Page images
PDF
EPUB

al Union; and that in your opinion an army and navy are constitutional means for suppressing that rebellion.

and,

2. That no one of you will do any thing which, in his own judgment, will tend to hinder the increase or favor the decrease, or lessen the efficiency of the army or navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress that rebellion; 3. That each of you will, in his sphere, do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and while engaged in the effort to suppress the rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided and supported.

navy,

This document, thus signed, to be published by the President, and this publication to be of itself a revocation of the order in the case of Mr. Vallandigham, who, on his return to the United States, would not, however, be suffered to put himself practically in opposition to the position of his friends. The President thought that such a statement from influential gentlemen of Ohio would more than compensate for any possible harm that could arise from the return of Mr. Vallandigham. This gentleman meanwhile, having been sent South, escaping the blockade, reached Bermuda, and thence sailed for Canada.- -The Constitutional Convention of Missouri, on the 1st of July, passed an ordinance for the abolition of slavery in that State. Its essential features are that slaves who in 1870 are over 40 years of age are to be held as servants during life; those under 12 till they are 23; those over 12 till the 4th of July, 1876. Other provisions refer to the sale of slaves from the State.

MEXICO.

The capture of Puebla, with almost the entire Mexican army, opened the way for the French oc

cupation of the capital. Juarez and his Cabinet left the city of Mexico on the last day of May for San Luis de Potosi. On the following day the leaders of the Church party assembled and offered their allegiance to the Emperor Napoleon. On the 5th of June the first division of the French army entered Mexico, followed soon after by the entire force, who were received with apparently the warmest wel

come.

EUROPE.

The Polish question presents no new aspects; but the probability increases of serious difficulties among the European Powers. In answer to a question in Parliament, Earl Russell, on the 26th of June, officially denied the truth of a current report that the French Government had renewed its proposition for a joint intervention in the affairs of America. He had previously stated that the blockade was sufficiently efficient to entitle it to be recognized by foreign Powers.-The case of the steamer Alexandra, supposed to be fitted out for the Confederate service, was tried in the Court of Queen's Bench. The fact that such was her destination was clearly proved; but the Court in effect decided that it was no violation of English law to fit out vessels and sell them to be employed in warfare against nations with whom Great Britain is at peace. An appeal was taken from this decision; but if it is affirmed, as it probably will be, it will furnish a precedent for action from which Great Britain will reap no benefit. Disputes have arisen between the Japanese and the English and French, which, it is believed, will result in active hostilities.

Literary Notices.

The residence had but six rooms, of which three were hardly more than closets, with outbuildings on the most meagre scale. The windows would hardly open or shut, and the door-latches were raised by bits of pack-thread. Such being the house of the master, we need not describe the cabins of the slaves. The field-hands, she says, "go to the fields at daybreak, carrying with them their allowance of food for the day, consisting wholly of Indian meal, which, toward noon, and not before, they eat,

can, where they are working. Their second meal in the day is at night, after their labor is over, having worked, at the very least, six hours without intermission since their noonday meal (properly so called, for 'tis meal, and nothing else)." Those employed at the mill and threshing-floor got their food from the cook-house.

Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, | swampy. by FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. Nearly a quarter of a century ago Mrs. Kemble, then Mrs. Butler, spent a winter at a rice and cotton estate belonging to her husband, upon an island near the coast of Georgia. She kept a full journal of the events of her daily life, which is at length published. As an Englishwoman, she was of course prejudiced against the institution of slavery; but her Journal bears on every page evidence that she wished to record the truth, and only the truth. It contains a picture of every-cooking it over a fire which they kindle as best they day life on a plantation which could only be produced by one in her circumstances. No mere visitor or tourist could have access to the facts which came under her observation. The estate, we trust, was not a fair specimen of Southern plantations. It was rarely visited by its owners, and had been for many years under the charge of an overseer, who, besides rendering satisfactory profits to the owners, had managed to make a fortune for himself, with which he had just bought a plantation in Alabama. He worked the estate and the negroes to the very extent of their capacity, and was evidently a hard and severe man, though not apparently wantonly cruel. Upon the whole, Mrs. Kemble affirms that the slaves considered themselves well off compared with those on the neighboring plantations; and had, moreover, a special horror of being sent off to the sugar-plantations, which are regarded by them as the Inferno to the Purgatorio of the rice and cotton estates. The owners were, as we have said, absentees. Indeed, there was little there to invite any thing more than the briefest residence. The island was low and

They ate sitting on their doorsteps or on the ground. They had no chairs, tables, plates, knives, or forks, but ate out of a wooden tub or an iron pot-some with broken iron spoons, more with pieces of wood, and the children with their fingers. They regarded it as a special hardship that they were not allowed to keep pigs. Mrs. Kemble, a woman and a mother, was especially moved by the hard fate of the women, childbirth, even, affording them only a brief respite from the labors of the field, the rule being that they must return to the field three weeks after confinement. The Journal is filled with details of the sufferings borne by her sex, and of the fearful mortality among the infants. A continuous wail came up to her from these poor creatures undergoing the trials which a woman and

a mother only can understand. To these we can hardly make more than a passing allusion, nor to the domestic morals of the plantation. It is enough to say that the women were absolutely under the control of the overseer, and that all the children of black mothers were not themselves black. Mrs. Kemble gives us no pictures of absolutely perfect slaves. There was no "Uncle Tom" on the estate. They were very much what might have been expected-better rather than worse. The merit of the book consists in its being indisputably, as far as it goes, a true picture of some of the inevitable aspects of that institution which the ablest man of the State where the scene is laid declares to be "the chief corner-stone in our new edifice." As such, we consider it the most powerful anti-slavery book yet written.

imputation of having carelessly put prussic acid into a composing draught. He marries the sister, who becomes in the end the chief instrument of detecting the crime, and escapes the gallows by committing suicide. The crime and its detection are never for a moment out of sight. The story marches steadily toward the dénouement, interrupted by no irrelevant episodes, pausing for no elaborate delineations of scene or character, or for any display of fine writing. The characters themselves are little more than lay-figures. The reader is not expected to care for what they are, but only for what they did. He hurries through the story as he would through a police report; but few we imagine will ever read it a second time. The book once read will be forgotten. Herein lies the difference between the works of Mrs. Wood and Miss Braddon and those of the great masters of fiction. (Published by T B. Peterson.)-A Point of Honor, the latest Number of "Harper's Library of Select Novels," is notable for three clearly conceived and carefully elaborated characters: Gifford Mohun, the handsome, fascinating, weak, and utterly selfish voluptuary; Jane Gand, the patient, long-suffering, and forgiving woman; and Matty Fergusson, the clever, scheming, and unscrupulous adventuress. The relations between those persons are wrought up into a story of very decided interest.

A Critical History of Free Thought, by ADAM STOREY FARRAR. This elaborate work forms the eight "Bampton Lectures" for 1862, delivered before the University of Oxford. The author uses the phrase "Free thought" in its technical sense, to denote "the struggle of the human mind against the Christian revelation, in whole or in part." The

Bampton Lectures" were founded and endowed for the purpose of defending the doctrines of Christianity, as embodied in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, against the assaults of heretics and schismatics. Mr. Farrar, in these lectures, assuming the truth of Christianity as expressed in these formulas, undertakes to give a resumé of the views of its represent

We can speak briefly of only a few of the novels of the last two months: St. Olaves (published by Harper and Brothers) is a story of English life of more than common merit.Faith Gartney's Girlhood (published by Loring) is a quiet, simple story, noticeable for purity of tone and delicacy of feeling rather than for vigor. In every respect it presents a marked contrast with the "storm and stress" novels of the day. The style is admirable, and the moral inculcated throughout is one which can not be too strongly commended to the attention of girls growing up to womanhood. If not a great book, it is something better a good one. In the Two Pictures we can hardly congratulate Miss MARIA J. M'INTOSH upon having added to her well-earned reputation. The slight historical element which is introduced is not sufficient to remove the story from the category of works of pure imagination. The author has written so much better books that we must pronounce this to be a failure. (Published by D. Appleton and Co.)Of DICKENS'S Tale of Two Cities, which forms an installment of Sheldon's Household Edition, we need only say that the two illustrations by DARLEY are worthy of the foremost living artist in his range. No other edition of Dickens at all comparable to this has appeared inative opponents from the earliest ages down to our Europe or America. -At Odds, by the Baroness TAUTPHOEUS (published by J. B. Lippincott), is a story of German life at the time of Napoleon's campaigns of 1805 and subsequent years. It is marked by the same careful delineations of character and manners which distinguished "The Initials" and "Quits," the two former novels by the same author. It is a tale of very decided merit, although the action is rather slow, and the story hangs while the writer executes her minute character painting. It belongs to the German rather than the English school of novels.In marked contrast with most of the foregoing novels is The Earl's Heirs, by Mrs. HENRY WOOD, who has within two or three years produced some of the most popular if not the best tales of the time. The secret of her success, as well as that of her rival, Miss Braddon, is easily fathomed. Both have a story to tell, involving some great crime or series of crimes, the detection of which forms the motive of the work. A mere ordinary crime, such as a forgery, a robbery, or a murder, is quite too tame of itself for the purpose. It must be complicated by revolting accessories-adultery, or bigamy, or the like. Thus in the "Earl's Heirs" the hero-villain, who is secretly married to one woman, falls in love with and pays court to a sister of his wife, although he is ignorant of the relationship. He poisons his wife just after her confinement, and manages to throw upon her medical attendant the

own times, criticising them from the stand-point of his own orthodoxy. The volume is one of great labor and research, and forms a valuable addition to our theological literature. (Published by D. Appleton and Co.)

Memoir of Theodore Frelinghuysen, by TALBOT W. CHAMBERS, D.D. Our country has produced some greater men, but certainly no better one than Theodore Frelinghuysen. Descended from the sturdy Dutch stock by which New Jersey as well as New York was originally settled, Theodore Frelinghuysen was born in 1787, studied law, and acquired an eminent position at the bar before he had completed his twenty-fifth year. In 1829 he was elected Senator in Congress, and although he served but a single term, he took a high place even among the "great men who then composed the Senate. In 1844 he was nominated for Vice-President of the United States, on the ticket which was headed by the name of Henry Clay as candidate for the Presidency. The unexpected result of the election of that year, in which Clay and Frelinghuysen were defeated by Polk and Dallas, probably changed the whole future history of the nation. Meanwhile Mr. Frelinghuysen had abandoned the profession of the law, and accepted the Chancellorship of the University of New York, which in 1850 he exchanged for the Presidency of Rutger's College, which he retained until his death in 1862. The last twenty-five years

productive power of the soil for hundreds of years,
without having recourse to imported or manufac-
tured manures. Indeed, the most valuable part of
his work is the extract from the Report of Dr. Ma-
ron to the Prussian Minister of Agriculture on Jap-
anese Husbandry. Liebig's work, as it stands,
of high value; but the information is given in a
form so technical as to render it unattractive, and
perhaps incomprehensible to the general public.
Any practical farmer who possesses the faculty of
imparting information in an attractive form could
hardly do a better work than making a brief abstract
of this elaborate volume. (Published by D. Apple-
ton and Company.)

The second year's issue of Harper's Hand-book for Travelers in Europe and the East, by W. PEMBROKE FETRIDGE, contains nearly a third more matter than the edition of last year, while the whole has been carefully revised and brought down to the latest moment. It also contains an accurate map showing all the railways in Europe. This work has already taken its place as an essential part of the equipage of every American tourist in Europe. To a great degree it supersedes the necessity of any of the twenty-five or thirty volumes of English Hand-books, and the hundred and more of the French "Guides." With this and the latest number of "Bradshaw" the tourist may think himself fairly provided with a Guide for his journeyings in every part of Europe, and those parts of the East which he will be likely to visit, including Egypt and Palestine.

of his life were spent as an instructor of young men, and in active co-operation in the great benevolent operations of the day. Notwithstanding his eminent position at the bar, the legal profession was not that which accorded with his tastes. While in the Senate he meditated entering the clerical profession, but was deterred by the influence of his friends, who thought he could do more good by remaining in public life. Among these was the venerable Gardiner Spring, who had himself taken the step which Mr. Frelinghuysen meditated. He wrote: "I left the bar because I got sick of it; I could not be happy in it; I panted for a better work; but in this country ministers of the Gospel can get very little influence on the State, and therefore there is more need for men who are qualified, and have the spirit of ministers, to retain their political influence." The religious element was the predominant one in Mr. Frelinghuysen's character, and to the delineation of it his biographer has devoted the greater portion of these memoirs. Few men even in the profession ever performed as great an amount of what is generally considered especially clerical labor. It is not a little remarkable that, notwithstanding his consistent piety and blameless life, he was always haunted by an almost morbid fear of death: not of mere physical pain, but his apprehensions went deeper than this. He feared that at the last he would be found to have made shipwreck of his soul. This perpetual dread of the future life is one of the mysteries of our nature. If any man might look forward with assured though humble confidence to future salvation, Theodore Frelinghuysen might, even in the light of the stern theology in which he believed. But this dread of death which haunted him through life disappeared when the final hour approached. The burden was removed, and the dying man never grew weary of expatiating on the marvelous change. This volume will be welcomed not merely by the religious public, as technically understood, but by all who reverence a pure and noble character. (Published by Harper and Brothers.) The Natural Laws of Husbandry, by JUSTUS VON LIEBIG. The cardinal principle laid down and elaborated by Liebig is, that every plant abstracts something from the soil which is essential to its growth, and that unless this is somehow restored the pro-haustive work on the subject. Hence the constant ductive capacity of the soil must in time become formula in the preface to almost every school-book, exhausted. In a state of nature a soil increases "The author has found no work on this important yearly in fertility, because all the mineral matters science adapted to the practical use of the instructor. taken up are returned to it, and the plants absorb He has endeavored to supply this want, with what others from the great store-house of the atmosphere. success he leaves to the judgment of those who, like Hence the accumulation of organic matter which himself, have," etc. That this acknowledged want renders our Western prairies capable of producing, has been but imperfectly met, is shown by the numyear after year, a succession of large crops, which ber of elementary books that are continually thrust are sent to market, returning nothing to the soil. upon the public. The fact is that works of this But in time even this accumulation must be ex-class have, to a great extent, been written by those hausted, when the crops are sent away. The system of rotation in crops only postpones the evil day. One crop succeeds where another has failed, either because it can dispense with some ingredients which the first has exhausted, or because its roots pene. trate deeper, and so draws its supplies from a part of the soil which the former has not exhausted. But every crop, any part of which is taken away, exhausts the soil, and this must be made up by artiticial manures, or sterility must sooner or later ensue. The whole subject of manures is elaborately discussed. Liebig considers the agricultural system of Europe radically defective; and holds that the Chinese in a degree, and the Japanese wholly, have practically solved the problem of keeping up the

Paris in America, by EDOUARD LABOULAYE. Under the whimsical form of an account given by a Parisian lunatic of a residence in the United States, this book contains many pungent criticisms upon the institutions, habits, customs, and government of France. The exaggerations, rendered necessary by the fanciful plot of the work, ought not to blind the reader to the real value of the social and political criticisms which it involves. Without having read the original, we are satisfied that the translator, Miss MARY L. Bоотн, has given us a fair presentation of the work. (Published by Charles Scribner.)

It is beginning to be understood that no man is competent to write an elementary book upon any science unless he is also competent to write an ex

who know little more of the subjects upon which they treat than is contained in their works. Not knowing what to omit, they consequently know only imperfectly what to insert. Their productions are imperfect from the absolute ignorance of the authors. Of late years men of profound acquirements have undertaken the preparation of the most elementary books. But these also have not unfrequently fallen far short of the requirements of the case. A thorough knowledge of any subject does not imply the possession of the faculty of presenting that knowledge in an attractive form. These two qualifications must be combined in the man who is to produce a satisfactory elementary book. HUMPHREY DAVY possessed both, and he could have written an ele

they concede. Nature, they confess, has lavishly endowed the Western Continent. But nature assisted by art-no, thank you; that is something the Western Continent can not yet present.

Yet Mr. Dicey has been in Italy. He knows the Cascine in Florence, the pretty wood along the Arno, and the Borghese Gardens in Rome, and the Villa Reale in Naples. He knows the grounds at Caserta, at the Villa Pamphili Doria, at the Villa Pallavicini in Genoa. Does he compare either of those parks or gardens, in point of breadth and nobleness of design, or in the general impression of stateliness and grandeur, with the Central Park? They have a certain

mentary book on chemistry, which would have been superseded only when that science had advanced, as it now has, beyond his stand-point. FARADAY possesses them; and his works on "Force" and "A Candle," are among the most pleasant as well as instructive which one can read. WORTHINGTON HOOKER possesses them, and we have more than once had occasion to speak in terms of unqualified commendation of his series of elementary works in the various departments of Physical Science. His latest work, the first of a series entitled "Science for the School and Family," treats upon Natural Philosophy. It is admirably executed, and affords a sufficient guarantee for the value of those which will follow.-Pro-romantic interest, indeed, of which nothing in a new fessor LOOMIS, of Yale, long known by his treatises on the higher department of mathematics, has prepared a little book on the Elements of Arithmetic, designed for children, which seems to us to be precisely what it should have been.MARCIUS WILLSON, whose series of "Readers" are so rapidly superseding all others of their class, has prepared a Primary Speller, which will delight children and their parents and teachers. (Published by Harper and Brothers.)

EX

Editor's Easy Chair.

VERY honest man who wishes that one great public work near New York should be performed ⚫ in the best possible way, and with an utter freedom from party machinations, must seriously regret the retirement of Mr. Olmsted from the superintendency of the Central Park. He and his partner, Mr. Vaux, the architect, by whose plans the Park has been laid out, have resigned their situations, and the Central Park is henceforth under the control of other men and other tastes.

This is a public misfortune. The work thus far has been so thorough in quality, and so magnificent in effect, that there was every reason for hoping that it might be fully completed under the same direction; and there is not a solitary reason, so far as the Park itself and the public are concerned, that it should fall into other hands. Since the original plan of Olmsted and Vaux was adopted the area of the Park has been enlarged by the addition of a picturesquely undulating country beyond the upper reservoir and Mount St. Vincent, which offers the most admirable and enticing opportunity for the same genius that has already regenerated the rest of the domain. Had the old management continued, we might have been sure that the newer part would have been as nobly designed as the rest; but the resignation of Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Vaux deprives us of that confidence, except so far as we may depend upon the irresistible force of the fine model which the finished portion offers.

The Central Park is the finest work of art ever executed in this country. It is the fashion of the foreign tourist to smile at our regard for it, and to pat us on the back with the assurance that, after a few hundred years or so, it will be a very respectable retreat. Mr. Edward Dicey is the last authority of this kind. These gentlemen arrive, so thoroughly persuaded that we are a young country, and a new country, and an undeveloped country, that they assume our incompleteness in every respect. Even our oldest inhabitant is a subject of skepticism in their minds. To them, therefore, it is quite impossible that we should have a Park worthy attention. Prairies, rivers, mountains, lakes, and a cataract,

country has the least trace. They have a historic and poetic charm which can not be rivaled else where. But as great public works, as monuments of art, skill, taste, and intelligence, they are not to be compared with our Park. Nor are the English public parks of such extent and beauty and design that an Englishman can safely sneer at ours. The gentleman who thinks that Hyde Park, or Green Park, or Regent's Park, are magnificent public grounds, may be pardoned for thinking that the Central Park is only so-so. Fine trees they have undoubtedly. And Windsor Forest and Windsor Park are spacious sylvan wildernesses. And the luxuriance and beauty of English foliage are not to be questioned. But all these combined do not authorize any Englishman to smile at the claims of the Central Park.

The objection that it wants great trees is valid. But that it wants effects of foliage is untrue. While the exquisite forms of the ground in every direction

the perfection of the road work and gardening-the picturesque and beautiful bridges-the lovely sweeps of water contrasted with lawny banks-the pictorial effect of the terrace upon the water, so that you drive out of the city into the landscape that Claude and Watteau painted-and a pervasive poetic suggestiveness every where-these are the charms of the Park; charms that remain when you have conceded the deep delight of association to all other pleasure-grounds in the world.

The Parisian drives contented in the Bois de Boulogne, or wanders about Versailles, or St. Cloudthe Viennese rolls to the Prater-Munich saunters in the "English Garden," and all of these grounds are very delightful. And yet none of them are so broadly designed, or so thoroughly and tastefully constructed as the Central Park.

It is a question of great public interest, therefore, what is to be the future management of this work. Its salvation, hitherto, has been its freedom from the control of city politicians-gentlemen who conspicuously display their taste and sense by such performances as the Worth Monument in Madison Square. What monsters in architecture or statuary, or what signal crimes in landscape arrangement and treatment, may be yet in store for us, no Easy Chair can safely predict. Every man in the country knew, while Mr. Olmsted was the directing mind, that no abominations of any kind would be tolerated. No man can now be sure that they will not be solicited. The Central Park will become, like every other public work within the dominion of the city, a huge job. Its army of laborers will be selected for partisan considerations, which has never been the case hitherto. There is no kind of innovation upon the natural proprieties of a park which may not be expected. And this, not because the late architect in chief is the only man in the country competent to

the work, but because the influences which now control the work are those of city politics. The city of New York owes to the State of New York two great benefits. One is the Central Park; the other is the Metropolitan Police system. When the city shall succeed in outwitting the State, it will undo the advantages of both.

OUR chat about the Central Park revives the question which has been often discussed around the Chair, whether the democratic system has not failed in the city of New York. The traveler who returns from Europe impressed by the public order in the least details which is maintained by a despotic, "paternal" government, almost trembles with fear as well as disgust at the hap-hazard order which is the rule of our great cities. The jam at a theatre-the passage to a wharf-the crowd at a railroad station in frantic doubt the wild uproar and probable street fight at a fire-the pestilential filth of the streetsthe universal want of system and precision—at length shake his head with the doleful question, is the popular system itself a failure here? and might not the "splendid despotism" for which the pure soul of Mr. Fernando Wood was tempted to sigh, be almost a better alternative than Mr. Fernando Wood himself governing the city by warrant of votes which he is supposed and reported to have purchased on the lowest terms?

| rapidly by the influx of immigrants that it can not be well assimilated, there will be an ignorant population incompetent to their own good government. But, while you point at such a city as an argument in favor of a return to some form of class or monarchical government, please observe that the mass of ignorant people who make the popular government impracticable were made and kept ignorant by the very form of government which you propose to substitute for ours, while the reason that they come to us is that our system promises them greater development and prosperity than their own. And while, huddled in the city or sea-port, they are sure to be the prey of demagogues, and to bring a popular government to shame, yet, in the broad view, the city is unimportant, and its misgovernment is one of the abuses and imperfections to which we agreed that we were liable. In other words, the necessary conditions for a fair experiment are wanting in a great city of which the population is artificially replenished from foreign sources.

If, then, the traveler, who thinks France better governed than the United States because his carriage in going to the opera was kept in line by a mounted gendarme, should ask with a sigh whether our war is not a sign of the general failure of our system, he should be answered by the question what form of government he finds better than our own if civil wars are evidence of insufficiency. The history of every despotism or monarchy is the story of

Then the traveler, putting his hand upon the arm of the Easy Chair, says that it is clear the intelli-wars by the governors upon the people, or by the gence and worth of the city do not govern it, and people upon the governors. English history, for what are numbers in government without worth, instance, bristles with civil war. You may take wisdom, or principle? Are a hundred Neros, he the British annals since the death of James I., and asks, any better than one Nero? Are they not a if commotions, threatened or actual, disprove the hundred times worse? Can a crowd of blackguards worth of the system, the British Government is as or thieves be so safe a governor as one honest man? wretched as can be fancied. The long, long civil Is a mob which is controlled by the inflammation war of Charles I. and Cromwell-the long, long rotof its meanest prejudices and its basest passions the ting of Charles II. and James II., with the episode kind of Government by which the rights of men of Monmouth and the final expulsion of James by are likely to be protected or civilization advanced? William III.—the struggle of William III. against Do you not sometimes sigh, he asks, for the regu-Jacobite machinations-the incessant Irish rebellions larity and security of a "strong Government ?" And do you not find many men who think that our system is certainly an experiment, and probably a failure?

Of course every body finds plenty of such grumblers. But I never knew one man in good health and spirits who seriously wished a fundamental change. As for the city of New York, it may be conceded that it is better governed by the State than it is by its own citizens; and, still further, that it would be better governed by the wisest and best man in it than by all the people together. But the question is not quite so easily settled.

"The good, 'tis true, are Heaven's peculiar care;

But who but Heaven can tell us who they are?" The point is not what is abstractly the best conceivable Government, but, given man and human society, which is the best practicable Government. In all forms there is friction. In every system there are abuses. And if you fix your eye and mind steadily and solely upon them, the uses will be hopelessly obscured to your perception.

the Scotch Pretender insurrections-the dogged mischief of George III., who did what he could to restore kingly prerogative, so that Charles Fox said that forcible resistance was merely a question of prudence-the fierce tumults of the Reform bill-the terrible and continuous riots in city and country for the last hundred and fifty years-the Smith O'Brien attempt in Ireland-all these and similar phenomena are simply civil war, actual or latent; and if trouble of this kind proves the inadequacy of the Government, the British system is condemned.

Mere resistance to authority proves nothing but discontent, which exists in all human society. If that discontent is so constant and threatening and active as to hold the political system in endless peril, then it does prove the failure of the system. But in our case the trouble springs not from the operation of the system, but from the determination not to permit its operation. Our war comes not from democratic excess, but from aristocratic and oligarchical hate and fear of democracy. It is a war of a faction upon the people, and nobody has We must measure our system, not by its working ever claimed that a republican system could be free in any particular part of the country, but in the from faction. Far from proving democracy a failcountry altogether. The popular system assumes ure the war would not have arisen, except from the that an intelligent people will, upon the whole, gov-futile effort to combine the principle of privilege ern themselves better than any chance man or men can govern them. But it will happen that in great cities, especially sea-ports, or especially the cities of any country of which the population increases so

with that of equal rights. That attempt was the seed of war. The only hope of escaping it was that privilege would peaceably yield to the natural and inevitable predominance of right. But it never

« PreviousContinue »