Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

From The Fortnightly Review. SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE UNITED

STATES.
II.

one of the points on which I most wished to learn something, namely the administration of justice and of everything else in the rural districts. My only opportu nity was during a sojourn in a rural part of Virginia, where, as far as I could see, nothing of any public interest went on at all. I was reminded of the ancient inhabitants of Laish, who dwelled careless, quiet, and secure, who had no business with any man, and who had no magistrate to put them to shame in anything.* Yet even here I heard now and then of politi cal differences; only here too, as elsewhere, on most questions of immediate importance, the division did not follow the same lines as the received cleavage into Democrats and Republicans.

In America everything seems to go by political divisions, except when men say openly that it is time for the honest men of both sides to join together against My visit to the United States had part- the rogues of both sides. On the other ly, but not wholly, the character of a lec-hand, I could learn next to nothing on turing tour. That is to say, I lectured in a good many places, mainly in the university and college towns, while I visited a good many other places where I did not lecture. Among these last was the federal capital. I was thus mainly thrown among professors and others more or less given to literary or scientific studies; but, without ever finding myself in the very thick of American political life, I also saw a good deal of political men, and heard a good deal of political matters. I saw something of federal affairs at Washington, something of State affairs at Albany, something of municipal affairs at Philadelphia. It must always be borne in mind that State affairs and municipal affairs come under the head of politics no less than the affairs of the Union, and that political divisions affect every detail of all three. My American friends, who naturally wished to learn something back again from me in exchange for all that I learned from them, were now and then somewhat amazed at finding how little I could tell them about English municipal matters. They seemed to find it hard to understand the nature of a man who did not live in a town. They were naturally all the more amazed when I sometimes sportively told them that I actually held a nominal municipal office, one which I suppose that Sir Charles Dilke or some other reformer will before long take from me. It seemed a hard saying when I told them that I had stayed longer in Philadelphia than I had ever stayed in London, longer than I had, since my boyhood, stayed in any town except Rome and Palermo. I have seen, and somewhat attentively studied, an American municipal election; an English municipal election I have never seen or taken any interest in. I am aware that in English municipal boroughs party politics largely affect the choice of councillors; I do not know how far they affect the votes of the councillors when they are once elected.

I often asked my American friends of both parties what was the difference between them. I told them that I could see none; both sides seemed to me to say exactly the same things. I sometimes got the convenient, but not wholly satisfactory, answer: Yes; but then we mean what we say, while the other party only pretends. Certainly at the present moment the difference between different sections of the Republican party is much clearer to an outsider than the difference between Republicans and Democrats. On intelligible questions like free trade and civil service reform, or again, the local Virginian question of paying or not paying one's lawful debts, the division does not follow the regular cleavage of parties. I certainly found it easier to grasp the difference between a stalwart Republican and one who was not stalwart, than to grasp the immediate difference between a Republican and a Democrat. Questions of this kind are plain enough; the distinction between the two great acknowledged parties is just now much less plain. But it must not be inferred that it is a distinction without a

* Judges xviii. 7.

[ocr errors]

is the very way to lead to separation. I know of no immediate reason to fear any attempt at centralization such as might thus lead to separation. But it does seem to be a possible danger; it seems to me that there are tendencies at work which are more likely to lead to that form of error than to its opposite. Nothing can be a plainer matter of history than the fact that whatever powers the Union holds, it holds by the grant of the States. It is equally plain that the grant was irrevocable, except so far as its terms may be modified by a constitutional amendment. And the power of making a

difference. The two parties seem to say the same things, because just at the present time no question is stirring which at all strongly forces them to say different things. Their differences have been important in the past; they may be important in the future; but just now questions which would bring out their differences are not uppermost. I am not sure that this is a wholesome state of things. If there must be and there doubtless must be - parties in a State, it is better that they should be divided on some intelligible difference of principle, than that political warfare should sink into a mere question of ins and outs, of Shanavests constitutional amendment is itself part of and Caravats. But, though the distinction between Republicans and Democrats looks from outside very like a distinction between Shanavests and Caravats, it is only accidentally so. The distinction may easily become as real as the distinction between Tory and Radical, Legitimist and Republican. Should any question ever again arise as to the respective powers of the Union and of the States, it is easy to see which side each party would take. It is simply because there is no such burning question at present stirring that the two parties seem to say exactly the same things, and yet to be as strongly divided

as ever.

the grant of the States, which thus agreed that, in certain cases, a fixed majority of the States should bind the whole. The error of the Secessionists lay in treating an irrevocable grant as if it had been a revocable one. The doctrine of the right of secession, as a constitutional right, was absurd on the face of it. Secession from the Union was as much rebellion, as much a breach of the law in force at the time, as was the original revolt of the colonies against the king. The only question in either case was whether those special circumstances had arisen which can justify breach of the ordinary law. But it is a pity, in avoiding this error, to I may speak on this matter as one who run into the opposite one, and to hold, has made the nature of federal govern- not only that the grant made by the ment an object of special study. It States to the Union was irrevocable, but strikes me that, as the doctrine of State that the grant was really made the other rights was pushed to a mischievous ex-way. I find that it is the received doctreme twenty years and more ago, so there | trine in some quarters that the States is danger now of the opposite doctrine have no rights but such as the Union being pushed to a mischievous extreme. The more I look at the American Union, the more convinced I am that so vast a region, taking in lands whose condition differs so widely in everything, can be kept together only by a federal system, leaving large independent powers in the hands of the several States. No single parliament could legislate, no single government could administer, for Maine, Florida, and California. Let these States be left to a great extent independent, and they may remain united on those points on which it is well that they should remain united. To insist on too close an union

allows to them. One of the Boston newspapers was angry because I stated in one of my lectures the plain historical fact that the States, as, in theory at least, independent commonwealths, surrendered certain defined powers to the Union, and kept all other powers in their own hands. The Boston paper was yet more angry because a large part of a Boston audience warmly cheered warmly that is, for Boston such dangerous doctrines. I was simply ignorant; those who cheered me were something worse.*

I must even cleave to the phrase "sovereign States," though I know it may offend many. A State

66

Now notions of this kind are not con- and one not federal is a difference of

fined to a single newspaper. And they original structure which runs through surely may lead to results as dangerous everything. It is a far wider difference at one end as the doctrine of Secession than the difference between a kingdom was at the other. Both alike cut directly and a republic, which may differ only in at the very nature of a federal system. the form given to the executive. It is Connected perhaps with this tendency is perfectly natural that the word "federal" one of those changes in ordinary speech should be in constant use in a federal which come in imperceptibly, without State, in far more common use than any people in general remarking them, but word implying kingship need be in a which always prove a great deal. In En-kingdom. There is a constant need to gland we now universally use the word distinguish things which come within the government" where in my boyhood range of the federal power from things everybody said "ministry" or "minis- which come within the range of the State ters." Then it was "the Duke of Wel- or cantonal power. And for this purpose lington's ministry" or Lord Grey's; now the word "federal" is more natural than it is "Lord Beaconsfield's government" the word "national." The proper range or Mr. Gladstone's. This change, if one of the latter word surely lies in matters comes to think about it, certainly means which have to do with other nations. a great deal. So it means a great deal One would speak of the "national honor," that, where the word "federal" used to but of the "federal revenue." That “nabe used up to the time of the Civil War tional" should have driven out "federal or later, the word "national" is now used within a range when the latter word seems all but invariably. It used to be "federal so specially at home, does really look as capital," "federal army," "federal rev- if the federal character of the national enue," and so forth. Now the word "na- power was, to say the least, less strongly tional" is almost always used instead. present to men's minds than it was twenty I have now and then seen the word "fed-years back. eral" used in the old way, but so rarely that I suspect that it was used of set purpose, as a kind of protest, as I might use it myself. Now there is not the slightest objection to the word “national;" for the union of the States undoubtedly forms, for all political purposes, a nation. The point to notice is not the mere use of the word "national," but the displacement of the word "federal" in its favor. This surely marks a tendency to forget the federal character of the national government, or at least to forget that its federal character is its very essence. The difference between a federal government is sovereign which has any powers which it holds by inherent right, without control on the part of any other power, without responsibility to any other power. Now every American State has powers of this kind. The thirteen States did not receive their existing powers from the Union; they surrendered to the Union certain powers which were naturally their own, and kept others to themselves. Within this last range the State is sovereign within the range of the powers surrendered to the Union the Union is sovereign. Of the old States this is historically true in the strictest sense. Of the constitutionally true; for they were admitted to all the

later States admitted since the Union was formed it is

rights of the old thirteen.

It is rather odd that this emphatic use of the word "national" should have been accompanied by changes which have made the being of the United States less strictly national, in another sense of the word, than it was before. That great land is still essentially an English land. But it is no small witness to the toughness of fibre in the English folk wherever it settles that it is so. A land must be reckoned as English where a great majority of the people are still of English descent, where the speech is still the speech of England, where valuable contributions are constantly made to English literature, where the law is still essentially the law of England, and where valuable contributions are constantly made to English jurisprudence. A land must be reckoned as English where the English kernel is so strong as to draw to itself every foreign element, where the foreign settler is adopted into the English home of an English people, where he or his children exchange the speech of their elder dwell

ings for the English speech of the land. | memory of the wrongs which drove them Nowhere does the assimilating process go from the old. I share the natural indig on more vigorously than in the United nation against those who, either in Ireland States. Men of various nationalities are or in America, make a good cause to be easily changed into "good Americans," evil spoken of; but, as long as the Irishand the "good American" must be, in man seeks to compass his ends only by every sense that is not strictly geographi-honorable means, we have no right to cal or political, a good Englishman. And, as regards a large part of the foreign settlers, no man of real English feeling can give them other than a hearty welcome. The German, and still more the Scandinavian, settlers are simply men of our own race who have lagged behind in the western march, but who have at last made it at a single pull, without tarrying for a thousand years in the isle of Britain. But there are other settlers, other inmates, with whose presence the land, one would think, might be happy to dispense. I must here speak my own mind, at the great risk of offending people on more sides than one. Men better versed in American matters than myself point out to me the fact that the negro vote balances the Irish vote. But one may be allowed to think that a Teutonic land might do better still without any Irish vote, that an Aryan land might do better still without any negro vote. And what I venture to say on the housetops has been whispered in my ear in closets by not a few in America who fully understand the state and the needs of their country. Very many approved when I suggested that the best remedy for whatever was amiss would be if every Irishman should kill a negro and be hanged for it. Those who dissented dissented most commonly on the ground that, if there were no Irish and no negroes, they would not be able to get any domestic servants. The most serious objection came from Rhode Island, where they have no capital punishment, and where they had no wish to keep the Irish at the public expense. Let no one think that I have any ill-feeling towards the Irish people. In their own island I have every sympathy with them. I argued long ago in the pages of this review on behalf of Home Rule or of any form of Irish independence which did not involve, as some schemes then proposed did involve, the dependence of Great Britain. I should indeed be inconsistent if I were to refuse to the Irishman what I have sought to win for the Greek, the Bulgarian, and the Dalmatian. Nor is it wonderful or blameworthy if men who have left their old homes to. escape from the wrongs of foreign rule should carry with them into their new homes the

blame him because his ends are different from ours. But all this is perfectly consistent with the manifest fact that the Irish element is, in the English lands on both sides of the ocean, a mischievous element. The greatest object of all is for the severed branches of the English folk to live in the fullest measure of friendship and unity that is consistent with their severed state. Now the Irish element in America is the greatest of all hindrances in the way of this happy state of things. It is the worst, and perhaps the strongest, of several causes which help to give a bad name to American politics. Political men in all times and places lie under strong temptations to say and do things which they otherwise would not say and do, in order to gain some party advantage. But on no political men of any time or place has this kind of influence been more strongly brought to bear than it is on political men in the United States who wish to gain the Irish vote. The importance of that vote grows and grows; no party, no leading man, can afford to despise it. Parties and men are therefore driven into courses to which otherwise they would have no temptation to take, and those for the most part courses which are unfriendly to Great Britain. Any ill-feeling which other causes may awaken between the two severed branches of the English people is prolonged and strengthened by the presence of the Irish settlers in America. In some minds they may really plant hostile feelings towards Great Britain which would otherwise find no place there. At any rate they plant in many minds a habit of speaking and acting as if such hostile feelings did find a place, a habit which cannot but lead to bad effects in many ways. The mere rumor, the mere thought, of recalling Mr. Lowell from his post in England in subserviency to Irish clamor is a case in point. That such a thing should even have been dreamed of shows the baleful nature of Irish influence in America, and how specially likely it is to stir up strife and ill-feeling between Great Britain and America even at times when, setting Irish matters aside, there is not the faintest ground of quarrel on either side. In a view of poetical justice it is perhaps not unrea

[graphic]

And

sonable that English misrule in Ireland | such an experiment been tried. should be punished in this particular this, though in some ages of the Roman shape. It may be just that the wrongs dominion the adoption and assimilation which we have done to our neighbors should be paid off at the hands of members of our own family. But the process is certainly unpleasant to our branch of the family, and it is hard to see how it can be any real gain to the other.

of men of other races was carried to the extremest point that the laws of nature would allow. Long before the seat of empire was moved to Constantinople, the name Roman had ceased to imply even a presumption of descent from the old patricians and plebeians. A walk through But the Irishman is, after all, in a wide any collection of Roman inscriptions will sense, one of ourselves. He is Aryan; show how, in the later days of the undihe is European; he is capable of being vided empire, a man was far oftener sucassimilated by other branches of the Eu- ceeded by his freedman than by his son. ropean stock. There is nothing to be And besides freedmen, strangers of every said against this or that Irishman all by race within the empire had been freely himself. In England, in America, in any admitted to citizenship, and were allowed other land, nothing hinders him from be- to bear the names of the proudest Roman coming one with the people of the land, gentes. The Julius, the Claudius, the or from playing an useful and honorable Cornelius, of those days was for the most part among them. All that is needed to part no Roman by lineal descent, but a this end is that he should come all by Greek, a Gaul, a Spaniard, or an Illyrian. himself. It is only when Irishmen gather But the Gaul, the Spaniard, the Illyrian, in such numbers as to form an Irish com- could all be assimilated; they could all munity capable of concerted action that be made into Romans. They learned to any mischief is to be looked for from speak and act in everything as men no them. The Irish difficulty is troublesome less truly Roman than the descendants just now; it is likely to be troublesome of the first settlers on the Palatine. Such for some time to come; but it is not likely men ceased to be Gauls, Spaniards, or to last forever. But the negro difficulty Illyrians. The Greek, representative of must last either till the way has been a richer and more perfect speech, of a found out by which the Ethiopian may change his skin, or till either the white man or the black departs out of the land. The United States-and, in their measure other parts of the American continent and islands have to grapple with a problem such as no other people ever had to grapple with before. Other communities, from the beginning of political society, have been either avowedly or practically founded on distinctions of race. There has been, to say the least, some people or nation or tribe which has given its character to the whole body, and by which other elements have been assimilated. In the United States this part has been played, as far as the white population is concerned, by the original English kernel. Round that kernel the foreign elements have grown; it assimilates them; they do not assimilate it. But beyond that range lies another range where assimilation ceases to be possible. The eternal laws of nature, the eternal distinction of color, forbid the assimilation of the negro. You may give him the rights of citizenship by law; you cannot make him the real equal, the real fellow, of citizens of European descent. Never before in our world, the world of Rome and of all that Rome has influenced, has

higher and older civilization, could become for many purposes a Roman without ceasing to be a Greek. In all these cases no born physical or intellectual difference parted off the slave from his master, the stranger from the citizen. When the artificial distinction was once taken away, in the next generation at least all real distinction was lost. This cannot be when there is an eternal physical and intellectual difference between master and slave, between citizen and stranger. The Roman Senate was filled with Gauls almost from the first moment of the conquest of Gaul; but for a native Egyptian to find his way there was a rare portent of later times. No edict of Antoninus Caracalla could turn him into a Roman, as the Gauls had been turned long before that edict. The bestowal of citizenship on the negro is one of those cases which show what law can do and what it cannot. The law may declare the negro to be the equal of the white man; it cannot make him his equal To the old question, Am I not a man and a brother? I venture to answer: No. He may be a man and a brother in some secondary sense; he is not a man and a brother in the same full sense in which every Western Aryan is a man and a brother. He

« VorigeDoorgaan »