How did poor, faulty Griffith receive it?
He raised his head, and turned his brown eye gentle but full upon her.
"My poor girl," said he, "I see what you are driving at. But that will
not do. I have nothing to give you in exchange. I hate my wife that I
loved so dear: d--n her! d--n her! But I hate all womankind for her
sake. Keep you clear of me. I would ruin no poor girl for heartless
sport, I shall have blood on my hands erelong, and that is enough."
And, with these alarming words, he seemed suddenly to recover all his
vigor; for he rose and stalked away at once, and never looked behind
him.
Ryder made no further attempt. She sat down and shed bitter tears of
sorrow and mortification.
After this cruel rebuff she must hate somebody; and, with the justice of
her sex, she pitched on Mrs. Gaunt, and hated her like a demon, and
watched to do her a mischief by hook or by crook.
* * * * *
Griffith's appearance and manner caused Mrs. Gaunt very serious anxiety.
His clothes hung loose on his wasting frame; his face was of one uniform
sallow tint, like a maniac's; and he sat silent for hours beside his
wife, eying her askant from time to time like a surly mastiff guarding
some treasure.
She divined what was passing in his mind, and tried to soothe him; but
almost in vain. He was sometimes softened for the moment; but _hæret
lateri lethalis arundo_; he still hovered about, watching her and
tormenting himself; gnawed mad by three vultures of the mind,--doubt,
jealousy, and suspense.
* * * * *
Mrs. Gaunt wrote letters to Father Leonard: hitherto she had only sent
him short messages.
Betty Gough carried these letters, and brought the answers.
Griffith, thanks to the hint Ryder had given him, suspected this, and
waylaid the old woman, and roughly demanded to see the letter she was
carrying. She stoutly protested she had none. He seized her, turned her
pockets inside out, and found a bunch of keys; item, a printed dialogue
between Peter and Herod, omitted in the canonical books, but described
by the modern discoverer as an infallible charm for the toothache; item,
a brass thimble; item, half a nutmeg.
"Curse your cunning," said he; and went off muttering.
The old woman tottered trembling to Mrs. Gaunt, related this outrage
with an air of injured innocence, then removed her cap, undid her hair,
and took out a letter from Leonard.
"This must end, and shall," said Mrs. Gaunt, firmly; "else it will drive
him mad and me too."
* * * * *
Bolton fair-day came. It was a great fair, and had attractions for all
classes. There were cattle and horses of all kinds for sale, and also
shows, games, wrestling, and dancing till daybreak.
All the servants had a prescriptive right to go to this fair; and
Griffith himself had never missed one. He told Kate over-night he would
go, if it were not for leaving her alone.
The words were kinder than their meaning; but Mrs. Gaunt had the tact,
or the candor, to take them in their best sense. "And I would go with
you, my dear," said she; "but I should only be a drag. Never heed me;
give yourself a day's pleasure, for indeed you need it. I am in care
about you: you are so dull of late."
"Well, I will," said Griffith. "I'll not mope here when all the rest are
merry-making."
Accordingly, next day, about eleven in the morning, he mounted his horse
and rode to the fair, leaving the house empty; for all the servants were
gone except the old housekeeper; she was tied to the fireside by
rheumatics. Even Ryder started, with a new bonnet and red ribbons; but
that was only a blind. She slipped back and got unperceived into her own
bedroom.
Griffith ran through the fair; but could not enjoy it. _Hærebat lateri
arundo._ He came galloping back to watch his wife, and see whether Betty
Gough had come again or not.
As he rode into the stable-yard he caught sight of Ryder's face at an
upper window. She looked pale and agitated, and her black eyes flashed
with a strange expression. She made him a signal which he did not
understand; but she joined him directly after in the stable-yard.
"Come quietly with me," said she, solemnly.
He hooked his horse's rein to the wall, and followed her, trembling.
She took him up the back stairs, and, when she got to the landing,
turned and said, "Where did you leave her?"
"In her own room."
"See if she is there now," said Ryder, pointing to the door.
Griffith tore the door open; the room was empty.
"Nor is she to be found in the house," said Ryder; "for I've been in
every room."
Griffith's face turned livid, and he shivered and leaned against the
wall. "Where is she?" said he, hoarsely.
"Humph!" said Ryder, fiendishly. "Find _him_, and you'll find her."
"I'll find them if they are above ground," cried Griffith, furiously;
and he rushed into his bedroom, and soon came out again, with a fearful
purpose written on his ghastly features and in his bloodshot eyes, and a
loaded pistol in his hand.
Ryder was terrified; but instead of succumbing to terror, she flew at
him like a cat, and wreathed her arms round him.
"What would you do?" cried she. "Madman, would you hang for them? and
break my heart,--the only woman in the world that loves you? Give me the
pistol. Nay, I will have it." And, with that extraordinary power
excitement lends her sex, she wrenched it out of his hands.
He gnashed his teeth with fury, and clutched her with a gripe of iron;
she screamed with pain: he relaxed his grasp a little at that; she
turned on him and defied him.
"I won't let you get into trouble for a priest and a wanton," she cried;
"you shall kill me first. Leave me the pistol, and pledge me your sacred
word to do them no harm, and then I'll tell you where they are. Refuse
me this, and you shall go to your grave and know nothing more than you
know now."
"No, no; if you are a woman, have pity on me; let me come at them.
There, I'll use no weapon. I'll tear them to atoms with these hands.
Where are they?"
"May I put the pistol away then?"
"Yes, take it out of my sight; so best. Where are they?"
Ryder locked the pistol up in one of Mrs. Gaunt's boxes. Then she said,
in a trembling voice, "Follow me."
He followed her in awful silence.
She went rather slowly to the door that opened on the lawn; and then she
hesitated. "If you are a man, and have any feeling for a poor girl who
loves you,--if you are a gentleman, and respect your word,--no
violence."
"I promise," said he. "Where are they?"
"Nay, nay. I fear I shall rue the day I told you. Promise me once more:
no bloodshed--upon your soul."
"I promise. Where are they?"
"God forgive me; they are in the Grove."
He bounded away from her like some beast of prey; and she crouched and
trembled on the steps of the door: and, now that she realized what she
was doing, a sickening sense of dire misgiving came over her, and made
her feel quite faint.
And so the weak, but dangerous creature sat crouching and quaking, and
launched the strong one.
Griffith was soon in the Grove; and the first thing he saw was Leonard
and his wife walking together in earnest conversation. Their backs were
towards him. Mrs. Gaunt, whom he had left lying on a sofa, and who
professed herself scarce able to walk half a dozen times across the
room, was now springing along, elastic as a young greyhound, and full of
fire and animation. The miserable husband saw, and his heart died within
him. He leaned against a tree and groaned.
The deadly sickness of his heart soon gave way to sombre fury. He came
softly after them, with ghastly cheek, and bloodthirsty eyes, like
red-hot coals.
They stopped; and he heard his wife say, "'T is a solemn promise, then:
this very night." The priest bowed assent. Then they spoke in so low a
voice, he could not hear; but his wife pressed a purse upon Leonard, and
Leonard hesitated, but ended by taking it.
Griffith uttered a yell like a tiger, and rushed between them with
savage violence, driving the lady one way with his wrists, and the
priest another. She screamed: he trembled in silence.
Griffith stood a moment between these two pale faces, silent and awful.
Then he faced his wife. "You vile wretch!" he cried: "so you _buy_ your
own dishonor, and mine." He raised his hand high over her head; she
never winced. "O, but for my oath, I'd lay you dead at my feet! But no;
I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton. So, this is the thing you love,
and pay it to love you." And with all the mad inconsistency of rage,
which mixes small things and great, he tore the purse out of Leonard's
hand: then seized him felly by the throat.
At that the high spirit of Mrs. Gaunt gave way to abject terror. "O
mercy! mercy!" she cried; "it is all a mistake." And she clung to his
knees.
He spurned her furiously away. "Don't touch me, woman," he cried, "or
you are dead. Look at this!" And in a moment, with gigantic strength and
fury, he dashed the priest down at her feet. "I know ye, ye proud,
wanton devil!" he cried; "love the thing you have seen me tread upon!
love it--if ye can." And he literally trampled upon the poor priest with
both feet.
Leonard shrieked for mercy.
"None, in this world or the next," roared Griffith; but the next moment
he took fright at himself. "God!" he cried, "I must go or kill. Live and
be damned forever, the pair of ye." And with this he fled from them,
grinding his teeth and beating the air with his clenched fists.
He darted to the stable-yard, sprang on his horse, and galloped away
from Hernshaw Castle, with the face, the eyes, the gestures, the
incoherent mutterings of a raving Bedlamite.
WHAT WILL IT COST US?
If we take the arm of Mr. Smith, who is one of many perplexed at this
time by the cost of living, and go round with him to rebuke the
tradesmen who oppress and devour him by overcharges of every kind, we
shall find these obdurate persons very quick upon their defence, and
full of admirable justification of their supposed extortion.
The wicked grocer, who in these piping times of peace makes Mr. Smith
pay twenty cents a pound for sugar, fifty-five cents for coffee, and a
dollar and a half for tea, replies, when reproached with his
heartlessness, that Mr. Smith gives him depreciated paper, not gold, for
his sugar, while he must pay the importer for prime cost, freight, and
duty, with the added premium on gold, and the importer's profit on the
aggregate, as well as the new duty on refining; and that as to coffee,
it has actually risen in price at Java through the Dutch government's
monopoly of the entire product, while our own law has imposed a duty of
five cents in gold upon it. This abandoned tradesman declares that he
must have a large profit to cover risks in holding such articles as tea
and coffee, when trade is unsettled and gold falling; and asserts that
he makes no more on tea now than he did in the days when it cost Mr.
Smith only thirty-five or forty cents a pound. The duty of twenty-five
cents, and the withdrawal and destruction by privateers of many ships
formerly engaged in the trade, have brought up the price of tea, and the
grocer is none the richer, though Mr. Smith is considerably the poorer.
Equally unblushing is the butcher,--a man who ought to have finer
feelings and some sense of remorse. Steak, he tells us, is thirty,
second cut of the rib twenty-eight, mutton twenty-eight, and poultry
thirty cents a pound, because, as he pretends, the farmers exhausted
their supply of cattle in feeding the army for so long a time, and now
find it more profitable to raise their lambs, and keep and shear their
sheep, than to kill them. To which he adds a note in the minor key
concerning the price of gold, and the increased expenses of living,
which he has himself to meet, and drives us in despair to the pitiless
merchant of whom we buy our dry-goods. _He_ evidently expects Mr. Smith,
for he says, with a shameless frankness and readiness: "I admit that I
have doubled my prices, but fifty per cent of the rise is due to the
premium on gold. Then there come in the war duties, and then the
internal revenue taxes. Don't you know that Congress has put taxes on
the materials, and upon every process of manufacture, and a further tax
of six per cent on sales, to say nothing of stamps and licenses? Look at
the report of the Revenue Commission,[F] which tells us that most of the
duties are duplicated, till they lap over like shingles and slates, and
come to ten or twenty per cent on manufactures. Look at their story of
the umbrella! Think of Webster's Spelling-Book printed in London for our
schools, to evade the taxes! Think of the men who go to Montreal,
Halifax, and even to London, for new suits, in consequence of the
duties, and of others who once came to me quarterly for a new coat and
gave away their worn garments, and who now come yearly! Please examine
this bill for coal at fifteen dollars instead of six dollars a ton, and
do not forget the city, State, and national taxes."
Incensed to the last degree by the merchant's effrontery, Mr. Smith
hurries us to the den which the cruel coal-dealer calls his office, and
demands to know how it is that, when the nation no longer requires coal
for the uses of war, and coal ought, in the very nature of things, to
come down, he has actually raised the price of it to fifteen dollars a
ton?
"Gentlemen," answers the coal-dealer, with a hardness not equalled by
the hardest clinker in his own anthracite,--"gentlemen, it's true the
war is over, but there are taxes on cars, engines, repairs, and gross
receipts, that add fifty per cent to transportation, while for five
years past the nation has required so much coal and iron to carry on the
war and to repair Southern tracks that few coal railways have been built
and few mines opened. There must be rivalry and increased production to
put down prices. New mines and railways cannot be opened with gold at
the present rates, or while the internal taxes, direct and indirect, add
fifteen dollars to the cost of each ton of bar-iron. Nor can there be a
great fall while there is a prospect that the coal from Nova Scotia is
to be excluded or raised in price by the repeal of the Reciprocity
Treaty. Freights have risen to the unprecedented rate of four or five
dollars per ton between Philadelphia and Massachusetts and Maine; and if
we wish for former freights of two dollars per ton and lower prices, we
must build steam colliers like those which run between Newcastle and
London, and bring back the coasters that left the trade and took shelter
under the flag of England. But the first thing is to bring down the
price of gold, which will bring down both freight and profits, and
enable the poor to enjoy the sparkle of the black diamonds. And now, Mr.
Smith, let me say that what with the city, the State, and the national
taxes, I am obliged to raise my rents, and I take the liberty to notify
you that houses are scarce; and although I regret to disturb an old
tenant and customer, I must add another hundred to the rent of the
house you occupy. Houses are in demand; few dare to build while
materials are so dear. And there are the Shoddies, who would take mine
to-morrow at any rent."
Not in the least consoled, but rather exasperated by this suggestion,
Mr. Smith fails to recover his spirits, even on the assurance of the
city official whom we meet, that the city, impoverished by payment of
soldiers' bounties and allowances to soldiers' families, as well as the
payment of the interest of her debt in gold throughout the war, still
hopes to reduce the interest to five per cent, and, when gold falls, to
diminish the taxes.
But if our course of inquiry into the causes of the present ruinous cost
of living has not given much solace to Mr. Smith, we may, nevertheless,
from the facts elicited and from the arguments of the different
tradesmen draw a few useful conclusions and decide what are the evils to
be removed or obviated before we can reduce the cost of living; and the
chief of these, we have learned, are the following:--
The premium on gold.
The taxes on productions.
The duties on materials.
The charges on transportation.
The duties and taxes which absorb income.
Let us consider whether these evils may not be boldly met and
surmounted, and this, too, without impairing the ability of the nation
to meet the interest of the debt incurred as the price of freedom, or
interfering with the payment of army and navy pensions, and similar
expenses.
RESUMPTION.
What is there to prevent the nation from resuming specie payments during
the present year?
There are those who profit by the fluctuations of gold; who gamble in
gold, and would make fortunes regardless of the consequences to others;
who control the columns of venal papers and write financial articles;
who claim to be the leaders of opinion, and tell their confiding readers
that Great Britain did not resume for a quarter of a century; that
resumption implies contraction and portends ruin; that we have a
thousand millions to fund within three years, and therefore cannot
resume.
But is not all this fallacious? Our position is not that of the British
Isles half a century since, exhausted by a war of twenty years, without
a railway, with less than half the wealth and half the population, and
one twentieth of the land and mineral resources that we possess, while
their debt was fifty per cent more than our own. They were almost
stationary, and we are progressive. In descending from a premium of 180
to 30 on gold, we have already accomplished five sixths of the journey
towards specie payment without serious disaster and with an easy
money-market.
As respects contraction, the instructive report lately addressed to the
Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Carey, the veteran advocate of
manufactures, shows that the compound-interest notes are withdrawn; that
a large portion of the greenbacks is held as a reserve fund by the
banks, another large portion is locked up in the sub-treasury, and the
actual circulation of the Union but $460,000,000,--really less than that
of France or Great Britain, although our population exceeds that of
either of those countries. And Mr. Carey, in his instructive letter,
offers proof that our circulation, although in excess of the gold,
silver, and bills circulating before the war, is not disproportionate to
our commercial transactions. When the Secretary of the Treasury is
ready, no serious contraction will probably be required, and no ruin
will follow, if our merchants move with caution, and prepare for a
return to the only safe standard of values. Let the manufacturer
accumulate no stocks, but continue to make goods to order, to sell in
advance. Let him cover his sales by the purchase of the materials as the
wise and sagacious have done ever since the surrender of Lee, and we
shall be ready for the notice that, after an interval of three or four
months, the United States will meet their notes and contracts with
specie.
Commerce will gradually adapt itself to this notice, as it has done to
the decline of gold from 285 to 130 in less than a year. But it is urged
that we have a thousand millions of debt to fund within three years, and
therefore cannot resume. Did we not fund nearly a thousand millions at
par in 1865, and most of this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium?
Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income
exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty
millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive
investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those
who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on more
favorable terms.
At Paris, Brussels, and Frankfort, the average rate of interest last
year was less than five per cent. Give Mr. McCulloch power to go there,
to issue bonds for one twentieth part of our debt payable there in the
currency of the country; and with such a fund at his disposal, he can at
once reduce interest and bring back specie, or rather retain it; for we
need not seek it abroad. When the Committee of Ways and Means intimate
that they will give him this power, gold and exchange fall; if a doubt
is expressed, both advance; and the simple question before the public
is, whether we shall cripple the Minister of Finance and give the power
to Wall Street;--whether our finances are to be governed by the Jews of
the gold board and the speculators of the stock exchange, or by the
Secretary of the Treasury. If we ended the war by placing one man on the
field to direct every movement,--after we had tried in vain to conduct
it by committees of Congress and rival generals,--will not one
statesman, with plenary power, be equally effective on the field of
finance?
The man who carried a Western State through the revulsion of 1857, and
maintained specie payments when Boston and New York succumbed,--who has
so well and so successfully wielded the limited power we have given
him,--well deserves the confidence of the country. Let him have power at
once to go to the fountain-head for the small balance we may require
from the Old World; let him have the authority to raise funds to meet
the floating debt and temporary loan, and to replace the seven-thirties
and compound-interest notes as they mature, and we may confidently
anticipate both an early resumption of specie payments and reduced rates
of interest, and consequent diminution of debt. With a return to specie
payments, our current expenses must fall from thirty to forty per cent,
and we can well afford to resign any premium on gold we now enjoy.
TAXES ON PRODUCTION.
The Revenue Commission enlighten us on this point. In their very able
and luminous Report they say:--
"The diffuseness of the present revenue system of the United States is
doubtless one of its greatest imperfections, and under it the exemption
of any article from taxation is the exception rather than the rule. To
assert this, however, is no reflection on the judgment or skill of its
authors. The system was framed under circumstances of such pressing
necessity as to afford but little opportunity for any careful and
accurate investigation of the sources of revenue; but it has most
certainly accomplished the end designed, namely, the raising of revenue;
and the country to-day is undoubtedly receiving by taxation far more
revenue than is necessary for its legitimate expenditures. As a success,
therefore, our present revenue system is a most honorable testimonial,
not only to the wisdom of its authors, but to the patriotism of the
people, who not only _endured_, but _welcomed_, the burdens it imposed
upon them.
"A system of taxation, however, so diffuse as the present one,
necessarily entails a system of duplication of taxes, which in turn
leads to an undue enhancement of prices; a decrease both of production
and consumption, and consequently of wealth; a restriction of
exportations and of foreign commerce; and a large increase in the
machinery and expense of the revenue collection.
"In respect to the injurious influence of this duplication of taxes upon
the industry of the country, the Commission cannot speak too strongly.
Its effect has already been most injurious. It threatens the very
existence (even with the protection of inflated prices and a high
tariff) of many branches of industry; and with a return of the trade and
currency of the country to anything approximating its normal condition,
it must, by checking development, prove highly disastrous.
"The influence of the duplication of taxes in sustaining prices is also,
in the opinion of the Commission, far greater than those not conversant
with the subject generally estimate; and were the price of gold and of
the national currency made at once to approximate, and the present
revenue system to continue unchanged, it would be impossible for the
prices of most products of manufacturing industry to return to anything
like their former level."
The Commission arrive at the conclusion, that all our manufactures are
by these taxes increased in cost from ten to twenty per cent. In the
language of Senator Sherman, when defending the Internal Tax Bill in the
Senate last year, the nation required funds to maintain its armies in
the field; it had put forth its arms and grasped the money of the
country, and would reduce and equalize the taxes when the war was ended.
The Revenue Commission find the taxes on our manufactures and their
materials an incubus upon the industry and a check to the progress of
the country, and recommend their remission. And this we may reasonably
expect from Congress at its present session. But, it may be urged, how
are we to meet the interest on our debt and current expenses of
$284,000,000 in the aggregate, if we repeal these taxes? The answer is a
simple one. The Commission estimate our imports at $400,000,000, and our
duties now average forty-seven per cent. Should this continue, we should
draw from this source alone $188,000,000. There is also the revenue from
public lands and miscellaneous sources, which the Secretary and the
Revenue Commission both rate at $21,000,000, making an aggregate of
$209,000,000; although the Commission, to guard against the effects of
any change in the tariff, modestly rate these items at only
$151,000,000.
To these they add for excise, viz.:--
From five cents per pound on Cotton, $40,000,000
One dollar per gallon on Spirits, 40,000,000
Duties on Tobacco, 18,000,000
Malt Liquors at one dollar only per barrel, 5,000,000
Twenty cents per gallon on Refined Petroleum, 3,000,000
From Spirits of Turpentine and Rosin, 2,000,000
-----------
$108,000,000
Licenses, $15,000,000
Stamps, 20,000,000
Banks, 15,000,000
Salaries, Sales, and Successions, 9,000,000
-----------
$59,000,000
They thus provide a revenue of $318,000,000, or $30,000,000 more than
that required by the Secretary,--a surplus which, with the annual excess
of duties, to say nothing of the future growth of revenue, would
extinguish our debt in little more than thirty years. But to guard
against all contingencies, they propose to levy on incomes taxes to the
amount of $40,000,000; and on the gross receipts of railways, bridges,
canals, and stages, $9,000,000. These change the aggregate to
$367,000,000; an excess of $81,000,000 over the estimate of our
requirements by the Secretary.
* * * * *
The Commission give us the Budget of France in the following summary,
viz.:--
Direct Taxes, $63,072,280
Registry Stamps and Public Domains, 81,537,833
Forests, 8,051,300
Customs and Duties on Salt, 29,485,000
Indirect Taxes, 115,600,400
Post-Office, 14,482,000
Sundry Revenues, 26,441,989
Miscellaneous, 11,736,360
-----------
Total, $350,407,212
Also, the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland for 1865, viz.:--
Customs, $115,023,808
Excise, 97,048,180
Stamps, 47,659,870
Fund and assessed Taxes, 16,439,670
Income and Property Taxes, 39,928,865
Post-Office, 20,852,197
Grain Lands, 2,212,000
Miscellaneous, 14,967,183
-----------
Total $354,131,773
If from these returns we deduct the earnings of the Post-Office
Department, which are not included in the Commission's estimate of
revenue for the United States, that estimate will exceed the returns of
revenue for France or the United Kingdom by more than thirty millions,
although the expenses of each of these countries are at least fifty
millions more than the computed expenses of our own. It is obvious,
therefore, from the Report of the Commission, that we may dispense with
the fifty-nine millions from income tax and the duties on
transportation, and still have a margin of more than thirty millions to
cover contingencies and provide for the gradual reduction of the debt.
Such a victory in finance achieved the first year after the war would
give us a second great national triumph.
The system proposed by the Commission is entitled to the most favorable
consideration. The taxes levied during the war were multifarious in
their character. Although effective in producing revenue, they were
imposed without discrimination, and they bear heavily alike both on
producer and consumer, checking the industry of the one and swelling
unduly the expenditures of the other. The plan of the Commission strikes
the handcuffs from industry, lessens the expenses of collection, enables
our artisan to compete with the foreigner, and, as most of the
manufactures of the country are consumed at home, consequently reduces
the cost of living. It seems from the Report of the Commission, that
their leading idea is to simplify the system and reduce the number of
taxes; to shift them from the producer to the consumer, and thus
stimulate the creation of wealth; to diminish charges, and at the same
time lighten the weight of the impost as it falls on the consumer.
Another leading idea is to transfer a portion of our burdens to the
foreign consumers of cotton, and at the same time stimulate our
manufactures, and the production of cotton, by a remission of the tax on
cloth exported; while yet another part of their plan was to take from
the illicit trader and give to the public coffers the profit he now
realizes upon spirits, and to restore alcohol to the arts.
Let us give to each of these measures the attention it deserves; and
inquire if we may not take at once the steps, which the Commission defer
for the present, toward the discontinuance of all charges upon
transportation and incomes. In recommending the entire removal of taxes
on production as the first measure to be adopted, the Commissioners
advise: "That the capital stock of the country in the interval between
1850 and 1860, deducting the value of the slaves, increased at the rate
of 158 per cent, or from $5,533,000 to $14,282,000; and that, if a
development in any degree approximating to the past can be maintained
and continued, then the extinguishment of the national debt in a
comparatively brief period becomes a matter of no uncertainty. To secure
this development, both by removing the shackles from industry, and by
facilitating the means of rapid and cheap intercommunication between the
different sections of the country, is to effect at the same time a
solution of all the financial difficulties that now press upon us."
The policy of the Commission is the speedy abolition or reduction of all
taxes which tend to check development. This policy is eminently wise and
statesman-like; for while it removes some of our most onerous burdens,
it gives a stimulus to the creation of wealth that must annually
alleviate our taxes, and is entitled to the approval of an enlightened
nation.
The second great measure of the Commission is to increase to five cents
the tax on cotton, which has, since the close of our last financial
year, begun to aid our revenue. The soil, climate, and seasons of our
Southern States are peculiarly adapted to the culture of cotton. In
India the fields are parched by the extreme heats of summer, and the
staple shortened; in Algiers, the rains of autumn, which favor the young
wheat, prevent the opening of the cotton-balls; but in the cotton States
of the South, the moisture of the spring, the heats and showers of
summer, and the dry weather and late frosts of autumn, all contribute to
the full development of the cotton-plant; and the yield is twice or
three times as great as in the cotton districts of the East. The staple,
too, is much more valuable, and the yield and the quality of the staple
are both improved by the application of guano. In 1859 the yield of the
United States rose to 2,080,000,000 pounds, while the consumption of the
civilized world was as follows:--
In Great Britain, 1,050,000,000 lbs.
On the Continent, 700,000,000 "
In the United States, 400,000,000 "
-------------
Total, 2,150,000,000 lbs.
During the five years of war, the consumption was reduced more than one
half by the deficiency; Great Britain was compelled to pay twice the
usual amount for half the usual quantity, and cotton rose from ten cents
to sixty cents in gold. The world was ransacked for cotton, and the
whole addition made to the supply (chiefly from India and Egypt) did not
exceed the increase of three years in the United States previous to the
war. The Revenue Commission have made a very elaborate report upon this
subject, and base their conclusions upon the advice and opinions of the
chief manufacturers of New England, who concur in the opinion that the
tax will be chiefly paid by the foreign consumer; that it will not give
an undue stimulus to the culture of cotton abroad; that Japan and China
have, since the decline of cotton to twenty pence in England, ceased to
ship it, and are drawing upon Surat and Bombay; that Egypt, our chief
rival, has nearly or quite reached her full capacity of production,
while India makes little progress.
The late Confederacy, by imposing an export duty of twenty cents per
pound, to be paid in gold; France, by her export duty on linen and
cotton rags and skins of animals; Russia, by various export duties;
Portugal, by her duties on wine exported; Great Britain, by her export
duties, imposed in India, on gunny-cloth, linseed, jute, saltpetre, and
opium; and Holland, by her monopoly and export duties on the coffee of
Java,--give precedents for a tax on cotton. The United States are
prohibited by the Constitution from levying an export duty, but may
nevertheless impose an internal tax which will cling to the cotton both
abroad and at home. A tax of five cents a pound will add but one cent to
the cost of a yard of calico; and with a crop of 2,000,000,000 pounds,
like that of 1859, will yield a revenue of $100,000,000, although the
Commission do not anticipate more than half that revenue for a few years
to come. It seems but reasonable that King Cotton, who made the war,
should aid in defraying its expenses; and it is also just that England
and France, his chief allies, should pay their tribute for the
suppression of the revolt they did so much to encourage. The planters
and free blacks of the South have sufficient incentives to the culture
of cotton in the high prices it must bear for years to come; and the
Commission have very wisely recommended a remission of the tax on all
cotton cloth or yarn exported, which will give a stimulus to
manufactures both at the South and the North, and enable our merchants
to meet those of Great Britain in successful competition in all parts of
the globe. The cotton tax, as a substitute for taxes on sales and
manufactures, will meet the cordial support of our countrymen; and, if
it oppose a slight check to production, they have already learned that
half a crop gives more dollars than a whole one.
SPIRITS.
Another change of great importance recommended by the Commission, both
in their general Report, and in a special report devoted to this
subject, is a reduction of the duty on spirits from two dollars to one
dollar per gallon _as a revenue measure_, the higher duty having proved
an utter failure. For some months past the average quantity that has
monthly paid duty has been less than half a million gallons, or at the
rate of six millions of gallons per year, while the entire annual
product, by the census of 1860, exceeded ninety-two millions of gallons,
and, at the customary rate of increase, would have amounted to one
hundred and twenty millions of gallons, or ten millions a month, in
place of half a million in 1866. It has been ascertained that in 1860
more than half the annual production was consumed in the arts. As
alcohol it was used for ether, spirit-lamps, camphene, and
burning-fluid; by apothecaries for tinctures and medicinal preparations;
by hair-dressers for lotions; and it was also consumed in many
manufactures. The duty has carried alcohol to five dollars per gallon,
and nearly stopped its use in the arts, while it has not stopped the use
of spirits as a beverage. It has drawn a revenue from the pockets of the
people, and transferred it from the government to the illicit trader.
While the duty ranged from twenty to sixty cents per gallon, the amount
assessed was from six to seven million gallons per month; but the
returns nearly ceased with the advance of duty two years since. Efforts
have been made to sustain the present duty by reference to the practice
of Great Britain, where a duty of $2.40 is imposed upon the imperial
gallon; but the imperial gallon is more than twenty per cent larger than
the wine gallon of America. The average prime cost of good spirits there
being sixty cents a gallon, while it has been but twenty cents in the
West, the percentage of the British duty is but 400 per cent, while the
duty of the United States is 1000 per cent, or a rate 150 per cent above
the rate abroad. Great Britain, in her compact territory, has employed
7,200 men in the preventive service, and 66 cruisers to check the
evasions of her duties on spirits and tobacco; and it is estimated by
good judges that a large part of the spirits, and more than half the
tobacco, consumed in England escape the duty. Several thousand seizures
are made annually, and it has been testified before Parliament that not
one evasion in sixteen is detected. If this be so in Great Britain, it
is not surprising that the government has failed, in this country, with
its sparse population, to collect a duty of 1000 per cent, or that the
experiment has cost the nation more than fifty millions. Such excessive
duties may well be styled over-taxation, and tend to demoralize and
corrupt our revenue officers, to encourage fraud, and to enrich illicit
traders. The Commission believe that the reduction of the duty will
restore alcohol to the arts, diminish fraud, and give us a revenue of at
least $40,000,000 annually,--a sum nearly equal to the proceeds of the
income tax.
INCOME TAX.
The Revenue Commission clearly demonstrate by their Report and table of
income, that this tax will not be required to meet our interest and
current expenses, and they apparently retain a portion of it as a flank
guard for their other items of revenue; but it is obvious from their
very guarded Report that this flank guard may be dispensed with. The
Commissioners very properly suggest that it is better to place this tax
upon created wealth and net income than to levy it upon production, and
in this all sensible men will concur; but we require at this time no
surplus revenue of $81,000,000. Our revenue from foreign duties must
exceed their estimate; and if it did not, a sinking fund of $32,000,000
is ample for a debt of $2,700,000,000, $400,000,000 of which draws no
interest, and the residue of which we may well presume will soon be
permanently funded at reduced interest. The income tax in Great Britain
is but 1-2/3 per cent, and it is wise to reduce our own tax on the
surplus incomes of the rich from ten to five per cent; but the
suggestion that an income tax should be imposed on rents exceeding $300
is in conflict with the Commissioners' suggestion, at page 60 of their
Report: "The general government has taken to itself nearly every source
of revenue, except the single one of real estate, which had been before
burdened with large expenditures for schools, roads, and other things
with which the local governments stand charged," and "cases can be cited
in which taxation upon real estate even now falls little short of
confiscation. Justice and wise policy, therefore, would seem to demand
that the national government should not now adopt any measures
calculated to maintain or increase these burdens, but, on the contrary,
do all in its power to diminish them."
Let the nation follow this judicious advice, and dispose of the
additional charge on real estate by repealing the income tax, which we
cease to require, or reducing it to a tax of three or four per cent upon
dividends and coupons, which will yield at least ten millions. This will
furnish a sufficient rear-guard for the corps which the Commission has
marshalled.
To use another happy expression in the very able Report of the
Commission,--"Freedom from multitudinous taxes, espionage, and
vexations; freedom from needless official inquisitions and intrusions;
freedom from the hourly provocations of each individual in the nation to
concealments, evasions, and falsehoods; freedom for industry,
circulation, and competition,--everywhere give the nation these
conditions, and it will give in return a flowing income."
We indorse the conclusions of the Commission, but would carry them to
their legitimate results,--the repeal of the inquisitorial tax on
incomes.
One of the Commissioners, Mr. J. S. Hayes, in a special report upon the
subject, proposes to draw some part of the revenue from the national
bonds. Those which are now reached by the income tax when the holders
are residents here should be reached hereafter by an impost on dividends
and coupons, according to Mr. Hayes's idea. He urges that these bonds
were issued when the currency was depreciated to 73 per cent, or 27 per
cent below par; but it was the government paper that depreciated it, and
the loyal men who subscribed for the national bonds in many instances
used funds drawn from mortgages upon which they had advanced in gold the
money they invested. Great Britain realized only 63 per cent or less in
depreciated currency from her three-per-cents, but redeems them at par,
or buys them in open market. There may be instances in which individuals
evade local taxes by such investments, but even this tends to popularize
the loans and reduce interest; and it may well be asked whether it would
not be wiser for the nation to make the loan popular, treating it as
sacred, and thus save twenty or thirty millions in interest annually by
reducing interest one per cent, than to attempt to save two thirds that
amount by taxes, which would inspire lenders with distrust, injure the
credit of the nation, and weaken its resources in a future exigency.
TAXES ON GROSS RECEIPTS.
The Commission, while they condemn charges on transportation, continue
for the present nine millions in taxes on the gross receipts of
steamers, ships, and railways, which it would be wise to relinquish at
the earliest moment. The railways to earn one dollar must charge two,
which doubles these taxes to the public, and adds to the cost of
delivering each ton of coal and each bushel of grain at the seaports, so
that our internal commerce now presents the strange anomaly of Indian
corn selling at one dollar per bushel in Boston, and at thirty-six cents
in Chicago, or less than the price in gold before the Insurrection.
Such charges are an incubus on trade, and may wisely be abandoned.
PROVINCIAL COMMERCE.
For the past ten years the Central and Eastern States have drawn large
supplies of breadstuffs, animals, lumber, and other materials for our
manufactures, from the Provinces; and under the Treaty of Reciprocity
our fisheries have grown vastly in importance. The whole amount of this
commerce, including the outfits and returns of the fishermen, is close
upon $100,000,000, and the tonnage of arrivals and departures exceeds
7,000,000 tons. Under the Treaty we have imported Canadian and Morgan
horses, oats for their support, barley of superior quality for our ale,
lustre-wool for our alpacas, and boards and clapboards for our houses
and for the fences and corn-cribs of our Western prairies. Indeed, the
facilities for communicating with the Provinces are so great, that for
some years past we have imported potatoes, coal, gypsum, and building
stone to supply the wants of New York and New England. Is it wise, then,
to cripple this growing trade by placing a duty of fifty per cent on the
spruce and pine we require for the new houses whose construction the war
has delayed, and by denying to Maine and Massachusetts the privilege of
sending their pine down the Aroostook and St. John, as those who own
townships on the waters of the Penobscot propose?
When Mr. Sumner moved the repeal of the Treaty, it was upon the ground
that it prevented us from levying a tax on lumber. The Ministers of
Canada have at once conceded this, and agree that internal duties may be
levied on all they send to us, and thus meet in advance the position of
Mr. Sumner. They have shown a desire to revive the Treaty, and to
cherish the great commerce between contiguous states. Mr. Derby reports
to the State Department that they will extend the free list, and include
our manufactures; that they will discourage illicit trade, and repeal
all discriminating tolls and duties. The position taken by the Ministers
of Canada is eminently wise and judicious. While we may not concede all
the privileges they ask, is it our policy to decline to negotiate,--to
shut out the materials we require and can command at low rates? Is it
wise to propose, as a committee of Congress has done, to reduce a free
commerce of seven millions of tons to a traffic in plaster and
millstones, and thus jeopard our fisheries and stimulate smuggling? The
Canadian Ministers, who visited Washington on business connected with
the Treaty, were kindly received by our Executive. They placed the
Provinces on the true ground by their proffered concessions and offers
to negotiate, and can stand at home upon the ground they took, while
their course in retiring after the rebuff they received from the
committee was dignified and judicious. When Congress has disposed of
reconstruction, and found leisure to attend to revenue and finance; when
it sees that we need new materials for our rising manufactures, and
require access both by the east and the west to the exhaustless pine
forests of Canada,[G] to provincial oats and barley, purchasable at
rates lower than those at which the West can afford to send them, and to
coal on coasts which Nature designed for the supply of the gas-works and
steamers of New England; when it finds proclamations issued excluding
our fishermen from the waters to which the mackerel resort,--then
Congress at last will doubtless be willing to resume negotiations, and
to give to us coal, wood, butter, grain, fish, lumber, and horses at
reasonable prices.
* * * * *
Eliminating from the summary of the Commission the items which are
condemned by their Report, we have the following result:--
REVENUE LIST OF COMMISSIONERS, EXCLUDING TAXES ON INCOME AND
TRANSPORTATION.
Customs, $130,000,000
Excise on Spirits, Tobacco, Malt Liquors
Cotton, Refined Oil, Spirits of
Turpentine, and Rosin, 108,000,000
Licenses, 15,000,000
Salaries, 2,000,000
Banks, 15,000,000
Stamps, 20,000,000
Sales, Legacies, &c., 7,000,000
Add Tax on Dividend and Coupons, 10,000,000
Miscellaneous, 21,000,000
-----------
Total $328,000,000
Amount deemed necessary by the
Secretary of the Treasury to meet
Interest and Expenses of Government
annually, 284,000,000
-----------
Surplus, $44,000,000
We thus deduce from the estimate of the Secretary and the conclusions to
which we are led by the Commission a surplus revenue or sinking fund of
$44,000,000, and this, too, after discontinuing all taxes on production,
income, and transportation, and liberating industry from the trammels
imposed by war. In addition, we may expect from cotton, whenever the
crop exceeds two millions of bales, a further revenue from the five-cent
tax, while the income from customs, which we rate at $130,000,000, has
actually been increased since June, 1865, to the amount of $58,000,000
more.
These results, achieved by the country while emerging from the smoke of
the battle-field, and disbanding its troops and placing army and navy on
a peace footing, are in the highest degree reassuring. What is there,
then, to prevent the nation's prompt return to specie?
Our chief bankers estimate their annual remittances to American citizens
for foreign travel and residence abroad at less than five millions
yearly. Our exports again exceed our imports, and foreign exchange is at
7-1/4 in gold, or two per cent below par. An emigration, chiefly from
Germany, greatly in excess of any former year is predicted. It has been
well ascertained that each emigrant brings, on the average, seventy
dollars in funds to this country, and these funds alone will suffice to
meet our interest abroad. What period could be more auspicious for a
gradual return, say in six months, to specie? Of course there would be
some decline in merchandise, but the loss would fall on declining
stocks, often sold in advance, and would not reach stocks in bond, the
price of which is to be paid in specie. The improvident might suffer a
little; but when the first shock was past, would not a strong impulse be
given to industry? Would not enterprise be at once directed to the
erection of the houses, factories, ships, steamers, locomotives, and
railways which our growth demands? Would not the community immediately
seek to renew their wardrobes and furniture, now worn out or exhausted
by the war? Our mutual friend Mr. Smith might then meet his friend the
coal-merchant with a smile, and cheer himself with his open fireplace,
putting away his stifling but economic stove; he might postpone his
retirement from the three-story brick to the wooden two-story in the
suburbs, eat his roast beef again on Sunday, and regale himself with
black coffee after dinner, without a thought of the slow but sagacious
Dutchman, who is transferring at his expense a national debt of
$800,000,000 from the sea-girt dikes of little Holland to the populous
and fertile isles and spice groves and coffee plantations of Sumatra and
Java.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] Report of the United States Revenue Commission to the Secretary of
the Treasury, January 29th, 1866.
[G] The annual product of lumber in Maine is rated at 1,100,000,000
feet, worth $20,000,000. By the census of 1860, the lumber produced by
all the States was valued at $95,000,000. The consumption was at least
$100,000,000, or five times the amount furnished by Maine. Canada has
287,000 square miles of pine forest on the waters of the St. Lawrence.
MEPHISTOPHELEAN.
You have been, I presume, Madam, among the crowds of young and old, to
the musical revival of the great wonder-work of the last century. You
have heard the Frenchman's musical expression of the German poet's
thought, uttered by the motley assemblage of nationalities which
constitutes an opera troupe in these latter days. You have seen the
learned Dr. Faustus's wig and gown whisked off behind his easy chair,
and the rejuvenated Doctor emerge from his antiquated apparel as fresh
and sprightly as Harlequin himself, to make love in Do-di-pettos. You
have seen the blonde young Gretchen, beauteous and pure at her
spinning-wheel, gay and frolicsome before that box looking-glass and
that kitchen table,--have heard her tender vows of affection and her
passionate outbursts of despair. You have heard the timid Siebel warble
out his adolescent longings for the gentle maid in the very scantiest of
tunics, as becomes the fair proportions of the stage girl-boy. You have
seen the respectable old Martha faint at the news of her husband's
death, and forthwith engage in a desperate flirtation with the gentleman
who brings the news. You have seen the gallant Valentin lead off the
march of that band of stalwart warriors, who seem to have somehow lost
the correct step in their weary campaigns. Your memory, even now, has a
somewhat confused impression of Frederici, moonlight, Mazzoleni,
Kermesse, Sulzer, gardens, Kellogg, churches, Himmer, flaming goblets,
Stockton, and an angelic host with well-rounded calves in pink tights,
radiant in the red light that, from some hidden regions, illuminates the
aforesaid scantily clad angels, as they hang, like Mahomet's coffin,
'twixt heaven and earth.
But I question, Madam, whether the strongest impression which your
memory retains be not exactly the one personage in the drama whom I have
omitted to mention,--the red-legged, gleaming-eyed, loud-voiced
gentleman who pulls the hidden wires which set all the other puppets in
motion,--Mr. Mephistopheles himself. Marguerite, studied, refined,
unimpassioned in the pretty Yankee girl,--simple, warm, outpouring in
the sympathetic German woman,--and Faust, gallant, ardent, winning in
the bright-eyed Italian,--thoughtful, tender, fervent in the intelligent
German,--are background figures in the picture your memory paints; while
the ubiquitous, sneering, specious, cunning, tempting, leering, unholy
Mephistopheles is a character of himself, in the foreground, whose
special interpreter you do not care to distinguish.
Ring down the curtain. Put out the lights. We will leave the mimic
scene, and return to the broad stage of life, whereon all are actors and
all are audience. There are Gretchens and Fausts everywhere,--American,
English, French, German, Italian,--of all nations and tongues,--but
there is only one Mephistopheles. They have lived and loved and fallen
and died. But he, indestructible, lives on to flash fire in the cups of
beings yet unborn, and lurk with unholy intent in hearts which have not
yet learned to beat. There is only one Mephistopheles; but he is protean
in shape. The little gentleman in black, the hero of so many strange
stories, is but the Teutonic incarnation of a spirit which takes many
forms in many lands. Out of the brain of the great German poet he steps,
in a guise which is known and recognized wherever the story of love and
betrayal finds an echo in human hearts. Poor Gretchen! She had heard of
Satan, and had been rocked to sleep by tales of the Loreley, and knew
from her Bible that there was an evil spirit in the world seeking whom
he might devour. But little did she dream, when she stopped her
spinning-wheel to think for a moment of the gallant young lover who
wooed her so ardently, that the glance of his eye was lighted with the
flame of eternal fire, and that the fond words of love he spoke were hot
breathings from the regions of the accursed. Poor Gretchen!
But, my dear Madam, this is all a fable. Mephistopheles--the real,
vital, moving Mephistopheles--has outlived Goethe, and will outlast the
very memory of the unhappy heroine of his noble poem. He walks the
streets to-day as fresh and persuasive as when, in ophidian form, he
haunted that lovely garden which is said to have once stood near the
banks of the Euphrates, and there beguiled the mother of mankind. Your
friend Asmodeus--albeit not the quondam friend of that name for whose
especial amusement he unroofed so many houses in the last century, when
he was suffering from severe lameness--has a discerning eye to pierce
his many disguises. He does not walk our streets now-a-days in red
tights or with tinsel eyes; he does not limp about with a sardonic
laugh; nor could you see the cloven hoof which is said to betray his
identity. Were such the case, the little street-boys would point him
out, and the daily papers, with which his friend Dr. Faustus had so much
to do in their origin, would record his movements with greater eagerness
than they do the comings and goings of generals and governors. No, my
dear Madam, he assumes no such striking costumes. But he brushes by you
in your daily walks, he sits beside you in the car, the theatre, and
even in the church, in respectable, fashionable attire. Frank dickers
with him in his counting-room, Tommy chases him in the play-ground, Mrs.
Asmodeus makes him a fashionable call, and--God help us all!--we
sometimes find him sitting domiciliated at our hearthstones. He changes
like the wizard we used to read of in our wonderful fairy books, who was
an ogre one moment and a mouse the next. He is more potent than the
philosopher's stone; for that changed everything into gold only, while
he becomes, at will, all the ores and alloys of creation. Fortunatus's
wishing-cap and Prince Hussein's tapestry were baby toys to him. They
whisked their owners away to the place where they wished, at the moment,
to be. He is ubiquitous.
He lurks under the liberty-cap of the goddess whose features are stamped
in the shining gold, and his laugh is the clink of the jingling pieces.
He turns himself into a regal sceptre that sways the gaping crowd, and
it becomes a magnet that draws with resistless power the outstretched,
itching palms of men. He takes the witching form of woman, paints her
pulpy cheek with peachy bloom, knots into grace her mass of wavy hair,
lights in her sparkling eye the kindling flame, hangs on her pouting lip
the expectant kiss, and bids her supple waist invite caress; and more
seductive far than gold or power are these cunning lures to win men to
bow down in abject, grovelling worship of his might. My dear Madam, I
would not imply that your beauty and grace are exhibitions of his skill.
By no manner of means! I faithfully believe that Frank was drawn to you
by the holiest, purest, best of emotions. But then, you know, so many of
your lovely sex are under the influence of that cunning gentleman while
they least suspect it. When a poor girl who owns but one jewel on
earth--the priceless one that adorns and ennobles her lowliness--barters
that treasure away for the cheap glitter of polished stones or the
rustling sweep of gaudy silk, is not the basilisk gleam of the
Mephistophelean eye visible in the sparkling of those gewgaws and the
sheen of that stuff? When your friend Asmodeus, honest in his modest
self-respect, is most ignominiously ignored by the stylish Mrs.
Money,--her father was a cobbler,--more noted for brocades than
brains,--or the refined Miss Blood,--her grandfather was third-cousin to
some Revolutionary major,--more distinguished for shallowness than for
spirit,--does he not smile in his sleeve, with great irreverence for the
brocades and the birth, at the easy way in which the old fellow has
wheedled them into his power by tickling their conceit and vanity? He
creeps into all sorts of corners, and lurks in the smallest of
hiding-places. He lies _perdu_ in the folds of _figurante's_ gauze,
nestles under the devotee's sombre veil, waves in the flirt's fan, and
swims in the gossip's teacup. He burrows in a dimple, floats on a sigh,
rides on a glance, and hovers in a thought.
But I would not infer, Madam, that he is the particular pet of the fair,
or that he specially devotes himself to their subjugation. It is certain
that he employs them with his most cunning skill, and sways the world
most powerfully by their regnant charms. But the lords of creation are
likewise the slaves of his will and the dupes of his deception. He
bestrides the nib of the statesman's pen and guides it into falsehood
and treason. He perches on the cardinal's hat and counsels bigotry and
oppression. He sits on the tradesman's counter and bears down the
unweighted scale. He hides in the lawyer's bag and makes specious pleas
for adroit rogues. He slips into the gambler's greasy pack and rolls
over his yellow dice. He dances on the bubbles of the drunkard's glass,
swings on the knot of the planter's lash, and darts on the point of the
assassin's knife. He revels in a coarse oath, laughs in a perjured vow,
and breathes in a lie. He has kept celebrated company in times gone by.
He was Superintendent of the Coliseum when the Christian martyrs were
given to the wild beasts. He was long time a familiar in the Spanish
Inquisition, and adviser of the Catholic priesthood in those days, and
Governor of the Bastile afterwards. He was the king's minister of
pleasure in the days of the latter Louises. He was court chaplain when
Ridley and Latimer were burned. He was Charles IX.'s private secretary
at the time of the St. Bartholomew affair, and Robespierre's right-hand
man in the days of Terror. He was Benedict Arnold's counsellor,
Jefferson Davis's bedfellow, and John Wilkes Booth's bosom friend.
A personage, and yet none ever saw him. His cloven hoof, his twisted
horns, his suit of black, his gleaming eyes, his limbs of flame, are but
the poet's dream, the painter's color. Mephistopheles is but the
creature of our fancy, and exists but in the fears, the passions, the
desires of mankind. He is born in hearts where love is linked with
license, in minds where pride weds with folly, in souls where piety
unites with intolerance. We never meet the roaring lion in our path; yet
our hearts are torn by his fangs and lacerated by his claws. We never
see the sardonic cavalier; yet we hear his specious whisperings in our
ears. The sunlight of truth shines forever upon us; yet we sit in the
cold shadow of error. We put the cup of pleasure to our lips, and quaff,
instead of cooling draughts, the fiery flashes of searing excess. We
long for forbidden delights, and when the fiend Opportunity places them
within our reach, we sign the compact of our misery to obtain them. The
charmed circle this unholy spirit draws around his fatal power is traced
along the devious line that marks our weakness and our ignorance. Storm
as we may, he stands intrenched within our souls, defying all our wrath.
But he shrinks and crouches before us when, bold and fearless, we lift
the cross of truth, and bid him fly the upborne might of our
intelligence. Mephistopheles is an unholy spirit, nestling in the hearts
of myriads of poor human beings who never heard of Goethe. Long after
the mimic scene in which he shares shall have been forgot,--long after
the sirens who have warbled poor Gretchen's joys and sorrows shall have
mouldered in their graves,--long after the witching beauty of the
Frenchman's harmony shall have been forever hushed,--long after the very
language in which the German poet portrayed him shall have passed into
oblivion,--will Mephistopheles carry his diabolisms into the souls of
human kind, and hold there his mystic reign. Yet there are those, and
you find Asmodeus is one, who dream of a day when the Mephistophelean
dynasty is to be overthrown,--when the sappers and miners of the great
army of human progress are to besiege him in his strong-holds, and to
lead him captive in eternal bondage. Of all the guides who lead that
mighty host, none rank above the Faust of whom tradition tells such
wondrous tales. Not the bewigged and motley personage Gounod has sung,
not the impassioned lover Goethe drew, but the great genius who first
taught mankind to stamp its wisdom in imperishable characters, and to
bequeath it unto races yet to rise. The Faust of history shall long
outlive the Faust of wild romance. The victim in the transient poem
shall be a conqueror in the unwritten chronicles of time.
My dear Madam, let us draw around us a charmed circle; not with the
trenchant point of murderous steel, but with the type that Faust gave to
the world. Within its bounds, intelligence and thought shall guard us
safe from Mephistopheles. Come he in whatever guise he may, its subtile
potency shall, like Ithuriel's spear, compel him to display his real
form in all its native ugliness and dread. And we must pass away; yet
may we leave behind, secure in the defence we thus may raise, the dear
ones that we love, to be the parents of an angel race that, in the
distant days to come, shall tread the sod above our long-forgotten dust.
MR. HOSEA BIGLOW'S SPEECH IN MARCH MEETING.
Jaalam, April 5, 1866.
MY DEAR SIR,--
(an' noticin' by your kiver thet you're some dearer than wut you wuz, I
enclose the diffrence) I dunno ez I know jest how to interdroce this
las' perduction of my mews, ez Parson Willber allus called 'em, which is
goin' to _be_ the last an' _stay_ the last onless sunthin' pertikler
sh'd interfear which I don't expec' ner I wun't yield tu ef it wuz ez
pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. Sence M^r Wilbur's disease I hevn't hed
no one thet could dror out my talons. He ust to kind o' wine me up an'
set the penderlum agoin' an' then somehow I seemed to go on tick as it
wear tell I run down, but the noo minister ain't of the same brewin' nor
I can't seem to git ahold of no kine of huming nater in him but sort of
slide rite off as you du on the eedge of a mow. Minnysteeril natur is
wal enough an' a site better'n most other kines I know on, but the other
sort sech as Welbor hed wuz of the Lord's makin' an' naterally more
wonderfle an' sweet tastin' leastways to me so fur as heerd from. He
used to interdooce 'em smooth ez ile athout sayin' nothin' in pertickler
an' I misdoubt he didn't set so much by the sec'nd Ceres as wut he done
by the Fust, fact, he let on onct thet his mine misgive him of a sort of
fallin' off in spots. He wuz as outspoken as a norwester _he_ wuz, but I
tole him I hoped the fall wuz from so high up thet a feller could ketch
a good many times fust afore comin' bunt onto the ground as I see Jethro
C. Swett from the meetin' house steeple up to th' old perrish, an' took
up for dead but he 's alive now an' spry as wut you be. Turnin' of it
over I recclected how they ust to put wut they called Argymunce onto the
frunts of poymns, like poorches afore housen whare you could rest ye a
spell whilst you wuz concludin' whether you'd go in or nut espeshully
ware tha wuz darters, though I most allus found it the best plen to go
in fust an' think afterwards an' the gals likes it best tu. I dno as
speechis ever hez any argimunts to 'em, I never see none thet hed an' I
guess they never du but tha must allus be a B'ginnin' to everythin'
athout it is Etarnity so I'll begin rite away an' any body may put it
afore any of his speeches ef it soots an' welcome. I don't claim no
paytent.
THE ARGYMUNT.
Interducshin, w'ich may be skipt. Begins by talkin' about himself: thet
's jest natur an'
most gin'ally allus pleasin', I b'leeve I 've notist, to _one_ of the
cumpany, an' thet 's more than wut you can say of most speshes of
talkin'. Nex' comes the gittin' the goodwill of the orjunce by lettin'
'em gether from wut you kind of ex'dentally let drop thet they air about
East, A one, an' no mistaik, skare 'em up an' take 'em as they rise.
Spring interdooced with a fiew approput flours. Speach finally begins
witch nobuddy need n't feel obolygated to read as I never read 'em an'
never shell this one ag'in. Subjick staited; expanded; delayted;
extended. Pump lively. Subjick staited ag'in so 's to avide all
mistaiks. Ginnle remarks; continooed; kerried on; pushed furder; kind o'
gin out. Subjick _re_staited; dielooted; stirred up permiscoous. Pump
ag'in. Gits back to where he sot out. Can't seem to stay thair. Ketches
into Mr. Seaward's hair. Breaks loose ag'in an' staits his subjick;
stretches it; turns it; folds it; onfolds it; folds it ag'in so 's 't no
one can't find it. Argoos with an imedginary bean thet ain't aloud to
say nothin' in repleye. Gives him a real good dressin' an' is settysfide
he 's rite. Gits into Johnson's hair. No use tryin' to git into his
head. Gives it up. Hez to stait his subjick ag'in; doos it back'ards,
sideways, eendways, criss-cross, bevellin', noways. Gits finally red on
it. Concloods. Concloods more. Reads sum xtrax. Sees his subjick
a-nosin' round arter him ag'in. Tries to avide it. Wun't du. _Mis_states
it. Can't conjectur' no other plawsable way of staytin' on it. Tries
pump. No fx. Yeels the flore.
You kin spall an' punctooate thet as you please. I allus do, it kind of
puts a noo soot of close onto a word, thisere funattick spellin' doos
an' takes 'em out of the prissen dress they wair in the Dixonary. Ef I
squeeze the cents out of 'em it's the main thing, an' wut they wuz made
for; wut 's left 's jest pummis.
Mistur Wilbur sez he to me onct, sez he, "Hosee," sez he, "in
litterytoor the only good thing is Natur. It 's amazin' hard to come
at," sez he, "but onct git it an' you 've gut everythin'. Wut's the
sweetest small on airth?" sez he. "Noomone hay," sez I, pooty bresk, for
he wuz allus hankerin' round in hayin'. "Nawthin' of the kine," sez he.
"My leetle Huldy's breath," sez I ag'in. "You 're a good lad," sez he,
his eyes sort of ripplin' like, for he lost a babe onct nigh about her
age,--"You 're a good lad; but 't ain't thet nuther," sez he. "Ef you
want to know," sez he, "open your winder of a mornin' et ary season, and
you 'll larn thet the best of perfooms is jest fresh air, _fresh air_,"
sez he, emphysizin', "athout no mixtur. Thet 's wut _I_ call natur in
writin', and it bathes my lungs and washes 'em sweet whenever I git a
whiff on 't," sez he. I offen think o' thet when I set down to write,
but the winders air _so_ ept to git stuck, and breakin' a pane costs
sunthin'.
Yourn for the last time,
_Nut_ to be continooed,
HOSEA BIGLOW.
I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it,
I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,--
Nut while the twolegged gab-machine 's so plenty,
'Nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty;
I 'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard
To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard,
An' maysure off, acordin' to demand,
The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on hand,
The same ole pattern runnin' thru an' thru,
An' nothin' but the customer thet 's new.
I sometimes think, the furder on I go,
Thet it gits harder to feel sure I know,
An' when I 've settled my idees, I find
'T war n't I sheered most in makin' up my mind;
'T wuz this an' thet an' t' other thing thet done it,
Sunthin' in th' air, I could n' seek nor shun it.
Mos' folks go off so quick now in discussion,
All th' ole flint locks seems altered to percussion,
Whilst I in agin' sometimes git a hint
Thet I 'm percussion changin' back to flint;
Wal, ef it's so, I ain't agoin' to werrit,
For th' ole Oueen's-arm hez this pertickler merit,--
It gives the mind a hahnsome wedth o' margin
To kin' o' make its will afore dischargin':
I can't make out but jest one ginnle rule,--
No man need go an' _make_ himself a fool,
Nor jedgment ain't like mutton, thet can't bear
Cookin' tu long, nor be took up tu rare.