Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

The popular idea of the common school is not this. It is based on a proposition that the masses can be educated; that is, taught to think. This conclusion is got at through a most ludicrous process. The mind is reduced to a memory. Facts are crowded into the pupil, and as the facts accumulate the education is supposed to proceed, and in possession of these facts the graduate comes forth the superior of Plato, Bacon, or Herbert Spencer.

This is simply an idiotic exercise of the memory, and as the memory grows perfect the intellectual faculties weaken and disappear. It is now recognized by the more thoughtful that an abnormal memory is evidence of idiocy. The net result, then, of all the labor is to graduate a learned ass.

The proof of what we assert is found in the result after the pedagogues have completed their work. The millions are considered taught; the masses take the level of unthinking multitudes, and look about among themselves for their teachers and leaders. The schoolmasters have held all to a dead level; but once out in the world, and nature asserts her rights, and the truly educated, the strong minds that have taught themselves to think, move to the front and take command.

If this thing were harmless, we could be content to let the popular craze wear itself out. But it is not harmless. In our insane desire to have this monstrous system prevail, let the cost be what it may, we lose sight of the grave fact that, while we cannot educate the people, we can train the people up to that moral condition so necessary to a safe and healthy condition of a Christian community.

In our idiotic belief that in a cultivation of the memory we are elevating and purifying the mind, we make our schools not only godless but positively immoral, for the untrained mind is trained in iniquity. And this pernicious result is strengthened by another crotchet of the popular mind--the habit we have fallen into of regarding the human race as a continuous whole instead of being the individual. We fail to realize that when one is born the world begins, and when one dies the world ends. We are like the notes of the piano: each key has its own separate and distinct sound, and while they may be made to harmonize with each other, the melody that melts through a flute or flows in endless eddies from a violin can never be reached. That government approaches human perfection which cares for the citizen and not the majority; and that moral religious training given us by our Saviour is the watchful care of the one soul. To this end the Church was organized: to this end was marriage instituted and made sacred. This means the home--the only school, public or private, that has an unalloyed good in its composition.

The wrong being done our people cannot be overestimated. The child in being put to school has been expelled from home. The parent is taught that the State has intervened and relieved God's responsible agent of all responsibility. This strikes a death-blow at the agency for good found in the parent. We all recognize the fact that from the home comes all that is sound in the State. By the hearth-stone grow, not only moral impulse, but true religion and all the patriotism that gives a love of country, and stability and power to the State. Anything, then, that saps the foundations of the household takes from under us the solid earth. This, we maintain, is what our common-school system as now organized and controlled is doing.

We trust our readers will be patient with us. We know that we are touching on a tender subject. There is a religious feeling injected into the craze that makes many men wild and unreasonable the moment the system is criticised. We appreciate and partake of the sentiment born in us through many generations of a struggle against the tyranny ever found in a union of Church and State. Our blessed Saviour saw this when He laid down that line of demarcation between the two when he said: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's." We not only say that we are opposed to governmental interference with religion, but we go a step farther, and, to make the line between Church and State yet more distinct, we assert that government has nothing to do with the morals of its people. Government is an expression of justice, as seen and felt in restraining through punishment the overt act of injustice. Morality and religion are so interwoven that they cannot well be separated, and the man who claims the political machine to be a great moral engine gives away all that our Christ commanded and our patriotic fathers sought to establish in framing our Constitution.

We hold that the morality of a people, like their religion, may be safely left to the Church and the home. When, therefore, the socialistic belief that the child belongs to the State and not to the parent prevails, not only the barriers but the very foundations of our social and political existence are broken down and in a fair way to be destroyed.

When we assert that the State rests upon the home, we say that which all men save communists heartily indorse. Now, the home is founded mainly on the mother's love. It is the strongest feeling given to animated life. We share it with the brute. It is the law of our being, and the source of all that is good. From the mother's care and training come our physical and moral health. This is not sentiment, it is solid fact. It is not that poets have sung and sages taught this great truth, but there is not a reader of this who cannot trace back to his early home and his mother's love not only all that has held him or her to moral conduct, but much that makes life worth living. This, that makes home what it is or should be, cannot be replaced by the State. The great infidel Robert Ingersoll retains his hold on certain thoughtless classes, not by his wit, which is keen, nor his eloquence, which is unquestioned, but because he preaches a sort of religion of home, and claims to be the only man, _par excellence_, who loves his wife and children.

The writer of this, when a judge, was remonstrated with for giving a child to a mother whom he had divorced from her husband on the ground of her infidelity. He made reply that the wife might be a bad woman and yet a good mother. Certainly there was no one to take her place. The court could not give the custody of the child to a man who thought so little of its welfare as to come into court and ask for a decree of divorce. The law had to be obeyed, and the divorce granted; but the custody of the child was left to the discretion of the court, and the court considered it merciful to leave the child with the mother rather than give it to a father who, in asking for a divorce, served notice that he would marry again and give this unfortunate to the care of a stepmother, to torture it with the taint of its origin, and a conflict with the natural affection for the newly found household and offspring.

The New England system of common schools recognizes the communistic theory of right, in the State, to the child. It reduces this theory to practice by supplanting the parent by the pedagogue. It teaches that to instruct the child is to make it moral, and its instruction means, as we have said, an abnormal development of the memory. A belief in this has come to be a popular fetish. The man who ventures to comment on it, or offers to amend or improve it, is hooted down as an enemy to his country and an infidel to its perfection. Pulpits resound with thanks to God for the blessings of free education, the press is filled with praise, while on the stump eloquent orators assure applauding crowds that our common-school system is the corner-stone of not only the great Republic, but of our social existence.

And yet, where are we? From all this senseless noise let us turn to the actual situation and consult the cold, naked facts. The increase of crime and insanity in the United States within the last half-century is something appalling. They have not only kept pace with our much-vaunted prosperity, but have been, and are, forging ahead at a rate that fills all thoughtful minds with alarm.

We cannot extend our space and burthen our brief comment with the statistics necessary to prove this fact, already patent to the more intelligent. Let the reader consult them for himself. He will find that the increase of criminals and the increase of insanity, set forth in cold figures, are not to be disputed or misunderstood. But it does not follow that these grave evils are to be laid to the communism of the New England common-school system. Perhaps not; but how much has this wonderful system done to arrest those evils? According to preachers, poets, editors, and stump orators, we are safe in leaving all to its care and keeping. It has certainly accomplished little in behalf of the Republic. Penitentiaries and asylums for the insane are increasing at a fearful rate; divorces follow fast upon the heels of marriage; and it may safely be said that not a single trust-fund has been left untouched by the hand of fraud throughout the entire country.

A further investigation, however, will lead us to yet another conclusion. The communism of the common school accompanies the evils. In those parts of our country where it is most rigidly enforced crime and madness have increased. In those sections yet new to the system these ills are less; and as there must be a cause for the difference, is it not safe to attribute it to this usurpation of the State, this insidious assault on the parent, and through both a weakening of religious faith and moral conduct?

We are well aware that, in the bigotry of belief that hedges about this system, there is no toleration for comment or criticism, and no room for amendment. To add to this, immense sums of money are involved; for while the State is keenly alive to the education of the people, and furnishes, with the greatest liberality, school-houses and pedagogues, it is strangely oblivious to the demand for books and stationery. In this supply lies two-thirds of the vociferous praise and vindictive support of the system. As the late Colonel Sellers was wont to say, "There's millions in it."

ABOUT THE BALLOT.

We have a growing number of earnest reformers who seek to better the machinery of elections by throwing about the ballot-box certain precautions, legally enacted, that will make the purchase of votes and the intimidation of voters more difficult. The trouble, however, is not in the vote, but the voter. If the one is corrupt, there is no legal process known to law-makers that will purify the other. If a man holds his vote in the light of property and knows of a purchaser possessed of means, it is extremely difficult to keep the parties apart or prevent the sale.

This, however, does not apply to that well-known evil of undue influence on the part of party leaders, or "strikers," as they are called. Those partisans are reinforced by men who have others in their employ dependent on such employers for a living, and of course possessed of an influence calculated to control the vote of the dependent, whether such voting is in accordance with the wishes or conscience of the voter or not.

We know, for example, that in the late canvass every capitalist with his investment depending for its profit on the success of the Republicans took pains to inform his workmen that unless Harrison were elected the works could not continue, and they, the laborers, would be discharged and left to starve. He was animated in this only by the highest philanthropic motives, not by any wish to influence the votes of his laborers.

Now, the operatives were intelligent enough to laugh at this, but they were well aware of what he meant, and that was to inform them of his wishes; and as he had it in his power to know how each voted, it was as much as each man's place was worth to vote the Democratic ticket. That there might be no mistake about this, the few who ventured to disobey this champion boss were soon disposed of. It is scarcely necessary to say that the smoke continued to pour up and out of the chimneys until an unfortunate wheat deal at Chicago sent the head centre of the attempted corner to the penitentiary, and made this capitalist who thus sought to intimidate his laborers quite fit for the same locality.

If some process of voting, whether Australian or not, could be devised to end this "bulldozing," as it is popularly called, it would be an excellent reform. It would also go far towards weakening the blind adhesion to political organizations. Many men are held to this more by association and that lack of independence necessary to a severance of old ties. This denies the voter the right to scratch his ticket when he finds a name on it that he knows to be that of a man he cannot approve and ought not to vote for. To keep abreast of his party he must vote "the ticket, the whole ticket, and nothing but the ticket." The leaders and their lieutenants, as the machine stands, have it in their power to spot and expose anyone venturing to break over the line and obey his own will.

This is the power, well recognized, which makes the nominating caucus the government. The right to vote carries with it to each voter a right to a candidate of his own selection. As the matter stands, in fact, he comes to the polls and has presented to him generally two tickets. It is claimed that he can vote one or the other, or, as it is called, vote in the air. The fact is he has no such choice. The despotic power of party discipline holds him firmly to the ticket his party has put in nomination. Our ballot, that is claimed to be secret, is open as the day. Every vote is counted and every voter known, and to make assurance doubly sure the polls are guarded by both parties, and the noble citizen runs the gauntlet through double lines of detestable township or ward politicians, potent for mischief in their sneers and jeers, and, if need be, ready with dirty fists or clubs, sometimes revolvers, to back the edict of the party.

Through this process a majority is supposed to govern. The practical fact is that a small minority, and that made up of the worst element, holds sway. The nominating caucus is composed of men who work for pay, and put in nomination the political aspirants corrupt enough to purchase their positions. The more decent class of our citizens avoid the primaries. They well know that to control them means a corrupt use of money, or a fight wherein victory is as fatal as defeat. In the rural districts the farmer is called to leave his plough and ride from one to three miles, and lose a day's work, for the privilege of being controlled by a small political bunco-steerer to the support of some aspirant to office who has the fellow in his pay. If the farmer differs from Mary's little lamb in not being white as snow, he resembles that poetic pet in his amiable docility. The caucus is composed of a mere corporal's guard from the army of voters. In the towns and cities the element is so brutal, impudent, and active that decency shrinks from a mere contact, let alone a contest in which decency will have its hat mashed over its eyes, its nose bloodied, and its body bruised. In ward and township these able manipulators are not the majority, as we have said, and yet they rule with a despotic brutality that makes the kingdom of Dahomey a liberal government in comparison.

Now, as we have said, if some legalized process could be devised through which the ballot could be made safe and secret, a deadly blow would be given to the caucus. As it is, the managers buy a few and intimidate the many. The basis of such reform, however, rests on the entire machine being paid for by the government. Tickets should be printed and furnished free on the demand of any ten men claiming to be a party with candidates to be voted for. Economy in this direction has costly results. On the plea of legitimate expenditures large sums are collected, and the people debauched. Any use of money other than that by the government should not only work a forfeiture of office, but open the penitentiary to the voter.

The truth is, however, that to make this reform effectual it must be thorough and radical. The one great evil in our way is in our frequent elections. The insane effort to apply the ballot to every office has so multiplied elections that it is impossible for a man to give attention to one-half, and follow his business so as to support his family. The average citizen is forced to leave the filling of office to the professionals, vulgarly called "bummers" in town, and "gutter-snipes" in the country. We have not only cheapened the suffrage and thereby cheapened office for the representative who represents, but we have degraded the civil service until it is more of a disgrace than an honor to be an official.

That sort of reform which compromises with wrong is worse than none. To be effective, reform must be radical. Chucking a boulder in a rut of a bad road makes the highway the more impassable. The rut itself must be eliminated before repairs can be said to have a foundation.

PASSING EVENTS.

The political battle has been fought. We can look calmly over the field, estimate the causes that led to the result, and to some extent forecast the future. The Republican party had no uncertain triumph. Since the day when Greeley was defeated by Grant there has been no such overwhelming majority in the Electoral College for a Republican candidate. Even without the vote of New York General Harrison would have been elected. The line of the "solid South" has been broken by West Virginia joining the Republican column, and Delaware for the first time in her history elects a Republican legislature. Both Houses of Congress will undoubtedly be Republican, so that there can be no shifting of responsibility for bad legislation. The defeat of the Democrats is clear, clean-cut, decisive.

It looks at first blush a temporary triumph for protection as against free trade. There is no mistaking the fact that the country in a four months' campaign could not be educated to give up ideas which had been advanced by leading statesmen of both parties for the past twenty years, and which met but very feeble protests from true Democrats. The protection fetich has been shattered, but not overturned from its shrine. The result shows the folly of half-hearted campaigns. Even the very authors of the Mills bill, filled with fearful tales of the New York workingman's aversion to free trade, when they came to the metropolis, instead of avowing that they proposed gradually to remove all restrictions upon our commerce with the world, began to apologize for their position, and to protest that they were not engaged in a free-trade campaign. Mr. Cleveland could not have been worse beaten had the fight been openly made for the abolition of all duties whatsoever and the closing of every custom-house. But those who think with the New York _Sun_ that we have had the last of an "educational campaign" very much deceive themselves. What could not be done in four months may be achieved in four years. The free-trade fight is on, and it is not at all impossible that Grover Cleveland may yet be the standard-bearer in a victorious campaign for human rights against combined monopolies. Other reasons for the Democratic defeat were: the greed of local halls for petty patronage, divisions among the Democrats of New York City over the mayoralty, jealousies of rival bosses in King's County, the free use of money by the Republicans, especially in Indiana, and the superior management of the Republican leaders, who were at least honestly fighting for what they believed in.

The longest session Congress ever held closed on October 20th, having lasted 321 days. Its most interesting features were the tariff discussion and the unparalleled deadlock in the consideration of the direct-tax bill. With the short session which begins on December 4th the present Democratic ascendancy will come to an end, as the Republicans will have a good working majority of at least thirteen in the Fifty-first Congress.

The diplomatic world is laughing at Lord Sackville for his foolishness in falling into a Republican trap, and his summary dismissal by President Cleveland. In answer to an unknown correspondent in California, the English minister wrote expressing his views as to the pending Presidential election--a thing in violation of all diplomatic custom. The letter was published and used as a campaign document. President Cleveland at once demanded his recall, and Lord Salisbury not acting with sufficient promptness, the unlucky minister was given his passport on October 30th.

England and Germany are contending for supremacy in East Africa, the latter by bombarding the natives of Zanzibar into submission, and the former by the peaceful methods of trade. Portugal is to join England and Germany in a naval blockade of Zanzibar to suppress slave-dealing, and the Pope has sent $60,000 to Cardinal Lavigerie for the same purpose. The Cardinal is raising a volunteer corps with which to fight the slave-dealers of Central Africa. The Congo Free State, the only absolute free-trade country in all the world, is being rapidly opened. The first section of the trans-African railway, from St. Paul de Loanda to Ambaca, has been completed. Stanley has been heard from indirectly, but the news is eleven months old and his present position is unknown.

Russia came near losing her ruler in a railway accident not far from Tiflis on October 29th. As the Czar and Czarina were returning from the Caspian to the Black Sea, the train left the rails and was wrecked. Twenty-one persons were killed and thirty-seven injured, but the Czar escaped with a slight injury to his foot. Balkan questions still cloud the political horizon. Austria is contemplating the occupation of Servia, a step which would be followed immediately by Russia occupying Bulgaria. King Milan has got his divorce from Queen Natalie. He pointed out to the Metropolitan of the Servian Church that the sovereign of course was superior to all law in such little matters as marriage-ties, and the Metropolitan obediently issued a decree granting the divorce. Queen Natalie has appealed to the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople. Meanwhile Roumania is trying an experiment in self-government, having introduced a system of elections for members of a Chamber of Deputies, for which all citizens paying taxes are electors.

Emperor William has returned from his junketing tour. His reception by the Italian people was enthusiastic, but his interview with the Pope was hardly a love-feast. Pope and Kaiser met face to face for the first time since Henry IV. of Germany did penance at Canossa before Gregory Hildebrand in 1077. A curious incident that happened just after the Emperor's visit was the breaking out of a fire in a wing of the Quirinal, in which the pontifical escutcheon affixed to the palace was burned. Another historical event occurred on October 17th, when Hamburg joined the German customs union, giving up its privileges as a free port. Bismarck's policy proved stronger than that of the free-traders in the Reichstag, and German custom-houses now cast their shadows on the waters of the Elbe.

In France the government proposals for a revision of the constitution seem to be in a fair way towards adoption. They include a fixed term for the ministers and curtailment of the Senate's powers. The senators oppose the plan, not caring to be "revised" out of their privileges. The Haytien republic has nearly finished its revolution. General Salomon, the exiled president, died in Paris on October 19th, and General Telemaque was killed in an attack on Port au Prince. The only other candidate for the presidency, General Francois Denys Legitime, was elected by the National Assembly on October 17th. The efforts of Manitoba to reach a foreign market without being subjected to the odious monopoly of the Canadian Pacific Railway may have serious consequences. The Province is building a railway to connect with the American lines, and the Canadian Pacific refuses to let them cross their tracks. Both sides threaten to fight.

Business is quiet but steady. Wall Street sharpers are anticipating a boom, as it is not expected that the new administration will do anything to hurt the monopolies. The shares of those trusts listed on the New York Stock Exchange--American Cotton Oil trust and Chicago Gas trust--have advanced in price. "Old Hutch" of Chicago is said to be engineering a corner in December wheat and January pork. Mr. John Taylor, of Chicago, who lost his fortune in "Old Hutch's" last corner, shot himself in a railway train while travelling from Paris to Marseilles, making the second suicidal crime attributable to this commercial freebooter. The investigation of the will of Mrs. Stewart, who was left a fortune of twenty-five million dollars by her husband, and died ten years afterward in debt over one million to her friend, ex-Judge Hilton, who managed her estate, is developing a remarkable system of book-keeping. All her investments ceased to pay, and her adviser even charged interest for her husband's funeral expenses. The directors of the Richmond Terminal Company have obtained control of the Georgia Central Railroad, with seven thousand miles of track and $9,000,000 gross earnings, and its ocean steamship line of ten steamers, plying between Savannah, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. Half the South is thus put under one gigantic railroad monopoly.

London has been startled by another horrible murder in Whitechapel, the ninth committed by an unknown assassin. All the victims have been unfortunate women of the streets, and all have been horribly butchered. The criminal record is enlarged by the flight of City Treasurer Thomas Axworthy of Cleveland, Ohio, who was nearly a million dollars short in his accounts, and whose defalcation temporarily bankrupted the city.

An accident which proves the value of water-tight compartments occurred on November 10th near Sandy Hook. The _Umbria_ had just begun her voyage to Queenstown when she ran across the freight steamer _Iberia_ during a fog, cutting her in two. Both parts of the _Iberia_ floated away and kept above water for hours, allowing the rescue of all hands. Not so lucky was the Russian steamer _Archangel_, which collided with the Glasgow steamer _Neptune_ in Christiana Bay on October 19th, losing her captain and seventeen of the crew. Another steamer disaster was the burning of the _Ville de Calais_, owing to an explosion of petroleum gas while in port at Calais. Over a dozen lives were lost. As an excursion train was returning from the fetes at Naples, a landslide occurred, crushing the train, and killing ninety persons and wounding seventy. By an explosion in a mine at Frontenac, Kansas, one hundred and eighty persons were buried, not more than fifty of whom were taken out alive. A similar explosion occurred in the Campagnac coal-pit, Aveyron, France, in which eighty miners were killed. Yellow fever still lingers in Florida. It has claimed 384 victims out of a total of 4,469 cases up to November 10th.

The theatrical season thus far is somewhat dull. Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeomen of the Guard" was brought out at the New York Casino about a week after its production in London, and met with no better success. The lively sparkle of "Pinafore" and "Patience" is missing. London has a new playhouse, the Shaftesbury Theatre, opened on October 20th with "As You Like It." New-Yorkers feel a pardonable pride in the success of the "Giants" in obtaining the League baseball championship. Starting third in the race, they obtained first place in the last week in July and held it until the end. Sporting men have been wondering at the remarkable jump of Steve Brodie from the Poughkeepsie bridge into the Hudson River, a distance of 212 feet. Mr. Richard K. Fox, by an offer of $500 and a gold medal, incited this foolhardy attempt, but the boy escaped with slight injuries. Two other Foxes, the famous sisters who forty years ago founded spiritualism, have created a sensation by telling how they humbugged people into believing what they now style a monstrous imposition. An attraction for lovers of art have been the paintings of Vasili Verestchagin, the Russian artist, which are being exhibited in New York. Critics pronounce them marvels of strength in delineation, but a little too realistic for the most refined taste.

Four well-known journalists have died during the month: Joseph M. Levy, proprietor of the London _Daily Telegraph_, who died on October 12th; "Long" John Wentworth, an old journalist, but best known in Chicago politics, whose career closed on October 16th; Colonel R. M. Pulsifer, former owner of the Boston _Herald_, who committed suicide on October 19th; and Napoleon N. Thieblin, a New York financial writer, who died of consumption on November 1st. The obituary record is also augmented by the death at Tashkend of Colonel Nicholas Prejevalski, the famous Russian explorer, just as he was about to start on an exhibition to Thibet.

_REVIEWS._

_History of Tennessee.--The Making of a State_, by James Phelan. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)--This book is to us a great delight. It illustrates so clearly what we have often said, that the success of an author is not so much in what he has to say as in the manner of saying it. This is an English rendition of the French axiom that style is thought. Anyone doubting this has only to remember that Shakespeare translated to any other language than his own is poor stuff. We laughed ourselves into tears once over the play of "Hamlet" rendered into French. The melancholy Dane became a grotesque mountebank, and Shakespeare's thoughts the dreariest sort of commonplace. It is the same of all.

Now, we have had histories and histories. Those of the dull, plodding workers in the worm-holes of time lift out the dust, and dust it remains until taken in hand by genius, and the dust is changed to gold. "The rank is but the guinea's stamp"--but the stamp makes it currency, and it is prized as it passes from hand to hand.

We have histories of States, we have histories of Tennessee--and they are too solemnly stupid, it is said, for consultation. The consultations are so rare that moth, mold, and mildew eat in and destroy them unmolested. We are erecting at an immense expense a huge building at Washington to hold the bound commonplaces of authors. How much better it would be to have a commission of good fellows go through and consign to the flames, or to the Young Men's Christian Association, or the common-school libraries, all the unreadable books! What a bonfire we should have of histories alone! The dry theological husks of learning would give Satan material for his furnaces for some days.

To return to our mutton--and it is tender, appetizing, digestible mutton. We have had histories of States and histories of Tennessee. They are all full of solid facts. Yet if a man can be found who will make affidavit that he has read any one of them with comfort to himself, we shall doubt his sanity or his truthfulness. Here is a young man, and a Member of Congress at that, who takes the same dry bones of fact, and through the magic touch of his pen, lo! the old skeletons take on flesh, drink in life, and through the roseate atmosphere of romance the records are fascinating, and one closes the book with the feeling that pervades our being at the close of a grand opera well rendered, when in the silence the feelings yet vibrate like the waves of the sea when the winds that have vexed them are still.

For the first time we waken to the fact that the earlier settlers of Tennessee were not common people. As a well-painted landscape is more prized than the real view, because of the art, so Mr. Phelan has given us a local coloring that makes these hardy pioneers picturesque and poetic. They make a charming background for such men as John Sevier, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Daniel Boone, Sam Houston, and other noted characters who toiled and wrought, killed and got killed, while the State was forming.

Mr. Phelan tells us in his charming way of the struggles and hardships, the wanton wrongs and wars, until the forests were felled, the swamps drained, fields opened, highways and railroads built, and the wilderness changed in less than three generations to farms and villages, where the busy hum of human life took the hearing from the cry of wild beasts, the yell of Indians, and the sharp crack of the murderous rifles in the hands of robbers.

Our space will not permit our giving much of this fascinating volume. The author seeks to rescue John Sevier from an undeserved oblivion. At the same time he relegates that historic myth Daniel Boone to his deserved contempt as a land-shark and speculator. It is a great comfort to find a man of genius and a student withal going through these sham gods of the past, and puncturing their bran-stuffed bodies until they collapse into insignificance. What a task some iconoclast of the future will have among our war heroes of the late armed conflict! How the great generals whose fame, like kites, has been made of newspapers, will tumble from their pedestals, while the real heroes are lifted into place!

We give space to give one extract not only as an example of our author's style, but for the facts he narrates. Speaking of the early Methodist Church of Tennessee and its pioneer preachers, he says:

"His manners were not polished, but they were far from rude. They
were simple and sincere, and were filled with a real sympathy and
warmed the hearts of his associates. He was plain of speech,
however, though if he wounded the vanity of his hearers he never
wounded their sensibilities. These were his chief limitations: he
was narrow, sectional, and bigoted, unpolished, beyond the grasp of
any but Christian fellowship, taking a hard, austere, and almost
terrible view of the world as it is, having real sympathy alone
with the world as it should be or as he would make it. Religion to
him was the goal of existence; all other interests were greater or
less temptations that drew away from the path of that goal.... It
is not a figure of speech to say that his path was beset with
death, and that for months at a time the penances of a Trappist
monastery were but as luxuries as compared to the daily trials of
hunger and thirst and sleeplessness which fell to his lot. He would
ride for days at a time, through any inclemency of weather, through
any degree of heat or cold, to keep an appointment to preach the
Word to those who hungered for the Lord. The last rain perhaps had
swept a bridge away. A tribe of hostile Indians were prowling
through the forests which he would have to penetrate. A heavy fall
of snow had obscured the trail that led through the intricacies of
a swamp. It was doubtful if he could procure food for man or beast
for days, and it was vain to try to carry a sufficient supply. It
was impossible to procure a guide across 'the forks' of some range
of hills, thickly covered with ravines and with dangerous defiles.
Starvation and all the forms of death lay thick around and before
him. The stoutest heart might have quailed, the most unflinching
sense of duty might have wavered. The rational mind might have
justly demanded a greater degree of equality between the magnitude
of the thing to be accomplished and the difficulties and dangers
attending its accomplishment. All these things gave him not a
moment's pause. Herein was manifest the grandeur of the circuit
rider's character. His mind was not the mind of a rational man, as
we estimate rationality. His profession of faith and his wish for
salvation were sincere to the full extent of their importance as he
estimated it. Religion was a real and a tangible thing to him. The
simple, unhesitating sincerity of his faith was grand, it was
wonderful, it was sublime.... He merged the individual completely
in the work, he lost all sense of personal interest in the craving
to advance the interests of others. He was willing to meet death
for the attainment of the smallest of the tasks set before him. He
was willing to forego all personal comfort as a part of the daily
life of which hunger and thirst were the incidents. Luxury he had
never known or seen.... As the Church increased in numbers and
influence, the pioneer of religion, the one who had hewn for it a
way through the primeval forests, either pushed forward with the
advance line of civilization or yielded to the mellowing influence
of a more genial state of society. As villages developed into towns
with souls enough to repay an exclusive charge, the saddle-bags and
the saddle were exchanged for a settled habitation. Sometimes he
married, and from the first, marriage had practically destroyed his
usefulness as an itinerant. He is now familiar to us only in
tradition. The discipline of Conference assignments of duty, which
carry with them change of habitation, still suggests his noble
activity in the early days of Tennessee history."

And yet, remembering the self-devotion, the sacrifices, the fervor and force of this religious enthusiasm, how little trace was left. The religion of Tennessee to-day is farther removed from the teachings of those early martyrs to what they believed the cause of God than were the Indians they cared little for, or the rough settlers they sought so fervently to convert. There is no trace of Indian or settler, nor the remotest vestige of the religion these preachers so earnestly taught. This because it was the religion of dogmas, founded upon the vengeance of God as they saw it in the chronicles of the Hebrews. They carried what Burns called "tyding o' damnation;" and the long-haired, hollow-eyed, hot gospeller gave vivid descriptions of unending torture of hell to the unbeliever. The love of God, the tender mercy of our blessed Redeemer, were lost in the awful vengeance of an offended and unforgiving Deity.

Poor human nature, as found among those earlier settlers, was frightened. The historian tells us that these attacks, more on the nerves than the conscience, culminated at revivals in what was called the "jerks." He says: "They were involuntary and irresistible. When under their influence the sufferers would dance, or sing, or shout. Sometimes they would sway from side to side, or throw the head backward or forward, or leap, or spring. Generally those under the influence would, at the end, fall upon the ground and remain rigid for hours, and sometimes whole multitudes would become dumb and fall prostrate. As the swoon passed away, the sufferer would weep piteously, moan and sob. After a while the gloom would lift, a smile of heavenly peace would irradiate the countenance, words of joy and rapture would break forth, and conversion always followed."

It came, in time, to be observed that this conversion affected only the converted member's manner. To be very serious and sad, to have profanity give place to prayers, made the substance of the process through which one escaped eternal punishment after death. Faith that is simply a longing for life was confounded with belief that, having its base in evidence, is entirely beyond the control of the would-be believer. The whole theological affair touched the moral conduct of the true believer only slightly. Life was harder in the Church than out of it. Charity, the love of one's neighbor, the forgiveness of sins on the part of the member--how could he forgive when his God would not forgive?--all gave way to a loud assertion of total depravity in the convert, and a profound belief in the dogmas. It was not long before these settlers observed that in dealing with a class-leader they had to be more cautious and guarded against being cheated than in like transactions with the godless.

However, those simple souls upon the border did not differ much from our humanity of to-day. Poor human nature is prone to love in the form itself the object for which the form was created. The white-chokered leader of Sunday-schools who flees to Canada with the cash of the bank where he was cashier is no more of a hypocrite than the president and directors. Religion to all these is one thing, moral conduct quite another. They are on a par with the bandit of Italy who hears mass, goes to confession, and has prayers said in his behalf before going out to rob and murder. Nor do they differ from the committee of negroes that waited on their white preacher and begged him to stop for one Sunday talking about lying and stealing, and "gib 'em one day ob good ole-fashioned glory-to-God religion."

_Men and Measures of Half a Century_, by Hugh McCulloch (Charles Scribner's Sons).--Here is a name that will loom up in the hereafter as that of one of the ablest financiers given our country. It is lost now in the yet lingering glare and blare of war, where little men, magnified by newspapers to gigantic generals, famous for the wanton slaughter of their own men, absorb public attention.

Mr. McCulloch was called to the Secretaryship of the Treasury by President Lincoln, and continued there by Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson. It was the hard task of Mr. McCulloch to rectify the errors of Salmon P. Chase. This great man had won success for the government in the war with the South on his financial blunders. Finding capital so unpatriotic that it would loan the government no money so long as the conflict was in doubt, Chase appealed to the people, and made his loans from them in the shape of promises to pay in the currency. While the soldiers in the field and the average citizen took a patriotic pride in accepting this currency at par, the financiers were as busy as Satan in depreciating it, until the Secretary was driven to buying up those money-getters. They drove a hard bargain with the oppressed Secretary, and this bargain ended in turning over a large part of the fiscal agency of the government, and all the currency, to nearly two thousand corporations.

When Mr. McCulloch took the portfolio of the Treasury our financial condition was most deplorable. The land was flooded with an irredeemable currency, and the source of credit being thus poisoned, all business was mere gambling. To understand this, one has to remember that in the first year of the war a tariff on imports was enacted by Congress that amounted at first to prohibition. In thus closing the door against foreign capitalists the government raised the prices of all manufactured goods against itself. The evil did not end here. As a purchaser of supplies in a paper currency for a million of wasteful and extravagant men in the field, the government again augmented prices to its own hurt. After the battle of Gettysburg, when the timid capital felt that it was safe, not to help an impoverished government, but to make investments, bonds were taken, paid for in the depreciated currency--and when the war ended, a subsidized Congress, leaving the loan in the shape of currency made by the people to take care of itself, enacted that these bonds, bought in currency, should be redeemed, capital and interest, in gold.

This was the situation that faced Mr. McCulloch when sworn in office as Secretary of the Treasury. He was selected by President Lincoln, and continued in office by Andrew Johnson. A more admirable appointment could not have been made. Hugh McCulloch is not only a remarkable man, but one singularly well adapted to the position assigned him. An eminently handsome man, he carried a large, healthy brain on a trunk capable of great endurance. It was health, good health, throughout. To a keen, sensitive intellect he adds a calm, dispassionate temperament and the highest courage. Although modest in manner and reticent in speech, his very presence commanded respect among his opponents, such as all positive characters possess; while his friends felt that their cause, whatever it might be, was safe in his hands. Trained a banker, he had made a success of his banking; and while possessed of a thorough acquaintance with the details of his business, he had also a philosophical knowledge of the science. This is a rare combination.

"How little those people know of their own business!" said Salmon P. Chase to Mr. Richard B. Pullen, of Cincinnati, after a meeting of bankers the able Secretary of the Treasury had called for consultation. It was well for the bankers that such was and is their condition. They are practical men--that is, men who accept the fact as they see it, without bothering their brains as to the reason for it. The business man who sends an order through the telegraph or telephone does not stop to consider what strange agency he is using. If he did, he would not only have his mind taken from his avocation, but lose the chance of a deal in the market. The mind given to and capable of study is one given to dreaming, not acting.

The vast debt owing the people by the government in the shape of currency presented to Secretary McCulloch his first problem that had to be solved before credit could be restored and business again put on a sound, healthy basis. He had the advantage of knowing clearly and precisely the work before him. It was the error of the day, as it is the error now, to confound currency with money. By money is meant the great measure of value in gold and silver coin determined on by trade and accepted the world over since trade first began. Currency, on the contrary, is that form of credit used in paper to facilitate exchange. Now, trade calls for a certain amount of this, not so large as is popularly supposed, but fluctuating in quantity as trade makes its demand. Gold and silver cannot be relied on for this purpose, for their intrinsic value, which makes them a measure of value, forbids. This measure of value, like that of the yard as to length, and the pound as to weight, becomes an abstract idea. When one seeks to purchase a pair of shoes, and the shoemaker says that their, price is five dollars, one may pay for them five bushels of wheat; so that on both sides a value is got at that facilitates the exchange. If currency is used, it, too, has the same nature--with this fact added: the intrinsic value of the paper promise to pay coin lies in the credit of the man, corporation, or government issuing the promise.

"If a man fall down a steep place," said the Hon. Tom Benton, "and get killed with a gold dollar in his pocket, and his bones be found a hundred years after, they will be worth the dollar. If, however, he has a promise to pay a dollar, he has that which depends for value on a board of directors sitting around a mahogany table. It may be worth a dollar and it may be worthless."

This disposes of the fiat money. We cannot create something out of nothing by act of Congress. When the government issues its paper, it coins its credit into currency. Its value, if it has any, lies in that.

Now, when Secretary McCulloch took command of the Treasury Department the credit of the government was at a heavy discount, and getting less every hour. The only class at the North that doubted the ability of the government to maintain itself in the War of Secession was the moneyed class, and this class continued to decry the credit of the government long after the war had been brought to a successful conclusion. This, because the condition of discredit was a source of income. They who had refused to fetch out their money-bags to aid the government when the roar of the first artillery was throbbing along the halls of the Capitol, now sought to fatten on its distress.

Hugh McCulloch found the government financially aground like a stranded whale, with sharks eating in at one end, and vultures and wolves at the other.

And yet all the vast powers of the government are given to the aid and support of this class from which come the sharks, buzzards, and wolves.

The new Secretary had this class to contend with; and he had another in the form of politicians, the representatives of the people that represented everything but the people's patriotism. Mr. McCulloch knew that to restore credit and redeem our currency the volume must be contracted. The moneyed class wanted to be let alone--it always wants that. The politicians wanted more currency--or money, as they called it.

In addition to this trouble, the politicians of the dominant party sought to make a colony of the entire South, to be governed by carpet-baggers and bayonets, because Southern staples could thus be made to contribute to Northern capital, and the ignorant plantation negroes could be used to keep that party in power. In this way half our territory and the most valuable of our products were paralyzed.

Fortunately for the country, President Johnson got into a row with both capitalists and politicians. As a poor white of the South, he hated wealth; as a Southerner, he hated Northern politicians. An ignorant, vicious sort of a man, Johnson was obstinate and courageous. It was, however, a sort of moral courage--if we may use such a term in this connection. Probably his nerve had been demoralized by his intemperate habits. It is true that the man who in the Senate defied the fierce slave-holders was the man whom General Don Carlos Buell cowed at Cincinnati, and who ordered the unfortunate and innocent Mrs Surratt to be hanged within twenty-four hours, with the recommendation to mercy of the court that condemned her before him, and the shrieks of her agonized daughter ringing in his ears.

Be all that as it may, Andrew Johnson, cutting loose from Congress and the moneyed class, took the executive government into his own hands. Few of us realize what a tremendous power is this government of ours. The framers of it made it so, to guard against the people in whose behalf it was created. The politicians in Congress saw this, and sought to free themselves of Johnson through impeachment. They charged him with selecting his cabinet. The charge was absurd, and failed; and while Johnson, with little dignity and less success, went on fighting politicians, Secretary McCulloch used the power given him to contract our currency, restore our credit, and put the country once more on the road to honest trade and its high prosperity.

No one, however, must open Hugh McCulloch's book with any hope of finding therein a history of this financial crisis and his part in the restoration to honor we enjoyed. The author is a modest man, and leaves to others the truth and the praise the truth awards him.

There is a more serious objection to the work, and that comes of Mr. McCulloch's marked ignorance of men. While clear-sighted and profound in his knowledge of great economic subjects, he scarcely knows one man from another, save as they are labelled and described by popular expression. It is amusing to run over his list of prominent men and see under each, if not an official pedestal, one given by social verdict. With the conservatism of his temperament in his judgment of men, he seldom departs from the recorded estimate of the public. The most ludicrous instance of this is his history of Grant and his summing up of the man's supposed character. It is the political fiction and newspaper lie of the day.

From this we can turn to the views of a statesman on finance, the tariff, and on reconstruction with not only pleasure but profit. So far we have three great historical characters to record as financiers: Hamilton because of his luck, Chase for his blunders, and McCulloch for his ability.