A cannot be assimilated; the laws of nature | colored people, we jumble together men forbid it. And it is surely a dangerous of nations differing widely in speech, in experiment to have in any commonwealth an inferior race, legally equal to the superior, but which nature keeps down below the level to which law has raised it. It is less dangerous in this particular case, because the negro is on the whole a peaceful and easily satisfied creature. He has no very lofty ambition; he is for the most part contented to imitate the ways of the white man as far as he can. A high-spirited people in the same case would be a very dangerous element indeed. No one now pleads for slavery; no one laments the abolition of slavery; but did the abolition of slavery necessarily imply the admission of the emancipated slave to full citizenship? There is, I allow, difficulty and danger in the position of a class enjoying civil but not political rights, placed under the protection of the law, but having no share in making the law or in choosing its makers. But surely there is greater difficulty and danger in the existence of a class of citizens who at the polling-booth are equal to other citizens, but who are not their equals anywhere else. We are told that education has done and is doing much for the younger members of the once en slaved race. But education cannot wipe out the eternal distinction that has been drawn by the hand of nature. No teaching can turn a black man into a white one. The question which, in days of controversy, the North heard with such wrath from the mouth of South the, "Would you like your daughter to marry a nigger?" lies at the root of the matter. Where the closest of human connections is, in any lawful form, looked on as impossible, there is no real brotherhood, no real fellowship. The artificial tie of citizenship is in such cases a mockery. And I can not help thinking that those in either hemisphere who were most zealous for the emancipation of the negro must, in their heart of hearts, feel a secret shudder at the thought that, though morally impossible, it is constitutionally possible, that two years hence a black man may be chosen to sit in the seat of Washington | and Garfield. original geographical position, in physical We must however not forget that there are great differences among the so-called Of the true Americans, the "dark colored people, some doubtless owing to Americans" of the hymn, the old inhabtheir different fates since their forced itants of the continent, I saw but little. migration, others owing to older dif- And what little I saw certainly disap. ferences in their first African homes. pointed me. I saw a good many young Several writers have pointed out that, Indians in the Indian school at Carlisle, under the general head of negroes, blacks, | Pa. To the zeal, energy, and benevo lence of all who are concerned in the work there I must bear such witness as I And I am told that the children are intelligent and take kindly to the civilized and Christian teaching which is set before them. But, just as in the case of the negroes, I could not keep down my doubts whether mere school-teaching will ever raise the barbarian of any race to the level of Aryan Europe and America. Of the two one is more inclined to hail a man and a brother in the Indian than in the negro. The feeling seems instinctive. While no one willingly owns to the faintest shade of negro descent, every one is proud to claim Pocahontas as a remote grandmother. Such Indians as I saw, the boys and girls, youths and maidens, of the Carlisle school, were certainly less ugly than the negroes. But then they lacked the grotesque air which often makes the negro's ugliness less repulsive. From my preconceived notions of Indians, I had at least expected to see graceful and statuesque forms, the outlines perhaps of nymphs and athletes. But the Carlisle Indians, clothed and, according to all accounts, in their right minds, seemed to me, both in face and figure, the dullest and heaviest-looking of mankind. Not repulsive, like the negro, from the mere lines of the face, they were repulsive from the utter lack of intellectual expression. Besides the younger folk at Carlisle, I was casually shown at Schenectady, N.Y., a man who, I was told, was the last, not of the Mohicans, but of the Mohawks. He was outwardly civilized, so much so indeed that the justice of the State of New York had more than once sent him to prison. The mind, or at least the press, of America was just then very full of an English lecturer whose name was largely placarded on the walls, and whose photographs, in various attitudes, were to be seen in not a few windows. I was not privileged to obtain more than a passing glimpse of either. But it struck me that between the survival of an old type and the prophet of a new there was a certain outward like passed the second. Of this latter bill I do not know the terms; the president could hardly have helped vetoing the former one, as its terms were surely inconsistent with that famous amendment which may be summed up in the phrase of " 'giving everybody everything." Yet I could not keep down a certain feeling of rejoicing over either bill. I saw in them a practical revolt against an impossible theory, a confession of the truth that legislation cannot override natural laws. A constitutional amendment, or any other piece of law-making, may in theory place all races and colors on a level; it cannot do so in practice. An acute American friend pointed out to me the distinctions between the three races which give rise to the difficulties that beset the United States in this matter. The Indian dies out. The negro is very far from dying out; but, if he cannot be assimilated by the white man, he at least imitates him. But the Chinaman does not die out; he is not assimilated; he does not imitate; he is too fully convinced of the superiority of his own ways to have the least thought of copying ours. The Chinese, in short, in the United States belong to one of those classes of settlers who form no part of the people of the land, who contribute nothing, but who swallow up a great deal. Now, at the risk of saying what I suppose is just now the most unpopular thing in the whole world, I must say that every nation has a right to get rid of strangers who prove a nuisance, whether they are Chinese in America or Jews in Russia, Servia, and Roumania. The parallel may startle some; but it is a real and exact parallel, as far as the objects of the movement in each case are concerned. The only difference, a very important difference certainly, between what has hap pened in Russia and what has happened in America consists in the means employed in the two cases. What has been done in Russia by mob-violence is at this moment doing in America in a legal way. Now no one can justify or excuse mob. violence in any case, whether aimed at Chinese, Jews, or any other class. But any one who knows the facts will admit that Russian violence against Jews, though in no way to be justified or excused, is in no way to be wondered at; and it is well to remember that, though anti-Chinese action in America is now going on in a perfectly legal way, yet there have been before now anti-Chinese riots in California, as there have been anti negro riots in New York. One thing I am certain of, namely that, if the press of England, Germany, and other European countries, were as largely in Chinese hands as it is in Jewish hands, we should have heard much more than we have heard about anti-Chinese action in America and much less about anti-Jewish action in Russia. Just now there are no tales of mob-violence against the Chinamen to record, yet it would be easy for a practised Chinese advocate to make out a very telling story about American dealings with Chinamen. "Frightful Religious Persecution in the United States," "Legislation worthy of the darkest times of the Dark Ages," would make very attractive headings for an article or telegram describing the measure which has lately passed Congress. No one has raised the cry of "religious persecution" in America, because there is no powerful body anywhere whose interest it is to raise it. But it would be just as much in place in America as it is in Russia. Neither the Jew nor the Chinaman is at tacked on any grounds of theological belief or unbelief, but simply because the people of the country look on his presence as a nuisance. But the Jew has brethren from one end of the world to the other, ready and able to give his real wrongs a false coloring, and to make the mass of mankind believe that he is, not only the victim of unjustifiable outrage, which he undoubtedly is, but the victim of religious persecution in the strict sense, which he certainly is not. The Chinaman has no such advantage. His case therefore has drawn to itself very little notice out of America, and neither in nor out of America has it been, like the Jewish case, judged on an utterly false issue. race seeks to take a share in the affairs of the ruling island, he must cross a wider expanse of sea than that which separates America from Britain, he must learn a strange tongue, he must adapt himself to strange manners, and become in everything another man. To the negro citizen in America everything is at least geographically near. He lives, it may be, within sight of the Capitol and the White House; his kinsman under British rule lives far away indeed from the palace of Westminster. To the American negro the tongue and the manners of the ruling race are in no way strange; they have been, from his birth upwards, his own tongue and his own manners, so far as the distinction planted by the hand of nature has enabled him to attain to them. It follows therefore that questions like those of the Indian, the negro, the Chinaman, while they touch the American at his own hearth, in no way touch us at our hearth, deeply and sometimes grievously as they touch us in our colonies and dependencies. The Irish question alone is common to the two branches of the English people. And it is plain that the Irish question takes two different shapes on the two sides of ocean. The United States, happily for them, are not burthened with the hard necessity of providing for the government of a land where it seems impossible to do real justice. the other hand, the problem of the "Irish vote" and its effects on home politics, though of growing and very unpleasant importance in Great Britain, is certainly not as yet of so great importance as it is in America. The Irish, as an element which can affect and sometimes turn an election, are in England confined to some particular towns and districts: in America they seem to be everywhere. The influThe difference between the position of ence which they obtain in local politics these questions in America and in En- is really amazing. The "bosses," as they gland illustrates in an instructive way the are called-a name of which one soon difference between a scattered and a con- comes to feel the meaning, though it is tinuous dominion. The different classes rather hard to translate into any other of British subjects are yet more numer-phrase — who hold so important and so ous and varied than the different classes anomalous a place in the municipal affairs of American citizens and of dwellers on of American cities are largely Irish. On American territory without the rights of the whole, even setting aside the way in citizenship. A black prime minister, a which Irish influence in America bears on yellow lord chancellor, of Great Britain us at home, that influence does not seem is in the theory no less possible than a to be a healthy one. Altogether the posiblack president of the United States. tion held by the Irish and the negroes The real likelihood may be about equal made me feel more and more strongly the on both sides, but the theoretical possi- danger of that hasty and indiscriminate bility is forced on the mind in the United bestowal of citizenship which has become States in a way in which it is not in Great the practice, and rather the pride, of the Britain. If a British subject of barbarian United States. The ancient and medi On some functions quite different from those of the House of Lords, yet it would hardly have come into the heads of constitutionmakers who were not familiar with the House of Lords. I may here quote the remark of an acute American friend that the Senate is as superior to the House of Lords as the House of Representatives is inferior to the House of Commons. A neat epigram of this kind is seldom literally true; but this one undoubtedly has some truth in it. It follows almost necessarily from the difference between the British and American constitutions that in the American Congress the upper house should be, in character and public estimation, really the upper house. In Great Britain no statesman of the first rank and in the vigor of life has any temptation to exchange the House of Commons for the House of Lords. By so doing he would leave an assembly of greater practical authority for one of much æval commonwealths, aristocratic and representative of the separate being and democratic alike, erred in the opposite the political equality of the States, has direction. But one is certainly sometimes tempted to doubt whether their error was not the smaller of the two. There is surely something ennobling in that kind of national family feeling, that cleaving to descent from the old stock, which was as strong at Athens and in Uri as it was at Corinth and at Bern. And surely a mean might be found between the exclusiveness of the elder commonwealths and the excessive lavishness of the younger. Surely some such standard as birth in the land might be set up, to be relaxed only in the case of eminent service to the commonwealth. As for the Irish, it is whispered that they somehow contrive to obtain citizenship yet more easily than the easy terms on which the law gives it. It is a characteristic story how the Irish immigrant was asked, before he had landed, what side in politics he meant to take how his first question was, "Have you a government here?"-how, being assured that the United States had a gov-less. But in the United States such a ernment, he at once answered, "Then set me down agin it." statesman has every temptation to leave the House of Representatives for the Senate as soon as he can. As neither I said before that it is a witness to the House can directly overthrow a governlife and strength of the true English ker- ment in the way that the House of Comnel in the United States that, notwith- mons can in England, while the Senate standing the lavish admission of men of has a share in various acts of the execuall kinds to citizenship, that English ker- tive power with which the House of Repnel still remains the kernel round which resentatives has nothing to do, the Senate everything grows and to which everything is really the assembly of greater authorelse assimilates itself. There is that kind ity. Its members, chosen for six years of difference between the English in by the State legislatures, while the repBritain and the English in America which resentatives are chosen by the people for could not fail to be under the different two years, have every advantage as to the circumstances of the two branches. Each tenure of their seats, and it is not wonof them is the common forefather of ear- derful to find that re-election is far more lier times modified as the several posi- the rule in the Senate than in the House. tions of his several descendants could not I had to explain more than once that it fail to modify him. In constitutional was a rare thing in England for a memmatters the closeness with which the ber of Parliament to lose his seat, unless daughter has, wherever it was possible, he had given some offence to his own reproduced the parent is shown perhaps party or unless the other party had grown in the most remarkable way in the preva- strong enough to bring in a man of its lence alike in the Union, in the States, own. In America, it seems, it is not unand in many at least of the cities, of the common for a representative to be dissystem of two houses in a legislative missed by his constituents of his own body. We are so familiar with that sys-party, simply because it is thought that tem from its repetition in countless later he has sat long enough and because anconstitutions that we are apt to forget that, when the federal constitution of the United States was drawn up, that system was by no means the rule, and that its adoption in the United States was a very remarkable instance of cleaving to the institutions of the mother country. Though the United States Senate, the other man would like the place. Here the difference between paid and unpaid members comes in: where members are paid, there will naturally be a larger stock of candidates to choose from. I was present at sittings of both houses, and there was certainly a most marked difference in point of order and decorum be tween the two. The Senate seemed to | York at the time of the "dead lock " early be truly a senate; the House of Repre- this year. For week after week the lower sentatives struck me as a scene of mere house found it impossible to elect a hubbub rather than of real debate. One incident specially struck me as illustrating the constitutional provision which shuts out the ministers of the president from Congress. One representative made a fierce attack on the secretary of the navy, and the secretary of the navy was not there to defend himself. Generally I should say, the House of Representatives and the legislative bodies which answer to it in the several States, illustrate Lord Macaulay's saying about the necessity of a ministry to keep a Parliament in order. One result is the far larger powers which in these assemblies are given to the speaker. And these are again attended by the danger of turning the speaker himself into the instrument of a party. conse speaker. And this was not the result of absolute equality between the two great parties. It was because a very small body of men, who had no chance of carrying a candidate from among themselves, thought fit, in ballot after ballot, to binder the election of the acknowledged candidate of either side. This illustrates the result of the rule which requires an absolute majority. I pointed out to several friends on the spot that no such dead lock could have happened in the British House of Commons. I know not how far the existence of a regular ministry and opposition would hinder the possibility of this particular kind of scandal; but it is hard to conceive the existence of a ministry in our sense in a State constitu The differences of procedure between tion. Even in our still dependent colour Houses of Parliament and the Amer- onies the reproduction of our system of ican assemblies, federal and State, are ministries going in and out in very curious and interesting, specially quence of a parliamentary vote, may be just now when the question of parlia- thought to be somewhat out of place. mentary procedure has taken to itself so Still the governor, named by an external much attention. But I must hasten on power, has much of the position of a to give my impression of other matters, king, and his relations to his ministry rather than attempt to enlarge on a point and his parliament can in a manner rewhich I cannot say that I have specially produce those of the sovereign in the studied. The State legislatures are mother country. But it is hard to conthe features of American political life ceive an elective governor, above all the which are most distinctive of the fed-governor of such a State as Rhode Island eral system, and to which there cannot be or Delaware, working through the conanything exactly answering among our-ventionalities of a responsible ministry. selves. It must always be remembered | Indeed even in such a State as New York that a State legislature does not answer there is still something patriarchal about to a town council or a court of quarter sessions. It is essentially a parliament, though a parliament with limited functions and which can never be called on to deal with the highest questions of all. Still the range of the State legislatures is positively very wide, and takes in most things which concern the daily affairs of mankind. A large part of their business seems commonly to consist in the passing of private bills, acts of incorporation and the like. Some States seem to have found that constant legislation on such matters was not needed, and have therefore thought good that their legislatures should meet only every other year. In Pennsylvania, therefore, where I had good opportunities of studying some other matters, I had no opportunity of studying the working of a State legislature. When I was there, municipal life was in full vigor in Philadelphia, but State life was dead at Harrisburg. But I came in for a sight of the legislature of New the office of governor. While I was in the Capitol at Albany, the friends of a condemned criminal came to plead with the governor in person for the exercise of his prerogative of mercy. Now the popula tion of the State of New York, swelled by one overgrown city, is greater than that of Ireland; even in its natural state, it would be much greater than that of Scotland. I thought of the days when the king did sit in the gate. The personal heads of the Union, the State, and the city, the president, the governor, the mayor, all come from English tradition. If we study the commonwealths of other ages and countries, we shall see that this great position given to a single man, though by no means without precedent, is by no means the rule. The title of governor especially is directly handed on from the days before independence. It would hardly have suggested itself to the founders of commonwealths which had not been used to the governor |