NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCXLIV. JULY, 1874. ART. I. THE HANLIN YUAN. NEAR the foot of a bridge that spans the Imperial Canal a few rods to the north of the British Legation, the visitor to Peking may have noticed the entrance to a small yamen. Here are the head-quarters of the Hanlin Academy, one of the pivots of the Empire, and the very centre of its literary activity. On entering the enclosure, nothing meets the eye of one who is unable to read the inscriptions, that would awaken the faintest suspicion of the importance of the place. A succes- sion of open courts with broken pavements, and covered with rubbish; five low, shed-like structures, one story in height, that have the appearance of an empty barn; these flanked by a double series of humbler buildings, quite inferior to the stables of a well-conducted farmstead, some of the latter in ruins, and dust and decay everywhere: such is the aspect presented by the chief seat of an institution which is justly regarded as among the glories of the Empire! A glance, however, at the inscriptions on the walls some of them in Imperial autograph warns the visitor that he is not tread- ing on common ground. This impression is confirmed when, arriving at the last of the transverse buildings, it is found ~o be locked, and all efforts to obtain an entrance fruitless. Its yellow tiling is VOL. CXIX. NO. 244. 1 2 The Ilanlin Yuan. [July, suggestive; and the janitor, proof against persuasion, an- nounces, with a mysterious air, that this is a pavilion sacred to the use of the Emperor. There, concealed from vulgar eyes, stands a throne, on which his Majesty sits in state whenever he deigns to honor the Academy with his presence. Sundry inscriptions in gilded characters record the dates and circumstances of these Imperial visits, which are by no means so frequent as to be commonplace occurrences. A native guide-book to the lions of the capital, devoting eigh- teen pages to the Hanlin Yuan, dwells with special emphasis on the imposing ceremonial connected with a visit of Kienlung the Magnificent~ in the first year of the cycle which occurred after the commencement of his reign. From this authority we learn that the rooms of the Acad- emy, having fallen into a state of decay, were rebuilt by order of the Emperor, and rededicated with solemn rites to the ser- vice of letters. His Majesty appeared in person to do honor to the occasion, and conferred on the two Presidents the favor of an entertainment in the Imperial pavilion. Of the mem- bers of the Academy not fewer than one hundred and sixty- five were present. Among the proudest recollections of the Hall of Gems (the Hanlin), says the chronicler, for a thousand years there was no day like that. The Emperor further signalized the occasion by two con- spicuous gifts. The first was a present to the library of a complete set of the wonderful encyclop~dia called the Tu-shu-chi-chery. Printed in the reign of Kanghi, on movable copper types, and comprehending a choice selection of the most valuable works, it extends to six thousand volumes, and constitutes of itself a library of no contemptible magnitude. The other gift, less bulky, but more precious, was an origi- nal ode from the Imperial pencil. Written as an impromptu effusion in the presence of the assembled Academicians, it bears so many marks of premeditation . that no one could have been imposed on by the artifice of Imperial vanity. It is en- graved after the original autograph on a pair of marble slabs, from which we have taken a copy. In their native dress these verses are worthy of their august 1874.] The Ilianhin Yuan. 3 author, who was a poet of no mean ability; but in the process of translation they lose as much as a Chinaman does in ex- changing his flowing silks for the parsimonious costume of the West. At the risk of producing a travesty instead of a trans- lation, we venture to offer a prose version. ODE COMPOSED BY THE EMPEROR KIENLUNG ON VISITING THE HANLIN YUAN IN 1744. On this auspicious morning the recipients of celestial favor, Rank after rank, unite in singing the hymn of rededication. Thus the birds renew their plumage, and the eagle, soaring heavenward, symbolizes the rise of great men. Those here who chant poems, and expound the Book of Changes, are all worthies of distinguished merit. Their light concentres on the embroidered throne, and my pen distils its flowery characters, While incense in spiral wreaths rises from the burning censer. Before me is the pure, bright, pearly Hall; Compared with this, who vaunts the genii on the islands of the blest? A hundred years of msthetic culture culminate in the jubilee of this day. To maintain a state of prosperity, we must cherish fear, and rejoice with trembling. In your new poems, therefore, be slow to extol the vastness of the Empire; Rather by faithful advice uphold the throne. I need not seek that ministers like Fu-Yuih shall be revealed to me in dreams; For at this moment, I am startled to find myself singing the song of Yau (in the midst of my ministers). In my heart I rejoice that ye hundreds of officers all know my mind, And will not fan my pride with lofty flattery. Happy am I to enter this garden of letters, In the soft radiance of Indian Summer; To consecrate the day to the honor of letters, And to gather around my table the gems of learning; But I blush at my unworthiness to entertain the successors of Fang and Tu. Why should Ma and Tsieu be accounted solitary examples? Here we have a new edition of the ancient Shih-chii (library of the Hans). We behold anew the glorious light of a literary constellation. But the shadow on the flowery tiles has reached the number eight; Drink till you are drunk, three times pass round the bowl. When morning sunlight fell on the pictured screen, We opened the Hanlin with a feast, The members assembling in official robes. We took a glance at the library, enough to load five carts, and fill four storehouses. 4 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, We visited in order the well of Lew and the pavilion of Ko. We watched the pencil trace the gemmy page, While the waters of Fung-chau (the Pierian Spring) rise to the brim; and in flowery cups we dispense the fragrant tea. Anciently ministers were compared to boats which crossed rivers; With you for my ministers I would dare to encounter the waves of the sea. From this effusion of Imperial genius we turn again to the august body in whose honor it was written, and inquire, Where are the apartments in which those learned scribes labor on their elegant tasks? Where is the hall in which they assem- ble for the transaction of business? and where the library supplied by Imperial munificence for the choicest scholars of the Empire? These questions are soon answered, but not in a way to meet the expectations of the visitor. The composing- rooms are those ranges of low narrow chambers, on either hand of the entrance ; some of them bearing labels, which indicate that it is there the Imperial will puts on its stately robes; but they are empty, and neither swept nor garnished. Those of the members who have special functions are em- ployed within the precincts of the palace, while the large class known as probationers prosecute their studies in a separate college called the Shu-chang-kwan. Common hall, or assembly- room, there is none. The society holds no business meetings. Its organization is despotic: the work of the members being mapped out by the directory, which consists of the Presidents and Vice-Presidents. In an out-of-the-way corner, you are shown a suite of small rooms, which serves as a vestry for these magnates, where they drink tea, change their robes, and post up their records. For this purpose they come together nine times a month, and remain in session about two hours. As for the other members, they convene only on feast-days as marked in the rubrics of the state, and then it is merely for the performance of religious rites or civil ceremonies. The ritual for both (or rather the calendar) is conspicuously posted on the pillars of the front court, suggesting that the sap and juice of the Academy have dried up, and that these husks of ceremony are the residuum. So far as this locality is concerned, this is true; for though the Academy exists, as we shall see, in undiminished vigor, the work intended to be done here is transferred to other 1874.] The Ilanlin Yuan. places; and but for occasions of ceremony, these halls would be as little trodden as those of the academies of Nineveh or Babylon. Of the ceremonies here performed, the most serious is the worship of Confucius, before whose shrine the com- pany of disciples are ranged in files, near or remote, according to their rank, kneel three times in the open court, and nine times bow their heads to the earth. A more modern sage, Han-wen-kung, whose chief merit was an eloquent denuncia- tion of Buddhism, is revered as the champion of orthodoxy, and honored with one third this number of prostrations. Besides the temples to these lights of literature, there is another shrine in which incense is perpetually burning before the tablets of certain Tauist divinities, among them the god of the North Star. The juxtaposition of these altars illustrates the curious jumble of religious ideas which prevails even among the edu- ~ated classes. If Confucianism, pure and simple, calm and philosophic, were to be found anywhere, where should we ex- pect to meet with it, if not in the halls of the Hanlin Yuan? As to the library, it must have been at least respectable in the palmy days of Kienlung, that Emperor having replenished it, as we have seen, by a gift of six thousand volumes. Copies of a still larger collection of works, the Sze-ku-chuen-shu, printed in the earlier part of the same reign, were deposited there, as also a manuscript copy of the immense collection known as Yung-lo-ta-tien. But in China libraries are poorly preserved; books have no proper binding, the leaves are loosely stitched, the paper flimsy, and adapted to the appetite of a variety of insects, while their official guardians often commit depredations under the influence of an appetite not altogether literary. Through these combined influences, the Hanlin library has dwindled almost to a vanishing point. Two of the book-rooms being within the sacred enclosure of the Imperial pavilion, the writer was not permitted to see them. The greater part of the books have been transferred elsewhere; and the condition of those that remain may be inferred from that of the only book-room that was accessible. Its furniture consisted of half a dozen cases, some locked, some open, the latter empty; the 6 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, floor was strewn with fragments of paper, and the absence of footprints in the thick deposit of dust sufficiently indicated that the pathway to this fountain of knowledge is no longer fre- quented. But things in China are not to be estimated by ordinary rules. Here the decay of a bnilding is no indication of the decadence of the institution which it represents. The public buildings of the Chinese are, for the most part, mean and con- temptible in comparison with those of Western nations; but it would not be less erroneous for us to judge their civilization by the state of their architecture, than for them, as they are prone to do, to measure ours by the tape-line of our tailor. With them architecture is not a fine art; public edifices of every class are constructed on a uniform model; and even in private dwellings there is no such thing as novelty or variety of design. The original idea of both is incapable of much development; the wooden frame and limited height giving them an air of meanness; while the windowless wall, which caution or custom requires to be drawn around every consider- able building, excludes it from the public view, and consequent- ly diminishes, if it does not destroy, the desire for ~nsthetic effect. Materialistic as the people are in their habits of thought, their government, based on ancient maxims, has sought to repress rather than encourage the tendency to luxury in this direction. The genius of China does not affect excellence in material arts. With more propriety than ancient Rome she might apply to herself the lines of the Roman poet Excudent aiji mollius spirantia a~ra Ta regere imperio populos Ha~c tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem. For not only is the Chinese notoriously backward in all those accomplishments in which the Roman excelled, but, without be- ing warlike, he has equalled the Roman in the extent of his con- quests, and surpassed him in the permanence of his possessions. With him the art of government is the great study; and all else science, literature, religion is merely subsidiary. For six- hundred years, with the exception of a brief interval, the ilanlin has had its home within the walls of Peking, 1874.] The Hanlin Yuan. 7, witnessing from this position the rise of three Imperial dynas- ties, and the overthrow of two. Under the Mongols it stood, not on its present site, but a little to the west of the present drum-tower. Kublai and his successors testified their sense of its importance by installing it in an old palace of the Kin Tar- tars. Eo-yang-chu, a discontented scholar of a later age, alluding to the contrast presented by the quarters it then occupied, laments in verse The splendid abode of the o1d Hanlin, The glittering palace of the Prince of Kin. The Ming Emperors removed it to its present position, ap- propriating for its use the site of an old granary. The Tsing Emperors had a palace to bestow on the Mongolian Lamas, but allowed the ilanlin to remain in its contracted quarters, erect- ing at the same time, in immediate contiguity, a palace for one of their princes. This is now occupied by the British Legation, whose lofty chimneys overlook the grounds of the Academy, and so menace the fang-skuy (good luck) of the entire literary corporation. If this were the whole of its history, the Hanlin would still enjoy the distinction of being more than twice as ancient as any similar institution now extant in the Western world; but this last period one of few vicissitudes covers no more than half its career. Its annals run back to twice six hundred years, and during that long period it has shared the fortunes and followed the footsteps of the several dynasties which have contended for the mastery of the Empire. From its nature and constitution attached to the court, it has mi- grated with the court, now north, now south, until the capital became fixed in its present position. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Academy was for a few years at Nan- king, where llungwu made his capital. During the period of the Crusades it accompanied the court of the southern Snugs as they retired before the invading Tartars, and fixed at Hang- chau the seat of their semi-empire. For two centuries previous it had shed its lustre on Loyang, the capital of the northern Sungs. During the five short dynasties (907 960) it disappears amid the confusion of perpetual war, though even then each aspirant for The Yellow surrounded himself with some 8 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, semblance of the Hanlin, as a circumstance essential to Impe- rial state; but its earliest, brightest, and longest period of re- poso was the reign of the Tangs, from 627 to 904, or from the rise of Mahomet till the death of Alfred. For China this is not an ancient date; but it was scarcely possible that such a body, with such objects, should come into existence at any earlier epoch. Under the more ancient dynasties the range of literature was limited, and the style of composition rude. It is not till the long reign of the house of Han that the language obtains its full maturity; but even then taste was little culti- vated, the writers of that day being, as the native critics say, more studious of matter than of manner. During the short-lived dynasties that followed the Han and Tsin, the struggle for power allowed no breathing-time for the revival of letters; but when the Empire, so long drenched in blood, was at length united under the sway of the Tangs, the beginning of the new era of peace and prosperity was marked by an out- burst of literary splendor. For twenty years Kaotsu, the founder, had been involved in sanguinary conflicts. In such circumstances valor was virtue, and military skill comprised all that was valued in learning. In the work of domestic conquest, his most efficient aid was his second son, Shemin. Destined to complete what his father had begun, but with a genius more comprehensive and a taste more refined, this young prince was to Kaotsu what Alexander was to Philip, or Frederick the Great to the rough Frederick William. Studying the poets and philosophers by the light of his camp-fires, he no sooner found himself in undisputed pos- session of the throne than he addressed himself to the pro- motion of learning. In this he was only reverting to the traditions of an empire which from the earliest times had always been a worshipper of letters. But Taitsung (the name by which he is called in history) did not confine himself to the beaten path of tradition; he issued a decree that men of abil- ity should be sought out and brought to court from their re- tired homes and secret hiding-places. His predecessors had done the same; but Taitsung formed them into a body under the name of Wen-hio-kuan, and installed them in a portion of his palace, where, the historian tells us, he was accustomed, in 1874.] The ilianlin Yuan. 9 the intervals of business, and late in the hours of the night, to converse with these learned doctors. The number of these eminent scholars was eighteen, in alhision possibly (though a Confucian would repudiate the idea) to the number of Arhants or disciples who composed the inner circle of the family of Buddha, Buddhism being at that time in high repute. Among these, the most prominent were Fang-yuenling and Tu-juhui, who were afterwards advanced to the rank of minis- ters of state. We have already seen their names in the Ode of Kienlung, where they are alluded to as the typical ancestors of the literary brotherhood. This was the germ of the ilanlin Yuan. Under previous reigns letters had been valued solely as an aid to politics; and scholarship, as a proof of qualification for civil employment. But from this time letters began to assume the position of a final cause, and civil employment was made use of as an incentive to encourage their cultivation. Pre- viously to this the single exercise of answering in writing a series of questions intended to gauge the erudition and test the acumen of the candidate was all that was required in examina- tions for the civil service; but from this epoch taste presided in the literary arena, and compositions, both in prose and vQrse, in which elegance of style is the chief aim, became thenceforth a leading feature in the curriculum. That wonderful net which catches the big fish for the service of the Emperor, and allows the smaller ones to slip through, was during this dynasty so far perfected that in the lapse of a thousand years it has under- gone no very important change. As might have been expected, the epoch of the Tangs became distinguished above all preced- ing dynasties as the age of poets. Litaipe, whose brilliant genius was believed to be an incarnation of the golden light of the planet Venus, Tufu, ilanyn, and others shed lustre on its opening reigns. Their works have become the acknowledged model of poetic composition, from which no modern writer dares to depart; and, under the collective title of the poetry of Tang, they have added to the Imperial crown an amaranthine wreath such as no other dynasty has ever worn. Litaipe was admitted to the Academy by Minghwang or lluentsung; the Emperor, on that occasion, giving him a feast, and, as native 10 The Ilanlin Yuan. [July, authors say, condescending to stir the poets soup with the hand that bore the sceptre. It is not a little remarkable that the art of printing made its appearance almost simultaneously with the formation of the Academy, and the reorganization of the examination system. Originating in a common impulse, all three interacted on each other, and worked together as powerful agencies in carrying forward the common movement. The method of stamping characters on silk or paper had no doubt been discovered long before; but it was under this dynasty that it was first em- ployed for the reproduction of books on a large scale. It was not, however, so employed in the reign of Taitsung. That monarch, resolving to found a library that should surpass in extent and magnificence anything that had been known in the past, was unable to imagine a more expeditious, or, at least, a more satisfactory method of producing books than the slow process of transcription. For this purpose a host of pencils would be required; and Taitsnug, in the interest of his library, made a fresh levy of learned men who were elegant scrihes as well as able scholars. To these, Huentsung, one of his suc- cessors, added another body of scholars, and, combining the three classes into one society, called it by the name of Hanlin, or the Forest of Pencils, a designation that was now more appropriate than it would have been when the number of its members fell short of a score. When the printing-press was introduced as an auxiliary in the manufacture of hooks, it relieved the Imperial scribes of a portion of their labors, but it did not supersede them. Re- leased from the drudgery of copying, they were free to devote their leisure to composition; and in China in the eighth cen- tury, as in Europe in the fifteenth, the art of printing imparted a powerful stimulus to the intellectual activity of the age. Rising, as we have seen, in the halcyon days of Taitsung, the ilanlin Yuan was not long in attaining its full develop- ment. In the reign of lluentsung it received the name by which it is now known, and through twelve centuries, from that day to this, it has undergone no essential modification, either in its objects, membership, or mode of operation; if we 1874.] The Hanlin Yuan. 11 except, perhaps, the changes required to adapt it to the dupli- cate official system of the present dynasty. Its constitution and functions, as laid down in the Ta-tsing-hwui-tien, or Insti- tutes of the Empire, is as follows 1. There shall be two presidents, one Manchu and one Chinese. They shall superintend the composition of dynastic histories, charts, hooks, Imperial decrees, and literary matters in general. 2. The vice-presidents shall be of two classes, namely, the readers, and the expositors to his Majesty the Emperor. In each class there shall be three Manchus and three Chinese. 3. Besides these, the regular members shall consist of three classes, namely, Sinchoan, Piensieu, and Kientao, in all of which the number is not limited. These, together with the vice-presidents, shall be charged with the composition and compilation of books, and with daily attendance, at stated times, on the classic studies of his Majcsty. 4. There shall be a class of candidates on probation, termed Sha- ki shi, lucky scholars, the number not fixed. These shall not be charged with any specific duty, but shall prosecute their studies in the schools attached t.o the Academy. They shall study both Manchu and Chinese. Their studies shall be directed by two professors, one Manchu and one Chinese, assisted by other members below the grade of readers and expositors, who shall act as divisional tutors. At the expiration of three years they shall be tested as to their ability in poetical composition, the Emperor, in person, deciding their grades, after which they shall be admitted to an audience ; those of the first three grades heing received into full membership, and those of the fourth grade, which comprises the remainder, being assigned to posts in the civil service, or retained for another three years to study and be examined with the next class. 5. There shall be two recorders, one Manchu and one Chinese. These shall be charged with the sending and receiving of documents. 6. There shall be two librarians, one Manchu and one Chinese. These shall be charged with the care of the books and charts. 7. There shall be four proof-readers, two Manchus and two Chi- nese. These shall attend to the revision and collation of histories, memorials, and other literary compositions. 8. There shall be forty-four clerks,forty Manchus and four from the Chinese Banners. These shall be employed in copying and translation. 9. The expositors at the classic table (of the Emperor) shall be six- teen in number, eight Manchus and eight Chinese. The Manchus must be officers who have risen from the third rank or higher. The 12 The Ilanlin Yuan. [July, Chinese also must be of the third rank or higher, having risen from the Academy. These shall be appointed by the Emperor on the recommendation of the Academy. The classic feasts shall take place twice a year, namely, in the second and the eighth months; at which time one Mancha and one Chinese shall expound the Book of History, and one Manchu and one Chinese shall expound the other classics, to be selected from a list prepared by the Academy. The subject and sense of the passages to be treated on these occasions shall, in all cases, he arranged by consultation with the presidents of the Academy, and laid before the Emperor for his approval. When the Emperor visits the Palace of Literary Glory, these expositors, together with the other officers, shall perform their prostrations at the foot of the steps, after which their going in and out shall be according to the form prescribed in the code of rites. When they shall have finished their expositions, they shall respectfully listen to the dis- courses of the Emperor. 10. The daily expositors shall be twenty-eight Manchus and twelve Chinese. They shall be above the grade of Kientao and below that of president, and may discharge this duty without resigning their original offices. 11. Prayers and sacrificial addresses for several occasions shall be drawn up by the Hanlin and submitted to the Emperor for his am proval. These occasions are the following: namely, at the Altar of Heaven; the Ancestral Temple; the Imperial Cemeteries; the Altar of Agriculture ; sacrifices to mountains, seas, and lakes, and to the ancient sage Confucius. 12. The Hanlin shall respectfully prepare honorary titles for the dowager empresses; they shall also draw up patents of dignity for the chief concubines of the late emperor; forms of investiture for new ernpresses and the chief concubines of new emperors; patents of nobility for princes, dukes, generals, and for feudal states; together with inscriptions on state seals, all of which shall first be submitted for the Imperial approbation. 13. The Hanlin shall respectfully propose posthumous titles for deceased emperors, together with monumental inscriptions and sacri- ficial addresses for those who are accorded the honor of a posthumous title, all of which shall be submitted to the Emperor for approval. 14. The presidents of the Hanlin shall be e -officio vice-presidents of the Bureau of Contemporary History, in which the Hanlin of sub- ordinate grades shall assist as compilers and composers, reverentially recording the sacred instructions (of the Emperor). 15. Prescribes the order of attendance for the Hanlin when the Emperor appears in public court. 1874.] The ilanlin Yuan. 13 16. Prescribes the number and quality of those of the Hanlin who shall attend his Majesty during his sojourn at the Yuen-Ming-Yuen (Summer Palace). 17. Provides that those members of the Hanlin whose duty it is to accompany his Majesty on his various journeys beyond the capital shall be recommended by the presidents of the Academy. 18. Provides that when the Emperor sends a deputy to sacrifice to Confucius, certain senior members of the Academy shall make offer- ings to the twelve chief disciples of the Sage. 19. The Hanlin, in conjunction with the Board of Rites, shall copy out and publish the best specimens of the essays produced in the pro- vincial and metropolitan examinations. 20. Prescribes the form to be used in reporting or recommending members for promotion, and provides that when an examination is held for the selection of Imperial censors, the Piensien, and Kientao on recommendation, may be admitted as candidates. 21. Regulates examinations for the admission of probationary members. 22. Admits probationers, after three years of study, to an exami- nation for places in the Academy or official posts elsewhere. 23. Provides for examinations of regular members in presence of the Emperor, at uncertain times, in order to prevent their relapse into idleness. 24. Provides for the promotion of members who are employed as instructors of probationers. Such is the official account of the ilanlin as at present con- stituted; but what information does it convey? After all we have done in the way of explanation in connection with a rather free translation, it still remains a confused mass of titles and ceremonies, utterly devoid of any principle of order; and with- out the help of collateral information, much of it would be altogether unintelligible. Interrogate it as to the number of members, the qualifications required for membership, the du- ration of membership, the manner of obtaining their seats (a term which must be used metaphorically of an association in which all but a few are expected to stand), and it is silent as the Sphinx. Should one, with a view to satisfying curiosity on the first point, attempt to reckon up the number of classes or divisions, to say nothing of individuals, the number being in some cases purposely indefinite, one would certainly fail of 14 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, success. Some who are enumerated, in those divisions are official emplo,y6s of the society, but not members; and yet there is nothing in the text to indicate the fact; e. g. the proof- readers are Hanlin~, the copyists and translators are not; the librarians are ilanlins, the recorders are not. We shall en- deavor briefly to elucidate these several points. Unlike the academies of Europe, which are voluntary asso- ciations for the advaucement of learning uuder royal or Imperial patronage, the Hanlin is a body of civil functionaries, a govern- ment organ, an integral part of the machinery of the state: its mainspring, as that of every other portion, is in the central throne. Its members do not seek admission from love of learning, but for the distinction it confers, and especially as a passport to lucrative employment. They are consequently in a state of perpetual transition, spending from six to ten years in attendance at the Academy, and then going into the prov- inces as triennial examiners, as superintendents of education, or even in civil or military employments which have no special relation to letters. In all these situations they proudly retain the title of member of the Imperial Academy; and, in their memorials to the throne, one may sometimcs see it placed above that of provincial treasurer or judge. There are, moreover; several ~arnens in the capital that are manned almost exclusively from the members of the ilanlin. Of these, the principal are the chan.sltih-fu and the chi-chu-chu; both of which are in fact nothing more than appendages of the Academy. The former, the name of which affords no hint of its functions, appears to bear some such relation to the heir- apparent as the Hanlin does to the Emperor. The beggarly building in which its official meetings are held may be seen on the banks of the canal opposite to the German Legation. It is, nevertheless, regarded as a highly aristocratic body, and gives employment to a score or so of Academicians. The other, which may be described as the Bureau of Daily IRecord, em- ploys some twenty more of the ilaulins in the capacity of Boswells to the reigning Emperor, their duty being to preserve a minute record of all his words and actions. Among the Imperial censors, who form a distinct tribunal, a majority perhaps are taken from the ranks of the Hanlin, but 1874.] The Ilanlin Yuan. 15 they are not exclusively so; while the higher ranks of the Hanlin, without being connected with the censorate, are cx- officio counsellors to his Majesty. Of those whose names are on the rolls as active members of the Academy in regul& r attendance on its meetings, the number does not exceed three or four score; though on great occasions, such as the advent of an emperor, the ex-members who are within reach are called in and swell the number to twice or thrice that figure. Besides these are the probationers or candidates, to the number of a hundred or more, who pursue their studies for three years under the auspices of the Academy, and theii stand an exami- nation for membership: if successful, they take their places with the rank and file of the Imperial scribes; otherwise, they are assigned posts in the civil service, such as those of sub- prefect, district magistrate, etc., carrying with them in every position the distinction of having been connected, for however brief a time, with the Imperial Academy. Without counting those rejected candidates, whose claim to the title is more than doubtful, the actual and passed members probably do not fall short of five hundred. The qualifications for membership are two, natural talent, and rare acquisitions in all the departments of Chinese scholar- ship; but of these we shall treat more at length hereafter. The new members are not admitted by vote of the association, nor appointed by the will of their Imperial master. The seats in this Olympus are put up to competition, and, as in the un- doo mythology, the gifted aspirant, though without name or influence, and in spite of opposition, may win the immortal amreet. None enter as the result of capricious favor, and no one is excluded in consequence of unfounded prejudices. The Hanlin Yuan has not therefore, like the Institute of France, a long list of illustrious names who acquire additional distinction from having been rejected or overlooked; neither does it suffer from lampoons, such as that which a disappointed poet would have fixed on his own tombstone at the expense of the French Academy, Ci-git Piron, qui no fut rien, Pas m~me acad~micien. In the Chinese Academy the newly initiated has the proud 16 The Ilanlin Yuan. [July, consciousness that he owes everything to himself, and nothing to the complaisance of his associates or the patronage of his superiors. Of the duties of the ilanlin, these official regulations afford us a better idea, indicating each line of intellectual activity, from the selection of fancy names for people in high positiou, up to the conducting of provincial examinations and the writ- ing of national histories; but the advancement of science is not among them. They do nothing to extend the boundaries of human knowledge, simply because they are not aware that, after the achievements of Confucius and the ancient sages, any new world remains to be conquered. Towards the close of the last year, the Emperor, by special decree, refer red to the Academy the responsibility of proposing honorific titles for the Empress dowager and the Empress mother. The result was the pair of euphonious pendants, Kangyi and Kangki, with which the Imperial ladies were decorated on retiring from the regency; and we are left to imagine the anxious deliberations, the laborious search for precedents, the minute comparison of the historical and poetical allusions involved in each title, be- fore the learned body were able to arrive at a decision. The composition of prayers to be used by his Majesty or his depu- ties on sundry occasions, and the writing of inscriptions for the temples of various divinities, in acknowledgment of services, are among the lighter tasks of the ilanlin. They are not, how- ever, like that above referred to, of rare occurrence. Ambitious of anything that can confer distinction on their respective localities, the people of numerous districts petition the throne to honor the temple where they worship by the gift of an Im- perial inscription. They ascertain that some time within the past twenty years the divinity there worshipped has interfered to prevent a swollen river from bursting its banks; to avert a plague of locusts, or arrest a protracted drought; or, by a nocturnal display of spectral armies, to drive away a horde of rebels. They report the facts in the case to their magistrates, who verify them, and forward the application to the Emperor, who in turn directs the members of the Hanlin to write the desired inscription. Cases of this kind abound in the Peking 1874.] The Hctnlin Yuan. 17 gazette; one of those best known to foreigners being that of Sze-tai-wang at Tientsin, whose merit in checking, under the avatar of a serpent, the disastrous floods of 1871, obtained from the Emperor the honor of a commemorative tablet writ- ten by the doctors of the ilanlin. If to these we add the scrolls and tablets written by Im- perial decree for schools and charitable institutions throughout the Empire, we must confess that the Hanlin Yuan might earn for itself the title of Academy of Inscriptions in a sense some- what different from that in which the term is employed in the Western world. Indeed, so disproportionate is the space al- lotted in the constitution to these petty details that the reader, judging from that document alone, would be liable to infer that the Academicians were seldom burdened with any more serious employment. But let him go into one of the great lil)raries connected with the court (unhappily not yet acces- sible to the foreign student), or even to the great book-stores of the Chinese city, and he will learn at a glance that the Hanlin is not a mere piece of Oriental pageantry. Let him ask for the Book of Odes; the salesman hands him an imperial edition in twenty volumes, with notes and illustrations by the doctors of the ilanlin. If he inquire for the Book of Rites, or aiiy of the thirteen canonical books, the work is shown him in the same elegant type, equally voluminous in extent, and exe- cuted by the hands of the same inexhaustible editors. Then there are histories without number; next to the classics in dignity, and far exceeding them in extent. If the poems of India, such as the Mahabharat, in length outmeasuring half a score of Iliads, suggest the idea of the in- finite, the histories of China are adapted to produce a similar impression. There are in the capital, at this present time, no fewer than four bureaus or colleges of history, constantly occu- pied, not as might be supposed with the history of other coun- tries and distant ages, but with the events of the present reign, and those of its immediate predecessor. These are all conducted by members of the ilanlin; and the scale on which they execute their tasks may be inferred from the fact, that the bureau of military history recently reported the completion of a portion of its labors in seven hundred and twenty books, VOL. cxIx.No. 244. 2 18 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, or about three hundred and sixty volumes. These only cover the Taiping and Nienfei rebellions, leaving the Mohammedan and foreign wars of the last seventy years to be spun out prob- ably to an equal extent. Here is a paragraph from the instructions of one of these bureaus, which in respect to the laborious minuteness which they exact may be taken as a sample of the whole They (the scribes) are to take note of the down-sitting and up- rising of his Majesty, and to keep a record of his every word and action. They are to attend his Majesty when he holds court and gives audience; when he visits the Altar of Heaven or the Temple of Ancestors; when he holds a feast of the classics, or ploughs the sacred field; when he visits the schools, or reviews the troops; when he bestows entertainments, celebrates a military triumph, or decides the fate of criminals. They must follow the Emperor in his hunt- ing excursions, and during his sojourn at his country palace. They will hear the Imperial voice with reverence, and record its utterances with care, appending to every entry the date and name of the writer. At the end of every month these records shall be sealed up and deposited in a desk, and at the close of the year transferred to the custody of the Inner Council. Besides these dynastic histories, there are topographical his- tories of provinces, prefectures, districts, and even of towns and villages, in number and extent to which we have no par- allel. In most of these the government takes a direct interest, and as far as possible they are edited by members of the Han- liii: e. g. a supplement is now being made at Taiping-fu to the history of the province of Chihli,bringing it through the troubled days of the Taiping rebellion and foreign invasion, down to the present time. It is executed under the super- intendence of a Hanlin piensieu, whose services were not obtained without a special application to the throne by the Viceroy Sihingchang. In addition to work of this kind, which is constant as the stream of time, the Hanlin supplies writers and editors for all the literary enterprises of the Emperor. Some of these are so vast that it is safe to say no people would undertake them but those who erected the great wall and excavated the grand canal; nor would China have had the courage to face them 1874.1 The I5lanlin Yuan. 19 had she not kept on foot as a permanent institution a standing army of learned writers. Two of these colossal enterprises distinguish the brilliant prime of the present dynasty; while a third, of proportions still more huge, dates back to the second reign of the Mings. This last is the Yung-lo-ta-tien, a cyclop~dic digest of the Im- perial library, which at that time contained 300,000 volumes. There were employed in the task 2,169 clerks and copyists, under the direction of a commission consisting of three presi- dents, five vice-presidents, and twenty sub-directors. The work, when completed, contained 22,937 books, or about half that number of volumes. ft was never printed as a whole, and two of the three manuscript copies, together with about a tenth part of the third, were destroyed by fire in the con- vulsions that attended the overthrow of the Mings. In the reign of Kanghi (latter part of the seventeenth century) a similar compilation was executed, numbering six thousand volumes, and beautifully printed on movable copper types, with the title of Tu-shu-ehi-cheng. About a century later, under Kienlung, a still larger collec- tion, intended to supplement the former, and preserve all that was most valuable in the extant literature, was printed on movable wooden types with the title of Sze-ku-chuen-shu. These two collections reproduce a great part of the preced- ing; nevertheless, great pains have been taken to copy out and preserve the original work. A commission of members of the Hanlin was appointed for this purpose by Kienlung, and a copy of the work, it is said, now forms a part of the ilanhin library. In this connection we may mention two other great works executed under the Mings, which have been reproduced by the present dynasty in an abridged or modified form. While the codification of the laws found in Yunglo a Chinese Justinian, it found its Tribonians among the doctors of the Academy. The Encyclop~dia of Philosophy, compiled by the ilanlin nuder Yunglo, the second of the Mings, was abridged by the ilanhin, under Kanghi, the second of the Tsings. A still more important labor of the Hanhin, performed by order of the last-named illustrious ruler, was the dictionary which bears his name, a labor more in keeping with its character as a literary corporation. 20 The Ilanlin Yuan. [July, Thiers speaks of the French Academy as having la mission d r~gler la marehe de la lctngue. It did this by publishing its famous dictionary; and about the same time the members of the ilanlin were performing a similar task for the language of China, by the preparation of the great dictionary of Kanghi, a work which stands much higher as an authority than does the Dictionnaire cle lAcach~mie Pran~aise. A small work, not unworthy of mention in connection with these grave labors, is the Sacred Edict, which goes under the name of Kaughi. It is not, however, the composition of either Kanghi or Yung- cheng, but purely a production of Hanlin pencils. In the Memoirs of the Academy we find a decree assigning the task and prescribing the mode of performance Taking, says the Emperor, the sixteen edicts (or maxims of seven words each) of our sacred ancestor surnamed the Benevolent, for a basis, we desire to expand and illustrate their meaning, for the instruction of our soldiers and people. Let the members of tbe Han- lin compose an essay, of between five and six hundred characters, on each text, in a plain and lucid style; shunning alike the errors of ex- cessive i)Olish and rusticity. Let the same text be given to eight or nine persons, each of whom will prepare a discourse, and hand it in in a sealed envelope. From this it appears that the sixteen elegant discourses, which compose the body of that work, are selections from over a hundred, the picked performances of picked men. In the early part of the Manchu dynasty, the Hanlin were much engaged in superintending the translation of Chinese works into Manchu; a language now so little understood by the Tartars of Peking that those voluminous versions have almost ceased to be of any practical value. Under the present reign the learned doctors have been working somewhat in a different direction, showing that the Chinese are not so in- capable of innovation as is usually supposed. A minority reign naturally snggested the want of a royal road to the acquisition of knowledge; our ilanlin doctors were accord- ingly directed to supply his Majesty with copies of History made easy, and the Classics made easy. The mode of making easy was a careful rendering into the Mandarin or court dialect, a style which these admirable doctors disdain as 1874.] The IlanUn Yuan. 21 much as the medi~val scholars of Europe did the vernacular of their day. May we not hope that these works, after educat- ing the Emperor, will, like those prepared by the Jesuits in usum Deiphini, be brought to the light for the instruction of his people? As it is intended here to indicate the variety rather than the extent of the literary labors of the ilanlin, these remarks would be incomplete if they did not refei: to their poetry. They are all poets; each a laureate, devoting his talents to the glori- fication of his Imperial patron. Swift said of an English laureate, Young must torture his invention, To flatter knaves or lose a pension. In China the office is not held on such a condition; sage emperors have been known to strike out with their own pen the finest compliments offered them by their official bards. Kienlung, as we have seen, felt it necessary to warn the Han- un against the prevailing vice of poets and pensioners. In China poetry is put to a better purpose; Imperial decrees and official proclamations being often expressed in verse, for the same reason that induced Solon to borrow the aid of verse in the promulgation of his laws. Didactic compositions in verse are without number, and for the most part as dry as Homers catalogue of the fleet. A popular cyclopa3dia, for instance, in overascoreofvolumes,treatsof all imaginable subjects in a kind of irregular verse calledfu. Employed as scribes and editors, it would be too much to expect that the Hanlin should distinguish themselves for origi- nality. It is a rare thing for an original work to spring from the brain of an Academician. In imitation of Confucius, they might inscribe over their door, We edit, but we do not com- pose. On entering this hail, said M. Thiers, taking his seat in the French Academy forty years ago, I feel the proudest recollections of our national history awakening within me. Here it is that Cor- neille, Boss~iet, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, one after another, came and took their seats; and here more recently have sat Laplace and Cuvier Three great men, Laplace, Lagrange, and Cuvier, opened the century; a numerous band of young and ardent intellects 22 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, have followed in their wake. Some study the primeval history of our planet, thereby to illustrate the history of its inhabitants; others, im- pelled by the love of humanity, strive to subjugate the elements in order to ameliorate the condition of man; still others study all ages and traverse all countries, in hopes of adding something to the treas- ures of intellectual and moral philosophy. . . . Standing in the midst of you, the faithful and constant friends of science, permit me to exclaim, happy are those who take part in the noble labors of this age! In this passage we have a true portraiture of the spirit that animates the peerage of the Western intellect; they lead the age in every path of improvement, and include in their number those whom a viceroy of Egypt felicitously described, not as peers, but as les totes eouronn6es de la science. How different from the drowsy routine which prevails in the chief tribunal of Chinese learning! Of all this the Chinese Academician has no conception; he is an anachronism, his country is an anach- ronism, as far in the rear of the worlds great march as were the people of a secluded valley, mentioned in Chinese literature, who, finding there an asylum from trouble and danger, declined intercourse with the rest of mankind, and after the lapse of many centuries imagined that the dynasty of Han was still upon the throne. It is doing our Hanlin a species of injustice to compare him with the Academicians or even with the commonalty of the West, in a scientific point of view; for science is just the thing which he does not profess, and that general information which is regarded as indispensable by the average intelligence of Christendom is to the Hanlin a foreign currency, which has no recognized value in the market of his country; nevertheless, we shall proceed to interrogate him as to his information on a few points, merely for the sake of bringing to view the actual condition of the educated mind of China. In history he can recite with familiar ease the dynastic rec- ords of his own country for thousands of years; but he never heard of Alexander or C~sar, or the first Napoleon. Of the third Napoleon he may have learned something from a faint echo of the catastrophe at Sedan, certainly not from the mis- sions of Burhingame or Chunghau, events that are yet too 1874.] The Hctnlin Yuan. 23 recent to have reached the ears of these students of antiquity, who, whatever their faults, are not chargeable with being rerum novarum avicli. In geography he is not at home even among the provinces of China proper, and becomes quite bewildered when he goes to the north of the Great Wall. Of Columbus and the New World he is profoundly ignorant, not knowing in what part of the globe lies the America of which he may have heard as one among the Treaty Powers. With the names of England and France he is better acquainted, as they have left their record in opened ports and ruined palaces. Russia he thinks of as a semi-barbarous state, somewhere among the Mongolian tribes, which formerly brought tribute, and was vanquished in con- flict, her people being led in triumph by the prowess of Kanghi. In astronomy he maintains the dignity of our native globe as the centre of the universe, as his own country is the middle of the habitable earth; a conviction in which he is con- firmed by the authority of those learned Jesuits who persisted in teaching the Ptolemaic system three centuries after the time of Copernicus. Of longitude and latitude he has no con- ception; and refuses even to admit the globular form of the earth, because an ancient tradition. asserts that heaven is round and the eadh square. To him the stars are shining characters on the book of fate, and eclipses portents of ap- proaching calamity. In zodlogy he believes that tigers plunging into the sea are transformed into sharks, and that sparrows by undergoing the same baptism are converted into oysters; for the latter meta- morpliosis is gravely asserted in canonical books, and the former is a popular notion which he cares not to question. Arithmetic he scorns as belonging to shopkeepers; and me- chanics he disdains on account of its relation to machinery and implied connection with handicraft. Of general physics he nevertheless holds an ill-defined theory, which has for its basis the dual forces that generated the universe, and the five elements which profess to compre- hend all forms of matter, but omit the atmosphere. Of the nature of these elements his text-book gives the following 24 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, luminous exposition, namely, that the nature of water is to run downward; the nature of fire is to flame upward; the nature of wood is to be either crooked or straight; the nature of metals is to be pliable, and subject to change; the nature of earth is to serve the purposes of agriculture. So weighty is the information contained in these sentences, that he accepts them as a special revelation, the bed-rock of human knowledge, beneath which it would be useless, if not profane, to attempt to penetrate. It never occurs to our phi- losopher to inquire why water flows downward, and why fire ascends; to his mind both are ultimate facts. On this founda- tion human sagacity has erected the -pantheon of universal science. This it has done by connecting the five elements with the five planets, the five senses, the five musical tones, the five colors, and the five great mountain ranges of the earth; the quintal classification originating in the remarkable observation that man has five fingers on his hand, and setting forth the harmony of nature as a connected whole with a beautiful simplicity that one seeks for in vain in the Kosmos of Humboldt. This system, which our ilanlin accepts, though he does not claim the merit of having originated it, is not a mere fanciful speculation; it is a practical doctrine skilfully adapted to the uses of human life. In medicine it enables him to adapt his remedies to the nature of the disease. When lie has con- tracted a fever on shipboard or in a dwelling that has a wooden floor, he perceives at once the origin of his malady, or his physician informs him that wood produces fire ; earth is wanted to restore the balance, i. e. life on shore, or out-door exercise. In the conduct of affairs it enables him to get the lucky stars in his favor, and, through the learned labors of the Board of Astronomy, it places in his hands a guide-book which informs him when he should commence or terminate an enterprise, when he may safely venture abroad, and when it would be prudent to remain at home. It enables him to calculate futurity and obtain the advantage of a kind of scientict media, or conditional foreknowledge; to know how to arrange a marriage so as to secure felicity according to the horoscope of the par- 1874.] The Hanlin Yuan. 25 ties; and ascertain where to locate the dwellings of the liv- ing, or the resting-places of the dead, in order to insure to their families the largest amount of prosperity. These occult sciences the Hanlin believes implicitly, but he does not profess to understand them, contented in such mat- ters to be guided by the opinion of professional experts. A Sadducee in creed, and an epicure in practice, the comforts of the present life constitute his highest idea of happiness; yet he never thinks of devising any new expedient for promoting the physical well-being of his people. Like some of the phi- losophers of our Western antiquity, he would feel degraded by occupation with anything lower than politics and ethics, or less refined than poetry and rhetoric. Seneca, says Lord Macaulay, labors to clear Democritus from the disgraceful imputation of having made the first arch; and Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the potters wheel. No such apologist is required for our doctors of the ilanlin, inas- much as no such impropriety was ever laid to their charge. The noble motto of the French Institute, invenit et peifecit, is utterly alien from the spirit and aims of the Academicians of China. With them the golden age is in the remote past; everything for the good of human society has been anticipated by the wisdom of the ancients. Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata. Nothing remains for them to do but to walk in the footsteps of their remote ancestors. Having thus subjected our Academician to an examination in the elements of a modern education, we must again caution our readers against taking its result as a gauge of mental power or actual culture. In knowledge, according to our standard, he is a child; in intellectual force, a giant. A vet- eran athlete, the victor of a hundred conflicts, his memory is prodigious, his apprehension quick, and his taste in literary matters exquisite. It is a dangerous error, says an erudite editor of Sir W. Hamil- ton, to regard the cultivation of our faculties as subordinate to the acquisition of knowledge, instead of knowledge being subordinate to the cultivation of our faculties. In consequence of this error, those 26 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, sciences which afford a greater number of more certain facts have been deemed superior in utility to those which bestow a higher culti- vation on the higher faculties of the mind. The peculiar discipline under which the ilanlin is educated, with its advantages and defects, we shall indicate in another place. Before quitting this branch of the sul)ject, we may remark, however, that its result as witnessed in the ilanlin is not, as generally supposed, a feeble, superficial polish which unfits its recipient for the duties of practical life; on the con- trary, membership in the ilanlin is avowedly a preparation for the discharge of political functions, a stepping-stone to the highest offices in the state. The Academician is not restricted to functions that partake of a literary character; he may be a viceroy as well as a provincial examiner; a diplomatic minis- ter as well as a rhymester of the court. In glancing over the long catalogue of the academic Legion of Honor, one is struck by the large proportion of names that have become eminent in the history of their country. We have had occasion more than once in the preceding pages to refer to the memoirs of the Academy. These rec- ords, unfortunately, extend back no further than the accession of the present dynasty, in 1644; and they terminate with 1801, comprising only a little more than one and a half of the twelve centuries of the societys existence. Published under Imperial auspices in thirty-two thin volumes, they are so divided that the books or sections amount to the cabalistic number sixty-four, the square of the number of the original diagrams which form the basis of the Yih-king, the national Book of Divination. The first thing that strikes us on opening its pages is the spirit of imperialism with which it appears to be saturated. The transactions of his Majesty constitute the chief subject; the performances of the members are mentioned only inci- dentally, and the whole association is exhibited in the charac- ter of an elaborate system of belts and satellites purposely adjusted to reflect the splendor of a central luminary. Cast your eye over the table of contents, and see with what relief this idea stands out as a controlling principle in the arrange- ment of the work. 1874.] The Ha?din Yuan. The first two books are devoted to what are called Slieng Yu, Holy Edicts, i. e. expressions of the Imperial mind in regard to the affairs of the society in any manner, however informal. Six books are given to Tien-chang, or Celestial Rhetoric, i. e. productions of the vermilion pencil in prose and verse; eight books record the imposing ceremonies connected with Imperial visits; six books commemorate the marks of Imperial favor bestowed on members of the Academy; sixteen of the re- maining forty-two are occupied with a catalogue of those mem- l)ers who have been honored with appointments to serve in the Imperial presence, or With special commissions of other kinds. In the residuary twenty-six we should expect to find specimens of the proper work of the Academy, and so we do; for no less than three books are taken up with ceremonial tactics; forms to be observed in attendance on the Emperor on sundry occa- sions, the etiquette of official intercourse, etc. ; these things occupying the first place among the serious business of the society. Fourteen are filled with specimens of prose and verse from the pens of leading members; and one is assigned to a high-flown description of the magnificence of the academ- ical buildings ; the rest contain a meagre catalogue of official employments and literary labors. What a picture does this present, a picture drawn by themselves, of the highest literary corporation in the Empire! Yet, notwithstanding the enormous toadyism with which they are inflated, we do not hesitate to say that the twenty-two books especially devoted to the emperors are by far the most readable and instructive portion of the memoirs. They throw light on the personal character of these monarchs, exhibit the nature of their intercourse with their subjects; and illustrate the estimation in which polite letters are held in the view of the government. The first chapter opens with the following: Shunche, the founder of the Imperial family, in the tenth year of his reign, visited the Inner Hall of the Academy, for the purpose of inspecting the translation of the Five Classics; on this occasion, his Majesty said, The virtues of Heaven and the true method of govern- ment are all recorded in the Book of History; its principles will re- main unalterable for ten thousand generations. 28 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, The translation referred to was into the Manchu language; it was made for the purpose of enabling the conquering race the more speedily to acquire the civilization of the conquered. The young sovereign, then only sixteen years of age, shows by this brief speech how thoroughly he had become imbued with the spirit of the Confucian books. The record pro- ceeds: In the 5th moon of the same year, his Majesty again visiting the Inner Hall, inquired of the directors why the writers had ceased from their work so early. The Chancellor Fan replied, This is the sum- mer solstice, we suspend our labors a little earlier on that ac- count. The Emperor, looking round on his attendant officers, said, To take advantage of some peculiarity of the season to make a holiday is natural; but if you wish to enjoy repose you must first learn to labor; you must aid in settling the Empire on a secure basis, and then your days of rest will not be disturbed. If you aim only at pleasure with- out restraining your desires, placing self and family first, and the Em- pire second, your pleasure will be of short duration. Behold, for example, our course of conduct, how diligent we are in business, how anxiously we strive to attain perfection. It is for this reason we take pleasure in hearing the discourses of these learned men; men of the present day are good at talking, but they are not so good at act- ing. Why so l Because they have no settled principles; they act one way to-day and another to-morrow. But who among mortals is free from faults? If one correct his faults when he knows them, he is a good man; if, on the contrary, he conceal his faults and present the deceptive aspect of virtue, his errors multiply and his guilt becomes heavier. If we, and you, our servants, are diligent in managing the affairs of state, so that the benefit shall reach the people, Heaven will certainly vouchsafe its protection; while on those who do evil with- out inward examination or outward reform, Heaven will send down calamity If your actions were virtuous, would Heaven afflict you? Chengtang was a virtuous ruler, yet he did not spare pains in correcting his faults; on the contrary, Chengteh, of the Ming dy- nasty, had his heart set on enjoyment, and clung to his own vices, while he was perpetually finding fault with the shortcomings of his ministers. When the Prince himself refuses to reform, the reforma- tion of his people will be impossible, however virtuous his officers may be. 1874.] The Ilanlin Yuan. 29 This little sermon, excepting the preceding brief encomium on the sacred books, is all that the Academy has thought fit to preserve of the discourses of Shunche. His son, the illustrious Kanghi, fills a large space in the memoirs. Here are a few extracts, by way of specimens The Emperor Kanghi, in the ninth year of his reign (the fif- teenth of his age), said to the officers of the Board of Rites, If one would learn the art of government, one must explore the classic learning of the ancients. Whenever we can find a day of leisure from affairs of state, we spend it in the study of the classics. Reflecting that what is called the Classic Feast, and daily Exposition, are impor- tant usages, which ought to be revived, you are required to examine and report on the necessary regulations. In the twelfth year, his Majesty said to the Academician Fu- tali: To cherish an inquiring mind is the secret of progress in learn- ing. If a lesson he regarded as an empty form, and, when finished, be dismissed from the thoughts, what benefit can there be to beart or life l As for us, when our servants (the Hanlin) are through with their discourses, we always reflect deeply on the subject-matter, and talk over with others any new ideas we may have obtained; our single aim being a luminous perception of the truth. The intervals of business, whether the weather be hot or cold, we occupy in reading and writing. So saying, his Majesty exhibited a specimen of his penman- ship, remarking that calligraphy was not the study of a prince, but that he found amusement in it. In the ninth moon of the same year, his Majesty said to Hiong-tsze-lii, The precept in the Tahio, on the study of things, is very comprehensive; it is not to be limited to math- ematical inquiries and mechanical contrivances.~ Again he said, Heaven and earth, past and present, are governed by one law. Our aim should be to give our learning the widest possible range, and to condense it into the smallest possible compass.~~ In the fourteenth year, his Majesty, on reading a paper of the Hanlin, and finding himself compared to the Three Kings and Two Emperors (of ancient times), condemned the expres- sion as a piece of empty flattery, and ordered it to be changed. 30 The Hanlin Yuan. [July, In the sixteenth year, his Majesty said, Learning must be reduced to practice in order to be beneficial. You are re- quired to address me with more frankness, concealing nothing, in order to aid me in carrying into practice the principles to which I have attended. In the nineteenth year, the Emperor, in bestowing on mem- bers of the Hanlin specimens of his autograph, remarked that in ancient times sovereign and subject were at liberty to criti- cize each other, and he desired them to exercise that liberty in regard to his handwriting, which he did not consider as a model. In the twenty-first year, in criticizing certain specimens of ancient chirography, his Majesty pointed to one from the pen of Lukung, remarking, In the firmness and severity of these strokes I perceive the heroic spirit with which the writer bat- tled with misfortune. In the twenty-second year, his Majesty ordered that the topics chosen for the lectures of the Classic Feast should not, as hitherto, be selected solely with reference to the sovereign, but that they should be adapted to instruct and stimulate the officers as well. In the twenty-third year, his Majesty was on a journey, when, the boat mooring for the night, he continued reading until the third watch. His clerk a member of the ilanlin had to beg his Majesty to allow himself a little more time for repose; whereupon his Majesty gave a detailed account of his habits of study, all the particulars of which are here faithfully preserved. In the forty-third year, his Majesty said to the High Chan- cellor and members of the Academy: From early youth I have been fond of the ink-stone; every day writing a thousand characters, and copying with care the chirography of the fa- mous scribes of antiquity. This practice I have kept up for more than thirty years, because it was the bent of my nature. In the Manchu I also acquired such facility that I never make a mistake. The indorsements on memorials from viceroys and governors, and Imperial placets are all written with my own hand, without the aid of a preliminary draft. Things of any importance, though months and years may elapse, I never for- 1874.] Tk~ Ilanlin Yuan. 31 get, notwithstanding the indorsed documents are on file in the re- spective offices, and not even a memorandum left in my hands. In the fiftieth year, his Majesty said to the High Chancel- lors In former generations I observe that, on occasions of the Classic Feast, the sovereign was accustomed to listen in respectful silence, without uttering a word. By that means his ignorance was not ex- posed, though he might not comprehend a word of the discourse. The usage was thus a mere name without the substance. As for me, I have now reigned fifty years, and spent all my leisure hours in diligent study; and whenever the draft of a discourse was sent in, I never failed to read it over. If by chance a word or sentence appeared doubtful, I always discussed it with my literary aids. For the Classic Feast is an important institution, and not by any means to be viewed as an insignificant ceremony. Of Yungcheng, the son and successor of Kaughi, the me- moirs have preserved but a single discourse, and of that only its opening sentence is worth quoting. His Majesty said to the members of the Hanlin: Literature is your business, but we want such literature as will serve to regulate the age, and re- flect glory on the nation. As for sonnets to the moon and the clouds, the winds and the dews, of what use are they? The next Emperor, Kienlung, far surpassed his predecessors in literary taste and attainments; and his reign being long (sixty years), his communications to the Hanlin are more than proportionally voluminous. Space, however, compels us to make our extracts in the inverse ratio. Many of the preceding and some which follow have nothing to do with the Academy, save that they were speeches uttered in the hearing of the Hanlin, and by them recorded. This, h6wever, is to the point. In the second year, his Majesty said to the general direc- tors: Yesterday we examined the members of the Academy, giving them for a theme the sentence, It is hard to be a sov- ereign, and to be a subject is not easy. Of course there is a difference in the force of th~ expressions hard, and not easy, yet not one of them perceived the distinction. Here follows an elaborate exposition from the vermilion pencil, which I must forego, at the risk of leaving my readers in per- petual darkness as to the momentous distinction. It is, how- 32 Tite Hanlin Yuan. [July, ever, but just to say that the Emperor intends the paper, not as a scholastic exercise, but as a political lesson. In the fifth year, his Majesty says he has remarked that the addresses of the Hanlin contain a large amount of adulation, and a very small amount of instruction. He accordingly recommends them to modify their style. Two years later he complains that the ilanlin often make a text from the sacred b6oks a stalking-horse for irrelevant matters; e. g. Chow- changfah, in lecturing on the Book of Rites, took occasion to laud the magnificence of our sacrifice at the Altar of Heaven, as without a parallel for a thousand years. Before the sac- rifice, he says, Heaven gave a good omen in a fall of snow, and during its per- formance the sun shone down propitiously. Now these rites were not of my institution; moreover, the soft winds and gentle sunshine on the occasion were purely accidential; for at that very time the Prov- ince of Kiangnan was suffering from disastrous floods, and my mind tormented with anxiety on that account. Let Chow-changfah he severely reprimanded, and let the other Hanlin take warning. Among the remaining speeches of Kienlung, there are three that do him credit as a vindicator of the truth of history. In one of them he rebukes the historiographers for describing certain descendants of the Mings as usurpers, observing that they come honestly by their titles, though they were not able to maintain them. In another he criticizes the ignorance and wilful perversions of facts exhibited by Chinese historians in their account of the three preceding Tartar dynasties, namely, the Liau, Kin, and Yuen. And in the last he reproves his own writers of history for omitting the name of a meritorious indi- vidual who had fallen into disgrace. Among the communications of the next Emperor, Kiaking (the memoirs close with the fourth year of his reign), I find nothing of sufficient interest to be worth the space it would occupy. Thus far the Emperors; what the Hanlin say to them in conversation or formal discourse is not recorded. But we know that they are so situated as to exert a more direct influ- ence on the mind of their master than subjects of any other class. They are the instructors of his youth, and the counsel- 18T4.] The Platform of the New Party. 33 lors of his maturer years; and this, the fixing of the views and moulding of the character of the autocrat of the Empire, we may fairly regard as their most exalted function. But if they influence the Emperor, we see in the preceding paragraphs how easy it is for the Emperor to influence them. Herein is our hope for the rehabilitation of the Academy. Far from being decayed or effete, it contains as many and as active minds as at any previous period. At present they spend much of their time in making sonnets to the moon but if the Emperor were so disposed, he could change all that in a moment. He could employ the Hanlin in translating out of English as well as into Manchu, in studying science as well as letters. Nor are indications wanting that this change in the direction of their mental activity is likely to take place. Some years ago Prince Kung proposed that the junior members of the Hanlin should be required to attend the Tungwen College, for the purpose of acquiring the languages and sciences of Europe. Wojin, a president of the Hanlin, and teacher of the Emperor, presented a counter-memorial, and the measure failed. But such is the march of events that the same measure, possibly in some modified form, is sure to be revived, and destined to be finally successful. When that time arrives, the example of the Academy will have great weight in promoting a radical revolution in the character of the national education. W. A. P. MARTIN. ART. II. THE PLATFORM OF THE NEW PARTY. A FREQUENT recurrence to the fundamental principles of the Constitution . . . . is absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty and to maintain a free government. The people ought, consequently, to have a particular attention to all those principles in the choice of their officers and repre- sentatives; and they have a right to require of their lawgivers and magistrates an exact and constant observance of them, in VOL. cxix. NO. 244. 3

18T4.] The Platform of the New Party. 33 lors of his maturer years; and this, the fixing of the views and moulding of the character of the autocrat of the Empire, we may fairly regard as their most exalted function. But if they influence the Emperor, we see in the preceding paragraphs how easy it is for the Emperor to influence them. Herein is our hope for the rehabilitation of the Academy. Far from being decayed or effete, it contains as many and as active minds as at any previous period. At present they spend much of their time in making sonnets to the moon but if the Emperor were so disposed, he could change all that in a moment. He could employ the Hanlin in translating out of English as well as into Manchu, in studying science as well as letters. Nor are indications wanting that this change in the direction of their mental activity is likely to take place. Some years ago Prince Kung proposed that the junior members of the Hanlin should be required to attend the Tungwen College, for the purpose of acquiring the languages and sciences of Europe. Wojin, a president of the Hanlin, and teacher of the Emperor, presented a counter-memorial, and the measure failed. But such is the march of events that the same measure, possibly in some modified form, is sure to be revived, and destined to be finally successful. When that time arrives, the example of the Academy will have great weight in promoting a radical revolution in the character of the national education. W. A. P. MARTIN. ART. II. THE PLATFORM OF THE NEW PARTY. A FREQUENT recurrence to the fundamental principles of the Constitution . . . . is absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty and to maintain a free government. The people ought, consequently, to have a particular attention to all those principles in the choice of their officers and repre- sentatives; and they have a right to require of their lawgivers and magistrates an exact and constant observance of them, in VOL. cxix. NO. 244. 3 34 The Platform of the New Party. [July, the formation and execution of the laws necessary for the good administration of the Common wealth. This precept of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights has been forgotten amid the tumult of civil commotion, until now, unless the country return to a study of those principles which lie at the foundation of government, the dangers against which these words are a warning are at hand. Since the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, when the fear of foreign conquest first forced the thirteen Colonies into an imperfect union, the power of the national government has been in constant conflict with the power of the several States. From the time when the first Continental Congress met, and when it adopted the Articles of Confederation, down to the time when the States ratified the Constitution, the States-rights, or decen- tralizing influence so predominated as to reduce the authority of Congress to a shadow, and to bring on the train of disasters which led to the organization of th~ present government; from 1789 to 1860 the two forces were almost in a state of equi- librium, though the country was ever moving with a slow but steady march toward a triumph of the central power; and since the outbreak of the war the balance has been completely turned, the- States-rights party has been annihilated, and vast strides have been made toward that condition of entire consoli- dation which to-day seems not far distant. To trace the cur- rent of events which has led to this result, to show the dangers which already beset the people, and the consequences which must follow a failure to check the forces working this silent revolution in the federal system, will be the object of this article. The early history of the nation is too well known to require much comment; no one needs to be reminded of the local jealonsies which pruned one by one every attribute of anthority from the Confederate Congress; nor of the wretched condition into which the country fell under that emasculated govern- ment; of the unexecuted treaties, of the debased currency, of the disputes between the States, and of the Shays rebellion. Attention is at once fixed upon the fact that only when soci- ety seemed on the verge of dissolution the people as a last resort were driven to contemplate some sacrifice of local mdc- 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 33 pendence, and to call the convention which framed the Con- stitution. Even then resistance was not overcome; the strug- gle over adoption was violent in the extreme, and iii the Virginia convention, on which all was supposed to depend, the vote was only carried by a majority of ten. Under these circumstances different interpretations of the Constitution were inevitable: one section of thinkers wished to give it a liberal construction, and to augment the central power; the other was inclined to depart as little as might be from the principles of the old confederacy. General Washingtons first Cabinet perhaps the most remarkable ever formed was an effort to unite all divisions of opinion. Mr. Jefferson was Secretary of State, Mr. Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Randolph Attorney-General. Harmony was impossible among such antagonistic elements: even the authority of the President failed to preserve peace, and the furious dissensions which broke out between Hamilton and Jefferson ended in the retirement of both ministers at the close of the first term. So opened the one great controversy in American politics, the relation which the general government should bear to the governments of the several States; in other words, the question of centralization. Under constantly shifting popular issues this stern problem is always found embedded, and sooner or later the struggle has invariably narrowed itself to this point. It was so. in 1801, in 1812, in 1828 over internal im- provements, in 1832 over nullification, in 1860 over seces- sion ; and it is so now. At the close of the last and the begin- ning of this century, foreign relations were the exciting cause. War raged over Europe, and General Washington adopted his policy of neutrality. So long as he remained in office, the re- spect inspired by his name held parties within some bounds; but on the inauguration of his successor the floodgates were opened. Mr. Adams wished to follow the course already marked out, but he found it no easy task. Mr. Jefferson and the Republicans were in furious opposition; they were in sym- patby with the French Revolution, while the North was hostile to it and looked on its progress with alarm. In the midst of this excitement the X Y Z papers were sent to Congress, and 36 The Platform of the New Party. [July, their publication was followed by a burst of indignation. War seemed inevitable. In this crisis the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, and in an instant the South was in a blaze. The legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky led the attack on the administration by passing the famous resolutions of 98. The third Virginia resolve is as follows: That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dan- gerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right and are in duty bound to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintain- ing within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them. The Kentucky resolutions were even stronger. Thus, within ten years after the government went into oper- ation, was that great dispute begun which only terminated sixty years later in the war of the rebellion. Was this government a league, a compact between the States; or was it national, based on the consent of the people, and deriving its power directly from them? If the Virginia doctrine was true in principle, the deductions drawn from it were logically just. If the States had only en- tered into a compact with one another, and still remained to all purposes sovereign republics, then they were equals with each other and with the general government. As such, each one could be the only judge of what constituted an infringe- ment of its sovereignty. Therefore, to allow Congress to pass laws, and to concede to the Supreme Court the final right of judging of their constitutionality, would have been monstrous, for it would have made the central power the judge of its own acts, and would have placed it at once in the position of a superior ruling inferiors. Admitting, however, that a State, as well as the Supreme Court, had a right to pass upon statutes, it necessarily followed that in case of an adverse decision the dissenting government was in duty bound to interfere and pre 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 37 serve its citizeiis from oppression under the execution of an unjust law. Clearly, the establishment of such a doctrine would have been a return to the confederation. In Cohens v. Virginia, Chief Justice Marshall said: Amer- ica has chosen to be, in many respects, and to many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes her government is com- plete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared, that in the exercise of all powers given for these o1z~jects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory These States are constituent parts of the United States. They are members of one great empire, for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate. In a government so constituted, is it unreasonable that the judi- cial power should be competent to give efficacy to the consti- tutional laws of the legislature ? We think it is not Thirteen independent courts, says a very celebrated statesman (and we have now more than twenty such courts), of final juris- diction over the same causes, arising upon the same laws, is a hydra in government, from which nothing but contradiction and confusion can proceed. This case was not decided until 1821 ; but the principle there laid down is that which moderate Federalists have always maintained. Had that party in 1801 been true to itself, had it been able to unite its whole strength on an effort to estab- lish a great fundamental truth, it would probably have carried the election, and the history of the country might have been changed; but it was capable of no such effort; it was torn by internal dissensions, and Mr. Adams was defeated. Among American statesmen Mr. Jefferson stands foremost as the champion of decentralization. He has always, in spite of his denials, been credited with the authorship of the Ken- tucky resolutions. He comprehended more fully, perhaps, than any man of that period the tremendous importance of the ques- tion. For years he had been developing his principles. He had finally, at his own time and in his own words, made a bold appeal to the people, and they had sustained him. Clearly, he was pledged to the loosening of the federal bond, and to the 38 The Pla~form of the New Party. [July, undoing of the federal fabric of government. And ye~ he never even attempted it. On the contrary, his administration seemed every whit as capable of straining authority as its predecessors, and he did in fact so use his power as to stir up something very like rebellion. He is the best illustration of the general law. From the moment when he first faced the responsibilities of office, he seems to have abandoned his dream, and to have re- signed himself to the inevitable. He felt there was but one path open. And so has it ever been; no President, despite his principles in opposition, has been able to resist the pressure which the current of events has always brought upon him. Throughout Mr. Jeffersons term of service a foreign war was imminent, and, beyond an abortive attempt by Mr. Giles to undermine the judiciary, no retrograde step was taken. The most memorable measure of this administration was the embargo. That measure precipitated Massachusetts, the old Federal stronghold, into a movement even fiercer than the one which the President himself had headed at the South, in his protest against the sedition law. But the story of the Hartford Convention, and of the opinion given by the judges on the power of calling out the militia (5 Mass., 545), is too familiar to be retold. The whole proceeding would have graced the bench and the people of South Carolina. Peace came in 1815, and with it the end of these troubles; and thus the practical result of fourteen years of republican rule had been to confirm the work which the Federalists had begun. With the close of war the era of good feeling opened, which lasted without interruption, save for personal quarrels among public men, until 1828. The admission of Missouri at one mo- ment seemed likely to precipitate the slavery qu~stion, but the compromise was peacefully arranged, and the struggle for a time postponed. Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, though perhaps in theory disagreeing with the Chief Justicc, were practically in perfect accord with him, and on the whole this may probably be looked back upon as the golden age of constitutional gov- eminent in America. Not that the old Virginia doctrines were forgotten. On the contrary, they gave signs of life in the Mis- souri discussion, while the case of Martin v. Hunters Lessee, argued in 1816, was a fiat deiiial of the appellate jurisdiction 1874.] The Pla~forrn of the New Parts. 39 of the Supreme Court by the Virginia Court of Appeals. Mr. Justice Roane, too, of that bench, attacked the decisions of Marshall with fury in the newspapers, and Mr. Jefferson again and again commended Roane in his letters, and spoke in strong terms of the usurpations of the judiciary. Nevertheless, all went smoothly until the controversy on the right of government to lay duties for protection was opened by the adoption of the tariff of 1828. This led to the nullification movement, made so famous by the genius of Webster and Cal- houn. Mr. Webster, in his reply to Hayne, thus sums up the position taken by Calhoun and his followers I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of the State Legislatures to interfere whenever, in their judgment, this government transcends its consti- tutional limits, and to arrest the progress of its laws. I understand him to maintain this right as a right existing UNDER the Constitution, not as a right to overthrow it, on the ground of extreme necessity, such as would justify violent revolution. I understand him to maintain aii authority, on the part of the States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the exercise of power by the general government, of checking it, and of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of its powers. I understand him to maintain, that the ultimate power of judging of the constitutional extent of its own authority is not lodged ex- clusively in the general government, or any branch of it; but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the general government transcends its power. I understand him to insist, that, if the exigency of the case, in the opinion of any State government, require it, such State govern- ment~ may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the general government which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitu- tional. Little can be said here of the debates which were held on this question, though they are among the most remarkable of this or any other nation. But to Calhoun in particular there is now scant justice paid. It was easy for Webster to trample on the weakness of Hayne; but it is impossible to read the works of Calhoun and not to feel that only too many of his forebodings have come true. As a reasoner, he was not in- 40 The Platform of the New Party. [July, ferior to his adversary; and the compass of his mind, the force of his logic, and the power of his argument stamp him as one of the most extraordinary men who ever spoke in the Senate of the United States. No extract from his works can do him justice; they must be studied as a whole. He boldly followed his conclusions to their end, and he and his State only yielded to overwhelming force. General Jackson was President. He, like Jefferson, had been avowedly elected on the constitutional issue of centralization, as presented by the question of internal improvements. He too, like Jefferson, had broken down an administration which was thought to favor that dangerous policy; and yet he was the man who, of all others, dealt the heaviest and most decisive blow at the party which carried what should have been his own principles to their legitimate conclusion. His prompt action strangled the incipient rebel- lion in South Carolina. But already it was clear that nothing was needed to bring about a violent collision save a moving cause of sufficient power to stir the passions of these antag- oiiistic forces. Such a cause was found in slavery. This is not the place for entering into the history of that terrible struggle. All its issues save one the great and final consti- tutional issue of the right to secede lie beyond the present discussion. That right was asserted, and was debated on the field of battle. The conquest of the South by national armies put this long controversy of sixty years at rest forever. The Virginia doctrines are dead. The government has proved by force of arms that it has not the right alone, but also the power, to judge its own acts and to enforce its own decrees. That right will not again be lightly questioned. But although it would be out of place to dwell upon the antislavery movement, there is much in the years between 1833 and 1860 which can by no means be omitted; for it was during this period that the seeds were sown from which has sprung the harvest the country is reaping now. General Jackson was the last of the strong Presidents. After the close of his administration the question of slavery began slowly to loom above the horizon. More urgently, day by day, one problem pressed on Southern leaders for solution. The Democratic party, which represented their interests, had to be 18~14.] The Platform of the New Party. 41 kept in power, and yet it represented a minority. Without Northern snpport, the South could not maintain its ascen- dency, and it would not sacrifice its principles to obtain this support. Thus nothing remained to them but a policy of cor- ruption. John Adams, in commenting on the Constitution, wrote: Corruption in almost all free governments has begun and been first introduced in the legislature. When any portion of executive power has been lodged in popular or aristocratical assemblies, it has seldom, if ever, failed to introduce intrigue. The executive powers lodged in the Senate are the most dangerons to the Constitution and to liberty of all the powers in it. And so the result has proved. The Southern leaders deliberately adopted the policy of securing Northern votes by an appeal to local prejudice. They hit on the expedient of nominating for President some weak man from a free State, who, when elected, became a tool in the hands of his Cabinet or, still Worse, in the hands of Con- gressmen, who dictated a policy to the executive. Party organization now became more and more necessary. It had to be relied on in default of principle, and to strengthen it, rotation in office and the caucus were gradually introduced. The value of rotation is evident. By offering places in the civil service as a prize for efficient party workers, a body of men were trained by degrees in all the methods by which local elections could be controlled. Of all these methods the most efficient is the caucus. This institution was not unknown at a much earlier period, for Mr. Madison was nominated by a caucus of the members of Congress in 1809; but the popular caucus, as it now exists, was introduced by the Democrats. Soon it became throughout the North the only method of pre- senting candidates to the people. Of course, in theory, it is a meeting of the members of a party in the district where the election is to be held, to select some man on whom they can unite ; and in order to secure united action, the minority is considered pledged to abide by the choice of the majority. But the practical working of the caucus by no means cor- responds to the theory. Necessarily it is an assembly made up of persons who seldom meet, who are mostly unknown to 42 The Platform of the New Party. [July, one another, and who are, as a rule, profoundly ignorant of parliamentary procedure. Under such circumstances it is easy for a comparatively small number of trained men, who have laid a plan beforehand, to effect their object even when the meeting is full. But the meeting seldom is full. The ordinary citizen cannot be induced to leave his home and his family, and pass long evenings in town-halls or ward-rooms, unless on very exceptional occasions; and when the attendance is scanty, managers have their own way without a show of oppo- sition. Office-holders, it is true, did not immediately begin to manip- ulate caucuses. The perfection to which the system is now brought has been a work of time; but the foundation was laid when the doctrine of spoils was proclaimed. Yet poli- ticians were not slow to strike the scent. Party nominations can be controlled by controlling primary meetings. These meetings can be manipulated with much certainty and ease if only a few clever men can be found who are willing to devote their lives to the calling; and places under government offered much too tempting a pension-roll for such managers, to be long overlooked. More thorough machinery for breeding corruption can scarcely be imagined. Under party organization thus consolidated, a nomination means election, if the party is in the majority. Ordinarily no second candidate can compete with the regular nominee. Everything conspires to render a concentration of independent voters impossible. The strange fear of breaking from old ties, the printed ballot, the want of machinery for calling a caucus, without which long custom has made it almost impossible to move, all unite to exclude competitors, and to place voters in the dilemma of accepting the ticket or throwing away their votes. Granting, then, the caucus as it exists, together with the singular American loyalty to party, as materials on which to work, all that politicians needed to give them nearly absolute power was to wrest the prerogative of appointment from the President. How federal patronage has, in fact, changed hands is a familiar chapter in history. The original machinery pro- vided by the Constitution for electing the President has been 1874.] The Placform of the New Party. 43 supplanted by the caucus and convention system; and at this day it hardly needs to be proved that the intrigues of conventions usually render the nomination of any man with a record impossible, or, in other words, throw out every man of large experience and tried ability. The weakness of Pres- idents chosen with a view to their pliability in the grasp of the power behind the throne, the exigency of party needs, and the confirming functions of the Senate, all have combined to change into an established right that which at first was accorded as an indulgence, and to support the legislature in its usurpation. Clearly, this tended directly toward consolidation. An engine was nearly perfected which would give the central government a great perhaps even a predominating influence in local politics. This was the danger feared by the opponents of the Constitution, though it arose in a different form from that which they apprehended; and yet this engine was invented and first used by the very party which most dreaded its effects, by the old Democratic States-rights party, the party of de- centralization. Thus at the outbreak of the war, rotation in office and the caucus were established facts. The Republican organization was tainted with corruption from its very birth. The descend- ants of the old centralizing Federalists came into power armed with the terrible weapon of their opponents. Henceforward two evils were united. The centralization of the Federalists was grafted upon the corruption of the Democrats. During Mr. Lincolns administration one ill at least was remedied. No one could complain of executive weakness. Congress was restrained within bounds, and the balance of the government was restored. Could the work of reconstruction after the war have been left to those sagacious statesmen who were then in office, the country might never have fallen into its present disastrous condition; but the murder of the Presi- dent raised Mr. Johnson to power, whose influence was an un- mixed evil. From the very outset he involved himself in per- sonal collisions, and adopted a tone and manner which drove the people into furious opposition. A more unhappy moment for entering on the delicate legislation which was to fix the 44 The Platform of the New Part~q. [July, relations between Southern whites and freedmen, could not have been chosen. The result was a sweeping enfranchise- ment of the blacks, and a wholesale creation of the most ignorant mass of voters to be found in the civilIzed world. Congress, too, was on the watch, and with that selfish greed so characteristic of legislative assemblies, it seized on the popular excitement as a pretext for pushing into law the series of measures which finally left the executive helpless and at its mercy. IDown to this time, the great body of simple common-sense voters at the North had steadily supported the national gov- ernment in its struggle to assert its powers. Hitherto it had required their every effort to prevent discontented States from carrying the Virginia doctrines into practice, or even from throwing off their allegiance altogether. They wanted the true federal government as expounded by Marshall: a central power limited strictly as to its purposes, but supreme within its sphere, leaving the States free in all other respects to regu- late their own affairs. Federal dictation or federal interfer- ence had always been hateful, and now the idea began to dawn among them that the States were in danger of being overwhelmed. Nor was this fear without foundation. The influence of the national government had been vastly increased during the war. A great revenue had become necessary, and the number of civil offices had been proportionately augmented. This enormous patronage had fallen into the clutches of mem- bers of Congress, and it promised to be peculiarly effective in manipulating the colored vote of the South. Already adven- turers used it on a large scale throughout the country, and their operations even then had begun to shape themselves into systematic assaults on the independence of States. A senator with patronage in his hands could pack the national offices in his State with his adherents; this done, he could hope to con- trol the caucuses which sent delegates to the convention which nominated the governor. He might take the nomination him- self, or he might give it to a trusted friend; but in either case the result was the same. Success at the election placed the State offices at his disposal; and, what was of much more consequence, it gave him the management of elections, the 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 45 decision in contested returns, the making up of returns and the counting of votes, the construction of votiiig-lists, besides the regulation of every detail at the polls. In 1868 the people began dimly to see these things. The desperate condition of the South alarmed them; they dis- trusted politicians of all sorts; and they turned to the one man in whom they placed perfect confidence, to General Grant. Never since the inauguration of Washington has a President had a more splendid opportunity; the whole nation was with him; it would have snpported him in any attack he might have made on the usurpation of the Senate and the corruption among politicians, and lie must have won. But General Grant failed to comprehend the emergency. He made a stand for a time, in his own peculiar fashion, against members of Con- gress whom he disliked he hardly knew why; but he was no match for them upon their own ground; he soon fell nuder their influence, and has since proved himself, among the many feeble men who have filled the office of President, the most passive instrument in furthering their schemes. Here is the turning-point in the history. All the evils which had hitherto been gathering and slowly drawing nearer, now started into terrible life. Before the war, however much office-holders might have secretly used their influence it was under a decent disguise; they seldom openly interfered with caucuses or elections. Under Johnson, the executive and Congress had been too hostile to act in unison for a common end. But henceforward the two interests were united, a popular President was in sympathy with a great majority in Congress, and both powers worked together toward consolida- tion. Federal interference was recognized as an avowed sys- tem. In North and South impartially, the dominant party used the government as its chief support. Custom, each day deeper rooted, developed an unwritten law stronger than any statute or bill of rights. And the law which has been declared is, that the will of the majority shall be supreme, the Consti- tution to the contrary notwithstanding. A constitutional federal government means a series of checks imposed upon the will of the majority for the protection of the 46 The Platform of the New Party. [July, minority. A consolidated government, in America, means that the will of the majority is absolute. The first proposition will hardly be disputed. The truth of the second is capable of demonstration. When, under the policy of the present administration, a State is, to use a cant term, captured, it ceases to be an independent organization, and becomes an appendage to the general government. This must be so, because its elections are controlled by national office-holders, and its governor is practically appointed at Washington. It is, in all respects save one, simply a province. Its courts alone remain, and the fate of the courts must now be considered. In the United States the courts are a semi-political institu- tion. They are endowed with extraordinary power, and are made the guardians of popular liberty by their prerogative of deciding upon the constitutionality of legislative acts. So long, therefore, as they could be maintained in purity, the triumph of centralization, based as it is upon corrupt and un- lawful principles, could never be complete. Hence it might be inferred that, at an early period, they would become a prin- cipal object of attack. And this inference is correct. That the judiciary can never be a real safe~uard is evident; because, if elective, it is subject to the same influences which control all elections ; if appointed, the power to appoint lies with the men who have the most direct interest in the character of the bench. Thus, according to circumstances, the judiciary will vary with the creative power; when that is corrupt, it will also be corrupt ; when pure, it will be pure. Moreover, it is possible for the legislature to reorganize the courts at its pleas- ure, so that by creating new judges the political departments of the government may always have that declared to be law which will fulfil their ends. And this, too, has been done. In short, in many States, by any or all these means, the judiciary, whether elected or appointed, has been made the mere tool of party. The courts have been disgraced, and the name of justice has fallen into contempt, because, in order to secure unhesitating support, politicians have crowded the bench with judges who might be bought with money. When the legislative, the executive, and the judicial func 1874.] The PlaCform of the New Party. 47 tions of States are thus grasped by a single hand, with the directing power seated, as it is, at Washington, consolidation is complete, and the government has ceased to be a govern- ment of laws and not of men. Had the Convention of 1787 followed the advice of Hamilton, consolidation, indeed, might have come, but it would have been of a very different kind. He advocated a strong central government, the President appointing the governors of the States, and the whole fabric supported by a standing army. His system would, perhaps, have ended in despotism; bnt, at least, it would have been the despotism of a legitimate government, sustained by open and acknowledged means, one capable of making itself respected, and of being obeyed by a people who respected themselves. The fate to which the country seems drifting presents no such redeeming trait. The spectacle offered is that of an executive reduced to impotence by the legislature; of certain members in the more powerful body of that legislature, responsible to no one for their action, forming a junto which controls the policy of the nation; of the various members of that junto striving each to capture his own State by systematic corruption; and, finally, of Congress stretching out its arm to drag down the Supreme Court, making its own will law. This is reducing government to its simplest form, though still preserving the cloak of ancient names. The usurpation of the legislature means the naked rule of numbers. Under some circumstances even such a result might be accepted, if not with complacency, at least with cheerfulness; but under the existing system majorities are manufactured by dema- gogues craftily manipulating the least intelligent portion of society. The facts on which these conclusions are based have occurred within a few years, and are still fresh in the memory of all. Indeed, many of the most startling developments date no fur- ther back than a few months. Yet, in order to place clearly in view the sequence of events, a short sketch of portions of General Grants administration will be useful, not only as illustrative of the past, but as significant of the future. The President, at the beginning of his career, apparently intended to place his reliance on men of common-sense, as he 48 The Platform of the New Party. [July, understood it, and to discard the ordinary politician. With this purpose in his mind, he named Mr. Stewart for his Sec- retary of the Treasury; but when his ineligibility was discov- ered, the President was left with no second candidate of his own choice. In this dilemma, he yielded to Congressional solici- tation, and sent Mr. Boutwells name to the Senate. No appointment could have been more unfortunate; for, not to dwell on the qualifications of that gentleman, as a financier, for the office, Mr. Boutwell had been bred in the school of local Democratic politics. The training received in such an atmosphere had produced its natural result, and the new Sec- retary regarded statesmanship as a mastery of the arts of manipulation. Instead of sustaining General Grant in the stand he had taken, he threw his whole influence into the opposite scale. His idea was to strengthen the party; he neither understood nor desired reform; and he lent the vast power of his department to men far worse than himself, whose designs he failed to fathom. Mr. Hoar was Attorney-General. The first great question that arose regarded the constitution- ality of the Legal Tender Acts. As the events which followed struck at the independence of the Supreme Court, they must ever remain a matter of the deepest interest. In Hepburn v. Griswold the majority of the court as then constituted, five judges out of eight, felt obliged to conclude that an act making mere promises to pay dollars a legal tender in payment of debts previously contracted is not a means appropriate, plainly adapted, really calculated to carry into effect any express power vested in Congress, is inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution, and is prohibited by the Constitution. This decision was not declared from the bench until February 7, 1870, but it had been generally understood that it would be unfavorable for a considerable period before it was made public, and ab- stracts from it had appeared in the newspapers at least a week previously. In commenting on it Mr. Justice Field says: That judgment was reached only after repeated arguments were heard from able and eminent counsel, and after every point raised on either side had been the subject of extended deliberation. The questions presented in that case were also involved in several other cases, and had been elaborately ar 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 49 gued in them. It is not extravagant to say that no case has ever been decided by this court since its organization, in which the questions presented were more maturely considered. It was hoped that a judgment thus reached would not be lightly disturbed. The President, the Attorney-General, and the majority of Congress were, however, bitterly opposed to the principles of this decision, and how that judgment came to be overturned is thus detailed in a note to the Legal Tender Cases (8 Wallace, 528): By act of March 3, 1863, the court was ordered to consist of ten members; a new member being then added. By act of July 23, 1866, to fix the number of Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, etc., it was enacted that no vacancy in the office of Associate Justice shall be filled by appointment until the number of Associates shall be reduced to six, and thereafter the Supreme Court shall consist of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices. By an act of 10th April, 1869, to take effect from the first Monday of December, 1869, it was enacted that the court should consist of a Chief-Justice and eight Associates, and that for the purposes of this act there should be appointed an additional Judge. Hepburn v. Griswold, it is stated in the opinion of the court in the case, was decided in conference No- vember 27, 1869 (8 Wallace, 626), there being then eight Judges (the Chief Justice and seven Associates) on the bench, the lowest number to which the court had been reduced. One of them, Justice Grier, resigned February 1, 1870. The judgment in Hepburn v. Griswold was announced from the hench and entered February 7, 1870. Mr. Justice Strong was appointed Fehruary 18, 1870, and Mr. Justice Bradley, March 21, 1870; and the order for the present argument was made by, and the argument itself heard before, the court of nine as constituted by act of 10th April, 1869. That argument was the argument made in the Legal Tender Cases. Judgment was rendered in the following December term, reversing the decision in Hepburn v. Griswold by a majority of one, both of the new judges voting for reversal. Well may Mr. Justice Bradley say in his opinion: It should be remembered that this court, at the very term in which, and within a few weeks after, the decision in Hepburn v. Griswold was deliv- ered, when the vacancies on the bench were filled, determined VOL. CXIX.NO. 244. 4 50 The Platform of the New Party. [July, to hear the question re-argued on the motion of the Attorney- General. No better example could be found of the impotence of the courts before a popular majority. It was the first time in American history that the constitution of the Supreme Court of the United States had been changed with the effect of influ- encing its decision on a vital question of constitutional law, but it is to be feared that it will not be the last. The precedent is one that is only too likely to be followed. This single act has done more to shake public confidence in the judiciary, and to engender a distrust in the stability of the law, than even the famous decision in the Fred Scott case. It is nothing to the purpose that all parties acted in the best faith, from a high sense of duty, and from the purest motives. The stubborn fact remains that a solemn judgment of the highest national court, rendered only after exhaustive arguments and on the most ma- ture consideration, was reversed within a few months by the votes of new judges raised to the bench within two or three weeks after the delivery of that judgment; and a second deci- sion made in unison with the loudly expressed desires of the predominant political party. A wrong decision by the Supreme Court on an important subject is doubtless a public misfortune; but to attempt to rectify such a decision by fresh appointments to the bench is destruction to constitutional government. It furnishes a precedent for all following politicians to adopt the same means to accomplish their ends. It destroys the respect of the community for law, and it annihilates the confidence which the people repose in the wisdom, integrity, and power of that tribunal on which their liberty and their happiness so utterly depend. Enough has been said of this remarkable violation of judicial sanctity to make obvious the conclusion to be drawn therefrom. The executive and legislative departments caused that to be declared law which accorded with their views. The two com- bined must ever hold the courts at their mercy. When public opinion has reached the point of tolerating such proceedings, paper constitutions may well be consigned to oblivion before they fall into contempt. It would be better frankly to admit the law of numbers, to withdraw political power from the courts, and thus to preserve their dignity and integrity even at the 1874.] The PlaCIorm of the New Partg. sacrifice of those exalted functions which the people fail to appreciate and to uphold. The system of federal interference with the independence of States is the next subject which requires notice. There is hardly a State in the Union on which an assault more or less violent has not been perpetrated, but two examples alone can be considered. They are those cases which have perhaps at- tracted the largest share of public attention, the cases of Louisiana and of Massachusetts. A general election was held in Louisiana in November, 1872, for governor, lieutenant-governor, members of the assembly, and other officers. W. P. Kellogg was the regular Repub- lican candidate for governor, who was opposed by John McEn- ery. Returns of the election were made in pursuance of a State statute to a returning board composed of the Governor, Warmouth, the Lieutenant-Governor, Pinchback, the Secre- tary of State, ilerron, members ex officio, John Lynch, and T. C. Anderson. The returns were sent under seal to the Governor, to be opened in the presence of the board. On the meeting of the board it was decided that Pinchback and Anderson, who had been candidates at the election, were on that account disqualified to serve. The previous Secretary of State, Boyce, had been removed on a charge of corruption, and Herron had been appointed in his place. The legality of this removal was then before the courts. Warmouth, however, became distrustful of ilerron (who was charged with designs of falsifying the returns in concert with Lynch), removed him, and made J. Wharton Secretary of State in his stead. The Governor and Wharton then proceeded to fill the vacancies occasioned by the withdrawal of these various persons; while Lynch and ilerron, pretending to be the true board, elected members to complete their number. Thus there were two bodies existing at the same time, each assuming to be the true board. The Governor had exclusive possession of all documents and returns. In December the Supreme Court of the State decided that Herron was an intruder into office. Therefore it clearly appeared that he had no right to sit in either body, for his claim to sit depended on his being a member ex officio, as Sec- retary of State. 52 The Platform of the New Party. [July, Kellogg, the Republican candidate, was undoubtedly defeated by a large majority. As soon as this result had become ap- parent, but before a canvass of the returns had been com- pleted, on the 16th of November, Kellogg filed a bill in the Circuit Court of Louisiana, averring that the Lynch board was the true board; that he, Kellogg, had been elected; that the returns had not been properly counted; and praying an injunction against the Warmouth board and McEnery, the suc- cessful candidate. Mr. Justice Durell was the presiding judge. It is at least very questionable whether this bill on its face pre- sented a case within the jurisdiction of the federal court. Nev- ertheless, Justice Durell at once issued an injunction on an ex parte hearing, enjoining the Warmouth board from acting except in presence of the Lynch board, and McEnery from setting up any claim to an election under its returns. In the mean time, while these and other legal proceedings were slowly advancing, Warmouth signed an act, previously passed by the legislature, abolishing both boards and constitu- ting a new one. He then organized another and different body in conformity with its provisions; the returns were duly canvassed and McEnery declared to be elected Governor. The names of the persons found to be chosen for the legislature were also published by the new canvassers, together with those of the other State officers. The prospects of Kellogg now seemed desperate. Mr. Jus- tice Durell, however, was master of the situation. On the night of the 5th December, in his own chambers, without any previous motion in court, he concocted the following order: It is hereby ordered, that the Marshal of the United States for the District of Louisiana shall forthwith take possession of the building known as the Mechanics Institute and occupied as the State House, for the assembling of the legislature therein, in the city of New Or- leans, and hold the same subject to the further order of this court; and meanwhile to prevent all unlawful assemblage therein under the guise or pretext of authority claimed by virtue of pretended canvass and returns made by said pretended returning officers in contempt and violation of said restraining order; but the Marshal is directed to allow the ingress and egress to and from the public offices in said building, of persons entitled to the same. E. H. DURELL. 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 53 Of course, so far as legality went, this order had precisely the same validity as if made by any other citizen. The order was, nevertheless, delivered to Packard, the Mar- shal, who called in the aid of the federal army to assist him in executing it. On the morning of the 6th, Captain Jackson, U. S. A., took possession of the State House and occupied it for more than six weeks. On the same day, Collector Casey tele- graphed to the President: Marshal Packard took possession of State House this morning, at an early hour, with military posse, in obedience to a mandate of Circuit Court, to prevent illegal assemblage of persons under guise of authority of War- mouths returning board, in violation of injunction of Circuit Court l7te decree was sweeping in its provisions, AND IF EN- FORCED WILL SAVE THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY AND GIVE Louisi- ANA A REPUBLICAN LEGISLATURE AND STATE GOVERNMENT. The real legislature thus was swept aside; it only re- mained to organize a new one. On December 6th the Lynch bbard certified that Kellogg was elected Governor, and also certified a list of persons whom they declared elected to the legislature. There is nothing in all the tragedy of blunders and frauds under consideration, more indefensible than the pretended canvass of this board. It was testified by Mr. Bovee himself that they were determined to have a Republican legisla- ture, and niade their canvass to that end. No returns were before the board. The following question by Mr. Carpenter and answer by Lynch tell the whole story: By Mr. Carpenter. Q. You estimated it, then, upon the basis of what you thought the vote ought to have been ~ By Lynch. A. Yes, sir. That was just the fact, and I think, on the whole, we were pretty correct. Antoine (the defeated candidate for lieutenant-governor and deputy-collector at Shreveport) now filed his bill; he prayed, like Kellogg, that no one whose name was not on the Lynch list should be allowed to lay claim to any office, and also that War- mouth should be restrained from interfering with the organiza- tion of the legislature elected by Lynch. Motion for this injunction was made on December 7th, and a restraining order was at once granted, couched in the broadest terms. 54 The Platform of the New Party. [July, The legislature thus fraudulently chosen was duly organized. Resistance was useless. It had been installed by the United States Army in pursuance of a void order of a United States Judge. Pinchback took the presidency of the Senate; War- mouth was immediately impeached (it is unnecessary to say that the proceedings at the impeachment trial were utterly irregular and illegal); Pinchback assumed the office of Governor. On the 11th of December, 18Th, Pinchback telegraphed to Attorney-General Williams May I suggest that the commanding general be authorized to furnish troops upon my requisition upon him for the protection of the legislature and the gubernatorial office l The moral effect would be great, and in my judgment tend greatly to allay any trouble likely to grow out of the recent inflammatory proclamation of Warmouth. Mr. Kellogg telegraphed: If the President in some way indicates recognition, Governor Pinchback and legislature would settle everything. And Mr. Casey sent a message saying : The delay in placing troops at disposal of Governor Pinch- back, in accordance with joint resolution, is disheartening our friends and cheering our enemies. If requisition of legislature is complied with, all difficulty will be dissipated, the party saved and the tide will be turned at once ~n our favor. . . . . This history may be fitly closed with the three following telegrams : DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, December 12, 1872. ACTING-GOVERNOR PINCHBACK, New Orleans, Loulswua Let it be understood that you are recognized by the President as the lawful executive of Louisiana, and that the body assembled at Mechan- ics Institute as the lawful legislature of the State; and it is suggcsted that you make proclamation to that effect, and also that all neces- sary assistance will be given to you and the legislature herein recog- nized to protect the State from disorder and violence. GEo. H. WILLIAMS, Attorney-General. On the 12th, McEnery telegraphed, begging that action might be postponed until a committee of citizens could go to Washington and lay the facts before the executive. He re- ceived the following reply to his respectful appeal: 1874.] The Platform of the New Part~y. 55 DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, December 13, 18~2. HON. JOHN MCENERY, New Orleans Your visit with a hundred citizens will be unavailing, so far as the President is concerned. His decision is made and will not be changed, and the sooner it is acquiesced in the sooner good order and peace will be restored. GRO. H. WILLIAMS, Attorney-General. Then came the last resort of arbitrary power WASHINGTON, December 14, 1872. GENERAL W. H. EMORY, U. S. A., Commanding New Orleans, Loulstana. You may use all necessary force to preserve the peace, and will recognize the authority of Governor Pinchback. By order of the President: E. D. TOWNSEND, Adjutant-General. Thus did a constitutional federal Government deal with a sovereign State! Thus was that government established under which such terrible misfortunes have befallen that unhappy people! The best commentary upon the whole matter is the remark of the committee of investigation: The saddest chap- ter in this melancholy business was the interference of federal authority with the affairs of Louisiana. The second example is that of Massachusetts. In that com- monwealth the Republican majority is very large, very compact, and remarkably steadfast. Throughout New England the peo- ple are peculiarly docile to party discipline. Long habit has there bound organizations together with bands too strong to be burst asunder without an absolute convulsion. The few per- sons who do throw off their allegiance are looked upon with suspicion by peaceable citizens as untrustworthy men, without balance, and of dangerous tendencies. An adventurer, there- fore, who can secure a nomination, even by the worst means, probably stands less danger of defeat by defection than would elsewhere be the case. What is known as the Essex district is the heart of the manu- facturing interest of the State. It was there that the organiza- tion was formed which first secured the election of the present representative, and has since enabled him to make good his seat against all opposition. The Congressional history of the member from Essex is not a little puzzling. Certainly when h~ first went to Washington no man seemed less in favor with General Grant, and yet shortly after the advent of this admin 56 The Platform of the New Party. [July, istration he seemed to have gained great influence with th~ President and his Cabinet. He now addressed himself to the task of capturing Massachusetts. To this end he endeav- ored to secure the appointment of his friends to federal offices wherever an opportunity occurred. Patronage was liberally accorded him. A personal party was formed on the most approved pattern, and in 1871 he apparently thought the work far enough advanced to justify a decisive step. In the autumn of that year he announced himself as a candidate, and at- tempted to seize on the Republican convention which nominated the governor. Probably no man could have been named within the Com- monwealth more offensive to the body of respectable and intel- ligent citizens, nor one who could have presented the issue of federal interference more squarely to the people. Without national support his design would have been im- practicable, with that support, not only was it practicable, but it even promised success. In every town and village a circle was formed round the postmaster, the collector, or some other government officer, who was moved by the hope of per- sonal gain. Not a man who wished for place or had a job on hand but added to their numbers. The now too common spec- tacle was displayed, of men bound together by self-interest and spurred to exertion by greedy lust for spoil. Notwithstanding all, the attempt failed, though the success with which caucuses had been manipulated was proved by the number of delegates who supported the new aspirant. Thence- forward a portion of the State central committee, who hold the whole party organization in their hands, was secured to him. Two years more were passed in perfecting the machinery of corruption. The government denied nothing to its favorite, and in 1873 he again renewed the contest. Once more he failed, and was driven to ask still further aid from Washington, nor did he ask in vain. Mr. Simmons, who, in a subordi- nate position, had particularly distinguished himself in the management of the last canvass, was promoted by the Presi- dent to the collectorship of Boston, in the hope that the most important national office in New England might offer a fitting sphere of action for his peculiar abilities. The struggle in 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 5T Massachusetts, it is true, lacks those startling incidents and dra- matic effects which lend so great an interest to the transactions in Louisiana. The three most melodramatic elements are as yet wanting in the North: the corrupt judges, the soldiers, and the blacks. In their absence the coloring takes more sober hues, and the terribly striking contrasts are lost. But making allowance for altered circumstances, and looking exclusively at the principles involved and the intention of the actors, the same conclusion is arrived at. No distinction can be drawn between the attitude of the government toward the two States, or between Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Butler. These two cases are only illustrative of a great system which pervades all parts of the Union alike, the system of corrupt consolidation. A third campaign against Massachusetts has already been announced; how it will tern~inate is uncertain. Should the Commonwealth fall, it will sink into the mire of ring government in which so many States already lie, and its wealth and strength will be used to drag down others to its low condition; for as State after State bows before this mighty power it becomes more difficult for the remnant to resist. This tendency to overthrow local independence is not a passing ill, but on the contrary an evil which probably will grow with time. In a country so large as the United States, sectional questions are pretty certain to be those which fix popular attention and stir popular passion. Whichever section happens to be in the majority must control the government, but it is observable that not only a majority of the people, but also a majority of the States, is necessary to secure a predomi- naiice in all its branches. The temptation, therefore, for the party in power to manipulate State elections in the opposing section is almost irresistible. As in Hepburn v. Griswold, it will be argued that the end justifies the means. The respecta- ble majority in Massachusetts never flinched in its support of the administration, notwithstanding and in the face of the Louisiana atrocities. And so it will ever be: so long as the power exists its abuse is certain. The hardship of the situation is great, because while under a simply centralized government reform is comparatively easy, under the American system a rising of the people on any such 58 The Platform of the New Party. [July, principle is difficult. A spasmodic effort is indeed possible, which may sweep away one nest of vermin, but in the mean time a new sectional issue will arise, a new party will be formed, and new demagogues bestriding the new organization will seek to subvert the States in the opposing section by national influence, and to lead them captive to Washington. When passions are stirred, the people forget that the machin- ery they permit their leaders to use for foreign conquest will next be turned against their own liberties. The organization by States, though in certain respects a protection to minorities, in certain others is a tremendous engine for concentrating power in a few hands. It matters not by how slender a vote a States election is carried, its weight is thrown as though its citizens were a unit. In case of capture, its organization is added to the national organization, and by the union of the two a government of astonishing strength is formed, one quite as ca- pable of trampling on individual rights as any in existence. The condition of many Southern States proves this fact convincingly. When this combination between the dual systems becomes general, that is to say, when men who have succeeded in cor- rupting the executive, the legislative, and the judicial depart- ments of a sufficient number of States have also secured seats 4 the Senate and wield the power filched from feeble Presi- dents, the utter overthrow of the Supreme Court will be at hand. Already it is staggering under a recent blow. Consoli- dation then will be complete, the conduct of public affairs, both local and national, will be concentrated in an irresponsible senatorial junto, legal restraint will be removed by the subju- gation of the courts, and constitutional government will be replaced by the shifting despotism of naked majority rule. Comment is useless. Recent developments have but too clearly demonstrated that the men who climb into office by illegitimate means understand how to create seeming majori- ties where none exist; how to stuff the ballot-box as well as how to pack the caucus. Viewed as a consolidated empire, the United States offers peculiar advantages to the adventurer. The ordinary State is not too large to be controlled by a few audacious, unprincipled men, backed by the wealth and weight of the general government. Once secured, it affords him a firm foothold at Washington; 1874.] The Platform of the New Party. 59 while its compact shape enables him to use it as a potent weap- on in his war on the executive. To say that the combined votes of the delegates from two or three large States would sway most Presidential conventions is no exaggerated state- ment. The men who thus grasp power are absolute in the purest sense, for they hold in their hands executive, legis- lative, and judicial functions. They are also irresponsible, for they are screened by ancient forms of government whose vi- tality they have sapped; and their influence is based on an appeal to the worst passions of the most unprincipled and the least intelligent portion of society, for their strength lies in the caucus packed with voters whom their creatures can control, by their creatures who themselves are bribed. No such system can be permanent, for it is an organized attack on ability, integrity, and education. A government by a standing army is expensive; but a government by a corrupt civil service, with demagogues manipulating caucuses, is ruin. If there be any justice in the foregoing reasoning, the fol- lowing propositions may be considered established. I. The situation of the United States to- day is in nothing anomalous or extraordinary. It is the legitimate result of a combination of circumstances which have influenced the people since they first formed themselves into a nation, and it is only one phase in the advance toward consolidation. Whether or not consolidation in some form would prove a benefit, re- mains in doubt; but that the advance in that direction has of late been rapid is a settled fact. The only point in debate, then, is, how long can the final catastrophe be postponed, and by what means can its approach be regulated. II. Granting, for the sake of argument, that some form of consolidation must come, the shape which it seems assuming is the worst possible, because based on unsound foundations. The system of government now developing falls little short of placing absolute power in the hands of demagogues who use corruption as a means of controlling ignorant votes, since their fixed policy is to exclude integrity and intelligence- from poli- tics, and to rule by an appeal to folly and to fraud. IlL SuTh being the facts, clearly no spasmodic effort by the wople to free themselves from intolerable burdens can produce permanent good. Momentary relief might in all likelihood 60 The Platform of the New Parts. [July, follow, but when new issues arise and new organizations are built upon the old basis to meet them, the old malady will surely break out with redoubled violence. IV. No real reform is therefore possible which does not cut the evil at the root. Demagogues arrive at power by means of a feeble executive, a corrupt civil service, and the caucus sys- tem. First, then, a strong President must be chosen, who will curb the Senate, confine Congress to its proper functions, and who will be able to conceive and to execute a broad constitu- tional policy, one who, above all else, will do battle for the courts. Second, rotation in office must be stopped by legis- lation; place must in future be held during good behavior, and place-men must be forbidden to mingle in politics. Third, something must be done to free minorities from their thral- dom. How this shall be accomplished is of little consequence, whether by independent movements, like that of Governor Booth in California, by regular representation as in England, or by reviving the old custom which prevailed in the South down to the war, of candidates presenting themselves to the people without previous nomination. Any or all these methods are good, so far as they tend to produce the result. But, be the remedy what it may, some means must be devised of loosening the garrote of the caucus. That institution is now strangling the nation by permitting those too often unworthy men who handle party machinery to break down opposition, and to drive from the field all who will not stoop to peddle in their low arts. Finally, nothing will avail unless heed be given to the warning in the Declaration of Rights. Unless the press and the country will rise to the level of the emergency, and will seriously turn to the discussion of those fundamental principles on which all government depends, the tale is welluigh told. To a generation bred up in a knowledge of those great truths no future is threatening, for their wisdom would render tolerable the worst of systems. Ignorant or forgetful of them, disaster is certain. America has been wildly drifting for the past ten years, a little longer and it will be too late. Nothing but a penetrating sense of their danger can save the people from having a dire choice thrust upon them, the choice between anarchy and disintegration, or force. BROOKS ADAMS. 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 61 ART. III. 1. Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissen- sc/i aft. Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Ernst Haeckel, von AUGUST SORLEICHER. 8vo. Weimar. 1863. 2. Ucher die Bedeutung der Spraclie fur die Naturgescitic/ite des lllienschen. Von AUGUST SORLEICHER. iGmo. Weimar. 1865. 3. Lectures on A& . Darwins Philosophy of Language. By PROFESSOR MAX MtYLLER. Delivered at the Royal Institution, March and April, 1873. Printed in Frasers Magazine, and reprinted in Littells Living Age, 1873. THE doctrine of evolution, of the connected and progressive development of organic life on the earth, of the transmutation of animal and vegetable species, is, as every one knows, a lead- ing subject of inquiry and controversy in this latter half of our nineteenth century. Hardly any one reads and thinks so little that he has not felt called upon to make up his mind, or at least to ask hims4f, on which side of the controversy he will take his stand. Yet at the same time there are compara- tively few who will venture to take a decided stand, or who will feel themselves qualified to defend either side against attack. Though from some points of view the new doctrine may seem to be carrying all before it, from others a very different impres- sion will be obtained. There is still a powerful party of oppo- nents who may yet, for aught that we outsiders can say, prove the nucleus of a counter-movement that will sweep backward over the whole field. It becomes us to keep our minds open to conviction on either side, and wait till the biologists shall have fought their fight more nearly out; then we can see whether we will join the victorious party, or summon them to a new contest on other ground. Meanwhile, there are some subsidiary questions which do admit of settlement, and whose settlement will help clear the way for the final decision. One of these subsidiary questions concerns the bearing of language on the controversy. Wonderful things have been brought to light by the aid of language during the past fifty years, in reference to the prehistoric history (if the seeming contradiction in terms be allowed) of the human race. And it cannot but have occurred to many to ask whether linguistic science, which has done so much, has not also a competent

1874.] Darwinism and Language. 61 ART. III. 1. Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissen- sc/i aft. Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Ernst Haeckel, von AUGUST SORLEICHER. 8vo. Weimar. 1863. 2. Ucher die Bedeutung der Spraclie fur die Naturgescitic/ite des lllienschen. Von AUGUST SORLEICHER. iGmo. Weimar. 1865. 3. Lectures on A& . Darwins Philosophy of Language. By PROFESSOR MAX MtYLLER. Delivered at the Royal Institution, March and April, 1873. Printed in Frasers Magazine, and reprinted in Littells Living Age, 1873. THE doctrine of evolution, of the connected and progressive development of organic life on the earth, of the transmutation of animal and vegetable species, is, as every one knows, a lead- ing subject of inquiry and controversy in this latter half of our nineteenth century. Hardly any one reads and thinks so little that he has not felt called upon to make up his mind, or at least to ask hims4f, on which side of the controversy he will take his stand. Yet at the same time there are compara- tively few who will venture to take a decided stand, or who will feel themselves qualified to defend either side against attack. Though from some points of view the new doctrine may seem to be carrying all before it, from others a very different impres- sion will be obtained. There is still a powerful party of oppo- nents who may yet, for aught that we outsiders can say, prove the nucleus of a counter-movement that will sweep backward over the whole field. It becomes us to keep our minds open to conviction on either side, and wait till the biologists shall have fought their fight more nearly out; then we can see whether we will join the victorious party, or summon them to a new contest on other ground. Meanwhile, there are some subsidiary questions which do admit of settlement, and whose settlement will help clear the way for the final decision. One of these subsidiary questions concerns the bearing of language on the controversy. Wonderful things have been brought to light by the aid of language during the past fifty years, in reference to the prehistoric history (if the seeming contradiction in terms be allowed) of the human race. And it cannot but have occurred to many to ask whether linguistic science, which has done so much, has not also a competent 62 Darwinism and Language. [July, judgment to pronounce in reference at least to the last asserted step of the infinite series of transmutations, the development of man out of a lower, a simioid animal. What the leading representatives of this science may have to say, either as to the point in question or as to their own authority as linguists to sit in judgment upon it, will assuredly be listened to with interest by the public. It happens, now, that two of the best-knowii philologists of the day have expressed themselves upon the subject of the bearing of linguistic evidence upon the Darwinian theories, at considerable length and with unquestioning confideiice, neither of them having the least doubt of his competence as a judge, and each claiming to settle the whole controversy beyond a peradventure. Both these men are Germans: the one, Pr~fes- sor August Schleicher of Jena, was long a leading authority in comparative philology, and hardly another scholar, save Bopp and George Curtius, has impressed himself so deeply upon that branch of knowledge, or done so much toward determining its prevailing doctrines; the other, Professor Max Muller of Oxford, is so well known to all readers of English that it is un- necessary to waste a word in describing his position and claims to attention. Unfortunately for the general public, these two eminent scholars have been brought to precisely contrary con- clusions. Schleicher is a firm jieliever in Darwinism, and he even undertakes, and with a success entirely satisfactory to himself, to prove its truth by the evidence of language. M~il- ler rejects Darwinism, and he lays himself out to demonstrate by the same evidence that it is not and cannot be true; and 1~e, too, is equally confident of the triumphant success of his demonstration. Such being the case, there is a yet more ob- vious call for a reopening of the discussion, and an examina- tion of the arguments by which such discordant results have been reached. Upon Schleicher, in the first place, I do not need to spend much time. The pamphlets in which he puts forth and defends his views I have already subjected to a somewhat detailed criti- cism,* which need not be even recapitulated here. His argu * See Transactions of the American Philological Association for 1871, pp. 35 64; and my Oriental and Linguistic Studies (New York, 1872), pp. 298231. 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 63 ment lies in a nutshell. Languages, he declares, are living organisms, with their own laws of development, and not de- pendent on the beings by whom they are used. Since, then, it is beyond all question that languages do develop and become transmuted, since a single stock-language ramifies into a variety of tongues, exhibiting differences as marked as those which distinguish the genera and species of animals and plants, it cannot be denied that organic beings do vary as rapidly and widely as the most eager Darwinian could ask; and if organic beings of one class, then, of course, those of other classes also: quod erat demonstrandum. The simple and obvious answer to this is, that languages are not organisms except by a figure of speech, and that therefore no conclusion can be carried from them over to real organisms. If Schleichers view of the nature of language had any other adherents worth noticing, it might deserve a more elaborate refutation in this place; but although some linguists have pushed the instructive parallel between the so-called organic life of language and that of a plant or animal ~so far as almost, or somewhat, to confuse and mislead their own minds, no one but he, I believe, has ever deliberately attempted to make it the foundation of a sci- entific argument, much less to draw from it inferences of such wide reach and startling importance; and I believe that I am justified in claiming the assent and approval of the leading German philologists for my refutation of his paradoxes. Schleicher was a comparative philologist of immense learning, surpassing ingenuity, and a rare power of systematizing and ingenious construction; but his discussions in the domain of linguistic science show a rashness and unsoundness which cul- minated in the essays to which we are here referring. We turn, then, to consider Mullers views, and the argu- ments by which they are supported. It is never entirely easy to reduce to a skeleton of logical statement a discussion as carried on by Mhller, because he is careless of logical sequence and connection, preferring to pour himself out, as it were, over his subject, in a gush of genial assertion and interesting illustration. I hope, however, to succeed in presenting his reasonings in abstract without doing him or them any injustice. 64 Darwinism and Language. [July, And, in the first place, it seems clear that Muller feels im- pelled to combat the Darwinian theory as to the descent of man by an overmastering fear lest man should lose, otherwise, his proud position in the creation. Thus, he says in the first lecture: If Mr. Darwin is right, if man is either the lineal or lateral descendant of some lower animal, then all the dis- cussions between Locke and Berkeley, between ilume and Kant, have become useless and antiquated. The same state- ment is put more clearly in the second lecture: If it can be proved that man derives his origin genealogically, and, in the widest sense of the word, historically, from some lower animal, it is useless to say another word on the mind of man being different from the mind of animals. The two are identical, and no argument would be required any longer to support Humes opinions; they would henceforth rest on positive facts. Few, I believe, of those who agree with Muller on the general question will hold with him in this particular; and any one must see that his state of mind is not one which will conduce to a calm and dispassionate, a scientific, discussion on his part. A man may be justified in fighting tooth and nail, by fair means and foul, against an absolute identification in point of intellect with the lower animals. The evolutionists, certainly, are actuated by no such dread. To them, the differ- ence of endowment between man and his inferiors is just what it is; something very substantial and very vast, which nothing can reason out of existence or reduce in dimension. So, also, the difference between the mind of the dog and that of the bee or ant, between that of the bee or ant and that of the oyster, is substantial and vast, and may, perhaps, be even greater than the other; as, in fact, it is in outside seeming certainly greater. It is all a matter for careful consideration, whether a continued chain of progression will lead from one of these conditions to another; and the dog may have as good a right to complain of Muller for putting him and the oyster into the same class of animals~ from whom man must be made out essentially different, as Muller to complain of Darwin for putting man and the dog together. But Muller is particu- larly severe upon the assumption of insensible gradations to bridge over any of the differences in any of the departments 18T4.] Darwinism and Language. 65 of nature, animate or inanimate. Thus he says (second lec- ture) This old fallacy of first imagining a continuous scale, and then pointing out its indivisibility, affects more or less all systems of phi- losophy which wish to get rid of specific distinctions The admission of this insensible otaduation would eliminate, not only the b difference between ape and man, but likewise between black and white, hot and cold, a high and a low note in music; in fact, it would do away with the possibility of all exact and definite knowledge, by removing those wonderful lines and laws of nature which change the Chaos into a Kosrnos, the Infinite into the Finite, and which enable us to count, to tell, and to know. Now it may be not quite fair to hold a reasoner to an illus- tration as if it were a deliberate argument; bnt I wonder that MUllers own chosen illustrations here did not show him, as they cannot help showing many of his readers, against what a phantom he is fighting. Where are the lines and laws of nature which separate, for instance, the high from the low musical tone? I know of none except the lines and spaces of the staff; and they are products of art rather than of nature. If Muller is satisfied with the full and complete recognition of the difference between white and black, hot and cold, high and low, and their like (such as small and great, young and old, rich and poor, handsome and ugly), and considers the Kosmos and the Infinite as insured thereby, then there is no obstacle in the way of his becoming a Darwinian; for the Darwinian regards, rightly or wrongly, the difference between man and ape as entirely analogous with the rest, that is to say, a mere difference of degree. MUller appears not to apprehend cor- rectly the meaning of the insensible graduation used by the evolutionists as a factor in their arguments. He proposes (by a characteristic and telling figure) to draw upon the same bank which furnishes the million intermediate grades for eyes that will magnify their distances a million times, and is confi- dent that his draft will be honored, and that the distances will continue to appear as great and insuperable as at present. But in this he overlooks the fundamental principle underlying the Darwinian theory namely, the undoubted and undisputed fact that species do actually vary in nature. Between the VOL. CXIX. NO. 244. 5 66 Darwinism and Language. [July, mind of a Newton or Cuvier and that of a dull English or French peasant there is a difference which does not need to be magnified a million of times iu order to become conspicuous; yet INitiller would hardly deny that the two are specifically related, and that the one might even descend lineally from the other. An insensible graduation is simply one of which the intervals are not greater than may be found actually occur- ring in nature between acknowledged kindred; and the ques- tion under discussion is, whether a succession of such intervals, following one another in the same direction, is capable of cov- ering the spaces that separate the different animals from one another, even man from his inferiors. Upon such a question, especially at this stage of its dis- cnssion, opinions cannot but be at variance; and possibly they may always continue so. It belongs especially to the biologists to settle, and until they shall have arrived at a greater una- nimity, the outside world will be justified in taking the affirma- tive or the negative according to their various bents. There is a considerable and respectable party who maintain the inviolability of specific differences, and refuse point-blank to admit that any transmutation is possible, in less or greater degree. It is not upon this broad ground that Muller elects to make his opposition ; he only steps in between man and the creatures of next lower grade, and offers there his veto. As linguist, he claims to have found in language an endowment which has no analogies and no preparations in even the beings nearest to man, and of which, therefore, no process of trans- mutation could furnish an explanation. Here is the pivot upon which his whole argument re~ts and revolves. It seems clear, however, that Muller cannot expect to daunt the evolutionists by setting up this obstacle in their way. There are other great steps upward in the scale of endoxvment which they will deem as hard to have taken as this. If they are ready to admit as possible a rise from the fixedness and unimpressibility of the polyp, for example, a mere link in the great chain of eater and eaten, to the free locomotion and the free intelligence of some quadrupeds, they will be likely to make little difficulty in adding on a power of speech. There is nothing, they will say, in the polyp, or even the reptile, to hold 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 67 out promise of a creature that shall soar and sing like the lark or the nightingale. And it savors of exaggeration perhaps natural aild excusable, but yet inadmissible exaggeration in the linguist to set up the particular endowment which is the subject of his studies as the one of all others which cannot have come by addition to its predecessors. He must argue the ease with moderation and acuteness, on strict scientific grounds and by scientific methods, if he is to convince our judgments. And I, for my part, do not think that Muller satisfies these reasonable requirements in any tolerable measure. So, for one thing, with the way in which he sets up language as the dis- tinctive quality, the specific difference, of man. Any one would naturally infer, from his account of it, that language is a unitary endowment, a gift like that of sight or hearing, and that it is all, or so nearly all, that makes mans superiority, that any given animal, plus speech, would equal man. To talk thus about it is not to talk science, even linguistic science. I should be a little troubled at believing that I held my position so exclusively by one right. It would not be without a certain secret shudder that I should join in the laugh at Schleichers joke, twice quoted by Muller in these lectures: If a pig were ever to say to me, I am a pig, it would ipso facto cease to be a pig. For wonderful things have happened; there is now and then a mouse that sings; and there are learned pigs; what if some time one should arise so learned as to compass the bodeful declaration of pighood which would be in effect a proof of manhood, and so should push us from our throne? I, however, can reassure myself by reflect- ing that there are many other things a pig cannot do and a man can; if his pigship were to fashion a violin and play a tune upon it, or draw a picture of his respectable mother, or even cut down trees and build himself a house, I should hardly dare to call him by his old name; and if he were to address me in good pigwigian speech, I should think that his identity~ did not cease by that act, but must have ceased long before. In arrogating such overwhelming importance to language as a human characteristic, Muller claims both too little and too much. Too little, because the superiority of human endow- ment comprehends vastly more than that. It is, for exampk, 68 Darwinism and Language. [July, every whit as characteristic of man to increase and supplement the capacity of his hands by using tools; and nothing else that lie does bears so pervading and instructive an analogy with his use of words. Yet no one would be justified in setting up the use of instruments, in a concrete way, as an impassable barrier between man and brute. It would be necessary, rather, to ana- lyze the individual capacities of which this is the joint effect, and to examine narrowly what beginnings of them, or indications looking toward them, are to be found in any of the inferior races, and by what deficiencies they are counteracted and fu- tilized. And it is precisely by neglecting to do this thing with reference to language that MUller claims too much. It is a very cheap and easy thing to assert, as he does, that, taking all that is called animal on one side, and man on the other, I must call it inconceivable that any known animal could ever develop language: nobody will think of disagreeing with him here; if the development of language were within the reach of any but man, it would long since, doubtless, have taken place. When, however, he claims that an increase of the endowments of any animal in such manner and degree as to put language within its reach is also inconceivable, a wonder as compared with which he could much more readily hold that that most wonderful of organs, the eye, has been developed out of a pig- mentary spot, and the ear out of a particularly sore place in the skin, he cannot but seem to many to be using the ex- aggerated and unscientific phraseology of mere prejudice and presumption, and they will have the fullest right to look sharply to discover on what basis of linguistic philosophy such a view reposes, and by what arguments he will attempt to establish its soundness. Nor do I think that they will be reassured and satisfied by the result of their inquiry. Let us examine and see. In the first place, Muller prepares his ground by denying categorically that we can know anything about the mental states and mental acts of the lower animals. If there is, he says, a terra incognita which excludes all positive knowl- edge, it is the mind of animals. The whole subject is transcendent. There is a compromise among philosophers of the last century, declaring the old battle-field, on which so much ink has been shed over the question of the intellect of 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 69 animals, to be forever neutralized, and it ought hardly to have been disturbed, least of all by those who profess to trust in nothing but positive fact. It is calculated to make a man of science of the nineteenth century a little impatient to be told that his predecessors of the eighteenth, which he almost re- gards as the age of darkness, have settled any question, in relation to the animal or vegetable or mineral kingdom, so thoroughly that he must not venture to reopen it; or that there is any phase of animal life and activity into which he may not look with the hope of learning at least something about it. By an error which is not uncommon with him, MUller expands a partial impossibility into a total one; because we cannot fully comprehend the mental processes of even the animals nearest to us, he would claim that we can know absolutely nothing about them. In his sense, it is impossible to know anything about even our fellow-men. Who, for example, can be sure that, if he had a friends sensorium in his brain instead of his own, he would get precisely the same sensation of color as at present from the green grass and the blue sky? The point is one which we can never bring to a test; the whole subject is transcendent; yet we content ourselves with the inferences we are able to draw from the like conduct of other men under conditions like those we experience, and we feel that we know something about them. And the same sources of knowledge stand us in stead with regard to the brute. We believe that the horse sees green, and tastes water, and feels pain, as con- fidently, and on nearly the same grounds, as we believe that our neighbor does the same. We are satisfied that we appre- ciate the feeling that makes puppies and kittens play, or the dog rub itself against its master, or look affectionately up into his face and wag its tail. It may be very unphilosophical; but it is part of the same common-sense philosophy which makes us believe in our own existence, and in that of beings and things external to ourselves, and of which every metaphysician that says I and we and you and they virtually ac- knowledges the truth, however firmly he may persuade himself that he has assurance of nothing in the universe save his own states of mind, if even of those. We have, it is true, one additional source of knowledge respecting our fellow-men, To Darwnasm and Language. [July, namely, their speech; and the advantage this gives us is very great; so long as MUller will let us look upon it as a matter of degree only, he can hardly claim anything in its favor which we shall not be disposed to grant; but it is not the only source, nor is it infallible; it requires to be both supplemented and controlled by that same observation of conduct under condi- tions which is all we have to rely upon in the lower animals. But Mullers assertion of our boundless ignorance as to the mental states of brutes seems intended by him to embarrass only his opponents reasonings, and not his own; for he goes on to maintain, in an equally categorical manner, that ani- mals receive their knowledge through the senses only; that conceptual knowledge is denied to then-i ; that no animal except man possesses the faculty, or the faintest germs of the faculty, of abstracting and generalizing. This doctrine of the incapability of any animal but man to form a general idea is very familiar to all who have read MUllers works; and many, probably, like myself, have looked with interest to see on what grounds he holds it, without ever discovering them; here, also, notwithstanding its pivotal value in his argument, he is equally chary of its proof; he only asserts that no phi- losopher of note denies it, and quotes as examples Locke and Schopenhauer. We do not, however, as I think, need to let ourselves be put down once for all by such a citation of authori- ties, nor to trouble ourselves to draw up an array of opposing authorities; votes are a less acceptable method of settling a question like this than a view of the facts involved. And I mustsaythatl do not see how the formation of generalideas, within the narrow limits of their understanding, can possibly be denied to the lower animals; it is a necessary attribute, not of the higher powers of human reason only, but also of the humbler quality of animal intelligence: nothing that we can call intelligence is to my mind conceivable without it. What is there so wonderful and exalted in the formation of a general idea? It need imply no more than the power of being so impressed by a thing in the assemblage of its qualities that on seeing another like it we recognize it as being like, and ex- pect the same acts or effects of it. Let us examine a little Mullers own illustration. A child, he says, that for the first 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 71 time sees an elephant, however much he may go about it and inspect it, does not know the elephant. We might dispute, I think, whether the child does not get a beginning of knowledge from such a first inspection; but let that pass. If, then (we are told), the child sees another elephant, or the same one a second time, and recognizes the animal as that, or like that, which he saw before, then, for the first time, we say that the child knows the elephant. This is knowledge in its lowest and crudest form. It is no more than a connecting of a present with a past intuition or phantasm; it is, properly speaking, remembering only, and not yet cognition. There seems to be a little inconsistency here. The child recognizes the animal, and knows it, and yet his act is not cognition; he remembers his former perception, puts it alongside his present, and appre- hends their likeness, and yet it is only remembering. Here, again, MUller ignores the gradual formation of a general con- cept. He insists on black and white, high and low, without any degrees between them. For he goes on to point ont that an older child, on seeing an elephant, even for the first time, knows it for an animal; and here, and only here, does he ac- knowledge that a concept has been formed. I maintain, on the contrary, that the idea of an elephant, which the child forms on the basis of two or more sights of the animal, is just as truly a general concept as that of an animal; it only is not one of so high an order; it calls for less experience, less penetration, less judgment, than the other. And Muller, confessing that the animal intellect, according to the ordinary interpretation, would go as far as this, but no further, virtually concedes the point in dispute, and allows the formation of general ideas by the animals. He then advances a step, and exhibits to us a young man of some scientific training judging the same creature to be a vertebrate, a mammal, a pachyderm, a proboscidate, and finally, an object; and seems to think that, as he rises higher and higher in the scale of what is. possible only to the highly trained human intellect, he is more and more strengthening his dogma, that nothing below man exhibits the faintest germs of the faculty of abstracting and generalizing. I cannot see it in that light; for me it is sufficient to know that an animal like a dog perfectly knows what a man is, never confounds it with Darwinism and Language. [July, any other creature, knows what to fear and hope from it, in order to hold, with a confidence that is proof against all au- thority, the doctrine that an animal lower than myself possesses sQch germs of the faculty of generalizing as are distinct only in degree from those which I possess. If the dog had language, he would as certainly say man, or something equivalent, and would apply it as correctly, as any of us do. We might illus- trate with a hundred other equally clear cases, but one is as good as a hundred. No doubt we should by and by come to a limit, where the case would be doubtful. I am very certain that neither dog nor elephant nor monkey could ever rise to the conception of a vertebrate, any more than many races of men with grammars and dictionaries have done; as to that of an animal, I should not at present venture to hold a confident opinion; certainly I should be loth to deny it. There are other points where Miller seems to mistake the limit between animal intelligence and human reason, and to claim solely for the latter what, in an inferior degree, belongs equally to the former. It is so with the matter which occupies his attention through nearly the whole of his first lecture. There he endeavors at great length to send the naturalists, the biologists, back to the study of Kant, and to the discussion of the opposing theories of flume and Berkeley, warning them that otherwise they cannot expect their opinions to fit in as harmonious parts in the great fabric of human knowledge. Whether they will much heed his exhortations may be doubted. They are an opinionated set of men, so busy in the investiga- tion of what they deem to be facts, and so convinced of the importance of the results they are reaching at every step, that they are a little impatient of being interrupted by people who want them to settle first what a fact is, and whether there is any reality in all that is busying them. They have a short and easy, even if a very nuphilosophical, way of settling these ultimate questions, namely, on the principle, familiar enough to them, of accepting the hypothesis that on the whole best explains the facts, and pushing directly on to the accumula- tion and classification and comparison of more facts. On this ground, they hold that a man is a being set down in the midst of a universe composed of beings and things just as real as he 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 73 himself is, and that be is by his senses and his reason put in such relations to this universe as enable him to learn some- thing about it; that he is essentially an intelligent being, capa- ble of receiving information and acquiring knowledge. That the knowledge gained is imperfect, in part delusive, mixed with error, they freely confess. They know, for example, that the sensations of color, of sound, of heat, are as subjective as that of pain ; that these are only the ways in which onr sensi- tive organism is made cognizant of the fact that other bodies are in certain states of vibration ; and, just as the absence of an ear would wellnigh hide from us the fact of sonorous vi- bration, so the acquisition of new senses not possessed by us might probably enough open to us a host of things of which we now have not the faintest conception, though they are as real as what we do perceive; even as Neptune and Uranus, and the rings and moons of Saturn, were real for ages before a single intelligence upon earth had so armed its power of observation as to discover them. They believe that theirs is the true and fruitful method of increasing human knowledge and eliminating human error; and they believe that meta- physical reasoning will never succeed in pushing more than an infinitesimal part of mankind off this basis; that even the metaphysicians really stand upon it; and that metaphysical science comes gleaning after physical, compelled to accept and work up in its way the latters results. Whether they are right or wrong in all this, they doubtless will not, as I have said, be driven off their position, or shaken in it, except by a more powerful assault than Muller makes upon them. And especially, they will not be led to acknowl- edge the paramount authority of the Kantian doctrine, in its bearing on the question of the development of man. What Muller claims most confidently and demonstrates most tri- umphantly by his first lecture is, that the categories of space and time, and the law of causality, whereby we postulate cer- tain existences external to ourselves as the producers of cer- tain effects in us, are elements of knowledge furiiished by our mind itself, not received from without. This we can well afford to grant him, for all the purposes of the main question that occupies us. For no zoiilogist, we presume, will think of 74 Darwinism and Langitage. [July, questioning that the minds of some of the lower animals fur- nish them precisely the same elements. That a dog, and many another animal, apprehends with all possible distinct- ness the existence of other beings than itself, it does not seem as if Muller even would have the boldness to deny; nor do the same animals fail to realize, as the basis of life, that succession of events, and that juxtaposition of objects, which are the foun- dation and the practical phase of what we call time and space. That the full conception of space and time is not too difficult an abstraction to be realized by even the highest animals I would not assert; but it may be confidently maintained that they possess here even more than those faintest germs of the faculty of abstracting and generalizing which Muller would fain deny them; germs enough to develop, with an increase of intelligence and the consequent acquisition of language, into all that belongs to us. If we examine the extract from Locke made by MUller, we shall see that the former denies to brutes the power of forming general ideas, simply on the ground that they do not talk. He says, The having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction between man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means at- tain to. For, it is evident, we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting or making general ideas, since they have no use of words or any other general signs. The fallacy lurking here is the assumption that, if general ideas were formed, they could not help finding expression in words; and that I can see no good ground for. Muller does the same thing in his own way, as follows: Language, such as we speak, is founded on reason, reason mean- ing for philosophical purposes the power of forming and handling general concepts; and as that power manifests itself outwardly by articulate language only, we, as positive philosophers, have a right to say that animals, being devoid of the only tangible sign of reason which we knox~, namely, language, may by us be treated as irrational beings, irrational, not in the sense of devoid of observation, shrewdness, calculation, presence of mind, reasoning in the sense of 1874.1 Darwinism and Language. T5 wejohino or even oenins, but simply the sense of of the in devoid power of forming and handling general concepts. All the assertions here are snob as will be disputed by men of another way of thinking than our author. Reason, they ~vill say, is that degree of power over general concepts which we possess, and which is so much higher than anything pos- sessed by brutes that it is properly called by a different name. Again, handling general concepts is an ambiguous and un- scientific phiase, and involves, perhaps, more power than forming them; we might fairly enough say that the effec- tive management of ideas is possible only by means of a sys- tem of signs, which the brute confessedly has not. But to put the formation of general concepts at the very top, and the power of weighing probabilities and calculating results, even genius itself, far below, is to turn the natural order of things topsy-turvy. I wish Miller would once attempt to show how the results of past experience are to be applied to the regula- tion of present action save through the medium of general ideas. Nor, once more, is articulated language, or language of any kind, the only intelligible manifestation of reason. There is rational conduct as well as rational speech, and it is quite as effective as speech. There could be no building, no weaving, no instrument-making, no art, without reason, but it is conceivable that they should exist without speech. All these, speech included, are parallel capacities of the rational being; each needing for its development and education the fostering care of circumstances and the accumniation of general and long-continued experience; of different degrees of elevation and importance; and each, in its own way and measure, help- ful to every other. Muller himself acknowledges, nearly at the beginning of his lectures (by a nearer approach to the trnth than we have ever noticed him to make before), that, though the faculty of language may be congenital, all languages are traditional. Unless, then, reason is a matter of tradition rather than of natural gift, a man may fail to have had any language handed down to him, and so may fail to give what Muller reg~rds as the only possible evidence of reason, and yet may be rational. There are especially two cases in which this faIlure may and does take place, that of the solitary and that 76 Darwinism and Language. [July, of the deaf-mute. Of these two, MUller has repeatedly main- tained that the latter does not possess reason; and I have always thought it a complete reductio ad absurdum of his theory of language and reason; nothing can be right which conducts us to such a paradox as that. At present he shows signs of drawing back. He ventures no assertion on his own responsi- bility, but tells us that, according to those who have best studied this subject, it is perfectly true that deaf-and-dumb persons, if left entirely to themselves, have no concepts, except suck as can be expressed by less perfect symbols. The statement has a tinge of bathos in it; it ought not to take much profound study, one would think, to bring to light a truth so obvious as that an unfortunate who is cut off from nearly all the ordinary means of instruction will fall far below his fellows in mental training. And the those who have best studied this subject, as appears from the reference given, are a single French phy- sician, who maintains only so much as this: that those who by congenital mutism are restricted to their own individual expe- rience retrograde toward the primitive savage condition of man, and that their minds are unable to develop themselves. I think that the gentleman in question would be somewhat astounded, if he knew that he had been relied on as sole voucher for the doctrine that human beings with numb auricu- lar nerves are destitute of reason. And the last clause of MUllers statement, which I have italicized, annuls its whole force. If the deaf can form concepts and express them by any symbols at all, whether more or less perfect, they can, accord- ing to Mullers own view, reason. He himself points out, only a paragraph or two later, that the kind of symbol is a matter of wholly secondary consequence; the essential thing is that any symbols are made, and that through their aid general con- cepts are handled. There is another of his old doctrines, closely connected with these, to which Muller seems minded to adhere more tenacious- ly, namely, that thought without words is impossible; though, after all, some of his expressions about it are so loose that we cannot quite tell what he means. Thus, in the very form which he gives to the question itself, Are concepts possible, or, at least, are concepts ever realized, without some form or 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 77 outward body? Here are two discordant things mingled to- gether as if parts of the same view. It may be possible for concepts to be formed, and yet not realized; that is to say, not so put before the consciousness of the conceiver that he knows, or realizes, what he is doing. And that would be very nearly my view: thought is possible without language, but reflection is not; the thinker cannot hold up his thought before his own mental eye (at least, otherwise than in the most imperfect way) without the aid of symbols; words bring thought under the full review of consciousness. Muller answers his question in the negative, and goes on: If the Science of Language has proved anything, it has proved that conceptual or discursive thought can be carried on in words only. Here again he limits thought in such a way as to render his meaning unclear without some explanation. Perhaps by con- ceptual or discursive t1~ought lie intends some of that higher kind of abstract reasoning which any one would admit to be impossible without signs, even as the higher mathematical processes are impracticable without figures and other symbols. Perhaps there is another and a simpler kind of thought, which is nevertheless thought, of which even he would allow the unassisted mind to be capable. If he does not mean this, many students of language will maintain that their science proves just the opposite of what he claims. What follows is more explicit: We can, by abstraction, distinguish between words and thought, but we can never separate the two without destroying both. If I may explain my meaning by a homely illustration, it is like peel- ing an orange. We can peel an orange, and put the skin on one side, and the flesh on the other; and we can peel language, and put the words on one side, and the thought or meanings on the other. But we never find in nature an orange without peel, nor peel without an orange; nor do we ever find in nature thought without words, or words without thought. This illustration is not at all to be found fault with on acconut of its homeliness; the more homely and familiar, the better, provided only that it be used as an illustration, as an aux- iliary to argument, not as a substitute for it, and provided that there be such an analogy between the things compared, in cer 78 Darwinism and Language. [July, taiu essential respects, that the one fairly casts light upon the other. But, so far as I am aware, this is the nearest approach that MUller has ever made to giving a reason why we should believe that thought is impossible without words; and when it comes to assume thus the character of an argument, when we are called upon to believe that thought cannot exist without expression because an orange is never found without a skin, then we cannot help examining narrowly the analogy upon which so much is built. And I think we shall find it not quite broad and solid enongh to sustain so great a superstructure. Orange- peel, in the first place, is of the self-same substance, and pro- duced by the self-same forces, as the rest of the orange; it is a part of the orange itself; while, on the other hand, a concep- tion, a judgment, a volition, a fancy, is an act of the mind, while a word is an act of the body, just as much as is a gesture, or a grimace, by either of which, indeed, as our author points out, the place of a spoken symbol may be supplied. It is, to be sure, an act of the body under the government and direction of the same mind that forms the thought; but so also the orange-tree makes roots, and stem-wood, and bark, and leaves, which are not orange-peel, though they may come to be used to wrap oranges in. Again, every orange has its own par- ticular skin, and of one unchanging form and size and thick- ness and edlor; while the thought and the word are so in- dependent of one another, that either may be altered to any extent without modifying the other; the word may be reduced to the driest yestige of its old self, and the contained idea be as rich and juicy as ever; and the substance of the idea may shrivel away to the emptiness of a mere sign of formal relation, while the word continues to make a fair show. Moreover, as many languages as there are, so many different words for the same thought, words as different as orange-peel and lemon-peel, and apple-skin and potato-skin, and ox-hide and fish-scales. When the Normans came into England, a long time ago, they brought with them a store of skins of a different growth, in which English oranges finally came to be to no small extent enclosed. And nowadays, when our tree produces new fruit, we go to certain countries of Southern Europe, where there was abundant production in old times, and trim and piece to- 1874.] Pj!9 Darwini~m and Language. gether out of their dead material wrappings for our fresh ac- quisitions. Truly, the comparison seems to halt a good deal, when we try to make it keep even with these characteristic and essential facts in the history of our language, and of other languages. Words are much less like the natural coverings in which oranges grow than like the boxes in which these are packed for transportation. Oranges cannot be conveniently handled, and laid up, and sent about, and dealt in, without such cases; and every community that grows them provides also cases for them, of such material, and in such forms, as convenience and custom prescribe. Of course, this analogy also has its weak sides, and could easily be made to appear absurd by pushing it too far; I only claim that it is enough truer than Mullers to constitute a satisfactory refutation of the latter; and to justify those who hold the doctrine of the merely external union of idea and word in waiting with undiminished confidence to see whether anything less easily disposed of can be brought forward against them. That character, certainly, does not belong to the paragraph in which our author attempts a little later to hold them up to ridicule, imagining them sitting down to prove their view ex- perimentally by deliberately thinking of some familiar and long-named object like a dog, without help from its name. The laugh, with most of his readers, will be only against him- self, for such a ludicrous misapprehension and misrepresenta- tion of his opponents views and methods of proof. If it were prevalently believed (and really there is not so absolute an unlikeness between the two doctrines) that a mans shadow was a mysterious and ineffable part of him, brought into the world with him and necessary to his existence, any one might just as suitably ridicule the philosopher who should try to show the contrary, by depicting him in the attitude of making frantic attempts to jump off his own shadow, or run away from it. Every one who knows anything of language knows that in our mental habits words and ideas have become so welded to- gether as to be wellnigh inseparable; and that it is especially in the deliberate, conscions, reflective action of our minds that the word most unavoidably accompanies the thought. One must catch the mind off its guard, as it were, or must observe 80 Darwinism and Language. [July, it working out and assimilating new knowledge, and casting about, often in the most open manner, for new designations for such knowledge, or must notice how, under the frame- work of its speech, it is drawing distinctions and pointing conclusions which words are then stretched or narrowed to cover, if he would appreciate what is meant by the mind being independent of words save as it uses them for its instruments and auxiliaries. Observation, comparison, percep- tion of resemblances and differences, these, in their degree, are the characteristic operations of human minds; and there is not one of them which, in its simpler stages, is not indepen- dent of speech; only speech enables us to rise into ever higher stages of mental action, to deal with subjects which would otherwise be quite out of our reach. If, standing under a fruit- tree, I compare two sticks, and choose the longest with which to reach the bending branches, I have done an act which is dis- tinctive of human reason, which no other animal is capable of, and which is nevertheless wholly independent of language; it and its like might have been done a million times before there was such a possession as language among men. If, instead of the familiar dog, Muller had brought before him some wholly strange animal, he would find that he could shut his eyes and call up the image of it readily enough without any accompany- ing name; and though he would at once proceed to examine it by a variety of customary tests, all of them connected with names, this would only be repeating known processes of judg- ment, every one of which had at some previous time, when brought distinctly before the consciousness, received its name, for convenience of handling ; and every act of testing, and affirmation of likeness or unlikeness, would be an act without words; he might discover some new and highly peculiar quality in the creature, which he would proceed to name and set before future observers as an additional test by which they should try future discoveries. That is the way that knowledge grows, by observations and deductions of which each one, after it is made, is incorporated in a name or names, and taught by him who has made it to the rest. Look, further, at the coarseness of such a word as sun, in comparison with the intricacy, the subtlety, the pregnancy, of the idea which it designates; no small part of 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 81 human culture has gone to the reinforcement of the idea, while the name remains as simple and insignificant as of old. So, again, the word tact is a foreign one, borrowed out of the vo- cabulary of a dead language, and means simply touch, a physical capacity; but all the influences of a long-trained ex- perience of life and of refined society have helped to give it its meaning. To be sure, the possession of language is among the most powerful of these infinences; without it there would have been little knowledge and no culture; but the theory that places the idea in slavish dependence on the word is overthrown when we see that an infinity of causes go to determine the growth of every idea, with no corresponding effect upon the word. I am convinced that Muller does not yet quite understand what is implied in the theory of the antecedency of the idea to the word, in the minds of those who hold that theory. In his various attempts to characterize it, he has never done it any sort of justice. He is so penetrated with a sense of the su- preme importance of language to man, that he cannot bear to admit anything which seems to him to derogate from it. And he is not ready to see that there remains to language all the importance that the most exacting linguist could demand, even if we regard it as only the instrument of which the mind avails itself in order to do infinitely more and better work than it could do without such an instrument. He will have all or nothing; language must be not only language, but also thought, reason, mind itself. In this he unwittingly takes the ground of one who should be so struck with the wonderful achievements of steamships, locomotives, and cannon, of weaving-machines, pin-making machines, and mowing-machines, as to deny that there is any power or skill in the bare human hands. Strong in the assurance, attainable by even a very superficial study of human action, that the thinking which we actually do could not be carried on without words, he denies that any thinking is possible but by their aid; resembling in this a mathemati- cian who, because the product of 57,493x79,628 cannot be obtained without written processes, should declare that the sum of 1+1 is not discoverable but by their aid. I do not at all despair of Mullers finally coming to see this VOL. cxix. NO. 244. 6 82 Darwini8m and Language. [July, himself, and of his explaining that, when he denied the antece- dency of ideas to words, he only meant to deny that men elab- orate a great store of ideas, and then, by an afterthought, pro- ceed to invent names to be applied to them; and that, when he maintained that concepts could not be formed and handled without signs, he referred particularly to the handling, and also to the fact that, when a concept has been formed, the mind cannot help seeking a sign for it, and using this sign as a necessary standing-ground from which to rise another step. For he has in these lectures done a thing quite analogous with that. Those who have read his first Lectures on the Science of Language (and who that is interested in the study of lan- guage has not?) will doubtless remember that in his last lec- ture he seemed to scout and to ridicule those who believed that interjections and imitative sounds were or might most proba- bly have been the first starting-point of language, giving to their views the nicknames of pooh-pooh theory and bow- wow theory, which have ever since continued current, influen- cing the opinions, probably, in some measure, of that part of the community with whom denunciation and ridicule go for more than argument; and also that he seemed to put forward an- other theory, to which some successful nomenclator (I think, in an English literary paper), normally following up the genesis of the idea with the production of a word by the aid of which it should be properly handled, immediately applied the title of ding-doug theory. From the later editions of the Lec- tures we have learned that we were under a misapprehension as to this second point; that the author never intended to pro- pose the theory, but only to quote it, out of respect to the little known German professor who originated and held it; and now we find that he has completed his retraction by going over to the party of the bow-wowers and the pooh-poohers. Roots, he tells us, represent the nuclei formed in the chaos of interjec- tional or imitative sounds ; and, yet more explicitly, inter- jections and imitations are the only possible materials out of which human language could be formed! We can hardly say that he has gone fairly and squarely over to those against whom he had before contended, because he still endeavors to establish a distinction between himself and them: they hold 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 88 that words come from interjections and imitations, while he holds that words come from roots, and only roots from interjec- tions and imitations. In this, however, I believe that he simply misapprehends their position; they would not in the least ob- ject to the interposition of a radical element between imitation and word, and, so far as I know, all accept the doctrine which is as good as forced upon us by the study of linguistic history, that behind the development of grammatical structure, the for- mation of words and parts of speech, lies a radical stage for all human speech. They have the right to claim that his former contempt reposed solely on ignorance; that just so soon and so far as he has understood their views, he has made them his own. The disquisition with which our author winds up his third lecture seems to me not less aside from the true point, and in- conclusive, than the arguments by which it is preceded. He reiterates his claim that the roots of language are the true barrier between Man and Beast. He challenges us to show only one single root in the language of animals, such as AK, to be sharp or quick. He offers to confess that man can have developed from some lower animal, provided we can find him one animal that can think and say two. He stigmatizes as fairy stories, and not science, the doctrine that under favorable circumstances, an unknown kind of monkey may have learned to speak, and thus, through his de- scendants, have become what he is now, namely, man, and so on. Let us only read a true barrier for the true bar- rier, and not even the most ardent Darwinian will need to dispute a single one of these opinions; he will only ask what they have to do with the real question at issue, namely, whether an increase of the intelligence possessed by some of the lower animals, in the same manner and direction in which that intelligence surpasses that of their inferiors, would not pos- sibly lead up to the vastly superior intelligence of man himself. I do not see, therefore, that Professor Mullers lectures are likely to influence the opinions of any adherent of the doctrine of evolution, or that his argument is less a failure than that of Schleicher. So far, linguistic science has not been shown to have any bearing on Darwinism, either in the way of support 84 Darwinism and Langua,9e. [July, or of refutation; and we should, in any event, be justified in waiting for a new attempt at proof, before admitting such bearing. But I think we may go further, and claim that a true view of language shows that the two have no connection with each other. Let us see if this cannot be made clear, in a sim- ple and unpretentious way. Human nature is the sum of certain endowments with which man is gifted above and beyond the lower animals. Among these, linguistic science teaches us that speech in the concrete sense, as a body of signs representing ideas, was not one; just as the history of art and of machines shows that art-products and instruments were not included among them. To human nature belong only the tendencies and capacities which make both possible and necessary the development of speech. This development was a protracted historical process; it was, per- haps, a long time in taking a definite beginning; it was cer- tainly a long time in accomplishing each successive step of progress; and the degree of advance reached has been various, in accordance with the different capacities of the several races of man, as favored or the contrary by all the influences, natu- ral and historical, which promote or retard human progress. Precisely the same has been the case with those other parallel branches of human activity to which I have referred. But every race of men has existed long enough to have its lin- guistic capacities work out certain definite results; not one is found destitute of a body of signs whereby it communicates its thoughts and carries on its processes of thinking. So, also, with the invention and application of instruments; the pos- session of arts of design is not probably quite universal among men; that is a department of effort less interwoven with the necessities of human life. Now these historically wrought-out results, in all the three departments alike, I~onstitute a part of the treasure of civilization of each race; they are all handed down from individual to individual, from generation to gen- eration, often even from race to race, by a process of teaching and learning. Special and very restrictedly local, even acci- dental, defects may cut off individuals from sharing in the advantages of one or another of the departments of civiliza- tion ; a blow that destroys the sight in childhood renders an 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 85 art education impossible; loss or lameness of members may prevent all use of instruments; a fever that dulls permanently the nerves of hearing puts spoken language out of reach, compelling the substitution of another system of aids to thought, less convenient and less elaborated. And mere iso- lation would have the same effect, depriving the individual of all the advantages which he enjoys as member of a (more or less) cultivated human society, and putting him back into a condition like that of the first generations of men, still pos- sessed of normal human endowments, but deprived of the accumulated results of their exercise, a condition, however, from which, in virtue of his endowments, he would at once begin to rise again, by the same slow progress by which he has already once risen. If, then, that whereby we excel the brutes is to be dignified by the name of reason, who can hesitate to apply the term to the capacities rather than to their wrought- out results, to the nature rather than to the institutions? Among the gifts and tendencies which have led man to the possession of language, one of the least essential is the posses- sion of voice. Least essential, because there are other capaci- ties that could have been turned to the uses of expression, and gould have been so turned, with kindred result, if voice had been wanting. And voice has other and more direct uses than that of expressing intellectual conceptions. More important, as underlying all power of expression, of any kind, are our superior mental capacities of memory, of distinct conception, of abstraction, or the contemplation of the qualities of objects apart from the objects themselves, and of reflection, or the more or less conscious and deliberate review of our own mental processes. Of not less consequence (though of a highly con- crete character, resolvable into a variety of elements) is the power of adapting means to ends, a power equally shown in the other characteristic departments of human activity with which I have above compared language. This requires to be added, and to be made prominent, because, though the sugges- tions of speech may have been in good degree instinctive, its effective beginnings were not so, nor has its substance and his- tory been so; it has been an adaptation of means to ends. And the end primarily aimed at, the end without effort at 86 Darwinism and Language. [July, whose attainment no language would ever have come into being, is communication. Man does not speak in order to express his thought for his own relief or benefit, but in order to put his thought before the apprehension of his fellow-man; all the other uses of speech, lower and higher, come in the train of this; the desire to communicate is the directly impel- ling force to the production of speech. I will not argue this view here, as I have done so repeatedly before; it is upheld by the whole course of history of human language, and by the analogies of other parallel parts of human development. It is where speech cuts loose from its narrow and inextensible instinctive basis, and becomes, instead of a cry to relieve the speakers own feelings, an utterance to bring a thought before another, that its unlimited growth becomes possible and that its history begins; here it makes that transition from emotional to rational upon which Muller with good reason lays so much stress. Although, as has been pointed out above, the faculties which in man produce language are not absolutely wanting in some of the lower animals, their degree is so much inferior to ours that the absence of language anywhere below us is fully and satisfactorily accounted for. The nearest approach made among the animals to a capacity for speech is seen in the by no means contemptible power which many of them possess for understanding what we try to signify to them. Our character- istic is, as Darwin himself truly puts it, our large power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas, not a wholly exclusive power; for when MUller urges in opposition thai nothing has ever enabled one single animal to connect one single definite idea with one single definite word, I do not see how he can defend himself against the charge of a gross over-statement. The difference of degree is confessedly a very great one; a chasm, not a step, separates us from our nearest inferiors; if there have been, as the evolutionists claim, con- necting links, they are lost, and thus far without trace. If they were still in existence, it might be a little embarrassing for us to determine just where our human sympathies might cease; for that sharp line upon which MUller relies with proud confidence, the possession of rational language, or of roots, 1874.] Darwinism and Language. 87 would doubtless become blurred along with the rest; there would be degrees of success in making the development out of those emotional cries and imitative sounds of which Muller himself now confesses that human speech is the result. It would be very interesting, however, to the linguist, to study the intermediate and transitional forms; many a point, which he can now solve only by conjecture, would then be cleared up by direct evidence. This advantage he will never enjoy; man is the only independently cultivable and progressive being that exists; no steps between the wholly instinctive expression of the animals and the wholly (so far as articulate words are con- cerned) conventional expression of man will ever be discov- ered. The wishes and expectations of those (for there are such) who still look to find a connecting series are founded on a misapprehension, and are futile; their fear to find that nat- ure has made a saltus in passing from the one to the other is equally in vain. There is neither saltus nor gradual transition in the case: no transition, because the two are essentially dif- ferent; no saltus, because human speech is an historical develop- ment out of infinitesimal beginnings, which may have been of less extent even than the instinctive speech of many a brute. If we had the missing links supplied, we should not find the more and more anthropoid beings possessing a larger and larger stock of definite articulations, to which they by instinct attached definite ideas; there are no such elements in human language, present or traceable past; and as we approach man, the detailed instincts leading to definite acts or products di- minish rather than increase; we should find those beings show- ing more and more plainly the essentially human power of adapting means to ends, both by reflection and unconscious action, in communication and expression as in other depart- ments of activity. We might just as reasonably worry our- selves about a saltus between the building powers, or the clothes- making powers, of the monkey-tribe and of ourselves. Hovel, cottage, and palace do not grow by insensible gradation out of bees cells, or birds nests, or beavers huts, or any other an- imal structures; they began when man, a shelterless creature, with no building instincts, felt the discomforting influences of external nature, and saw how, by the appropriate use of mate- rials lying within his reach, they could be avoided. 88 Darwinism and Language. [July, There is another great error of which those who argue this subject on the Darwinian side are sometimes gnilty; namely, the assumption that the development of language has had a part in the evolution of humanity out of a lower form of animal life. I can discover nothing in either linguistic or physical history which at all favors such an assumption. Speech, like the other elements of our civilization, is the result of our hu- man capacities, not their cause; it helps to raise the savage to the rank of civilized man, but not to lift him above humanity; it trains his mental powers to a higher capacity of labor, but adds no new powers; least of all does it produce modifications of physical structure that look toward the founding of new varieties or species. Man was man in esse and in posse, when the development of speech began; by its aid, though not by that alone, he has been ever ascending to a loftier plane of manhood, and is, we hope, still continuing to ascend, though with no prospect of ever becoming angelic. If these things are true, linguistic science has no more to say about the evolution of animal life than of vegetable life, or of geologic structure; and all future attempts like those of Schleicher and of MUller are destined to fail not less signally than theirs. The question of the Darwinian theory belongs in the hands of the biologists ; if they can bring the higher an- imals out of the lower, they will have to be allowed to bring man himself out of the races that stand next below him in the series. And, for my part, I can see no human interests that will be endangered by their success. It is to be observed, in conclusion, that Mr. Darwin himself shows a remarkable moderation and soundness of judgment in his treatment of the element of language. Though he refers in a foot-note (Descent of JJilian, Part I., ch. ii.) to Schleichers pamphlet in his support, he does not deign to make the slight- est use of it. Very little exception is to be taken by a linguis- tic scholar to any of his statements. Though no master, such as MUller is, of the facts of many languages, his general view of speech in its anthropological relations, his sense of what it is to man, and how, is far truer than that of the scholar who has attempted by the evidence of language to overthrow his whole theory. W. D. WHITNEY. 1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 89 ART. IV. Geschichte der Franzdsischen Literatur seit Ludwig XVI. 1774. Von JULIAN SCHMIDT. 2 B~nde. Zweite, you- stiindig umgearbeitete, Aufiage. Leipzig: Fr. Wilh. Grunow. 1874. IN choosing the year 1774 as the starting-point for his his- tory of French literature, Mr. Schmidt has not been influenced by any wish to make his book include the arbitrary limits of a century ; he has rather selected a date from which it is easiest to trace the growth of the diverse branches of modern, unclas- sical French literature. It was a period when the influence of the reign of Louis XIV. was to a considerable degree a thing of the past; although reminiscences of the classical drama still held the stage in the tragedies of Voltaire, already Diderot, Rousseau, and indeed Voltaire himself had undermined the artificial courtliness which made the charm of the Augustan age of French literature. Now, these philosophers were all old men; their work had been done, and France was awaiting the ripening of the seed they had sown, which was the Revo- lution. Meanwhile, cynicism and immorality were rife; they found their literary expression notably in Chamfort, and La- cbss wonderful Liaisons dangereuses; in Bernardin de Saint Pierre, on the other hand, we find a warm love of nature and a religious yearning rare in the general corruption, but in- sufficient to check the dangerous current. Underneath the sentimentality and the complacent philosophy of the time the preparation for the overthrow of the monarchy was go- ing on, arid at last the storm broke. This and the subsequent course of literature this history describes. How close is the connection between literature and history may be clearly seen in Mr. Schmidts book. It is one of this authors principles in writing literary history, to avoid the bio- graphical system which gives us a connected life of each man, without throwing sufficient light on his relations to his contem- poraries. He says in his Preface : Now it sounds like a paradox, but I hope the time will soon come when it wK I be considered necessary for every sort of history to be arranged in the same way as political history. In a history of the

1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 89 ART. IV. Geschichte der Franzdsischen Literatur seit Ludwig XVI. 1774. Von JULIAN SCHMIDT. 2 B~nde. Zweite, you- stiindig umgearbeitete, Aufiage. Leipzig: Fr. Wilh. Grunow. 1874. IN choosing the year 1774 as the starting-point for his his- tory of French literature, Mr. Schmidt has not been influenced by any wish to make his book include the arbitrary limits of a century ; he has rather selected a date from which it is easiest to trace the growth of the diverse branches of modern, unclas- sical French literature. It was a period when the influence of the reign of Louis XIV. was to a considerable degree a thing of the past; although reminiscences of the classical drama still held the stage in the tragedies of Voltaire, already Diderot, Rousseau, and indeed Voltaire himself had undermined the artificial courtliness which made the charm of the Augustan age of French literature. Now, these philosophers were all old men; their work had been done, and France was awaiting the ripening of the seed they had sown, which was the Revo- lution. Meanwhile, cynicism and immorality were rife; they found their literary expression notably in Chamfort, and La- cbss wonderful Liaisons dangereuses; in Bernardin de Saint Pierre, on the other hand, we find a warm love of nature and a religious yearning rare in the general corruption, but in- sufficient to check the dangerous current. Underneath the sentimentality and the complacent philosophy of the time the preparation for the overthrow of the monarchy was go- ing on, arid at last the storm broke. This and the subsequent course of literature this history describes. How close is the connection between literature and history may be clearly seen in Mr. Schmidts book. It is one of this authors principles in writing literary history, to avoid the bio- graphical system which gives us a connected life of each man, without throwing sufficient light on his relations to his contem- poraries. He says in his Preface : Now it sounds like a paradox, but I hope the time will soon come when it wK I be considered necessary for every sort of history to be arranged in the same way as political history. In a history of the 90 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, Thirty Years War, every one would find it absurd if it were told in a series of biographies, lives of Ferdinand, Wallenstein, Tilly, Gustavus Adolphus, etc. But that is nowadays the favorite method in literary histories. Literature, that is to say, the appearance and dissemination of written or printed books, letters, orations, dramatic performances, and whatever means are adopted for the expression of the intellectual life, the thoughts, the feelings, the imagination of a people, are all dependent for existence upon a number of preceding events, each of which is a part of the history of the time. Hence, to show their relation to one another, it is necessary to show how they followed one another. In carrying out his design Mr. Schmidt has in fact very nearly written a history of France since the accession of Louis XVI. He has everywhere managed to keep the political part subordinate to what is purely literary; and yet, by writing about the history in its relation to literature, he throws new light upon both. The bond between the two is indeed an evident one, for who can miss seeing the connection between certain of Rousseaus writings, Le (Jo ntrat Social, for instance, and some of the ideas most prominent in the Revolution, and still smouldering in the minds of men? Beaumarchaiss Marriage of Figaro expresses the dissatisfaction at the state of affairs which afterwards found other means of asserting itself; and the same is true in general. Fully to understand the clas- sical period of French literature, it is necessary to be familiar with the pomp and majesty of the reign of Louis XIV; or, to take an example more familiar to us, in order to comprehend the tone of a great many of their writers during the last twenty years, it is well to know how the government lent its aid to the pleasure-loving extravagance which has fatally fas- cinated so many of us Americans. There are possibly some who would at once rule out of court a foreigner who should undertake to write about French litera- ture, and a German would be the first among foreigners to re- ceive their condemnation. With even more zeal would they act in regard to a German who should have rewritten his book on French literature since the last great war. It should be said, however, that this book is not written for the French, but for a people which is more nearly akin to our own in its posi 1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 91 tion toward literature than is the French. And while trnth is truth, without regard to geographical distinctions, it is still cer- tain that every nation, by taste or precept, adopts certain prin- ciples of its own in regard to literature, which are as distinct as individual characteristics in living men. There is no real catholicity in literature, any more than there is absolute equal- ity among human beings. The confusing lack of compactness of the Germans, their way of saying everything, offends the French; what we call the decency of a great part of English literature seems to them to smack of prudery; and it is only by an effort that we can understand many of the appearances of French literature. A foreigner who should write a literary his- tory and content himself with denouncing everything he could not understand, would merely confirm his readers in their prej- udices, when he should be giving them reasons for their opinions. He need not praise continually, but he should know why he thinks either one way or the other. If, on the other hand, he should trace the growth of what is strange in another literature, explaining its origin and detailing its history, even if he condemns the principle on which it rests, we are not tempted to give blind credence to his words; we are able to judge for ourselves. And, in our opinion, this is what Mr. Schmidt has doiie. His point of view is more nearly that of his German and English readers, and yet he sets clearly before us the feelings which inspired the French writers. There will always be a difference of tone between the exposition of an analyst and that of a disciple, but it is well to hear both; and it needs no voice from heaven to tell us which is most likely to make us think for ourselves. While no history of French literature can wholly supersede that which Sainte-Beuve has written, in his detached Gauseries du Lundi and Nouveaux Lundis, there may yet be much to learn from a foreigner who brings to the consideration of the subject, if not the same easy, gracious style and delicacy of ob- servation, at any rate a commendable felicity of expression, and a standard of judgment which is different from that of the French critic, and possibly one made from the comparison of a greater number of examples; it is at least a standard with which those of his readers are familiar who know our own lit- 92 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, erature and that of the Germans. Mr. Schmidts merits are his coolness, which is not cynicism, great patience, which, at any rate in his French literature, does not become wearisome, and, as the result of both, the ability to form his opinion with due deliberation. If he lacks the s~ft, delicate touch of the great French critic, he is still by no means an unentertaining guide, and always a sure one, for nowhere does he let himself be carried away to forgetting to apply his usual test, the rela- tiori of what he is discussing to the world in which we live. This definition might evidently be used in defence of a very sordid style of criticism; we hope to show that in Schmidts History of French Literature it has a very different meaning. While perhaps it is the second volume, with its discussion of Balzac, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Alexander IDumas, and Victor Hugo, etc., that is of the greater general interest to us who are more familiar with their writings than with those of their predecessors who are the subject of the first volume, it will be found nevertheless that the long chapters on Chateaubriand are of importance for understanding the growth of the Roman- tic school of France. This writer, with his various qualities, has a great deal of space devoted to him, as he deserves; Mr. Schmidt gives us very copious quotations from his different writings, letting us judge for ourselves the nature of man who so long imposed upon the French people, the man once worshipped by Sainte-Beuve, but afterwards the subject of some of his severest criticisms. If, as is claimed for him, he is to survive as the representative of the thoughts and feelings of this cen- tury, it is well for us not to be too confident of the favorable opinion of posterity. But even when Schmidt shows us Cha- teaubriands colossal egotism, his frequent inaccuracy, his sin- gular, it might even be called unprecedented, vainglorious boast- ing, he does justice to the masterly art of that great writer which blinded his contemporaries to his faults, and made him the mouthpiece of much of the disappointment and weariness of the world, which was the repentant awakening from a time of great indifference to anything but easy pleasure. Sainte- Beuve says, and doubtless with great truth, that it is impossible for a foreigner to get the full enjoyment of the beauty of hi~ style; but no one at all conversant with the language can help 1874.] Julian Schmidts Histor~y of Trench Literature. 93 noticing, if only in a vague way, its ricimess and smoothness. In a time like the present, when there is but little patience with empty wailing, when science weeds many overgrown corners of the human mind, Chateaubriands patchwork of second-hand learning, and his theatrical, self-conscious complaining, are just what can find the fewest defenders. At the time he wrote he expressed what was uppermost in the hearts of his fellow- coun- trymen, the desire of glorifying their morbid discontent; this cannot be done without encouraging the growth of vanity, and they, delighted at finding those feelings put in sonorous language, which unadorned by Chateaubriands genius would have sounded far less sublime, were very ready to forgive his errors. There is no art so grateful to us as that which throws a veil of romantic interest over our faults, but that veil becomes more transparent when the faults it covers are those of our grandfathers. To what was remarkable in Chateaubriand, as we have said, Mr. Schmidt does justice, and he exposes his faults without rancor. The space he devotes to him is less in compass than that which Sainte-Beuve found necessary, who was continually returning to discuss his old love; but the impression made upon the two critics is to a very great extent the same. For a complete account of this writer, one cannot do better than turn to what Saiiite-Beuve has said about him; but no one who takes up Mr. Schmidts history should overlook his criticism, in his haste to get to those who are now more familiar writers. Lamartine is treated of at some length. Mr. Schmidt says, speaking of the success of his lili6ditations Po6tiques His personality had a great deal to do with this. He was a al position, with the handsome young noblemau, of the highest soci stamp of Ren6; that is to say, extremely sceptical in his opinions, and very distrustful of the truth of his own bcart, but inclined to throw himself into every new illusion, every new emotion, every new love, every new conviction, with youthful ardor; in short, an inter- esting, irresistible young man. . . . . For information about him, we are unfortunately obliged to go to his later confessions. Of late years confessions of this sort have become epidemic among the cele- brated men and women of France, and it is a source of great rcgrct that they are always deeply tinged with vanity. No one of them 94 Julian Schmidts rnstory of French Literature. [July, gives the unvarnished truth; every one tries to idealize his life, and to wear a crown of glory; hence the poet in his memoirs represents himself as much worse than in his earlier poems or than in his actual life. He goes on to give us copious extracts from his writings, and then says What Lamartine offers us is not wholly new; the thoughts and even the cadence remind us as much of Bernardin de St. Pierres Jitudes de la Nature, as poetry can remind us of prose; there are, besides, traces of Rousseaus Reveries, of LHo2nrne de D~sir, and Corinue. But the charm lay in the form. The school of Horace and Boilean was completely abandoned; the poetical expression corre- sponded to the actual sentiment. The verses, tinged with a tender melancholy, flowed melodiously; a succession of agreeable pictures lent animation to the poetry, without giving it any definite form; the rhythmical expression suited the dreaminess of the idea. To be sure, the emotions lacked depth, the ideas genuineness, the images freshness; the reflections were superficial, the imagination had but little play. In speaking of what should always be present to the mind of one who is criticising a foreign literature, Mr. Schmidt says When we undertake to compare our own judgment of one of its poets with that of a whole people, we should in the case of a lyrical poet be especially cautious, and should examine whether we do not lose the principal part of what delights his fellow-countrymen. In regard to an epic or dramatic work this is less likely to be the case; an epic poem or a play, which, stripped of its external varnish in a literal translation, has not merit enough of its own to impress us as important, does not belong to the first rank. In lyric poetry, on the other hand, the form and the contents are really one; even in the best translation one can never appreciate a lyric at its just value, and for a foreigner who understands the language, to enjoy the original in the same way as a native, it is necessary that there should be a certain relationship between the languages. There is that con- nection between the German and the English. I imagine that I can appreciate a poem of Lord Byron, Moore, or Burns as thoroughly as any Englishman or Scotchman, just as Englishmen who know our language can appreciate Goethes poems. The case is different with the languages derived from the Latin. Any one, with an ear for 1874.] Julian Schmidts Histor& of French Literature. 95 such forms, can comprehend clever tnrns or rhetorical flights; but what is truly poetical, that which works immediately, xve are slower to enjoy. The Latin races set a very different value on the sound of words from what we do. For us the word is merely the representa- tive of the meaning, the suggester of the image; the value of what is purely musical we must first interpret for ourselves. Hence, when a Frenchman denies the soundness of our judgment of Lamartin& s poems, on the ground that there is something in them which we do not hear, and so cannot appreciate, we are obliged to confess the reasonableness of his objection. But we are not obliged on that account to refrain from all judg- ment of their lyric poetry. There is enough, besides the melody, which we can understand and judge, the thoughts, the images, the genuineness of the sentiment; moreover, we can compare the differ- ent French poets with one another. We can compare the modern French Romanticism with its classical predecessors, we can compare the whole recent academic literature with the poets of the sixteenth century; and we can measure single poets of the school with one another. If these comparisons fail to give absolute value to our judgment, they at least bring us nearer the truth. Starting with this principle, Mr. Schmidt says Lamartine had the immense advantage of being the first of his school. Chateaubriand had given himself up entirely to politics; the real Romantic authors had not yet appeared. When to-day we run over the 21f~ditcttions, we can hardly realize the paradox which they seemed to contain at the time of their appearance. Religious sensibility, sensitiveness to nature, to moonlight, and the deep silence of night, a decided inclination to tearfulness, attention to the life of different natural objects, an oak, the ocean, a swallow, occasional longing after death, all that has become so hackneyed since then, that we read this without much excitement. But in the year 1820 it seemed paradoxical to Frenchmen, and when the ruling powers accepted the JJI~ditations because their political and religious ten- dency might be of use to them, the younger generation was de- lighted with them for their novelty and the change from the incessant turmoil of war. He compares him as a lyric poet with Goethe, and gives Lamartine by no means the high position that is claimed for him. He charges him with lacking the free and natural heart- beat which moves us so strongly in every poem of the same sort 96 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, of G6ethes. He has smooth, artificial sentences, which ex- clude all play of the fancy and all real dreaming. The exaggeration as well as the effeminacy of Lamartine often repel us, but a certain nobility of soul reconciles us again, when we compare him with the other writers of love-songs of the period. When Beyle indulges in fancies about love, he seems very unattractive, and the case is almost worse with B6ranger The 3ikditations celebrated a sort of love of which the French had previously had no representation, a love which was the medium for what eludes the grasp of the senses. It is to be said, however, that our interest in Chateaubriand and Lamartine is principally of an historical kind; they are the classics of the Romantic school, and demand full treatment more from the position they have won in their own country than from the interest they now excite in foreigners. It is impossible to have a satisfactory impression of the French lit- erature of the present century without knowing them, but with most of us outside barbarians they have risen to the dusty and well-filled shelves of the respected unread; our tastes lead us to the study of their successors, Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand. Chateaubriand was one of the first to hail Victor Hugo, who led the literary revival of 1820 1830, which, it will be remem- bered, was so warmly greeted by Goethe, then a very old man, but still attentive to everything going on in the world of let- ters. Victor Hugo began his literary career as an ardent royalist, and to this enthusiasm he owed in great measure the recognition he won from Chateaubriand, the inventor of the Ren6, whose fame was now to be made even greater by the younger writers. Mr. Schmidt explains the religious and po- litical conservatism of the young Romanticists as follows. He says The Christian tinsel was a protest against the periwigs, the ency- clop~ndia, and the mathematics. The imagination felt itself fettered in this mesh of abstractions, and the mind was confused in the whirl of contradictory ideas. It was a wonderful masquerade. The Baya- deres, made holy by rememhering the goddess of Liberty, found their altar; and the ascetics their cells, which had been a refLge agaiust 1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 97 the storms of the Revolution. The comfortable bourgeois of the school of Voltaire, which limited its religion to the one command- ment, not to do wrong; the pale priest, who, crucifix in hand, had marched out against the wild hands of the Chonans; the gray-mus- tached veteran who had fought at the Pyramids and lost the use of his limbs on the ice-plains of Moscow, and who worshipped only one god, the god of war, and the eagle of his country; the despised Jacobin of the time of the convents, who strolled with his hand-organ from village to village, playing the Marseillaise; the curiosity-pedlers who drove bargains over medi~val saints images, and explained the for- gotten coats-of-arms; all were confused together. What conld seem fitter to an imaginative youth than the return to what had stood firm amid the general crash, to what seemed most unlike the detested, mathematico-economical state of society, namely, the splen- dor of the Catholic Church and the sanctity of anointed royalty l Christianity had its long history, its striking colors, it stirred all the depths of the soul, and so was much better suited for artistic treatment than the pale, uninteresting view of the world of the Theophilanthropists, who survived as a feeble reminiscence of the attack against Christianity of the eighteenth century Lyric poetry began with singing throne and altar, chivalry and Church; then it turned to elfs and nixies, then to poets and unrecognized geniuses, and at last it sank to humanity, to which it promised a glorious future. The muse, who at first adorned her head with lilies, at last put on the red cap. If Victor Hugo was fickle with regard to the subjects he chose, he has always remained firm in his manner of treat- ment; however his views may have changed, he has never losi~ confidence in himself; he has been sure of his own genius. Indeed, it would be hard to put ones finger on a French writer who has let himself be hampered by any despouding doubts as to the value of his work. Whatever their sensitiveness to external things, that quality never seems to extend very far beneath the surface. Their tears are very near their eyes, but within they are hard as stone. So much at least we should be inclined to say of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo. The novels of the last named have what is called an enormous success, but it is not easy to get any solid satisfaction from Han dislande, for example. In that novel the hero, a cannibal, the son of a witch and a monster, begins his career by burning VOL. CxIX.NO. 244. 7 98 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, the monastery in which an attempt had been made to educate him. He swims from Iceland to Norway on the branch of a tree, and gives his attention to the serious business of life, un- dermining crowded bridg~s, burning up cathedrals, and, being jealous of some unknown soldier, with a wild justice he deter- mines to eat up the whole regiment; and this is literature! It would be natural, but wrong, to close with him here. The importance of his plays cannot be overlooked, still less the charm of some of his lyrics. Th6ophile Gautier, in his recent- ly published Ilistoire du Bomantisme, has left to us a charming account of his early enthusiasm for Victor Hugos Hernaru, which at its appearance in 1830 so divided the literary world. It is with real humor that he describes his boyish zeal. And it is by no means hard to see how the surprises of the play, the quick dialogue, and the breathless interest that is kept up, can fascinate those who are disposed to enjoy the melodrama. As melodrama no one can find fault with most of Victor Hugos plays. If we will but confess, not only that they represent something different from every-day life, for so much can be said of every sort of dramatic literature which deserves the name, but also that they represent a sort of life in which our interest is given, not to the nature of the characters, but to the perils which surround them, and that we look upon the dramatis per- sonce as we do at rope-dancers; if we will confess so much, we can justify our interest in them, but we must be careful to discrimi- nate between the intensity of interest and real sympathy. The latter is a sine qua non for literary success. Mr. Schmidt treats of these plays at some length. After Hernani and Jfarion de Lorme he says A number of Rents followed these two: such as Rodolfo, Gen- naro Borgia, and Rny Bias; they have all the same gloomy face, the same hitter twitching of the lips. Whoever is interested in such people would do hetter to go to the fountain-head, to Rend or the Giaour; Yictor Hugo only gives us variations on the familiar theme, he has never invented a melody of his own. The second stock character we have already met in Ruy Gomez the old baron of feudal times, the type of the Romantic catechism, loyalty, independence, honor, hospitality, family pride, etc. In the middle of an orgie a folding-door opens, disclosing a tall old man 1874.] Julian Schrniclts Histor~j of French Literature. 99 with a white beard, a huge sword, and, if possible, the Goldei Fleece, or some equally lofty order, on his breast. For some time he gazes with imposing silence on the wild doings of the young courtiers, and then says with his deep voice, In my time it was far different. Then he describes his time in a rather long speech, and disappears as solemnly as he entered. For example, the Burgrave Job, the old Mar- quis do Nangis at the court of Itichelien, Ruy Gomez with the wild companions of King Charles, St. Vallier among the gallants of Fran- cis the First, Ormond among the debauched Cavaliers. Occasionally the abusive old gentleman, or Pottore, as he seems to us, gets himself up as a tyrant; but he still wears a wig. I am a terrible man. I can have the life of whomsoever I will, and I know no pity. I belong to the family of the Malipieri, each one of whom takes the life of hii he bates. I hate my wife. Hence I shall have her put to death, etc. Every time the good old man is deceived, for there is the same monotony in the situations as in the figures. The third stock character is the diplomatist of Scribes school, the machinist. A cold, heartless creature, who holds the secret threads of the intri~iie in his hands, and who turns the passions which destroy others to his own selfish interests. His appearance is in the rule as follows. The first lover is about to utter a monologue expressive of his disgust with the world, when some one taps him on the shoulder. He turns; a man stands behind him, wrapped in a dark mantle, with a pale, hard face, with eyes in which nothing can be read, and motion- less features. He begins: You are so and so, you were born at such a time, in such a place. Then he gives a full account of the heros genealogy, tells him and the audience for the scene is always in the first act all the particulars of his life and closes with, Now ~ou wish so and so, I will secure it for you (this is to get an entrance to the boudoir of some reigning duchess, to cut off the head of the prime-minister, to make his mistress a millionnaire, a countess, or something of the sort). Are you willing? Of course; but on what terms? Then follows the answer, according to the mood of the machinist: A little key, a hundred thousand scudi, or your head. To be all-knowing and all-powerful in this fashion, he has to be one of the secret police of Venice (Llomodei), or a bandit with a position un- der Lucrezia Borgia (Gubetta), or a creature of Richeliens (Laffemas), or very rich (the Jew in Marie Tudor, who only appears to give the history of Fabianis life, and is then at once stabbed to death), or a very great diplomate (Simon Renard, Salluste), or a simple fool un- touched by ordinary passions, and who hence sees what the dazzled hero overlooks (L Angely). 100 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, The last character is the Cavalier. The taste of the Ceto-Ro- man books of knight-errantry is unchanged. Ready at any moment to measure swords with a dozen giants or Philistines, or to throw him- self in despair at the feet of a cold inarquise, or, if long withstood, ready to fall in love with the first pretty face; devoted to women with that sort of gallantry which is nine parts jest and one part love; quick to anger, but prompt to forget it at the first joke; a ~reat many debts, and a long line of ancestors; a peer before the monarch, and a good fellow at a drinking-bout, such are the qualities of a nobleman as we see them drawn in Froissart, in Calderon, in the memoirs since the time of Louis XIV., and, more recently, in the garrison adventures of Alexander Dumas Victor Hugo sees his figures, not in any complete way, hut in a definite theatrical situation ; they depend upon some stage-effect. Lucrezia Borgia has been turned into an opera with only trifling mod- ifications, and almost every one of his tragedies is capable of such treat- ment. The soliloquies stand for arias, the dialogues for duets, and the machinist would take the main r6le. Somewhat the same unfavorable criticism he applies to Vic- tor Hugos lyric poetry, in speaking of his Orientales; he praises the grace, accuracy, and novelty of their form, but says: The images, rhythm, and rhyme serve no poetic end, they are themselves an end; the cadence swallows up thoughts and sentiment; we admire the certainty with which the chords are struck, but we hear no melody. The drapery, the silks and satins, the landscape, the color, all bear the stamp of a master-hand, but we see no eyes from which a living soul looks forth. This is not favorable criticism, and there is in the cominu- nity a vague feeling, something like that which opposes capital punishment, that criticism to be sound has to be complimentary. It is true that Victor Hugo has won for himself a great name, and his prominence certainly demands for him very careful at- tention. Mr. Schmidt, however, shows that his qualities are those which are calculated to arouse keen interest, without giv- ing any lofty pleasure. He has acquired fame; but, in com- parison with acknowledged masterpieces, do his writings de- serve the highest praise, praise, that is to say, to correspond with his temporary success? That is the question before the 1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 101 critic, and to which Mr. Schmidt gives an unfavorable answer, unfavorable, that is, to Victor Hugo, but favorable to the in- terest of literature. Indeed, he goes eveii farther, and after charging the poet with representing paradox as of every-day occurrence, and with neglecting the study of life to please our ears and eyes with novel surprises, he says: This incessant attention to new devices to give stronger coloring to the r3le he is playing, is the reason he has remained in his old age what he was as a youth, a frivolous adventurer in the fields of sentiment, thought, and poetry. Whatever his faults, Baizac was a man of a different stamp; he never fastened his readers attention by ingenious tricks; he resorted to the study of human beings, and although he devoted himself principally to the study of disease in unworthy sub- jects, and often mistook distasteful inventions of his morbid fancy for genuine pathology, he has left behind him work of great power. The faults which are so prominent in his novels are not to be laid entirely to the account of the writer; the taste of the time had been corrupted by false ideals; the air was full of immoralities and provincialisms. Of the last named there is hardly one, unless it is the adoration of Paris rivalling the Mahommedans feeling towards Mecca, which readers of French novels are more frequently reminded of, than this of which Mr. Schmidt speaks as follows : A superstitious devotion to the nobility, or rather to the life of good society, to the je ne sais quoi, which distinguishes every inhabi- tant of the Faubourg Saint Germain from the rest of the world, is perhaps his weakest side. In spite of its democracy there exists in Paris an impassable barrier between the different classes of society ; in spite of their sneers against the ideas of legitimacy, the literary ad- venturers are constrained in their attitude towards the aristocracy Baizac is hy no means the only one who errs in this way; almost all the novelists of the time are running over with titles and coats of arms; the manners of the court, the impertinence and frivolity of the young ladies of fashion are put in a poetical light; the liberal-minded private citizen is either a knave or a fool. Pure blood is the principal thing insisted on for horses, dogs, and people ; the next thing is ele- gant gloves. Under all this praise of the aristocracy the parvenu is easily detected in the love of luxury and contempt for honest work. 102 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, Again If Baizac fancied that he had thoroughly investigated human na- ture, his speciality was the analytical representation of French society at the time of the Restoration; of that he considered himself the Buf- fon. He viewed with a keen and intelligent eye the kingdom of shadows, of feverish joys intermingled with cold calculation From the Scenes de la vie Parisienne there is a great deal to he learned, but it is a repulsive world into which Balzac introduces ns. Vice and crime are the rule. Social life is a riddle the solution of which lies wholly in the bagnio; its locks have to be picked. His favorite fig- ures are young aristocrats, steeped in every refinement of pleasure, who have constructed for themselves a sort of perverted morality, and who commit crimes which, nnder other circumstances, would bring them to the galleys, not merely for the attainment of an object, but with a sort of dogmatic conviction, out of duty, as Beyle says! As our quotations show, Mr. Schmidt has but little mercy for the snobbishness of so many French novels, that quality which imposes upon so many of their readers, and he is equally clear-sighted with regard to Balzacs perverted moral sense, which is so patent and so painful, as well as for the psy- chological impossibilities of some of the novels. In general they may be said to be simply records of sinfulness; even the most innocent are tainted by a foul flavor, as if the one or two single volumes of comparative innocence had been infected by those that stood on the same shelf which dealt with the black- est sides of human nature. The record against Balzac for this fault could be made as long as it would be odious. So wonder- ful, however, is his power of analyzing people, of setting them and their surroundings before us, of exposing their motives, of interesting us in their devious course, of making us share in their vilanies, and almost sympathize with the most atrocious criminals, that we cannot help acknowledging his wonderful power, even if, on laying down one of his novels, we feel as if we had spent our life hitherto in picking pockets, robbing the dead, and burning churches. He gives his readers a great satiety of wickedness. One who has read many of his novels feels afterwards as if at that time of his life he had been one of a band of outlaws. Mr. Schmidt does not content himself with exposing some 1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 103 of the more obvious flaws in Baizacs work; he discusses many of his novels in turn, and writes a great deal of sound and serious criticism about him. He does justice to his power, but he always speaks with coolness about his use of it. We regret we have not space for further quotations. We cannot do more than refer the reader to Vol. II. pp. 450 458, where there is to be found a careful examination of this French novelist. Scattered references may be found elsewhere. They show very well the critics habit of mind, and his method of dis- cussing authors. What is most especially to be noticed is his certainty of touch, so to speak. We feel that we have to do with a man who is never startled by sudden blushes of shame at foolish enthusiasms. He is not fascinated by external charms to forgetfulness of solider merits ; he always remem- bers to put the questions, What is the real value of this? In the first place, does it represent life? and, secondly, does the representation serve to please, even with sadness, or to pain the reader? The exciting of repulsion is to be avoided in lit- erature as much as in painting. It is easy for readers to con- tent themselves with getting any feeling except fatigue from a book, and certainly talent is required to arouse a sort of dis- gust which shall not be wearisome; but it is as important to discriminate between that feeling and healthy enjoyment as it would be to avoid putting Boucicault above Shakespeare, be- cause his plays are more applauded by theatre-going audiences. Mr. Schmidt never forgets to do this. It is a quality which makes a usually safe guide through the devious paths of modern French literature; if he were one who contented himself with noisy abuse, he would overshoot his mark and only do himself and his readers harm; but he always, or very nearly always, discriminates between what is deserving of blame and what of praise. He does not earn his name for impartiality by unexpected and surprising abuse; he is very able to say a good word even for writers he dislikes, when they happen to deserve it. Most students of later French literature have to learn to adapt themselves to much which owing, let us say, to provincial prejudice is extremely pain- ful. The application of just the same tests as they use for their own literature would lead to condemning the foreign one 104 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, in toto. Indeed, this is the course of a great many intelligent people; they will have nothing to do with it. Those, however, who go on in it wilfully harden themselves to a great deal, and the danger is that they lose the power, or rather let it lie inactive, of deciding where they shall draw the line between prudery and proper reserve. Some speak of these books as freely as if they were light clouds vanishing in the summer sky, instead of very possible agents of mischief with thought- less persons. The evil tendency is ignored with the same good-nature with which one forgives occasional misprints. A companion and adviser like Mr. Schmidt does not denounce them all; he shows where their merits lie, and how much their faults are due to mistaken views of men and life; he supplies the necessary tonic; he remedies the indifference about mere matters of morality which is apt to grow upon readers fasci- nated by charms of style and character-drawing. What underlies the whole of modern French fictitious liter- ature is the feeling, but ill expressed by the phrase, art for arts sake, that whatever exists in human beings is a proper subject for the pen. In how narrow a way this maxim is fol- lowed may be seen by the exclnsiveness with which, almost without exception, the odious sides of human nature are chosen for description and discussion. Everything must have the flavor of forbidden fruit, and this it is which makes the nar- rowness and provincialism of French literature as truly marked and more frequent than even the pastoral simplicity of the ideal English novel at which Frenchmen are forever laughing. Even those who are bold enough to deny that its influence is injurious, must confess that it is one-sided in what it repre- sents; no external cleverness should make us forget this fun- damental fault. Perhaps the readers of Mr. Schmidts History would object more to his treatment of Alfred de Musset than to any other part of his book. When we recall Tames comparison between him and Tennyson, and the praise given him by the French critic, we are able to see why it is he is so popular with his fellow-countrymen. He had when he began the charm of youth, grace, and elegance of form. He has sung what he chose to sing with an easy airiness which could not fail to 1874.] Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. 105 please. Then, too, the story of his life, his early age when he began to write his best poetry, his melancholy struggle after false ideals, and his abject failure which he tells in sad lines, all combine to make us pity the man and set great store by what was good in his work, because it was so very good. It had the stamp of genuineness, in spite of the occasional sham Spanish and Italian setting. With all his tropes and straining of voice, Victor Hugo never could hide the hardness within. But with all his faults, Alfred de Musset was a poet, even if a mistaken and deluded man; in his youth his freshness fasci- nated his readers, it was with great joyousness he entered life, and during his struggle with the world and its snares, he followed what was the ideal of his race and generation. No one ever sang so sweetly the apples of Sodom, and when they turned to dust in his mouth, his pathos half hides his cynicism. Very touching are the much-quoted lines he wrote while still a young man, which, even if familiar to our readers, will bear rereading: Jai perdu ma force Ct ma vie, Et mes amis et ma gait~ Jai perdu jusqu~ ~a fiert6 Qui faisait croire ~ mon g~nie. Quand jai connu la v~rit6, Jai cru que c6tait une arnie; Quand je 1ai comprise et sentie, Jen ~tais d6j~i d~gofit~. Et pourtant elle est immortelle, Et ceux qui se sont passes delle Ici-bas ont tout ignor~. Dieti pane, ii faut quon lui r6ponide. Le seul bien qui me reste au monde Est davoir quelquefois p1eur~. These lines should be read in the light of his other writings; they have a very different sound from much that he wrote. Mr. Schmidt, however, is not led by the beauty of his verse to overlook the many faults of the poet. He says, and with truth, of Alfred de Mussets earliest work, that while the conflict between passion, which is the most concentrated ex- pression of an individual nature, and law, which represents the interests of the community, may lead to a tragic catastrophe, 106 Julian Schmidts History, of French Literature. [July, this poet celebrates not passion, but crime. For this statement he brings copious examples. Such writing, he says, can oniy be, not justified, but explained, by its being a mirror of real life. In general, he goes on, one is inclined to ascribe whatever is great and fine in an author to his nature and whatever is bad to the influences of his time. Our time, however, is not an abstract idea, but it expresses the sum of our principles, habits, inclinations, wishes, and ideals, which, according as they are sound or corrupt, open a hopeful or a despairing view of the future. He denies that the poet in these odious scenes properly de- scribes the actual life of his day, and says they did not spring from the air, but that they arose from a struggle after what should rack the feelings and be true to nature. Hence the continual struggle after impressiveness which so often offends good taste. With the beauty of his poetry one often forgets, he says, the distastefulness of the subject; it is with breath- less interest one reads some of his prose plays and novels. He quotes for especial commendation Les Caprices de JUiarianne, and we decidedly approve of his choice. Those who have been so fortunate as to have seen this play acted will certainly never forget it. Of his stories Mr. Schmidt says In his choice of subjects Alfred de Musset reminds one often of M6rim6e, who had a great influence over him; to make the distinction clear one should read the novel of M6rim6es, La double M~prise, which had just appeared; it is a story of adultery of the most repulsive sort with regard to the subject, but treated so delicately, that although it cannot be called decent, for everything is expressed, it may be said to be moral. It shows the way in which in Parisian society a noble nature conducts itself after committing a grievous fault The differeuce between the two is this M6rim~e remains master of him- self when describing wild scenes, Alfred de Musset loses his head and becomes wild himself. In his criticisms of these stories of Alfred de Musset, as well as of many other pieces of French literature, Mr. Schmidt often does no more than tell the story in the simplest manner, stripping it of the smooth form which so often benumbs the readers critical sense, but showing us what is the real value of 1874.] JuUan Schmidts History of French Literature. 107 what might have had a good chance of winning our admiration. He remembers, too, that it is one of the first duties of a critic to illustrate and prove what he has to say, as well as to make in- teresting statements. We can see his mood, either of admira- tion or of contempt, in the way in which he makes the abstract, and often again he lets that suffice; he shows us the fundamen- tal weakness, and then passes on to something else. An excel- lent example of this is his treatment of Lamartines incredible La chute dunange, Vol. II. pp. 51113. From the examples we have given, the reader may be able to form a tolerably definite notion of some of Mr. Schmidts merits as a critic. It will be seen that it is not with a thor- oughly sympathizing spirit that he writes about French litera- ture; that he rather tends to depreciate the value of form in a work, in comparison with qualities more easily defined, and possibly of greater importance. His position, however, is not one of hostility, although very often one of disapproval; there is no unwillingness to admire to be detected in what he says, indeed he is often no severer than the smoothest tongued French critics. He sees, what they see, that before the Rev- olution of 1830 there was a revival in French literature which promised more than has subsequently been performed. The young generation produced work which was surprisingly good, when one considers the age of the writers; in M6rim6es case no one would have suspected him of being hardly more than a boy, and that was perhaps true of some of the others. Victor Hugo, the leader, was but twenty-eight years old, and there is no cause for wonder that Goethe watched the efforts of these youths with the greatest interest. But what has come of it all? Victor Hugo is still before the public, claiming that he is the great genius of the day, and writing such novels as his last, Quatre-vingt-treize, which saddens the hearts of men. Gau- tier, who died a year or two ago, has left interesting work behind him. The little that M~rim6e did will always find admirers, although it is highly probable that the Lettres d une Inconnue are what he will be best remembered by. The movement as a whole failed, and Mr. Schmidt naturally is anxious to find out the grounds of this failure. Foreigners who treat of French literature are very often extremely ten- 108 Julian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, der in what they say about it; it seems to be a matter of per- sonal pride not to be too harsh with it. An appreciation of its merits is often taken to be something like speaking their lan- guage with a good accent, a mark of high culture. It in- volves a lofty sense of morality, so lofty indeed that ordinary distinctions are of no account; the intrigues of the vicious are looked at as coldly as we look at gold-fish swimming about in a globe; we have to watch a villain plotting and carrying out his crimes with the same approval with which we follow an heroic struggle, if not with complete indifference. Sometimes we hear that the grandmotherly feeling of propriety which we mistake for morality is treated with all the respect it deserves, when, at the conclusion of the book, some harsh fate seizes the leading villain. But if the whole story has been inculcating wrong-doing as something desirable in itself, though occasion- ally liable to bring the guilty one to harm, no shocking catas- trophe at the end can undo the mischievous effect, any more than a death on the scaffold can beautify the past life of a criminal. A noticeable book of this sort is Gustave Flauberts llliadame Bovary, which is often brought forward as the one odious book with a salutary lesson in it. Tame thus speaks of it in his Vie et Opinions de 31. Grain d Orge, and many other writers re-echo his verdict. Those who are led thereby to read it, however, find it hard to have due patience with its disagreeable, unflinching delineation of an offensive subject. We find, to be sure, that sin brings its punishment, and on that account a pardon is. sought for the book; but morality is not a matter of the last chapter, it depends upon the whole construction of the book, the delineation of the characters, the way they are connected with one another, etc. If the part of wickedness wins our ap- plause or sympathy in the body of the book, the last twenty pages, no matter how tragic, will not be able to undo the evil that has been done; if we have been sneering at virtue for two volumes and a half, our tardy respect at the end cannot count for much. It is claimed that the writer is justified in ignoring no side of human nature; that he has the same duty to investigate im- partially as the man of science; this may be true, but he 1874.] Julian Schmidts ilistory of French Literature. 109 should also exercise the same reserve. When scientific men have to do with matters which are tabooed by the unanimous consent of society, they are careful not to thrust them forward out of their proper place. We do not have a description of the processes of digestion printed on our bills of fare. But of French novelists, the man who can invent something new in the time-worn subjects of crime at once makes his mark. This is not as it should be; let him study any subject he pleases, but let him not smuggle the report of his investigations into every careless hand, corrupting under the pretence of amusing. It is also said that we should be satisfied with the admirable way in which the work is so often done, that the merit of the workmanship makes up for the worthlessness of the subject. But no ability of an author to describe, can make us indifferent to tIre subject of the description. Beauty and accuracy of color cannot hide a picture, and so it is with books. The authors pretend to write on all sorts of subjects with impartiality; to describe for the sake of describing, as if emotion were a quality which could be ignored at will, as if it were not a great part of every work of art, which could not be left out without belit- tling the whole work. The artist who undertakes to work with- out it is mutilated just so far as he comes near succeeding, arid no skill in his craft can make up for its absence. This beauty of form, of which we hear so much, means, it is fair to suppose, this technical skill. But of what use is the manipulation of the brush, if we cannot get any pictures; or the beauty of form in writing, if it is devoted to offending us? This quality which is here denounced is the one most frequently brought up in defence against harsh criticism of modern French literature; but so long as readers are fair representatives of the human race, and as such still care for the principles, feelings, and duties that make up human life, tbere must be some discontent at the shadowy appreciation of books which looks no further than at the outside. That in which the French do excel us outsiders is a quality which certainly stands for a great deal; it is the gift of easy, delicate expression. They flatter their readers by a gracious- ness which we all naturally prefer to any amount of honest bluntness. Sinful man would always rather hear a compli 110 elulian Schmidts History of French Literature. [July, ment he knew to be false, than be told painful truths without tact; and it is tact which so many French writers have. They know how to please; they leave things unsaid; they impose upon us by their neat epigram, just as a man who is well dressed shines above the man who has to hide a tear in his coat by keeping his arm always in one position. For the time there is a great difference between them. It is a ridiculously trifling matter, and one who is not self-conscious does not know it, but others feel it. The French writers are fully con- scious of this, and hence there arises probably that contempt for rugged virtues which is to be observed in other nations than France, that pride themselves more on intellectual clev- erness than humdrum morality, as if the one were something old-fashioned and exploded, and the other the fruit of a higher civilization. Not that we would charge the French with never recognizing nor using the truth, but it may be said that their most attractive quality is one that exercises a much greater influence than it should, and this it does both upon them and upon us. How demoralizing this is and may be we all know; and in the way of instruction about this, as we have said, Mr. Schmidts book can be of great service. We can hardly say, however, that it gives enough credit to the quality of French literature we have just alluded to, which, while used unwor- thily, may be the cloak for great faults, it is true, but also is of great service when used in other ways. It is an ~dvantage like a good voice to an orator, or a fine instrument for a musi- cian. There is nothing, however well worth saying, but is the better for being well said. This grace is as good a weapon in righteous hands as it is dangerous when used by those who defend the wrong. To take a most noticeable instance of how valuable it can be, there is Sainte-l3euve, who, with all his politeness, often made himself felt painfully. It is in general a quality which needs no pointing out; it strikes at once and fascinates for a time every reader of French, and it is against its dangers that Mr. Schmidt is most eloquent; we cannot help thinking, however, that he might also have indicated its merits more clearly. Mr. Schmidts History only comes down as far as the begin- ning of the Second Empire; and hence much of the later 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 111 degradation does not fairly come within its compass. He has treated some recent authors in detached papers with a great deal of ability. His History, however, gives a complete ac- count of what has been done by authors of every sort from the time immediately following that of the great writers of the last century to almost the last manifestations of lit- erature in France. The brief extracts we have given indi- cate very insufficiently the thoroughness with which he has performed this severe task. All praise is due, also, to his impartiality. We can warmly recommend the book to all readers of German. T. S. PERRY. ART. V. THE CURRENCY DEBATE OF 1873 74. IN his speech at the bar of the House of Lords on the im- peachment of Warren Hastings, Sheridan, to the great delight of the historian who was himself among the audience, took occasion to refer to the luminous page of Gibbon. The adjective was certainly not inappropriate; but when the bril- liant orator was shortly after called to account for using it, the temptation proved too great for the wit, and he is said to have defended himself by insisting that he did not say luminous,~~ but voluminous. The page of Gibbon is undeniably volu- minous, but in it at least are garnered up the ripe fruits of twenty years of constant thought and conscientious labor spent in recounting the story of human civilization through fifteen eventful centuries. During the autumn of 1873 the United States was visited by one of those fii~ancial storms, incident to the modern high- pressure system of conducting business, and which are com- mon to all civilized countries and to every monetary system. Shortly after the fury of the tempest had subsided the national Congress met, and took the subject into consideration. Through nearly five mortal months the process of incubation was pro- tracted, finally resulting in a measure which in due time was reproduced by the press of foreign lands as a legislative curl- -

1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 111 degradation does not fairly come within its compass. He has treated some recent authors in detached papers with a great deal of ability. His History, however, gives a complete ac- count of what has been done by authors of every sort from the time immediately following that of the great writers of the last century to almost the last manifestations of lit- erature in France. The brief extracts we have given indi- cate very insufficiently the thoroughness with which he has performed this severe task. All praise is due, also, to his impartiality. We can warmly recommend the book to all readers of German. T. S. PERRY. ART. V. THE CURRENCY DEBATE OF 1873 74. IN his speech at the bar of the House of Lords on the im- peachment of Warren Hastings, Sheridan, to the great delight of the historian who was himself among the audience, took occasion to refer to the luminous page of Gibbon. The adjective was certainly not inappropriate; but when the bril- liant orator was shortly after called to account for using it, the temptation proved too great for the wit, and he is said to have defended himself by insisting that he did not say luminous,~~ but voluminous. The page of Gibbon is undeniably volu- minous, but in it at least are garnered up the ripe fruits of twenty years of constant thought and conscientious labor spent in recounting the story of human civilization through fifteen eventful centuries. During the autumn of 1873 the United States was visited by one of those fii~ancial storms, incident to the modern high- pressure system of conducting business, and which are com- mon to all civilized countries and to every monetary system. Shortly after the fury of the tempest had subsided the national Congress met, and took the subject into consideration. Through nearly five mortal months the process of incubation was pro- tracted, finally resulting in a measure which in due time was reproduced by the press of foreign lands as a legislative curl- - 112 The Currency De6ate of 1873 74. [July, osity, and which was promptly vetoed by the President. The mouse, if was true, was a very ridiculous mouse; and, indeed, never struggled into a real existence; but the amount of groan- ing on the part of the mountain which preceded its still-born genesis was truly portentous. It covered about seventeen hundred columns of the Congressional Record, containing upon a close computation considerably more printed matter than the entire work of the voluminous Gibbon; a mass of reading suffi- cient, indeed, to fill about seventeen numbers of this Review, and equal to the twelve volumes of the works of Edmund Burke. Such are the proportions of a modern Congressional debate. Yet Methuselah and his contemporaries have long since passed away! This is America, in the nineteenth century, and the years allotted to the reviewer no longer approach unto a thou- sand, but barely to a poor threescore and ten. And yet, in but a portion of one brief session, the national Sanhedrim dumps upon him between three aiid four thousand octavo pages on a single topic. In view of such an infliction, Gibbon is no longer the voluminous, nor can the perusal of his work be regarded otherwise than in the light of a holidays reading. The financial debate of the first session of the Forty-third Congress may be said to have begun on December 1, 1873, the day upon which that body assembled. History will probably show that both session and debate ended, as they began, to- gether. Meanwhile on the 1st of December, almost as soon as the Senate was called to order, two resolves relating to the financial condition of the country were introduced, respectively by Messrs. Morrill of Maine, and Ferry of Michigan, and were laid upon the table: that of Mr. Morrill looked to a speedy resumption of specie payments; that of Mr. Ferry to an in- crease of the existing volume of irredeemable and depreciated paper-money. Other measures speedily followed, emanating from different senators and expressive of their views; generally emphasized by a speech of greater or less length. All this was, however, but the dropping fire of the skirmish lines; the forces were not yet in battle array; the tug of war was to come. At length, upon the 111th of December, Mr. Sherman of Ohio, as chairman of the Committee on Finance, introduced 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 113 into the Senate certain resolutions, in the form of instructions to the committee of which he was the head, calculated to draw forth from the Senate some expression of opinion as to the na- ture of the measure finally to be submitted to it. Immediately two other members of the committee, Mr. Ferry of Michigan and Mr. Bayard of Delaware, submitted other and substitute propositions, and upon these the debate began its interminable progress. The whole proceeding was, it would seem, unparlia- meiitary in the last degree, and calculated to consume the utmost possible amount of time, with the least possible result. The committee, instead of doing its preliminary work in the committee-room, and submitting on behalf of the majority and the minority of its members concrete and well-digested meas- ures to be considered, debated, attacked, defended, and passed or rejected, and there an end, abdicated its functions and called upon the Senate to go into a loose and aimless discussion of abstract principles. As would naturally have been anticipated, that body thereupon proceeded to resolve itself into a national debating club, and its members began to relieve their minds at the rate of about ten columns of printed matter per diem. Meanwhile the committees of the house of Representatives were busy in their several rooms, while the Saturdays, given up to speech-making de omnibus rebus et ceteris aijis, afforded a safety-valve to the more eager and surcharged members. On these occasions, Mr. Kelley of Pennsylvania more particularly held forth week after week in reference to his own pet panacea, warranted to solve every difficulty, and to at once provide the country with a perfect currency and abundant money. The months of December, of January, and nearly half of February wore away in this harmless discussion. It was rap- idly losing all interest, when, in the Senate, Mr. Sherman infused new life into it by introducing another feeler for instruc- tions in regard to a bill regulating the distribution of bank cur- rency. The debate upon this measure assumed a somewhat sectional character, which lent a certain interest to it; but it, too, was rapidly languishing away when it was broken in upon by the death of Mr. Sumner. At last, when the days of monrn- ing were over, both houses settled themselves down to their work. Into each bills were introduced by the proper commit VOL. CXIX.NO. 244. 8 114 The Currency De6ate of 1873 74. [July, tees, and the two bodies devoted themselves to their consider- ation. In the House a bill increasing the authorized volume of legal-tender notes from $356,000,000 to $400,000,000 was reported by the Committee on Ways and Means, and was passed on the 23d of March by a vote of 168 to 77; every amendment proposed to it having been rejected by decisive majorities. Another bill providing for the increase and distri- bution of bank currency, under what is knowii as a system of Free Banking, was proposed by Mr. Maynard of Tennessee, from the Committee on Banks and Banking, and, after a long and sharp debate, was passed on the 14th of April by a vote of 129 to 116. Meanwhile, on the 24th of March, Mr. Sherman in the Senate had called up for final action a carefully prepared measure, which had previously been reported by him on behalf of the Finance Committee. Upon this the final debate was begun and continued until the 9th of April. In the course of it the bill was changed through the process of amendment, or, in parliamentary phraseology, perfected, until its whole origi- nal character was perfected out of it; when it was finally passed, by a vote of 29 to 24, and sent to the House for con- currence. As originally reported this measure was a timid effort at compromise, going to the extreme limit of concession. It conceded the $26,000,000 of cancelled notes illegally issued by Mr. Richardson, and made them a part of the permanent circulation; it did not touch the great question of resump- tion, but fixed the 1st of January, 1876, as a date after which United States notes might, on the demand of any holder, be converted into five-per-cent bonds; it made provision for an in- crease of the national banks, but provided that seventy per cent of the amount of additional bank currency issued should be retired in United States notes; finally, it contained a futile clause looking to the increase of the stock of gold in the coun- try by compelling the banks to hoard one quarter part of the interest they received on their United States bonds pledged in the Treasury as security for their circulation. It is not here proposed to criticise this measure; but, mild as it was, it by no means met the views of the moderate expansionists, and in the course of debate was stigmatized by one of their number 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 115 as being nothing but a contraction scheme any way. As finally perfected, it was certainly nothing but an inflation scheme any way; though, unfortunately, after its passage, it was discovered that it would not inflate. As passed, it sim- ply provided for the permanent reissue of the $44,000,000 of United States notes withdrawn from circulation and cancelled by Mr. McCulloch, and for an increase of $46,000,000 of the national bank currency. Round numbers have always a fasci- nation for theorists ; and the~ moderate expansionists now agreed to fix the needs of the country at $800,000,000 of paper-money, leaving the yet rounder and more fascinating sum of $1,000,000,000 as an argument in some future de- bate. This bill was taken up as soon as possible after it reached the House, and, after a short debate, was passed on the 16th of April; all amendments were voted down, and the final majority for the bill was 38, there being 140 yeas to 102 nays. It then went to the President for his signature. By him it was held under advisement until the 22d, when it was returned to the Senate with a veto message. Upon the 28th that body proceeded to the consideration of the veto, and, after a very singular running debate lasting through several hours, in which nothing whatever was said of the veto and a great deal about Mr. Sumners displacement some years before from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations, a final vote was reached, and the abortive measure which, poor as it was, represented the result of four months consideration, failed to pass. Sixty-four members of the Senate were pres- ent and voting; 43 votes were required to make up the requi- site two thirds; 34 voted in the affirmative and 30 in the neg- ative, so that the passage of the bill would have required a change of nine votes from the minority to the majority. That a measure looking to a direct inflation of an irredeem- able and depreciated legal-tender paper-money by further issues of similar paper-money, to be forced into circulation in a time of profound peace and abundant material prosperity, should, after months of the fullest discussion, in the United States of America, and in the year 1874, be prevented from becoming a law only by the interposition of the executive veto, is sufficiently extraordinary. It admits of neither excuse nor 116 The Currene~y Debate of 187374. [July, palliation. It is and must remain a lasting stigma upon the honesty and good faith of the American people, both casting and authorizing the gravest doubts on their much-vaunted ca- pacity for self-government. No amount of rhetoric or sophistry or blustering can in the slightest degree alter or extenuate the fact. It is now matter of history. It cannot be obliterated; it will not be forgotten. A free, self-governing people, con- tinually boasting of their liberty, their wealth, their superior intelligence, and the inexhaustible resources of that country of which they are so proud, this people, not stricken by plague, pestilence, or famine, unvexed by any war, in the midst of plenty, decided, in the full light of the nineteenth century, and after months of deliberation, to do that which no monarch or despot has for more than two centuries done in any land, except when compelled thereto by the sternest of duress, they decided wantonly and arbitrarily to tamper with and debase the national standard of values. And yet there are certain circumstances in connection with this proceeding which should not be forgotten. Under the most favorable conditions, the honesty, intelligence, and vir- tue of a country so prosperous as America has, in the struggle of political life, a heavy load to carry. The delights of Capua do not incite to eternal vigilance; and, as a rule, with nations no more than with individuals are fortunate times pure times. At present, it so happens that a more thaix usually heavy load is imposed upon the better political elements of this country. We are now beginning to taste the bitter after-fruits of the late Civil War. As the necessary and inevitable result of that struggle, we destroyed, or irretrievably shattered, the whole industrial and political organization of at least nine States of the Union. From Virginia, all along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico to Louisiana, and north to Arkansas, the States emerged from the war in a condition of exhaustion, from which they passed into one of chaos. Meanwhile the national government thought to create, through some patent legislative enactments, a living political organization to re- place that which had been destroyed. The broken pieces were gathered together, strung upon wires, and cemented with Con- gressional glue; and so we reconstructed the South. The 1874.1 The Currency De6ate of 1878 74. 117 work, when completed, made up a ragged and incongruous whole, in which it was hard to say whether, in the expressive political nomenclature of the day, the Northern carpet- bagger, the Southern scallawag, or the enfranchised African shone as the more conspicuous and least creditable element. But completed the work was; and the Southern States at last staggered to their feet, and stood, galvanized into life, like the creation of another Frankenstein, a ghastly satire on the republican form of government. Unlike Frank- enstein, who fled in horror from the hideous result of his labors, Congress looked upon the erring but reconstructed sisters, and they seemed good in its eyes; so straightway the living organ- izations of the loyal North were wedded to the galvanized corpses of the rebellious South, to Alabama, to Louisiana, to Arkansas, to South Carolina. For years to come they must remain a dead weight, which the honesty, vigor, and life of the country has got to carry. They had to carry it in the financial debate, and it turned the scale against them. And why should the South be blamed? The political combination of barbarism and corruption which our reconstruction meas- ures placed in assured control of those States has reduced them already to utter bankruptcy and inevitable repudiation. Why should the intelligent elements of the South, embittered by a sense of outrage and crushed under negro legislation, care to maintain those standards of value which represent only ruin to themselves? Must they not, on the contrary, feel a sweet sense of elation in the thought that they may yet drag us down into the pit we dug for them ? Throughout the financial debate they were a unit, and they made our scale kick the beam. Outside of the reconstructed States, Messrs. Bayard and Salisbury of Delaware, and Hamilton of Maryland, well represented the best type of Southern public men of the past. From those States there were a few men, like Townsend of Virginia, and Lamar of Mississippi, who represented the better political elements; but it is greatly to be feared that it will be long before the great law of the survivorship of the strongest so far asserts itself as to materially enlarge their num- bers. Meanwhile, on the decisive vote in the present debate, the six New England States were more than counterbalanced 118 The Currency Debate of 187374. [July, by the nine Gulf and cotton States, excluding Texas. The latter were an affirmative unit; the former, with the exception of Mr. Sprague of Rhode Island, were a negative unit. Had the issue been left to the representatives of those States, the sys- tems of which had not been disorganized by war, the healthy, intelligent, solvent communities of the Union, the result would not have been for a moment in doubt. In passing through a somewhat similar crisis fifty years ago, Great Britain occupied a wholly different position. With the exception of Ireland, the influence of which part of the empire was comparatively small, she contained within her system no foreign element of inherent weakness. Her position then was much more as that of New England now. The intelligence and honesty of Great Britain were not handicapped with dead weights of bankruptcy and barbarism of their own creation. As compared with ours, their task was an easy one. In passing through the crisis of 1815 20, Great Britain, also, enjoyed the incalculable advantage of a decisive, vigorous lead on the part of those responsible for the government. It was Mr. Peel, afterwards Sir Robert, who from the Treasury benches, and with the whole strength of the government behind him, brought in and carried through the specie-resumption act of 1817. The friends of a sound financial policy had some- thing to rally on, a standard to follow. Parliament was not a mob of noisy talkers, from whose combined unwisdom those upon whom responsibility rested tried to extract instructions as to a policy. Throughout the recent financial debate, however, no lead or indication of a lead was afforded to Congress by the administration. The message of the President at the com- mencement of the session was vague and uncertain in tone, and in its loose expressions in regard to specie payments, the balance of trade, and the sufficiency of the currency, indicated rather an utter failure to grasp the elementary principles of the question at issue, than any intention to pursue a definite line of action in regard to it. Had he earlier, and through the proper official channels, caused the views contained in his veto message, or, yet more, those of his subsequent Memorandum of June 4, to be understood as the views of the government, the whole course of events would have been other than it was. 1874.] The Currenc~~ Debate of 1873 74. 119 Not improbably, however, the opinions of the message were imbibed from one source, and those of the memorandum from another. At the earlier period, the Boutwell-iRichardson r6gime still directed the Treasury, and the message as plainly partook of its pale, colorless influence, as did the later docu- ments of the strong, sanguine views of Senator Jones of Nevada, through whom the unofficial manifesto was finally made public. However this may be, and whatever unex- plained causes may have induced the startling change be- tween the official utterances of December and the individual manifesto of May, one thing is indisputable, the veto mes- sage was a surprise to every one, and during the whole course of the debate which preceded it the executive views were unknown, and its influence unfelt; the most important question of the day was not a party question. The government had no policy. Its friends those who in Congress were looked to as the especial exponents of its views were divided in opin- ion. In the Senate Chamber Messrs. Conkling and Chandler found themselves sharply arrayed against Messrs. Morton and Cameron; while in the House of Representatives, General But- ler, the actual administration leader, was upon one side, and Mr. Pawes, its official mouth-piece, was on the other. It is unneces- sary to say that such a course of action was wholly inconsistent with the traditions of the government, and incompatible with its successful operation. It is very well for the administration to have no policy to maintain in opposition to, and defiance of, the legally expressed will of the country. That is the principle at the base of all parliamentary government. No party can, however, without becoming contemptible, remain in control of the government and yet abdicate responsibility. It is very well to increase to the utmost the number of open questions; it is far from desirable that the executive should make its influence felt on all the petty issues of the day. But, in the present case, it may safely be asserted that the worst features of that confusion on the currency question in which the public mind is now involved are due to the uncertain and changing tone of the administration, and to the utter disregard of those usages which custom has established to regulate the inter- course between it and the legislative department. Memo 120 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, randa should be communicated to heads of departments at the commencement of a session, not to casual visitors at its close. Through four months of debate, valueless except for its crystallizing effect on public opinion, the head of the government jealously reserved his opinions, only to make them public when they produced, amid the murky darkness which had settled down upon Congress and the country, rather the effect of a thunderbolt than a beacon. What would have been the fate of our finances in the early days of the Republic had Washington first expressed his policy in a veto, and had Mr. Richardson occupied the chair of Hamilton! As a consequence of this absence of lead, the debate through- out its course indicated the utter breaking up of party lines. Both in discussion and when it came to the votes, the old organizations were fairly reft in twain; the two wings of each coalesced with the similar wings of the opposing organization on an entirely new division. So much was this the case, that in each house a majority of the Republicans and a majority of the Democrats found themselves united against the two minor- ities of the same parties, acting together in perfect sympathy. It is not proposed in the present paper to enter into any gen- eral review of the debate, or of the several speeches made on one side or the other in the course of it. Of these there were more than one hundred and twenty-five; in which number is in- cluded only the set speeches. Many of them were characterized by very decided ability; and, indeed, the record bristled with sali- ent points and episodes of interest. Three efforts only, however, attracted any great degree of public notice, or marked turning- points in the discussion. These three were the speeches of Mr. Schurz on February 25th, and of Mr. Jones of Nevada, on April 1st, in the Senate; and that of Mr. Mitchell of Wisconsin, on March 27th, in the House. Throughout, the attitude of Mr. Schurz was, probably, more creditable to himself individually than that of any other man. Outside of all party lines, near the close of his senatorial term, coming from a Western State, in which he was believed in the detestable Congressional jargon to antagonize public opinion on the question at is- sue, he yet unhesitatingly flung himself into the struggle, in obedience to his convictions, and boldly risked his political 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74.. 121 future on a faith in his principles. He triumphantly bore the brunt of the debate in the Senate, and his collisions with the inflationist leaders were not infrequently so sharp as to infringe on the limits of parliamentary courtesy. He repre- sented, on his side, the student, the theorist, the accomplished parliamentary debater; ready, witty, armed at all points, he was never found wanting, was never despondent, and his record will even bear comparison with that of Canning in the English debate on the Bullion Report. Mr. Jones of Nevada made but two brief speeches, the first of which, however, stamped him at once as a debater of very decided power. It was marked through- out by a practical, incisive tone which stands out in agreeable relief against the droning monotony of the general discussion. Ready, vigorous, formidable in retort, he went to the gist of the subject as did no one else. There was a certain epigram- matic bluntness in the way in which he almost blurted out the ugly truths at issue which was most refreshing; and the vigor and directness of thrust with which he unhorsed Mr. Morton, when that gentleman more than once undertook to meddle with him, must have given his unfortunate adversary a most realizing sense of the expediency of greater caution in the future. If any inference may be drawn from the maiden efforts of Mr. Jones, the Senate has secured in him a veritable acquisition during the remainder of his official term. Mr. Mitchells speech in the House was of the best class which ever comes from the purely business man in public life. It was, apparently, a written essay, and formed no part of legitimate debate, as did the effort of Mr. Jones. It was, however, clear, unpretentious, direct, the utterance of a practical man, who was not only familiar with the details of business, but who had done what so few of that class ever do, studied its theory and detected its formulas. Of the other speeches on the same side of the question it is not proposed to say anything. They are already forever buried in the columns of the Record. Upon the side of the inflationists Messrs. Morton, Ferry, and Logan were most conspicuous in the Senate, and Messrs. Kelley and Butler in the House. The efforts of none of these gentlemen were, in themselves, worthy of any particular no- 122 The Currency Debate of 1873 T4. [July, tice. Mr. Morton, of Indiana, was the real leader on his side of the question. A vigorous, ready, and formidable debater, his position throughout this discussion was one of peculiar diffi- culty. He was oppressed by the utterances of other days. One after another, his opponents first Sherman, then Schurz, then Thurman appealed to what Disraeli has called the irrevocable pages of Hansard, and brought him face to face with his diametrically opposite opinions so freely and fully expressed but a few short months before. So frequently and elaborately was this process gone through with, with such a cruel gusto and enjoyment on the part of his tormentors, that he must quite have grown to enjoy it himself at last. At least it seemed to occasion him no embarrassment. lie never tried to explain away the discrepancy; contenting himself always with the same old standard repartees, that only dead men and idiots never changed; or that he was glad at last to recognize the sources from which his opponents drew their arguments, and to see them masquerading in his cast-off clothes. Mr. Mor- tons record in this debate certainly does not commend him. He is said to be an aspirant for presidential honors. If such is the case it is safe to predict disappointment in store for him in that respect. No man with such a voluminous and varied record could hope to run the terrible gauntlet which hedges the way to the White House. Mr. Morton has the misfortune of combining to a degree quite inconsistent with success the attributes of a copious debater with those of a political weather- cock. Of Messrs. Ferry and Logan little need be said. The first is a fair specimen of the active and practical business man, half educated, and long accustomed to dealing with the outside of things, but now attempting the r6le of the financial states- man. In his view a complete collapse of credit is a mere currency derangement; a system radically unsound may at any moment be made sound by amending its by-laws. A courteous political tinker, with a sublime confidence in the efficacy of legislation, he contributed little to the ~iiscussion beyond much earnestness, a profuse display of rhetoric, and a great deal of rather thin sophistry. Mr. Logan developed in great perfection all the characteristics of the vex et rrceterea ni 1874.] Tue Currency Debate of 1873 74. 123 Lii statesman. Talking more than any one else, he opened his share in this debate with a deliciously naV claim for consider- ation on the ground that he had formed his opinions only after devoting his whole leisure time during the past two weeks, when not engaged in the Senate, to the most patient study of the science of finance, including researches into all the leading authorities! Unfortunately, however, to the very end, he evinced a lamentable incapacity to grasp the distinction be- tween accumulated wealth and a medium of exchange. In his mouth wealth was money, and so was currency; currency, therefore, was wealth. He accordingly always enjoyed the great advantage over his adversaries of answering their argu- ments at great length, and to his own perfect satisfaction, without in the remotest degree understanding them. He fur- ther contributed to the debate several very marked displays of extremely bad temper and worse manners, and a few dismal efforts at humor. During its last stages, however, this man either put himself forward or was put forward as the recog- nized parliamentary leader of a majority of the Senate of the United States. In the House of Representatives Mr. Kelley, of Pennsyl- vania, was the most prominent talker on either side, and is deserving of a moments consideration. Referring to himself endearingly in the course of the debate as Old Pig.Jron, Mr. Kelley is an earnest and thoroughgoing protectionist of the Philadelphia school, and as such regards Mr. Henry C. Carey as the most profound and philosophic student of social science the world has yet produced. As well as one can judge, a very honest man, his self-appreciation is something inconceivable, and, on paper and at a distance, most amusing. Of very limited capacity, irritable, and often arrogant in debate, absolutely sure in his own conclusions and never tracing any result beyond a proximate and apparent cause, delighting as the protectionist must in the post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, there is yet more individuality about him more of which to compose a study of amusing foibles for a character in a novel, a sort of Rt. Hon. Nicholas Rigby than in almost any other man on the floor of Congress, ex- cepting perhaps General Butler. There is something humor- 124 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, ously simple in his lofty estimates of himself and his friends, which he does not hesitate openly to avow, but which he also allows to crop out on all sorts of unexpected occasions. Of this description was his reply to Mr. Beck of Kentucky, who had made some allusion to him in debate which called forth a warm rejoinder; when Mr. Kelley had finished, Mr. Beck politely inquired if he had got through. Yes, rejoined the leonine Kelley, unless you arouse me again. On an- other occasion, after upsetting and casting to the winds with scorn the whole long list of financial and economical author- ities of other lands, lie fortified himself by a reference to Henry C. Carey, John A. Thompson of Summit Point, West Virginia, and Charles Sears of Navasink, New Jersey, three as original and profound thinkers as God ever blessed our country with. Mr. Kelley would hardly deserve so long a notice in this paper, were it not for the singular fact that he was, throughout the discussion, the recognized exponent and the most earnest advocate of what has been adverted to as the single novel financial expedient suggested in it, the 3.65 per cent inter- convertible bond scheme.* The suggestion of novelty may or may not be warranted; but, certainly, with this excep- tion, there was not in the whole course of the welluigh in- terminable debate a single idea which had not often before been proposed, discussed, and put in practice, in other times and other lands; there was not a sophistry which had not over and over again been refuted and exposed in treatise and de- bate; there was not a reply which could not be found in almost the same words, mutatis mutandis, in the records of many languages. To the student in financial discussion this monotony of repetition in the full confidence of original thought is wearisome to a degree. John Locke and John Law, Vansittart and Canning, Ricardo and Bosanquet, have left scant gleanings behind them; though its members know it not, the art of financiering so as to make one into two is so far exhausted as to make it very difficult for Congress to give to its discussion the interest of novelty. None the less, if the 3.65 convertible-bond scheme, though not very profound, * See Sumners History of American Currency, p. 326. 1874.] The currency Debate of 1873 74. 125 has indeed the merit of novelty, it and its leading exponent are upon that score alone deserving of some consideration. Not that Mr. Kelley, or eveii Mr. Henry C. Carey, or those other original and profound thinkers, Jones of Summit Point, and Sears of Navasink, can severally or collectively assert a copyright to this financial invention. On the contrary, that distinction is disputed with all the world by no less a per- son than General B. F. Butler of Massachusetts. That distin- guished financial authority plumes himself especially on the parentage of this plan, for on the 27th of March he said: I believe that in 1869 I was the first to propose in an elaborate speech in this House the 3.65 bonds ; and again, on Apri1~, 1874, he declared, that he had elaborated that scheme with more care and with more thought than I ever bestowed upon any proposition, whether of law, finance, or politics. A financial novelty painfully elaborated by the Essex statesman, whilom the grim soldier of New Orleans, indorsed by the most profound student of social science the world has yet produced, as well as by an array of the most original thinkers God has ever blessed our country with, such a measure, championed by Old Pig-Iron himself, could not but prove a quarry tempting even to a reviewer of what Mr. Logan would describe as a depreciated intellect. But some consideration is due to a long-suffering community. Three thousand pages of solid financial discussion in one half- year is sufficient to stay the appetite of the veriest cormorant. Enough is proverbially as good as a feast, and it is not now proposed to supplement so plentiful a repast. And indeed the space allotted to this article can better be devoted to the one truly salient feature in the Congressional debate, its innu- merable crudities, absurdities, and sophistries. With these it was most plentifully larded. Indeed, a well-culled selection of these gems of American forensic discussion would make a volume which would be interesting now and curious forever. That such vile sophistries should during the latter half of the nineteenth century be clothed in yet viler rhetoric and uttered in any deliberative body outside of a debating club in a luna- tic asylum ought to constitute matter for special wonder to ourselves, and doubtless will to all future generations. 126 The Currency Debate of 187374. [July, It will be necessary to begin at the beginning and follow the thread of the debate. The cause of the crisis and consequent panic of 1873 would seem to have been obvious enough. For twelve years the country had been steadily running in debt, borrowing on almost any terms, of whoever was willing to lend. The rate of interest to be paid was hardly matter for discussion; and when the interest on such loans as were effected came due, more loans were negotiated with which to pay it. It seemed confidently to be believed that this process need never stop. It became a mania with States, with cities, with towns, with corporations, and with individuals. Espe- cially was it the case with railroads. Statistics incontroverti- bly showed that investments in this class of property averaged an annual return of barely six per cent; yet loans were freely negotiated at ten, at fifteen, at twenty per cent, and bonds and stock on gayly printed paper were poured out in reckless pro- fusion. It is noteworthy that not a single speaker in the whole debate attempted to deal exhaustively with this subject. Many touched upon it; not one laboriously collected the sta- tistics and exhibited to the country the hard, cruel figures in which its folly should stand confessed. Estimates, more or less careful, of the amount of the indebtedness thus incurred were giv~n by three speakers, Messrs. Fenton of the Senate, and Townsend and Comingo of the House. In each case they were carelessly made and amounted to little more than guesses; but they sustained each other. By Mr. Fenton our indebtedness was placed at $12,000,000,000, upon which an annual interest account of $720,000,000 had to be met. Mr. Townsend estimated the total at $ 10,000,000,000, and the interest at $600,000,000; and Mr. Comingo reached a similar result. If a business man effects a loan, and then borrows money to meet the interest upon it; and then borrows again to pay interest on interest, beside increasing the loan, his affairs generally after a time culminate in a crisis; that is, when he gets to a point where he can borrow no more, he collapses. It was to just that point that the business system of the United States arrived in the summer of 1873. To the matter-of-fact observer this all seemed simple enough; the Congressional mind despises theory, but is not matter-of-fact. 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 127 Thackeray, somewhere in his writings, criticises severely the well-worn adage that money is the root of all evil, and em- phatically declares that in his experience it was not in money, but in the want of money that the difficulty lay. This view of the case strongly commended itself to the average Congres- sional mind, and was stated in many forms with much point and earnestness. For instance, Mr. Logan thus explained the matter, adducing the case of Jay Cooke & Co., and at the same time administering one of his inimitably happy and humorous slaps at two of his opponents : A large portion yes, a very large portion of the railroad bonds thrown into the market, to carry on the larger railroad schemes of this country, has been taken in Europe. And why taken in Europe? Because there they have money and we have not Let us take one example: the Northern Pacific Railroad scheme claimed to be wholly on a gold basis, as I understand We all know the sequel. Was this one of the sins of the greenbacks? I am rather inclined to believe it was for the lack of greenbacks, and not on account of their being in excess of the business wants of the country. No, sir; it was want of faith in the enterprise on which the bonds were predicated which caused them not to be taken in sufficient amounts to carry the enterprise through, and Jay Cooke not being enabled to procure the money, when the money was not in the country to be procured, that caused the explosion of the scheme. But perhaps I have not looked far enough into the Senators (Mr. Scharz) model authorities, Marco Polo and Amasa Walker, to see the connection between the cause and effect. Record. No. 79, March 21, 1874. To the same effect, Mr. Hunter of Indiana, also referring to the Jay Cooke problem: It was then for want of money, and not on account of too much of it, to meet his obligations, that he failed The injury in every instance can be traced to the want of money, and not to a superabundance of it. Record, No. 86, March 29, 1874. In the Senate, Mr. Bogy of Missouri became poetic over this chronic difficulty: The Senate and the country may see and understand how and why it is that, however hard our farmers arA pI~nters may work and toil, however genial and fruitful the season may have been, however 128 The Currenc~y Debate of 1873 74. [July, plentiful and refreshing the rains may have fallen on the fruitful soil of the West and of the South, prosperity for the want of money was, and is to-day, an impossibility. Record, No. 16, January 6, 1874. And finally, Mr. Whitehead, of Virginia, recurred to the same obvious truth: Sir. there seems to be a great deal of difficulty here as to what caused the panic, and gentlemen persist in saying that it was too much paper-money. Well, I do not pretend to controvert their sources of information; but one thing I say, that we were perfectly satisfied in my section of the country that what caused the panic was a scarcity of money. Record, No. 95, April 1 9, 1874. The government had issued tickets of value by which buyers and sellers effected exchanges; according to the expressed views of half of the members of Congress, furnaces, mills, and shops, crowded with orders, doing a perfectly satisfactory busi- ness, with large profits, were suddenly obliged to suspend op- erations for the want of these tickets of value with which to effect exchanges. Such a proposition seems incredible, yet this is what Mr. Cameron, the senior Senator, a life-long banker, had to say upon it: I believe that the moment you do anything here which restores confidence to the people, you will have the manufactories started again. Confidence is the one thing that they need. They want currency when they get into operation. The cry ~vas constantly I know it myself from my intimate acquaintance with the large manu- facturers and the small manufacturers too that every one of them needed more currency than they had. They had capital, but could not get that which enabled them to pay off their hands The manufacturers of the country need a currency which will enable them to pay their weekly and daily debts. Record, No. 93, Apr11 7,1874. Considering his antecedents, by the way, the role played by Mr. Cameron throughout this debate was an exceedingly offen- sive one. He appeared as the hoary, white-haired father, the good old man, of the Senate, the venerable political Turveydrop, in fact, scattering about unctuous flowers of rhe- torical cant, which, considering the detestable political moral- ity of the man, are odorous in the extreme. Here are some specimens: Then again, the Senator said, what I do not believe is true, that 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 129 it costs something to be honest. My teaching has always been that honesty is the best policy. In my judgment, it is always profitable to be honest. The man who only looks for pecuniary profit is a fool, because he always suffers. Just and honest acts of individuals, and wise and just acts of legislators, always produce benefits, not only for those for whom they legislate, but for themselves. The man in this Senate who will protect the laborer and the producer will always re- ceive honor and profit. He will derive no loss from that. Record, No. 93, April 7,1874. I think he (Mr. Howe) believes, as I do, tbat there is a great deal of good left in the country, and a great deal of good left in mankind. Indeed, I believe, taking them generally, men are good. The excep- tion is a had man in a crowd. And, therefore, I am always hopeful. I do not believe this country is going to be destroyed by any legisla- tion we shall enact here. There is too much good sense in this body to vote for anything that would at all tend to the destruction of the country. Every man here wants to do right. Record, No. 93, April 7, 1874. But to return to the great theory of a credit collapse because of an insufficient supply of tickets of exchange. Example after example of this singular hallucination might be cited. Senators and members vied with each other in declaring that, owing to the remarkable scarcity of the article, the busi- ness men of the country had to stop, because they could not get the currency to pay their hands. The idea of an excess of irredeemable money was absurd; such phrases as dearth, famine, grinding contraction,~~ criminal con- traction, were inadequate to express the dire pangs of those ,a-hungering for more paper-money. It would be useless to multiply quotations to this effect; especially as this diagnosis of the disorder was not satisfactory to all the authorities. Mr. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, for instance, as was befitting an ex-Secretary of the Treasury and the inventor of the green- back-reserve panacea, took a closer view of the question, and declined to concur in the heresy which sought foi the root of all evil in the dire impecuniosity of the time. He looked for it elsewhere; and at last his search was grandly rewarded by discovering it in the deposit of out-of-town balances during the summer-vacation period in the banks of Wall Street; then he delivered himself as follows: VOL. CXIX. NO. 244. 9 130 The Cutrrenc~y Debate of 1873 74. [July, I attribute the panic to the inflation of the currency locally; and when you speak of the inflation of the currency, whether it be a paper currency or a metallic currency, it is always local Dur- inc the last season there was no inflation of the currency of this country appertaining to the whole country, but there was inflation of the currency limited to the city of New York The processes by which the currency of the city of New York was inflated are generally well understood. The statistics show that the deposits of the banks of the city of New York, including the national banks and the banks established under the laws of the State, were increased $50,000,000 between the month of April and the month of September The presence of this vast sum of money in New York, accumulated by unnatural processes, brought upon that city, and then upon the whole country secondarily, the evils which we are now called upon to consider. Record, No. 36, January 29, 1874. Mr. Boutwell is a financial light. This discovery of the cause of the crisis of 1873 deserves to rank with his other dis- covery, made while Secretary of the Treasury in 1870, that the permitting foreigners to do our ocean carrying-trade was a direct drain upon the resources of the country of just so much money, and equal to casting it into the sea, so far as the nation is concerned. Nor is it behind this startling economic prop- osition, which all future theorists on the science of wealth had best take note of as the ripe conclusion of a practical ob- server The wealth of London is so great, that if her four million people were to suspend labor, and the income of the investments which have been made were to continue unimpaired and to be equally distributed for the support of the inhabitants, they, and the generations that are to follow them, could live on idleness and in comfort. This is the wealth of which I speak, the accumulated wealth of generations. Record, No. 37, January 29, 1874. Leaving Mr. Boutwell, however, let us pass from the cause of the crisis to its obvious remedy. As want of money was by the large majority settled upon as the root of all evil, it plainly followed that its removal lay in the creation of more money; or, as Mr. Morton, of Indiana, beautifully expressed it: The people want a little more currency. They believe it will be good for them, and I believe it. I believe it will 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 131 revive business all over this nation. I believe that business will spring up under the influence of a promise like that, just as the grass and the flowers will grow under the spring show- ers. While the same high authority had already announced in language equally happy that vague declamation about the beauties of resumption is like the notes of the mocking-bird, which please only by their delusions. As government held a monopoly in the printing of currency business, it at once became not only its right, but a duty, and indeed one of its necessary functions, to supply that little more which the people wanted. The following are a few fair specimens of the absurdities and atrocities uttered on this subject: The truth is, the Constitution does not make anything money, either gold or silver or anything else; hut leaves this question with the legislative department of the government, imposing no restraint or limitations upon its discretion, and assuming that it would he gov- erned by the general principles of expediency and common-sense. Now, in view of these antecedents and principles, I feel compelled to regard the powers Qf Congress over the money of the iRepublic absolutely sovereign, complete, indivisible, and unrestrained It remained for the Congress of the United States, representing the most intelli- gent and the most highly civilized people of the world, to coin the credit of the nation, and it has thus wisely provided a lawful money for the people, an instrument of exchange more perfect than that of any other nation. In our progress and development a great stride was taken in monetary science when the Legal-Tender Act of 1862 was approved by the President of the United States, and now to perfect our fiscal system is the task which Congress must undertake and accomplish. MR. FIELD, OF MICHIGAN. Record, No. 21, Janu- ary 11, 1874. I lay it down as an undeniable proposition that one of the high- est duties of a government is to make money cheap to the people, for upon the labor of the people it is dependent for its greatness and prosperity. MR. WILSON, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 90, April 3, 1874. A financial system, to be independent and free from the control of aggregated capital at the money centres of the country, must he based upon the cardinal doctrine that it is the duty and exclusive prerogative of the government to determine hoth the quality and the quantity of the currency which may be in circulation. MR. WOLFE, or INDIANA. Record, No. 66, March 6, 1874. 132 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, All that it is necessary for a government to do to create money is to stamp upon what it would change into money its image and superscription, and declare it to be money. Mn. BERRY, OF OHIO. Record, No. 39, February 1, 1874. I think money in this country is made by an act of Congress. I think that is money which is declared by law to be money, ~ measure of value, a standard of exchange, a medium by which debts are ex- tinguished by law. An act of Congress declares what is money; it stamps the money quality, the representative value, upon a bit of geld or silver just as it does upon paper. There is no difference in that respect. The stamp of the United ~States upon gold or silver gives it the character of money and fixes its value as money. Without that, sir, it is simply an article of merchandise, bullion; a thing of the market, a commodity for bargain and sale simply, but not money. Paper which bears the stamp of the United States upon it as money is money. Its value is fixed by law. It bears the highest impress of value, the faith of the nation. It is the only paper-money ever issued in this country that bore an honest front. It is not a child of monopoly.MR. HOLMAN, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 95, April 9,1874. The gentleman says that promises to pay a gold dollar are float- ing about, and bringing us to shame because we are not prepared to redeem them and keep the promise. I would like to see one of those promises to redeem a greenback with gold. They embody no such promise. They promise to pay a dollar; and a dollar is what the sovereign power has declared shall be a dollar. Mn. KELLEY, OF PENNSYLVANIA. Record, No. 7, December 10, 1873. Mr. Speaker, in this debate we have heard it many times stated that our greenbacks are depreciated, and that they are below par. The gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Hawley] stated the other day that greenbacks were twelve per cent below par. Now I wish to con- trovert and deny such statements; for they are not true. I admit that gold bears a premium and fluctuates with the price of foreign exchange in the market; but I deny that greenbacks are below par, for the simple reason that they are the lawful money of the country, and therefore must be at par. If it be true that greenbacks to-day are twelve per cent below par, then, on the same theory, when gold coin was at fifty per cent premium, our greenbacks were fifty per cent below par; when gold was one hundred per cent premium these greenbacks were worth nothing, a dollar of lawful money would not buy even a wooden nutmeg. According to this mode of esti- mating the value of greenbacks, when gold was one hundred and fifty 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 133 per cent premium, the poor man, having ten dollars of good green- backs in his pocket, would have to pay five dollars to have them taken off his hands. MR. FIELD, or MICHIGAN. Record, No. 99, April 14, 1874. Such being the function and abstract duty of government, the propriety of exercising it did not lack argument. Natu- rally, while spending in every form of investment several thou- sand millions of borrowed wealth, and until the day of settle- ment came, the country had enjoyed a great appearance of prosperity, its material development had been wholly unpre- cedented. This afforded a noble opportunity for the post hoc ergo propter hoc argument. The whole of the prosperity was due, not at all to the application of borrowed wealth, but to the use of paper-money; as well might a drunken man ascribe his drunkenness to the cup, and not to the wine! Half a volume could be filled with examples of this fallacy, all couched in that vile rhodomontade which the Congressman mistakes for eloquence; but let these three suffice: There are inconveniences attending our irredeemable currency and resulting from the fluctuations in the price of gold. No one denies it. But how trifling have they been for the last ten years when compared with the vast benefits, the growth and development, which have sprung from that currency! And how trivial and con- temptible will they he for years to come, when compared to the hard- ships and grinding oppression to result from forced resumption! SENATOR MORTON, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 81, March 24, 1874. No one more ardently desires a return to specie payments than I do. But I cannot shut my eyes to two facts: the impossibility of resumption, except by a contraction which would bring disaster upon the country; and that other great fact which it is impossible to ignore, that under an irredeemable paper currency, varying from seven hun- dred to seven hundred and fifty millions, the country has attained a prosperity, not fictitious but real, greater by far than at any period of our history. Argue and refine as gentlemen may, here is a stub- born fact which confounds all their theories. SENATOR PRATT, oF INDIANA. Record, No. 52, February 17, 1874. We adopted a new system of currency about ten years since. If it was too large for us, if the notes it authorized were irredeemable in gold or silver, if it was inconsistent with that of other countries and at war with the most beautiful theories of our proudest writers 134 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, and orators, it has allowed us to expand the villages of Chicago and of St. Louis into mighty cities, and to earn one half as much wealth in ten years as England has earned since it was invaded by Julius C~esar some two thousand years ago. MR. CLARK, OF NEW JERSEY. Record, No. 87, March 31, 1874. Of course, as the development was wholly due to our own happy invention of a paper currency, no thanks whatever were due to those lenders of capital, those credit-mongers and gold-mongers, as Mr. Kelley delighted to call them, who had intruded themselves into our Paradise: that unfortunate class who were then philosophizing over the loss in the panic of several hundreds of millions of dollars did indeed come in for some rare flowers of rhetoric. The following, for example, do not lack energy; beginning with Mr. Beck of Kentucky, the Democratic leader in the House : Why, I ask, should Congress specially seek to encourage the busi- ness of the money-changers 3 These men produce nothing, add nothing to wealth; they toil not, neither do they spin. They live on the necessities or misfortunes of productive labor. They are the drones in the hive of industry. It might not be polite to say that they are the buzzards who batten and fatten on the corruptions of the body politic. Moses, by divine authority, prohibited their business, and Christ drove them from the Temple because under them it became a den of thieves. Record, No. 95, April 9, ] 874. Why is it that representatives forget the interests of their own section and stand up here as the advocates of the gold-brokers and money-lenders and sharks, the same class of men whose tables Christ turned over, and whom he lashed out of the Temple at Jerusalem 3 SENATOR LOGAN, or ILLiNoIs. Record, No. 79, March 21, 1874. And in the following we have a kindly reference to Mr. Mc- Culloch, late Secretary of Treasury, before Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Richardson redeemed the languishing financial reputation of the country: We have doubled the indebtedness of the tax-payers of the coun- try by agreeing to pay the five-twenty bonds in gold, when they were contracted to be paid iu greenbacks; but that does not satisfy the insatiate greed, the voracious appetite, of the Shylocks and sharks, the bankers and brokers, the money-mongers and gold-worshippers of the country. No, sir, these lineal descendants and next of kin to the sordid 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 135 and mercenary crew whom the Saviour of the world when on earth ~vhipped and scourged from the Temple at Jerusalem, must add to the intolerable burden of debt of the people, by bringing the price of everything down to the standard of gold, and contracting the cur- rency for the purpose of accomplishing that sublimcst of all follies in the present condition of the country, resumption of specie payments. Mr. Speaker, the contracting policy of the government, inaugu- rated in the interest of capital and money, by the Secretary of the Treasury, whose grovclling instincts I trust now are being fully de- veloped and satisfied amidst the gold and bullion of Threadneedle Street, is unparalleled in the history of modern times, for its wanton disregard of the rights of the tax-payers of the country, and for its inexcusable contempt for the lessons of experience. Mn. BUCKNER, or MISSOURI. Record, No. 87, March 31, 1874. It required, however, all the logic and energies of Mr. B. F. Butler of Massachusetts to go to the root of the credit-mon- ger and gold-monger evil. That gentleman has long, it is said, been in the habit of declaring that he never knew what comfort was till he got rid of his last vestige of char- acter; the full benefit of this conclusion from ripe per- sonal experience he now proposed to impart to the country. Oblivious of the fact that men and nations of poor credit have always to submit to the largest sacrifices, his road to absolute financial happiness lay through a perfect disregard of our obli- gations. He thus, not for the first time, developed this other financial novelty One word further upon the question of credit in Europe. I have heard many times before, as we have just heard, Now, if you do any- thing to relieve the people we shall injure our credit in Europe ; and I want to say hcre that we have had too much credit in Europe for our bonds. We have them there to such an amount that we are send- ing $ 125,000,000 of gold yearly to pay interest on our bonds sold to buy and import luxuries, and the quicker Europe stops taking our bonds, the better I shall be satisfied. I have no hesitation or doubt upon this matter; yet I have always been told, whenever I said a word about bringing the currency of this country into a condition for the use and prosperity of the country, thus bringing down the rate of interest from which national banks make dividends of 10 and 15 per cent anuually and lay by 20 per cent surplus, I have always been answered, You will hurt our credit abroad. Sir, we carried on this The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 136 [July, great war of ours without any credit abroad, and during all that time we had to hear our own burdens and provide our currency in our own way. We then passed an act by which our credit was raised abroad, and thereby our bonds, which we had to that time carried ourselves, were sold in Europe, at from 30 to 60 cents on the dollar, and be- cause of our raised credit we have had to buy them back, under our absurd idea of reducing the public debt, at 100 and 112 cents on the dollar. I do not desire to see this process of depletion of our wealth going on any longer, and I am not anxious what the bankers of Eu- rope think about our credit. The quicker they stop loaning us money the happier we shall be. If they send what they are now sending over to us, the strong arms and willing hearts of the emigrant labor of their country, then we shall be able to work out our own salvation, not in fear and trembling. Record, No. 11, December 16, 1873. Naturally, so obnoxious a class as the lenders of capital were to be suppressed as the common enemies of mankind. Neither was their suppression a difficult task. They levied their unholy gains through the loaning of money: now money was in de- mand simply because money was scarce; in this country cur- rency indisputably was money; if, therefore, the United States printed an abundance of currency, then money would no longer be scarce, and consequently the occupation of the money-lender would be gone. Thence followed the cardinal idea of cheap money, with which the whole debate resounded : Cheap money is the one thing needful for the agricultural and productive interests of this country; and let the debt-burdened West and the debt-burdened South heed it. Cheap interest is what we want. If you will show me a country that pays, as we do in the South, from 15 to 26 per cent per annum for its currency, I will show you a country where prosperity is dead or dying, and every industrial interest prostrate. High interest is high evidence of low prosperity. It is at the same time the evidence and the cause of the destruction of the prosperity of any community But, Mr. President, we are told that as a means of relief we must dh~ersify our labor. No man is more impressed with the importance and the necessity of diversity of labor than I am Give us the means, give us a sufficiency of circulation to make interest cheap, and we will diversify our labor. Give us the means, and we will seize upon all the advantages which nature has given us Give us the means. This is what we ask of Congress. Give us a financial system which shall secure to us 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 137 money at rates which rule in England and France. SENATOR GOR- DON, OF GEORGIA. Record, No. 32, January 24, 1874. I have taken the ground that the expansion of the currency not the inflation, as some Senators have endeavored to characterize it, hut an expansion equal to the expansion of husiness would in its effect reduce the rate of interest ; that in proportion to the adequacy of currency the rate of interest would he reduced; and the very rea- son why there is such opposition to the proposition to make the cur- rency convertible into 3.65 bonds is because that would be con- strued into a national declaration that the rate of interest should rule lower. SENATOR FERRY, or MIcHIGAN. Record, No. 48, Febru- ary 12, 1874. Mr. President, there is no more sense in a scarcity of money than there is in a scarcity of food. As an abundance of food strengthens the body and gives it action and energy, so an abundance of money stimulates business and industry, and promotes the growth and the prosperity of the nation. 0, but, we hear it said, you will increase speculation Well, sir, I am not very much frightened at that. Speculation is the great stimulus of growth and prosperity after all. Some kiads of speculation are not profitable; speculation in stocks is not; but speculation is the great stimulus of growth and prosperity. Plenty of money not an excess of it, but plenty of money makes business active and prosperous, and promotes the growth and development of a nation. SENATOR MORTON, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 49, February 13, 1874. The question, after all, is, whether we have enough. How shall we determine it 3 The law of supply and demand determines it to a great extent. The rate of interest testifies in the case. Is it possible that the quantity of the currency is sufficient to make the necessary exchanges of the country, when the holders of the currency demand and receive 12 to 18 per cent interest for it I Shall not this medium of exchange be measured by the same laws which govern all other commodities as to the quantity on the market I If we have abun- dance, why are the producers and manufacturers compelled to pay such rates of interest I MR. BUNnY, OF OHIO. Record, No. 34, Jan- uary 27, 1874. And after Mr. Bundy had. thus distinguished himself Mr. Kelley rose for the purpose of elucidating certain points, and referred to what has been quoted, as follows So gratcful am I to him [Mr. Bundy] for the expression of the tiue foundations and limitations of currency, and of the true laws of 138 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, finance, that I could not speak at this time if my words were to imply dissent from his premises or argument. Naturally, however, with this vital function imposed on gov- ernment, of seeing that money was plenty and interest cheap, it became all good legislators to see to it also that no abuse crept in through their own unwisdom. There were almost no inflationists in Congress; they were all hard-money men, all excepting Messrs. Kelley of Pennsylvania, and Butler of Massachusetts. Those two profound thinkers had long since spurned from under their feet all belief in the bar- barism of specie, and, soaring aloft on greenback wings into a financial empyrean all their own, mere wrapt in seraphic con- templation of the ineffable excellence of a system of 3.65 per cent interconvertible bonds. Their brother legislators were, however, in their own eyes at least, hard-headed, practical men, contending with visionary theorists. Messrs. Morton and Ferry and Logan and Merriman all resented the term inflationist, when applied to them, with equal vehemence; in no sense, they declared, were they inflat~onists, they were moderate expansionists. That this augmented issue would to some extent impair the profits of a certain class, I have no doubt; but this class is not the producing one. It consists of money-lenders and capitalists in favor of high interest. That this amount of money would enable the West to engage in new enterprises is to my mind as clear as any rule in arithmetic. To allow to this people a sufficient amount of currency,. although it may be an augmentation of the present volume, is not inflation. I understand inflation to be an amount beyond the businesss wants of the country; but within the limits required by the needs of trade and commerce, it is not inflation. SENATOR Boov, ot MIssouRI. Record, No. 65, March 5, 1874. The people of this country have some sense. They want enough money, but do not want any more. They want enough to do the business of the country; but because they want enough to do that, they are told they will get drunk, they will become gluttons, they will want $ 2,OOO,OQO,OOO! The very argument is an impeachment of the intelligence of Congress and of the people of the United States. They know that population has increased; they know that the coun- try has been developed; they know that business has been vastly in- creased, and that more currency is demanded; and because they ask 1874.] The Currene~, Debate of 187374. 139 an increase just adequate to this increase of demand, we are met with the cry of inflation, irredeemable paper, the country is to be ruined, and somebody is to be scared SENATOR MORTON, or IN- DIANA. Record, No. 89, April 2,1874. Gentlemen here, who are in favor of a return to specie payments, use the word inflation as applicable to gentlemen who are in favor of a moderate increase of the currency. I do not understand that to be inflation by any means. You cannot inflate the currency until the currency is up to the standard of necessity, and then an increase would be inflation. It is a question whether the currency is up to that standard, and not a question of inflation; and the word infla- tion as it is used here, seems to be a very improper one. If I un- derstand it, and if Worcester and Webster understood it, it means to puff up, fill up, and swell out. Gentlemen may be inflated sometimes, but the currency is not by any means. SENATOR LOGAN, or ILLINOIS. Record, No. 32, January 24, 1874. When it came, however, to the question of what a moder- ate expansion was, a considerable diversity of opinion mani- fested itself. Some said fifty millions, others five hundred millions; and yet others inclined to an annual settlement, with a volume of currency to be fixed, as the first act of each ses- sion, in the wisdom of Congress: MR. FERRY, of Michigan. Mr. President, I have nothing to con- ceal on this question. The proposition of the Senator from North Carolina would bring up the volume of the currency, together with the $44,000,000 reserve, to about what I thought might be the right point, and it would seem I have the support of the Senate to affirm my judgment. The $44,000,000 would, with the $46,000,000, make the total volume of circulation $800,000,000. The $44,000,000 re- serve ought to be made a part of the permanent circulation, and not be left to issue and withdrawal at pleasure. I answer the Senator, therefore, that after having $46,000,000 national-bank notes and the $44,000,000 reserve, we should be disposed to rest. Record, No. 77, March 19, 1874. Then, sir, how much currency is needed l I cannot answer the question, but I venture to say one thing. Distribute $ 500,000,000 broadcast this day in the land, and it willabe swallowed up like the water upon a parched desert As a plan, however, I would sug- gest that it might be issued in five equal annual instalments. By this process it would be rapidly absorbed in the liquidation of debts and profitable investments; would be combined with labor and inter- 140 Tke Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, mingled with our diversified industries; made active in production and tributary to national wealth, instead of being locked up in a bonded debt, whose only active property is that of the eating cancer, consuming the body on which it is fastened. But how shall we get it? I have a plan of my own. How did we lose it? What became of it? In the first place it was retired in five-twenty and other bonds. The principle is easy, redeem or pay off the five-twenty bonds in legal-tender notes and restore the equi- librium which was lost when these notes were retired Redeem your five-twenty bonds, pay them off, and give the country legal- tenders. It needs them. MR. BRIGHT, OF TENNESSEE. Record No. 42, March 31, 1874. A currency good in the payment of all debts would fix the price of comfriodities, and the value of debts would be adjusted to it. The price would be high or low, depending upon the volume of the cur- rency. Perhaps there might be tables of the increase of population, and authority given the government in the course of paying its ex- penses to issue a fixed increase of currency annually, to keep pace with the growth and the increase of population of the country, and to provide for the loss or destruction of the circulating medium; or that feature might be left to Congressional action in the future, when the necessity of the case should require it. MR. MELLISH, OF NEW YORK. Record, No. 12, January 11, 1874. In the course of an extract which has been quoted from a speech of Mr. Bogy of Missouri, it may be noticed that it had occurred to that gentleman that an increase in the volume of irredeemable legal-tender notes, while doubtless favorable to the interests of one class, those who paid, might perchance affect prejudicially another, those who received. His answer was prompt: in plain English, it was that the debtors, as a class, were useful men who could not afford to pay; while the creditors, equally as a class, were useless if not bad men, who could afford to lose. The conclusion was apparent. There were many specimens of this line of argument, of which the following are a few : Expansion, which is held up as a bugbear to frighten the timid, will, if it hurts at all, only hurt those who cannot be seriously in- jured. Contraction ruins those who cannot rally from the blow inflicted. Mn. BECK, OF KENTUCKY. Record, No. 95, April 9, 1874. The alternative now stands before us of expansion in some form 1874.] The Currency Debate of 18~3 T4. 141 or resumption; commercial life or commercial death; either diffusion of wealth or monopoly of wealth. The question involves the pros- perity of the producer, else the enrichment of the non-producer; whether the laborer shall walk more erect, or the capitalist more proudly strut. SENATOR FERRY, OF MIcHIGAN. Record, No. 70, March 11, 1874. There are, or at all events there should be, no favored classes in legislation; but we are in a dilemma from which we cannot escape without doing what I have indicated. Which, then, ought to be the favored class, and which shall it be I Shall we adopt that policy which will add to the burdens of the debtor and increase the wealth of the creditor class, or shall we, as far as lies in our power, endeavor to lift the burden from the former and impose it in a measure upon the latter To these questions I have but one answer to give; and that is, let us, as far as is in our power, try to relieve the unfortunate debtor class, and afford them an opportunity to overcome the adverse fortune by which they have been overtaken; and at the same time do what we may and can to prevent unnecessary sacrifices by those who have been more highly favored and have escaped the horrors of financial embarrassment. MR. CoMINGo, OF MISSOURI. Record, No. 122, May 10, 1874. But perhaps as comical an argument as any advanced in the whole debate was that of Mr. Boutwell, when he undertook to show how, through ingenious financial expedients, the terrible fall in the value of legal-tender notes, which succeeded the Treasury suspension in 1861, had wrought no harm to the creditors of that period. This proposition deserves to be quoted at length: I ask what excuse, except the sternest necessity, can be offered to the country upon the moral question if you add to the volume of cur- rency and enable debtors to pay their debts with less value than would have been required under the currency that existed when the debts were contracted I In the war we had an excuse; it was a valid ex- cuse. The country was in peril; every interest was in jeopardy. Individual rights under such circumstances are comparatively unim- portant. Necessity, stern necessity, is the excuse; it is the defence. But the injustice of the proceeding was considered. We offered to the creditors of the country who held notes without interest the oppor- tunity to exchange those notes for bonds bearing interest; and by the policy of the government and the purposes of the people those bonds have become as valuable as coin. Therefore the creditor class that 142 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, was at first compelled to receive in payment of debts currency less valuable than that which existed when the debts were contracted, by investing the moneys which they thus received in the securities of the government, transferred the loss first imposed upon themselves to the country as a whole; therefore, considering the creditor class of the years 1862, 1863, and 1864 together, they suffered nothing by the transaction. SENATOR BOUrwELL, or MASSACHUSETTS. Recor~1, No. 36, January 29, 1874. In other words, there was in 1862, 1863, and 1864, a class in the community which lived on fixed incomes, on salaries, rents derived from leases, interest on bonds and mortgages, and on annuities. With the money so received they paid their rents and taxes, bought their food and clothes, and educated their children. The government during those three years debased the measure of value from 100 to 36, and rent, food, clothes, and education went up in price proportionately. This large class received their incomes, contracted in gold, in legal-tender notes; but, says the ex-Secretary, no wrong was done them as a class, for had they not seen fit to pay rent, to buy food and clothes, and to educate their children, they might have invested their incomes in government bonds, which, by good fortune, have risen to par! As a plain, practical, ob serving man, not one of your theorists or doctrinaires, but a hard-headed retail shopkeeper, Mr. Boutwell should have closed this disquisition on financial ethics and clinched his argument with the ancient and homely adage, that the creditor class, as a class, cannot expect to eat its cake, and have it too. But Mr. Boutwells great discovery in the course of this de- bate was that the depreciated legal.tender notes of the United States were neither dishonored rags nor printed lies. In view of the promise printed on the face of each of them, both of these facts had been roundly stated by the bullion- ists, as their opponents delighted to call the advocates of specie payment, at a very early stage in the debate. This ex- cited the patriotic indignation of many gentlemen, and, among others, of Mr. Boutwell, who announced that he had yet to learn how the public credit is improved or the character of the country increased by the statement that it is living in constant financial dishonor. There are few things, except signing their 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 143 names, in connection with the proper ordering of national finances, which Mr. Boutwell and his prot~g~ and successor in the United States Treasury Department have not, apparently, yet to learn; but it would seem to be quite elementary that a pompous silence in relation to ones protested notes, however impressive it may be, is, after all, a poor substitute for cash; to the theoretic mind the discredit seems to be in the failure to pay, not in the plainness of speech thereon. But Mr. Boutwell argued that the legal-tender notes were not dis- credited, because, though they promised to pay dollars, they did not specify when they would be paid Whoever will look at a United States note will see that there is no obligation expressed and I think none implied in what is written upon the note, that it is to be paid at a particular time. It is redeemable at the pleasure of the government, but not payable at any particular moment. Such was the spirit of the law. Such, I think, has been the view of the Treasury Department As re- gards the United States notes, they are redeemable at any time, but they are payable only at the pleasure of the government; that is to say, the government will consult its own convenience, the ideas that prevail as to a wise public policy. I only make these remarks that I may put an end, so far as an expression of opinion can put an end, to the opinion prevailing in the community that the government has for a moment been discredited in reference to the redemption of these notes. . . . . I suppose the courts would enforce the payment of a similar private pbligation after the demand was made, considering the circumstances, whether they were reasonable or not; but the rule does not apply to the government. There is no power of making the demand. . . MR. MORRILL, of Vermont. I am quite ready to admit that there is no obligation which can be enforced by law; but it does not de- stroy the moral obligation. Record, No. 20, January 10, 18r4. But Mr. Morrill got nothing by his reply, as the ex-Secretary triumphantly declared that the equity and morality of the proceeding are to be sought for in the hearts and purposes of the people. This question of the redeemable character of legal-tender notes excited in the course of the debate no little discussion, both metaphysical and legal. On the metaphysical side of the 144 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, question several conundrums were propounded by various gen- tlemen, all indicating an opinion that the legal-tenders were already redeemable. As, for instance, in reply to Mr. G. F. Hoar, who asked him if he did not consider the faith of the government pledged to the redemption of the greenbacks in coin, Mr. Kelley characteristically and enigmatically respond- ed as follows MR. KELLEY. I say I think the faith of the government is pledged to the redemption of the greenback; but I have no time to go into a scientific discussion of the question of what is redemption. Some day I shall he glad to have the gentleman make an hours speech and let me puzzle him with a few questions, such as whether a thing is not redeemed when it buys its full value. Record, No. 27, January 18, 1874. The unfortunate Mr. Mellish of New York, who, almost be- fore the debate was over, lost his mind and died, philosophized to much the same effect: Inasmuch as our currency under the proposed plan would repre- sent the dollar and its multiples, the critic or hypercritic will ask, What is a dollar? Answer: It is the name conventionally adopted as a unit of value. But what is it worth, and what do you measure a dollar by? Answer: By the same method as with the silver and gold dollar under the specie system, by another dollar of the same kind. But what is it worth? says the critic. It is worth as much wheat, or cloth, or leather, or salt, or rum, or tobacco, as you can buy with it. And that is all that can be said of a gold or silver dollar. Record, No. 86, March 29, 1874. But Mr. B. F. Butler, as usual, settled the question so as to obviate the necessity of its further discussion forever: I hear a great deal said about an irredeemable paper currency. What is currency? It is an instrument of exchange, an instrument to work with, to use, to measure values, to carry on transactions. Why does not somebody get up here and make us an argument about an irredeemable yardstick, or an irredeemable quart-pot, or an irre- deemable bushel-measure, or an irredeemable Fairbanks scale? Why should we want to redeem this instrument of exchange, this measure of value? We want to use it all the time. Record, No. 93, April 7,1874. It so happens, however, that the first law passed under the administration of President Grant was an act to strengthen 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 145 the credit of the United States, which, among other things, solemnly pledged the national faith to make provision at the earliest practicable period for the redemption of United States notes in coin. Five years had passed away and not one step in the direction indicated had yet been taken. And now the inflation leaders dealt with this act in two ways: by one section of them it was roundly denounced, while by the other it was gently interpreted away. Mr. Kelley was the leading exponent of the first class, as Mr. Boutwell was of the second. The former gentleman was peculiarly explicit : Ma. KELLEY. I will accommodate the order of niy remarks to the gentlemans question, although I would have preferred that he had allowed me to reach it at another point. Sir, the resolution of 1869, to which the gentleman refers, was passed in order that it might be said that the first act signed by General Grant was a declaration in support of the public credit. It originated in the room of the Corn- inittee on Ways and Means, and was a hit of buncombe by which opposition members were to be compelled to vote to sustain the pub- lic credit. A MEMBER. And you voted for it. Record, No. 27, January 18, 1874. Where did one Congress get the power to bind its successors for- ever by an ordinary act of legislation l 0, yes! It is all right to amend the act of 1862 by the act of 1869, after the bonds were issued, and add $ 200,000,000 to their value; but of course legisla- tion that would relieve labor and save to the producers of our wealth, the patient toilers in the field and the mine and the shop, $21,240,000 a year, would be a violation of public faith! What an argument in a republic ! MR. HOLMAN, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 95, April 9,1874. It is known to every gentleman that you passed an act in 1869 saying you would redeem this debt in gold. Suppose you did. It did not form any part of the contract. It was a legislative act and bound nobody, but simply authorized the government officer to pay in gold. ~Thenever you repeal it, it is at an end. It is not like the law of the Medes and Persians. Mn. BRIGHT, or INDIANA. Record, No. 87, March 31, 1874. I think it would be quite justifiable in any future Congress to regard such legislation as null and void. It is not fair to assume that all wisdom will die with this Congress, or that we know better how many greenbacks will be necessary in 1880 than will the then representatives of the people. Of course this principle will apply to VOL. CXLX.NO. 244. 10 146 The Currency Debate of 1873 T4. [July, the farce of a solemn pledgein regard to limiting the volume of greenbacks passed some years ago, and about which has been let oft so much of touching, not to say maudlin, eloquence. Even the Con- stitution fixes nothing in perpetuity; how absurd, then, to claim a greater scope for an enactment of Congress, which may be passed suddenly and uuder excitement, than can be claimed for a solemn provision of the Constitution itself. MR. MELLISH, OF NEW YORK. Record, No. 86, March 29, 1874. Mr. Boutwells ingenious method of referring those curious as to the significance of this act to the hearts and purposes of the people for information on that point has already been referred to. This simple method of disposing of an ugly point strongly commended itself to the Congressional mind, and brought out numerous marginal glosses on the words earliest practicable period The word practicablein the law of 1869 is not synonymous with possible. It does not mean at every sacrifice, or at all hazards, but when the government is in a condition to do it, and it can be done without injury to the general prosperity and the business of the country. Upon the greenback circulation there can be no technical default by the government. It is not a private but a public obliga- tion, part of a general system of finance and administration issued for purposes of general policy and to be paid in the same way. The greenbacks were issued as a substitute for coin, the day of payment left indefinite and dependent upon the future condition and business of the country. SENATOR MORTON, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 79, March 24, 1874. I therefore say that the Senators idea that the government can only maintain her honor by paying out a dollar in gold for each dol- lar in greenbacks is erroneous. She will pay every- dollar of it when it can be done without detriment to the treasury or injury to her citizens; and that is what is meant by as soon as practicable on her part, which the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] dwells on so much. SENATOR LOGAN, OF ILLINOIS. Record, No. 29, January 31, 1874. Congress, in 1869, after the hue and cry of the Western Demo- crats for repudiation had somewhat subsided, passed an act to strengthen the public credit. This act binds the government to redeem the greenbacks at the earliest moment practicable. At pres- ent specie redemption is not practicable. It is not even possible. The people, who own the greenbacks, and who are the sole judges of the question of practicability, do not demand it now. The greenback 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 147 is more popular than ever before, and it holds its value unimpaired amid all the clamors of all its detractors. Mn. SHERWOOD, OF OHIO. Record, No. 89, April 2, 1874. Mr. Ferry, however, laid down the broad general principle that, with individuals as well as with governments, willingness to pay~ones notes was the one conclusive proof of the ability to do so, and that the examination into the hearts and pur- poses of the people should go no further; unwillingness to pay was sufficient evidence of inability to pay, and conclusive on the earliest practical period point; consequently the government, when able conveniently to pay, will pay. The colloquy setting forth this startling theory of commercial faith is too long to quote. (Record, No. 77, March ii, 1874). But this branch of the discussion brought up the whole greenback question, and the eagle fairly screamed in his wrath at the opprobium cast upon such a noble legacy of our martial glories. The logic here becomes so absurd and the rhetoric so detestable, that the temptation to quote is not easily resisted. But a single specimen of each style of argu- mentation must suffice. We may as well begin with the good old post ergo propter, and Senator Cameron, of Pennsyl- vania, may state it: He [Mr. Stewart of Nevada] said that our currency was the reproach of the country. I wanted to know from the Senator where was the reproach. Was the issuing of our greenbacks, and after- ward the establishment of our national banks, a reproach when it saved the country from the hand of the spoiler? Was it a reproach when this government of ours, which I and other men believe the most beneficent government in the world, was saved from destruction and the country from dismemberment? Was that a reproach I I think not. Without our banking system, without our greenbacks, we should have been severed long ago. The great consummation of the war, which destroyed so much capita] and so many valuable lives, was saved to us and to the world and to future generations by the currency which the wisdom of Congress gav~ to the people. I think there was no reproach in that. Record, No. 56, February 21, 1874. Next, Mr. Ferry, with the reductio ad absurdurn I ask your attention to the two ways of measuring the value of this currency. What are they? Go into the markets; question 148 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, Wall Sfreet; and the answer made in the midst of the panic was, that the value of this currency was only six per cent discount, ninety-four cents to the dollar in gold. I ask the Senator from Wis- consin [Mr. Howe] whether that be stuff, whether that be counter- feit money 3 And I ask the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] if such is an engraved falsehood 3 If in market, in the midst of the panic, it was worth ninety-four cents, and to-day, I believe, is worth ninety cents in coin, then strictly, according to the epithets and estimates of these Senators, it would be ten cents lie and ninety cents truth.Record, No. 14, December 19, 1873. Then Mr. Morton argued that the people accepted the legal- tender notes, not because the courts compelled them to accept them or nothing, but because they loved them and preferred them to gold; technically the argumentum ab amore viridis- tergi The issue of greenbacks solved the financial question of the war, and from that time forward there was little trouble or doubt about the means for carrying on the conflict. The greenbacks grew steadily in popular favor, and, notwit.hstanding the premium on gold, became, and are to-day, the most popular currency the country has ever had. The idea that they were a forced loan never occurred to the people. They took them without force, would part from them with reluc- tance. Record, No. 81, March 24, 1874. Then comes an argument from the inexpediency of waste ; money is wealth, currency is money, greenbacks are currency, therefore greenbacks are wealth: When you tell me that you will repeal the legal-tender act and burn up the legal-tender notes, I tell you you will burn up $ 382,000,000 values in this country, and you reduce to that extent, by $ 382,000,000 of values, the property of the people of the United States of America. That is exactly the result and I tell you, gentlemen, when they go beforc this country with propositions like this they will find a voicc coming from the hard-fisted yeo. manry of this land, that will make them shake and tremble in their boots. MR. LOGAN, OF ILLINOIS. Record, No. 149, June 12, 1874. Next comes the argumentum ab amore patrice And right here rests the true basis of all our currency. While the people cheerfully and readily pay taxes, the currency can never 1e dis- credited, notwithstanding public men decry it as lies, mockery, repu 1874.] The Currene~ Debate of 1873 74. 149 diation, and shame; thus doing more to blast the reputation of their country and befoul its fair name than they could by any device of wickedness short of rebellion and treason. MR. COBURN, or IN- DIANA. Record, No. 95, April 9, 1874. Then we have a new species of argument drawn from the joy of the manumitted African, a species of argumentum ab arnore Nigrorum We must remember that these people had seldom seen gold; that the greenback was the first thing they ever earned they could call their own, the first thing, save our flag, that stood before them a syml)ol of their freedom. XYith it they soon learned a power to gather together long-broken families into a common happy home. To the colored man the greenback rose above the dignity of a lan- guage; to them it almost bore the dignity of religion. This precious- earned companion of the new freemen they gather and cherish as better than gold, the possession and power of which they never knew. MR. MERRIAM. or NEW YORK. Record, No. 85, March 28, 1874. And now, at last, we come to an old, familiar friend, the blood-sealed greenback, and no single excerpt will suffice for the glories of the argumenturn a pueris in cwruleo yes- titi8 Sir, you might have sent friend after friend down upon the bloody battle-fields, and each blue-coated boy there might have put his wife and children into that friends care, and said to him, When you go home, take care of them and see that they do not suffer. Yet there would have been a lingering doubt in the mind of that soldier that, because of other duties, those friends would not perform that mission. But when you sent the greenback to the soldier in the field, when you put into his hand that promise to pay, which is called by some a fraud upon its face, and when he mailed it to his family, he was sure that that would take care of them while he was fighting the bat- tles of his country. Sir, the greenback was one of the most potent weapons that the Union army had during the long and bloody strug- gle through which this country passed. Mn. BIERY, OF PENNSYL- vANIA. Record, No. 34, January 27, 1874. If our government is not good, then our currency is not good; if our government is good, our currency is good; and with a government so cherished, so endeared to the people of this land that they would spend billions upon billions of money and rivers and rivers of the 150 The Currency Debate of 18T3 T4. [July, best blood to preserve it, I ask you where the man is who will stand up here and curse it and say it is not responsible for the circulation of the country 1 Why, sir, men who have by their attacks indirectly assailed the character and credit of this American government have sinned against the enlightenment of this age. SENATOR LOGAN, OF ILLiNOIS. Record, No. 79, March 21, 1874. Here we are still within reach almost of the battle-cry and shouts of victory that closed the war, and we are now demandimr, or a por- tion of our American people are demanding, a speedy redemption of the legal tender. Sir, I maintain for that legal tender, to-day, that it is as good as gold. The honor of this nation is pledged for its re- demption in gold; it will be, and shall be, every dollar, redeemed in gold. We will never repudiate a dollar or a dime of it. Sir, it has upon it the impress of the best faith of this nation. It is the money sealed and sanctified with the best blood of the Republic. It is no disgrace to the nation; it is a noble currency, a grand trophy of the war, and held dear in the heart of every American citizen. SENATOR OGLESBY, OF ILLINoiS. Record, No. 55, February 20, 1874. But according to these authorities, the greenback is not only good and lovable from a sentimental point of view, but its payment is secured as is that of no other paper, however gilt- edged. Mr. Havens, of Missouri, in his enthusiasm declared that every dollar of property in-the country is pledged for its redemption; and Mr. Aibright, of Pennsylvania, announced that a government note is a mortgage upon every farm and every workshop in the country. This proposition was very frequently advanced, and, at last, when put forward by Mr. Wilson of Indiana, led to the propounding of an obvious question, which brought forth a very characteristic reply from General Butler: All the property of the nation, all the wealth of the nation, all there is of this government, was saved by the greenback; and behind the greenback is a pledge for its redemption in the taxes of the coun- try, in the property of the country, and not alone in the gold of the country, which we of New En0land may have a little more of than some of the rest of the States of the Union. MR. GARFIELD. Will the gentleman please point out the link that fastens his greenback to the security which he says gives it its value I How may the holder of it realize the security I MR. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. It is fastened by the votes of 1874.] Tue Currency Debate of 1873 74. 151 honest Congressmen that do not vote for banks. Record, No. 90, April 2, 1874. The process of foreclosure on some particular farm or workshop, by virtue of this pledge, might chance to be intri- cate; but, after all this nonsense, it is refreshing to see a bub- ble pricked, as was this one, by Mr. Kasson of Iowa There is a short argument on this question. Suppose I owe to the most prominent unredeemable inflationist on this floor ten dollars. I go to him with this ten-dollar greenback in one hand, with all the property of the United States behind it, with all the laws of the Uuited States guarding it, with all the unexecuted pledges of the United States to make it as good as gold; and in the other band I take this golden eagle, which has got merely the mint stamp of the United States on it, no mortgage or land or public pledges or financial theories behind it; which is yellow, not green in color, and which contains, for every dollar named on it, twenty-five and eight tenths grains of gold; and I ask him to take his choice in payment of the debt I owe him. Will he take the paper~ that has all the laws of the United States behind it, all the billions of the Federal census to support its value, and all the pledges of the government faith for its redemption; or will he take this metal which has no security or pledge behind it, but which contains simply a certain, number of grains of gold? My friend in front of me, which will he take if he has his choice? A MEMBER. Both. MR. KAssoN. Let him have his choice, and which will he take? He will take the gold every time. Now, sir, that argument you may take into every district in these United States, and put it against all your fine-spun theories of the inherent l)eauty of an irredeemable paper currency. You may take it to the farmers and laborers of any district between the two oceans. I will meet you on any stump with it. Record, No. 97, April 11, 1874. Naturally, greenbacks approaching so very closely to that perfection which is never wholly attained, the use of specie came in for a suitable expression of contempt. The idea of specie payments was a snare,~~ a ~ a fallacy ; a fanaticism which Mr. Morton, for instance, had suffered under pretty badly once, though experience and the lapse of time had abated the violence of it in his case very materially. 152 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, (Record, No. 15, December 20, 1873.) It was also a worship of the golden calf; but our members of Congress must speak for themselves: MR. MORTON. Mr. President, it has been the subject of complaint with many religious people in this country for a good many years, that when our fathers formed the Constitution they did not put into it a recognition of Almighty God; but it seems, according to the argu- ment of several Senators, that they put gold into it, which many think is better; they erected in the Constitution a golden shrine, at which many persons worship who worship at no other. Record, No. 89, April 2, 1874. Standing as we do, Mr. Speaker, on the eve of our centennial cele- bration, with a history and an experience peculiar and significant, it is not becoming in us to bend in humble adoration before the brazen god of gold This colossal idol, like the golden calf of old, must be shattered before we reach our Canaan. A gold currency, or a resump- tion of specie payments, so called, is a delusion and a snare. It is no more essential to our financial prosperity than the fly on the driving- wheel is essential to the speed of the train. Our people want a gov- ernment currency, bearing the impress of solvency and security, and plenty of it, to enable them to solve the problem of their manifest destiny. The worn-out countries of Europe furnish no parallels for us. The lamp of their experience sheds no light on our path in this regard. Mn. KILLINGER, or PENNSYLVANIA. Record, No. 55, April 20, 1874. This idolatry of gold on the part of the minority finally be- came so scandalous that Mr. Logan felt obliged to remind the Senate, with great dignity, that the people of this country do not worship gold, they worship their God, but they do use gold as a medium of exchange. (Record, No. 149, June 12, 1874.) It is sincerely to be hoped that the first half of this proposition is more correct than the last, but of its propriety and elevation of tone there can be no difference of opinion. But, as Mr. LaFayette Kettle would have said, the Senator from Illinois is perhaps as remarkable a man as any in our country. Some profound comments were also elicited on the absurd value conventionally put upon gold, or, as Mr. Small of New Hampshire expressed it : What is gold? In and of itself it is the most worthless of all the metals. (Record, No. 51, 1874.] The Currency Debate of 187374. 153 February 15, 1874.) Nor did he stand alone in this esti- mate It is a popular error to suppose that gold is worth intrinsically anything like the value that is placed upon it conventionally by legal enactments and the consent of trading nations. In truth, intrinsi- cally, gold is one of the least valuable of the metals. Conventionally, it is the most valuable. Take from it that conventional value placed upon it in use among men, and its value is very low in the scale of metals. Steel and zinc and tin and some of the other metals are in- trinsically more valuable. MR. MELLISH, or NEW YORK. Record, No. 21, January 11, 1874. Is there any doubt that gold, as far as regards intrinsic value, is among the least valuable of all metals, being put to the fewest uses, except for the purpose of ornament l The Spartan was right when he made iron the currency on its intrinsic value. The only trouble was, it took a great deal to carry on the business; and it would take a great deal in weight of gold to carry on business. We cannot carry on even the business of this country in gold without an amount of gold greater than that which exists in the world. MR. BUTLER, OF MASSACHUSETTS. Record, No. 93, April 7, 1874. And this idea of insufficiency was enforced in many quar- ters; especially by Mr. Merriam of New York, who, in the same paragraph, charged it with the apparently inconsistent sins of insufficiency and redundance There is not gold enough in the world to transact the business of modern commerce; hence, each nation invents its own paper currency. Gold has been the great inflationist, and unless we can shut up our mines, pouring a hundred millions annually into the lap of mankind, it will continue the great inflator; and hateful as has heen the word expansion, it will continue the great expansionist. Record, No. 85, March 28, 1874. But the crimes of gold were not yet all enumerated. It was reserved for Mr. Sprague, of Rhode Island, to complete the list. The business firm of which that gentleman was a member had become insolvent during the crisis, and, like most men of broken fortune, Mr. Sprague took liberal views on all points of financial ethics. Wholly betraying the constituency which had the mis- fortune to be represented by him, in dogged, shame-faced silence he contented himself with a silent vote for any and 154 The Currency De6ate of 1873 74. [July, every measure looking to the national dishonor. In cruel com- pliment Mr. Ferry, of Michigan, had alluded to him as the one exception to the solid New England vote, and attributed his action, not to his bankruptcy, but to a wise forecast, the result of mammoth business enterprises, which led him to support expansion. (Record, No. 70, March 11, 1874.) But at last Mr. Sprague broke through his wise rule of silence, and made, so far as the record shows, his single contribution to the long debate in these remarkable words: Gold is the basis of monopoly. (Record, No. 150, June 13, 1874, p. 54.) Truly, with Mr. Sprague silence was better than speech! This line of reasoning as regards gold would have been in- complete had the selection of a universal measure of value on which to conduct the exchanges of the world not come in for its share of ridicule. The money of the world was thoroughly exposed. Mr. Bundy of Ohio had a friend who went to the exposition at Vienna; in that city he found a community mak- ing use of a legal-tender currency even more depreciated than that of the United States. Mr. Bundys conclusions therefrom were noticeable: Another thing. They had a worlds fair and exposition over there in Vienna last summer. And they had a worlds currency there, too. But the curious part of it is that during that fair the green- backs of the United States were worth more at Vienna than the cur- rency of Austria, the worlds currency, and brought a premium. A friend of mine, who was over there, to whom I said, What could you do with the greenbacks; could you get anything with them 3 replied, 0, yes; I got a premium on them. The worlds currency of the United States, the greenhack cur- rency, is to-day worth more at Vienna and on the Rhine than the bond of Great Britain. Now, I think that is about good cuough. It seems to me that the quality is all very well, and that we have no right to say, by legislation or otherwise, that the dollar of the United States in the shape of a greenback shall not be a dollar for all pur- poses. But, Mr. Speaker, I know that in talking this way I am outside of precedents, and I am glad of it. MR. KELLEY. But you are on the foundations of eternal truth. Record, No. 34, January 27, 1874. 1874.] The Currency Debate of 187374. 155 But even before this lucid exposition Mr. Field of Michigan had struck these foundations of eternal truth, and given the coup de grdce to the money of the world in the following profound and original reflections Some ignorant persons have a notion that money should be re- deemed, and they call ours irredeemable currency and false promises to pay. Now, the power of transferring a debt from one to another is the true and only function of money. Who ever heard of English sovereigns or American eagles being redeemed in any other sense 3 Our greenbacks are in fact redeemed every day in effecting exchanges and in the payment of debts. Again, others, still more ignorant, assert that our money should be the money of the world, they never specify what world, nor do they describe the kind of money wanted, nor how Congress is to exercise its express powers to pro- vide lawful money for other nations. If they mean gold coin, then what shall he done for China and the East Indies, containing proba- bly one third of the whole population of the globe, and whose money consists solely of copper and silver 3 Our sentimental writers on finance should know that the lawful money of one nation becomes merchandise, like corn and pork, in another; our gold coins, when shipped abroad, leave the country like other of our raw products, and bankers draw for the avails at sight. Such persons should also know that Congress can only provide money for the New World; and that our national credit the greenback is the best lawful money for the people of the United States. Record, No. 21, January 11, 1874. Of course, gold being so valueless, fluctuating, insufficient, superabundant, and, in a word, disreputable a commodity, it was inexplicable that it should in common opinion be valued more highly than a currency so infinitely preferable to it as greenbacks. This was attributed by all the authorities, from the versatile Morton to the unfortunate Mellish,to the fact that the government exacted its duties on imports, and paid the interest on its debt, in gold. The majority of Congress failed to grasp the idea that gold was a commodity in universal de- mand, and that however little we used it among ourselves, buy it we must with what we did use, if we did not propose to cease our dealings with the world. But let them speak for them- selves; according to them, all that was needed to destroy the market for gold was for the United States government wholly to ignore it: 156 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, The interest upon the public debt must be paid in coin, and, to procure that, duties upon imports are made payable in coin. If we had no public debt, or if the interest upon it was payable in cur- rency, then the duties might be collected in greenbacks; and there can be no doubt that they would be of the full value of gold. But while importers must procure about one hundred and seventy millions of gold annually with which to pay duties, there will be a strong de- mand for it in the market, and gold will be at a premium. SEN- ATOR MORTON, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 79, March 24, 1874. My view is, if the government would put an end to the traffic in gold by no longer employing many thousands of merchants in New York and elsewhere to supply through customs the gold that is neces- sary for the government wants, and let the government issue its paper a full legal tender, and then, as sole purchaser of coin, provide itself for public necessities, there would then be so little demand for coin and no competition in the market, the premium would disap- pear. SENATOR FERRY, or MiCHIGAN. Record, No. 77, March 11, 1874. The other step to which I refer is to strike from the laws the words except duties on imports, and make government money re- ceivable for all dues to government and to individuals alike. Do you desire to see the currency at par with gold l You will not see it as long as the government dishonors its own currency, by making it a legal tender to the citizens, and refusing it for dues to itself Relieve the merchants of the necessity of buying gold to pay duties, and that day the occupation of the Wall Street gold kings, like Othellos, is gone. Gold, being no longer needed for individual pur- poses, or by government save to pay interest, would cease to be in demand, and the whole coin of the country would be upon the mar- ket without buyers. It must of necessity therefore fall to par, and if we continue this course, would remain so forever. The amount of coin needed to pay interest would be largely supplied by the mines and receipts from abroad. If more were needed, let it be purchased abroad and not here. Free the farmers from the merciless claws of the speculators and the burden of high interest, and their exports will soon take care of foreign balances. Mr. President, the day we take the step I have indicated, that day we shall proclaim a new Declaration of Independence, a declaration of the independence of our industries from the effects of our own money-changers and combiners, and of foreign intermeddlers with our currency. Let a dollar mean a dollar, and not a promise to pay a dollar. SENATOR GORDON, OF GEORGIA. Record, No. 32, January 24, 1874. 1874.] The Gurrency De6ate of 187374. 157 The way to return to specie payments, that is, to make a paper dollar equivalent in purchasing power to a dollar in gold, a con- summation most devoutly to be wished, is to make gold an article that is not sought for. Destroy the market for gold here, which would he done by this bill, and you would very soon find people who would he very willing to change their gold for the circulation of the country When it should occur that the balance with trading nations should he in our favor, they would he compelled to pay us in gold, and then we should he so situated we could take the gold at our own price. The time is in the near future when we shall be imperial in every respect. MR. MELLiSH, OF Nxw YORK. Record, No. 62, March 1,1874. There were, however, two points throughout this debate which gave the majority infinite trouble: the one was that all~ human experience was against them; the other, that all human authority was against them. Their method of dealing with these difficulties had the full flavor of the debate, and its dar- ing patriotism cannot but excite the admiration of a distant posterity. Take the lessons of history first, and deal with them chronologically. In the course of his speech of 25th February, Mr. Schurz had made a very happy quotation from Marco Polo, showing the use and abuse of paper-money far back in the centuries. This troubled the mind of Mr. Logan, until he bethought himself to thus hoist the engineer with his own petard : I do not go to Chinese classics for my theory of currency; I do not desire to adopt their theory, nor does any one else that I know of; and if the Chinese, as he asserts, tried paper-money a thousand years ago and then returned to specie, and specie alone, without hav- ing any other circulating medium but that, we have in their present condition an evidence of the result. What is it l Isolated from the world, idolaters, semi-barbarous, governed by superstition, less en- lightened and less advanced to-day than they were in the days of Confucius, their only ambition when they come into enlightened nations being to wash clothes and become menial servants to others. If the credulous old Venetian is correct, then the example is against the theory of the Senator from Missouri and not in support of it. But will he compare the money of China in the thirteenth century, based on nothing but the will of a despot, to our money based upon gold-bearing bonds of the best government in the world 1 lie may do 158 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, it, sir; but the people will not agree with him. Record, No. 79, March 21, 1874. Next came the South Sea Bubble, which Mr. Merriam of New York closed out of the case thus peremptorily: Is it in sincerity and honesty that intelligent men point us to the South Sea Bubble, and tell us to beware, when the great power of our currency is based upon a necessity for its use and in the mutual confidence of honorable men, without which there is no possibility of extended commerce, which is one of the master glories of civiliza- tion ? Record, No. 85, March 28, 1874. Then came the French assignats which Messrs. Bundy and Mellish exposed with much historical acumen: Gentlemen have also referred to the French assignats. But they were founded upon what? Upon nothing, as it turned out. They had no government support, as our currency has. They were founded upon the confiscation of the property of the Church and the prop- erty of the emigrant nobles. Not only that, but the government that issued those obligations undertook to confiscate man of his immortal- ity, the universe of its God. [Here the hammer fell.] Record, No. 95, April 9, 1874. The French assignats are thrust into the argument by the bul- lionists, apparently in ignorance of their real nature and the anoma- lous circumstances under which they were created ; as though there was any resemblance between the condition and government of our country now and of France at the time they were issued I In point of fact there was no sovereignty in France competent to sell and con- vey title to the property they had covered with assignats. If the power that issued them had acquired authority, the property could and probably would have been sold, and the asdgnats, that were a lien upon it, might have been good. But the assignats failed to have any value, because the government that issued them failed to have any power. Record, No. 62, March 1, 1874. Upon which last extracts, as indeed upon much of this dis- cussion, a somewhat instructive light is thrown by this excerpt from one of Mirabeaus speeches in the French Assembly, which was quoted by Mr. Mitchell of Wisconsin: It is vain to assimilate assignats secured on the solid basis of these domains to an ordinary paper currency possessing a forced cir- culation. They represent real property, the most secure of all pos 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 159 sessions, the land on which we tread. Why is a metallic circulation solid 3 Because it is based on subjects of real and durable value as is the land which is directly or indirectly the source of all wealth. Pa- per-money we are told will become superabundant; it will drive the metallic out of circulation: Of what paper do you speak 3 If of paper without a solid basis, undoubtedly; if of one based on the firm foundation of landed property, never. There cannot be a greater error than the terrors so generally prevalent as to the over issue of assignats. It is thus alone you will pay your debts, pay your troops, advance the revolution. Reabsorbed progressively in the purchase of the national domains, this paper-money can never become redundant any more than the humidity of the atmosphere can become excessive which descends in rills, finds the river, and is at length lost in the mighty ocean. It must apparently be confessed that, so far as security was concerned, as compared with greenbacks, the a8signats had the best of it. Finally the experience of the Confederate States money was one day referred to by Mr. Chandler of Michigan. This was too much for the patriotism of Mr. Logan, and the bird of liberty fairly danced and yelled. It will be noticed that Mr. Logans wrath was too much for his English, and at the close of his remarks he slightly confused the attributes of his mind with those of an irredeemable paper-money Mr. LOGAN. I must say that I am very much surprised to see the war Senator, as he was termed not many years ago, so short a time having elapsed since the faith of this nation had been tried and the people tested it, to-day comparing our notes with Confederate notes. Does he suppose that he can palm off any such sophistry as that upon an intelligent people 3 Does he not know that the Confederate money was based upon a prospective government, and the moment the gov- ernment was on the decline the money must decline, the very mo- ment the government collapsed the money could not be worth the paper it was written on 3 Does he not know that; and does he stand here to-day in the presence of an intelligent community to compare the notes of a collapsed government aiid their depreciation with those of a competent, stable government like ours, whose notes have hot been depreciated on account of want of faith in the government 3 Great heavens! if we have come to this kind of argumentation on the side of the bullionists, or the side of the contractionists, on the side 160 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, of the rich against the muscle and energy of the country, that they must compare our government, standing as it does to-day the pride of the world, against the notes of a confederate collapsed government, I am ashamed of my country if such stuff as this should be received by even a man that was depreciated in intellect. Record, No. 55, Feb- ruary 20, 1874. Having thus disposed of all human experience, it only re- mained for the infiationists to dispose of all human authority. In this field they only can do justice to themselves, their rav- ings were simply incredible: An attempt is made to hind up and fetter its [this countrys] ex- panding energies and prospects with Old World theories and methods. As well attempt to put baby-clothes upon the statue of Hercules. Such men judge our country by the Old World standards. Sitting upon the steps of our national Capitol, they look up the stream of time, study the inscriptions upon the Pyramids, and the financial theories of China, and call it learning But some nations still stand out and cling to gold and silver as the only safe and respectable medium of exchange, and are dragging their way down the path of time generally far in the rear of their more enlightened, wealthy, and prosperous neighbors. SENATOR MORTON, or INDIANA. Record, No. 79, March 24, 1874. Mr. President, an abundance of money, plenty of money, does produce enterprise, prosperity, and progress. There is no sort of doubt about that. Now, I put aside all these old theories. My friend can bring from the books, as he has brought, authority that we ought to have absolute free trade. lie can hring from the books au- thority in favor of the contraction of our currency to one half of its present volume. I know he can do that. But after he has stated all these commonplaces of the books, these platitudes of finance, has given us the metaphysics of finance, there is no vitality in them. I prefer to take the actual results and the actual condition of the coun- try, and let theory go to the dogs. There is no more vitality in these theories, as applied to the condition of our country now, than there is in the petrified snakes or the geological specimens upon the shelves of some venerable antiquary. In. Record, No. 26, January 17, 1874. I believe that the great error of the present moment is the ten- dency of men to rely upon what are declared or have been declared to be principles with reference to other countries and other conditions of peoples, not applicable at this time to ourselves. I should like to borrow, as an illustration or example of what I have in mind, one of 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 161 the greatest questions ever put to mankind, by Colburn, in his First Lessons of Intellectual Arithmetic, to the child: How many thumbs have you on your right hand l SENATOR BOUTWELL, OF MAssAcHU- SETTS. Record, No. 54, February 19, 1874. Are we to be whistled down the wind and answered by theories from John Stuart Mill or from Bastiat? I hope not. Let us rather look at the actual condition of our country; let us be governed by the circumstances that surround us, rather than by those which surround other countries; and yet the lessons of history are all in favor of what I advocated the other day, and of what I say to-day. You can no more make the wages and prices that prevail in Germany and France applicable to this country than you can make the map of Europe answer for the map of North America. Suppose you take a plaster of Paris cast of the topography of the continent of Europe, with all her mountains, plains, and rivers, could you make that fit upon the continent of America l No more can you make a theory that may suit Germany fit the condition of things in the United States. SENATOR MORTON, or INDIANA. Record, No. 26, January 17, 1874. I do not consult antiquated theorists of a hundred years ago to determine whether we have, or have not, enough money for the busi- ness necessities of the country. The wisest of them no more compre- hended the financial wants of to-day than they foresaw the present greatness of our nation. Being a practical man, I look upon things as I find them, and will insist on a system of finance which has proven beneficial to our people, even if this throws me in opposition to the conjectures of antiquity. SENATOR CAMERON, OF PENNSYLVA- NIA. Record, No. 52, February 17, 1874. I am aware, Mr. Speaker, that my presumption, in assuming to suggest adequate remedies for the evils of the times, merits, and will receive, the sneering condemnation of the book-worms, theorists, and bankers of the House and country It was said that much learning had made Paul mad. Sir, I am sure this will not be supposed to be my case, for I am but a plodding interrogator of our own recent financial history and of current events. Strangely enough, sir, this limited field of study has forced upon me the conviction that the most dangerous thing a legislator can possess is knowledge, that absolute knowledge which is derived a priori, which regards the teaching of the passing year as vulgar and imperti- nent, and the possession of which justifies gentlemen in ignoring any fact that seems to conflict with conclusions imparted by men who were once accepted teachers, such knowledge, sir, as that possessed by the people who persecuted Galileo!.... VOL. CXIX. NO. 244. 11 162 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, Yes, sir, the world does move; and the folly of the alleged alge- braic relation between the volume of currency and the prices of com- modities which was invented by Montesquieu, anglicized by Hume, and is still accepted as true by our gold-basis sophists, has been de- rn.onstrated a thousand times by terrible experience. Mn. KELLEY, or PENNSYLVANIA. Record, No. 68, March 8, 1874. The books that have been written on the subject have been writ- ten by men who were in the interest of the aristocracy of the country in which they were living. They were written in the interest of moneyed men, as against the laboring man and the masses of the peo- ple. I do not know that I can except from this remark any book on political economy that I know anything about. I admit that I have not read as much on this subject as some others; if I had, I might have adopted their heresies. MR. BUNDY, or Onio. Record, No. 34, January 27, 1874. This last censure was, however, a little too sweeping for Mr. Kelley, who could not help calling to the speaker: You ought to except Henry C. Careys work on Political Econ- omy; which Mr. Bundy forthwith proceeded to do. The late Sydney Smith was one day alluded to, but he was inconti- nently stigmatized as an old Englishman, an English Tory, who had gone over the argument to depreciate Amer- ican institutions, and was incontinently hustled out of doors. But they had not done with Englishmen; Mr. Sherwood, of Ohio, next took them in hand: Our own country, in war and peace, for the past ten years has been conducted in defiance of every principle of military strategy and political economy laid down by the books And to-day, after ten years of substantial and healthful growth in invention, in manu- factures, in material wealth, in population, in moral grandeur, what do all the books of all the Englishmen amount to I The Declaration of Independence was not written in accordance with English precedent; and when the young Republic was started, as a feeble contribution to a new system of political economy, there was no celebrated Englishman to give it a send-off, or a godsend, with a book. And to-day, with nearly a century of successful history be- hind us, a century born the year Adam Smith sent into the world his Wealth of Nations, how marvellous it is that not one Eng- lishman has fortified the Republic with a book. And yet we have not seriously felt the loss 1874.] The Currencil Debate of 1873 74. 163 Daring the progress of this debate all history has been ransacked by contractionists for evidence to fortify their positions. All the obscure pamphieteers of the last century, whose works have drifted down through cheap auctions to the Congressional Library, have been dusted out and doctored and brought to the front. I have no objec- tion to this resurrection of these dead voices; but in the light of the experience, knowledge, genius, and practical statesmanship of to-day, why should we seek oracles of obscure tombstones ~ Record, No. 89, April 2, 1874. But Mr. Coburn, of Indiana, alone dealt with this subject of authorities with any true genius. He did not destroy them; he did better, he appropriated -them. He thus pre-empted Mr. Webster The world does move and change, but those who quote Webster and the old statesmen v~ho died before these astounding steps of progress do the grossest injustice in their attempts to apply their mere arguments as to the policy of their times to ours. The Webster of to-day would not be found among the pinching and grinding con- tractionists; his grand soul would have risen to the height of the great argument for progressive financial management. He would have seen and appreciated the grand march of events, and lent his own powerful eloquence to plead the cause of true national advancement. He spoke Tor no day and no occasion like the present. He was laid in his honored grave before the great events I have named had their inception. Record, No. 95, April 7,1874. But the tricks the inflationist gentlemen played with history were not confined to assertions of what might have been. They tampered as freely with facts, as they proposed to do with contracts. Take the following examples: The Bank of England suspended specie payment for twenty-four years following her continental wars, and issued bank-notes, which were accepted as lawful monoy and a legal tender for public and pri- vate purposes. SENATOR FERRY, OF MIcmGAN. Record, No. 4, December 5, 1873. The battle of Waterloo closed the continental wars in June, 1815; in August, 1819, the Bank of England notes were at par with gold, and have remained so from that time to this. General B. F. Butler, also, asserted that since 1843, and after breaking all the merchants, the Bank of England had 104 The Currency Debate of 1873 74. [July, three times suspended specie payments, in 1848, in 1857, and in 1866. This statement was not, it is true, made in the debate, but for ignorance and recklessness was worthy of it. The following, however, is a startling bit of information for the benefit of all future writers on British finance Great Britain did what the men who control the affairs of this nation seem incapable of doing. Her statesmen, in grappling with a great debt, the fruit of nearly half a century of war, did not hesitate to reduce the interest on her public debt when that debt was found oppressive to her people. Capitalists had driven her to hard bargains in the hour of her extremity. She had issued bonds at as high as six per cent, and she reduced the interest to an average of three per cent, and her consols (consolidated annuities) to this day express the views of her statesmen as to what a nation should do when the question was presented of dividing the burdens of a public debt between labor and capital. MR. HOLMAN, OF INDIANA. Record, No. 95, April 9, 1874. This article must, however, be brought to a close, leaving by much the larger portion of the material gathered for it wholly unused and forever buried in the Congressional Record. As one final example, as an acme of cant, ignorance, bad logic, and worse taste, as an illustration of that which has made our Congressional oratory a byword and a laughing-stock, it may be well to close with this truly patriotic effusion of the most active and earnest of all the friends of cheap money, Senator Ferry, of Michigan. Herein the depths are sounded: We know that wages are lower in Europe than in America. We know that more men are compelled there to work for low wages than are here employed. We know that that vast force of low-paid opera- tives are also the dependents of a formidable array of salaried digni- taries and commercial princes, with titles of dukes, marquises, earls, counts, lords, and barons. We know that the feudal system, so long in vogue there, is the boon of aristocracy and the bane of the masses. We know that it~ policy is to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. We know that around every merchant prince, moneyed aris- tocrat, and landed lord, cluster numberless tenants, serving the pur- poses of their exacting masters, like so many serfs doing the bidding of their unrelenting chiefs. That this mass of toilers are poorly paid and provided for by weekly, monthly, or yearly stipend, with no thought but work and pay, and the supply of both provided by the 1874.] The Currency Debate of 1873 74. 165 credit of employers, who are the financial centres of those laboring retinues, and use vastly less money than credit, is also well known. lore, in a free Republic, fewer men work for wages, and at great deal higher rates. Fewer live on salaries. The large m jority of the people are their own operators. They think, devise, and arrange their own pursuits; dependent upon themselves and not upon others. They control and provide for no large dependent communities, and therefore have a restricted credit, and use more money daily than credit. Such an enterprising and active people, made up of nearly as many centres of operation as there are men, educated to individual thought and action by the sovereignty of citizenship and the respon- sibilities of a free Republic, with no one, from the President down to tide-waiter, wearing any other title but American gentlemen, which nothing can dispossess hut conduct of self-election. To compare the wants of such an independent, industrial, intelli- gent, enterprising, well-paid, and inventive people, spreading over a still unoccupied extent, and developing resources of yet untold riches, with nations massed within unyielding boundaries, of limited re- sources, whose wealth is determined by the products of subsidized nations and cheapened industry; whose people are divided between dependent toil and titled aristocracy, to make a comparison between two such peoples, for the purpose of fixing the character and volume of the money needed for ones thriving under republican freedom; by enforcing for such the nature and amount of money required by the other, moving under monarchical forms of limited powers and benefits, is such a reversal of the spirit and scope of modern progress as to evoke my unqualified repudiation~ Record, No. 70, March 11, 1874. C. F. ADAMS, JR. 166 Gravier8 Dicouverte de lAm6rique. [July, ART. VI. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. D~eouverte de 1Am~rique par les Normands au Xe Si~cle. Par GABRIEL GRAVIER. Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie. 1874. M. GRAVIERS book is the latest addition to the literature of Norse discovery. The dispute which he has undertaken to decide has been long and sharp. Views varying from perfect faith to utter incredu- lity have been successively put forward. M. Gravier represents one extreme, Mr. Bancroft the other. The Society of Northern Anti- quaries in Copenhagen under the guidance of Jlafn have given the subject from their standpoint a thorough treatment, and to their labors M. Gravier is chiefly indebted for his materials. On this side of the water, although almost every point in dispute has been the subject of investigation, no full critical examination of the whole subject has yet appeared. Among American authors Dr. Palfrey has on the whole dealt with it most effectively, and his conclusions coin- mend themselves at once as just and reliable. He fails, however, to include what is all-important a discussion of the Sagas and of their historical value. If Mr. Bancrofts theory be adopted, the whole matter is much simplified. In the first chapter of his History of the United States Mr. Bancroft gives a few lines to the Norse voyages, and then dismisses them with no further mention. He admits the settlements of the Norsemen in Greenland, which are beyond dis- pute, but considers the narratives of their more southerly voyages, contained in the Sagas, as relating only to other points on the Green- land coast. The belief that Norsemen ever visited any portion of the United States is dismissed by Mr. Bancroft as due solely to the heated imagination and national pride of the Scandinavian his- torians. M. Graviers book not only gives the other side of the question, but affords the be~t material for a true understanding of these early explorations. This is due not so much to the light thrown by the authors own suggestions, as to the praiseworthy diligence with which everything bearing on the subject has been brought together. The evidence of Norse visits to the coasts of the United States is of two sorts. The first and best is that of tombs, buildings, inscriptions, or other actual relics. Narratives contained in the Sagas form the second. And here the main point to be determined is the value of an argument which rests upon the Sagas alone.

166 Gravier8 Dicouverte de lAm6rique. [July, ART. VI. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. D~eouverte de 1Am~rique par les Normands au Xe Si~cle. Par GABRIEL GRAVIER. Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie. 1874. M. GRAVIERS book is the latest addition to the literature of Norse discovery. The dispute which he has undertaken to decide has been long and sharp. Views varying from perfect faith to utter incredu- lity have been successively put forward. M. Gravier represents one extreme, Mr. Bancroft the other. The Society of Northern Anti- quaries in Copenhagen under the guidance of Jlafn have given the subject from their standpoint a thorough treatment, and to their labors M. Gravier is chiefly indebted for his materials. On this side of the water, although almost every point in dispute has been the subject of investigation, no full critical examination of the whole subject has yet appeared. Among American authors Dr. Palfrey has on the whole dealt with it most effectively, and his conclusions coin- mend themselves at once as just and reliable. He fails, however, to include what is all-important a discussion of the Sagas and of their historical value. If Mr. Bancrofts theory be adopted, the whole matter is much simplified. In the first chapter of his History of the United States Mr. Bancroft gives a few lines to the Norse voyages, and then dismisses them with no further mention. He admits the settlements of the Norsemen in Greenland, which are beyond dis- pute, but considers the narratives of their more southerly voyages, contained in the Sagas, as relating only to other points on the Green- land coast. The belief that Norsemen ever visited any portion of the United States is dismissed by Mr. Bancroft as due solely to the heated imagination and national pride of the Scandinavian his- torians. M. Graviers book not only gives the other side of the question, but affords the be~t material for a true understanding of these early explorations. This is due not so much to the light thrown by the authors own suggestions, as to the praiseworthy diligence with which everything bearing on the subject has been brought together. The evidence of Norse visits to the coasts of the United States is of two sorts. The first and best is that of tombs, buildings, inscriptions, or other actual relics. Narratives contained in the Sagas form the second. And here the main point to be determined is the value of an argument which rests upon the Sagas alone.

166 Gravier8 Dicouverte de lAm6rique. [July, ART. VI. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. D~eouverte de 1Am~rique par les Normands au Xe Si~cle. Par GABRIEL GRAVIER. Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie. 1874. M. GRAVIERS book is the latest addition to the literature of Norse discovery. The dispute which he has undertaken to decide has been long and sharp. Views varying from perfect faith to utter incredu- lity have been successively put forward. M. Gravier represents one extreme, Mr. Bancroft the other. The Society of Northern Anti- quaries in Copenhagen under the guidance of Jlafn have given the subject from their standpoint a thorough treatment, and to their labors M. Gravier is chiefly indebted for his materials. On this side of the water, although almost every point in dispute has been the subject of investigation, no full critical examination of the whole subject has yet appeared. Among American authors Dr. Palfrey has on the whole dealt with it most effectively, and his conclusions coin- mend themselves at once as just and reliable. He fails, however, to include what is all-important a discussion of the Sagas and of their historical value. If Mr. Bancrofts theory be adopted, the whole matter is much simplified. In the first chapter of his History of the United States Mr. Bancroft gives a few lines to the Norse voyages, and then dismisses them with no further mention. He admits the settlements of the Norsemen in Greenland, which are beyond dis- pute, but considers the narratives of their more southerly voyages, contained in the Sagas, as relating only to other points on the Green- land coast. The belief that Norsemen ever visited any portion of the United States is dismissed by Mr. Bancroft as due solely to the heated imagination and national pride of the Scandinavian his- torians. M. Graviers book not only gives the other side of the question, but affords the be~t material for a true understanding of these early explorations. This is due not so much to the light thrown by the authors own suggestions, as to the praiseworthy diligence with which everything bearing on the subject has been brought together. The evidence of Norse visits to the coasts of the United States is of two sorts. The first and best is that of tombs, buildings, inscriptions, or other actual relics. Narratives contained in the Sagas form the second. And here the main point to be determined is the value of an argument which rests upon the Sagas alone. 1874.] G~raviers D~couverte de lAm6rique. 167 The subject of M. Graviers first chapter is the maritime spirit of the Norsemen. This introduction to the argument is happily chosen, since the mere statement of well-known facts is in itself sufficient to create a strong presumption in favor of Norse enterprise. Jn con- nection with this spirit of maritime adventure it is important to notice the peculiar class of Norsemen who came to Iceland, to Green- land, and thence to America. In the year 860 Harold Fairhair be- came king of Norway and wrought a revolution in the existing form of Norse government. All the people were required to become the kings men and subjected to the universal rules of the kings service. The petty rulers and great nobles who had been hitherto almost independent of their sovereign, and had served him when they felt inclined or in time of need, were at once levelled to the rank of sub- jects. Harold laid the foundation of a despotism and began upon the same career of centralization which had in turn brought the Franks, the old Saxons, and the English to the more or less complete loss of their ancient liberties. A large class in the community made a des- perate resistance to their new king in defence of their constitutional rights. When the struggle had become hopeless in Norway the kings enemies took to their ships and left their native land to wan- der over the world. These exiles trusted to their courage and endurance, their long bills and two-handed swords, to convince society at large of the inherent Norse truth that no man has rights who has not strength to defend them. Some went to France, and, unusually favored by fortune, got a rich harvest of convents, and eventually tribute-money and land. Some went to Spain, some to Italy, and some to Constantinople, where numbers of them took ser- vice with the Emperor and formed the celebrated body-guard of the Varangians. The Lions of the Acropolis, now guarding the gate of the \Tenetian arsenal, still tell the story of the Eastern adventurers as they carved it upon them in Runic characters. But the larger num- ber of these exiles preferred their Northern climate. On th~ English and Irish coasts, in the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Faroe Islands they built their strongholds. Sallying forth from these rocky and rugged fastnesses the Yikings swept the seas and made life a burden to all their neighbors, but most of all to their king, Harold. At last Harolds patience was exhausted, and, collecting all his forces, after several desperate sea-fights, he cleared the Northern seas. Just after these battles, Ingolg in the year 874, settled in Iceland. He was followed in a very short time by more than fifty thousand of his countrymen, who were glad to colonize even Iceland if they could but preserve the rude social forms to which they were attached. The 168 araviers D6couverte de lAm6rique. [July, colonists of Iceland comprised the men who were most essentially iNorse. To Iceland we are indebted for the Sagas and the most accurate accounts not only of the early Norse customs, but of archaic Scandinavian law. The flower of the old heathen Norsemen had been transplanted almost intact to Iceland. They were a restless, roving race, fond of their ships, though these were little more than very large open row-boats, in which, trusting to oars and sails, they were always ready to put to sea, with an amiable confidence in bring- ing up at last on some shore which could not be rougher than their own. Almost every man of any consideration in Iceland took to the sea at some period of his life in search of wealth and fame. Such were the men who, after coming to Iceland, followed Eric the Red to Greenland in the year 983. A glance at the map, and a comparison of the distance between Iceland and Norway with that between Ice- land and our own coasts, will furnish a probability that almost amounts to proof of the Norse visits to New England. In his account of the Southern voyages, M. Gravier has closely fol- lowed the translations from the Sagas given by Rafn in the Antiqui- tates Ameriectuce, which contain everything knowm~ to exist that bears upon the subject. A brief review of the principal expeditions, those supposed to have left traces on the American coasts and those detailed with the greatest minuteness in the Sagas, will put the question in the clearest light. The first discoverer was Bjarn Heriulfson. Bjarn had come to Iceland to see his father, Heriulf, who had gone to Greenland with Eric. Bjarn, determined to see his father the same winter, started immediately for Greenland, knowing no more than that it was neces- sary to sail to the west. Driven south by stress of weather, Bjarn sighted several coasts which he felt sure were not those of Green- land. He therefore headed his vessel to the North, and after several days reached his destination. This was in the year 986, and this story of Bjarn is valuable merely as showing that the Norsemen had a certainty of the existence of more southern lands, distinctly not portions of Greenland, and that this knowledge was a natural induce- ment to further discoveries. About the year 1000, Leif, the oldest son of Eric, was sent from Norway by Olaf Tryggvason to christianize Greenland. Probably Olaf sent the same message to Greenland which he had previously sent to Iceland that if all Norsemen in- habiting Iceland did not at once become Christians he would kill every one of them he could lay hand upon. An idea of Leifs mis- sionary character may be gained from that of Thaugbrand and his friend Gudleif, as pictured in Njals Saga. The simple words of the 1874.] araviers D6couverte de 1 Am6rique. 169 Saga descriptive of Gudleif contain the whole Norse idea of an apostle Gudleif was a great man-slayer and one of -the strongest of men, and hardy and forward in everything. When Leif had come to his fathers house at Brattahlida, he decided that he had better buy Bjarns boat and go to the south in sear.ch of adventure. Leaving Christianity and the two priests he had brought with him in Greenland, Leif started off with a good crew to explore the new land of Bjarn. After some days Leif struck the last point seen by Bjarn before reaching Greenland. This country Leif named Hellu- land, from the great quantities of rock or slate; the next point he touched at was a thickly wooded country which he called Markland. Stopping at neither of these places, Leif kept on to the south, and a few days brought him to a cape stretching away east and north. Coasting along the shores of this cape to the southwest, the Norse- men ran their vessel up an arm of the sea, and landing, made a temporary settlement which they called Leifsbudr. Here they passed the winter. In this country Leif found wild grapes in great profusion, from which he christened the land Vinland. Leif is also said to have noted the length of the shortest day in the year, which is stated by Rafn as from 7.30 A. ~. to 4.30 P. M. This would fix Leifsbudr in the neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island. The original Norse is, however, so obscure, and any translation so dis- putable, that this shortest day has to be rejected as unsafe evidence. After one winter Leif left his settlement in Vinland and sailed back to Greenland, which is the end of Leif so far as America is con- cerned. He brought back a cargo of rare woods and furs, from which he gained as much profit as he did glory from his explorations. Leif was surnamed the Fortunate from the results of his voyage. In the year 1003, Leif persuaded his brother Thorwald to take Bjarns boat and go to the south to make his fortune. Thorwald accordingly set forth, and after a good deal of voyaging fonnd Leifsbudr without difficulty. Here he passed the winter. The following summer he made some expeditions in a southerly direction, discovering nothing more important than a long island stretching away to the west. After another winter at Leifsbudr, Thorwald started for home, keep- ing along the shores of the cape running east and north. On the extremity of this cape Thorwald stranded his vessel. He named the spot Cape Kiarlarnes, or Keel-Cape. Having repaired damages, he turned west and soon made land. The point they reached so pleased Thorwald by its appearance, that he expressed a wish always to live there. In the evening a party of nines natives, or Skrellings, as the Norsemen called indifferently all inhabitants of America, came off in 170 araviers D~couverte de lAm6rique. [July, their canoes. Eight of these Skrellings were seized by the Norse- men, and as life had been comparatively tame of late, apparently for sheer amusement they cut the throats of the unfortunate savages. The one Skrelling who escaped aroused his people, and in the morn- ing they came off in their canoes in great numbers and attacked the Norsem.en with showers of arrows. The savages were beaten oW but in the affray Thorwald received a mortal wound. While dying he remarked, with true Norse coolness, that he was likely to remain some time at the place he had admired so much the day before. His com- panions obeyed his request to be buried there, and, erecting two crosses over his grave, they called the point Cape Krossanes, and returned to Greenland. In the year 1007, Thorfinn, a rich and noble Norwegian, set sail from Greenland for Vinland. Thorfinn took with him his wife Gudrida, the widow of Thorstein, Erics third son, who had perished the year before in an abortive attempt to reach Vinland. This expe- dition was the most important and best organized of which we have any knowledge. Besides Gudrida, five other women accompanied the party. There were several ships and a number of cattle, so that it is fair to infer that Thorfinn contemplated colonization. Passing Helluland and Markland, the expedition reached Cape Kiarlarnes. They followed closely the shores of this cape to the south, and en- tered a large bay, which, from its numerous currents, they called Straumfjord. In the southern portion of the bay they visited a large island, which they found covered with sea-fowls eggs. To this island they gave the name of Straumfey. On the shore of Straumfjord they wintered, and suffered much from failure of their provisions, due to their own improvidence. In the spring Thorhall with some of the party deserted, but Thorfinn kept on to the south, and running up a river at a place which he called hip or Hope, he founded Thor- finnsbudr. The scheme of colonization failed, owing, apparently, to continual conflicts with the natives. After two winters Thorfinn returned to Greenland with all his party. To this expedition the carving on the celebrated Dighton Rock is attributed. Several other expeditions of little moment are narrated in the Sagas, and told at length by M. Gravier. M. Graviers next division is devoted to the still more southern expeditions of the Norsemen, expeditions to any part of our coast from New York to Florida. All these narratives, except that of Hervador, even as told by M. Gravier, are worthless for any historical purpose. Hervador, as M. Gravier tells the story, sailed up the Potomac, got into a fight with the Skrellings, and one of the women 1874.] Graviers D6couverte de lAm6rique. 171 of the party was killed and buried there. An inscription commemo- rative of Syasi the Blonde, was carved on the rock above her tomb, in which were deposited coins, ornaments, etc. All this took place not far from Washington, in the neighborhood of Great Falls. The other facts on which M. Gravier rests this part of his argu- ment are the so-called Old Mill at Newport, the statements of Adam of Bremen and Ordericus Vitalis, and the stories told by the iRecollet monk Leclerq, an early missionary to the Gaspesian region, as to the crux immissa, the ideas about creation, the forms of prayer, etc., which he found among the natives. To take up the first class of evidence, the actual relics of the Norse visits, it is as well to begin with the expedition of Hervador and the tomb of Syasi the Blonde. This whole story is a pure fabrication, beginning with the Skalholt Saga, from which it is said to have been taken, and including the coins and ornaments found in the grave. Six or eight years ago a Mr. Cowan, then a young lawyer in Wash- ington, conceived and executed this historical hoax. Professor Henry, in the forthcoming Report of the Smithsonian Institution, apropos to scientific hoaxes, uses the following conclusive language in regard to it Among these imitations, within a few years, the most successful, and one which evinced considerable reading, was that of the pretended discovery of a series of Runic inscriptions on the face of a rock in the Potomac River, near Washington. This was the invention of a young student of law in this city; it was copied in various ethnological journals, and was hailed by the Scandinavians as a new evidence of the explorations of the Northmen in the United States. This certainly puts to rest Hervadors expedition, and relegates it to the region of forgeries. It is valuable on two accounts, as show-~ ing the harm that lies of this nature may do, and as pointing the moral so necessary for all students of history, to begin by doubting everything. The quotations from Adam of Bremen and Ordericus Vitalis, although important, are useful only in confirmation of the Sagas. They serve to show the belief of their age in a large country named Vinland, existing somewhere near Greenland, in the far West. The Old Mill at Newport is worthless as a proof of anything. It may have been a baptistery built by the Normans, as M. Gravier would have us suppose, or it may have been anything else. The only abso- lutely certai ~i fact is, that it unfortunately possesses round arches, which havc served to support many theories, among others MI. (h~aviers. Dr. Palfrey has proved, in the first volume of his History 172 Graviers D6couverte de lAm6rique. [July, of New England, so far as anything can be proved about the build- ing, that it was nothing but a mill built by Governor Benedict Arnold about the year 16Th. The ingenuity and fairness of Dr. Palfreys argument ought to set the matter finally at rest; but it is to be feared that the Old Mill will always serve as an excuse for the wildest speculations from that large class ever eager to find wonders instead of simple and natural explanations. As to the crux innnissa, the Gaspesian prayers to the sun, and apparent knowledge of Noah, a careful examination of them warrants tbeir rejection, if not as mere imaginings of the Recollet monk, at least as worthless material for history. There is another relic of the Norse described by M. (liravier in connection with Thorwalds expedition. About the end of the last century, according to M. Gravier (his authority is given as a gentle- man bearing the well-known name of Smith), a tomb constructed in masonry was discovered on Rainsfords Island in Boston Harbor. In this tomb were the remains of a skeleton and the iron hilt of a sword, which M. Gravier says was pronounced by connoisseurs (prob- ably M. Smith) to be of workmanship anterior to the fifteenth cen- tury. This tomb and its contents may be safely pronounced as pure a fabrication as the story of Hervador and Syasi the Blonde. A full account of Rainsfords Island is given in Mr. Shurtleffs work. No mention is there made of any such tomb. Nothing can be found in regard to it in the records of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Yet there is possibly a distant foundation in fact for the supposed tomb of Rainsfords Island. M. Gravier thinks tbat the skeleton said to have been found there was that of Thorwald, and it may be strongly suspected that this is but a reappearance of the unhappy warrior who has figured so prominently in literature, from Longfellows Skeleton in Armor down through many arch~ological papers. M. Gravier treats also of the so-called Skeleton in Armor in connection with the Saga of Freydisa. These remains were discovered on digging away a bank near Fall River. Portions of the body were in a good state of preservation. There were also several brass arrow-heads of superior workmanship besides the armor on the skeleton. This armor consisted of a breastplate and a belt of brass tubes curiously linked together, not unlike mail in its general construction, together with armlets and anklets made in the same way. Everything there found was placed in the museum at Fall River, and was de- stroyed by fire some years ago. It is a loss much to be regretted, as * A Topograpical and Historical Description of Boston, Chap. XLI. By Nathaniel B. Shurtleff. Printed by request of the City Council. 1874.] araviers D6couverte de lAm6rique. 173 these were almost the only ante-Indian relics of New England. A good account of the discovery of this skeleton is given in the Massa- chusetts Historical Collection, written in 1837, while all the circum- stances of the discovery were still fresh. One passage seems worth quotation That the body was not one of an Indian, we think, needs no argument. We have seen some of the drawings taken from the sculptures found at Palenque, and in those the figures are represented with breastplates, though smaller than the plate found at Fall River. On the figures found at Palenque, the bracelets and anklets appear to be of a manufacture precisely similar to the tubes just described. The skeleton was certainly not that of an Indian, and as certainly not that of a Norseman. Even M. Gravier is obliged to say that the Northern Society of Antiquaries have suspended judgment, but think the remains may be those of an Indo-Scandinavian. M. Gravier, how- ever, contents himself by saying that certain other skeletons found near by, of which nothing is known by any one but himself, were those of the companions of Freydisa. It ought, perhaps, to he explained that Freydisa was the illegitimate daughter of Eric, a young woman of very warlike propensities, who had accompanied Thorfiun to Vinland. She subsequently made a second expedition in partnership with two brothers, Helgi and Finnborgi. On arriving at Vinland she murdered her two partners, and, taking possession of the vessel and cargo, re- turned to Greenland. Of course, M. Graviers duty was to find the remains of Freydisas victims, a matter easily accomplished. But one more supposed Norse relic and then we get to the simple stories of the Sagas, without any corroborative tomb or inscription to support their statements. This last relic is the celebrated Dighton Writing Rock, which has been the subject of almost as much con- tention as the Old Mill. Two distinct and opposite views have been put forward as to the writing. The Danish savans affirm the existence of Runic characters. All the best American authorities agree that the figures are wholly of Indian workmanship. The first drawing of the inscription was made as early as 1680, by Dr. Dan- forth. In 1830 the Rhode Island Historical Society, at the request of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, examined the rock and had drawings made. These, together with all earlier drawings, were forwarded to Copenhagen, and published by Rafn in a series of plates. The difference between each and all of these reproductions * Massachusetts Historical Collection, pp. 123 125. By J. W. Barber. Worcester. 1844. 174 G~ravier8 D6couverte de 1 Amdrique. [July, is thus very strikingly shown. The Danish savans, Rafn and Magnus- son, relying on the drawing of the Rhode Island Historical Society, translated a portion of the inscription as follows One hundred and thirty-one men of the North have occupied this country with Thorfinn. Not content with this they went still further, and endeavored to give a meaning to all the other figures on the rock. In the drawing which they used, figures closely resembling the Roman numerals CXXXI., the exact number of Thorfiuns men, are undoubtedly indi- cated. Certain figures like the Latin, or, according to Rafn, the Latin-Gothic letters of Thorfinns name, are apparent in this same drawing. If it is added that the position of the rock on the shores of the river is favorable to the Norse theory, we have the entire case as made out by Rafn and his supporters. On the other side the weight of authority is very strong. Many good drawings and careful examinations of the rock have been made, frequently by persons eager to support the Scandinavian view, and all have arrived at one conclusion, that the rock is of purely Indian origin. One of the best was that of Edward Kendall, Esq., drawn in 1807 for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Kendall also made a report in which he said It is not a monument of the Phomicians nor of the Carthaginians, etc.; but it is a monument of the sculpture of the ancient inhabitants of America, whether Narragansetts or others. * Probably the best drawing ever made was the work of naval en- gineers, under the direction of Commodore George S. Blake of the United States Naval School, sent by him with a report to the Ameri- can Antiquarian Society. Mr. S. F. Haven, in presenting this draw- ing to the society, said It is a singular fact that of all the various copies thus far taken no two are alike; and the diversity is in some cases very extreme. ~ Schooleraft gave great attention to this question~ When Rafns book appeared, Schooleraft submitted the plates of the Dighton Rock to Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief, who interpreted them as commemorative of an Indian battle at Berkeley. The Algonquin rejected a number of figures as inexplicable. The figures thus rejected happened to be those principally used by the Danes. Schoolcraft felt that his theory. df an Icelandic inscription being mixed up with the Indian one was established. Nevertheless, at that time even he was obliged to confess that The letters appear- * Proceedings of American Antiqnarian Society, October 21, 1864. t Ibid. 1874.] arctviers D6couverte de PAm6rique. 175 ing in the iRhode Island Historical Society copy, as published at Copenhagen, are either unprecise or wholly wanting. * A more care- ful examination some years later convinced Schoolcraft of the error of this first theory. He had the rock daguerreotyped, and the prepa- ration of the rocks surface which this involved proved to him that it was a complete Indian inscription with no admixture of foreign work. In his second report on it he says The former (Dighton Rock) is a well-characterized pictographic in- scription due to the Indians ; the latter (the Old Mill) an economic structure, built, probably, after the landing of the Pilgrims, or in the reign of Charles II. t Of late years the rock has been examined by Dr. Samuel A. Green and Dr. Jeifries Wyman. In their opinion, also, it is of In- dian origin. Dr. Green, in a report to the American Antiquarian Society, gave it as his opinion that the Dighton Rock was carved by Indians, as well as the pictured rocks of Tiverton and Portsmouth Grove, copies of which were examined in vain by Rafn. Dr. Green thought, all were probably cut by the same tribe which formerly peo- pled that region. Dr. Augustus C. Hamlin, of Maine, a member of the Society of Northern Antiquaries, is probably almost the only Runic scholar who has examined it. He had given much atten- tion to the numerous pictured rocks scattered over the eastern por- tion of this continent, and had no difficulty in identifying that at Dighton as an example of the ordinary Indian pictographs. Dr. ilamlin endeavored to take a plaster cast of the Dighton Rock, and unfortunately failed, but his examination satisfied him that there were no Runic characters. Against such a preponderance of evidence the Dighton Rock has no chance as a Norse relic. It must take its place simply as an intere~ting specimen of rude Indian art. This concludes the first class of evidence, that of relics, and narrows the argument down to the Sagas. There are certain facts to be mentioned, however, before the Sagas are taken up. These facts are, the daring maritime spirit of the Norsemen, their settlements and explorations in all parts of Greenland, their knowledge of a country to the south called ~[inland, and their treatment of Vinland as a region quite distinct from Greenland. Join to these facts the narratives of the Sagas, which are in this case historical records, and * Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. Under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. By Henry H. Schooleraft. Vol. I. p. iii. t Ibid., VoL IV. p. 117. 176 araviers D~couverte de lAm6rique. [July, a tolerably complete proof of Norse visits to the United States is attained. The failure to perceive the weight of the argument thus constructed has usually arisen from a misconception of the nature of the Sagas. The popular idea is, that these are a collection of wild, poetical Norse legends, very little to be depended upon for historical purposes. Mr. Charles W. Dasent, the best Icelandic scholar to-day in England, distinguished as the editor of Cleasbys Icelandic Dic- tionary, and as the translator of the Sagas of Gisli and Burnt Njal, gives in his Preface to the latter work the best description of this Northern literature. To quote his own words What is a Saga? A Saga is a story or telling in prose sometimes mixed with verse. There are many kinds of Sagas of all degrees of truth. There are mythical Sagas in which the wondrous deeds of the heroes of old time, half gods and half men, as Sigurd and Ragnar are told as they were banded down from father to son in the traditions of the Northern race These are all more or less trustworthy, and in general far worthier of belief than much that passes for the early history of other races. Again, there are Sagas relating to Iceland, narrating the lives and feuds and ends of mighty chiefs, the heads of great families which dwelt in this or that district of Iceland. These were told by men who lived on the very spot, and told with a minute- ness and exactness as to time and place that will hear the strictest examina- tion. Further on, at page viii, he says But it is an old saying that a story never loses in telling, and so we may expect it must have been with this story; for the facts which the Saga-teller related, he was bound to follow the narra~tions of those who had gone before him, and if he swerved to or fro in this respect, public opinion and notorious fame were there to check and contradict him. And in a note on page ix There can he no doubt that it was considered a grave offence to public morality to tell a Saga untruthfully. Respect to friends and enemies alike, when they were dead and gone, demanded that the histories of their lives, and especially of their last moments, should be told as the events actually happened. It ought to be added that all the Sagas were reduced to writing soon after the Change of Faith, which occurred about the year 1000. Thorfiuns Saga, from which these narratives are principally taken, must have been composed about the year 1007, when Thorfinn re- turned to Greenland. In this case, therefore, there was little or no oral transmission; the Saga was probably written out soon after composition. The Sagas may then be accepted as authentic histor- ical records. A detailed examination of them would result in almost 1874.] araviers D6couverte de lAm6rique. 177 complete proof of Norse visits to America. Such an examination would be impossible within the limits of a notice, but some of the most striking portions are worth attention. If one takes a map of North America, it will be seen at once that a vessel starting from Cape Farewell and steering almost due south would make the coast of Newfoundland, possibly Labrador. The first land made by the Norse- men after leaving Greenland was Helluland, distinguished by its rocky appearance, like the northern Newfoundland coast. Farther to the south, the next shores would be those of Nova Scotia, a thickly wooded country, and called by the Norsemen Markland. Sev- eral days of open water and Cape Cod or Cape Kiarlarnes would be reached. The description of this cape in the Sagas, where it is fre- quently mentioned, corresponds perfectly with Cape Cod. rrhe fea- tures of the shores are accurately described, long stretches of flats, and sand dunes rising up behind them. To the south of this cape a bay was entered by the Norsemen, and named from its numerous currents, for which Buzzards Bay is remarkable. Tbe large island covered with the eggs of sea-birds lies in the southern part of this bay. The long beaches of Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket are famous to-day, as in the tenth century, for large quantities of se~~ fowls eggs. In this country wild grapes grew in great profusion. Even supposing great changes of climate, this fact may be fairly taken to exclude Greenland and Labrador, in both of which countries wild grapes would be an anomaly. Grapes do grow, however, in Rhode Island. Examples might be multiplied. It is a very strong case of cumulative evidence. ~Jinland must have been some portion of the eastern coast of the American continent. Nothing is then more likely than that the Norsemen visited New England. The descriptions in the Sagas coincide exactly with the southeastern coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The Sagas are in the main certainly accurate and truthful. If these premises are admitted, and it seems impossible to deny them, the visits of the Norsemen are sufficiently well proved. It seems unnecessary to state a proposition which appears so obvious but when the Norse visits are rejected in toto by so high an authority as Mr. Bancroft, it is not, perhaps, alto- gether useless to insist upon this evidence. That the Norsemen ever emigrated to America and settled there in large numbers, as M. Gravier would have us believe, seems as unlikely as the opposite theory, that they never came at all. Probably a number of roving expeditions touched on the New England coast. It is to be doubted if they ever went farther south. These expeditions were probably fre- quent, and as they came for cargoes, they may have been in the VOL. CXIX. NO. 244. 12 178 Graviers D6couverte de lAm~rique. [July, habit of staying a year or so at a time. This is all that can be affirmed with any certainty. It ought to be said that this is sub- stantially the same conclusion as that reached by Dr. Palfrey. It is also substantially the same conclusion as that reached in the notice of a book by De Costa, which appeared in this Review for July, 1869. This notice was a valuable contribution to the sub- ject, except as to the Sagas, and perfectly just. The writer says, however, that the Sagas are not literally exact, and ridicules any attempts at identification of the places named in them with points on the Rhode Island coast. The Sagas are in the main exact, according to Mr. Dasent, and the identification of various places is often so obvious that it affords fair evidence to support the argument drawn from these sources. One important point is made in this notice which offers strong proof of the value of the Sagas. The Sagas of Thorfinn and those of the sons of Eric are of unquestionably distinct origin, and yet they agree in many of the minutest details. Turning now to the other portions of M. Graviers book, the reader is uncertain whether he is not reading one of M. Jules Yernes enter- taining stories instead of a grave archeological treatise. Three more series of expeditions are described. One seems more wonderful than the other, and all of equal value. The first is an account of the voyages of two Italian brothers, the Zenos, who sailed in the service of the Sinclairs, lords of the Orkneys. This narrative is a confused jumble of geography, etc., rather imaginative, but hardly worth printing. The opinion of Dr. Forster, cited by Belknap, that the places visited by the Zenos were only various portions of the Orkneys, Faroc Islands, and the Hebrides, is perfectly satisfactory.* Jhe second series com- prises the tradition of Madoc-ap-Owen. Madocs voyages to and from America were about the year 1170. The songs describing these voyages were written by Meredith, a Welsh bard who lived about 1477. The translation is preserved in Hakluyt,t and was first pub- lished by him in 1589, from a history of Wales published a few years earlier by Dr. Powel. It is also given by Belkuap, who concludes that, Perhaps the whole mystery may be unveiled, if we advert to this one circumstance, the time when Hakinyts book was first published. National prejudice might prevail, even with so honest a writer, to convert a Welsh fable into a political argument to support, against a powerful rival, the claim of his sovereign to the dominion of this continent. ~ This is certainly the natural conclusion which any one would draw. * Belkuaps American Biography, Vol. I. p. 73. t Hakluyt, Book III. Chap. XXI. 1. $ Belknap8 American Biography, Vol. I. p. 66. 1874.] Graviers D6couverte de lAm6rique. 179 The story as given by Hakluyt is vague, contradictory, and confused, and in the second paragraph of the account he naively says: This land must needs be some part of that country of which the Spaniards affirm themselves to be the first finders since Hannos time. This par- ticular passage is due to Humphrey Lloyd, the original translator of the story from Caradocs Welsh history. Dr. Palfrey speaks of it as a cu- rious tradition with, perhaps, some truth in it, and refers to Catlins opinion that among the Mandans there were traces of the Welsh lan- guage. With all due deference it must be said that the tradition of Madoc-ap-Owen is about as worthless an old story in itself, and as open to suspicion, as any historical imposition. This story of Madoc M. Gravier unites in a very ingenious manner to what is one of his most extraordinary theories. Hvitramannaland or Whitemensland, as treated by M. Gravier, may be considered as a bit of purely original work. Hvitramauna- land, called also by the Norsemen Great Ireland, may be briefly defined as meaning all the territory lying between New York and Florida. The white men from whom the land was named were, ac- cording to M. Gravier, large numbers of highly civilized Irishmen, who had come to America shortly before the Normans, and settled there. The facts adduced by M. Gravier to prove the existence of a large Celtic population on our southern coasts are few, but conclusive. The principal argument is, that a Norseman named An Marson was wrecked somewhere on the coasts of America in the year 983. This, it should be borne in mind, was three years before it was even known to the Norsemen that there was any country to the south of Green- land. Indeed, Greenland itself was only discovered in 983. Nothing was heard of An Marson for some time, but when news was received, it appeared that he had been wrecked among a Christian people, who had baptized him, and among whom he had become chief. He was seen by Thorfiun Sigurdson, Earl of the Orkucys, and by others of his countrymen, for communication between Ireland, Iceland, and the country of white men was continuous. The whole story is vague. The only fact given directly in the Saga is ruinous to the theory that An Marson was wrecked in America. The distance from Ireland to Whiten~c usland is stated in Rafns translation of the Saga thus: Sex dierum navigatione versus occidentem ab Irlandia. * If the a~ crage duration of a voyage to Whitemensland from Ireland in the x essels of that period was six days, it is a fair presumption that A~i Marson was much nearer his home than he would have * Antiquitates AmericanLe, p. 211. Hafuin. 1834. 180 aravier8 Dicouverte de lAm6rique. [July, been in any portion of the United States. Probably M~rson was wrecked on the coast of Ireland, but it is all mere conjecture. The next story is that of Bjarn Asbrandson, who was forced to fly from Iceland, and of whom nothing was heard for many years. One Gudleif was driven by storms on a coast which he supposed to be that of America. The natives were commanded by a chief who appeared to be of Nor~e origin, and who made inquiries of Gudleif of such a nature that he concluded at once that this was Bjarn Asbrandson. Gudleif also fancied he detected Irish in the lan- guage of Bjarns followers. The third proof of ilvitramannaland cited by NI. Gravier is, that two Skrelling children picked up by Thorfinn on his way back to Greenland said that a land inhabited by white men was supposed by the Skrellings to exist in the south. All three of these stories are taken from Sagas, and are simply vague. They merely contain glorious possibilities. But M. Gravier turns them into valuable data, and clinches his argument as to Great Ireland by an authority of his own devising. This authority is no less a person than Madoc-ap-Owen, who, M. Gravier says, cer- tainly would never have left Wales and started off in a westerly direction without feeling sure that he was going to a country well known to, and inhabited by, the kindred Irish race. M. Gravier is constrained to admit that the kinship between the Gaelic and Indian languages has not been entirely made out. Advocates of the Welsh theory and of Whitemensland as peopled by Madocs followers have not been wanting in this country. Catlin thoroughly believed that he had found the posterity of Madoc among the Mandans. Mr. Ha- ven, in the Archveology of America, gives at length the adventures of Stuart and his party who are said to have found Welshmen among Western tribes. If any one, philologist or not, examines Catlins conclusions, principally based on linguistic resemblances, they will probably perceive at once the extreme weakness of the argument. To refer once more to the official work on the Indians published by Schoolcraft, we find it there said in regard to the Celtic remains in this country, that, The discovery of a Welsh element in the Indian languages is wholly without proof of a philological character Hasty observers may have been easily mistaken by accidental analogies of sound, in hearing languages so strange to European ears as Indian; and we feel assured that in the pres- ent state of the knowledge of the principles of the Indian languages in the United States there has not been the slightest discovery of Welsh or any other form of Celtic. * * Historical and Statistical Information (see ante), Vol. IV. p. 118. 1874.] Cramers D6couverte de lAm6rique. 181 These fancied philological resemblances, the discovery of a much- disputed Celtiberian inscription in one of the turnuli of Ohio, and a tradition of the Florida tribe of the Shawaijees that their ancestors were white, and came over the sea, together with the fable of Madoc- ap-Owen, comprise everything which goes to prove the existence of Whitemensland. But one more chapter and one more theory of M. Graviers re- mains. It is im1)ossible to do justice to the grandeur of this con- ception in an abbreviated form; to fully appreciate it, one must turn to the ori~inal. The outline, however, may be indicated. As set forth there by M. Gravier, the Norsemen settled in large numbers in Vinland. From various causes these settlements did not prosper, and a general migration to the West took place. The Norsemen moved slowly west and south, enslaving all the nations they met, and forcing them to build the great mounds of Ohio and the Mississippi Valley. That these mounds are of Norse origin is proved by their general resemblance to the so-called Danish mounds of Ireland and Norway, and, M. Gravier might have added with justice, to all other mounds. Setting to the south, the Norse tide of emigration swept over Mexico. Thus are the Mexican ruins very comfortably ac- counted for. Still moving southwards, the Norsemen entered Brazil. Their presence here is more satisfactorily proved than anywhere else. The ruins of an ancient city were lately discovered in the province of Bahia. Among these ruins was the statue of a~ man pointing with his forefinger to the North Pole. The Norse race had a monopoly of the North Pole. Nothing ihore need be said to prove that they built this city and resided in Brazil. No reference is made to Peru, and it seems rather hard that all the ruined temples and palaces of that country should be left out in the cold. Surely it would have been an easy task, the Vikings once in Brazil, to get them over the moun- tains and into Peru. One point in all this is unsatisfactory. We are not told what finally became of all the Norse. Perhaps they degenerated into the effeminate races found by Cortes and Pizarro. Perhaps they evaporated. Either hypothesis will answer. It is never safe to laugh at any ones theories on such a subject as the ancient races which once peopled North and South America. Where there is so much obscurity, any speculations, honestly called so, are admissible. They are a quite harmless form of imaginative work, and may give amusement and stimulate inquiry. But the con- struction of a historical theory is quite another affair. In the latter case the reasoning ought to be close and strictly warranted by facts. M. Gravier is a striking example as a victim of a bad system. He is 182 Schweglers B~mische aesc1dc1~te. [July, evidently a hard worker and thoroughly in love with his subject, as shown by the publication of this book at his own expense, no slight undertaking. Yet his book is almost valueless beyond calling atten- tion to an interesting field of investigation. A theory has evidently been preconceived, and then all the scattered facts have been cob lected with much labor and fitted in to suit this theory, or, more properly, this speculation. The arguments are terribly illogical, and the gaps jumped over to reach conclusions are distressingly wide. M. Gravier needs a course of German reading in order to learn method. Ability is not wanting in France any more than in Eng- land or America, but defective method has been the cause of much poor historical work, both French and English. It is to be hoped that continued investigation and fresh discoveries may soon throw more light on the obscure history of the great build- ing races which once peopled both the southern and northern por- tions of the American continent. The roving visits of piratical Norsemen form a small point in our history; but some knowledge of the race now extinct, which once peopled this country and possessed so much civilization and intelligence, would be invaluable. 2. A. Schweglers R& rnische Cescliichte. Fortgeftihrt von OcTAvIus CLASON. Vierter Band ~der FortsetzungErster Band], vomGallischen Brande Roms his zum ersten Samniter-Kriege. Berlin: Verlag von S. Calvary & Co. 1873. 8vo. pp. xxviii and 428. PRorEssoR SdIIWEGLER, of the University of Ttibingen, author of the well-known History of Philosophy, died in 1857, leaving unfinished a history of Rome of great and peculiar merit. Its author was not a specialist in Roman history, in the sense in which Momnmsen, Peter, Ihue, and Lange are specialists; but possessing a wide learning, a remarkable power of combination and analysis, and a clear, calm judgment, his plan was to produce a work which should be an ency- clop~dia of its subject, bringing together all the facts and all the lead- ing theories in regard to it, and weighing the theories with the impar- tiality of one who was himself no theorist. Such a work must necessarily be on an enormous scale, and no wonder its author died with his task scarcely begun. He left three thick volumes, reaching to the threshold of authentic history, the capture of Rome by the Gauls. What dimensions his work would have attained, could he have lived to complete it, it is impossible to conjecture. It is, at all events, a matter of congratulation that his clear eye and steady hand can gnide

182 Schweglers B~mische aesc1dc1~te. [July, evidently a hard worker and thoroughly in love with his subject, as shown by the publication of this book at his own expense, no slight undertaking. Yet his book is almost valueless beyond calling atten- tion to an interesting field of investigation. A theory has evidently been preconceived, and then all the scattered facts have been cob lected with much labor and fitted in to suit this theory, or, more properly, this speculation. The arguments are terribly illogical, and the gaps jumped over to reach conclusions are distressingly wide. M. Gravier needs a course of German reading in order to learn method. Ability is not wanting in France any more than in Eng- land or America, but defective method has been the cause of much poor historical work, both French and English. It is to be hoped that continued investigation and fresh discoveries may soon throw more light on the obscure history of the great build- ing races which once peopled both the southern and northern por- tions of the American continent. The roving visits of piratical Norsemen form a small point in our history; but some knowledge of the race now extinct, which once peopled this country and possessed so much civilization and intelligence, would be invaluable. 2. A. Schweglers R& rnische Cescliichte. Fortgeftihrt von OcTAvIus CLASON. Vierter Band ~der FortsetzungErster Band], vomGallischen Brande Roms his zum ersten Samniter-Kriege. Berlin: Verlag von S. Calvary & Co. 1873. 8vo. pp. xxviii and 428. PRorEssoR SdIIWEGLER, of the University of Ttibingen, author of the well-known History of Philosophy, died in 1857, leaving unfinished a history of Rome of great and peculiar merit. Its author was not a specialist in Roman history, in the sense in which Momnmsen, Peter, Ihue, and Lange are specialists; but possessing a wide learning, a remarkable power of combination and analysis, and a clear, calm judgment, his plan was to produce a work which should be an ency- clop~dia of its subject, bringing together all the facts and all the lead- ing theories in regard to it, and weighing the theories with the impar- tiality of one who was himself no theorist. Such a work must necessarily be on an enormous scale, and no wonder its author died with his task scarcely begun. He left three thick volumes, reaching to the threshold of authentic history, the capture of Rome by the Gauls. What dimensions his work would have attained, could he have lived to complete it, it is impossible to conjecture. It is, at all events, a matter of congratulation that his clear eye and steady hand can gnide 1874.] Schwe9lers Bilmiscite Gescltichte. 183 the inquirer through the mazes of that period where such a help is most needed; and it has not seemed at all likely that any one would be found to continue the gigantic undertaking. A continuation has nevertheless heen undertaken, and its first vol- ume, on about the scale of Schweglers original work, lies before us. It possesses certainly sufficient merit of its own to entitle it to a welcome from all interested in Roman history; the question is, How far does its author succeed in doing the work which his predecessor began l Here we will indicate three principal points of difference be- tween them. In the first place, Dr. Clason lacks the remarkable per- spicuity of style which characterized Professor Schwegler; one not infrequently finds it hard to guess precisely what he means to say. In the second place, where the original work gave full citations, the continuation gives nothing but hare references. This may not neces- sarily be a defect. Certainly it reduces the bulk very materially, and that is a consideration of some weight, in so extensive a work. It does, however, completely change the character of the treatise. The first three volumes are by themselves sufficient for the student; the passages from ancient writers are quoted with such fulness, as proof or illustration of statements in the text, that the student rarely has occasion to go to the original authority to test a point. The book is a library by itself; and, if we could conceive of such a case, a person taking a sea-voyage, or camping out in the Adirondacks, might if he chose make a thorough study of early Roman history from just these three volumes. Now, the new volume would be far from serving the same end; the student must have his Livy, Dionysius, and Cicero, nay, his Aulus Gellius, Festus, and Siculus Flaccus, in short, every author referred to, if he wishes to follow up special points of inquiry. A third point of difference is in regard to the general view taken of Roman history. Schwegler was, as we have remarked, under the do- minion of no theory. In general he was a disciple of Niebuhr, and the chief defect of his treatment is his incapacity to do justice to later writers of original genius, Huschke, Rubino, and Mommsen, as compared with the more special followers of Niebuhr, G~ittling, Becker, and Lange. Belonging to the T~tbingen school, he carries to an extreme the sceptical method of interpreting the ancient records; in both respects, as a follower of Niebuhr, and a thinker of advanced views, he is an ardent advocate of the plebs as against the patricians. Now this is not having a theory; it is simply accepting the prevailing theory, which happened to coincide with his own mental tendencies. Here Dr. Clason takes issue with him. Accepting the recent results of K. W. Nitzsch (RUmische Annalistik), one of the most impor 184 Schweglers BImiscAe Geschicltte. [July, taut of which is that our chief authority for the early history is not the records of the EPatriciani College of Pontifices, but of the Plebeian tEdiles, preserved in the temple of Ceres, and that these records pre- sent a one-sided plebeian view of the early struggles, he is di posed to vindicate the patricians, where we are in the custom of taking sides exclusively with the plebeians. He disclaims every idea of doing this as a partisan. We are accustomed, he says, to look only at one side; but the othei~ side has something to be said for it as well. The two orders were, he says, two competing elements with equal rights, whose struggle and conflict must, to he sure, necessarily advance the plebeian rights, but at the same time, as a retarding force against the plebeian claims, did the state a great service, and in a high degree aided in strengthening its position. (Vorrede, p. xv.) These two elements he happily characterizcs (p. 26) as one which has received a natural development, and one which is receiving a natural develop- ment (den nattirlich gewordenen nod den nattirlich werdenden). This is a correct and instructive view, so far as it goes; we need to be reminded that the right of authority and tradition is also a nat- ural right developed out of relations imposed by nature, not an arti- ficial and forcibly established one. (p. 26.) This point needs, how- ever, a little further analysis. We know very well that, as a matter of fact, present authority and tradition say American slavery, English land monopoly, the Turkish rule in Constantinople are artifi- cial creations of force and injustice. How did the prerogatives of the Roman patricians differ in this respect l Because, as has been pointed out, the Roman patriciate was formed, by a natural development. It is not, then, universally true that authority and tradition possess a natural right; it is true only when, as in this case, it has been de- veloped by a natural process. But the struggle in this case was deeper than merely between a system which had been developed by a natural process, and one which was in process of development; it was between a mature and devel- oped organism and a destructive, disorganizing force. The movement which overthrew the political supremacy of the patricians was typical of the great movement to which society in its entire career has been sub- jected, the substitution of individualism for organism. The most fundamental pAnciple established in the domain of primitive institu- tions by the investigations of Bastian, Maine, Lubbock, Morgan, and others of the present generation, is the highly organized character of the earliest institutions, as outgrowths of the family; the individual being completely merged in the organization. The history of society has consisted essentially in a gradual disintegration of these organisms, 1874.] La D6mocrcttie en France au Ittoyen Age. 186 which has resulted in placing the individual man as its unit in their stead. It was then with the clear-sightedness of genius that Calhoun struck at the vital feature of modern democracy, in urging the claims of political organisms against numerical majorities; and it was with no mere dull conservatism that men of masculine intellect, like Lord Eldon, clung to the rotten-borough system, as being, in their eyes, a part of an organic whole; strike out that abuse, and the whole system will go, as has turned out to be the case. Now the Roman patriciate was a body which had been formed by a natural process of organic growth; the plebs was no organism at all, but an unorganized mass. It contained, it is true, organic elements, in the rural plebs, and to a certain extent in the clients; it had formed itself into an independent organization within the state, hut this organization was artificially created, not naturally developed. The plebeian families copied the gentile institution of the patricians (which some of them no doubt possessed from the first); and they formed the Italian custom of auspices into a system analogous to that which was under the charge of the College of Augurs; for all this, it was with no mere high-born arrogance that the patricians denied to the plebeians the possession of both gens and auspices. No doubt the force which overthrew the patrician predominance was an irresistible one; no doubt too any further maintenance of this predominance would have been equally unwise and unjust. We do not say that the benefits of the disintegration do not far outweigh its evils ; neverthe- less it is at best a destructive process, and the patricians were per- fectly right, from their point of view, in resisting a reform that sub- verted the very foundations of their political system. We have not space to enter into the detailed examination of Dr. Clasons book. Its importance consists, as we have shown, not so much in these as in the fact that it looks at the early history of Rome from a new point of view. As a continuation of Schweglers great work we cannot regard it as a success, for the reason that it does not do the same special service for students; as an original and interest- ing treatment of its subject, it deserves attention and consideration. 3. La D~mocratie em France au Afo~ien Aqe. Par F. T. PERRTSNS. Ouvrage Couronn~ par lInstitut. (Acad6mie des sciences morales et politiques.) Paris. Librairie Acad6mique. Didier et C~, Li- braires-f~diteurs. 35 Quai des Augustins. 2 vols. 8vo. To the student of political history there are few periods more inter- esting than the fourteenth century. Although reckoned as belonging

1874.] La D6mocrcttie en France au Ittoyen Age. 186 which has resulted in placing the individual man as its unit in their stead. It was then with the clear-sightedness of genius that Calhoun struck at the vital feature of modern democracy, in urging the claims of political organisms against numerical majorities; and it was with no mere dull conservatism that men of masculine intellect, like Lord Eldon, clung to the rotten-borough system, as being, in their eyes, a part of an organic whole; strike out that abuse, and the whole system will go, as has turned out to be the case. Now the Roman patriciate was a body which had been formed by a natural process of organic growth; the plebs was no organism at all, but an unorganized mass. It contained, it is true, organic elements, in the rural plebs, and to a certain extent in the clients; it had formed itself into an independent organization within the state, hut this organization was artificially created, not naturally developed. The plebeian families copied the gentile institution of the patricians (which some of them no doubt possessed from the first); and they formed the Italian custom of auspices into a system analogous to that which was under the charge of the College of Augurs; for all this, it was with no mere high-born arrogance that the patricians denied to the plebeians the possession of both gens and auspices. No doubt the force which overthrew the patrician predominance was an irresistible one; no doubt too any further maintenance of this predominance would have been equally unwise and unjust. We do not say that the benefits of the disintegration do not far outweigh its evils ; neverthe- less it is at best a destructive process, and the patricians were per- fectly right, from their point of view, in resisting a reform that sub- verted the very foundations of their political system. We have not space to enter into the detailed examination of Dr. Clasons book. Its importance consists, as we have shown, not so much in these as in the fact that it looks at the early history of Rome from a new point of view. As a continuation of Schweglers great work we cannot regard it as a success, for the reason that it does not do the same special service for students; as an original and interest- ing treatment of its subject, it deserves attention and consideration. 3. La D~mocratie em France au Afo~ien Aqe. Par F. T. PERRTSNS. Ouvrage Couronn~ par lInstitut. (Acad6mie des sciences morales et politiques.) Paris. Librairie Acad6mique. Didier et C~, Li- braires-f~diteurs. 35 Quai des Augustins. 2 vols. 8vo. To the student of political history there are few periods more inter- esting than the fourteenth century. Although reckoned as belonging 186 La D6mocratie en France au M~yen Age. [July, to the middle age, it is a century which has little sympathy with the feudalism and ecclesiasticism that characterize the middle age proper. With the three prominent names which mark its commencement Edward I. of England, Philip the Fair of France, and Pope Boni- face VIII. we associate a strong reaction against this earlier feudal- ism and ecclesiasticism, and the opening of an era in which industry, jurispradence with its applications to constitutional law, a rude be- ginning of natural science, and a secular literature, take the place of the all-engrossing theology of the earlier times. Even theological. speculation entered upon a new stage at this epoch, and Wiclif and Huss were hut representatives of a controversial movement in the Church which preceded them hy some generations, and was the fore runner of the great division two centuries later. And in secular mat- ters the fourteenth century seems in a remarkable degree to have anticipated, perhaps prematurely, perhaps in the natural course of development, what we are wont to consider the special characteristics of our own day. It was an age of democracy and of revolutions. In this century were the heginnings of Swiss independence and the revolt of Scotland from England; the Hanseatic League, having its seat in the aristocratic republics of Germany, was now at its height; during this century were achieved the emancipation of the serfs, and the municipal revolutions by which the trade-guilcUs wrested political power from the patrician families; to this century belong Wat Tyler, Philip van Artevelde, and Etienne Marcel. M. Perrens, favorably known as the author of a valuable mono- graph upon Etienne Marcel, has recently published a work, the aim of which is to bring the career of this remarkable man into relation with the whole democratic movement of this age in France. It is but one phase of democracy in the fourteenth century; it does not cover the entire ground even of democracy in France, but only the relation of democracy to the central government. It will be remem- bered that Guizot introduced the seventh lecture of his course upon Civilization in Europe with a comparative view of municipal govern- ment in the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries: the one was local self-government, the other consisted in a participation in the national government; and the spirit of institutions had so completely changed in the interval, that neither could have understood the others claims to be called municipal government. Now M. Perrenss work re- lates to the series of events which formed the passage from the earlier to the later type of democracy, a passage which was contemporane- ous with and closely connected with the development of nationality and of monarchical power in France. 1874.] La D6mocratie en France au Mioyen Age. 187 It will be found therefore to have considerable value in the history of political science. It is often said, and we think with reason, that the fatal defect in the liberal movements of the French is indicated by precisely this contrast pointed out by M. Guizot, a defect all the more fatal because Frenchmen themselves, even this acute and liberal writer, appear wholly ignorant that it is a defect, treating the change as rather a development than a deterioration. M. Perrens, especially in his earlier work, shows indications of understanding the disastrous nature of this transformation; but in the present work it is hardly brought out at all. In brief it may be thus described: in the twelfth century France, like England (and in certain respects in an even higher degree than England), possessed a decentralized, local self- government; at present the French definition of democracy is not the right of a community to govern itself, but the power to govern others. The democratic movement sketched in these volumes began with the great revolutionary ePisis of 1355 57, and ended with that of the Cabochiens in 1413, after which, as the author sagaciously points out, all national efforts were merged in the great struggle against the invaders, or, as he expresses it, the ruin of democratic tendencies was wrought by the progress of patriotism. This revolution of 1413 is the most striking and novel portion of the work to those who are already familiar with the greater events of 1356, and at any rate its treatment, in these pages, strikes us as more adequate and complete; partly because the author had already had his say upon the earlier epoch, partly because even in his former work he does not seem to us to go to the bottom of the causes which led to the failure of Etienne Marcel. It was, we believe, Augustin Thierry who first called attention to the vital importance of this constitutional movement of 1356, md who vindicated the character of its great leader against the prepos- sessions of history. This fourteenth-century ~chevim, he says, by a remarkable anticipation, wished and attempted things which seem to belong only to the most modern revolutions. (Hist. du Tiers Etat, p. 39.) In truth, the measures enumerated by M. Thierry are sufficiently startling, in their analogy to those of the great Revolu- tion; but for our purposes the true point of comparison is not with later French movements, but with the development of English liber- ties. The States-General of 1356, under the lead of Etienne Marcel, aimed to nv~ke France a constitutional monarchy, such as England already was; why did they fail, where th~ English Parliament had succeeded l 188 La D6mocratie en Prance au Mioyen Age. [July, However minutely we might enter into constitutional details on this head, we think it would, in the main, resolve itself into the gen- eral fact, which strikes the most superficial reader of M. Perrenss book. The movement had no bottom to it. One feels all along that Marcel and his coadjutors were contending against odds, arising from the very nature of the constitution under which they were acting. The very completeness of the authority exercised by the Norman and early Angevin kings of England was the source of the subsequent infringement of royal prerogative. Under them we find the whole country of England embraced in one system of fidministration, sub- jected to one rule of justice, and its several parts co-ordinated with one another in a degree marvellous at that time. When Parliament came into existence, there was no looseness or indefiniteness as to its organization; the writs ran alike to every sheriff, and ordered de comitatu pra~dicto duos milites et de qualibet civitate ejusdem comi- tatus duos cives, et de quolibet burgo duos hurgenses . . . . sine dilatione eligi if there was in practice any irregularity, it was not the fault of the system, but of the sheriffs or the cities themselves. Thus the whole kingdom, and, what is more, by united and organized action, was in condition to engage in the contest against prerogative. A second point of hardly less importance is, that the representative branch of Parliament consisted not merely of the industrial classes, citizens and burgesses, but embraced also the landed interest, the knights of the shire or lower nobility, and, by a most significant and salutary provision, that these knights of the shire represented, in all probability, not merely the landed aristocracy to which they belonged, hut the whole body of freeholders, great and small. In this way the agricultural interest was associated with the commercial and manufacturing interests. Look at France, on the other hand. Here the lower or untitled nobility, as in all the countries of the continent of Europe, were classed, not with the commons, but with the barons. The 1iers-Ptat therefore represented only the cities, having no connection with the landed interests. Again, it was not every civic community that was represented, but only a certain number of privileged towns. This was precisely opposite to the English rule. In England every city and borough had a right to he represented; in France certain cities received the privilege of representation. There was no national sys- tem. Indeed, the representatives deliberated and voted by provinces, instead of as a nation. England had the good fortune, of which France failed, that her national unity was attained at the expense of neither local nor national liberties. 1874.] La Democratie en France au Aloyen Age. 189 We see then, in part, how it came that the revolution of 1356, as every one since, was made, not by the French nation, but by the city of Paris. The history of democracy in France, narrated by M. Per- rens, is to all intents and purposes the history of democracy in Paris. There were, to he sure, other cities engaged in the movement, and other leaders, as especially Robert Le Coq, Bishop of Laon; hut they merely labored in the train of Paris and its Provost of the Mer- chants. The English Revolution of 1640 the one to which most nearly corresponds, in its aims, this of 1356 was hardly at all under the influence of London. It was the whole nation peer and peasant, city and manor that fought for the liberties of all. In France it was the roturiers of a few cities, with Paris at their head; we may admire their disinterested devotion, but we cannot help see- ing that the cause was lost from its beginning. It is sometimes said that this revolution failed for the same reason as so many similar attempts in France, because it aimed to accom- plish more than was then practicable; because it was under the con- trol of abstract theories, instead of being directed against definite and concrete abuses. We do not think that this was the case in any ma- terial degree. Undoubtedly rather larger reforms came first and last within their plans than England, for example, has secured by any one step. But we must remember that although the actual net results of the English revolution of 1640 were moderate, yet that the revo- lution itself went to nearly as great theoretical lengths as the French revolution of 1 789, being preserved by special causes from the hor-. rors of that event. The Fifth-Monarchy men are theoretically fit peers of the Jacobins. And if we compare the Great Ordinance of 1356 with either Magna Charta or the Bill of Rights, we shall admit that it deserves to be classed with them as a dignified, conservative document, whose aims were strictly practical and practicable. What is most remarkable is that the Cabochiens of 1413 who stood to Marcel and his fellows very much as the Jacobins did to the Giron- dins not only committed no excesses, but actually brought about (though but for a short time) a series of reform measures distin- guished for moderation and statesmanship. It should be remarked that this work is a prize essay; the sub- ject having been given out by the Acad6mie des sciences morales et politiques in 1869, and the judgment pronounced in 1871. 190 Adamss Memoirs of John Quiney Adams. [July, 4. ilfemoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848. Edited by CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Vol. I. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874. THE first instalment of this long-expected Journal has at last ap- peared. During the lifetime of Mr. John Quincy Adams, it was generally understood that he had been in the habit of keeping a daily record of his life from a very early date, and a natural curiosity was felt to know what was ~n it. The story ran that he had directed its publication to be delayed for twenty years after his death, which naturally only whetted the desire to see it. Mr. Charles Adams makes no mention in his Preface of any such injunction, and very likely it had no foundation. There is. certainly nothing in this vol- ume that might not have been published in Mr. Adamss lifetime. His strictures on the conduct, and his comments on the characters, of his contemporaries, dnring the period of which it treats, are all within the just limits of fair criticism, and most of the subjects of them had long preceded him to the other world. But it is qnite likely that, as the story approaches later times, his strong opinions may have been so strongly expressed as to make the interposition of a generation of years between their recording and their publication a matter of wise expediency, if not of necessity. We apprehend that the first feeling of the readers of the Journal will be one of disappointment. And this partly from this very absence of strong personal criticism as well as of gossiping anecdotes of society and manners. Indeed, the general reader hardly knew what to expect; and when the book so long looked for was actu- ally before him, it was hardly possible that it should not fall short of his indefinite anticipations. But this was very unreasonable. Any one who had any knowledge of Mr. Adams, either personally or by authentic description, would expect to find very much what he meets with in the pages of his Journal. A serious narrative of the events of each day with solid comments upon them, sketches of his studies, glimpses all too few and too brief at his domestic interior, occasional sittings in judgment upon himself, in which he shows small mercy to what he esteems his moral or intellectual shortcomings, these, it might have been foreseen, would have made up the daily record of the days of such a man. The Journal is certainly not an entertaining one, but to our sense it is deeply interesting as a picture of the daily inner and outer life of so eminent a man. Indiscretion and thoughtlessness are essential elements of an enfertaining journal.

190 Adamss Memoirs of John Quiney Adams. [July, 4. ilfemoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848. Edited by CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Vol. I. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874. THE first instalment of this long-expected Journal has at last ap- peared. During the lifetime of Mr. John Quincy Adams, it was generally understood that he had been in the habit of keeping a daily record of his life from a very early date, and a natural curiosity was felt to know what was ~n it. The story ran that he had directed its publication to be delayed for twenty years after his death, which naturally only whetted the desire to see it. Mr. Charles Adams makes no mention in his Preface of any such injunction, and very likely it had no foundation. There is. certainly nothing in this vol- ume that might not have been published in Mr. Adamss lifetime. His strictures on the conduct, and his comments on the characters, of his contemporaries, dnring the period of which it treats, are all within the just limits of fair criticism, and most of the subjects of them had long preceded him to the other world. But it is qnite likely that, as the story approaches later times, his strong opinions may have been so strongly expressed as to make the interposition of a generation of years between their recording and their publication a matter of wise expediency, if not of necessity. We apprehend that the first feeling of the readers of the Journal will be one of disappointment. And this partly from this very absence of strong personal criticism as well as of gossiping anecdotes of society and manners. Indeed, the general reader hardly knew what to expect; and when the book so long looked for was actu- ally before him, it was hardly possible that it should not fall short of his indefinite anticipations. But this was very unreasonable. Any one who had any knowledge of Mr. Adams, either personally or by authentic description, would expect to find very much what he meets with in the pages of his Journal. A serious narrative of the events of each day with solid comments upon them, sketches of his studies, glimpses all too few and too brief at his domestic interior, occasional sittings in judgment upon himself, in which he shows small mercy to what he esteems his moral or intellectual shortcomings, these, it might have been foreseen, would have made up the daily record of the days of such a man. The Journal is certainly not an entertaining one, but to our sense it is deeply interesting as a picture of the daily inner and outer life of so eminent a man. Indiscretion and thoughtlessness are essential elements of an enfertaining journal. 1874.] Adamss Memoirs of Jokn Quincy Adams. 191 The writer must have amusing things to tell, and be entirely unscru- pulous in the telling them. Either he must believe that no other eyes than his will ever read what he writes, or he must not care whether they do or not. The moment the thought of what other people n~ay think of what he says occurs to him half the grace is gone. It is the same with letter-writing. We Mhall have no more of the exquisite letters of former days. The careless graces, the delightful nothings, the airy gossip, the delicious trifling, the commonplaces stamped with immortality, the tiresome and the stupid whom genius has pfeserved in its own amber for our diversion, it will he a lucky chance if we ever have them again. Every one who knows or believes that pos- terity will care anything about him, feels that posterity is looking over his shoulder as he writes. It will he the worse for posterity. We should never have had Madame de Sevign6 or Lady Mary or Cowper, had they suspected us of doing anything of the kind. It is needless to say that Mr. Adamss Journal is marked by none of these excellent qualities of carelessness, indiscretion, recklessness, and levity. We fear he began rather early to believe that he was providing materials for the history of his time. Such as he has given us, let us take it as it is and be thankful. There is something curiously interesting in the process by which Mr. Adams was fitted for his career in life. Nothing could well be further removed from the ordinary preparation of men regularly edu- cated for professional and public life, unless it were from that of the fearfully and wonderfully self-made men with whom the inscruta- ble dispensations of Providence have visited our afflicted country in these latter days. His political education may be said to date from the day his mother led him up Penns Hill to hear the cannonade of Bunkers Hill and to see the smoke of Charlestown relieved against the blue sky of that summers day. Nothing could well be more desultory, apparently, than his strictly literary education, from the morning he embarked in Nantasket Roads for Europe with his father when eleven years old, in 1778, until he went to Harvard in 1786. But the authority of his father and the influence of Franklin doubt- less helped to form those habits of application and that love of study which enabled him to make good the deficiencies of his actual teach- ing by a true self-education. There is something in his boyish and youthful career singularly interesting. Arriving in France on the first of April, 1778 (which the types have changed to 1779), he nar- rowly escaped seeing Voltaire, and did actually see Marie Antoinette in the full pride of her beauty, about the tim~ when Burke saw in her the loveliest vision that ever lighted on this planet. And he lived 192 Adamss Miemoirs of John Quincy Adams. [July, in daily communication with Franklin, with whom, at a later day, he used to play billiards every morning. Mr. Adamss schooling was soon interrupted by his first return to America, and, though resumed on his fathers speedy resumption of his functions, lasted less than six months at Paris. Four months at the Latin school of Amsterdam and five at the University of Leyden comprised the whole of his reg- ular teaching until he went to Cambridge in 1786. When fourteen years old, his diplomatic education began under the eye of Mr. Dana, afterwards the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, at St. Petersburg, to whom he acted as secretary at that early age, his familiarity with the French language well qualifying him for the duties of the post. After leaving St. Petersburg, in 1782, he acted in Paris as an additional secretary to the Commissioners who were negotiating the Peace of 1783. The extracts from his Journal at this time, when he was but sixteen years old, are of the true nature of good journalizing, and we are sorry that the editor has not given us a great many more of them. When his father was appointed minister to England, young Adams came to the wise determination of returning to America, which he expresses in terms which show the early maturity of his jndgment: After having been travelling for these seven years almost all over Europe, and having been in the world, and among company, for three; to return to spen(l one or two years in the pale of a College, subjected to all the rules which I have so long been freed from; then to plunge into the dry and tedi- ous study of the Law for three years; and afterwards not expect (however good an opinion I may have of myself) to bring myself into notice under three or four years more; if ever! It is really a prospect somewhat discour- aging for a youth of my ambition (for I have ambition, though I hope its object is laudable). But still Oh! how wretched Is that poor Man that hangs on Princes favors or on those of anybody else. I am determined that so long as I shall be ahle to get my own living in an honorable manner, I will depend upon no one. My Father has been so much taken up all his lifetime with the interests of the public, that his own fortune has suffered by it; so that his children will have to provide for themselves, which I shall never be able to do, if I loiter away my precious time in Europe and shun going home until I am forced to it. With an ordinary share of common sense, which I hope I enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and free; and rather than live otherwise I would wish to die hefore the time when I shall be left to my own discretion. I have before me a striking example of the distressing and humiliating situ- ation a person is reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct, and I am determined not to fall into the same error. p. 21. Returned to America, he soon entered Harvard University at the last term of the Junior year, and virtually stood at the head of his 1874.] Adamss Memoirs of Jo1~n Quinc~y Adams. 193 class at its graduation in 1 787. The authorities of the College, doubt- less thinking it hard that a youth who had borne so light a part of the burden and heat of college life should supersede the one who had endured the whole and would regularly have received the English Oration, which was the highest academic honor, introduced the inno- vation of a Second Oration, which was assigned to Mr. Adams, an arrangement which probably satisfied all parties. After graduating and studying the law, he opened an office in Boston ~nd awaited the advent of clients. As his leisure was not much more disturbed by the turba. clie2ttiu?n than that of young lawyers generally, he luckily turned it to the best account for his future success by writing politi- cal articles for the newspapers. The newspapers of those days were small and few in comparison with those of the present day, but their actual influence and practical importance were much greater. Dr. Franklin, somewhere speaking of the multiplication of newspapers in this country during his lifetime, says with obvious satisfaction that, at the time he wrote, there were not less than twenty-five newspapers printed in the United States, a number which he thought would supply the necessities of the country for many years to come. Droll as such a statement may seem to us now, it is not doubtful that the positive influence of the periodical press of eighty or ninety years ago was greater on the public mind of that day, than that exercised on the opinion of to-day by our contemporary prints, whose name is Legion. Thomas Paine (commonly called of men Tom) had just pub- lished his once famous Rights of Man in England, as a reply to Burkes Thoughts on the French Revolution, and it had been re- printed in Philadelphia with the emphatic indorsement of Mr. Jef- ferson. Mr. Adams made this work the occasion of a series of articles in the Columbian Centinel, signed Publicola, and afterwards discussed the various political topics of that exciting time, when the French Revolution was in full and fiery blast, under the signatures of Marcellus and Columbus. The first-named series of essays in particular excited great attention, not only in this country but on the other side of the Atlantic, having been reprinted in London, in Glas- gow, and in Dublin. And it is a curious circumstance that these last- named editions were never known to the writer, nor to the editor until seventy years after their publication, when he accidentally met with copies during his diplomatic residence in England. These po- litical writings changed the course of his future career, as they were the occasion of his first introduction to the public service before he had completed his twenty-sevent.h year. For President Washington had been so much struck by their merit VOL. CXIX.NO. 244 13 194 Adamss Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. [July, that in May, 1794, he sent in to the Senate the name of John Quincy Adams as minister to Holland, without consultation with his father, then Vice-President. No doubt this appointment was due in part to a wish on the part of General Washington to gratify his friend the Vice-President, but it certainly never would have been made had he not been fully satisfied of the fitness of the young diplo- matist for the post. Mr. Adamss Journal describing his visit to Philadelphia to procure his credentials, dining in New York on the way in company with Talleyrand, and afterwards in England en route for the Hague, is animated and entertaining, and carries us along with him as a journal should do. In London he of course forthwith visited Mr. Jay, then en~aged in negotiating his famous treaty. There he was astonished by a piece of news, indeed of an astounding nature. He says Mr. Jay asked me whether the death of Robespierre was known in America before I sailed. I repeated with utter astonishment, Robes- pierre dead! more times than was perfectly decent, and could scarcely believe I had heard right, until he assured inc very seriously that about six weeks or two months since Robespierre, with a considerable number of his partisans, were accused, tried, condemned and executed by a party of Mod- erates who had succeeded to his power. Alas, the ocean telegraph, which tells us everything the moment that it happens, if not before, has made impossible any such delight- ful surprises to us I The period on which Mr. Adamss mission to Holland fell was almost precisely that of the French occupation by Pichegru. His presentation to the Stadtholder was ulmost im- mediately followed by the flight of that prince, and his subsequent transactions were with the authorities of the Batavian Republic, the name under which the old United Provinces were permitted to dis- guise from themselves the humiliating fact that they were virtually but a department of France. His Journal, during the whole of his Dutch residence, though it records no affairs of particular consequence with which he had to do officially, is very good reading as a running commentary on current events, and a description of the diplomatic and private society of Holland. In October, 1795, Mr. Adams was directed by the Washington Administration to go over to London to exchange the Ratifications of Jays Treaty. Owing to various delays he did not arrive in season to perform this duty, but he was received by Lord Grenville and presented at Court as Minister Resident at the Hague. For some reason, it is not very clear what, unless it were the belief that so young a diplomatist might be easily manipulated, Lord Grenville wished Mr. Adams to assume the character and func 18T4.] Adam~ts Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. 195 tions of minister to St. Jamess. Of course, nothing of the sort could be done, and when it was certain that he could not be used for what- ever object the attempt was made; his treatment became less and less flattering. Lord Grenville forgot his first engagement to present him at Court, which could hardly be well-pleasing to the carnal man of Mr. Adams. The following brief entries tell the story of his interviews with royalty. He goes to the levee on the 9th of December, 1795, and he tells the rest of the story thus After the Levee was over I was introduced into the private closet of the King by Lord Grenville, and, presenting my credential Letter, said, Sir, to testify to your Majesty the sincerity of the United States of America in their negotiations, their President has directed me to take the necessary measures connected with the Ratifications of the Treaty of Amity, Com- merce, and Navigation concluded between your Majesty and the United States. He has authorized me to deliver to your Majesty this Letter, and I ask your Majestys permission to add, on their part, the assurance of the sincerity of their intentions. He then said, To give you my answer, Sir, I am very happy to have the assurances of their sincerity, for without that, you know, there would be no such thing as dealings among men. He after- wards asked to which of the States I belonged, and on my answering, Massa- chusetts, he turned to Lord Grenville and said, All the Adamses belong to Massachusetts? To which Lord Grenville answered, they did. He en- quired whether my father was now Governor of Massachusetts. I answered, No, Sir; he is Vice-President of the United States. Ay, said he, and he cannot hold both oflices at the same time? No, Sir. lie asked where my father is now. At Philadelphia, Sir, I presume, the Congress being now in session. When do they meet? The first week in December, Sir. And where did you come frem last? From Holland, Sir. You have betn employed there? Yes, Sir, about a year. Ilave you been em- ployed before, and anywhere else? No, Sir. pp. 162, 163. 17th. Went with Mr. Cottrell to the Drawing Room. Presented to the Queen as Minister Resident of the United States of America at the Hague. Asked me bow long I had been in Holland, and whether I was any relation to the Mr. Adams that was here some years ago. The King asked me whether our winters were not more severe than they are here. p. 165. January 13th, 1796. Attended the Levee. Saw Mr. Morris there. Heard of Mr. Pinckneys arrival. Mr. Hammond at the Levee too. The King did not speak to me. My reception at Court this day contrasted com- pletely with those on former occasions, when I was to be cajoled into com- pliance. I valued it much more highly; it flattered my pride as much as the former fawning malice humbled it. 14th. Morning papers say that I took leave of the King at the Levee yesterday, introdneed by Lord Grenville, and that I am upon my return home. I suppose it is meant as a hint to me to go away. I can certainly 196 Adamss lJfemoirs of JoAn Quincy Adams. [July, henceforth do no good here. But I cannot well go without receiving further orders from home. p. 167. He had, however, some more amusing experiences in London than his dealings with royalty and the Foreign Office. He seems to have improved his opportunities to see the good acting at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in those best days of the London stage. Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble, Mrs. Jordan, Jack Bannister, Dicky Suet~ (here misspelt Swett), Munden, Quick, some of them the Old Actors whom Charles Lamb has made immortal, made a pleasant variety after the talks with Lord Grenville and Mr. Hammond, his under-secretary, no