Which is the first people in the world? There is no nation which does
not make pretensions to this superiority. Who in France has not sung in
the words of Béranger, "Queen of the world, oh my country! oh France!"
in the full conviction, that the French nation was predestined to be
forever at the head of the human race, to eclipse all others, in peace
and in war? For myself, before I had crossed the frontier, I believed
most implicitly, that we were not only the most generous and chivalric
of people, the most intellectual and ingenious, the first in the fine
arts, the most amiable and brilliant; but also that we were the most
enlightened, the first in political and industrial arts, the most
inventive and the most practical, in short, the pattern-nation, perfect
and unrivalled. Notwithstanding the rains and fogs of Paris, I supposed
our climate the mildest and the most serene in the world; in spite of
the Landes and Champagne, I considered it undeniable, that our soil
was the most fertile, our scenery the most picturesque, in the world.
Trusting to the reports of our exhibitions of industrial skill, I was
ready to swear that we had left our neighbours of England a hundred
leagues behind, and that their manufacturers, to avoid being reduced to
beggary by our competition, would soon be obliged to come over to learn
how to smelt and refine iron, how to spin cotton, how to manufacture
steel, how to manage the most gigantic establishments in the most
economical manner, how to despatch mountains of merchandise beyond sea
most expeditiously.
After having crossed the frontier one gradually lowers these
magnificent pretensions; patriotism becomes purer and stronger. In
visiting foreign parts one sees what is wanting to the prosperity and
glory of his country, and how it might be possible to add some jewels
to her crown. Thus it does not require long observation to see, that
if England might borrow much from us, we have not less to receive from
her. The English are not only more skilful manufacturers and better
merchants than we are, but they possess in a higher degree than we
do, those qualities which enable men, after having conceived grand
projects, to carry them into execution. The English have that practical
sagacity and that unbending perseverance, by which our Titan-like
battles of the Revolution and the Empire, our impetuous and devoted
enthusiasm, our unparalleled victories, our unmatched triumphs, were
reduced to treaties of Vienna, that is to say, were made to result in
our own humiliation, and in the enthronement of Great Britain on the
apex of the European pyramid. The English have less of the gift of
speech, but more capacity for action, than we have. And it is owing to
this, that they have found means to extend their colonial possessions,
while all other nations were losing theirs; what they lost in the West,
they have supplied in the East tenfold. They possess that political
sense, to which they owe the peaceful settlement, during the last
three years, of questions, that seemed destined to shake the granite
foundations of their island and bury it in the sea. They have achieved
their Reform; they have abolished the monopoly of the East India
Company; they have reconstructed the Bank; they have abolished slavery.
During this period, we have been revolving about questions of secondary
importance, without being able to make a decision; we do not know how
to go to work with monopolies, which, in comparison with the colossal
privileges of the East India Company, are grains of sand; we, who have
given to the world the most conclusive arguments in favour of liberty
of commerce!
If in Paris, we consider ourselves, in all, and for all, and forever,
the pattern-people, at London, the opinion is not less exclusively and
decidedly in favour of the English. In London, the duke of Wellington
is called the conqueror of Napoleon, which, indeed, is true to the
letter, but is nevertheless perfectly ridiculous, although Lord
Wellington is certainly an extraordinary man. I have seen Englishmen
pettishly shake their head, when they were told that the sky of England
was foggy; with a little malice, one might drive them to maintain, that
they need not envy the climate of Italy, and that even the atmosphere
of Manchester, where the sight of the sun is a rarity, has charms,
in spite of the slanders of its detractors, even for those who have
breathed the air of Naples. At Madrid, that heroic people, which seems
to be awaking at last from its long lethargy, has not lost the habit of
believing in the supremacy of Spain, and there, they dream that they
are yet in the glorious days of Charles V., when the sun never sat on
the Spanish dominions. And we can pardon this in the noble Castilians;
but I verily believe, also, that Don Pedro and Don Miguel, those
interminable pretenders, have each an official journal which tells them
daily, that the breathless universe has its eyes fixed on their ragged
armies, and that the destinies of the world are settled at Santarem and
Setubal. At Constantinople, in the capital of an empire which exists
only because the other European powers cannot agree in the division
of the spoils, they call us Christian dogs. In Rome the people still
call themselves Romans, and this ridiculous misnomer really makes the
Trans-Tiberine populace believe, that military glory is yet the lot of
the country, and that the _Romans_ will soon resume the character of
lords of the world, magnanimously raising the humble and crushing the
pride of the powerful (_Parcere subjectis_, &c.)! In Vienna, on the
contrary, everybody thinks that Rome is no longer in Rome, but that it
is, of right and in fact, in the archducal capital, that the emperor
is heir by lineal descent to Augustus and Trajan. The devise of an
early prince of the house of Austria (A. E. I. O. U.),[Q] attests that
this pretension is almost as old as the house of Hapsburg. In Prussia,
meanwhile, the young nobles, proud of having studied at the great
universities of Jena and Berlin, and of having worn the sword in an
army which was once the great Frederic's, affect an utter disdain for
the Austrians. Elated by the rapid extension of their country, which
has not, however, yet reached its full growth, the Prussians look upon
their sandy land as the cradle of a new civilisation. It seems as if
the waters of the Spree had some miraculous qualities, and that whoever
has not tasted them, has but four senses instead of five. At St.
Petersburg and Moscow, no one doubts, that the sword of the emperor,
thrown into the scales of the world's destinies, would at once overbear
the opposite balance. Perhaps we of Western Europe have done our part
in filling the Russians with these high notions of the influence of
the Czar. Thus in Europe, each nation arrogates to itself the first
rank, and I do not see why the Americans should be more modest than the
people on the other side of the Atlantic. The miracles which they have
accomplished in fifty years give them a right to be proud, and they,
also, in their turn, are persuaded that they are the first people in
the world, and they boast loudly of their preëminence.
The fact is, there is no chosen people, on whom superiority is entailed
for ages. The Jewish nation, in which this notion of predestination
seemed to be most deeply rooted, has for centuries afforded the most
melancholy refutation of the doctrine. Since the age of Richelieu and
the Revolution of 1688, that is, since Spain has fallen asleep, France
and England have been at the head of civilisation, and have divided the
supremacy between themselves; the one ruling by the theoretical, the
other by the practical; the one giving the tone in politics, the other
in taste, the arts, and manners. But what were France and England three
centuries ago, in the time of Charles V., when the generals of that
emperor and king slew Bayard at Rebecque, made Francis I. prisoner at
Pavia, and the Pope in Rome, whilst four thousand miles further west,
Cortez was conquering for him the proud empire of Montezuma? Prussia,
who now divides with Austria the dominion of Germany, and who is worthy
of that dignity, who is the youthful, the aspiring, the ambitious
Germany, full of the future, as Austria is the patriarchal, sober,
prudent, conservative Germany, clinging to the past and the old,--what
was Prussia three generations ago? What shall we all be, French,
English, Prussians, and Austrians three centuries hence, or perhaps one
hundred years hence? Who can say that some northern blast, finding us
divided, and enfeebled by our divisions, will not have laid low those
who are now so high and haughty? Who knows if the vigourous race which
is now bursting forth from this virgin soil, will not then have passed
us in their turn, as we have outstripped our predecessors? Who can
foretell, whether the two gigantic figures that are now rising above
the horizon, the one in the East with one foot on Moscow and one just
ready to fall on Constantinople, the other in the West, as yet half
hidden by the vast forests of the New World, whose huge limbs stretch
from the mouths of the St. Lawrence to those of the Mississippi: who
can foresee, whether these youthful Titans, who are watching each other
across the Atlantic, and already touch hands on the Pacific, will not
soon divide the empire of the world?
Civilisation is a treasure, to which each generation adds something in
transmitting it to its heirs, and which passes from hand to hand, from
people to people, from country to country. Setting out from Asia it
was four thousand years in reaching the borders of the Atlantic Ocean.
Wo to the nations, that having become depositaries of the treasure,
instead of keeping it with watchful care and labouring to increase
it, lay it down by the road-side, and waste their time and strength
in foolish quarrels; for they will soon be robbed of their trust! The
Americans are the most enterprising of men, and the most aspiring of
people; if we continue to be swallowed up in our barren disputes, they
are the people to snatch from us at unawares the precious charge of
the destinies of our race, and to place themselves at the head of its
march.
Each people has its qualities, which are developed by education, which
at certain moments shine with peculiar brilliancy, like a beacon light
towards which the eyes of mankind are directed, and by which its march
is guided, and which always command the esteem or love or respect of
others. The people of the United States most undeniably have theirs.
No people is so peculiarly fitted by its intrinsic character, as
well as by the circumstances of the territory and the condition of
the population, for democratic institutions. The Americans possess,
therefore, in the highest degree, the better features of democracy,
and they have also its inseparable defects; but if there is something
in them to blame, there is still more to praise. There is much here
for a European to learn, who should come to seek, not subjects
for fault-finding, satire, and sarcasm (which have become vulgar
common-places, since the small coin of Voltaire and Byron has passed
through so many hands), but positive facts, which might be imitated in
our old countries, with the necessary modifications required by the
difference between our circumstances and the condition of America.
Almost all English travellers in this country have seen a great deal
that was bad and scarcely any thing good; the portrait they have drawn
of America and the Americans, is a caricature, which, like all good
caricatures, has some resemblance to the original. The Americans have a
right to deny the jurisdiction of the tribunal, for they have a right
to be tried by their peers, and it does not belong to the most complete
aristocracy in Europe, the English aristocracy, to sit in judgment on a
democracy. Yet all the English travellers in America have belonged to
the aristocracy by their connexions or their opinions, or were aspiring
to it, or aped its habits and judgments, that they might seem to belong
to it.
A Yorkshire farmer or a Birmingham mechanic would certainly pass a very
different judgment; they would probably be as exclusively disposed to
praise, as the most disdainful tourists have been to blame. And the
farmers and mechanics count for something in the numbers of the English
population and in the elements of the British prosperity. Suppose an
Ohio or Illinois farmer, after having sold his flour and salt pork
to advantage, should enact the nabob six months in England, and on
his return should describe, with the rude eloquence of the West, the
distress of the British operatives, the corn laws, the poor rates, the
frightful condition of the Irish peasantry, the impressment of sailors,
the sale of military offices, and to complete his picture of manners,
should add a boxing match, a scene of the guests at a dinner rolling
dead-drunk under the table, and of the sale of a wife by her husband in
open market; if he should give such a picture to his countrymen as a
political and moral portrait of England, the English would shrug their
shoulders, and with reason. Yet his story would be founded on facts,
and could not be said to be actually false in any particular. Now such
a story would be an exact counterpart of most of the representations of
America by English travellers. Do not to others what you would not have
others do to you.
There is one thing in the United States that strikes a stranger on
stepping ashore, and is of a character to silence his sentiments
of national pride, particularly if he is an Englishman; it is the
appearance of general ease in the condition of the people of this
country. While European communities are more or less cankered with the
sore of pauperism, for which their ablest statesmen have as yet been
able to find no healing balm, there are here no paupers, at least not
in the Northern and Western States, which have protected themselves
from the leprosy of slavery. If a few individuals are seen, they are
only an imperceptible minority of dissolute or improvident persons,
commonly people of colour, or some newly landed emigrants, who have
not been able to adopt industrious habits. Nothing is more easy than
to live and to live well by labour. Objects of the first necessity,
bread, meat, sugar, tea, coffee, fuel, are in general cheaper here than
in France, and wages are double or triple. I happened, a few days ago,
to be on the line of a railroad in process of construction, where they
were throwing up some embankments. This sort of labour, which merely
requires force, without skill, is commonly done in the United States
by Irish new-comers, who have no resource but their arm, no quality
but muscular strength. These Irish labourers are fed and lodged, and
hear their bill of fare; three meals a day, and at each meal plenty
of meat and wheat bread; coffee and sugar at two meals, and butter[R]
once a day; in the course of the day, from six to eight glasses of
whiskey are given them according to the state of the weather. Beside
which they receive in money 40 cents a day under the most unfavourable
circumstances, often from 60 to 75 cents. In France the same labour is
worth about 24 cents a day the labourers finding themselves.
This positive and undeniable fact of the general ease, is connected
with another, which gives it a singular importance in the eyes of a
European, who is the friend of progressive reforms, and the enemy
of violence; the prevalence of radicalism in politics. The term
_democrat_, which elsewhere would fill even the republicans with
terror, is here greeted with acclamations, and the name of _Democratic_
is zealously claimed by every party as its exclusive property. But this
is the only kind of property which is called in question; it is true
that material property rapidly disappears in this country, unless it is
preserved by the most constant vigilance, and renewed with untiring
industry. But as long as it exists, it is the object of profound
respect, which, I must confess, has rather surprised me. I should have
expected that the social theory would have borrowed some notions from
the predominant political theory; but there are those in Europe, who
are not there considered the boldest speculators on this subject, who
here would be looked upon as the most audacious innovators. From this
simple statement, it seems natural to infer, that valuable lessons are
to be learned here by those who seek to solve the great question that
now agitates Europe, the amelioration of the greatest number. It would
be interesting to inquire into the causes of this state of things,
and to examine whether, with certain modifications, it could not be
transferred to Europe, and particularly to France.