleased and of pleasing. I would only add that there seem to
be few dull people in American society. There is with them more general
animation and _enjouement_ of life than with us.
[Sidenote: _Episcopal Church at Washington._]
On attending morning service at the Church of the Epiphany at
Washington, I found on the seat a printed paper containing a letter
from the congregation to the minister, announcing that they begged
that for the future he would consent to receive an increase to his
salary, raising it to £800 a year; and one from the minister to the
congregation, thanking them for their liberality. In addition to this
salary they had presented him with a furnished house.
Washington, with a population of 120,000, has in the city eight
Episcopal churches, and four in the suburb of George Town. There were
when I was there two additional congregations in process of formation.
At that time they were meeting in an upper room, but it was expected
that they would soon be strong enough to build churches for themselves,
and to become fully organised. An effort is being made to obtain a
bishop for the district of Columbia, and, if possible, to get the
consent of the bishops to his being made an archbishop and metropolitan
of the American Church.
At the service I attended, there was not a seat vacant in the Church of
the Epiphany; but they were all filled with well-dressed persons. In
the afternoon of the same Sunday I went to the church of St. John’s, to
be present at a Bible class held by the Adjutant-General of the United
States army, a man whom any church might be thankful to have among
its members, and to hear the catechising conducted by the rector. The
children catechised were those of the upper class, for here also I
found no ill-dressed people among the congregation. In the evening I
went to Trinity Church, where I was told I should see a congregation
of the humbler classes. I heard a clergyman conduct the service and
preach, who I thought possessed just the qualities which would adapt
him for obtaining an influence over those classes, but I saw very few
of them in the church.
As I am not aware that any bishop of the American Episcopal Church
was at Washington while I was there, I will take this opportunity for
offering to the consideration of English Churchmen some remarks that
were made to me elsewhere by an American bishop. I run the risk of
doing this without permission, because I believe that here at home we
are far too ignorant of, not to say indifferent about, what is passing
in the minds and hearts too of our American brother-churchmen. He
thought that the Episcopal Church in America was the natural, or at all
events now the chief, bond of union between the old country and the
United States. With very few exceptions, and they are exceptions that
are not worth considering, the Episcopalians cherish the recollections
of the old country most fondly; whereas it is notorious that the
American churches which are connected with English dissent are more
or less actuated by feelings, if not of animosity, yet certainly of
coldness towards the old country.
[Sidenote: _Some Remarks of an American Bishop._]
The Episcopal Church is a great power in the United States, and is
more respected, and more influential in forming and guiding public
opinion than even the government and legislature. Its members comprise
the great bulk of the most refined and educated class in the country.
Those who join us from that class come to us because they regard
Romanism as a religion not for men, but only for women and children,
while they look upon the other churches as having little devotion and
less stability.
The Episcopal Church was opposed to the late war, and though pressure
was put upon it, it would not give in to the fierce mania of the
moment. This was the case in both sections.
The clergy of the different churches, but more particularly of the
Episcopal Church, are, in the existing state of things on this
continent, the natural and only aristocracy. The lawyers come next.
The politicians are nowhere. The American people have had plenty of
time and opportunities enough for weighing the latter, and have found
them wanting in everything for which man respects his fellow-man: all
the while their respect for the clergy of the Episcopal Church has
constantly been becoming deeper.
The five Yankee States, with the exception of Connecticut, which is the
most Episcopal State in the Union, are rapidly becoming Unitarian and
Universalist. This in some degree accounts for the equivocal character
of their acuteness, and for their singular want of magnanimity.
When he was in England, he was struck with the fact that the members
of the Government took no notice of the American bishops. In this they
showed their ignorance of the public mind in America. They also showed
their disregard of the advance of the church to which they profess to
belong. He did not suppose they neglected them because they were afraid
of giving offence to the other religions communities of America, but
simply because they were ignorant about America, and careless about
their own church.
The Americans, being a practical people, have established, in
connection with the general government at Washington, a department
of agriculture, presided over by a commissioner. One of the objects
of this department is to form a perfect museum of the agriculture of
the United States. This is the act of a practical people, because as
America is a new country, in the process of settlement, there must
always be immigrants starting, some for one locality and some for
another, who are in need of information as to what kinds or varieties
of grain, vegetables, and fruit would be most suitable for the soil
and climate of their proposed new home; and as to the best methods of
cultivation for each crop; and what will be the difficulties they will
have to contend with, and what have been ascertained to be the best
remedies for these evils. It is possible that each year the value of
the information distributed throughout the Union by this department may
be many times greater than the cost of the department. If so, the cost
is a small price to pay for a very great advantage.
My reason, however, for mentioning this museum of agriculture, is that
it contributes very much towards making distinct in one’s mind the
idea of the vast extent of the territory of the United States, and its
great range of climate. This it does by ocular demonstration. Here are
collected into one view specimens of the agricultural and horticultural
produce of every State in the Union, from Maine to Florida, and from
Massachusetts to California. These specimens range through all the
products of the temperate regions of the earth, and descend far down
into the list of the products of tropical climes. All the cereals we
grow in this country, Indian corn in many varieties, the grape, every
description of European fruit—in some cases, as in that of the apple,
greatly improved by its transference to America—tobacco, rice, the
sweet potato, the sugar-cane, the orange, the banana, ending with the
cocoa-nut of the South of Florida.
[Sidenote: _Natural Advantages of the United States._]
Here is a region larger than the whole of Europe, which if it were
transferred to the part of the globe which Europe occupies, only
retaining its latitude, would reach down to the Sahara of Africa,
covering the whole of the Mediterranean. This vast territory contains
an inland navigation which is the grandest in the world, and has in no
way taxed the labour of man. From its extremest point at the north, at
the head of the navigable stream of the Missouri, to its southern point
at New Orleans, there is an open course of three thousand miles without
a single break, a distance as great as the space which separates London
from Timbuctoo, or from Bokhara. And this main artery of communication,
the value of which is enhanced a thousand fold by the fact that it
runs from north to south, enabling the produce of so many climes to be
exchanged, instead of running along the same line of latitude, where
there would be little or nothing to exchange, is supplemented on the
right and left by 23,000 miles more of the natural navigation of its
great affluents. And the vast valley which this system of rivers opens
to traffic and travel is so extensive and fertile that it could support
the whole population of Europe, and probably will support some day as
large a population in far greater material well-being, and with far
more highly cultivated intelligence.
If everything throughout this vast territory had been arranged by the
most intelligent of mankind, with a view solely to the convenience
of its inhabitants, we cannot imagine how it could have been made to
contribute to those ends in a higher degree than it does at present.
Not only is it capable of producing to a practically unlimited extent
every plant that man cultivates, but it is also inexhaustibly rich
in the precious and the useful metals, and in mineral fuel. The
configuration too of the continent is such as to aid man in many ways
in subduing and utilising the soil, for on each side of the grand
central valley rises a long range of mountains, the one descending to
the Pacific, the other to the Atlantic, which give birth to multitudes
of rivers, which connect these vast districts with the two oceans, and
supply harbours for carrying on intercourse with all the world.
[Sidenote: _A Consequence of Variety of Productions._]
One of the causes that has most contributed to the wealth and
commercial aptitude of the inhabitants of the old country is, that
the productions of no two districts in it are precisely similar. The
districts, for instance, that breed cattle and sheep are not always
those that fatten them, and never those that consume them. So with
cereals, one district is good for wheat, another for barley, another
for oats, another for beans and peas. Fish that is taken on the coast
is consumed in the interior. A similar remark may be made of the
various kinds of minerals with which different parts of the island have
been enriched. Even the granite of Scotland is wanted in London for its
streets. Every town must get its flag-stones from a distance. Each
kind of manufacture has certain requirements which render one district
more suitable for it than another; so that for the article produced in
each manufacturing locality there must be trade between that locality
and all others. Hence it comes about that there is a larger interchange
of home productions in this country than in any other in the world.
In this respect compare Italy with ourselves. All its districts have
much the same productions; the result of which is the minimum of home
trade. How enormous must be the differences which must result to Italy
and ourselves from this dissimilarity in our respective circumstances!
I apply this to the United States of America. The cause which has
contributed so much to make us wealthy, intelligent, and commercial,
is to be found in the United States—with the difference, however, that
what has been done here on a very small scale, is there done, and has
yet to be done, on an enormous scale. Their variety of products is
far greater than ours, and will have to be exchanged to far greater
amounts, and so will employ a proportionately greater number of agents.
What a vast traffic will it be when the wheat consumed throughout the
Union shall be supplied by what are now the North-western States and
California, and the mutton and beef shall be supplied by the Western
prairies, and the pork by the maize-growing States, and the various
metals, precious and useful, and the different forms of manufacture,
each by different localities to all the rest!
This Museum of Agriculture and Horticulture gives one the means of
comparing the size and quality of the fruits, vegetables, and cereals
grown in different parts of the Union. The effects of climate and
soil are, as might have been expected, very perceptible. A variety of
the apple, for instance, that produces very large and good fruit in
Illinois and Michigan, will deteriorate as one goes farther south, till
at last it becomes not worth cultivating; while one sees specimens of
other varieties, which their nature adapts to the sunnier States. The
variety and excellence of the produce of the whole country is very
striking, for everywhere in the United States there is light and heat
enough and to spare; but what strikes one most of all is, the peculiar
and extraordinary excellence of everything that comes from California;
for instance, the pear La Belle Angevine, without any of the minute
attention that is bestowed on its culture in France, very commonly
attains the almost incredible weight of between three and four pounds.
And all other kinds of fruit, and every kind of vegetable, grow in
the same luxuriant manner. This is something that must be seen to
be believed; but when seen, it enables one to understand how in the
short space of twenty years this State has passed from an uninhabited
wilderness to one of the richest and most powerful States in the Union.
With such a climate and soil, to say nothing of its enormous mineral
wealth, ‘it is bound,’ to use the local word, to leave New York, and
Pennsylvania, and all the old leading States of the Union far behind,
and, indeed, every other part of the world, whether new or old.
[Sidenote: _California compared with Italy._]
One cannot become acquainted with half-a-dozen Californians without
seeing that man himself has been improved in this wonder-working
region—the finest, not only that the Anglo-Saxon race, but that any
race of man has ever inhabited. There is a quickness and determination
of mind, and a calmness of manner, a quickness of eye and a cleanness
of limb about a Californian that you cannot but notice. They have
in a thousand ways shown enterprise which astonishes even Americans
themselves. But in nothing have they shown it to such an incredible
degree as in their agriculture. Their wines are of many kinds, as may
be seen in this museum, and some of them are very good. Their garden
produce is quite unrivalled. But I will only mention what they have
done in the culture of wheat. Twenty years ago there was no agriculture
in this State. Twenty years are not time enough here to enable us to
make up our minds as to whether we will use the steam-plough. But in
these twenty years the clear-sighted and undaunted Californian has
learnt how to grow enough wheat to feed the inhabitants of his own
State, and in a great degree of the neighbouring States of Oregon and
Washington, and the whole population of our British Columbia. And not
content with this, he has undertaken the supply of Chili and Peru, and
the other republics on the seaboard of the Eastern Pacific. This comes
to a great deal—to what is almost beyond belief. To the Californian,
however, it is nothing at all. He has for several years been sending
wheat the length of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to England. Eight
years ago, I saw cargoes of Californian wheat selling at a profit
in Liverpool. And last year he capped even this, for he sent both
flour and wheat to New York, selling the former at eleven dollars a
barrel—that is, two dollars a barrel cheaper than the great millers
of Richmond can afford to lay it down at, whose mills are, as it were,
just outside the gates of New York. And the latter they sold at a price
which, had there been enough of it, would have completely excluded
Chicago and the great wheat-producing States of the North-west from the
market, and so would have swept away, at a single stroke, the chief
part of the business of the great Erie Canal.
Any little change at our own door appears great to us, while the
mightiest changes at a distance affect us little: if, however, we
are disposed to weigh events in accordance with their intrinsic
and real importance, we might compare the rising of the star of
this extraordinary community with the lately recovered unity and
independence of Italy, which has of late engrossed so much of our
attention and interest. California at the present moment contains a
population of between six and seven hundred thousand souls—Italy one
of twenty-four millions. But if the old Nation and the new State were
to try their strength against one another, I believe that this handful
of keen-witted and intrepid men would go just where they pleased, and
do just what they pleased in any part of Italy; while the Italians,
however much of their strength they might put forth, would find
themselves quite unable to do anything of the kind with California. How
much would a Californian population of twenty-four millions make of
Italy! They would have no armies of officials, no brigandage, no debt;
their ships would sail on every sea; their influence would be felt all
over Europe and throughout the world.
[Sidenote: _Coloured Waiters._]
At Washington, as at Philadelphia and Baltimore, I found the waiters
at the hotels were coloured men. I very much preferred this to having
the white waiters I had fallen in with at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New
York: the latter, I thought, felt the degradation of their position.
In America, waiting in hotels and railway cars, being domestic
servants, and keeping barbers’ shops, are the only employments, with
the exception of field-labour in the South, which are really left
open to the coloured race. For a white man, therefore, to become a
waiter at an hotel, is to sink himself to the level of the black. It
is impossible to conceive a native American placing himself in such a
situation. It is too poor an employment for him; it is of a servile
character; and it is one which, in public opinion and by general
practice, has been assigned to the African. Even here, in England,
one pities the man whom circumstances have made a footman—when one
sees the hosts of men occupied in this way in London and elsewhere,
and compares what they are, and their sad prospects, with the fine
manly fellows they might have been, and the independence they might
have secured for themselves and their children in Canada, the Western
States, Brazil, on the Rio Plata, in Natal, Australia or New Zealand,
or in other places where the climate is fine, land a drug, and the only
thing wanted is men who can work as Englishmen and their descendants
alone can and do. The feelings, however, of commiseration with which
in England we regard the man whom circumstances have placed in such
a position, become in America dashed with somewhat of contempt for
the whites who voluntarily place themselves in it. One does not feel
in the least degree in this way towards the coloured waiters. It is
not in the nature of the black that he should ever work hard enough
to cultivate the soil, where the climate is such that the European
is capable of labouring in it. He has it not in him to become, and
never has become, a settler. One cannot imagine half-a-dozen negroes
voluntarily submitting for half-a-dozen years to the incessant toil—the
ploughing, the sowing, the weeding, the harvesting, the threshing,
the cattle-tending of a Northern farm. It is not only that they are
constitutionally lazy, but that they are also of too volatile a
disposition for such a life. Nature, however, has fitted them for such
employments as domestic service and waiting in hotels. In their case
there is an obvious congruity between the employment and the person.
When you thank the willing and cheerful black for changing your plate,
or ministering in some way to your personal wants, and get in return
the almost universal ‘Vara welcome,’ you do not feel in the slightest
degree that a good and likely man is being wasted and degraded just for
the promotion of your own comfort and convenience.
[Sidenote: _A Negro Masonic Funeral._]
On a Sunday while I was at Washington, I saw a grand negro funeral.
The deceased had been a minister in one of their churches, and also a
Freemason. He was therefore buried with Masonic honours. They chose
for the procession the streets in which, and the day and the hour of
the day when, there would be most people to witness it. The order was
as follows:—First came a negro on horseback to open the way; then a
powerful band. These were succeeded by two hundred Masons, all well
dressed, with aprons, scarves, and badges. After these the corpse in
a handsome coffin. In order that this might be completely seen, the
sides of the hearse were of plate-glass. The corpse was followed by
twenty carriages, each drawn by two horses. These carriages contained
the ladies of the _cortége_. I saw no attempt among them, by drawing
down blinds or the use of the handkerchief, to conceal their grief.
Their bearing, I rather thought, indicated the presence in their sable
breasts of the very ancient desire to see and be seen. No whites took
any part in the funeral. A great many, however, had assembled to
see it pass, all of whom appeared to behave very decorously. There
was evidently a great effort on the part of the blacks to appear
to advantage. It was a curious and interesting sight. Some of the
mulattoes were tall and good-looking, but far the greater part of them
were intensely ugly. In the procession was every shade of colour,
from ebony to what might have easily passed for the complexion of an
European; for in the United States not even light hair and blue eyes
with a fair skin can rescue from social exclusion the man who is known
to have in his veins a drop of negro blood.
Wherever in the South I mentioned this negro funeral, the same remark
was made on the Freemasonry of the negroes. Everyone professed himself
ignorant of how the negroes had come by it. No one knew who had
admitted them; and no one would acknowledge them as brother-Masons.
On going over the Smithsonian Museum, I was much struck by the
superiority of the birds of America to those of Europe in the
architectural skill and beauty of their nests.
While I was at Washington, a bill was before Congress for depriving of
the franchise every father whose children (up to a certain age) did not
attend school at least twelve weeks each year.
It was here that I first saw something of the Freedman’s Bureau.
Probably in the first days of emancipation some agency was needed for
regulating the movements of the negroes, and for supplying them with
information as to their newly acquired rights. I am, however, disposed
to think that so extensive a department as this bureau was altogether
a mistake. It has cost much, and, as far as I could judge, done some
harm and very little good. But of that anon: I will only speak now
of my visit to one of the coloured schools I found at Washington
under its superintendence. Like all the American schools I visited in
towns, it was graded; that is, as we should express it, the school
was divided into classes, each class having its own teacher and its
own school-room, and being in every particular entirely distinct and
separate from all the rest. There were about four hundred children on
the books, and the usual number, about fifty, in each grade. It is
impossible to exaggerate the advantages of this method of teaching.
Each teacher has but one class; therefore the whole of the school-time
is actually and actively employed in teaching. One class is not idle
while the teacher is attending to another. No child is neglected. All
parts of the school are equally cared for. There is much emulation
among the teachers, each desiring that his part in the general system
shall be done well. Each teacher having only one step or grade to
teach, perfects himself in it, and teaches it thoroughly. When it has
been completely mastered, the child is passed on to the teacher of the
next step or grade, who in his turn goes through the same process; till
at last the child, at the end of three years—for each grade requires
six months—leaves the school, having passed through all it professes to
teach, and generally having acquired it all thoroughly.
[Sidenote: _Coloured Schools._]
As I am not one of those who believe that the intellect of the longest
civilised and most highly cultivated race in the world is no better
than that of a race of which no branch has ever been civilised or
cultivated in any way or degree—or, to put it in other words, that
those who have given greater proofs of intelligence than any other race
of men are (which is a contradiction in terms) on a level with those
who have never given any proofs whatever of intelligence—I carefully
notice everything that appears in any way to militate against my side
of the question. For this reason I must mention that I was taken
by surprise at the quickness and attainments of these four hundred
coloured children. I never saw a school in England in which so much
readiness was shown in answering questions as to the meaning of words
that occurred in the reading lesson, and questions as to the meaning
of what had been read. I must, however, remark that this may perhaps
have been owing to the excellence of the teachers, who at present are
chiefly enthusiasts in the cause of the negro from New England, and to
this method of grading the schools. Of course the children were not
readier or better taught than white children are in America. And here,
besides, comes in the doubt whether the intellectual development of
this race, as all travellers in Africa assert, does not stop at the age
of fourteen. There was in connection with these schools one for adult
negro scholars, which may be regarded as to some extent a contradiction
of this opinion, for I will not call it fact.
A great many of our ideas about American manners are mere traditions
of an utterly gone-by state of things, as far away from their
present manners (for changes are rapidly effected in America) as our
own present manners are from those of Squire Western’s and Parson
Trulliber’s day. In travelling 8,000 miles, through all parts of the
Union, I never once saw, even in the woods of the South, or on the
prairies of the West, any more than in New York or Boston, a _table
d’hôte_ dinner, served, at the sound of a bell, at one time for all
the guests of the house, upon which a scramble ensued for every dish.
I should be surprised to hear that this practice now existed in a
single hotel in the Union. The method of proceeding, which is now
universal, is for every single person, or party of persons, to be
served separately. Nor are the middle-class Americans, who are the
chief frequenters of hotels, more rapid in despatching their meals than
we are. They are the reverse of talkative. They are not inquisitive.
They are far more civil and helpful to one another and to strangers
than Englishmen are. Those whom we should consider in good society are
in a very high degree quiet and unassuming. I never heard an American
use the word ‘Siree’ for Sir; nor did I ever hear one ‘guess’; nor
was I ever asked to ‘liquor.’ And so one might go on with many other
things which were once American practices, but have been utterly
abandoned. The fact is that the Americans are the most reasonable and
teachable people in the world. Prove to an Englishman that he is wrong,
and he will cling to his mistake more closely than before. Prove to the
Americans that they are wrong, and the whole people will, as if they
were one man, readily abandon their mistake.
[Sidenote: _Our Diplomacy with America._]
I left Washington by an early train. Trains, as is the case with the
hours for breakfast and for business, are earlier in the United States
than in England. On coming down to the bar of the hotel at 5 A.M., I
found that the night service of the hotel had spent their long watch in
listening to Mr. Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist,’ each reading aloud in his
turn.
In our diplomatic intercourse with the Government of the United States
our method of proceeding ought to be founded on a right appreciation
of the character of the people, because it is mainly with the people
themselves that we have to do. Everybody reads the newspapers;
everybody has his opinion, and what is the opinion of the majority is
what is done. Now, speaking generally, the character of the people
of the United States is such that the simplest style of diplomacy,
or rather no diplomacy at all, is requisite in dealing with them.
The Americans are an eminently reasonable people, and can be made to
understand what is right. It is not as if we had to deal with Austrian,
or Russian, or French diplomatists, with whom, unless we have long been
much mistaken, reason and right are not the first considerations. What
is requisite, then, in dealing with our cousins on the other side of
the water, is, that we should ask for nothing but what we are clearly
entitled to—what is our due, and our own; and that having asked for no
more than what is rightfully ours, we should not concede one jot or
one tittle. In two words—right and firmness—are comprised all that we
have to attend to. It is absurd to suppose that we are incapable of
making them understand what is our right; and they will respect us if
we maintain our right with firmness, and they will despise us if we do
not. They would never go to war with us knowing themselves to be in the
wrong.
But, just as in trade they are always ready to take advantage of every
slip or oversight on the part of those with whom they deal, deeming
that men, whether themselves or others, must pay the penalty of
carelessness, or ignorance, or even of want of sagacity—carrying this
to a point beyond what we should consider quite justifiable—so also in
diplomacy they will see what can be made out of all kinds of claims and
demands such as their politicians are ever ingenious and forward in
suggesting. But they are too just and reasonable a people to persist in
being misled, after things have been fully and fairly put before them.
Having, then, right clearly on our side, all the art that is required
for the double purpose of maintaining our right, and of securing their
respect, is firmness.
[Sidenote: _Washington._]
In its public buildings Washington has begun to resemble an European
capital. Everyone has seen engravings of the Capitol. It is a
large marble building with a central dome, very well placed on an
eminence at one end of the city. From some reason arising out of
the proprietorship of the land, no private residences or shops have
sprung up in its immediate vicinity. The main street, of about a mile
in length, connects it with the Executive Mansion, as the President’s
house is called in newspaper language. This also is of white marble. It
is about as large as the country house of an English gentleman who is
in receipt of an income of 10,000_l._ a year. The ground sinks between
the Capitol and the President’s house. Most of the public offices
are in the immediate neighbourhood of the latter. The chief part of
the city lies around and beyond the President’s house. The Treasury,
which has been built since the war, is in its dimensions worthy of the
enormous business carried on in it—that is, the printing and issue of
the greenback currency. It also is of white stone, I believe a kind
of granite. The only other building worthy of notice, either from its
dimensions or uses, is the Patent Office. In this is contained a model,
or specimen, of everything for which a patent has been issued in the
United States. One ought at least to walk through the numerous and
spacious and well-filled apartments of this building, to get an idea
of the activity of the inventive faculty in America, and of the great
honour in which it is held.
I understood from Americans that every facility and security possible
are given to persons desirous of taking out patents. Not only is there
this museum to enable them to see whether or how the thing has been
done before, but there are also persons whose business it is to be
thoroughly acquainted with the specifications and objects of all former
patents, and who are ready to supply any information on the subject
to all applicants. I could not but contrast this instance of American
intelligence and wisdom with our English methods for discouraging
invention, notwithstanding the fact that mechanical inventions are
among the chief foundations and glories of our manufactures.
The Americans are a population of very thirsty souls. I do not know
whether the cause of this is the dryness of the climate, or the habits
of the people, or both combined. All day long, throughout the winter as
well as the other seasons of the year, people are drinking water with
ice floating in it. Many persons finish their breakfast with a large
tumbler of this. Wherever men congregate, whether in the drawing-rooms
of hotels or of private houses, or even in railway-cars, there is to
be found the ever-present and ever-needed iced water. I found myself
thirstier, and drank a great deal more in America than I had ever done
before; and, like the natives, I felt a repugnance to drink water,
however cold the weather might be, without ice in it. Now again in
England, I am satisfied with perhaps one fourth of the water I needed
in the United States, and I have no desire for the ice I regarded
almost as a necessary there.