EDUCATION AND RELIGION.
The one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of
the United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them
in taking to themselves praise which we cannot take to ourselves or
refuse to them, is the matter of Education. In saying this I do not
think that I am proclaiming anything disgraceful to England, though
I am proclaiming much that is creditable to America. To the Americans
of the States was given the good fortune of beginning at the
beginning. The French at the time of their revolution endeavoured to
reorganize everything, and to begin the world again with new habits
and grand theories; but the French as a people were too old for such
a change, and the theories fell to the ground. But in the States,
after their revolution, an Anglo-Saxon people had an opportunity of
making a new State, with all the experience of the world before
them; and to this matter of education they were from the first aware
that they must look for their success. They did so; and unrivalled
population, wealth, and intelligence have been the results; and with
these, looking at the whole masses of the people,--I think I am
justified in saying,--unrivalled comfort and happiness. It is not
that you, my reader, to whom in this matter of education fortune and
your parents have probably been bountiful, would have been more happy
in New York than in London. It is not that I, who, at any rate, can
read and write, have cause to wish that I had been an American. But
it is this:--if you and I can count up in a day all those on whom our
eyes may rest, and learn the circumstances of their lives, we shall
be driven to conclude that nine-tenths of that number would have
had a better life as Americans than they can have in their spheres
as Englishmen. The States are at a discount with us now, in the
beginning of this year of grace 1862; and Englishmen were not very
willing to admit the above statement, even when the States were not
at a discount. But I do not think that a man can travel through the
States with his eyes open and not admit the fact. Many things will
conspire to induce him to shut his eyes and admit no conclusion
favourable to the Americans. Men and women will sometimes be impudent
to him;--the better his coat, the greater the impudence. He will be
pelted with the braggadocio of equality. The corns of his Old-World
conservatism will be trampled on hourly by the purposely vicious
herd of uncouth democracy. The fact that he is paymaster will go
for nothing, and will fail to insure civility. I shall never forget
my agony as I saw and heard my desk fall from a porter's hand on
a railway station, as he tossed it from him seven yards off on to
the hard pavement. I heard its poor weak intestines rattle in their
death-struggle, and knowing that it was smashed I forgot my position
on American soil and remonstrated. "It's my desk, and you have
utterly destroyed it," I said. "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the porter.
"You've destroyed my property," I rejoined, "and it's no laughing
matter." And then all the crowd laughed. "Guess you'd better get it
glued," said one. So I gathered up the broken article and retired
mournfully and crestfallen into a coach. This was very sad, and
for the moment I deplored the ill-luck which had brought me to so
savage a country. Such and such like are the incidents which make
an Englishman in the States unhappy, and rouse his gall against
the institutions of the country;--these things and the continued
appliance of the irritating ointment of American braggadocio with
which his sores are kept open. But though I was badly off on that
railway platform,--worse off than I should have been in England,--all
that crowd of porters round me were better off than our English
porters. They had a "good time" of it. And this, O my English brother
who hast travelled through the States and returned disgusted, is the
fact throughout. Those men whose familiarity was so disgusting to you
are having a good time of it. "They might be a little more civil,"
you say, "and yet read and write just as well." True; but they are
arguing in their minds that civility to you will be taken by you for
subservience, or for an acknowledgment of superiority; and looking at
your habits of life,--yours and mine together,--I am not quite sure
that they are altogether wrong. Have you ever realized to yourself
as a fact that the porter who carries your box has not made himself
inferior to you by the very act of carrying that box? If not, that is
the very lesson which the man wishes to teach you.
If a man can forget his own miseries in his journeyings, and think of
the people he comes to see rather than of himself, I think he will
find himself driven to admit that education has made life for the
million in the Northern States better than life for the million is
with us. They have begun at the beginning, and have so managed that
every one may learn to read and write,--have so managed that almost
every one does learn to read and write. With us this cannot now be
done. Population had come upon us in masses too thick for management
before we had as yet acknowledged that it would be a good thing that
these masses should be educated. Prejudices, too, had sprung up, and
habits, and strong sectional feelings, all antagonistic to a great
national system of education. We are, I suppose, now doing all that
we can do; but comparatively it is little. I think I saw some time
since that the cost for gratuitous education, or education in part
gratuitous, which had fallen upon the nation had already amounted to
the sum of £800,000; and I think also that I read in the document
which revealed to me this fact, a very strong opinion that Government
could not at present go much further. But if this matter were
regarded in England as it is regarded in Massachusetts,--or rather,
had it from some prosperous beginning been put upon a similar
footing, £800,000 would not have been esteemed a great expenditure
for free education simply in the city of London. In 1857 the public
schools of Boston cost £70,000, and these schools were devoted to a
population of about 180,000 souls. Taking the population of London at
two-and-a-half millions, the whole sum now devoted to England would,
if expended in the metropolis, make education there even cheaper than
it is in Boston. In Boston during 1857 there were above 24,000 pupils
at these public schools, giving more than one-eighth of the whole
population. But I fear it would not be practicable for us to spend
£800,000 on the gratuitous education of London. Rich as we are, we
should not know where to raise the money. In Boston it is raised by
a separate tax. It is a thing understood, acknowledged, and made
easy by being habitual,--as is our national debt. I do not know that
Boston is peculiarly blessed, but I quote the instance as I have
a record of its schools before me. At the three high schools in
Boston, at which the average of pupils is 526, about £13 per head is
paid for free education. The average price per annum of a child's
schooling throughout these schools in Boston is about £3 per annum.
To the higher schools any boy or girl may attain without any expense,
and the education is probably as good as can be given, and as far
advanced. The only question is, whether it is not advanced further
than may be necessary. Here, as at New York, I was almost startled
by the amount of knowledge around me, and listened, as I might have
done, to an examination in theology among young Brahmins. When a
young lad explained in my hearing all the properties of the different
levers as exemplified by the bones of the human body, I bowed my
head before him in unaffected humility. We, at our English schools,
never got beyond the use of those bones which he described with such
accurate scientific knowledge. In one of the girls' schools they were
reading Milton, and when we entered were discussing the nature of the
pool in which the Devil is described as wallowing. The question had
been raised by one of the girls. A pool, so called, was supposed to
contain but a small amount of water, and how could the Devil, being
so large, get into it? Then came the origin of the word pool,--from
"palus," a marsh, as we were told, some dictionary attesting to the
fact,--and such a marsh might cover a large expanse. The "Palus
Mæotis" was then quoted. And so we went on till Satan's theory of
political liberty,
"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,"
was thoroughly discussed and understood. These girls of sixteen and
seventeen got up one after another and gave their opinions on the
subject,--how far the Devil was right and how far he was manifestly
wrong. I was attended by one of the directors or guardians of the
schools, and the teacher, I thought, was a little embarrassed by her
position. But the girls themselves were as easy in their demeanour as
though they were stitching handkerchiefs at home.
It is impossible to refrain from telling all this, and from making a
little innocent fun out of the super-excellencies of these schools;
but the total result on my mind was very greatly in their favour.
And indeed the testimony came in both ways. Not only was I called on
to form an opinion of what the men and women would become from the
education which was given to the boys and girls, but also to say what
must have been the education of the boys and girls from what I saw of
the men and women. Of course it will be understood that I am not here
speaking of those I met in society, or of their children, but of the
working people,--of that class who find that a gratuitous education
for their children is needful, if any considerable amount of
education is to be given. The result is to be seen daily in the whole
intercourse of life. The coachman who drives you, the man who mends
your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the girl who
stitches your wife's dress,--they all carry with them sure signs of
education, and show it in every word they utter.
It will of course be understood that this is, in the separate States,
a matter of State law; indeed I may go further and say that it is in
most of the States a matter of State constitution. It is by no means
a matter of Federal constitution. The United States as a nation takes
no heed of the education of its people. All that is left to the
judgment of the separate States. In most of the thirteen original
States provision is made in the written constitution for the general
education of the people; but this is not done in all. I find that it
was more frequently done in the Northern or Freesoil States than in
those which admitted slavery,--as might have been expected. In the
constitutions of South Carolina and Virginia I find no allusion
to the public provision for education, but in those of North
Carolina and Georgia it is enjoined. The forty-first section of
the constitution for North Carolina enjoins that "schools shall
be established by the legislature for the convenient instruction
of youth, with such salaries to the masters, paid by the public,
as may enable them to instruct _at low prices_;" showing that the
intention here was to assist education, and not provide it altogether
gratuitously. I think that provision for public education is enjoined
in the constitutions of all the States admitted into the Union since
the first federal knot was tied, except in that of Illinois. Vermont
was the first so admitted, in 1791, and Vermont declares that "a
competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town
for the convenient instruction of youth." Ohio was the second, in
1802, and Ohio enjoins that "the general assembly shall make such
provisions by taxation or otherwise as, with the income arising from
the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of
common schools throughout the State; but no religious or other sect
or sects shall ever have any exclusive right or control of any part
of the school funds of this State." In Indiana, admitted in 1816, it
is required that "the general assembly shall provide by law for a
general and uniform system of common schools." Illinois was admitted
next, in 1818; but the constitution of Illinois is silent on the
subject of education. It enjoins, however, in lieu of this, that
no person shall fight a duel or send a challenge! If he do he
is not only to be punished, but to be deprived for ever of the
power of holding any office of honour or profit in the State. I
have no reason, however, for supposing that education is neglected
in Illinois, or that duelling has been abolished. In Maine it is
demanded that the towns--the whole country is divided into what are
called towns--shall make suitable provision at their own expense for
the support and maintenance of public schools.
Some of these constitutional enactments are most magniloquently
worded, but not always with precise grammatical correctness. That
for the famous Bay State of Massachusetts runs as follows:--"Wisdom
and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body
of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights
and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities
and advantages of education in the various parts of the country,
and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty
of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of
this commonwealth, to cherish the interest of literature and the
sciences, and of all seminaries of them, especially the University
at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to
encourage private societies and public institutions, by rewards,
and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences,
commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country;
to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general
benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality,
honesty and punctuality in all their dealings; sincerity, good
humour, and all social affections and generous sentiments among
the people." I must confess, that had the words of that little
constitutional enactment been made known to me before I had seen
its practical results, I should not have put much faith in it. Of
all the public schools I have ever seen,--by public schools I mean
schools for the people at large maintained at public cost,--those
of Massachusetts are, I think, the best. But of all the educational
enactments which I ever read, that of the same State is, I should
say, the worst. In Texas now, of which as a State the people of
Massachusetts do not think much, they have done it better. "A general
diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the
rights and liberties of the people, it shall be the duty of the
legislature of this State to make suitable provision for the support
and maintenance of public schools." So say the Texians; but then the
Texians had the advantage of a later experience than any which fell
in the way of the constitution-makers of Massachusetts.
There is something of the magniloquence of the French style,--of
the liberty, equality, and fraternity mode of eloquence,--in the
preambles of most of these constitutions, which, but for their
success, would have seemed to have prophesied loudly of failure.
Those of New York and Pennsylvania are the least so, and that of
Massachusetts by far the most violently magniloquent. They generally
commence by thanking God for the present civil and religious liberty
of the people, and by declaring that all men are born free and equal.
New York and Pennsylvania, however, refrain from any such very
general remarks.
I am well aware that all these constitutional enactments are not
likely to obtain much credit in England. It is not only that grand
phrases fail to convince us, but that they carry to our senses almost
an assurance of their own inefficiency. When we hear that a people
have declared their intention of being henceforward better than their
neighbours, and going upon a new theory that shall lead them direct
to a terrestrial paradise, we button up our pockets and lock up
our spoons. And that is what we have done very much as regards the
Americans. We have walked with them and talked with them, and bought
with them and sold with them; but we have mistrusted them as to their
internal habits and modes of life, thinking that their philanthropy
was pretentious and that their theories were vague. Many cities in
the States are but skeletons of towns, the streets being there, and
the houses numbered,--but not one house built out of ten that have
been so counted up. We have regarded their institutions as we regard
those cities, and have been specially willing so to consider them
because of the fine language in which they have been paraded before
us. They have been regarded as the skeletons of philanthropical
systems, to which blood and flesh and muscle, and even skin,
are wanting. But it is at least but fair to inquire how far the
promise made has been carried out. The elaborate wordings of the
constitutions made by the French politicians in the days of their
great revolution have always been to us no more than so many written
grimaces; but we should not have continued so to regard them had the
political liberty which they promised followed upon the promises so
magniloquently made. As regards education in the States,--at any rate
in the northern and western States,--I think that the assurances put
forth in the various written constitutions have been kept. If this
be so, an American citizen, let him be ever so arrogant, ever so
impudent if you will, is at any rate a civilized being, and on the
road to that cultivation which will sooner or later divest him of his
arrogance. _Emollit mores._ We quote here our old friend the Colonel
again. If a gentleman be compelled to confine his classical allusions
to one quotation, he cannot do better than hang by that.
But has education been so general, and has it had the desired result?
In the city of Boston, as I have said, I found that in 1857 about
one-eighth of the whole population were then on the books of the free
public schools as pupils, and that about one-ninth of the population
formed the average daily attendance. To these numbers of course must
be added all pupils of the richer classes,--those for whose education
their parents chose to pay. As nearly as I can learn, the average
duration of each pupil's schooling is six years, and if this be
figured out statistically, I think it will show that education
in Boston reaches a very large majority--I must almost say the
whole--of the population. That the education given in other towns of
Massachusetts is not so good as that given in Boston I do not doubt,
but I have reason to believe that it is quite as general.
I have spoken of one of the schools of New York. In that city the
public schools are apportioned to the wards, and are so arranged
that in each ward of the city there are public schools of different
standing for the gratuitous use of the children. The population of
the city of New York in 1857 was about 650,000, and in that year it
is stated that there were 135,000 pupils in the schools. By this it
would appear that one person in five throughout the city was then
under process of education,--which statement, however, I cannot
receive with implicit credence. It is, however, also stated that the
daily attendances averaged something less than 50,000 a day--and this
latter statement probably implies some mistake in the former one.
Taking the two together for what they are worth, they show, I think,
that school teaching is not only brought within the reach of the
population generally, but is used by almost all classes. At New
York there are separate free schools for coloured children. At
Philadelphia I did not see the schools, but I was assured that the
arrangements there were equal to those at New York and Boston. Indeed
I was told that they were infinitely better;--but then I was so told
by a Philadelphian. In the State of Connecticut the public schools
are certainly equal to those in any part of the Union. As far as I
could learn, education--what we should call advanced education--is
brought within the reach of all classes in the northern and western
States of America,--and, I would wish to add here, to those of the
Canadas also.
So much for the schools, and now for the results. I do not know that
anything impresses a visitor more strongly with the amount of books
sold in the States, than the practice of selling them as it has been
adopted in the railway cars. Personally the traveller will find the
system very disagreeable,--as is everything connected with these
cars. A young man enters during the journey,--for the trade is
carried out while the cars are travelling, as is also a very brisk
trade in lollipops, sugar-candy, apples, and ham sandwiches,--the
young tradesman enters the car firstly with a pile of magazines or
of novels bound like magazines. These are chiefly the "Atlantic,"
published at Boston, "Harper's Magazine," published at New York, and
a cheap series of novels published at Philadelphia. As he walks along
he flings one at every passenger. An Englishman, when he is first
introduced to this manner of trade, becomes much astonished. He is
probably reading, and on a sudden he finds a fat, fluffy magazine,
very unattractive in its exterior, dropped on to the page he is
perusing. I thought at first that it was a present from some crazed
philanthropist, who was thus endeavouring to disseminate literature.
But I was soon undeceived. The bookseller, having gone down the whole
car and the next, returned, and beginning again where he had begun
before, picked up either his magazine or else the price of it. Then,
in some half-hour, he came again, with an armful or basket of books,
and distributed them in the same way. They were generally novels, but
not always. I do not think that any endeavour is made to assimilate
the book to the expected customer. The object is to bring the book
and the man together, and in this way a very large sale is effected.
The same thing is done with illustrated newspapers. The sale of
political newspapers goes on so quickly in these cars that no such
enforced distribution is necessary. I should say that the average
consumption of newspapers by an American must amount to about three a
day. At Washington I begged the keeper of my lodgings to let me have
a paper regularly,--one American newspaper being much the same to me
as another,--and my host supplied me daily with four.
But the numbers of the popular books of the day, printed and sold,
afford the most conclusive proof of the extent to which education is
carried in the States. The readers of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens,
Bulwer, Collins, Hughes, and--Martin Tupper, are to be counted by
tens of thousands in the States, to the thousands by which they
may be counted in our own islands. I do not doubt that I had fully
fifteen copies of the "Silver Cord" thrown at my head in different
railway cars on the continent of America. Nor is the taste by any
means confined to the literature of England. Longfellow, Curtis,
Holmes, Hawthorne, Lowell, Emerson,--and Mrs. Stowe, are almost as
popular as their English rivals. I do not say whether or no the
literature is well chosen, but there it is. It is printed, sold, and
read. The disposal of ten thousand copies of a work is no large sale
in America of a book published at a dollar; but in England it is a
large sale of a book brought out at five shillings.
I do not remember that I ever examined the rooms of an American
without finding books or magazines in them. I do not speak here of
the houses of my friends, as of course the same remark would apply as
strongly in England, but of the houses of persons presumed to earn
their bread by the labour of their hands. The opportunity for such
examination does not come daily; but when it has been in my power I
have made it, and have always found signs of education. Men and women
of the classes to which I allude talk of reading and writing as of
arts belonging to them as a matter of course, quite as much as are
the arts of eating and drinking. A porter or a farmer's servant in
the States is not proud of reading and writing. It is to him quite a
matter of course. The coachmen on their boxes and the boots as they
sit in the halls of the hotels, have newspapers constantly in their
hands. The young women have them also, and the children. The fact
comes home to one at every turn, and at every hour, that the people
are an educated people. The whole of this question between North and
South is as well understood by the servants as by their masters, is
discussed as vehemently by the private soldiers as by the officers.
The politics of the country and the nature of its constitution are
familiar to every labourer. The very wording of the Declaration of
Independence is in the memory of every lad of sixteen. Boys and girls
of a younger age than that know why Slidell and Mason were arrested,
and will tell you why they should have been given up, or why they
should have been held in durance. The question of the war with
England is debated by every native paviour and hodman of New York.
I know what Englishmen will say in answer to this. They will declare
that they do not want their paviours and hodmen to talk politics;
that they are as well pleased that their coachmen and cooks should
not always have a newspaper in their hands; that private soldiers
will fight as well, and obey better, if they are not trained to
discuss the causes which have brought them into the field. An English
gentleman will think that his gardener will be a better gardener
without than with any excessive political ardour; and the English
lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have a very pronounced
opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the cabinet ministers.
But I would submit to all Englishmen and Englishwomen who may look at
these pages whether such an opinion or feeling on their part bears
much, or even at all, upon the subject. I am not saying that the man
who is driven in the coach is better off because his coachman reads
the paper, but that the coachman himself who reads the paper is
better off than the coachman who does not and cannot. I think that
we are too apt, in considering the ways and habits of any people,
to judge of them by the effect of those ways and habits on us,
rather than by their effects on the owners of them. When we go among
garlic-eaters, we condemn them because they are offensive to us;
but to judge of them properly we should ascertain whether or no
the garlic be offensive to them. If we could imagine a nation of
vegetarians hearing for the first time of our habits as flesh-eaters,
we should feel sure that they would be struck with horror at our
blood-stained banquets; but when they came to argue with us, we
should bid them inquire whether we flesh-eaters did not live longer
and do more than the vegetarians. When we express a dislike to the
shoeboy reading his newspaper, I fear we do so because we fear that
the shoeboy is coming near our own heels. I know there is among us a
strong feeling that the lower classes are better without politics, as
there is also that they are better without crinoline and artificial
flowers; but if politics and crinoline and artificial flowers are
good at all, they are good for all who can honestly come by them and
honestly use them. The political coachman is perhaps less valuable
to his master as a coachman than he would be without his politics,
but he with his politics is more valuable to himself. For myself, I
do not like the Americans of the lower orders. I am not comfortable
among them. They tread on my corns and offend me. They make my
daily life unpleasant. But I do respect them. I acknowledge their
intelligence and personal dignity. I know that they are men and women
worthy to be so called; I see that they are living as human beings in
possession of reasoning faculties; and I perceive that they owe this
to the progress that education has made among them.
After all, what is wanted in this world? Is it not that men should
eat and drink, and read and write, and say their prayers? Does not
that include everything, providing that they eat and drink enough,
read and write without restraint, and say their prayers without
hypocrisy? When we talk of the advances of civilization, do we mean
anything but this, that men who now eat and drink badly shall eat and
drink well, and that those who cannot read and write now shall learn
to do so,--the prayers following, as prayers will follow upon such
learning? Civilization does not consist in the eschewing of garlic
or the keeping clean of a man's finger-nails. It may lead to such
delicacies, and probably will do so. But the man who thinks that
civilization cannot exist without them imagines that the church
cannot stand without the spire. In the States of America men do eat
and drink, and do read and write.
But as to saying their prayers? That, as far as I can see, has come
also, though perhaps not in a manner altogether satisfactory, or to
a degree which should be held to be sufficient. Englishmen of strong
religious feeling will often be startled in America by the freedom
with which religious subjects are discussed, and the ease with which
the matter is treated; but he will very rarely be shocked by that
utter absence of all knowledge on the subject,--that total darkness,
which is still so common among the lower orders in our own country.
It is not a common thing to meet an American who belongs to no
denomination of Christian worship, and who cannot tell you why he
belongs to that which he has chosen.
"But," it will be said, "all the intelligence and education of this
people have not saved them from falling out among themselves and
their friends, and running into troubles by which they will be
ruined. Their political arrangements have been so bad, that in spite
of all their reading and writing they must go to the wall." I venture
to express an opinion that they will by no means go to the wall, and
that they will be saved from such a destiny, if in no other way, then
by their education. Of their political arrangements, as I mean before
long to rush into that perilous subject, I will say nothing here. But
no political convulsions, should such arise,--no revolution in the
constitution, should such be necessary,--will have any wide effect
on the social position of the people to their serious detriment.
They have the great qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race,--industry,
intelligence, and self-confidence; and if these qualities will no
longer suffice to keep such a people on their legs, the world must be
coming to an end.
I have said that it is not a common thing to meet an American who
belongs to no denomination of Christian worship. This I think is
so; but I would not wish to be taken as saying that religion on
that account stands on a satisfactory footing in the States. Of all
subjects of discussion, this is the most difficult. It is one as
to which most of us feel that to some extent we must trust to our
prejudices rather than our judgments. It is a matter on which we
do not dare to rely implicitly on our own reasoning faculties, and
therefore throw ourselves on the opinions of those whom we believe
to have been better men and deeper thinkers than ourselves. For
myself, I love the name of State and Church, and believe that much
of our English well-being has depended on it. I have made up my
mind to think that union good, and not to be turned away from that
conviction. Nevertheless I am not prepared to argue the matter. One
does not always carry one's proofs at one's finger-ends.
But I feel very strongly that much of that which is evil in the
structure of American politics is owing to the absence of any
national religion, and that something also of social evil has sprung
from the same cause. It is not that men do not say their prayers. For
aught I know, they may do so as frequently and as fervently, or more
frequently and more fervently, than we do; but there is a rowdiness,
if I may be allowed to use such a word, in their manner of doing so
which robs religion of that reverence which is, if not its essence,
at any rate its chief protection. It is a part of their system that
religion shall be perfectly free, and that no man shall be in any
way constrained in that matter. Consequently, the question of a
man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy way. It is well,
for instance, that a young lad should go somewhere on a Sunday;
but a sermon is a sermon, and it does not much concern the lad's
father whether his son hear the discourse of a freethinker in the
music-hall, or the eloquent but lengthy outpouring of a preacher in a
Methodist chapel. Everybody is bound to have a religion, but it does
not much matter what it is.
The difficulty in which the first fathers of the Revolution found
themselves on this question, is shown by the constitutions of the
different States. There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of
the New England States were, as things went, a strictly religious
community. They had no idea of throwing over the worship of God, as
the French had attempted to do at their Revolution. They intended
that the new nation should be pre-eminently composed of a God-fearing
people; but they intended also that they should be a people free in
everything,--free to choose their own forms of worship. They intended
that the nation should be a Protestant people; but they intended also
that no man's conscience should be coerced in the matter of his own
religion. It was hard to reconcile these two things, and to explain
to the citizens that it behoved them to worship God,--even under
penalties for omission; but that it was at the same time open to them
to select any form of worship that they pleased, however that form
might differ from the practices of the majority. In Connecticut it is
declared that it is the duty of all men to worship the Supreme Being,
the Creator and Preserver of the universe, but that it is their right
to render that worship in the mode most consistent with the dictates
of their consciences. And then a few lines further down the article
skips the great difficulty in a manner somewhat disingenuous, and
declares that each and every society of Christians in the State shall
have and enjoy the same and equal privileges. But it does not say
whether a Jew shall be divested of those privileges, or, if he be
divested, how that treatment of him is to be reconciled with the
assurance that it is every man's right to worship the Supreme Being
in the mode most consistent with the dictates of his own conscience.
In Rhode Island they were more honest. It is there declared that
every man shall be free to worship God according to the dictates of
his own conscience, and to profess and by argument to maintain his
opinion in matters of religion; and that the same shall in nowise
diminish, enlarge, or affect his civil capacity. Here it is simply
presumed that every man will worship a God, and no allusion is made
even to Christianity.
In Massachusetts they are again hardly honest. "It is the right,"
says the constitution, "as well as the duty of all men in society
publicly and at stated seasons to worship the Supreme Being, the
great Creator and Preserver of the universe." And then it goes on to
say that every man may do so in what form he pleases; but further
down it declares that "every denomination of Christians, demeaning
themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall
be equally under the protection of the law." But what about those who
are not Christians? In New Hampshire it is exactly the same. It is
enacted that--"Every individual has a natural and unalienable right
to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience and
reason." And that--"Every denomination of Christians, demeaning
themselves quietly and as good citizens of the State, shall be
equally under the protection of the law." From all which it is, I
think, manifest that the men who framed these documents, desirous
above all things of cutting themselves and their people loose
from every kind of trammel, still felt the necessity of enforcing
religion,--of making it to a certain extent a matter of State duty.
In the first constitution of North Carolina it is enjoined,--"That
no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the
Protestant religion, shall be capable of holding any office or place
of trust or profit." But this was altered in the year 1836, and
the words "Christian religion" were substituted for "Protestant
religion."
In New England the Congregationalists are, I think, the dominant
sect. In Massachusetts, and I believe in the other New England
States, a man is presumed to be a Congregationalist if he do not
declare himself to be anything else; as with us the Church of England
counts all who do not specially have themselves counted elsewhere.
The Congregationalist, as far as I can learn, is very near to a
Presbyterian. In New England I think the Unitarians would rank next
in number; but a Unitarian in America is not the same as a Unitarian
with us. Here, if I understand the nature of his creed, a Unitarian
does not recognize the divinity of our Saviour. In America he does
do so, but throws over the doctrine of the Trinity. The Protestant
Episcopalians muster strong in all the great cities, and I fancy that
they would be regarded as taking the lead of the other religious
denominations in New York. Their tendency is to high-church
doctrines. I wish they had not found it necessary to alter the forms
of our prayer-book in so many little matters, as to which there was
no national expediency for such changes. But it was probably thought
necessary that a new people should show their independence in all
things. The Roman Catholics have a very strong party--as a matter
of course--seeing how great has been the immigration from Ireland;
but here, as in Ireland--and as indeed is the case all the world
over--the Roman Catholics are the hewers of wood and drawers of
water. The Germans, who have latterly flocked into the States in
such swarms that they have almost Germanized certain States, have of
course their own churches. In every town there are places of worship
for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every
denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for
these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings contrived to
inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they
called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them
look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to
those sects are often handsome. This is especially the case in New
York; and the pastors are not unfrequently among the best educated
and most agreeable men whom the traveller will meet. They are for the
most part well paid; and are enabled by their outward position to
hold that place in the world's ranks which should always belong to
a clergyman. I have not been able to obtain information from which
I can state with anything like correctness what may be the average
income of ministers of the Gospel in the northern States, but that
it is much higher than the average income of our parish clergymen,
admits, I think, of no doubt. The stipends of clergymen in the
American towns are higher than those paid in the country. The
opposite to this, I think as a rule, is the case with us.
I have said that religion in the States is rowdy. By that I mean to
imply that it seems to me to be divested of that reverential order
and strictness of rule which, according to our ideas, should be
attached to matters of religion. One hardly knows where the affairs
of this world end, or where those of the next begin. When the holy
men were had in at the lecture, were they doing stage-work or
church-work? On hearing sermons, one is often driven to ask oneself
whether the discourse from the pulpit be in its nature political or
religious. I heard an Episcopalian Protestant clergyman talk of the
scoffing nations of Europe,--because at that moment he was angry with
England and France about Slidell and Mason. I have heard a chapter of
the Bible read in Congress at the desire of a member, and very badly
read. After which the chapter itself and the reading of it became the
subject of a debate, partly jocose and partly acrimonious. It is a
common thing for a clergyman to change his profession and follow any
other pursuit. I know two or three gentlemen who were once in that
line of life, but have since gone into other trades. There is, I
think, an unexpressed determination on the part of the people to
abandon all reverence, and to regard religion from an altogether
worldly point of view. They are willing to have religion, as they are
willing to have laws; but they choose to make it for themselves. They
do not object to pay for it, but they like to have the handling of
the article for which they pay. As the descendants of Puritans and
other godly Protestants, they will submit to religious teaching, but
as Republicans they will have no priestcraft. The French at their
Revolution had the latter feeling without the former, and were
therefore consistent with themselves in abolishing all worship. The
Americans desire to do the same thing politically, but infidelity
has had no charms for them. They say their prayers, and then seem to
apologize for doing so, as though it were hardly the act of a free
and enlightened citizen, justified in ruling himself as he pleases.
All this to me is rowdy. I know no other word by which I can so well
describe it.
Nevertheless the nation is religious in its tendencies, and prone
to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things. A man there is
expected to belong to some church, and is not, I think, well looked
on if he profess that he belongs to none. He may be a Swedenborgian,
a Quaker, a Muggletonian;--anything will do. But it is expected of
him that he shall place himself under some flag, and do his share
in supporting the flag to which he belongs. This duty is, I think,
generally fulfilled.