A SONG of the hour, now in course of being sung and whistled in every
street, the other day reminded the writer of these words—as he chanced to
pass a fag-end of the song for the twentieth time in a short London
walk—that twenty years ago, a little book on the United States, entitled
_American Notes_, was published by “a Young Man from the Country”, who
had just seen and left it.
This Young Man from the Country fell into a deal of trouble, by reason of
having taken the liberty to believe that he perceived in America downward
popular tendencies for which his young enthusiasm had been anything but
prepared. It was in vain for the Young Man to offer in extenuation of
his belief that no stranger could have set foot on those shores with a
feeling of livelier interest in the country, and stronger faith in it,
than he. Those were the days when the Tories had made their Ashburton
Treaty, and when Whigs and Radicals must have no theory disturbed. All
three parties waylaid and mauled the Young Man from the Country, and
showed that he knew nothing about the country.
As the Young Man from the Country had observed in the Preface to his
little book, that he “could bide his time”, he took all this in silent
part for eight years. Publishing then, a cheap edition of his book, he
made no stronger protest than the following:
“My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the
influences and tendencies which I distrusted in America, have any
existence but in my imagination. They can examine for themselves
whether there has been anything in the public career of that country
during these past eight years, or whether there is anything in its
present position, at home or abroad, which suggests that those
influences and tendencies really do exist. As they find the fact,
they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-going, in
any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had
reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they will
consider me altogether mistaken. I have nothing to defend, or to
explain away. The truth is the truth; and neither childish
absurdities, nor unscrupulous contradictions, can make it otherwise.
The earth would still move round the sun, though the whole Catholic
Church said No.”
Twelve more years having since passed away, it may now, at last, be
simply just towards the Young Man from the Country, to compare what he
originally wrote, with recent events and their plain motive powers.
Treating of the House of Representatives at Washington, he wrote thus:
“Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who, applying
themselves in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and vices
of the old, purified the avenues to Public Life, paved the dirty ways
to Place and Power, debated and made laws for the Common Good, and
had no party but their Country?
“I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of
virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.
Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public
officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers
for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to
mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day
and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are
the dragon’s teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and
abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful
suppressions of all its good influences: such things as these, and in
a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing
form, stared out from every corner of the crowded hall.
“Did I see among them, the intelligence and refinement: the true,
honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and there, were drops of
its blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the stream of
desperate adventurers which sets that way for profit and for pay. It
is the game of these men, and of their profligate organs, to make the
strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all
self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded
persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to
battle out their selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of
all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other countries would,
from their intelligence and station, most aspire to make the laws, do
here recoil the farthest from that degradation.
“That there are, among the representatives of the people in both
Houses, and among all parties, some men of high character and great
abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those politicians who
are known in Europe, have been already described, and I see no reason
to depart from the rule I have laid down for my guidance, of
abstaining from all mention of individuals. It will be sufficient to
add, that to the most favourable accounts that have been written of
them, I fully and most heartily subscribe; and that personal
intercourse and free communication have bred within me, not the
result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, but increased
admiration and respect.”
Towards the end of his book, the Young Man from the Country thus
expressed himself concerning its people:
“They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and
affectionate. Cultivation and refinement seem but to enhance their
warmth of heart and ardent enthusiasm; and it is the possession of
these latter qualities in a most remarkable degree, which renders an
educated American one of the most endearing and most generous of
friends. I never was so won upon, as by this class; never yielded up
my full confidence and esteem so readily and pleasurably, as to them;
never can make again, in half a year, so many friends for whom I seem
to entertain the regard of half a life.
“These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the whole
people. That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted in their
growth among the mass; and that there are influences at work which
endanger them still more, and give but little present promise of
their healthy restoration; is a truth that ought to be told.
“It is an essential part of every national character to pique itself
mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its virtue or its
wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great blemish in the
popular mind of America, and the prolific parent of an innumerable
brood of evils, is Universal Distrust. Yet the American citizen
plumes himself upon this spirit, even when he is sufficiently
dispassionate to perceive the ruin it works; and will often adduce
it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance of the great sagacity
and acuteness of the people, and their superior shrewdness and
independence.
“‘You carry,’ says the stranger, ‘this jealousy and distrust into
every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men from your
legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the
suffrage, who, in their every act, disgrace your Institutions and
your people’s choice. It has rendered you so fickle, and so given to
change, that your inconstancy has passed into a proverb; for you no
sooner set up an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down and
dash it into fragments: and this, because directly you reward a
benefactor, or a public-servant, you distrust him, merely because he
_is_ rewarded; and immediately apply yourselves to find out, either
that you have been too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he
remiss in his deserts. Any man who attains a high place among you,
from the President downwards, may date his downfall from that moment;
for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it
militate directly against the character and conduct of a life,
appeals at once to your distrust, and is believed. You will strain
at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly
won and well deserved; but you will swallow a whole caravan of
camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions.
Is this well, think you, or likely to elevate the character of the
governors or the governed, among you?’
“The answer is invariably the same: ‘There’s freedom of opinion here,
you know. Every man thinks for himself, and we are not to be easily
overreached. That’s how our people come to be suspicious.’
“Another prominent feature is the love of ‘smart’ dealing: which
gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a
defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his
head up with the best, who well deserves a halter: though it has not
been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done
more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the
public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have
effected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, or a
bankruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or
his observance of the golden rule, ‘Do as you would be done by’, but
are considered with reference to their smartness. I recollect, on
both occasions of our passing that ill-fated Cairo on the
Mississippi, remarking on the bad effects such gross deceits must
have when they exploded, in generating a want of confidence abroad,
and discouraging foreign investment: but I was given to understand
that this was a very smart scheme by which a deal of money had been
made: and that its smartest feature was, that they forgot these
things abroad, in a very short time, and speculated again, as freely
as ever. The following dialogue I have held a hundred times: ‘Is it
not a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So-and-so
should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious
means, and notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been
guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a
public nuisance, is he not?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘A convicted liar?’ ‘Yes,
sir.’ ‘He has been kicked, and cuffed, and caned?’ ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And he is utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate?’ ‘Yes,
sir.’ ‘In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit?’ ‘Well, sir,
he is a smart man.’
“But the foul growth of America has a more tangled root than this;
and it strikes its fibres, deep in its licentious Press.
“Schools may he erected, East, West, North, and South; pupils be
taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands;
colleges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be
diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the
land with giant strides; but while the newspaper press of America is
in, or near, its present abject state, high moral improvement in that
country is hopeless. Year by year, it must and will go back; year by
year, the tone of public opinion must sink lower down; year by year,
the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all
decent men; and year by year, the memory of the Great Fathers of the
Revolution must be outraged more and more, in the bad life of their
degenerate child.
“Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, there
are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and credit.
From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen connected with
publications of this class, I have derived both pleasure and profit.
But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion; and the
influence of the good, is powerless to counteract the moral poison of
the bad.
“Among the gentry of America; among the well-informed and moderate;
in the learned professions; at the bar and on the bench; there is, as
there can be, but one opinion, in reference to the vicious character
of these infamous journals. It is sometimes contended—I will not say
strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a disgrace—that
their influence is not so great as a visitor would suppose. I must
be pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for this plea, and
that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the opposite
conclusion.
“When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can
climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without
first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before
this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from
its attacks; when any social confidence is left unbroken by it; or
any tie of social decency and honour is held in the least regard;
when any man in that Free Country has freedom of opinion, and
presumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble
reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base
dishonesty, he utterly loaths and despises in his heart; when those
who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the
nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their
heels upon, and crush it openly, in the sight of all men: then, I
will believe that its influence is lessening, and men are returning
to their manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in
every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state,
from a president to a postman; while, with ribald slander for its
only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous
class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not
read at all; so long must its odium be upon the country’s head, and
so long must the evil it works, be plainly visible in the Republic.”
The foregoing was written in the year eighteen hundred and forty-two. It
rests with the reader to decide whether it has received any confirmation,
or assumed any colour of truth, in or about the year eighteen hundred and
sixty-two.