Two years ago Mr Clay began a speech in the Senate, with these words,
which have become celebrated on this side of the Atlantic: "We are
in the midst of a revolution." It was at the time, when by an act of
authority before unheard of in American history, General Jackson had
just settled the bank question, which his friends in Congress and even
his own ministers had refused to decide. These words have often been
repeated by others. More recently, since the scenes of murder, outrage,
and destruction which have been exhibited through the United States,
both in the slave-holding States, and in those in which slavery does
not exist, in the country as well as in the towns, at Boston, the
republican city _par excellence_, as as well as at Baltimore, for which
the bloody excesses of which it was the theatre in 1812, have gained
the title of the _Mob Town_, good citizens have repeated with grief;
"We are in the midst of a revolution."
It must be granted to the honour of the English race, that it is,
more deeply than any other, imbued with a feeling of reverence for
the law. Until lately, the Americans have shown themselves in this
respect, as well as in others, to be double-distilled Englishmen.
There are nations, who conceive of law under a living form, that is,
only so far as it is personified in a man. They know how to obey a
leader, but they cannot learn to respect a dead letter. With them the
glory and prosperity of a State depend little on the character of the
laws, but much on that of the men who are their organs. In their view,
the empire rises and falls by turns, according as the sovereign,
whatever may be his title, is a superior man or an ordinary personage.
Such appears to be, in general, the character of the Asiatics. The
Englishman is formed in a different mould; he willingly bows to the
authority of a text; but he stoops to man with reluctance. He does not
need that obedience to law should be inculcated by the voice of man, he
obeys it without an effort and by instinct. In a word the Englishman
has in himself the principle of self-government. This fact accounts for
the success of his political system in the United States, where the
native character of the English race is fairly developed.
Unfortunately the reverence for the laws seems to be wearing out with
the Americans. This people, eminently practical in every thing else,
have allowed themselves to be pushed into the excess of theory in
politics, and have here taken up the _quand même_ logic; they have
shrunk from none of the consequences of popular sovereignty, at least
while those consequences were flattering to their pride; as if there
were a single principle in the world, not excepting Christian charity
itself, which could be carried to its extreme logical consequences
without resulting in absolute absurdity. They have, therefore, been
driven in the United States to deny that there is any principle true in
and by itself, and to assert that the will of the people is, always and
necessarily, justice; the infallibility of the people in every thing
and at all times, has, in fact, become the received doctrine, and thus
a door has been opened to the tyranny of a turbulent minority, which
always calls itself the people.[DP]
The appearance of this miscalled popular justice, administered by
the hands of a few desperate or furious men, who call themselves the
successors of the Boston _Tea Party_ of 1773, is a great calamity
in the bosom of a country, where there is no other guarantee of the
public peace than a reverence of the laws, and where the legislator,
taking for granted the prevalence of order, has made no provisions
against disorder. This popular justice has the greater condemnation
of being for the most part grossly unjust. Most of the men who have
been atrociously hanged, or flogged, or tortured in twenty other ways
in the South,[DQ] as abolitionists, that is as guilty of instigating
the slaves to rise against their masters, were, according to all
appearances, merely guilty of having expressed their abhorrence of
slavery with too little caution. It is even doubtful whether the
pretended plots, for being engaged in which whites and blacks have
been summarily executed, had a real existence. At least no proof of
their reality has yet been brought forward, which would be admitted
by a court of justice. During the outrages last month at Baltimore,
which were continued for four days, this self-styled justice was most
stupidly unjust. The mob gave out that it wished to punish those knaves
who had shamefully abused the credulity of the poor in the affair of
the Bank of Maryland. It is a matter of public notoriety, that the
bankruptcy of the bank was fraudulent; that just before it stopped
payment, it had offered a high rate of interest on deposits of any
amount, in order to attract to its counter the savings of the labouring
classes; but it was also a matter of notoriety, that the criminal acts
of the bank were wholly the work of one Evan Poultney, who alone was,
in fact, the bank. Instead of going to take vengeance for the ruin of
the artisan, the widow, and the orphan, on the author of it, the mob
went to call to account the bankruptcy commissioners, appointed by the
court. It was not till the third day that it bethought itself to make
a visit to Poultney, who, without being at all disconcerted, began
to cry out that he was a sinner, that he had been guilty of wronging
his neighbour. He beat his breast in sign of repentance, and in a
puritanical slang accused himself more loudly than the rioters had
done. Blinded, like Orgon, by so much sanctity, they excused themselves
to Tartufe like him, carefully swept the hall and the marble door-steps
which they had soiled, and hastened to sack the house of the mayor,
because a small detachment of militia, spontaneously assembled, had
fired upon them in self-defence, after having stood patient for some
time under a shower of stones.
These disorders are alarming from their general prevalence, and from
their frequent repetitions, and they are the more so, the less their
importance is realised. They meet with few voices to condemn them, but
they find many to excuse them. One of the defects of democracy is that
it is forgetful of the past, and careless of the future. A riot, which
in France would put a stop to business, prevents no one here from going
to the Exchange, speculating, turning over the dollars, and making
money. On meeting in the morning, each one asks and tells the news;
here a negro has been hanged, there a white man has been flogged; at
Philadelphia, ten houses have been demolished; at Buffalo, at Utica,
some people of colour have been scourged. Then they go on to the price
of cotton and coffee, the arrivals of flour, lumber, and tobacco, and
become absorbed in calculations the rest of the day. I am surprised to
see how dead the word equality falls, when a good citizen pronounces
it; the reign of law seems to be at an end; we have fallen under that
of expediency. Farewell to justice, farewell to the great principles of
1776 and 1789! All hail to the interest of the moment, interpreted by
nobody knows who, for the success of some petty intrigue of politics or
business!
Five men, five white men, have been hanged at Vicksburg in Mississippi,
without even the form of a trial; they were gamblers, you are told, the
scourge of the country. The _most respectable_ citizens of Vicksburg
assisted in their execution. But the law which guaranties to all your
fellow-citizens the trial by a jury of peers; but that old Saxon
justice of which you boast! What is become of them? No tribunal would
have been able to rid us of the rogues; morality and religion condemn
them, and their decree, for want of others, we have executed; it was
necessary. _Expediency!_ In Virginia, travellers from the Northern
States, on the slightest pretences, for some tavern gossip, or some
conversation in the coach, have been dragged before the self-styled
_Committees of Vigilance_, beaten, tarred, and feathered. Others,
whose crime consisted in inadvertently having in their pocket, some
papers which the slave-holder has been pleased to pronounce abolition
writings, have been seized by these fanatics, and hanged as emissaries
of insurrection. What is become of that article of the constitution,
which secures to the citizens of each State the protection of the
laws in every other State? If we were to insist on these points, we
should endanger our union with the South. _Expediency!_ Merchants of
New York! The planters of one of the parishes of Louisiana have set a
price on the head of one of your number, because, as they say, he is
an abolitionist, an amalgamator. Will not your national sensibility,
so lively in regard to France, be touched by this act of audacity? Our
commerce with the South constitutes half the prosperity of New York.
_Expediency!_ Men of New England! Citizens of the cradle of American
liberty! Sons of the pilgrims, self-exiled first to Holland, and then
to the sandy shores of Massachusetts, rather than bow their opinions to
the will of the Stuarts! You, so proud of your liberties, how can you
abandon the dearest of all, the liberty of the press, to the hands of a
postmaster? Always the same reply: _Expediency!_
It would seem as if political principles no longer existed in the
United States but at the pleasure of the passions, and the laws had no
force when they jarred with interest. When a State feels itself injured
by a tariff, it declares the law null and void, arms its militia, buys
powder and throws down the glove to Congress. When another State,
as Ohio, is dissatisfied with the boundary line assigned to it, it
declares war against Michigan, its neighbour, in order to extend its
frontiers by force. When the fanatics of Massachusetts, in their savage
intolerance, feel offended by the presence of a Catholic convent, in
which the sisters devote themselves to the work of educating young
girls without distinction of sect, they plunder it and set it on
fire, and the sacred edifice is burnt, in sight of a city with 70,000
inhabitants, without a drop of water being thrown upon the flames,
and without its being possible to find a jury that would convict the
authors of the cowardly outrage. When a Governor of Georgia[DR] comes
into collision with an upright magistrate, who interposes his authority
between the rapacity of the whites and the poor Indian whom they are
impatient to rob, he denounces the just judge to the legislature, and
urges the passing of a law that will make him a State criminal. And, I
repeat it, the worst and most fatal symptom of the times is, that the
perpetration of these outrages, however frequent they become, excites
no sensation. The destruction of the churches and school-houses of
the blacks in New York was looked upon as a show, and the merchants
of the city as they passed, paused to take a moment's relaxation from
the sight; the fall of the buildings was greeted with loud cheers. In
Baltimore, a numerous crowd applauded the work of demolition without
inquiring whose house was pulled down, and the women, in the excitement
of the moment, waved their handkerchiefs in the air.
Another symptom still more alarming! Civil courage, the virtue of the
Hampdens, the glory of the English race, which shone with so pure a
lustre in the United States whilst the authors of their independence
survived, seems to be for a time extinct; I say for a time, for there
is a stock of energy in the American character, which cannot fail some
time or another to revive and put forth its strength anew. The press,
which with a few honourable exceptions, does not possess and does not
merit, in the United States, the consideration which it enjoys in
France; the press, which is here so outrageously violent and brutal
in its treatment of members of Congress belonging to the opposite
party, is, on the other hand, more cautious and reserved in regard to
the multitude. The American press is free in so far as it gives no
bonds and pays no stamp duty, but it is dependent on a capricious,
despotic, and not very enlightened public opinion, which requires it to
flatter the passion of the hour, and does not look to it for lessons
of morality. The public opinion of the democracy is a master who is
easily offended, and who quickly shows his displeasure. The American
journalist is well aware that for the slightest display of boldness
he will be deserted; and since the late events, this is not his only
fear, for he knows that if his enemies should choose to brand him
as an abolitionist, for example, it would be easy to raise a mob of
vagabonds, who would pillage and pull down his house, tar and feather
his person, and drive him from home without any interference by the
public authorities.[DS] He is therefore exceedingly circumspect. In
a word, the _reign of terrour_ is begun in the United States. Men of
courage and devotion to the cause of law have no rallying point in
the press; and even when the public authority would be disposed to
support them, it proves insufficient, either through fear, or concern
for party interests, or want of physical force. To the small number of
good citizens in whom the state of the country excites the liveliest
alarm, there appears to be no resource left, but that of organising
themselves in patriotic societies, forming themselves into military
companies, of creating, in fine, a national guard, under the form which
the laws and national customs would sanction. They feel that this step
is necessary, but they hesitate, because they fear to kindle a civil
war. The Baltimoreans, however, seem determined to make the trial.[DT]
It has also been proposed to make the towns responsible by law for
the damages committed within their limits. Such a law, if it did not
have the effect wholly to prevent the disorders, for the taxes here are
mostly paid by the rich, would at least have the merit of repairing the
losses suffered by means of them.
The present generation in the United States, brought up in devotion
to business, living in an atmosphere of interest, if it is superiour
to the last generation in commercial intelligence and industrial
enterprise, is inferior to it in civil courage and love of the public
good. Deplorable fact! When Baltimore was not long since given up to
the genius of destruction four whole days, when the protection of
the city had been vainly transferred from the mayor to the sheriff,
and from the sheriff to the commanding officer of the militia, when
the prisons had been forced, and the spirit of order began at last
to revive, not a man was found in this city of 100,000 souls to
put himself at the head of the movement. When the most respectable
citizens, and those most deeply interested in the restoration of the
public tranquillity held a meeting in the Exchange, the mountain in
labour brought forth only a long series of whereases on the advantage
of public order, and a string of wordy resolutions which resolved
nothing. Nothing, shameful to relate, but the presence of a veteran
relic of the Revolution with the weight of eighty-four years on his
head, who had retired from Congress to end his long career in repose,
but who felt his blood boil in his veins and mantle in his cheeks at
the spectacle before him,--nothing but his presence gave courage to
this assembly of men in the vigour of life, who were letting their
city fall a prey to a handful of drunkards and depraved boys. The
indignant old man, started up and interrupted the reading of the
resolutions; "Damn your resolutions!" cried he; "give me a sword
and thirty men, and I will restore order!" "What! General Smith,"
said one of these irresolute makers of resolutions, "would you fire
upon your fellow citizens?" "Those who break the laws, drive their
neighbour from his house, plunder his property and reduce his wife and
children to beggary," answered Gen. Smith, "such fellows are not my
fellow-citizens." These words, which expressed the thoughts of all, but
which no one dared utter, were received with a thunder of applause. The
aged senator was named commander of the military force by acclamation,
and a few days after was chosen mayor. Since that time Baltimore has
been quiet. But when we reflect that order has been restored in a
large and flourishing city, only because there happened to be present
a veteran whom death had spared, and who had energy enough, with one
foot in the grave, to come forward and teach his fellow citizens, by
example, the lessons of the golden age of American liberty, are we not
forced to exclaim with Mr Clay; "We are in the midst of a revolution."
Mr Clay is no false prophet; for the events that have succeeded each
other since he uttered these words, announce that a crisis is at hand.
The American system no longer works well. In the North, the removal
of all restrictions on the right of suffrage, without the creation
of any counterpoise, has destroyed the equilibrium. In the South,
the old foundation borrowed from the ante-Christian ages, on which
it has been attempted to raise the superstructure of a new social
order in the nineteenth century, shakes and threatens to bury the
thoughtless builders under the ruins of their half-finished work.
In the West, a population sprung from the soil under the influence
of circumstances unparallelled in the history of the world, already
affects a superiority, or rather lays claim to dominion, over the
North and South. Everywhere, the relations established by the old
federal compact, become unsuited to the new state of things. The
dissolution of the Union, the mere thought of which would have caused a
shudder of horrour, ten years ago, which was numbered among those acts
of infamy that are not to be named,--the dissolution of the Union has
been demanded, and no thunder fell upon the head of the perpetrator of
the sacrilege. At present it is a common topic of conversation. The
dissolution of the Union, if it should take place, would be the most
complete of all revolutions.
What will be the character of this revolution, which is felt to be
approaching? To what institutions will it give birth? Who must perish
in the day of account? Who will rise on the storm? Who will resist the
action of ages? I have not the gift of prophecy, and I shall not try
to pierce the mystery of the destinies of the New World. But I have a
firm faith, that a people with the energy and intelligence which the
Americans possess; a people which has like it the genius of industry,
which combines perseverance with the resources of ingenuity, which
is essentially regular in its habits and orderly in its disposition,
which is deeply imbued with religious habits; even when a lively faith
is wanting, such a people cannot be born of yesterday to vanish on
the morrow. The American people, in spite of its original defects, in
spite of the numerous voids which a hasty growth and a superficial
education have left in its ideas, feelings, and customs, is still a
great and powerful people. For such nations, the most violent storms
are wholesome trials which strengthen, solemn warnings which teach,
elevate, and purify them.