Chapter IX: In Society (7)

But though Byron and Heine were thus rapt up into the mountain in visions, their daily walk and life were in the world; its dust and soilure cling to them, we see them wavering and going astray. Their very wanderings bring them nearer to us, who sojourn; their desire, their aspiration, their failures make the wiser use of opportunity possible to any of us who may have been born away from home.

TITUS MUNSON COAN.

THE HOME OF MY HEART.

Not here in the populous town,
In the playhouse or mart,
Not here in the ways gray and brown,
But afar on the green-swelling down,
Is the home of my heart.

There the hillside slopes down to a dell
Whence a streamlet has start;
There are woods and sweet grass on the swell,
And the south winds and west know it well:
'Tis the home of my heart.

There's a cottage o'ershadowed by leaves
Growing fairer than art,
Where under the low sloping eaves
No false hand the swallow bereaves:
'Tis the home of my heart.

And there as you gaze down the lea,
Where the trees stand apart,
Over grassland and woodland may be
You will catch the faint gleam of the sea
From the home of my heart.

And there in the rapturous spring,
When the morning rays dart
O'er the plain, and the morning birds sing,
You may see the most beautiful thing
In the home of my heart;

For there at the casement above,
Where the rosebushes part,
Will blush the fair face of my love:
Ah, yes! it is this that will prove
'Tis the home of my heart.

F. W BOURDILLON.

THE SOUTH, HER CONDITION AND NEEDS.

Sir Robert Peel, shortly before his death, said that what he had seen and heard in public life had left upon his mind a prevailing impression of gloom and grief. What impressed the mind of the English statesman so painfully in reference to his own country must be felt correspondingly by Americans who contemplate the South; for its present condition awakens the anxious solicitude of every thoughtful patriot. A brief mention of some of the evils that afflict her may help toward the ascertainment and application of adequate remedies. Let it be premised that this discussion proceeds in no degree from disloyalty to the Government, nor from unwillingness to accept the legitimate consequences of the war.

Betwixt the North and the South there lingers much estrangement. One serious cause of irritation at the South, which seems irremediable, is the distrust with which those who sustained the Confederate States are regarded by a large number of Northern people. Our motives are habitually misrepresented, our purposes misunderstood, our actions perverted, our character maligned. On our conduct have been placed constructions which seem to spring from direst hate or malice. By representative men Southern States are spoken of as outside the Union; and "a solid South" has been the party appeal most efficacious for arousing sectional and vindictive passion. Every Southern citizen who followed his convictions, and affiliated with the 1,640,000 Democrats of the North, is suspected of disloyalty or treason. No protestations of men or parties, no avowals of governors or legislatures, are accepted as sincere unless accompanied by a support of the Republican party. Party platforms, the support of an Abolitionist like Mr. Greeley, organic laws, are regarded as deceptive because the shibboleth of disloyalty and patriotism is "Republicanism." These persistent efforts to brand us as inferiors, to make us unequals as citizens, to coerce the support of an administration and a party, are based upon our unfitness, morally or intellectually, to decide for ourselves what is best for the country's welfare and perpetuity. We are loyal, and patriotic, and honest only when we sing pæans to the Administration and its favorites. Practically the war has been prolonged, and this policy of disunion alienates, embitters, and prohibits the growth of fraternal sentiments. To prevent a complete and durable reconciliation seems the settled policy of a large party. This proscription and ostracism have helped to create a hopelessness as to the future. A nightmare paralyzes our energies.

The South, if conquered, and honestly accepting the results of the war, needed encouragement and material help instead of discriminating injuries. Her condition was deplorable. All wars are destructive of property and production. To the South the war between the States was exhausting to the utmost degree. Its destructiveness is not computable by figures. The numerical inferiority of the army made it necessary to put into the effective military force every available boy and man; and these were thus withdrawn from productive labor. Much of the labor that remained was applied, not to the production of wealth, but to such manufactures as were needful only in war. For four dreadful years, like the _triste noche_ described by Prescott, with ports closed, and under the imperious necessity of evoking and utilizing every possible warlike agency, this cessation of wealth-producing industry, this drain upon material resources, this decimation of our best men, this waste of capital and exhaustion of the country from the Rio Grande to the Chesapeake bay, continued remorselessly. Superadd the emancipation of 4,000,000 slaves, the sudden extinction of $1,600,000,000 of property, the disorganization of the labor system, the upheaval of society, the "stupendous innovation" upon habits, modes of thought, allegiance, amounting almost to a change of civilization, and it will be easy to see that the South started upon her new career with nothing but genial climate, fertile soil, and brave hearts. Absence of capital, of concentrated wealth, made it necessary to begin _de novo_. Slavery and profitableness of crops had prevented diversity of pursuits. Agriculture, applied to a few products, was almost our sole occupation. Former habits had disinclined to mechanical pursuits or manual labor, and our towns, since 1865, have been crowded with young men, who have sought in clerkships, agencies, and professions the means of support. These employments, if furnishing remunerative wages, are not wealth-producing, add nothing to capital, and have aggravated the general impoverishment.

These evils have been intensified by vicious legislation and bad government. Federal legislation has been much in the interest of stock-jobbers, speculators, monopolists, so that "corners" have been fostered, and labor has paid heavy and depressing tribute to fatten greedy cormorants. The present system of banking violates the established principles of currency, and is in utter contradiction to what, for a decade, by consent of all parties and financiers, was the policy of the Government. Bad as the system is inherently by injurious legislation, its benefits are secured to a favored class, and by combination with other corporations, notably railroad companies, the business of the country is largely in the control of a few monopolists, who rule and grow rich in spite of the laws of political economy. Promissory notes, printed with pictures on fine paper, have been substituted for the money of the Constitution, and our young people are growing up with the notion that this rag currency is a legitimate measure of value and a legal solvent of debts.

So marked has been this class legislation in the interest of capital, that a Senator of the United States, Mr. Wallace of Pennsylvania, says, "From the beginning of the present Administration down to the adjournment of Congress in August, 1876, every financial statute has had but one purpose, and that purpose to increase the value of the bonded indebtedness of the Government." Statistics show how insecure is business, on what vicious principles it is transacted, and how rapidly property is concentrating in the hands of a few. In 1874 there were 5,830 failures for a total of $155,000,000, and in 1875 the failures increased to 7,740, aggregating a loss of $201,000,000. In both North and South there has been a frightful increase of indebtedness by towns and cities, counties and States--thirty-eight States owe an aggregate of $382,000,000--so that taxpayers groan in purse and spirit, and are deeply concerned to find a way of honest payment.

Taxation has been and is a potent instrument of wrong and corruption. To pay the national debt increased taxation was, of course, necessary and proper, but taxation should have been adjusted to the rights of honest creditors and the lessened pecuniary ability of taxpayers. The Federal and local taxes of the last eleven years, according to high authority, amount to not less than $7,500,000,000. Never in modern times was revenue collected in such a complicated and ruinous manner. Mr. Curtis tells us one-fourth of the revenue is lost in the collection. If the collection and expenditure of revenue be the tests for determining the wisdom of a government, then ours is not "the best the world ever saw."

Extravagant expenditure is closely connected with enormous revenues. Economy of administration is a lost art. Federal expenditure in 1860, exclusive of payment of public debt, was $1.94 per head. In 1870 it was $3.52 per head, and in 1875 $3.38. The $4,500,000,000 of Federal taxes[7] of the last eleven years have not been exclusively appropriated to reduction of debt and defraying necessary expenditures. Officials have been needlessly multiplied, jobs have been created, peculation is common, and millions have been squandered on contracts made with hungry partisans. Such an exhaustion of national resources is governmental robbery. In the purer days it was a political maxim that no more money was to be taken from the people than was necessary for the constitutional and economical wants of the Government. Large revenues and large expenditures are mutually recreative. Mr. Calhoun, the most sagacious and philosophical statesman of this century, said, in 1839, "I am disposed to regard it as a political maxim in free States, that an impoverished treasury, once in a generation at least, is almost indispensable to the preservation of their institutions and liberty." All experience shows that excessive revenue and large expenditures increase the patronage of the government and corrupt public and private morals. Some palliation may be found in the fact that wars are demoralizing, necessitate much assumption of power, and that our conflict was gigantic; but after all due allowances the corruptions in America must find a parallel in that period of English history when the sovereign was the pensioner of a foreign potentate. The centennial anniversary of our republic finds a record so scandalous that all honest men blush, and the Fourth of July eulogists have to make the humiliating confession of much of vice and shame in our national life, of a decline from the former high standard of political and moral purity, and of the blister of corruption in high places, upon Executive and judiciary, upon laws, and on the acts of prominent officials. (See speeches of Dr. Storrs and Hon. C. F. Adams.)

[7] This is somewhat in excess of the actual amount, which is,
however, quite large enough, $3,809,722,765; viz., customs,
$1,973,589,621; internal revenue, $1,826,185,813; direct tax,
$9,947,331. It is well to remember, too, that the expenditures of
the Government have decreased one-half in this period; viz., from
$520,809,417, in 1866, to $258,469,797 in 1876. Of this decrease,
thirty-three millions is in the interest on the public
debt.--ED. GALAXY.

As cause and consequence of oppressive taxes, and wasteful and corrupt extravagance, I may instance the centripetal tendencies of the Federal Government. The patriot must deprecate the rapid strides toward consolidation. Our government was designed as a government of clearly-defined limitations upon power. It is now practically absolute. In its complex character, a division of powers mutually exclusive betwixt Federal and State governments, "divisibility of sovereignty," as some phrase it, was contemplated. Now the States are provinces dependent on, submissive to, the central head, just as the Colonies were looked upon, prior to our independence, as a species of feudatories for the benefit of the mother country. By popular vote, by elastic constructions or palpable violations of the Constitution, by unprecedented assumptions, our Federal system has been revolutionized. It is the height of absurdity to talk of the restrictions of a written Constitution, when a dominant majority interprets finally that instrument, and there are no remedies to protect against invasion or encroachment.[8] It is a mere glittering generality to boast of a constitutional republic, if a President can violate the organic law with impunity, or if Congress is restrained in its assumptions only by its own sense of justice. Much recent executive, legislative, and judicial action has tended to absorb State rights and prerogatives. Mr. Boutwell's proposition to remand a State to territorial pupilage would be but the legal enactment and the logical sequence of what has had the enthusiastic approval of a large number of citizens. Encroachments have been so numerous and violent, submission has been so tame, that governors are coolly set aside on the demand of a petty marshal, and legislatures on the bidding of Mr. Jones. Once States were supposed to have the right of eminent domain; to have exclusive control of education, of litigation among its own citizens; to determine the elective franchise; to regulate the relations of parent and child, husband and wife, guardian and ward; but that was in the purer days of the republic, when States were not mere counties, but political communities, with, a large residuum of undelegated powers. The earlier amendments to the Constitution imposed checks and limitations upon the general Government, because of the watchful jealousy on the part of the States of their sovereignty and independence. Following the tendency to centralize, to despotize, the late amendments are in the direction of consolidation, and take away from the States what was once universally regarded as their _exclusive_ prerogative in reference to the elective franchise. Now, under amendments and "_appropriate_ legislation for carrying them into effect," the _national_ Government can control voting, make a registration of voters, and very soon, if there be no arrest of tyranny, the ballot box will be under the guardianship of Presidential appointees. Federal election laws thus degrade States into petty municipalities and subvert liberty.

[8] Not only that government is tyrannical which is tyrannically
administered, but all governments are tyrannical which have not
in their constitution a sufficient security against arbitrary
power.--_Burgh's Pol. Disquis._, 378.

Passing from these grievances, applicable to the whole Union, I approach what is to my apprehension the most unmatchable outrage ever inflicted by a civilized people. Some acts, like the partition of Poland, stand out on the pages of history as disgraceful national crimes; but most of them shade into minor offences compared with the crime-breeding, race-endangering, liberty-imperiling savagery of conferring the right of suffrage upon the negroes _en masse_. In other countries liberty has been not so much a creation as a growth. In conservative England, suffrage has been slowly, temperately enlarged, always preserving restrictions so as not to commit the destinies of the kingdom to an ignorant mob. Giving the elective franchise to the suddenly emancipated negroes, placing the government of States in the hands of such a class, wholly unprepared by education or experience, if not such a repeating crime, would be a farce for the ages. Every person of the least intelligence knows that generally the voting of the negroes is a mere sham. He votes as a machine. He is the tool of the demagogue, the pawn of a political party. That men with no intelligent understanding of rights and duties, unable to read, untrained in political affairs, wholly ignorant of the commonest matters pertaining to government, superstitious, credulous, victims of impostors, paying no capitation tax, should decide upon grave questions of organic or statute law, upon the financial or foreign policy of the country, should control counties, cities, States, is an offence that will stink in the nostrils of coming centuries. What has occurred since the Presidential election is demonstration that both parties at the North regard unlimited negro suffrage as subversive of the principle of reliance upon moral worth and clear intelligence. The presence of the military in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, the hurrying to and fro of partisans, the secret conclaves and cabalistic telegrams, the jealous superintendence of the counting of votes, the criminations and recriminations in reference to fraud and intimidation, are the legitimate results of the attempt to sustain a party by such extreme medicine. Our novel experiment of free government cannot endure many more such tests. Prof. Huxley, speaking to Americans during his late visit, said: "You and your descendants have to ascertain whether the great mass of people will hold together under the forms of a republic and the despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether centralization will get the better without the actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy." It need not take long to work out the problem if the ballot box is to be controlled by ignorance. Sometimes we are lectured to be grateful to the North for its magnanimity toward the South. Legislation does not sustain the self-eulogy. It is alleged that mercy was shown to "rebels and traitors." Passing over the _petitio principii_ in the phraseology, a thousand times better it would have been to have hung President, and Cabinet, and every Congressman, and every general, than to have fastened upon us this incurable cancer, eating up the life-blood of the Union.

In the South, the administration of government in some instances has been marked by oppressive tyranny and open corruption. Incompetent and dishonest men have been appointed to positions, and with full knowledge of their wrong doings have been retained to accomplish party ends. This injustice and tyranny have demoralized somewhat our own people. Tyranny always corrupts. A lower standard of morality is first tolerated, and then becomes popular. Lax motives of honor are taking the place of chivalrous integrity. Payment of honest debts is evaded. Grinding poverty has made some unduly covetous of riches. Enormous taxation, selfish and immoral legislation, have partially undermined the foundations of private virtue. The ease and frequency with which the rewards of honest toil are filched away give insecurity to property and take away much of the stimulus to diligent toil. Some have sunk into despair, while others, with more of unsubdued energy, are willing for almost anything to turn up which gives promise or possibility of change.

The South in seeking relief need not delude herself by reliance upon any _party_ to reform evils and restore prosperity. Some difficulties are independent of party action, or even political policy, and have their origin in more general causes. A portion of the commercial and financial troubles is probably due to some "wider misadjustment of labor and capital" than can be rectified by one country, and requires broad and sound statesmanship. The Republican party is held together, in part, by the "cohesive power of public plunder," or compacted into unity by distrust or hatred of the South. The Democratic party, as unsound as its antagonist on the vital questions of tariff, currency, finances, and the character of the General Government, has practised the fatal maxim that "to the victors belong the spoils," and, in special localities, has been implicated in corruption. The history of parties in England and the United States shows that any party long in power will become corrupt. To rely upon any party, or the wisdom or sense of justice of any government, for protection of property or guaranty of civil or religious liberty, is to lean upon a broken reed; for rights never enforce themselves, and are soon gone unless sustained by more potent means than the justice or honor of those in power. A President is impotent of himself, soon passes into private life, and is at best but a man.

Alike futile is the notion, sometimes finding audible expression, that an arbitrary government or a monarchy would bring relief. Our fathers, in throwing off a kingly government and setting up a constitutional republic, acted in the full light thrown on popular rights by all preceding history. They did not live in prehistoric or barbaric times, but acted with rare wisdom and patriotism. More sagacious men never planned a government, and blindly and suicidally would we act to prefer or accept a monarchy. The centuries of the past are eloquent with wisdom and plethoric with instructive examples on this subject. God has never given any exclusive rights to special families, and all historical records confirm, with the Scriptures, the folly of choosing a king. How often in such governments is public policy dependent on royal whims, on palace intrigues, on the taste or caprice of the boudoir! Monarchy has been the rule of violence; inequality and centralization are of its essence. The rebellion in England and the French revolution were the long-delayed protests of outraged peoples against ruinous taxation and hurtful tyranny and cankerous corruption. When the disgraceful crimes by men in high places were exposed last year European journals made themselves merry over the corruptions which they alleged were the legitimate outgrowths of democratic institutions. In the first place, our Government is not a democracy, and never was intended to be. Secondly, monarchies are not in a condition to cast the first stone. Italy, Spain, Austria, Russia, and France have had corruption enough to make them blush. As England is held up for our copying, and is less censurable than the others, I cite a few instances from her history. May, in "Constitutional History of England," Vol. I., p. 299 says: "Our Parliamentary history has been tainted with this disgrace of vulgar bribes for political support from the reign of Charles II. far into that of George III." For shamefulness of public life Charles II. stands without a rival. He was a pensioner of the King of France, and applied to his own privy purse large sums of money which had been appropriated by Parliament for carrying on the war. The equipoise designed to be secured in the National Legislature by the House of Commons was defeated because the House was at once dependent and corrupt. Borough nominations, places, pensions, contracts, shares in loans and lotteries, and even pecuniary bribes, secured the ascendency of Crown and Lords in the councils and government of the State. Sunderland, Secretary of State under James II., stipulated to receive 25,000 crowns from the King of France for services to be rendered. Walpole's and Pelham's administrations were notorious for the very audacity of their corruptions. In the reign of Anne Parliamentary corruption was extensive and unblushing. Sir John Trevor, the Speaker, accepted a bribe and did the dirty work of bribing other members. In the reign of George I., during his first Parliament, 271 members held offices, pensions, and sinecures; in the first of George II., 257. In 1776 Lord Chatham accused the ministers of "servility, incapacity, corruption." Macaulay says Lord North's administration was supported by vile and corrupt means, and the King, George III., was not only cognizant of Parliamentary bribery, but advised it and contributed money to it. Although there has been much improvement in the character and purity of the public men, yet as late as 1829 the pension list was above £750,000.

The principle of a representative constitutional republic is right. Much of the evil which afflicts us is the result of a departure from our original system; is an accident rather than essential, and is certainly not to be cured by a monarchical government.

In suggesting some remedies or palliatives for present ills it is not needful to startle by novelties. Truth is generally commonplace, honesty always. A return to justice and right, frugality and economy, as applicable to the body politic and to individual life, a recurrence to fundamental principles, are of prime importance.

As a people we must, if possible, preserve what remains of the Constitution and of the federative system. Sober, honest purpose can reform some abuses. Imperious necessity will compel the North to take effective steps for restoring the violated purity of the Government. If present tendencies are not arrested, liberty will be sacrificed. As the tendency of every government is to excess, a constitution is more or less perfect according as it is full of limitations of authority. The grant and the distribution of public functions should be accompanied with safeguards. Our Federal Constitution cautiously delegates to various public functionaries certain powers of government, defines and limits the powers thus delegated, and reserves to the people of the States their sovereignty over all things not delegated. Our organic law thus seeks to restrain the Government within narrow and prescribed limits, to guard weaker and dissimilar interests against inequality, to interpose efficient checks, to prevent the stronger from oppressing the weaker. Ours is a government under a written compact, and _in its purity the best ever devised_. The war between the States is much misunderstood. It was a gigantic conflict of _political_ ideas, a controversy, not for or between dynasties, but on the nature and character and power of the Federal Government. Three things were settled by the war:

1. Emancipation and citizenship of the negroes.

2. The surrender of any claim of resort to secession in case of dispute as to powers of the Government, or as a remedy for violated compact.

3. The recognition of such a person as a citizen of the United States, independent of citizenship in a State.

Besides these, nothing else of a political character was settled, and the second was determined only by the stern arbitrament of war. The right of search was, however, similarly adjusted, and the treaty of peace effected at Ghent, on December 24, 1814, contains no allusion to the _casus belli_. There are few, if any, who do not rejoice at the accomplishment of the first. The mode of emancipation was not such as we would have chosen; but as the problem baffled the wisdom of all the statesmen of the past, we may as well be grateful that African slavery no longer exists to perplex and confound patriots and Christians. The opinions of the framers of the Constitution were reversed on these three subjects by the war. All else remains intact, or can be put _in statu quo ante bellum_. The Constitution was not abolished. No vital principle of the Federal system, State interposition excepted, was destroyed. "The invasions of the Constitution have resulted from administrative abuses," says Governor Jenkins, "and not from structural changes in the government. This distinction should be kept constantly in view. In a complex government like our own let it never be conceded that a power once usurped is thenceforth a power transferred, nor that a right once suppressed is for that cause a right extinguished, nor that a Constitution a thousand times violated becomes a Constitution abolished." The war did not decide that the powers of the Federal Government were indefinite and unlimited. That is subsequent usurpation. The war did not decide that State lines were to be obliterated, State flags torn down, State governments reduced to municipalities, and the elements of civil authority fused into one conglomerate and centralized mass. Whatever may be the fate or the construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, they cannot mean the concentration of all power at Washington and the complete control of the States by the general Government. Our Constitution-makers could not have contemplated political irresponsibility; that the minority should be at the mercy of the majority; and that the residuary mass of undelegated powers was to be swallowed up by the delegated. The fathers felt that no body of men could be safely entrusted with unrestrained authority, and they knew that "all restrictions on authority unsustained by an equal antagonist power must for ever prove wholly inefficient in practice." That a mere party majority can rule as they please, is hateful despotism. A majority, unhindered by any rule but their discretion, is anything but free government; for human nature cannot endure unlimited power, and bodies of men are not more discreet in their tyranny than individual tyrants. The distinction between the granting and the executing, the Constitution-making and the law-making power, is to be reaffirmed. The general Government and the States have separate and distinct objects and peculiar interests--"the States, acting separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar interests, and acting jointly, through one general government, representing and protecting the interests of the whole; and thus perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just."--_VI. Calhoun_, 66.

We need civil service reform in the United States, States, and cities, reducing the number, increasing the competency and responsibility of office-holders, and abolishing the pestiferous maxim that to the victors in a party contest belong of right the offices of the country. We need rigid economy, public and private, civic purity, honest administration. To take a citizen's money, except for the just and economical administration of affairs, is governmental robbery. Economy is not possible in Federal, or State, or municipal governments, with high taxes. Men will steal. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Handling large sums of the people's money is a temptation before which many have yielded. "Economy and accountability are virtues without which free and popular governments cannot long endure."

Closely allied is the good old homely virtue of honesty. Under the temptation of loss of property, men have sought to accumulate by any methods and get back to ante-secession pecuniary condition. Public corruption has been contagious. Men contract debts loosely and improvidently, and wipe out easily by bankrupt laws. Tweedism has fastened itself upon elections. False registration, ballot-box stuffing, the machinery and appliances for fraud, are not the exclusive practice of one section or party. "Cheating never thrives." It is as true in politics as in religion that there is no good in sin. It is essentially and always evil. Party is a great tyrant at best, and the caucus system enslaves men, and few have the courage to disobey its edicts and encounter its vengeance; but when party to the terrible enginery of a caucus, controlled by the vulgar and the vicious, adds fraud and bribery, woe be to our republic and to our civilization!

An indispensable factor to the product of the South's upbuilding is the introduction of a more healthful public opinion as a positive element in politics. It ought to be an ever-present and a permanent force in elections and the choice of candidates. Any thing like union of church and State, or the prescribing of a Christian profession as a test for office, is not to be thought of, except to resist the first hint at such a possibility; but such opposition should not prevent moral and Christian men from demanding honesty in officials, fairness and openness in party machinery, and common decency and morality in candidates. In cities, political preferment and success in nominating caucuses are largely the result of party machinery by "pot-house politicians," by grog shops and gambling saloons, and by men not conspicuous for virtue or intelligence. So foul is the atmosphere of party politics, to such dishonoring and degrading practices are applicants for office often reduced, so necessary is it to spend money corruptly and to pension the _claqueurs_ and intriguers and wire-pullers, that the virtuous and patriotic are often disgusted, and many Christians are unwilling to peril spiritual health and life by contact with such impurities. The complications and "trimming" expediences often deter the pure and refined from political associations, and those who control American politics are quite content to dispense with the presence, except at the ballot-box, of those who ought to give tone and direction to public opinion. Moral character, sobriety, decency, chastity, are not the elements of availability in the selection of candidates. Drunkards, profligates, connivers at fraud, plotters, are apparently as acceptable for nomination and election as those whose intelligence and virtues should commend them to public approval. Macaulay has a sentiment which ought to be printed on satin and hung up in every house to be memorized by every voter: "The practice of begging for votes is absurd, pernicious, and altogether at variance with the true principles of representative government. The suffrage of an elector ought not to be asked, or to be given, as a personal favor. It is as much for the interests of constituents to choose well as it can be for the interest of a candidate to be chosen.... A man who surrenders his vote to caresses and supplications forgets his duty as much as if he sold it for a bank-note. I hope to see the day when an Englishman (an American) will think it as great an affront to be courted and fawned upon in his capacity of elector as in his capacity of juryman."

Not lightly fall
Beyond recall
The written scrolls a breath can float:
The crowning fact,
The kingliest act
Of freedom is the freeman's vote.

The too common practice in all portions of the Union honors vice and gives scant encouragement to noblest qualities. If a community bestow its rewards and honors on inferior or vicious men, higher qualities will decay and perish or seek other fields. If honors and rewards be allotted to the noble and the good, the demand will develop intelligence and nobility. In America there is lamentably a plentiful lack of great men. Whatever may be the demand, the supply is inadequate. Woe to the country, said Metternich, whose condition and institutions no longer produce great men to manage its affairs. The country needs men of earnest convictions and noble aims, "to whom power is not a possession to be grasped, but a trust to be fulfilled." A nation can have no purer wealth than the stainless honor of its public men. The philosophic Macintosh enunciated almost a maxim when he said, "There can be no scheme or measure as beneficial to the State as the mere existence of men who would not do a base act for any public advantage." By some, politics seems to be regarded as a game in which the sharpest are to win. Federal, State, or municipal government can never be safely committed to any party or men as the result of fraud or connivance at fraud.

Since the Federal Government dispensed with a period of probation as preparatory to suffrage, and refused to leave the whole question of suffrage to the States where it properly belongs, the presence of the negroes becomes to the South fearfully ominous of peril. Giving the right to vote to the ignorant and incapable is only a part of the evils associated with the inhabitancy of such a multitude of citizens of a different and inferior race. Such is the climate of the South, the fertility of soil, the ease of bare subsistence, that little labor and but scant clothing and shelter are needed by the negroes, with their thriftlessness, and without taste or desire for any large measure of artificial comforts, and with few incentives to patient industry. Their presence will prevent any early or large immigration of Europeans. The removal of the negroes is an obvious suggestion, but the policy pursued toward the Indians, undesirable, as coinhabitants, but as capable as negroes of free government, seems impracticable from want of territory for colonization and because of the large number of the negroes. This displacement at present may be impossible, and would certainly be tedious and expensive. Close contact of the two races becomes a necessity of this coöccupancy of territory. The Southern white people should cultivate kindliest feelings and make wise and strenuous efforts for the improvement of their former slaves. Already the whites bear the expense of educating the blacks. In the last six years the expenditure in Virginia for "colored schools" has amounted to near $1,668,000, and it would be safe to say that one and a half millions of this sum were paid by white citizens. So also we take care of their blind, and deaf, and dumb, and idiotic, pay for the trial and safe-keeping of their criminals, and bear the burdens of government. Impartial justice should be administered without reference to race, color, or previous condition; freedom and the right to hold and inherit property should be guaranteed; protection against all violence or wrong should be afforded; but there should be formed no party nor other affiliations which may tend to efface the line of social separation, or ignore the predestined distinction of color. The attempt in Africa to Europeanize the negro and ignore his idiosyncrasies as a race has utterly failed. The races here should be kept from abnormal admixture. Rigid laws, springing from and enforced by an inflexible public opinion, should prevent intermarriage. Miscegenation will degrade the Caucasian. Red and white deteriorate, _a fortiori_, white and black. The fusion would lower the white race in the scale of civilization, of moral and mental power, and would reproduce the ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, and chronic revolutions of Mexico with her mongrel population.

A felt want of the South is the restoration of old-fashioned love of country. A sore need is to feel in our souls, as a passion, that this is _our_ country; that _we_ have part and lot in it; and to be deeply interested in its welfare and perpetuity. To keep alive animosities is unchristian. Brooke found it impossible to frame an indictment against a whole people. It ought to be equally hard to involve a whole party, or geographical section, in sweeping accusations of injustice, and tyranny, and fraud. Strong as is the provocation at times to bitterness and hatred, the South should not cherish resentment, but rather seek that which makes for peace and reconciliation. It is better, as far as possible, to obliterate unpleasant memories, to practise toleration and forgiveness, to cultivate a genuine patriotism, ardent love for this ancient birth land of the free. It is easy by cheap rhetoric to open wounds afresh and inflame hostility; but every true son and daughter of the South should strive not to transmit a legacy of hate, nor make our land a Poland or an Ireland. The noble ambition ought rather to be to lift up the South and the United States to the level of its privileges, and in the future to harmonize the ideal and the actual. The South needs the development of her material resources, the diversification of industry, the construction of permanent highways, the power of machinery in its manifold applications, sounder notions of labor, rigid economy and responsibility in all offices. The whole country should encourage universal education in universities, colleges, academies, and public schools; elevate the tone of a free press; preserve an able and independent judiciary; insist upon juster and more enlarged ideas of official duty; maintain the principles of constitutional liberty and absolute freedom of religion, and above all, a spirit of subordination to the divine law, and a reverent acknowledgment of Him in whose hands are the destinies of nations.

J. L. M. CURRY.

DRIFT-WOOD.

TALK ABOUT NOVELS.

IF the St. Louis preacher who lately tilted against novels chose judiciously his points of attack, he presumably won a victory. His own Sunday-school library is very likely filled with wishy-washy fiction for bright young minds that might be harvesting works worth remembering, whether of romance or history. The prudent Quakers of Germantown rejoice in a free library without a novel, and a librarian who never read one. Indiscriminate novel reading is as sorry a tipple as addiction to newspapers, which also, in fact, are largely works of the imagination. Besides, the moral of even a goody-good story may be ingeniously twisted by perverse readers. The other day a lad was indicted in England for breaking into the Rev. Mr. Sherratt's schoolroom, where he stole some books and cake, trudging off with them in a wheelbarrow at midnight. He was an old pupil, the son of respectable parents; in his pocket was a book entitled "Industry Without Honesty," and his ambition was to become a _Chevalier d'Industrie_ of the sort he had been reading about. It is said that Dumas's story, "Monsieur Fromentin," so spread the rage for lottery gambling that the author in great grief bought up and burned every copy he could lay hands on. For generations English youth have turned footpads or thieves, in emulation of Sir Richard Turpin, Lord John Sheppard, and other knights of the road whose careers are set forth in the shining pages of biographical romance. French youngsters have a like exemplar in Louis Cartouche. Two San Francisco lads are now in jail for trying to rob a stagecoach, in Claude Duval style--luckless little victims, knocked down by the passengers in a way not recorded in the novels that had ruined them. Lads are for ever running away to sea in imitation of some Jack Halyard or Ben the Bo's'n; and surely we know that urchins of all ages and sizes are picked up on their way west to "fight Injuns," thanks to their dogs'-eared dime novels narrating the prowess of Buffalo Bills and Texas Jacks. Boyish sympathy goes out toward the Paul Cliffords, the Arams of romance. I remember, as if it were of yesterday, the sad fate of Red Rover, and how the overwrought little reader, when he came to the hero's death, put by the book that he could not finish, and walked about in the twilight of a Saturday whose hours had slipped unnoticed away, inconsolable with sympathy and grief.

But the preacher need not rest his case on "Mike Martin," or "Rinaldo Rinaldini," or "The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main," or any of the predatory heroes embalmed in story for the improvement of youth, since he has also the field of poisonous French romance to complain of, with its imitations in our tongue. In short, he can indict in a lump the bad books of fiction, and against the good he may charge that they exhaust our tears and passion on imaginary distresses.

Still, nothing would then have been said of novels which could not be said in a degree of the newspapers, the drama, the law, the pulpit itself. We must not judge them by their worst fruits. "Pamela" was praised from the pulpits of its day, although, to be sure, it would hardly now be given to young women. I well remember, when prowling about the homestead bookcase, coming upon Rowland Hill's "Village Dialogues." Their characters were fictitious, the distresses imaginary; still I presume the St. Louis preacher would not object to "Socinianism Unmasked," the "Evils of Seduction," and the "Awful Death of Alderman Greedy." Everybody sees how fiction is a weapon of philanthropy. Christ himself taught by parables. Clergymen resort to romance to achieve what the sermon cannot do, and men of science to achieve what the essay cannot do. Religious newspapers publish serial novels. The anti-slavery, temperance, prison reform, and poor law agitations owe immeasurably to novels. Daniel Webster said of Dickens that he had done more to ameliorate the condition of the British poor than all the statesmen that ever sat in Parliament. And this present wonderful movement of the Jews to recover Palestine--what does it not owe to a novel?

A noble influence, too, comes from some novels that do not aim to be _doctrinaire_ or proselyting. A story of Thackeray is a tonic to the scorn of base action; a story of Charles Kingsley is a trumpet call to Christian duty; a story of George Eliot is an inspiration to high thought and honorable living. Some of her sisterhood are probably capable of uneasily disliking George Eliot because she has a depth of intelligence quite beyond their plummet, which the world admires; but I should think that most women would be proud of the strength and vast influence of one who, in succeeding to the royal line of feminine novelists, has carried its triumphs far beyond anything achieved by Miss Burney, Jane Austin, Miss Porter, Miss Martineau, Charlotte Bronté, and Georges Sand.

We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill. We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use, saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens: "What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place, and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of mankind--to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their children's children--but must think of his calling with a solemn and humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always!"

Most of us have known an era in life when we looked down on novels like Miss Muloch's, with their gentle refrain: "He was so handsome, how could she help loving him? She was so beautiful, what could he do but adore her?" Better worth reading were stories of frontier trails, knightly tourneys, chases of smuggler and corvette--those stimulating feasts that we swallowed rather too hastily for health, and which, I grant the St. Louis preacher, formed so rich a mixture that nightmare sometimes followed a _pâté_ of adventure and murder on which we had too bountifully supped.

Yet who would willingly forget the terror of that moment when Crusoe discovers the footprints on the lonely shore? I fancy many a lad has borne testimony to the genius of De Foe by popping his curly pate beneath the bed clothes at that awful juncture, in as great fright as if he himself had just seen the track in the sand. Or perhaps, living by the seaside, he has rowed his wherry to some neighboring bunch of rocks, to take possession of it, Crusoe fashion, bribing some less enthusiastic companion to act the rôle of Friday, until, unworthy of his faithful prototype, the extemporized Friday sulks and throws off his allegiance. I lately heard that Crusoe's isle was now tenanted by industrious German colonists, who had planted and stocked it, not like Robinson, but under all agricultural advantages, and that Juan Fernandez was a regular entrepot for whale ships. Think of it! Yankee tars revictual where the lonely mariner saw cannibals feasting! But it is only Selkirk's domain that is thus invaded; Crusoe's right there is none to dispute; safe in the keeping of genius, his monarchy can no more be annexed by filibuster or colonist than the magic isle of Prospero.

Musing on popular novels, one is struck by the changes of fashion in fiction. Who now reads "Clarissa," which Dr. Johnson pronounced the first book of the world for knowledge of the human heart; which D'Alembert styled unapproachably greater than any romance ever written in any language; for which Diderot predicted an immortality as illustrious as that of Homer? Who reads "Cecilia," which Burke sat up all night to read? The romances over which our great grandmothers simpered and sighed are to our age intolerable bores. Reade, not Richardson, is the man for our money; Miss Braddon, not Miss Burney, is the rage at the circulating libraries. Whither are gone those stories that a few years ago could not be printed fast enough--"The Lamplighter," "Hot Corn," and the rest of that brood? They are hidden under dust in the alcoves, or have been carted off to the pulp mill. Could mind of man have fancied, an oblivion so swift for those favorites of the public? Could mortal ken have foretold its present fate for the "Wide, Wide World"?--a story now quite dropped out of sight, but once the town's rage, and whose heroine I remember as a sort of inexhaustible human watering cart with the tear tap always turned on.

What has become, too, of those learned novels, patterned after Bulwer--extracts from Lemprière in dialogue form, sandwiched with layers of low life? "Surely, my dear niece, you remember what Athenæaus quotes on this subject from the Leontium of Hermesianax of Colophon, the friend of Philetas?" "Perfectly, aunt, and methinks mention is also made of the same elegiac poem in Pausanias, and again in Antoninus Liberalis, the latter saying," etc. Where, I say, are the novels in that vein, with their charming mixture of murder, mythology, and metaphysics? They have their run, strut their brief hour, and give way to some "Madcap Violet" or "Helen's Babies." Never fear a lack of fresh novels. If the lads lose Mayne Reid, they find Jules Verne. The secret is an open one: the novel is the best paid branch of literature--always excepting Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets. Times have changed since "Evelina" was sold for £20.

Perhaps of all novelists Victor Hugo receives the largest earnings for a single work. One of his clerical enemies, Mgr. de Ségur, has bitterly attacked him for his gains--"$100,000 for 'Les Misérables' alone," said the critic in angry extravagance. But Hugo's admirers will not grudge his gains.

The English have put a premium on prolix novels by giving them a regulation length of just three volumes, to be cold for a guinea and a half. This droll uniformity has much less basis of reason than the old custom of writing tragedies and comedies just five acts long; for there is sense in making a play last out an evening. Trouble to writer and weariness to reader must come of spinning a novel against space, overlaying a plot with trivial incidents, and stuffing a story with padding, merely to reach a standard of length both arbitrary and absurd. Yet prodigious was the patience of our novel-reading ancestry prior to Fielding. The "Grand Cyrus" was issued in ten volumes, "Clarissa Harlowe" in eight, and sometimes an heroic romance reached twelve. Jules Janin puts Richardson on Shakespeare's level, and modern French readers appreciate "Clarissa" more than English--but they get it abridged. Mr. Dallas, following Janin, has abridged the famous novel with care for English readers, too, and a more recent editor likewise aims to evade its monotony by striking out "tediously unnecessary passages and unimportant details," though old-fashioned readers may still like to take "Clarissa" in all its prolixity. As to the romances that preceded it, they seem to our age duller than any ever written--"huge folios of inanity," said Sir Walter, "over which our ancestors yawned themselves to sleep." I warrant their descendants never yawned over "Guy Mannering."

Still, modern novels as a class are more apt to be voluble than prolix. Story-writers like Trollope, Mrs. Edwards, and McCarthy amaze us at the ductility which the English tongue assumes for them. They seem less to compose than to _reel off_ their pages. To Trollope's free-and-easy flow is there any stop? None, surely, through mental exhaustion. His bright loquacity and productiveness remind one of that bewitched salt mill in the story of Nicholas, which ground on for ever, without effort or wearying, until it had salted the whole sea.

PRIMOGENITURE AND PUBLIC BEQUESTS.

SOMETHING was said, in a former "Driftwood" essay, regarding the frequent dedications of private fortunes, in America, to public uses. We see a philanthropic millionaire stripping himself, even in hale life, of all his wealth save a slender annuity and the portions reserved for his heirs and legatees; or we see the bulk of a great fortune given to charities in a testamentary bequest.

Certainly Americans, though often overreaching in making a fortune, are proverbially lavish in distributing it. New England, the home of 'cuteness in trade, is extraordinary for the number and extent of its charitable bequests. Americans may do things that an Englishman will not in getting the best of a bargain, but quite as quickly as the average Englishman, they give the whole fruits of the sharp trade to some sufferer. Unscrupulous in a contest of wits, they yet have bowels of compassion beyond many other nations, are perhaps the least cruel of all, and have made American private endowments of educational and charitable institutions famous the world over.

But can we put all the credit of these endowments to the score of national character? Is not some part traceable simply to the abolition of the old privileges and customs of primogeniture? I fancy that were it American usage to pass the bulk of great estates to a succession of eldest sons or to the nearest heir, we should see fewer great bequests to the public. "The heir" would ever be an overshadowing figure in the rich man's plans; whereas now, if kith and kin be well provided for, no one finds it strange that the bulk of an estate like Mr. Peabody's or Mr. Lick's or Mr. Cornell's should go to public education and charity.