, ^J fiaoramento, Sal a. ^ 
 
 - ^ 
 

TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES PAETON, 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co. 
 
 1871. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 
 
 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS ... 1 
 
 THE YANKEES AT HOME 30 
 
 CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES . 65 
 
 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 95 
 
 OUR EOMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN 132 
 
 How CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME 199 
 
 THE CLOTHES MANIA 224 
 
 LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON ..... 254 
 
 OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN 285 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE . . . 317 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK . 350 
 
 8276065 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 
 
 F 
 
 j iIRST, as to the wages he pays them. It is not neces- 
 J sary for him to give high salaries, because there are 
 two precious commodities with which a government can re 
 ward its servants, over and above the money it pays them. 
 One is honor ; the other is safety. These two things, 
 honor and safety, are what the virtuous portion of man 
 kind strive for ; and so precious are they, that when, after 
 years of honest toil, a man has attained them, most of us 
 join in the acclaim which pronounces his life successful. 
 Now a government can bestow these upon every person 
 whom it retains in its service. It can reasonably ask a 
 man, in the full tide of a victorious career, to relinquish 
 his vocation, and devote his life to the public service, for a 
 comparatively small sum per annum, provided that sum 
 per annum is made securely his until justly forfeited. It 
 can do this, because a decent and secure maintenance, with 
 the honor properly belonging to a government office, con 
 stitutes an entire material success. No man can get any 
 more material good than that, for the simple reason that 
 there is no more to get. Mr. Astor was right in saying 
 that he derived from his estate only the few thousands a 
 year which it cost him to live ; but those few thousands 
 are so securely his that he can be deprived of them only 
 by his own fault or folly. A government can place its 
 higher servants in a position more desirable even than his, 
 since to his safety it can add honor. There is no honor in 
 owning a thousand houses, but it is highly honorable, under 
 a properly constituted government, to be the trusted and 
 faithful servant of the public. 
 
 Hence, on these terms, a government can usually have 
 the choice of all the most suitable persons for any post. 
 i A 
 
2 TOPICS OF Tlffi TIME. 
 
 If it happens to want a judge, it can usually have the best 
 lawyer of the most distinguished court. If it wants a man 
 of business, it can select the best executive talent known 
 to exist. Why should it not ? It can offer better wages 
 than a man gets in a private station, more honor, and 
 equal safety. We have recently seen that one of the ablest 
 business men in the country, already in the possession of 
 a secure fortune, was willing to give up three millions 
 per annum for the honor and satisfaction of serving the 
 public. 
 
 I fear we must admit that Uncle Sam, with all his gen 
 erosity and good intentions, pays to his upper servants the 
 smallest wages a government ever paid, wages so mean 
 that it is wonderful he gets any faithful, efficient service 
 at all. He does get a good deal ; but he has little right 
 to expect it. When he confers security he gives along 
 with it a pinching, lowering,, corrupting salary; and in 
 the majority of cases, his servants enjoy neither safety nor 
 abundance. 
 
 I will mention a few facts with regard to the Supreme 
 Court, the judges of which receive six thousand paper dol 
 lars a year, and the chief justice six thousand five hundred.* 
 W r hen I was in Washington last winter, the daughters of 
 the late chief justice were earning a scanty, precarious 
 livelihood by copying documents in one of the public offices, 
 at eight cents per hundred words. The father of those 
 ladies, twenty-seven years before his death, lured by an 
 honorable, long-cherished ambition, gave up a practice at 
 the Maryland bar which in a few years would have en 
 riched him, in order to accept the post of chief justice. 
 Whatever his errors may have been, I know he accepted 
 the seat from a proper human motive, that of winning 
 the esteem of his countrymen by interpreting justice to 
 them ; and he devoted himself wholly to the performance 
 of its duties. I well remember hearing him, one evening, 
 some years before his death, give a sketch of his daily and 
 yearly round of work and travel. It was wonderful that a 
 man of fourscore could get through an amount of labor 
 only equalled by that of the active editor of a great daily 
 
 * The salaries of the judges of the Supreme Court have since been 
 raised to $10,000 and $ 10,500. PUBLISHERS. 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 3 
 
 paper. Except that he smoked like a steam-engine, his 
 habits were regular and abstemious ; but he died so poor 
 that his family were destitute almost immediately after his 
 last year s salary was spent. 
 
 Other facts: A justice of the same high court the 
 highest, considering all its duties, in the world was pay 
 ing exactly his whole salary, last winter, for the board and 
 lodging of himself and his wife. They had one parlor and 
 one bedroom. The judge, of course, gave up the parlor to 
 his wife and her guests, and used the bedroom for an office 
 and consultation-room. There was a great clearing away 
 of papers at bedtime ; for, the room being very small, the 
 bed had to serve as an office-table. Another justice, who 
 relinquished a practice of forty thousand dollars a year, 
 being a Californian, had to sell his paper dollars during the 
 war at from one third to one half their nominal value ; and 
 he spent a quarter of the year in laborious travelling. 
 One eminent member of this court was compelled to resign 
 his seat, not because he could not live upon his salary, 
 for no justice of the Supreme Court can do that, but 
 because he had not private income enough to eke it out. 
 There is not a justice now sitting upon that bench who 
 lives or can live upon his salary ; although, fortunately, it 
 is not etiquette for a justice of the Supreme Court to 
 entertain. 
 
 Now, reader, it is no hardship for a man to spread his 
 papers over his bed ; nor is it much more painful for the 
 daughters of a chief justice to do copying at eight cents a 
 page than it is for the daughters of a chief cook. I never 
 had six thousand dollars a year, and have managed to rub 
 on pretty well without it, and expect to continue so to do. 
 To me, to nine tenths of all my readers, and to nearly all 
 the people in the world, six thousand dollars a year would 
 be wealth. / cannot, therefore, consider it a hardship for 
 men in general to be limited to such a revenue. But it is 
 hard for a patriotic President to be limited in his choice 
 for the office of Supreme judge to the very few lawyers 
 who happen to possess an independent estate. It is a 
 hardship to a great lawyer, formed by nature and circum 
 stances for that sublime place, to be compelled to leave 
 it to inferior men because he cannot live upon the salary. 
 
4 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 It is a hardship to the generous people of the United 
 States to see men of such exalted rank in their service 
 
 men intrusted with such difficult and important duties 
 
 cramped and pinched and anxious for a little money, 
 unable to keep a secretary, and too poor to afford a ride 
 on horseback before going into court. 
 
 To this, some will be disposed to reply that any sum per 
 annum is too much for a court from which the Dred Scott 
 decision emanated. But on that principle you must cut off 
 supplies from the White House, starve Congress, and sus 
 pend nine tenths of all official and all private salaries. We 
 were all misled or corrupted by slavery, except the few 
 original, thorough-going Abolitionists, who alone of all the 
 inhabitants of America have a "record" on that subject of 
 which they need never be ashamed. Because Judge Taney 
 was perverted and corrupted by slavery is no reason for de 
 grading forever the Court over which he presided. It is 
 worth mentioning, too, that if the Supreme Court had been 
 decently compensated the Dred Scott decision would never 
 have been written. Judge Taney was past eighty when he 
 wrote it, and he would have retired some years before if he 
 could have retained his ridiculous but indispensable little 
 salary. 
 
 It is not necessary, I repeat, for the judges of this Court 
 to be paid high salaries ; because the appointment is for 
 life, and the honor is immense. It is only necessary that 
 they be paid such a sum per annum as will enable lawyers 
 who have little property to accept seats on that bench with 
 out injustice to those dependent upon them. Judges of the 
 same rank in England, if there were any, would receive 
 a salary not far from equivalent to a hundred thousand of 
 our dollars per annum. We can, and properly may, get the 
 best lawyers at a lower rate ; for the same principle should 
 fix the compensation of a Supreme judge as regulates the 
 wages of day laborers. The average of unskilled laborers 
 being two dollars a day, if you want men of average quality 
 you pay two dollars a day. If you want only the refuse of 
 the streets, you pay a dollar and a half. If you want the 
 pick of the whole town, you pay two dollars and a half. 
 The question is, What grade of lawyer do we desire for 
 a justice of the Supreme Court 1 If we desire the highest, 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SEE V ANTS. 5 
 
 and no other, we must give him an equivalent for what he 
 is to surrender. A lawyer of the first rank, at the present 
 time, earns an income ranging from thirty to sixty thousand 
 dollars a year. Hence I presume that if the salary were 
 fixed at twenty thousand dollars a year, with a proper retir 
 ing-pension, the government could look over the bar of the 
 whole country, and get the best living man for every 
 vacancy. Perhaps fifteen thousand would almost answer, 
 which is about the sum it costs to keep house decently in 
 Washington at present. 
 
 On almost any morning during the winter, if you take 
 your stand at the front (which is the back) of the Capitol, 
 you may see lawyers who practise in the Supreme Court 
 driven up to the entrance in well-appointed carriages, while 
 the justices before whom they are to argue get out of street 
 cars or trudge up the steep hill on foot. It is pleasant to 
 see the judges in the cars, and to observe that the respect 
 due to their place is manifested by all who ride in their 
 company. Nevertheless, if any people about the Supreme 
 Court are to have carriages, surely the justices ought to be 
 among them. Uncle Sam can certainly afford to pay his 
 highest servants as liberally as clients pay their lawyers ; 
 and it concerns both his dignity and his interest to do so. 
 Of course, people can always be found to take any place at 
 any salary ; but the more able a man is, the more he can 
 choose what he will do, and the harder he is to get. If it is 
 desired to have truly competent persons in the public ser 
 vice, the public service must be made truly desirable. 
 
 What a wise thing Congress did, in 1855, in establishing 
 the Court of Claims ! The founding of that court was 
 a step forward in the art of government. The late Sir 
 Frederick Bruce, British Minister in Washington, who was 
 an intelligent observer of men and things in America, used 
 often to say that there was nothing in Washington which 
 seemed to him more admirable or more original than that 
 Court. " It is," he once said, " a grand and noble thought 
 that any citizen can go before a legal tribunal, and main 
 tain his rights against thirty millions. Nothing American 
 in America has so deeply impressed me." When he met 
 one of the judges of the Court, he was never weary of listen 
 ing to explanations of its procedure and narratives of its 
 
6 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 cases. His appreciation of the value of this Court would 
 have been still greater if he had lived in Washington be 
 fore it was established, and had witnessed the bad lobbying 
 and weary waste of time and resources which it has in some 
 measure prevented. Before the Court of Claims existed, 
 an honest claimant might well doubt whether any amount 
 of money could compensate him for the intrigue, solicitation, 
 and anxiety involved in the prosecution of a claim before 
 Congress ; and, at the same time, a dishonest claimant 
 might doubt whether a claim could be so ill-founded that 
 indomitable lobbying might not weary Congress into con 
 ceding it. A citizen can now go before this Court, present 
 his claim, establish it by evidence and argument; and, 
 if the court allows it, he has but to exhibit proof of the fact 
 at the treasury, and draw the money. Very large claims 
 and war claims are alone exempted from its jurisdiction ; 
 but probably the time is not distant when all disputed 
 claims of whatever kind or amount will be submitted to it 
 for adjudication. Not only does this Court decide upon 
 claims, but it establishes principles. Its decisions are now 
 a rule in the Departments for the guidance of heads of 
 bureaus. The volumes containing reports of cases tried be 
 fore it, prepared by Judge Nott and Mr. Samuel H. Hunt- 
 ington, show, even to the unprofessional mind, that this 
 court contributes its share to the maintenance and elucida 
 tion of justice in this land. 
 
 The reader will observe that in constituting this Court 
 Congress has nobly parted with a portion of its sovereignty. 
 When it was first established, a claimant had to procure a 
 decision in his favor from the Court, and then go to Con 
 gress and enter upon a course of lobbying to get the money 
 appropriated. This was heart-breaking work to many a 
 wretch ; nor was the time of Congress always saved by de 
 cisions which had no effect until Congress ratified them. 
 The Court was in fact no more than an adjunct to the Com 
 mittee on Claims. At length, Congress wisely gave to the 
 decisions of the Court a practical validity by empowering 
 the Secretary of the Treasury to pay the sums awarded, 
 securing to the disappointed claimant a right of appeal to 
 the Supreme Court. 
 
 Every reflecting person, I think, will feel that judges in- 
 
UNCLE SAM S TKEATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 7 
 
 trusted with powers so peculiar and so great, judges sin 
 gularly liable both to temptation and suspicion, ought to 
 be lawyers of very high rank and men of the highest char 
 acter. In other words, they ought to be men who in pri 
 vate life can earn a liberal income. In 1855, when a dollar 
 was a dollar, Congress fixed the salary of the judges of this 
 Court at four thousand dollars a year. It was not enough 
 then ; but the salary has never been changed, except by 
 the depreciation of the currency. Consequently, it now 
 possesses about one half of its original value, and a judge 
 who has no private income is in sorry case. Wealthy and 
 powerful claimants come before him, some of whom are 
 foreigners whose only care is to get their claim allowed. 
 Thriving lawyers plead at the bar, gain large fees, go to 
 luxurious homes, and enjoy every facility for the doing of 
 their work ; while the judges, if they have no estates and are 
 blessed with families, will be in doubt sometimes whether 
 they can really afford to ride in the street-cars. 
 
 Now, human nature being always human nature, ability 
 and force will as a rule take the path in life that leads 
 to a good front-door, with a nice saddle-horse tied to the 
 post before it. Therefore, if. a judge on the bench gets four 
 thousand dollars a year, and the leading lawyers at the bar 
 get twenty thousand, you will observe, at last, that the first- 
 rate men remain at the bar, and the third-rate men are on 
 the bench. Not at first, because the permanence of the 
 appointment counts for much, and the honor for more. 
 But in the course of time, if you persist in condemning 
 judges to a lifetime of respectable pinch, the valuable men 
 will resign and decline, until the peculiar honor once at 
 tached to the title of judge is gone. I say nothing of the 
 temptation to which a poor judge in such a Court may be 
 exposed, because we have not yet sunk to the point when 
 an American judge permanently appointed can be thought 
 of as subject to temptation. But keep judges salaries as 
 they are for a few years more, and there will be no justice 
 obtainable in the United States, except by purchase. If a 
 seat on this bench should become vacant to-morrow, the 
 President might be driven half mad by the multitude of 
 applicants; but if he were to offer it to each of the hundred 
 most eminent lawyers in the country, it is probable that it 
 
8 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 would be declined by them all. Most of these would prob 
 ably reply : "Mr. President, you do me great honor, but I 
 really cannot afford it ; the luxury is beyond my means." 
 
 Every senator, I believe, without exception, and nearly 
 every member of the House, will own, in conversation, that 
 the salaries paid to judges, heads of departments, some 
 heads of bureaus, and other officials, are insufficient ; but 
 many senators hang back from increasing salaries, for fear 
 of an imaginary fool of a farmer, who is supposed to be 
 grudge the servants of the public a just compensation. 
 Whenever I have been in the country lately, I have looked 
 about in search of that narrow-minded agriculturist, but I 
 have not been able to find him. The farmers understand 
 this matter as well as senators ; they know perfectly well 
 that if the government wants a diamond or a man, it must 
 go into the market and pay what the article will fetch from 
 other purchasers. The only question is, what grade of 
 diamond or man does it want 1 
 
 Sir Frederick Bruce might well be interested in the 
 Court of Claims ; but there is something in Washington a 
 thousand times more wonderful and more original than 
 that. Like other wonders, however, it escapes observation 
 because we are so familiar with it. Walk over the Treasury 
 building ; mark the thousands of persons employed therein ; 
 consider the nature of their employment ; contemplate the 
 magnitude and difficulty of the task imposed upon the 
 head of that department ; think of the wide-spread ruin 
 that could result from an error on his part, and the lasting 
 good that might come of one superior method. Consider 
 the trust reposed in him, the ease with which that trust 
 could be violated, and the absolute certainty we have that 
 it never is. never has been, and never will be violated. 
 Think of all this, and then reflect upon the fact that out 
 of those inconceivable millions that pass under his control, 
 we permit him to retain for his own use not enough to keep 
 house upon. " How much rent do you pay here in Wash 
 ington 1 " asked some one of Mr. Evarts last winter. " My 
 salary," was the reply. This is the great wonder, not of 
 Washington only, but of the world. The pyramids of 
 Egypt are commonplace compared with it. The man that 
 supplies the Treasury building with any one of the leading 
 
UNCLE SAM S TEEATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 9 
 
 articles used in it would turn up his nose at eight thousand 
 dollars a year. Fortunes were made in the mere erection 
 of the edifice. Yet Secretaries of the Treasury, as they 
 have gone down those granite steps in the afternoon, have 
 doubtless often fallen into a deep meditation upon the ways 
 and means of getting over the next rent-day. They have 
 generally been men of small fortunes. Hamilton was 
 obliged to resign and go home to earn money for his large 
 family, and Gallatin was never in very liberal circum 
 stances. Gallatin had an opportunity, once, of gaining a 
 large fortune in Paris without dishonor. " No," said he to 
 the representative of the great house which he had obliged, 
 " no -j a man who has been intrusted with the finances 
 of his country must not die rich." In this lofty spirit the 
 office has generally been held. 
 
 The time has come, I think, for putting the members of 
 the Cabinet a little more at their ease. The people do not 
 want to be under an obligation to them of a pecuniary 
 nature. They did not want Mr. Staiiton to work during 
 the war as no galley-slave ever worked, and yet live in 
 part upon his private fortune ; nor is it wise to subject 
 human nature to such a staggering temptation. The man 
 whose signature confers place and wealth ought not to be 
 left to grapple with the embarrassments of an insufficient 
 income. Uncle Sam has a large although not unencum 
 bered estate, and he can well afford to maintain those who 
 serve him in a style suited to the importance and dignity 
 of their duties. To keep house in Washington on the scale 
 adopted by Mr. Seward, who lived plainly enough and gave 
 perhaps twenty moderate dinners a year, costs about fifteen 
 thousand dollars per annum ; which is about the present 
 value of the salary which Hamilton found inadequate dur 
 ing the presidency of General Washington. Hamilton, 
 however, had married a rich man s daughter, who had 
 probably a rich man s daughter s ideas as to what are the 
 necessaries of life. His vices also were expensive, or, to 
 speak more exactly, his vice. The virtuous public men of 
 the present day could probably retain the post of Cabinet 
 Minister or Vice-President for a few years upon fifteen 
 thousand dollars a year without seriously encroaching 
 upon their private fortunes : and a salary of that amount 
 1* 
 
10 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 would give the President a much wider range of choice. 
 " Perhaps," said Mr. Wade last spring, " I should have 
 taken office, if it had been offered me ; but the pay is in 
 adequate. I could not have held the position and kept 
 house in Washington as Cabinet Ministers are expected to, 
 for the salary. It would have taken five thousand dollars 
 a year more from my private means, unless I d steal, and 
 I m too old to begin to steal." 
 
 The grade of officials just below that of Cabinet Minister, 
 the class represented during the war by Mr. G. V. Fox, 
 Assistant Secretary of the Navy, are persons of great im 
 portance in Washington. The supposed necessities of 
 party sometimes induce a President to fill a place in the 
 Cabinet with any old figure-head that happans to be lying 
 about. In any case, the person next in rank to the chief 
 exercises great authority, and will generally be to his de 
 partment what a first lieutenant is to his ship. It is 
 admitted on all hands that the sudden expansion of the 
 navy of the United States during the first years of the war, 
 resulting in a real blockade of an immense line of coast, 
 and in the immortal victories of Farragut and his comrades, 
 was the ne plus ultra of administrative achievement. It is 
 also admitted that this was chiefly the work of Mr. G. V. 
 Fox. Now, it was no hardship to Mr. Fox, in those glori 
 ous years, to serve his country for less money than would 
 pay for the board and lodging of a small family in a third- 
 rate hotel. On the contrary, it was a sweet, a high, a 
 priceless privilege. The meanness of the salary enhanced 
 the glory and fascination of the post. It must have been 
 delicious, sometimes, when he had signed contracts that 
 would enrich half a dozen men, to contemplate the leanness 
 of his own exchequer. It must have been a gratification 
 bordering on the sublime, just after he had asked a creditor 
 to wait till next quarter-day for his money, to read in a 
 Democratic newspaper of the enormous sums he was mak 
 ing from his interests in navy contracts. But human 
 nature cannot be kept at that pitch of exaltation in which 
 we lived from 1861 to 1865 ; nor is there any need that it 
 should be. In the long run, bread-and-butter, as Ex-alder 
 man Johnson styled it, rules the world ; and, when the war 
 was over, Mr. Fox was more than justified in resigning his 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 11 
 
 place in Washington, at thirty-five hundred dollars a year, 
 to accept the superintendency of a manufactory at Lowell, 
 at seven thousand. Seven thousand dollars a year at 
 Lowell is about equal to eleven thousand dollars a year 
 at Washington. 
 
 The simple question for us to consider is : Are men of 
 great capacity wanted in government offices, or are they 
 not 1 If they are, we must pay them what others find it 
 worth while to pay them. Mr. Fox represents a class of 
 able men, nearly all of whom were compelled to retire from 
 the public service after the close of the war because the 
 salaries attache^ to their posts were inadequate, I men 
 tion him by name, because he is well known to the public, 
 and also because I have never seen him, and do not even 
 know whether his was the creative mind of the Navy De 
 partment. Some mind was ; and the principle is the same, 
 whether it goes by the name of Fox or another. To this 
 class of officials, assistant secretaries, heads of important 
 bureaus, and others, Uncle Sam, it is to be noted, pays 
 nothing but money. Their names become known to the 
 public only by accident ; for it is part of the etiquette of 
 their place to see to it that the honor of what they accom 
 plish shall be awarded to their nominal chief ; nor is their 
 appointment permanent. A man with sense enough to 
 know wherein consists human happiness can accommodate 
 himself to a narrow income, provided it is safely his own. 
 But to an income of any magnitude whatever, subject to 
 be taken away without notice and without cause, a man of 
 sense and ability was never yet reconciled. To accept such 
 a place, in ordinary times, is a confession of incompetency. 
 
 This brings us to the rotation-in-office question, to which 
 attention has been powerfully recalled of late by the able 
 and patriotic labors of Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island. Still 
 more powerfully has attention been called to it by the re 
 cent rebellions in the State Prison at Sing-Sing which were 
 said to be caused by the sudden dismissal of Republican 
 officers to make room for a number of Democratic politi 
 cians who had to be provided with places. That event, 
 doubtless, aggravated the state of things existing in the 
 prison ; and probably the stanchest Jackson-Democratic 
 father and housekeeper in that part of Westchester County 
 
12 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 has had doubts this year whether the system of rotation is 
 quite applicable to the officials of an establishment contain 
 ing thirteen hundred criminals. As that father made his 
 rounds at night, locking up house, barn, and stable, and 
 reflecting upon what might happen if that mass of ruffians 
 were let loose upon an improtected village, I fear he did not 
 feel all that veneration for his departed chief which it is 
 the pride of Jackson Democrats to exhibit. It perhaps oc 
 curred to him that to govern with firmness, humanity, and 
 wisdom so peculiar a community demanded other qualifica 
 tions than the single one of being able to "carry" a ward 
 or a county, and that those other qualifications ought at 
 least to be thought of in making prison appointments. " I 
 don t see what is the use of having such men as John 
 Clark here," said a high official in the Philadelphia custom 
 house, of one of its clerks. " Why not 1 " asked a by 
 stander. The reply was : " He has been here six or seven 
 years, and he has never carried his precinct." 
 
 We have now tried the Jackson rotation system forty 
 years and six months. How has it worked ? 
 
 I admit that there is something plausible to be said in 
 its favor. I am writing this article on Cape Ann, part of 
 the " stern and rock-bound coast " of Massachusetts, which 
 is now getting sliced up into wonderfully long pieces of fine 
 granite, and carried off in schooners to various Atlantic 
 ports for building and paving. Fish and granite are the 
 products of this rugged, romantic region. All day long, 
 under the hot summer sun and in the cutting winter winds, 
 the quarrymen swing the great hammer, or hold the peril 
 ous lx>ring-tool, or manage the ponderous machinery that 
 lifts and loads the huge masses, or yell like tragedians at 
 the writhing oxen. The men of Cape Ann who do not 
 work in the quarries go for codfish in schooners to the 
 coast of Labrador, to the banks of Newfoundland, and else 
 where, not shrinking from the cruel tempests of February 
 and March ; or they cruise up and down the coast in search 
 of the uncertain mackerel, coming in sometimes, after 
 weeks of dangerous voyaging, without a fish ; or else they 
 court destruction in a little flat-bottomed boat called a 
 dory, and gather the harvest of the sea within a few miles of 
 the shore, supplying lobsters at four cents each for canning, 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 13 
 
 and sending fresh fish to the Boston markets. Life on 
 Cape Ann wears a serious aspect, and is maintained by 
 fierce grappling with hostile forces. 
 
 But here and there on the Cape there is a man who walks 
 serene, listening to the musical ring of the hammer which 
 he never lifts, and viewing the boundless peril which he 
 never shares. The whole fleet of mackerel-men and cod- 
 meu may come in empty ; but it is naught to him, his salt 
 pork and biscuit are secure. Nobody may want granite, 
 and the music of the quarries may cease ; but he surveys 
 the scene with a tranquil mind, and draws his pay as before. 
 As long as the President of the United States is a Repub 
 lican, and the member of Congress who got him his place 
 continues to be re-elected, and does not want the office for 
 some one else, so long he remains a gentleman of leisure, 
 in the midst of a most laborious people. Such are the 
 lighthouse-keepers, the inspectors of customs, the postmas 
 ters, and a few others. How natural that the men of the 
 Cape should think it right to take a turn, now and then, 
 at these easy employments and this certain pay ! Why, 
 they ask, should Neighbor Jones always walk up and down, 
 looking out for smugglers, catching one every year or two, 
 and the rest of us always split the granite and hunt the mack 
 erel 1 Turn about is fair play, they think ; and there will 
 never be wanting politicians to sympathize with them in 
 this view of the subject. 
 
 Such is the light in which rotation appears upon the 
 granite coast of New England. But none of these stal 
 wart men would begrudge a lighthouse to a one-legged 
 soldier or the widow of a drowned fisherman; and when 
 the government is put once more upon a basis of common 
 sense, lighthouses will invariably be reserved for persons 
 whose circumstances and past services mark them out from 
 all mankind for just such posts. Nor do the men of this 
 Cape envy the lot of a certain postmaster, the slenderness 
 of whose emolument exactly balances the more desirable 
 circumstances of his place, and keeps him equal to the rest 
 of the village. Still less would they be disturbed, if the 
 incumbent of such an easy post were a woman. They do 
 envy the case of some of the customs-officials ; and well 
 they may. Several of those gentlemen have very little to 
 
14 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 do, and that little is not arduous ; while the pay is more 
 liberal than it would have to be, if the appointment were 
 permanent. Nor would the present salaries be deemed ex 
 cessive, nor excite envy in the breasts of honest men, if 
 they were the late reward of faithful service in lower posts, 
 for which every man s son might compete. These hardy 
 fishermen do not feel it a grievance that some- of their 
 neighbors own a share in a schooner, which gives them a 
 double portion of the profit of voyages to the toil of which 
 all hands equally contribute. But when Uncle Sam comes 
 along and bestows sudden, unearned ease and honor upon 
 one of their number, they feel that, the next time he looks 
 in upon Cape Ann, he ought to put that man back into the 
 quarry or the schooner and give some one else a respite 
 from toil and trouble. But our respected Uncle ought not 
 to bestow sudden, unearned ease and honor upon any man. 
 This is one of the many wrongs of rotation ; and, hence, 
 I must reckon Cape Ann an argument for permanence. 
 
 This remote and stony Cape is representative on this 
 subject. Having been for many years interested in the 
 question, I have sought opportunities of learning how it 
 appears to average voters, the owners of the United States, 
 who w r ill have finally to decide it. At present, the average 
 voter is under the impression that we ought to take turns 
 at enjoying what few good things Uncle Sam has to bestow. 
 This feeling is the difficulty to be overcome. 
 
 Cape Ann, on the other hand, has afforded a pleasing 
 illustration of the solid, enduring happiness which can result 
 from a very small income, w r hen it is not precarious. Yon 
 der lighthouse, built in the year 1800, was occupied for 
 forty-nine years by the same keeper. The salary was three 
 hundred dollars a year ; but a garden furnished the family 
 with vegetables, and the ocean with fish. They were noted 
 the country round for innocent cheerfulness and bountiful 
 hospitality, and the old man, when at length the lamp of 
 his own life went out, left an estate worth seven thousand 
 dollars. Quiet, stable welfare like this can exist wherever 
 there is a secure livelihood suitably bestowed. Lamb had 
 it from his place in the India House. Hawthorne might 
 have had it in the Salem custom-house. There are people 
 in this world who possess high, rare, and exquisite qualities ; 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 15 
 
 people who can render the most perfect service in posts the 
 duties of which are fixed for them ; and yet they are want 
 ing in a certain audacity and energy that fit men to make 
 a successful career of their own. How excellent a thing 
 for a bank, a company, or a government to give permanent 
 welfare to such in return for admirable service ! It is idle 
 to urge men to be moderate in their pursuit of fortune, so 
 long as the possession of property is the only means of 
 securing independence and dignity. In the United States 
 a man is a fool who does not sacrifice to the acquisition of 
 wealth everything except health and honor ; since wealth 
 alone gives a platform upon which a happiness can be es 
 tablished. Faraday might well decline to make a fortune 
 of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds by doing chemis 
 try for men of business ; he had a secure eighty pounds a 
 year, three rooms, fuel, and candles ; and, having these, he 
 could afford the ineffable luxury of spending his life in the 
 discovery of truth. 
 
 I turn from Cape Ann to a scene which I witnessed in 
 the White House a few days after the last Inauguration. 
 If the Jackson rotation system appears endurable upon the 
 sea-coast, it is entirely hideous at Washington. 
 
 About nine o clock one morning, on going by the Presi 
 dent s house, I observed a great number of men standing 
 about the front-door, and many others walking towards it, 
 as though something was going on and the public had 
 been invited to attend. I joined the throng and entered 
 the hall. The President s family had not yet taken pos 
 session, and several upholsterers were making wild efforts 
 to take up the carpets ; while parties were waiting for 
 some one who had gone to find some one else who had the 
 key of the East Room, which they were desirous of seeing. 
 Meanwhile, they strolled about in the smaller show apart 
 ments, stumbling over rolls of carpet, inhaling dust, and 
 viewing works of art. But most of those who entered this 
 private residence of a respectable family went up stairs, 
 where the President was supposed to be. Following the 
 stream, I found myself in one of the suite of rooms of the 
 east wing, adjacent to the apartment in which the Presi 
 dent usually receives people who call on business. These 
 large rooms were filled with men, standing in groups talk- 
 
16 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 ing eagerly together, or sitting silent and anxious on the 
 seats that lined the wall. The roar of conversation was 
 like that of the Chicago Exchange when wheat is coming 
 in freely, and the air was as pestiferous as at an evening 
 party the giver of which keeps four stout colored men 
 opening champagne, but forgets to let in a little inexpen 
 sive atmosphere. The men here assembled had a suf 
 ficient, capable aspect \ many of them were persons of 
 note in politics ; many had distinguished themselves in the 
 war. Strolling about among them, and passing from room 
 to room, I came at last to the DOOR, the door of doors, 
 which all of those present desired to enter. Some of them 
 had crossed a continent to enter it ; and there it was, tight 
 shut, guarded by two ushers, and two hundred people were 
 waiting to go in. It was not necessary for any one to be 
 told that this door led to the President s office. There was 
 a lane of men, terminating at the door, and extending back 
 into the middle of the room, each man of which looked at 
 the door as though it were beef and he had tasted nothing 
 for three days and three nights. I saw then what the 
 poet meant who first spoke of people devouring objects 
 with their eyes. These men had a hungry look. With 
 their eyes they were eating up that dingy-white door. So 
 intent were they upon it that they were unconscious of 
 themselves, of their attitude and expression ; and, when at 
 last the door opened, it was awful to see how they scanned 
 the face of the messenger, and watched his movements. 
 And so they waited, hour after hour. Failing to get in 
 one day, they would try again the next. Some of those 
 then present had been trying for four days for admission, 
 and had still no expectation of getting in very soon. 
 Many had given up the attempt to see the President, and 
 were waiting there in hopes of speaking with their senator 
 or member, who would convey their wishes to him. 
 
 A scene similar to this, but on a smaller scale, was 
 going on wherever there was a person in Washington who 
 had easy access to the President. A member of Congress 
 who was supposed to have any particular influence with 
 him would have a hundred applications a day for the exer 
 tion of that influence. One member, who was not on the 
 best terms with the President, would have twenty callers 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 17 
 
 in one evening, asking his aid in procuring a favorable 
 presentation of their "claims." Washington swarmed 
 with office-seekers. At the Capitol, when a messenger ar 
 rived from the White House with a packet of nominations, 
 the rush of men toward the Senate wing of the building 
 was like the thundering tramp of buffaloes across a 
 prairie.* 
 
 I might dwell upon the waste, the anguish, the inde 
 cency, the degradation, of this scramble. I might speak 
 of men coming to Washington with high hopes and full 
 pockets, who begin by living at Willard s and treating with 
 champagne, then remove to a less expensive hotel, after 
 wards to a cheap boarding-house, and finally, after subsist 
 ing awhile at " free lunches," borrow money to go home, 
 where they arrive haggard and savage. I might speak of 
 the impossibility of making good appointments in such cir 
 cumstances ; of the much better chance that brazen im 
 portunity has at such a time than merit ; of the greater 
 likelihood that a noisy eleventh-hour convert will get an 
 office than a man who has borne the burden and heat of 
 the day, but has omitted to come to Washington ; or 
 of the infernal cruelty of working a President to within an 
 inch of his life in the first six weeks of his term. But all 
 things cannot be said in one short article. The great evil 
 of the system, as it is seen at Washington, is, that it com 
 pels the chief persons of the government to expend most 
 of their time and strength upon a matter that properly be 
 longs to subordinates. When President Grant came into 
 office, there were several matters of great importance which 
 
 * A Washington letter of April 2, 1869, has the following: " To-day the 
 hundreds of office-seekers now here flocked to the CapitoL At about two 
 o clock General Porter made his appearance, and after depositing with the 
 Senate his sealed packages of appointments he repaired to the Secretary s 
 office, and there placed a list of the same for the public. In an instant a 
 grand rush was made for this office, and soon there was scarcely standing- 
 room therein. The reporters of the afternoon papers tried in vain to 
 secure copies of the names on the list, but the hungry, anxious, and eager 
 crowds rushed in pell-mell. It was amusing to see the expressions of the 
 faces of these people after the list had been read. Of course none of the 
 successful candidates were present, and all were disappointed. The score 
 or more persons seeking the same office sought their Congressmen, and 
 each demanded explanations of the why and wherefore. Profanity raged 
 
 among all The 8.40 train for New York was packed with the most 
 
 dejected, pitiful, profane, and demoralized crowd of men that ever left 
 this city." 
 
18 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 demanded his attention and that of his Cabinet ; such as 
 Cuba, the Alabama claims, reconstruction, and the adop 
 tion of a financial policy. The consideration of such sub 
 jects is the high duty which the Constitution assigns to the 
 heads of the government, and in order to get that duty 
 done the people gave General Grant their votes. But dur 
 ing the first week of his term he was worn out, day after 
 day, by listening to the claims and settling the differences 
 of people whose existence would naturally be known to a 
 President or a Cabinet Minister only through the Blue 
 Book. 
 
 And this, let me add, is the chief labor of a President 
 all through his term. " What is it to be President 1 " I 
 once asked of a gentleman who had filled the office ; 
 " what is the principal thing a President does 1 " The reply 
 was, " To make appointments." A mere lounger about 
 Washington can see that this is true ; and it is manifest to 
 all who look over such documents as that containing the 
 testimony taken by the Covode Committee in 1860. The 
 reader of that choice volume perceives that Mr. Buchanan 
 wrote long letters and spent laborious hours in forcing, 
 upon the Philadelphia Navy- Yard an incompetent head- 
 carpenter. The authorities of the yard sent back word 
 that the man could not pass his examination. No matter ; 
 the President of the United States would have him ap 
 pointed, and he was appointed ; for he had rendered ser 
 vices in the Presidential election which a Buchanan could 
 not overlook. The following is a portion of the man s 
 sworn testimony : 
 
 " Question. Do you mean to say that you gave [naturali 
 zation] papers to parties who subsequently used them in 
 elections without ever going before a court to make the 
 necessary proof [of five years -residence] 1 
 
 "Answer. I have given a few. 
 
 " Ques. Well, how many did you distribute yourself 1 ? 
 
 " Ans. Two or three thousand" * 
 
 This was the man Patrick Lafferty was his name 
 whom the President of the United States put over the 
 heads of American mechanics. I do not adduce the fact to 
 illustrate the corrupting tendency of rotation, but to show 
 
 * Covode Investigation, p. 396. 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 19 
 
 the petty nature of the employments to which it reduces 
 the head of the government. I am not sure that Mr. 
 Buchanan was aware of the kind of service which his Irish 
 friend had rendered him ; but the assiduous Lafferty swore 
 that when he failed to pass his examination he went to 
 Washington and conversed with the President upon the 
 subject for an hour and a half. We also find the Presi 
 dent, upon the pages of this huge volume, meddling in the 
 pettiest details of the pettiest ward elections, and superin 
 tending the division of the vulgarest portion of the spoils. 
 He arranged the division and subdivision of the profits 
 made on the public printing, and he parcelled out among 
 three of his Pennsylvania neighbors the percentage allowed 
 on the price of the coal purchased for the government. 
 Do we elect a President for such work as this 1 Mr. Lin 
 coln, too, was immersed in the most trivial details of ad 
 ministration. I think he must have spent more than half 
 his time, and a full third of his strength, in arranging 
 affairs of which, in a properly constituted public service, 
 he would never have heard ; and this, with a million men 
 in the field, and the existence of the nation at stake. 
 That the same system prevails to-day I have a hundred 
 proofs before me ; but they are needless, for every one 
 knows it to be the case. We have even read lately a 
 printed notice, signed by the commandant of a navy-yard, 
 in which it is stated that " no person hostile to the present 
 administration will be employed in the yard," and that 
 " the Secretary of the Navy particularly desires " the en 
 forcement of this rule. 
 
 Now, human nature being what it is, we may be sure 
 that nine Presidents out of ten will make nine appoint 
 ments out of ten with an eye to their own re-election, or 
 the election of their candidate. They will generally make 
 haste to have the fifty thousand office-holders active agents 
 in their behalf; and since "power over a man s support 
 has always been held and admitted to be power over his 
 will," an ambitious and able President can easily convert 
 all that large army of men from servants of the public 
 into personal retainers. John Tyler, of precious memory, 
 for example, employed his postmasters in circulating copies 
 of a campaign Life of himself. They were called upon by 
 
20 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 a circular letter, franked, to subscribe for and spread 
 abroad " fifty or sixty copies," which would be furnished 
 " at the low price of fifty dollars a hundred." This cir 
 cular letter was accompanied by a note penned in the 
 President s own office by his son and secretary. The fol 
 lowing is a copy of the note : 
 " (Private.) PRESIDENT S HOUSE, 1st Dec., 1843. 
 
 " SIR : As it is considered of importance, in justice to 
 the President, to circulate among the people the work 
 spoken of in Mr. Abell s letter accompanying this, you will 
 confer a favor on the undersigned by taking such measures 
 for that end as Mr. A. suggests. 
 
 " Prompt attention and a liberal subscription will render 
 your services still more useful. 
 
 " I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 " JOHN TYLER, JR." 
 
 This letter, I believe, correctly represents a system 
 which time has not materially changed. As a rule, we 
 shall not have in the Presidential chair such blundering 
 people as Tyler and Johnson, who let their clumsy hands 
 be seen from behind the curtain of the show ; but no 
 President who could be nominated by the present style of 
 politicians can be reasonably expected to refrain from 
 using his power to perpetuate his power. Rotation be 
 littles, personalizes, and disgraces the government in its 
 every department and grade. From peculiar circum 
 stances, I am thoroughly familiar with the working of the 
 system, and I am convinced that Mr. John Stuart Mill s 
 recent utterance on this subject is the truth. He well 
 says that rotation is the evil of our government,* and that 
 
 * " I hnve long thought," wrote Mr. Mill, a few months ago, to a friend 
 in New York, apropos of Mr. Jenckes s bill, " that the appointments to 
 office without regard to qualifications are the worst side of American in 
 stitutions, the main cause of what is justly complained of in their practi 
 cal operation, and the principal hindrance to the correction of what is 
 amiss, as well as a cause of ill-repute to democratic institutions all over 
 the world. If appointments were given, not by political influence, but by 
 open competition, the practice of turning out the holders of office, at 
 every change in politics, in order to reward partisans, would necessarily 
 cease, and with it nearly all the corruption and larger half of the virulence 
 of mere party conflict. I have been delighted to see that Mr. Jenckes s 
 measure meets with increasing support from disinterested opinion, though 
 it will have to encounter the utmost hostility from the professional poli 
 ticians, who are the great perverters of free government." 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 21 
 
 professional politicians are the great perverters of free 
 government. Rotation has created professional politicians, 
 and by rotation alone they are kept in being. The order 
 did not exist before Jackson debauched the government : it 
 will cease to exist when Mr. Jeiickes has reformed it. 
 
 At the penitentiary upon Blackwell s Island, near New 
 York, the superintendent once pointed out to me a young 
 man (not more than twenty-eight) who had been in the 
 prison fifty-seven times. Other young men there had been 
 " sent up " thirty times, twenty times, eighteen times, ten 
 times ; and, I think, comparatively few were serving their 
 first term. This led to the disclosure of the fact that 
 most of the crime in the large cities of the world is com 
 mitted by a small number of professional villains, who 
 pass their short lives between the prison and the streets ; 
 not unfrequently getting themselves arrested and convicted 
 when times are hard. Thus the Tombs in New York has, 
 like the Astor House, its regular customers; and Black- 
 well s Island is, like Newport, a place of resort ; and the 
 virtuous portion of the people pay three or four millions 
 per annum for the support, arrest, and entertainment of a 
 few thousand individuals who have adopted stealing as a 
 vocation. We support them out of prison and we support 
 them in prison. Rotation in office has called into exist 
 ence an order of politicians as distinct as the order of 
 thieves ; and the inhabitants of New York do not need to 
 be informed that between these two orders there is an 
 affinity, such as that which we suspected between Bu 
 chanan and Lafferty. If anything is certain, it is this : 
 the rotation system is developing this affinity into an alli 
 ance. In the city of New York, we all see this ; but the 
 country at large is so sound, and there are still so many 
 respectable men in office and so much of the public busi 
 ness is tolerably done, that the tendency is less apparent 
 to those who live out of the large seaports. But the ten 
 dency exists. Honorable men, who are still occasionally 
 sought for office, instinctively perceive it, and shrink from 
 contact with a class who seem to have something in com 
 mon with men of prey which easily develops into an under 
 standing, into a partnership. 
 
 That coal agency, already referred to, may serve as an 
 
22 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 example of the way in which political transactions shade 
 off into criminal ones. Half a dozen applicants for the 
 agency were in Washington, all of whom had spent money 
 and wind in the preceding election, and all neighbors or 
 friends of the President. Some of the applicants and their 
 adherents met and talked the matter over, and they agreed 
 at length that one of their number should be appointed 
 agent, and that the emoluments of the office should be 
 equally divided between him and two others. It is hardly 
 necessary to add that neither of the three knew anything 
 particular about coal, or even took pains to inquire ; one 
 of them being a physician, another an editor, and the 
 third an omnibus proprietor. The business was " turned 
 over to Stone, Tyler, & Co.," who "became at once the 
 purchasers for, and the sellers to, the government." I am 
 happy to be able to add, that when Mr. Getz, editor of the 
 Reading Gazette, came to understand the arrangement, he 
 declined to take any share of its profits ; so that the doctor 
 and the omnibus man had the whole fourteen thousand 
 dollars a year to divide between them. I do not say that 
 this was as bad as picking pockets, but only that it was 
 akin to it. 
 
 It is ludicrous to observe sometimes how entirely the 
 public service is lost sight of under this insensate system, 
 and what absolute puppets the lower officials are in the 
 games of the higher. If a member of Congress, for example, 
 bolts on an administration measure, the President turns 
 out of office the postmasters, lighthouse-keepers, custom 
 house clerks, and navy-yard laborers who owed their ap 
 pointments to him. There is something about this so 
 exquisitely absurd, that it is provocative of laughter rather 
 than horror, as when we read of those usages of barbarous 
 tribes which have the peculiarity of being both deadly and 
 silly. We are so constituted that murder itself becomes 
 laughable if a Chinaman is hung up by his pigtail; and 
 suicide excites mirth when we read of a Japanese nobleman 
 going aside and quietly ripping himself up. So, when we 
 read of Buchanan turning a mechanic out of his shop 
 because a New York member voted against Lecompton, we 
 can hardly resist the comic incongruity of the transaction. 
 I cannot read seriously such a passage as the following 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 23 
 
 from the Covode Report, although I know that precisely 
 the same system prevails to-day, and that it is as mon 
 strous as it is ridiculous : 
 
 " The division of patronage among members was well 
 known in the Brooklyn navy-yard. Each master workman 
 understood to whom he and each of his fellows owed their 
 places. Thus the constructive engineer, the master plumber, 
 and the master block-maker represented Mr. Sickles ; the 
 master painter represented Mr. Learing ; the master spar- 
 maker, master blacksmith, and timber-inspector represent 
 ed Mr. Maclay Lawrence Cohane was appointed 
 
 master carpenter upon the nomination of Mr. Haskin, 
 in the general division of patronage. Tie was removed on 
 account of Mr. llaskin s course upon the Lecompton Constitu 
 tion" 
 
 Each of these representative master mechanics selects 
 and discharges the men of his shop, and he is expected to 
 do this with the most implicit deference to the will and 
 political interest of the member who caused his appoint 
 ment. But to this, it seems, other members sometimes 
 object. Thus, Mr. Haskin procured the appointment of 
 Master Carpenter Cohane ; but we find the Hon. John 
 Cochrane addressing the unfortunate Cohane thus : " I will 
 have my proportion of men under you ; if you do not give 
 
 them, I will lodge charges against you I will make 
 
 application that you be turned out. The bearer will bring 
 me an answer." The master painter, about the same time, 
 took the very great liberty of discharging a man for habit 
 ual drunkenness. The man s member of Congress made 
 the following remark to the master painter in consequence : 
 " You may set it down as a fact that I will have you re 
 moved if I can, if you don t put that man back again." 
 The drunkard was not put back again, and the master 
 painter ivas removed. Another member writes to the 
 master of one of the shops : " As a general thing, Hugh Mc- 
 Laughlin, master laborer, knows who my friends are, and 
 he will confer with you at all times." 
 
 In these absurd contentions the Secretary of the Navy 
 himself did not disdain to mingle, and of course we find 
 him siding with the aggrieved member and adding the 
 weight of his positive order to effect the member s purpose. 
 
24 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Equally, of course, it was the refuse of the mechanics of 
 New York and Brooklyn who usually came to the yard 
 backed with a member s demand for their employment; 
 and thus the Brooklyn navy-yard, once the pride of ship 
 builders, to be employed in which was formerly a coveted 
 honor, was "reduced to a mere political machine where 
 idleness, theft, insubordination, fraud, and gross neglect of 
 duty prevailed to an alarming degree." Of course ! An 
 employer who treats his workmen thus deserves to be 
 served so, and always will be. The wonder is, that any 
 ship built in the yard kept afloat long enough to reach 
 Sandy Hook. 
 
 A noteworthy circumstance is, that members of Congress 
 of any intelligence, who employ this system, are as keenly 
 alive to its absurdities and its ill consequences as we are 
 who pay the cost and suffer the shame of it. That very 
 John Cochrane who would have his share of the nav} T -yard 
 carpenters has solemnly declared that the system is an un 
 mitigated evil, injurious to the purity of elections, injurious 
 to the mechanic and his work, and a frightful nuisance 
 to members, who are beset at every turn by applicants. 
 Another member has testified : " My house was run down. 
 I was addressed upon the subject in the street ; when in 
 the lower part of the city on business I would be pursued ; 
 and I really could find no rest by reason of the great num 
 ber of such applications This whole system tends, 
 
 in the first place, to the demoralization of the laboring class 
 to their serious detriment, and, in my judgment, to the 
 degradation, personal and political, of members of Con 
 gress." As men and citizens they all comprehend this ; 
 while as politicians they insist on having their share of its 
 supposed advantages. 
 
 " We shall be broken up," said Senator Trumbull of Illi 
 nois, in April last, "unless some administration will set 
 the example, or some legislation will compel it, of making 
 the price of office good behavior only. The scenes and the 
 scramble of the last month have been disgraceful, as you 
 know. But you do not probably know the effect of this 
 periodical rotation upon Congress. For example, I want 
 the Secretary of the Treasury to give my man an office. I 
 go up to the department and wait there for an audience. 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 25 
 
 long or short, as the case may be. The Secretary speaks 
 encouragingly. Next day I go up again, and he is not 
 quite so sanguine. It is by this steady persistence that 
 offices are obtained here. Not merit, nor recommendation, 
 nor impulse, but dingdonging, obtains the offices. Well, 
 the Secretary has a financial policy, perhaps. How can I, 
 as a senator, speak independently of his policy, while my 
 man is in a state of suspense 1 Thus the executive part of 
 the government paralyzes in a great degree the legislator s 
 independence." 
 
 A striking case in point, which clearly illustrates the 
 working of the system, was furnished by a late collector of 
 the New York custom-house, who desired to represent the 
 United States at the court of St. Petersburg. The Senate 
 frustrated his ambition, and he took his revenge by turning 
 out of the custom-house thirty clerks and porters whom a 
 New York senator had recommended for appointment. A 
 gentleman who was present when the thirty new men were 
 sworn in asked the collector whether the vacancies had 
 been created in order to retaliate upon the senator for his 
 adverse vote. He did not deny the soft impeachment, 
 though he. pretended that the thirty dismissed were "in 
 competent." He concluded his answer to the question in 
 these words : " Blood is thicker than water. If a man 
 cheats me I arn going to pay him off for it. I did not 
 want the mission to Russia particularly. It would have 
 cost me ten thousand dollars a year to go there. But then, 
 when a man makes up his mind to do a thing he don t like 
 to be cheated out of it. There have not been more than 
 thirty new appointments made." Thirty men suddenly 
 deprived of their means of living, and thirty more lured 
 perhaps from stable employments, in order to gratify the 
 spite of a person whom it had been an affront to Russia to 
 send thither as a representative of the United States ! How 
 foolish it is for us to complain of the alleged peculations of 
 custom-house officials ! Has it ever been possible, in any 
 age or country, to get decent and capable men to serve on 
 these terms ; to be the puppets and instruments of such a 
 person for a hundred and fifty dollars a month 1 You can 
 get thieves on such terms. You can get fools on such 
 terms. You can get necessitous honest men for a short 
 2 
 
26 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 time on such terms. But Uncle Sam will never be well 
 served so long as he can stand by with his hands in his 
 pockets while his servants are thus treated. 
 
 " You don t do work enough to earn your salary," said a 
 chief of bureau, in this same custom-house, to one of the 
 clerks. " Work ! " exclaimed the young man, " I worked 
 to get here ; you surely don t expect me to work any 
 longer." 
 
 This anecdote, which sums up the system in a sentence, 
 is one of the hundreds of good things collected by the inde 
 fatigable industry of Mr. Jenckes. He relates another story, 
 to show the marvellous carelessness with which men are 
 selected even for situations requiring special or professional 
 knowledge. The chief clerk of the Office of Construction 
 in the Treasury Department being requested to give the 
 " full particulars " of his examination, thus replied : " Major 
 Barker commenced the examination by saying : You are 
 from New York, I believe, Mr. Clark] I replied that 
 I was. He then commenced a detailed narrative of his first 
 visit to New York, and gave me an interesting and graphic 
 account of the disturbance created in his mind by the noise 
 and confusion of the great city. The delivery of this nar 
 rative occupied, as nearly as I remember, about half an 
 hour. \ listened to it attentively, endeavoring to discover 
 some point in his discourse which had reference to my 
 (then present) examination. I failed to discover any 
 relevancy, and therefore made no reply. At the close of 
 his narrative, without any further question, he said to his 
 associate examiners : * Well, gentlemen, I presume there is 
 no doubt but that Mr. Clark is qualified. Whereupon 
 they all signed the certificate, and my examination 
 closed." 
 
 Is it not one of the wonders of the world that the Treas 
 ury building stood long enough to get the roof upon it 1 
 But the erection of an edifice ever so huge is an easy task 
 compared with other tasks less conspicuous. A building is 
 open to the inspection of all the world ; few men would 
 apply for employment upon it who were wholly incompe 
 tent ; and it was easier to build it tolerably right than 
 obviously wrong. But you cannot collect a whiskey-tax on 
 rotation principles. I have quoted Thomas Benton s maxim 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 27 
 
 that power over a man s livelihood is power over his will. 
 Now, who has power over a tax-collector s livelihood 1 Mr. 
 E. A. Rollins, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, answers 
 this question for us in one of his reports. The whiskey-tax, 
 he assures us, can never be collected until " the combined 
 and active hostility of all those against whom the law is 
 enforced shall be insufficient for the removal of any officer 
 opposed to their plundering*" He says further: "The 
 evil is inherent in the manner of appointments, and lies 
 deeper than the present supremacy of any political party. 
 .... Their tenure of office when secured is uncertain and 
 feeble, seeming to be strengthened rather by concessions to 
 wrong than by exacting the rights of the government." That 
 tells the whole story. They naturally obey the power 
 which gave and can take away their places. Uncle Sam, to 
 use the language of the ring, "goes back" on those who 
 carry his commission ; does not stand by his servants when 
 they do their duty. He treats his servants vilely; and, 
 as a natural consequence, many of them are exceedingly 
 remiss, or worse, in their duty. This error costs him, it is 
 computed, in the collection of the revenue alone, a round 
 hundred millions per annum in mere money, without reck 
 oning the injury to the morals of the people, and the bad 
 example set to other employers. " I can t get a man 
 of talent," said one of the architects employed by the gov 
 ernment, " to help me here ; because, first of all, the salary 
 is too low ; secondly, no degree of merit in a man can get 
 him an appointment ; and lastly, no degree of merit can 
 keep a good man in a place if he should happen to get 
 one." 
 
 Let no one hug the delusion that the system is changed 
 under President Grant. He cannot change it. I have no 
 doubt he is as fully alive to its absurdities and its impolicy 
 as any man living ; but, like Mr. Lincoln, he feels that he 
 must run the machine as he finds it. He is, indeed, a vic 
 tim of the system, which may yet cost him his life, as it 
 cost the lives of two of his predecessors. His appointments 
 show that he practically accepts the doctrine that to the 
 victors belong the spoils, and that he is even exceptionally 
 insensible to the peculiar claims which politicians occa 
 sionally respect. In fact, he is worried out of his life with 
 
28 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the endless succession of importunate applicants. I used 
 to wonder in Washington that he did not give it up, and fly 
 to parts unknown, leaving us without any Uncle Sam. In 
 all probability, too, he desires re-election. Every President 
 desires it. It is human nature. The politicians would 
 drop him in an instant, and set "party organs" at work 
 creating odium against him, if he were to pause and make 
 appointments on any other principle than the one which 
 politicians recognize ; and when the nominating convention 
 met, in 1872, his name would not be mentioned among the 
 candidates. 
 
 Nothing will ever touch this evil short of restoring to the 
 public service that element of permanence which it once 
 had, and which all successful private establishments pos 
 sess. In the lower grades of the persons employed in our 
 great houses of business, there are frequent changes. 
 Young men come and go, as they ought, trying themselves 
 and the places they fill. Sometimes the person resigns the 
 place and sometimes the place rejects the person ; and it is 
 seldom indeed that a man goes on for life as he begins. 
 But in the higher grades there is, there should be, there 
 must be, a degree of permanence. Twice a year, for fifteen 
 years, I have gone to a certain bank to receive a dividend 
 for a person who cannot conveniently go herself. Invaria 
 bly I find the same paying-teller, well-appointed, self-pos 
 sessed, counting out the money with that careful rapidity 
 that never permits a mistake ; the same excellent cashier, 
 who learned his Latin Reader at my side at school no end 
 of years ago ; the same serene and agreeable dividend-clerk, 
 and the same nice young man helping him. All goes like 
 clock-work; all is efficient, vigorous, and successful. The 
 young men, as is just, work hard, get little, and are not yet 
 certain of keeping their places ; but they know that if they 
 finally choose to trust their future to that bank, there are 
 places in it for the deserving which will give them a decent 
 livelihood and all the security needful for peace and dignity. 
 So it could be at the custom-house round the corner, if only 
 two men in it were fixed in their places during good be 
 havior ; namely, the collector and the appraiser. Give just 
 those two men a fair compensation, say thirty thousand 
 dollars a year and no fees ; put it out of the power of poli- 
 
UNCLE SAM S TREATMENT OF HIS SERVANTS. 29 
 
 ticians to remove them ; give them the right to select their 
 assistants ; and hold them responsible for the faithful col 
 lection of the duties, and we should soon have a custom 
 house that would afford as pleasing a scene of tranquil and 
 efficient industry as the bank. The principle of perma 
 nence should be carried much farther ; but even this little 
 would lay the axe at the root of the evil, and give Uncle 
 Sam better work and more revenue at two thirds of the 
 present expense. 
 
 After a trial of forty years, rotation stands condemned as 
 a wholly unmitigated evil, hurting everybody and blessing 
 nobody, helping nothing that is good, and aggravating every 
 evil. Uncle Sam will never be better served than he is 
 until he learns to treat his servants with a liberality and 
 consideration that seem at present far from his thoughts. 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 
 
 rpHOSE horrible Yanks ! I have seen them in their 
 I native haunts. The most dreadful creatures become 
 interesting when, regarding them only as objects of natural 
 history, we creep up near their den, and watch them as 
 they devour their prey, caress their cubs, and gambol in 
 the sun. Perhaps a busy universe, which has heard al 
 ready a good deal about the mean, low, cheating, infidel, 
 and entirely odious Yankee, may yet be willing to lean 
 back in its arm-chair for a short time, and learn how he 
 looks to a stranger s eyes, and how he comports himself 
 amid his own hills and rocks, in that unique organization 
 of his, a New England town. 
 
 There was published, a year or two since, an article 
 upon Chicago, which chanced to attract the notice of 
 a young gentleman then residing among us, a citizen 
 of the Argentine Republic, which is the United States 
 of South America. He was so much struck with the 
 exploits of the people of Chicago, that he translated the 
 article into Spanish, and caused it to be published as a 
 pamphlet in his native land, with a Preface calling upon 
 his countrymen to imitate the spirit, energy, forethought, 
 and patriotism displayed by the men of the prairie me 
 tropolis. It was well done of him ; for, indeed, the creators 
 of Chicago have performed, and are performing, the task 
 assigned them in a manner unexampled in the history of 
 the world ; and the record of what they have done and are 
 doing will for ages be a chapter in our history honorable to 
 this nation and instructive to others. But perhaps one of 
 those quiet towns sleeping among the umbrageous hills of 
 New England is a triumph of man over circumstances and 
 over himself not less remarkable than the more striking 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 31 
 
 and splendid achievements of the Chicagonese. And what 
 is Chicago but a New England town in extremely novel 
 circumstances, that was forced to undertake enormous en 
 terprises, and compelled to expand, in thirty years, into a 
 high-pressure Boston 1 If I could only succeed in revealing 
 to mankind the town of New England, its defects as 
 well as its merits, I should have produced something 
 worth translating into every tongue. 
 
 It is evident that the Yankee system, with modifications, 
 is destined to prevail over the fairest parts of this con 
 tinent, if not finally over the best portions of the other. 
 It prevails already in the West as far as San Francisco, the 
 famous Vigilance Committee of which was a veritable town 
 meeting. Wherever the Yankee soldier has tramped the 
 Yankee schoolmarm will teach. Noble and chivalric gentle 
 men may throw stones at her windows, burn her school- 
 house, drive her from their neighborhood ; but she re 
 appears, she or her cousin, and the work of Yankee- 
 fication proceeds. First Julius Caisar, then Roman civiliza 
 tion, then Christianity. The soldier must always go first, 
 and open the country. In this fortunate instance, the 
 gentle and knowing schoolmarm quickly follows the man 
 of war, and she is preparing the way for the gradual re 
 organization of the South upon the general plan of New 
 England towns. It is hard for the noble and chivalric 
 gentlemen to bear, but it seems inevitable. The Carolinas 
 may object, and Georgia expel; Texas may slay, and 
 Louisiana massacre, it will not avail ; this is the fate in 
 reserve for them. The Yankee schoolmarm is extremely 
 addicted to writing long letters home, which go the round 
 of the village, are carried into the next county, and are 
 sent at last to circulate by mail over all the land. Most 
 graphic and powerful some of her letters are, and New 
 England knows her new conquest in this way. The school- 
 marm s lover has thoughts of settling there, when the land 
 itself is " settled." Her uncle the capitalist has long had 
 an eye on those rich lands, those unused watercourses, 
 those mines and quarries. She is merely one of the first 
 to tread the path worn by the army shoe stamped U. S. A. 
 
 A New England town, the distant reader will please take 
 note, is not a town, though it may have a town in it, and 
 
32 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 two or three villages besides. It is a subdivision of a 
 county, or, to use the language of the law-books, it is " an 
 organized portion of the inhabitants of a State, within 
 denned limits of territory, within the same county." It 
 may consist of only three or four hundred people, or of 
 several thousands. Perhaps two thousand may be an 
 average number, which gives about three hundred voters ; 
 and the average circumference of the territory may be 
 about ten miles. Every five years the selectmen are re 
 quired to "perambulate" the boundaries, to see that the 
 boundary-stones and guide-boards are right ; and this work, 
 I believe, is generally done in one day. The inhabitants 
 of this area are an association for the performance of 
 certain duties imposed upon them by the State. They are, 
 says the law, a " corporate body," which is intrusted with 
 powers denned and limited. It can fine you a dollar for 
 driving over a bridge faster than a walk, or twenty dollars 
 for declining a town office. It can itself be fined fifty 
 dollars for not having a cattle-pound, five hundred dollars 
 for not electing town officers, a thousand dollars if a person 
 falls through a rotten bridge and loses his life, and three 
 thousand dollars for sending to the legislature more 
 members than it is entitled to. It is responsible as 
 much so as a railroad company for any accidents happen 
 ing through its fault, and can claim damages for an injury 
 done to itself. It can sue and be sued as though it were 
 one man. It can hold, hire, buy, sell, let, lease, or give 
 away real estate. It can tax and be taxed, both, how 
 ever, for purposes named in the law, and for no others. 
 For example, it can raise money by taxation to pay for 
 schools, public libraries, the support of the poor, guide- 
 boards, burial-grounds, bridges, roads, markets, pounds, 
 hay-scales, standard weights and measures, public clocks, 
 houses destroyed to stop a conflagration, the prosecution 
 and defence of suits. Such of these things as concern other 
 towns, or the county, the State, the United States, or the 
 universe, each town is compelled to provide, bridges, 
 pounds, roads, and schools, for example. But the towns 
 may or may not vote money for hay-scales or a public 
 library. The schools are a necessity ; the library is merely 
 desirable in a high degree. The cattle-pound protects neigh- 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 33 
 
 boring towns from devastation ; but it is a question for 
 each town to decide, whether or not it will have a public 
 clock or a soldiers monument. 
 
 The governing power of a New England town is the whole 
 body of voters in town meeting assembled. Speaking gen 
 erally (for all the States of New England have not yet quite 
 come up to the standard of the most advanced), we may 
 say that every man, white or black, is a voter, who can 
 read the constitution of his State in the English language 
 understanding^, and who is not an alien, a lunatic, a pau 
 per, or a convict. 
 
 The exclusion of paupers is of small consequence, because 
 in most of the towns there are no paupers able to go to the 
 polls, and in many there are no paupers at all. At the 
 time of the first cable celebration, Mr. Cyrus Field, desirous 
 that all the world should rejoice, sent orders to his native 
 village in New England that a banquet should be provided 
 at his expense for the paupers of the whole town. The 
 selectmen sent back word that there were no paupers; and 
 there are none there now. Your mean Yankee is a stickler 
 for justice ; and it would offend his sense of justice, that a 
 man who had contributed nothing to the fund raised by 
 taxation should have a voice in directing its expenditure. 
 He is beginning to think, too, that it is hardly fair to tax 
 a widow or an independent spinster and refuse her a vote 
 in town meeting. Here and there there is a bold Yankee 
 who goes further than this, and pronounces it unwise to 
 exclude such women as Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Stowe, Miss 
 Catharine Beecher, and Mrs. Horace Mann, while admitting 
 to the franchise every male citizen who can be trusted 
 alone out of doors, and who can boggle through a para 
 graph of the Constitution. In some towns, where a few 
 crusty old farmers can always be depended on to defeat a 
 liberal scheme, the votes of the ladies, it is thought, would 
 give a lift to the library and a blow to the grog-shop, and 
 help all the civilizing measures. The necessity of women s 
 assistance becomes more apparent as the towns advance in 
 wealth and refinement ; and the Yankee would long ago 
 have seen this, and sought the aid of the decorative sex, 
 but for a few words in an ancient epistle. 
 
 The exclusion from the polls of men who cannot read 
 2* c 
 
34 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 works nothing but good.* It is a measure absolutely ne 
 cessary in the peculiar circumstances of the United States ; 
 and I will venture to predict that every State will in time 
 adopt it, or, like the city of New York, become a prey to 
 the spoiler. This law, however, excludes very few natives 
 of the soil. If, in a New England town, there chances to 
 be a native who cannot read and write, he is regarded as a 
 curiosity, and is pointed out to strangers as one of the ob 
 jects of interest in the place. There is one such man near 
 Stockbridge, in Massachusetts, who was pointed out to me 
 last summer as the only native of New England in all that 
 region who could neither read nor write. The people ap 
 peared to be rather proud of him than otherwise, as though 
 he had given no slight proof of an ingenious mind in hav 
 ing escaped so many boy-traps and man-traps, baited with 
 spelling-books, as they have in New England. The reading 
 law merely keeps away from the polls the grossly ignorant 
 among the foreign population, who, being unable to read, 
 are dependent upon other men s eyes and minds for their 
 political information, and who can be driven in herds to the 
 polls by the party having the least scruples. 
 
 Major De Forest, in one of his valuable and entertaining 
 articles on the " Man and Brother," has intimated an opin 
 ion that the black man will never associate in this country 
 on equal terms with the white man. Never is a long time, 
 and we cannot even see into the next century ; but I should 
 say that the condition of the colored people in New Eng 
 land supports the gallant Major s conjecture. There are 
 not more than twelve or fifteen thousand negroes in Massa 
 chusetts ; but they are so unequally distributed that you 
 may occasionally find a considerable number of them in 
 one town. They stand before the law equal to the white 
 man ; their children sit in the public schools side by side 
 with his ; they are treated with consideration and respect ; 
 
 * " No person shall have the right to vote, or be eligible to office under 
 the Constitution of this Commonwealth, who shall not be able to read the 
 Constitution in the English language, and write his name; provided, hoio- 
 ever, that the provisions of this amendment shall not apply to any person 
 prevented by a physical disability from complying with its requisitions, nor 
 to any person who now has the right to vote, nor to any persons who shall 
 be sixty years of age or upwards at the time this amendment shall take 
 effect." Constitution of Massachusetts. 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 35 
 
 they have the same opportunities to acquire property as the 
 white inan \ they go with him to the ballot-box and vote on 
 the same terms and conditions, nevertheless, their social 
 position is precisely the same in New England as it is in 
 North Carolina. They usually live in a cluster of cottages 
 in the outskirts of the village ; the men are laborers or wait 
 ers, and the women take in washing or go out to service. 
 They live in peace and abundance, but they are no nearer 
 social equality with the whites now than they were thirty 
 years ago. They seldom get on so far as to own a farm, 
 seldom learn a trade, and never run a factory or keep a 
 store. In the free high schools one of which nearly 
 every town in New England supports, or helps support 
 a colored youth is rarely found. In and near Stockbridge, 
 for example, there is a colored population of two hundred, 
 and they have been settled there for many years ; but no 
 colored boy or girl has ever applied for admission to the 
 high school, though it is free to all. 
 
 But the negro is an indispensable and delicious ingre 
 dient in the too serious and austere population of New 
 England. They appear to be the only people there who 
 ever abandon themselves to innocent merriment. What a 
 joyous scene is one of the negro balls so frequently given 
 in some of the New England villages ! In the morning, the 
 stranger notices upon the lordly, wide-spreading elm that 
 shades the post-office a neatly written paper, notifying the 
 public that an " entertainment " is to be given that evening 
 for the " benefit " of some afflicted person, perhaps a 
 woman whose husband a ruthless constable has taken off to 
 jail. "All who wish to enjoy a good time are respectfully 
 invited to attend, -admission, twenty-five cents," for which 
 a substantial supper of pork and beans and new cider is 
 furnished. Soon after eight in the evening the village re 
 sounds with the voice of a colored Stentor, who calls out 
 the figures of the quadrille, and all the world is thus noti 
 fied that the " entertainment " has begun. The scene with 
 in the ball-room might make some persons hesitate to decide 
 which destiny were the more desirable in New England, 
 to be born white or black. The participants seem so un 
 consciously and entirely happy ! An ancient uncle, white- 
 haired and very lame, stands near the entrance, seizes the 
 
36 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 new-comers with both hands, and gives them a roaring 
 and joyous welcome ; and there is a one-legged man with a 
 crutch, and four mothers with infants in their arms, who go 
 through a quadrille with the best of them. The mothers, 
 however, when they grow warm with the dance, hand the 
 blessed baby to a passing friend to hold. The band, which 
 consists of two male fiddlers and a woman who plays the 
 accordion, is seated upon a platform at one end of the long 
 room, and plays with eyes upcast, ecstatic, and keeps a 
 heel apiece going heavily upon the boards. The room itself 
 seems to be quivering. There is no walking through a 
 quadrille here ; but each performer, besides doing his pre 
 scribed steps, cuts as many supplementary capers as he can 
 execute in the intervals. A dance begins, it is true, with 
 some slight show of moderation ; but as it proceeds the 
 dancers throw themselves into it with a vigor and anima 
 tion that increase every moment, until the quadrille ends 
 in a glorious riot and delirium of dance and fun. No Mussul 
 man would ask these people why they did not require their 
 servants to do their dancing for them. On the contrary, 
 that famous pacha, catching their most contagious merri 
 ment, would have sprung upon the floor, and dashed his 
 three tails wildly about among those shining countenances. 
 Nevertheless, there was not the smallest violation of deco 
 rum ; all was as innocent as it was enjoyable. As the room 
 was lined with white spectators, perhaps we shall some day 
 learn the trick of cheap, innocent, and hearty enjoyment. 
 One thing was very noticeable, and would certainly be 
 noticed by any one familiar with the South, the purity 
 of blood exhibited in the faces of the company. Among 
 the one hundred and fifty dancers, there were perhaps ten 
 who were not quite black ; and this was an ancient settle 
 ment of colored people, dating back beyond the recollection 
 of the present inhabitants. The only fault with which their 
 white neighbors charge them is, that one or two in a hun 
 dred has not yet got the old plantation steal out of their 
 blood. A person interested in the health question would 
 observe the roundness and all but universal vigorous health 
 of these children of the tropics, which is another proof that 
 human nature in America does not dwindle necessarily. 
 " In town meeting assembled." Once a year, and oftener 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 37 
 
 if necessary, the voters of this small and convenient republic 
 meet to elect town officers, consider proposed improvements, 
 and vote taxes. The town meeting is a parliament, of 
 which every voter is an equal member, and the authority 
 of which is final so long as its acts are legal. It is a public 
 meeting clothed with power. 
 
 I will here respectfully invite the attention of the Argen 
 tine Eepublic, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, and all coun 
 tries supposed to be groaning under the yoke of the oppres 
 sor, and hoping one day to throw off that yoke, to the 
 following truth, now for the first time given to the world : 
 
 THAT PEOPLE is FIT FOR FREEDOM WHICH CAN HOLD A 
 PROPER PUBLIC MEETING. 
 
 To us how easy ! to a great part of the rest of mankind 
 how impossible ! Before a community reaches the stage of 
 development which admits of the public meeting, there 
 must exist in it considerable ability and knowledge, and 
 there must be a certain prevalence of what may be styled 
 the virtues of maturity, self-conquest and self-control. 
 Men must respect themselves, but respect one another also, 
 and, along with a proper confidence in their own opinions, 
 have a genuine tolerance for those of their neighbors. With 
 an ability to convince others, there must be in the people 
 the possibility of being convinced, as well as of frankly sub 
 mitting to a decision the most adverse to that for which 
 they had striven. A strong, keen, and constant sense of 
 justice must be tempered by a spirit of accommodation, an 
 aversion to standing upon trifles, and a disposition to wel 
 come a reasonable compromise. There must be in many of 
 the people a true public spirit, and in some a very great 
 and deep love of the public welfare, and a capacity for tak 
 ing a prodigious amount of trouble for a public object. The 
 desire to shine, so natural to immature persons and races, 
 must have been by many outgrown, or, at least, exalted into 
 a noble ambition to be of service, and thus to win the ap 
 proval of the community. An insatiate vanity in only two 
 or three individuals might render profitable debate impos 
 sible ; nor less harmful is that other manifestation of morbid 
 self-love which we call bashfulness. 
 
 The horrible Yanks, with all their faults, do actually pos 
 sess the qualities requisite for holding a public meeting in 
 
38 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 a higher degree than any other people. They have governed 
 themselves by public meeting for two hundred years or 
 more. It seems now instinctive in them, when a thing is 
 to be done or considered by a body of men, to put it to the 
 vote and be governed by the decision of the majority. The 
 most curious illustration of this fact that has been recorded 
 is the one related by Mrs. John Adams in one of her letters 
 of 1774 to her husband. The men of Braintree and neigh 
 boring towns, alarmed lest the British general should seize 
 their store of powder, assembled on a certain Sunday even 
 ing to the number of two hundred, marched to the powder- 
 house, took out the powder, conveyed it to a place of safety, 
 and secreted it. On their way they captured an odious 
 Tory, and found upon him some still more odious documents 
 aimed at the liberty of the Commonwealth. This man they 
 took with them, and, when the powder was disposed of, they 
 turned their attention to him and his documents. Readers 
 familiar with the period do not need to be reminded that 
 these men, marching so silently and seriously on that Sun 
 day evening, were profoundly moved and excited. All New 
 England, indeed, was thrilling and palpitating with mingled 
 resolve and apprehension. Nevertheless, instinct, or ancient 
 habit, was stronger than passion, even at such a crisis, in 
 these two hundred Yankee men, and therefore they resolved 
 themselves into a public meeting. Upon the hostile war 
 rants being produced and exhibited, it was put to the vote 
 whether they should be burnt or preserved. The majority 
 voting for burning them, the two hundred gathered in a 
 circle round the lantern, and looked on in silence while the 
 offensive papers were consumed. That done, and no 
 doubt there were blazing eyes in that grim circle of Puri 
 tans as well as blazing papers, " they called a vote whether 
 they should huzza ; but, it being Sunday evening, it passed in 
 the negative." 
 
 The reader who comprehends the entire significance of 
 that evening s performance knows New England. If I were 
 a painter, I would try and paint the scene at the moment 
 the blazing papers flashed light into the blazing eyes. If I 
 were a king, I should think several times before going to 
 war with people of that kind. 
 , After a practice of two centuries the Yankees would be 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 39 
 
 able to hold a very good town meeting without assistance, 
 and yet everything relating to it is prescribed and regulated 
 by statute. The people must be notified in just such a way ; 
 the business to be done must be expressed in the summons ; 
 and nothing can be voted upon or discussed unless it has 
 been thus expressed. In case the selectmen of a town 
 should unreasonably refuse to call a town meeting, any ten 
 voters can apply to a justice of the peace, and require him 
 to issue a call. Every possible, and almost every conceiv 
 able, abuse or unfairness has been anticipated and guarded 
 against by the legislature, and yet the town meeting is ab 
 solutely unfettered in doing right. It may also do wrong if 
 it chooses, provided it does wrong in the right way, and the 
 wrong is of such a nature as to harm nobody but itself. 
 And I will here observe, that, if any one would know how 
 deeply rooted in the heart of man is the love of justice, and 
 would inspect the most complete system of fair play man 
 kind possesses, let him buy, keep, and habitually read the 
 volume containing the Constitution and Revised Statutes of 
 Massachusetts. Most of the standard law books are inter 
 esting and edifying, but this one is the most instructive and 
 affecting of them all. It shows, in a striking manner, how 
 much better the heart of man is than his head ; for the 
 community which wrought out this beautiful system of 
 justice and humanity believed, ivhile it was doing it, in the 
 doctrine of total depravity ! Delightful inconsistency ! 
 Would that all the head s mistakes could be so gloriously 
 refuted by the other organ ! 
 
 The principal town meeting of the year generally occurs 
 in the spring, when the town officers are elected by ballot. 
 The town officers are : Three, five, seven, or nine selectmen, 
 who are the chief officers, and take care of things in general ; 
 a town clerk ; three or more truant officers j three or more 
 assessors ; three or more overseers of the poor ; a town 
 treasurer ; one or more surveyors of highways ; a constable ; 
 one or more collectors of taxes ; a pound-keeper ; two or 
 more fence-viewers ; one or more surveyors of lumber ; one 
 or more measurers of wood and bark ; a sealer of weights 
 and measures ; a ganger of liquid measures ; a superinten 
 dent of hay-scales. Here is a chance for office-seekers ! 
 But, unfortunately, the emoluments attached to these 
 
40 TOPICS OF THE TIME. ^ 
 
 offices are as small as the duties are light ; and it has been 
 found necessary to compel men to serve in them, if elected, 
 under penalty of a fine of twenty dollars, a sum much 
 larger than the usual amount of the fees. But then no 
 man can be made to serve two years in succession. These 
 officers being elected, the^town parliament proceeds to con 
 sider proposed improvements and appropriations ; and you 
 may frequently hear in the town hall excellent debating, 
 very much in the quiet and rather homely manner of the 
 British House of Commons, when country members get on 
 their legs to discuss country matters. There is usually a 
 total abstinence from all nights of oratory, for every man 
 who speaks or votes has a personal and pecuniary interest 
 in the question under debate. He who advocates a stone 
 bridge in place of the rickety old wooden one knows that 
 he will have to pay his share of the expense ; and he who 
 opposes it knows that he will have to cross the rickety 
 structure, and will have to pay his part of a thousand-dollar 
 fine when it lets a pedler through to destruction. 
 
 In the list of town magnates just given the reader may 
 have noticed " truant officers." They must be explained. 
 
 There is one thing upon which these mean Yankees are 
 entirely and unanimously resolved, and it is this : That no 
 child, of whatever race, color, or capacity, shall grow up 
 among them in ignorance. In the oldest of their records 
 we find the existence of the school-house taken for granted. 
 When there was no church in a town, no court-house, no 
 town-hall, there was always a school-house, which served 
 for all public purposes ; and ever since that early day the 
 school system has been extending and improving. Very 
 pleasant it is of a summer day to ride past the little lone 
 school-houses, and -peep in at the -open door, and see the 
 schoolmarm surrounded with her little flock of little chil 
 dren, whose elder brothers are in the fields ; nor less pleasant 
 is it to mark in every village the free high school, where 
 the pupils who have outgrown the common school continue 
 their studies, if they desire it, to the point of being pre 
 pared for college, and snatch a daily hour for base-ball 
 besides. Indeed, it is an excellent thing to be a child in 
 this land of the Yankees. If you are a good boy or girl 
 you have these common and high schools for your instruc- 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 41 
 
 tion ; if you are a bad boy, they send you off to a reforma 
 tory school to be made better, or to a ship school to be 
 changed into a good sailor ; and if you are a bad girl, there 
 is a girls industrial school for you, where you will be taught 
 good morals and the sewing-machine. And they do not 
 leave the bad boys and girls to go on in their evil ways 
 until they are developed into criminals. The towns in 
 Massachusetts are now authorized to appoint the truant 
 officers before mentioned, whose duty it is to take care that 
 every child between the ages of six and sixteen shall avail 
 itself either of public or private means of education. No 
 miserly parent, no hard master, no careless guardian, can 
 now defraud a child of his right to so much instruction as 
 will make it easy for him to go on instructing himself all 
 his life. 
 
 By way of showing how much in earnest the Yankees are 
 in this matter, I will insert upon this page certain " by-laws 
 concerning truants and absentees," which I had the pleasure 
 of reading last summer on a handbill displayed in the post- 
 office of a small village in New England. It seems to me 
 that these by-laws may convey a valuable hint to the 
 Argentine and other republics. The following selection 
 may be sufficient for our purpose : 
 
 "2. Any child between the ages of six and sixteen, who, 
 while a member of any school, shall absent himself or her 
 self from school without the consent of his or her teacher, 
 parent, or guardian, shall be deemed a truant." (Penalty, 
 a fine of twenty dollars, or a term not exceeding two years 
 in a reform school.) 
 
 " 3. Any child between the ages of six and fifteen, who 
 shall not attend some public school or suitable institution 
 of instruction at least twelve weeks in a year, six of which 
 shall be consecutive in the summer term, and six of which 
 shall be consecutive in the winter term, shall be deemed an 
 absentee. 
 
 " 4. ABSENTEES OF THE SECOND CLASS. Children be 
 tween the ages of seven and sixteen years of age, wandering 
 in the streets or loitering in stores, shops, or public places, 
 having no lawful occupation or business, and growing up in 
 ignorance, are hereby placed under supervision of the truant 
 officers, so far as the law provides. The first offence shall 
 
42 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 be reported to parent, guardian, or master of said child by 
 a truant officer, and, in case of the failure to secure said 
 child the requisite amount of schooling or instruction else 
 where; he shall be fined twenty dollars ; for the second 
 offence of the same person, the child shall be sent to the 
 almshouse or to the State Reform School, or the nautical 
 branch of the same, or State Industrial School for girls, for 
 a period agreeable to the statutes, as the justice of the 
 court having jurisdiction of the same shall decide." 
 
 " 6. It shall be the duty of every truant officer to inquire 
 diligently concerning all persons, between the ages afore 
 said, who seem to be idle or vagrant, or who, whether em 
 ployed or unemployed, appear to be growing up in igno 
 rance, and to enter a complaint against any one found 
 unlawfully absent from school, or violating any of these 
 by-laws. 
 
 "7. It shall be the duty of every truant officer, prior to 
 making any complaint before a justice, to notify the truant 
 or absentee child and its parents or guardian of the penalty 
 for the offence. If he can obtain satisfactory pledges of 
 reformation, which pledges shall subsequently be kept, he 
 shall forbear to prosecute." 
 
 In one of those country towns of New England, a person 
 likely to be elected a truant officer would have some knowl 
 edge of all the inhabitants. Hence it is now almost im 
 possible for the most perverse or neglected child to avoid 
 getting a little schooling. Each town, I should add, pays 
 for the maintenance of children sent from it to a reforma 
 tory school, provided the parents or guardians cannot. 
 The female teachers employed in the common schools re 
 ceive now from five to eight dollars a week, and the master 
 of a country high school from eight hundred to two thou 
 sand dollars a year. Twelve hundred dollars is very fre 
 quently the salary. Now, in a New England village, an 
 active man who has a saving wife and an ordinary-sized 
 garden, can live decently upon the salary last named, send 
 a. son to college, and give his daughters lessons on the 
 piano. 
 
 I suppose that in New England there is a less unequal 
 division of property than in any other region of a civilized 
 country. I chanced to be in a country bank there last 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME, 43 
 
 July, about the time when the coupons due on the first of 
 that month had been mostly paid, and the money for each 
 individual had been done up in a neatly folded small pack 
 age. The village was small, and remote from any impor 
 tant centre ; and these packages of greenbacks belonged to 
 the farmers, mechanics, and manufacturers of the neighbor 
 hood. I think there must have been half a peck of them, 
 perhaps a hundred packages. There are country towns 
 in New England where nearly every respectable house has 
 some United States bonds in it, and the Savings Bank will 
 wield a capital of half a million dollars besides. Reason : 
 diversified industry. These Yankees, finding themselves 
 planted upon a soil not too productive, were compelled at a 
 very early period to become good political economists ; and 
 while the fathers scratched the hard surface of the soil for 
 a few bushels of corn, the sons rigged small schooners, and 
 fished off the coast for cod. By and by they got on so far 
 as to build ships, in which they sailed to the coast of 
 Guinea, brought thence a load of slaves and a few quills of 
 gold-dust, sold the slaves to the West-Indians for molasses, 
 brought the molasses home, distilled it into rum, took the 
 rum to Guinea for more slaves, sent most of the gold-dust 
 to England for manufactured goods, and made the rest into 
 watch-chains and gold beads. Thus Newport was enriched ; 
 thus was founded in Rhode Island the manufacture of jew 
 elry and silver-ware which has attained such marvellous 
 proportions. This infernal commerce is now regarded by 
 the people of New England as wise and honest Catholics 
 regard the Inquisition and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew ; 
 that is, they wonder how their forefathers could have been 
 guilty of it, and attribute it chiefly to the general barbarism 
 of the age. 
 
 But the diversified industry remains, and it has enriched 
 New England. Those streams which wind about the wood 
 ed hills and mountains of this region, useless as they are 
 for navigation, shallow, winding, rocky, and rapid, frequent 
 ly have such a descent that there can be a factory village 
 every mile or two of their course for many successive 
 miles. Travellers by such railroads as the Housatonic 
 know this to their sorrow ; for these villages are so frequent 
 along the banks of the Housatonic River, that there is a 
 
44 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 stopping-place, at some parts of the line, every mile and a 
 half. Among the glorious, wood-crowned hills of Berk 
 shire I have passed in an afternoon ride the following man 
 ufactories : an iron-smelting furnace ; two very extensive 
 manufactories of the finest writing-paper, the linen rags 
 for which are brought from the shores of the Mediterranean ; 
 a large woollen mill ; a small factory of folding-chairs and 
 camp-stools ; a manufactory of something in cotton ; a mill 
 for grinding poplar wood into material for paper ; and some 
 others, at a little distance from the road, the nature of 
 which could not be discerned. All these may be seen in a 
 ride of ten miles along the Housatonic, and all are kept in 
 motion by that little bustling stream. 
 
 So much of this diversified industry as is legitimate (i. e. 
 unforced by a stimulating tariff) is beneficial ; the rest is 
 excessive and hurtful. It is excellent for the farmer to have 
 a market near his barn, but it is bad for him to have to 
 pay such a price for labor as neutralizes that advantage. 
 These numberless factories absorb female labor to such a 
 degree that I have known a family try for four months to 
 get a servant-girl in vain ; and the few girls in a village 
 that will go out to service are often the refuse of creation, 
 and rule their unhappy mistresses with a rod of iron. The 
 factories, too, are attracting to some parts of New England 
 Irish and German emigrants much faster than they can be 
 assimilated. I read in a religious Report : " The mountain 
 regions [of Massachusetts] are continually drained of a 
 large part of. their most enterprising population ; the fur 
 naces buy up the farms for the sake of their wood, and, 
 having skinned them, in the expressive language of the 
 region, sell them out at low prices to foreigners, who are 
 thus, in a number of places, coming into possession of hun 
 dreds of these mountain acres. This transfer of population, 
 while apparently beneficial both to those who go and those 
 who come, throws new burdens on the churches, and adds 
 new embarrassments to the already difficult problem of a 
 general popular Christianization. Considerable numbers of 
 the Canadian French are now coming into Berkshire, turn 
 ing its forests into fuel for the mills and founderies." 
 
 This is partly owing to the tariff stimulation of the fac 
 tories, and tends to show that stimulation is no better for 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 45 
 
 the body politic than for the corporeal system of man. 
 The truth remains, however, that diversified indust^ is one 
 of the chief secrets of a country s prosperity and progress. 
 The most desperate and deplorable poverty now to be seen 
 on earth so I am assured by an intelligent and universal 
 traveller is in some of the sugar and coffee districts of 
 Cuba, where Nature has lavished upon the land her richest., 
 gifts. There is room there for the planter, the slave, and] 
 the importer of manufactures ; all others cringe to the 
 plantation lord, as toadies, beggars, or white trash. j 
 
 It is curious to see how the emigrants, who arrive in the 
 country at the rate of a thousand a day, distribute them 
 selves over the land, and settle just where they are wanted. 
 These obscure factory villages of New England swarm with 
 Irish people and Germans j but no Yankee sends for them. 
 They come. If they do well, they induce their relations 
 and friends to join them ; if work is scarce, if the factory 
 closes, they either scatter among the farmers to subsist, and 
 wait for the reopening, or a band of them moves off to 
 Iowa, Wisconsin, or Minnesota. In the back country, em-" 
 ployers will make considerable sacrifices to avoid closing 
 their works during the long, snow-bound winter, partly 
 from benevolent feeling, partly from their unwillingness to 
 create a destitution which it will fall to them to relieve. 
 Here, as elsewhere, it is only about one third of the work 
 men who save their money and improve their position in 
 the world ; another third about hold their own, or can get 
 credit in dull seasons sufficient to carry them over to the 
 next period of superabundance ; another third live in such 
 a way that, if work ceases this week, they must go hungry 
 the next, unless more provident people help them. Some 
 of the factories in odd, out-of-the-way nooks of New Eng 
 land are of such antiquity that men who went into them as 
 boys are now gray-headed foremen or partners. Upon the 
 whole, I must confess that some of the factory villages, 
 with their rows of shabby cottages close together, their tall 
 factory buildings humming with machinery, and all the 
 refuse of manufacture lying about, do not leave an agree 
 able impression upon the mind of the visitor. But what 
 ever in them is merely unpleasing to the eye admits of easy 
 and inexpensive remedy. 
 
46 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 The time was when very few men would be farmers in 
 New England who could help it, and farming there is still 
 far from being an attractive or popular occupation. The 
 dearness of labor compels most of the proprietors of the 
 soil to work with their hands from the rising of the sun 
 to the going down of the same ; and, so long as this is the 
 case, the more capable of our idle species will extol the 
 noble occupation of the farmer, and avoid it. But the busi 
 ness is rising in dignity. It is beginning to detain the 
 superior sons of farmers from the city, and now and then 
 lures from the city a volunteer who brings to the soil a 
 highly trained and sure intelligence. The railroads go 
 everywhere, and enable the farmers of the most northern 
 town of Vermont to send to New York (three hundred and 
 fifty miles distant) commodities as bulky as hay and as 
 perishable as blackberries. Along the lines of those quiet 
 country railroads to points two hundred miles distant from 
 New York or Boston a milk-train nightly passes, gathering 
 up from every station its quota of cans of milk for the next 
 morning s supply of those cities. They have a way now of 
 " curing " milk, which, without injuring it, causes it to keep 
 longer, and prevents the cream from rising. A farmer 
 among the hills of Berkshire, who cures his milk by this 
 process, has sent to New York (one hundred and fifty miles 
 off), every night for the last eighteen months, two hundred 
 cans of milk, and has only lost one can by the milk spoiling. 
 For the information of milk consumers, I will here com 
 municate the fact, that the milk which costs us in New 
 York the " war price " of ten cents a quart yields the Yan 
 kee farmer only four cents. The strangest thing of all is, 
 that it cannot be brought to our doors for much less than 
 ten cents. Another thing incredible (but true) is, that the 
 Yankee farmer does not water the milk, nor even put into 
 each can the " lump of ice to keep it," of which we hear in 
 convivial hours. 
 
 Special farming appears to be more remunerative than 
 general agriculture, and is one of the causes of the growing 
 attractiveness of the business. The factories, wherein the 
 milk of a hundred farms is made into cheese or butter, are 
 an unspeakable relief to farmers wives. Labor-saving ma 
 chinery is doing wonders for the farming interest, and will 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 47 
 
 do more. The high prices of produce during the last seven 
 years have cleared many thousand farms in New England 
 from encumbrance, and put away in their owners money 
 boxes a few United States bonds. In a word, although few 
 honest men will ever find it an easy thing to live, and every 
 one of the legitimate occupations makes large demands of 
 those who exercise them successfully, it may now be said of 
 farming in New England, that it invites, and will sufficiently 
 reward, intelligent labor. The difficulty is the first five 
 years. After that, if you manage well, you may have as 
 much money as is necessary, and work no harder than is 
 becoming. Probably there is now no business in which a 
 little sound sense and extra judicious expenditure yield 
 results so certain, so lasting, so desirable as this of farming. 
 It seems strange that the mean Yankees should have 
 taken so much trouble as they have to make their homes 
 and villages pleasant to the eye. If the New-Yorker wishes 
 to find a delightful village in which to spend the summer, 
 he has only to go up in a balloon some fine afternoon in 
 June, when the wind is blowing toward the east, and, when 
 the balloon is over New England, let himself gently descend 
 into a field, and make for the nearest collection of houses. 
 He will be almost certain to have reached a pleasant place ; 
 but if not, there will be sure to be one a very few miles dis 
 tant. I have been in New England towns of four or five 
 thousand inhabitants, in which- 1 could not discover by dil 
 igent search one squalid house, one untidy fence, one de 
 cidedly disagreeable object. They make their very wood 
 sheds ornamental, and pile the wood in them so evenly that 
 the sawed ends of the sticks make a wall smooth, clean, and 
 compact, pleasing to behold. A frequenter of New England 
 could tell when he had reached that strange land by the 
 wood-piles. Almost everything you see or handle there is a 
 mechanical curiosity, for the Yankees take infinite trouble 
 to invent trouble-saving implements and apparatus. They 
 have most curious and novel hinges, locks, latches, padlocks, 
 keys, curry-combs, pig-troughs, and horse-shoes ; and noth 
 ing pleases them better than to be the first to have a new 
 and startling invention, such as a front-door key that 
 weighs half an ounce (a pretty little thing of polished steel, 
 fit for the vest pocket, and yet capable of turning a huge 
 
48 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 lock), or a stove that puts on its own coal, or a gate that 
 opens as the horseman approaches and closes when he has 
 passed through, or a flat-iron that keeps itself hot, or a gas- 
 burner so contrived that the gas lights by being merely 
 " turned on." A genuine Yankee delights to expound such 
 things to the stray New-Yorker, and, in his eagerness, does 
 not mark the impenetrable blank of his guest s countenance 
 as he strives to look as though he understood them. A 
 Yankee establishment, including house, fences, gates, barn, 
 stable, wood-shed, chicken-yard, pig-sty, and tool-box, is a 
 museum of ingenuities, all of which will "work," and all of 
 which were made with a purposed symmetry and elegance. 
 Some of the older villages have grown exceedingly lovely. 
 A long, wide street, not straight, no, not straight, 
 nor violently crooked either, but gently curving as a coun 
 try road usually does, which sets off to the best advantage 
 the grand old elms lining the street on both sides, and af 
 fords many a glimpse of the pretty houses nestling under 
 them, such is the usual village of New England. Few 
 white fences, few white houses, but almost all that man 
 has made is of a hue to harmonize with the prevailing col 
 ors of nature. The pillared edifices of fifty years ago, 
 and the elaborate picket fences, have nearly disappeared, 
 and all is becoming villa-like, neat, subdued, elegant. The 
 width of the street gives room for two wide strips of grass, 
 which beautifully relieve the heavy, dark masses of foliage 
 on each side ; and these masses are further relieved by the 
 lawns, the flowers, and the flowering shrubs that surround 
 every house. Sometimes of a morning, when the sun slants 
 across the street, and lights up the grass so that it looks 
 like sheets of emerald, and touches with glory every object, 
 and brings into clear view the distant, pleasing bend of the 
 road, transmuting its very dust into gold, sometimes, I 
 say, about 7 A. M., in one of these older villages of New 
 England, when the jaded citizen steps out upon the path, 
 and looks up and down the street, the view is such as to 
 melt his heart and haunt him in his softer moments ever 
 after. The scene is at once so peaceful and so brilliant, 
 and its beauty has not been too dearly purchased. It 
 is not one man s ostentation or one class s privilege which 
 has created this enchanting scene ; it is not a gorgeous cas- 
 
THE YAXIvEES AT HOME. 49 
 
 tie, and an exclusive park, with a squalid village near by. 
 This loveliness is the result of a sense of the becoming 
 which pervades the community, and which the whole com 
 munity has indulged. The cost in money is trifling indeed. 
 Looking over the records of a town in Vermont, I happened 
 to fall upon an entry which showed that the town had paid 
 for planting those mighty elms in its public square twenty- 
 five cents each. There are many men in the United States 
 who would count it a rare piece of good luck to be able to 
 buy one of them for twenty thousand dollars, cash on 
 delivery in good condition. 
 
 Of late years there has been a revival of interest in the 
 matter of village decoration in New England. This move 
 ment originated in the mind of a public-spirited lady of 
 Stockbridge, Mrs. J. Z. Goodrich, who, in 1853, was chiefly 
 instrumental in forming the famous Laurel Hill Association 
 of that place, since imitated in other towns. The objects 
 of these associations, as expressed in their constitutions, are 
 " to improve and ornament the streets and public grounds 
 by planting and cultivating trees, cleaning, trimming, and 
 repairing the sidewalks, and doing such other acts as shall 
 tend to beautify and improve such streets and grounds." 
 Every person over fourteen who agrees to pay one dollar a 
 year for three years, or who plants and protects one tree 
 under the direction of the executive committee, is a mem 
 ber of the association. Any one may become a life-member 
 by paying ten dollars a year for three years, or twenty-five 
 dollars at one time. To interest the children in the mat 
 ter, who might otherwise injure the young trees, or tread 
 carelessly on the edges of the paths, all persons under four 
 teen are admitted members by paying twenty-five cents a 
 year for three years, or " by doing an equivalent amount of 
 work annually for three years, under the direction of the 
 executive committee." This executive committee, who, of 
 course, do all the work of the association, consists of the 
 president, the four vice-presidents, the treasurer, the secre 
 tary, and fifteen others, "part of whom shall be ladies." 
 The committee meets once a month, determines what shall 
 be done, at what expense, and under whose supervision. 
 The result is, that the village is properly shaded, the grass 
 on each side of the road is cut at proper times, the paths 
 
 3 D 
 
50 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 are trimmed and kept free from weeds, the public ground 
 is improved and beautified, the cemetery is duly cared for, 
 the happiness of every civilized being in tlie place is in 
 creased, and the value of all the village property is en 
 hanced. Once a year the association meets to elect officers, 
 to hear what has been done, how much spent, and what 
 else is needed and desired. Sometimes this annual meet 
 ing is held in midsummer out of doors in the public park, 
 and the ladies seize the opportunity to make it a kind of 
 village festival. 
 
 Speaking of these associations reminds me of another of 
 the many ways in which the Yankees in their native towns 
 display their meanness. Ever since New England was 
 settled, the inhabitants have had dinned in their ears, two 
 or three times a week, such sentiments as that it is more 
 blessed to give than to receive, that strength is bestowed 
 upon the strong that they may help the weak, and wisdom 
 upon the wise that they may guide the foolish. In fact, 
 the very Constitution of Massachusetts contains aji Article 
 upon the encouragement of literature, which, it says, ought 
 to be encouraged for the following reasons : " To counte 
 nance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general 
 benevolence, public and private charity, industry and fru 
 gality, honesty and punctuality in dealings, sincerity, good- 
 humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments 
 among the people." Hence we can hardly find a town in 
 New England, of any considerable age or wealth, which has 
 not been the recipient of a gift or gifts from one or more of 
 its inhabitants. There is little Stockbridge, among the 
 hills of Berkshire, where the lynx and the otter are still 
 caught, and from which the bear has not been long gone. 
 The village contains but fifty or sixty houses, and the whole 
 town has only a population of about nineteen hundred and 
 fifty ; but the following is an imperfect catalogue of the 
 gifts which it has received. First, its remarkably beautiful 
 public ground, containing ten or twelve acres, was a gift to 
 the town from the family known to the whole country by 
 the talents of one of its members, the late Miss Catherine 
 Sedgwick. Upon this fine park the public high school has 
 been built, behind which the ground rises into a rocky and 
 almost precipitous hill, densely covered with wood, afford- 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 51 
 
 ing a capital playground to the boys, and a most agreeable 
 retreat to all the people. Near by is a solid stone structure, 
 the public library building, given to the town by Mr. J. Z. 
 Goodrich. Another native of Stockbridge, Mr. Jackson, 
 had previously had the meanness to start a public library 
 by the gift of two thousand dollars worth of books, to 
 which other residents had added many valuable volumes ; 
 whereupon Mr. Goodrich builds this solid and spacious edi 
 fice to contain the books, and to afford a pleasant reading- 
 room for the people in the afternoons, when many of them 
 can spend an hour or two over the papers and magazines. 
 That done, the town took fire, in town meeting assem 
 bled, and voted four hundred dollars a year for the 
 increase of the library, and the compensation of the young 
 lady who serves as librarian (from 2 to 5 p. M., five days a 
 week). Then President Hopkins, of AVilliams College, 
 hearing what was going on in his native place, gave to the 
 library an unusually interesting collection of minerals. 
 Other contributions of pictures and books have followed 
 fast ; until really the library -of little Stockbridge is only 
 inferior to such ancient establishments as that of Newport, 
 which also has grown to its present importance chiefly by 
 gifts and bequests. In Stockbridge, too, there is a very 
 elegant fountain, the marble figures of which, executed in 
 Milan, were presented by a well-known New-Yorker, John 
 H. Gourlie, who has a cottage near it. The town, however, 
 excavated and built the fountain, the water of which comes 
 from mountain springs some miles away. Incredible as it 
 may seem, this ridiculous little village has had the inso 
 lence to tap a mountain, and bring excellent spring water 
 into every house that chooses to have it ! Another gift is 
 a carved marble drinking-fountain, temporarily placed at 
 the side of the library building. Finally, there is a hand 
 some monument of brown stone, erected, at a cost of two 
 thousand dollars, to the immortal and dear memory of the 
 men of Stockbridge who fell in the war. This was built by 
 general subscription. 
 
 The propensity to make presents to the public is so 
 general and so strong in New England, that it requires 
 checking and warning rather than stimulating. In the 
 course of time, when the progress of civilization shall have 
 
52 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 still further loosened the general clutch upon money, and 
 the man who ha-s the mania for needless accumulation will 
 be generally recognized as a madman, it will probably be- 
 come necessary to further regulate this matter of public 
 gifts and bequests by law. No man has a right to saddle 
 posterity with a hurtful burden. There is not a man in a 
 million wise and far-seeing enough to give away a million 
 dollars without doing more harm than good. By and by 
 we shall see men competing for the honor and privilege of 
 giving something to the public, and town meetings will be 
 called to consider whether a proffered sum of money will 
 be, upon the whole, and in the long run, a benefit or an 
 injury. There are colleges in New England the efficiency 
 of which would be doubled if the trustees could disregard 
 those conditions of gifts and bequests which frustrate the 
 giver s benevolent intentions. 
 
 To a New-Yorker who finds himself for the first time in 
 New England, it is a great disappointment that he can find 
 no Yankees about. In the ridiculous comedy of The Ameri 
 can Cousin, the audience is given to understand that Asa 
 Trenchard, the Yankee hero of the play, is a native of 
 Brattleboro , Vermont. A visitor to that delightful town 
 is as likely to find an Asa Trenchard there as he would be 
 to meet a Tony Lumpkin at a dinner-party in Windsor 
 Castle. Brattleboro , forsooth ! it would be difficult to dis 
 cover on earth a village less capable of producing such a 
 preposterous ass. They have a club there for taking the 
 periodicals of Continental Europe, such as the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, the numbers of which circulate from house 
 to house. They have a Shakespeare Club, which assem 
 bles on winter evenings to read and converse upon the 
 plays of that poet, each member of the club taking a part. 
 They form other winter clubs to study a language in com 
 mon under the same teacher. They have an endowed 
 library, for which, no doubt, some liberal soul or souls will 
 provide a building erelong. They have also some vigorous 
 ball clubs and an engine company ; but I defy Tom Taylor 
 to discover among them any creature ever so remotely re 
 sembling Mr. Trenchard, Salem Scudder, or any of the 
 other stage Yankees. The stage Yankee is gone from the 
 earth. There are no " Yankees " in New England outside 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 53 
 
 of the theatre. Indeed, we may say of the whole of the 
 Northern States, that rusticity in all its forms is disappear 
 ing, and everything, as well as everybody, is getting covered 
 with a metropolitan varnish. Go where you will, you can 1 
 not get far beyond the meerschaum pipe, white kids, lessons 
 on the piano, and the Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 A melancholy feature of village life in New England is 
 the great number of intelligent, refined, and gifted ladies 
 who have no career nor rational expectation of one. A 
 large proportion of the young men leave their native towns 
 at an age when marriage cannot be thought of; they repair 
 to a city, or plunge into the all-absorbing West, and are 
 seen no more, until, perhaps, at fifty-five, their fortunes 
 made, their families grown up, they come back to spend 
 the evening of their days near their childhood s home. 
 Consider, for example, the case of the well-known Field 
 family, and you will see why there are so many old maids 
 in New England. There were six vigorous, ambitious boys 
 of them, sons of a Puritan clergyman, whose doctrine and 
 whose salary were both of the old school. When this fine 
 old bulwark of the faith had given his boys a college edu 
 cation, and assisted them into a profession, what more 
 could he or Berkshire do for them? They must needs 
 adopt Napoleon s tactics, and " scatter to subsist." One, 
 indeed, stayed at home, where he was long a leading law 
 yer of Western Massachusetts, and represented it in the 
 State senate. Another became a New York merchant, and 
 forced a reluctant world to re-lay the Atlantic cable. An 
 other tried for fame and fortune at the New York bar, and 
 won a superfluity of both. Another distinguished himself 
 as a naval officer. Another emerged to the public view as 
 editor of a leading religious newspaper. Another made his 
 way to a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States. These able men have had a career in the 
 world, as thousands of other New England lads have had, 
 and are having. But what of the " girls they leave behind 
 them " 1 Some, it is true, go forth, and make a career ; but 
 many seern compelled to remain at home, where they amuse 
 themselves as best they can with German lessons, garden 
 ing, fairs, ecclesiastical needle-work, and going out to tea ; 
 willing to do any suitable work, but unwilling to deprive 
 
54 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 of it work-women who must have it. It is easy enough to 
 find villages in New England where there are twenty ad 
 mirable girls under thirty years of age, and not one mar 
 riageable young man. 
 
 A precious relief it is to these when the long June days 
 bring at length, after the slow winter and tardy, tedious 
 spring, the first summer visitors, with their huge trunks 
 piled high on the village coach. Not for the new fashions 
 sake, dear, no ! There is not a device nor passing 
 whim of fashion which these Yankee girls do not know as 
 soon as it is known in the Fifth Avenue. No city damsel 
 need expect to astonish them with her novelties from Paris. 
 Such of the Yankee girls as have been so unfortunate as 
 to catch the clothes mania, now raging in most Christian 
 countries, are walking Harper s Bazars of fashionable knowl 
 edge. Very many of them make their own dresses, and 
 trim their own bonnets, but they do it in the most recent 
 and killing manner. The gay summer birds that come to 
 these sweet nooks of New England are welcome for many 
 reasons ; they fill the churches, patronize the fairs, enliven 
 the street, and join the tea-parties; but they cannot tell 
 the Yankee girls anything they do not know already, un 
 less it is what Tostee really does, my dear, in La Grande 
 Duchesse. 
 
 A curious thing about New England is the variety of 
 eccentric characters to be found there. In almost every 
 town there is a farmer or mechanic who has addicted him 
 self to some kind of knowledge very remote from his occu 
 pation. Here you will find a shoemaker, in a little shop 
 (which he locks when he goes to dinner or to the post-office, 
 much to the inconvenience of customers), who has attained 
 celebrity as a botanist. In another village there may be a 
 wheelwright who would sell his best coat for a rare shell ; 
 and, not far off, a farmer, who is a pretty good geologist, 
 and is forever pecking away at his innocent rocks. Again, 
 you will find a machinist who is enamored of " large-paper" 
 copies of standard works, and rejoices in the possession of 
 rarities in literature w r hich he cannot read. I know an ex 
 cellent steel-plate engraver, who, besides being a universal 
 critic, is particularly convinced that the entire railroad 
 system of the world is wrong, ties, rails, driving- wheels, 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 55 
 
 axles, oil-boxes, everything, and employs his leisure in 
 inventing better devices. Then there are people who have 
 odd schemes of benevolence, such as that of the Massachu 
 setts farmer who went to Palestine to teach the Orientals 
 the true system of agriculture, and was two years in find 
 ing out that they would n t learn it. There are morose 
 men and families who neither visit nor are visited ; and 
 there is, occasionally, a downright miser, of the ancient 
 type, such as we read of in old magazines and anecdote 
 books. There are men, too, of an extreme eccentricity of 
 opinion. I think there are in Boston about a dozen as 
 complete, immovable, if not malignant Tories, as can be 
 found this side of Constantinople, men who plume them 
 selves upon hating everything that makes the glory of their 
 age and country. And, speaking of Boston, solid, sensi 
 ble Boston, what other city ever accomplished a feat so 
 eccentric as the production of those twin incongruities, 
 George Francis Train and the Count Johannes 1 
 
 In matters more serious there is an occasional eccentri 
 city still more marked. So, at least, it is said by those who 
 look deeper than the smiling summer surface of New Eng 
 land. In the religious Report* quoted above I read a 
 startling passage to this effect : " Our purely American 
 communities, that have had a natural growth, are (with 
 an exception soon to be named) religious and church-going 
 communities." That exception, says the Report further on, 
 is where " some form of religious error " i. e. a creed dif 
 ferent from ours " has prevailed. In some such places 
 there is an obstinate indifference to worship and to religious 
 truth, and even to religious questions in general. In others, 
 a mental indisposition of peculiarly mischievous character 
 substitutes for this indifference an acrid hostility. This 
 epidemic which in some localities has become endemic 
 is characterized by a general habit of opposition, a 
 habit, not of eclecticism or of criticism, but of attack and 
 denunciation ; not of broad survey and genial correction, 
 but of perverse misconception and invective." In several 
 communities, continues the Report, " the results begin to 
 
 * First Report of the [Massachusetts] State Committee on Home Evan 
 gelization. Presented to the General Conference [of Congregational Cler 
 gymen], September 13, 1866. 
 
56 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 appear in a retrogression towards the paganism of the laier 
 empire, a virulent hatred of Christianity, an assertion of 
 the sufficiency of philosophy and the uselessness of religion, 
 a contempt for worship and the Lord s Day, and a doubt 
 of immortality." 
 
 This is eccentric indeed. It is such eccentricity as the 
 summer visitor seldom has an opportunity of observing ; 
 for in the villages which he frequents the entire population 
 on Sunday morning seems to come forth in its excellent 
 Sunday clothes, and gently wind its way to the churches, 
 much to the discomfort of a city pagan, whom this ap 
 parent unanimity leaves to a silent, reproachful solitude. I 
 think the most "acrid" of the pagans of "the later em 
 pire," who should witness, from a convenient point, the 
 long lines of well-dressed people strolling churchward on 
 Sunday in a green New England village, all gardens and 
 loveliness, would be compelled to confess (to himself) that 
 this weekly grooming of the whole people, this peaceful 
 assembling, this silent, decorous sitting together for an hour 
 or two,, these friendly greetings at the church doors, and 
 the chatty stroll home with neighbors, is rather a good 
 thing than otherwise, and certainly very much better than 
 staying at home in the same old clothes, doing the same 
 old work, and being "acrid." If the pagans of the later 
 empire are numerous enough, they should hasten to estab 
 lish a Sunday gathering, and so get rid of their acridity ; 
 for there are but two evils in the world, and one of them is 
 ill-humor. 
 
 But how changed is New England religion from the 
 time when Jonathan Edwards made mad the guilty and 
 appalled the free in Northampton and Stockbridge a hun 
 dred and twenty years ago ! Strange being ! Wonderful 
 creed ! There was a certain Sunday morning in North 
 ampton, in 1737, when the gallery of the church gave way 
 in consequence of the heaving of the ground in spring. The 
 account which Edwards gives of this event is a most curi 
 ous study of character, of history, and of mania. He gives, 
 first of all, a careful, exact explanation of what he would 
 have called the " natural causes " of the catastrophe, 
 showing how the ends of the supporting timbers were drawn 
 out of their sockets by the bulging of the wall. Then he 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 57 
 
 describes the event : " The gallery, in falling, seemed to 
 break and sink first in the middle, so that those who were 
 upon it were thrown together in heaps before the front 
 door. But the whole was so sudden, that many of those 
 who fell knew nothing what it was, at the time, that had 
 befallen them. Others in the congregation thought it had 
 been an amazing clap of thunder. The falling gallery 
 seemed to be broken all to pieces before it got down ; so 
 that some who fell with it, as well as those who were under, 
 were buried in the ruins, and were found pressed under 
 heavy loads of timber, and could do nothing to help them 
 selves." But no one was killed, and only one seriously 
 hurt. Why was this 1 ? Mr. Edwards answers : "It seems 
 unreasonable to ascribe it to anything else but the care of 
 Providence in disposing the motions of every piece of tim 
 ber, and the precise place of safety, where every one should 
 sit and fall, when none were in any capacity to care for 
 their own preservation." Hence, he continues : " We 
 thought ourselves called on to set apart a day to be spent in 
 the solemn worship of God, to humble ourselves under such 
 a rebuke of God upon us, in time of public service in his 
 house, by so dangerous and surprising an accident ; and to 
 praise his name for so wonderful, and as it were miraculous, 
 a preservation." 
 
 The stranger who now visits the church belonging to 
 the society of which Jonathan Edwards was the minister 
 finds himself introduced into a spacious and elegant edi 
 fice, with all the modern improvements in upholstery and 
 cabinet work. The scene is bright and cheerful. A fine 
 organ, well played, soothes and exalts the mind, and a 
 highly trained quartette discourses beautiful music. If 
 the gallery should break down some Sunday morning, the 
 occupants would not have far to fall, and the church would 
 bring an action against the builder. The sermon, of course, 
 is not such as the acrid pagans of the later empire approve ; 
 but it is better than a man can be reasonably expected to 
 produce who has to preach twice a week, and the first ne 
 cessity of whose position is, not to offend the people that 
 pay him. 
 
 In these transition times it is hard to be a clergyman in 
 New England ; for whether the clergyman advances faster 
 
58 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 than the people, or the people get ahead of the clergyman, 
 the result is equally distressing to the weaker party. Per 
 haps there is not a more agonizing situation on earth than 
 that of the clergyman of a modern fastidious church, who, 
 having a sickly wife, six children, and no head for business, 
 has incurred the hideous calamity of knowing too much. 
 If ever we have in America a great fictitious literature, 
 much of the agony of the same will be of that internal 
 and spiritual nature here referred to. 
 
 The time was when there was an intimate connection 
 between these town governments and the church, the 
 established church of New England, and when all other 
 beliefs and rites were forbidden. Once a man could be law 
 fully taxed against his will for the support of the Congre 
 gational minister, and it was death to say mass. But New 
 England, from its first settlement to the present hour, has 
 always given that sole certain evidence of spiritual life 
 which is afforded by " growth in grace." The essential 
 difference between a wise and a foolish person, between a 
 superior and an inferior community, is, that one learns and 
 the other does not. The Mathers and Edwardses of a 
 former generation are succeeded by the Channings, Beech- 
 ers, Parkers, Motleys, and Emersons of this; and these, 
 in their turn, will be followed by men equal to the task of 
 carrying on and organizing the regeneration which has 
 been so worthily begun. The old restraints and privileges 
 have long ago been abolished, and perfect religious and 
 irreligious freedom prevails. A family can now take a ride 
 on Sunday afternoon, or receive visitors on Sunday even 
 ing, without exciting consternation or calling out the con 
 stable. In almost every village all the principal sects are 
 represented, and there is usually the utmost possible friend 
 liness between them. At the Congregational church you 
 will generally find the solid aristocracy of the place, the 
 president of the railroad, the president of the bank, the 
 master of the high school, the employing manufacturers, 
 the old doctor, the rich farmers, the large store-keeper, and 
 the colored man who thinks he waited on General Wash 
 ington in the Eevolutionary War. But, in some towns, the 
 Unitarians have a share of these great men, as well as a 
 good number of the polite people who are sometimes de- 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 59 
 
 scribed in New England as " literary." In most villages 
 there may now be found a pretty little box of an Episcopal 
 church, half hidden in foliage, which in summer, during 
 the reign of the summer visitors, is filled to overflowing 
 with the gayest costumes ; though in winter, they say, the 
 attendance dwindles to a company which is as small in 
 number as it is fervent in zeal. There is, also, usually a 
 Methodist church, and frequently a Baptist, which have 
 their proportion of adherents. Each of these denomina 
 tions maintains a vigorous Sunday school, and the friendly 
 rivalry between the schools gives the poorer children many 
 a picture-book, doll, cake, and picnic which they would not 
 otherwise have. 
 
 Perfect freedom, I have just said, prevails in religious 
 matters in New England ; but this has not long been the 
 case. Some of the elderly people in the elderly towns 
 found it hard to tolerate the building of Catholic churches 
 in their midst, and consequently Catholics occasionally 
 found it difficult to buy ground for the purpose. No one had 
 any lots to sell, or a preposterous price was asked ; the true 
 reason being, that the wink had been passed among the 
 land-owners, and an understanding come to that the priest 
 was not to have any land. I am acquainted with a large 
 town in Vermont where these tactics were successful for 
 some years, in spite of the disorderly Sundays in the Irish 
 quarter, which were a weekly argument in favor of the 
 priest s coming. At length, by stratagem, the requisite 
 lots were obtained ; and then the Catholics, being put upon 
 their mettle by this inconsiderate opposition, took their 
 revenge by building a twenty-thousand-dollar church of 
 brick instead of a three-thousand-dollar one of wood, as 
 first proposed. Not content with this fell vengeance, they 
 carried their animosity so far as to behave ever after with 
 the strictest propriety on Sundays. 
 
 The stranger is surprised to find in small sequestered 
 villages, renowned perhaps in the annals of Puritanism, 
 Catholic churches of good size, with thick walls of hand 
 some, and well-cut stone, nearly as white as marble, and 
 surrounded by lawns and shrubbery, not very ill kept. 
 The explanation of the mystery sometimes is, that in these 
 remote villages among the mountains there are human 
 
60 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 minds all alive to the stir and impulse of the time, to 
 whom the men, the books, the ideas, the aspirations, the 
 dismay, and the despair of the age are more real and fa 
 miliar than to us who live in distracting cities ; and some 
 of these yearning, imaginative souls have listened in their 
 seclusion to the rending cry of Lacordaire in Notre Dame, 
 to Hyacinthe, to Newman, and have been seduced to aban 
 don the hereditary fold, and fly, shivering, to the ancient 
 ark. Hence the Catholic churches are sometimes more 
 costly than they naturally would be, and we find in them 
 a crowded congregation of Irish laborers and their families, 
 and one solitary native of ancient name and wealth, who 
 contributed a large part of the building fund. Along the 
 northern border, where many of the laboring class are 
 French, there are a few rather ancient Catholic churches ; 
 in some of which the sermon is in French one Sunday and 
 in English the next, and French confessions alternate with 
 English on Saturdays. It were much to be desired that 
 some religion had power enough on the frontier to put an 
 end to the petty smuggling that goes on there continually, 
 corrupting the poor man who perpetrates the offence, and 
 the summer visitor who instigates or rewards it. 
 
 I think the Catholic bishops must reserve a few wild 
 priests for the remoter country congregations, where there 
 is little chance for proselyting. I witnessed a Catholic ser 
 vice, a summer or two since, in the very heart of New Eng 
 land, which was a chapter of Charles O Malley come to life, 
 a bit of old Ireland transferred bodily to the New 
 World. Toward nine o clock on Sunday morning, the hour 
 appointed for the semi-monthly mass, the people gathered 
 about the gate under the trees, while the ruddy and robust 
 priest stood at the church door, accosting those who entered 
 with a loud heartiness that made every word he uttered 
 audible to the people standing without and to the people 
 kneeling within. He was a jovial and sympathetic soul, 
 who could (and did] laugh with the merry and grieve with 
 the sad ; but it was evident that laughter came far more 
 natural to him than crying. When he had concluded, at 
 9.15, a boisterous and most jovial conversation with Mrs. 
 O Flynn at the door, every word of which was heard by 
 every member of the waiting congregation, he entered the 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 61 
 
 church, and proceeded to the altar, before which he knelt, 
 holding his straw hat in his hand. His prayer ended, he 
 went into a small curtained alcove at the side, where his 
 ^priestly robes were hanging. Without taking the trouble 
 to let the curtains fall, he took off his coat, in view of the 
 whole assembly, and put on part of his ecclesiastical gar 
 ments, unassisted by his only acolyte, a little boy in the 
 usual costume, who stood by. He then went again to the 
 altar, and arranged the various objects for the coming cere 
 monial; after which he stepped aside and completed the 
 robing, not even going into the alcove, but standing out 
 side, and reaching in for the different articles. He might 
 have spared the congregation the pain of seeing his strug 
 gles to tie his strings behind him ; but no ; he chose to per 
 form the whole without help and without disguise. When 
 all was ready, he said the mass with perfect propriety, and 
 with unusual manifestations of feeling. But the sermon, if 
 sermon it could be called, was absolutely comic, and much 
 of it was intended to be so. There had been a fair recently 
 for the re-decoration of the altar ; and in the first part of 
 his discourse the gratified pastor read a list of the contrib 
 utors, with comments, in something like the style follow 
 ing : 
 
 "Mrs. McDowd, $13.50; and very well done, too, con 
 sidering they had nothing but cake upon their table, no, 
 not so much as an apple. John Haggerty, $ 2. 70 ; and in- 
 dade he s only a boy, a mere lad, and a good boy he is. 
 Mrs. O Sullivan, $37.98; yes, and $27.42 before. Ah! 
 but that was doing well, that was wonderful, considering 
 what she had to contend with. Mrs. O Donahue, $ 7.90 ; 
 and every cent of it got by selling a ten-cent picture. Very 
 well-done of you, Mrs. O Donahue ! Peter O Brien, $ 12.00 ; 
 good for you, Peter, and I thank you in my own name and 
 
 in the name of the congregation Total, $489.57. 
 
 Nearly five hundred dollars ! It s really astonishing ! and 
 how much of it, my children " (this he said with a wink and 
 a grin that excited general laughter), " and how much 
 of it do you think your priest will kape for himself] Not 
 much, I m thinking. No indeed. Why should I kape it 1 
 What do I want with it 1 I have enough to eat, drink, and 
 wear, and what more does a priest want 1 I have no am- 
 
62 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 bition for money, not I ; and you know it well. You 
 know that the whole of this money will be spent upon the 
 altar of God ; and we shall spend it with the greatest econ 
 omy. Not Brussels carpet, of course. That would cost*? 
 four or five dollars a yard. Good ingrain will do well 
 enough for us at present, and last long enough too ; for 
 can t it be turned 1 You know it can. Twenty years from 
 now, when we are all dead and gone, they 11 be turning and 
 turning and turning it, and holding it up to the light, and 
 saying, * I wonder who laid down this ould carpet ! In all 
 my life, I never saw such an altar as this in a church of 
 this size " (turning to the altar, and surveying it with an 
 indescribably funny attempt to look contemptuous), " so 
 mane, so very mane ! I tell you, if I had been here when 
 this altar was made, I d have ivkeeled the man out of church 
 pretty quick." (These last words were accompanied with 
 the appropriate gesture, expressive of taking the delinquent 
 carpenter by the back of the neck, and propelling him 
 thereby down the aisle.) " But what shall I say of those 
 who have given nothing to this fair? Ah ! I tell you, when 
 the decorations are all done, and you come here to mass on 
 Sunday mornings, and see God s house and the sanctuary 
 where he dwells all adorned as it should be with the gifts 
 of the faithful, and when you think that you gave not one 
 cent towards it, I tell you you 11 blush if there s a blush 
 in you." 
 
 After proceeding in this tone for twenty minutes, during 
 which he laughed heartily himself, and made the people 
 laugh outright, he changed to another topic, which he 
 handled in a style well adapted to accomplish the object in 
 tended. He said he had heard that some of the " hotel 
 girls " had be*en swearing and quarrelling a good deal that 
 summer. " Ah," he continued, " I was sorry to hear it ! 
 The idea of ladies swearing ! How wrong, how mean, how 
 contemptible, how nasty, how unchristian ! Don t you 
 suppose that the ladies and gentlemen at the hotel have 
 heard how many Protestants are coming into the bosom of 
 the Catholic Church 1 ? Don t you suppose they watch you] 
 They know you re Catholics, and don t you suppose they 11 
 be judging of Catholics by you ? And, besides, who would 
 marry a swearing lady ] Tell me that ! The most aban- 
 
THE YANKEES AT HOME. 63 
 
 doned blackguard that walks the streets wouldn t marry a 
 girl that he had heard swear, for he knows very well that 
 she d be a bad mother. If I were a young man, and 
 heard my true love swear, do you think I d marry her 1 
 Hey ? do you think I would ] By no manes ! And I wish 
 to God I had spoken about this before ; for now the season 
 is almost over, and many of the Protestant people have 
 gone home, and very likely are talking about it now in New 
 York and Boston. You know what they 11 say. They 11 
 say, If that s the way Catholic ladies behave, you don t 
 catch me turning Catholic. " 
 
 At the conclusion of his discourse he took up the collec 
 tion himself, saying, as he left each pew, " Thank you," in 
 a strong, hearty tone of voice ; and if any one took a littie 
 extra trouble to reach over, or put into the box something 
 more than the usual copper coin, he bowed, and said, " I 
 thank you very much, madam, very much indeed." He 
 was a strange mixture of the father and the ecclesiastic, of 
 the good fellow and the gentleman. In Tipperary, in the 
 Colleen Bawn, in Charles Lever, we are not surprised to 
 find him ; but who would have expected to make his ac 
 quaintance in a secluded valley of New England, and to 
 discover that he has the largest congregation in the neigh 
 borhood 1 And how much better is such a priest than 
 one of the howling-dervish description ! 
 
 So much for life in a New England town ; for I have left 
 myself no room to speak of the unequalled efficiency of the 
 Yankee town system in time of war. No despot has ever 
 invented a mode of bringing out "the last man and the 
 last dollar " half so simple, cheap, prompt, and certain as 
 this. As soon as a call for troops is flashed over the wires, 
 the officers of each town can ascertain exactly how many 
 men they have to produce ; and they know where the men 
 are, and what the men are, who are most open to an offer. 
 They know what the families of the soldiers require, and 
 those soldiers Jiave an assurance that their families will not 
 suffer in their absence. It was this town system that saved 
 the country in the late war. 
 
 Universal liberty may be a dream. Henry Clay s pleas 
 ing fancy of a continent of closely allied Eepublics settling 
 all differences and difficulties by an occasional Congress on 
 
64 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the Isthmus of Darien, wherein the honorable giant from 
 Patagonia would join in harmonious debate with the honor 
 able dwarf from Greenland, may never be realized. But if 
 universal liberty is not a dream, if the whole habitable 
 earth is ever to be occupied by educated, dignified, and vir 
 tuous beings, it is probable that those beings will arrange 
 themselves in self-governing communities, similar in mag 
 nitude, similar in institutions and laws, to a New England 
 town. It is strange that such people as Yankees are said 
 to be, struggling for life in the wilderness against savage 
 man and savage nature, should have hit upon methods 
 which seem scarcely capable of essential improvement. 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 
 
 STROLLERS about the Capitol at "Washington fre 
 quently pause to admire the ingenuity and the studious 
 habits of a certain respectable colored man who serves as 
 door-keeper to an august national court. It is an estab 
 lished principle at Washington that an American citizen 
 visiting the capital of his beloved country shall never be 
 allowed to open a door for himself; and, consequently, 
 wherever there is a door, there must needs be a door 
 keeper. A being more superfluous than a door-keeper to 
 the room in which this high court is held it would be diffi 
 cult to imagine. The door has been provided by a grateful 
 nation with a convenient loop or handle of brass, adapted 
 to the meanest capacity, and with a spring which causes 
 it gently to close without the interposition of human hands. 
 It- closes, too, upon something soft, so that there is tfo dan 
 ger of the deliberations of the court being disturbed by a 
 bang. Most of the persons who enter the room are familiar 
 with all its arrangements ; and if their hands should chance 
 to be full of papers, they could easily thrust out one little 
 finger, and, inserting it in the handle, pull the light and 
 unlatched door wide open. Nor does the door-keeper show 
 to a seat the awe-struck visitors who are occasionally at 
 tracted to the apartment by curiosity. Within the room 
 other officers, white in color or higher in rank, stand ready 
 to prevent ladies from rushing forward to the bench of the 
 judges or losing themselves among the lawyers within the 
 bar. The sole business of that respectable coloured man 
 from 1 1 A. M. to 3 p. M. is to open a light door which shuts 
 itself. Being a man of resources, he has provided himself 
 with a chair and tied a string to the handle of his door. 
 He goes to his place every morning provided with reading- 
 
 E 
 
66 .TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 matter, and there lie sits, holding his newspaper or book in 
 one hand, and the end of his string with the other. When 
 any one approaches, he knows it by instinct, and gives the 
 string a mechanical pull, without looking up or being men 
 tally aware that he has performed an official duty. 
 
 Behold the typical man in him ! He represents a class 
 in Washington. He is one of the small sins which Con 
 gress permits and commits. 
 
 The sins of this kind which Congress commits are worse 
 than those which it permits. After satisfying the curiosity 
 of the ladies with a view of the Supreme Court, a work 
 of three minutes, you naturally ascend to the gallery of 
 the Senate. This is the paradise of door-keepers. I think 
 I counted fourteen doors to this gallery. There are doors 
 which admit only ambassadors, door-keepers friends, and 
 other privileged persons. There are doors which exclude 
 the public from the Reporters Gallery, writing-room, 
 and telegraph office. There are many doors which admit 
 ladies, and many more that open into the portions of the 
 gallery used chiefly as a warming-place by unemployed 
 negroes. Each of these doors consists of two leaves that 
 swing together, and are kept shut by the attraction of 
 gravitation. What a field for door-keeping is here ! At 
 nearly every leaf of these numerous doors sits or stands a 
 door-keeper, his hand inserted in his brass loop, one man 
 outside to let in the coming, and another inside to let out 
 the parting guests. From their keeping such a tight clutch 
 upon their handles, I think there must be more door-keep 
 ers than there are doors. Every man seems afraid that if 
 he should let go his handle another might get hold of it, 
 and thus rob him of his slight pretext for being on the pay 
 roll. Half a dozen locks and a hundred latch-keys would 
 deprive of all semblance of pretext the gentlemen who ex 
 clude the miscellaneous public from the Ambassadors Gal 
 lery and the Reporters apartments : and the rest of the 
 door-keeping could be well done by two men. But that 
 would naver do in Washington. The pretext for being on 
 the pay-roll is the very thing wanted. 
 
 If the visitor is rash enough to hint that two men to 
 each door is rather a lavish expenditure of human force, 
 considering the scarcity of labor on this continent, he is 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 67 
 
 silenced by the question, How could two or three or half a 
 dozen men " clear the galleries " 1 They could not. Nor 
 could forty, if the auditors were determined to sit fast. 
 But the Speaker s simple order, addressed to people habitu 
 ated and wholly disposed to obey properly constituted au 
 thority, clears them with all requisite despatch. If not, 
 there are thirty-three bored, yawning, inexpressibly idle 
 men about the Capitol, in blue uniform and steeple-crowned 
 hats, who are styled the Capitol police. They have a cap 
 tain and two lieutenants, to head any onset upon a stubborn 
 public which the Speaker might order, and it would relieve 
 the monotony of their existence to be ordered upon any 
 duty whatever. 
 
 Congress has, indeed, furnished itself most liberally with 
 servants. The Senate, which consists of seventy-four mem 
 bers, is served by at least one hundred officers of all grades, 
 from secretary to page. The House, which numbers two 
 hundred and fifty-three members when the States are fully 
 represented, has not less than a hundred and fifty officers, 
 although the investigator does not find so many in the 
 published list. We observe a considerable number of per 
 sons employed about the Capitol whose names elude the 
 search of those who pore over the Blue Book of Mr. Dis- 
 turnell, or the useful and excellent Congressional Directory 
 of Major Ben Perley Poore. If we add to the officers 
 employed about the two chambers the printers and binders 
 who do the work of Congress in the public printing-office, 
 we shall find that Congress has many more servants than 
 members. It may be that most of these are necessary. 
 The Secretary of the Senate may require the assistance of 
 twenty-one clerks. The heating-apparatus of the Capitol 
 may be of such a complicated and tremendous nature that 
 it is as much as fourteen men can do to manage it. Mem 
 bers may read and consult such a prodigious number of 
 books and documents as to need the assistance of more 
 librarians than are employed in the Mercantile Library of 
 New York, which has ten or twelve thousand subscribers, 
 as well as an immense reading-room. Including the libra 
 rians of the library proper and those of the sub-libraries 
 and document-rooms of the two houses, there are twenty- 
 four persons in the Capitol supposed to be chiefly employed 
 
68 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 in ministering to the intellectual wants of members of Con 
 gress. All these persons may be indispensable, but they 
 do not seem so to the casual observer. The casual ob 
 server receives the impression that the servants of Congress, 
 like those of the government generally, would be improved 
 if two very simple and easy things -were done, - the sal 
 ary of the chiefs doubled, and the number of their assist 
 ants reduced one half. 
 
 I can show the reader, by relating a little incident which 
 I witnessed in Washington last winter, how it comes to 
 pass that so many more officers get appointed than seem 
 to be necessaiy. While resting in the office of the public 
 printer, after going over the most admirably complete and 
 efficient printing-office in the country, a well-dressed, polite 
 young man came in, and presented a letter of introduction 
 to the superintendent. Clouds gathered over the face of 
 that functionary as he read it ; and he invited the bearer 
 to be seated in a tone which implied that he wished he was 
 in Jericho. I was afterward favored with an explanation 
 of the scene ; and that explanation applies to a large num 
 ber of the names in the Blue Book. A few days before, 
 the superintendent had discharged thirty compositors be 
 cause he had no work for them. This nice young man, 
 who was one of them, went to one of the senators from his 
 State, stated his case, and asked the senator to procure his 
 reappointment. That senator, not considering the gross 
 impropriety of his interference, but complying with the 
 established custom, wrote a letter to the superintendent, 
 of some length and much urgency, asking him to put his 
 constituent back to the place from which he had been re 
 moved. I am afraid that this most improper request was 
 complied with ; for the officer to whom it was addressed 
 was a servant of Congress, who might one day want that 
 senator s vote. It is of no consequence whether he com 
 plied or not. Every reader acquainted with governments 
 or with human nature knows that nine men out of ten, in 
 that superintendent s place, would have found work, or a 
 pretence of work, for that man. Nor can we so much won 
 der at the conduct of the senator. He also looks to re-elec 
 tion. He also desires to make friends. This pleasing young 
 man may have an uncle who controls a newspaper or an iron- 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 69 
 
 foundry in the senator s State, and it is convenient, at a 
 critical time, to have the hearty support of a few uncles of 
 that description. The difficulty is, that at Washington there 
 is no rock of security anywhere in the system, against which 
 applications like this can strike and be repulsed. If that 
 superintendent were properly secure in his place, he would 
 have shown the young man to the door, just as any other 
 printer would have done, with the simple remark that he 
 had no work for him. 
 
 Some time will probably elapse before the people gain 
 such a triumph over the politicians as to secure perma 
 nency of appointment to government officials. Meanwhile 
 members of Congress should disdain to listen to applica 
 tions like this; especially members whose position has 
 some basis of security. 
 
 A stranger to politics and to Washington is astonished 
 to observe how general the feeling is, that a public man is 
 justified in gratifying an impulse of benevolence, or in dis 
 charging a private obligation, at the cost of the public. 
 Some time ago, General Grant chanced to be looking out 
 of a window while a salute was firing in his honor, and he 
 saw a man lose one of his legs by the bursting of a cannon. 
 When the man had recovered his health, General Grant 
 was President of the United States. What more natural 
 than that the President should ask Mr. Boutwell to give 
 the unfortunate man, if convenient, a watchman s place in 
 the treasury 1 He pitied the man, and he had the power 
 to give him effectual relief at the public expense. Most 
 men would have yielded to this impulse of benevolence, as 
 General Grant did, and most men perhaps approved the act. 
 Nevertheless, it is just in this way that the Capitol, the 
 departments, the post-offices, and the custom-houses get 
 clogged with superfluous persons. It is thus that one- 
 legged incompetence pushes from its place two-legged abil 
 ity. Some one, who cannot be refused, asks the appointment, 
 and then one of two things must happen, either a man 
 must be summarily and unhandsomely, if not inhumanly, 
 thrust from his post, or two men must ^e set to doing one 
 man s work. Generally, both these things are done. The 
 two men go on for a while, until some new broom sweeps 
 one or both away, to make room for the favorites of another 
 irresistible personage. 
 
70 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 An entertaining writer, some weeks ago, favored the 
 public with reminiscences of former administrations, in 
 order to show that the people cordially sustain a President 
 who indulges his personal feelings at the people s cost. He 
 told a story of General Jackson, which might have been 
 true, the incident being entirely characteristic. "Gen 
 eral," asked an old friend of the ex-President, at his Ten 
 nessee Hermitage, " tell me why you kept yourself and all 
 your friends in trouble, through your first Presidential 
 term, by keeping Mr. Gwinn Marshal of Mississippi 1 " To 
 this General Jackson replied : " When my mother fled with 
 me and my brother from the oppression of the British, who 
 held possession of North Carolina, we were very, very poor. 
 My brother had a long sickness (occasioned by a wound 
 received from a British officer because he refused to do 
 some menial service), and finally died. In the midst of our 
 distress and poverty, an old Baptist minister called at our 
 log-cabin, and spoke the first kind words my mother heard 
 in her new home ; and this good man continued to call, 
 and he finally made oar house his lodging-place, and con 
 tinued to prefer it, when better ones in the neighborhood 
 \vere at his service. Years rolled on, and this good man 
 died. Well, sir, when the news was brought me that I 
 was elected President, I put up my hands and exclaimed, 
 Thank God for that, for it will enable me to give the best 
 office under the government to the son of the old minister 
 who was the friend of my mother, and of me in my youth ; 
 and I kept my promise, and, if it had been necessary, I 
 would have sacrificed my office before he should have been 
 removed." 
 
 The feeling was natural and noble. The only question 
 is, whether a man should requite at the expense of his 
 country services done to his mother. The relater of the 
 anecdote appends to it this commentary : " General Jack 
 son was triumphantly re-elected to a second term." It is 
 true ; but it was in spite of such errors as this, not in con 
 sequence of them. Members of Congress who can remem 
 ber that mad peried of our political history will not justify 
 personal government by the example of General Jackson. 
 
 Few of us, perhaps, have an adequate sense of the supe 
 rior sacredness of public property to private, of public 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 71 
 
 trusts to private. Little things betray our sluggish public 
 conscience. No man, except a thief, would think of taking 
 a sheet of postage-stamps from the desk of a banker or 
 merchant ; but, in Washington, it seems to be only men 
 exceptionally honorable who scruple to use, or even to 
 take, franked envelopes, which appear to be lying about 
 everywhere. Still fewer have a proper sense of how much 
 worse it is to steal from all their fellow-citizens than it is 
 to steal from one of them. In everything relating to the 
 government, a citizen of the United States should feel that 
 he is upon his most sacred honor. We are here in double 
 trust. Our difficult and still doubtful experiment is for 
 mankind as well as ourselves. I would not magnify a 
 small sin into a great one ; still less would I assume to be 
 more virtuous than others ; and yet it seems to me that a 
 citizen of the United States should shrink from accepting 
 a proffered frank, as he would avoid touching only enough 
 pitch to defile the tips of his fingers. I would not blame, 
 but forgive, a Frenchman for cheating his government, 
 which is itself a cheat ; but the citizens of free countries 
 defraud and despoil themselves when they do or permit an 
 action which implies that public property is less sacred 
 than private. 
 
 A special calamity of the small sins of Congress is, that 
 their results are exceedingly conspicuous, and bring upon 
 Congress an amount of odium or ridicule that ought to be 
 excited only by great transgressions. I have mentioned 
 the superfluous door-keepers and the swarms of officers 
 .everywhere to be seen about the two chambers. The 
 amount of money wasted upon these gentlemen is not 
 great ; but the waste is obvious and striking. The dullest 
 visitor comprehends that a small party of ladies can gain 
 admittance to a gallery by a light and easy door without 
 the assistance of two able-bodied men. Some of the small 
 sins of Congress entail effects still more glaring, and fix a 
 permanent, unconcealable stain upon the nation itself. Not, 
 a stain upon its honor ; but such a stain as a lady incurs 
 when her dress comes in contact with a freshly painted 
 railing. We do not want fair Columbia to be thus dis 
 figured. We wish her to be spotless and glorious even in 
 the garments that she wears and in the ornaments that 
 
72 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 adorn her. We desire her to be tasteful in her splen 
 dors. 
 
 The reader has probably often asked himself, while wan 
 dering about the Capitol, what could possess Congress to 
 throw away the public money upon some of those pictures 
 that disgrace the western continent, and human nature 
 generally, in the Rotunda. He has, perhaps, also, after 
 giving up that conundrum, essayed to conjecture why no 
 member has risen superior to the clamor of economists, and 
 proposed an appropriation of two dollars to whitewash them 
 from the view of mankind. It w r as bad enough to put them 
 there ; but to keep them visible, year after year, and give 
 new commissions to the painters who produced them, are 
 acts almost too abominable to be reckoned among the small 
 sins of the national legislature. 
 
 Congress no doubt interpreted correctly the wishes of the 
 people in making the Capitol stately and ornate; and it 
 was an exquisite thought to go on- decorating and complet 
 ing it while the hosts of the Rebellion were intrenched with 
 in sight of its rising dome. Every building that belongs to 
 the nation, every object that bears upon its surface the 
 letters " U. S.," should have something in its style and 
 appearance that will convey to the mind of the beholder a 
 feeling of the imperial grandeur of the country s mission 
 and destiny. Those nasty and cheap sub-post-offices in the 
 city of New York, and those conspicuously shabby, rusty, 
 cast-iron lamp-post letter-boxes, are an abomination in my 
 eyes ; not merely because they are stupidly inconvenient, 
 but because they are mean in appearance ; because I desire 
 that whenever American eyes rest upon an object bearing 
 the stamp of the nation, they should rest upon something 
 which they can contemplate with satisfaction and pride. 
 Hence, it is always a pleasure to get round to the front of 
 the Capitol, and turn away from the shanties, the shops, 
 the sand-heaps, the general dilapidation and shabbiness of 
 the region, and gaze for a while upon the magnificence of 
 that vast range of architecture, with its avalanches of snowy 
 steps, that glorious dome floating lightly over the centre, 
 and the small, brilliant flag above each wing, denoting that 
 Congress is in session. In this brave attempt to express in 
 marble the grandeur and glory of the United States, we see 
 
CONGEESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 73 
 
 the prophecy of those chaster splendors, that simpler mag 
 nificence, which will enchant and exalt our grandchildren 
 when they visit the future and final capital of the country. 
 It was an excellent thing, perhaps, after all, to try our 
 prentice hand on Washington, and exhaust all the possi 
 bilities of error there. 
 
 The interior of the Capitol is chaos, of course. That is 
 unavoidable when a large building is erected over a smaller 
 one. The visitor forgives and is amused at the labyrinthine 
 intricacies in which he is continually lost ; and when at 
 last he stands beneath that beautiful dome, which hovers 
 over him like an open balloon of silk , illuminated by the 
 sun, he experiences a renewal of the joy which the exterior 
 afforded him. Doubtless, we are running too much to 
 domes ; we are putting a dome oyer every building of much 
 magnitude, it is such a fruitful source of contracts. But 
 this one justifies itself, and startles the coldest spectator 
 into admiration. It was also a fine conception to place 
 under it in that perfect light a series of large historical 
 paintings. Nor was it necessary that they should be of 
 the highest rank as mere works of art ; because it is not 
 certain that there are now living upon earth artists capable 
 of executing paintings of that magnitude in a truly excel 
 lent manner. No artist in these times can get the many 
 years of large practice which is necessary for the attainment 
 of the large manner ; and, I suppose, the best we can hope 
 for, at present, in pictures of great size, is correct, refined, 
 excellent scene-painting. But some of the paintings in the 
 Rotunda, besides being singularly hideous as pictures, are 
 historical falsehoods, which any school-boy might be able 
 to detect at a glance. That one, for example, which is 
 supposed to have been suggested by De Soto and his men 
 discovering the Mississippi River, what a curiously ridic 
 ulous lie it is, with its display of superb costumes, its well- 
 conditioned horses, and its plump cavaliers as fresh and 
 gay, in their silk and velvet, as if they were careering in 
 the streets of Madrid on a day of festivar ! What is better 
 known than that these Spaniards reached the banks of the 
 Great River in woful plight after a wearisome march of 
 many months through the wilderness ! It is also particu 
 larly recorded that De Soto was sparing in expenditure for 
 
74 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 gay apparel, and that every rag of clothes, except what his 
 followers wore, was burnt after one of their bloody encoun 
 ters with the Indians. An hour s research in the library 
 of Congress, under the intelligent guidance of the librarian, 
 would have put the painter in possession of all the picturesque 
 details of the real scenes, and given him subjects for several 
 pictures of peculiar interest. A picture could have been 
 composed for that panel which would have such fascinating 
 power as a mere exhibition of truth, that few would have 
 cared to criticise it as a work of art. 
 
 But the question recurs, Why are such artists employed 1 
 The shameful answer is, Because they lobby for a commis 
 sion and know how to lobby with effect. It is not an 
 honest ignorance of art and history which has thus dis 
 figured the Capitol ; for these paintings are the constant 
 theme of ridicule among members as they are among pri 
 vate citizens. One artist won his commission, it is said, by 
 assiduous flattery of the wives and daughters of members 
 of Congress. While artists of merit were toiling after 
 excellence in distant studios, this wiser man in his genera 
 tion was enjoying elegant leisure in the drawing-rooms of 
 Washington, where he made sketches in the albums of 
 ladies who could influence votes, or painted their portraits 
 in some Italian or Spanish costume from his portfolio. He 
 is thought to have secured votes by pretending that the 
 excellent but not beautiful wife of a member of Congress 
 reminded him constantly of an exquisite model he once had 
 in Rome, one of the loveliest creatures in the world. He 
 had, moreover, some little talent in small album-sketches 
 and little fancy portraits in costume. This, doubtless, de 
 ceived some members, who did not reflect upon the infinite 
 difference between a grand historical painting and an imita 
 tion of the velvet in a cavalier s doublet. If that man s 
 claim to the highest honor which the nation can bestow 
 upon an artist had been openly discussed in committee, his 
 name would never have reached the House at all. It was 
 private lobbying that brought this dishonor upon art, upon 
 Congress, and upon the national taste. 
 
 It has been proposed to introduce the rule that no man 
 shall be appointed to office who seeks office. Congress 
 may rely with certainty the most complete upon this, that 
 
CONGEESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 75 
 
 no artist capable of worthily filling one of the panels of the 
 Rotunda will ever lobby for the commission in the drawing- 
 rooms of Washington. If that artist should ever be wanted, 
 he will have to be looked for and solicited. 
 
 The reader has perhaps wondered also why Congress 
 should have selected for the execution of the national statue 
 of Abraham Lincoln a person of no standing or expe 
 rience as an artist. Miss Vinnie Ream is a young lady of 
 perfect respectability, and, no doubt, highly estimable in 
 her private relations. No one can blame her for her good 
 fortune. She has done little more than open her mouth 
 and let the plum fall into it. But what has Congress done 1 
 Here was a piece of work to be given out, the statue of 
 a man as little statuesque as any we can imagine, which 
 required in the artist a combination of artistic skill and 
 judgment, love of the man, and love of truth. The work 
 was to be seen by hundreds who had been familiar with 
 the subject, and by tens of thousands who would take a 
 kind of affectionate interest in the artist s management of 
 its difficulties. The Abraham Lincoln of future gener 
 ations was to be created. In the selection of the artist 
 a national fame was either to be conferred or enhanced. 
 Congress assigned this work to a girl w r ho had the rudi 
 ments of her art still to learn, and who had given no proof 
 of her capacity to acquire those rudiments. She exhibited 
 a model. It was about to be overlooked. She burst into 
 tears. The results to her were, a ten-thousand-dollar com 
 mission, a universal celebrity, and two years in Europe, 
 three immense boons, either of which had been a fit re 
 quital for long-tried excellence. And, as if this were not 
 enough, a room was given her in the Capitol itself in which 
 to execute and exhibit her work. Congress bestowed upon 
 this unknown and untried child honors which it has per 
 sistently withheld from artists who have conferred upon 
 the country whatever name it, has in the world of art, but 
 who hardly know what the word " lobbying " means. Rec 
 ognition one tenth as distinct and emphatic as this, how it 
 would have cheered the early years of the excellent sculptors 
 of whom the country is proud ! Such caprice does not harm 
 them ; for when Congress confers distinction thus, it parts 
 with its power to confer honor, and sensibly lessens its own. 
 
76 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Five minutes conversation with Miss Vinnie Ream ex 
 plains this ridiculous behavior of Congress. She is one of 
 those graceful, animated, bright-eyed, picturesque, undaunt 
 ed, twinkling little women, who can make men say Yes to 
 anything -they ask. She also wore a pretty blue, turban- 
 like covering for her hair, which was killing at five paces ; 
 and there is that in her manner which puts men in the 
 humor of uttering, badinage, and at the same time gives 
 them the idea that she is a helpless little body who would 
 cry if she could not have her own way. The visitor to her 
 room in the Capitol had but to stand apart and see the 
 modest audacity of her demeanor, and observe the assured, 
 lively manner in which she held a circle of men in conver 
 sation, in order to comprehend why Congress, in its easy, 
 thoughtless good-nature, should have granted to her the 
 most signal honors it ever bestowed upon an artist. 
 
 Men are naturally susceptible to the picturesque in wo 
 man. It is natural also to feel like caressing and protect 
 ing whatever reminds us of tender, graceful childhood. 
 Members had done well to give a private commission to 
 this agreeable young lady by way of encouraging her to 
 attempt acquiring some skill in modelling. But they were 
 false to their trust when they gave her an important public 
 work to execute. Men who are charged by their fellow- 
 citizens with the adornment of national edifices and the 
 bestowal of national honors are much to blame in allowing 
 a blue turban, a pair of speaking eyes, a trim waist, and a 
 fluent tongue to carry off prizes due only to tried merit. 
 Members can form little idea of the dishonor, nay, the con 
 tempt, which they bring upon Congress by indulging a 
 whim of this kind. Millions witness the result ; only a few 
 individuals see the bright excuse ; and of those few only 
 one sex admits that it is any excuse at all. 
 
 There is an impression in Washington that a great deal 
 of legislation is influenced by female lobbyists ; and the 
 easy success of this young lady gives countenance to the 
 idea. A woman of attractive presence and of a certain au 
 dacity of manner, who should be able to live and entertain 
 in handsome style, could no doubt win favor and votes for 
 some measures. Many members come from homely homes, 
 the ladies of which have expended their vivacity and beauty 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 77 
 
 in that American phase of "the struggle for life" which 
 Fanny Fern styles " grappling with Erin." Such members, 
 when they find themselves in a drawing-room next to a lady 
 who expends her vivacity in entertaining them, and arrays 
 her beauty in all the charms of novel costume and bewitch 
 ing decoration, are only too apt to surrender to the fasci 
 nating influence. But such women cannot be hired to go 
 lobbying. It occasionally happens that a circle interested 
 in a scheme contains one such who will render the service 
 required. Generally speaking, however, the female lobby 
 is small and insignificant. A lady informed me last winter 
 that she had defeated international copyright j and, indeed, 
 she was the Washington agent of the weak opposing influ 
 ence. But a pebble can stop a six-horse coach when it is 
 going up a steep hill, and the horses are tired, the driver 
 indifferent, and the passengers asleep. 
 
 Of all the smaller sins of Congress, there are none, per 
 haps, which excite so much odium as that multitude of 
 petty transgressions covered by the words " Contingent 
 Expenses." The mere running expenses of Congress, in 
 cluding its share of the public printing, amount to about 
 twice the revenue of the government under President Wash 
 ington. I have tried in vain to get at the total cost of a 
 session of Congress.. The mere list of the Contingent Ex 
 penses of the House fills a volume of two hundred and 
 twenty pages, and there is no hint anywhere of the sum 
 total. It is certain, however, that a session of Congress 
 costs the country as much as four millions of dollars, in 
 cluding pay, postage, printing, and contingent expenses. 
 "Will the honorable member from Ohio allow me five 
 minutes to make an explanation 1 " asks an honorable mem 
 ber from Somewhere Else. If that request is granted it 
 costs the people of the United States a little over six hun 
 dred dollars. The chaplain s prayer, which usually lasts 
 one minute, consumes one hundred and thirty-eight dollars 
 worth of time every morning. Calling the Yeas and Nays, 
 an operation of half an hour, comes to over four thousand 
 dollars. Allowing six months for an average session, and 
 twenty days a month as the average number of meetings, 
 Congress costs us something more than thirty-three thou 
 sand dollars a day. Who would begrudge his share of this 
 
78 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 great expense, if it were necessary? It is not necessary. 
 A vigorous man of business, who should have the contract 
 for running Congress, could save enough in the three items 
 of printing, postage, and contingencies to double the 
 salaries of members, give a decent compensation to the 
 justices of the Supreme Court, the judges of the Court of 
 Claims, and heads of departments, and have a handsome 
 surplus for himself. Nothing is so extravagant and undem 
 ocratic as to pay such salaries to the judges, cabinet minis 
 ters, and members of Congress as to exclude from those 
 high and honorable posts the great body of able men who 
 are neither rich nor reckless. A fraction of the mere waste 
 of Washington would support them all respectably, and 
 render it possible for men of talent wiio have little property 
 to serve the government. 
 
 This book of the Contingent Expenses of the House of 
 Representatives is amusing literature indeed. There is an 
 air of candor about it that edifies the mind. It looks so 
 very honest, the publication of such items as " 2 mice-traps, 
 50 cts." "Repairing 3 chairs, $1.50." "Easing drawer, 
 25 cts." " 1 paper of needles, 10 cts." " One long poker, 
 $ 3.00 " ; and " 2 pounds of putty, 25 cts." It is such a 
 satisfaction to know that the poker which cost so much was 
 long ! It is also interesting to note, that to clean and pol 
 ish that extremely absurd relic of barbarism, the " mace," 
 cost three dollars ; and that, during one session of Congress, 
 the people paid for " hauling" more than ten thousand cart 
 loads of documents ! There are many items, however, 
 which excite interest of another kind. When we find two 
 hundred " porte-monnaies " charged at prices ranging from 
 $1.20 to $ 4.25 each, we cannot help feeling that each and 
 every one of those articles is a petty fraud. The United 
 States has not undertaken and is not bound to supply any 
 portion of its servants with porte-monnaies. What a scan 
 dal, too, is that annual penknife business ! One thousand 
 and ninety-eight penknives, at prices averaging about three 
 dollars each, I find after a few minutes search charged 
 among the " Contingent Expenses " of the second session of 
 the Fortieth Congress ! I could probably make up the 
 amount to two thousand by going through the book, in 
 which the items are apparently published, but are really 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 79 
 
 interred and covered up. There are charges also of " Half 
 dozen Martinique snuff, $25.00," "50 Ibs. of tobacco, 
 $ 25.00," " 2 doz. pocket-scissors, $ 28.00," " 2 doz. hair 
 brushes, $48,00," " 12 cotton stay-laces, $ 6.00," "5 extra 
 morocco desks, $ 67.00," and endless charges for inkstands, 
 newspapers, and periodicals ; stationery by the mountain, 
 of course. I spend my whole time, from January to Decem 
 ber, in one unending, unchanging task of spoiling white 
 paper ; but I cannot get through more than three reams 
 per annum, which costs about twelve dollars. Knowing 
 how far a little stationery will go, I read of the inconceiv 
 able quantities consumed about the Capitol with amaze 
 ment. 
 
 It is to be hoped that none but men in sound health will 
 be sent to Congress, for it costs a great deal to get a mem 
 ber home if he should happen to die in Washington. The 
 following is the bill paid to the Sergeant-at-arms of the 
 House for transporting the body of a deceased member from 
 Washington to Easton in Pennsylvania : 
 
 Hack hire, assistance in care of remains, and arranging for 
 
 the funeral in the House of Representatives . . . $50.00 
 
 18 white silk sashes for officers of House and Senate . 254.00 
 
 8 black silk sashes for committee of arrangements . . 96.00 
 
 20 dozen kid gloves 615.00 
 
 2 dozen kid gloves . . . . . . . .54.00 
 
 2 dozen kid gloves . ....... 60.00 
 
 1 dozen kid gloves . . . . . . . .33.00 
 
 200 black crape scarfs 300.00 
 
 Travel of messenger to New York and return . . . 47.00 
 
 Hacks to carry escort and friends to depot . . . 16.00 
 Fare and expenses of escort and remains from Washington, 
 
 D. C., to Easton, Pa 245.00 
 
 Hotel bills and hacks at Easton 42.65 
 
 Fare and expenses on return to "Washington . . . 194.00 
 Travel of assistant sergeant-at-arms and 2 messengers, 
 
 Washington to Easton and return, 460 miles each . 138.00 
 
 $2,144.65 
 
 The fee system, it appears, is still employed to compen 
 sate some of the officers of Congress. If there is a " call 
 of the House," i. e. a general hunting up of absent members, 
 the Sergeant-at-arms is permitted to charge five dollars and 
 twenty cents for " arresting, bringing before the House, and 
 
80 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 discharging" each absentee. If a hundred members are 
 absent, which is not unfrequently the case, a call of the 
 House costs the country five hundred and twenty dollars. 
 If witnesses are summoned to testify before a committee, 
 the Sergeant-at-arms charges a fee and mileage for each. 
 Thus every person summoned from New Orleans to testify 
 with regard to the negro massacre cost us three hundred 
 and seventeen dollars, and the cost of merely summoning 
 the witnesses in that affair was $ 2,392. It cost three hun 
 dred and seventeen dollars to summon " General Hamlin " 
 to testify before a committee. The object of the committee 
 could no doubt have been accomplished for three cents and 
 a half, half a cent for stationery and three cents for post 
 age. 
 
 Now, if money is to be thrown away in this reckless 
 manner, if the Capitol is to remain the scene of waste and 
 profusion we find it now, .then I say the people have a choice 
 with regard to the persons who shall be benefited by it. 
 They do not see any justice or any propriety in Henry Wil 
 son s being compelled to pinch on five thousand dollars a 
 year, while servants of the body to which he belongs retire 
 rich after four years service. It brings a blush to the cheek 
 of every properly constituted person to think that a justice 
 of the Supreme Court should be compelled to expend his 
 whole salary for two rooms and the board of his family, 
 while a man who gets stationery contracts sets up his car 
 riage and buys pictures. If the government is to be plun 
 dered at every point by every hand, it is time the spoils 
 were more fairly divided. 
 
 There is only one remedy for this profusion at the Capi 
 tol. Congress has honestly attempted to cut off the oppor 
 tunities for petty larceny. It has attempted it many times, 
 but never with much success. The mileage system, the 
 franking-privilege, the wild and wondrous waste of station 
 ery, the pocketing of French inkstands and costly pen 
 holders, the lugging home of half-reams of paper, and all 
 the small stealings of committee-rooms, have been, by 
 turns, the theme of ridicule and the object of legislation. 
 Some leaks have been stopped ; but others have been im 
 mediately opened, and the same thieves who pilfered under 
 the old law have plundered under the new. We ought to 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 81 
 
 know by this time that a privilege is a thing which is al 
 ways and everywhere abused. We ought to know that a per 
 quisite is always and everywhere a means of corruption. We 
 ought to know that nearly every one in the world who is com 
 pensated by fees gets much too much or much too little, or 
 riots in abundance now, to be starved to-morrow. Let Con 
 gressmen simply abolish fees, perquisites, and privileges, 
 and accept in lieu thereof a proper increase to their sala 
 ries, say, double what they now receive. Let members 
 pay their own postage, charge no mileage, subscribe for 
 their own newspapers, buy their own envelopes and writing- 
 paper, and compensate all their officers by salaries. 
 
 Nothing short of this will ever answer the purpose. If 
 Congress should permit only so much as a bottle of ink to 
 be furnished to each committee-room, once a week, and 
 charged to Contingent Expenses, a widening crevice would 
 be established through which a torrent of colored fluids 
 would continually pour. Add pens to the ink, and you 
 would see exquisite pen-holders, fitted with the most costly 
 diamond-pointed gold pens, and huge cases of the finest 
 products of Gillott, heaped high in the store-rooms of th 
 Capitol. Complete the list with paper, and you have a 
 thick volume of wonderful items, and run up a stationery 
 bill the mere clippings and extras of which build houses 
 and found estates. The sole remedy is to pay each mem 
 ber a decent compensation, not less than ten thousand 
 dollars a year, and allow neither to members nor to com 
 mittees so much as a sheet of foolscap or a penny pen 
 holder. 
 
 The completion of the Pacific Railroad antiquates the 
 system of mileage, by destroying the necessity for it. In 
 deed, ever since railroads brought two thirds of Congress 
 within forty-eight hours ride of Washington, a system of 
 mileage which gives to one member eight dollars for his 
 travelling expenses, to another several hundred dollars, and 
 to another several thousands, has been growing ridiculous. 
 But now that a member from Oregon can get to the capital 
 in eleven days, it is too absurd to pay him fifteen times as 
 much mileage as Henry Clay used to get for his six weeks 
 horseback ride from Kentucky. Away with Congressional 
 mileage ! The honorable member from Oregon will, of 
 4* r 
 
82 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 course, have to incur a little more expense in getting to 
 Washington than the honorable member from Baltimore ; 
 but he will not find this an insupportable burden. He will 
 be pretty sure to have free tickets to most places presented 
 him a few hours after his election, and I am afraid he will 
 be weak enough to accept them, until Congress makes it 
 unlawful for him to do so. More than that, a palace-car 
 will be assigned to his exclusive use, as long as the Pacific 
 Railroads have favors to ask, or retribution to fear, from 
 the body of w T hich he is a member. 
 
 The surrender of the franking-privilege, besides being 
 the most popular act winch Congress could do, would be 
 also one of the most beneficial. to itself. It would operate 
 as a tonic. The flow of Buncombe speech would be 
 checked, millions of infinitesimal frauds would be pre 
 vented, and a source of demoralization would be annihi 
 lated. 
 
 Abolish perquisites, abolish fees, abolis*h privileges, and 
 double salaries. There would be a little Buncombe opposi 
 tion from members and editors who set up as champions of 
 economy, but their Buncombe could be triumphantly refuted 
 if Congress saved the million and a half additional pay out 
 of the running expenses of the Capitol, the post-office, and 
 the public printing-house. 
 
 I believe I express the opinion of all the gentlemen who 
 have held the office of public printer, when I say that half 
 a million dollars per annum is worse than wasted at the 
 public printing-office. Having examined the office, the 
 reports of the superintendent, and several of the more 
 expensive volumes issued, I see clearly enough that if 
 there were such an officer as National Editor, with the 
 usual editorial power to select, cut down, and exclude, he 
 could save the country much more than half a million a 
 year by merely drawing his pencil through useless matter. 
 What havoc he would have made, for example, in the gorgeous 
 quarto (962 pages) in which are preserved the letters, reso 
 lutions, and addresses of condolence called forth by Mr. Lin 
 coln s assassination ! In that huge and splendid work, which 
 cost us eighteen thousand dollars, there may be ten pages 
 worth saving ; and those the National Editor would have 
 forwarded per boy to Newspaper Row, opposite Willard s, at 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 83 
 
 a cost of two car tickets. The saving on that one item would 
 have made the Supreme Bench comfortable for a whole 
 year. In the Agricultural Report for 1867, which fills five 
 hundred and twenty-two large octavo pages " handsomely 
 illustrated, of which two hundred and twenty-four thousand 
 five hundred copies were given away, at a total expense of 
 a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, what gashes an 
 intelligent National Editor would have made ! or rather, 
 would he not have selected the valuable portions and sent 
 copies to each of the agricultural newspapers and periodi 
 cals 1 They would give to matter really valuable all the 
 publicity that could be desired. The Patent-Office Report 
 has annually swollen, until it now makes over two thousand 
 pages, four large octavos, of which one half the space is 
 occupied by engravings. Of this most expensive work sixty 
 thousand copies are given away. The Reports of the Com 
 missioners to the Paris Exposition of 1867 will fill several 
 profusely illustrated volumes, which will of course be given 
 away profusely. When we read the names of some of the 
 Commissioners, we know very well what a gifted National 
 Editor would do with their contributions. 
 
 In the last report of Mr. John Defrees, Congressional 
 printer, a gentleman who knew the precise value of the 
 mountains of books which Congress ordered him to manu 
 facture, we find this interesting paragraph : 
 
 " The Army Register of Volunteers has also been com 
 pleted in eight volumes. Fifty thousand copies were or 
 dered to be printed, for sale qf cost) by the joint resolution 
 of June 30, 1864. An edition of five thousand copies of 
 the first four volumes was printed, but finding very little 
 demand for the work, the edition of the residue of the vol 
 umes was reduced to one thousand." ^ 
 
 For sale at cost ! That is the true method, if Congress 
 must manufacture books. Observe how the enormous error 
 of this publication was rebuked and corrected by bringing 
 it to the test of sale at cost. If the people want a book, 
 they will buy it at cost ; if they will not buy it at cost, it 
 is proof positive that they do not want it enough to justify 
 an appropriation of their money. It was an amiable idea 
 to preserve the name of every man who fought for his 
 country during the war ; but to preserve such a catalogue 
 
84 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 did not necessitate its publication in eight volumes. Such 
 extravagance keeps alive in the general mind the false, per 
 nicious idea, that the government may properly expend 
 money on principles which would be absurd and ruinous 
 in an individual. 
 
 Do members of Congress sell West Point and Annapolis 
 cadetships 1 I am afraid I must confess that it has been 
 done. Not often; for members are abundantly blessed 
 with nephews, and friends who have nephews, and they are 
 generally besought for those appointments as soon as it is 
 rumored that they intend to run for Congress. Not often ; 
 for members generally want all their small change of that 
 nature during the canvass. Not often ; for few men of an 
 infinitesimal calibre have yet found their way to Congress. 
 And still I fear that the member who gave a cadetship to 
 the son of a person who presented his wife with a grand 
 piano was in some degree influenced by the circumstance. 
 There are lobbyists who profess to be able to procure cadet- 
 ships for money, but most of them are strikers. Some 
 members find their election expenses a heavy burden, and 
 I believe that, occasionally, a distinct arrangement has been 
 entered into between a member of the lobby and an anxious 
 father, to this effect : the anxious father agrees to send a 
 check for two thousand dollars to the chairman of the 
 member s committee, as a contribution to the expenses of 
 the election, and the man of the lobby agrees to induce the 
 member to give the anxious father s son a cadetship in one 
 of the national, academies. ^In a very few instances such 
 an arrangement may have been fulfilled. Some members, 
 I fear, regard the duty of making these important appoint 
 ments in the light of a perquisite, and, as just remarked, 
 the word "perquisite" is generally synonymous with cor 
 ruption. Congress will perform an act as wise as it will be 
 noble when it relinquishes a privilege that has always been 
 abused, and always must be, by men who have sons, neph 
 ews, and election committees. 
 
 Before leaving this small branch of a large subject, I 
 must not fail to remark that many of us seem to be unduly 
 alarmed at the corruptions and abuses of. the government. 
 The American people are so accustomed to honesty in their 
 dealings with one another, and to a certain frugality of 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 85 
 
 ordinary expenditure, that they start back affrighted from 
 the scene of profusion, and worse than profusion, of govern 
 ment offices. Let us see then how it is with other govern 
 ments. Let us see if government by the people for the 
 people is less or more profuse, less or more corrupt, than 
 the vaunted governments by a class for a class. 
 
 That is a pretty piece of scandal which advocate Mathieu 
 Marais relates in his Memoires, of the dissolute Regent of 
 France and the Abbe de Broglie. The Abbe having warmly 
 commendedp a certain wine, the Regent said he would like 
 to have some of it, and the Abbe sent him three hundred 
 bottles. The prince insisted on paying for them, and 
 accordingly the priest handed him a bill in proper form, 
 like this : 
 
 His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent Dr. 
 
 To the Abbe de Broglie. 
 
 60 gallons of wine - . 400 francs. 
 
 300 bottles . . . . . .60 
 
 300 corks 15 
 
 Twine .4 
 
 Sealing-wax, Spanish 9 
 
 Baskets 25 
 
 Carriage .7 
 
 Total : The Abbey of Mount St. Michael. 
 
 The prince paid the bill. The governorship of an abbey, 
 and a handsome income for life of other people s money, 
 was the reward which this man, intrusted with the rev 
 enues of church and state, felt to be due to a profligate 
 young ecclesiastic who had given him a moment s amuse 
 ment. This was in 1721. Fifty years later the young 
 Abbe de Talleyrand won his first preferment, which con 
 sisted of two abbeys, by saying. a good thing to Madame 
 Dubarry, the king s mistress. He, the most licentious 
 young man in Paris, had sat silent while others amused 
 the mistress with tales of intrigue and gallantry. She 
 asked him at length why he did not favor the company 
 with one of his numberless amorous adventures. " Be 
 cause," said he, assuming a melancholy tone, " in Paris, at 
 present, it is so much easier to win the favor of ladies than 
 to get preferment in the Church." This small joke made 
 the king laugh, when it was told to him, and it was worth 
 
86 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 to the youth who uttered it the two abbeys just referred 
 to. 
 
 On similar principles the church benefices of every 
 established church on earth have been usually bestowed. 
 That is to say, the appointing power does not usually so 
 much as think of appointing the fittest attainable man, but 
 gives or sells benefices, abbeys, bishoprics, archbishoprics, 
 solely for its own pleasure and purposes.* If the Arch 
 bishop of Canterbury should die to-day, Mr. Gladstone 
 would bestow the vacancy upon that man in England who, 
 in that place, could do most to help him retain and increase 
 his majority in the House of Commons ; unless, perchance, 
 the services have already been rendered which give to some 
 person, family, club, or clique, a claim to the appointment. 
 No one could blame him. The system requires it of him. 
 He could not be Prime-Minister, and act on any other prin 
 ciple. 
 
 A French gentleman resident in New York related to me 
 the other evening the particulars of a case which he thought 
 showed advantageously for the government of the present 
 usurper. A custom-house officer at a French seaport, after 
 many years of faithful service, was dismissed from his place 
 for accepting two gifts from an importer, of the value of 
 one dollar and thirty cents. Respectable merchants peti 
 tioned for his restoration, but the minister replied that he 
 had not the power to restore him ; there was no provision 
 in the system of the government for the pardon of such an 
 offence. It simply could not be done. This was supposed 
 
 * Since writing this passage, I read the following in an English paper: 
 " The account of the biddings for the next presentation to the rectory and 
 vicarage of Westborough and Dry Donnington, in the county of Lincoln, 
 which was put up to auction at the Mart on Tuesday, certainly offers food 
 for reflection to thoughtful minds. It appears that the living is worth 
 seven hundred and eight pounds per annum. There are two churches to 
 serve, a mile and a half apart, service being held alternately at each 
 place, viz. in the morning at one, and in the evening at the other, and vice 
 versa. There was, the auctioneer stated, good society; he thought he 
 might add, good hunting, and, allowing one hundred pounds a year to a 
 curate to do the dirty, disagreeable work, such as attending to the"sick and 
 dying, there would remain a net profit of about six hundred pounds a year 
 for the rector. The outside sum offered for the privilege of attending to 
 the eternal salvation of the inhabitants of the two parishes in question was 
 four thousand eight hundred pounds. This did not reach the reserve 
 price, and accordingly the living was withdrawn, doubtless to the great 
 disappointment of young divines with a call, but no ready money." 
 
CONGEESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 87 
 
 to be extremely virtuous. But, surely, we cannot call that 
 system pure in which the great thieves want so much that 
 they will not and cannot permit the little people to steal at 
 all, which loads with plunder the men who help steal all 
 the revenues of France, and covers with diamonds the wo 
 men who assist to dazzle and delude the people. At the 
 very time when this poor old man was thrust out into hope 
 less destitution for a momentary weakness or inadvertence, 
 the woman of one of the head plunderers was selling off 
 some hundreds of thousands of francs worth of diamonds 
 merely because she had so many jewels that she did not 
 know what to do with them. 
 
 In England, too, they are rigid in dealing with petty cor 
 ruption, as they ought to be. An instance occurred re 
 cently. A navy clerk caused to be conveyed to a timber 
 merchant an intimation that for thirty pounds he would 
 get for him a certain contract to supply timber to one of 
 the navy-yards. Both the clerk and his messenger were 
 tried for conspiracy to obtain money by false pretences, and 
 on being convicted were sentenced to eighteen months im 
 prisonment at hard labor. This was j ust. But, on the other 
 hand, there is in this same England an amount and variety 
 of political immorality, particularly among great lords, cap 
 italists, and corporations, which leaves the United States 
 stainlessly pure in comparison. We all know what English 
 elections are. The reason why we all know is, because the 
 corruption at those elections has become an established jest, 
 which the national humorists, such as Hogarth, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, and Bulwer, have found available for their art. 
 Through the works of these great authors we have become 
 perfectly familiar with that corruption, and with the nation 
 al average of moral feeling which joyfully accepts the brib 
 ing and debauching of free citizens as a legitimate source 
 of fun. Englishmen urge foreigners to stay over another 
 steamer on purpose to witness " the humors of an English 
 election," as Spaniards detain their guests for. the Sunday 
 bull-fight. 
 
 We may also pass lightly over that long period in the 
 history of England when every minister bought an essen 
 tial portion of his majority by bank-notes put into the 
 hands of members in the House of Commons. " The sums 
 
88 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 varied," as we learn from Wraxall, " from five hundred to 
 eight hundred pounds a year," which sums were " conveyed " 
 to gentlemen of the House of Commons " in a squeeze of 
 the hand " as they passed the ministerial agent. It was 
 the business of that agent in Lord Chatham s time "to dis 
 tribute with art and policy, amongst the members who had 
 no ostensible place, sums of money for their support dur 
 ing the session, besides contracts, lottery-tickets, and other 
 douceurs. It is no uncommon circumstance at the end of a 
 session for a gentleman to receive five hundred or a thou 
 sand pounds for his service 1 * There has been published a 
 letter from an English minister to Cardinal Henry, who 
 was minister of Louis XV. of France at the beginning of 
 his reign. Here is an edifying extract : "I pension half 
 the Parliament to keep it quiet ; but as the king s money 
 is not sufficient, they to whom I give none clamor loudly 
 for a war. It would be expedient for your Eminence to re 
 mit me three millions of French livres in order to silence 
 the barkers. Gold is a metal which here corrects all ill 
 qualities in the blood. A pension of two thousand pounds 
 a year will make the most impetuous warrior in Parliament 
 as tame as a lamb." f There is also a letter extant, in 
 which Louis XIV. authorizes his minister to offer the Duke 
 of Marlboro ugh four millions of francs for a peace on cer 
 tain conditions. With regard to the peace of 1763, against 
 .which Lord Chatham so eloquently protested, it is known 
 to have been accomplished by the most lavish expenditure 
 of money and promotion. " The Royal household had been 
 increased beyond all former example. The lords and 
 grooms of the bedchamber were doubled. Pensions were 
 thrown about indiscriminately. Five-and-twenty thousand 
 pounds were issued in one day, in bank-notes of one hun 
 dred pounds each. The only stipulation was, Give us your 
 vote / . . . . The city of London refused to address (in 
 favor of peace), although the sum of fourteen thousand 
 
 pounds was offered to complete the bridge The 
 
 Lord-Lieutenants had begging-letters sent to them to use 
 their influence ; and five hundred pounds, secret service, 
 were added to each letter. The sum of five hundred pounds 
 
 * Anecdotes and Speeches of Lord Chatham, Dublin, 1792, Vol. 1. 137. 
 t Memoirs of Pompadour, Vol. I. 57. 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 89 
 
 was the notorious price of an address. Some addresses 
 cost a much larger sum. The sum was regulated according 
 to the importance and magnitude of the place from which 
 the address was obtained." * We also read, in the memoirs 
 of that time, of men holding offices of which they only 
 drew half the salary, "being rode for the other half" ; and 
 these individuals, both the riders and the ridden, were not 
 city-clerks and contractors, but men of rank and influence. 
 But these things occurred a long time ago, one hun 
 dred and six years, when all the world, except Prussia, 
 was corrupt ; and Prussia is an empire to-day because she 
 was not corrupt then. Since that time England has nobly 
 grappled with many a hoary abuse, has made important ad 
 vances toward free trade and purity of government, and is 
 still pressing onward. And yet we read astounding things 
 of the venality of the present generation of her ruling class. 
 The history of railroads in Great Britain appears to be lit 
 tle more than a history of giant frauds, from the day of 
 honest George Stevenson to that of collapsed Morton Peto. 
 The English biographer of the Stevensons tells us of a great 
 duke who caused the defeat of a railroad bill in Parliament, 
 because the engineer had laid out the line too near one of 
 his Grace s fox covers; of a "party" in a committee of 
 lords offering to withdraw opposition to a projected road 
 for ten thousand pounds ; of opposition " got up mainly for 
 the purpose of being bought off " ; of railway directors 
 boasting of the number of votes they could "command" 
 in the House of Commons ; of parliamentary log-rolling in 
 the " Yankee " style of " You help me roll my log, and I 11 
 help you roll yours " ; of a railway bill which it cost the 
 directors eighty-two thousand pounds to get passed ; of an 
 other, the total cost of passing which was four hundred and 
 thirty-six thousand, two hundred aad twenty-three pounds, 
 about three million dollars of our present currency; of 
 needy members " conciliated " by being paid five thousand 
 pounds for a strip of land worth five hundred ; of members 
 who "systematically sold their parliamentary interest for 
 money considerations " ; of an " impoverished nobleman " 
 receiving thirty thousand pounds for a narrow strip of his 
 estate, the whole of which was not worth more than that 
 
 * Anecdotes and Speeches of Lord Chatham, Vol. I. 268, 282. 
 
90 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 sum, and then selling another corner to another company 
 for a second thirty thousand pounds, thus getting sixty 
 thousand pounds " damages " for what greatly increased the 
 value of his property. " Of course," remarks Mr. J. C. 
 Jeafferson, " it was well understood that the two sums of 
 thirty thousand pounds did not represent the price of the 
 land, but the price of the peer s parliamentary interest." 
 
 It seems, too, that many of the petty infamies incident 
 to the infancy of popular government infamies which 
 we are about to abolish are in full activity in England. 
 English politicians have not yet discovered the puerility of 
 bribing obscure and utterly uninfluential newspapers by 
 lavish advertising. Advertisements for navy rum were 
 inserted by the last Tory administration in a little weekly 
 paper, circulating a few hundred copies among clergymen 
 of conservative politics. Comic papers of the same politics 
 were subscribed for in considerable numbers for distribution 
 in government asylums. Advertisements were paid for at 
 rates three or four times higher than the regular price. At 
 the time of the last general election, as we learn from the 
 Pall Mall Gazette, " an advertising-agent was instructed by 
 a government department to send advertisements to a cer 
 tain provincial journal. This journal was so excellent a 
 medium for the purpose that the agent, whose business it 
 is to know these things, was quite unaware of its existence. 
 He had to make inquiries as to whether there was such a 
 newspaper or not. His investigations were successful. It 
 turned out that the influential and widely circulated print 
 had been started a few weeks previously to serve the inter 
 est of the Tory candidate for the borough in which it was 
 published. Accordingly, the government advertisements 
 were sent for the support of the paper ; and there we have 
 seen them, column after column, week after week." 
 
 The same journal informs mankind that this extremely 
 primitive, provincial, and generally useless form of bribery 
 is " rampant " in England, as well as that of giving exclusive 
 news for fulsome laudation. "In short," adds this able 
 newspaper, "it comes to this: it is the custom of ministers 
 in England, as well as in foreign parts, to subsidize the 
 press for their own benefit." But how stupidly they do it ! 
 During the recent general election in England, there was a 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 91 
 
 certain " industrious literary compiler," named Townsend, 
 who wrote on the D Israeli side with great diligence and 
 small effect. He was promised by Mr. D Israeli, not a 
 petty office in the custom-house for four years, but a post 
 in the mint for life, worth a thousand pounds a year ; or, 
 if that should not fall vacant, he was to have the still more 
 lucrative place in the inland revenue held by a brother of 
 the Premier, whose death was daily expected. But before 
 the vacancy occurred, Mr. D Israeli had lost the power to 
 confer such munificent rewards for services so trifling, and 
 the new ministry, upon the death of Mr. James D Israeli, 
 had the virtue to abolish the sinecure he had held so long. 
 The disappointment was too much for the unhappy writer, 
 who stabbed himself to the heart ; an occurrence which led 
 to the disclosure of the facts. All this is very much in 
 what Englishmen flatter themselves is the American style : 
 only, more so.* 
 
 Indeed, they have in England most of the small sins of 
 popular government as well as all of the great ones. I 
 read in the London papers, at the close of a session, that 
 the House of Commons, like the House of Representatives, 
 is idle during the first half of a session ; which obliges it to 
 hurry bills through with such velocity at last, that mem 
 bers can hardly catch their titles, but merely ascertain 
 whether an act is favored or opposed by the ministry, and 
 vote accordingly. It appears, also, that ministers cram 
 the public offices with superfluous clerks, and that absurd 
 and fraudulent charges are covered by that convenient 
 word, " contingencies." Dr. Russell was in the Crimea 
 lately, and wrote home to the Times, that " the French and 
 Russian dead have been reverently gathered together, but 
 the English cemetery on Cathcart s Hill is in a shameful 
 
 * Here is another anecdote of the last general election in England: 
 " Some time ago a well-educated young Welshman came into possession 
 of a farm left him by his father, and, being a Liberal in politics, he voted 
 at the last election for the Liberal candidate. He was in the habit of 
 churning his butter by water-power, which he obtained from a brook 
 which ran through the land of his neighbor, a powerful conservative landed 
 proprietor, and member of Parliament. To punish the young farmer s 
 audacity in voting according to his principles, the Tory magnate ordered 
 the course of the water to be diverted, so that it might not be used any 
 longer to churn the Radical farmer s butter. This was actually done. 
 The farmer found one day the water turned from his house,, and now he 
 has to churn his butter by hand." 
 
92 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 state, notwithstanding the thirteen thousand pounds paid 
 by the government for its proper maintenance. The Rus 
 sian government has done more than could be expected of 
 it, but all the monuments in the cemetery are being chipped 
 to pieces, and no attempt has been made to gather the re 
 mains of our fallen soldiers in one spot." There is, also, in 
 England, a "pardon lobby," which can sometimes get a 
 man of rank released from prison before his term has ex 
 pired ; as in the United States a forger of wealthy family 
 can occasionally (though very rarely) procure a similar 
 favor. 
 
 Mr. Froude s recent utterance with regard to the prev 
 alence of fraud in England would surely be an exaggera 
 tion if applied to the United States. It could not be truly 
 said of the business of America that it is " saturated with 
 fraud." " So deep has it gone," added the historian, "that 
 a strictly honest tradesman can hardly hold his ground 
 against competition. You can no longer trust that any 
 article that you buy is the thing which it pretends to be. 
 We have false weights, false measures, cheating, and shoddy 
 everywhere. Yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in 
 absolute indifference ; and the great question which at this 
 moment is agitating the Church of England is the color of 
 the ecclesiastical petticoats." This is not true of the Unit 
 ed States, where, as a rule, men of business comprehend 
 well, and act upon their belief, that the sole possible basis 
 of a business permanently great is to give a good dollar s 
 worth for a dollar. Probably Mr. Froude, like Mr. Carlyle, 
 lives very much among his books, and does not possess per 
 sonal knowledge of anything which cannot be learned in a 
 library. As to the clergy, their existence as a privileged 
 order is in peril ; they are engaged in Mr. Darwin s " strug 
 gle for life." Clergymen of ability, who have several strings 
 to their bow, do not meddle with the petticoat question. 
 
 There is a poem by Mrs. Browning, written before we 
 had emancipated ourselves from slavery, in which she told 
 us that the penalty we paid for consenting to remain under 
 that shameful yoke was that we forfeited the right to glow 
 with indignation, and hurl the sharp rebuke, at atrocious 
 deeds doDe anywhere on earth. In the presence of our 
 own giant iniquity, we must remain silent when we heard 
 
CONGRESSIONAL PECCADILLOES. 93 
 
 of distant outrage. But the principle to which she gave 
 expression in this fine poem is, perhaps, of universal appli 
 cation. No nation is so pure that it can with propriety 
 point the finger of reproach at another; because, if the 
 sins of one are different from those of the other, it does 
 not follow that they are less. I do firmly believe that the 
 people of the United States are the most honest people in 
 the world ; but I do not know that we should be such if it 
 were as hard to live in the United States as it is in the dense 
 ly peopled and entirely appropriated countries of the Old 
 World. There was no stealing in the California mining- 
 region when every man was making his pile. Considering 
 how much our virtues and our vices are produced by cir 
 cumstances, it is as ridiculous to boast as it is vulgar to 
 taunt. 
 
 Why then parade those examples of the weakness and 
 corruption of other governments 1 For several reasons. 
 It is comforting to have companions in misfortune, and it is 
 reassuring to know that governments that were once wholly 
 corrupt are now but partially so. The court of Louis XIV. 
 and their servants numbered three thousand persons, and 
 the king carried on his war by the sale of places. There 
 were lieutenant-colonels then in the French army ten years 
 of age, and archbishops under twenty-one. It is not so 
 bad as that in France now \ and in England several entire 
 species of corrupt practice have been extirpated. The 
 tendency of governments to become corrupt is powerful 
 and constant, and they can be kept endurably honest only 
 by eternal vigilance. Besides, a year or two since, when 
 the North American Review exposed the government of 
 New York, the English Tories seized the articles with avid 
 ity, and caused them to be republished in England, and 
 circulated as " campaign documents." All the Tory organs 
 commented upon them, and drew inferences unfavorable to 
 government by the people for the people ; omitting to men 
 tion that the corrupt governments of our three largest sea 
 ports are sustained by voters whom the Tory system of 
 Europe had kept in brutal ignorance. If New York alder 
 men steal, it is because Great Britain has been governed 
 by a class. Send us intelligent, educated emigrants, ye 
 supercilious Tories ! Send us men trained in the duties of 
 
94 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 citizenship, and we will soon expel the thieves from city-hall 
 and lobby. We shall do it, as it is ; but not as soon as we 
 should like. 
 
 After all, we are but serving an apprenticeship in the art 
 of government by the whole people. We have done very 
 well hitherto. Evils have arisen, but they have been grap 
 pled with and suppressed. Evils exist, but there is no 
 reason to think that the recuperative energy of the system 
 is near exhaustion. It is only people who do not know 
 much about the period of Washington and John Adams, 
 who think the government was better then than it is now. 
 It is better now, upon the whole, than it was then ; and muck 
 better, considering . how difficult a task governments now 
 have. In its worst estate, it was better than the best 
 despotism. Congress, I am sure, will repent of its small 
 sins ; and by and by it will so reorganize the public service 
 that the temptation to commit many of them will be 
 removed. 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 is an American lady living at Hartford, in Con- 
 necticut, whom the United States has permitted to be 
 robbed by foreigners of $ 200,000. Her name is Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe. By no disloyal act has she or her family 
 forfeited their right to the protection of the government of 
 the United States. She pays her taxes, keeps the peace, 
 and earns her livelihood by honest industry ; she has reared 
 children for the service of the Commonwealth ; she was 
 warm and active for her country when many arourid her 
 were cold or hostile ; in a word, she is a good citizen. 
 
 More than that : she is an illustrious citizen. The 
 United States stands higher to-day in the regard of every 
 civilized being in Christendom because she lives in the 
 United States. She is the only woman yet produced on 
 the continent of America to whom the world assigns equal 
 rank in literature with the great authoresses of Europe. 
 If, in addition to the admirable talents with which she is 
 endowed, she had chanced to possess one more, namely, 
 the excellent gift of plodding, she had been a consummate 
 artist, and had produced immortal works. All else she 
 has, the seeing eye, the discriminating intelligence, the 
 sympathetic mind, the fluent word, the sure and happy 
 touch ; and these gifts enabled her to render her country 
 the precise service which it needed most. Others talked 
 about slavery : she made us see it. She showed it to us in 
 its fairest and in its foulest aspect ; she revealed its aver 
 age and ordinary working. There never was a fairer nor 
 a kinder book than " Uncle Tom s Cabin " ; for the entire 
 odium of the revelation fell upon the Thing, not upon the 
 unhappy mortals who were born and reared under its 
 shadow. The reader felt that Legree was not less, but far 
 
96 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 more, the victim of slavery thaii Uncle Tom, and the effect 
 of the book was t$ concentrate wrath upon the system 
 which tortured the slave s body and damned the master s 
 soul. Wonderful magic of genius ! The hovels and cotton- 
 fields which this authoress scarcely saw she made all the 
 world see, and see more vividly and more truly than the 
 busy world can ever see remote objects with its own unas 
 sisted eyes. We are very dull and stupid in what does not 
 immediately concern us, until we are roused and enlight 
 ened by such as she. Those whom we call " the intelligent," 
 or " the educated," are merely the one in ten of the human 
 family who by some chance learned to read, and thus came 
 under the influence of the class whom Mrs. Stowe represents. 
 
 It is not possible to state the amount of good which this 
 book has done, is doing, and is to do. Mr. Eugene Schuy- 
 ler, in the preface to the Russian novel which he has 
 recently done the public the service to translate, informs 
 us that the publication of a little book in Russia contrib 
 uted powerfully to the. emancipation -of the Russian serfs. 
 The book was merely a collection of sketches, entitled " The 
 Memoirs of a Sportsman " ; but it revealed serfdom to the 
 men who had lived in the midst of it all their lives without 
 ever seeing it. Nothing is ever seen in this world, till the 
 searching eye of a sympathetic genius falls upon it. This 
 Russian nobleman, Turgenef, noble in every sense, saw 
 serfdom, and showed it to his countrymen. His volume 
 was read by the present Emperor, and he saw serfdom ; and 
 he has since declared that the reading of that little book 
 was " one of the first incitements to the decree which gave 
 freedom to thirty millions of serfs." All the reading, public 
 of Russia read it, and they saw serfdom ; and thus a public 
 opinion was created, without the support of which not even 
 the absolute Czar of all the Russias would have dared to 
 issue a decree so sweeping and radical. 
 
 We cannot say as much for " Uncle Tom s Cabin," be 
 cause the public opinion of the United States which per 
 mitted the emancipation of the slaves was of longer growth, 
 and was the result of a thousand influences. But when we 
 consider that the United States only just escaped dismem 
 berment and dissolution in the late war, and that two great 
 powers of Europe were only prevented from active interfer- 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 97 
 
 ence on behalf of the Rebellion by that public opinion 
 which "Uncle Tom s Cabin" had recently revived and 
 intensified, we may at least believe, that, if the whole 
 influence of that work could have been annihilated, the 
 final triumph of the United States might have been 
 deferred, and come only after a series of wars. That book, 
 we may almost say, went into every household in the civ 
 ilized world which contained one person capable of reading 
 it. And it was not an essay ; it was a vivid exhibition ; 
 it was not read from a sense of duty, nor from a desire to 
 get knowledge ; it was read with passion ; it was devoured ; 
 people sat up all night reading it ; those who could read 
 read it to those who could not ; and hundreds of thousands 
 who would never have read it saw it played upon the stage. 
 Who shall presume to say how many soldiers that book 
 added to the Union army 1 Who shall estimate its influ 
 ence in hastening emancipation in Brazil, and in preparing 
 the amiable Cubans for a similar measure 1 Both in Cuba 
 and Brazil the work has been read with the most passionate 
 interest. 
 
 If it is impossible to measure the political effect of 
 this work, we may at least assert that it gave a thrilling 
 pleasure to ten millions of human beings, an innocent 
 pleasure, too, and one of many hours duration. We 
 may also say, that, while enjoying that long delight, each 
 of those ten millions was made to see, with more or less 
 clearness, the great truth that man is not fit to be trusted 
 with arbitrary power over his fellow. The person who 
 afforded this great pleasure, and who brought home this 
 fundamental truth to so many minds, was Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, of Hartford, in the State of Connecticut, where she 
 keeps house, educates her children, has a book at the gro- 
 cery, and invites her friends to tea. To that American 
 woman every person on earth who read " Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin" incurred a personal obligation. Every individual 
 who became possessed of a copy of the book, and every one 
 who saw the story played in a theatre, was bound, in natural 
 justice, to pay money to her for service rendered, unless 
 she expressly and formally relinquished her right, which 
 she has never done. What can be clearer than this 1 Mrs. 
 Stowe, in the exercise of her vocation, the vocation by 
 
 5 G 
 
98 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 which she lives, performs a professional service to ten mil 
 lions of people. The service is great and lasting. The 
 work done is satisfactory to the customer. What can annul 
 the obligation resting upon each to render his portion of an 
 equivalent, except the consent of the authoress "first had 
 and obtained " 1 If Mrs. Stowe, instead of creating for our 
 delight and instruction a glorious work of fiction, had con 
 tracted her fine powers to the point of inventing a nut 
 cracker or a match-safe, a rolling-pin or a needle-threader, 
 every individual purchaser could have been compelled to 
 pay money for the use of her ingenuity, and everybody 
 would have thought it the most natural and proper thing 
 in the world so to do. There are fifty American inventions 
 now in use in Europe from which the inventors derive 
 revenue. Revenue ! not a sum of money which, once 
 spent, is gone forever, but that most solid and respectable 
 of material blessings, a sum per annum ! Thus we reward 
 those who light our matches. It is otherwise that we 
 compensate those who kindle our souls. 
 
 " Uncle Tom s Cabin," like every other novelty in litera 
 ture, was the late-maturing fruit of generations. Two 
 centuries of wrong had to pass, before the Subject was 
 complete for the Artist s hand, and the Artist herself was 
 a flower of an ancient and gifted family. The Autobi 
 ography of Lyman Beecher has made known this remark 
 able family to the public. We can all see for ourselves 
 how slowly and painfully this beautiful genius was nour 
 ished, what a narrow escape it had from being crushed 
 and extinguished amid the horrors of theology and the 
 poverty of a Connecticut parsonage, how it was saved, 
 and even nurtured, by that extraordinary old father, that 
 most strange and interesting character of New England, 
 who could come home, after preaching a sermon that apr 
 palled the galleries, and play the fiddle and riot with his 
 children till bedtime. A piano found its way into the 
 house, and the old man, whose geniality was of such 
 abounding force that forty years of theology could not 
 lessen it, let his children read Ivanhoe and the other novels 
 of Sir Walter Scott. Partly by chance, partly by stealth, 
 chiefly by the force of her own cravings, this daughter of 
 the Puritans obtained the scanty nutriment which kept her 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 99 
 
 genius from starving. By and by, on the banks of the 
 Ohio, within sight of a slave State, the Subject and the 
 Artist met, and there, from the lips of sore and panting 
 fugitives, she gained, in the course of years, the knowledge 
 which she revealed to mankind in " Uncle Tom s Cabin." 
 
 When she had done the work, the United States stood 
 by and saw her deprived of three fourths of her just and 
 legitimate wages, without stirring a finger for her protec 
 tion. The book sold to the extent of two millions of 
 copies, and the story was played in most of the theatres in 
 which the English language is spoken, and in many French 
 and German theatres. In one theatre in New York it was 
 played eight times a week for twelve months. Considerable 
 fortunes have been gained by its performance, and it is still 
 a source of revenue to actors and managers. We believe 
 that there are at least three persons in the United States, 
 connected with theatres, who have gained more money 
 from " Uncle Tom s Cabin " than Mrs. Stowe. Of all the 
 immense sums which the exhibition of this story upon the 
 stage has produced, the , authoress has received nothing. 
 When Dumas or Victor Hugo publishes a novel, the sale 
 of the right to perform it as a play yields him from 
 eighty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand 
 francs. These authors receive a share of the receipts of 
 the theatre, the only fair arrangement, and this share, 
 we believe, is usually one tenth ; which is also the usual 
 percentage paid to authors upon the sale of their books. 
 If a French author had written " Uncle Tom s Cabin," he 
 would have enjoyed, 1. A part of the price of every copy 
 sold in France ; 2. A share of the receipts of every theatre 
 in France in which he permitted it to be played ; 3. A sum 
 of money for the right of translation into English ; 4. A 
 sum of money for the right of translation into German. 
 We believe we are far within the truth when we say, that 
 a literary success achieved by a French author equal to 
 that of " Uncle Tom s Cabin " would have yielded that 
 author half a million dollars in gold ; and that, too, in spite 
 of the lamentable fact, that America would have stolen the 
 product of his genius, instead of buying it. 
 
 Mrs. Stowe received for " Uncle Tom s Cabin " the usual 
 percentage upon the sale of the American edition ; which 
 
100 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 may have consisted of three hundred thousand copies. This 
 percentage, with some other trifling sums, may have amount 
 ed to forty thousand dollars. From the theatre she has 
 received nothing ; from foreign countries nothing, or next 
 to nothing. This poor forty thousand dollars about 
 enough to build a comfortable house in the country, and 
 lay out an acre or two of grounds was the product of the 
 supreme literary success of all times ! A corresponding sac- 
 cess in sugar, in stocks, in tobacco, in cotton, in invention, 
 in real estate, would have yielded millions upon millions to 
 the lucky operator. To say that Mrs. Stowe, through our 
 cruel and shameful indifference with regard to the rights 
 of authors, native and foreign, has been kept out of two 
 hundred thousand dollars, honestly hers, is a most moder 
 ate and safe statement. This money was due to her as 
 entirely as the sum named upon a bill of exchange is due 
 to the rightful owner of the same. It was for "value re 
 ceived." A permanently attractive book, moreover, would 
 naturally be more than a sum of money ; it would be an 
 estate ; it would be an income. This wrong, therefore, 
 continues to the present moment, and will go on longer 
 than the life of the authoress. While we are writing this 
 sentence, probably, some German, French, Spanish, Italian, 
 Russian, or English bookseller is dropping into his " till " 
 the price of a copy of " Uncle Tom s Cabin," the whole of 
 which he will keep, instead of sending ten per cent of it to 
 Hartford on the 1st of January next. 
 
 We have had another literary success in these years, 
 
 Mr. Motley s Histories of the Dutch Republic and of the 
 United Netherlands. As there are fifteen persons in the 
 world who can enjoy fiction to one that will read much of 
 any other kind of literary production, the writers of fiction 
 usually receive s.ome compensation for their labors. Not a 
 fair nor an adequate compensation, but some. This com 
 pensation will never be fair nor adequate until every man 
 or woman in the whole world who buys a copy of a novel, 
 or sees it played, shall, in so doing, contribute a certain 
 stipulated sum to the author. Nevertheless, the writers 
 of fiction do get a little money, and a few of them are able 
 to live almost as well as a retired grocer. Now and then 
 we hear of an author who gets almost as much money for a 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 101 
 
 novel that enthralls and enchants two or three nations for 
 many months, as a beardless operator in stocks sometimes 
 wins between one and two P. M. It is not so with the 
 heroes of research, like Motley, Buckle, Bancroft, and Car- 
 lyle. Upon this point we are ready to make a sweeping 
 assertion, and it is this. No well-executed work, involving 
 original research, can pay expenses, unless the author is 
 protected in his right to the market of the world. This is 
 one of the points to which we particularly wish to call 
 attention. Give us international copyright, and it imme 
 diately becomes possible in the United States for a man 
 who is not rich to devote his existence to the production of 
 works of permanent and universal value. Continue to with 
 hold international copyright, and this privilege remains the 
 almost exclusive portion of men of wealth. For, in the 
 United States, there is scarcely any such thing as honest 
 leisure in connection with business or a salaried office. 
 
 Now, with regard to Mr. Motley, whose five massive vol 
 umes of Dutch History are addressed to the educated class 
 of all nations, before that author could write the first 
 sentence of his work he must have been familiar with six 
 languages, English, Latin, Dutch, French, German, and 
 Spanish, besides possessing that general knowledge of his 
 tory, literature, and science which constitutes what is called 
 culture. He must also have spent five laborious years in 
 gaining an intimate knowledge of his subject, in the course 
 of which he must have travelled in more than one country, 
 and expended large sums in the purchase of books and 
 documents, and for copies of manuscripts. Living in the 
 cheap capitals of Continental Europe, and managing his 
 affairs with economy, he may have accomplished his pre 
 paratory studies at an expenditure of ten thousand dollars, 
 two thousand dollars a year. The volumes contain in all 
 about three thousand five hundred large pages. At two 
 pages a day, which would be very rapid work, and probably 
 twice as fast as he did work, he could have executed the 
 five volumes, and got them through the press (a year s hard 
 labor in itself), in seven years. Here are twelve years 
 labor, and twenty-four thousand dollars necessary expendi 
 ture. Mr. Motley probably expended more than twelve 
 years, and twice twenty-four thousand dollars ; but we 
 
102 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 choose to estimate the work at its necessary cost. Two 
 other items must be also considered : 1. The talents of 
 the author, which, employed in another profession, would 
 have brought large returns in money and honor ; 2. The 
 intense and exhausting nature of the labor. The produc 
 tion of a work which demands strict fidelity to truth, as 
 well as excellence in composition, which obliges the 
 author, first, to know all, and, after that, to impart the 
 essence of his knowledge in an agreeable and striking man 
 ner, is the hardest continuous work ever done by man. 
 It is at times a fierce and passionate joy ; it is at times a 
 harrowing anxiety ; it is at times a vast despair ; but it is 
 always very hard labor. The search after a fact is some 
 times as arduous as the chase after a deer, and it may last 
 six weeks, and, after all, there may be no such fact, or it 
 may be valueless. And when all is done, when the 
 mountain of manuscript lies before the author ready for 
 the press, he cannot for the life of him tell whether his 
 work is trash or treasure. As poor Charlotte Bronte said, 
 when she had finished Jane Eyre, " I only know that the 
 story has interested me." Finally comes the anguish of 
 having the work judged by persons whose only knowledge 
 of the subject is derived from the work itself. 
 
 No matter for all that : we are speaking of money. This 
 work, we repeat, cost the author twenty-four thousand dol 
 lars to produce. Messrs. Harper sell it at fifteen dollars a 
 copy. The usual allowance to the author is ten per cent 
 of the retail price, and, as a rule, it ought not to be more. 
 Upon works of that magnitude, however, it often is more. 
 Suppose, then, that Mr. Motley receives two dollars for 
 every copy of his work sold by his American publishers. A 
 meritorious work of general interest, i. e. a book not ad 
 dressed to any class, sect, or profession, that costs fifteen 
 dollars, is considered successful in the United States if it 
 sells three thousand copies. Five thousand is decided suc 
 cess. Seven thousand is brilliant success. Ten thousand 
 copies, sold in the lifetime of the author, is all the success 
 that can be hoped for. Ten thousand copies would yield 
 to the author twenty thousand dollars, which is four thou 
 sand dollars less than it cost him. 
 
 But Mr. Motley s work is of universal interest. It does 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 103 
 
 not concern the people of the United States any more than 
 it does the people of England, France, and Germany, nor 
 as much as it does the people of Spain and Holland. 
 Wherever, in the whole world, there is an intelligent, edu 
 cated human being, there is a person who would like to 
 read and possess Motley s Histories, which relate events of 
 undying interest to all the few in every land who are capa 
 ble of comprehending their significance. Give this author 
 the market of the world, and he is compensated for his 
 labor. Deny him this right, and it is impossible he should 
 be. England buys a greater number of fifteen-dollar books 
 than the United States, because, in England, rich men are 
 generally educated men, and in the United States the class 
 who most want such books cannot buy them. Our clergy 
 are poor ; our students are generally poor ; oar lawyers and 
 doctors are not rich, as a class ; our professors and school 
 masters are generally very poor ; our men of business, as a 
 class, read little but the daily paper ; and our men of leisure 
 are too, few to be of any account. Nor have we yet that 
 universal system of town and village self-sustaining libra 
 ries, which will, by and by, abundantly atono for the igno 
 rance and indifference of the rich, and make the best mar 
 ket for books the world has ever seen. England would 
 readily " take " ten thousand copies of a three-guinea book 
 of first-rate merit and universal interest. A French trans 
 lation of the same would sell five thousand in France, and, 
 probably three thousand more in other Continental coun 
 tries. A German translation would place it within the 
 reach of nations of readers, and a few hundreds in each of 
 those nations would become possessors of the work. Or, in 
 other words, an International Copyright would multiply the 
 gains of an author like Mr. Motley by three, possibly by 
 four. 20,000 X 3 = G0,000. 
 
 We are far from thinking that sixty thousand dollars 
 would be a compensation for such work as Mr. Motley has 
 done. We merely say, that the reasonable prospect of even 
 such a partial recompense as that would make it possible 
 for persons not rich to produce in the United States works 
 of universal and permanent value. The question is, Are 
 we prepared to say that such works shall be attempted here 
 only by rich men, or by men like Noah Webster, who lived 
 
104 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 upon a Spelling-Book while he wrote his Dictionary ? Gen 
 erally, the acquisition of an independent income is the work 
 of a lifetime, and it ought to be. But the production of a 
 masterpiece, involving original research, is also the work of 
 a lifetime. Not one man in a thousand millions can do 
 both. Give us International Copyright, and there are al 
 ready five publishers in the United States who are able and 
 willing to give an author the equivalent of Gibbon s sixteen 
 hundred pounds a year, or of Noah Webster s Spelling- 
 Book, or Prescott s thousand dollars a month ; i. e. main 
 tenance while he is doing that part of his work which re 
 quires exclusive devotion to it. Besides, a man intent upon 
 the execution of a great work can contrive, in many ways, 
 to exist just exist for ten years, provided he has a 
 reasonable prospect of moderate reward when his task is 
 done. There are fifty men in New England alone who 
 would deem it an honor and a privilege " to invest " in such 
 an enterprise. 
 
 Mr. Bancroft s is another case in point. Mr. Buckle re 
 marks, that there is no knowledge until there is a class who 
 have conquered leisure, and that, although most of this 
 class will always employ their leisure in the pursuit of 
 pleasure, yet a few will devote it to the acquisition of knowl 
 edge. These few are the flower of their species, its or 
 naments and benefactors, for the flower issues in most 
 precious fruit, which finally nourishes and exalts the whole. 
 We are such idle and pleasure-loving creatures, and civili 
 zation places so many alluring delights within the reach of 
 a rich man, that it must ever be accounted a merit in one 
 of this class if he devotes himself to generous toil for the 
 public good. George Bancroft has spent thirty years in 
 such toil. His History of the United States has stood to 
 him in the place of a profession. His house is filled with 
 the most costly material, the spoils of foreign archives and 
 of domestic chests, the pick of auction sales, the hidden 
 treasure of ancient bookstores, and the chance discoveries 
 of dusty garrets. His work has been eminently " success 
 ful," and he has received for it about as much as his mate 
 rial cost, and perhaps half a dollar a day for his labor. 
 When the third volume of the work was about to appear, 
 a London publisher offered three hundred pounds for the 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 105 
 
 advance sheets, which were furnished, and the money was 
 paid. The same sum was offered and paid for the advance 
 sheets of the fourth volume. Then the London publisher 
 discovered that " the courtesy of the trade " would suffice 
 for his purpose, and he forbore to pay for that which he 
 could get for nothing. Six hundred pounds, therefore, is 
 all that this American author has received from foreign 
 countries for thirty years labor. His work has been trans 
 lated into two or three foreign languages, and it is found in 
 all European libraries of any completeness, whether public 
 or private ; but this little sum is all that has come back to 
 him. Surely, there cannot be one reader of this volume 
 so insensible to moral distinctions as not to feel that this is 
 wrong. The happy accident of Mr. Bancroft s not needing 
 the money has nothing to do with the right and wrong of 
 the matter. No man is so rich that he does not like to 
 receive money which he has honestly earned ; for money 
 honestly earned is honor as well as reward, and it is not for 
 its, the benefited party, to withhold his right from a man 
 because he has been generous to us. And the question 
 again occurs, Shall we sit down content with an arrange 
 ment which obliges us to wait for works of permanent and 
 universal interest until the accident occurs of a rich man 
 willing and able to execute them 1 It is not an accident, 
 but a most rare conjunction of accidents. First, the man 
 must be competent ; secondly, he must be willing ; thirdly, 
 he must be rich. This fortunate combination is so little 
 likely to occur in a new country, that it must be accounted 
 honorable to the United States that in the same generation 
 we have ha(J three such men, Bancroft, Motley, and Pres- 
 cott. Is it such persons that should be singled out from 
 the mass of their fellow-citizens to be deprived of their 
 honest gains 1 Besides, riches take to themselves wings. 
 A case has occurred among us of a rich man devoting the 
 flower of his days to the production of excellent works, and 
 then losing his property. 
 
 It will be of no avail to adduce the instance of Dr. J. W. 
 Draper. We have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Draper 
 relate the history of his average day. Up at six. Break 
 fast at seven. An hour s ride to the city. Busy at the 
 Xew York University from nine to one. .Home in cars to 
 5* 
 
106 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 dinner at three. At four P. M. begins his day s literary 
 work, and keeps steadily on till eleven. Then, bed. Not 
 one man in many millions could endure such a life, and no 
 man, perhaps, ought to endure it. Dr. Draper happens to 
 possess a most sound and easy-working constitution of body 
 and mind, and he has acquired a knowledge of the laws 
 which relate to its well-being. But, even in his case, it is 
 questionable whether it is well, or even right, to devote so 
 large a part of his existence to labor. It is probable, too, 
 that an -International Copyright would, ere this, have re 
 leased him from the necessity of it, or the temptation to it. 
 
 Few of us are aware of the extent to which American 
 works are now reprinted in England. We noticed, the 
 other day, in an English publication, a page of advertise 
 ments containing the titles of thirteen volumes announced 
 to be sold at " Is." or "Is. Gc/." Twelve of the thirteen 
 were American. Among them, we remember, were Mrs. 
 Stowe s "Little Foxes," Dr. HolmesV" Humorous Poems," 
 and Mr. Lowell s " Biglow Papers." The cheap publication 
 stores of Great Britain are heaped with such reprints, the 
 sale of which yields nothing to the authors. We have even 
 seen in England a series of school writing-books, the inven 
 tion of a Philadelphia writing-master, the English copies of 
 which betrayed no trace of their origin. Nor have we been 
 able, after much inquiry, to hear of one instance in which 
 an English publisher has paid an American author, resident 
 in America, for anything except advance sheets. Mr. Long 
 fellow, whose works are as popular in England as in Amer 
 ica, and as salable, has derived, we believe, considerable 
 sums for advance sheets of his works ; but, unless we are 
 grossly misinformed, even he receives no percentage upon 
 the annual sale of his works in Great Britain. 
 
 And the aggravating circumstance of all this spoliation 
 of the men and women who are the country s ornament and 
 boast is, that it is wholly our fault. We force the Euro 
 pean publishers to steal. England is more than willing, 
 France is more than willing, Germany is quite willing, 
 Sweden, Denmark, and Russia are willing, to come at once 
 into an international arrangement which shall render liter 
 ary property as sacred and as safe in all civilized lands as 
 tobacco and whiskey. All the countries we have named 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 107 
 
 are now obliged to steal it, and do steal it. Who would 
 have expected to find the Essays of Mr. Emerson a topic in 
 the interior of Russia 1 We find them, however, familiarly 
 alluded to in the Russian novel " Fathers and Sons," recently 
 translated. If authors had their rights, a rill of Russian sil 
 ver would come trickling into Concord, while a broad and 
 brimming river of it would inundate a certain cottage in 
 Hartford. How many modest and straitened American 
 homes would have new parlor carpets this year, if henceforth, 
 on the first days of January and July, drafts to their address 
 were to be dropped in the mail in every capital of the world 
 which the work done in those homes instructs or cheers ! 
 Nor would new carpets be all. Many authors would be 
 instantly delivered from the fatal necessity of over-produc 
 tion, the vice that threatens literature with annihila 
 tion. 
 
 There is another aggravating circumstance, most ag 
 gravating. The want of an International Copyright chiefly 
 robs our best and brightest ! A dull book protects itself ; 
 no foreigner wants it. An honest drudge, who compiles 
 timely works *of utility, or works which appease a transient 
 curiosity, and which thousands of " agents " put under the 
 nose of the whole population, can make a fortune by one 
 or two lucky hits. There are respectable gentlemen not 
 far off, who, with pen and scissors, in four months, manu 
 factured pieces of merchandise, labelled " Life of Abraham 
 Lincoln," of which a hundred thousand copies each were 
 sold in half a year, and which yielded the manufacturer 
 fifteen thousand dollars. This sum is probably more than 
 the sum total of Mr. Emerson s receipts from his published 
 works, the fruit of forty years of study and meditation. 
 It is chiefly our dear Immortals and our best Ephemerals 
 who need this protection from their country s justice. It 
 is our Emersons, our Hawthornes, our Longfellows, our 
 Lowells, our Holmeses, our Bryants, our Curtises, our 
 Beechers, our Mrs. Stowes, our Motleys, our Bancrofts, our 
 Prescotts, whom we permit all the world to plunder. We 
 harmless drudges and book-makers are protected by our 
 own dulness. We are panoplied in our insignificance. The 
 stupidest set of school-books we ever looked into has yielded, 
 for many years, an annual profit of one hundred thousand 
 
108 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 dollars, and is now enriching its third set of proprietors. 
 No one, therefore, need feel any concern for us. But, 
 honorable members, spare the few who redeem and exalt 
 the country s name, and who keep alive the all but extin 
 guished celestial fire ! If American property abroad must 
 be robbed, let cotton and tobacco take a turn, and see how 
 they like it. Invite Manchester to come to the Liverpool 
 Docks and help itself. Let there be free smoking in 
 Europe. Summon the merchants of London to a scramble 
 for American bills of exchange. Select for spoliation any 
 thing but the country s literature. 
 
 The worst remains to be told. It is bad to have your 
 pocket picked ; but there is something infinitely worse, 
 it is to pick a pocket. Who would not rather be stolen 
 from, than steal? Who would not rather be murdered, 
 than be a murderer] Nevertheless, in depriving foreign 
 authors of their rights, it is still ourselves whom we injure 
 most. The great damage to America, and to American 
 literature, from the want of an international copyright law, 
 is not the thousands of dollars per annum which authors 
 lose. This is, in fact, the smallest item that enters into 
 the huge sum total of our loss. 
 
 It maims or kills seven tenths of the contemporary liter 
 ature that must be translated before it is available for 
 publication here. Charles Keade, in that gallant and bril 
 liant little book of his, "The Eighth Commandment," 
 quotes from a letter written in Cologne, in 1851, the fol 
 lowing passage : 
 
 " About thirty years ago the first translations from 
 English were brought to the German market. The Waver- 
 ley Novels were extensively circulated, and read with 
 avidity by all classes. Next came Bulwer, and after him 
 Dickens and other writers. Rival editions of the same 
 works sprang up by the half-dozen ; the profits decreased, 
 and the publishers were obliged to cut down the pay of the 
 translators. I know that a translation-monger at Grimm 
 pays about 6 for a three-volume novel. 
 
 " These works, got up in a hurry, and printed with bad 
 type on wretched paper, are completely flooding the market ; 
 and, as they are much cheaper than original works, they 
 are a serious obstacle to our national literature. Thus 
 
INTERNATIONAE COPYRIGHT. 109 
 
 much for our share in the miseries of free trade * in trans 
 lations. 
 
 " Now for yours. There are able men in Germany, who, 
 were it made worth their while, could and would put the 
 master works of your novelists and historians into a decent 
 German garb. But under the present system these men 
 are elbowed out of the field." 
 
 Change a few names in this passage, and it describes, 
 with considerable exactness, the state of the translation 
 market in the United States. Works, which in France 
 charm the boudoir and amuse the whole of the educated 
 class, sink, under the handling of hasty translators and 
 enterprising publishers, into what we call "Yellow-Covered 
 Literature," which is to be found chiefly upon the wharves. 
 Respectable publishers have a well-founded terror of French 
 and German translations ; since, after incurring the expense 
 of translation, they have no protection against the publica 
 tion of another version except " the courtesy of the trade," 
 a code of laws which has not much force in the regions 
 from which the literature of the Yellow Cover emanates. 
 We are not getting half the good we ought from the con 
 temporary literature of France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, 
 Holland, Italy, and we never shall, until American pub 
 lishers can acquire property in it by fair purchase, which 
 the law will protect. The business of furnishing the Ameri 
 can public with good translations from the French would 
 of itself maintain two or three great publishing houses. 
 There is a mine of wealth there waiting for the removal of 
 the squatters and the recognition of the rightful title-deeds. 
 What would California have been worth to us, or to itself, 
 or to anybody, if its treasures had been left to the hurried 
 scratchings over the surface of uncapitalled prospecters 1 
 Capital and skill wait until the title is clear. Then they 
 go in, with their ponderous engines, and pound the rocks 
 till the gold glitters all over the heap. 
 
 Messrs. Appleton, of New York, have recently ventured 
 to publish good translations and good editions of Madame 
 Muhlbach s historical novels. The name of this lady being 
 
 * Upon this expression Mr. Reade justly remarks : " This is a foolish 
 and inapplicable phrase. Free trade is free buying and selling, not free 
 stealing." 
 
110 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 new to America, the enterprise was a risk, a risk of 
 many thousand dollars, a risk which only a wealthy 
 house would be justified in assuming. The great expense 
 of such an undertaking is incurred in making the new 
 name known, in advertising it, in shouting it into the 
 ears of a public deafened with a thousand outcries. An 
 enormous sum of money may easily be spent in this way, 
 when advertising costs from twenty cents to two dollars a 
 line. Suppose the efforts of the publishers are successful, 
 see how beautifully the present system works ! The more 
 successful they are, the more perilous their property be 
 comes ! It is safe only as long as it is worthless. Just as 
 soon as they have, by the expenditure of unknown thou 
 sands, created for the works of this German lady a steady 
 demand, which promises to recompense them, they are 
 open to the inroads of the Knights of the Yellow Cover ! 
 See, too, the effects upon the Berlin authoress. Playing 
 such a dangerous and costly game as this, the American 
 publisher dare not, cannot treat with her in the only proper 
 and honorable way, open a fair bargain, so much for so 
 much. Messrs. Appleton did themselves the honor, the 
 other day, to send her a thousand dollars, gold, which was 
 an act as wise as it was right. We enjoyed an exquisite 
 pleasure in looking upon the lovely document, duly stamped 
 and authenticated, which has ere this given her a claim 
 upon a Berlin banker ; and we have also a prodigious hap 
 piness in committing the impropriety of making the fact 
 public. Nevertheless, it is not thus that authors should 
 be paid for their own. All we can say of it is, that it is 
 better than nothing to her, and the best a publisher can do 
 under the circumstances. 
 
 This business of publishing books is the most difficult one 
 carried on in the world. It demands qualities so seldom 
 found in the same individual, that there has scarcely ever 
 been an eminent and stable publishing house which did not 
 consist of several active and able men. Failure is the rule, 
 success the rare exception. The shores of the business 
 world are strewn thick with the wrecks of ventures in 
 this line that gave every promise of bringing back a large 
 return. It has been proved a task beyond the wisdom of 
 mortals, to decide with any positive degree of certainty 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. Ill 
 
 whether a heap of blotted manuscript is the most precious 
 or the most worthless of all the productions of human 
 industry. Young publishers think they can tell ; old pub 
 lishers know they cannot. This is so true, that for a 
 publisher to have a knowledge of the commodity in which 
 he deals is generally a point against his success as a pub 
 lisher ; and it will certainly rain him, unless he has a 
 remarkably sound judgment, or a good, solid, unlearned 
 partner, whose intuitive sense of what the public wants is 
 unbiased by tastes of his own. 
 
 It is this terrible uncertainty as to the value of the 
 commodity purchased, which renders publishing a business 
 so difficult, precarious, and unprofitable ; and the higher 
 the character of the literature, the greater the difficulty 
 becomes. Publishers who confine themselves chiefly to 
 works of utility and necessity, or to works professional and 
 sectarian, have an easy task to perform compared with that 
 of a publisher who aims to supply the public with pure 
 science and high literature. If any business can claim 
 favorable consideration from those who have in charge the 
 distribution of the public burdens, surely it is this. If in 
 any way its perils can be justly diminished by law, surely 
 that protection ought not to be withheld. We believe it 
 could be shown that the business of publishing what the 
 trade calls "miscellaneous books," i. e. books which depend 
 solely upon their intrinsic interest or merit, yields a smaller 
 return for the capital and talent invested in it than any 
 other. The Harpers have a grand establishment, one 
 of the wonders of America. Any one going over that 
 assemblage of enormous edifices, and observing the multi 
 tude of men and women employed in them, the vast and 
 far-reaching enterprises going forward, some of which 
 involve a large expenditure for years before any return is 
 possible, the great numbers of men of ability, learning, 
 and experience who are superintending the various depart 
 ments, and the amazing quantities of merchandise pro 
 duced, the mere catalogue of which is a large volume, 
 any one, we say, observing these things, would naturally 
 conclude, that the proprietors must be in the receipt of Van- 
 derbiltian incomes. The same amount of capital, force, 
 experience, and talent employed in any other branch of 
 
112 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 business could not fail to put the incomes of the proprietors 
 high up among those which require six figures for their 
 expression. Compare the returns of these monarchs of the 
 "trade" with those of our dry-goods magnates, and our 
 mighty men in cotton, tobacco, and railroads. A dealer in 
 dry-goods in the city of New York has returned as the 
 income of a single year a sum half as large as the whole 
 capital invested in the establishment of the Harpers. If 
 the signal successes of publishing successes which are the 
 result of the rarest conjunctions of talent, capital, experi 
 ence, and opportunity are represented by incomes of 
 twenty and thirty thousand paper dollars a year, what 
 must be the general condition of the trade 1 But it is the 
 difficulty of conducting the business at all, not the slender- 
 ness of its profits, upon which we now desire the reader to 
 reflect. That difficulty, we repeat, arises from the fact 
 that a publisher buys his pig in a poke. He generally 
 knows not, and cannot know, whether what he buys is 
 worth much, little, or nothing. 
 
 But there is one branch of his business which does not 
 present this difficulty, the. reprinting of works previously 
 published in a foreign country. He has the advantage of 
 holding in his hand the precise article which he proposes 
 to reproduce, a printed volume, which he can read with 
 ease and rapidity ; and this is nearly as great an advantage 
 as a manager has who sees a play performed before buying 
 it. He has the still greater advantage of a public verdict 
 upon the book. It has been tried upon a public ; and it is 
 a rule almost without exception, that a book which sells 
 largely in one country will not fail in another. Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Reade, Miss Mulock, Anthony Trollope, George 
 Eliot, Dumas, Hugo, George Sand, have in all foreign coun 
 tries a popularity which bears a certain proportion to that 
 which they enjoy in their own ; and even the Chinese novel 
 published some years ago in England was a safe specula 
 tion, because it was universally popular in China. The 
 Russian novel before alluded to was a prudent enterprise, 
 because Russia had previously tasted and enjoyed it. Lit 
 erature of high character is always pervaded with the 
 essence of the nationality which produced it, but it is, for 
 that very reason, the more interesting to other nations. 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 113 
 
 Don Quixote has more Spain in it than all the histories of 
 Spain ; but in the library of the German collector of Cer 
 vantes, whose death has been recently announced, there 
 were more than twice as many foreign editions as Span 
 ish. According to the Pall Mall Gazette, there were 
 400 editions in Spanish, 168 in French, 200 in English, 87 
 in Portuguese, 96 in Italian, 70 in German, 4 in Russian, 4 
 in Greek, 8 in Polish, 6 in Danish, 13 in Swedish, and 5 in 
 Latin. Poor Cervantes ! How eloquently this list pleads 
 for International Copyright ! 
 
 It is, then, in the republication of foreign works that our 
 publishers ought to find an element of certainty, which 
 cannot appertain to the publication of original and untried 
 productions. But it is precisely here that chaos reigns. In 
 the issue of native works, there is but a single uncertainty ; 
 in the republication of foreign, there are many. No man 
 knows what his rights are ; nor whether he has any rights j 
 nor whether there are any rights; nor, if he has rights, 
 whether they will be respected. This chaos has taken to 
 itself the pleasant and delusive name of " Courtesy of the 
 Trade." Before the " reign of law " is established in any 
 province of human affairs, we generally see men feeling 
 their way to it, trying to find something else that will 
 answer the purpose, endeavoring to reduce the chaos of 
 conflicting claims to some kind of rule. The publishers of 
 the United States have been doing this for many years, and 
 the result is the unwritten code called the Courtesy of the 
 Trade, a code defective in itself, with neither judge to 
 expound it, jury to decide upon it, nor sheriff to execute 
 it. This code consisted at first of one rule, if a publisher 
 issues a foreign work, no other American publisher shall 
 issue it. But it often happened that two or three publish 
 ers begftn or desired to begin the printing of the same 
 book. To meet this and other cases, other laws were 
 added, until at present the code, as laid down by the rigor- 
 ists, consists of the following rules : 
 
 1. If a publisher issues an edition of a foreign work, he 
 has acquired an exclusive right to it for a period undefined. 
 
 2. If a publisher is the first to announce his intention to 
 publish a foreign work, that announcement gives him an 
 exclusive right to publish it. 
 
114 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 3. If a publisher has already issued a work of a foreign 
 author, he has acquired thereby an exclusive right to the 
 republication of all subsequent works by the same author. 
 
 4. The purchase of advance sheets for publication in a 
 periodical gives a publisher the exclusive right to publish 
 the same in any other form. 
 
 5. All and several of these rights may be bought and 
 sold, like any other kind of property. 
 
 There is a kind of j ustice in all these rules. If we could 
 concede that a foreign author has no ownership of the coin 
 age of his brain, if anything but that author s free gift 
 or purchased consent could convey that property to another, 
 if foreign literature is the legitimate spoil of America, 
 then some such code as this would be the only method of 
 preventing the business from degenerating into a game of 
 unmitigated grab. In its present ill-defined and most im 
 perfect state, this system of " courtesy " scarcely mitigates 
 the game at all ; and, accordingly, in " the trade," instead 
 of the friendly feeling that would naturally exist among 
 honorable men in the highest branch of business, we find 
 feuds, heart-burnings, and a grievous sense of wrongs un- 
 redressed and unrcdressable. Some houses " announce " 
 everything that is announced on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, so as to have the first choice. Smaller firms, see 
 ing these announcements, dare not undertake any foreign 
 work, even though the great house never decides to publish 
 the book upon which the smaller had fixed its attention. 
 It is only under the reign of law that the rights of the weak 
 have any security. In the most exquisitely organized sys 
 tem of piracy, no man can rely upon the enjoyment of a 
 right which he is not strong enough personally to defend. 
 It is not every house that can crush a rival edition by sell 
 ing thousands of expensive books at half their cost. Be 
 tween the giant houses that tower above him, and the 
 yellow-covered gentry that prowl about his feet, an Ameri 
 can publisher of only ordinary resources has a game to play 
 which is really too difficult for the limited capacities of man. 
 Who can wonder that most of them lose it 1 
 
 One effect of this courtesy system is, that many excellent 
 works, which it would be a public benefit to have reprinted 
 here, are not reprinted. Another is, that corrected or irn- 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 115 
 
 proved editions cannot be given to the American reader 
 without bringing down upon the publisher the enmity or 
 the vengeance of a rival. It is not common in Europe for 
 the first editions of important works to be stereotyped ; but 
 in America they always are. The European author fre 
 quently makes extensive additions and valuable emenda 
 tions in each successive edition; until, in the course of 
 years, his work is essentially different from, and far superior 
 to, the first essay. We cannot have the advantage of the 
 improved version. There is a set of old and worn stereo 
 type plates in the way, the proprietor of which will not 
 sacrifice them, nor permit another publisher to produce the 
 corrected edition, which would as completely destroy their 
 value as though they were melted into type metal. Who 
 can blame him 1 No one likes to have a valuable property 
 suddenly rendered valueless. " It is not human nature." 
 Mr. Lewes is not justified in so bitterly reproaching Messrs. 
 Apploton for their cold entertainment of his offer to them 
 of the enlarged version of his " History of Philosophy." 
 
 "I felt," says Mr. Lewes, "that Messrs. Appleton, of 
 New York, had, in courtesy, a prior claim, on the ground 
 of their having reprinted the previous edition in 1857. 
 Accordingly I wrote to them, through their London agent, 
 stating that I considered they had a claim to the first offer, 
 and stating, further, that the new edition was substantially 
 a new book. [As this is an important element in the pres 
 ent case, allow me to add, that the edition of 1857 was in 
 one volume 8vo, published at sixteen shillings, whereas the 
 new edition is in two volumes 8vo, published at thirty 
 shillings ; and the work is so considerably altered and en 
 larged that a new title has been affixed to it, for the pur 
 pose of marking it off from its predecessors.] Questions of 
 courtesy are, however, but ill understood by some people, 
 and by Messrs. Appleton so ill understood that they did 
 not even answer my letter. After waiting more than three 
 months for an answer, I asked a friend to see their London 
 agent on the subject, and thus I learned that Messrs. Ap 
 pleton risum teneatis, amid? considered they had a 
 right to publish all future editions of my work without 
 payment, because ten years ago they had given the mag 
 nificent sum of twenty-five pounds to secure themselves 
 against rivals for the second edition." 
 
116 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 The omission to answer the author s letter, we may 
 assume, was accidental. It is not correct to say that the 
 publishers founded their claim to issue the new edition 
 upon their payment of twenty-five pounds. The real diffi 
 culty was, that Messrs. Appleton possessed the plates of the 
 first edition, and could not issue the enlarged edition with 
 out, first, destroying a property already existing, and, sec 
 ondly, creating a new property at an expenditure about four 
 times as great as the sum originally invested. The accept 
 ance of Mr. Lewes s offer would have involved an expendi 
 ture of several thousand dollars, at a time when, for a 
 variety of reasons, works of that character could hardly be 
 expected to return the outlay upon them. The exclusive 
 and certain ownership of the work might well justify its 
 republication, even now, when it costs exactly three times 
 as much to manufacture a book in the United States as it 
 did seven years ago. But nothing short of this w T ould war 
 rant a publisher in undertaking it. The real sinners, against 
 whom Mr. Lewes should have launched his sarcasm, are the 
 people of the United States, who permit their instructors, 
 both native and foreign, to be robbed of their property with 
 impunity. Thus we see that a few hundred pounds of 
 metal are likely to bar the entrance among us of a work 
 which demonstrates, in the clearest and most attractive 
 manner, the inutility of all that has hitherto gone by the 
 name of "metaphysics," and which also indicates the method 
 of investigation from which good results are to be rationally 
 hoped for. 
 
 It is the grossest injustice to hold American publishers 
 responsible for the system of ill-regulated plunder which 
 they have inherited, and which injures them more imme 
 diately and palpably than any other class, excepting alone 
 the class producing the commodity in which they deal. 
 There are no business men more honorable or more gener 
 ous than the publishers of the United States, and especially 
 honorable and considerate are they toward authors. The 
 relation usually existing between author and publisher in 
 the United States is that of a warm and lasting friendship, 
 such as that which subsisted for so many years between Irv 
 ing and Putnam, and which now animates and dignifies the 
 intercourse between the literary men of New England and 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 117 
 
 Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, and which gathers in the well- 
 known room of the Harpers a host of writers who are at 
 tached friends of the " House." The relation, too, is one 
 of a singular mutual trustfulness. The author receives his 
 semiannual account from the publisher with as absolute a 
 faith in its correctness as though he had himself counted 
 the volumes sold ; and the- publisher consigns the manu 
 script of the established author to the printer almost with 
 out opening it, confident that, whether it succeeds or fails, 
 the author has done his best. We have heard of instances 
 m which a publisher had serious cause of complaint against 
 an author, but never have we known an author to be inten 
 tionally wronged by a publisher. We have known a pub 
 lisher, in the midst of the ruin of his house, to make it one 
 of the first objects of his care to save authors from loss, or 
 make their inevitable losses less. How common, too, it is 
 in the trade for a publisher to go beyond the letter of his 
 bond, and, after publishing five books without profit, to give 
 the author of the successful sixth more than the stipulated 
 price ! Let every one speak of the market as he finds 
 it. For our part, after fifteen years of almost daily inter 
 course with publishers, we have no recollections of them 
 that are not agreeable, and can call to mind no transaction 
 in which they did not show themselves to be men of honor 
 as much as men of business. We have not the least doubt 
 that Mr. Peterson honestly thought he had acquired a right, 
 by fair purchase, to sell the property of Charles Dickens in 
 the United States as long as he should continue in business, 
 and then to dispose of that right to his successor. We are 
 equally confident that Messrs. Harper felt themselves com 
 pletely justified in endeavoring to crush the Diamond Edi 
 tion of Thackeray. All this chaos and uncertainty, all these 
 feuds and enmities, have one and the same cause, the 
 existence in the world of a kind of property which is at 
 once the most precious, the easiest stolen, and the worst 
 protected. 
 
 Almost to a man, our publishers are in favor of an Inter 
 national Copyright. We have been able to hear of but one 
 exception, and this is the publisher of but one book, 
 Webster s Dictionary, the work of all others now in exist 
 ence that would profit most from just protection in foreign 
 
118 TOPICS OF THE TIME." 
 
 countries. There is an impression in many circles that the 
 Harpers are opposed to it. We are enabled to state, upon 
 the authority of a member of that great house, that this is 
 not now, and never has been, the case. Messrs. Harper 
 comprehend, as well as we do, that they would gain more 
 from the measure than any other house in the world ; 
 because it is the natural effect of law, while it protects 
 the weak, to legitimate and establish the dominion of the 
 strong. International Copyright would benefit every crea 
 ture connected with publishing, but it would benefit most 
 of all the great and wealthy houses. The Harpers have 
 spent tens of thousands in enforcing the observance of the 
 courtesy of the trade, but they cannot enforce it. It is a 
 work never done and always beginning. It cost them four 
 hundred of our ridiculous dollars for the advance sheets of 
 each number of Mr. Dickens s last novel ; and within forty- 
 eight hours of the publication of the Magazine containing 
 it, two other editions were for sale under their noses. The 
 matter for " Harper s Magazine " often costs three or four 
 thousand dollars a number ; can any one suppose that the 
 proprietors like to see Black wood and half a dozen other 
 British magazines sold all over the country at a little more 
 than the cost of paper and printing 1 They like it as little 
 as the proprietors of Blackwood like it. This is a wrong 
 which injures two nations and benefits one printer ; and 
 that printer would himself do better if he could obtain ex 
 clusive rights by fair purchase. No ; Messrs. Harper, we 
 are happy to state, are decidedly in favor of an International 
 Copyright, and so is. every other general publishing house 
 in the country of which we have any knowledge. 
 
 Consider the case of our venerable and beloved instructor, 
 "The North American Review," conducted with so much 
 diligence, energy, and tact by the present editors. Not a 
 number of it has appeared under their management which 
 has not been a national benefit ; and no country more needs 
 such a periodical than the United States, now standing on 
 the threshold of a new career. The time has passed when 
 a review could consist chiefly of the skilfully condensed con 
 tents of interesting books, which men could execute in the 
 intervals of professional duty, and think themselves happy 
 in receiving one dollar for a printed page, extracts deducted. 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 119 
 
 At the present time, a review must initiate as well as criti 
 cise, and do something itself as well as comment upon the 
 performances of others. We believe that no number of the 
 North American Review now appears, the matter of which 
 costs as little as a thousand dollars. But it has to compete, 
 not only with the four British Reviews sold here at the price 
 of paper and printing, but with several periodicals made up 
 of selections from the reviews and magazines of Europe. 
 Nor is this all. A public accustomed to buy books and 
 periodicals at a price into which nothing enters but manual 
 labor and visible material is apt to pause and recoil when 
 it is solicited to pay the just value of those commodities. 
 A man who buys a number of the Westminster Review for 
 half a dollar is likely to regard a dollar and a half as an 
 enormous price for a number of the North American, though 
 he gets for his money what cost a thousand dollars before 
 the printer saw it. For forty years or more we have all 
 been buying our books and reviews at thieves prices, 
 prices in which everybody was considered except the crea 
 tors of the value ; and the consequence is, that we turn 
 away when a proper price is demanded for a book, and re 
 gard ourselves as injured beings. How monstrous for a 
 volume of Emerson to be sold for a dollar ! In England 
 and France, when the price is to be fixed upon works of 
 that nature, the mere cost of paper and printing is hardly 
 considered at all. Such trifles are felt, and rightly felt, to 
 have little to do with the question of price. The publisher 
 knows very well that he has to dispose of one of those rare 
 and beautiful products which only a very few thousands of 
 his countrymen will, care to possess, or could enjoy if it 
 were thrust upon them. He fixes the price with reference 
 to the facts of the case, the important facts as well as 
 the trivial, the rights of the author as well as the little bill 
 of the printer, and that price is half a guinea. The want 
 of an International Copyright, besides lowering and de 
 grading all literature, has demoralized the public by getting 
 it into the habit of paying for books the price of stolen 
 goods. And hence the North American Review, which 
 would naturally be a most valuable property, has never 
 yielded a profit corresponding to its real value. People 
 stand aghast at the invitation to pay six dollars a year for 
 
120 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 au article, the mere unmanufactured ingredients of which 
 cost a thousand times six dollars. 
 
 Good contemporary books cannot be very cheap, unless 
 there is stealing somewhere, for a good book is one of the 
 most costly products of nature. Fortunately, they need 
 not be cheap, for it is not necessary to own many of them. 
 As soon as an International Copyright has given tone to 
 the business of writing and publishing books, and has 
 restored the prices of them to the just standard, w r e shall 
 see a great increase of those facilities for purchasing the 
 opportunity to read a book without buying it, which have 
 placed the whole literature of the world at the command 
 of an English farmer who can spare a guinea or two per 
 annum. It is not necessary, we repeat, to possess many 
 new books ; it is only necessary to read them, get the good 
 of them, and give a hearty support to the library from 
 which we take them. The purchase of a book should be a 
 serious and well-considered act, not the hasty cramming of 
 a thin, double-columned pamphlet into a coat-pocket, to be 
 read and cast aside at the bottom of a book-case. It is an 
 abominable extravagance to buy a great and good novel in 
 a perishable form for a few cents ; it is good economy to 
 pay a few dollars for one substantially bound, that will 
 amuse and inform generations. A good novel, play, or 
 poem can be reread every five years during a long life. 
 When a book is to be selected out of the mass, to become 
 thenceforth part and parcel of a home, let it be well printed 
 and well bound, and, above all, let it be of an edition to 
 which the author has set the seal of his consent and appro 
 bation. No one need fear that the addition of the author s 
 ten per cent to the price of foreign books will make them 
 less accessible to the masses of the people. It will make 
 them more accessible, and it will tend to make them better 
 worth keeping. % 
 
 When we consider the difficulties which now beset the 
 publication of books in the United States, we cannot but 
 wonder at the liberality of American publishers toward 
 foreign authors, a liberality which has met no return 
 from publishers in Europe. The first money that Herbert 
 Spencer ever received in his life from his books was sent to 
 him in 1861 by the Appletons as his share of the proceeds 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 121 
 
 of his " Essays upon Education " ; and every year since he 
 has received upon all his works republished here the per 
 centage usually paid to native authors. This is so inter 
 esting a case, and so forcibly illustrates many aspects of 
 our subject, that we will dwell upon it for a moment. 
 
 It will occasionally happen that an author is produced 
 in a country who is charged with a special message for 
 another country. There will be something in the. cast of 
 his mind, or in the nature of his subject, which renders his 
 writings more immediately or more generally suitable to 
 the people of a land other than his own. We might cite 
 as an example Washington Irving, who, though a sound 
 American patriot, was essentially an English author, and 
 whose earlier works are so English that many English peo 
 ple read them to this day, we are told, who do not suspect 
 that the author was not their countryman. Washington 
 Irving owed his literary career to this fact ! His seventeen 
 years residence abroad enabled him to enjoy part of the 
 advantage which all great authors would derive from an 
 International Copyright, that is to say, he derived revenue 
 from both countries. During the first half of his literary 
 career, he drew the chief part of his income from England ; 
 during the second half, when his Sketch-Book vein was 
 exhausted, and he was again an American resident, he 
 derived his main support from America. If he had never 
 resided abroad, we never should have had a Washington 
 Irving ; if he had not returned home, he would have been 
 sadly pinched in his old age. Alone among the American 
 authors of his day or of any day, he had the market of the 
 world for his works ; and he only, of excellent American 
 authors, has received anything like a compensation for his 
 labor. The entire proceeds of his works during his life 
 time were $ 205,383, of which about one third came to him 
 from England. His average income, during the fifty years 
 of his authorship, was about four thousand dollars a year. 
 Less than any other of our fkmous authors he injured his 
 powers by over-production, and it was orily the unsteadiness 
 of his income, the occasional failure of his resources, or the 
 dread of a failure, that ever induced him to take up his 
 pen when exhausted nature cried, Forbear ! Cooper, on 
 the contrary, who was read and robbed in every country, 
 
122 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 wrote himself all out, and still wrote on, until his powers 
 were destroyed and his name was a by-word. 
 
 A case similar in principle to that of Irving was Audu- 
 bon, the indefatigable and amiable Audubon. The exceed 
 ing costliness of his "Birds of America" protected that 
 work as completely as an International Copyright could ; 
 and, but for this, we never could have had it. Audubon 
 enjoyed the market of the world ! The price of his won 
 derful work was a thousand dollars, and, at that period, 
 neither Europe nor America could furnish purchasers 
 enough to warrant him in giving it to the press. But 
 Europe and America could ! Europe and America did, 
 each continent taking about eighty copies. The excellent 
 Audubon, therefore, was not ruined by his brave endeavor 
 to honor his country and instruct mankind. He ended his 
 days in peace in that well-known villa on the banks of the 
 Hudson, continuing his useful and beautiful labors to the 
 last, and leaving to his sons the means of perfecting what 
 he left incomplete. 
 
 But to return to Herbert Spencer, the author of " Social 
 Statics " ; or, as we call it, Jeffersonian Democracy, illus 
 trated and applied. Unconnected with the governing 
 classes of his own country, escaping the universities, bred 
 to none of the professions, and inheriting but a slender 
 patrimony, he earned a modest and precarious livelihood 
 by contributing to the periodicals, and wrung from his 
 small leisure the books that England needed, but would 
 not buy. An American citizen, Professor Youmans, felt all 
 their merit, and perceived how adapted they were to the 
 tastes and habits of the American mind, and how skilfully 
 the ideas upon which America is founded were developed 
 in them. He also felt, as we have heard him say, that, 
 next to the production of excellent works, the most useful 
 thing a man can do in his generation is to aid in giving 
 them currency. Aided by other lovers of his favorite 
 author, he was soon in a position to bear part of the heavy 
 expense of stereotyping Mr. Spencer s works ; and thus 
 Messrs. Appleton were enabled, not only to publish them, 
 but to afford the author as large a share of the proceeds as 
 though he had been a resident of the United States. Thus 
 Herbert Spencer, by a happy accident, enjoys part of the 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 123 
 
 advantage which would accrue to all his brethren from an 
 International Copyright ; and we have the great satisfac 
 tion of knowing, wfien we buy one of his volumes, that we 
 are* not defrauding our benefactor. 
 
 Charles Scribner habitually pays English authors a part 
 of the profit derived from their republished works. Max 
 Miiller, Mr. Trench, and others who figure upon his list, 
 derive revenue from the sale of their works in America. 
 Mr. Scribner considers it both his duty and his interest to 
 acquire all the right to republish which a foreign author 
 can bestow ; and he desires to see the day when the law 
 will recognize and secure the most obvious and unquestion 
 able of all rights, the right of an author to the product of 
 his mind. 
 
 We trust Messrs. Ticknor and Fields will not regard it 
 as an affront to their delicacy if we allude here to facts 
 which events have already disclosed to the public. This 
 house, on principle, and as an essential part of their sys 
 tem, send to foreign authors a share of the proceeds of 
 their works, and this they have habitually done for twenty- 
 five years. The first American edition of the Poems of 
 Mr. Tennyson, published by them in 1842, consisted of one 
 thousand copies, and it was three years in selling; but 
 upon this edition a fair acknowledgment in money was sent 
 to the poet. Since that time, Mr. Tennyson has received 
 from them a certain equitable portion of the proceeds of all 
 the numerous editions of his works which they have issued. 
 Mr. Fields, with great labor and some expense, collected 
 from periodicals and libraries a complete set of the works 
 of Mr. De Quincey, which the house published in twenty- 
 two volumes, the sale of which was barely remunerative ; 
 but the author received, from time to time, a sum propor 
 tioned to the number of volumes sold. M*. Fields has 
 been gathering the " Early and Late Papers " of Mr. Thack 
 eray, one volume of which has been published, to the great 
 satisfaction of the public. Miss Thackeray has already 
 received a considerable sum for the sale of the first edi 
 tion. Mr. Browning, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Reade, the Country 
 Parson, Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Dr. John Brown, 
 Mr. Mayne Reid, Mr. Dickens, have been dealt with in a 
 similar manner; some of them receiving copyright, and 
 
124 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 others a sum of money proportioned to the sale or expected 
 sale of their works. Nor has the appearance of rival edi 
 tions been allowed to diminish the author s share of the 
 profits realized upon the editions published with their con 
 sent. Mr. Tennyson counts upon the American part of 
 his income with the same certainty as upon that which he 
 derives from the sale of his works in England, although he 
 cannot secure his Boston publishers the exclusive market 
 of the United States. Comment is needless. Every man 
 who has either a conscience or a talent for business will rec 
 ognize either the propriety or the wisdom of their conduct. 
 Upon this rock of fair-dealing the eminent and long-sus 
 tained prosperity of this house is founded. 
 
 Complaints, then, are made of American publishers ! 
 We say again, that, after diligent inquiry, we cannot hear 
 of one instance of an English publisher sending money to 
 an American author for anything but advance sheets. Mr. 
 Longfellow is as popular a poet in England as Mr. Tenny 
 son is in America, and he has, consequently, as before re 
 marked, received considerable sums for early sheets, but 
 nothing, we believe, upon the annual sale of his works, 
 nothing from the voluntary and spontaneous justice of his 
 English publishers. We have no right, perhaps, to censure 
 men for not going beyond the requirements of law ; but 
 still less can we withhold the tribute of our homage to 
 those who are more just than the law compels, and this 
 tribute is due to several publishers on this side of the At 
 lantic. But then there remains the great fact against us, 
 that England is willing to-day, and we are not, to throw 
 the protection of international law around this most sacred 
 interest of civilization. 
 
 Would that it were in our power to give adequate expres 
 sion to the mighty debt we owe, as a people, to the living 
 and recent authors of Europe ! But who can weigh or es 
 timate the invisible and widely diffused influence of a book 1 
 There are sentences in the earlier works of Carlyle which 
 have regenerated American souls. There are chapters in 
 Mill which are reforming the policy of American nations. 
 There are passages in Buckle which give the key to the 
 mysteries of American history. There are lines in Tenny 
 son which have become incorporated into the fabric of our 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 125 
 
 minds, and flash light and beauty upon our daily conversa 
 tion. There are characters in Dickens which are extinguish 
 ing the foibles which they embody, and pages of Thackeray 
 which kill the affectations they depict. What a colossal 
 good to us is Mr. Grote s " History of Greece " ! Miss Mu- 
 lock, George Eliot, Charles Reade, Charlotte Bronte, King- 
 lake, Matthew Arnold, Charles Kingsley, Ruskin, Macaulay, 
 how could we spare the least of them 1 Take from our 
 lives the happiness and the benefit which we have derived 
 from the recent authors of Europe ; take from the future 
 the silent, ceaseless working of their spirits, so antidotal 
 to all that remains in us of colonial, provincial, and super 
 stitious, and what language could state, ever so inade 
 quately, the loss we and posterity should experience ? And 
 let us not lay the mean unction to our souls that money 
 cannot repay such services as these. It can ! It can repay 
 it as truly and as fully as sixpence pays for a loaf of bread 
 that saves a shipwrecked hero s life. The baker gets his 
 own; he is satisfied, and holy justice is satisfied. This 
 common phrase, " making money," is a poor, mean way of 
 expressing an august and sacred thing ; for the money which 
 fairly comes to us, in the way of our vocation, is, or ought 
 to be, the measure of our worth to the community we serve. 
 It is honor, safety, education, leisure, children s bread, wife s 
 dignity and adornment, pleasant home, society, an indepen 
 dent old age, comfort in dying, and solace to those we leave 
 behind us. Money is the representative of all the substan 
 tial good that man can bestow on man. And money justly 
 earned is never withheld without damage to the withholder 
 and to the interest he represents. 
 
 We often think of the case of Dion Boucicault, one of 
 the few men now writing the English language who have 
 shown a very great natural aptitude for telling a story in 
 the dramatic form. For thirty years we have been witness 
 ing his plays in the United States. A fair share of the 
 nightly receipts of the theatres in which they were played 
 would have enriched him in the prime of his talent, or, in 
 other words, have delivered him from that temptation to 
 over-production which has wellnigh destroyed his powers. 
 He never received any revenue from us until he came here 
 and turned actor. He gets a little money now by associat- 
 
126 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 ing with himself an American friend, who writes a few 
 sentences of a play, then brings it to New York and dis 
 poses of it to managers as their joint production. But what 
 an exquisite shame it is for us to compel an artist to whom 
 we owe so many delightful hours to resort to an artifice in 
 order to be able to sell the product of his talent ! Our in 
 justice, too, damages ourselves even more than it despoils 
 him ; for if we had paid him fairly for " London Assurance " 
 and " Old Heads and Young Hearts," if he had found a 
 career in the production of plays, he might not have been 
 lured from his vocation, and might have written twenty 
 good plays, instead of a hundred good, bad, indifferent, and 
 atrocious. We cheat him of our part of the just results of 
 his lifetime s labor, and he flings back at us his anathema in 
 the form of a " Flying Scud." Think of Sheridan Knowles, 
 too, deriving nothing from our theatres, in which his dramas 
 have been worn threadbare by incessant playing ! To say 
 that they are trash is not an infinitesimal fraction of an ex 
 cuse ; for it is just as wrong to steal paste as it is to steal 
 diamonds. We liked the trash well enough to appropriate 
 it. Besides, he really had the knack of constructing a tell 
 ing play, which, it seems, is one of the rarest gifts bestowed 
 upon man, and the one which affords the most intense 
 pleasure to the greatest number of people. 
 
 Why, we may ask in passing, did the English stage lan 
 guish for so many years 1 It was because the money that 
 should have compensated dramatists enriched actors ; be 
 cause the dramatist that wrote " Black-eyed Susan " was 
 paid five pounds a week, and the actor that played William 
 received four thousand pounds during the first run of the 
 play. In France, where the drama flourishes, it is the actor 
 who gets five pounds a week, and the dramatist who gets 
 the thousands of pounds for the first run ; and this just 
 distribution of profits is infinitely the best, in the long run, 
 for actors. 
 
 There is still an impression prevalent in the world, that 
 there is no connection between good work and good wages 
 in this kind of industry. There was never a greater mis 
 take. A few great men, exceptional in character as in 
 circumstances, blind like Milton, exiled like Dante, prison 
 ers like Bunyan and Cervantes, may have written for solace, 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 127 
 
 or for fame, or from benevolence ; but, as a rule, nothing 
 gets the immortal work from Jlrst-rate men but money. We 
 need only mention Shakespeare, for every one knows that 
 he wrote plays simply, and solely as a matter of business, 
 to draw money into the treasury of his theatre. He was 
 author and publisher, actor as well, and thus derived a 
 threefold benefit from his labors. Moliere, too, the great 
 est name in the literature of France, and the second in the 
 dramatic literature of the world, was author, actor, and 
 manager. Play-writing was the career of these great men. 
 It was their business and vocation ; and it is only in the 
 way of his business and vocation that we can, as a rule, 
 get from an artist the best and the utmost there is in him. 
 Common honesty demands that a man shall do his best 
 when he works for his own price. His honor and his safety 
 are alike involved. All . our courage and all our cowardice, 
 all our pride and all our humility, all our generosity and all 
 our selfishness, all that can incite and all that can scare us to 
 exertion, may enter into the complex motive that is urging us 
 on when we are doing the work by which we earn our right 
 to exist. Nothing is of great and lasting account, not re 
 ligion, nor benevolence, nor law, nor science, until it is so 
 organized that honest and able men can live by it. Then 
 it lures talent, character, ambition, wealth, and force to its 
 support and illustration. The whole history of literature, 
 so far as it is known, shows that literature flourishes when it 
 is fairly rewarded, and declines when it is robbed of its just 
 compensation. Mr. Reade has admirably demonstrated this 
 in his " Eighth Commandment," a little book as full of wit, 
 fact, argument, eloquence, and delicious audacity as any 
 that has lately appeared. 
 
 There has been but one country in which literature has 
 ever succeeded in raising itself to the power and dignity of 
 a profession, and it is the only country which has ever en 
 joyed a considerable part of the market of the world for 
 its literary wares. This is France, which has a kind of 
 International Copyright in its language. Educated Russia 
 reads few books that are not French, and in every country 
 of Christendom it is taken for granted that an educated 
 person reads this language. Wherever in Europe or Amer 
 ica or India or Australia many books are sold, some French 
 
128 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 books are sold. Here in New York, for example, we have 
 had for many years an elegant and well-appointed French 
 bookstore, in which the standard works of French literature 
 are temptingly displayed, and the n,ew works are for sale 
 within three weeks after their publication in Paris. Many 
 of our readers, too, must have noticed the huge masses of 
 French books exhibited in some of the second-hand book 
 stores of Nassau Street. French books, in fact, form a 
 very considerable part of the daily business of the book 
 stores in every capital of the world. Nearly one hundred 
 subscribers were obtained in the United States for the 
 Nouvelle Biographic, in forty-six volumes, the total cost of 
 which, bound, was more than two hundred dollars. Besides 
 this large and steady sale of their works in every city on 
 earth, French authors enjoy a protection to their rights at 
 home which is most complete, and they address a public 
 accustomed to pay for new books a price, in determining 
 which the author was considered. Mr. Reade informs us 
 that a first-rate dramatic success in Paris is worth to the 
 author six thousand pounds sterling, and that this six thou 
 sand pounds is very frequently drawn from the theatre 
 after a larger sum has been obtained for the same work in 
 the form of a novel. 
 
 What is the effect 1 ? Literature in France, as we have 
 said, is one of the liberal professions. Literary men are 
 an important and honorable order in the state. The press 
 teems with works of real value and great cost. The three 
 . hundred French dramatists supply the theatres of Christen 
 dom with plays so excellent, that not even the cheat of 
 " adaptation " can wholly conceal their merit. Great novels, 
 great histories, great essays and treatises, important contri 
 butions to science, illustrated works of the highest excel 
 lence, compilations of the first utility, marvellous diction 
 aries and statistical works, appear with a frequency which 
 nothing but a universal market could sustain. In whatever 
 direction public curiosity is aroused, prompt and intelligent 
 efforts are made to gratify it. Nothing more surprises an 
 American inquirer than the excellent manner in which 
 this mere task-work, these "booksellers jobs," as we term 
 them, are executed in Paris. That Nouvelle Biograpliie of 
 which we have spoken is so faithfully done, and is so free 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 129 
 
 from any perverseness or narrowness of nationality, that it 
 would be a good enterprise in any of the reading- countries 
 to publish a translation of it just as it stands. French 
 literature follows the general law, that, as the volume of 
 business increases, the quality of the work done improves. 
 The last French work which the pursuit of our vocation led 
 us to read was one upon the Mistresses of Louis XV., by 
 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. %Ve need not say how 
 such a subject as this would be treated by the cheated hire 
 lings of the Yellow Cover. This work, on the contrary, is 
 an intelligent historical study of a period when mistresses 
 governed France, and the passages in the work which touch 
 upon the adulterous tie which gave fair France over to 
 these vampires are managed with a delicacy the most per 
 fect. The present hope of France is in her literature. Her 
 literary men are fast educating that interesting and virtu 
 ous people to the point when they will be able to regain 
 their freedom and keep it safe from nocturnal conspirators. 
 They would have done it ere now, but for the woful fact 
 that only half of their countrymen can read, and are thus 
 the helpless victims of a perjured Dutchman and his priests. 
 What the general knowledge of the French language has 
 done for French literature, all of that, and more than that, 
 an International Copyright law would do for the literature 
 of Great Britain and the United States. Here are four great 
 and growing empires, Great Britain, the United States, the 
 Dominion of Canada, and the states of Australia, in which 
 the same language is spoken and similar tastes prevail. In 
 all these nations there is a spirit abroad which will never 
 rest content until the whole population are readers, and 
 those readers will be counted by hundreds of millions. 
 Already they are so numerous, that one first-rate literary 
 success, one book excellent enough to be of universal inter 
 est, would give the author leisure for life, if his rights were 
 completely protected by international law. What a field 
 for honorable exertion is this ! And how can these empires 
 fail to grow into unity when the cultivated intelligence of 
 them all shall be nourished from the same sources, and bow 
 in homage to the same commanding minds 1 Wanting this 
 protection, the literature of both countries languishes. The 
 blight of over-production falls upon immature genius, mas- 
 6* i 
 
130 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 terpieces are followed by labored and spiritless repetitions, 
 and men that have it in them to inform and move mankind 
 grind out task-work for daily bread. One man, one master 
 piece, that is the general law. Not one eminent literary 
 artist of either country can be named who has not injured 
 his powers and jeoparded his fame by over-production. We 
 do not address a polite note to Elias Howe, and ask him 
 how much he would charge for a " series " of inventions 
 equal in importance to the sewing-machine. We merely 
 enable him to demand a dollar every time that one concep 
 tion is used. Imagine Job applied to for a " series " of 
 Books of Job. Not less absurd is it to compel an author 
 to try and write two Sketch-Books, two David Copperfields, 
 two Uncle Toms, two Jane Eyres, or two books like " The 
 Newcomes," When once a great writer has given such 
 complete expression of his experience as was given in each 
 of those works, a long time must elapse before his mind 
 fills again to a natural overflow. But, alas ! only a very 
 short time elapses before his purse empties. 
 
 It was the intention of the founders of this Republic to 
 give complete protection to intellectual property, and this 
 intention is clearly expressed in the Constitution. Justified 
 by the authority given in that instrument, Congress has 
 passed patent laws which have called into exercise an 
 amount of triumphant ingenuity that is one of the great 
 wonders of the modern world ; but under the copyright 
 laws, enacted with the same good intentions, our infant lit 
 erature pines and dwindles. The reason is plain. For a 
 labor-saving invention, the United States, which abounds 
 in everything but labor, is field enough, and the inventor is 
 rewarded ; while a great book cannot be remunerative un 
 less it enjoys the market of the whole civilized world. The 
 readers of excellent books are few in every country on earth. 
 The readers of any one excellent book are usually very few 
 indeed ; and the purchasers are still fewer. In a world 
 that is supposed to contain a thousand millions of people, 
 it is spoken of as a marvel that two millions of them bought 
 the most popular book ever published, one purchaser to 
 every five hundred inhabitants. 
 
 We say, then, to. those members of Congress who go to 
 Washington to do something besides make Presidents, that 
 
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 131 
 
 time has developed a new necessity, not indeed contem 
 plated by the framers of the Constitution, yet covered by 
 the Constitution ; and it now devolves upon them to carry 
 out the evident intention of their just and wise predeces 
 sors, which was, to secure to genius, learning, and talent 
 the certain ownership of their productions. We want an 
 international system which shall protect a kind of property 
 which cannot be brought to market without exposing it to 
 plunder, property in a book being simply the right to 
 multiply copies of it. We want this property secured, for 
 a sufficient period, to the creator of the value, so that no 
 property in a book can be acquired anywhere on earth un 
 less by the gift or consent of the author thereof. There 
 are men in Congress who feel all the magnitude and sacred- 
 ness of the debt which they owe, and which their country 
 owes, to the authors and artists of the time. We believe 
 such members are more numerous now than they ever were 
 before, much more numerous. It is they who must take 
 the leading part in bringing about this great measure of 
 justice and good policy; and, as usual in such cases, some 
 one man must adopt it as his special vocation, and never 
 rest till he has conferred on mankind this immeasurable 
 boon. 
 
OUR EOMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 
 
 ONE thing can be said of our Roman Catholic brethren, 
 and especially of our Roman Catholic sisters, without 
 exciting controversy, they begin early in the morning. 
 St. Stephen s, the largest Catholic church in New York, 
 which will hold five thousand persons and seat four thou 
 sand, was filled to overflowing every morning of last No 
 vember at five o clock. That, however, was an extraordi 
 nary occasion. The first mass, as housekeepers are well 
 aware, usually takes place at six o clock, summer and win 
 ter ; and it was this that I attended on Sunday morning, 
 December 8, 1867, one of the coldest mornings of that re 
 markably cold month. 
 
 It is not so easy a matter to wake at a certain hour 
 before the dawn of day. One half, perhaps, of all the in 
 habitants of the earth, and two thirds of the grown people 
 of the United States, get up in the winter months before 
 daylight ; and yet a person unaccustomed to the feat will 
 be utterly at a loss how to set about it. At five o clock of 
 a December morning it is as dark as it ever is. The most 
 reckless milkman has not then begun his matutinal whoop, 
 and the noise of the bakers carts is not heard in the streets. 
 And if there should be a family in the middle of the block 
 who keep chickens, there is no dependence to be placed 
 upon the crowing of the cocks ; for they crow at all odd, 
 irrational times both of night and day. Neither in the 
 heavens above nor in the yards beneath, neither in the 
 house nor in the street, is there any sign or sound by which 
 a wakeful expectant can distinguish five o clock from four, 
 or three, or one. It is true, madam, as you remark, that 
 there is such a thing as an alarm-clock. But who ever has 
 one when it is wanted 1 People who get up at five every 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 133 
 
 morning can do without ; and those who get up at five once 
 in five years, even if by any chance they should possess an 
 alarm-clock, forget in the five years of disuse how the little 
 fury is set so as to hold in all night and burst forth in frenzy 
 at the moment required. This was my case. The alarm 
 went off admirably an hour too late, and woke up the wrong 
 person. It was only a most vociferous crowing of the cocks 
 just now reviled as unreliable that caused me to suspect 
 that possibly it might be time for me to strike a light and 
 see how the alarm-clock was getting on. Our Roman Cath 
 olic brethren, in some way or ways unknown, habitually 
 overcome this difficulty ; for fifty thousand of them, in New 
 York alone, are frequently at church and on their knees 
 before there are any audible or visible indications of the 
 coming day. 
 
 It was a very cold and brilliant morning, stars glitter 
 ing, moon resplendent, pavement icy, roofs snowy, wind 
 north-northwest, and, of course, cutting right into the faces 
 of people bound up the Third Avenue. An empty car went 
 rattling over the frozen-in rails with an astonishing noise, 
 the conductor trotting alongside, and the miserable driver 
 beating his breast with one hand and pounding the floor 
 with one foot. The highly ornamental policeman on the 
 first corner was singing to keep himself warm ; but, seeing 
 a solitary wayfarer in a cloak scudding along on the ice, he 
 conceived a suspicion of that untimely seeker after knowl 
 edge ; he paused in his song ; he stooped and eyed him 
 closely, evidently unable to settle upon a rational explana 
 tion of his presence ; and only resumed his song when the 
 suspected person was five houses off. There was scarcely 
 any one astir to keep an adventurer in countenance, and I 
 began to think it was all a delusion about the six-o clock 
 mass. At ten minutes to six, when I stood in front of the 
 spacious St. Stephen s Church in Twenty-Eighth Street, 
 there seemed to be no one going in ; and, the vestibule 
 being unlighted, I was confirmed in the impression that 
 early mass did not take place on such cold mornings. To 
 be quite sure of the fact, however, I did just go up the steps 
 ^and push at the door. It yielded to pressure, and its open 
 ing disclosed a vast interior, dimly lighted at the altar end, 
 where knelt or sat, scattered about one or two in a pew, 
 
134 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 about a hundred women and ten men, all well muffled up in 
 hoods, shawls, and overcoats, and breathing visibly. There 
 was just light enough to see the new blue ceiling and its sil 
 ver stars ; but the sexton was busy lighting the gas, and got 
 on with his work about as fast as the church filled. That 
 church extends through the block, and has two fronts. As 
 six o clock approached, female figures in increasing numbers 
 crept silently -in by several doors, all making the usual 
 courtesy, and all kneeling as soon as they reached a pew. 
 At last the lower part of the church was pretty well filled, 
 and there were some people in the galleries ; in all, about 
 one thousand women and about one hundred men. Nearly 
 all the women were servant-girls, and all of them were 
 dressed properly and abundantly for such a morning. There 
 was not a squalid or miserable-looking person present. 
 Most of the -men appeared to be grooms and coachmen. 
 Among these occupants of the kitchen, the nursery, and 
 the stable there were a few persons from the parlor, evi 
 dently of the class whom Voltaire speaks of with so much 
 wrath and contempt as devots et devotes. There were two or 
 three men near me who might or might not have been 
 ecclesiastics or theological students ; upon the pale and 
 luminous face of each was most legibly written, This man 
 prays continually, and enjoys it. 
 
 There is a difference between Catholics and Protestants 
 in this matter of praying. When a Protestant prays in 
 public, he is apt to hide his face, and bend low in an awk 
 ward, uncomfortable attitude ; and, when he would pray in 
 private, he retires into some secret place, where, if any one 
 should catch him at it, he would blush like a guilty thing. 
 It is*not so with our Roman Catholic brethren. They 
 kneel, it is true, but the body above the knees is bolt up 
 right, and the face is never hidden ; and, as if this were 
 not enough, they make certain movements of the hand 
 which distinctly announce their purpose to every beholder. 
 The same freedom and boldness are observable in Catholic 
 children when they say their nightly prayers. Your little 
 Protestant buries its face in the bed, and whispers its 
 prayer to the counterpane ; but our small Catholic breth- 
 ren and sisters kneel upright, make the sign of the cross, 
 and are not in the least ashamed or disturbed if any one 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 135 
 
 sees them. Another thing strikes a Protestant spectator 
 of Catholic worship, the whole congregation, without 
 exception, observe the etiquette of the occasion. When 
 kneeling is in order, all kneel ; when it is the etiquette to 
 stand, all stand ; when the prayer-book says bow, every 
 head is low. These two peculiarities are cause and effect. 
 A Protestant child often has some reason to doubt whether 
 saying its prayers is, after all, "the thing," since it is 
 aware that some of its most valued friends and relations do 
 not say theirs. But among Catholics there is not the dis 
 tinction (so familiar to us) between those who "belong to 
 the church " and those who do not ; still less the distinc 
 tion (nearly as familiar in some communities) between be 
 lievers and unbelievers. From the hour of baptism every 
 Catholic is a member of the church, and he is expected to 
 behave as such. This is evidently one reason for that open, 
 matter-of-course manner in which all the requirements of 
 their religion are fulfilled. No one is ashamed of doing 
 what is done by every one in the world whom he respects, 
 and what he has himself been in the habit of doing from 
 the time of his earliest recollection. A Catholic appears 
 to be no more ashamed of saying his prayers than he is of 
 eating his dinner, and he appears to think one quite as 
 natural an action as the other. 
 
 On this cold morning the priest was not as punctual as 
 the people. The congregation continued to increase till 
 ten minutes past six ; after which no sound was heard but 
 the coughing of the chilled worshippers. It was not till 
 seventeen minutes past six that the priest entered, accom 
 panied by two slender, graceful boys, clad in long red robes, 
 and walked to his place, and knelt before the altar. All 
 present, except one poor heathen in the middle aisle, shuf 
 fled to their knees with a pleasant noise, and remained 
 kneeling for some time. The silence was complete, and I 
 waited to hear it broken by the sound of the priest s voice. 
 But not a sound came from his lips. He rose, he knelt, he 
 ascended the steps of the altar, he came down again, he 
 turned his back to the people, he turned his face to them, 
 he changed from one side of the altar to the other, he 
 made various gestures with his hands, but he uttered 
 not an audible word. The two graceful lads in crimson 
 
136 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 garb moved about him, and performed the usual services, 
 and the people sat, stood, knelt, bowed, and crossed them 
 selves in accordance with the ritual. But still not a word 
 was spoken. At the usual time the collection was taken, 
 to which few gave more than a cent, but to which every one 
 gave a cent. A little later, the priest uttered the only 
 words that were audible during the whole service. Stand 
 ing 011 the left side of the altar, he said, in an agreeable, 
 educated voice : " The Society of the Holy Rosary will 
 meet this afternoon after vespers. Prayers are requested 
 for the repose of the souls of - " ; then followed the names 
 of three persons. The service was continued, and the 
 silence was only broken again by the gong-like bell, which 
 announced by a single stroke the most solemn acts of the 
 mass, and which, toward the close of the service, summoned 
 those to the altar who wished to commune. During the 
 intense stillness which usually followed the sound of the 
 bell, a low, eager whisper of prayer could occasionally be 
 heard, and the whole assembly was lost in devotion. About 
 twenty women and five men knelt round the altar to re 
 ceive the communion. Soon after this had been adminis 
 tered some of the women began to hurry away, as if fearing 
 the family at home might be ready for breakfast before 
 breakfast would be ready for them. At ten minutes to 
 seven the priest put on his black cap, and withdrew ; and 
 soon the congregation was in full retreat. But by this time 
 another congregation was assembling for the seven-o clock 
 mass ; the people were pouring in at every door, and 
 hurrying along all the adjacent streets towards the church. 
 Seven o clock being a much more convenient time than six, 
 the church is usually filled at that hour ; as it is, also, at 
 the nine- o clock mass. At half past ten the grand mass of 
 the day occurs, and no one who is in the habit of passing a 
 Catholic church on Sunday mornings at that hour needs to 
 be informed that the kneeling suppliants who cannot get 
 in would make a tolerable congregation of themselves. 
 
 What an economy is this ! The parish of St. Stephen s 
 contains a Catholic population of twenty-five thousand, of 
 whom twenty thousand, perhaps, are old enough and well 
 enough to go to church. As the church will seat four 
 thousand persons, all this multitude can hear mass every 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 137 
 
 Sunday morning. As many as usually desire it can attend 
 the vespers in the afternoon. The church, too, in the 
 intervals of service, and during the week, stands hospitably 
 open, and is usually fulfilling in some way the end of its 
 erection. How different with our churches ! There is St. 
 George s, for example, the twin steeples of which are visible 
 to the home-returning son of Gotham as soon as the Sound 
 steamer has brought him past Blackwell s Island. In that 
 stately edifice half a million dollars have been invested, 
 and it is in use only four hours a week. No more ; for the 
 smaller occasional meetings are held in another building, 
 a chapel in the rear. Half a million dollars is a large 
 sum of money, even in Wall Street, where it figures merely 
 as part of the working capital of the country ; but think 
 Avhat a sum it is when viewed as a portion of the small, 
 sacred treasure set apart for the higher purposes of human 
 nature ! And yet the building which has cost so much 
 money stands there a dead and empty thing, except for 
 four hours on Sunday ! Our Roman Catholic brethren 
 manage these things better. When they have invested 
 half a million in a building, they put that building to a 
 use which justifies and returns the expenditure. Even 
 their grand cathedrals are good investments ; since, besides 
 being always open, always in use, always cheering and com 
 forting their people, they are splendid illustrations of their 
 religion to every passer-by, to every reader of books, and to 
 every collector of engravings. Such edifices as St. Peter s, 
 the cathedrals of Milan and of Cologne, do actually cheer 
 and exalt the solitary priest toiling on the outskirts of 
 civilization. Lonely as he is, insignificant, perhaps despised 
 and shunned, he feels that he has a property in those gran 
 deurs, and that an indissoluble tie connects him with the 
 system which created them, and which will one day erect a 
 gorgeous temple upon the site of the shanty in which now 
 he celebrates the rites of his church in the presence of a 
 few railroad laborers. 
 
 While these successive multitudes have been gathering 
 and dispersing, something has been going on in the base 
 ment of St. Stephen s, a long, low room, extending- from 
 street to street, and fitted up for a children s chapel and 
 Sunday-school room. The Protestant reader, it is safe to 
 
138 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 say, has never attended a Catholic Sunday school, but he 
 shall now have the pleasure of doing so. It ought to be a 
 pleasure only to see two or three thousand children gath 
 ered together ; but there is a particular reason why a Prot 
 estant should be pleased at a Catholic Sunday school. 
 Imitation is the sincerest homage. The notion of the 
 Sunday school is one of several which our Roman Catholic 
 brethren have borrowed from us. This church, hoary and 
 wrinkled with age, does not disdain to learn from the 
 young and bustling churches to which it has given all 
 they have. The Catholic Church, however, claims a share 
 in the invention, since for many ages it has employed boys 
 in the celebration of its worship, and has given those boys 
 a certain training to enable them to fulfil their vocation. 
 Still, the Sunday school, as now constituted, is essentially 
 of Protestant origin. Indeed, the energetic and truly 
 catholic superintendent of St. Stephen s school, Mr. Thomas 
 E. S. Dwyer, informed me, that, before beginning this 
 school, he visited all the noted Sunday schools in New York, 
 Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, and endeavored to get 
 from each whatever he found in it suitable to his purpose. 
 
 The basement of St. Stephen s, being three hundred feet 
 long, fifty or sixty feet wide, and only about ten feet high, 
 looks more like a section of an underground railroad than 
 a room. It is so very low that, although abundantly pro 
 vided with windows on both sides, it is necessary always to 
 light many jets of gas. In the ceiling is fixed part of the 
 heating apparatus of the church, a circumstance that 
 does not tend to the purification of the atmosphere. At 
 one end of this exceedingly long room is a small, plain 
 altar, with the usual candles and other appurtenances ; 
 and on one side of the room, about midway, is a large cab 
 inet organ, with an enclosure about it for the choir of chil 
 dren who chant the responses and psalms of the mass. On 
 the walls between each window are the showy pictures 
 usually found in Catholic institutions. At nine o clock, 
 when I took my seat in one of the pews of this long, low 
 apartment, children with the reddest cheeks and the warm 
 est comforters were thundering in, and diffusing themselves 
 over the floor, the girls taking one side of the room and 
 the boys the other. When Mr. Dwyer began this school a 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 139 
 
 few years ago, only two hundred children attended, a 
 mere handful in a Catholic parish, but every teacher 
 bound himself to visit each of his pupils once a month, 
 and so endeavor to interest the people in the school. The 
 effect was magical. Children came pouring in, until now 
 the average attendance is two thousand, and there have 
 been in the school at one session three thousand three 
 hundred and forty. 
 
 The noise continued to increase till ten minutes past 
 nine, when nearly every pew was filled, and the side exten 
 sions following the cruciform plan of the church were also 
 crowded with the younger children seated upon benches, 
 each bench having a teacher at one end. Meanwhile, the 
 candles of the altar had been lighted, the choir had assem 
 bled, and the organ had been opened. A bell tinkles. A 
 priest is at the altar, attended by two boys, who had come 
 in unobserved amid the confusion. The bell rings again. 
 Every child gets upon its knees, and every adult also, except 
 the lonely heathen before mentioned. It was a truly affect 
 ing spectacle, the rows of little boys, with a tall teacher 
 at the head of each row, all kneeling in the candid, upright 
 manner in which our Roman Catholic brethren always do 
 kneel. There was still, however, a great noise of boys 
 coming in and kneeling, and it was some minutes before 
 there was any general approach to silence. 
 
 This mass, like the early one in the church, was performed 
 without the priest s uttering one audible word. The re 
 sponses and the psalm-like portions of the mass were sung 
 by the choir, which consisted of one man, one woman, and 
 about twenty children, who sang very well, and very appro 
 priate music. But in that low, crowded, noisy room the 
 music had as much effect as if performed in a tunnel, or at 
 the bottom of a large, deep well. Thus, as the priest said 
 nothing, and the choir could not be understood, the children 
 were thrown, as it were, upon their own resources ; and 
 those resources, it must be owned, were insufficient. Many 
 of the"boys followed the service in their little prayer-books, 
 and most of them refrained from conversation. There were 
 always some, however, who kept up a sly whispering in the 
 ears of their neighbors, and the countenances of a very 
 large number were expressive of nothing. 
 
140 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 But what strains are these 1 ? Old Hundred introduced 
 into the mass ! Slightly altered, it is true, but unmistak 
 ably Old Hundred. And again : the children of the choir 
 break into one of our most joyful tunes, which is sung in 
 every Protestant church, on an average, once every Sunday 
 the year round. Later in the mass the choir sang one of 
 the regular Sunday-school airs, such as Mr. Root of Chicago 
 composes, similar in character to " If at first you don t 
 succeed, try, try again." To think of Catholic children 
 presuming to express their joyful emotions by the aid of 
 Protestant music ! Congress, perhaps, will be petitioned 
 next winter for an Inter-Denominational Cop} T right Law. 
 
 The supreme moment of the mass, announced by the 
 ringing of the bell, is at the elevation of the host. Now, 
 for the first time during the service, there was silence in 
 the room ; and every head was bowed, while the priest said 
 inaudibly, in Latin : " Accept, Holy Father, almighty, 
 eternal God, this immaculate Host, which I, thy unworthy 
 servant, offer unto thee, my living and true God, for my 
 innumerable sins, offences, and negligences, and for all here 
 present ; as also for all faithful Christians, both living and 
 dead, that it may be profitable for my own and for their 
 salvation unto life eternal. Amen." Soon after this solem 
 nity, ten or fifteen children, from nine to eleven years of 
 age, went to the altar and communed. All this army of 
 children, except a very few under seven years of age, have 
 been confirmed, and consequently are communicants. Many 
 hundreds of them had been recently confirmed, clad in 
 white garments, adorned with flowers, accompanied by 
 parents and friends, and surrounded by whatever is most 
 expressive of joy and hope. In this easy and pleasant way 
 our Roman Catholic brethren "join the church." As we 
 have already observed, there is not, among Catholics, any 
 thing of that distinction between those who " belong to the 
 church " and those who do not, which is so painful, and, as 
 some of us think, so deeply demoralizing, a circumstance 
 of American life. There are good Catholics and bad Cath 
 olics, devout Catholics and neglectful Catholics ; but all are 
 Catholics ; all are members of the church ; all can at any 
 moment resume neglected obligations without taking the 
 public into their confidence. The attitude and condition 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 141 
 
 of each soul is a secret known only to itself and to one 
 other. Hence there is no such thing as a roll of members 
 in a Catholic parish, and there are no formalities attending 
 the transfer of a member to another parish. The poor emi 
 grant is at home in the first church he comes to, and every 
 priest is his father. This is one of the most important dif 
 ferences between our Roman Catholic brethren and our 
 selves ; and it is one which gives them a most telling ad 
 vantage in this country among educated persons who love 
 virtue and loathe the profession of it. 
 
 This Sunday-school mass lasted thirty-five minutes, at the 
 end of which the priest put on his black cap and retired. 
 A curtain was then drawn across the altar, which exempted 
 all from the obligation of bending the knee on passing it. 
 A furious uproar arose when the mass ended, caused by the 
 gathering of the classes around the teachers and getting 
 ready for the next exercise, which was catechism. For 
 about half an hour the whole body of children were en 
 gaged in saying their lesson, and in hearing the comments 
 of the teachers upon it ; and as there were two thousand of 
 them the noise was great. Nevertheless, there was very 
 little intentional disorder, although the air was so agoniz 
 ingly impure as to enhance tenfold the difficulty of keep 
 ing order, and of keeping in order. Windows were opened, 
 but it was of no use ; the air never can be even tolerable in 
 that basement when there arfe five hundred persons in it. 
 After the catechism the superintendent mounted a platform 
 in the midst of his flock, and reduced them to silence by 
 the sound of his bell. Then he crossed himself, and said, 
 " In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
 Amen," while all the children rose to their feet. He then 
 said, "The Gospel for the day is," and read it to the 
 children, all standing. He next said, " Kneel " ; and all 
 knelt on both knees, with the body upright. He said a 
 very short prayer (five or six short sentences), which the 
 children repeated after him. The school was then dis 
 missed. 
 
 Usually, however, they spend the last fifteen minutes in 
 singing a few simple songs, set to easy, lively music. Dr. 
 Cummings, who was the late pastor of this church, and was 
 venerated in it, composed a Sunday-school hymn-book in 
 
142 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the last years of his life. The reader, perhaps, may be 
 curious to know what kind of hymns our Roman Catholic 
 brethren teach their children to sing. Well, cut out of this 
 book one tenth of its contents, in which the saints are in 
 voked and a few Catholic peculiarities are referred to, and 
 it would be found suitable to any Protestant Sunday school. 
 There is, for example, a " Song of the Union," which might 
 very properly be sung in Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of 
 July: 
 
 " Ere Peace and Freedom, hand in hand, 
 
 Went forth to bless this happy land, 
 And make it their abode, 
 
 It was the footstool of a throne ; 
 
 But now no sceptre here is known, 
 No King is feared but God. 
 
 " Americans uprose in might, 
 And triumphed in th unequal fight, 
 
 For Union made them strong: 
 Union ! the magic battle-cry, 
 That hurled the tyrant from on high, 
 
 And crushed his hireling throng! 
 
 " That word since then hath shone on high 
 In starry letters to the sky, 
 
 It is our country s name ! 
 What impious hand shall rashly dare 
 Down from its lofty peak to tear 
 
 The banner of her fame? " 
 
 The same strain of patriotism is continued in the three 
 other stanzas. There are many hymns such as the follow 
 ing, called " A Child s Hymn to his Guardian Angel," which 
 hovers over the line that divides poetry and superstition : 
 
 " How kind it is of you to come, 
 Bright angel, from" your starry home, 
 And watch by night and watch by day 
 Beside a sinful child of clay ! 
 How good and pure I ought to be, 
 Who always live so near to thee. 
 Beneath thine eyes the whole day round, 
 Where er I tread is holy ground. 
 
 " And if I had my wish I would, 
 Dear angel mine! be always good; 
 This minute I would rather die 
 Than say bad words or tell a lie. 
 I always feel disposed this way, 
 Whene er I kneel me down to pray; 
 But I forget when church is o er, 
 And am as naughty as before. 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 143 
 
 " But I would love to fear the Lord, 
 And shun each sinful deed and word, 
 Not do the sin, then feel the force 
 Of bitter shame and keen remorse. 
 I wish to think of God and thee 
 Whenever pretty things I see, 
 Till every flower that gems the sod 
 Shall make me think of thee and God." 
 
 Interspersed among such simple and innocent songs as this 
 there are a few which Protestants disapprove : 
 
 "0 Mary! Mother Mary! 
 
 We place our trust in thee; 
 Our faith shall never vary, 
 
 Though weak the flesh may be. 
 Too oft, with steps unwary, 
 
 From duty we have bent: 
 Mary ! Mother Mary ! 
 
 Thou teach us to repent." 
 
 But, on the other hand, there are no appeals to base ter 
 ror, no horrid pictures of future hopeless torment. The 
 only thing in the book that even calls to mind the fearful 
 threats of eternal vengeance with which all children used 
 to be terrified, degraded, and corrupted is a hopeful and 
 sympathetic little hymn entitled " Purgatory " : 
 
 " When gentle showers 
 
 Cool the parched beds, 
 Languishing flowers 
 
 Lift up their heads. 
 Christ s precious merits, 
 
 Like gentle rain, 
 Soothe the good spirits 
 
 In their great pain. 
 
 " To the dim region, 
 
 Where dear ones mourn, 
 Love and religion 
 
 Bid us oft turn. 
 Prayer hath the power 
 
 To give them peace, 
 Speeding the hour 
 
 Of their release." 
 
 Such are the exercises of a Catholic Sunday school : mass, 
 thirty-five minutes ; catechism, about the same time ; sing 
 ing, fifteen minutes ; the Gospel of the day read ; a prayer 
 of five lines ; to which is occasionally added a short address 
 by the pastor. The following summary of the Annual Re 
 port of this school for 1867 will interest some readers. The 
 
144 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 word " Mission," which occurs in it, signifies " revival," or 
 "protracted meeting," concerning which something further 
 may be said : 
 
 Number of children on Register 2,346 
 
 Average attendance of children 1,607 
 
 Average number of children late ..... 97 
 
 Number of teachers on Register ...... 230 
 
 Average attendance of teachers . . . . . 176 
 
 Average number of teachers late ...... 9 
 
 Number of classes in Sunday school .... 210 
 
 Increase in the number of children on Register over 1866 . 762 
 
 Increase in the average attendance of children over 1866 . 427 
 
 Increase in the number of teachers on Register over 1866 . 62 
 
 Increase in the average attendance of teachers over 1866 . 31 
 
 Increase in the number of classes over 1866 . ( . . 54 
 
 Number of children at Festival, Jan. 13, 1867 . . . 3,000 
 
 Number of children at Festival, Oct. 27, 1867 . . . 3,434 
 
 Number of children to confession during Mission . . 2,900 
 
 Number of children who received communion during Mission 1,660 
 
 Number of children confirmed during Mission . . . 1,530 
 
 Total number of visits to children during the year . . 4,973 
 
 Increase in the number of visits to children over 1866 . . 436 
 
 THOS. E. S. DWYER, Sup t. 
 
 It is a beautiful thought to gather the children of a com 
 munity, for a short time, an hour and a half, no more, 
 on Sunday morning, in some very inviting and perfectly 
 salubrious place, where they shall enjoy themselves in sing 
 ing songs and hymns, and he.ar something cheering and 
 beneficial, and to join in any other exercises which the af 
 fectionate ingenuity of their elders may be able to devise. 
 It is a lovely idea, and one which civilization, having once 
 possessed, can never again let go. So far, the idea has 
 been carried out imperfectly ; and it will perhaps never be 
 made the most of until the churches all give up the attempt 
 to expound the universe, and settle down to their final 
 grand vocation, that of inculcating virtue, instructing 
 ignorance, and cheering human life. This Sunday school 
 of our Roman Catholic brethren will doubtless improve 
 when its zealous and amiable teachers have better facilities 
 and a better school-room. It has already an excellent 
 feature : this one session of an hour and a half is, at once, 
 church and Sunday school ; and nothing more is required 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 145 
 
 of the children during all the rest of the day. There is 
 no afternoon ischool, and the children are not expected nor 
 advised to hear a second mass. Our Roman Catholic 
 brethren never compel young children, over-schooled during 
 the week, to attend Sunday school from nine to half past 
 ten ; to remain in church, understanding nothing of what 
 is said and done there, until past twelve ; and then, after 
 dinner, to endure both school and church again, happy if 
 they escape them in the evening. Of all the contrivances 
 for making children sicken at the thought of everything 
 high and serious this is the masterpiece. Fortunately, it 
 is now scarcely known, except in a few very remote and 
 benighted places. The time is rrear at hand, when the 
 great joy of the week to the children of the United States 
 will be the hour and a half of the Sunday school. Often, 
 when hearing Mr. Dickens read, the thought occurred to 
 us : What a splendid exercise some such reading as this for 
 a Sunday school ! Among a dozen teachers, surely there 
 would always be one with a little natural aptitude for read 
 ing and personating, who would consent to go into train 
 ing for a year or two, and then give all the children, every 
 Sunday, half an hour of rapture, and an endless benefit, 
 by reading something suitable. 
 
 Protestants who visit Catholic institutions for the first 
 time, and converse with those who have charge of them, 
 are surprised to find how little good Catholics differ from 
 other good people. These teachers of the St. Stephen s 
 Sunday school, for example, their tone, manner, feeling, 
 cast of countenance, remind you continually of Protestant 
 persons engaged in the same calling. They are as candid 
 and open as the day. They are as truly and entirely con 
 vinced of the truth of their religion as any Protestant ever 
 was of his, and their habitual feeling towards Protestants is 
 compassion. They think their religion is altogether 
 sweet and engaging, full of comfort and hope ; and they 
 yearn to see all the world partaking of its joys and con 
 solations. Just as we in our ignorance pity them, so do 
 * they in their ignorance pity us. The habitual feeling of 
 good Catholics, with regard to their church and the rest of 
 the world, was well and truly expressed by the late pastor 
 of St. Stephen s, Dr. Cummings : 
 
 7 j 
 
146 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 " World of Grace! mysterious Temple! 
 
 Holy, Apostolic, One ! 
 Never changing, ever blessing 
 
 Every age and every zone ; 
 Church, sweet Mother! may all nations 
 
 Know thee, love thee as of yore : 
 May thy children learn to prize thee, 
 
 Daily, hourly, more and more." 
 
 Ignorant Catholics, of course, like ignorant Protestants, 
 sometimes despise or hate those who differ from them on 
 subjects which are far beyond all human comprehension. 
 But the general feeling of our Roman Catholic brethren 
 towards us is a tender and warm desire that we should im 
 mediately abandon our gloomy and abortive religion, and 
 come back to the true fold, where all is cheerfulness, cer 
 tainty, and love, especially, certainty ! There is nothing 
 they pity us so much for as the doubt and uncertainty in 
 which they suppose many of us are living concerning fun 
 damental articles of faith. A Catholic cannot doubt ; for 
 the instant he doubts he ceases to be a Catholic. His 
 church is "infallible"; hence his doctrine must be right. 
 His priest is the director of his soul ; he has but to obey 
 his direction. Thus a good Catholic has intellectual satis 
 faction and peace of conscience both within his reach ; and 
 he truly pities those who grope in mental darkness, and 
 carry the burden of their sins, without the possibility of 
 ever being quite sure they are forgiven. The priest says : 
 " I absolve thee " ; but it is on certain conditions named, 
 with which a person can comply, and with which he can 
 know he has complied. 
 
 There is an impression among Protestants that the Cath 
 olic priests are not believers in their own creed ; but that, 
 being convinced of the necessity which exists in unformed 
 minds of believing something absurd and fictitious, they 
 recognize that necessity, and have organized superstition 
 without sharing it. We sometimes hear Protestants par 
 odying the ancient remark concerning the Roman augurs, 
 and wondering whether two priests can ever look one another 
 in the face without laughing. That there are Catholic 
 statesmen and monarchs who take this view of the religion 
 they profess is probable enough. Voltaire himself admitted, 
 when his house had been robbed, that hell was an excellent 
 thing to frighten thieves with, and he consigned to it the 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 147 
 
 particular thieves in question most heartily. His friend, 
 Frederick of Prussia, who was as thoroughgoing an unbe 
 liever as himself, was in the habit of laughing at Voltaire s 
 zeal against the faith of Christendom ; and used to tell 
 him, that, even if he could succeed in destroying that faith, 
 which he could not, every ignorant mind would immediately 
 attach itself to falsehoods still more extravagant and per 
 nicious. At that day, too, there were not wanting in France 
 abbes and bishops who passed their lives in deriding the 
 church from which they derived their subsistence. But 
 even then and there the vast majority of the working clergy 
 were perfectly sincere and very laborious pastors, and gave 
 the hungry peasant the greater part of the little comfort he 
 enjoyed. 
 
 No candid person can associate much with the Catholic 
 priests of the United States without becoming aware of the 
 entireness and strength of their faith in the doctrines they 
 teach, without being convinced of their fidelity to the 
 Yv/ws they have taken. Why remain priests if they have 
 ceased to believe ] It is not the life a false man would 
 choose in this country. What with the early masses, the 
 great number of services, the daily and nightly calls to the 
 bedside of the dying, the labor and anxiety of hearing con 
 fessions, the deprivation of domestic enjoyments, the poverty 
 (the Archbishop of New York has but four thousand dol 
 lars a year and his house), and what with the social stigma 
 which in some communities the very name of Catholic car 
 ries with it, there are few vocations in which a fervent 
 believer would find more joy, and in which a hypocrite 
 would suffer so much weariness and disgust. In one sickly 
 time, two years ago, an assistant priest of a populous New 
 York parish was summoned sixty-five times in eight days to 
 administer the communion to dying persons, and forty-five 
 of those times were between sunset and sunrise. The salary 
 of an assistant priest, in these dear times, is four hundred 
 dollars a year, a room, and a portion of the fees he receives 
 for marriages, baptisms, and masses for the dead, the 
 whole being a bare subsistence, averaging about eight hun 
 dred dollars a year. The pastor of a church receives six 
 hundred dollars a year, a house, and a portion of the fees 
 just mentioned. In a few very extensive city parishes the 
 
148 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 priest may get a little more money than he really needs ; 
 but the great majority receive just enough for the three 
 necessities, food, clothes, and charity. 
 
 The manner in which our Roman Catholic brethren select 
 and train their priests insures at least sincerity. It is a 
 training which, in favorable cases, develops every noble 
 trait of human nature except one, the sceptical, ques 
 tion-asking faculty, to which all improvement, all progress, 
 is due. Some of the sweetest, purest, and loveliest human, 
 beings on this earth are Roman Catholic priests. I have 
 had the pleasure, once in my life, of conversing with an 
 absolute gentleman : one in whom all the little vanities, all 
 the little greedinesses, all the paltry fuss, worry, affectation, 
 haste, and anxiety springing from imperfectly disciplined 
 self-love, all had been consumed ; and the whole man 
 was kind, serene, urbane, and utterly sincere. This per 
 fect gentleman was a Roman Catholic bishop, who had 
 spent thirty years of his life in the woods near Lake Supe 
 rior, trying (and failing, as he frankly owned) to convert 
 rascally Chippeways into tolerable human beings. " I 
 make pretty good Christians of some of them," said he ; 
 " but men ? No : it is impossible." But while I so highly 
 rate this exquisite human being, I must remember that his 
 task in life had been far easier than ours. The two grand 
 difficulties of human life he never encountered, the 
 difficulty of earning his subsistence, and the difficulty of 
 rearing a family. "Thirteen year of temper in a pal 
 ace," says Doctor Marigold, "would try the worst of 
 you ; but thirteen year of temper in a cart would try the 
 best of you." The Catholic priest ought to be far gentler 
 and sweeter than other men, since he has neither a cart to 
 drive nor a temper to live with. It is also much easier to 
 live in a grand, lofty, contemplative way, in the forest, than 
 in New York or Chicago. A Catholic priest, indeed, would 
 be much to blame if he failed to attain a high degree of 
 serenity, moral refinement, and paternal dignity. 
 
 The training of priests is severe and long. They come 
 to the altar to be ordained, with faces pallid and wasted by 
 long fasting and late watching. Years before, when they 
 were little boys in the Sunday school, they were noted for 
 their docility, and their interest in all that related to the 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 149 
 
 Church. The pastor marked them, observed them. As 
 soon as they were old enough, they aspired to serve the 
 priest at the altar ; and this ambition was at length, after 
 due trial and preparation, gratified, to the great delight and 
 pride of parents and relations. A Protestant can hardly 
 imagine the joy of Catholic parents at seeing their son min 
 istering to the priest at the altar. Besides being a conspic 
 uous reward for his good behavior, and a kind of guaranty 
 of his future good conduct, it is also something done toward 
 his eternal salvation. Our Roman Catholic brethren, abound 
 ing in faith as they are, scoff at the idea of being "justified 
 by faith alone," and feel themselves bound " to work out 
 . their salvation." The zealous lad, impelled partly by this 
 motive, but chiefly by natural love of the self-denying and 
 devoted, soon belongs to the select band of altar boys, who- 
 glory in assisting at the earliest mass, and in masses per 
 formed at midnight. The pastor converses with the parents, 
 and if they consent, but cannot afford the expense of edu 
 cating the boy for the priesthood, ways are found of aiding 
 him through the preliminary studies. Those studies, 
 what are they 1 Latin, Greek, theology, and whatever else 
 cultivates the imagination and assists faith, without giving 
 play to that best something in the best human minds which 
 will not take things for granted, which inquires, doubts, 
 denies, reasons, and presses on to better ways of thinking. 
 That most powerful instinct, too, which urges the young 
 man, like the spring bird, to seek his mate, has to be extin 
 guished or controlled; and to this end fasting, watching, 
 and other painful mortifications are enjoined, increasing in 
 intensity as the time draws near for the final and irrevoca 
 ble act of renunciation. With pinched cheeks and sunken 
 eyes, and souls on fire, the young men kneel to receive 
 ordination, while all good Catholics who look upon the 
 scene are filled with a feeling that would be compassion 
 if it were not triumphant joy. " We believe," says a con 
 vert, who witnessed the ceremony lately, " there were few 
 dry eyes in that basement chapel when the long ceremony 
 came to its close, when the last words of benediction had 
 been given to the newly consecrated priests by the uplifted 
 hands of the bishop ; and cold and selfish must have been 
 the heart which did not linger to send up a fervent petition 
 
150 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 that God would give perseverance to those youthful and 
 self-devoted laborers in his vineyard. But never shall we 
 forget the zeal and eagerness with which the first mass of 
 each new priest was attended, or how the crowd, men, wo 
 men, children, pressed forward at its close to receive the 
 benediction from those innocent and now sanctified palms. 
 So precious is this first blessing from a newly ordained priest, 
 that old priests and even bishops come eagerly forward, and 
 bow their heads under the freshly anointed hands." 
 
 Sincere ! The sincerest believers in the world are our 
 Roman Catholic brethren. Faith, like every other faculty 
 or habit, grows strong by exercise. Every time a Catholic 
 attends mass, he is required to perform the most tremen 
 dous act of faith ever attempted by the human mind since 
 its creation. Whatever may be weak or wanting in Catho 
 lics, they abound in faith. 
 
 Our Roman Catholic brethren are acquiring so great an 
 estate in the United States, and acquiring it so rapidly, 
 that it becomes a matter of public concern how they get it, 
 what they do with it, and, especially, what they will do 
 with it by and by, when it shall have become the largest 
 property held in the country by or for an organization. 
 Other organizations usually live from hand to mouth ; but, 
 somehow, the Catholics always contrive to have a little 
 money ahead, to invest for the future. The Catholic Church, 
 seven tenths of whose members are exempt from the income 
 tax because their income is under a thousand dollars a year, 
 is a capitalist, and has the advantage over other organiza 
 tions which a man has over his fellows who, besides earning 
 his livelihood, has a thousand dollars to operate with. 
 There are spots in the Western country, over which the 
 prairie winds now sweep without obstruction, that will one 
 day be the sites of great cities. Our Roman Catholic 
 brethren mark those spots, and construct maps upon which, 
 not existing towns alone are indicated, but probable towns 
 also. A professor of one of our Western colleges saw, two 
 years ago at Rome, a better map of the country west of the 
 Mississippi than he ever saw at home ; upon which the line 
 of the Pacific Railroad was traced, and every spot was dot 
 ted where a settlement would naturally gather, and a con 
 jecture recorded as to its probable importance. Five 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 151 
 
 hundred dollars judiciously invested in certain localities now 
 will buy land which, in fifty years, or in twenty, may be 
 worth one hundred millions. Thirty-seven years ago the 
 best thousand acres of the site of Chicago could have 
 been bought for a dollar and a quarter an acre ; and there 
 is one man now in Chicago who owns a lot worth twenty 
 thousand dollars which he bought of the government for 
 fifteen cents and five eighths. Now, there are in the Ro 
 man Catholic Church men whose business it is to turn such 
 facts to the advantage of the church, and there is also a 
 systematic provision of money for them to expend for the 
 purpose. 
 
 Look at our island of Manhattan ! Sixty-seven years 
 ago there were but one or two small Catholic churches 
 upon it. It was not until 1808 that there was such a per 
 sonage as a Roman Catholic bishop of New York. Run 
 over the diocese now, and what do we find ] Churches, 88 ; 
 chapels attached to institutions, 29 ; colleges and theological 
 seminaries, 4 ; academies and select schools, 23 ; parochial 
 schools, one to nearly every church; charitable asylums 
 and hospitals, 1 1 ; religious communities of men, 6 ; of 
 women, 10. But this enumeration, as every New-Yorker 
 knows, conveys no idea of the facts. Everything which 
 our Roman Catholic brethren buy or build is bought or 
 built with two objects in view, duration and growth. 
 Hence massive structures, and plenty of land ! Wherever 
 on this island, or on the lovely waters near it, you observe 
 a spot upon which nature and circumstances have assem 
 bled every charm and every advantage, there the foresight 
 and enterprise of this wonderful organization have placed, 
 or are placing, something enormous and solid with a cross 
 over it. The marble cathedral which is to contain ten 
 thousand persons is going up on the precise spot on the 
 Fifth Avenue which will be the very best for the purpose 
 as long as the city stands. Yet, when that site was select 
 ed, several years ago, in the rocky wilds beyond the cattle- 
 market, no one would have felt its value except a John 
 Jacob Astor or a Roman Catholic Archbishop. This mar 
 vellous church so possesses itself of its members, that 
 Catholic priests are as wise and acute and pushing for the 
 church as the consummate man of business is for his own 
 
152 TOPICS OF THE TDIE. 
 
 estate. Our excellent and zealous friends, the Paulist 
 Fathers, when they planted themselves on the Ninth Ave 
 nue opposite Weehawken, bought a whole block ; and thus, 
 for less money than one house-lot will be worth in five 
 years, secured room enough for the expansion of their com 
 munity and its operations for ten centuries ! And there is 
 the Convent of the Sacred Heart, hi the upper part of the 
 island, the old Lorillard country-seat ; and the great 
 establishments of the Sisters of Charity on the Hudson, 
 where Edwin Forrest built his toy-castle, were ever sites 
 better chosen ? Mark, too, the extent of the grounds, the 
 solidity of the buildings, and the forethought and good 
 sense which have presided over all the arrangements. 
 
 All these things cost money, though bought and built 
 with most admirable economy. Fifty million dollars worth 
 of land and buildings the church probably owns in the 
 diocese of Xew .York ; one half of which, perhaps, it ac 
 quired by buying land when land was cheap, and keeping 
 it till it has become dear. Protestants will not fail to note 
 the wisdom of this, and to reflect upon the weakness and 
 distracted inefficiency of our mode of doing business. But 
 the question remains : How was the other half of this great 
 estate accumulated in half a century by an organization 
 drawing its revenues chiefly from mechanics, small store 
 keepers, laborers, and servant-girls 1 Why, in the simplest 
 way possible, and without laying a heavy burden on any 
 one. The glory of the Catholic Church, as we all know, is, 
 that it is the church of the poor ; and in this fact consists 
 its strength, as well as its glory. 
 
 The unit of the Catholic Church is the parish. A certain 
 number of parishes constitute the diocese, and a certain 
 number of dioceses form an arch-diocese ; but the beginning 
 of everything is the parish. Just as a company of troops 
 is at once a whole and a part, small in itself, but imaging 
 in its organization the whole army, independent and yet 
 subordinate, such is a parish to the Church Universal It 
 so happened that a new parish was organizing in the city 
 of Xew York, while this article was forming out of chaos ; 
 and I read from the front windows, stuck upon a lamp-post 
 (in violation of an ordinance), a handbill which explains 
 how it is done : 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 153 
 
 t 
 
 "NOTICE TO CATHOLICS. 
 
 "A NEW PARISH. 
 
 "The Most Reverend Archbishop McCloskey has ap 
 pointed the undersigned to take charge of a new parish, 
 which will extend from the east side of Fourth Avenue to 
 the East River, and from the north side of Eighteenth 
 Street to the south side of Twenty-Fourth Street. 
 
 DEMILT HALL, 
 
 Northwest corner of Second Avenue and Twenty-Ninth 
 Street, will be opened on and after Sunday, Jan. 5th, 1868, 
 for divine service. 
 
 " On Sundays, at Eight o clock. 
 
 " High Mass, Nine o clock. 
 
 "On Holy Days of Obligation, Mass at Seven and at 
 Nine. 
 
 " On other days, Mass at Seven. 
 
 "Sunday school will meet at the Hall on Sundays at 
 Eight o clock, A. M., and will continue one hour after Mass. 
 
 "At the Eight-o clock Mass on Sundays, and at the 
 Nine-o clock Mass on Holy Days, a portion of the Hall will 
 be reserved for children. 
 
 " Confessions will be heard every Saturday, commencing 
 at Four o clock, p. M. 
 
 "R. L. BURTSELL, D. D., Pastor. 
 
 " CHRISTMAS DAY, 1867." 
 
 Observe now the simplicity and efficiency of the system. 
 St. Stephen s parish, containing twenty-five thousand Catho 
 lic souls, had become too populous to be adequately served 
 by one church ; and therefore this slice (a mile long and a 
 quarter of a mile wide, containing, perhaps, ten thousand 
 Catholics) is cut off from it to form a new parish. The 
 archbishop looks about among his clergy for a priest fitted 
 by nature and circumstances to organize a parish and pro- 
 
154 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 vide for it suitable buildings. The priest selected feels 
 himself honored by the appointment ; it is promotion to 
 him ; it is reward and stimulus. He comes to his new 
 field unshackled, except by the general laws and usages of 
 the Church. The same Church which tries and tests with 
 such unrelenting severity the candidates for the priesthood 
 trusts her priests with great freedom, great power, great 
 responsibility, while supplying them with the most power 
 ful motives to exertion. She supplies both kinds of motives, 
 the noble and the commonplace. This priest has a church 
 to build, schools to form, a parish to create. He has no 
 wife : the Church is his spouse. He has no child : the 
 Church is his HEIR ! Professional pride, esprit du corps, 
 human ambition, and all the other ordinary motives to 
 exertion, conspire in this man with benevolence and religion : 
 since he firmly and entirely believes that the Roman Catho 
 lic Church is the sweetest, holiest, sublimest thing known 
 to man, his best consolation here, and his surest passport 
 to happiness yonder. 
 
 In union there is strength ; and yet when a thing is to 
 be done, one man must do it. Our Roman Catholic breth 
 ren contrive to work at once, with the power of a union of 
 two hundred millions of members, and with the efficient 
 force which only an individual can wield. This priest of 
 the unformed parish is as independent as the captain of a 
 frigate on his own quarter-deck, who must ever keep an eye 
 on the signals of the admiral s ship, but who when the sig 
 nal says Go in, lays his ship alongside, and carries on the 
 action in his own way, subject only to the rules of the ser 
 vice. This priest, too, is not required to waste his force 
 and the best of his time in writing brilliant sermons for the 
 entertainment of a cloyed, fastidious congregation. His is 
 healthier, manlier work. He has to do, at times, with con 
 tractors, masons, carpenters, architects. He is out of doors 
 a good deal, watching the progress of buildings, upon the 
 erection of which his heart is set, and the completion of 
 which will gratify his pride as well as his benevolence, be 
 sides entitling him to consideration elsewhere. Seeing 
 what a healthy and full life these Catholic priests lead, I 
 no longer wonder to find them so round, contented, cheer 
 ful, and merry. 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 155 
 
 Our priest, as we see in the handbill, hires a hall, and 
 begins. The enterprise is self-sustaining from the first day. 
 His three masses on Sunday, his daily mass, his vesper ser 
 vices, his pew-rents, his fees, bring in money enough for all 
 expenses, and a surplus for the church which is to be 
 erected. At every mass there is a collection. A building 
 committee is formed ; subscription-books are opened ; fairs 
 are held. In three years, come to this new parish, and you 
 shall see : 1. A large and handsome church ; 2. A good 
 parsonage, next door to it ; 3. A five or six story building 
 adjoining for a parochial school, with two thousand children 
 in it under the instruction of the Sisters of Charity and the 
 Christian Brothers. This is no exaggeration; for I am 
 only stating here what has actually occurred in the next 
 parish, that of the Immaculate Conception, in East 
 Fourteenth Street. Seven years ago, when Dr. Morrogh 
 was appointed pastor of this parish, there was nei ther 
 church, parsonage, nor school. He now has an excellent 
 church, which he is about to enlarge, a sufficient parsonage, 
 and an exceedingly spacious and handsome school-house, 
 wherein, by the time these lines are read, he will have 
 twenty-five hundred children. It is true that Dr. Morrogh 
 possesses unusual executive ability ; but, on the other hand, 
 his church is in the heart of one of the tenement-house 
 regions, and he probably has not a hundred men in his 
 parish who ever have a hundred dollars all at once. Prob 
 ably he can boast and a proud boast it is for a Christian 
 minister that nine tenths of his flock are laboring men 
 and domestic servants. And it is these poor people who 
 have solaced themselves by paying for these buildings, 
 which cannot have cost less than two hundred thousand 
 dollars.* Nor has it been a heavy burden to any one but 
 the pastor. " Many a night I have lain awake," said he, 
 " wondering where the money was to come from to go on 
 with." But for the people of the parish it was easy enough. 
 Are there not fifteen thousand of them 1 If each contrib 
 utes ten cents a week, does it not come to seventy-eight 
 thousand dollars a year 1 
 
 The regular revenues of a Catholic church in a city are 
 numerous and large. Here is the Church of St. Stephen s, 
 for example ; let us endeavor to estimate its income : 
 
156 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Six-o clock mass on Sunday morning . . . $10.00 
 
 Seven-o clock mass " " . . .25.00 
 Nine-o clock " " "... 25.00 
 
 Sunday-school collection . . . . . .10.00 
 
 High mass at half past ten . . . . .40.00 
 
 Vespers . . . . . . . . .20.00 
 
 Six week-day masses, in all . . . . . 25.00 
 
 Total weekly income : .... $155.00 
 
 This is equal to $ 8,060 for a year. Add to this the rent 
 of 600 pews, at an average of $ 75 each, and we have an 
 annual revenue of $53,060. The pew-rent, I believe, av 
 erages more than this ; although the pews stand open to 
 every comer, except at high mass and vespers. 
 
 Such is the income. The expenses are not great : 
 
 Pastor s salary . . . . . . $ 600 
 
 Three assistant priests, in all . . . . . 1,200 
 
 Sexton, not more than ..... 1,000 
 
 Organist, probably ....... 1,000 
 
 Choir, about . 4,000 
 
 Fire and gas, possibly 1,000 
 
 Total expenses $ 8,800 
 
 This leaves an excess of income over expenditure of 
 $42,260. This excess, except a small annual tax for the 
 archbishop and the general interests of the diocese, is all 
 expended in the parish. Upon most of these new city 
 churches there is a debt which has to be provided for. If 
 the parish is old enough to be out of debt, you may be sure 
 it needs a new or an enlarged church, for which a fund is 
 forming. If its church is sufficient, and the parsonage 
 adequate, then you may expect to see the pastor directing 
 the construction of a parochial school-house, large enough to 
 draw off from the over-crowded public schools of tlae neigh 
 borhood the two thousand too many children on their rolls. 
 Or, perhaps, there is connected with the church a religious 
 community whose operations are expensive. Thus, by the 
 unstimulated, quiet operation of. the system, all our cities 
 will be covered with costly Catholic structures, which will 
 constantly increase in splendor and number. In some New 
 England villages, and in several New England towns, the 
 Catholic Church^ is already much the most solid, spacious, 
 and ornate ecclesiastical edifice in the place. It must be 
 
OUE ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 157 
 
 so ; for the poor, besides being more generous than the 
 rich, are hundreds of times more numerous, and their pen 
 nies flow in a continuous stream. Nor do they confine 
 thek gifts to copper coin. " An Irish housemaid," says a 
 paragraph just afloat, "has given a stained-glass window to 
 the Catholic Church at Concord, New Hampshire." Noth 
 ing more credible. Two servant-girls, in this very house 
 where I am now writing, educated their brother for the 
 priesthood, keeping on year after year, spending nothing 
 for their personal gratification, literally nothing, but sus 
 taining him respectably, until one ecstatic day they went 
 off in their Sunday clothes, their two faces radiant with 
 joy, to see him ordained. Having accomplished this work, 
 they next saved the sum requisite ($ 250 each) for their 
 honorable admission into a laborious religfous order, in 
 which they now are. And yet the self-indulgent Parlor 
 has the . insolence to think itself morally superior to the 
 self-denying Kitchen. The Recording Angel, if there is 
 such a book-keeper, has something to enter to the credit of 
 the Kitchen much oftener, probably, than he has to that 
 of the apartments above it. 
 
 But we are talking of the financial system of the church. 
 The archbishop, as before observed, draws a small sum an 
 nually from each parish; he also derives something from 
 the revenues of the cathedral; and he controls the large 
 fund arising from the sale of lots in the Catholic ceme 
 teries, all of which are the property of the diocese. Our 
 Roman Catholic brethren decidedly prefer*to*be buried in 
 cemeteries of their own. No strict Catholic will bury a 
 member of his family in Greenwood or Mount Auburn, for 
 he does not feel that God Almighty s ground is quite good 
 enough for his bones to moulder in until a bishop has said 
 a few words over it. We must pardon him this harmless 
 foible, in consideration of our own similar weaknesses. The 
 fact remains, however, that the income of the cemeteries 
 adds something considerable to the central fund of the dio 
 cese, which is applied to objects of diocesan importance. 
 We may illustrate the working of this part of the system 
 by showing how the new cathedral in the city of New York 
 was started, how it has been continued, and how it is to be 
 carried on to completion. This edifice will probably cost 
 
158 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 two millions of dollars. It would cost ten millions if it 
 were to be built by the city government. 
 
 When Archbishop Hughes made up his mind, about ten 
 years ago, that the time had come for beginning a cathedral 
 that would be worthy of the chief city of the Union, the 
 debt upon the old cathedral had not been extinguished, the 
 cemetery fund was almost consumed in enlarging and im 
 proving the cemeteries themselves, and the archbishop was 
 dependent for his mere maintenance upon the product of 
 the tax upon the parishes. No matter ; the time had come 
 for beginning ; and every New-Yorker now sees how per 
 fectly the commencement of the enterprise was timed. But 
 there was no money. If it had been a Protestant enter 
 prise, this fact would have presented a slight impediment. 
 It is only our Roman Catholic brethren who can undertake 
 two-million-dollar cathedrals without having any money. 
 The archbishop caused a circular letter to be written, an 
 nouncing his design, and requesting the person addressed 
 to contribute toward it one thousand dollars. A copy of 
 this letter, signed by the archbishop, was sent to every 
 Catholic in the diocese known to be rich enough to afford 
 himself the luxury of giving away a thousand dollars. A 
 similar letter, also signed by the archbishop, was addressed 
 to every Catholic who could be supposed capable of giving 
 five hundred dollars ; and another letter to many who could 
 be rationally expected to give two hundred and fifty dol 
 lars ; each of whom was invited to confer upon himself the 
 pleasure and advantage of giving the sum mentioned in the 
 epistle addressed to him. Such requests are never made 
 without due consideration, and they are seldom refused. 
 Nor is the church too particular as to ivhose money it shall 
 accept. I have before me a Catholic subscription paper, on 
 which may be read : 
 
 Charles O Conor $250.00 
 
 John Morrissey 500.00 
 
 All is fish that comes to the church s net. By this expe 
 dient the archbishop raised three hundred thousand dollars, 
 enough to buy the land, lay the foundation, and carry- 
 up the walls a few feet. About the time the war broke 
 out the money was gone, and it was highly convenient to 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 159 
 
 stop. The orphans and the widows of the war were a heavy 
 charge upon all the city parishes. The ordinary collections 
 at Christmas and Easter (sacred to the orphan in all Cath 
 olic churches) were utterly insufficient, and the people were 
 called upon for further aid, which of course they gave most 
 liberally. It was obviously not a time to be building mar 
 ble cathedrals for posterity, and so the walls were carefully 
 boarded over. The war being ended, the new archbishop 
 issued a requisition, calling upon each pastor of a parish 
 for a contribution to the cathedral fund, and allowing him 
 a certain time in which to collect it. Work upon the build 
 ing has been resumed, and will probably go on until it is 
 completed; for the old cathedral is out of debt, and the 
 cemetery fund is now productive. 
 
 The archbishop, be it observed, is the almost absolute 
 ruler of the priests of his province. He places them, re 
 moves them, suspends them, according to his own good 
 will and pleasure, subject to the laws and usages of the 
 church. There is no appeal against his decisions, except to 
 Rome ; and this resource is seldom within the compass of 
 a priest. Rome is far away, and a priest appealing against 
 the judgment of his superior must have a very good case or 
 a very good friend, in order to obtain a favorable judgment. 
 But, on the other hand, a dignitary of the church is severely 
 and long tested before promotion, and he is practically 
 elected by the very men whom he is afterwards to govern. 
 Soon after the death of an archbishop, the higher clergy of 
 the province assemble to express their preferences with re 
 gard to his successor. They send three names to Rome. 
 Opposite the first name is written, Dignus, worthy. Opposite 
 the second, Digmor, worthier. Opposite the third name 
 is written, Dignissimus, most worthy. The office is almost 
 invariably assigned to the person whom his brethren thus 
 indicate as their choice. The instances are rare in which an 
 American prelate has abused his power over the clergy, and 
 I believe no priest has yet applied to Rome for the redress 
 of a grievance. 
 
 Among our -Roman Catholic brethren the instinct of or 
 ganizing and co-operating is wonderfully developed. I have 
 before me a list, not complete, of the Catholic orders, which 
 contains the names of two hundred and fifty-one varieties, 
 
160 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 each Of which is an expression and a permanent gratifica 
 tion of the desire of some benevolent soul. One example : 
 Two hundred and fifty years ago, a French priest, named 
 Vincent de Paul, was requested by a lady of his nook to 
 call the attention of the congregation to the case of a desti 
 tute family lying sick a mile from the town. He did so, 
 and with such effect that the poor people were supplied 
 with food in profusion, so that much of it was spoiled be 
 fore they could consume it. This priest, being one of those 
 men whom every event instructs, was led to reflect upon 
 the need there was in every large town of having the be 
 nign impulses regulated, and the gifts of the benevolent 
 husbanded, so that none of them should be wasted, and the 
 supply should never be exhausted. The result of his med 
 itations we behold in the order of the Sisters of Charity, 
 which all the world approves, and will ever approve. But 
 this was not all the good arising from Father Vincent s re 
 flections. To-day nearly every Catholic parish in large 
 towns, in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, has 
 within it a society called a " Conference of St. Vincent de 
 Paul," the object of which is the systematic and judicious 
 relief of the poor of the parish. These societies form one 
 vast system of charity ; each conference reporting to a 
 diocesan centre, each diocese reporting to a national centre, 
 and each nation to the Head Centre of the organization, 
 a cardinal residing at Paris. From him again, as the blood 
 pulses back from the heart to the extremities, a quarterly 
 report is sent to every corner of Christendom, which reaches 
 every individual member of each conference. Any reader 
 curious to know the practical working of the system can 
 gratify his desire by expending ten cents at any Catholic 
 bookstore, where he can buy the " Rules of the Society of 
 St. Vincent de Paul." 
 
 Then there is the "Propaganda," or, as we should term 
 it, the missionary system. This, too, is an organization 
 which embraces the whole world, and to the funds of which 
 tens of millions of Catholics contribute. Each member of 
 the organization gives one cent a week toward the extension 
 of the domain of the Church. In every tea members there 
 is one person who is authorized to receive the weekly cop 
 pers, and pay the dime over to an individual who is the 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 161 
 
 centre of ten tens. By the time the money reaches his 
 hands it has become a dollar, and he hands the dollar to one 
 who receives for ten of these ten tens. We have now rolled 
 up the sum to ten dollars, which is paid to the head of ten 
 of the hundred tens ; and so it goes on swelling until it 
 reaches the chief of the propaganda, another cardinal, who 
 lives at Lyons. He, in turn, sends to the societies a report 
 of the grand result, which, by a system of handing from 
 one ten to another, is made to reach every giver of a weekly 
 cent. Thus is the money raised which sustains the Church 
 beyond the bounds of Christendom, and buys the sites of 
 churches where as yet there is no human habitation. 
 
 There is no end to the charities of our Roman Catholic 
 brethren and sisters, and all that they do in this way is 
 done with the efficiency and power of a disciplined organiza 
 tion. An admirable case in point is that of a community 
 in Paris, which consists of an equal number of blind and 
 seeing sisters. In each cell there is one of each ; and it is 
 part of the occupation of the sister who can see to aid, wait 
 upon, and read to the sister who is blind. It does the 
 heart good merely to know that such a sweet device as this 
 has ever been conceived. There is a little book published 
 in Paris (and we ought to have such in our cities) which 
 contains a catalogue and brief account of all the charitable 
 organizations there, Manuel des GEuvres et Institutions de 
 Charite. Publie par Ordre de M ffr - I Archeveque, &c. It 
 contains a description of one hundred and ninety-two be 
 nevolent societies and systems. Any one would be puzzled 
 to think of a malady, misfortune, deprivation, or peril for 
 which there does not exist in Catholic Paris some organized 
 remedy, mitigation, or prevention. The mere enumeration 
 would exhaust all my remaining space, and I can only men 
 tion a few. There are societies for aiding mothers before, 
 during, and after confinement ; some of which give in-door, 
 others ont-door aid ; some bearing the whole charge, others 
 part ; some aiding mothers themselves to form a fund 
 against the time, and others insuring the required aid, 
 whenever needed, in return for the payment of a small sum 
 periodically. There are societies for the preservation and 
 assistance of every conceivable description of needy chil 
 dren, lost children, abandoned children, neglected chil- 
 
162 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 dren, destitute children, bad children, blind, deaf and dumb, 
 and crippled children ; children subject to fits, convalescent 
 children, children whose mothers have to go out to work, 
 children who want to be apprenticed and cannot pay the 
 required premium, children who have no one to teach them 
 their catechism ; orphan children in asylums, orphan chil 
 dren living with relatives, orphan children in places, orphan 
 children adopted, Polish orphans, Jewish orphans. Besides 
 special hospitals for almost every kind of curable and in 
 curable maladies, there are asylums for every description 
 of disabled persons, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the 
 crippled, the aged, the imbecile, the incompetent of all 
 kinds and degrees. And this vast system of charity is car 
 ried on by our Roman Catholic brethren and sisters, and 
 most of the work is done by persons dedicated for life to 
 the service of the afflicted, and trained to discharge their 
 vocation in the best manner. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how each part of the Catholic 
 system, besides promoting the general object, works in spe 
 cial harmony with special aims. Example : it is the wish, 
 it is the fixed intention, of our Roman Catholic brethren to 
 have a free school in every parish in the United States suf 
 ficient for the accommodation of all the Catholic children 
 resident in the parish. In the diocese of New York there 
 are sixty-one of these parochial schools, in which about 
 twenty-five thousand pupils are taught, greatly to the 
 relief of the cruelly crowded public schools. The relig 
 ious instruction given in these schools consists of a lesson in 
 the catechism, the saying of a few short Catholic prayers, 
 the reading of the Gospel for the day, and an occasional 
 exhortation ; the whole occupying, on an average, twenty 
 minutes a day. But it is not for the sake of the direct 
 religious instruction that the pastors are so desirous of 
 having parochial schools. There are several orders in the 
 church which are devoted to the work of instruction, 
 the Christian Brothers, some of the Sisters of Charity, the 
 Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and many more. It is from 
 these orders that the teachers of the parochial schools are 
 drawn ; and it is the Catholicizing effect upon the minds of 
 the children, of these still, self-contained, cheerful per 
 sons that the pastors chiefly value. There is a marvellous 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 163 
 
 economy, too, in the system ; for these pious sisters and 
 devoted brothers only require the necessaries of life. Dr. 
 Morrogh pays into the treasury of the Sisters of Charity 
 two hundred dollars per annum for each sister employed in 
 his school ! The sisters live at the house of their order in 
 Fifteenth Street, and go forth every morning to the schools 
 to spend a laborious day in instructing ignorance, returning 
 at noon and at night to their religious home. It will cost 
 Dr. Morrogh about eight thousand dollars to sustain his 
 school, possibly ten thousand. It would cost the city of 
 New York eighteen thousand dollars. It happened to be a 
 snowy day on which I visited this school, and no one went 
 home to dinner. But when dinner-time came, an apparatus 
 containing a hot dinner for the sisters was brought round 
 to them from their home near by, and they all sat down 
 together in a nice little room to enjoy it, with the musical 
 accompaniment of twelve hundred romping girls. 
 
 Surely there is something admirable and imitable in all 
 this. 
 
 Of course there is shadow to be put into the picture. 
 This amazing organization, or system of organizations, is 
 the accumulated practical wisdom of many thousand years ; 
 but it is the work of imperfect human beings, and partakes 
 of their imperfection. " There is a provision in nature," 
 says Goethe, "to prevent trees from growing up into the 
 sky." Else, Commodore Vanderbilt would own all the 
 railroads, and we should all turn Catholics immediately. 
 Every Protestant knows, or thinks he knows, precisely 
 what the defect is which prevents this interesting tree 
 from growing up into the sky, and spreading its branches 
 over the whole earth. I think I know. I think it is be 
 cause there is not a sufficient provision in it for adapting 
 its doctrine to the advancing mind of the race. 
 
 Our Roman Catholic brethren, for example, firmly believe 
 that miracles are daily wrought among them. They in 
 form me, that the most noted miracle yet performed in the 
 United States occurred in the city of Washington on the 
 10th of March, 1824. Bishop England, of Charleston, who 
 ranked very high in the estimation of his brethren, inves 
 tigated this miracle, published an account of it, and ap 
 pended to his narrative the affidavits of thirty-seven persons, 
 
164 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 all of whom testified to the miraculous nature of the event. 
 Mrs. Ann Mattingly, widow, aged thirty-four, residing with 
 her brother, the Mayor of Washington, had been afflicted 
 for six years with a hard and painful .tumor in the lower 
 part of the left breast, which four of the leading physicians 
 of the city pronounced incurable, and for which they pre 
 scribed only palliative applications and medicines. She 
 suffered all that a woman could suffer and live, vomitings 
 of blood, intense chills, pain almost insupportable, a most 
 distressing cough, until she was reduced to a skeleton, and 
 lay at death s door. From long lying in bed, her shoulders 
 and back were ulcerated to such a degree that it was tor 
 ture to her to have her linen changed or to move in bed. 
 In the fifth year of her illness the tidings began to be 
 spread abroad in America of the wonderful cures wrought 
 in Europe through the prayers of a certain Prince Hohen- 
 lohe, a venerated priest of the Catholic Church ; and some 
 of the friends of the afflicted lady besought her to make 
 known her sufferings to this holy man, and beg his inter 
 cession in her behalf. The pastor of her church, with the 
 consent of the Archbishop of Baltimore, wrote to the prince 
 ly priest, as many others did in all parts of the world, 
 asking his prayers for this lady s recovery. The priest as 
 certained, however, that the Prince Hohenlohe had already 
 made known his intentions with regard to all sick persons 
 out of Europe who desired his prayers. He would pray for 
 such on the tenth day of every month at nine o clock in 
 the morning, and he called upon all who wished to enjoy 
 the benefit of his intercession to fulfil certain conditions. 
 They must have faith in the efficacy of prayers; they must 
 repent anew and deeply of their sins ; they must form an 
 immovable purpose to lead an exemplary life ; they must 
 perform a Novena, or nine days devotion, in honor of the 
 Holy Name of Jesus ; they must confess, do penance, and 
 receive the sacrament ; and, finally, on the appointed day, 
 the tenth of any month, at nine A. M., they must unite in 
 prayers with the prince, far away on the other side of 
 the ocean. 
 
 With all these conditions Mrs. Ann Mattingly complied. 
 The priest of her church, two hundred of her friends and 
 fellow-Catholics, as well as some other sick persons, shared 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 165 
 
 in the Novena, and the archbishop of the province " gra 
 ciously promised to join in prayer with them on the appointed 
 day, 10th of March instant." The Novena was begun on 
 the first day of March, 1824, so that it might end on the 
 tenth. As there is a difference of six hours between the 
 time at Washington and at the place in Germany where 
 the prince lived, the priest appointed the hour of three in 
 the morning for the last solemn act of supplication, and so 
 notified ^all the families and persons concerned. At nine in 
 the evening before, Mrs. Mattingly, who apparently had 
 not many hours to live, confessed, and received absolution. 
 At two in the morning, the priest who was in special charge 
 of the Novena said mass in the church, and carried thence 
 the sacrament to the afflicted lady s room, where he arrived 
 about half past two. She was then so low and so inces 
 santly tormented by a cough, that the priest was appre 
 hensive she would die before she had communed. The 
 sacrament, however, was administered, and it cost the lady 
 a painful effort of six minutes to swallow it. The solemn 
 ceremony being ended, the priest wrapped up the sacred 
 vessels and implements, gave the usual blessing to the 
 kneeling family (five in number, all of whom swear to these 
 and the following statements), and was making his last 
 adoration of the Host before leaving, when he heard a deep 
 sigh issuing from the direction of the bed. He turned, and 
 behold, a miracle ! Mrs. Mattingly sat up, stretched 
 her arms forward, clasped her hands, and said, in a clear 
 though weak voice, " Lord Jesus, what have I done to de 
 serve so great a favor ] " Sobs and shrieks burst from the 
 persons present. The priest rose from his knees, and has 
 tened to the bedside. She raised his hand. " Ghostly 
 father," she cried, " what can I do to acknowledge such a 
 blessing V " Glory be to God ! " he exclaimed ; " we may 
 say so. 0, what a day for us ! " On being asked to tell 
 what she felt, she said, " Not the least pain left." 
 
 She went on to say, that, being overcome by her suffer 
 ings, and in expectation of immediate death, she had said 
 to herself, " Lord Jesus, thy will be done ! " and at that 
 instant she was completely relieved from all her pains. " I 
 wish to get up," she cried, joyfully, " and give thanks to 
 God on my knees " ; and so she did, and remained kneeling 
 
166 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 for fifteen minutes without fatigue. She walked; she 
 dressed herself ; she came down to breakfast ; she ate 
 heartily, and remained up all day, receiving the visits of 
 friends and strangers, who came in crowds to see her. 
 Every trace of the tumor was gone ! The ulcws upon her 
 back had vanished, and left no scar; and, what was strangest 
 of all, the matter which those ulcers had discharged had 
 all disappeared, both from the bed-clothes and from her 
 own night-dress ! ! Upon this last point Bishop England 
 is emphatic. " I am perfectly convinced," he says, " that, 
 were I disposed to collect the testimony relating thereto, it 
 would appear to the satisfaction of every unbiassed, impar 
 tial, and judicious reader, unquestionable, that as miracu 
 lous a change took place in the state of the clothing of the 
 bed and of the body as there did in the state of the body 
 itself." 
 
 This assertion of the Bishop is safe, because upon such 
 subjects no reader is unbiassed, no reader is impartial. 
 
 This narrative illustrates a very important difference be 
 tween our Roman Catholic brethren and ourselves. A good 
 Catholic, no matter what his rank or culture, believes in 
 such things without an effort. It was not necessary for the 
 faith of Catholics that Bishop England should gather such 
 a mass of testimony. Three good witnesses would have 
 sufficed quite as well as three dozen. But no amount or 
 quality of testimony could convince a Protestant mind that 
 Mrs. Mattingly s tumor was cured miraculously, and her 
 linen miraculously cleansed. For my part, if the President 
 and Vice-President, if the whole Cabinet, both houses of 
 Congress, and the judges of the Supreme Court, had all 
 sworn that they saw this thing done, and I myself had 
 seen it, nay, if the tumor had been on my own body, and 
 had seemed to myself to be suddenly healed, still I 
 should think it more probable that all those witnesses, in 
 cluding myself, were mistaken, than that such a miracle had 
 been performed. Such is the incredulity of a modernized 
 mind, especially if that modernized mind has occasionally 
 served on a jury, and so learned the value of human testi 
 mony. 
 
 How different with Catholics ! " Why ! " says Father 
 Hecker, " we do not worship a dead God ! Where is* the 
 
* OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 167 
 
 improbability? No one doubts God s ability to heal his 
 faithful servants ; why should we find it so hard to believe 
 that he does so 1 Protestants usually admit that miracles 
 were once performed, and they still use language in their 
 prayers which implies an expectation of miraculous aid. 
 We Catholics have a living practical faith in Providence, 
 which you Protestants think you have, and have not. And 
 where is your authority for saying that, during a certain 
 period of the world s history, miracles were wrought, but 
 that there came a moment when they ceased to be wrought 1 
 Why is it rational to believe in a miracle which occurred 
 Anno Domini 32, but wholly irrational to believe in one 
 wrought Anno Domini 1868 T 
 
 These are not the precise words of the Superior of the 
 Paulists, but such are some of his ideas. I did not, do not, 
 cannot answer his questions. My office is merely that of 
 reporter. I have yet to relate the special measures now on 
 foot for the conversion of us all, and the grounds upon 
 which our Roman Catholic brethren rest their confident ex 
 pectation of being in another generation or two the domi 
 nant church of the United States. 
 
 Are we all going to be Roman Catholics, then, about the 
 year 1945 ? 
 
 So we are assured by some of our more sanguine Roman 
 Catholic brethren. And, really, the ancient church, not in 
 this young country only, but in Europe too, and especially 
 in France, Germany, and England, appears to be -renewing 
 its youth, and pressing forward most vigorously to occupy 
 and reoccupy. It is regaining its audacity. It is begin 
 ning again to take the initiative. It hits back once more. 
 It even succeeds in turning the laugh against us sometimes, 
 which is a great point gained. It has taken the church 
 eighty years to recover from the mockery of one man, and 
 it is now using his terrible weapon against its own enemies. 
 Few better burlesques have ever been written than the 
 one recently published in England, and republished in New 
 York, entitled " The Comedy of Convocation in the English 
 Church," in which the one great excellence of that church 
 is ridiculed in the most delicious manner. The point of 
 superiority of the Church of England over some others is, 
 or was, that it allowed a wide latitude of opinion, and did 
 
1G8 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 not set up to be an infallible teacher. This is the point 
 ridiculed ; but the novelty of the burlesque is, that it is so 
 exquisitely and good-naturedly done. The new blood is be 
 ginning to tell. There is one extractible passage of this 
 masterpiece of fun, which may serve to illustrate the new 
 spirit of which I speak. " Archdeacon Jolly," one of the 
 speakers at the imaginary convocation, explains the opera 
 tion of a new society, which, he said, was called " The So 
 ciety for considering the best Means of keeping alive the 
 Corruptions of Popery in the Interests of Gospel Truth." 
 
 "It was, of course," the jolly Archdeacon continued, "a 
 strictly secret organization ; but he had been favored, he 
 knew not why, with a copy of the prospectus, and as he had 
 no intention of becoming a member, he would communicate 
 it to the house. It appeared from this document, and 
 could be confirmed from other sources, that a deputation 
 was sent last year to Home to obtain a private interview 
 with the Pope, in order to entreat his Holiness not to reform 
 a single Popish corruption. A handsome present was in 
 trusted to the deputation, and a liberal contribution to the 
 Peter s Pence Fund. The motives set forth in the pream 
 ble of the address presented to his Holiness were, in sub 
 stance, of the following nature : They urged that a very 
 large body of most respectable clergymen, who had no per 
 sonal ill-will toward the present occupant of the Holy See, 
 had maintained themselves and their families in comfort 
 for many years exclusively by the abuse of popery ; and, 
 if popery were taken away, they could not but contemplate 
 the probable results with uneasiness and alarm. Moreover, 
 many eminent members of the profession had gained a 
 reputation for evangelical wit, learning, and piety, as well 
 as high dignities in the Church of England, by setting forth 
 in their sermons, and at public meetings, with all their har 
 rowing details, the astounding abominations of the Church 
 of Rome. The petitioners implored his Holiness not to be 
 indifferent to the position of these gentlemen. Many of 
 their number had privately requested the deputation to 
 plead their cause with the amiable and benevolent Pius IX. 
 Thus the great and good Dr. M Nickel represented respect 
 fully that he had filled his church, and let all his pews, 
 during three - and - twenty years, by elegantly slandering 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 169 
 
 priests and nuns, and powerfully illustrating Romish super 
 stitions. A clergyman of noble birth had attained to the 
 honors of the episcopate by handling alternately the same 
 subjects, and a particularly pleasing doctrine of the Millen 
 nium, and had thus been enabled to confer a valuable living 
 on his daughter s husband, who otherwise could not have 
 hoped to obtain one. An eminent canon of an old Roman 
 Catholic abbey owed his distinguished position, which he 
 hoped to be allowed to retain, to the fact of his having 
 proved so clearly that the Pope was Antichrist ; and ear 
 nestly entreated his Holiness to do nothing to forfeit that 
 character. A well-known doctor of Anglican divinity was 
 on the point of quitting the country in despair of gaining 
 a livelihood, when the idea of preaching against popery 
 was suggested to him, and he had now reason to rejoice 
 that he had abandoned the foolish scheme of emigration. 
 .... Finally, a young clergyman, who had not hitherto 
 much distinguished himself, having often but vainly solic 
 ited a member of his congregation to favor his evangelical 
 attachment, at length hit upon a new expedient, and 
 preached so ravishing a discourse on the matrimonial pro 
 hibitions of the Romish Church, and drew so appalling a 
 picture of the domestic infelicities of the Romish priest 
 hood, that on the following Monday morning the young 
 lady made him an offer of her hand and fortune." 
 
 Nothing could be better for its purpose than this, and 
 the whole pamphlet of one hundred and thirty-eight "pages 
 is executed quite as well. The surprising feature of the 
 performance is, that the author never lapses for a single 
 instant into ill-temper, such is the strength of his talent, 
 and the entireness of his faith. In conversing with Catholic 
 ipriests, I have been repeatedly struck with the same imper- 
 *H:urbable good-humor, the same absolute confidence in the 
 impregnability of their position. 
 
 Another fruit of the church s recovered audacity lies 
 before me, in the Abbe Maynard s new " Life of Voltaire," 
 called forth, apparently, by the great stir in France result 
 ing from the proposal to erect a national monument to 
 Voltaire in Paris. " You are a humbug," said Voltaire to 
 the Church, in ninety-seven volumes duodecimo. " You re 
 another," replies Abbe" Maynard, in two volumes octavo. 
 8 
 
170 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 This indefatigable Abbe has gone over the thousand vol 
 umes or so which contain the yet unwritten story of Vol 
 taire s life, and has gathered from them every incident and 
 every sentence the cold relation or quotation of which would 
 make against his subject. The result is, that his work is, 
 at once, the truest and the falsest upon. Voltaire ever writ 
 ten ; most of the facts which he chooses to give are stated 
 with a certain exactness, but most of that in Voltaire s 
 career wliich made it worth while to relate those facts at 
 all is not mentioned. It is evident, nevertheless, that the 
 Abbe is as honest as he is patient ; he merely cannot see 
 anything in Voltaire except his poor, human foibles. His 
 Avork is chiefly interesting as another evidence that our 
 Roman Catholic brethren are becoming militant again, and 
 do not mean to be hit without striking out from the shoul 
 der at their assailant. 
 
 By a curious chance, it happened that the same steamer 
 which brought these two thick volumes from France brought 
 also Le Vrai Voltaire, of M. Pompery, also published in 
 1867, in which two things arc asserted of the great master 
 of mockery : 1. That he was the most extraordinary of 
 men ; and, 2. That he was the consummate Christian of all 
 times ! Both of these w r orks came to me in the same brown- 
 paper parcel. Both were published in the same Paris, in 
 the same year; both were written by Frenchmen for French 
 men. Such a creature is man when he shuts up in party 
 that mind of his which was meant to range free over the 
 whole ! Of these two works, that of the Abb6 is by far the 
 most able and thorough ; and he does not fail to urge home 
 to the Paris of this moment that the virtuous people of 
 France are still those who go to mass and confess their 
 sins. Ah ! that is the difficult argument to answer ! As 
 the authoritative expounder of the universe, the mission 
 of the church may, indeed, be nearly accomplished ; but as 
 an organization for the inculcation of virtue, the best part 
 of its career is only just now beginning. 
 
 Persons who are so unfortunate as to be obliged to travel 
 much in the public vehicles and vessels of the city of New 
 York frequently have religious tracts offered them by a 
 fellow-sufferer, who draws a bundle of them from his pocket, 
 and hands them around. It has, perhaps, occurred to others 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 171 
 
 besides myself, what a powerful means of doing good this 
 might be if the tracts were written in just the right way, 
 on just the right subjects, by truly enlightened and sympa 
 thetic men; and perhaps others have wondered, besides 
 myself, that such an obvious and easy way of spreading 
 abroad good knowledge, good principles, and good feeling 
 should be so long neglected by persons capable of using it 
 with effect. I hope yet to see our omnibuses littered with 
 tracts written by such persons as Mr. Emerson, Dr. Holmes, 
 Mr. Lowell, Mr. Norton, Mr. Curtis, Dr. Bellows, Horace 
 Greeley, Dr. Chapin, Mr. Mayo, Mr. Higginson, Mrs. Stowe, 
 Gail Hamilton, Mr. Beecher, Goldwin Smith, Charles Dick 
 ens, and all the other good fellows of either sex who love 
 their species, and have a wise or friendly word to say to 
 them. It will only be necessary for them to write a great 
 deal better than they ever did before. 
 
 Our Roman Catholic brethren have at length awoke to 
 the power of the four-paged tract, and they are using it with 
 increasing frequency and skill. This movement mitigates 
 the horrors of city travel ; for the Catholic tracts, besides 
 containing much information little known to us Protestants, 
 are written in a lively strain, often in the form of dialogue. 
 It is not a bad thing, about half-way down town, to have 
 politely put into your hands a sprightly little piece, upon 
 " What my Uncle said about the Pope." 
 
 " One day, in the Central Park, we sat down on a nice 
 shady seat, and Uncle George took out a newspaper to read. 
 As his eye glanced down the columns he suddenly gave a 
 grunt, and hit the ground very sharply with his cane. 
 
 " Got the gout, Uncle 1 said I. 
 
 " No, my dear, it s nothing but the old Pope again. 
 
 " Who is he, Uncle 1 I inquired. 
 
 " I am sorry to say he s a bad man, my dear, replied 
 iTncle George, looking at me over his spectacles, and al 
 ways was. 
 
 " Why don t the police take him up, then, and try him 1 
 I asked. 
 
 " Because there are so many people who believe him to 
 be a good man, answered my uncle j and as for trying 
 him, Fred, there s been plenty of that, if you only under 
 stood it ; but the oftener he is brought into court, the 
 
172 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 fewer witnesses you can get to appear against him, and he 
 always manages to come off " not guilty." 
 
 " How many people believe he is a good man, Uncle] 
 I inquired. A dozen now, I should n t wonder 1 
 
 " A dozen ! exclaimed the old gentleman ; see here ; 
 and he commenced drawing figures on the gravelled walk 
 with his cane. There, said he, pointing to the sum he 
 had marked on the ground, what do you make of that 1 
 
 " There s a 2, said I, and a naught, and an 8, and six 
 more naughts. Why, Uncle, that s two hundred and eight 
 millions ! 
 
 " That s about it, my dear. " 
 
 It is much more amusing to read such a sprightly per 
 formance as this than to sit opposite six pairs of eyes, 
 occupied .only in the embarrassing task of not " catching " 
 any of them. Useful knowledge, too, is acquired. It is 
 agreeable to know the exact figures about anything. There 
 is a tract upon "Article II. of the Popular Creed," which 
 is, "All men cannot believe alike." There is also one upon 
 Article I. of the same creed : " It is a matter of no impor 
 tance what a man believes, if he be only sincere." There 
 is another entitled "What shall I do to be saved T This 
 is a dialogue, and the main question is thus answered : 
 
 "Earnest Inquirer. Will you be kind enough to tell me 
 what practical answer is given in the Catholic Church to 
 Catholics themselves who ask the question, What shall I 
 do to be saved ] 
 
 " Catholic. A Catholic is usually baptized in infancy, and 
 is thereby invested with all the privileges of a Christian. 
 As he grows older, he is taught the principles of his re 
 ligion. If he lives up to them, and obeys God s command 
 ments, he is always the friend of God, and does not need to 
 ask the question at all, just as a native-born citizen who 
 has never forfeited his citizenship needs not to inquire how 
 he shall become a citizen. But if he turns away from God 
 by sin, then .... the short practical answer to his question 
 is, Prepare yourself, and come and make an humble and 
 contrite confession of your sins." 
 
 Most of the thirty tracts already issued are evidently 
 designed to be read by Protestants, and aim to give correct 
 statements of certain Catholic doctrines which Catholics 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 173 
 
 claim are habitually misstated by Protestants. In the pub 
 lication of these and other cheap works a Catholic Publica 
 tion Society has been formed, precisely similar in design to 
 the "Methodist Book Concern." In short, our Roman 
 Catholic brethren are adopting, one after another, all our 
 Protestant plans and expedients ; they are turning our own 
 artillery against us. As usual with them, it is one man 
 who is working this new and most effective idea ; but, as 
 usual with them also, this one man is working by, with, 
 and through an organization which multiplies his force one 
 hundred times, and constitutes him a person of national 
 importance. Readers who take note of the really impor 
 tant things transpiring around them will know at once that 
 the individual referred to is Father Hecker, Superior of the 
 Community of the Paulists, in New York, editor of the 
 " Catholic World," and director of the Catholic Publication 
 Society. It is he who is putting American machinery into 
 the ancient ark, and getting ready to run her by steam. 
 Here, for once, is a happy man, happy in his faith and 
 in his work, sure that in spreading abroad a knowledge 
 of the true Catholic doctrine he is doing the best thing 
 possible for his native land. A tall, healthy-looking, robust, 
 handsome, cheerful gentleman of forty-five, endowed with a 
 particular talent for winning confidence and regard, which 
 talent has been improved by many years of active exercise. 
 It is a particular pleasure to meet with any one, at such a 
 time as this, whose work perfectly satisfies his conscience, his 
 benevolence, and his pride, and who is doing that work in 
 the most favorable circumstances, and with the best co 
 operation. Imagine a benevolent physician in a populous 
 hospital, who has in his office the medicine which he is 
 perfectly certain will cure or mitigate every case, provided 
 only he can get it taken, and who is surrounded with a 
 corps of able and zealous assistants to aid him in persuading 
 the patients to take it ! 
 
 This excellent and gifted man is a native of the city of 
 New York, where his two brothers are well known as con 
 trolling the business of supplying the city with every de 
 scription of flour and meal ; their establishment being 
 among the most extensive of the kind in the world. The 
 father of these three boys was a Presbyterian, the mother 
 
174 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 a Methodist ; but neither of them was a severe or exacting 
 sectarian, and the boys were allowed the usual free range 
 among all the churches of the town. It was an affection 
 ate, entirely virtuous, and estimable family, of German ori 
 gin, with a decided bias among the younger members 
 toward spiritual inquiries and subjects. The three boys, 
 in particular, had the true German fondness for one another, 
 and, in due time, went into business together, that very 
 business which has since grown to such wonderful propor 
 tions. They began, however, as bakers and dealers in flour 
 in a small way ; all three, I believe, working at the knead 
 ing-trough and at the oven s fiery mouth. Their business 
 prospered ; it soon became evident that a great success was 
 within their reach, to attain which they had nothing to do 
 but go on in the way they were going. But this assurance 
 of success having been reached, one of the brothers ceased 
 to find the business interesting. He was young, vigorous, 
 athletic, full of life and cheerfulness, and he said to himself : 
 " A man requires but a few cents a day (this was nearly 
 thirty years ago) for his sustenance; why take all this 
 trouble to get those few cents 1 Is there nothing better or 
 other 4 for a man to do in his short life than earn his living 1 
 Must I expend my whole revenue of strength in merely 
 getting the very trifling supplies needed to keep the bodily 
 machine going ? must I really 1 " Revolving such thoughts 
 in his anxious mind, he continued faithfully to knead the 
 dough and draw the loaves. Always an eager reader, he 
 now became a student. He used to be up at four in the 
 morning studying Kant and the other metaphysicians ; and, 
 as kneading do.es not engross the mind, he nailed his alge 
 bra to the wall before his trough, that he might use the 
 unemployed portion of his intellect while at his work. But, 
 whatever he studied, the questions ever present with him 
 were, What is man 1 whence carne he 1 why is he here 1 
 whither is he going ? what does it become him to do 1 - 
 questions which no creature worthy of the name of man 
 ever escaped, or ceased to ask, until he had either found 
 answers, or ascertained them to be unanswerable: 
 
 In quest of light upon these problems, he went the round 
 of the sects, attending the services, reading the books, and 
 conversing with the leaders of each. What he longed for 
 
OUR KOMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 175 
 
 was a life of self-renunciation, a life wholly devoted to 
 worthy objects external to himself. He used to ask Prot 
 estants, how he, I. T. flecker, baker, of the city of New 
 York, could fulfil such injunctions as, " Sell all and follow 
 me," and, " Forsake father and mother for my sake." They 
 answered that these were figurative expressions, or, if not 
 figurative, yet not applicable to the case of a young gentle 
 man of good business prospects, residing on the populous 
 island of Manhattan in the nineteenth century. " It was 
 going too far; it was mere youthful enthusiasm; it was 
 not suited to the nineteenth century ; there was no occa 
 sion for anything of that kind in modern times." These 
 remarks silenced him for a while, but did not satisfy him ; 
 he was still seeking his religion, and with a deeper longing 
 than before. He resolved to make it the business of his 
 whole existence, if necessary, to find the solution of his 
 difficulty. "It is a necessity," he said to himself, " to find 
 a religion coinciding with the dictates of reason, and com 
 mensurate with the wants of our whole nature, or else to 
 wait for its revelation. If I find no such religion, and God 
 deigns not to reveal it, then on my tomb shall be written : 
 Here lies one who asked with sincerity for truth, and it 
 was not given. He knocked earnestly at the door of truth, 
 and it was not opened. He sought faithfully after truth, 
 and he found nothing. " He now avoided female society, 
 because he was determined, until the great question was 
 settled, to keep his destiny in his own hands, and not com 
 plicate the difficulty by blending with his own the fate of 
 another. He withdrew from business also ; gave up those 
 brilliant prospects opening before the- house of Hecker 
 Brothers, and set out on a journey in search of wisdom. 
 The world has but one way of judging a case of this na 
 ture : " Poor Hecker is crazy " ; and perhaps the world is 
 not wholly in the wrong. 
 
 Every reader has heard of Brook Farm in Massachusetts, 
 where Hawthorne, Ripley, C. A. Dana, G. W. Curtis, and 
 many other young philosophers, took up their abode twenty- 
 five or thirty years ago, and sought to realize in their daily 
 life all that this young New-Yorker was meditating. They, 
 too, had indulged the fond delusion of increasing the hap 
 piness by lessening the difficulties of life, and of arranging 
 
176 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 their lives upon a better system than the natural order. 
 To Brook Farm the youthful seeker after wisdom directed 
 his steps, and cast in his lot with the noble band. It nat 
 urally fell to his share to make the bread for the household, 
 which he did on the true Hecker principle. No one found 
 at Brook Farm what he sought there. After nine months 
 residence Mr. Hecker left that unpeaceful abode no wiser 
 than he came, and went off with Thoreau to one of that 
 philosopher s extremely inexpensive places of residence. 
 They experimented together upon the necessary cost of 
 maintaining human life, and upon this point they actually 
 arrived at a result. They discovered that they could live 
 well enough upon nine cents a day each, an island of 
 certainty in a sea of doubt, but not large enough for a 
 dwelling-place for two souls. Thoreau found it sufficient 
 for himself for a while, and wrote a highly entertaining 
 book relating his residence thereon. 
 
 Meanwhile, the brothers and friends of Mr. Hecker were 
 pressing him to return and resume his place in the ever- 
 expanding business. After much reflection, it occurred to 
 him that a man having many other men in his employment 
 might perhaps find a sphere for all his nobler aims in pro 
 moting their welfare. He may have been reading Carlyle s 
 fantastical Toryism in Past and Present, where this par 
 ticular kind of impertinence is highly extolled. However 
 that may be, he consented, about the time of his coming of 
 age, to return to the ordinary life of men, and to take his 
 proper place in the business, on two conditions : 1 . That 
 the three brothers should possess all things in common, 
 have no separate purse ; and, 2. That he should have con 
 trol of all the men emp^ed. His brothers gladly consent 
 ing, he returned. He now tried in all w^ays known to him 
 to benefit the workmen. He fitted up a nice room, and 
 stored it well with books, periodicals, and games, in which 
 he invited them to pass their leisure hours. He endeavored 
 to give them good advice, as well as to comfort and en 
 courage them. But it would not do. The attempt to 
 teach others only brought home the more painfully to his 
 mind how sorely he needed instruction himself. He was 
 trying to feed other men, while himself was starving. 
 Groping in the dark, blind, blind, blind, he was presuming 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 177 
 
 to guide the steps of his fellows. If he asserted something 
 respecting their duty, and they questioned it, he knew of 
 no infallible standard to which he could appeal. He could 
 not tell them what man s duty really was, for he knew not 
 why man was placed here, nor what placed him, nor whith 
 er he was bound, nor whether he was bound anywhither. 
 He did not quite like to confess this to the men he was try 
 ing to help ; but if they pressed him close, he stammered 
 and hesitated, and, if they pressed him closer, he was dumb. 
 He persevered, however, for a year. Then he gave it up, 
 and resumed his studies and wanderings. He was fully 
 determined not to expend the whole of his energies, and 
 most of his time, in earning that ridiculous sum of nine 
 cents a day needed for keeping the bodily apparatus going. 
 And as for guiding the men engaged in helping him get 
 those nine cents, it would be time for him to teach them 
 when he himself had found out something. 
 
 Fourierism came up about this time. Mr. Brisbane, a 
 young man of fortune, returned from Europe full of the 
 dreams and theories of Fourier, which he proceeded to 
 expound to the public in the young Tribune ; and highly 
 creditable it was, both to the man and to the newspaper, to 
 do and risk so much in the discussion of such a subject. 
 To err in the service of man is nobler than to be wise for 
 one s self. Mr. Hecker became acquainted with Mr. Bris 
 bane, discussed Fourierism with him, and, without being 
 able yet to point out the fatal defect in the system, felt 
 that it would not work. 
 
 Up to this period about the twenty-second year of his 
 age he had never so much as thought of looking into the 
 Roman Catholic doctrine or practice. It had not crossed 
 his mind that there could be anything worth considering in 
 a creed only known to him as the one held by Irish laborers 
 and servants, whom he had seen kneeling before the church 
 doors on Sunday mornings. He was led to think of the 
 Catholic Church through one of its fiercest enemies. About 
 twenty-five years ago there was a preacher in New York 
 named Brownlow or Brownlee, who conceived the brilliant 
 and original scheme of gaining distinction in his profession 
 by calling his Roman Catholic brethren hard names, and 
 holding them up to the execration of mankind. New York 
 8* L 
 
178 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 was a very provincial place then, and there was still a con 
 siderable number of persons living there who could be taken 
 in by charlatanry of that nature. So Brownlow, D. D., 
 flourished for a while. He denounced the Catholic Church 
 most fluently in the old Chatham Street chapel, and by and 
 by set up a weekly paper called " The Downfall of Baby 
 lon," in which he continued the work. In this amusing 
 periodical he inserted a good many extracts from Catholic 
 works, from the decisions of councils held in the Middle 
 Ages, and, especially, from those of the more recent Coun 
 cil of Trent. I can myself remember an interesting list of 
 " anathemas " in " The Downfall of Babylon," which led me 
 to expend a small sum at a book-stall, in the days of my 
 youth, in the purchase of the volume containing the com 
 plete catalogue of the same, as pronounced by the council 
 just named. It is really remarkable how uniformly denun 
 ciation and persecution help their objects. Almost any 
 Catholic priest you meet can name " converts " who were 
 made such by people of the Brownlow species, and by such 
 events as the Philadelphia riots of 1844, in which one or 
 two Catholic churches were burned. Such things excite 
 inquiry, and when once a person has reached the point of 
 suspecting that Catholic priests are not the designing and 
 insidious monsters which the Brownlows say they are, a re 
 action is apt to set in, which is often strong enough to 
 carry him into the ancient fold. 
 
 No one will be made a Catholic by reading such dis 
 courses as that which now has the honor to engage the 
 reader s attention, although it is written in a spirit of sin 
 cere respect for the most venerable and the most indispen 
 sable of existing institutions. If you wish to make converts, 
 you must adopt the Scarlet Woman style, and set on a mob 
 to burn churches. 
 
 Mr. Hecker was an occasional hearer of the infuriate 
 Brownlow, and an occasional reader of his " Downfall." 
 He read with particular interest, and with nascent approval, 
 some of the decisions of the Council of Trent, especially the 
 one that repudiates Luther s doctrine called "justification 
 by faith alone," which had long appeared to him question 
 able, if not absurd and injurious. It seemed to him, or 
 began to do so, that it was more congenial to human na- 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 179 
 
 ture, and more reasonable, for man to work out his salvation, 
 and to be able to merit something of his Creator. Even so 
 recently as twenty-five years ago, many people still attached 
 importance to these theological niceties, which now few 
 unprofessional persons regard or know anything about. So 
 long as all are agreed that good works are to be done, 
 as many of them as possible, and bad works are to be 
 left undone, the modernized mind cares little for the 
 precise theological process by which these duties are estab 
 lished. It was also pleasing to this young Protestant to 
 know, that the Catholic Church, as a church, had uniform 
 ly opposed the doctrines named after Calvin, who burned 
 his brother at the stake because that brother indulged in 
 some vagaries of opinion upon subjects about which no 
 man s opinion has any value, since it cannot be founded 
 upon knowledge. 
 
 But it was not these things that made this young in 
 quirer after truth a Roman Catholic. The great conver 
 sions are not effected through the understanding. What 
 he wanted was, to devote himself to something high and 
 good ; and he soon discovered that the strength of the 
 Catholic Church lies in the very fact that it furnishes op 
 portunities for every kind and every degree of self-sacrifice. 
 Those dreams of " selling all that he had," of " forsaking 
 father and mother, brother and sister," of dedicating his 
 entire existence to noble labors, which his Protestant friends 
 had pitied, derided, and disapproved, he found that the 
 Catholic Church recognized, understood, welcomed, blessed, 
 and employed. If a compassionate girl had a genius for 
 nursing the sick ; if a gifted woman felt herself impelled to 
 instruct the ignorant ; if a man had within him an unde 
 veloped power to rouse the torpid consciences of vicious 
 men ; if another thought he could serve his fellows best by 
 a life of contemplation ; if another would go to the ends of 
 the earth to civilize the savage ; if an heiress aspired to a 
 nobler fate than such a marriage as an heiress usually in 
 curs ; if a man of fortune desired to employ himself and his 
 wealth in noble uses ; yes, and if a poor, deceived woman, 
 placed in relations to the world inextricably false, longed to 
 atone for the error of an hour by a lifetime of devotion, 
 and to consecrate her very contrition to the service of her 
 
180 . TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 kind, this ancient Church, he was assured, opened her 
 bosom to all and each of these, and gave them the oppor 
 tunity they craved. It was this that won the heart of the 
 anxious wanderer, tired by his six years of perplexity and 
 unrest. He was living with Thoreau in Massachusetts*, in 
 their usual abstemious manner, when the grand decision 
 was made, and to Thoreau it was first communicated. The 
 convert was then twenty-three years of age ; and, now that 
 he is forty-seven, he still looks back to that moment as the 
 most fortunate of his life ; for he has found in the service 
 of the Cnurch the complete realization of his early dreams. 
 
 He soon felt what our Roman Catholic brethren call a 
 "vocation" to the priesthood, which was recognized as 
 genuine, and he went to a convent in Germany to complete 
 his preparation for the office. After his ordination he re 
 turned to his native land, and joined one of the numerous 
 orders which play into and co-operate with the general 
 work of the Church. 
 
 I have alluded to the fact that last November the largest 
 Catholic church in New York was filled to repletion every 
 morning at five o clock. There was a mission" then go 
 ing on in that church. We Protestants should call it a 
 "revival," or a "protracted meeting." Whatever our Ro 
 man Catholic brethren do, as I have before observed, they 
 do by means of an organization ; and that organization is 
 made, by discipline and subordination, to work with the 
 singleness of aim and the efficient force of one man. These 
 Catholic revivals, or "missions," are conducted by orders of 
 priests, specially endowed, trained, and organized for the 
 purpose. Men gifted with a particular talent for holding 
 attentive large congregations, and for recalling attention to 
 neglected obligations, find their place and work in such 
 orders as these. At the appointed time, the priests of the 
 church in which a mission is to be held are reinforced by a 
 delegation from one of these orders, and the great work of 
 reviving religious feeling begins. The first mass is cele 
 brated at five in the morning, for the convenience of the 
 mighty host of laboring men and women ; and a moving 
 sermon is preached to them before the kitchen fires are 
 lighted, before the hodman s breakfast is ready. This first 
 vast audience is dismissed about a quarter past six, and at 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 181 
 
 seven another assembles ; at nine, another ; and, in some 
 cases, yet another at half past ten. In the afternoon con 
 fessions are heard, and every confessional is occupied ; for 
 there are relays of priests for every part of the work. In 
 the afternoon, too, classes of Protestants sometimes meet 
 for the purpose of receiving special instruction in the faith 
 and practice of the Church from one of the priests who, 
 being himself a convert, is better able than his brethren to 
 anticipate and answer their inquiries. In the evening, still 
 the work goes on until ten; vespers, confessions, exhorta 
 tions, fill up the evening hours, and fan the rising flame. 
 The conscience-stricken Catholic is not tortured with doubts 
 either as to what he ought to do or as to whether he has 
 done it. The injunction of the Church is perfectly simple : 
 If you are truly sorry for your sins, and mean to forsake 
 them, confess to a priest, comply with his direction, joyfully 
 accept absolution, and keep your resolve to lead a new life. 
 As the " mission " continues, the feeling spreads and deep 
 ens, the confessionals are more and more beset, until all 
 but the hopeless reprobates of the parish are partakers of 
 the influence. The mission may last ten days, two weeks, 
 or a month, according to the size and circumstances of the 
 parish ; and when it is over the mission priests retire -to 
 their own abode, to refresh themselves by rest, study, and 
 contemplation for another mission in a remote part of the 
 diocese. Thus no one is fatigued, no one need lapse into 
 formality and coldness. 
 
 It was in one of these orders that Father Hecker first 
 exercised his vocation in his native land, and he labored in 
 it in various parts of the country. But this mission work 
 brought him into contact chiefly with Catholics, and he felt 
 a particular yearning to bring into the fold of the Ancient 
 Church such persons as he had known at Brook Farm, and 
 in the intellectual circles of Massachusetts and New York, 
 who, he felt, could alone attain peace in the Catholic 
 Church, and only there find a way of bringing their high 
 moral feeling to bear upon masses of their countrymen. He 
 remembered, also, how completely and how long he had 
 misunderstood the Church, and that, but for the accident 
 of his falling in with the absurd " Downfall of Babylon," he 
 might have lived and died in ignorance of its true charac- 
 
182 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 ter. He felt that there was need of a special organization 
 for spreading abroad in the United States correct informa 
 tion respecting Catholic doctrine and practice. Convinced, 
 too, that the day was near at hand when his Church was to 
 be dominant in the United States, he desired to do some 
 thing toward aiding Catholics themselves to rise to the 
 height of their " vocation," so that they might use in the 
 noblest way the power which was about to fall into their 
 hands. He had a conviction, and still has it, that there is 
 something peculiarly congenial to Republican America in 
 the stately decorums of his Church, its gentle doctrine, 
 its severe exactions, its brotherly equalities, and in the 
 grand assemblage of all the fine arts in the Supreme Act, 
 in which man pays homage to the divinity by exhibiting his 
 own. In church, he remembered, Protestants say, " Man is 
 totally depraved." At the political meeting the same Prot 
 estants assert, " Man is capable of self -government" There 
 is no such contradiction, he maintains, in the Catholic mind. 
 What the Catholic believes as a Catholic he can also believe 
 as a citizen. "It is only since I have been a Catholic," 
 says Father Hecker, " that I have been a consistent and 
 intelligent citizen of a republic." 
 
 A new order then, he believed, was called for in the New 
 World, and the scheme was approved by his ecclesiastical 
 superiors. When our Roman Catholic brethren have re 
 solved upon a project of this nature, they proceed to exe 
 cute it in the most sensible and business-like manner. If 
 the world is to be moved, the first requisite is to get a ful 
 crum for the lever ; for there is no use in having a lever 
 unless there is a fulcrum on which to rest it. When a new 
 order is fco be founded, the first thing is to secure a small 
 piece of the earth s surface, which it can possess in fee sim 
 ple, upon which its home and working-place can be perma 
 nently built. Now, observe how all the parts of this as 
 tonishing organization work together ! Father Hecker, pro 
 vided with the due authorization, goes forth to raise the 
 money needed to make the first payment upon a piece of 
 ground. His previous missionary labors had brought him 
 into favorable relations with a great number of parishes, 
 and those labors he continued while begging the money for 
 the new enterprise. From Quebec to New Orleans he went, 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 183 
 
 rousing Catholics to confess and forsake their sins, and ask 
 ing contributions to his scheme. 
 
 It is surprising what a talent our Roman Catholic breth 
 ren have for raising money. The Superior of the Domini 
 can Community, which is now building a convent in New 
 York, raised in the city alone, in two weeks, forty thousand 
 dollars toward paying for the edifice. "One man s money 
 is as good as another s," appears to be a familiar principle 
 with our Roman Catholic brethren ; and, accordingly, some 
 of our New York city office-holders are frequently called 
 upon to disgorge a trifling portion of their booty, a check 
 for five hundred dollars, or some small matter of that kind. 
 It has been discovered, also, that candidates for city offices 
 have a tenderness for the orphan, a pride in the new cathe 
 dral, an interest in the publication of Catholic works, and a 
 desire for the conversion of heretics, which causes them to 
 adorn many subscription-papers with their signatures. What 
 an advantage over us our Roman Catholic brethren have in 
 being able to tax sinners for the suppression of sin, and to use 
 stolen money in inculcating honesty ! We poor Protestants 
 never think of asking a gambler, a city politician, or a thief to 
 subscribe money for the promulgation of principles which, if 
 universally accepted, would ruin his trade. We place nearly 
 the whole burden of sustaining virtue upon the virtuous ! 
 
 Father Hecker raised the requisite sum, and reported 
 himself and it to the Archbishop of New York. Immedi 
 ately his special enterprise was made to co-operate with the 
 general work of the diocese in such a way that each should 
 aid the other directly, powerful!} 7 , constantly, and forever. 
 On the outskirts of the city, between the ground now occu 
 pied by the Central Park and the Hudson River, a region 
 then dotted with shanties and enlivened by goats, the Arch 
 bishop laid out a new parish, and appointed Father Hecker 
 pastor of it ; who forthwith bought the best block of 
 ground in the neighborhood for the site of the church and 
 for the home of the new community. All gathers round a 
 church parochial school, parsonage, convent, college, 
 seminary in the Catholic world ; this alliance, therefore, 
 was nothing new, but in strict accordance with the system. 
 Thus, a movement designed to convert Mr. Emerson and 
 his friends, and the educated people of America, was made, 
 
184 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 first of all, to minister to the spiritual wants of the poorest 
 and most ignorant people living in the Northern States. 
 
 It is this exquisite feature of the system, this care for 
 the very poorest and forlornest of human kind, this car 
 ing for them first, just as we help children first at the table 
 because they are the hungriest and least patient, this 
 sweet blending of the two extremes of human nature in 
 the same project, it is this that melts the heart and gives 
 pause to the . mind. If it were possible for me to be a 
 Catholic, which I think it is not, it is this that would 
 bring me to it. If, in this city of New York, there is any 
 such thing as realized, working Christianity, it may be seen 
 in one of its poor, densely peopled Catholic parishes, where 
 all is dreary, dismal desolation, excepting alone in the 
 sacred enclosure around the church, where a bright interior 
 cheers the leisure hours ; where pictures, music, and stately 
 ceremonial exalt the poor above their lot; and where a 
 friend and father can ever be found. And observe : these 
 blessings are not doled out to them as charity ; these poor 
 people have the privilege of paying for them and sustaining 
 them. The church is their own ; the spacious and elegant 
 school-house is their own ; the priest is supported and the 
 whole expense of every part of the parish system is borne 
 by them. And nothing else in the parish works well or 
 economically but the church. The landlord gives them bad 
 lodgings for high rents ; the city officials leave mountains 
 of filth before their doors ; the water will not flow in the 
 upper stories ; the grocery store is on so small a scale that 
 its profits must be exorbitant. All in their lot, all in their 
 surroundings, is mean, nasty, inefficient, forbidding, ex 
 cept their church. 
 
 Ten years have passed. Upon the ground bought by 
 Father Hecker we now see a large and handsome church, 
 adorned with pictures much superior to those usually found 
 in Catholic churches here. The fashionable quarter of the 
 city has been drawing nearer to it, so that now the congre 
 gation is composed of those who live in brown-stone houses, 
 as well as of those who assist in building them ; and the 
 service is performed with an elegance and finish seldom seen 
 in the United States. Adjoining the church is a spacious 
 and commodious house for the Fathers and students belong- 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 185 
 
 ing to the new community, who are called Paulists. The 
 community now consists of six priests, twelve students, and 
 four servants, all but one or two of whom are " converts," 
 i. e. Catholics who were once Protestants. The special work 
 of this community is, to bring the steam printing-press to 
 bear upon the spread of the Catholic religion in the United 
 States. The matter published by the Catholic Publication 
 Society, the new tracts, the articles of the monthly maga 
 zine called " The Catholic "World," and the smaller volumes 
 designed for Sunday-school libraries, are chiefly written or 
 edited by the Paulist Fathers. Every Catholic church has 
 connected with it several voluntary societies ; such as the 
 Altar Society, of ladies, who take care of the decoration 
 and purification of the altar ; the Conference of St. Vincent 
 de Paul, for the relief of the poor ; the Society of the Holy 
 Rosary, for simultaneous devotion the Society of the Holy 
 Infancy, for the promotion of missions in heathen lands ; 
 the Father Mathew Society, for mutual protection against 
 the poor man s worst enemy; the Sunday-school Society, 
 of teachers, all these Societies are so many organizations, 
 ready-made, for the distribution of the tracts and volumes 
 prepared by the Paulist Fathers in their pleasant retreat 
 near the Hudson River. 
 
 This community, in one important particular, differs from 
 other Catholic orders, it exacts no special vows of its 
 members. Father Hecker is an American, a patriotic 
 American, an American who believes in American princi 
 ples, in short, he is what we used to call a good Jefter- 
 souian Democrat. Being that in politics, he desires to be 
 it also in religion ; for he is of opinion that a proposition 
 which is true at the polls cannot be false before the altar. 
 Jefferson says, All men are equals. True, says this Ameri 
 can priest, because they are all brothers. Jefferson says, 
 Man is capable of self-government. True, adds Father 
 Hecker, for man is made in the image of his Creator. This 
 Paulist Community, therefore, is conducted on American 
 principles : "the door opens both ways " ; no man remains 
 a moment longer than he chooses ; and every inmate is as 
 free in all his works and ways as a son is in the well-ordered 
 house of a wise father. 
 
 What a powerful engine is this ! Suppose the six ablest 
 
186 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 and highest Americans were living thus, freed from all 
 worldly cares, in an agreeable, secluded abode, yet near the 
 centre of things, with twelve zealous, gifted young men to 
 help and cheer them, a thousand organizations in the coun 
 try to aid in distributing their writings, and in every town 
 a spacious edifice and an e ager audience to hang upon their 
 lips. What could they not effect in a lifetime of well- 
 directed work 1 ? Father Hecker lives so remote from the 
 worldly anxieties, that he did not know the amount of his 
 own salary until I told him. That is not in his department. 
 He has nothing to think of but his work. 
 
 Father Hecker and his colleagues propose to convert us 
 by convincing our reason. There is nothing which they 
 deny with so much emphasis and vehemence as the com 
 mon assertion, that the Roman Catholic Church demands 
 of man the submission or abdication of his reason. Father 
 Hecker, in his spirited and eloquent little book entitled 
 " The Aspirations of Nature," is particularly strong upon 
 this point. " Man has no right to surrender his judgment," 
 he tells us. " Endowed with free-will, man has no right to 
 yield up his liberty. Reason and free-will constitute man 
 a responsible being, and he has no right to abdicate his in 
 dependence. Judgment, Liberty, Independence, these are 
 divine and inalienable gifts ; and man cannot renounce 
 them if he would." Again he says : " Religion is a ques 
 tion between God and the soul. No human authority, 
 therefore, has any right to enter its sacred sphere. Every 
 man ivas made by his Creator to do his own thinking" And 
 again : " There is no degradation so abject as the submis 
 sion of the eternal interests of the soul to the private au 
 thority or dictation of any man, or body of men, whatever 
 may be their titles." And again : " Reasonable religious 
 belief does not supplant Reason, nor diminish its exercise, 
 but presupposes its activity, extends its boundaries, elevates 
 and ennobles it by applying its powers to the highest order 
 of truth." And once more : " There are several primary, 
 independent, and authoritative sources of truth. Among 
 others, and the first, is Reason." These passages are in 
 curious contrast to the wild denunciations of human Rea 
 son in which Luther indulges, and which Father Hecker 
 quotes only to condemn : " Reason, you are a silly blind 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 187 
 
 fool"; "Reason is the Devil s bride, a pretty strumpet," 
 etc. 
 
 Our Paulist friends, too, are the furthest possible from 
 being alarmed at the discoveries of science ; for they do 
 not insist on the literal infallibility of the books composing 
 the Bible. They would not feel that either the Church or 
 the public morals was in danger if a bishop on the other 
 side of the globe should catch Moses tripping in his arith 
 metic. With them, it is the CHURCH that is infallible, i. e. 
 the collected, deliberately uttered moral sense of mankind, 
 enlightened by the Author of it, and which is therefore for 
 individuals the supreme, unerring conscience. Galileo would 
 be in no danger nowadays if his discoveries should appear 
 to cast a reflection upon the statement that Joshua com 
 manded the sun and moon to stand still, and they obeyed 
 him. " The geologist," observes Father Hecker in one of 
 his most eloquent passages, "may dig deep down into the 
 bowels of the earth till he reaches the intensest heats ; the 
 naturalist may decompose matter, examine with the micro 
 scope what escapes our unaided observation, and unveil to 
 our astonished gaze the secrets of nature ; the astronomer 
 may multiply his lenses till his ken reaches the empyrean 
 heights of heaven ; the historian may consult the annals of 
 nations, and unriddle the hieroglyphics of the monuments 
 of bygone ages ; the moralist may expose the most delicate 
 folds of the human heart, and probe it to its very core ; 
 the philosopher may, with his critical faculty, observe and 
 define the laws which govern man s sovereign reason, 
 and Catholicity is not alarmed ! Catholicity invokes, en 
 courages, solicits your boldest efforts ; for at the end of all 
 your earnest researches you will find that the fruit of your 
 labors confirms her teachings, and that your genuine discov 
 eries add new gems to the crown of truth which encircles 
 her heaven-inspired brow." 
 
 How interesting to observe the noble heart endowing 
 with its own nobleness whatever it loves ! How resistless 
 the influence of this large and free America, which trans 
 figures all things and persons into a likeness to itself ! 
 
 The question now recurs : Will the Paulist Fathers suc 
 ceed in their darling object of bringing over a majority of 
 the people of the United States to the ancient faith ? I 
 
188 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 can state softie of the grounds of their own unbounded con 
 fidence in the coming supremacy of their church. First, 
 its past progress has been startlingly rapid. In the year 
 1800 there were in the United States one Roman Catho 
 lic bishop, fifty-three priests, and about 90,000 members. 
 There are now seven archbishops, forty bishops, three mi 
 tred abbots, about 3,100 priests, sixty-five Catholic colleges, 
 fifty-six convents of men, one hundred and eighty-nine con 
 vents of women, and (according to Catholic calculation) 
 4,800,000 Catholic population. In other words, in 1800 
 the Catholics were something like one seventieth of the 
 whole population of the United States ; they are now about 
 one sixth ! They have also increased faster than the gen 
 eral population of the country. Thus between 1840 and 
 1850 the general increase was thirty-six per cent ; the 
 Catholic increase, one hundred and twenty-five per cent. 
 Judging from the past, our Roman Catholic brethren con 
 clude that in the year 1900 they will form one third of 
 the population of the country, and perhaps a majority in 
 the controlling cities and States of it. The property of the 
 Church increases at a rate still more rapid ; since, in addi 
 tion to the new purchases, the Church snares largely in the 
 constant increase in the value of real estate. The only 
 class of laborers in the country who always earn much more 
 money than they need are domestic female servants ; and 
 they spend most of their surplus either in direct contribu 
 tions to the Church, or in bringing across the ocean new mem 
 bers. As a rule, a female servant can appropriate one half 
 of her wages to these objects if she chooses. How many of 
 them choose to do so is known to housekeepers, and, still bet 
 ter, to bankers who sell small drafts on Ireland and Germany. 
 Then, again (as Father Hecker fails not to notice in his 
 recent contribution to the Revue Generate of -Brussels, upon 
 La Situation Religieuse des Etats Unis), our Roman Catho 
 lic brethren claim to be better propagators than we can 
 boast of being. It is obvious, they say, that Catholic fam 
 ilies are more numerous than Protestant. This august and 
 holy mystery of generation the ancient Church invests with 
 sacramental dignity, and makes the marriage tie indissolu 
 ble. Father Hecker is wrong in attaching importance to 
 the hateful thing called free-love, and to the kindred abom- 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 189 
 
 ination that took to itself the name of Bohemianism. 
 Nothing ever excited a deeper or a more general loath 
 ing among Protestants than these things did. They had 
 but few adherents, and were of no account. Mormonism, 
 also, which he mentions in this connection, is an exceptional 
 and transient triumph of one vigorous Saxon who was re 
 solved to have a harem without taking the trouble of turn 
 ing Turk. But the great number of divorces, the very 
 frequent revolt of parents against the sublime duties of 
 their lot, the murder of unborn offspring, the dying out of 
 the old New England families, their ancient farms occupied 
 by healthier Europeans, mostly Catholics, these things, 
 Father Hecker thinks, prove " the complete impotence of 
 Protestantism to impose and make respected the rein which 
 public morality demands," and announce the coming suprem 
 acy of a Church powerful enough to guard the issues of 
 life. Now, the best man is he who can rear the best child ; 
 the best woman is she who can rear the best child. The 
 whole virtue of the race physical, moral, mental comes 
 into play in this most sweet, most arduous, most pleasing, 
 most difficult of all the work done by mortals in this world. 
 If, therefore, it is- true that Catholics do this work so much 
 better than Protestants, the case is closed ; we must all 
 turn Catholics, or make up our minds to see the race con 
 tinue to dwindle. This is, of course, too vast and awful a 
 subject to be treated here. I will venture merely to ex 
 press the conviction, that the first people to discover and 
 successfully practise the art of rearing children in the new 
 conditions of modern life will be persons who will seek for 
 the requisite knowledge where alone it is to be found, in 
 science. These will communicate it to others, and then, 
 perhaps, the. various churches will adopt, hallow, and im 
 part it. 
 
 Our Roman Catholic brethren dwell much upon the 
 enormous expense of the Protestant system, as well as 
 upon its signal inefficiency. Upon this point we may prof 
 itably consider what they say. Take the case of any of 
 our vigorous country towns in the Northern States, and 
 what do we find there 1 Generally, six churches struggling 
 to maintain themselves; six clergymen, all in the false 
 position of having to instruct people upon whom their 
 
190 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 children s bread depends ; six clergymen s families, in the 
 equally false position of being nominally at the head of so 
 ciety upon a thousand dollars a year and a donation-party ; 
 six organizations attempting, with anxious feebleness, to do 
 the work of one. And no Catholic can discern any great 
 difference between them. He cannot see, for example, why 
 the Methodists and the Episcopalians would not both gain 
 enormously by re-uniting. One would gain the power and 
 vitality of numbers, the other would gain in decorum and 
 dignity. The Episcopal Church would no longer rest under 
 the blighting stigma of being the rich people s church, and 
 the Methodists would be restrained from the spiritual riot 
 of the camp-meeting. Then there are the Unitarians and 
 the Jews, why should not they come together with the 
 same mutual advantage ? The Jews would only have to 
 give up one or two usages, the relics of a barbarous age ; 
 the Unitarians would merely be required to make their 
 sermons shorter and simpler, and adopt part of an ancient 
 ritual. The Calvinistic sects, too, why should they keep 
 apart 1 It looks to a reflective Catholic priest as though one 
 grain of common sense would suffice to reduce the churches 
 in all our villages one half in the next six months. 
 
 Our Roman Catholic brethren count upon important 
 accessions through their convent schools, conducted by 
 Sisters of Charity and by other orders, male and female. 
 These schools are numerous, important, and increasing ; 
 and I think that one fourth, perhaps one third, of all the 
 pupils in them are children of Protestant parents. Few 
 persons are competent to judge of an institution who have 
 never been inmates of it, because nothing is easier than to 
 deceive completely all but the acutest visitors. Still, these 
 Catholic schools have some advantages over most of ours, 
 which catch the eye and captivate the imagination. We 
 are apt to undervalue decorum, etiquette, manner, de 
 meanor, and all the minor details of discipline and subor 
 dination. We are apt to forget that" children were not 
 included in the first sentence of the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence. We trust them too much in some particulars, 
 and too little in others. The teachers of Protestant private 
 schools have seldom any vantage-ground of rank of a nature 
 to aid them in securing respect and obedience. The prin- 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 191 
 
 cipal is often an anxious and dependent man ; often he is 
 grossly ignorant and vulgar ; while the subordinate teachers 
 are poor and overworked, and without the means of gaining 
 a proper ascendency over their pupils. Many of them, in 
 these commercial cities, where nothing is sincerely honored 
 except the bank account, come out of garrets every morn 
 ing, to teach boys and girls who live in mock-palaces; and 
 who have no conception of anything higher or more desir 
 able than to live in a mock-palace. Have not I myself seen 
 the insolent unlicked cubs of the Fifth Avenue and streets 
 adjacent making the lives of gentlemen of learning and 
 eminent worth bitter to them by their riotous contempt of 
 authority and decency, and no teacher connected with the 
 school in a position which justified his felling the young 
 savages to the floor ] Have I not seen the principal of a 
 boarding-school running an annual "revival" as a good 
 business operation, and forbidding the poor dyspeptics un 
 der his charge to receive the visits of their parents on 
 Sunday afternoons ? 
 
 Certainly, these convent schools, which are now so popu 
 lar, are free from some of the objections and difficulties 
 that lessen the usefulness of many of our fashionable pri 
 vate academies. Among the "traditions" of the Catholic 
 Church, there is one to the effect that children are children, 
 and have a right to be kept from doing themselves irrepar 
 able harm, peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must. 
 The teachers of the convent schools all the resident 
 teachers are sufficiently independent of the good-will of 
 the pupils, without being too much so for their own good. 
 The convent possesses property, guards and maintains its 
 inmates in their own home, and yet in a great degree it 
 depends upon the income derived from the school. The 
 garb of the nun, of the Christian Brother, of the Sister of 
 Charity, as well as the serenity and dignity of their de 
 meanor, hold impudence in check, and teach the young 
 victims of successful speculation that there are distinctions 
 other than thdfee indicated by marble fronts and rosewood 
 stairs. There is a certain civilizing influence, too, which 
 comes of compelling the minute observance of the etiquette 
 of each apartment and each situation. 
 
 I was present once when the young ladies attending the 
 
192 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 principal convent schQol upon the island of Manhattan en 
 tered their chapel, on Sunday afternoon, to see four or five 
 of their number, who had become " converts " at the con 
 vent, baptized. It was a truly exquisite scene. No man 
 ager of a theatre ever arranged anything more effective for 
 the stage ; and yet it was well adapted at once to impress 
 the minds and tame the bodies of the three hundred 
 romping girls who took part in it. Perhaps in no other 
 way can I better show the reader what our Roman Catholic 
 brethren and sisters are doing to attract the children of 
 wealthy Protestants into their schools, than by briefly 
 describing what I saw on that pleasant Sunday afternoon 
 in May. 
 
 On the summit of a gentle slope, surrounded by trees 
 and shrubbery, in a part of the island where the ancient, 
 renowned loveliness of Manhattan has not been obliterated, 
 and commanding a view of the Hudson, the Harlem, and 
 the Sound, the Palisades bounding the view on the 
 west, the arches of the High Bridge visible in the north, 
 the Sound stretching away to the northeast, and the city 
 of New York spreading over all the southern half of the 
 island, stands the group of solid, but not uninviting, 
 structures which form the establishment, chief among them 
 the chapel. On this warm spring day all the doors stood 
 open and it was evident, as soon as we alighted under the 
 covered entrance, that something joyful was going forward. 
 The parlors were full of happy parents, conversing with 
 happy daughters, and a joyous hum pervaded all the 
 rooms. The chapel is spacious, elegant, and very lofty; 
 and it is adorned with the usual large altar-piece, as well 
 as with many smaller pictures. Nearly the whole space 
 upon the floor is covered with plain black-walnut pews, 
 without doors or cushions. These are for the young ladies; 
 visitors sit near the entrance, in pews raised a little from 
 the floor ; the nuns have raised seats along the sides of the 
 chapel, each sister having a little pew to herself, and 
 sitting with her face to the altar. At the appointed mo 
 ment the pupils began to enter in procession, by the middle 
 aisle, two by two, walking almost as slowly as it is possible 
 to walk, just moving, no more, and doing so in absolute 
 stillness. Not an audible tread j not a whisper ; not an 
 
OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 193 
 
 eye upraised. All were dressed alike in pink summer 
 dresses, with a white veil over their heads. They seemed 
 to be softly floating in, and winding round into the black- 
 walnut seats, like the tinted clouds of sunset. First came 
 the little girls, who, upon reaching the middle aisle, bent 
 one knee to the ground, and then glided slowly to the slow, 
 soft music of the organ all down the aisle to the altar, 
 where they divided, one line moving to the right, the 
 other to the left, and so curled round into the first pews, 
 which they entered at the end nearest the wall. Thus the 
 pleasing pageant was prolonged. As the procession con 
 tinued, its interest both changed and increased, because 
 the little girls were followed by larger, until we had the 
 pleasure of looking upon young ladies in the bright lustre 
 of their maturing charms. In every particular, this pro 
 cession was arranged just as a Kemble or a Wallack would 
 have arranged it. The same devices were employed, both 
 to prolong and increase the pleasure of the spectator, which 
 are employed upon a well-conducted stage. Especially 
 were the most impressive objects of all reserved for the 
 last. Finally came the young ladies who were about to be 
 baptized, all clad in white dresses, and covered with a long 
 white veil, each of them resting an arm upon the shoulder of 
 a sister attired in blac7c, the venerable Superior of the 
 Convent being one. Nothing was ever seen more pictu 
 resque or more affecting, nor anything more legitimate and 
 proper. When all the pupils were standing in their pews, 
 and the candidates for baptism had placed themselves be 
 fore the altar, a sister who was in one of the side niches 
 made a slight, scarcely audible click with a small instru 
 ment concealed in her hand. Instantly the whole pink 
 cloud of girls softly knelt, and remained kneeling till an 
 other click was heard, when they nestled back to their 
 seats. The black line of kneeling nuns along the sides of 
 the chapel, the parterre of young loveliness on the floor, the 
 altar blazing with lighted candles, made up a spectacle as 
 pleasing as it was impressive. At the conclusion of the 
 service the girls glided out in the same silence and slow 
 ness ; and the newly baptized closed the train, leaning, as 
 before, upon the shoulders of the sisters. 
 
 Ten minutes after, the whole three hundred pupils, ex- 
 9 M 
 
194 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 cept those who rejoined their parents in the parlors, were 
 on the full romp in their large sitting-room, running, shout 
 ing, in unrestrained hilarity ! No Sunday gloom ! No 
 goody, nauseous books ! No forced seriousness of demeanor ! 
 
 The arrangements of the school seemed excellent. The 
 best school-room I ever saw in a private school, the loftiest, 
 airiest, most spacious and elegant, is the one belonging to 
 this establishment. In one wing of the building are thirty 
 music-rooms, so constructed that a girl may be practising 
 in every one of them without disturbing or being disturbed. 
 The sleeping-rooms are a happy compromise between the 
 injurious privacy of a separate apartment and the injurious 
 publicity of a common room ; and the means of ventilation 
 appeared to be sufficient. Despite these excellent features 
 and arrangements, the school may be a very bad one ; the 
 minds of the pupils may neither be profitably exercised nor 
 suitably fed ; yet every reader can see how such schools as 
 this are calculated to captivate parents and allure children. 
 Probably seven of their Protestant pupils out of ten be 
 come Catholics sooner or later. 
 
 Conversions to the Catholic faith, it seems, have been 
 more numerous since the war than before. During the 
 "mission" recently held at St. Stephen s, in New York, the 
 number of converts was eighty. This is nothing to boast 
 of, considering the extent of the parish and the duration 
 of the " mission " \ nor, indeed, have converts ever yet 
 come in with any great rapidity. It is the quality of the 
 converts, not their numbers, of which we hear so much ; the 
 expected rush has not yet begun. I am informed that a 
 few educated persons in most city parishes are inquiring, 
 with more or less earnestness, into the Catholic faith, and I 
 am further assured that these inquiries generally end in 
 conversion. Among the most frequent causes assigned by 
 inquirers for dissatisfaction with their hereditary belief are 
 the following : The difficulty of believing in the literal in 
 fallibility of the whole Bible ; the gloom of the Sabbata 
 rian Sunday; the ban placed by many sectarians upon 
 innocent pleasures, such as dancing and the drama, which 
 tends to drive young people into guilty pleasures ; the fren 
 zies of the camp-meeting, more revolting, in some parts 
 of the country, than the howlings and whirlings of the 
 
OUE ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 195 
 
 Dervishes of Turkey ; the painful uncertainty which many 
 persons feel, all their lives, whether their souls are " saved" 
 or not ; the dulness and barrenness of the public service, 
 in which a duty is assigned to every clergyman which only 
 one in a thousand can discharge, namely, the production 
 of two powerful and entertaining sermons every seven days. 
 The effect of the war in multiplying conversions is explained 
 thus : The Catholic Church alone escaped division ; since 
 the Catholic Church alone kept itself always and entirely 
 aloof from the political questions involved. The spectacle 
 of this unity in the midst of such contention and severance 
 has proved captivating, I am told, to several educated 
 minds. I have been assured by a distinguished Protestant 
 general, who served in important commands during the 
 whole war, that the only chaplains who, as a class, were of 
 much utility in the field were Roman Catholic chaplains ; 
 which he attributes to the fact, that they alone were ac 
 countable to ecclesiastical superiors. It may be that the 
 exploits of some of our Protestant chaplains in the way of 
 " living on the country " contrasted with the strict observ 
 ance, by Catholic chaplains, both of military and ecclesias 
 tical rule, had some effect upon observant Protestant minds. 
 
 Such are some of the reasons assigned for the unbounded 
 confidence with which our Roman Catholic brethren count 
 upon being the final and eternal Church of the United 
 States. These reasons the reader is competent to estimate. 
 
 For fifteen centuries the Christian Church has under 
 taken to perform for all the inhabitants of Christendom two 
 offices having no necessary connection, and therefore capa 
 ble of being separated. One of these offices I have styled, 
 in a previous page, expounding the universe ; or, in other 
 words, assuming to declare with authority what people 
 must think concerning the origin of things, the destiny of 
 man, the nature of the Supreme Being, and the general 
 government of the w r orld. During the past three centuries 
 or more a conviction has been gaining ground, that no man 
 or body of men is competent to do this. On such subjects 
 it is now agreed among the intelligent part of mankind, 
 that one man s theory or conjecture, however interesting or 
 consolatory it may be, cannot be binding on any other 
 man. It is now agreed, among those whose thoughts finally 
 
196 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 become the thoughts of mankind, that on such subjects as 
 these there can be no such thing as a guilty opinion. This 
 part, therefore, of the Church s service to Christendom is 
 now nearly accomplished. It will be quite accomplished 
 when the greater part of the inhabitants of Christian coun 
 tries are made partakers of modern knowledge. During 
 former ages, the Church did a kind and needed service, per 
 haps, in concealing from man his own ignorance. He now 
 knows his ignorance ; he also knows the only method which 
 can ever exist of lessening it ; and he knows, consequently, 
 that in this matter priests cannot aid him. 
 
 But the other duty of the Church remains, that of 
 inculcating virtue, assisting regeneration, guiding, cheering, 
 ennobling human life. This remains. This will never be 
 needless as long as man is weak, virtue difficult, and vice 
 alluring. Human reason is not equal to the task of form 
 ing an adequate theory of the universe ; but it is equal to 
 the task of discovering how men ought to feel, and how 
 men ought to act. No body of men can ever have the 
 right to say what we ought to think concerning the " Un 
 knowable " , but any man, by a life of fidelity and charity, 
 can acquire absolute certainty respecting the duties we owe 
 to ourselves and one another. 
 
 The churches will be slow to assent to these truths, 
 familiar as they are to men of the world ; but the indiffer 
 ence of the public to everything " doctrinal," and its eager 
 interest in everything " practical," will continue to have its 
 effect. Do we not see the Pope, who began his reign by 
 establishing a new doctrine, end it by regulating the dress 
 of women 1 Do we not see a grand council of bishops ris 
 ing superior to theological subtleties, to consider the perni 
 cious consequences of keeping up balls after midnight 1 
 Have we not seen the leading Calvinistic clergyman of 
 New York soaring above all Calvin s gloomy crudities, and 
 addressing himself to the nobler, higher, and more difficult 
 work of throwing light upon the duties of employers to 
 employed 1 Poor work he made of it ; but everything 
 must be pardoned in a beginner. It is easy to make a 
 passable sermon upon points of " doctrine " ; but the 
 moment you tackle such subjects as that, you have arrived 
 at the hill Difficulty, and must prepare for a tough climb. 
 
OUK ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN. 197 
 
 All history, all political economy, all morals, are involved 
 in that servant-girl question. 
 
 In eveiy community are produced a few persons who are 
 endowed with a special aptitude for discerning what is right 
 and becoming. The problem is, By what means shall these 
 be discovered, trained, and afforded an opportunity to act 
 upon the general conscience 1 For many centuries this was 
 done by the Roman Catholic Church, and done, too, with a 
 considerable degree of efficiency. It employed women in 
 this vocation as well as men, children as well as the mature. 
 It was, so to speak, a complete moral and religious appa 
 ratus. If the same office is still to be performed for man 
 kind, I think the organization that performs it will have 
 to study deeply and long the Roman Catholic Church, and 
 borrow from it nearly every leading device of its system, 
 especially these three, celibacy, consecration for life, and 
 special orders for special work. 
 
 Celibacy was a most masterly device ; its inventor should 
 be trebly canonized ; it is the great secret of the efficiency 
 of the Roman Catholic Church. An idea of such power 
 and value will never be lost. I do not doubt that, in the 
 future as in the past, men and women who fall in love with 
 their species will often find it best to remain unmarried, 
 since the proper rearing of a family is itself a career, and 
 demands most of a life. Political economy has taken up 
 this subject. The remarks upon it of Mr. John Stuart 
 Mill * should be attentively considered by humane persons. 
 " Little improvement," he says, " can be expected in mo 
 rality until the producing of large families " (in densely 
 peopled countries) "is regarded with the same feelings as 
 drunkenness or any other physical excess. But while the 
 aristocracy and clergy are foremost to set the example of 
 this kind of incontinence, what can be expected from the 
 poor 1 ?" In Mr. Mill s system, celibacy and married conti 
 nence play a part of the first importance. r 
 
 Destruction has gone far enough. The time is at hand 
 when we can begin to think of reconstruction. 
 
 " Faith," says Sainte-Beuve, " has disappeared. Science, 
 let people say what they please, has destroyed it. It is 
 absolutely impossible for vigorous, sensible minds, conver- 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, Vol. I. p. 458, American edition. 
 
198 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 sant with history, armed with criticism, studious of the 
 natural sciences, any longer to believe in old stories and old 
 Bibles. In this crisis there is only one thing to do in order 
 to avoid languishing and stagnating in a decline, namely, 
 to move rapidly and to march firmly on toward an order of 
 reasonable, probable, corrected ideas, which beget convic 
 tion instead of belief, and which, while leaving to the ves 
 tiges of neighboring creeds all liberty and security, prepare 
 in all new and robust minds a support for the future." 
 
 This may apply to a few individuals in a few 7 countries. 
 If it were true of all men of all countries, not the less 
 would it be difficult to live purely, honorably, and wisely ; 
 not the less would it be necessary for each child to begin 
 at the rudiments and acquire the art of living, almost as 
 though it were the first creature whom temptation ever 
 allured ; not the less would self-control be painful and long 
 to learn. Who does not need help in this great matter of 
 proper and happy living 1 
 
 Suppose, then, that all the churches are about silently 
 and insensibly to abandon the attempt to regulate opinion. 
 Suppose the word " orthodoxy " abolished. Instantly the 
 long quarrel between the Heart and the Head of Christen 
 dom ceases ; Sainte-Beuve takes a Sunday-school class ; Mr. 
 Emerson writes tracts. All that is efficient in the Catholic 
 system will be preserved, and all. that is good in the Prot 
 estant will be joined to it ; and no one will care to inquire 
 in 1945, whether it is this all-conquering America which 
 has become Catholicized, or the ancient Church which has 
 become Americanized. Whatever there is of good and suit 
 able in this Church, whatever there is of good and suitable 
 in the universe, America will assuredly appropriate. 
 
ROW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 
 
 ONE of the oddities of human nature is its patient en 
 durance of obvious, easily remedied inconveniences. 
 No man ever spoke, and no man ever listened to a speech, 
 in the Representatives Hall at Washington, without being 
 painfully aware of its unsuitableness to the purpose for 
 which it was intended. It was intended to afford accom 
 modation for three hundred gentlemen while they debated 
 public questions and conversed on public business. Almost 
 all debate in a modern parliamentary body naturally takes 
 the tone of conversation, because nearly every topic that 
 arises is some question of detail the principle of which is 
 not disputed. It is only on rare occasions that the voice 
 of a speaker endowed with reason would naturally rise 
 above the conversational tone. The main business of Con 
 gress is to determine how much money shall be raised, how 
 it shall be raised, and for what objects it shall be spent. 
 The stricter States-rights men of the early time used to say, 
 that, when Congress had made the annual appropriations, 
 only one duty remained, which was to adjourn and go home. 
 This was an extreme statement. It is, I think, a most im 
 portant part of the duty of Congressmen to converse to 
 gether, in the presence of the whole people in reporters 
 gallery assembled, on subjects of national concern ; but 
 even on a field-day of general debate, when principles are 
 up for discussion, it is still calm, enlightened, dignified 
 conversation that is most desirable. Members are well 
 aware of this. Flights of oratory generally excite derisive 
 smiles upon the floor of the House, and no man is much 
 regarded by his fellow-members who is addicted to that 
 species of composition. 
 
 But neither conversation nor calm debate is possible in 
 
200 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the Representatives Chamber. It is large enough for a 
 mass-meeting. The members are spread over a wide ex 
 panse of floor, each seated at a desk covered and filled with 
 documents and papers, and they see themselves surrounded 
 by vast galleries rising, row above row, to the ceiling. 
 When a man begins to speak, though he may be the least 
 oratorical of mortals, he is soon forced into an oratorical 
 condition of mind by the physical difficulty of making him 
 self heard. Compelled to exert his lungs violently, he en 
 deavors to assist and relieve the muscles of his chest and 
 throat by gesticulation, and this brings the color to his 
 cheeks and contributes to work up the whole man into the 
 oratorical frenzy that puts a stop to all useful," elucidating 
 operation of the brain. Often, very often, have I seen a 
 member of the House, superior by nature, age, and educa 
 tion to the clap-trap of harangue, rise in his place, full- 
 charged with weighty matter on a subject utterly unsuited 
 to oratory, and attempt to address the House in the tem 
 perate, serene manner which is alone proper when intelli 
 gent minds are sought to be convinced. At once he be 
 comes conscious that no one can hear him beyond the fifth 
 desk. His voice is lost in space. He raises it ; but he can 
 not make the honorable member hear to whose argument 
 he is replying. He calls upon the Speaker to come to his 
 rescue, and Mr. Speaker uses his hammer with promptitude 
 and vigor. The low roar .of conversation, the rustle of 
 paper, the loud clapping for the pages, subside for a mo 
 ment, and the member resumes. But even during that in 
 stant of comparative silence, he is scarcely heard, he is 
 not heard unless he " orates," and, a moment after, his 
 voice is drowned again in the multitudinous sea of noise. 
 Still he will not give up the attempt, and he finishes with 
 the wildest pump-handle oratory of the stump. It is not 
 his fault. He is no fool. He would not naturally discuss 
 army estimates in the style of Patrick Henry rousing his 
 countrymen to arms. If he does so, it is because nature 
 has so limited the reach and compass of the human voice, 
 that he cannot make himself heard unless he roars ; and 
 no man can keep on roaring long without other parts of the 
 body joining his lungs in the tumult. 
 
 This is really a matter of first-rate importance; for, 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 201 
 
 whatever else man is or has, we are sure he possesses an 
 animal nature, and hence is subject to physical conditions 
 that are inexorable. If we could assemble in that enor 
 mous room the sages, statesmen, and orators of all the 
 ages, we should not get from them much profitable debate. 
 The hall is good enough ; only it wants taking in. There 
 is no need of such extensive accommodation for the chancfl 
 visitors to the Capitol ; since the w r hole people, as just re 
 marked, as well as a respectable representation from for 
 eign countries, are present in the gallery of the reporters. 
 Three or four hundred gallery seats would answer better 
 than the present thousand. 
 
 We ought not to be ashamed to learn something of the 
 details of parliamentary management from a people who 
 have had a Parliament for eight centuries. When the city 
 of Washington was laid out, 1790 to 1800, the people 
 of the United States had caught from the enthusiastic Re 
 publicans of France a certain infatuation for the ancient 
 Romans ; and hence the building for the accommodation of 
 Congress was styled the Capitol ; and, in furnishing the 
 chambers for the Senate and House, the seats were arranged 
 in semicircles, after the manner of the Roman senate-house. 
 There was such a relish then for everything Roman, that it 
 is rather surprising honorable members were not required 
 to appear in their places wearing Roman togas. Nothing 
 seems to have been copied from the British Parliament, 
 except that object which Oliver Cromwell saw before him 
 when he dissolved Parliament, one April day in 1653, and 
 bade a soldier near him take away that fool s bauble, the 
 mace. But perhaps there are one or two other features of 
 the British House of Commons that might have been con 
 sidered. Never would the House of Commons have formed 
 a Fox, a Sheridan, a Canning, a Peel, a Palmerston, or a 
 Gladstone, if those masters of parliamentary conversation 
 had been obliged to speak in such an apartment as our pres 
 ent Representatives Hall. I have been in the House of 
 Commons when important debates occurred, and every 
 leading speaker on both sides did his best, but no man put 
 forth any great physical exertion. Sir Robert Peel rareh~, 
 Palmerston never, departed from the easy manner and un 
 forced tone of conversation. A great debate was only the 
 
202 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 more or less animated talk of able, experienced, well-in 
 formed gentlemen ; and it retained this tone chiefly because 
 the auditors were so close around the speakers that conver 
 sation could be heard. No desks obstructed and filled up 
 the floor, tempting members to write. No heaps of pam 
 phlets and newspapers rose before them, luring them to read. 
 All reading and writing had been done before the House met, 
 and nothing remained but to talk it over. Ministerial and 
 opposition members sat on long benches, facing one another, 
 with a mere alley between them ; and the strangers gallery 
 was a cockloft up near the ceiling, .which would hold, when 
 crammed, a hundred and twenty people. 
 
 The reader has perhaps not forgotten the astonishment 
 that seized him when first he caught sight of the tumult 
 uous scene afforded by the House of Representatives in 
 session. I suppose we are all so used to it now, that we 
 have ceased to see in it anything extraordinary. A delib 
 erative body, indeed ! From the gallery we look down 
 upon semicircles of desks, at which members are writing, 
 reading, and gossiping, apparently inattentive to what is 
 going on. Outside of the outer semicircle is a crowd of 
 men standing in groups talking together. The sofas that 
 line the walls are usually occupied by men engaged in con 
 versation ; and in the lobbies beyond there is a dense crowd 
 of talkers, who contribute their share to the volume of 
 noise. Inside the inner row of desks, between the members 
 and the Speaker s lofty throne of marble, the business of 
 the House is brought to a focus. There, at a long row of 
 marble desks, sit the shorthand reporters, who prepare for 
 the " Globe " the official verbatim report of the proceedings. 
 Above and behind them, at another row of marble desks, 
 sit the clerks who keep an official record of whatever is 
 clone. Above and behind these, in his marble pulpit, with 
 his mace at his right hand, his compass-like clock- and ex 
 cellent ivory hammer before him, behold the Speaker, most 
 attentive of members, and the only one among them all 
 who is expected to know at every instant the business- be 
 fore the House. On the marble steps connecting these 
 three platforms are the pages, the circulating-medium of 
 the House, who spring at the clapping of a member s hands 
 to execute his will. From the midst of the great chaos of 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 203 
 
 members, members desks, boots, and litter of documents, a 
 Voice is heard, the voice of -one who is supposed to be 
 addressing the House. Not a member listens, perhaps, nor 
 pretends to listen ; not even the Speaker, who may be at 
 the moment conversing with a stranger just presented to 
 him, or may be signing documents. He knows that the 
 Voice has seventeen minutes and three quarters longer to 
 run, and his sole duty with regard to that Voice is, to bring 
 down his well-made hammer with a good rap on the desk 
 when its time is up. The only attentive persons are the 
 shorthand reporters; but as they merely sit and write, 
 without ever looking up, the absurd spectacle is often pre 
 sented, of a distinguished gentleman delivering a most ani 
 mated harangue to a great crowd of people, not one of 
 whom appears to be regarding him. His right hand quivers 
 in the air. He cries aloud. His body sways about like a 
 tall pine in a torturing gale. " Yes, Mr. Speaker, I repeat 
 the assertion " ; but Mr. Speaker is giving audience to 
 three of his constituents, who stand, hat in hand, on the 
 steps of his throne. " I appeal to gentlemen on the other 
 side of the House " ; but no : neither the gentlemen on 
 the other side of the House, nor his own intimate friends 
 near by, pay him the poor compliment of laying down their 
 newspapers or looking up from the letters they are writing. 
 
 Why these desks 1 why this general absorption of mem 
 bers in writing, reading, and conferring 1 Why the frequent 
 necessity of hunting up members in their committee-rooms ] 
 It is because Congress meets four hours too soon ! It meets 
 at 1 2 M. instead of 4 p. M. It meets long before the daily 
 work of members is done, before the morning s news is stale, 
 before the relish of the mind for excitement is sated, before 
 the mood has come for interchange of ideas, for converse 
 with other minds. 
 
 Every one knows that the hard labor of Congress is done 
 in committee-rooms and in the private offices of members ; 
 but, I presume, few persons are aware of the great amount 
 and varietv of duty which now devolves upon members 
 who are capable of industry and public spirit. There are 
 idle members, of course ; for in Congress, as everywhere 
 else, it is the willing and generous mind that bears the 
 burden and pulls the load. It is with members of Con- 
 
204 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 gress as with editors, most of their labor consists in 
 considering and quietly rejecting what the public never 
 hears anything about. Beau Brummell wore but one neck 
 tie, but his servant carried down stairs half a dozen failures. 
 A magazine contains twenty articles ; but, in order to et 
 that twenty, the editor may have had to examine four hun 
 dred. During the session, Washington being the centre of 
 interest to forty millions of people, it is the common recep 
 tacle of the infinite variety of schemes, dreams, ideas, vaga 
 ries, notions, publications, which the year generates. When 
 a citizen of the United States conceives an idea or plans 
 an enterprise, one of the things he is likely to do is to write 
 a pamphlet about it, and cither send a copy to each mem 
 ber of Congress, or hire a small boy to place a copy upon 
 each member s desk just before twelve o clock. The inter- 
 national-copyrightists, I remember, took that enlightened 
 course, fondly believing that no member who called himself 
 a human being could read such moving arguments without 
 being impatient to vote for the measure proposed. But 
 when I began to look into Washington affairs, I discovered 
 that hundreds of other people were continually employing 
 the same too obvious tactics. Pamphlets come raining 
 down upon members in a pitiless storm. On going into 
 the office of a member one morning, when he had been 
 absent twenty-four hours, I had the curiosity to glance at 
 the mail which had accumulated in that short time. It con 
 sisted of one hundred and eight packages, about one third 
 letters, and two thirds newspapers and pamphlets. I think 
 a member whose name is familiar to the country will usually 
 receive, in the course of a long session, a good cart-load of 
 printed matter designed expressly to influence legislation. 
 
 More vigorous schemers, or rather schemers with longer 
 purses, soon discover that pamphlets are rather a drug in 
 Washington, and send delegations or agents to "push" 
 their projects by personal interviews. Nearly all these en 
 terprises are either in themselves absurd, or else they are 
 beyond the range of legislation ; but members have to 
 bestow attention enough upon them to ascertain their na 
 ture and claims. At least, many members do this, and by 
 doing it effect a great deal of unrecorded good. Many a 
 member of Congress does a fair day s work for his country 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 205 
 
 outside of the chamber in which he sits and the committee- 
 rooms in which he labors. Many members, too, have ex 
 tensive affairs of their own, factories or banks to direct, 
 causes to plead in the national courts, articles to write for 
 their newspapers. 
 
 Let them get all this work and all committee work done 
 before the Houses meet, and then come together at four 
 o clock in the afternoon, in snug convenient rooms without 
 desks, and talk things over in the hearing of mankind. 
 This would obviate the necessity for the two sessions which 
 give the Sergeant-at-arms so much lucrative employment, 
 and party-going members such annoyance. I think, too, it 
 would discourage and finally abolish the pernicious custom 
 of reading speeches, as well as that kindred falsehood of 
 getting speeches printed in the " Globe " which have never 
 been delivered at all. A distinguished senator remarked in 
 conversation last winter, that when he came to Congress, 
 fifteen years ago, not more than one speech in five was 
 written out and read, but that now four in five are. I have 
 known a member, who had an important speech prepared, 
 seriously consider whether he should deliver it in the House 
 of Representatives, or offer it as a contribution to the " At 
 lantic Monthly." He concluded, after deliberation, to deliver 
 the speech to the House, because he could reach the coun 
 try quicker in that way ; and he accordingly roared it, in 
 the usual manner, from printed slips, few members regard 
 ing him. The next morning, the speech was printed in 
 every important daily newspaper within fifteen hundred 
 miles of Washington. 
 
 Among the great purposes of a national parliament are 
 these two : first, to train men for practical statesmanship ; 
 and, secondly, to exhibit them to the country, so that, when 
 men of ability are wanted, they can be found without anx 
 ious search and perilous trial. The people of free countries 
 can form little idea of the embarrassment which a patriotic 
 despot suffers when he must have an able, commanding 
 man for the public service, and there is no tried and tested 
 body of public men from which to choose. The present 
 Emperor of Russia, at more than one critical time, I have 
 been assured, has experienced this difficulty : the whole 
 vast empire with its teeming millions lies before him sub- 
 
206 TOPICS OF THE TDIE. 
 
 ject to his will; but it is dumb. Russia has no voice. 
 Her able men have no arena. Xo man is celebrated, except 
 as heir to an ancient name, or commandant of an important 
 poet. No class of men have had the opportunity to stand 
 up before their countrymen, year after year, and show what 
 they are, what they know, what they can bear, what they 
 can do, and what they can refrain from doing, in keen, 
 honorable, courteous encounter with their peers. One 
 lamentable consequence is, that when an emperor, rising 
 superior to the traditions of his order, strikes into a new 
 and a nobler path, and looks about him for new men to 
 carry out the new ideas, he has no knowledge to act upon. 
 France has been muzzled for nearly twenty years. The 
 time is at hand when the muzzle will fall off ; but the con 
 trolling men who should have been formed and celebrated 
 by twenty years of public life in a parliament are unformed 
 and unknown. The people will want leaders ; but leaders 
 that can be trusted are not extemporized. 
 
 This congressional essay-writing threatens to reduce us 
 to the same condition. The composition of an essay, in 
 the quiet solitude of a library, is a useful and honor 
 able exertion of the human mind ; but it is a thing essen 
 tially different from taking part in public debate, and 
 does not afford the kind of training which a public man 
 needs. It does not give him nerve, self-command, and the 
 habit of deference to the judgment of other minds. It does 
 not give him practice in the art of convincing others. We 
 cannot get hi a library that intimate knowledge of human 
 vanities, timidities, prejudices, ignorance, and habits, which 
 shut the mind to unaccustomed truth, and turn the best- 
 intentioned men into instruments of evil. The triumphant 
 refutation of an opponent in a composition calmly written 
 in the absence of that opponent, how easy it is, compared 
 with meeting him face to face, and so refuting him in the 
 hearing of an empire, that, if he be not convinced, tens of 
 thousands of other men are ! Essay- writ ing does not knock 
 the conceit out of a man like open debate ; nor yet does it 
 fortify that just self-confidence which enables one to hold 
 his own against eloquent error arid witty invective, and sit 
 unmoved amidst the applause and laughter that frequently 
 follow them. It does really unfit a person for grappling 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 207 
 
 with the homely, every-day difficulties of government. It 
 tends to lessen that unnamed something in human beings 
 which gives ascendency over others, and it diminishes a 
 man s power to decide promptly at a time when his decision 
 is to take visible effect. Nor does a written essay give any 
 trustworthy indication of its author s character or force. 
 A false, barren, unfeeling soul has been an " absolute mon 
 arch of words," capable of giving most powerful expression 
 to emotions which it never felt, and to thoughts imbibed 
 from better and greater men. 
 
 The substitution of written essays, read from printed 
 slips, for extemporized debate, deprives the public, there 
 fore, of one of the means of knowing and weighing the men 
 from whom the leading persons of the government would 
 naturally be taken ; and it deprives members of Congress 
 of part of the training which public men peculiarly need. 
 It is to be hoped that when the House of Representatives 
 moves into a smaller room, and Congress meets at four in 
 the afternoon, the reading of speeches will be coughed down, 
 and that Congress will resume its place as one of the na 
 tional parliaments of the world. 
 
 If the reader has ever been so unfortunate as to be per 
 sonally interested in a measure before Congress, he has 
 doubtless been exasperated by observing that, while Con 
 gress has much more to do than it can do, it wastes much 
 more than half its time. The waste of time, in the last 
 days of a short session, with the appropriation bills still to 
 be acted upon, and a crowd of expectants in the lobbies 
 waiting for their bills to " come up," is sometimes excessive, 
 absurd, and, to parties concerned, almost maddening. I 
 shall long remember a certain day in the House of Repre 
 sentatives, when I chanced to sit next to a gentleman whose 
 whole fortune and entire future career, as he thought, 
 depended upon the action of the House concerning a bill 
 which was expected to come up in the course of the after 
 noon. He was a stranger to me, but I gathered from his 
 conversation with his friends, who clustered around him on 
 the floor before the session began, that he had been a waiter 
 upon Congress for two years. Noiv, he thought, the deci 
 sive hour had come : that day, he believed, would send him 
 home made or marred for life. Sitting so near him as I 
 
208 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 did, I could not help regarding the proceedings of the 
 House that day with his eyes and his feelings. 
 
 Punctually at twelve, the rap of the Speaker s ivory 
 hammer was heard above the din of conversation, the 
 rustle of papers, and the noise of the ushers admon 
 ishing strangers to withdraw. A chaplain entered, who 
 took his stand at the Clerk s desk, just below the Speaker, 
 and began the usual prayer. I had the curiosity to ascer 
 tain the exact number of persons who appeared to attend 
 to this exercise. The number was three : first, the Speaker, 
 who stood in a graceful attitude, with clasped hands and 
 bowed head, as though he felt the necessity of representing 
 the House in a duty which it did not choose itself to per 
 form ; second, one member, who also stood ; third, one 
 spectator in the gallery. Scarcely any members were yet 
 in their seats, and the hall exhibited a scene of faded mo 
 rocco chair-backs, with a fringe of people in the distance 
 walking, standing, conversing ; the prayer being an extem 
 pore one, the chaplain grew warm, became unconscious of 
 the lapse of time, and prolonged his prayer unusually. 
 Never was there a religious service that seemed more ill- 
 timed or mo re ill-placed than that which opens the daily 
 sessions of the House of Representatives. There is a time 
 for all things ; but members evidently think that the time 
 to pray is not then nor there. The prayer can have no effect 
 in calming members minds, opening them to conviction, or 
 preparing them for the duties of the occasion, because 
 members minds are absorbed, at the time, in hurrying the 
 work of their committee-rooms to a conclusion. We might 
 as well open the Gold-Room with prayer, or the daily ses 
 sions of the stock-brokers. Mr. Daniel Drew would probably 
 assume an attitude of profound devotion, but other gentle 
 men would do what many members of Congress do, 
 avoid going in until the prayer is finished. In fixing times 
 and places for devotional acts, we are now advanced far 
 enough, I trust, to use our sense of the becoming and the 
 suitable, and to obey its dictates. Members should cer 
 tainly come in and " behave," or else abolish the chaplain. 
 
 My Expectant did not fret under the prolongation of the 
 prayer. He had made up his mind to that apparently. 
 Nor was he moved when a member rose and asked to have 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 209 
 
 a totally unimportant error corrected in yesterday s " Globe." 
 After this was done began a scene that wasted an hour and 
 a half, and disgraced, not this House alone, but the country 
 and its institutions. Two witnesses, who had refused to 
 answer the questions of an investigating-committee, and 
 had afterwards thought better of it, and given the infor 
 mation sought, were to be discharged from the custody of the 
 Sergeant-at-arms. The prisoners were of the lowest grade 
 of New York politician. One of them, a good-humored, 
 dissolute ruffian of twenty-three, was so precocious in de 
 pravity that he had already been an alderman, and had 
 afterwards been concerned in the congenial business of 
 distributing forged naturalization-papers. I became ac 
 quainted with this fellow-citizen during his detention in 
 the lobby, and he informed me, as 1 contemplated the 
 diamond pin in his shirt, that he would have come on to 
 Washington that winter, not as a prisoner, but as a mem 
 ber of Congress, if he had been old enough. This was a 
 flight of the imagination. The despots of the Democratic 
 party in the city of New York take excellent care that the 
 really desirable things at their disposal fall to the men who 
 can pay for them. They give the wretches whose votes they 
 employ showers of Roman candles about election time, but 
 they do not pave their streets, nor remove their heaps of 
 garbage. They have no objections to a poor devil s picking 
 up a diamond pin or so as alderman or councilman ; but 
 when it comes to member of Congress dear, no ! they 
 rarely take such things even for themselves. 
 
 These prisoners being residents of New York, there was 
 an opportunity for a few members to make a little home 
 capital by publicly taking their part. One after another 
 the city members, in the view of the whole House and the 
 crowded galleries, went up to the ex-alderman, as he stood 
 in front of the Speaker, shook hands with him, smiled upon 
 him, and exchanged jocular observations with him. A chair 
 was brought for his convenience, and while his case was 
 under consideration, he held a levee in the aisle, sitting ; 
 while the Sergeant-at-arms, representing the authority of 
 the House, stood behind him. Mr. James Brooks paid him 
 his respects, nodding benignantly. Mr. Fernando Wood 
 bowed with courtly grace, and uttered friendly words. Mr. 
 
210 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Robinson (ah ! Richelieu, you deserve better company !) 
 was merry with him. A member moved that one of the 
 prisoners be "discharged from custody." "Why not say 
 honorably discharged 1 " asked a Democratic brother ; which, 
 of course, led to the expected wrangle. But the main effort 
 was to get the ex-alderman clear without his paying the 
 costs of his arrest and transportation to Washington, 
 seventy-five dollars. Now mark the purposed waste of 
 time. It was moved that the prisoner be discharged on 
 paying the costs of his arrest. A Democratic member 
 moved to amend by striking out the words, " on paying the 
 costs of arrest," alleging that the witness was a poor man, 
 and could not procure so large a sum. The diamond pin 
 glittered at this remark. I think, too, that the officer who 
 had had charge of the prisoner the night before must have 
 smiled ; for the young alderman had not been abstemious, 
 and he had broken one of the commandments in an expen 
 sive manner. The question was put. A few scattered ayes 
 responded ; and these were followed \)y such a simultaneous 
 and emphatic roar of NOES as ought to have settled the 
 question. A Democratic member demanded the yeas and 
 nays ; and, as it was doubtful whether this demand would 
 be sustained, he called for tellers on the question whether 
 the yeas and nays should be taken or not. Monstrous rob 
 bery of precious time ! First, two members take thek stand 
 in front of the Speaker, and the whole House, first the yeas 
 and then the nays pass between them, a curious scene 
 of huddle and confusion. The tellers reporting that the 
 demand is sustained, the ayes and noes are ordered ; which, 
 with the time already consumed, wastes three quarters of 
 an hour. The amendment, as every one knew it would be, 
 was voted down. 
 
 Nothing had yet been done in the case. An amendment 
 had been offered and rejected, no more. The main ques 
 tion now recurred : Shall the prisoner be discharged on 
 paying the costs 1 The sense of the House wa s known to 
 every creature ; but the few Democrats from New r York, 
 not regarding the convenience and dignity of the House, 
 but thinking only of the Sixth Ward and the possible effect 
 of their conduct there, must needs repeat this costly farce. 
 Again they forced members to file between tellers ; again 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 211 
 
 they condemned two thousand persons to endure the tedi 
 um of the roll-call ; again they compelled anxious expec 
 tants to chafe and fret for three quarters of an hour. It 
 was past two o clock before this trifling matter was disposed 
 of. The House was then in no mood for private business, 
 and this unhappy man was kept in suspense till another 
 day. 
 
 He received his quietus, however, before the session 
 ended. I saw him, a few days after, come into a committee- 
 room, followed by two or three members, who, I suppose, 
 had been pleading his cause. His face was very red, and 
 it betrayed in every lineament that the vote of the House 
 had crushed his hopes. If any dramatist would like to 
 know how a man comports himself under such a stroke, I 
 will state that this gentleman did not thrust either of his 
 hands into his hair, nor throw himself into a chair and bury 
 his face in his hands, nor do any other of those acts which 
 gentlemen in such circumstances do upon the stage. He 
 walked hastily to the faucet, filled a glass with water, and 
 drank it very fast. Then he filled another glass, and drank 
 that very fast. He then said to the members present, who 
 expressed sympathy with his disappointment, " Gentlemen, 
 you did the best you could for me." Next, he put on his 
 overcoat, took up his hat, went out into the lobby, and so 
 vanished from history. 
 
 It was not this unfortunate suitor alone, nor the class 
 whom he represented, that suffered keenly upon the occa 
 sion before mentioned. Committees were anxious to report ; 
 members were watching for an opportunity to introduce 
 matters of great pith and moment ; foreign agents were 
 waiting for the House to act upon the affairs which they 
 had in charge ; an important revision of the internal-revenue 
 system, upon which a committee had expended months of 
 labor, was pending, and was finally lost for want of the 
 time thus wantonly wasted. Surely it is within the com 
 pass of human ingenuity to devise a method of preventing 
 a handful of members from frustrating the wishes of a ma 
 jority ] Three fourths of the House desired to go on with 
 the business of the day ; and, of the remaining fourth, only 
 half a dozen really cared to conciliate the class represented 
 by the prisoner. Why not take the yeas and nays by a 
 
212 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 machine similar to the hotel indicator ? From the remotest 
 corner of the largest hotel, a traveller sends the number of 
 his room to the office by a pull of the bell-rope. The in 
 ventor of that machine could doubtless arrange a system 
 of wires and words by which the vote of the House could 
 be taken, and even permanently recorded, by a click of a 
 key on each member s desk. In an instant every name 
 might be exhibited in bold characters, the ayes on the 
 Speaker s right, and the noes on his left, legible to the 
 whole House ; or the ayes and noes might be printed on 
 prepared lists. Until such a contrivance is completed, the 
 Speaker might be empowered to put a stop to such obvious 
 filibustering as that just described. There has never yet, 
 I believe, been a Speaker of the House of Representatives 
 who might not have been safely intrusted with much addi 
 tion to his power. "All power is abused," says Niebuhr; 
 " and yet some one must have it." Such Speakers as Henry 
 Clay, General Banks, Mr. Colfax, and Mr. Elaine would not 
 be likely to abuse power so abominably as the minority of 
 the House do whenever they fancy they can please sweet 
 Buncombe thereby. 
 
 A good deal of precious time is consumed by Congress 
 in misgoverning the District of Columbia, or in doing just 
 enough to prevent the people of the District from govern 
 ing themselves. Who invented the District of Columbia ] 
 Why a District of Columbia ? It is a joke in Washington, 
 that, for sixty-five years, Congress voted fifteen hundred 
 dollars every session for the salary of " the keeper of the 
 crypt," because no member had the moral courage to con 
 fess his ignorance of the meaning of the word. The jokers 
 say that many members thought it was some mysterious 
 object, like the mace, without which Congress would not be 
 Congress. Certain it is that the money was voted without 
 question every year, until in 1868 the item caught the eye 
 of General Butler, and he asked members of the Committee 
 on Appropriations what it meant. No one being able to 
 tell him, he went down forthwith into the crypt of the 
 Capitol in search of its "keeper." No such officer was 
 known in those subterranean regions. After a prolonged 
 inquiry, he discovered that soon after the death of General 
 Washington, when it was expected that his remains would 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 213 
 
 be deposited in the crypt under the dome, Congress created 
 the office in question, for the better protection of the 
 sacred vault. Mrs. Washington refusing her consent, the 
 crypt remained vacant ; but the office was not abolished, 
 and the appropriation passed unchallenged until General 
 Butler made his inquiry, when it was stricken out. Is not 
 our District of Columbia a similar case 1 The District is 
 instilled into the tender mind of infancy, and we have all 
 taken it for granted. But what need is there of depriving 
 a portion of the American people of part of their rights, or 
 of compelling them to travel across a continent to vote ] 
 Why use an apparatus so costly, complicated, and cumber 
 some as the Congress of the United States to get a little 
 paving done in Pennsylvania Avenue, or some soup given 
 out to a few hundred hungry negroes 1 Do California and 
 Oregon send members across the continent to attend to the 
 lamp-posts of a country town? Are honorable gentlemen 
 to travel all the way from the extremity of Florida or the 
 farthest confines of Texas to order some new boards to be 
 nailed down on the Long Bridge 1 
 
 Unable to answer such questions as these, or get them 
 answered, I thought that possibly there might be some 
 military advantage arising from the system, which would 
 serve as an offset to its manifest inconveniences. But the 
 jurisdiction of Congress did not prevent officers of a hostile 
 army from walking into the White House one very warm 
 day in the summer of 1814, and eating Mrs. Madison s 
 excellent dinner, while the soldiers under their command 
 were ravaging the town and burning the Capitol. Nor was 
 it the authority of Congress that kept the Confederate 
 Army on the other side of the Potomac after the battle of 
 Bull Run. No harm appears to have come from giving 
 back to Virginia the forty square miles which she contrib 
 uted to the original hundred ; and I cannot think of any 
 evil or any inconvenience that would result if Congress 
 were to restore to Maryland her sixty, and pay taxes on 
 the property of the United States, like any other guardian 
 or trustee. 
 
 This is a matter of much importance, because there 
 seems to be some danger of the government s repeating the 
 stupendous folly of creating a Federal City. No less dis- 
 
214 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 tinguished a person than General Sherman appears to take 
 it for granted that there is some necessity for the govern 
 ment to be sovereign in a little principality around the 
 public edifices. " In my opinion," he lately wrote, " if the 
 capital is changed from Washington to the West, a new 
 place will be chosen on the Mississippi River, several hun 
 dred miles above St Louis I have interests in St. 
 
 Louis, and if allowed to vote on this question, I would vote 
 against surrendering St. Louis city and county, with its 
 vast commercial and manufacturing interests, to the exclu 
 sive jurisdiction of a Congress that would make these inter 
 ests subordinate to the mere political uses of a Federal 
 capital. Nor would any National Congress make the cap 
 ital where it had not exclusive and absolute jurisdiction for 
 its own protection and that of the employes of the govern 
 ment. Therefore, if the capital be moved at all, it must 
 go to a place willing to surrender its former character and 
 become a second Washington City." 
 
 This is an appalling prospect for posterity, a second 
 Washington City ! I could wish that General Sherman 
 had given some reasons for his assumption ; for while the 
 good resulting from the jurisdiction of Congress is not ap 
 parent, the evils are manifest. The arriving stranger, who 
 usually has the pain of riding a mile or two in Pennsylvania 
 Avenue, naturally asks why that celebrated street is so ill 
 paved, so dusty, so ill lighted. It is one of the widest 
 streets in the world ; and as it runs two miles without a 
 bend and without a hill, the winds rushing along it from 
 the distant gap in the mountains raise clouds of dust that 
 are wonderful to behold and terrible to encounter. At 
 other times the street is so muddy that people call a car 
 riage to take them across. In the evening the whole city 
 is dim, dismal, and dangerous from the short supply of gas. 
 Ladies who intend to give a party endeavor to select an 
 evening when there will be no evening session; because 
 when the Capitol is lighted the gas-works are so overtasked 
 that every drawing-room in the city is dull. The dilapida 
 tion of the bridges, the neglected appearance of the public 
 squares, the general shabbiness and sprawling incomplete 
 ness of the town, strike every one who comes from the trim 
 and vigorous cities of the North. In things of more impor- 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 215 
 
 tance there is equal inefficiency. Since the war closed, 
 Washington has been a poverty-stricken place. The war 
 gathered there several thousands of poor people, who be 
 came instantly helpless and miserable when the army was 
 withdrawn, with its train of sutlers, storekeepers, embalm- 
 ers, and miscellaneous hangers-on. In one of the last 
 weeks of the last session, I remember the business of the 
 nation was brought to a stand while a member coaxed and 
 begged a small appropriation from Congress to keep several 
 hundreds of colored people from starving. I myself saw 
 the soup-houses surrounded by ragged, shivering wretches, 
 with their pails and kettles, soon after ten in the morning, 
 although the soup was not distributed until twelve. Wash 
 ington, being peopled chiefly by under-paid clerks and their 
 worse paid chiefs, the charity of the city w-as even more 
 overtasked than its gas-works ; and there seemed no way 
 in which those poor people could be saved from starvation, 
 except by a gift of public money, national money, the 
 property of Maine, Oregon, Florida, California, and the 
 other States, The absurdity of the act was undeniable ; 
 but when human beings are seen to be in the agonies 
 of starvation, constitutional scruples generally give way. 
 Congress might just as properly have voted thirty thousand 
 dollars to relieve the suffering poor of San Francisco. The 
 accidental proximity of those perishing people gave them 
 no claim upon the national treasury which the poor of other 
 cities did not possess. 
 
 The stranger, I repeat, observing these and many other 
 evidences of inefficient government, naturally asks an ex 
 planation. The explanation is, that the unhappy city has 
 two governments, namely, Congress, and its own Mayor 
 and Aldermen, one very rich and close, the other very 
 poor and heavily burdened with expense. Between these 
 two powers there is a chronic ill-feeling, similar to that 
 which might exist between a rich uncle and a married nephew 
 with a large family and many wants, both living in the 
 same house. The old man is under the impression that he 
 makes his nephew a munificent allowance, to which he adds 
 Christmas and other gifts on what he considers a liberal 
 scale. His numerous other heirs and dependants share this 
 opinion. They even reproach him for his lavish benefac- 
 
216 TOPICS OF THE TIME!. 
 
 tions. They go so far as to say that he ought not to have 
 paid that last heavy plumbing bill for letting the water 
 into the house. The young man, on the other hand, so 
 far from being grateful for his uncle s generosity, is always 
 grumbling at his parsimony ; and every time an unusual 
 expense has to be incurred, there is a struggle and a 
 wrangle between them as to which shall pay it. " Pay it 
 out of your income," says Uncle Sam. " No, my dear sir : 
 this is a permanent addition to your estate," replies the 
 nephew. " You require me," he continues, " for your own 
 convenience and advantage, to reside in this huge, rambling, 
 expensive mansion, far away from towns and markets ; and 
 I am thus compelled to live on a scale which is out of all 
 proportion to my slender means. It is but fair that you 
 should help me out." The old gentleman assents to the 
 principle ; but he never can be brought to come down as 
 handsomely as the young nephew feels he ought. Hence 
 the feud between the two. 
 
 This state of things is injurious to both ; but to the city 
 government it is demoralization and paralysis. After many 
 years of silent and of vocal strife, there has come about a 
 kind of " understanding" that Congress is to " take care " 
 of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the city government is to do 
 all the rest. But the real object of strife appears to be 
 which government shall most completely neglect the duty 
 assigned it ; and each excuses its neglect by pointing to the 
 inefficiency of the other. The remedy appears simple and 
 feasible. Let Congress restore to Maryland her sixty square 
 miles, and pay taxes on the national property. By this in 
 expensive expedient, Congress would get rid of the trouble 
 some task of misgoverning a small principality, and the 
 city government would be put upon its good behavior, and 
 supplied with adequate means and motive. 
 
 The question of the removal of the capital is scarcely ripe 
 even for serious consideration, since we cannot know for ten 
 years or more what effects will be produced by the Pacific 
 railroads, built and to be built ; nor whether the country 
 is to extend northward, southward, in both directions, or in 
 neither. If Canada is to " come in," then Mr. Seward may 
 be right in his conjecture that the final capital of the United 
 States will be somewhere near the city of St. Paul. If 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 217 
 
 Cuba is to be ours, if the other large islands of the West 
 Indies- are to follow, if we are to dig the Darien Canal, and 
 the United States is to compete with Great Britain for the 
 commerce of the world, then the future capital may properly 
 be an Atlantic seaport, New York perhaps. If we are to 
 take upon ourselves the grievous burden of Mexico, and ex 
 tend our empire along the Pacific coast, then some central 
 city yet to be created may be the predestined spot. If 
 none of these things is to happen, the beautiful and com 
 modious city of St. Louis presents almost every advantage 
 that can be desired. Many years must probably elapse 
 before any of these ifs are out of the way. In the mean 
 time no reason appears why Congress should not gladly 
 permit the people residing in the District of Columbia to 
 take care of their own municipal affairs. There would then 
 be one committee the less, one lobby the less, one whole 
 class of ill-defined and undefinable claims the less. It would 
 not require ten years of lobbying, under that system, to 
 get Pennsylvania Avenue paved ; nor would Congress have 
 to spend precious time in providing soup for the poor. 
 
 But the greatest time-consumer of all is the frequently 
 settled but always reopening controversy respecting the 
 right of Congress to appropriate money for " internal im 
 provements." We are at sea again on this subject. It will 
 not remain settled. The stranger in the Capitol, who looks 
 over the heaps of pamphlets and documents lying about on 
 members desks and on committee-room tables, discovers 
 that a large number of able and worthy people are under 
 the impression that Congress may be reasonably asked to 
 undertake anything, provided it is a desirable work, and will 
 cost more money than parties interested find it convenient 
 to raise, anything, from a Darien Canal to the draining 
 of a silver mine, from the construction of a whole system 
 of railroads to the making of an experimental balloon. 
 There are those who want Congress to buy all the telegraphic 
 lines, and others who think that all the railroads should be 
 public property. The strict-constructionists are reduced to 
 a feeble cohort, and yet Congress adheres to the tradition 
 of their doctrines, and is fain to employ devices and subter 
 fuges to cover up its departures therefrom. But no one 
 knows how far Congress will go, and this uncertainty lures 
 
 10 
 
218 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 to the capital many an expensive lobby, who wear out their 
 hearts in waiting, and who waste at Washington the money 
 and the energy that might have started their enterprise. 
 
 While waiting one day in the room of a Washington cor 
 respondent, I noticed upon the table a large, square, gilt- 
 edged, handsomely bound volume, resembling in appearance 
 the illustrated annuals which appear on the booksellers 
 counters during the month of December. Upon taking it 
 up, I observed upon the cover a picture, in gold, of a miner 
 gracefully swinging a pickaxe, with golden letters above 
 and below him informing me that the work was upon the 
 " Sutro Tunnel, Nevada." I opened the volume. Upon 
 one of the fly-leaves I had the pleasure of reading a letter, 
 in fac-simile, signed Adolf Sutro, which showed that Mr. 
 Sutro was an elegant penman and wrote in the French 
 manner, one sentence to a paragraph, thus : 
 
 " We have a vast mining interest : we also have a large 
 national debt. 
 
 " The development of the former will secure the early 
 payment of the latter. 
 
 "The annexed book contains much information on the 
 subject. 
 
 " A few hours devoted to its perusal will prove useful, 
 interesting, and instructive." 
 
 Having read this neat epistle, I turned over a leaf or two, 
 and discovered an engraving of " Virginia City, N. T.," and 
 opposite to the same the title-page, of which the following 
 is a copy : " The Mineral Resources of the United States, 
 and the Importance and Necessity of Inaugurating a Ra 
 tional System of Mining, with Special Reference to the 
 Comstock Lode and the Sutro Tunnel in Nevada. By 
 Adolf Sutro. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co. 1868." 
 The work consisted of two hundred and thirty-two large 
 pages, of which both the paper and the printing were of 
 the most expensive kind. The substance of Mr. Sutro s 
 message can be given in a few sentences : 1. The Comstock 
 Lode in Nevada, the most productive series of silver mines 
 in the world, having yielded seventy-five million dollars 
 worth of silver in six years, has now been dug so deep that 
 it costs nearly as much to pump out the water as the 
 mines yield. 2. Mr. Sutro wants Congress to tap the 
 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 219 
 
 mountain by means of a tunnel, the Sutro Tunnel, 
 so that the water will all run out at the bottom, far below 
 the silver, leaving the mines dry. 3. If that is not done, 
 the mines cannot be worked much longer at a profit. 4. 
 Capitalists will not undertake the tunnel, because they are 
 not sure there is silver enough in the lode to pay for it. 5. 
 Mr. Sutro is perfectly sure there is. 6. There are many 
 similar lodes in Nevada. 7. Therefore it is " the duty and 
 interest of the government to aid in the construction of one 
 tunnel as an index work," to show that there is silver enough 
 in such lodes to pay for such tunnels. 
 
 This is the milk in that magnificent cocoanut. The idea 
 is ingenious and plausible. I should like to see it tried. 
 But who needs to be told that, under the Constitution of 
 the United States, as formerly interpreted, Congress has no 
 more right to advance money or, as the polite phrase now 
 is, "lend the credit of the government " for such an ob 
 ject as this, than it has to build a new kind of steamboat 
 for the Fulton Ferry Company, because the company is not 
 certain it will answer 1 The inventor is certain. He gets 
 a great album printed, and goes to Washington to lobby 
 for the money. Now, to produce a thousand copies of such 
 a work as this costs ten thousand dollars ; and it indicates 
 a lobby that may have cost twenty thousand or fifty thou 
 sand more. What a waste is this ! And there are fifty 
 lobbies every winter, in Washing-ton, pushing for objects as 
 obviously beyond the constitutional power of Congress as 
 the Sutro Tunnel. These lobbies not only cost a great deal 
 of money, but they demoralize, in some degree, almost 
 every person who has anything to do with them. Nearly 
 all of them fail, as a matter of course ; but not until they 
 have tempted, warped, perverted, corrupted, men who, but 
 for such projects, would leave Washington as innocent as 
 they came to it. 
 
 Take this scene for example. A Washington correspond 
 ent, sauntering towards the Capitol, is joined by the chief 
 of one of these lobbies, to whom he has been casually intro 
 duced. There are about sixty correspondents usually re 
 siding in Washington during the winter, of whom fifty-five 
 are honorable and industrious ; having no object but to 
 serve faithfully the newspapers to which they are attached ; 
 
220 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 and generally no source of income but the salary which 
 they draw from those newspapers, from thirty to a 
 hundred dollars a week. The other five are vulgar, un 
 scrupulous, and rich. They belong to insignificant papers, 
 and sell their paragraphs to inexperienced men who come 
 to Washington to get things " through," and desire the aid 
 of the press. Lobbyists who understand their business 
 seldom approach correspondents with illegitimate proposi 
 tions, because they know that the representatives of influ 
 ential newspapers cannot sell their columns, and would 
 disdain to attempt doing so. The corrupt five, who prey 
 generally upon the inexperienced, occasionally get lucrative 
 jobs from men who ought to be ashamed to employ them. 
 They make it a point to cultivate a certain kind of intimacy 
 Avith members, a billiard-room intimacy, a champagne- 
 supper intimacy. They like to be seen on the floor of the 
 House of Representatives, and may go so far as to slap a 
 senatorial carpet-bagger on the back. It is part of -their 
 game to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue arm-in-arm with 
 a member of Congress, and to get the entree of as many 
 members apartments as possible. Some members who 
 know and despise them t are yet in some degree afraid of 
 them ; for any man who can get access to a newspaper can 
 do harm and give pain. To the publicity of the press 
 there are as many avenues in the country as there are 
 newspapers to exchange with; and any paper, even the 
 most remote and least important, is competent to start a 
 falsehood which the great thunderers of the press may copy, 
 and which no denial can ever quite eradicate from the pub 
 lic mind. These jovial fellows, who treat green members 
 to champagne, and ask them to vote for dubious measures, 
 are also the chief calumniators of Congress. It is they who 
 have caused so many timid and credulous people to think 
 that the Congress of the United States is a corrupt body. 
 They revenge themselves for their failure to carry improper 
 measures by slandering the honest men whose votes defeat 
 ed them. They thrive on the preposterous schemes to which 
 a loose interpretation of the Constitution has given birth. 
 
 But my friend who was strolling toward the Capitol was 
 not one of the scurvy five, but of the honorable fifty-five ; 
 and, strange to relate, the lobby chief who escorted and 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 221 
 
 took him aside was a master of his art. But the scheme 
 which he represented was in imminent peril, and it was 
 deemed essential that the leading papers of the West 
 should, at least, not oppose it. It was thought better that 
 the papers should even leave the subject unmentioned. It 
 were needless to give in detail the interview. The substance 
 of what our lobbyist had to propose to this young journal 
 ist was this : " Take this roll of greenbacks, and don t 
 send a word over the wires about our measure." From the 
 .appearance of the roll, it was supposed to contain about as 
 much money as the correspondent would earn in the whole 
 of a short session of Congress. What a temptation to a 
 young married man and father ! a quarter s salary for 
 merely not writing a short paragraph, w T hich, in any case, 
 he need not have written, and might not have thought of 
 writing. He was not tempted, however ; but only blushed, 
 and turned away with the remark that he was sorry the 
 tempter thought so meanly of him. It is illegitimate 
 schemes, such as ought never to get as far as Washington, that 
 are usually sought to be advanced by such tactics as these. 
 
 Either by a new article of the Constitution, such as Pres 
 ident Jefferson proposed sixty-five years ago, or by a clearly 
 denned interpretation of existing articles, the people should 
 be notified anew that Congress is not authorized to expend 
 the public money, or " lend the public credit," for any but 
 strictly national objects, objects necessary to the defence 
 and protection of the whole people, and such as the State 
 governments and private individuals cannot do for them 
 selves. Any one w T ho has been in Washington during the 
 last few winters, and kept his eyes open, must have felt that 
 this was a most pressing need of the time. It is sorrowful 
 to see so much effort and so much money wasted in urging 
 Congress to do what it cannot do without the grossest viola 
 tion of the great charter that created it. 
 
 I feel all the difficulty of laying down a rule that will 
 stand the test of strong temptation. The difficulty is 
 shown by our failures hitherto ; for this question of the 
 power of Congress to do desirable works has been an " issue " 
 in Presidential contests, and the theme of a hundred de 
 bates in both Houses. President Washington, influenced 
 perhaps by his English-minded Secretary of the Treasury, 
 
222 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Hamilton, evidently thought that Congress could do almost 
 anything which the British Parliament could do ; and we 
 see him urging Congress to realize Hamilton s dream of a 
 great National University. John Adams shared this opin 
 ion. When Mr. Jefferson came into power, in 1801, on a, 
 strict-constructionist issue, Republicans thought the thing 
 was settled. But no : there occurred an opportunity to 
 buy Louisiana, and that opportunity seemed transient. 
 Napoleon wanted money desperately, and had sense enough 
 to understand the uselessness of Louisiana to France. Jef 
 ferson yielded. He bought Louisiana, and then asked Con 
 gress to frame an amendment to the Constitution that 
 would cover the act. I never could see the necessity for 
 an amendment for that case ; for it certainly belonged to 
 " the common defence " for the United States to own its 
 own back door. Then came that perplexing surplus of 
 1805, when Mr. Jefferson asked Congress to take the whole 
 subject of internal improvements into consideration, and 
 frame an article of the Constitution which would be a clear 
 guide for all future legislation. It was not done. The war 
 of 1812 betrayed the weakness of the country in some 
 essential particulars, and broke down the strict-construction 
 theory, while confirming in power the party of strict-con 
 struction ists. Madison revived the project of a National 
 University, ivithout asking for a new article ; and the old 
 Federalist ideas gained such ground, that, when John 
 Quincy Adams came into power, in 1825, Congress was 
 asked to do more than Hamilton had so much as proposed 
 in Cabinet-meeting. Jackson, impelled by his puerile 
 hatred of Henry Clay, re-established the strict-construction 
 principle ; but it would not remain re-established. In 1843, 
 Congress gave Professor Morse twenty thousand dollars 
 with which to try his immortal experiment with the tele 
 graph. Congress had no right to do this ; but the splendor 
 of the result dazzled every mind and silenced all reproach. 
 Then came Mr. Douglas s device by which a Democratic 
 Congress was enabled to set up a railroad company with 
 capital from the sale of the public lands, and leave to the 
 railroad company all the profit upon the investment. Fi 
 nally was achieved the masterpiece of evasion called " lend 
 ing the public credit." 
 
HOW CONGRESS WASTES ITS TIME. 223 
 
 I never could see the necessity of any device to justify 
 Congress in constructing one Pacific Railroad outright ; be- 
 caiise it was a cheap and necessary measure of " common 
 defence." That railroad defends the frontiers against the 
 Indians better than mounted regiments, and defends the 
 Pacific States better than costly fleets. But the most 
 strained reading of the Constitution cannot make it author 
 ize the building of a railroad beginning and ending in the 
 same State, nor justify the voting of public money to make 
 scientific experiments. Probably there are now in Wash 
 ington at least fifty lobbies (or will be erelong) working 
 for schemes suggested by those two violations of trust, to 
 the sore tribulation of members of Congress, and to the 
 grievous loss of persons interested. 
 
 The time is favorable for an attempt to settle this ques 
 tion, because it does not now enter into the conflict of par 
 ties. Perhaps the Congress of an empire like this ought to 
 have power to aid in such a work as the Darien Canal. Per 
 haps the mere magnitude of the undertaking makes it ex 
 ceptional, makes it necessarily national. It may properly 
 belong to an imperial parliament to aid scientific experi 
 ments which are too costly for individuals to undertake. 
 Perhaps a national Congress is incompletely endowed unless 
 it can reward services that cannot otherwise be rewarded, 
 such a service, for example, as that rendered by the discov 
 erers of the pain-suspending power of ether. If so, let the 
 power be frankly granted, but carefully defined. If not, let 
 the fact be known. There should be an end of evasions, 
 devices, and tricks for doing what the Constitution does not 
 authorize. A tolerably well-informed citizen of the United 
 States should be able to ascertain with certainty, before 
 going to Washington and publishing a gorgeous album, 
 whether his enterprise is one which Congress has or has not 
 the constitutional right to assist. 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 
 
 r I ^HAT Alpine hat which broke out upon us with so much 
 JL violence, and which, I am told, has not yet spent its 
 force in the interior States, is a good illustration of the way 
 in which a fashion originates, "takes," spreads, rages, de 
 clines, dies away in the distance, and is lost to view, until 
 it pleases our sovereign lords, the fashion-makers, to spring 
 it upon mankind again. The son of a New York hatter, late 
 in the year 1867, while making the tour of Europe, found 
 himself at Naples, where he noticed a pretty green hat that 
 was much in vogue, called the Alpine hat. It was steeple- 
 crowned, with wide brim, and a broad black ribbon round 
 the crown which was further decorated by a feather. It 
 differed from the familiar Tyrolese hat, which we often see 
 at the opera upon the heads of picturesque banditti, chiefly 
 in having the brim turned up instead of down, and in hav 
 ing a deep, regular dent or cleft in the top of the crown, 
 such as all soft hats have when they are first unpacked. 
 The young hatter, though on pleasure bent, had a mind 
 attentive to business, and he sent one of these hats home 
 to his father, who placed it in his store for the amusement 
 of his customers. It was as though he had said, " See 
 what things those absurd foreigners wear ! Yes, sir, they 
 actually wear that kind of thing in Naples ; out of doors, 
 and in broad daylight ! Just fancy a man wearing a green 
 hat, with a feather in it, in the streets ! " 
 
 For three months or more this hat, so pretty at Naples, 
 so ridiculous in New York, was exhibited in the hat-store 
 in Broadway without exciting in the breast of any man a 
 desire to possess it. The realistic drama was then in fash 
 ion. Managers advertised their new effects as patented ; 
 dramatists sought the twofold protection of the Patent 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 225 
 
 Office and the copyright law, and would not permit the 
 hero of another man s play to incur any but an original 
 peril. The hats worn upon the stage being thus as real as 
 the real water of the stage fountain and the real donkey 
 of the stage cart, this romantic hat was not in request for 
 the drama. Indeed, it remains unsold at the present mo 
 ment, and may still be inspected by the curious. But one 
 day it occurred to the philosophic mind of the hatter who 
 owned it, that, apart from its green color and its feather, 
 the fundamental ideas of this hat were good, and were also 
 in harmony with the tastes of the American people. He 
 thought he saw in it a taking compromise between the 
 orthodox respectability of the stiff and glossy cylinder, and 
 the too careless lowering loaferism of soft felt. He thought 
 he could Americanize the Naples hat in such a way as to 
 combine the safety of the stove-pipe with the grace that is 
 latent in the slouch. Then he said, " Make me a dozen 
 hats of that pattern, but black and without a feather." In 
 due time, the hats were placed in the store for sale. The 
 hit they made was immediate and most decided. Every 
 one who saw them was delighted with them, and they were 
 all sold in a few hours. It is a long time since hatters 
 have offered the public so pleasing a union of the becom 
 ing, the comfortable, and the convenient. And about this 
 time arrived in New York the gallant band of English 
 cricketers, wearing hats somewhat similar and these gen 
 tlemen, performing daily in the presence of a great multi 
 tude, gave an impetus to the fashion. In a short time, the 
 originator was selling a hundred Alpine hats a day, and all 
 the other hatters were in full cry after them. In a few 
 weeks, one half the better dressed men in New York were 
 happy in the consciousness of having their heads more 
 becomingly covered than they ever were before ; and the 
 other half secretly craved the same happiness, but were 
 prevented from indulging their desire by the noble dread 
 of wearing a hat that " everybody " wore. 
 
 In this little story of the Alpine hat is contained, as I 
 have said, all the principles that control the rise, spread, 
 and extinction of fashions. But in order to present the 
 subject properly, we must go back of the Alpine hat, and 
 see by what steps we arrived at the state of mind and taste 
 10* 
 
226 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 which caused so many of us to adopt it so eagerly. And 
 this is a subject which goes down to the depths of human 
 nature. As the topmost leaves of the tallest tree draw 
 their nourishment from the far distant and unseen root, 
 and take their form, color, and texture from the tree s 
 constitution and circumstances; as there is a natural 
 necessity that the leaves of the willow shall be long and 
 the leaves of the holly shall shine ; so the feathers in ladies 
 bonnets and the shape of men s hats, and all the seeming 
 caprices of fashion, are controlled by law, originate in the 
 nature of things, and are influenced by the controlling 
 events of history. I do not know why walking-sticks are 
 seldom earned at present in our streets, where, three years 
 ago, it was common to carry them ; but if any one had a 
 month in which to find out, he could find out ; and very 
 likely his investigation would carry him up among the great 
 events and men of the age. He might have to write to 
 Count Bismarck about it; the national debt may have 
 something to do with it. The shade of care that cornea 
 over the countenances of a community when times are 
 hard, and which our faces have worn for the last three 
 years, since our burden began to settle down heavily upon 
 us (the flush-money of the war being all spent, and the 
 fictitious prosperity of war having been succeeded by its 
 proper reaction), may explain it ; for a walking-stick is the 
 natural accompaniment of a mind at ease. It is when we 
 go forth to stroll among the girls in the Fifth Avenue on a 
 fine afternoon, that we take a cane with us ; not when we 
 are going down town to collect or borrow money. But I 
 leave this interesting branch of the subject to future inves 
 tigators, and return to my hats, merely reporting, for the 
 information of those investigators, that, during the whole 
 of the year 1868, the walking-stick trade was exceedingly 
 dull, and that in 1864 and 1865 it was very brisk indeed. 
 
 Among the pictures in the gallery of the New York His 
 torical Society, there is one representing the interior of the 
 Park Theatre, on an evening in 1822, during the perform 
 ance of the elder Matthews. Every face in the audience is 
 a portrait, the object of the artist being to assemble upon 
 one canvas portraits of all the leading persons then moving 
 in the society and business of New York. Often as I go 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 227 
 
 into this interesting gallery, I never fail to take a look, in 
 passing, at the round-faced, burly fathers of the present 
 kings of commerce and finance. What a contrast, their 
 amplitude of countenance and form, their good-humored 
 torpidity of intellect, their consummate, solid respectability, 
 with the sharper-featured, more slender, slightly intellec- 
 tualized " operators " of the present time ; connoisseurs in 
 tandems, pictures, books, operas ! As the persons in that 
 distinguished audience are in full dress, the picture serves 
 as an historical fashion-plate. The greater number of those 
 stout gentlemen wear the most voluminous white neck 
 cloths, which seem to have been wound round and round 
 their necks, completely filling up the space between the 
 coat and the countenance. Others have on those high stiff 
 stocks which many of us remember, things of buckram 
 covered with black silk, satin, or velvet, fastened behind 
 with a buckle that was not always invisible. From out 
 the depths of the stocks, stiff and sharp-cornered collars 
 thrust themselves toward heaven. The coat-collars of these 
 solid gentlemen are several inches high, and only less stiff 
 than a pine board. A few of the spectators, who are stand 
 ing at the back of the pit, have their hats on, and those 
 hats are immense ; they are structures, regularly built, 
 bell- crowned, and covered with the beaver skins which Mr. 
 Astor brought from the far-distant haunts of his trappers. 
 Most of the ladies wear bonnets, which also are vast, wide- 
 spreading, and lofty, apparently of construction scarcely less 
 massive than the beavers of their husbands. 
 
 Stiff and cumbrous as the clothes in this picture seem to 
 us, they are light and easy compared with the cocked hats, 
 the padded coats, stiffened with buckram, the wigs, the 
 overflowing ruffles, the knee-breeches and great buckles, 
 from which victorious democracy, in Jefferson s early day, 
 delivered the fathers of these fathers who sit so solemnly 
 enjoying Charles Matthews the elder. Old men used to be 
 about New York who remembered when the young dandies 
 of the Democratic party, in 1801, the year of Mr. Jeffer 
 son s inauguration, first dared to show themselves in 
 Broadway without wig or pigtail. It was thought to be an 
 innovation scarcely decent for a young man to go about 
 the streets exhibiting his own hair ; and many men sur- 
 
228 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 rendered the pigtail only with life. When Mr. Jefferson 
 discarded his short breeches, silk stockings, and silver- 
 buckled shoes, and concealed his well-formed legs in pan 
 taloons, the Federalists w^ere prone to regard it as the trick 
 of a demagogue to secure the favor of the mob. A gentle 
 man in trousers and short hair ! But what better could be 
 expected of a Democrat and an atheist 1 
 
 After the revolutionary ferment, which in Europe ended 
 in defeat under Napoleon, and here in peaceful victory 
 under Jefferson, there was a reaction toward the opinions 
 which are called conservative, and this reaction expressed 
 itself in stiffness and uniformity of dress. People forty 
 years of age can remember the high stock, the cruel shirt- 
 collar, the ruthless coat-collar, the prodigious bonnet, and 
 the general setness and severity of costume which prevailed 
 among us, before Channing, Dickens, Carlyle, Emerson, 
 Beecher, and the New York Tribune had begun the eman 
 cipation of the American understanding from the tight- 
 fitting armor of opinions in which it was once confined. 
 The primness and stiffness of the ladies who used to walk 
 past the Astor House when it was the one grand hotel of 
 the city, and when the fashionable walk was between the 
 Battery and St. Paul s Church, can only be realized by 
 those who remember their leg-of-mutton sleeves bulged out 
 with buckram, and their lace handkerchiefs carried in their 
 hands before them in a ludicrously precise and uniform 
 way. The dress of the men was only less formal, cumbrous, 
 and unyielding. Over all hung heavily the large black 
 beaver hat ; which maintained its supremacy so long be 
 cause it harmonized with the stiffness and angularity of 
 the rest of the attire. 
 
 It required three great historical events merely to cir 
 cumscribe the dominion of the stove-pipe hat. First, the 
 Mexican War revealed to a large number of American 
 citizens the unsuspected truth, that the head of man could 
 be covered becomingly without resorting to the stiff beaver. 
 A good many officers and soldiers brought home from 
 Mexico the wide-brimmed, steeple-crowned, flexible hat 
 worn by Spaniards and Spanish Creoles ; but the large and 
 sweeping picturesqueness of that tropical production was 
 felt to be incongruous with the square-shouldered, tight- 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 229 
 
 fitting garments worn by the busy and punctual men of 
 American cities. Few had the courage to face a staring 
 population, and most of those spacious hats were hung on 
 pegs as mementos of warlike adventure. Then occurred 
 the discovery of gold in California, and the wonderful rush 
 across the Plains, around Cape Horn, and over the Isthmus, 
 which compelled thousands of people to discard from their 
 attire everything that was not pliable. The Mexican soft 
 hat, modified to suit the American taste, became part of 
 the uniform of the gold-seeking multitude, and was fre 
 quently seen in the streets of the Atlantic cities. But 
 neither the war with Mexico, nor the discovery of California 
 gold, nor both these important events together, sufficed to 
 make the soft hat fashionable. Something more was needed. 
 Europe had to be convulsed, and half a dozen ancient 
 thrones shaken, before the scene became possible which 
 gave a rival to the stiff cylinder. 
 
 The Mexican "War began in 1846. Captain Sutter s men 
 discovered the glittering particles of gold in the California 
 mill race, in 1848. On a certain day in December, 1851 
 (the soft-hat manufacture being then in full activity), the 
 most picturesque human figure which recent America has 
 had the pleasure of beholding flashed upon two hundred 
 thousand of us as we stood packed in Broadway, between 
 the Battery and Union Square, two miles and two thirds 
 of excited people, every creature of whom desired in his 
 secret soul to be a pleasing object of contemplation to his 
 friends and the public. We saw the hero of the hour but 
 for half a minute each, as he passed, standing in his 
 barouche, his pale and handsome face set off so strikingly 
 by that graceful hat, with the large black feather wound 
 about it. What a beautiful object he was ! The mere 
 beauty of the man and his costume was such as to excite 
 in every susceptible beholder a thrill of delight. I can see 
 him now T , the splendid Magyar, the magnificent, marvellous, 
 histrionic Kossuth ! 
 
 It was done ! The stove-pipe had a rival ; the feather, 
 of course, was a thing to which we could not lift our souls. 
 It has pleased Heaven so to constitute these northern 
 climes, and the races inhabiting them, that a male of our 
 species, who wears a feather in his hat of his own free will, 
 
230 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 must be either more or less than man. "We could not attain 
 to the feather; but the KOSSUTH HAT, adapted to the 
 American taste, immediately appeared, and from that day 
 to this the stiff cylinder has never been able to reign over 
 us with its former absolute sway. 
 
 An unpopular article of attire is the hat stigmatized as 
 the stove-pipe. It is generally reviled as the acme of in 
 convenience and ugliness. It binds the head, and reddens 
 the skin ; it is heavy, large, inflexible, expensive, easily 
 injured, difficult to restore, and very much in the way on 
 a journey, in a crowd, or at a public meeting. No one 
 pretends to admire or defend it. And yet there is some 
 thing in the breast of the respectable citizen which prompts 
 him, upon the whole, to prefer it ; and, consequently, that 
 hat, to this hour, is worn by about one half of the men in 
 cities and large towns. There is, besides, a tendency in 
 men, after indulging in soft infidelities for a while, to return 
 to this unyielding head-covering. If between the sublime 
 and the ridiculous there is a whole step, there is only a fin 
 ger s breadth between the becoming and the absurd ; and a 
 staid citizen, when he ventures upon a soft hat, is not quite 
 sure on which side of that dividing finger he is. But the 
 stiff hat is a fixed quantity ; he feels safe in it ; and he is 
 content not to be picturesque so long as he is sure not to 
 be ridiculous. In itself, the hard hat is unpleasing and 
 irrational, but it harmonizes with the angularity and stiff 
 ness which solid men still affect in the rest of their attire. 
 Hence in Boston and Philadelphia, it is more frequently 
 seen than in New York. The time has been in those two 
 cities when the credit of a young man would have suffered 
 if he had walked to his business in any other kind of hat 
 than one of that polished and unyielding description which 
 was once associated in the public mind with punctuality 
 in meeting pecuniary obligations. If his hat was flexible, 
 what guaranty had the public for the rigidity of his prin 
 ciples 1 
 
 The Alpine hat took half our heads by storm, because it 
 held out to us the alluring prospect of being safely pictu 
 resque. The dent in the crown was regular ; the brim was 
 somewhat broad, but it was not allowed to flap about of its 
 own free will ; and that wide black ribbon round the crown 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 231 
 
 gave richness and dignity to the whole. In truth, the soft 
 hat was arranged in its most becoming form, and then fixed 
 in that form by block and stiffening. Such was its success 
 in reconciling discordant conditions, that I saw the presi 
 dent of one bank and the cashier of another going down 
 town wearing the Alpine hat, at a time when it was in high 
 favor with the easy-going gentlemen of the press. Every 
 one must feel that this savors of the millennium ; the Alpine 
 hat, indeed, expresses clearly the spiritual condition of the 
 age, that half-fledged freedom of the soul, that longing to 
 be free, without quite daring to launch away from the na 
 tive twig, which is characteristic of so many at present. 
 
 In most of our large libraries there are collections of cos 
 tume-books sufficient to show how immediately a change of 
 opinion reveals itself in costume ; and many modern histo 
 rians have recorded the fact. Henri Martin, in his History 
 of France, frequently pauses to note the connection between 
 changes of spiritual condition and changes in the general 
 style of dress. " In order to judge of a community," he 
 says in one place (Martin, XII. 124), "it almost suffices to 
 see its costume, that faithful interpreter of the bodily 
 habits, which reflects always those of the spirit." Han 
 dling masses of illustrated works, and living near galleries 
 of old pictures, he observed that both the morals and the 
 minds of his countrymen have been faithfully reflected in 
 the clothes they preferred. Under Francis I., French fash 
 ions were elegant and voluptuous ; at the immoral court of 
 Henry III., they were extravagant and monstrous ; in the 
 time of Henry IV., they had a military cast ; under glori 
 ous Richelieu, the costumes assumed " a nobleness, a severe 
 and picturesque amplitude, a style at once graceful and dis 
 tinguished, never equalled in modern Europe." Fashions 
 in that age, as in every age, originated in the country 
 where there was most money and most leisure to spend 
 upon dress, which then was Holland. Venice once gave 
 the law to fashionable Europe, then Spain, then Holland, 
 then France. While Louis XIV. was a gay and gorgeous 
 personage, the costumes of his court were gay and gorgeous,- 
 but when he had been scared into a kind of repentance, and 
 settled down with Madame de Maintenon into the steady- 
 going married man, and no one could hope for royal favor 
 
232 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 who did not attend mass once a day, costumes became 
 heavy, ugly, awkward, a monstrous blending of the courtly 
 and the puritanic. Then, when the Regent brought pleas 
 ure into fashion once more, instantly the cumbrous extrav 
 agances of the old court were abandoned, and dress became 
 simpler, costlier, and more elegant. As the Revolution 
 approached, democratic ideas were fashionable in chateaus 
 and grand drawing-rooms. All costume and all decoration 
 became simpler and less expensive. English modes w r ere 
 introduced, the splendid carriages with panels painted by 
 artists of repute, and heavy with elaborate decoration, all 
 disappeared, and Paris was sombre with chariots, dark-col 
 ored and devoid of ornamentation, in the London style. 
 Later, meanness and shabbiness of attire were the height 
 of the mode in Paris, where republicans of ancient lineage 
 and renown strove to express in this way their newly felt 
 brotherhood to the less fortunate of mankind. Under 
 Napoleon, all fashions for men had something in them of a 
 -military character, Napoleon reserving to himself the strik 
 ing simplicity of a field uniform. 
 
 We have all observed, I suppose, what Mr. Herbert Spen 
 cer mentions in one of his essays, that the character of a 
 political meeting can be inferred from the dress of those 
 who attend it. "At a chartist demonstration," he tells us, 
 " a lecture on socialism, or a soiree of the friends of Italy, 
 there will be seen many among the audience, and a still 
 larger ratio among the speakers, who get themselves up in 
 
 a style more or less unusual Bare necks, shirt-collars 
 
 a la Byron, wonderfully shaggy great-coats, numerous oddi 
 ties in form and color, destroy the monotony usual in 
 crowds And when the gathering breaks up, the vari 
 eties of head-gear, the number of caps, and the abundance 
 of felt hats, suffice to prove that were the world at large 
 like-minded, the black cylinders which tyrannize over us 
 would soon be deposed." These remarks apply as well to 
 New York as to London. They perfectly describe the 
 motley assemblies which used to crowd the old Tabernacle 
 in Broadway, when Theodore Parker lectured to all that 
 was most advanced and enlightened, as well as to much 
 that was eccentric and affected, in the city. On the other 
 hand, how uniform and precise the dress of the men who 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 
 
 issue in dark clouds about 12.15 on Sundays, from churches 
 where all endeavor to think alike, and engage an able man, 
 at great expense, to assist them in so doing ! In those 
 Theodore Parker days, members of the press sported va 
 rious peculiarities of costume; especially men connected 
 with tne journal supposed to be most at variance with 
 public opinion. Since that time, extremes of opinion have 
 drawn nearer together, and we now observe that the public- 
 spirited and exemplary workingmen of the New York press, 
 Bohemians of the new school, only discard so much of the 
 conventional in costume and demeanor as is inconvenient 
 and irrational. Compared with people of twenty years ago, 
 we are all radicals, and our clothes show it. The eccen 
 trics of the old Tabernacle platform have generally chosen 
 to conform to the fashions of a public with which they are 
 no longer much at variance ; and the public, less tram 
 melled than formerly by orthodoxies in politics and theol 
 ogy, dress more easily, comfortably, and variously. 
 
 Certainly, men do. If any one thinks ladies do not, I 
 would like to show him a set of fashion-plates of 1820 to 
 1830, now lying before me. Paniers, do you say ? Paniers 
 first came in, I believe, about six months after the marriage 
 of Louis XV., which occurred in 1725. They have been in 
 fashion several times since, but they have never been so 
 light, so modest, so harmless, so little worn, and so gen 
 erally ridiculed as now. We can at least boast that they 
 are not now regarded as an affair of state, disturbing the 
 peace of courts, and calling for the interference of a prime 
 minister. That gossiping Paris lawyer, Barbier, in his 
 diary for 1728, has a curious passage relating to the paniers 
 then worn at the French court, a passage which may con 
 sole some readers whom the sight of a panier causes to 
 despair of the human race. 
 
 "One would not believe," says Barbier, "that the Car 
 dinal [Fleury, prime minister] has been embarrassed with 
 regard to the paniers which women wear under their petti 
 coats to render them large and spreading. They are of 
 such a size, that when the ladies sit down, the whalebones 
 are pushed out and make such an astonishing spread that 
 they have been obliged to have arm-chairs made on purpose. 
 Only three women can ge t into a box at the theatre without 
 
234 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 crowding. The fashion has gone to such an extravagance, 
 as extreme fashions always do, that when the princesses are 
 seated on each side of the queen, their petticoats, which 
 rise as they seat themselves, hide the queen s petticoat. 
 That seemed improper, but it was difficult to devise a 
 remedy. By dint of pondering (& force de rever) the Car 
 dinal has decided that there shall always be an empty 
 chair on each side of the queen, which will prevent the in 
 convenience ; and the pretext is, that those two chairs are 
 reserved for Mesdames de France, her daughters" (twins, 
 two years old). 
 
 Thus the wise old priest, who governed France for so 
 many years, arranged this great affair. It soon appeared, 
 however, that the princesses did not like their petticoats 
 concealed by the paniers of adjacent duchesses, and the 
 Cardinal was obliged to grant them a vacant stool on each 
 side. This offended the duchesses, who desired the same 
 privilege. But Cardinal Fleury, like Dickens s immortal 
 London barber, had to draw the line somewhere, and he 
 drew it so as to exclude the duchesses, which led to a bit 
 ter war of pamphlets and epigrams, in the course of which 
 one pamphlet was publicly burned by the executioner 
 (Barbier, II. 37 and 41). Much as we may regret to see 
 young loveliness disfiguring itself with these things in the 
 Fifth Avenue, we can find comfort in the reflection that 
 Mr. Seward has not been obliged to interfere, nor has the 
 public hangman earned the smallest fee in consequence of 
 the revived fashion. 
 
 Fashion is a necessity of human nature ; because, while 
 we all desire to be pleasingly attired, not one in ten thou 
 sand of us is able to invent any article of dress or- decora 
 tion that shall be truly becoming. Nothing is more uni 
 versal than the wish to be well-looking ; and the feeling is 
 so strong that a person had almost better not be born at 
 all than be born two feet too tall or too short, or with any 
 other very marked personal peculiarity that cannot be 
 concealed. Byron s morbidness with regard to his lame 
 ness was not an unusual case. Turn loose, in a large school 
 of rough boys or girls, a child who has a squint eye, or a 
 humpback, or a red patch on its face, or who is extremely 
 fat or lean, or tall or short, or whose clothes are very dif- 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 235 
 
 ferent from those worn by the rest, or who has some uncon 
 querable peculiarity of speech or manner, and that child 
 will suffer an acute misery of which no one can form an 
 idea who has never experienced it. Nor is this a peculiar 
 ity of childhood. What would induce a respectable citizen 
 of Boston to walk down Washington Street in top-boots, or 
 wearing a hat of 1830 1 Where is the woman strong-minded 
 enough to calmly endure the stony stare of an omnibus full 
 of female critics who have spied out something awry or an 
 tique in her costume 1 It is a tremendous ordeal. We are 
 so constituted that we like to be like one another ; and so 
 general is this desire, that one of the signs of madness is an 
 inclination to oddity in personal adornment. It is hard for 
 us to believe in the soundness of a person s judgment who 
 turns his collar down when every one else turns it up, or 
 who lets his hair grow very long when the rest of mankind 
 have theirs cropped. It is only in these advanced days 
 and in these two or three most advanced nations, that there 
 is any real liberty of choice whether we shall go bearded or 
 shorn, and whether we shall take evening sustenance in 
 a coat with a tail behind, or in one with a tail all around 
 it. Indeed, there are circles even in metropolitan London, 
 Paris, and New York, where a person, otherwise unexcep 
 tionable, would be grossly undervalued if he should presume 
 to present himself in any other than the regulation coat. 
 
 Many suppose that it is only the circles dependent upon 
 Paris for their personal decoration which are subject to 
 these rigors. Not so. Nothing delivers from the tyranny 
 of fashion but real elevation and independence of character ; 
 and, accordingly, the most abject slaves of fashion are to be 
 found among the barbarous races and classes. Mr. Oscan- 
 yan tells us, that in the harems of the East, where Paris 
 fashions are unknown, the changes in the shape of the 
 ladies dresses, and in the mode of adorning their persons, 
 are as frequent as with us ; and, although those changes 
 are often so trifling that a foreigner would not notice them, 
 a lady who cannot follow the new mode is as miserable as a 
 New York servant-girl would have been a year or two ago 
 without a hoop-skirt. We read in Marco Polo that it was so 
 with the ladies of the harem countries, six hundred years 
 ago. " A peculiar fashion of dress," he records of one of 
 
236 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 those countries, " prevails among the women of the superior 
 class, who wear below their waists, in the manner of drawers, 
 a kind of garment in the making of which they employ, 
 according to their means, a hundred, eighty, or sixty ells 
 of fine cotton cloth ; which also they gather or plait, in 
 order to increase the apparent size of their hips ; those be 
 ing accounted the most handsome who are most bulky in 
 that part." Paniers again ! And when the captains who 
 sailed under Prince Henry the Navigator, first landed upon 
 the Western coast of Africa, years before Columbus com 
 manded a ship, they discovered that the unclad beauties of 
 Guinea were devoured by the same passion to be in the 
 mode. " That woman among them," writes an old trans 
 lator of the valiant and talkative Cadamosto, " who has the 
 largest breasts, has the glory of being considered the most 
 handsome. For this purpose, each female, ambitious of 
 this prerogative, when they attain their seventeenth or 
 eighteenth year submit themselves to the operation of hav 
 ing their breasts tied around with strings, and so closely 
 drawn that they almost sever them from the body, and by 
 means of daily efforts of stretching and dilation, give them 
 at length such an extension as to hang down to the navel. 
 No greater bliss can arrive to their sex than success in this 
 attempt."* 
 
 And a traveller of to-day tells us that he carried with 
 him a bountiful supply of the prettiest and costliest colored 
 beads into the interior of Africa, hoping thereby to concili 
 ate a powerful tribe and purchase their good offices ; but 
 when he arrived among them, he found, to his dismay, that 
 the fashion in beads had changed, and that his were not in 
 vogue. Colored beads were out, white beads were in. Not 
 a negro of them, nor a negress, would look at his beautiful 
 assortment of brilliant-hued beads, the choicest product of 
 Birmingham ; but the rage was for a certain kind of very 
 cheap and common white beads, which the traders had in 
 troduced. Give me a week in the Astor Library, and I 
 will furnish an octavo volume of facts like these, showing 
 that the desire to be in the mode is universal, and that this 
 desire is strongest in the weakest of our species. 
 
 The root of it all is, the deep and poignant shame which 
 
 * Narrative of First Voyage of Cadamosto to Coast of Africa, 1455. 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 237 
 
 we experience from physical defects, a feeling most neces 
 sary and salutary. Every man wishes to be of the proper 
 number of inches round the chest, and every woman wishes 
 to be beautiful in form and feature. There is not a fashion 
 now prevalent in the world, and probably never has been 
 one, which did not originate in the desire on the part of 
 some one to display a physical excellence, or conceal a phys 
 ical defect. Nature abhors bodily insufficiency. For five 
 years past, men have stood aghast at the fantastic tricks 
 which ladies have played before high Heaven with their 
 own and other people s hair, as well as with that of horses 
 and other innocent creatures. This wondrous hair system, 
 which has prevailed throughout Christendom, all originated 
 in the fact that the hair of a certain conspicuous woman 
 became, by incessant dressings, very thin. Those shoes, 
 too, which have the heel near the middle of the foot, and 
 destroy the harmony of every movement, owe their cur 
 rency to a foolish and groundless superstition, that a small 
 foot is a sign of superior lineage. Some lady whose posi 
 tion required her to wear fine clothes in the gaze of many 
 of her fellow-mortals had a large foot, which her obliging 
 shoemaker strove to diminish by putting the heel an inch 
 or two nearer the toe than it ought to have been. The 
 trick seemed to answer the purpose, and from that time 
 every lady in six nations, not exceptionally firm and sensi 
 ble, has gone rocking on a pivot. Constantly, for the last 
 three hundred years, ladies have been preached at for wear 
 ing their dresses too low ; but such is the passion of human 
 beings for displaying physical excellence, that just as often 
 as the conspicuous lady of the age is well formed the fash 
 ion returns, and women indulge their desire to appear as 
 lovely as nature made them. 
 
 In every community of which we have any knowledge, 
 there is that one conspicuous person or class whom the rest 
 admire, envy, and imitate. But this elect few, who alone 
 have much time or means to expend upon the decoration 
 of the body, are ever striving to be as distinguished in ap 
 pearance as they suppose themselves to be in reality ; and 
 thus there is always going on a game of cross-purposes be 
 tween the few and the many. The young men of New 
 York who give their whole mind, -such as it is, to the adorn- 
 
238 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 ment and display of their persons, were glad enough to 
 wear Alpine hats while only their own circle had them ; but 
 the moment those hats began to be generally worn, the 
 dandies gave theirs away, and fell back upon styles which 
 had some little peculiarity. The Astrakhan cap, high, and 
 without a visor, gave solace to some, and caused the lobby 
 of the French Opera to assume an Alaskian aspect, as 
 though the Russians on their way home had stopped a few 
 nights in New York to see the new piece. If the dandies 
 succeed in adopting a kind of hat that pleases the public, 
 more and more of the Alpines are laid aside, until they 
 finally disappear beyond the Alleghanies, and spread them 
 selves over the Valley of the Mississippi. Thus it is with 
 all fashions. They are invented by taste or suggested by 
 accident ; they are adopted by the few who live but to 
 dress ; they are taken up by the public who have only time 
 to ask what is worn > they are then abandoned by the orna 
 mental class, and successively by the classes who are uneasy 
 if they do not resemble them ; and, at last, they are only 
 seen on the persons of the multitude, who buy clothes with 
 the intention of wearing them out, and who execute that 
 intention. 
 
 Several causes have conspired of late years to stimulate 
 our natural and commendable love of personal decoration, 
 until most of us expend too much money upon it, and many 
 are possessed by a kind of mania for changing and multi 
 plying their garments, and for having them made of mate 
 rials needlessly expensive. 
 
 Eighteen years ago, the President of the Republic of 
 France betrayed the country which had trusted him, stole 
 its liberties in the night, laid robber hands upon its treas 
 ury, dishonored its noblest citizens by carting them to jail 
 in prison vans, murdered in cold blood several hundreds of 
 innocent men and women in the streets of Paris, and trans 
 ported hundreds more to a hot unhealthy region of the 
 tropics. This was the Andersonville of usurpation. It 
 transcended all that had ever been done in that kind, 
 joining to the extreme of dastardly meanness the extreme 
 of audacious cruelty, and being totally devoid of palliation 
 or excuse, except that invented by the head liar of the gang 
 who perpetrated it. The man in whose name the deed was 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 239 
 
 done appears to have furnished nothing but the lies ; the 
 audacity, and what little courage was shown, being supplied 
 by others. Mr. Kinglake s chapter upon this usurpation 
 (Invasion of the Crimea, Vol. I. Ch. XIV.) strikingly con 
 firmed by some American narratives to which that author 
 had not access, exhausts the subject, and avenges the hu 
 man race, which is deeply injured whenever man s faith in 
 man is lessened by the deliberate betrayal of a solemnly 
 accepted trust. Mr. Kinglake, I say, has avenged our out 
 raged race ; for which, I trust, we are all duly grateful to 
 him. Nothing remains but for France to bring the perfid 
 ious wretch to trial for the special wrong done to her, and 
 execute upon him the penalty to which he may be con 
 demned. 
 
 As usual in such cases, a woman was found willing to 
 share the bed and booty of the successful robber. She was 
 young, beautiful, well formed, and of just such a mind as 
 to submit joyfully to spend half the day in trying on arti 
 cles of wearing apparel, and the other half in displaying 
 them to a concourse of people. It became, too, and remains 
 an important part of her duty to amuse, dazzle, and debase 
 the women of France, by wearing a rapid succession of the 
 most gorgeous, novel, bewildering costumes, the mere de 
 scription of which has developed a branch of literature,, 
 employs many able writers, and mainly supports fifty peri 
 odicals. Here is a vain, beautiful woman, living in the 
 gaze of nations, who has the plunder of a rich kingdom 
 with which to buy her clothes, and the taste of a continent 
 to devise them for her ; for to Paris the elite of all tailors, 
 dress-makers, milliners, and hair-dressers go from every 
 capital in Europe. Whatever there is in France of truly 
 noble and patriotic and there are as many noble and 
 patriotic persons in France as in any country avoids the 
 vicinity of this woman ; while around her naturally gather 
 the thoughtless and the interested. The women in this 
 circle imitate her as closely as women can whose husbands 
 have not stolen the treasures of a nation ; all except one, 
 it is said, and she is the real queen of fashion. 
 
 Both these leading women have certain physical defects 
 which they wish to conceal, as well as certain unusual 
 charms, of which they intend the most shall be made. One 
 
240 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 is beautiful and tall. The other is ugly and short, but 
 graceful, vivacious, and interesting. The hair of one of 
 them growing scanty behind, all women felt the necessity of 
 carrying a pound of horsehair under their own, and swelled 
 out in the region of the back hair to an extent that now 
 seems incredible. If the parting of the hair widens, and 
 begins to resemble baldness, then frizzing comes in, which 
 covers up the deficiency. A few gray hairs bring powder into 
 fashion. Other insufficiencies send paniers on their way 
 round the world. For these women, and especially the one 
 who figures in the centre of the group, occupy that con 
 spicuous place to which for two centuries past more female 
 eyes have been admiringly directed than to any other ; and 
 there reside near them a band of writers who live by chron 
 icling every new device of decoration that appears upon 
 their persons. So able, liberal, and sensible a journal as 
 the Pall Mall Gazette finds it necessary to station an indus 
 trious member of its staff within sight of these people, for 
 the sole purpose of telling the best women in England what 
 clothes the worst women in France wear. I should suppose, 
 from looking over the periodicals which publish fashion 
 news, that there must be in Paris as many as a hundred 
 writers who derive the whole or part of their income from 
 describing the dresses worn in the ancient palaces tempo 
 rarily occupied by the usurper and his dependants ; and 
 many of these writers do their work so well, that their let 
 ters are a most potent stimulator of the passion for dress 
 which is so easily kindled in the minds of the ignorant and 
 immature. 
 
 This poor woman, who is the immediate cause of the 
 mischief, is, we are told, an anxious and unhappy being, as 
 well she may be. She struggles to conciliate. A forced, 
 fixed smile is ever upon her face, when that , face is seen by 
 others. In her growing anxiety, she naturally redoubles 
 her efforts to dazzle and beguile the people in whose sight 
 she dwells, and on whose money she dresses. When the 
 Hour comes, I hope she will be mercifully judged, for she 
 has already expiated the venial sin of yielding to a tempta 
 tion which only a very superior woman one really honest 
 and thorough-bred could have resisted. It is probable 
 that she now regards the wearing of those tremendous cos- 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 241 
 
 tumes merely as her contribution towards housekeeping; 
 as though she said to her husband, " You keep down the 
 men by muzzling the press and nattering the army, and 
 I 11 fool the women by wearing the most stunning costumes 
 that ever struck envy to the female heart." 
 
 Then the marriage laws of France, and the universal cus 
 tom of demanding a dowry with a wife, have necessitated 
 other arrangements than marriage between the sexes ; have 
 called into existence a large class of women who are well 
 named the demi-monde, a something between respectable 
 married women and those who are wholly out of the pale 
 of respectability. I presume this class is not more numer 
 ous in proportion to the rest of the population now than 
 they were when the loyal Barbier, indignant at the epi 
 grams launched at Louis XV. when he established his first 
 mistress at court, exclaimed: "Every one else keeps a 
 mistress ; why should n t the king have one 1 " The demi 
 monde may not be proportionally more numerous than in 
 the year 1 735, but they have, as a class, a hundred times 
 more money to spend. Empty head, vacant time, full 
 purse, these are the main constituents of the people sub 
 ject to the clothes mania. Since the discovery of gold in 
 California in 1848, I suppose more people have undergone 
 a complete change of circumstances than ever before in so 
 short a space of time. From that heavily laden marquis 
 in England, who toils at the management of an estate 
 yielding an income of three thousand pounds sterling a 
 day, to the rag-pickers of the streets, we all have more 
 money to spend than we used to have ; and one of the 
 things we are surest to do, when we have some superfluous 
 cash, is to go to Paris and buy pleasure with it, pleasure 
 being a chief product of that capital. Of course, there 
 must be a prodigious number of semi and wholly unfortu 
 nate women there who have heaps of gold, and nothing to 
 do but to copy or burlesque the showy women of the 
 Tuileries. 
 
 Heavens ! What a carnival of folly they are holding, 
 those women of the palace and of the demi-monde ! That 
 is, if we may believe our assiduous friends, the reporters of 
 fashions. The most curious and amusing feature of it is, 
 the great number of things that are now regulated by 
 11 p 
 
242 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 fashion. I read in one fashion-letter that American young 
 ladies were greatly in vogue in Paris until last year ; but 
 during the present season it has not been fashionable to 
 have them at balls and parties, because it has been dis 
 covered that, under elegant and most costly costumes, 
 some of them concealed an ignorance surpassing that of a 
 servant-girl. I read in another of these epistles, that such 
 is the rage for light hair, that ladies whose hair is not of 
 the fashionable hue tie it up into the smallest possible 
 space, and wholly cover it with light curls, frizzles, and 
 powder. Another informs us that the costumes of the 
 Conspicuous Woman of France, which are sometimes 
 changed four times a day, and the most expensive of which 
 are never worn more than twice, vary in sentiment with the 
 occasion ; so that when she attends a council of ministers, 
 so called, she wears a dress of " a grave, reflecting tone, on 
 which hues of steel-gray meet rays of studious brown, the 
 ensemble being burnished armor." Two years ago, we are 
 further assured, it was fashionable to be seen making caps 
 and drosses for some poor woman s baby ; but babies are 
 past, and now no lady of fashion does anything with needles 
 less elegant than " Venetian guipure or netting," whatever 
 that may be. Mourning dresses and mourning customs, it 
 seems, also vary, and we are favored with minute descrip 
 tions of the styles worn at Pere-la-Chaise on the day when 
 custom enjoins that graves shall be visited. Coffins, we 
 are told, are again covered with black cloth " puffed like 
 upholstery." 
 
 Indeed, if the reader will take the trouble to look over 
 a few of the fashion-letters from Paris, he will discover that 
 fashion now prescribes not only every article of dress and 
 personal decoration, but that there is scarcely anything 
 which it does not regulate. In the course of a week or 
 two I have gathered paragraphs telling me what cards I 
 must use for every occasion on which cards can be sup 
 posed to come into play ; how I must be buried, if I wish 
 to have the thing done as it should be ; what styles of 
 tombstone are now in fashion ; what color my horses would 
 have to be, if I had any ; whether the wheels and the body 
 of my carriage must contrast or match ; what medicines, 
 and school of medicine, and practitioners of medicine, it is 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 243 
 
 fashionable to employ, as well as what diseases are now in 
 vogue. I am notified, also, that in England, at present, 
 the fashionable religion is Ritualism. Strangest of all, I am 
 seriously assured by the Moniteur de la Mode itself, that it 
 is now the height of fashion, not to follow the fashion, but 
 to go to the studio of your artiste in clothes, and demand 
 of her a creation, a costume wholly original. " There is 
 no woman of fashion who does not ask des confections faites 
 exclusivement pour elle. As soon as a thing has been seen, 
 she wishes it no longer." This calls to mind the advice 
 which the author of Pelham gave to the London dandy of 
 thirty years ago, which was, that if he saw his most favorite, 
 most costly, most stunning waistcoat copied by another 
 man, he should instantly give his own away to his valet. 
 No other course was open to a man of true ton. 
 
 The solemnity with which these things are stated is 
 sometimes extremely ludicrous. The force of the comic 
 can no further go than in a paragraph printed last winter 
 in a New York paper, which notified the public that a 
 family was in affliction from a cause both novel and dis 
 tressing. An elegant bridal veil of " real point lace " had 
 been ordered in Paris for a young lady who was to be 
 married the next day. It had not arrived, and "the family 
 of the bride were very much concerned, fearing that white 
 tulle would have to be substituted." Carlyle should have 
 had this for " Sartor Resartus." " Concerned " is good. 
 
 The truth is, that the two conspicuous persons in France 
 are in a position which is both false and precarious. Being 
 essentially histrionic persons, they employ histrionic arts, 
 one of which is, rapid and frequent changes of costume. 
 One of these people plays emperor, and the other plays 
 empress ; and they have set all the fools in Christendom 
 dressing for parts. " A remarkable toilet," says a fashion- 
 letter, " is a hunting-robe, to be worn by a belle, who looks 
 on while the hunters mount in their saddles, but does not 
 follow them." 
 
 The cost of all this is beyond arithmetic to compute. 
 Never before were the treasures of a frugal and laborious 
 people, such as the French are, wasted so wantonly. No 
 mistress of Louis XIV., no titled harlot of the Regency, not 
 Pompadour, not Dubarry, ever squandered the money of 
 
244 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the French with such reckless profusion as the woman now 
 occupying the apartments in which they dwelt. "The 
 cream of novelty," says a letter from Paris, "is a gar 
 land so contrived -that, as the heat of the dancing-room 
 becomes greater, the petals composing this garland open 
 gradually, then fall into the hair, disclosing a diamond or a 
 ruby in each." Another : " A new fashion is, to have but 
 tons and jewelry of the same shade as the ribbon sashes ; 
 thus a maize taffeta is worn with amethyst, and coral jew 
 elry with coral-colored ribbons." Another : " The ladies at 
 Compiegne dress four times a day, and vie with one another 
 in magnificence." " The Empress s toilets are all ravishing. 
 On Sunday, at mass, she wore a blue satin trained dress, 
 trimmed with Russian sable, with a polonaise of the same, 
 likewise trimmed with sable, and a bonnet of iris velvet 
 with aigrette." This was a simple church dress. One of 
 the evening costumes was " an apricot silk, puffed all round 
 the bottom with apricot tulle ; flounces worked with silver, 
 fuchsia pattern, and trimmed with Venetian fringe of white 
 silk. Over this an immense train of white satin, softened 
 by apricot tulle, worked with silver fuchsias and fringe 
 round the borders." 
 
 In this style do women of a certain mind dress when 
 they have the plunder of a great kingdom at command. 
 The Princess Metternich, when she came to spend a few 
 days at Compiegne, felt it necessary to bring with her 
 twenty -six trunks full of clothes ; and we read of a French 
 bride who had sixty thousand francs worth of handkerchiefs 
 as one item of her outfit. In a word, the surplus money 
 which ought to be educating France is at present chiefly 
 wasted in disfiguring a few thousand Frenchwomen. 
 
 The time was when the ladies who led society in France 
 had other claims to the homage of men than the clothes 
 they wore. The time was, do I say ? The time is. The 
 women who dress with this shameless disregard of morality 
 and taste are, in no proper sense, leaders of the society of 
 the country upon which they have fastened. They are not 
 the successors of those amiable, intelligent ladies to whom 
 Martin refers, when he says : " The ancients created con 
 versation between men. Conversation between the two 
 sexes, the true and complete conversation, was born in 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 245 
 
 France ; and this is not one of the least of our titles to the 
 esteem of mankind, little as we think of it now, when we 
 have departed so far from our former elegance of manners " 
 (Martin, XII. 424). Nor are these dull, ignorant people 
 worthy to be ranked with the Frenchwomen of whom Syd 
 ney Smith wrote : "There used to be in Paris, under the 
 ancient regime, a few women of brilliant talents, who violated 
 all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little 
 suppers." There can be no pleasant little suppers with 
 persons dressed in the manner just described. No conver 
 sation is possible with a woman who has five hundred thou 
 sand francs worth of satin, lace, and jewels on her mind. 
 These women are in fact purely histrionic persons, actresses, 
 with whom a few words may be exchanged as they stand 
 dressed to "go on"; but their minds are so preoccupied 
 with their parts, their audience, and their trains, that con 
 versation is out of the question. Happily, the play will 
 end erelong, and then they will slink out of the stage door 
 and go home, carrying their toggery with them. 
 
 It is sometimes spoken of as a shame to the ladies of 
 America, England, and Christendom generally, that they 
 should have stooped to imitate the women temporarily con 
 spicuous in betrayed and plundered France. Perhaps, many 
 centuries hence, mankind will have advanced so far in 
 moral feeling and genuine civilization, that a wrong done to 
 any portion of the race will be keenly felt by every other 
 portion, and a face unjustly slapped in Australia will make 
 cheeks tingle in Greenland. At present, however, this is 
 not the case, and most of us bear the sorrows of others 
 with fortitude. Ladies do not generally read the newspa 
 pers ; do not as yet consciously share in the public life of 
 the race ; do not even generally know how the person whose 
 garments they copy got her insatiable little hand into the 
 treasury of saving, industrious France ; do not see the trans 
 parent artifices by which the French are amused and flat 
 tered, while they are held down and plundered ; do not 
 recognize in the bewildering costumes of the Conspicuous 
 Woman a means of corrupting one sex and enslaving the 
 other. 
 
 Ladies do not think of politics when they go to Stewart s 
 to buy a new dress, and are much less concerned to know 
 
246 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 what is fashionable in France than what is " going to be 
 worn " by the influential ladies of their own circle. Each 
 country has its professional fashion-makers, who adapt 
 French patterns to that country s climate, circumstances, 
 and taste, and it is w T ith these that ladies have to do. Not 
 one lady in a million, who has ceased to part her hair, or 
 who hides the symmetry of her form in a panier, sees any 
 connection between those acts and the politics of Europe. 
 Let us not presume to censure the fairer part of creation. A 
 woman with a full purse and an empty head must dress, 
 or do worse , and, being totally unable to devise costumes 
 herself, she must follow the fashions invented by people who 
 have less money and more brains than herself. 
 
 These fashion-makers have become in some capitals, es 
 pecially in New York, a numerous and very capable class ; 
 and they, too, have been powerful stimulators of the clothes 
 mania. I may say, indeed, that a sort of conspiracy exists 
 between the makers and the originators of clothes, the 
 grand object of which is to compel people to buy new gar 
 ments before their old ones are worn out. I say compel, 
 not merely tempt them to do so by the invention of new 
 and pleasing styles (though that, too, is done), but force 
 young and susceptible people to cast aside garments not 
 half worn out, by making them prematurely old-fashioned. 
 
 I can best explain how this is done by recurring to an 
 article already mentioned, the stove-pipe hat, which, being 
 still worn by about one half the men in the United States, 
 is what is styled " a leading article." The great question 
 which the chief hatters of this nation revolve in their inge 
 nious minds is this : How can we make men dissatisfied with 
 the hats they have, and fly to others which they see the 
 dandies wear 1 As many changes can be made in a hat as 
 can be rung on those abominable " nine bells " of the arith 
 metics. A hat has a crown and a brim. That crown can 
 be high, low, straight, steeple, or bell-shaped ; and that 
 brim can be narrow, wide, curling, straight, turned down 
 or turned up. The whole structure can be large or it can be 
 small. Of all the shapes which this kind of hat can assume, 
 the one most popular, the one hardest to change, is the 
 very one which happens to be most in vogue at this writ 
 ing (February, 1869), namely, a moderate-sized bell, with a 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 247 
 
 rather wide, curling brim. No shape is becoming to so 
 many persons as this; and hence, though the straight 
 crowns and steeple crowns seldom run more than two 
 years, the bell, once well established, can seldom be made 
 to seem absurd in less than seven years. Now, the trick 
 of the hatters, as of all other fashion-makers, male and 
 female, is this : first, to push or develop the reigning fash 
 ion, as rapidly as possible, to an extreme which savors of 
 the ridiculous ; and then, as rapidly as possible, to recede 
 from that extreme to an opposite one. At present the ten 
 dency is to make hats larger, more bell-like, and with a 
 brim of more pronounced curl. But the impulse in that 
 direction is nearly exhausted, and the newest hats begin to 
 look absurdly large, too bellish, and curling. The moment 
 is at hand when a movement, more or less violent, will take 
 place in the opposite direction. If the hatters dared, they 
 would dart at once to a minute and natty steeple crown ; 
 but the public, in that case, would shy, and keep on wear 
 ing the bells. The next extreme, whatever it may be, will 
 not be reached under two years, and it will be approached 
 by such numerous and gradual changes, that most of our 
 hats will be considerably worn before we begin to be ashamed 
 of them. Our tyrants will beware of going too fast with 
 us ; for, after all, we can be masters if we will. We have 
 to be deluded with the name and forms of freedom, while 
 many of us are in reality the unresisting slaves of five men 
 who keep Broadway hat-stores. 
 
 The recent tight trousers illustrate the same device. 
 They grew tighter, and tighter, and tighter, until it was 
 perilous to go abroad, and many of our young fellows looked 
 like Master Shallow in his young days, when, as Falstaff 
 informs us, he resembled " a forked radish, with a head 
 fantastically carved upon it with a knife." The moment a 
 ridiculous extreme of tightness had been well established, 
 our lords, the tailors, kindly shook out a reef, and relieved 
 us. But the tight trousers, which they had compelled us 
 to buy, hang on their pegs unworn, or adorn the store fronts 
 of Chatham Street. Among the ladies, the present rage is 
 to load every article of visible attire with ornament. " We 
 know," says the editress of our chief fashion-paper, " of a 
 costume lately made, on which eighteen women spent two 
 
248 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 days in making the trimming." If the modistes are true 
 to their principles, they will push this fashion of excessive 
 ornamentation until it becomes utterly monstrous ; and 
 then, when every wardrobe is bursting with absurdity, they 
 will turn as short a corner as they dare, and rush to an 
 opposite extreme of simplicity. The object of all these 
 tailors and dress-makers is, to make us loathe our clothes 
 while they are still as good as new. But they could not 
 work their will upon us without the co-operation of the 
 small class in all our cities who live only to dress, and 
 whose one cry is, " Give us something new to wear." These 
 start a fashion and give it a chance to " take." And as 
 fortune is ever apt to favor the brave, it sometimes happens 
 that accident aids the bold innovator who suddenly cuts 
 off our coat tails, or takes in our trousers until we cannot 
 pick up a lady s handkerchief. All garments look well 
 upon a fine form ; and there are legs which are more 
 admirable the more distinctly they are revealed. Let but 
 a perfectly formed man of some note wear tights and a bob 
 tail a few times in the view of the public, and every dandy 
 is impatient until he has converted himself into a forked 
 radish. 
 
 And yet our fashion-makers, though they have stimulated 
 the clothes mania, are probably the very persons who will 
 do most to cure it. Such, at least, was my impression the 
 other day, after going over the largest fashion-making 
 establishment in the world. America, which is destined to 
 try all the experiments and solve all the problems, seems 
 to have it in charge also to teach the Northern races how 
 to dress. When an American takes hold of a thing, he is 
 pretty sure to give it plenty of air. He is the great Ad 
 vertiser. He instinctively aims at the million, knowing 
 well that there is little else in America but million, and 
 knowing also that he who draws permanent tribute from 
 the million must devise something truly serviceable. We 
 have in New York four establishments whose sole or chief 
 business is to invent fashions, sell fashion-plates, paper 
 patterns, and printed directions for cutting garments. The 
 one which I visited employs sixty persons, and is about to 
 occupy the whole of a large building, of which the rent is 
 fifteen thousand dollars a year. The stranger is shown 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 249 
 
 into one "studio," where a "corps of artists," men, sit 
 assiduous, drawing upon stone the fashion prints for men s 
 clothes, to which the chief tailors of the city have con 
 tributed each one suit. There I saw the coats, waistcoats, 
 trousers, hats, neckties, and boots which were to be in 
 fashion five months later; for, as the fashion-plate is sent 
 to subscribers in February, it has to be drawn some weeks 
 before ; and the ingenious authors of it have to project 
 their minds into the future, and infer what men can be 
 made to buy in June, from what they fancy in December. 
 Sometimes they hit it, sometimes they miss; the public 
 may jump at a new device, or let it alone ; for, after all, 
 the public can be led only by being led in the way in which 
 it is inclined to go. He is the great fashion-maker who 
 knows best how to interpret the unconscious tendency of 
 the public taste. 
 
 In another room of this building is another " corps of 
 artists," women, who contrive new fashions for the ladies, 
 sold in the form of paper patterns, with directions for cut 
 ting attached. Now the great hits achieved in this 
 " studio," the patterns which sell most and longest, are 
 such as combine with elegance the greatest number of utili 
 ties. The staple patterns are those which can be made 
 easily, look well in cheap material, and harmonize with 
 many other garments. I was expected to be surprised at 
 the information (but I was not), that the person in New 
 York who has shown the greatest fertility in inventing 
 these universal and lasting patterns is " a girl from the 
 woods of Maine," who never saw fashionable costume till 
 she was a grown woman, and now earns sixteen hundred 
 dollars a year by the inventive talent which she was acci- 
 dently discovered to possess. This establishment publishes 
 an illustrated catalogue, which contains pictures and de 
 scriptions of more than a thousand garments of ladies and 
 children s wear, patterns of any of which, with full direc 
 tions for cutting, are sold for a few cents. There appears 
 to be a great economy of brains and labor here, three 
 men and four women inventing the clothes for a great part 
 of a populous country. These " artists " are becoming in 
 dependent of Paris. They take all the Paris fashion- 
 periodicals, read the fashion-letters from that city, adopt 
 
250 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 any device that seems to them suitable to America ; but 
 they never think of introducing a fashion merely because it 
 has found favor with the temporary occupants of French 
 palaces, or the demi-wives of the transient millionnaires of 
 the Paris Bourse. 
 
 It is a curious thing, too, that the magazines and weekly 
 papers published by or for the fashion-makers are as a class 
 remarkable for good sense and healthy feeling. If they fill 
 the souls of some ladies with visions of costume impossible 
 to a slender purse, they have excellent editorials showing- 
 how wrong it is to sacrifice the substantial interests of a 
 family to the false decoration of one or two members of it. 
 They give alluring pictures of babies lace dresses, $ 150 
 to $ 400 at Stewart s, but they tell mothers that it is 
 highly ridiculous to provide such costly bibs for the absorp 
 tion of sour milk. One of these papers and it is a 
 paper of most excellent tone, full of capital advice and just 
 satire has a circulation of sixty thousand copies, and it 
 is, therefore, compelled to give its chief attention to the 
 promulgation of really useful patterns. It follows the law 
 which is converting the fashion-manufactories from stimula 
 tors into correctors of mania. The universal and prompt 
 dissemination of every new device makes it impossible for 
 any woman to gain distinction by novel changes of attire ; 
 and we already see, at grand parties, that a few ladies of 
 entirely assured position avoid in their dress everything 
 that savors of the startling, and usually forbear the use of 
 those very costly fabrics which they alone can wear without 
 starving or stinting more important interests. Such ladies, 
 of course, never exhibit anything conspicuous or costly in 
 the street, and some of them even go to an extreme in the 
 disregard of appearances out of doors. Of late, a few have 
 gone further, and denied themselves the pleasure to 
 them alone an innocent pleasure of wearing satin, velvet, 
 and much lace. 
 
 Goethe says that folly can seldom be cured by denying 
 to it all indulgence, and recommends that, in some cases, 
 it should be nauseated by "intoxicating draughts." In 
 this way, also, the fashion-papers may be of service, aided 
 as they are by the fearful excesses in which some of the 
 clothes maniacs indulge. There were "receptions" given 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 251 
 
 last winter in New York, which were, in the most literal 
 meaning of the word, nothing but exhibitions of wearing- 
 apparel. No lady had any other object than to display her 
 own costume, and to scrutinize that of others ; nor when 
 she afterwards discoursed of the entertainment, had she 
 anything to communicate except descriptions of dresses 
 such as we read in letters from Paris. Indeed, the mere 
 magnitude of the dresses was such in January and Febru 
 ary, that every lady had as much on her mind in making 
 her way about, as the* pilot of one of those magnificent 
 Bristol steamboats has on his, when, at 5.15 p. M., the 
 stately craft moves majestically among the numberless 
 ferry-boats and sailing vessels of the East KiveV. A mo 
 ment s inattention, and smash ! the cabin is stove in. One 
 glance at a friend who may be two or three dresses off, and 
 rip ! away go the gathers. In time, let us hope, such expe 
 riences as these may prove to be the nauseating draughts 
 which Goethe recommends. 
 
 Men s dress is now nearly perfect. It is cheap, durable, 
 convenient, various ; and it may be elegant and becoming 
 in a high degree. By devoting to the subject thirty min 
 utes per annum, fifteen in May and fifteen in September, 
 a man may provide himself with all the clothes which 
 can contribute either to the comfort or the adornment of 
 his person. A dress suit will last through ten seasons of 
 pretty frequent parties, and still be presentable ; nor does 
 it need any great firmness or good sense to enable a man 
 to smile at the devices of tailors and fashion-makers, and 
 stick to his clothes till they are worn out. As a rule, men 
 in the United States do not dress well enough. A million 
 of us ought to dress every evening for dinner, who do not, 
 merely because we are not civilized enough. Our dirty 
 streets and crammed public vehicles discourage dressing, 
 and we indulge the delusion that we have not time or 
 strength to dress after the labor of the day is done, though 
 many mechanics do it who work ten hours a day, and travel 
 an hour and a half besides. 
 
 With ladies, it is otherwise. Many of them have entirely 
 run to clothes, as cucumbers run to seed. Men begin to 
 maintain the Mahometan doctrine, that women have no 
 souls. In former times, it was only the few thousand ladies 
 
252 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 connected with courts and aristocracies, who were subject 
 to this kind of mania. But, at present, few women wholly 
 escape it. In remote villages you will see foolish virgins 
 in three or four different costumes on the same Sunday, and 
 in cities you will find the wives of plain, laborious men 
 squandering more money on a child s dress than would 
 maintain three sons in college. 
 
 We have all become so used to witnessing this entire 
 devotion to dress, that when, by chance, we observe indi 
 cations of intellectual or unimpaired physical life in a lady 
 who has grown up under present influences, we are startled. 
 
 Twice in my life I have fallen in love at first sight. The 
 first time was in a bookstore in Boston, in the street named 
 after the Father of his country. I was fresh from New 
 York, where my afternoon walk is usually up the Fifth 
 Avenue, a street in which the Mahometan doctrine just 
 mentioned does not always seem so very irrational. This 
 first love of mine was a girl of about seventeen, with a 
 lovely bloom on her cheeks, and she wore a dress of blue 
 something (not silk) with white spots in it. It was when 
 I found out what that sweet girl had come to the store to 
 buy that I gave way to the weakness alluded to above. She 
 was lovely in herself, but, great heavens ! she was there 
 buying a GAZETTEER ! Here was a young lady, aged seven 
 teen, who took interest enough in the world she inhabited 
 to desire a catalogue of its contents ! Amazing ! Long she 
 hesitated, anxious to choose the best. Shall it be Lippin- 
 cott ] Shall it be Harper 1 She made up her mind at last, 
 paid for the book, and completed her conquest by carrying 
 it home herself. I never saw her more ; I know not her 
 name ; but I love her still, and often have a distracting 
 vision of her when I see " those others " in the Avenue. 
 
 The other time was on the long piazza of a seaside hotel, 
 also in New England. She was a married lady, a mother, 
 and a writer of verse and prose. It had been her singular 
 good fortune to be reared on that rockbound coast in such 
 a way that her growth was never checked by excessive 
 school, nor her freedom of movement hampered by irra 
 tional dress, or by false ideas of propriety. Her father 
 being a landlord, a fisherman, a lighthouse keeper, and a 
 man of sense and information, she had plenty of boats, 
 
THE CLOTHES MANIA. 253 
 
 rocks, fishing-tackle, and suggestive conversation; and so 
 grew up absolutely free from every one of the pernicious 
 restraints of a defective civilization. At the same time her 
 mind was duly nourished with honest knowledge, and kept 
 totally free from all the contracting superstitions. I never 
 spoke to her. I should not know her face to-day, if I saw 
 it. But what instantaneously captivated my affections was 
 the wondrous beauty of her step ! Just to watch the glo 
 rious harmony, the perfect concert, of her movements, 
 was rapture. It is this darling of my memory in her coarse 
 blue Dio Lewis boat-dress, that I think of when I see those 
 gorgeous ladies carrying down the steps of a fashionable 
 house an immense armful of clothes which they have been 
 exhibiting at a reception. 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 is a tradition in Washington that the lobby 
 i arose while General Jackson was waging war against 
 the last United States Bank, from 1830 "to 1836. But 
 lobbying is as ancient as governing. It is also as legiti 
 mate and necessary, since the governing power is in need 
 of the special knowledge which it is the proper office of a 
 lobby to supply. It is only when the governing power is 
 weak or corrupt or too transient, that there is danger of 
 the lobby laying aside its modest office of supplying infor 
 mation, and assuming the mastery. As weak kings are 
 governed by favorites and mistresses, so ill-constituted par 
 liaments are governed by lobbies. 
 
 And, speaking of weak kings and their lobby of favorites, 
 it was interesting to observe in Washington, during the 
 administration of Andrew Johnson, how the vices of the old 
 courts reappeared with the circumstances that produced 
 them. A recent writer gives a short description of the 
 rapacious lobby that surrounded the Scotchman called 
 James I., king of England, every word of which applies 
 with exactness to the state of things in Washington during 
 the two years ending March 4, 1869 : " In addition to the 
 officials whose pay was nearly nominal, the king was sur 
 rounded by a crowd of hungry courtiers whose pay was 
 nothing at all. To them nocked day by day all who had 
 any favor to beg, and who hoped that a little money judi 
 ciously expended would smooth the way before them. Some 
 of the applicants, no doubt, were honest men, who merely 
 wanted to get a chance of doing honest work. But there 
 were not a few whose only object was to enrich themselves 
 in some discreditable way, and who were ready to share the 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 255 
 
 booty with those who would lend them a helping hand in 
 their roguery." * 
 
 Every well-informed resident of Washington will recog 
 nize the literal truth of the description. Like king, like 
 lobby. Johnson was probably not a corrupt man, in 
 the lowest sense of the word. His refusal of the carriage 
 and horses offered to him by his admirers may not have 
 been the mere buncombe it was supposed to be ; and he 
 probably went home to Tennessee carrying with him only 
 the savings of his salary, and the contempt of the universe. 
 And yet he could hardly have been ignorant that prosti 
 tutes of one sex sold his pardons, and prostitutes of another 
 sex sold his offices. James I. of England, who also had his 
 pardon lobby and his "appointment lobby," was aware, 
 probably, that his favorites sold him every day, and was 
 perhaps not unwilling to enrich them in so economical a 
 manner. There are people whose self-love is such that 
 they can associate happily only with their worshippers, 
 having always to be on their good behavior with equals, 
 which is irksome. These flatterers of Johnson were a relief 
 to him after consorting with gentlemen, and he freely paid 
 them for their gossip and adulation with the goods in 
 trusted to his administration. Around such men as James 
 I. and Andrew Johnson infirm of purpose and yet pig- 
 headedly obstinate, ignorant but unteachable, bashful and 
 vain, transplanted from a lower to a higher civilization 
 a corrupt and vulgar lobby naturally gathers ; for there 
 will always be an affinity, if not a resemblance, between the 
 lobby and the power which it influences. When Cromwell 
 was Protector, great Milton wrote the foreign despatches, 
 the alliance being natural between real power and spe 
 cial knowledge. Character raised the unlettered Washing 
 ton to a genuine equality with the men around him, 
 who knew so much more than he. Fancy him chatting 
 familiarly on a sofa of the Presidential mansion with a 
 woman of the street, or giving valuable appointments at 
 the solicitation of a purchased renegade ! 
 
 The founder of our Congressional lobby was Alexander 
 Hamilton ; and his great achievement as a log-roller was a 
 perfect specimen of the art, both in its modes and its results. 
 
 * Gardiner s Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage. 
 
256 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 There was, it is true, a resolute and acrimonious lobby at 
 the time of "the Congress," the body that governed the 
 thirteen States during the Kevolutionary War; the Lee 
 lobby, for example, that nearly succeeded in getting Frank 
 lin recalled from France, and would have done it but for 
 the superior lobbying of the French minister. But, under 
 the present Constitution, Hamilton was the great original 
 lobbyist ; and, as they still employ some of his methods of 
 administration in the Treasury Department, so the Wash 
 ington lobby still uses his tactics in carrying bills through 
 Congress. 
 
 There were two distracting bills before Congress in the 
 spring of 1790 ; one proposing that the general government 
 should assume the debts (twenty-one millions of dollars in 
 all) incurred by the several States during the Revolutionary 
 War ; the other a bill for removing the capital from New 
 York to Philadelphia, where it should remain ten years, and 
 then be transferred to the shores of the Potomac. Neither 
 of these bills could command a majority of both Houses. 
 The creation of a city in the wilderness, far from every 
 source of the supplies needful for a government, when com 
 modious cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, 
 abounding in every requisite, already existed, seemed to the 
 disinterested portion of Congress just as absurd as it does 
 to us ; and the measure, on its merits, never could have 
 been passed. The opposition to it, however, though de 
 cided enough, was mild and trifling compared with the 
 abhorrence and disgust excited by the Assumption Bill. It 
 is not easy for a student of the present day to account for 
 the singular violence of this opposition to a measure which 
 seems to us reasonable, natural, and just. 
 
 Except the Missouri Compromise struggle, this contest 
 was, as Mr. Jefferson remarks, the " most bitter and angry 
 ever known in Congress before or since the union of the 
 States." Why 1 It was not the magnitude of the sum in 
 volved, although twenty-one millions in 1790 was -as great 
 an addition to the public burden as two hundred millions 
 would be now. Nor were the debts of the two sections far 
 from being equal. If Massachusetts owed four millions, so 
 did South Carolina. New Hampshire and Georgia each 
 owed three hundred thousand. Rhode Island and Dela- 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 257 
 
 ware, New Jersey and Maryland, had each the same debt. 
 Nothing was proposed but the cancellation of the State 
 bonds and the issue of United States bonds in their stead ; 
 and this, because the debts had been incurred for the com 
 mon cause. 
 
 The rancor of the Southern opposition arose partly from 
 their State pride and their dread of centralization, but 
 chiefly, as it seems, from their rustic, provincial detestation 
 of what they called stock-jobbing. To the country gentle 
 men it seemed undeniable, that a man who bought a 
 soldier s claim in 1789 at its market value, and sold it in 
 1790 at its market value, and thus gained two hundred 
 dollars, had cheated a scarred veteran of the Revolution 
 out of a portion of his nobly earned " pittance" by " insidi 
 ous arts." There were wild stories afloat of the fortunes 
 made by New York speculators who had contrived to get 
 early information of Hamilton s funding policy. It was 
 said that, as soon as the passage of the Funding Bill be 
 came pretty certain, three swift pilot-boats had slipped out 
 of harbor, winged for distant ports, to buy up the depre 
 ciated claims. " Couriers and relay-horses by land," says 
 Jefferson, " and swift-sailing pilot-boats by sea, were flying 
 in all directions." Members fully believed this, and doubt 
 less the lobby was not inattentive to its interest on this 
 occasion, and did turn its knowledge to account. Cruel 
 wrong, no doubt, was done to war-worn patriots and lonely 
 widows, ignorant of what was passing in New York ; and 
 country members did themselves honor by their eloquent 
 disgust at such heartless spoliation. It was this feeling 
 that caused the loss, by a small majority, of the Assump 
 tion Bill, which the Southern members regarded only as a 
 device to supply the Wall Street of that day with twenty- 
 one millions of additional material upon which to exercise 
 its " insidious arts." 
 
 But, in the course of the long and most keenly contested 
 debate on the bill, the commercial members, too, had be 
 come heated ; so that, when the bill was rejected, the feel 
 ing of the House was such that it was impossible to go on 
 with the public business. The House abruptly adjourned. 
 It met the next day, and again adjourned without attempt 
 ing to transact business. Congress met every morning for 
 
 Q 
 
258 .TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 several days, Mr. Jefferson records, only to adjourn im 
 mediately, " the parties being too much out of temper to 
 do business together," and some of the members threaten 
 ing a " secession and dissolution." 
 
 Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, upon whose report 
 the defeated bill had been founded, and of whose system 
 the assumption was an important part, was distressed and 
 alarmed. But the resource of the lobby remained. In 
 the nick of time he met in the street Mr. Jefferson, recently 
 returned from France, and then Secretary of State. To 
 him the anxious financier depicted the terms of the situa 
 tion, " walking him backwards and forwards before the 
 President s door for half an hour," and calling upon him 
 as his colleague and the friend of General Washington to 
 rally to the support of the administration, and save at 
 once it, the measure, and the Union. As the bill had been 
 lost by a very small majority, General Hamilton thought it 
 probable that "an appeal" from so influential a Virginian 
 "to the judgment and discretion of some of his friends 
 might effect a change in the vote," and set the machine of 
 government going again. " Come and dine with me to 
 morrow," said Mr. Jefferson, " and I will ask a friend or 
 two to meet you, and we will talk it over." 
 
 Fatal dinner ! How often, amid the dust and desolate 
 vastness of "Washington, its hopeless shabbiness, dulness, 
 and dearness, have I wished that the soup that day had 
 disagreed with these gentlemen, and they had been obliged 
 to go home before the removal of the cloth had introduced 
 the business of the occasion ! But it did not. The dinner 
 put the guests into a compliant humor. The city of Wash 
 ington was destined to exist, first, as the capital of the 
 country, and, after that, as a marble quarry for posterity, 
 having the peculiarity of furnishing the marble ready cut. 
 The discussion took place, and the company soon agreed 
 that, whatever might be thought of assumption, disunion 
 was worse, and that, therefore, the defeated bill must be 
 reconsidered. But to effect this, some members must 
 change their votes, must vote for a measure which they 
 hated. This was a difficulty. The log was hard to roll, 
 " pill," Mr. Jefferson styles it. " It was observed," he 
 says, " that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the 
 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 259 
 
 Southern States, and that some concomitant measure 
 should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There 
 had before been propositions to fix the seat of government 
 either at Philadelphia or at Georgetown on the Potomac ; 
 and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for 
 ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterwards, this 
 might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree the ferment 
 which might be excited by the other measure alone ; so two 
 of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but the former 
 with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive) agreed to 
 change their votes ; and Hamilton undertook to carry the 
 other point." 
 
 Thus log-rolling began ; or, as Mr. Jefferson would have 
 named it, pill-swallowing. Thus originated the art of mak 
 ing honest and patriotic men vote for measures of which 
 they violently disapproved. It is surprising that the art 
 should have been carried so far toward perfection in the 
 first specimen, which, the lobby will observe, contained 
 many of the important elements : two measures, neither of 
 which could pass, each favored and each opposed by the 
 same interests ; a compromise effected by social influence ; 
 the precise terms arranged at a dinner ; and, finally, mis 
 chief the result, lasting, far-reaching, and irreparable. The 
 evils resulting from assumption refuse to become apparent 
 to a modern inquirer, although the democrats of the early 
 day held the measure in execration, and continued to de 
 nounce it as long as they lived. But the evils which have 
 flowed from " the concomitant measure " are evident enough, 
 without reckoning the expense of providing a marble quarry 
 of that singular character for posterity. 
 
 It is not surprising that a system begun by party leaders 
 so distinguished should have been continued in a body 
 every member of which comes to Washington in the double 
 capacity of national representative and local claim-agent. 
 Every member has charge of some local or private interest, 
 on which he alone is fully informed, and which cannot be 
 come the subject of a general debate. One wants a light 
 house on a rock which may wreck a fishing-smack in the 
 course of ages. Another wishes his local harbor improved. 
 Another desires increased protection on the fabric which 
 his constituents manufacture. Very many are anxious for 
 
260 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 subsidies for branch railroads. Some are charged with the 
 business of getting one more superfluous arsenal or navy- 
 yard established. Most members feel a particular interest 
 in some eminently reasonable claims upon the justice of 
 Congress, which they are desirous to carry both for selfish 
 and unselfish reasons. In many instances the private in 
 terest which a member has in charge is vital to him ; for it 
 sent him to Congress, keeps him there. Every member, 
 therefore, has votes to exchange for votes; and it some 
 times seems as if all legislation at Washington had degener 
 ated into log-rolling. On almost any day in the latter half 
 of a session a spectator may see specimens of all the three 
 varieties of log-rolling, which are these : 1. Help me to 
 roll my log, and I 11 help you to roll yours. 2. If you 
 don t help me to roll my log, I won t help you to roll 
 yours. 3. If you hinder the rolling of my log, yours shall 
 never budge. 
 
 It may be that one of the logs ought to roll, and the 
 other ought not. In that case, a member of Congress is 
 subjected to the kind of temptation to which men not ex 
 ceptionally strong in character or position may be expected 
 to yield. And it is in this way that the astounding votes 
 of respectable members may usually be explained, their 
 votes for public as well as for private objects. It needs lit 
 tle reflection to understand what an advantage, under the 
 log-rolling system, an unscrupulous, pushing member has 
 over one of really superior powers who is troubled with 
 modesty and conscience, and who has to legislate in a hall 
 where calm debate is useless because inaudible. It is also 
 easy to see how an unscrupulous administration can go into 
 the lobby, and get votes for national measures by compel 
 ling its adherents to vote for private or local ones-. 
 
 As a rule, the more objectionable a measure the more 
 numerous its lobby. Gentlemen of the press in Washing 
 ton, who contemplate life from the reporters gallery, say 
 that the moral quality of a measure can usually be inferred 
 from the buzz an<J stir that are to be observed about the 
 Capitol when it is expected to come up. A revision of the 
 tariff, for example, crowds the hotels and committee-rooms ; 
 but there is no lobby for international copyright. One man 
 in Philadelphia, and one woman in Washington, sufficed to 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 261 
 
 kill international copyright the winter before last; but 
 President, Cabinet, Commissioner Wells, the Democrats, 
 the Free-Trade League, the Evening Post, Charles Sumner, 
 and the universe generally, proved unequal to the task of 
 defeating the biU increasing the duty upon copper. Copper 
 had a lobby. 
 
 For nearly thirty years after the invention of log-rolling 
 over Mr. Jefferson s wine (he was a connoisseur" in wine, 
 and had imported some kinds from France that were new 
 to his guests on this occasion), the log-rolling lobby gener 
 ally exerted their powers upon objects which possessed a 
 public character. The lobby, such as we see it now, came 
 in with the protective system in 1816. The book of the 
 tariff, that curiosity of literature, with all its pleasing con 
 tents from absinthe to zinc, is a monument to the zeal, skill, 
 audacity, and perseverance of the log-rolling lobby. It used 
 to be said, when the tariff was undergoing its quadrennial 
 revision, that Congress consisted of three houses, Senate, 
 House, and Tariff Lobby. Even if the principle of protec 
 tion were sound, our tariff is open to the fatal objection 
 that the greater number of its provisions were arranged to 
 suit private interests, not to promote the public good. Cal 
 ico has had its lobby ; and so have copper, iron, salt, wool, 
 and every fabric made by man. It is the public that is 
 not represented in the lobby when the tariff is undergoing 
 manipulation. The public has been represented only by 
 that small number of members of Congress who are not 
 identified with a private interest, and who have made a 
 particular study of the laws of trade. In no legislature on 
 earth have such members ever been a majority ; and we 
 must consequently look to the very lobby that created our 
 tariff system for the influence that will gradually destroy 
 it. Before many years have passed, we shall see the man 
 ufacturers of the United States clamoring for free trade ; 
 and then the lobby will change sides. American manufac 
 turers will not always be content with a system that excludes 
 them from the markets of the world, and which is a confes 
 sion and proclamation of inferiority. It is possible, too, 
 that, before the end of the present century, the art of self- 
 government may have made such progress as to admit of 
 the public being represented in Congress by a powerful and 
 brilliant minority. 
 
262 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Meanwhile, some of the exploits of the tariff lobby are 
 highly amusing ; that is, they are amusing to the boys who 
 throw the stones, and to the spectators that line the shore, 
 but the pelted frogs do not find them laughable. A young 
 firm, which has invested its all in a manufactory, is not 
 amused to discover that the alteration of a line in the tariff 
 list has killed enterprise and made property valueless. In 
 the disinterested spectator, however, some of the incidents 
 related in Mr. Commissioner Wells s report may excite a 
 smile ; particularly since the Protectionists in the House 
 proclaimed that report unanswerable by attempting to rob 
 its author of his pittance of a salary. The report being thus 
 admitted to be correct by its opponents, its anecdotes have 
 an additional value. " In carrying out the idea of protec 
 tion," remarks Mr. Wells, " Congress has assumed that 
 whatever is for the advantage of a private interest must be 
 for the advantage of the public interest also." " The result 
 has been," he continues, " a tariff based upon small issues, 
 rather than upon any great national principle " ; and this 
 tariff, while it acts as a bad stimulant to some enterprises, 
 is torpidity and death to others. 
 
 Amusing case in point. In 1864 American spool-thread 
 makers discovered. that some of their English rivals were 
 evading the duty by sending over fine thread in skeins and 
 hanks instead of winding it on spools as usual. A spool- 
 thread lobby appeared in Washington, the result of which 
 was that the tariff was amended with an eye single to the 
 interests of American spool-thread manufacturers. A duty 
 was placed upon unwound fine thread, that was equivalent 
 to prohibition. All was joyous in the circles interested, 
 until, on enforcing the new rates of duty, two disagreeable 
 facts came to light. One was, that very fine unwound 
 thread is an essential article in some branches of manufac 
 ture ; the other was, that the article could not be procured 
 on the continent of America. Here was a coil. Another 
 lobby went to Washington, on behalf of the manufacturers 
 of suspenders, gaiters, lastings, coburgs, and other similar 
 products, many of whom absolutely could not continue 
 business if the new duties were collected. One establish 
 ment did actually close ; others were suspended ; others 
 ran at a loss for a while ; and much unwound thread, 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 263 
 
 ordered before the spool-thread lobby had performed its 
 work, was sent back to Europe. When the new lobby 
 arrived in Washington, Congress had adjourned, and noth 
 ing could save the embarrassed industries but an interpreta 
 tion of the tariff that Avould admit unwound thread at lower 
 rates for the purposes to which it is essential. The Secre 
 tary of the Treasury took the responsibility of sanctioning 
 a violation of the law. He decided that fine thread de 
 signed for sewing must pay the new rate, but fine thread 
 to be used in certain manufactures should come in on the 
 old. " By this decision only," says Mr. Wells, " several 
 branches of American industry, involving probably more 
 of capital and labor than was represented by the article 
 which it was originally intended to protect, were saved 
 from absolute destruction." This was extremely comic, ex 
 cept to the few hundred families whose means of living were 
 suddenly threatened or suspended, without warning, and 
 without act of their own. 
 
 The performances of the salt lobby are equally striking. 
 One of them would make a subject for a poem. " In the 
 Gulf of California," Mr. Wells informs us, " there is an 
 island Carmen where salt of remarkable purity is 
 deposited by natural agencies in inexhaustible quantities. 
 The situation and condition of this island are such that it 
 would seem as if it were intended to be the natural and 
 cheap source of supply of salt for the whole Pacific coast 
 of our country ; and yet, by the agency of men, and in the 
 name of protection, this free gift of God and this great 
 source of national wealth has been rendered practically of 
 no account, inasmuch as the royalty exacted by the Mexi 
 can government, the United States tariff added, and the 
 expenses of collecting and transportation, in the aggregate 
 amount so nearly to the price of salt obtained from other 
 sources in San Francisco, as almost completely to eat up 
 all profits, and thus close in a great degree the only market 
 to which it can be taken. The result of all this is, that 
 capital and labor, in a section of country where capital and 
 labor are of all things most in demand, are withdrawn from 
 other employments and diverted to doing that which Na 
 ture herself has already done much more perfectly, namely, 
 making salt from sea-water in the bay of San Francisco, at 
 
264 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 a cost of from seven to ten dollars per ton." Mr. Bungay, 
 who sang with so much spirit the completion of the Pacific 
 Railroad, could surely do well with this glorious triumph 
 of the salt lobby. 
 
 To these two anecdotes borrowed from Mr. Wells I will 
 add one of my own, which is so variously representative, 
 that the relation of it gives the whole history of American 
 manufactures and their lobby, past, present, and future. 
 
 Bunting, the material of the star-spangled banner, is the 
 subject of the tale. Until within these few years no bunt 
 ing, was made in the United States. The "flaunting Ire" 
 of the years preceding the war, the "rag" of secession, and 
 the* innumerable flags that streamed over ship, fort, and 
 army, on the part of the United States, were made in Eng 
 land, as were also the flags of our previous wars. But five 
 years ago, some knowing Yankees in Lowell (induced by an 
 act of Congress that promised a contract for a year s supply 
 of army and navy to whosoever should first produce an article 
 of bunting equal to the best English) mastered the peculiar 
 difficulties attending this branch of manufacture, and won the 
 prize. Before the year ended the war had closed. The 
 demand for bunting was diminished by three fourths, and the 
 English bunting could still be sold in New York cheaper 
 than the American could be produced at Lowell. Need I 
 say that, in these circumstances, a bunting lobby asked an 
 increase of duty upon the foreign fabric ] The duty was 
 promptly fixed at the modest rate of twenty cents per 
 square yard, plus thirty-five per cent of the value ; which 
 was in strict accordance with the system as by lobby estab 
 lished. The result has been that a hundred and twenty 
 persons have been drawn from other occupations in a State 
 where enterprise languishes and life is imbittered by the 
 scarcity of labor, and set at work making bunting. But 
 among these hundred and twenty persons there are several 
 of great ingenuity, who contemplate nothing which they do 
 not desire to improve. Hence, two capital arid several 
 minor improvements in the article produced, as well as 
 better and cheaper modes of producing it. These Lowell 
 Yankees print the stars and stripes, instead of sewing 
 them on, and give you a flag without a stitch in it, 
 lighter, more elegant, and more durable than those formerly 
 in use. 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 265 
 
 Now, with a universal, international system of patent- 
 right and copyright, and a tolerable approximation to free 
 dom* of trade, i. e. with decent " protection " to the NAT 
 URAL RIGHTS OF MAN, these Yankees could give the whole 
 world the immediate benefit of their inventions, while reap 
 ing a munificent reward for themselves. But under the 
 system of protection to whatever private interest can 
 command a lobby, their operations are limited to the narrow 
 field of one country. The very protection* which stimulated 
 the business limits it by making the product too dear to 
 compete with the foreign article in other countries. Give 
 the Lowell men a fair chance, and they will supply half 
 the world with flags ; just as the Stein ways, Chickerings, 
 Webers, Knabes, and others would sell American pianos in 
 every capital in Europe, if there were not from two to six 
 duties or taxes 011 every leading article that enters into the 
 composition of a musical instrument. But the tariff lobby, 
 which got us into this scrape, must get us out of it. The 
 Natural Rights of Man will never send an expensive lobby 
 to Washington, though they may come at last to be power 
 fully represented within the bar. But the time is probably 
 not very distant when bunting, calico, ships,* wool, cloth, 
 silver, pianos, iron, steel, copper, and coal will roll their 
 several lobbies into one grand overwhelming lobby, and 
 demand that those great interests be allowed as fair a 
 chance in the markets of the world as the same interests in 
 other countries. The system of confining protection to 
 whatever branches of business can afford a lobby or a 
 member, is perhaps nearer its downfall than many suppose. 
 
 But this very system indicates the incorruptibleness of 
 Congress, and the impotence of money to carry measures 
 against the current. Mr. Greeley informs us that there is 
 a British lobby in Washington,! and I learned last winter 
 
 * Mr. D. McKay, the noted shipbuilder of Boston, estimates the duties 
 upon the articles required for a ship of one thousand tons at $8,665.33 in 
 gold. Messrs. Steinway reckon the duties and taxes upon a grand piano 
 at $ 180 in currency. 
 
 t " Many, whose duties or pleasure called them to Washington at inter 
 vals from fifteen to twenty-five years ago, will recollect a small, bright, 
 active, wittv person known as George Dwight, who was quartered in that 
 city throughout each session of Congress. Of his private life I know noth 
 ing ; but his large and fine parlor at one of the great hotels was open to a 
 wide circle, and he there dispensed a generous though by no means indis- 
 12 
 
266 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 that there was a French lobby also ; and if the Senate goes 
 on rejecting and neglecting treaties according to its pleas 
 ure, we shall doubtless have soon a lobby of all nations, 
 since it is with the Senate that foreign powers must hence 
 forth negotiate. When we consider the immense capital 
 represented by the French and English lobbies, and the 
 enormous advantage which slight changes in the tariff list 
 would give foreign manufactures, and when we also bear in 
 mind that American enterprises are usually in their infancy 
 at the time when they seek protection, we may safely infer 
 that it is not mere length of purse that enables a lobby to 
 carry its point. In truth, there is a general impression in 
 Congress and in the country, that compliance with the 
 American manufacturers lobby is " protection to American 
 industry." The railroad subsidy system would also have 
 been impossible, if Congress and the country had not been 
 impatient for the construction of the great roads to which it 
 has been applied. 
 
 Probably there has never been such a persistent exertion 
 of log-rolling energy as when President Buchanan was try 
 ing to force slavery upon Kansas by means of the Lecomp- 
 ton Bill, and a powerful india-rubber interest was lobbying 
 for the extension of the Chaffee patent. These were the 
 two logs. The Lecompton lobby .was directed by Cornelius 
 Wendell, who had been clearing a hundred thousand dollars 
 a year from the public printing, whose bank account ran up 
 to "nine hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars in two 
 years," and who had behind him the entire administration, 
 with all its resources of men, money, and influence. The head 
 of the Chaffee-patent lobby was that most indomitable of 
 all the india-rubber men, Horace H. Day, owner of the 
 Chaffee patent, a man capable of spending seventy thou 
 sand dollars upon an election. Both of these lobbies spent 
 
 criminate hospitality. Observing that he was evidently neither very rich 
 nor a man likely to waste his substance in reckless prodigality, I at length 
 asked a mutual acquaintance, How does Dwight support all this? and 
 was answered: Very easily; he is the agent here of the British woollen 
 interest [manufacturers and exporters], well salaried to watch the legisla 
 tion of Congress and look after the welfare of his employers. Several 
 others subsequently confirmed this statement, and told me that he furnished 
 statistics, estimates, etc., for the Secretary of the Treasury (R. J. Walker), 
 and had thus exercised a powerful influence in shaping the tariff of 1846." 
 HORACE GREELEY, N. Y. Tribune, 1869. 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 267 
 
 money, both before and after the junction, as freely as it is 
 ever spent for such purposes. Wendell hud his check-book 
 always ready, and Day kept a band of lobbyists in pay for 
 two sessions. Newspapers were bought, subsidized, and 
 established, for the purpose of denouncing members of Con 
 gress who would not come in to the support of Lecompton ; 
 and the friends of such members were systematically turned 
 out of custom-houses, post-offices, and navy-yards. Contin 
 gent interests in Chaffee were given to correspondents, 
 one to the correspondent of the leading religious newspaper 
 of the time ; and Mr. Day even took the precaution of 
 assigning a contingent interest to a female "medium,". in 
 exchange for the advice which "she got from the other 
 world to aid the Chaffee patent." He had a list of Chaffee 
 members in his pocket, which he would show to Wendell when 
 they met ; and Wendell, a much more experienced lobbyist 
 than himself, would warn him that, in Washington, prom 
 ising support to a measure was a very different thing from 
 voting for it. Among other expedients, the President at 
 tempted to bribe the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper, 
 offering him the Liverpool consulship and ten thousand 
 dollars in money.* Bat all would not suffice. When the 
 bills came to the test of a vote in the House, both failed, a 
 large number of Chaffee members not voting at all, and 
 Lecompton failing in strict accordance with the known 
 political circumstances. Kansas was free, and all the india- 
 rubber men were at liberty to macerate their crude mate 
 rial with the aid of Mr. Chaffee s masterly invention. 
 
 The testimony on this subject fills many hundred pages, 
 but not a word was elicited showing corruption in a mem 
 ber of Congress. Several lobbyists swore that they knew 
 of no member whom they would dare approach wfth money ; 
 and the general tone of the evidence leads the reader to 
 the same conclusion. 
 
 A lobby occasionally attempts to carry a point by sur- 
 
 * From the testimony taken before the Covode Committee, June 12. 
 I860: 
 
 Wendell. " I carried $ 10,000 for the purpose of giving it to Colonel 
 Forney," in the event of his accepting the place abroad for some three 
 weeks." 
 
 Chairman. " By whose authority or instructions ? " 
 
 Wendell. " Well, sir, it might be said to be by the President s." 
 
268 TOPICS OF THE TIME. * 
 
 prise. I witnessed a scene of the kind last winter in the 
 House of Representatives, which shows how extremely 
 cautious members should be not to act upon the informa 
 tion given by an interested lobby before they have heard 
 the lobby of the other side. The most honest man in the 
 world will go wrong if he neglects this precaution. Indeed, 
 it may be necessary by and by for Congress to adopt the 
 rule contemplated by the legislature of Massachusetts, 
 compelling lobbyists to present their cases before the 
 proper committee, and making it unlawful for a member 
 to converse privately with an interested person on legisla 
 tive business. 
 
 But to my scene. One afternoon in February last, while 
 the House in Committee of the Whole was working its slow 
 and toilsome way down, item after item, through the Army 
 Appropriation Bill, under the leadership of the alert and 
 vigorous Mr. Blaine, now the Speaker of the House, a clause 
 of the bill was about to pass without debate, when Mr. 
 Fernando Wood, of New York, rose and offered the follow 
 ing curious amendment : " But no part of the sum [appro 
 priated] shall be paid to Alexander Dunbar for his alleged 
 discovery of the mode of treatment of horses feet." There 
 had been no mention of the said Dunbar in the clause, nor 
 of his mode of treating horses feet, nor of any other system 
 of treatment ; and the very name of the man was evidently 
 unknown to the House. Mr. Wood proceeded to explain 
 that the Secretary of War, General Schofield, had made a 
 contract (authorized by act of Congress) with Alexander 
 Dunbar, by which the latter was to receive twenty-five 
 thousand dollars for imparting his system of horseshoeing 
 and hoof-treatment to the veterinary surgeons and cavalry 
 blacksmiths of the army. "And I am advised," continued 
 the member from New York, " by those who are judges of 
 that subject, that the man is totally ignorant, that he 
 knows nothing about the diseases of horses feet, and that 
 he rather perpetrates injury upon the poor animals than 
 produces any benefit to them." 
 
 Fernando Wood, in his air and demeanor, is one of the 
 most dignified and impressive members of the House, He 
 attends carefully to his dress ; and, as to his " deportment," 
 Mr. Turveydrop would contemplate him with approval. 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 269 
 
 For such a personage to rise in his place, and, in a meas 
 ured, serene manner, discourse thus upon a subject of which 
 no man on the floor knew anything whatever, could not fail 
 to produce some effect. Mr. Elaine could only say, that he 
 had never heard the name of Alexander Dunbar before; 
 but that he thought the amendment cast a severe reflec 
 tion upon the Secretary of War. Mr. Wood insisting, the 
 amendment was finally amended so as to make the exclu 
 sion apply to the whole Appropriation Bill, and thus cut 
 off the unknown Dunbar entirely ; and in this form, I 
 believe, it passed the Committee of the Whole, and was 
 prepared for submission to the House ; at least, Mr. Wood 
 agreed to withdraw his amendment in order to amend it in 
 the way described. 
 
 It did so happen that there was a person sitting in a 
 commodious corner of the reporters gallery, who, though a 
 stranger to Mr. Dunbar, and singularly ignorant of horses, 
 yet knew all about the Dunbar system and its discoverer. 
 That person, strange to relate, was myself; and, if it had 
 not been a little out of order, I should have shouted a few 
 words of explanation over the vast expanse below. Rising 
 superior to this temptation, and thus avoiding the atten 
 tion of the Sergeant-at-arrns, I constituted myself a Dunbar 
 lobby, and imparted to as many members as possible some 
 of the facts which I am now about to communicate to the 
 reader. Some years since, the mysterious Alexander Dun- 
 bar, an honest, observant farmer and contractor, of Canada, 
 was driving a lame horse on a hilly road. He noticed that 
 the horse was lamest when going down hill, but not lame at 
 all going up hill. Having observed this peculiarity for 
 several miles, he began to speculate upon the cause ; and, 
 by carefully examining the action of the horse s feet, he 
 discovered it. The blacksmith had pared the hoof on the 
 wrong principle, cutting it close where it ought to have 
 been left thick, and leaving it unpared where nature con 
 stantly produces a redundancy. He tried his hand at 
 remedying the mistake. He cut boldly at the parts that 
 were in excess, and the lameness was cured ! A few judi 
 cious cuts with a sharp knife, and a shoe adapted to the 
 natural growth of the hoof, this is all there is of the 
 Dunbar system, which was elaborated by the mystical 
 
270 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Alexander after some years of observation and experiment, 
 suggested by this incident. He found that many cases of 
 lameness of years standing could be cured radically and 
 almost instantly by simply paring the hoof aright and alter 
 ing the shoe. 
 
 We have in New York an enthusiast on the structure of 
 the horse, Mr. Robert Bonner, whose stable contains six 
 of the fastest trotting-horses in the world. He was led to 
 study the anatomy of the horse by endeavoring to get at 
 the reason why some horses can trot in 2 : 20 farther than 
 an ordinary nag can in five minutes. He was curious to 
 know just where the trotting talent lies ; and this led to 
 other inquiries. Hearing by chance of Mr. Dunbar s dis 
 covery, he investigated it most thoroughly, and came to 
 the conclusion that the Dunbar system was founded in the 
 eternal nature of things. I suppose that, during the last 
 three years, Mr. Bonner has, with his own hands, pared 
 the hoofs of fifty horses on the Dunbar plan, and thereby 
 cured a dozen cases of lameness supposed to be incurable. 
 In his great desire to test the discovery, he has travelled a 
 hundred miles sometimes for the sole purpose of having a 
 lame horse shod in the Dunbar style, very frequently par 
 ing the hoofs himself. Recently the discoverer has been 
 among us, and his system, after having been adopted in 
 several of the largest stables in the United States, was in 
 troduced into the army. But, as usual, his success was 
 damage to other men ; particularly to the proprietors of a 
 patent horseshoe, which Mr. Dunbar was compelled to say 
 was not made in accordance with the eternal nature of 
 things. Hence, a patent-horseshoe lobby ! Hence, Mr. 
 Fernando Wood s strange amendment ! Mr. Dunbar s 
 friends, however, rallied in time to enlighten the House, 
 and no harm was done ; but the occurrence shows how a 
 member of Congress may be misled, unless he makes it a 
 principle and a point of honor never to act upon an ex 
 parte statement. 
 
 On this point the late investigating committee of the 
 Massachusetts legislature offers some excellent remarks. 
 It seems that the strikers of the Boston lobby have made 
 such an outcry with regard to the alleged corruption of the 
 legislature during the last year or two, that a committee 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 271 
 
 was appointed to find out how much fire there was beneath 
 all this smoke. They report, as might have been expected, 
 that there is no fire at all, not a smouldering ember, not 
 a spark. After my investigations at Washington, I am 
 fully prepared to believe this, and I do entirely believe it. 
 They add, that a lobby has no legitimate place except in a 
 committee-room, where both sides can be heard and testi 
 mony recorded.* It were much to be desired, that the 
 lobby at Washington were as insignificant and impotent as 
 the lobby at Boston. The hired lobby is. The fellows 
 who lay themselves alongside of green new-comers, and 
 pretend to have " a twist " on this member, and an un 
 bounded influence over that, and give out that they corre 
 spond with seven papers, all daily, are about as influential 
 in one place as they are in the other. This is not the kind 
 of lobby from which danger is to be feared. The lobby 
 that carries its measures has exceedingly little to do with 
 such. 
 
 The lobby which is to be feared is that which sends 
 members to Congress, which has millions of acres and dol 
 lars at command, and is engaged in schemes dear to the 
 pride and important to the interests of the nation. It is 
 to be regretted that Mr. Jefferson s advice was not acted 
 upon, to amend the Constitution so as to empower Congress 
 to do everything for the country, in the way of internal im- 
 
 * The following is -an extract from this interesting; report, much of 
 which is as true of Washington as it is of Boston : " The committee are 
 satisfied that the influence of the lobby (so called) is greatly overestimated. 
 A certain number of persons, known as lobby membWs, receive very con 
 siderable sums of money* from corporations and other parties having 
 business before the legislature. In the opinion of the committee, this 
 influence is not legitimate in matters of legislation. Committees are pro 
 vided by the legislature, to whom all matters are referred and before 
 whom all matters are legitimately heard. Whoever desires to present 
 testimony or statements can do so before these committees, and this testi 
 mony legitimately reaches both branches of the legislature through these 
 several committees. The parties referred to as lobby-men are not lawyers, 
 and have no legitimate professional calling at the Ca pitof, but are supposed 
 to have more or less influence in private talks and conversations by partial 
 presentation of matters to individual members. The committee believe 
 money expended in the employment of these men is wasted by the parties 
 who expend it, and that the influence of such expenditure has a tendency 
 to demoralize legislation and create suspicions of integrity of members 
 where suspicion should never rest. The committee, in all their examina 
 tions, have had no reason to suppose that any member either of this or 
 any previous legislature has been influenced bv any improper or dishonor- 
 able motives." * 
 
272 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 provements, which no State or combination of States, or 
 company of individuals, could be reasonably expected to 
 accomplish. The idea of the system established in 1787 
 was, that the general government should do whatever the 
 interests or the honor of the whole country required to be 
 done, and which the separate States could not do for them 
 selves. The time is not distant, perhaps, when we shall 
 deplore that Congress did not regard a railroad across the 
 continent as a " post-road," or as a measure essential to the 
 " common defence " of sections so widely separated, and 
 build the road outright with the public money. We might 
 thus have saved a tract of land nearly as large as France, 
 and kept out of the Capitol a lobby that may in time be 
 come formidable indeed. The directors of the Pacific Rail 
 road can already, if they choose, enrich a member of Con 
 gress, or a hundred members, by merely investing a trifling 
 sum of money for them .in the sites of future Chicagos. It 
 is no joke to have half a dozen men in the lobby, wielding 
 such an engine and directing such an estate. 
 
 The subsidy system originated in the acute mind of the 
 late Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, and the first railroad 
 aided by a grant of land was the Illinois Central, in 1850. 
 Mr. Douglas, Senator though he was, was the chief of the 
 Illinois Central lobby, and his management of the bill was 
 the most ingenious, audacious, complicated piece of log 
 rolling that has ever been placed on record. It was his 
 boast, too, that this "pioneer bill," as he styled it, " went 
 through without a dollar, pure, uncorrupt." Without a 
 dollar, yes ; pure and nncorrupt, no. 
 
 His first exploit was to get rid of Mr. Holbrooke, who, as 
 far back as 1835, had conceived the project of connecting 
 Chicago and Cairo by a railroad, and to whom had been 
 granted a charter for its construction by the Illinois legis 
 lature. On the strength of this charter, and in the fullest 
 confidence that the road would one day be built, Holbrooke 
 had invested h is whole fortune in Cairo lots, lands, and 
 projects. Here was Holbrooke s weakness and Douglas s 
 opportunity ; for these two able and not over-scrupulous 
 men had become antagonists on this railroad scheme, and 
 it was a question which of the two should confer the boon 
 on the State. Holbrooke wanted the millions, and Douglas 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON, 273 
 
 the glory, that would result from success. After years of 
 manoeuvring at home, where Holbrooke had the advantage, 
 the scene of strife was transferred to Washington, where 
 Douglas .was then all-powerful. Douglas had already ap 
 plied for a grant of land in aid of the road ; but Holbrooke 
 had procured the passage of an act through the legislature 
 (or, as Douglas charged, had a clause fraudulently inserted 
 in an act), conveying to his company whatever lands Con 
 gress might grant. Upon this, the Little Giant introduced 
 a new bill, terminating the road at a different point on the 
 Ohio, and thus reducing Cairo to its original condition of 
 utter worthlessness. 
 
 This brought the redoubtable Holbrooke to his knees. 
 " Spare my Cairo /" was his imploring cry. " With pleas 
 ure," replied the Senator, " provided you surrender your 
 charters and leave Illinois Central to me." Holbrooke sur 
 rendered the charters, and Douglas brought in his bill 
 granting alternate sections of land along the line of the 
 projected road. * 
 
 Such was his preliminary performance. His next step 
 was less difficult, but more striking. The Senators and 
 Members from Alabama and Georgia were opposed to the 
 bill, on the old ground that grants of land for such a pur 
 pose internal improvement of a single State were 
 unconstitutional. As a Democrat, Mr. Douglas should 
 have respected, should have shared, this scruple. Perhaps 
 he did, but he overcame it ; and he addressed himself to 
 the task of overcoming theirs in a manner that was bu si" 
 ness-like at least. While visiting his children s plantation 
 in Mississippi, he found it convenient to go to Mobile, where 
 he at once inquired the way to the office of the Mobile 
 Railroad, recently suspended for want of money. He was 
 lucky enough to catch the president and directors at the 
 office, just as they had concluded the business which had 
 called them together. The champion of Jeffersonian and 
 Jacksonian Democracy did not stop to argue the constitu 
 tional question with these gentlemen, but proposed to them 
 a game of log-rolling. He offered to tack to his bill a 
 clause giving their suspended road a grant of lands, pro 
 vided the Senators and Representatives of Alabama and 
 Mississippi would vote for the bill. The president and 
 
 12* R 
 
274 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 directors, rejoicing in this unlooked-for prospect of relief, 
 instantly gave their assent, disposing of the votes of their 
 absent Senators and Members as though they owned them. 
 But, no, said the cool-headed Senator from Illinois; your 
 Senators and Members have already voted against my bill, 
 and it is necessary for your legislatures to instruct them 
 to vote for it. This presented no difficulty to that knot of 
 railroad directors, and the compact was concluded on the 
 spot ; one director saying, that if Senator Foote did not 
 vote for the grant he should never be re-elected to the 
 Senate. Cautioning them all to keep secret his connection 
 with the affair, Douglas took his leave, and went straight 
 to Washington, " being afraid to be seen in those parts." 
 
 In due time the legislative instructions reached Washing 
 ton, as per agreement. Mr. Douglas then had occasion to 
 exert his histrionic talents. Senator King of Alabama, and 
 Davis of Mississippi, who had been most decided in their 
 opposition to the bill, " cursed their legislatures," and could 
 scarcely .believe their eyes. In their perplexity, they con 
 sulted Douglas, and asked his aid in drawing the clause 
 
 m which was to include the Mobile Road in the grant. With 
 all the dignity of a man who felt himself aggrieved, Mr. 
 Douglas declined their offered support, saying that he felt 
 sure of being able to carry his bill without their aid ; but 
 feigned to be softened at length, and agreed, as a favor to 
 them, to admit the clause which they desired. The solemn 
 farce was maintained to the end. The Southern Senators, 
 as Douglas anticipated, were in no haste to comply with 
 
 . disagreeable instructions, and," consequently, when he sent 
 them word one day that he was about to call up his Illinois 
 Central Bill, they came hurrying to the chamber, with no 
 amendment ready, and begged him to draw one for them. 
 He had had an amendment carefully drawn by one of the 
 best lawyers in Congress, which he handed to Mr. King of 
 Alabama, and immediately moved to proceed with the bill. 
 Mr. King then rose, in his usual dignified manner, and asked 
 the Senator from Illinois to accept an amendment. The 
 Senator from Illinois was obliging enough to do so. The 
 Senators from Alabama and Mississippi all voted for the 
 bill, and it passed the Senate with the additional clause. 
 This was an essential point gained ; but the decisive bat- 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 275 
 
 tie. was to be fought in the House of Eepresentatives. And 
 here Mr. Douglas performed feats of log-rolling which, I 
 think, have never been equalled in any legislative body. 
 The log-rolling art, begun in 1790 by Hamilton and Jeffer 
 son, made marvellous progress in the short space of sixty 
 years. 
 
 When the bill stood at the head of the Speaker s list, 
 and Douglas could count in the House a majority of fifteen 
 "pledged" to support it, Mr. Harris of Illinois moved to 
 proceed with the business on the Speaker s table. This 
 called up the bill, and roused the dormant opposition. By 
 the adroit management of that opposition, a test motion 
 was precipitated upon*the House, which left the bill in a 
 minority of one ; and this, notwithstanding weeks of previ 
 ous log-rolling, and the fifteen pledged majority. "We had 
 gained votes," says Mr. Douglas, " by lending our support to 
 many local measures But, at the important moment, you 
 see, some of the " pledged" votes were not forthcoming, 
 which is often the case in Washington. Let Mr. Douglas 
 relate what followed : 
 
 " I was standing in the Iobby 5 paying eager attention, 
 and would have given the world to be at Harris s side, but 
 was too far off to get there in time ; and it w r as all in an 
 instant, and the next moment a motion would have been 
 made, which would have brought on a decided vote, and 
 have defeated the. bill. Harris, quick as thought, pale and 
 white as a sheet, jumped to his feet, and moved that the 
 House go into Committee of the Whole on the slavery 
 question. There were fifty members ready with speeches 
 on this subject, and the motion was carried. Harris came 
 to me in the lobby, and asked me if he had made the right 
 motion. I said, Yes, and asked him if he knew what was 
 the effect of his motion. He replied it placed the bill at 
 the foot of the calendar. I asked him how long it would 
 be before it came up again. He said, It would riot come 
 up this session ; it was impossible ; there were ninety-seven 
 bills ahead of it. " * 
 
 But the Little Giant would not give it up. For many 
 days and " nights " he racked his brain for an expedient. 
 
 * A Brief Treatise on Constitutional and Party Questions, by J. Mad 
 ison Cutts, p. 196. . 
 
276 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 It occurred to his mathematical mind, at last, that the 
 same tactics applied to the ninety-seven bills would place 
 them also, one after the other, at the bottom of the calen 
 dar, and his own bill, finally, at the top. The plan was 
 adopted. Ninety-seven times Mr. Harris, or else some 
 member not supposed to have any particular interest in 
 the Illinois Bill, moved to clear the Speaker s table ; ninety- 
 seven times a certain other member moved to go into Com 
 mittee of the Whole on the slavery question ; ninety-seven 
 times this always welcome motion was carried. Sometimes 
 these tactics would be employed twice in the same day, and 
 send two bills tumbling to the bottom of the ladder. And 
 the -Illinois Bill constantly gained Mends by the process ; 
 for was not Harris, who had it in charge, continually mov 
 ing to call up bills in alliance with it 1 The odium all fell 
 upon the member who continually frustrated Harris s benev 
 olent intentions. " All praised its" says Mr. Douglas ; " said 
 we were acting nobly in supporting them. We replied, 
 Yes, having defeated our bill, we thought we would be 
 
 generous, and assist you. All cursed Mr. . Some 
 
 asked me if I had not influence enough to prevent his mo 
 tion. I replied he was an ardent antagonist, and that I had 
 nothing to do with, him, to the truth of which they assented." 
 That member was, indeed, a political opponent of Mr. Doug 
 las, but he was a personal friend, and was acting in this 
 matter in pursuance of an express agreement with the Sen 
 ator from Illinois. The Illinois Bill gradually worked its 
 way to the top of the list once more, when it was passed 
 by a majority of three! It cost Douglas two years of hard 
 work, in and out of Congress, to accomplish this result. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this masterpiece, because it includes 
 almost every known device and trick of the log-rolling art. 
 The ease with which the legislatures of Illinois, Alabama, 
 and Mississippi were handled by a few railroad chiefs ; the 
 manner in which a lobbyist with a mathematical head con 
 verted the just rules of the House of Representatives into 
 an engine of injustice ; the unblushing audacity with which 
 an honorable Senator, and candidate for the Presidency, 
 could first lie, and then boast that he had lied ; these 
 are among the points that should excite reflection. But 
 neither those three legislatures nor Congress could have 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 277 
 
 been wielded in this manner by one man, if there had not 
 been in those bodies, and in many of the people whom they 
 represented, an impatient desire to have the works executed 
 in aid of which a principality was granted. The three in 
 terested States were, of course, well pleased to have railroads 
 completed which for fifteen years they had in vain been 
 trying to execute for themselves ; and the rest of the coun 
 try was absorbed in the great public questions of the time. 
 This feat was performed in the very heat and tempest of 
 the slavery debates of 1850. 
 
 Presidents and directors are the lords of the world at 
 present. There have always been rich men ; but in former 
 times great capital was dead or torpid, invested in vast 
 landed estates, and the revenue spent in luxury and 
 ostentation. But the steam-engine has generated a new 
 kind of capitalists, men of brain, ambition, and industry, 
 wielding millions of active capital, and controlling thousands 
 of human beings, men capable of everything except the 
 tranquil enjoyment of life, and who rest only when they lie 
 down to rest forever. These are the children of the steam- 
 engine, which compels everything to be done on the great 
 scale, manufacturing, travelling, and finally agriculture, 
 and has called into being a class of men capable of di 
 recting immense enterprises and of wielding enormous sums. 
 In England these men generally get into the small circle 
 of the ruling class, marry into ruling families,* get them 
 selves elected to Parliament, govern the British empire, as 
 we may say, legitimately; and hence, their power is not 
 absolute, but limited. In the United States they have 
 usually found it more convenient to govern in the lobby, 
 and their power threatens to become unlimited, through 
 their easy control of law-making bodies. If, just now, they 
 are turning their thoughts toward getting within the bar, 
 and some have found their way thither, it is that they may 
 operate the more effectually as log-rolling lobbyists. 
 
 It is startling to hear these people talk of legislatures, 
 and their complete subserviency. My eye was caught the 
 other day by this passage in an affidavit of Mr. Daniel Drew 
 of New York : " We " (directors of the Erie Railroad) " went 
 over to New Jersey ; we stayed over there some weeks ; we 
 got a law passed by the New Jersey Legislature to enable us 
 
278 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 to transact the business of the company over there, so that 
 we might not be plagued by the courts of New York," alias 
 Fisk, Jr. The off-hand, matter-of-course manner in which 
 the fact is mentioned would be remarkable, if we were not 
 so familiar with the state of things at Trenton. Probably 
 it cost Mr. Drew little more than the writing of a letter, to 
 get the law passed. Usually, however, legislatures are 
 managed by log-rolling, or, as Mr. Washburne of Illinois 
 styles it, ring legislation, " combinations of different and 
 distinct interests for the purpose of forcing legislation upon 
 subjects grouped together, when not one of them could 
 stand separately," a system, he observes, which is " becom 
 ing the curse of the country." * 
 
 Mr. Washburne declined to state whether anything of 
 this kind is done in Congress, because it would not have 
 been " in order." But there is another gentleman in the 
 House of Representatives, of similar name, General C. C. 
 Washburn of Wisconsin, who, in the most nonchalant way, 
 in the course of the same debate, let the cat out of the bag. 
 "Every intelligent member of Congress knows," said he, 
 "that any company representing a capital of one hundred 
 millions of dollars can defeat any legislation that ever may 
 be sought here in the interest of the public." Many years 
 had passed since a sentence had so impressed and puzzled 
 me as this Land, after brooding over it for eleven months, 
 I went to i^ashington purposely to see what it meant. 
 There is something in the phraseology of it which causes it 
 to lay violent hold of the mind. " Every intelligent mem 
 ber!" Greenhorns may think that Congress is the supreme 
 power in this land ; but intelligent members know that the 
 lobby can defeat any legislation that can ever be sought in 
 Washington in the interest of the public. It is a truly 
 tremendous statement, and, for one, I think it is much too 
 
 * " I say it with shame," added Mr. Washburne, " it has prevailed in 
 my own State, Illinois. It was by this ring legislation that our last legis 
 lature got through that series of acts, the new State House, the Agricul 
 tural College, the Southern Penitentiary, and perhaps some others, which, 
 if not promptly repealed, will entail millions and millions of public debt on 
 our people, already groaning under a load of taxation almost to"o grievous to 
 be borne. It is this ring legislation that threatens particularly to fasten 
 Tipon the people of our State the new State House, one of the most mon 
 strous schemes ever thrust through a legislative body, and which has met 
 with almost universal execration from all parties." Speech on the Pacific 
 Railroad, March 10, 1868. 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 279 
 
 sweeping. It may, at length, become true ; but up to this 
 time, potent as the lobby is, and skilledas it is in log-rolling, 
 it has won signal triumphs in Washington only when it has 
 been supported by a strong and wide-spread feeling out of 
 doors. The Pacific Railroad, for example, was ever a 
 public work so vehemently desired as that 1 Congress made 
 a hard bargain for the country in subsidizing the road so 
 lavishly ; but, at the time the bargain was made, it did not 
 seem so unreasonable, and the public was in a mood to 
 submit to any conditions, provided the road were hurried 
 forward. 
 
 The millionnaires in the lobby, however, are most power 
 ful in Washington, and their power seems likely to increase 
 with their rapidly augmenting wealth. 
 
 Think of the mere amount of money which a man, or a 
 small number of men, can now control. " I can check 
 for fifteen millions," is the boast of a person who but yes 
 terday drove a pedler s wagon. Two or three men, styled 
 The Erie Railway Company, receive fifteen millions of dol 
 lars a year from that road, employ twelve thousand men, 
 lease hundreds of miles of other and connecting railroads, 
 own twenty steamboats on the Great Lakes, control lines 
 of steamboats on Long Island Sound, expend twenty-five 
 millions a year, run a New York court, keep a judge, and 
 can have what they wish at Albany, even to being endowed 
 with absolute power over all this property for five years. 
 One gentleman, past the time of life when our forefathers 
 used to retire from business, deliberately selected as the 
 amusement of his old age (he really regards it in that light) 
 the getting control of all the railroads connecting New 
 York with the Western country. He began the pastime by 
 buying one road a hundred and sixty miles long outright, 
 with his own money ; for this gentleman can check for much 
 more than fifteen millions. Old as he is, he may live long 
 enough to accomplish his purpose ; and he certainly would, 
 if he were fifty years of age instead of seventy-five. An 
 other able, untiring man has a dry-goods store in New York 
 which contains precisely the space of two hundred dry-goods 
 stores of average size, and does about the amount of 
 business that two hundred average stores would do, and 
 does it at less than half the average expense. Two great 
 
280 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 houses, the Capulets and Montagues of Rhode Island, are 
 said (falsely, no doubt, but with some show of truth) to 
 divide that pleasant, busy, thriving little State between 
 them; and New Jersey does really appear to have abdi 
 cated her political being in favor of Camden and Amboy. 
 
 We must bear in mind also that this massing tendency 
 is a law of nature, which the steam-engine has only stimu 
 lated and aggravated. In every pond the strong-coarse 
 devour the weak-fine. The savage pickerel grows great by 
 gobbling up myriads of gentle perch and tender trout. In 
 every age the same problem presents itself in a changed 
 form, How the weak-fine are to keep the strong-coarse a 
 little within bounds. In one age the pickerel is the feudal 
 system ; again, it is a priestly hierarchy ; or it is both 
 these in alliance. At another time it is Philip II., or Louis 
 XIV., or Napoleon Bonaparte. In England, at present, it 
 is what that intelligent English newspaper, the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, calls the "Inevitable Landlord." This paper, a few 
 weeks ago, had a noticeable article upon the all-devouring 
 British pickerel, in the course of which it said : " Almost 
 every economical improvement which can be suggested, 
 every saving in cost of production, every relief from incon 
 venient encumbrances, every measure designed for the im 
 provement of the condition of the toiling classes of society, 
 ends by putting more money into the pockets of that order 
 which certainly does not suffer from the lack of it. Let 
 science apply her novel resources to the cultivation of the 
 land, and up goes the rent. Let sanitary improvements in 
 towns be carried out at great cost to the public in general, 
 the final benefit (in a pecuniary sense) is reaped by the 
 house-owner. Let railways and telegraphs bring the most 
 distant parts of the productive area of our soil into imme 
 diate competition with those previously more available, and 
 the territorial proprietors of the regions thus rendered more 
 accessible, after a short time, make their bargains with the 
 tenant according to the raised value of the land." 
 
 This is merely the present English form of the universal 
 difficulty, which form we have not yet reached, and may 
 never reach. We have to contemplate the time, not dis 
 tant, when all our towns will be Lowells, all industry a mill, 
 all land model farms ploughed by steam, and all the re- 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 281 
 
 sources of the country wielded by presidents and boards. 
 With us it is the inevitable DIRECTOR who looms up, for 
 midable and menacing. 
 
 It is to be observed, also, of these check-drawing mag 
 nates, that they have learned, of late years, how much bet 
 ter it pays to unite, and prey upon the public, than it does 
 to fight, and prey upon one another. They will fight long 
 enough to ascertain whether one can devour another ; but 
 when they have discovered that this cannot be conveniently 
 done, then they are apt to unite, and rush hungry upon 
 mankind. I have quoted a few words, above, from an affi 
 davit of Mr. Daniel Srew, founder of a theological semi 
 nary. The same affidavit concludes with the following 
 passage : " Gould and Fisk have recently been engaged in 
 locking up money ; they told me so ; they wanted me to 
 join them in locking up money, and I did to the extent of 
 one million dollars, and refused to lock up any more ; I had 
 originally agreed to lock up four million dollars, but when 
 money became very tight I deemed it prudent to decline to go 
 any farther, and unlocked my million. The object of lock 
 ing up is to make money scarce. They had money enough 
 of the Erie Railway Company to lock up to make money 
 scarce and affect the stock market, to make stocks fall, 
 because people could n t get the money to carry them; 
 they sent, I have understood, three millions to Canada, to 
 a bank there." 
 
 The reader will never know what he lost by skipping 
 those columns upon columns of affidavits in small type, 
 which darkened the New York newspapers in the early 
 part of 18G9, affidavits shot at one another by direc 
 tors contending for the control of the Erie Railway. The 
 publishers of the newspapers were right in refusing to in 
 sert the affidavits, except as advertisements at so much a 
 line, because no one could rationally be expected to read 
 them. But those who did read them were amused and 
 edified. An attentive reader could see both games played, 
 that of combining to plunder, and that of fighting to devour. 
 The victors succeeded, at length, in getting the unhappy 
 Founder of a Theological Seminary in a position that would 
 have excited pity in any but a director s breast. He came 
 to one of them on a Sunday morning, and simply begged 
 
282 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 
 
 for mercy, but begged in vain. He would not be denied. 
 He pleaded till one o clock on Monday morning, without 
 producing any effect upon his fellow pickerel, who had him 
 in that terrible Erie corner. Since the world was created, 
 never before did a founder of a theological seminary pass 
 such a Sunday. 
 
 Many recent instances in which corporations have first 
 contended -for each other s destruction, and then united for 
 the purpose of having the public at their mercy, are famil- * 
 iar to us all, and need not be mentioned. Corporations 
 omnipotent within their range result from these unions ; 
 corporations which pay their legal"" advisers much more 
 money per annum for an occasional hour a day than the 
 public pays its highest servants for exhausting toil the year 
 round. These corporations, huge and powerful as they 
 now are, are capable of uniting again in the lobby at Wash 
 ington for purposes common to several of them ; and we 
 have the opinion of a veteran member of Congress, that 
 they will never exert themselves in that lobby without 
 accomplishing their object. 
 
 When this state of things is contemplated, people some 
 times reassure themselves by saying that the press is left, 
 to represent, and contend for, the public. But is it ? Who 
 is the controlling man of most of our great newspapers, 
 the editor or the stockholder 1 If any one is in doubt on 
 this point, he has only to ask the co-operation of some of 
 the leading newspapers in urging a reform which will in 
 volve the risk of pecuniary loss. In many cases, he will 
 find that it is the stockholding mind which decides questions 
 of that nature. The v editor would attack a flagrant abom 
 ination ; but the man controlling a majority of the stock 
 calls his attention to the fact that the flagrant abomination 
 advertises two or three columns a day, and the flagrant 
 abomination is either not attacked at all, or it is flattered 
 by the kind of attack that advertises it most effectively. 
 The editor is generally man enough to look to the future, 
 and comprehend the policy of forming journalists to fill the 
 places by and by of the present leaders of the press. He 
 would stimulate and reward young ambition, exulting to 
 compensate able and valiant service liberally ; but the 
 stockholder thinks naturally of his next dividend, and puts 
 
LOG-ROLLING AT WASHINGTON. 283 
 
 the office upon an allowance. Flourishing as the press is, 
 as a mere business, it is for the moment in a condition of 
 .arrested development. The young journalist climbs to a 
 certain height ; but when he has done his apprenticeship, 
 and has fitted himself for something of command, he finds 
 that he has attained all that the press now has to be 
 stow upon mere talent and skill. It is only mcney that 
 can advance him another step. The stockholder blocks 
 the way. The editor is dethroned. The stockholder 
 reigns. 
 
 This is no one s fault. It is, after all, only a stage in the 
 march of the press, where, for a brief period it halts, to 
 perfect new arrangements. Like every other institution 
 and interest of civilized man, the press has to adjust itself 
 to the steam-engine, which first enabled, and now compels, 
 it to be immense, and thus necessitates the stockholder. 
 When the mere presses, that a daily newspaper in a large 
 city must have, cost a hundred thousand dollars, and the 
 telegrams average five hundred dollars a day, there must be 
 more money invested in a daily paper than an intellectu- 
 alized man ever possesses except by an accident. The 
 irruption of the moneyed stockholder into the press pre 
 sents peculiar inconveniences only because newspapers are, 
 in some degree, an intellectual product, not a mere com 
 modity or manufacture, like screws or flour. An editor is 
 naturally the servant of the public, not the servant of a 
 few men who have raised money enough to buy shares in a 
 newspaper. 
 
 The stockholder cannot be expected at once to perceive 
 these truths, and it is his vocation and duty to look to the 
 dividends. He seems, at present, rather disposed to regard 
 the writers for the press very much as managers of theatres 
 used to regard dramatists, such managers as the one 
 who gave Douglas Jerrold five pounds a week, and made 
 twenty thousand pounds by one of his plays. These men 
 arrested the development of the English stage for sixty 
 years, as the stockholder now arrests the development of 
 the daily press. But, doubtless, a way will be devised by 
 which journalists, pure and simple, without submitting to 
 the nuisance of making money, will be restored to a just 
 share of the power, honor, and safety now enjoyed and 
 
284 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 abused by the stockholder. Either this will be, or the 
 press will decline and degenerate. 
 
 Congress and journalism, then, are in the same boat. 
 Directors and stockholders threaten the independence of 
 both. In the lobby they employ their talents in log-rolling; 
 and when they want important service from the press, they 
 can buy shares. Any newspaper in the country, except 
 perhaps two, could be bought outright for two millions of 
 dollars; and what are two millions to men who control 
 fifteen hundred miles of railroad and a greenback mill," 
 and have it in their power to shoot into Wall Street new 
 stock by the wagon-load 1 Congress is not corrupt ; the 
 press is not corrupt. Both are threatened with paralysis ; 
 but neither will be paralyzed. Every age has its difficulty. 
 This is ours, and we shall overcome it. 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 
 
 DID the reader ever try to compute what it has cost our 
 Israelitish brethren to keep two Sundays a week, and 
 four sets of holidays a year 1 Besides their own religious 
 and national festivals, they have been compelled, generally 
 under ruinous penalties, to abstain from business on those 
 of the countries in which they have dwelt. Thus in Cath 
 olic countries, for several centuries, they were obliged to 
 be idle : 1. Fifty-two Sundays ; 2. Thirty holidays of obli 
 gation ; 3. Fifty-two Saturdays or Sabbaths ; 4. An average 
 of twelve other holidays of their own : total, one hundred 
 and forty-six days per annum, or about tw<5 days in every 
 five ! In Protestant countries, the usual number of idle 
 days, including their fifty-two Saturdays and twelve festi 
 vals and fasts, has been one hundred and ten, or about two 
 days in every six. In other words, the Jews in Catholic 
 countries have been obliged, by law and conscience, to ab 
 stain from business nearly three days a week, and in Prot 
 estant countries a little more than two. Of late years, 
 since Catholics have become much less strict in the observ 
 ance of Sundays and holidays, the Jews suffer more incon 
 venience in Protestant than in Catholic lauds. The rigor 
 of the Scotch and the Puritan Sunday is especially grievous 
 to them, even to the present hour ; while in Paris, Hamburg, 
 and Vienna Sunday is, in some branches of business, the 
 best day of the week. 
 
 This fact of the double set of holidays would alone have 
 sufficed to exclude them from agriculture. A ripe harvest 
 will not wait from Friday till Monday for any of our scru 
 ples ; and two good planting days lost in a late, wet spring 
 would often make the difference between a crop and no 
 crop. Fancy a market-gardener in strawberry time, or a 
 
286 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 florist in May, obliged to cease work half an hour before 
 sunset Friday afternoon, and unable to offer anything for 
 sale till Monday morning ! Even the thirty Catholic holi 
 days of obligation placed the farmers of Catholic countries 
 under a disadvantage that was obvious to all who lived near 
 the line dividing a Catholic from a Protestant country. Vol 
 taire, who lived for thirty years close to the frontier of 
 France, within two miles of Protestant Geneva, dwells upon 
 this in many a passage of exquisite satire. Readers remem 
 ber the scene in which the priest rushes from the tap-room, 
 " red with wrath and wine," to rebuke the yeoman who had 
 " the insolence and impiety " to plough his field on a Saint s 
 day, " instead of going to the tavern and drinking like the 
 rest of the parish. The poor gentleman was ruined : he 
 left the country with his family and servants, went to a 
 foreign land, turned Lutheran, and his lands remained un 
 cultivated for many years." If thirty extra holidays were 
 a serious injury to French farmers, it will not be questioned 
 that ninety-four made agriculture an impossible pursuit to 
 Israelite^. 
 
 Except where Jews lived together in large numbers, as in 
 Poland and some parts of Germany, the same fatality of 
 their lot sufficed to exclude them from most workshops, 
 counting-rooms, and stores. Who could take an apprentice 
 with the understanding that he was to be always absent on 
 Saturdays ? Who, a clerk, on the condition of not having 
 him on the busiest day of the week 1 Even here, in these 
 free cities of America, where Jewish merchants and bankers 
 are often obliged to employ Christian clerks, they labor un 
 der the disadvantage of 4iaving to pay salaries for three 
 hundred and nine days work per annum, while only getting 
 two hundred and fifty-seven days attendance. In short, 
 if the reader will take the trouble to trace all the conse 
 quences of the conscientious adherence of our Israelitish 
 brethren to their holy days, he will discover that during 
 many centuries of their dispersion among Christian nations, 
 that adherence would have been enough of itself to confine 
 their able men to the trade in money and jewels, and their 
 ordinary men to petty traffic and hard bargaining. Money 
 at interest keeps no holy day. Like the trees of the Scotch 
 laird in the novel, it grows while the owner sleeps. It earns 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 287 
 
 revenue both while the lender prays in the synagogue and 
 while the borrower worships in the cathedral. On Good Fri 
 day as on the Day of Atonement, through merry Christmas 
 .and joyous Purim, on the days of Passover, the fourth of July, 
 the fifth of November, still it yields its increase. Hence 
 strong Israelites usually deal in money ; and as to the rank 
 and file, we must allow, if we would be just, that the trader 
 who has to keep his shutters closed two or three days a 
 week must, as. a general thing, carry on business at small 
 expense, and make the most of every transaction. 
 
 But if, a thousand years ago, the Jews had reached that 
 point of development which would have enabled them with 
 a good conscience to give up their seventh-day Sabbath, and 
 rest only on ours, it would not have availed to give them a 
 choice of occupations. In the night of superstition, no Jew 
 could own or hold land on endurable conditions in any 
 country of Christendom. Nor could he belong to any guild 
 of mechanics ; and hence he could not be himself a me 
 chanic, nor apprentice his son to a mechanic. He could not 
 lawfully hire a Christian servant in some countries. He 
 could not enter a university or a preparatory school in any 
 country ; and so the liberal professions were closed to him. 
 He could not be an artist, even if any Christian prince 
 would have bought pictures of him, because, in the black 
 ages, there were only two kinds of pictures that yielded 
 much revenue or renown, New Testament scenes, and 
 indecent pictures from the Greek and Roman poets. The 
 former a Jew could not paint ; the latter he would not, for 
 the Jews have preserved, through all vicissitudes, a certain 
 Chastity of mind and taste, which makes such subjects 
 abhorrent to them. A good Jew knows better than most 
 men the unutterable preciousness of an unprurient soul and 
 an uncontaminated body ; for there is nothing which his 
 religion inculcates so sedulously and in so many ways. At 
 the present hour they are probably the chastest seven mil 
 lions of people under the sun. 
 
 The tory Carlyle, with the baser instinct of his party, 
 which is, to grovel before the strong and trample on 
 the weak, makes this exclusion of the Jews from all the 
 more honorable and expanding pursuits the occasion of a 
 most bitter taunt. The celestial powers, he says, when a 
 
288 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 people have become hopelessly debased, sometimes toss 
 them in utter contempt a great bag of money, as if to say, 
 " Take that ! Be that your portion ! " How cruelly un 
 just is this ! The Encyclopaedia Britannica, an invaluable 
 work, but uniformly narrow and reactionary on religious 
 subjects, while admitting that, in the dark ages, Jews had 
 no choice but to be money-lenders, while allowing that they 
 had no means either of revenge or self-defence, except in 
 extorting usurious interest from their plundering oppressors, 
 stamps with reprobation their "meanness and injustice" in 
 so doing. But the same writer on the same page (Vol. 
 XII. p. 778) has no word of encomium for those heroic Jews, 
 who he says presented their breasts to the sword rather 
 than violate their conscience; nor for those high-minded 
 Jewish maidens and wives, who fastened stones to their 
 bodies and sought refuge in the river from the polluting 
 touch of Christian soldiers. In one of our best periodicals, 
 while I am writing these paragraphs, I read an impatient 
 paragraph, complaining of the tl obstinacy " of the Russian 
 Jews in avoiding agriculture and sticking to petty traffic. 
 As if, in all the empire of Russia, until very recently, an 
 Israelite could own an acre of land, or till a farm to advan 
 tage, while forced to observe the numerous festivals of the 
 Greek Church ! 
 
 The Jews are, in truth, singularly adapted by natural 
 disposition to agriculture, their skill in which once made 
 Palestine a garden. At the present moment the attention 
 of benevolent and public-spirited Jews is directed to the 
 return of their people to agricultural pursuits, and the 
 scene of the first experiment is Palestine itself. There are 
 now thirteen thousand Israelites in that country, nine 
 thousand of whom live in or near Jerusalem ; and there is 
 no reason in the laws or customs of the land why they 
 should not cultivate the soil. But hardly a Jew in the 
 world knows how to plough and reap, and the Jews in 
 Palestine pilgrims and descendants of pilgrims have 
 been steadily demoralized by the alms sent to them from 
 orthodox synagogues in every part of the world. M. 
 Netter, the agent of the Israelitish Alliance, who was sent 
 to Palestine to inquire into the condition of the Israelites 
 there, reports that this unwise, sentimental almsgiving 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 289 
 
 paralyzes the arms and corrupts the hearts of his people. 
 "As the elders," he remarks, " get a double portion of the 
 alms, and as they themselves distribute whatever little 
 may be left of it, the indigent and lowly get but a very 
 small portion of it. We therefore see parents allowing 
 their children to marry early, in order that the offspring of 
 these marriages may share in these charities and increase 
 the resources of the family. Children are also made to 
 study the Talmud, a knowledge of which brings in an addi 
 tional income. The weak and powerless are held in abject 
 subjection by their superiors, and frequently seek relief 
 from the English missionaries, w*ho are always ready in 
 such cases." 
 
 Here is another example of the pernicious consequences 
 of ill-directed benevolence, from which the future is to 
 suffer so much. The remedy M. Netter suggests is agri 
 culture ; although at present not a Jew in Palestine culti 
 vates the soil. A few of them have tried gardening, and 
 failed, as Christian amateurs generally fail, from ignorance. 
 An agricultural school and experimental farm, in aid of 
 which money has been subscribed in New York and other 
 capitals, is about to be started in Palestine. All things 
 must have a beginning, and the disuse of eighteen centuries 
 cannot be overcome in a year or two, but there is reason to 
 believe that the people who once made their land a proverb 
 for its abundant harvests are about to recover their skill 
 in the cultivation of the soil. In reading Jewish periodi 
 cals and in conversing with enlightened Jews, I perceive an 
 impulse in this direction which will produce results where 
 Sunday laws do not hinder. % 
 
 Who can estimate the reparation which Christendom 
 owes this interesting and unoffending people ? How abun 
 dant, how untiring, should be our charity in judging the 
 faults of character which our own superstition has created 
 or developed ! 
 
 Of the giant wrongs to which they have been subjected 
 for the last ten centuries, the huge Andersonville out 
 rages, few readers need to be reminded. In the slaugh 
 ter of the Jews of Seville, in 1391, thirty-five hundred 
 families were murdered. In, 1492, under Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, three hundred thousand heroic Israelites preferred 
 
 13 8 
 
290 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 exile to apostasy. Many of them found a resting-place 
 only in, the grave or in the depths of the sea ; for neither 
 Portugal nor Italy nor Mohammedan Morocco would toler 
 ate the presence of a people who would not comply with 
 their superstitions, and who, by their frugality, continence, 
 temperance, and industry, absorbed the wealth of every 
 country in which they lived. Those who remained in the 
 Peninsula suffered baptism, and were obliged to conform 
 to the outward observances of the reigning church. Far 
 more enviable was the lot of those who had accepted banish 
 ment. The favorite office of the Spanish Inquisition for two 
 centuries was to " question " the sincerity of those two 
 hundred thousand Jewish converts ; and the national 
 amusement was to witness the burning of Jewish Kabbis 
 and Jewish maidens. Similar atrocities were committed, 
 as we all know, in England, Germany, and France. 
 
 Nor can we claim that Protestants have been guiltless 
 toward them. Since I have been interested in this subject, 
 I have found nothing more savage against the Jews than a 
 passage from Martin Luther in which he offers for the 
 consideration of the Christian public seven propositions : 
 1. "That we should set fire to their synagogues and 
 schools, and what cannot be burnt should be covered over 
 with earth, that no man may ever discover a stone or brick 
 of it ; we are to do this for the glory of our Lord and 
 Christianity." 2. Burn all their houses, and lodge them 
 in stables like gypsies, " in order that they may know they 
 are not lords in this land, but in captivity and misery." 
 3. Burn all their prayer-books and Talrnuds. 4. Forbid 
 the Rabbis, under pain of death, to give instruction. 5. 
 *Deny Jews the right of protection on the highways ; " for 
 they have no business with the land." 6. " Being neither 
 lords, farmers, nor merchants, nor anything of the kind, 
 they are to remain at home." " You lords shall not, and 
 cannot, protect them, unless you would take part in their 
 abominations." 7. Put a flail, axe, mattock, or spindle 
 into the hands of every " young and strong Jew and Jew 
 ess," and compel them to manual labor. This was Luther s 
 idea of the treatment due to the only body of religious 
 people in Europe who could be in sympathy with him in 
 his struggle with superstition. But Luther himself was 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 291 
 
 only half emancipated : for he clung to that fatal, fatal root 
 of bitterness, the belief that human souls can be eternally 
 lost by erroneous opinions. 
 
 But we have done worse to these people than murder 
 and torture them. Wrongs like these are occasional ; the 
 rack palls at last ; and the most infuriate mob of Christians 
 that ever hunted down an innocent people grows weary of 
 massacre at last, and a^long period of peace usually suc 
 ceeds. In our own day I have seen Protestants in Phila 
 delphia pursuing in blind fury harmless Catholics, burning 
 their churches, and insulting their priests ; and I have seen, 
 in New York, Catholics rioting in the massacre of the most 
 inoffensive laboring people in the world. In three days 
 the fit passes ; reason returns ; and the very men who in 
 flicted the wounds are ready to assist in healing them. 
 But there is a wrong which all Christians, for many hun 
 dreds of years, have done to all Jews, all the time, we 
 have despised them. Having excluded them from the oc 
 cupations most favorable to the development of human 
 nature s better side, we have added to this giant wrong the 
 crueller sting of despising them for not having their better 
 side developed. Having kept them styed in Ghettos and 
 in Jews streets age after age, we loathe them because they 
 are not all clean. 
 
 Human beings are so constituted and related, that among 
 the most precious possessions any of us can have is the 
 respect and good-will of our community. Happily, few are 
 aware of this truth, because, like good digestion, the value 
 of such a possession is not known until it is lost. Those 
 quadroon and octoroon gentlemen of New Orleans knew it, 
 who said to General Butler with so much passion : " We 
 care not oil which side we fight ; we will fight as long as 
 we can, and spend all we have, if only our boys may stand 
 in the street equal to white boys when the war is over ! 
 If the reader has ever happened to have his eye upon the 
 face of a well-dressed person at the moment a policeman 
 touched his arm, and he felt that he was arrested, no longer 
 one of the passing throng, no longer a member of the com 
 munity, no longer a man among men, but a detected thief, 
 whom any boy might make faces at, a thing abhorred and 
 despised, upon whom no countenance could cast a benignant 
 
292 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 nor even an indifferent look, if the reader has ever noted 
 the awful shadow that falls upon a human countenance at 
 such a moment, he can perhaps form some idea of what it 
 must be to feel always the contempt of men. Or, still 
 better, if the reader can look back to his school-days and 
 call to mind moments or hours when, for some peculiarity 
 of dress, person, or conduct, he was the object of general 
 derision, either in schoolroom or play-ground, and can feel 
 still the scorch of the old blush in his cheeks, he cannot be 
 quite ignorant of the value of that unexpressed good-will 
 which usually invests us like the air we unconsciously 
 breathe. . 
 
 And the Jews were never allowed to forget that they 
 were a despised people. Contempt of the Israelite was 
 embedded in law and exhibited in daily custom. In Prot 
 estant Holland, down nearly to the days of Louis Bona 
 parte, Jewish paupers were compelled to say their prayers 
 bareheaded, and to work all day Saturday, although they 
 begged the privilege of doing in five days their whole week s 
 work. It was not till 1790 that this poor boon was granted 
 them. Some of the watering-places in Germany could show, 
 among their chartered privileges, the right to exclude Jews. 
 At Strasburg, within the recollection of living persons, a 
 Jew had to pay three francs a day merely for the privilege 
 of staying in the town. In Switzerland, as late as 1851, 
 the contemptuous law was re-enacted, imposing a fine of 
 three hundred francs upon every Christian who gave a Jew 
 employment. In Russia, at the present hour, the govern 
 ment presumes to prescribe what shall be the garb of a 
 Jew. In New York, London, Paris, and other cities there 
 is an alliance, or society for the sole object of promoting 
 the emancipation of the Jews from the remaining disa 
 bilities which the aversion of Christendom has imposed. 
 Without troubling the reader with a catalogue of similar 
 facts, I can convey some idea of the scorn in which Jews 
 were once held in a more convenient manner by showing 
 how they are now treated in the city of Rome, Rome be 
 ing a fragment of the Past preserved, like an Elgin marble, 
 for the inspection of the moderns. In 1860, when there 
 was talk of a congress of European powers for the settle 
 ment of international questions, the Jews of Rome prepared 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 293 
 
 a petition for presentation to it, in which some of their 
 grievances were stated. From this paper we learn that no 
 Jew in Rome can be an artist, nor be a pupil in a school of 
 art, nor frequent a public gallery for practice in art. No 
 college, medical school, law school, or scientific institution 
 can receive a Jewish student. No Jew can exercise a 
 mechanical trade, except cobbling shoes. Cruellest and 
 absurd est of all, no Jew, fond as he is of music, and gifted 
 as his race is in music, can sing in public or play on an 
 instrument. " Woe to the Hebrew," says the petition, 
 " who dares sing or play in public ; for the police and the 
 Holy Office immediately pounce upon him and punish the 
 offence with severe penalties." This is the more abomina 
 ble, because nature has signalized this people, not so much 
 by superiority of understanding, as by talent. The gifted 
 among them are formed to sing, to play, to compose, to 
 carve, to paint, to personate, to excel in all those arts by 
 which human nature is enchanted and exalted by being 
 exhibited to itself. 
 
 Edmond About s report of the condition of the Jews in 
 Rome is fresh in the recollection of many. He glances 
 backward at the time, not remote, when every evening at 
 the hour Christians go to the theatre the gates of the Jews 
 quarter were locked for the night ; when on days of holy 
 festival Jews were made to run races for the amusement of 
 Christians ; when every year a city official gave them a 
 representative kick, an honor for which they had to pay 
 four thousand francs j when they were compelled to present 
 publicly to e*very new Pope a Bible ; when they were obliged 
 to pay the salary of a Christian priest employed to preach 
 a sermon to them every Saturday, and they could only 
 avoid attending this. service by paying a fine ; when their 
 Ghetto bred such deadly pestilence, that some of them 
 almost lost the semblance of humanity, and " they might 
 have been mistaken for beasts, if one had not known them 
 to be intelligent beings, apt for business, resigned to their 
 lot, simple in their requirements, kind-hearted, devoted to 
 their families, and irreproachable in their conduct." Such 
 .was their condition in Rome. M. About tells us what it is. 
 The present Pope, he reminds us, has indeed taken away 
 the gates of the Ghetto, so that Jews can go about the city 
 
294 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 after dark ; he has dispensed them from the annual kick 
 and its annual price, and he has closed the church to which 
 they were required to go on Saturdays to be converted. 
 
 But the author adds : " I secretly questioned two well- 
 known inhabitants of the Ghetto. When they understood 
 why I concerned myself with their affairs, the poor men 
 exclaimed : For Heaven s sake, do not publish that we are 
 wretched ; that the Pope actively regrets his concessions of 
 1847 ; that doors invisible, but impassable, close the Ghetto, 
 and that our condition is worse than ever. All that you 
 might say in our behalf would be visited upon us, and in 
 stead of benefiting you would injure us. " The inquirer 
 visited the Ghetto, in the low ground near the Tiber, and 
 found it " the most horrible and neglected quarter of the 
 town," in which not the humblest of the thousand prelates 
 about Home would set his foot, any more than an Indian 
 Brahmin would cross the threshold of a Pariah s hovel. " I 
 learned," says this author, " that the most humble employ 
 ment in the most humble office would as soon be given to 
 a beast as to a Jew ; that for a child of Israel to ask in 
 Rome to be employed as a commissary, would be more 
 absurd than for the giraffe of the Jardin des Plantes to ask 
 for an under-prefectship in Paris." No Jew can own a foot 
 of land in the papal dominions, nor cultivate one, unless in 
 the name of a Christian ; and if a Jew, using this artifice, 
 ventures to cultivate a garden or a farm, his harvest is safe 
 from pillage only so long as the legal device remains a 
 secret. Let but the Christians around learn that the har 
 vest is the property of an Israelite, and " a rage for plunder " 
 seizes them, which leaves the hapless proprietor w r ith deso 
 lated fields. 
 
 This is the testimony of a witness who is prejudiced, as 
 all modernized minds are prejudiced, against government 
 by priests. Let me summon another witness, a Christian 
 who writes to L Ami d Israel an account of his visit to 
 the Roman Ghetto : " It is situated on the borders of the 
 Tiber, in a place subject to inundations ; the population is 
 confined in narrow, dirty streets ; and although the Jews 
 are much too numerous for this small quarter, they are not. 
 allowed to take up their abode beyond the limits of the 
 Ghetto. The closing of the gates is discontinued, but the 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 295 
 
 prohibition as to residence remains the same. I was struck 
 with the activity and industry of the Jews; for while one 
 sees a great many idlers and crowds of beggars in Rome it 
 self, in the Ghetto every one is at work, and there is not a 
 beggar visible." The struggle for life, this writer remarks, 
 is so severe, that out of a population Of more than four 
 thousand, two thousand five hundred are extremely poor, 
 and in part dependent upon the charity of their neigh 
 bors. 
 
 As Israelites are now looked upon and treated in Rome, 
 so were they once regarded and treated in every capital of 
 Europe ; and their partial emancipation is a thing too re 
 cent to have more than begun to obliterate the effects of 
 fifteen centuries of outrage and contempt. For the faults 
 which we see in them, and which clearly result from the 
 contracted Ghetto and the exclusion from the broadening 
 employments, we should blame ourselves, not them ; and 
 when a Jew plays upon us a scurvy trick, let us go out 
 straightway and kick a Christian for it. 
 
 In conversing upon this subject with the enlightened and 
 accomplished Israelites now to be found in all our cities, I 
 am amazed at the absence of everything like rancor and fury 
 from their hearts when they dwell upon the wrongs of their 
 race. A decent Christian boils with anger as he reads of 
 the indignities they have suffered ; but they, the victims of 
 our insensate aversion, speak of these indignities w r ith such 
 calmness and good temper, that I have been ready to ex 
 claim : The Jews are the only Christians ! And certainly, 
 if the peculiar virtue of Christianity is the patient endur 
 ance of outrage, then we must admit that they have excelled 
 all known people in practising the religion which Christians 
 have preached. But of course the patient endurance of 
 outrage is not the great Christian virtue, nor is it a virtue 
 at all, unless the outrage is irredressible. But that has 
 been precisely their case. Usually a small number in the 
 midst of a hostile population, they have been obliged to 
 endure, or perish ; they have had such a training in some 
 portions of the Sermon on the Mount as no other race has 
 ever had. 
 
 If a Christian would know these people aright, that is, if 
 he would know their best, he must observe their home life ; 
 
296 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 for the great secret of Jewish persistence is the strength 
 of that mingled affection and pride which binds families to 
 gether. The family, the Sabbath, in those two words 
 are hidden the secret of Jewish history since their disper 
 sion. Let us accompany a good orthodox Jewish family 
 through their calm and cheerful Sabbath, and see how they 
 keep it and enjoy it. I select an orthodox family, instead 
 of a " .Reformed," merely because the orthodox Jew is an 
 historical person ; as he keeps his Sabbath, his fathers have 
 kept it for many centuries. 
 
 The Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday evening half an 
 hour before sunset, and ends on Saturday evening half an 
 hour after sunset, or when a star is visible in the sky. On 
 Friday, the day of preparation, the women and girls of the 
 family are busy in providing for the morrow the best food 
 of the week ; for whatever is eaten or drank during the 
 joyous sacred hours must be the very best the family can 
 afford. Poor Jews will pinch all the week in order that 
 their wives and children may have something delicious to 
 eat on the Sabbath. But that savory food must be cooked 
 or prepared for cooking before the Sabbath begins ; for our 
 Israelitish brethren observe with just strictness the law 
 which gives rest on the Day of Rest to their servants. 
 They shame us in this particular. They will not use even 
 their horses on their Sabbath. On a Sunday, about twelve, 
 M., you may see in front of Dr. Adams s fashionable Presby 
 terian church in Madison Square, New York, or around Dr. 
 Tyng s fashionable Episcopal church in St. George s Square 
 of the same city, from twenty to forty well-appointed equi 
 pages waiting for the last hymn to be finished ; but you 
 will never see a vehicle before the superb Temple Immanuel, 
 a Jewish synagogue in the Fifth Avenue, although there are 
 many families within who could ride home, if they would, 
 in their own carriages. I do not say that the Christians 
 are wrong or the Jews right in this. It is no one s business 
 but their own. But if we borrow the Hebrew s word " Sab 
 bath," and adopt, verbally, their Sabbatical law, our prac 
 tice perhaps ought to conform in "some degree to our pro 
 fession. It probably does not severely tax those coachmen 
 and footmen to show off their gay turn-outs and brilliant 
 liveries on a fine Sunday morning in the Fifth Avenue. 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH , BRETHREN. 297 
 
 But for the heavy-laden drudges of the boarding-house 
 kitchen, and the maid-of-all-work in average families, I 
 could wish we were all Jews from Saturday night till Mon 
 day morning. It is a dastardly shame to compel or permit 
 women, who have faithfully toiled for us from Monday s 
 tub to Saturday s scrub, to work hard all through the best 
 hours of Sunday merely that we may gorge ourselves with 
 dainty food. The Jews avoid this barbarous meanness. 
 Their servants rest on their Sabbath. 
 
 As early as possible on Friday afternoon the father 
 comes home. As sunset draws near the family put on 
 their best clothes, and father and sons go to the synagogue 
 for the short Sabbath-eve service. His wife and daughters 
 usually remain at home, where pleasing duties still detain 
 them, though their arduous work is done. 
 
 The Jewish religion is a monotone ; it is a religion of 
 one idea, and that idea is GOD. Do you wish the most en 
 lightening of all commentaries on the Bible 1 do you wish 
 to know the original meaning of hackneyed Christian 
 phrases 1 would you taste the savor and inhale the fra 
 grance of celebrated texts ] do you desire to see living 
 descendants of the characters sketched in the New Testa 
 ment? Then frequent orthodox synagogues, and observe 
 the ways of those who attend them. The Jew " walks with 
 God " ; the Jew, " in everything, gives thanks " ; the Jew 
 " makes melody in his heart to the Lord " ; the Jew " prays 
 without ceasing." 
 
 A pious Jew of the old school utters in the course of 
 every twenty-four hours as many as a hundred benedictions, 
 ascriptions, and prayers. On waking in the morning he 
 says : " I thank thee, ever-living, .ever-enduring King, that 
 thou hast restored me unto life, through thy great mercy 
 and truth." Whenever he enjoys, whenever he suffers, 
 whenever he gains, whenever he loses, he has a form of 
 Hebrew words ready in his memory in which to call upon 
 his God. If he eats a fine peach he says : " Blessed art 
 thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast 
 caused us to be preserved, and permitted us to enjoy this 
 season." But if he were about to eat strawberries, the as 
 cription would slightly vary ; as it would also for bread, 
 cakes, melons, vegetables, wine, water, oil. If he enjoys 
 13* 
 
298 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the fragrance of flowers, he will say : " Blessed art thou, 
 Lord God, King of the Universe, who Greatest aromatic 
 herbs " ; and he has also a form for sweet-scented woods, 
 fruit, gums, spice. On passing a synagogue in ruins, or 
 one flourishing and handsome ; on meeting Hebrew sages, 
 and on meeting Gentile sages ; when he hears thunder, 
 music, rain, or wind, or sees a rainbow, a fine tree, a moun 
 tain, a river, the ocean, a handsome creature ; on hearing 
 good news or bad news ; at the birth or at the death of a 
 child ; upon leaving and returning home ; he utters his 
 short thanksgiving in Hebrew. It is so, Mr. Hepworth 
 Dixon assures us, with the Oriental religions generally ; 
 which at the present hour, as three thousand years ago, 
 have a strong family likeness. " An Oriental is a man of 
 prayer," says Mr. Dixon. " If he rises from his couch, a 
 prayer is on his lips ; if he sits down to rest, a blessing is 
 in his heart. When he buys and when he sells, when he 
 eats and when he drinks, he remembers that the Holy One 
 is nigh. If poor in purse, he may be rich in grace ; his 
 cabin a sanctuary, his craft a service, his daily life an act 
 of prayer." These words describe the pious Jews of our 
 modern capitals. They " walk with God." " God is in all 
 their thought." 
 
 The father and his boys enter the synagogue, sometimes 
 pausing in the vestibule, if they have touched uncleanness 
 on the way, to wash their hands, conveniences for which are 
 placed there. As they enter, they are required to bow to 
 the ark containing the scrolls of the Law, and to say : " In 
 the greatness of thy benevolence will I enter thy house : 
 in reverence of thee will I bow down toward the temple of 
 thy holiness." The " ark " is a closet at the eastern end of 
 the synagogue, usually made of costly woods, closed with 
 sliding doors, and approached by stairs. Within are scrolls 
 of parchment, each of which contains one book of the Pen 
 tateuch, written with perfect correctness in Hebrew, by men 
 whose profession it is to write them. One error, no matter 
 how insignificant, condemns a scroll ; for the examiners sub 
 ject it to tests from which no error can escape. The letters 
 of every line, division, and book are counted. In the exact 
 middle of the synagogue is a somewhat spacious platform, 
 raised four or five feet from the floor, and provided with a 
 
OUR ISRAELITISII BRETHREN. 299 
 
 broad desk and a sofa. Most of the pews face this platform, 
 but there are a few " chief seats of the synagogue," for the 
 trustees and other officers. On the ground floor are men 
 and boys only, all with their hats on ; the women and girls 
 being in the gallery. Israelites say that this exclusion of 
 women from the floor of the synagogue that is, from the 
 synagogue proper is an homage to their delicacy. Their 
 law requires that, at various periods, women should not 
 enter the sanctuary at all ; and the subterfuge of the gal 
 lery was invented to avoid the necessity of asking disagree 
 able questions. In some countries women, for the same 
 reason, assemble in an adjoining apartment, with a door 
 opening into the synagogue, through which the voices of the 
 reader and preacher can be heard. 
 
 The Friday-evening service, which lasts an hour and a 
 quarter, consists of the chanting of prayers and psalms in 
 the Hebrew tongue. Sometimes the Rabbi, seated on his 
 sofa, with his hat on, clad in a black silk gown and a white" 
 silk tunic over it, intones a portion solo, the people respond 
 ing with an occasional amen. Then the whole congregation 
 will repeat a psalm ; sometimes standing, sometimes sitting, 
 bowing now and then and occasionally bowing very low. 
 At intervals a highly trained choir of men and boys, from 
 a gallery where they cannot be seen, burst into a song or 
 breathe out a most melodious soft chant. No organ smoth 
 ers the voices ; for the orthodox Jew feels that the harp of 
 his people still hangs upon the willow, and must not be 
 heard again till the Temple is rebuilt. But this choir (Nine 
 teenth Street, New York) needs no organ ; it is itself one 
 beautifully attuned instrument. As the service approaches 
 a conclusion there is more responding and more simulta 
 neous recitation, which sometimes swells into a loud chorus. 
 In less polite congregations than this it is said some of the 
 members become almost vociferous. 
 
 When the service is ended, while the men are shaking 
 hands and cheerfully conversing, all the boys crowd upon 
 the platform and gather round the Rabbi, who places his 
 hand upon each little cap, and pronounces a word or two of 
 benediction. To those who have had the profound misfor 
 tune of being reared in one of those creeds which repel the 
 young soul, and make it loathe what its elders revere, this 
 
300 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 sweet spectacle reveals much of the Jewish mystery. They 
 have known how to associate religion with the pleasing 
 recollections of childhood. 
 
 Upon returning home, after the service, the father and 
 his sons find their abode decked in its brightest attire, the 
 table set in its goodliest array, the ladies in handsome 
 Sabbath costume, and on the mantel-piece of the principal 
 room the two wax-candles lighted, to symbolize the light 
 and warmth shed on Israel by the Sabbath. In some fam 
 ilies the old-fashioned " Sabbath lamp," with seven burners, 
 is retained, and lighted only on this joyous evening. The 
 family being now all assembled, the father places his hand 
 upon the heads of each of his children, and invokes upon 
 them the blessing of Jacob. Then they kiss one another, 
 and each wishes the others " Good Sabbath," as we say 
 " Merry Christmas." All join in a Sabbath hymn ; after 
 which the father pays honor to his wife by chanting the fine 
 "description in Proverbs of a Virtuous Woman, whose price 
 is above rubies, in whom the heart of her husband doth 
 safely trust, who looketh well to the ways of her household 
 and doth not eat the bread of idleness. Next he takes a 
 small silver cup, kept for the purpose, and pours into it 
 some pure home-made wine, of grapes or raisins, and pro 
 nounces a blessing on the wine ; after which he breaks a 
 piece of bread, and utters the prescribed blessing upon the 
 bread. A formal and longer grace is said for the meal, and 
 then the family take their places at the table. 
 
 All this ceremonial, which seems long when it is related, 
 occupies but a few minutes, for the Hebrew is a compact 
 language, and our Israelitish brethren have little concep 
 tion of what we understand by the word solemnity. There 
 is something off-hand in the usual religious acts of the or 
 thodox Jews. When the meal is ended, the family rise and 
 remain standing about the table while a thanksgiving is 
 pronounced and a hymn sung. In many families the father 
 relates to his children 011 Friday evening some legend of 
 their race, of which the stock is inexhaustible ; for there 
 are fifteen centuries of persecution to draw from, without 
 counting the ages during which Israel had a national exist 
 ence and a recorded history. Hence the collection of Jewish 
 stories, recently republished in New York from the columns 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 301 
 
 of the Jewish Messenger, was happily entitled " Friday 
 Evening." During the Sabbath no musical instrument is 
 heard in the house of an orthodox Jew, nor does he enter 
 tain any company beyond the circle of his relations and 
 nearest friends. But this seclusion of families has nothing 
 in common with Sabbatarian gloom and isolation. It is 
 more like a Christmas reunion, when families are happy 
 enough without other friends, than a Sabbatarian with 
 drawal from cheerful society. 
 
 On Saturday morning the service at the orthodox syna 
 gogue begins at eight and lasts till twelve. It differs little 
 in character from the service of the evening before, except 
 that toward the close the minister, accompanied by two of 
 the congregation, descends from the platform and walks 
 slowly to the chanting of the choir to the closet where the 
 scrolls of the Law are kept, the doors of which have been 
 previously opened by two of the members. The scroll con 
 taining the portion of the Law to be read that day is taken 
 from its place and carried slowly to the platform, where its 
 gay covering is removed and the scroll laid out flat upon 
 the broad desk. After the portion has been read, one of 
 the gentlemen who has assisted in its conveyance from the 
 " ark " lifts it by the ends of its two rollers, and holds it 
 up, open, as high as he can reach, and turns it in various 
 directions, so that all the congregation can see the Hebrew 
 characters written upon it. It was perhaps this holding 
 aloft of the Sacred Object which suggested the elevation of 
 the Host in the celebration of the Mass. Indeed, there is 
 many a rite, ceremony, and usage, of both Protestant and 
 Catholic worship, the idea of which was furnished by the 
 people whom Protestants and Catholics have agreed to re 
 vile and torment. Little boys, for example, assist in unroll 
 ing and rolling up again the scroll of the Law ; and one 
 boy stands upon the platform, in the course of the morning 
 service, and pipes with his shrill tenor a few Hebrew sen 
 tences. Doubtless it was this usage of the Israelites, this 
 habit of associating their boys with them in every religious 
 act and ceremonial, that suggested the employment of boys 
 in the altars of Christian churches. 
 
 The sermon is not regarded by orthodox Jews as a very 
 important part of the Sabbath service. In some synagogues 
 
302 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 no sermon is preached ; in others a short one is delivered 
 in the German language ; but it is rare indeed that a ser 
 mon in English is heard ; for, to the present hour, no Rabbi 
 lives in the United States who was not born and educated 
 on the Continent of Europe. 
 
 Four hours seem to us impatient mortals a long time to 
 spend in a religious service ; but only a small part of the 
 congregation attends during the first hour ; the synagogue 
 does not fill up before ten o clock ; and some leave soon 
 after the service has reached its climax in the elevation of 
 the scroll. A few sturdy old gentlemen are punctually in 
 their places at eight, and go through the whole, rising 
 and sitting down, responding and reciting, bowing and 
 standing erect, never faltering or shrinking, to the last 
 amen. The secret of this persistence is, that the congre 
 gation take an active part in the worship. They do not 
 sit passive more than four or five minutes at a time. 
 At the conclusion of the services the assembly breaks 
 into groups of cheerfid talkers, and so drifts down stairs 
 through the vestibule into the street, where there is abun 
 dant hand-shaking and friendly merriment. There is a 
 short afternoon service, which is not more numerously 
 attended than that of Christian churches; for after the 
 bountiful Sabbath dinner, our Israelitish brethren are apt 
 to abandon themselves, as we do, to the noble work of 
 digestion. 
 
 The Sabbath to the Jews is wholly joyous ! In all the 
 tales, essays, treatises, catechisms, of this interesting peo 
 ple, which lie heaped up before me at this moment, I can 
 find no hint of that strange institution which the Puritans 
 called Sabbath. To the good Jew the Sabbath means rest, 
 mental improvement, domestic happiness, cheerful conver 
 sation, triumphal worship. From a tract recently issued, 
 entitled " The Sabbath, an Appeal to the Israelites of New 
 York," I copy a short passage, to show how pious Jews re 
 gard their sacred day, and why they urge its observance. 
 
 " The family," says this writer, " in which the Sabbath 
 is a stranger, as it is, alas ! the case with such a large 
 number of our co-religionists, is bereft of those beautiful 
 ties which make the Jewish home a paradise to the poorest 
 of its professors, is a desert with no oasis, an ocean of ever- 
 
OUE ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 303 
 
 contending waves, with no haven of shelter. ye who yet 
 remember the Sabbath eve in the old European home, 
 and there are many of you, conjure up before your vision 
 the little chamber with the seven-armed candelabra lit in 
 honor of the Sabbath bride ; the table spread, the spotless 
 linen, your father coming home from the synagogue, his 
 eyes beaming with satisfaction, his countenance expressing 
 happiness and contentment, not a ruffle on his forehead 
 which would indicate that care had ever dwelt in that soul, 
 placing his hand on your head, blessing you, and then sing 
 ing songs of welcome to the regular returning guest, the 
 bride beloved so well ! Did ever happiness enter your soul 
 so unmeasured since you gave up all for a heap of gold 1 
 Will your children ever feel as happy as you did on that 
 Sabbath eve, will your wife ever know the beatitude your 
 mother felt, when she saw her husband joyous and happy]" 
 
 Here we have all that was good in the old Puritan Sun- / 
 day, without its gloom, restraint, and terror. There is no 
 terror in the religion of the Hebrews, no eternal perdition. | 
 They are all Universalists. The Puritanism of two hundred \ 
 years ago, as we find it in the works of the Mathers, was ] 
 Judaism plus the doctrine of eternal perdition. 
 
 That was a happy touch of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher s 
 in his newspaper, The Christian Union, where, after having 
 given the news of the various Christian denominations, he 
 concluded by a few paragraphs, headed thus : 
 
 " OTHER RELIGIONS." 
 
 Whether we regard this as a mere stroke of journalism, 
 or as a recognition of the claims of other religions to the 
 regard and respect of Christians, it was worthy of the intel 
 ligence of the editor. Nothing is more startling to a stu 
 dent of religions than their likeness to one another, and the 
 similarity of their effects upon the various minds. Men 
 who have lived in the Eastern world, in Japan, Siam, India, 
 China, and in the great islands of the Archipelago, have 
 often remarked that the religions of those lands, however 
 they may differ in name, usages, rites, costumes, traditions, 
 have much more in common than they have of difference ; 
 and under them all can be found the same varieties of reli 
 gious and irreligious character : the sincere and lowly wor- 
 
304 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 shipper ; the man who expects to be heard for his much 
 speaking ; he who affects devotion, and he who affects 
 indifference ; the rogue who uses religion as a cloak, and 
 the politician who employs it as capital ; the dealer in reli 
 gious merchandise, who believes in religion as the servants 
 of the Cataract House believe in the sublimity of Niagara ; 
 all these characters, we are assured, can be found under 
 all the religions of the Oriental world. 
 
 And, what is more interesting, it seems as if the religions 
 of the world were in the same state of transition, and at 
 about the same stage of progress. They are all anxious, all 
 excited, all in movement. Orthodox, heterodox, ritualists, 
 infidels, we find them at Calcutta, in Japan, in China, in 
 Barbary, as we do at London, Berlin, Paris, New York, and 
 Boston. English residents in India tell us that in the 
 higher society of Calcutta there are native young men who 
 take precisely the same tone with regard to the Brahmins 
 and the Hindoo sacred books as many of our young pagans 
 do at Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Boston, when the 
 Christian religion is the subject of discourse, a tone not 
 of contempt, by any means ; they are beyond and above 
 that. They speak of the religion of their fathers as the son 
 of an ancient house might descant upon the old family 
 coach, which was excellent in its day, but is now done with, 
 and kept as an interesting relic. Nor are there wanting, 
 in those remoter capitals of the world, young men who sur 
 prise their companions, as some of our young ritualists do, 
 by a sedulous imitation or revival of ancient methods and 
 forgotten rites. 
 
 Mr. Beecher may well tell us, then, of " Other Relig 
 ions " ; for they are all in a similar critical condition. To 
 the careless looker-on it seems as if they were all dissolv 
 ing ; but, in reality, they are only shedding their non- 
 essentials, which is a painful and demoralizing process. 
 "When in the Arctic seas the sun gains power to soften the 
 ice and melt the snows, the first effects upon the ice-bound 
 fleets of fishermen and navigators are disagreeable, if not 
 injurious. Everything is soft, damp, unstable ; the snug 
 snow-packing, which had protected and warmed the impris 
 oned mariners so long, becomes a source of discomfort ; and 
 the ice-roads which had borne them stiffly up are safe no 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 305 
 
 longer. But the thaw is about to set them FREE, and send 
 them careering over the boundless deep. 
 
 Our Israelitish brethren, besides sharing in the influences 
 which are mitigating all creeds and liberalizing all minds, 
 are now subjected to a trial peculiar to themselves. From 
 being persecuted everywhere, they are beginning to be hon 
 ored and sought. The grand example of the youngest of 
 the nations in protecting all religions equally, while recog 
 nizing none, has had its effect in improving the condition 
 of the Jews throughout the greater part of Christendom 
 and beyond Christendom. Within the recollection of men 
 still young, Jews have been admitted to the British Parlia- j 
 ment, where, I am informed by a distinguished Rabbi, who 
 gloried in the fact, no Jew has ever sided with the. party of 
 reaction, except one, and he a renegade. The Jews to-day 
 in the House of Commons vote on important measures with 
 John Bright. The professor of Hebrew in the London 
 University is a Hebrew;. and among the Jewish students 
 last year at Oxford and Cambridge, one was a senior wran 
 gler and another the crack oarsman of his college. In Lon 
 don one of the noted clubs is Jewish, and there are so 
 many Jews in the city government that they may almost 
 be said to have the controlling influence. Happily, the 
 Jews are not proselyters, and can be aldermen without 
 using their office to get a sly advantage for their synagogue. 
 Among the seventy-five thousand Jews in London, there are 
 many business men who, despite the double Sunday, hold 
 their own against Christian competitors, to say nothing of 
 the much greater number who have no Sunday at all. 
 There is one Jewish clothing-house in London that has 
 thirteen stores and employs eleven thousand people. 
 
 In France the Jews are fortunate in the free Sunday 
 permitted both by law and custom ; and as a consequence 
 there is less poverty among them than elsewhere. The 
 Rabbis are paid from the public treasury, as the ministers 
 of the various Christian denominations are, and the govern 
 ment courts their good-will. The Jewish newspaper in 
 Paris describes in glowing words the manner in which " the 
 Emperor s fete " was celebrated at the principal synagogue. 
 A detachment of chasseurs, commanded by an officer, was 
 stationed in the temple opposite the choir, and while the 
 
306 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 " Halel " was chanted the edifice resounded with the blast 
 of trumpets from a military band. At the moment when 
 the scroll of the Law was taken out of its sacred enclosure 
 the troops presented arms, the trumpets sounded, and the 
 organ pealed its melodious thunder. Thus the host is sa 
 luted on festive days at Notre Dame. In Paris, among a 
 large number of other charitable organizations of Israelites, 
 I find two designed to aid parents who desire to apprentice 
 their children to trades. These are societies for paying the 
 premiums required in Europe when apprentices are taken. 
 
 Throughout Germany Jews at length stand upon an 
 equality before the law with Christians, even in Austria, 
 so long the citadel of conservatism. Austria has abolished 
 all Sunday laws that would prevent Jews from cultivating 
 land, and the Emperor has sought to compliment his Israel- 
 itish subjects by appointing two young Hebrew gentlemen 
 to positions on his personal staff. This in Austria, where 
 until 1860 a Jew could not exercise many of the most usual 
 avocations, could not bo a farmer, miller, apothecary, 
 brewer ; and in some wide regions and populous places of 
 the empire could not reside at all ! In Frankfort, where 
 the Rothschilds originated, the Jews are masters of every 
 thing. Those great bankers, as all the world knows, live 
 in luxury more than regal ; but all the world does not 
 know that several members of this family are persons of 
 genuine liberality of mind as well as bountifully liberal in 
 charitable gifts. It is a pity the head of so conspicuous a 
 house should not set a better example to Christians, by 
 living more simply.* But all things in their time. When 
 the time comes for general reaction against the burdensome 
 and immoral splendors of modern life, such as are de 
 scribed in Lothair, the Jews will not be the last to adopt 
 a style of elegant and rational simplicity .- 
 
 * " Not far from Ferney one of the Kothschilds has his magnificent pal 
 ace, in sight of the lake and Mont Blanc. This chateau, and that of the 
 king of Prussia at Babelsberg, are the finest that I have yet seen in Europe : 
 yet the banker s is more costly and imperial than the king s, without, how 
 ever, the least dash of vulgar extravagance in its splendor. I was assured 
 that the interior is in keeping with the charming grounds ; and a lady who 
 was a frequent guest there told me that crowned heads were sometimes at 
 the table, and the banquet was as stately as the company, so much so that 
 the different courses were served by different bands of servants, each band 
 with its own dress. 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. . 307 
 
 Spain, wonderful to relate, joins the nations in restoring 
 to the Jews the rights of man, of which she despoiled them 
 four centuries ago. The Israelites of the world are now 
 joining in a dollar subscription to build in Madrid a tem 
 ple, worthy by its magnitude and splendor to commemorate 
 the abrogation of the edict of 1492, which silenced Hebrew 
 worship throughout Spain, and dismantled every synagogue. 
 Within these few weeks Sweden has swept from her law 
 books every remaining statute which made a distinction 
 between Jews and Christians ; and now, except in Russia 
 and the Papal States, there is, I believe, no part of Europe 
 where an Israelite has not the essential rights of a citizen, 
 so far as they are enjoyed by the rest of the people. 
 
 If any one desires to revive his detestation of caste, the 
 oppression of class by class, of color by color, of race by 
 race, let him mark in the history of this people how uni 
 formly they rise and expand and ennoble when the stigma 
 is removed and the repressive laws are abolished. Always 
 complying with the fundamental conditions of prosperous 
 existence, that is, being always as a people chaste, temper 
 ate, industrious, and frugal, they have only needed a fair 
 chance to develop more shining qualities. Americans need 
 not recur to history to learn this. We need only to walk 
 down Broadway as far as Castle Garden (where all the his 
 tories of all the nations come to a focus and show their net 
 results), and compare Israelites fresh from the countries 
 where they have been oppressed and despised for many 
 centuries with Israelites who have lived in the United 
 States for one or two generations. America can boast no 
 better citizens, nor more refined circles, than the good 
 Jewish families of New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Phila 
 delphia. 
 
 Not that the repression of ages can be overcome in a few 
 
 " I got a different impression of another branch of the Rothschild family 
 from travelling awhile with some of them in Switzerland, and having con 
 siderable conversation with the ladies. They were accomplished, elegant, 
 and unpretending, with no outward mark of station but attendant servants; 
 and I was not a little surprised and instructed to find that the courtly 
 mother was at once so zealous a daughter of Israel as to change her plans 
 of journeying in order to keep some of the great days of the synagogue, 
 and at the same time so much of a liberal as to delight greatly in the 
 writings of Theodore Parker." Rev. Samuel Osgood, in New York Evening 
 Post. 
 
308 * TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 years. We must expect that many Jews will long continue 
 to exhibit unpleasing traits peculiar to themselves ; and in 
 some instances we shall observe that those traits, subdued 
 in a parent, will reappear in his children. We have a highly 
 interesting example in the author of Lothair. The elder 
 Disraeli, though descended from a line of moneyed men, 
 was curiously devoid of the commercial spirit, caring for 
 nothing but his books and his collections of literary curios 
 ities, a guileless, unaspiring student. His gifted son 
 revels in the external. After fifty years of familiarity with 
 the sumptuous life of very rich people, he writes of jewels 
 in the manner of a dealer, and of nobles in the spirit of a 
 footman. 
 
 One of the happy effects of light and liberty upon a reli 
 gious body is to divide it. It is only people who do not 
 think at all that value themselves upon thinking alike. 
 Black night is uniform : daylight shows a thousand hues. 
 Ignorance is a unit : knowledge is manifold. As long as 
 the Jews were persecuted, they clung to ancient usage and 
 doctrine with thoughtless tenacity ; their whole strength 
 being employed in the mere clutch. But when the repres 
 sive and restrictive laws were relaxed, the mind of the Jews 
 resumed its office ; divisions arose among them ; and the 
 world began to hear of the Orthodox and the Reformed. 
 Women, for example, are profoundly honored by the men 
 of Israel, as they are by all the chaste races (and by no 
 others) ; yet they retained in their morning service that 
 in suiting " thanksgiving : " Blessed art thou, Lord our 
 God, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a 
 heathen ; who hast not made me a slave ; who hast not 
 made me a WOMAN ! " While the men were uttering these 
 offensive words, the women were required to accept their 
 hard destiny by thanking God for having "made them ac 
 cording to his will," and imploring him to deliver them from 
 " impudent faces," " a bad man," " an evil eye," " an op 
 pressive lawsuit," " an implacable opponent," and other 
 evils. All this had become unsuitable, but it was retained. 
 Then, in ancient times when almanacs were not, the festi 
 vals (all -regulated by the moon) were required to be kept 
 for two days, instead of one, lest the time of the new moon 
 should not have been exactly ascertained. This inconven- 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 309 
 
 lent custom was maintained in rigor, although the moment 
 of the- birth of the new moon was known to every family. 
 In Palestine the eating of shell-fish and pork was forbidden, 
 because in that country those articles were thought to 
 induce leprosy ; and so in New York and London not a Jew 
 would eat an oyster or a sausage. For similar reasons, 
 minute directions were given by the ancient lawgivers re 
 specting the mode of killing animals, all of which were, 
 doubtless, necessary or humane at the time ; and down to 
 a recent period every Jewish community had its butcher, 
 and no man would kill a chicken except in the authorized 
 way. The service of four hours on the Sabbath was much 
 too long ; but on high days the pious Israelites were engaged 
 in public worship for eight hours without a pause. Verita 
 ble rams horns were blown in the temple \ and every Jew 
 who built a house left some visible part of it unfinished, to 
 denote that the Temple was still in ruins. All life was 
 overlaid with minute observances, and religion was to many 
 families almost as much a burden as a solace. 
 
 In one of the stories published in " Friday Evening," 
 there is a scene which illustrates the ruthless tyranny of 
 ancient custom when it has acquired the sanction of re 
 ligion. A poor family of Jews had just seated themselves 
 at the table to enjoy the Sabbath dinner, for which the 
 father, in the midst of cruel misfortunes, had ventured to 
 provide a fine, fat goose. The eagerly expected moment 
 arrives ; the children gaze breathless as the majestic bird 
 is placed upon the table ; and the happy father, with 
 beaming countenance, begins to use the carving-knife. 
 
 " The goose was at length completely carved, and still 
 rested in delicious morsels on the plate before him, when, 
 suddenly, little Schimmele cried out : Look, look, there is 
 a nail driven in the goose ! 
 
 " Where 1 ? where V demanded at the same time both 
 father and mother. The child pointed to the place, and 
 there, indeed, the nail was revealed. 
 
 " The knife dropped quickly from our Anschel s hand, 
 who stood transfixed, his face paler than the cloth before 
 him on the table. Esther at once removed the bird, and 
 ordered Schimmele to hasten to the Rabbi s house, and in 
 quire of him if it were unclean or not. The boy seized the 
 
310 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 dish, covered it with a napkin, and staggered away under 
 his tempting load as fast as legs could bear him. 
 
 "Meanwhile, gloomy and melancholy silence reigned 
 throughout the house. The children gazed on, with an 
 expression of disappointment and dismay. Anschel lowered 
 his eyes, whilst Esther sat immovably in her seat without 
 uttering a word. 
 
 " A few minutes afterwards Schimmele returned, but 
 his countenance foreboded no good; tears were in his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Well 1 demanded Esther, as he stood irresolutely on 
 the threshold. 
 
 " The goose the goose is unclean, replied the boy, 
 after a desperate effort, sobbing." 
 
 It was all over with the Sabbath banquet ! No one 
 thought of eating a morsel of the goose. 
 
 I have before me a curious narrative of a young Jewish 
 lady in Southern Russia, venturing to carry a parasol in 
 the streets on the Sabbath. Her mother, reproached by 
 the stricter Israelites for allowing her daughter thus to 
 transgress traditional law, forbade the young lady ever 
 again on the sacred day to interpose a human invention 
 between her fair countenance and the sun s rays. The 
 daughter, offended, refused to go out at all on the Sabbath, 
 and after four months the mother relented, saying : " I am 
 not so strict as my mother is, and you will not be so strict 
 as I am. You may, therefore, just as well begin now to 
 practise your laxer principles ; it is of no use trying to 
 make you what I am myself." The grandmother, in fact, 
 was a pilgrim in the Holy Land, whither she had gone to 
 end her days ; the mother was merely a good orthodox 
 Jewess ; the daughter was willing to carry a parasol on 
 Saturday ! 
 
 The recent movement among our Israelitish brethren to 
 ward Reform is merely the revolt of emancipated intelli 
 gence against the rites, usages, and doctrines which had 
 become unsuitable and obstructive. It is a reassertion of 
 the supreme authority of human reason. The reformers, 
 while clinging with the tenacity of their race to the two 
 essentials, God and the Sabbath, demand and concede 
 in all minor matters perfect liberty ! Nor do they adhere 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 311 
 
 to the weekly day of rest so much because it is commanded, 
 as because it is be"st. The most advanced statement of the 
 reformed ideas is a little work published a few weeks ago, 
 " What is Judaism 1 " by Rev. Rafael D. C. Lewin of New 
 York. Mr. Lewin, in discoursing upon the laws and rites 
 ordained .by Moses, asserts that they are obligatory only so 
 long as they answer the end intended. " As soon," he re 
 marks, " as reason has decided that the time for their ob 
 servance has passed, that they no longer effect their purpose, 
 that according to the age in which we live the religious 
 Idea, if requiring an outer covering at all, needs one of 
 different materials, then the observance of them has forever 
 passed, and a continuance of them is but a violation of 
 those grand eternal principles which constitute pure Juda 
 ism." 
 
 Sacrifices, according to this bold writer, were permitted 
 only in condescension to the barbarism of primitive tribes, 
 and he ventures upon the tremendous audacity of saying, 
 that even the venerated rite of circumcision must give way 
 before advancing intelligence ! He evidently regards it as 
 the merest relic of barbarism, and speaks of the coming 
 abrogation of all such usages as " a glorious event." Again 
 and again he holds language like this : " Judaism is re 
 ligion, and religion is life, spirit ; it is neither letter nor 
 law. The Bible is the word of God only when it is con 
 strued from its spiritual signification. There is nothing 
 supernatural about the Bible. It is not a revelation of 
 God s will imparted to any certain man under mysterious 
 circumstances, nor is it a direct communication from God 
 to man. It is a book, and only a book ; a book written by 
 mortal hands, a book containing ideas, sentiments, and 
 doctrines emanating from the brain of man." But, he 
 adds, although the Bible is man s work, wherever in it the 
 true spirit of religion is expressed, there, but only there, is 
 it "the true inspired word of God." 
 
 Few of our Israelitish brethren are yet prepared to receive 
 such advanced heresy as this. Perhaps one third of all the 
 Jews in the United States are still orthodox ; another third 
 neglect religion except on the greatest days of the religious 
 year, and are indifferent on the disputed questions ; another 
 third are in various stages of Reform, a few even going be- 
 
312 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 yond Mr. Lewin. A very small number, both in Germany 
 and America, are prepared, for reasons of convenience, to 
 adopt the first day of the week instead of their Sabbath. 
 They say truly that the essential thing is to rescue a day 
 from business for the higher interests of man ; and, that 
 great boon being secured, the only other point of importance 
 is, that we should all have the same day. This idea, how 
 ever, is held in aversion by a vast majority of the Jewish 
 people, and it will be many years in making its way to 
 general acceptance. Meanwhile they employ our Sunday 
 in holding their religious schools and in transacting the 
 business of synagogue and charity. 
 
 The difference of opinion between the Orthodox and the 
 Reformed does not create visible division among them, be 
 cause the Jews are congregationalists. Each synagogue is 
 independent in all respects. There is no ecclesiastical body 
 nor Chief Rabbi in the United States, to interfere in the 
 concerns, to criticise the ritual, or censure the belief of any 
 congregation. If a congregation is in need of a minister, a 
 preacher, a reader, a sexton, it simply advertises for one, 
 stating the salary to be given, and usually whether the 
 congregation is Orthodox or Reformed. In almost any of 
 our Jewish papers we can find a long string of advertise 
 ments like the following : 
 
 WANTED. The Cong. Anske Chesed, of this city, desire to engage a 
 minister for the term of five years from August next, at the yearly 
 salary of three thousand dollars. He is expected to deliver sermons in 
 German, and to superintend the congregational school. 
 Applications and testimonials to be handed in before the 8th of April next. 
 
 THE Congregation Anske Chesed, of Vicksburg, Miss., desire to engage a 
 gentleman to take charge of their new temple. It is requisite that 
 he he able to lecture in the English as well as in the German language, 
 and perform the functions of Chazan, leader and instructor of a choir. 
 A salary of $ 3,000 per annum will be paid. 
 
 Competent men are invited to correspond with the undersigned on the . 
 subject, and enclose references and testimonials. 
 
 TO CONGREGATIONS. A gentleman, who has for a number of years 
 filled the position of Chazan, Baal Korah, and teacher of Hebrew and 
 German in a rather large congregation, but on account of religious princi 
 ples has given up his situation, is anxious to meet with a similar position 
 in an Orthodox congregation, in either city or country. He is a well- 
 qualified Shochet and practical Mohel,* and, though not a professional 
 preacher, able to lecture in both German and English languages. 
 The best of references can be given. 
 
 * Circtimciser. 
 
OUR ISRAELITISH BRETHREN. 313 
 
 WANTED. A CHAZAN and SHOCHET (Orthodox) by Congregation 
 K. Keneseih Israel, of Richmond, Va., within sixty days from date. 
 Salary, $ 1,000. Applicants must have the best of recommendations, and 
 mu.st be able to deliver a discourse. No travelling expenses allowed. 
 
 WANTED. A SHOCHET and CHAZAN (Orthodox) by the Con 
 gregation Beth Ee, of Buffalo, N. Y. Election to take place Sunday 
 in Chalamood Pesach (April). Applicants must have the best of recom 
 mendations. No travelling expenses allowed. 
 
 In every congregation there is, of course, a party inclined 
 to reform, and a party of sticklers for " the good old ways 
 of our fathers." The occasional election of a minister fur 
 nishes an opportunity for measuring the strength of the 
 two ; and each member has always the resource of joining 
 another congregation more in accord with his own disposi 
 tion. Nor can there be very bitter contentions in a reli 
 gious body that never thinks of winning proselytes, and has 
 only a faint and vague belief in retribution beyond the 
 grave. Among the thirty-tw r o congregations in New York, 
 the two most conspicuous represent the extremes of Ortho 
 doxy and Reform, but there appears to be good-will between 
 them, and they unite in the support of charitable institu 
 tions. 
 
 The most costly and picturesque edifice in the Fifth 
 Avenue, New York, if we except the unfinished Roman 
 Catholic cathedral, is the new Temple Immanuel, belonging 
 to a reformed congregation. The interior, which is bright 
 with gilding and many-hued fresco, is arranged so much 
 like one of our churches that no one would suspect its 
 Oriental character. Men and women sit together; the 
 men are uncovered and wear no scarf ; there is an organ ; 
 the Saturday morning service lasts but two hours ; some 
 of the prayers are read in English, others in German, others 
 in Hebrew ; the scroll of the Law is solemnly taken from 
 the ark, laid upon the desk and a portion read, but it is 
 not elevated ; and there is always a sermon, one week by 
 the minister, Dr. Adler, in German, and the next, by k the 
 English preacher, Dr. Gutheim, in English. The service, 
 in general, is extremely like that of the Episcopal church 
 when the prayers are intoned and the psalms and responses 
 are chanted. A stranger coming in by chance, and seeing 
 the reader, the minister, and the English preacher dressed 
 in ample gowns of black silk and wearing university caps, 
 14 
 
314 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 might suppose he had strayed into an Episcopal church 
 where three professors from Oxford were conducting the 
 service in a style recently introduced in England, but not 
 yet known in America. 
 
 The Sunday school of this spacious and magnificent 
 temple exhibits two novelties worthy of consideration : 
 1. Every class has its own room; 2. The teachers oxepctid 
 at the rate of five dollars for each Sunday. Instead, there 
 fore, of the Sunday school presenting a scene of chaos with 
 Babel accompaniment, it is as quiet, efficient, and orderly 
 as a well-arranged week-day school. At ten, the pupils 
 assemble in a large room in the basement of the temple. 
 The stroke of a bell calls them to order ; one of the pupils 
 perhaps a little girl is called to the platform, and the 
 school rises and remains standing, while she says a very 
 short prayer ; all responding with a loud AMEN ! When 
 the school is seated again, another child is invited to the 
 piano, and, as she plays a lively march, the classes, each in 
 its turn, march to their rooms, where they remain two 
 hours under instruction ; at noon they march back to the 
 music of the piano, into the large apartment, where another 
 little prayer is said by one of the children, a hymn is sung, 
 and the school is dismissed. 
 
 To an outside barbarian it is sorrowful to see such bright 
 young intelligences fed upon lists of ancient kings, Hebrew 
 roots, and innutritions catechism ; but we have to steel 
 ourselves against emotions of that kind whenever we look 
 upon such a gathering. The world is full of minds whose 
 growth was early arrested by mere lack of nutrition. 
 
 In all New York there is no .ecclesiastical establishment 
 more vigorously alive than this Temple Immanuel. Free 
 from debt, and even possessing a handsome surplus in the 
 form of unsold pews, it expends annually about forty thou 
 sand dollars in salaries, repairs, and insurance, and gives 
 away an average of thirty thousand dollars in charity. On 
 one occasion recently it raised sixteen thousand dollars for 
 a hospital, to which patients of all religions or of none are 
 equally welcome. In this congregation, as in all others, 
 there are societies for ministering to the sick, burying the 
 dead, assisting the poor, and aiding oppressed Israelites in 
 other lands. The ancient festivals are not neglected ; but 
 
OUR ISRAELITTSH BRETHREN. 315 
 
 if you converse much with the fathers and mothers, you 
 will suspect that the day of the year which really interests 
 and kindles the people most is the one on which, in the 
 presence of the greatest congregation of the year, the 
 children are confirmed. 
 
 The Jews are happy in the United States. There are 
 now two hundred congregations of them here, half of whom 
 have arrived within the last twelve years. They are good 
 citizens, firmly attached to those liberal principles to which 
 they owe their deliverance from degrading and oppressive 
 laws, and are rising in the esteem of the people among 
 whom they dwell. Their attachment to the system of 
 universal education is hereditary ; it dates back three 
 thousand years; and though their religious feelings are 
 wounded by the opening exercises of many public schools, 
 they would not for that reason destroy them. They prefer 
 rather to rally warmly to their support, trusting to the 
 magnanimity and growing good sense of their fellow-citizens 
 to spare their children, at length, the pain of taking part 
 in exercises which they regard as idolatrous. For this they 
 are willing to wait. They hope, also, to see the day when 
 the thanksgiving proclamations of governors and presidents 
 will be so worded that they, too, can comply with them ; 
 though of late they have viewed with needless alarm the 
 attempts, on the part of a few well-intentioned persons, to 
 break the silence of the Constitution respecting religion. 
 
 Our Israelitish brethren object, and with reason, to a 
 thoughtless habit of some reporters in speaking of a person 
 arrested for an infamous crime as " a Jew." They say that, 
 before the law, Jews are citizens merely ; the word Jew 
 being now descriptive, not of their nationality, but of their 
 religion. Why not, they ask, report that Patrick O Mul- 
 ligan, a Roman Catholic, was arrested for drunkenness, or 
 John Smith, a Presbyterian, was tried for forgery ] 
 
 But nothing irritates this good-tempered people so much 
 as the societies maintained for the purpose of converting 
 them to the faith which for so many centuries made their 
 lives shameful and bitter. Amiable as they are, they really 
 resent this effort with some warmth. They point with 
 derision to the fact that the society in London expends 
 fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum in converting a 
 
316 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 dozen or two poverty-stricken wretches, and sending abroad, 
 on highly interesting tours, a few plausible renegades. The 
 very organ of this society confesses that poor Jews in Lon 
 don are morally superior to poor Christians. " As to their 
 moral qualities," says the editor of Jewish Intelligence, in 
 the number for November, 1862, "the evidence seems to 
 show that the lower class of Jews are decidedly superior to 
 the same class among ourselves. They are far less given 
 to drinking ; their religious customs enforce a certain 
 amount of cleanliness, both personal and in their dwellings; 
 and two families are never found inhabiting the same 
 apartment ! " We can hardly be surprised at the Jews for 
 regarding the maintenance of such societies as a standing 
 menace and insult. Fifty thousand pounds a year, drawn 
 from the limited benevolence fund of Christendom, is too 
 much to waste upon such missionaries as write the Deports 
 in the magazine of the London Society for converting the 
 Jews. 
 
 Our Israelitish brethren in the United States have their 
 own battle to fight. It is substantially the same as ours. 
 They, too, have to deal with overwhelming masses of igno 
 rance and poverty, just able to get across the ocean, and 
 arriving helpless at Castle Garden. They, too, have to 
 save morality, decency, civilization, while the old bondage 
 of doctrine and habit is gradually loosened. In this strug 
 gle Jews and Christians should be allies ; and allies are 
 equals. 
 
 v> 
 
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON 
 BONAPARTE.* 
 
 ~\ yTR, BENJAMIN DISRAELI won many friends, and 
 IVI softened the animosity of some enemies, by a sen 
 tence in the Preface to his edition of his father s writings : 
 " My father was wont to say, that the best monument to an 
 author was a good edition of his works ; it is my purpose 
 that he should possess this memorial." The pious inten 
 tion was worthily executed, and the edition will remain, as 
 long as men care for curious odds and ends of knowledge, 
 a monument both to father and son. 
 
 The Bonapartes owed such a tribute to the memory of 
 the head of their family ; for, however the account may 
 finally stand between Napoleon Bonaparte and mankind, no 
 one can deny that to him his relations owe the whole of 
 their importance in the world. He was ever mindful of 
 what is due to kindred; he was fatally generous to his 
 family ; and it was not for them to regard his fame merely 
 as part of their inheritance, to be expended or husbanded 
 according to their convenience or caprice. Moreover, a 
 good and complete edition of the writings of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte who was at least the consummate specimen 
 of his kind of man, and as such worthy of attentive study 
 would have been a boon so precious and interesting, that 
 it would have atoned for much which his present repre 
 sentatives have done amiss. The work would have been 
 dearly purchased, but it would have remained a solid addi 
 tion to our means of knowing one another. 
 
 In the issue of costly works there is usually, in these 
 times, a publisher and an editor ; and few literary workmen 
 
 * Correspondance de Napoleon ler publi^e par Ordre de I Empereur 
 Napoteon III. Paris. 1858-1869. 
 
318 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 have been so blessed in their career as not to know what it 
 is to have, in the back office, veiled from the general view, 
 a timid or an embarrassed publisher, who shrinks from lib 
 eral expenditure and trembles when one subscriber writes a 
 fault-finding letter. The editor of this collection is Prince 
 Jerome, who was aided by a corps of assistants. These 
 gentlemen appear to have done their work with fidelity, 
 giving the text with exactness, and avoiding all elucidation 
 except such as they alone possessed the means of affording. 
 The copy before us, which was sent for in the ordinary way, 
 contains a large number of minute corrections with the pen, 
 and there are many other indications, too trifling for men 
 tion, tending to show that the editors have done their duty 
 as well as they were permitted to do it. 
 
 But they had a publisher, that "half-scared literary 
 man," who is called Napoleon III. He appears to have 
 bothered the zealous but irresponsible editors extremely. 
 They had no throne to lose, no necks in danger of the 
 guillotine. The issue of the letters, which was begun in 
 1858, came to an abrupt conclusion in 1869, with the pub 
 lication of volume twenty-eighth, which is only half as thick 
 as the others. The twenty-seventh volume fell short a 
 hundred and twenty pages, but the twenty-eighth is so thin 
 as to destroy the uniformity of the set, and gives a rather 
 ridiculous dwindling appearance to it, not without signifi 
 cance to the minds of the Irreconcilables. The last utter 
 ance of Napoleon given in this collection is the famous 
 Protest, dated August 4, 1815, written on board the Bel- 
 lerophon, against his detention as a captive by the British 
 government. But we learn from a "Report to the Em 
 peror," prefixed to volume twentieth, that as late as 1867 
 Prince Jerome expected and intended to include the letters 
 and documents dictated at St. Helena. He had calculated 
 that the productions of the Emperor in exile "would form 
 only three or four volumes," which would be given to the 
 world by the end of the year 1869. But they did not 
 appear. After a pause of some months, a New Series is 
 announced, to consist only of the letters written in exile, 
 and these volumes are now issuing.* We shall not wait for 
 them, however ; for, besides the fact that we do not need 
 more material for our purpose, there is no knowing what 
 * June, 1S70. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 319 
 
 other change of plan may occur in the councils of a family 
 now more than " half-scared." 
 
 The publisher has unmercifully scrimped the editors in 
 point of expenditure ; for not .only is the paper cheap and 
 fluffy, but the publication has been continually retarded by 
 want of money. " If," explains Prince Jerome, " our task 
 has not proceeded more rapidly, it is because we believed 
 it our duty to institute researches in the archives of Ger 
 many, England, Spain, Italy, Portugal. These researches, 
 little as they have cost, have so lessened the fund at our 
 disposal, that we have found it out of our power to bear 
 the expense of printing a greater number of volumes with 
 out going beyond our allowance The time afforded 
 
 us by the slenderness of our resources we have turned to 
 account in examining documents beyond the period reached 
 in the volumes given to the printer, thus diminishing our 
 general expenditures." One toilet the less in a week for 
 Eugenie would Have relieved the editor s embarrassment. 
 
 In all these volumes, though they average more than six 
 hundred pages each, and contain twenty-two thousand and 
 sixty-seven letters and documents, there is revealed no fact 
 so remarkable as the one intimated in the passage just 
 quoted, namely, that the letters of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
 published by his family half a century after his death, in 
 twenty-eight volumes, sold at seven francs a volume, did 
 not pay expenses ! Little as our grandfathers, who saw him 
 at the summit of his power, the terror of the world and 
 the delirium of France, may have believed in the duration 
 of his throne, few among them would have hazarded the 
 prediction that the mere curiosity of the world w r ith regard 
 to him would have so nearly died. out in fifty years. These 
 volumes, whatever their defects and omissions may be, do 
 really admit the reader behind the scenes of the most start 
 ling, rapid, and tremendous melodrama ever played with 
 real fire and real cannon, real kings and real emperors 
 daughters ; and yet they do not sell, and we find the cus 
 todians of some of our most important libraries hesitating 
 whether it is worth while to add them to their store. This 
 is the more strange from the evident intention of the per 
 sons interested to publish the work on strict business prin 
 ciples. It is cheaply edited j it is sold at a fair booksellers 
 
320 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 price ; and the public are twice notified in each volume that 
 the rights of translation and of republication are reserved, 
 or that every one infringing will be prosecuted. Carlyle 
 has lived to see his prediction of forty years ago fulfilled in 
 good part : " The time may come when Napoleon himself 
 will be better known for his laws than for his battles, and 
 the victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the 
 opening of the first Mechanics Institute." This was a bold 
 remark to utter in 1829, under the very nose of Wellington. 
 How commonplace it seems in 1870 ! The prophecy would 
 have been already fulfilled to the letter, if it had read 
 thus : " The time may come when Napoleon himself will be 
 more esteemed for his laws than for his battles, and the 
 victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the found 
 ing of the first Working-men s Protective Union." 
 
 There is, very naturally, a distrust of this publication in 
 France. Frenchmen know very well who the publisher in 
 the back office is ; what he is ; what his motive was in issu 
 ing the work ; and whether he would be likely to give the 
 world a sight of a document calculated to weaken the spell 
 of Napoleon s name in France. People of our race, we 
 think, need not share this distrust : for the family con 
 cerned in publishing the correspondence of Napoleon, much 
 as they might wish and intend to make his fame subservi 
 ent to their interests, would not know how to present him 
 in the most favorable light to the outside world. They 
 would be as likely to suppress passages honorable to him as 
 passages dishonorable. They would be likely to glory in 
 some letters that would offend an American, English, or 
 German reader. When a whole family have been eating 
 garlic, they may gather after dinner about the head of the 
 house, and the children may climb into his lap, and hug 
 him close around the neck, and none of them will be able 
 to discover anything wrong in his breath. To us these 
 volumes exhibit the man, Napoleon Bonaparte. We may 
 believe Prince Jerome when he says : " Let your Majesty 
 be pleased to remark to what a proof we submit the mem 
 ory of Napoleon I. We place in the clearest light all the 
 acts of his government ; we reveal the secret of his inmost 
 
 thoughts We have faith in the public reason." 
 
 Doubtless the editor felt himself justified in commending 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 321 
 
 the work to "the judgment of enlightened men" as a 
 " loyal publication." 
 
 Certainly there is enough of detail and minutiae to satisfy 
 the most ravenous collector. Letter No. 8089, addressed 
 to Berthier, is to this effect : "My cousin, the words of my 
 writing which you cannot make out are bataillon d elite 
 suisse." No. 20093, to the Empress Marie Louise, is : 
 " Madame and dear Friend, I have received the letter in 
 which you say that you received the Archchancellor in bed. 
 It is my desire that, in no circumstances and under no pre 
 text, you receive any one in bed, whosoever he may be. It 
 is not permitted to a woman under thirty." No. 21591, 
 written at Elba, to an officer of the household : "I think it 
 will be necessary for all the books asked for Leghorn to be 
 rebound. Order that, if possible, an N shall be put upon 
 each." There are hundreds of notes as brief and trivial as 
 these, as well as a vast number of the answers scrawled upon 
 the notes of ministers submitting minor questions of admin 
 istration to the master. Napoleon Bonaparte is within the 
 covers of these volumes, and he can be extracted from them 
 by those who will take the trouble. 
 
 Upon turning over the first volume, which begins with 
 the siege of Toulon and includes the conquest of Italy, 
 we are struck at once with the maturity of mind and char 
 acter exhibited by the artillery officer of twenty-four. He 
 seems to have been completely formed before he had held 
 a command. He never equalled, as Emperor, the exploits 
 of the young general. We see in his earliest letters every 
 trait that distinguished him afterwards, and we see him 
 also employing the methods and devices which marked his 
 policy when he gave laws to a continent. These first let 
 ters give the impression that at twenty-four he could have 
 fought Austerlitz as well as he did at thirty-five, and Wa 
 terloo better than at forty-six. The young man is betrayed, 
 here and there, by a tendency to moralize, and a habit of 
 uttering neat generalities, such as : " It is artillery that 
 takes places, infantry can only help " ; or, " Three 
 fourths of men occupy themselves with necessary things 
 only when they feel the need of them" ; or, " In artillery, 
 the most difficult operation is the formation of a siege- 
 train." But, generally speaking, the mature Napoleon is 
 14* u 
 
322 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 exhibited, and the whole of his career is foreshadowed in 
 the few letters relating to his capture of Toulon in 1793. 
 We see in them, what we see in all his military achieve 
 ments, first, that the sure way of doing the thing was 
 revealed to him at a glance ; that that sure way was so 
 simple that, when pointed out, every man not an absolute 
 fool saw it as plainly as he did, and wondered why no one 
 had thought of it before ; that then he executed his plan 
 with the precision of mathematics ; and, finally, that he 
 knew how to relate what he had done so as to intoxicate 
 Frenchmen, and concentrate their admiration on himself. 
 He had no sooner surveyed the situation at Toulon, than 
 he perceived a point from which a few pieces of cannon 
 could force the English fleet from the roads. But there 
 were no cannon at command. Then he writes clear, mas 
 terly letters to the government, begging cannon. After 
 two months of letter- writ ing and intense effort in camp, the 
 cannon are placed in position, and all falls out exactly as 
 the young officer had predicted. 
 
 From that time, by the mere natural ascendency of ge 
 nius over ordinary mortals, Napoleon Bonaparte was the 
 ruling mind of the French Republic. Sitting quietly at 
 his desk in a government office in Paris, he evidently pro 
 vided the Committee of Public Safety with whatever they 
 had of continental policy and administrative skill. He 
 suggested their plans ; he wrote their important letters ; 
 he gave away some of their good places. Already he had 
 acquired the habit of surveying the whole scene of Euro 
 pean politics, and of seeking vulnerable points in the ene 
 mies line at a great distance from the actual seat of war. 
 Just as the Emperor fought England in Spain and Russia, 
 so now the officer of artillery proposed to make a diversion 
 in favor of beleaguered France by going to Constantinople 
 and rousing Turkey to arms against allied Russia and Aus 
 tria. Before he had suppressed the riots in Paris in 1795, 
 before he had held an independent command of any kind, 
 before his name was generally known in France, he could 
 write to his brother Joseph : " I am attached at this mo 
 ment to the Topographical Bureau of the Committee of 
 
 Public Safety If I ask it, I shall be despatched to 
 
 Turkey as General of Artillery, sent by the government to 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 323 
 
 organize the artillery of the Grand Seigneur, with a hand 
 some allowance and a very nattering title of envoy. I shall 
 name you consul, and Villeneuve engineer, to go with me." 
 And in the same note, he tells his brother that he is 
 charged by the committee with the direction of the armies 
 and the formation of plans of campaign. Who governs a 
 country in time of war, if not he who suggests its foreign 
 policy and devises its plans of campaign ? 
 
 These letters, written before his fame existed, show him. 
 to us in a light wholly amiable and admirable. He is in 
 love with Josephine, and tells Joseph that it is not impossi 
 ble " the folly may seize him to marry," and asks his broth 
 er s advice. The following passage, written to Joseph in 
 September, 1795, a month before the " whiff of grapeshot " 
 from General Bonaparte s field guns terminated the Revolu 
 tion, is a pleasing specimen of his family epistles of the 
 time. He is looking out for a good post for Joseph : " I 
 shall remain in Paris specially for your affair. You ought 
 not, whatever happens, to fear for me. I have for friends 
 all the people of worth, of whatever party or opinion they 
 may be. Marietta " (conservative member of the Com 
 mittee of Safety) " is extremely zealous for me ; you know 
 his opinion. Doulcet " (member of the convention of mod 
 erate politics) "I am closely allied with. You know my 
 other friends of opposite views. . . . . I am content with 
 (brother) Louis. He fulfils my hope, and the expectation 
 I had formed of him. He is a good fellow ; but, at the 
 same time, one after my own heart ; warmth, intelligence, 
 health, talent, straightforwardness, good-nature, all are 
 united in him. You know, my dear brother, that I live 
 only by the pleasure I give my relations. If my hopes are 
 seconded by that good fortune which never abandons me in 
 my enterprises, I shall be able to make you happy, and fulfil 
 
 your desires To-morrow I shall have three horses, 
 
 which will permit me to ride a little in a cab, and enable 
 me to attend to all my affairs. Adieu, my dear fellow ; 
 amuse yourself ; all goes well ; be gay. Think of my affair, 
 for I long to have a house of my own." 
 
 All his letters to Joseph at this happy, hopeful time are 
 in the same tone. He appears in them the virtuous young 
 man, distinguished in his profession, honestly in love, and 
 
324 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 looking forward to the possession of a home, devoted to his 
 brothers and sisters, and striving to benefit them, writing 
 to Joseph his oldest brother every day, the life, stay, and 
 boast of his family. He was a good Republican, too, 
 although of the more conservative wing. " The govern 
 ment," he writes to Joseph, September 12, 1795, "is to be 
 organized at once ; a tranquil day dawns upon the destinies 
 of France. There is a primary assembly which has asked for 
 a king. That has provoked laughter." Doubtless he joined 
 in the laughter ; for, so far as we can judge from his letters, 
 he heartily accepted the Revolution, and valued himself 
 upon his political orthodoxy. " Passions are inflamed," he 
 wrote a few days after ; " the moment appears critical ; but 
 the genius of liberty never .abandons its defenders. All our 
 armies triumph." . 
 
 When next he wrote to the head of the family, it was to 
 announce to him the event which put him directly upon 
 the road to his great fortune, the dispersion of the mob 
 at the Tuileries, October 6, 1795. "At length," he began, 
 " all is finished ; my firtjt thought is to give you the news." 
 The brief note ends : " We have disarmed the sections, and 
 all is calm. As usual, I have not a scratch." Five months 
 after, we find him on the same day announcing his marriage 
 to the Directory, and setting off to take command of the 
 French army in the native land of his ancestors, Italy. 
 
 Persons who remain during long periods of time the idols 
 of a multitude usually possess, along with other gifts, a 
 keen eye for effect, a histrionic talent which enables them, 
 in a pleasing and striking manner, to exhibit and exaggerate 
 their own good qualities. This wonderful being was not a 
 hypocrite : nor, at this part of his career, was he, in any 
 vulgar sense, an actor ; but he possessed naturally an acute 
 sense of the decorous and the becoming ; and now, on his 
 way to Italy, he gave a proof of it. The earliest letter of 
 his which we have seen in print is one written to his 
 mother, when he was a boy of sixteen ; and it is signed, 
 "Napoleone di Buonaparte." Just before" leaving Paris for 
 Italy he signed his marriage contract with Josephine, in the 
 presence of a notary, thus : " Napolione Buonaparte " ; and 
 his previous letters in this collection are all signed in the 
 Italian form, " Buonaparte." But now, being at Toulon 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 325 
 
 within a few miles of the beautiful land of his fathers, 
 which he was about to overrun and pillage, he appears to 
 have awakened to the impropriety of spoiling Italy while 
 bearing an Italian name. At Toulon, for the first time in 
 his public career, he spells his name " Bonaparte " ; a form 
 from which he never after departed. It* is significant, that 
 the very page which shows this new spelling contains the 
 proclamation offering fair Italy to the hunger and rapacity 
 of French troops : " Soldiers : You are naked, ill-fed. The 
 government owes you much, it can give you nothing. The 
 patience, the courage you have shown in the midst of these 
 rocks are admirable ; but they procure you no glory : no 
 lustre from them is reflected upon you. I desire to lead 
 you into the most fertile plains of the world. Wealthy 
 provinces, great cities, will be in your power. You will find 
 in them honor, glory, riches. Soldiers of Italy, will you be 
 wanting in courage or in constancy 1 " Certainly we must- 
 approve the taste of a man of Italian lineage in Frenchify 
 ing his name a little before issuing such a proclamation. 
 
 With regard to those Italian campaigns, to which the 
 first three volumes of this work are chiefly devoted, the 
 correspondence of the commanding general confirms what 
 military men have often remarked, that they were Napo 
 leon s greatest. The dash, the brilliancy, the rapidity of 
 his operations are less apparent when the mind is detained 
 by fifteen hundred pages of orders, letters, arid documents ; 
 but we see more clearly than ever what a master of his art 
 he was. In fifteen days after setting foot upon Italian soil 
 he had given the world assurance of a general. There was 
 then in Europe no general but himself, and nothing re 
 mained but for him to continue his method until the con 
 tinent was his own. A great artist is not apt to talk much 
 about the processes by which he produces his great effects, 
 and, accordingly, there are not many passages in these let 
 ters upon the art of winning victories. The reader can 
 see Napoleon winning them ; but it is only at long intervals 
 that we meet a sentence that betrays the master s method. 
 One such as this : " The enemy, in the Austrian manner, 
 will make three attacks ; by the Levante, by Novi, and by 
 Montonotte : refuse two of those attacks, and direct all 
 your forces upon the third." This is another : " In military 
 
326 TOPICS OF TI1E TIME. 
 
 operations, hours decide success and campaigns." This is 
 another : " One bad general is better than two good ones. 
 War, like government, is an affair of tact." And this 
 another: "If the English attack you, and you experience 
 vicissitudes, always bear in mind these three things : reunion 
 of forces, activity, and firm resolution to perish with 
 glory. These are the three great principles of the military 
 art which have rendered fortune favorable to me in all my 
 operations. Death is nothing ; but to live vanquished and 
 without glory is to die every day." In the spirit of this 
 last passage his Italian campaigns were conducted ; espe 
 cially when, after a long series of triumph*, his lines were 
 broken and his hold upon Italy endangered. The celerity 
 with which his scattered forces were reunited and hurled 
 upon the enemy, and the personal daring of the young 
 general, restored his fortunes before the news of his disaster 
 had crossed the Alps. For the benefit of young soldiers, 
 however, who may think that victories can be won by fol 
 lowing maxims, we must add one of Napoleon s own com 
 ments upon the general opposed to him in Italy : " He has 
 the audacity of fury, not that of genius." 
 
 It was in Italy that General Bonaparte exhibited his tal 
 ents and revealed his moral defects. We have seen that he 
 roused his ragged and hungry soldiers by appealing to their 
 vanity, appetite, and avarice. They took him at his word. 
 No sooner had he given them victory in the wealthy prov 
 inces of Italy, and possession of some of its rich towns, than 
 they proceeded to do precisely what he had invited them to 
 do. " The soldier without bread," he writes, a few da} S 
 after entering Italy, " yields to such excesses of fury as 
 
 make me blush to be a man I am going to make 
 
 some terrible examples. I shall restore order, or I shall 
 
 cease to command these brigands To-morrow we shoot 
 
 some soldiers and a corporal who stole vases from a church." 
 When next he addressed his soldiers, he began by recount 
 ing to them, that in fifteen days they had won six victories, 
 taken twenty-one flags and fifty-five cannons, conquered the 
 best part of Piedmont, captured fifteen thousand prisoners, 
 and killed or wounded ten thousand men ; but he ended by 
 saying : " I shall not permit brigands to soil our laurels. 
 .... Pillagers shall be shot without mercy ; several have 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 327 
 
 been already." And he assured the people of Italy, in the 
 same proclamation, that the French army had come only to 
 break their chains ; that the French were friends of every 
 people ; and that their property, their religion, and their 
 usages should be respected. " We make war as generous 
 enemies ; hostile only to the tyrants who abase you." 
 
 All of which signified that General Bonaparte meant to 
 have an army, instead of a horde of robbers, and that he 
 reserved to himself the right to plunder. 
 
 Probably no revelation of these volumes will more sur 
 prise the general reader than the prodigious extent of his 
 spoliation of the " property " of his countrymen in Italy ; 
 especially that portion of their property which the world 
 regards as sacred, and which really was and is most proper 
 to tnat beautiful land, pictures, statuary, and other 
 treasures of art. That the kingdoms, states, and cities of 
 conquered Italy should be laid under contribution and 
 compelled to disgorge, each its proportion of millions, was 
 to have been expected ; at least, might have been forgiven. 
 But the reader of the correspondence feels that in that 
 wholesale picture-stealing Bonaparte fell far below the nat 
 ural level of his character. It might have been pardoned 
 in a Massena, but it was infinitely beneath Napoleon Bona 
 parte, the man of intellect and breeding, whose ancestors 
 had contributed something to what constitutes the sole 
 glory of modern Italy, its art and literature. He knew 
 better ; for at Milan the young conqueror had written to an 
 astronomer of the university : " The sciences which honor 
 the human mind, the arts that embellish life and transmit 
 great deeds to posterity, ought to be especially honored by 
 free governments. All men of genius, all those who have 
 obtained an eminent rank in the republic of letters, are 
 Frenchmen, in whatever country they may have been born." 
 When these brave words were penned he had already sent 
 to Paris for a corps of artists to come and select the works 
 of art best worth stealing. 
 
 From the mass of letters relating to the systematic plun 
 der of Italy we select a few sentences showing how General 
 Bonaparte squeezed the Pope. We copy from the Armistice 
 of June 6, 1796, only premising that the Pope fared no 
 worse than his neighbors : " Art. 8. The Pope will deliver 
 
328 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 to the French Republic one hundred pictures, vases, or 
 statues, to be chosen by the commissioners who will be sent 
 to Rome ; among which will be comprised, for certain, the 
 bronze bust of Junius Brutus and the one in marble of Mar 
 cus Brutus, both from the Capitol ; and five hundred man 
 uscripts, at the choice of the commissioners. Art. 9. The 
 Pope will pay to the French Republic twenty-one millions 
 of francs, .... independent of the contributions which will 
 be raised in Bologna, Ferrara, and Faenza." This large sum 
 was to be all paid in three months. Nor did the conqueror 
 remain content with the hundred works of art demanded 
 in the Armistice. We find at the end of volume third of 
 the correspondence a catalogue, drawn up in form and 
 signed by the French commissioners, of the works of art 
 selected by them at Rome, and sent to Paris " in the year 
 VI. of the French Republic one and indivisible," which we 
 style 1 797. The list comprises about eight hundred objects ; 
 among which are six colossal statues and six groups of stat 
 uary. The rest are statues, busts, fragments, bronzes, 
 medallions, and vases. The readers of this interesting 
 catalogue may be excused for not comprehending what 
 such spoliation of Roman churches and galleries had in 
 common with delivering Italy from its tyrants. The ty 
 rants were squeezed and left ; it was the works of art from 
 which Italy was delivered. 
 
 At a later period of the negotiations we observe that the 
 insatiable conqueror demanded more of the precious manu 
 scripts of the Vatican than the number named in the Arti 
 cle. In recounting to the Directory the treasures extracted 
 from the Papal dominions he remarks : " The Papal com 
 missioners yielded with a good grace everything except the 
 manuscripts, which they were unwilling to give up ; and we 
 have had to reduce our demand from two or three thousand 
 to five hundred." His letter to the Directory (No. 685, 
 Vol. I. p. 431), in which he exults over the plunder of the 
 Pope, is more bandit-like than any other in the collection. 
 We learn from it that, besides the works of art already 
 mentioned, and besides retaining some of the Pope s best 
 provinces, he obtained from him in all thirty-four million 
 seven hundred thousand francs. He also informs the Di 
 rectory that he would have wrung from him a few millions 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 329 
 
 more, if he had not been interfered with by their commis 
 sioners. " I am consoled" he adds, " by the fact that what 
 we have got surpasses the terms of your instructions. * 
 
 Was there ever such a godsend to an unpopular govern 
 ment as this young general was to the Directory of 1796 1 
 Victory alone would have sufficed, but here was a general, 
 who, besides sending home the most thrilling bulletins, kept 
 consigning to a drained treasury whole wagon-trains of 
 wealth. " Twenty-four wagon-loads," he wrote from Bologna 
 in July, 1796, "of hemp and silk set out to-day for Nice. 
 .... I am getting together at Tortona all the silver plate 
 and jewels, which I shall send to Paris by Chambery. I 
 hope that convoy alone will be worth five or six millions. 
 I shall add as much in money." But what should he do 
 with the plunder of Rome ? " The statues can only be 
 transported by sea, and it would be imprudent to trust 
 them that way. We must box them up, then, and leave 
 them at Rome." 
 
 The Pope, we repeat, fared no worse than the other 
 princes of Italy. From Milan an amazing booty was sent 
 to Paris ; the first instalment being, as the General re 
 marked, " twenty superb pictures, chief of which is the 
 celebrated St. Jerome of Correggio, which has been sold, 
 they tell me, for two hundred thousand francs." Another 
 item again to translate from the General s joyous de 
 spatch was " two millions in jewelry and ingots, the pro 
 ceeds of different contributions." Other letters announce 
 to the Directory the coming of rare plants from the public 
 gardens of Italy, of a fine collection of serpents from a mu 
 seum, and other natural curiosities. He is so considerate 
 as to send them " a hundred of the finest carriage horses 
 of Lombardy," to replace "the ordinary horses that draw 
 your carriages." But enough of larceny, grand and petit. 
 Let us come to the volumes which show how kingdoms were 
 stolen, and how poor France was kept reeling drunk while 
 her life-blood was drained. 
 
 At St. Helena, in conversation with the companions of 
 his exile, Napoleon designated the moment when he first 
 felt the stirrings of lawless ambition. " It was not till after 
 Lodi," he said, " that I was struck with the possibility of 
 my becoming a decided actor on the scene of political events. 
 
330 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Then was enkindled the first spark of a lofty ambition." 
 Having a lively recollection of this sentence, which we read 
 long ago in Mr. Abbott s entertaining volume upon Napo 
 leon at St. Helena, we had the curiosity to turn to the 
 letters written by General Bonaparte at the time, to see if 
 there was anything in them to confirm his statement. Yes : 
 just after Lodi, for the first time he begins to protest and 
 swear that his only ambition is to serve France in any ca 
 pacity which the Directory may be pleased to assign him. 
 Five days after his troops had given him, at the bridge of 
 Lodi, that surprising proof -of devotion, he writes to his 
 patron, Carnot : " Whether I make war here or elsewhere 
 is indifferent to me. To serve my country, to deserve from 
 posterity one leaf of our history, to give the government 
 proofs of my attachment and devotion, this is all my 
 ambition." It is a touch worthy of Shakespeare. Thus 
 might the great dramatist have indicated the birth of an 
 ambition. 
 
 It was after Lodi, too, that he showed his eager prompti 
 tude to reward those who served him, and his tact in adapt 
 ing the reward to the nature of the case. The battle of 
 Lodi was won by the column that rushed across the bridge 
 in the face of thirty pieces of cannon and the fire of in 
 fantry. The General caused a printed list of the names of 
 the men composing the column -to be posted in every dis 
 trict of France where any one of them resided ! Could 
 any reward have been more thrilling to the men or more 
 promotive of the next conscription 1 At a later day it 
 became a custom with him to have such lists posted upon 
 the parish churches of the soldiers whom he desired to 
 honor. But when once a priest presumed to read the list 
 to his parishioners in the church, the master wrote from 
 Vienna to the minister of police to forbid the repetition of 
 the act ; because, said he, in substance, if priests may an 
 nounce victories, they may comment upon them, and if bad 
 news should arrive, they may comment upon that. " Priests 
 must be used with civility, but not made too much of." 
 
 From Italy the young conqueror, after a short interval 
 of busy preparation at Paris, betakes himself to Egypt, in 
 pursuance of his policy of striking England through her 
 dependencies and allies. No one,, with this correspondence 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 331 
 
 before him, can say that he was sent to Egypt by the Direc 
 tory, in order to get him out of the way. It was his own 
 conception. He was master of France almost as much in 
 1798 as he was in 1805 and the tone of his letters in 1798 
 is as much the tone of the master as in 1805. The very 
 order assigning him to the command of the army destined 
 for Egypt was penned by himself; and in preparing the 
 expedition, the Directory did nothing but sign what he 
 dictated. His object was to dispossess the English of their 
 Indian empire, using Egypt as a base of operations j and 
 he spoke of the enterprise, in a confidential letter, as "the 
 greatest ever executed among men." Only it was not " ex 
 ecuted ! " Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the battle 
 of the Nile, and blockaded Egypt with such sleepless vigi 
 lance that General Bonaparte and his army were, in effect, 
 prisoners of war. The General himself informed the Direc 
 tory that, during the eighteen months of his residence in 
 Egypt, he only heard from Paris once ; and then he received 
 part of his despatches, snatched by the courier from his 
 grounded boat a moment before his English pursuers 
 clutched it. It was an error to land a French army in 
 Egypt while the English were masters of the sea ; but it 
 is evident from the correspondence that General Bona 
 parte really believed the French fleet a match for the Eng 
 lish. He was not aware that in Horatio Nelson the English 
 possessed an admiral who trebled the force of every fleet 
 that he commanded. 
 
 The correspondence, reticent as it is concerning what 
 ever tends to exhibit Napoleon vulnerable, shows plainly 
 enough that it was Nelson who destroyed him. Nelson 
 hit him two blows, Nile and Trafalgar. By the bat 
 tle of the Nile he penned him in Egypt, killed his Indian 
 projects, and reduced him to absolute paralysis for a 
 year and a half. By Trafalgar he again destroyed the 
 French naval power, made invasion of England impossible, 
 and compelled Napoleon to continue his policy of fighting 
 England upon the territories of her allies. In other words, 
 he penned him in the continent of Europe. This led to 
 that prodigious extension of his operations, until he had 
 vast armies in Spain, Italy, Prussia, Russia, and France, 
 and had so distended his " empire," that ten cold nights in 
 
332 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Russia at the time when his power seemed greatest caused 
 his ruin. This was Nelson s work, and well Napoleon knew 
 it ; for there is not in all these volumes one allusion to the 
 battle of Trafalgar. It is a telltale silence. Amid the 
 bulletins of Austerlitz, few except the master knew what 
 had happened upon the ocean ; and except himself perhaps 
 no one comprehended its importance. 
 
 But to glean a trait or two from the Egyptian letters. 
 The mighty man of war, it seems, was subject to sea-sick 
 ness. " Have a good bed prepared for me," he writes to 
 Admiral Brueys before leaving Paris, "as for a man who 
 will be sick during the whole passage." In Egypt, where 
 he was absolute master, he had an opportunity to rehearse 
 the drama of the French Empire, and he displayed all the 
 devices of the emperor which the scene admitted. Despis 
 ing all religions, he showed that he could natter, use, and 
 laugh at any religion that chanced to be available for his 
 purpose. At Malta, on his way to Egypt, wishing to employ 
 the bishop to conciliate the people of the island, he wrote 
 to him : " I know of no character more respectable or more 
 worthy of the veneration of men, than a priest who, full of 
 the true spirit of the Gospel, is persuaded that it is his duty 
 to obey the temporal power, and to maintain peace, tran 
 quillity, and union in the midst of his diocese." A few 
 days after he issued to his troops the proclamation in which 
 he enjoined them to pay respect to " the Egyptian Muftis 
 and Imams, as you have to rabbis and bishops." He con 
 tinued thus : " Show the same tolerance for the ceremo 
 nies prescribed by the Koran as you have for convents, for 
 synagogues, for the religion of Moses and of Jesus Christ. 
 The Roman legions protected all religions." He went him 
 self far beyond the letter of this order ; for he celebrated 
 the religious festivals of the Mohammedans with all the 
 emphasis and splendor possible in the circumstances. From 
 Cairo he wrote to one of his generals : " We celebrated here 
 the feast of the Prophet with a pomp and fervor which 
 have almost merited for me the title of Saint " ; and he 
 ordered commanders of ports and garrisons to do the same. 
 
 In Egypt, as in Italy, he would permit no one to plunder 
 but himself ; and it was here that he put in practice the 
 only device for preventing pillage which has ever answered 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 333 
 
 its purpose. It consisted in holding each division of an 
 army responsible for the misconduct of the individuals com 
 posing it. A theft or an act of violence having been com 
 mitted, the perpetrators, if discovered, were to make good 
 the damage, or pay the forfeit with their lives. If they 
 were not discovered, then their company was assessed to 
 make up the amount. If the company could not be ascer 
 tained, then the regiment, brigade, or division. This was 
 a masterly device, and it has become part of the military 
 code of nations. But the plunder of Egypt, on system, by 
 the orders of the General commanding, was great and con 
 tinuous ; for the French army, severed from the world with 
 out, had no resource but to subsist upon the fertile prov 
 ince upon which it had descended. It will not exalt the 
 world s opinion of the Commanding General to discover, in 
 his correspondence, such notes as the following : " Citi 
 zen Poussielgue, General Dumas" (father of the novelist) 
 " knows the house of a bey where there is a buried treas 
 ure. Arrange with him for the digging necessary to find 
 it." Another engaging epistle begins thus : " You did well, 
 citizen general, in having the five villagers shot who re 
 volted. I desire much to learn that you have mounted 
 your cavalry. The shortest way, I believe, will be this : 
 Order each village to furnish you two good horses. Do not 
 accept any bad ones ; and make the villages which do not 
 furnish theirs in five days pay a fine of one thousand talari. 
 This is an infallible means of having the six hundred horses 
 
 you require Demand bridles and saddles as well." 
 
 He found leisure to establish an Institute in Egypt, on 
 the model of that of France. At the first sitting the Com 
 manding General proposed the following questions : Are 
 our army bread-ovens susceptible of improvement 1 ? Is 
 there any substitute in Egypt for the hop in making 
 beer ! How is the water of the Nile cleared and kept cool] 
 Which is best for us at Cairo, to construct water-mills 
 or wind-mills 1 Can gunpowder be made in Egypt ? What 
 is the condition in Egypt of jurisprudence, the judiciary, 
 and education, and what improvements in either are possi 
 ble, and desired by the people of the country 1 He was 
 making himself very much at home in Egypt, evidently 
 meant to stay there, had sent to Paris for a troop of come- 
 
334 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 dians, and was meditating vast plans for the improvement 
 of the country. 
 
 But in August, 1799, a package of English newspapers, 
 of which the most recent was nine weeks old, fell into the 
 General s hands, and gave him information that made him 
 willing to risk capture in order to get to France : Italy 
 lost ! The French beaten in Germany in two pitched bat 
 tles, and compelled to recross the Rhine ! The Russians 
 marching to join the coalition ! The English blockading 
 every port, and lording it oil every sea ! The Directory 
 distrusted, inactive, imbecile ! France beleaguered on every 
 side, and threatened with dissolution ! His mind was made 
 up on the instant. In eleven days he was ready to go. 
 His paper of secret instructions to Kleber, whom he left in 
 command, betrays his perfect satisfaction with what he had 
 done in Egypt, his entire conviction of the right of the 
 French to possess and hold the country. "Accustomed," 
 he says, "to look for the reward of my pains and labors in 
 the opinion of posterity, I abandon Egypt with the keenest 
 regret." Another sentence is significant : " You will find 
 subjoined a cipher for your correspondence with the gov 
 ernment, and another for your correspondence with me." 
 
 In three months General Bonaparte and the "govern 
 ment " were one and the same. The very company of 
 comedians which he had written for as General Bonaparte 
 he sent to Egypt as First Consul. He was absolute mas 
 ter of France, a fact which he announced to the people in 
 the following neat and epigrammatic manner : " Citizens, 
 the Revolution is fixed in the principles that began it. IT 
 is FINISHED." Yes; it was finished, and it was General 
 Bonaparte who gave it the finishing blow. Whether he 
 could have saved it can never be known, because he did not 
 try ; and his talents were so prodigious that it is impossible 
 to say what he might or might not have done, if he had had 
 the "lofty ambition" to help the French govern themselves. 
 There was so much that was large and generous in this 
 man, that we cannot always resist the impression that he 
 was capable of something much better than the tawdry role 
 into which he lapsed. But human nature is so limited a 
 thing, that there is not room in an individual for more than 
 one decided talent ; and that talent, when it is eminent, is 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 335 
 
 apt to bewilder, mislead, and dominate the possessor of it. 
 The successes of this sublime adventurer, besides being rapid 
 and immense, were of the very kind that most dazzle and 
 mislead. He found France impoverished, misgoverned, an 
 archic, without an ally, defeated, discouraged, with powerful 
 foes on every side, on land and sea. In two years what a 
 change ! Internal tranquillity, universal joy and exultation, 
 enemies signally beaten, territories enlarged, the treasury 
 replenished, and peace restored ! In 1799 he might have 
 risen to the height of the great citizen ; he might have 
 fought in the service of France, and when he had delivered 
 her from her enemies, he might have lent his great admin 
 istrative abilities to the restoration of internal peace and 
 prosperity, without despoiling her of that hope of liberty 
 cherished through so many years of suffering and blood. 
 This was possible in 1799, but not in 1801. 
 
 But how marvellously well he enacted the part of the 
 ruler of a free people ! How adroitly this foreigner nattered 
 the amiable and generous people whom he had subjugated ! 
 In announcing the peace of 1801, he played upon their 
 vanity and their patriotism with singular skill, throwing 
 upon them all the glory of his achievements in the field : 
 " Frenchmen, you enjoy at length that entire peace which 
 you have merited by efforts so long continued and so gen 
 erous. The world contains for you only friendly nations, 
 and upon every sea hospitable ports are open to your 
 
 ships Let us perfect, but, above all, let us teach 
 
 the rising generation to cherish, our institutions and our 
 laws. Let them grow up to promote civil equality, public 
 liberty, national prosperity. Let us carry into the work 
 shop, the farm, the studio, that ardor, that constancy, that 
 patience, which have astonished Europe in all our difficul 
 ties Let us be the support and example of the peo 
 ples who surround us. Let the foreigner, whom curiosity 
 draws into our midst, linger among us attached by the 
 charm of our manners, the spectacle of &ir union, the at 
 traction of our pleasures; let him return to his country 
 more friendly to us than he came, a wiser and a better 
 man." Soon after appeared the first of his annual messages, 
 his Expose de la Situation de la RepuUique, modelled 
 closely (as to the form only) upon the messages of our 
 
336 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 Presidents, although longer than those of Washington, 
 Adams, or Jefferson ; a message without a legislature 
 which could act upon it ! " It is with sweet satisfaction 
 that the government offers to the nation a view of public 
 affairs durmg the year that has passed." The government 
 was a general of the French army, and his riiessage was in 
 genious, intoxicating flattery of the most susceptible people 
 in the world. 
 
 Was all this mere coarse, conscious hypocrisy on the part 
 of General Bonaparte ] We think not. Great histrionic 
 personages, like Napoleon Bonaparte, appear sometimes to 
 dazzle ancl deceive themselves. Men familiar with Brigham 
 Young tell us that that stupendous American Turk is one 
 tenth sincere ; and it is the fraction of sincerity which gives 
 him his power over his followers. There are pages in these 
 volumes that exhibit Napoleon to us in the threefold char 
 acter of hero, actor, and spectator ; as though David Gar- 
 rick should play Richard III., be Richard III., and see 
 Richard III., all on the same evening ; himself lost in the 
 marvels of the scene, deceived by his own acting, and daz 
 zled by his own exploits. We cannot believe that this de 
 lirious Expose was a thing contrived to deceive and capti 
 vate the French people. He had seen such striking things 
 done at the word of command, that he seems to have sup 
 posed all things possible to a great soldier. He appears to 
 have thought that national institutions, industries, lyceums, 
 colleges, universities, durable alliances, and national welfare 
 could be summoned into being at the tap of the drum. 
 " Thirty lyceums," said he, " wisely distributed over the 
 territory of the Republic, will embrace all its extent by 
 their influence, will shed upon every part of it the lustre 
 of their acquisitions and their triumphs, will strike foreign 
 ers with admiration, and will be for them what some cel 
 ebrated schools of Germany and England once were for us, 
 what some famous universities were which, seen from a dis 
 tance, commanded the admiration and respect of Europe." 
 The whole message is in this taste. Poor man ! Poor 
 France ! 
 
 The great question of the reign of Napoleon is : Which 
 was to blame for breaking the peace of Amiens, the Eng 
 lish government or the French ] This correspondence con- 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 337 
 
 firms the constant assertion of French historians, that the 
 responsibility is to be laid at England s door. Bonaparte 
 wanted peace : that is plain. Peace was his interest : that 
 is undeniable. England had agreed to evacuate Malta, and 
 when the time came refused to give it up : that also is cer 
 tain. England should have frankly accepted Napoleon as 
 head of the French government, and forborne to give a pre 
 text for breaking the peace to a man so exquisitely skilled 
 in the use of deadly weapons. On the other hand, what 
 absurdity more complete than for France to go to war with 
 Great Britain for a little distant island in which neither of 
 them had any rights 1 We cannot dwell upon this point, 
 although there is no volume of the correspondence in which 
 Napoleon s talents are more brilliantly exhibited than in the 
 one which contains his letters and instructions previous to 
 the declaration of war in 1802. He had the advantage of 
 being technically in the right ; and England labored under 
 the disadvantage of putting forward a pretext, instead of 
 the real grievance. Napoleon s matchless skill in the use 
 of deadly weapons was the real grievance. The peace was 
 broken, coalitions were formed and renewed, because four 
 crowned persons in Europe felt that they were not safe 
 while such a man controlled the resources and commanded 
 the armies of France. 
 
 Behold him now at the summit of his power. The vol 
 umes devoted to this part of his career are precious to the 
 French people at the present moment, when they are pre 
 paring to expel the Bonaparte intruders from their territory. 
 If, on the one hand, they show him a very great general, 
 on the other, they reveal so clearly the essential littleness 
 of the man, and expose so fully the artifices by which he 
 ruled, that the spell conjured up in France by his very 
 bones twenty years ago can never be conjured up again. 
 This publication kills Napoleonism past resurrection. It 
 shows to an attentive reader that Napoleon s personal am 
 bition was not " lofty," as he termed it, but personal, i. e. 
 low and small ; and that the means by which he gratified 
 it were often base, often despicable, often ridiculous. The 
 desire of this man s heart was to be admitted to the circle 
 of European kings, and then to be the most powerful of 
 them all. We could only make this clear to the reader by 
 15 v 
 
338 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 going carefully over the whole of his dealings with the 
 reigning families of Europe, which would more than ex 
 haust our space. The truth shines out in hundreds of 
 passages, and it excludes him forever from the rank of the 
 great, whose ambition is to become eminent by serving 
 their kind. He was so little superior in moral discernment 
 to the ordinary mortal, that he thought it grander to be 
 the Frederick William of a country than its Bismarck ; to 
 be a George III. than a Nelson or a Chatham. So little 
 had he reflected upon men and governments, that he did 
 not know the proper place of a man of great talent ; which 
 is not at the head of a nation, but in a place subordinate. 
 
 The proper head of a nation is a sound average man, 
 one whom the average citizen can recognize as a man and 
 a brother; one who will keep the brilliant minister, the 
 great general, always in mind of the homely material with 
 which governments have to deal ; one who will embody 
 and represent the vis inertice of things. Bismarck, firmly 
 astride of Prussia, would ride that great kingdom to the 
 Devil ; as Bonaparte did France ; as Hamilton might the 
 United States, if average human nature had not stood in 
 his way, represented in the august person of George Wash 
 ington. It is mankind whom the head of a government 
 should represent. The exceptionally gifted individual who 
 serves under him needs his restraining slowness and caution, 
 as much as the chief needs the light and help of minds 
 specially endowed. 
 
 Of all this Napoleon knew nothing. His poor ambition 
 was to reign. " For the Pope," said he, " I am Charle 
 magne, because I reunite the crown of France to that of 
 the Lombards " ; and he told his brother Joseph, when he 
 put him up as king of Naples, that he wished his " blood " 
 to reign in Naples as long as in France, for " the kingdom 
 of Naples was necessary to him." It is at once ludicrous 
 and affecting to see such a man so infatuated with the part 
 he was playing, to read in his letters to kings, emperors, 
 and popes such expressions as, " my house," " the princes 
 of my house," " my capital " (meaning Paris), " my good 
 city of Lyons," "my armies," "my fleet," "my peoples," 
 " my empire," " my kingdom of Italy " ; and to read elabo 
 rate papers rearranging states and nations in which every- 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 339 
 
 thing was considered, except the will of the people inhabit 
 ing them. 
 
 Nothing will astound the reader of these volumes more 
 than the bulletins, dictated by Napoleon on the field, and 
 published in the Moniteur by his command. It was those 
 bulletins that kept France in. a state of delirium, and drew 
 to distant fields of carnage the flower of her youth and the 
 annual harvest of her educated talent. He was accus 
 tomed to send every day or two from the seat of war, when 
 anything extraordinary had occurred, chatty, anecdotical 
 bulletins, designed chiefly to keep up the martial frenzy of 
 the French ; but he inserted also many paragraphs intended 
 to sow dissension among his enemies ; knowing well that 
 these documents would be closely scanned at every court, 
 club, and head-quarters in Europe. Those anecdotes of 
 the devotion of the troops to the Emperor, which figure in 
 so many biographies and histories, here they are, where 
 they originated, in the bulletins dictated by Napoleon s 
 mouth, corrected by his hand, and published by his command 
 in the official newspaper of his empire, and now given to 
 the world as part of his correspondence by the head of his 
 family ! The following are passages from the Austerlitz 
 bulletins : 
 
 "On the 10th" (the day before the battle), "the Em 
 peror, from the height of his bivouac, perceived, with joy 
 unutterable, the Russians beginning, at two cannon fires 
 distance from his advanced posts, a flank movement to turn 
 his right. Then was it that he saw to what a point pre 
 sumption and ignorance of the art of war had led astray 
 the counsels of that brave army. Several times the Em 
 peror said : * Before to-morrow night that army is mine. " 
 
 " In the evening he wished to visit on foot and incognito 
 all the bivouacs ; but scarcely had he gone a few steps than 
 he was recognized. It would be impossible to depict the 
 enthusiasm of the soldiers when they saw him. In an in 
 stant bundles of straw were placed at the end of thousands 
 of poles, and eighty thousand men presented themselves 
 before the Emperor, saluting him with acclamations ; some 
 complimenting him on the anniversary of his coronation ; 
 others saying that the army would present its bouquet to 
 the Emperor to-morrow." 
 
340 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 To any one who ever saw an army of even ten thousand 
 men in the field, the entire and absolute falsehood of all 
 this will be apparent. The imperial reporter proceeds : 
 
 " One of the oldest grenadiers approached him, and said : 
 You will have no need to expose yourself. I promise you, 
 in the name of the grenadiers of the army, that you will 
 have to fight only with your eyes, and that we will bring 
 you to-morrow the flags and artillery of the Russian army 
 by way of celebrating the anniversary of your coronation. 
 The Emperor said, upon entering his bivouac, which con 
 sisted of a sorry straw cabin without a roof, which his 
 grenadiers had made for him : This is the most beautiful 
 evening of my life ; but it saddens me to think that I shall 
 lose a good number of those brave fellows. I become sensi 
 ble, from the grief which this reflection causes me, that they 
 are truly my children ; and, indeed, I sometimes reproach 
 myself for indulging this sentiment, fearing it will render 
 me at last unskilful in making war. 
 
 "At the moment of sunrise the orders were given, and 
 each marshal rejoined his command at full gallop. While 
 passing along the front of several regiments, the Emperor 
 said : Soldiers, we must end this campaign by a thunder 
 bolt which will confound the pride of our enemies ; and 
 immediately, hats at the end of bayonets and cries of Vive 
 I Empereur ! were the veritable signal of battle ! " 
 
 "This day will cost tears of blood at St. Petersburg. 
 May it cause them to throw back with indignation the gold 
 of England, and may that young prince, whom so many 
 virtues call to be the father of his subjects, snatch himself 
 from the influence of those thirty coxcombs whom England 
 artfully seduces into her services, and whose impertinences 
 obscure his good intentions, lose him the love of his soldiers, 
 and throw him into operations the most erroneous. Nature, 
 in endowing him with great qualities, called him to be the 
 
 consoler of Europe Never was there a more horrible 
 
 field of battle May so much bloodshed, may so many 
 
 miseries, fall at length upon the perfidious islanders who 
 are the cause of them ! May the base oligarchs of London 
 bear the anguish of so many calamities ! " 
 
 " The Emperor of Germany" (in his interview with the 
 Emperor) "did not conceal the contempt which the con- 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 341 
 
 duct of England had given both himself and the Emperor 
 of Russia. They are shop-keepers, he said more than 
 once, who set the Continent in flames in order to secure 
 for themselves the commerce of the world. .... Several 
 times the Emperor of Germany repeated : There is no 
 doubt that France is in the right in her quarrel with Eng 
 land. .... They say that the Emperor said to the Em 
 peror of Germany, as he invited him to come nearer the fire 
 of his bivouac : I receive you in the only palace I have 
 inhabited these two months. To this the Emperor of Ger 
 many replied, laughing : You turn habitations of this kind 
 to such good account that they ought to please you. At 
 least, this is what those present thought they overheard. The 
 numerous suite of the two princes was not so far off that they 
 could not hear several things ! 
 
 " The corpses have been counted. The totals are, eigh 
 teen thousand Russians killed, six hundred Austrians, and 
 nine hundred French. Seven thousand wounded Russians 
 are on our hands. All told, we have three thousand French 
 wounded. General Roger Valhubert is dead of his wounds. 
 An hour before he breathed his last he wrote to the Em 
 peror : I could have wished to do more for you. I die in 
 an hour. The loss of my life I do not regret, since I have 
 participated in a victory which assures you a happy reign. 
 As often as you shall think of the brave men who were de 
 voted to you, remember me. It is sufficient for me merely 
 to tell you that I have a family ; I need not recommend them 
 to your care. " 
 
 From the whole of the bulletins we could gather, per 
 haps, two hundred anecdotes similar in character and pur 
 pose to those we have given ; and we do not believe that 
 ten of them are the exact statements of fact. They were 
 fictions coined to make France willing to bleed. Inter 
 spersed with the bulletins are quiet, business-like notes to 
 the Minister of War and others, the burden, of which is : 
 Conscripts, conscripts, conscripts ; send me conscripts ; armed 
 or unarmed, in uniform or in peasants rags, no matter ; send 
 forward conscripts / 
 
 Appended to the bulletins are decrees giving pensions to 
 the widows of every man who fell in the last battle, six 
 thousand francs to a general s widow, and two hundred to 
 
342 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 + 
 
 a private s. After Austerlitz, a decree was published which 
 was as captivating to delirious France as it was unjust to 
 the army in general : " We adopt all the children of the 
 generals, officers, and soldiers who fell at the battle of Aus- 
 teiiitz. They will be maintained and reared at our expense, 
 the boys at our imperial palace of Rambouillet, and the 
 girls at our imperial palace of Saint Germain. The boys 
 will be placed in situations, and the girls dowered, by us. 
 To their baptismal and family names they will have the 
 right to add that of Napoleon." No man ever displayed 
 such art in rousing a nation to frenzy, and silencing its 
 reason. If space allowed, we could give a catalogue of at 
 least one hundred different devices of his fertile mind to 
 reward and signalize soldiers who served him with conspic 
 uous devotion. Many of these such as orders, medals, 
 flattering mention, and inscribing the names of fallen sol 
 diers upon Pompey s pillar were of a costless and senti 
 mental nature. Others such as gifts of money, pensions, 
 promotion were of a solid and practical character. Some 
 times he would order a picture painted of a feat of arms, 
 and decree that the uniform of the soldiers depicted should 
 be that of the corps which performed the act. Nor was he 
 lavish of rewards and honors ; but in this, as in all things 
 relating to war, he acted upon system, and preserved per 
 fect coolness of judgment. 
 
 And while by these various arts this Corsican kept aver 
 age France in delirium, the superior mind and judgment of 
 France were denied all utterance. We have marked dozens 
 of passages in the correspondence showing this. While he 
 had writers in England in his pay for the purpose of em 
 barrassing the Ministry and making friends for himself by 
 their articles in English newspapers, he would not permit 
 so much as a woman to live in France whom he suspected 
 of having escaped the prevailing madness. Three times he 
 orders back Madame de Stael, " that bird of evil omen," 
 as he styles her, when he heard she had approached or 
 crossed the frontiers. "It is the intention of the govern 
 ment," he wrote in 1803, "that this intriguing foreigner 
 shall not remain in France, where her family has done harm 
 enough." Again, in 1807, he speaks of her with contempt 
 uous fury, as a " crow " whose approach foreboded mischief, 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 343 
 
 and repeats his command that she be kept from the soil of 
 France. Nor was she the only lady whom he feared and 
 exiled, because he saw her sane in the midst of lunatics. 
 As to the press, not a paragraph was allowed to appear cal 
 culated to recall Frenchmen to themselves ; and not a line 
 escaped his vigilant distrust, if it provoked Frenchmen to 
 ask why their countrymen should be slaughtered by thou 
 sands in Poland, in Spain, in Russia, in Austria, in Prussia, 
 for a quarrel about Malta, an island of no interest to 
 France, except as the source of Maltese cats. 
 
 For military men we must find room for a curious order 
 addressed to Marshal Berthier at Boulogne, in ] 805, just 
 as Napoleon was about to begin that swift, silent march 
 across Europe which ended at Austerlitz. It shows how 
 little magic there J^LS in his proceedings, and by what 
 homely, plodding labors the most brilliant results are pro 
 duced. " My cousin " (he called all his marshals cousin), 
 " I desire you to have two portable boxes made, with com 
 partments ; one for me and the other for yourself. The 
 compartments will be arranged in such a way that, with 
 the aid of written cards, we can know at a glance the move 
 ments of all the Austrian troops, regiment by regiment, 
 battalion by battalion, even to detachments of any con 
 siderable magnitude. You will divide the compartments 
 into as many divisions as there are Austrian armies, and 
 you will reserve some pigeon-holes for the troops which the 
 Emperor of Germany has in Hungary, in Bohemia, and in 
 the interior of his states. Every fifteen days you will send 
 me a statement of the changes that have taken place dur 
 ing the preceding fifteen days ; availing yourself for this 
 purpose, not only of the German and Italian newspapers, 
 but of all the information which my minister for foreign 
 affairs may send you ; with whom you will correspond for 
 this object. Employ the same individual to change the 
 cards and to draw up the statement of the situation of the 
 Austrian armies every fifteen days. P. S. You must in 
 trust this business to a man who will have nothing else to 
 do, who knows German well, and who will take all the 
 German and Italian papers, and make the changes which 
 they indicate." 
 
 Before leaving the volumes, which exhibit him in the 
 
344 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 plenitude of his power and glory, we offer for the reader s 
 amusement the most characteristic letter, perhaps, of the 
 whole collection; one written in 1807, to that good Louis 
 whom young General Bonaparte had so cordially praised a 
 few years before as a lad after his own heart. Louis was 
 now called King of Holland ; and trouble enough he had 
 between his own amiable dream of being a good to 
 Holland and the determination of his brother to regard 
 Holland only in the light of so much war material. Was 
 ever a monarch so lectured, bullied, berated, and insulted 
 as poor Louis was in this epistle 1 
 
 " I have received your letter of the 24th of March. You 
 say that you have twenty thousand men at the Grand 
 Army. You do not believe it yourself; there are not ten 
 thousand ; and what men ! It is not, marshals, chevaliers, 
 and counts that we want ; we want soldiers. If you go on 
 so, you will render me ridiculous in Holland. 
 
 "You govern that nation too much like a capuchin. 
 The goodness of a king ought always to be majestic, and 
 not that of a monk. Nothing is worse than that great 
 number of journeys which you make to the Hague, unless 
 it be the contribution made by your order in your kingdom. 
 A king commands, and asks nothing of any one ; he is deemed 
 to be the soiirce of all power, and to have no need to recur 
 to the purse of others. These niceties, you feel them not. 
 
 "Some notions occur to me concerning the re-establish 
 ment of your nobility, upon which I wait to be enlightened. 
 Have you lost your senses to that point, and would you 
 forget to such a degree what you owe me? You speak 
 always in your letters of respect arid obedience ; but it is 
 deeds, not words, that I require. Eespect and obedience 
 consist in not precipitating measures so important ; for 
 Europe cannot imagine you to be so wanting in a sense of 
 duty as to do certain things without my consent. I shall 
 be obliged to disavow you. I have asked for the document 
 relating to the re-establishment of the nobility. Prepare 
 yourself for a public mark of my excessive dissatisfaction. 
 
 " Despatch no maritime expedition ; the season is passed. 
 Raise national guards to defend your country. Pay my 
 troops. Raise plenty of national conscripts. A prince 
 who, the first year of his reign, is thought to be so good, 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 345 
 
 is a prince who will be ridiculed in the second. The love 
 which kings inspire ought to be a masculine love, mingled 
 with a respectful fear and a great opinion of their merit. 
 When people say of a king that he is a good man, his reign 
 is a failure. How can a merely good man, or a good father, 
 if you please, sustain the charges of the throne, suppress 
 the malevolent, and conduct affairs so that the passions of 
 men shah 1 be hushed, or march in the direction he wishes *? 
 The first thing you ought to have done, and I advised you 
 to do it, was to establish the conscription. What can be 
 done without an army 1 For, can one call a mass of desert 
 ers an army 1 How could you avoid feeling (the condition 
 of your army being what it is) that the creation of mar 
 shals was a thing unsuitable and ridiculous 1 The king 
 of Naples has none. I have none in my kingdom of Italy. 
 Do you believe that if forty French vessels should be united 
 to five or six Dutch barks, that Admiral Ver Huell, for 
 example, in his quality of marshal, could command them ? 
 There are no marshals in the minor kingdoms ; there are 
 none in Bavaria, in Sweden. You overwhelm men with 
 honors who have not merited them. You go too fast and 
 without advice ; I have offered you mine ; you respond by 
 fine compliments, and you continue to commit follies. 
 
 "Your quarrels with the queen reach the public ear. 
 Have at home that paternal and effeminate character which 
 you exhibit in the government, and in public affairs prac 
 tise that rigor which you show in domestic matters. You 
 treat a "young wife as one would lead a regiment. Distrust 
 the persons who surround you; you are only surrounded 
 by nobles. The opinion of those people is always diamet 
 rically opposite to that of the public. Beware of them ; 
 you begin to be no longer popular either at Rotterdam or 
 Amsterdam. The Catholics begin to be afraid of you. 
 Why do you employ none of them 1 Ought you not to pro 
 tect your religion 1 All that shows little force of character. 
 You pay court too much to a part of your nation : you 
 offend the rest. What have the chevaliers done to whom 
 you have given decorations 1 Where are the wounds which 
 they have received for their country, the distinguished 
 talents which recommend them, I do not say of all, but of 
 three fourths of them 1 Many of them have done service to 
 15* 
 
346 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the English party, and are the cause of the misfortunes of 
 their country. Was it necessary to ill treat them 1 No, 
 but to conciliate all. I also have some emigres in office ; 
 but I do not let them go too far, and when they think they 
 are near carrying a point, they are further from it than 
 when they were in a foreign country : because I govern by 
 system, and not by weakness. 
 
 " You have the best and the most virtuous of wives, and 
 you render her unhappy. Let her dance as much as she 
 wishes ; it belongs to her time of life. I have a wife forty 
 years old ; from the battle-field I write to her to go to 
 balls ; and do you wish that a wife of twenty years, who 
 sees her life passing, who has all of life s illusions, should 
 live in a cloister 1 should be like a nurse, always washing 
 her baby 1 You attend too much to your domestic affairs, 
 and not enough to your administration. I should not say 
 all this to you, but for the interest I take in your welfare. 
 Make the mother of your, children happy. You have only 
 one means of doing so ; it is to show her much esteem and 
 confidence Unfortunately, you have a too virtuous wife. 
 If you had a coquette, she would lead you by the end of 
 the nose. But you have a wife who respects herself, whom 
 the mere idea that you could have a bad opinion of her 
 revolts and afflicts. You should have had a wife like some 
 I know of in Paris. She would have played you false, and 
 kept you at her knees. It is not my fault, for I have often 
 said as much to your wife. 
 
 " For the rest, you can commit follies in your own king 
 dom ; very well ; but I shall see to it that you commit 
 none in mine. You offer your decorations to everybody ; 
 many persons have written to me who have no title to 
 them. I am sorry that you did not feel that you were 
 wanting in proper consideration towards me. I am resolved 
 that no one shall wear those decorations near me, being 
 determined not to wear them myself. If you ask me the 
 reason, I shall reply, that you have as yet done nothing to 
 merit that men should wear your portrait ; that, besides, 
 you have instituted the order without my permission ; and 
 that, finally, you give them away too lavishly. And what 
 have all those people done who surround you to whom you 
 give them?" 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 347 
 
 This it was to be one of Napoleon s kings ! He lectures 
 Joseph, Jerome, Lucien, his sisters, and even his uncle, 
 Cardinal Fesch ; not always with such severity, but always 
 in the tone of the master. To Cardinal Fesch, his ambassa 
 dor of Rome, he once wrote : " I find all your reflections 
 upon Cardinal Ruffo small and puerile. You are in Rome 
 like a woman Don t meddle in affairs you don t under 
 stand." This it was to be a cardinal of Napoleon s making. 
 
 The suddenness of the collapse of this showy mockery of 
 an empire is exhibited in the correspondence in a manner 
 truly affecting. It was the freezing to death of thirty 
 thousand horses that destroyed the "Grand Army," and 
 tumbled the empire into chaos. Burnt out of Moscow on 
 the 14th of September, 1812, the Emperor was incon 
 venienced certainly, but felt still so much at ease, that he 
 sent a note, sixteen days after, to his librarian at Paris, 
 scolding him for not keeping him better supplied with the 
 new publications ; and he continued for another month to 
 direct even the police of Paris from the vicinity of the 
 burnt capital. A bulletin written on the homeward march, 
 October 23, is all glowing with victory, and recounts the 
 burning of Moscow only as a disaster and shame to Russia ! 
 It ends thus : " The people of Russia do not remember such 
 weather as we have had here during the last twenty days. 
 We enjov the sun of the beautiful days of our excursions to 
 Fontainebleau. The army is in a country extremely rich, 
 which can compare with the best provinces of France and 
 Germany." 
 
 This was written on the 23d of October, and published 
 in Paris November 16th. As late as November 3d, still 
 the Emperor wrote to one of his ministers : " The weather 
 continues to be very fine ; a circumstance extremely favor 
 able to us." Three days after, namely, November 6, 1812, 
 the icy blast swept down from the North and chilled the 
 army to the marrow. Ten nights of sudden, premature 
 cold killed or disabled nearly all the horses ; which com 
 pelled the abandonment or destruction of all the provisions 
 that the men could not carry. Clouds of Cossacks hovered 
 about the track of the gaunt and weary troops. Napoleon 
 was twenty days without hearing from Paris. The Grand 
 Army perished, and the empire was no more ! 
 
348 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 He died game. He was himself to the last. As soon as 
 he had reached a point from which a courier could be safely 
 despatched to Paris, he sent an aide-de-camp and a bulletin 
 to break the news to Europe. He would not trust any one 
 to write the paragraph which he ordered the aid to have 
 inserted in German journals on his way to Paris, but gave 
 it to him written by his own hand. On the 2d of Decem 
 ber, from the midst of the wreck and ruin of his army, with 
 ghastly pallor and rigid death on every side, this great his 
 trionic genius wrote the following orders to the aide-de 
 camp charged with his despatches : 
 
 " He will announce everywhere the arrival of ten thou 
 sand Russian prisoners, and the victory won upon the 
 Beresina in which we took six thousand Russian prisoners, 
 
 eight flags, and twelve pieces of cannon He will 
 
 cause to be inserted everywhere in the Gazettes : M. de 
 Montesquiou, aide-de-camp, etc., has passed through, bear 
 ing the news of the victory of Beresina won by the Emperor 
 over the united armies of Admiral Tchitchakof and General 
 Wittgenstein. He carries to Paris eight flags taken in that 
 battle, at which also six thousand prisoners were captured 
 and twelve pieces of cannon. When this officer left, the 
 Emperor s health was excellent. M. de Montesquiou will 
 see to it that this paragraph is published in the Mayence 
 journal. The Due de Bassano will cause it to be put into 
 the Vilna papers and will write in the same strain to 
 Vienna. M. de Montesquiou will travel with the utmost 
 speed in order to contradict everywhere the false reports 
 which may have been spread abroad. He will explain that 
 those two (Russian) corps meant to cut our line in two, 
 but that the army routed them utterly, and has arrived at 
 Vilna, where it finds numerous depots, which will at once 
 end the sufferings which it has experienced." 
 
 This was for Prussia, Austria, England. But it would 
 not do for France, which must instantly supply new armies. 
 This same aide-de-camp carried a bulletin for the Moniteur, 
 long, detailed, artful, which, with mitigations, ac 
 quainted the French people that " a frightful calamity " 
 had befallen them. They rallied gallantly to the support 
 of the man who had flattered them with such transcendent 
 ability, and they fought for him with much of the old cour- 
 
CORKESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 349 
 
 age and devotion. It did not suffice. Elba, the Hundred 
 Days, Waterloo, the Bellerophon, complete the story. The 
 last line of his published correspondence charges England 
 with having extended to a fallen foe a hospitable hand, and 
 then, when he had given himself up in good faith, "she 
 immolated him," die Vimmola ! But in 1806, when he 
 dethroned the king of Naples, he wrote thus to his brother 
 Joseph : " The king of Naples will never ascend his throne 
 again. You will explain that this is necessaiy to the repose 
 of the Continent; since he has twice disturbed it." 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF 
 NEW YORK.* 
 
 ON certain conditions, a very large proportion of the 
 whole human race will steal. The opportunity must 
 be good, of course, and the chance of detection small ; the 
 stealing must easily admit of being called by another name ; 
 and, above all, the theft must be of such a nature that the 
 thief does not witness the pain which the loss of the stolen 
 property occasions. On these conditions, almost all chil 
 dren and other immature persons, as well as a great num 
 ber of average honest men and women, will steal. One 
 proof of the civilizing power which the late Horace Mann 
 exercised over the pupils of Antioch College in Ohio was, 
 that no depredations were committed by those raw lads 
 upon the orchards and gardens of the neighborhood. Mrs. 
 Mann is justified in mentioning this fact as one that does 
 honor to the memory of her husband ; for the boy who 
 steals apples from an orchard usually has an excellent op 
 portunity and seldom has the slightest sense of doing an 
 injury to the owner. He takes a handkerchief full from an 
 unseen person, who has whole acres strewn with fruit and 
 trees bending with the weight of it, and who will never 
 know that particular loss. If the stolen property presented 
 itself in its ultimate form, a piece of bread and butter 
 going into the mouth of one of the farmer s little children, 
 not one boy in ten thousand would steal a crumb of it ; 
 but so long as it is mere apples lying in an orchard, all boys 
 will steal it without compunction, unless they have been 
 exceptionally well bred or taught. 
 
 Well-informed persons, who have been officially obliged 
 to consider the matter, assure us that a majority of car- 
 
 * This article was written in 1 866. 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 351 
 
 conductors, omnibus-drivers, and all other takers of unre 
 corded and untraceable money, are habitual thieves in all 
 countries. It is the constant study of able managers to 
 arrange a system that shall remove a temptation which ex 
 perience has shown to be generally irresistible. Our fair 
 readers, if we are so happy as to have any for so repulsive 
 a subject, are acquainted with a class of active little mortals, 
 the cash-boys of our large dry-goods stores. Cash-boys 
 had never appeared on earth if clerks had never stolen. 
 But we need not multiply examples. The self-knowledge 
 of the most honest men suffices. Who has not observed 
 the unwillingness of persons of tried and punctilious integ 
 rity to put themselves in the way of temptation 1 It is 
 because those know most of the moral weakness of men 
 who have converted that weakness into strength. How 
 often have we admired the exquisite modesty of Benjamin 
 Franklin in that passage, written when he was an old man, 
 in which he attributes the honesty of his early life to the 
 fact that his trade brought him in such " plentiful supplies " 
 of money that he had little temptation to do wrong. This 
 was not a confession in the " high-toned " style, but that is 
 the way honest men feel who know themselves. 
 
 We have undertaken to write something about the gov 
 ernment of the city of New York, and yet we have fallen 
 into a discourse upon stealing. The reason is, that, after 
 having spent several weeks in investigating our subject, we 
 find that we have been employed in nothing else but dis 
 covering in how many ways, and under what a variety of 
 names and pretexts, immature and greedy men steal from 
 that fruitful and ill-fenced orchard, the city treasury. 
 
 That the government of the city of New York has had, 
 for several years past, an exceedingly bad name in the 
 world, is probably known to all our readers. It has fallen 
 into complete contempt. It is a dishonor to belong to it. 
 Persons of good repute do not willingly associate with the 
 rulers of the city, unless they are known to be of the small 
 number who hold their offices for the purpose of frustrating 
 iniquitous schemes. When it was found, last winter, that 
 the Aldermen and Councilmeii of the city must necessarily 
 attend the ball of the Seventh Regiment at the Academy 
 of Music, many respectable persons who had b&ught tickets 
 
352 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 sold them again, rather than jostle those magnates. The 
 Rev. Henry Ward Beecher recently said, in the pulpit, that 
 perhaps the government of the city of New York did more 
 moral harm to the people^of New York than all the churches 
 together did good. Nevertheless, since we are all disposed 
 to exaggerate evils vaguely known, and since the cry of cor 
 ruption is habitually raised by corrupt men for purposes of 
 intimidation or revenge, we entered upon our task fully 
 prepared to find the affairs of the city less corruptly ad 
 ministered than they are supposed to be. It is an old 
 remark, that good people are not quite as good, noi 1 bad 
 people as bad, as popular rumor gives them out. 
 
 It occurred to us that perhaps the best way of beginning 
 an investigation of the city government would be to go 
 down to the City Hall and look at it. It proved not to be 
 there. To keep the whole city from falling a prey to the 
 monster, it has been gradually cut to pieces, and scattered 
 over the island ; but, like the reptiles whose severed frag 
 ments become each a perfect creature, with maw as spacious 
 and appetite as keen as the original worm, so each portion 
 of the divided system is now a self-operating and indepen 
 dent apparatus. In the City Hall, however, the legislature 
 of the city still assembles. It consists of two honorable 
 bodies, the Board of Aldermen, seventeen in number, 
 elected for two years, and the Board of Councilmen, twenty- 
 four in number, elected for one year, each member of 
 both boards receiving a salary of two thousand dollars a 
 year. Considering that they meet but twice a week, always 
 in the afternoon, and that the session averages one hour s 
 duration, these gentlemen cannot be said to be ill paid. 
 They are compensated for their valuable services at twice 
 the rate at which the labors of the Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States are rewarded. But 
 then it costs those city legislators something to be elected. 
 The legitimate expenses of an election to either of the 
 boards amount to about three hundred dollars ; but many 
 a candidate expends a thousand dollars of his own money 
 and several hundred dollars of other people s. 
 
 It is to the Chamber of the Board of Councilmen that we 
 beg first to invite the courteous reader. This apartment 
 being in the second story of the building, we pass many 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 353 
 
 open doors on our way to it, through which we see idle men 
 with their feet upon tables, smoking cigars. There are few 
 buildings in the world, probably, wherein the consumption 
 of tobacco in all its forms goes on more vigorously during 
 business hours than the City Hall of New York. Smoke 
 comes in clouds from many rooms, and the vessel w^hich Mr. 
 Thackeray used to call the " expectoratoon " is everywhere 
 seen. If we enter the Councilmen s Chamber a few minutes 
 before the time of beginning the session, we observe many 
 members smoking ; and as soon as there is a prospect of 
 an adjournment, the same gentlemen begin to fondle their 
 cigars, to hand them about, or even toss them to one an 
 other, so that when the adjournment does take place not a 
 moment may be lost. Twice we have seen a member light 
 his cigar before an adjournment was carried. The very 
 clerks of this " honorable body " write out their notes of 
 the proceedings smoking cigars of a flavor beyond that 
 which the pursuit of literature allows. 
 
 The Councilmen s Chamber, a lofty and spacious room, 
 provided by the liberal forethought of honest and public- 
 spirited men sixty years ago, is furnished with preposterous 
 magnificence; not "regardless of expense," however, as some 
 have inconsiderately alleged. On the contrary, expense was 
 evidently the first object sought by the persons who had the 
 work in charge ; and, accordingly, wherever a thousand- 
 dollar thing could be put, there you behold it. The apart 
 ment is arranged on the plan of the Representatives Cham 
 ber in the Capitol at Washington. The President sits aloft, 
 in a richly canopied recess ; below him are four clerks in a 
 row ; the members sit in two semicircles, in chairs of the 
 most massive mahogany, at desks of solid elegance. The 
 windows are shaded by curtains heavy with expense, and 
 the carpet is thick with it. In case the session, which be 
 gins at 2 P. M., should chance to prolong itself to the even 
 ing, there is a chandelier of the most elaborate and ramified 
 description, such as would rejoice the heart of any con 
 tractor to furnish. To remind members, who all have gold 
 watches, of the passage of time, there is a clock of vast size, 
 splendid with gilt and carving. Four staring, full-length por 
 traits of Fillmore, Clay, Young, and Hamilton Fish disfigure 
 the walls, and the Father of his Country looks coldly down 
 
 w 
 
354 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 upon the scene in marble. He never had such furniture 
 either at Mount Vernoii or at Philadelphia, nor did he ever 
 see such at Independence Hall. The ceiling is frescoed, 
 and a great gilt eagle spreads his wings over the President s 
 canopy. Besides this gorgeous apartment, the Councilman 
 have a large and handsomely furnished room for their clerks 
 and books, and a private room, densely carpeted, for them 
 selves, where there is a wardrobe for each member s over 
 coat and umbrella. These wardrobes are very properly 
 provided with lock and key. 
 
 To assist this " honorable body " in the business of legis 
 lation, there is a " chief clerk," whose salary is $ 3,000 a 
 year ; there is a " deputy clerk," at $ 2,000 a year ; there 
 is a "first assistant clerk," at $1,500 a year; there is a 
 " second assistant clerk," at the same ; there is a " general 
 clerk," at $ 1,200 a year; there is an "engrossing clerk," 
 at $ 1,250 a year ; there is a " sergeant-at-arms," at $ 1,200 
 a year ; there is a " reader," at the same ; there is a "door 
 keeper," at $ 750 a year ; there is a "messenger," at $1,200 
 a year; and there is an " assistant messenger," at $ 1,100 
 a year. In short, there is not a legislative body in the 
 world more completely provided with all external aids and 
 appliances for the work in hand than the Honorable the 
 Board of Oouncilmen of the City of New York. To the sal 
 aries of these officers the Councilrnen add, in the form of 
 gifts for " extra services," six or seven thousand dollars 
 more ; and they bestow upon the reporters of seventeen 
 newspapers, for not reporting their proceedings, two hun 
 dred dollars a } T ear each. Perhaps the clerks also are paid 
 for not doing their duty, if any duty can be found for so 
 many, for we were present in the chamber, last June, 
 when a communication from the Mayor was read, in which 
 he complained that bills came to him for approval so badly 
 written that he could scarcely read them, and declaring that 
 hereafter he would pay no attention to acts not properly 
 
 The twenty-four Councilmen who have provided them 
 selves with such ample assistance and such costly accom 
 modation are mostly very young men, the majority appear 
 to be under thirty. Does.the reader remember the pleasant 
 description given by Mr. Hawthorne of the sprightly young 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 355 
 
 bar-keeper who rainbows the glittering drink so dexterously 
 from one tumbler to another 1 That sprightly young bar 
 keeper might stand as the type of the young men compos 
 ing this board. There are respectable men in the body. 
 There are six who have never knowingly cast an improper 
 vote. There is one respectable physician, three lawyers, ten 
 mechanics, and only four who acknowledge to being dealers 
 in liquors. But there is a certain air about most of these 
 young Councilmen which, in the eyes of a New-Yorker, 
 stamps them as belonging to what has been styled of late 
 years " our ruling class," butcher-boys who have got into 
 politics, bar-keepers who have taken a leading part in pri 
 mary ward meetings, and young fellow s who hang about 
 engine-houses and billiard-rooms. A stranger would natu 
 rally expect to find in such a board men who have shown 
 ability and acquired distinction in private business. We 
 say, again, that there are honest and estimable men in the 
 body ; but we also assert that there is not an individual in 
 it who has attained any considerable rank in the vocation 
 which he professes. If we were to print the list here, not a 
 name would be generally recognized. Honest Christopher 
 Pullman, for example, who leads the honest minority of six 
 that vainly oppose every scheme of plunder, is a young man 
 of twenty-seven, just beginning business as a cabinet-maker. 
 Honest William B. White, another of the six, is the man 
 ager of a printing-office. Honest Stephen Roberts is a 
 sturdy smith, who has a shop near a wharf for repairing 
 the iron-work of ships. Morris A. Tyng, another of the 
 honest six, is a young lawyer getting into practice. We 
 make no remark upon these facts, being only desirous to 
 show the business standing of the men to whom the citizens 
 of New York have confided the spending of sundry millions 
 per annum. The majority of this board are about equal, in 
 point of experience and ability, to the management of an 
 oyster-stand in a market. Such expressions as " them laws," 
 "sot the table," " 71st rigment," and "them arguments is 
 played out," may be heard on almost any Monday or Thurs 
 day afternoon, between two and three o clock, in this sump 
 tuous chamber. 
 
 But what most strikes and puzzles the stranger is the 
 crowd of spectators outside the railing. It is the rogues 
 
356 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 gallery come to life, with here and there an honest-looking 
 laborer wearing the garments of his calling. We attended 
 six sessions of this " honorable body," and on every occasion 
 there was the same kind of crowd looking on, who sat the 
 session out. Frequently we observed looks and words of 
 recognition pass between the members and this curious 
 audience ; and, once, we saw a member gayly toss a paper 
 of tobacco to one of them, who caught it with pleasing 
 dexterity. We are unable to explain the regular presence 
 of this great number of the unornamental portion of our 
 fellow-beings, since we could never see any indications that 
 any of the crowd had an interest in the proceedings. As 
 the debates are never reported by any one of the seventeen 
 reporters who are paid two hundred dollars a year for not 
 doing it, and as the educated portion of the community 
 never attend the sessions, this board sits, practically, with 
 closed doors. Their schemes are both conceived and exe 
 cuted in secrecy, though the door is open to all who wish to 
 enter. This is the more surprising, because almost every 
 session of the board furnishes the material for a report, 
 which an able and public-spirited journalist would gladly 
 buy at the highest price paid for such work in any city. 
 
 Debates is a ludicrous word to apply to the proceedings 
 of the Councilmen. Most of the business done by them is 
 pushed through without the slightest discussion, and is of 
 such a nature that members cannot be prepared to discuss 
 it. The most reckless haste marks every part of the per 
 formance. A member proposes that certain lots be pro 
 vided with curbstones ; another, that a free drinking-hydrant 
 be placed on a certain corner five miles up town; and an 
 other, that certain blocks of a distant street be paved with 
 Belgian pavement. Respecting the utility of these works, 
 members generally know nothing and can say nothing ; 
 nor are they proper objects of legislation. The resolutions 
 are adopted, usually, without a word of explanation, and at 
 a speed that must be seen to be appreciated. The first and 
 last impression made upon a disinterested spectator is, that 
 this most expensive body, even if every member were an 
 honest man, would be absolutely useless. A competent 
 street inspector, properly aided by the police, could do all 
 the real work that is left to them to do j for such has been 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 357 
 
 the flagrant abuse of their power, that, by degrees, they 
 have been deprived by the State Legislature of a great part 
 of the authority they once possessed ; but the power to do 
 mischief remains. This " honorable body " can still waste, 
 give away, and steal the money of their constituents. 
 
 The only way in which we can convey to the reader s 
 mind a lively idea of the character of the city legislature 
 is to relate, as simply as possible, a few of their acts of last 
 summer, which we witnessed ourselves and recorded on the 
 day of their perpetration. There is no " mystery of iniquity" 
 in the business ; to understand the game which the major 
 ity of this body are playing, it is only necessary to sit out 
 two or three of their ordinary sessions. We own it is a 
 trial to the patience. There will be moments when a per 
 son of a vivacious turn of mind will feel an almost irresisti 
 ble impulse to throw something at the head of those inso 
 lent young bar-keepers, who have contrived to get their 
 hands into the public pocket, and are scattering wide the 
 hard-earned money of good citizens and faithful fathers of 
 families. 
 
 At almost every session we witnessed scenes like the fol 
 lowing. A member proposed to lease a certain building for 
 a city court at two thousand dollars a year for ten years. 
 Honest Christopher Pullman, a faithful and laborious pub 
 lic servant, objected on one or two grounds : first, rents 
 being unnaturally high, owing to several well-known and 
 temporary causes, it would be unjust to the city to fix the 
 rent at present rates for so long a period ; secondly, he had 
 been himself to see the building, had taken pains to inform 
 himself as to its value, and was prepared to prove that twelve 
 hundred dollars a year was a proper rent for it, even at the 
 inflated rates. He made this statement with excellent 
 brevity, moderation, and good temper, and concluded by 
 moving that the term be two instead of ten years. A ro 
 bust young man with a bull-neck and of ungrammatical 
 habits said, in a tone expressive of impatient disdain, that 
 the landlord of the building had " refused " fifteen hundred 
 dollars a year for it. " Question ! " " Question ! " .shouted 
 half a dozen angry voices. The question was instantly put, 
 when a perfect roar of noes voted down Mr. Pullman s 
 amendment. Another hearty chorus of ayes consummated 
 
-358 TOPICS OF THE TIME 
 
 the iniquity. In all such affairs, the visitor notices a kind 
 of ungovernable propensity to vote for spending money, and 
 a prompt disgust at any obstacle raised or objection made. 
 The bull-necked Councilman of uncertain grammar evidently 
 felt that Mr. Pullman s modest interference on behalf of 
 the tax-payer was a most gross impertinence. He felt him 
 self an injured being, and his companions shared his indig 
 nation. 
 
 We proceed to another and better specimen. A resolu 
 tion was introduced, appropriating four thousand dollars for 
 the purpose of presenting stands of colors to five regiments 
 of city militia, which were named, each stand to cost eight 
 hundred dollars. Mr. Pullman, as usual, objected, and we 
 beg the reader to mark his objections. He said that he 
 was a member of the committee which had reported the 
 resolution, but he had never heard of it till that moment ; 
 the scheme had been " sprung " upon him. The chairman 
 of the committee replied to this, that, since the other regi 
 ments had had colors given them by the city, he did not 
 suppose that any one could object to these remaining five 
 receiving the same compliment, and therefore he had not 
 thought it worth while to summon the gentleman. "Be 
 sides," said he, " it is a small matter anyhow " ; by which 
 he evidently meant to intimate that the objector was a very 
 small person. To this last remark, a member replied, that 
 he did not consider four thousand dollars so" very small a 
 matter. "Anyhow," he added, "we oughter save the city 
 every dollar we kin." Mr. Pullman resumed. He stated 
 that the Legislature of the State, several months before, 
 had voted a stand of colors to each infantry regiment in the 
 State ; that the distribution of these colors had already 
 begun ; that the five regiments would soon receive them ; 
 and that, consequently, there was no need of their having 
 the colors which it was now proposed to give them. A 
 member roughly replied, that the colors voted "by the State 
 Legislature were mere painted banners, "of no account." 
 Mr. Pullman denied this. " I am," said he, " captain in 
 one of our city regiments. Two weeks ago we received our 
 colors. I have seen, felt, examined, and marched under 
 them ; and I can testify that they are of great beauty, and 
 excellent quality, made by Tiffany and Company, a firm of 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 359 
 
 the first standing in the city." He proceeded to describe 
 the colors as being made of the best silk, and decorated in 
 the most elegant manner. He further objected to the price 
 proposed to be given for the colors. He declared that, 
 from his connection with the militia, he had become ac 
 quainted with the value of such articles, and he could pro 
 cure colors of the best kind ever used in the service for 
 three hundred and seventy-five dollars. The price named 
 in the resolution was, therefore, most excessive. Upon 
 this, another member rose and said, in a peculiarly offensive 
 mariner, that it would be two years before Tiffany arid 
 Company had made all the colors, and some of the regi 
 ments would have to wait all that time. " The other 
 regiments," said he, " have had colors presented by the 
 city, and I don t see why we should show partiality." 
 Whereupon Mr. Pullman informed the board that the city 
 regiments would all be supplied in a few weeks ; arid, even 
 if they did have to wait awhile, it was of no consequence, 
 for they all had very good colors already. Honest Stephen 
 Roberts then rose, and said that this was a subject with 
 which he was not acquainted, but that if no one could refute 
 what Mr. Pullman had said, he should be obliged to vote 
 against the resolution. 
 
 Then there was a pause. The cry of " Question ! " was 
 heard. The ayes and noes were called. The resolution 
 was earned by eighteen to five. The learned suppose that 
 one half of this stolen four thousand dollars was expended 
 upon the colors, and the other half divided among about 
 forty persons. It is conjectured that each member of the 
 Councilmen s Ring, which consists of thirteen, received 
 about forty dollars for his vote on this occasion. This sum 
 added to his pay, which is twenty dollars per session, made 
 a tolerable afternoon s work. 
 
 Any one witnessing this scene would certainly have sup 
 posed that now the militia regiments of the city of New 
 York were provided with colors. What was our surprise 
 to hear, a few days after, a member gravely propose to 
 appropriate eight hundred dollars for the purpose of pre 
 senting the Ninth Regiment of New York Infantry with a 
 stand of colors. Mr. Pullman repeated his objections, and 
 recounted anew the generosity of the State Legislature. 
 
36Cf TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 The eighteen, without a word of reply, voted for the grant 
 as before. It so chanced that, on our way up Broadway, an 
 hour after, we met that very regiment marching down with 
 its colors flying ; and we observed that those colors were 
 nearly new. Indeed, there is such a propensity in the 
 public to present colors to popular regiments, that some of 
 them have as many as five stands, of various degrees of 
 splendor. There is nothing about which Councilmen need 
 feel so little anxiety as a deficiency in the supply of regi 
 mental colors. When, at last, these extravagant banners 
 voted by the Corporation are presented to the regiments, a 
 new scene of plunder is exhibited. The officers of the fa 
 vored regiment are invited to a room in the basement of the 
 City Hall, where city officials assist them to consume three 
 hundred dollars. worth of champagne, sandwiches, and cold 
 chicken, paid for out of the city treasury, while the 
 private^ of the regiment await the return of their officers in 
 the unshaded portion of the adjacent park. 
 
 It is a favorite trick with these Councilmen, as of all 
 politicians, to devise measures the passage of which will 
 gratify large bodies of voters. This is one of the advan 
 tages proposed to be gained by the presentation of colors to 
 regiments, and the same system is pursued with regard to 
 churches and societies. At every one of the six sessions 
 of the Councilmen which we attended, resolutions were 
 introduced to give away the people s money to wealthy 
 organizations. A church, for example, is assessed^ a thou 
 sand dollars for the construction of a sewer, which enhances 
 the value of the church property by at least the amount 
 of the assessment. Straightway a member from that 
 neighborhood proposes to console the stricken church with 
 a " donation " of a thousand dollars to enable it to pay the 
 assessment ; and as this is a proposition to vote money, it 
 is carried as a matter of course. We select from our notes 
 only one of these donating scenes. A member proposed to 
 give two thousand dollars to a certain industrial school, 
 the favorite charity of the present time, to which all the 
 benevolent most willingly subscribe. Vigilant Christopher 
 Pullman reminded the board that it was now unlawful for 
 the Corporation to vote money for any object not specified 
 in the tax levy, as finally sanctioned by the Legislature. 
 
He read the section of the act which forbade it. He fur 
 ther showed, from a statement by the Comptroller, that 
 there was no money left at their disposal for any miscel 
 laneous objects, since the appropriation for " City contin 
 gencies " was exhausted. The only reply to his remarks 
 was the instant passage of the resolution by eighteen to 
 five. By what artifice the law is likely to be evaded in 
 such cases, we may show further on. In all probability, 
 the industrial school, in the course of the year, will receive 
 a fraction of this money, perhaps even so large a fraction 
 as one half. It may be that, erenow, some obliging person 
 about the City Hall has offered to buy the claim for a thou 
 sand dollars, and take the risk of the hocus-pocus necessary 
 for getting it, which to him is no risk at all. 
 
 It was proposed, on another occasion, to raise the fees of 
 the inspectors of weights and measures, who received fifty 
 cents for inspecting a pair of platform scales, and smaller 
 sums for scales and measures of less importance. Here was 
 a subject upon which honest Stephen Roberts, whose shop 
 is in a street where scales and measures abound, was entirely 
 at home. He showed, in his sturdy and strenuous manner, 
 that, at the rates then established, an active man coiild 
 make two hundred dollars a day. " Why," said he, "a man 
 can inspect, and does inspect, fifty platform scales in an 
 hour." The cry of " Question ! " arose. The question was 
 put, and the usual loud chorus of ayes followed. 
 
 As it requires a three-fourths vote to grant money, i. e. 
 eighteen members, it is sometimes impossible for the Ring 
 to get that number together. There is a mode of prevent 
 ing the absence or the opposition of members from defeat 
 ing favorite schemes. It is by way of " reconsideration." 
 The time was, when a measure distinctly voted down by a 
 lawful majority was dead ; but by this expedient the voting 
 down of a measure is only equivalent to its postponement to 
 a more favorable occasion. The moment the chairman pro 
 nounces a resolution lost, the member who has it in charge 
 moves a reconsideration ; and, as a reconsideration only 
 requires the vote of a majority, this is invariably carried. 
 By a rule of the Board, a reconsideration carries a measure 
 over to a future meeting, to any future meeting which 
 may afford a prospect to its passage. The member who is 
 16 
 
362 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 engineering it watches his chance, labors with faltering 
 members out of doors, and as often as he thinks he can 
 carry it, calls it up again until at last the requisite eighteen 
 are obtained. It has frequently happened that a member 
 has kept a measure in a state of reconsideration for months 
 at a time, waiting for the happy moment to arrive. There 
 was a robust young Councilman who had a benevolent pro 
 ject in charge, of paying nine hundred dollars for a hackney- 
 coach and two horses which a drunken driver drove over 
 the dock into the river one cold night last winter. There 
 was some disagreement in the Ring on this measure, and the 
 robust youth was compelled to move for many reconsidera 
 tions. So, also, it was long before the wires could be all 
 arranged to admit of the appointment of a "messenger " to 
 the City Librarian, who has perhaps less to do than any man 
 in New York who is paid eighteen hundred dollars a year ; 
 but perseverance meets its reward. We hear that this 
 messenger is now smoking in the City Hall at a salary of 
 fifteen hundred dollars. 
 
 There is a manoeuvre also for preventing the attendance 
 of obnoxious, obstructive members, like the honest six, which 
 is ingenious and effective. A " special meeting " is called. 
 The law declares that notice of a special meeting must be 
 left at the residence or the place of business of every member. 
 Mr. Roberts s residence and Mr. Roberts s place of business 
 are eight miles apart, and he leaves his home for the day 
 before nine in the morning. If Mr. Roberts s presence at 
 a special meeting at 2 P. M. is desired, the notice is left at 
 his shop in the morning. If it is not desired, the notice is 
 sent to his house in Harlem, after he has left it. Mr. Pull 
 man, cabinet-maker, leaves his shop at noon, goes home to 
 dinner, and returns soon after one. If his presence at the 
 special meeting at 2 P. M. is desired, the notice is left at his 
 house the evening before, or at his shop in the morning. 
 If his presence is not desired, the notice is left at his shop 
 a few minutes after twelve, or at his house a few minutes 
 past one. In either case, he receives the notice too late to 
 reach the City Hall in time. We were present in the Coun- 
 cilmen s Chamber when Mr. Pullman stated this .inconven 
 ience, assuming that it was accidental, and offered an amend 
 ment to the rule, requiring notice to be left five hours before 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 363 
 
 the time named for the meeting. Mr. Roberts also gave 
 his experience in the matter of notices, and both gentlemen 
 spoke with perfect moderation and good temper. We wish 
 we could convey to our readers an idea of the brutal inso 
 lence with which Mr. Pullman, on this occasion, was snubbed 
 and defrauded by a young bar-keeper who chanced to be in 
 the chair. But this would be impossible without relating 
 the scene at very great length. The amendment proposed 
 was voted down with that peculiar roar of noes which is 
 always heard in that chamber when some honest man at 
 tempts to put an obstacle in the way of the free plunder 
 of his fellow-citizens. 
 
 These half-fledged legislators are acquainted with the 
 device known by the name of the "previous question." 
 "We witnessed a striking proof of this. One of the most 
 audacious and insolent of the Ring introduced a resolution, 
 vaguely worded, the object of which was to annul an old 
 paving contract that would not pay at the present cost of 
 labor and materials, and to authorize a new contract at 
 higher rates. Before the clerk had finished reading the 
 resolution, honest Stephen Roberts sprang to his feet, and, 
 unrolling a remonstrance with several yards of signatures 
 appended to it, stood, with his eye upon the chairman, 
 ready to present it the moment the reading was concluded. 
 This remonstrance, be it observed, was signed by a major 
 ity of the property-owners interested, the men who would 
 be assessed to pay for one half of the proposed pavement. 
 Fancy the impetuous Roberts with the document held aloft, 
 the yards of signatures streaming down to his feet and flow 
 ing far under his desk, awaiting the time when it would be 
 in order for him to cry out, " Mr. President." The reading 
 ceased. Two voices were heard, shouting, " Mr. President." 
 It was not to Mr. Roberts that an impartial chairman could 
 assign the floor. The member who introduced the resolu 
 tion was the one who " caught the speaker s eye," and that 
 member, forewarned of Mr. Roberta s intention, moved the 
 previous question. It was in vain that Mr. Roberts shouted, 
 "Mr. President." It was in vain that he fluttered and 
 rattled his streaming ribbon of blotted paper. The Presi 
 dent could not hear a word of any kind until a vote had 
 been taken upon the question whether the main question 
 
364 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 should be now put. That question was carried in the af 
 firmative by a chorus of ayes, so exactly timed that it was 
 like the voice of one man. Then the main question was 
 put, and it was carried by another emphatic and simultane 
 ous shout. 
 
 We have spoken of the headlong precipitation with which 
 all business is done in this board. Measures involving an 
 expenditure of millions, and designed to bind the city for a 
 great number of years, are hurried through both boards in 
 less time than paterfamilias expends in buying his Sunday 
 dinner in the market ; and, frequently such measures are 
 so mysteriously worded that no one outside of the Ring can 
 understand their real object. We happened to be present 
 when a resolution was brought directly from the Board of 
 Aldermen (who had passed it without debate), directing the 
 Street Commissioner to make a contract with the lowest 
 bidder for lighting the whole island for twenty years with 
 gas, the price to be fixed now, when coal and labor are 
 twice their usual price. No such simple words, however, 
 as twenty years were to be found in the resolution ; which 
 merely said, that the contract should be for " the same 
 number of years as the contract last made and executed 
 with the Manhattan Gas Company." A member, bewildered 
 by the furiously rapid reading of this long and vague reso 
 lution, timidly inquired how many years that was. No one 
 seemed to know. After a pause, some one said that he 
 believed it was ten years. Whereupon, Councilman White, 
 a faithful and intelligent member of the honest minority, 
 proposed that the term of the contract be two years, which 
 Mr. Pullman supported. The amendment was instantly 
 voted down, and the original resolution was carried by the 
 usual eighteen votes. The Mayor promptly vetoed the 
 scheme. The Tribune thundered against it ; but the veto 
 message had no sooner been read, than it was passed over 
 the veto by the Aldermen ; then taken to the Councilmen s 
 Chamber, where the requisite eighteen votes were immedi 
 ately cast for it. This resolution, as we were afterwards 
 informen, was merely one of a long series of measures de 
 signed to tap the lamp-posts of the city, like so many sugar- 
 maples, and make them run gold into the troughs of a few 
 notorious politicians. 
 
THE GOVEENMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YOKK. 365 
 
 We are lingering too long in the Conncilmen s Chamber, 
 and must abruptly leave it. Nor can we remain more than 
 a moment with the Aldermen. It is not necessary, for 
 there is not a pin to choose between the two bodies. We 
 observe in their chamber the same lavishness of furniture 
 and decoration ; pictures as numerous and as bad as those 
 which hang in the chamber opposite ; the same wild pro 
 fusion of clerks, assistant clerks, readers, engrossers, mes 
 sengers, and assistant messengers ; the same crowd of un 
 washed and ugly spectators outside the railing. Except 
 that the Aldermen are a little older and somewhat better 
 dressed than the Councilmen, we could discern no difference 
 between them. Whatever dubious scheme is hurried 
 through one body is rushed through the other. Sometimes 
 the Councilmen point the game, and the Aldermen bring it 
 down ; and sometimes it is the Aldermen that start up the 
 covey, and the Councilmen that fire. As with the Council- 
 men, so with the Aldermen, there is a sure three-fourths 
 vote for every scheme which has the sanction of the interior 
 circle who control the entire politics of the city. And, as 
 among the Councilmen, so among the Aldermen there are 
 a few honest and public-spirited men who vainly protest 
 against iniquity, or silently cast their votes against it. If 
 one such body is one too many, how shall we express the 
 enormous superfluity of two 1 It is impossible. 
 
 But there is a third legislative board sitting in the City 
 Hall. The island upon which New York is built is a 
 county, and that county has its board of twelve Supervisors, 
 who have the spending of seventeen millions of dollars per 
 annum. The city and the county cover the same territory. 
 Each creature in the island of Manhattan lives both in the 
 county and in the city of New York. The existence, there 
 fore, of a separate legislature for each is a complete absurd 
 ity ; and, if both were honest, there would be constant 
 danger of clashing between them. They do not often clash, 
 because both have in view the same object, and pursue that 
 object tinder the direction of a central gang, the masters 
 of both. It is the Board of Supervisors who, being author 
 ized, eight years ago, to build a court-house at an expense 
 not to exceed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, have 
 expended upon it two millions and a half j and there it 
 
366 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 stands to-day just half done. It is computed, by archi 
 tects professionally employed, that for every dollar spent 
 upon this unfinished edifice another dollar has gone else 
 where. 
 
 Our principal object in this article is not to present the 
 reader with a startling catalogue of iniquities, but to en 
 deavor to contribute our little towards discovering a mode 
 of expelling the thieves, keeping them expelled, and getting 
 a few honest men in the place of that great multitude of 
 plunderers. Before entering upon that part of our subject, 
 however, we must show to readers remote from the scene, 
 that the corruption exists, that it taints nearly every branch 
 of the public service, that it is an evil of gigantic and men 
 acing proportions, and that the numerous expedients devised 
 for holding it in check have failed. Hitherto we have re 
 lated what we have ourselves seen and heard : we now 
 proceed to glean a few of the more striking facts from 
 our notes of what others have told us and from printed 
 testimony. 
 
 The volume entitled " The Manual of the Common Coun 
 cil " is itself a curious specimen of the artifices resorted to by 
 these official plunderers of the public purse. In the year 
 1841, a zealous assistant clerk to the Common Council con 
 ceived the idea of publishing a little volume, which should be 
 a kind of city almanac ; containing, besides what an almanac 
 usually presents, a list of all the persons connected with 
 the city government, their places of business and residence, 
 and a map of the city. A neat, small volume of 180 pages 
 was the result of his labors. Even this was unnecessary, 
 because the most useful part of the information which it 
 gave respecting the members of the government had already 
 appeared in the City Directory, and an almanac could be 
 had of pill-venders for nothing. No good reason could 
 be given why even so inexpensive a work as that should be 
 paid for out of the public treasury. But see to what pro 
 portions this trifling imposition has since grown. The next 
 year, our zealous assistant clerk added to his catalogue of 
 city officials a list of all previous members of the Corpora 
 tion, from the earliest period of the city s existence, and a 
 picture of New York as it was two hundred years ago. 
 This year the volume swelled from 180 to 253 pages. The 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 367 
 
 picture was interesting, and caused the work to be much 
 spoken of and sought after, which was only another proof 
 how unnecessary it was that it should be published at the 
 expense of the city. The next issue, besides the list of 
 names and residences, contained extensive extracts from 
 ancient city records, which increased the number of pages 
 to 312. Every year the Manual increased in bulk, in the 
 quantity of superfluous matter, in the number and costliness 
 of the pictures, until it has now become a manual of folly, 
 extravagance, and dishonesty. Let us glance at the Man 
 ual for 1865; for, to add to the exquisiteness of the art 
 employed in its preparation, the book is not published un 
 til the year is nearly expired, and a new set of officers are 
 about to be chosen, so that the volume for 1866 had not 
 appeared when these lines were written. The Manual for 
 1865 is a most superb and lavishly illustrated duodecimo 
 volume of 879 pages. It contains one hundred and forty- 
 one pictures, of all degrees of expensiveness, steel-plate, 
 woodcut, plain lithograph, and colored lithograph. The 
 large colored map of the city, at the beginning, cost as 
 much money as a map of that kind could any way be made 
 to cost. Next comes a steel portrait of the person who, for 
 twenty-five years, has hired people to compile the annual 
 volume, and whose name has always appeared on the title- 
 page as its editor, and who is supposed to be liberally re 
 munerated for his editorial labors. Next appears a very 
 elegant colored title-page, containing six finely executed 
 pictures. 
 
 Before proceeding with the list, we remind the reader 
 that the ingenuity of the compilers of this work has been 
 severely taxed for many years to devise and discover sub 
 jects for illustration. Subjects that could be called legiti 
 mate, or that approached the legitimate, having been long 
 ago exhausted, the editor this year appears to have been 
 in the direst straits to supply his lithographers and en 
 gravers with the regular quantity of work. 
 
 Accordingly, the next illustration is a plan of the Alder 
 men s Chamber, designed to show where each member sat 
 in 1865 ; and the next is a four-paged, folding lithograph, 
 containing precious gift to posterity ! a fac-simile of 
 each Alderman s signature. In the next two plates poster- 
 
368 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 ity is blessed with the signatures of the Councilmen for 
 1865, and the means of ascertaining the precise arm-chair 
 occupied by each. The following are the subjects of a few 
 of the costly colored lithographs : the " fur store " estab 
 lished in 1820 by the father of the Mayor of the city in 
 1865; the "old frame-house " in which the editor of the 
 Manual " passed his youth " ; " Mr. Stewart s house in 
 Fifty-Fourth Street " ; "a grocery and tea store " of the 
 year 1826 ; the house in North Moore Street in which 
 Speaker Colfax was born ; " twin frame-houses in Lexing 
 ton Avenue "5 Tammany Hall in 1830; a billiard saloon 
 in the Fifth Avenue ; Harlem Lane, with fast horses travel 
 ling thereon ; the " Audubon Estate " on the Hudson ; the 
 upper end of the Central Park drive. Besides these, there 
 are pictures, not colored, of a prodigious number of public 
 and private buildings, and portraits of undistinguished per 
 sons. The number of pages occupied by extracts from old 
 records, newspapers, and memories is 423 ! 
 
 Such is the book which the tax-payers of the city are 
 called upon every year to pay for, in order to swell the in 
 come of sundry printers, lithographers, politicians, and the 
 compiler. But this is not all. The number of copies an 
 nually ordered to be printed is ten thousand ! The num 
 ber paid for is ten thousand. The number actually printed, 
 we are positively assured by men who are in a position to 
 know, is about three thousand. Of this number, about 
 fifteen hundred are distributed gratis about the City Hall, 
 and the rest are sold by, and for the benefit of, the com 
 piler. A considerable number find their way into the 
 second-hand bookstores which make Nassau Street so fas 
 cinating to poor students and rich collectors. We bought 
 our copy there, and its price was three dollars. The book 
 seller informed us that he laid in his supply of the Manual 
 for 1865 at two dollars per copy, which is three dollars 
 and thirty-six cents less than a copy costs the city. Nor 
 have we yet got to the bottom of this enormous "job." We 
 have said that the city pays for ten thousand copies of the 
 preposterous volume. It pays for nearly twice that num 
 ber. The items of the Manual account rendered for 1865 
 were these ; 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 369 
 
 Bill of engraving . . . V " $4,353.10 
 
 Bill of engraving and printing . \ - . 733.00 
 
 Bill of drawing and printing . . 5,150.00 
 
 Bill of lithographing and printing . . . 3,185.00 
 
 "Bill of printing 10, 000 copies . ". . 27,951.20 
 
 Bill of corrections and alterations . . " . 300.00 
 
 Bill of paper for title-pages . .. . . : . 600.00 
 
 Bill of thirty reams tissue paper ... , . 150.00 
 
 Bill of papering 10,000 copies . . . " . * 100.00 
 
 Bill of ten reams wrapping paper . . . 150.00 
 
 Bill of binding 5,000 copies in cloth . . 5,000.00 
 
 Bill of binding 4,000 copies in muslin . . 4,000.00 
 Bill of binding 1,000 copies in morocco . 2,000.00 
 
 Total $53,672.30 
 
 D. T. Valentine, for compiling . . 3.500.00 
 
 Total $57,172.30 
 
 This shameful account being brought to the notice of the 
 present Mayor of the city, Mr. John T. Hoffman, he did 
 himself the honor to veto the resolution authorizing a sim 
 ilar expenditure for 1866. He told the men who passed 
 that resolution, that he had made inquiries of such pub 
 lishing houses as the Appletons and the Harpers, and had 
 ascertained that ten thousand copies of the work could 
 be manufactured for $30,000, instead of $53,672; al 
 though a new publisher would not have the benefit of the 
 large amount of stereotyped matter which appears in the 
 Manual from year to year, with little alteration. The truth 
 is, that the book actually costs the compiler about $ 15,000 
 per annum ; and the difference between that sum and the 
 amount charged is taken from the pockets of the New 
 York tax-payers by a process which we leave our readers 
 to characterize with the proper term. 
 
 The. most usual manner of stealing is to receive money 
 for awarding or procuring contracts, appointments, dona 
 tions, or increase of salaries, which money, of course, the 
 favored person gets back, if he can, from the public treas 
 ury ; and he usually can. The President of the Board of 
 Health, last spring, when New York was threatened with 
 the cholera, had occasion to remonstrate with a person 
 who held the contract for removing dead animals from the 
 streets, and threatened him with the breaking of the con 
 tract if its conditions were not better complied with. 
 16* x 
 
370 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 " That would be rather hard, Mr. Schultz," replied the 
 man, " for that contract cost me $ 60,000." And well it 
 might ; for the city pays $ 25,000 a year for getting rid of 
 a commodity every pound of which ought to yield the city 
 a revenue. A dead horse, worth twenty dollars, the city 
 pays for having carted off to where it can be conveniently 
 converted into twenty dollars. Another contractor receives 
 $ 21,000 a year for removing night-soil, which could be sold 
 for enough to pay the cost of its removal. By various ex 
 tra charges, the holders of this contract have continued to 
 swell their gains incredibly. Mr. Jackson Schultz, the 
 energetic and capable President of the Board of Health, 
 has recently published his conviction, that the " total swin 
 dle under this contract is $ 111,000," and we have had the 
 advantage of hearing him demonstrate the fact. The story, 
 however, is too long for our very limited space. 
 
 Does any one need evidence that the men who award 
 such contracts, in the teeth of opposition and elucidation, 
 receive a large share of the plunder ? The fact is as cer 
 tain as though ten witnesses swore to having seen the money 
 to them in hand paid. Three years ago a contract was 
 awarded for sweeping the streets for ten years, at $ 495,000 
 a year. Since the accession to power of the new Board of 
 Health, responsible men have handed in a written offer to 
 buy the remainder of the contract for a quarter of a million 
 dollars, i. e. to clean the city for seven years at $ 495,000 
 a year, and give the city a quarter of a million dollars for 
 the privilege. There are those about the city offices who 
 know, or think they know, how the plunder of this contract 
 is divided. We believe we are not violating any confidence, 
 expressed or implied, when we say, that it is the conviction 
 of the Board of Health that $ 100,000 per annum,of the 
 proceeds of this contract are divided among certain politi 
 cians ; that a certain lawyer, who engineered the project, and 
 stands ready to defend it, receives a salary of $ 25,000 pe? 
 annum as " counsel to the contract " ; and that the men 
 in whose name the contract is held are " dummies," who get 
 $ 6,000 a year for the use of their names and for their labor 
 in superintending the work. The contract is further bur 
 dened with the support of several hundred cripples, old men, 
 and idle men, all of whom are voters, who are put in the 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YOKK. 371 
 
 street-cleaning force by Aldermen and Councilmen who want 
 their votes and the votes of their relatives, thus kindly re 
 lieved of maintaining aged grandfathers, lame uncles, and lazy 
 good-for-nothings. These statements, we are aware, cannot 
 be proved. Such compacts are not trusted to paper ; and 
 a witness driven to bay can always balk his assailants by 
 refusing to criminate himself. The reader, therefore, may 
 decline to believe these details. One thing remains, and is 
 certain, that the workingmen of New York are annually 
 plundered of two hundred thousand dollars per annum by 
 this single contract. 
 
 How the work so munificently paid for is done is suf 
 ficiently well known. Into that foul subject we cannot 
 enter, except to notice the blind devotion of the great mass 
 of poor men who annually vote to keep in power the people 
 who steal their earnings and poison their children. New 
 York boasts a Democratic majority of more than thirty 
 thousand votes, and the government of the city is always 
 in the hands of the party so named. Is it, then, the rich 
 men s streets that are unswept, and the poor men s crowded 
 avenues and lanes that are clean 1 Are the small parks and 
 squares where thousands of poor children play better kept 
 than those to which scores of rich men s children are car 
 ried 1 Is the Bowery cleaner than Broadway, and Tomkins 
 Square more inviting than Union 1 In the spring, when 
 the March thaw has unlocked the accumulated dirt of the 
 winter, and the whole city is deep in mire, which are the 
 streets that a Democratic contractor first throws himself 
 upon 1 Does he first remove the festering mounds of pol 
 lution that block the poor man s path to his home, and 
 make that home loathsome to him, and then betake himself 
 to the coating of mud that soils the rich man s boots 1 Or 
 does he leave reeking with abomination the crammed thor 
 oughfares where Democratic voters live, half a hundred in 
 a house, until every shovelful of dirt has been removed 
 from the places where rich men reside, seven voters to a 
 block 1 Bat why ask idle questions ? It is the law of this 
 world that the strong shall rule it. In a commercial city, 
 the strong men are rich. Label your government what you 
 will, it is the strong men in a community who have their 
 way; and therefore, under all governments, the streets 
 where rich men live are clean. 
 
372 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 The plunder of the persons who are so unfortunate as to 
 serve the public, and of those who aspire to serve the pub 
 lic, is systematic, and nearly universal. Our inquiries into 
 this branch of the subject lead us to conclude that there 
 are very few salaries paid from the city or county treasury 
 which do not yield an annual percentage to some one of the 
 " head-centres " of corruption. The manner in which this 
 kind of spoliation is sometimes effected may be gathered 
 from a narrative which we received from the lips of one of 
 the few learned and estimable men whom the system of 
 electing judges by the people has left upon the bench in 
 the city of New York. Four years ago, when the inflation 
 of the currency had so enhanced the price of all commodi 
 ties that there was, of necessity, a general increase of sala 
 ries, public and private, there was talk of raising the salaries 
 of the fourteen judges, who were most absurdly underpaid 
 even when a dollar in paper and a dollar in gold were the 
 same thing. Some of the judges were severely pinched in 
 attempting to make six thousand half-dollars do the work 
 which six thousand whole ones had accomplished with diffi 
 culty ; and none, perhaps, more severely than the excellent 
 and hospitable judge whose experience we are about to re 
 late. A person known by him to be in the confidence of 
 leading men about the City Hall called upon him one day, 
 and informed him that it was in contemplation to raise the 
 salaries of all the judges $ 2,000 per annum. The judge 
 observed, that he was much relieved to hear it, for he had 
 gone so deeply into the Sanitary Commission and other 
 projects for promoting the war, and had made so many 
 expensive journeys to Washington in furtherance of such 
 projects, that he did not see how he could get through 
 the year if the inflation continued. " Well, Judge, " said the 
 person, " if the judges are disposed to be reasonable, the 
 thing can be done." " What do you mean by reasonable ? " 
 asked the judge. The reply was brief and to the point : 
 " Twenty-five per cent of the increase for one year." The 
 judge said 110. If his salary could not be raised without 
 that, he must rub on, as best he could, on his present in 
 come. The person was evidently much surprised, and said : 
 " I am sorry you have such old-fashioned notions. Why, 
 Judge, everybody does it here." Nothing more was heard 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 373 
 
 of increasing the judges salaries for a whole year, during 
 which the inflation itself had become inflated, and every 
 door-keeper and copyist had had his stipend increased. At 
 length the spoilers deemed it best, for purposes of their 
 own, to consent that the salaries of the judges should be 
 increased $ 1,000 ; and, a year after that, the other $ 1,000 
 was permitted to be added. 
 
 It was recently proved, in the presence of the Governor 
 of the State, that the appointment of the office of Corpora 
 tion Attorney was sold to one incumbent for the round sum 
 of $ 10,000. This is bad enough, but worse remains to be 
 told. Sworn testimony (from thirty-six- witnesses), taken 
 by a committee of investigation, establishes the appalling 
 fact, that appointments to places in the public schools are 
 systematically sold in some of the wards, the wards where 
 the public schools are almost the sole civilizing power, and 
 where it is of unspeakable importance that the schools 
 should be in the hands of the best men and women. One 
 young lady, who had just buried her father and had a help 
 less mother to support, applied for a situation as teacher, 
 and was told, as usual, that she must pay for it. She re 
 plied that she could not raise the sum demanded, the funeral 
 expenses having exhausted the family store. She was then 
 informed that she could pay " the tax " in instalments. 
 Another poor girl came on the witness-stand on crutches, 
 and testified that she had paid $ 75 for a situation of $ 300 
 a year. Another lady went to a member of the Ring, and 
 told him, with tears, that she saw no way of procuring the 
 sum required, nor even of saving it from the slender salary 
 of the place. The man was moved by her anguish, took 
 compassion upon her, and said he would remit his share of 
 " the tax." It was shown, too, that the agent of all this 
 foul iniquity was no other than the principal of one of the 
 schools. It was he w r ho received and paid over the money 
 wrung from the terror and necessities of underpaid and 
 overworked teachers. We learn from the report of the 
 committee that the Ring in this ward was originally formed 
 for the express purpose of giving the situations in a new 
 and handsome school "to the highest bidder " ; and, as the 
 opening of the new school involved the discharge of a small 
 number pf teachers employed in the old schools, the Ring 
 
374 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 had both the fear and the ambition of the teachers to work 
 upon. " There was a perfect reign of terror in the ward," 
 says the report of the investigating committee. " The 
 agent performed his duty with alacrity and with a heart- 
 lessness worthy of the employers. It appears that he not 
 only summoned the teachers to come to him, but that he 
 called on their parents and friends as to the amount they 
 should pay for their appointments, the sums varying 
 from $ 50 to $ 600, according to the position sought." 
 
 And who were the Ring that perpetrated this infamy 1 
 They were a majority of the Trustees elected by the people, 
 and the School Commissioner elected by the people, six 
 poor creatures, selected from the grog-shop and the wharf, 
 and intrusted with the most sacred interest of a republic, 
 the education of its children. It was known before that 
 in some of the wards the school trustees were drunkards ; 
 it was known before that little children were piled up, like 
 flower-pots in a green-house, in small, ill-ventilated rooms ; 
 but no one supposed, before this investigation in 1864, that 
 men could be elected to office who were capable of such 
 revolting meanness as this. 
 
 When appointments are sold, appointments are likely to 
 be numerous. Some of our readers, doubtless, have smiled 
 at the ridiculous catalogue of offices created to relieve the 
 pecuniary straits of Louis XIV., and given by Voltaire in 
 his history of the reign of that expensive monarch. In 
 Paris, in the year 1710, men holding the rank of counsel 
 lors of the king held such posts as hog-inspectors, inspectors 
 of calves, of wigs, and of slaughter-houses, inventory-draw 
 ers, measurers of fire-wood, deputy measurers of fire-wood, 
 pilers of fire-wood, unloaders of fire-wood, comptrollers of 
 timber, markers of timber, charcoal-measurers, grain-sifters, 
 comptrollers of poultry, barrel-gangers, barrel-rollers, but 
 ter-testers, beer-testers, brandy-testers, linen-measurers, un 
 loaders of hay, and removers of boarding. Not that coun 
 sellors to the king performed any of these labors. That 
 was done by underlings ; the counsellors to the king merely 
 pocketing the greater part of the fees. But how mild and 
 trivial was this abuse of kingly power, compared with the 
 hoards of superfluous officers that swarm in the public 
 buildings of the city of New York ! In the office of the 
 
THE. GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YOKK. 375 
 
 City Comptroller there are one hundred and thirty-one 
 clerks. The Street Commissioner employs sixty. In the 
 precious Manual described above, the reader, amazed at 
 the interminable list of persons employed by the city, is 
 every now and then puzzled by such items as these : twelve 
 " manure-inspectors," at $ 3 a day each ; twenty-two " health- 
 wardens," twenty-two " assistant health-wardens," twenty- 
 two " street-inspectors, " all at $ 3 a day each ; seven " as 
 sistant inspectors of meat, at $ 900 per annum each ; seven 
 "inspectors of encumbrances," at $1,250 each; twenty-two 
 " distributors of corporation ordinances," at $ 2 each per 
 day. We have not space to continue the catalogue. Who 
 has ever seen any of these wardens and inspectors? A 
 gentleman connected with the Citizens Association, had the 
 public spirit to sally forth, Manual in hand, in quest of the 
 twenty-two health-wardens and twenty-two assistants ; for 
 neither he nor the writer of these lines, nor any of their 
 acquaintances, had ever so much as heard of the existence 
 of such officers. Long and painful was the search. He 
 found that those guardians of the public health were bar 
 keepers, low ward politicians, nameless hangers-on of sa 
 loons, who absolutely performed no official duty whatever 
 except to draw the salary attached to their places. They 
 were the merest creatures of the worthless man who ap 
 pointed them, the man who sold or gave away blank in 
 terment-permits, signed, to favored undertakers, "to save 
 them the trouble of coming down town every time they had 
 a funeral." * For the benefit of those gentlemen of leisure 
 in New York, who excuse their want of public spirit by say 
 ing that the city government is so corrupt that it is of " no 
 use to try " to reform it, we will mention that, very much 
 through the exertions of the warden-hunter referred to 
 above, those three twenty -two s were abolished a few months 
 ago, as well as the entire department to which they be 
 longed. To that single item of reform we owe it that the 
 city was not desolated by the cholera during the past sum 
 mer. 
 
 The reader has, perhaps, heard something respecting the 
 
 * This was the reason given by the undertakers when they were ques 
 tioned on the subject by members of the new Board of Health. The pos 
 session of blank permits did not, however, prevent them from charging for 
 the permits in their bills. 
 
376 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 cost of " opening " new streets in the city of New York. 
 Under cover of those innocent-looking words, incredible 
 sums of money are stolen from the owners of real estate. 
 In the year 1811, the entire island, except a small strip at 
 its northern extremity, was surveyed ; the sites of all the 
 future streets and avenues were settled, marked with stone 
 pillars, and laid down on maps ; so that, ever since that 
 time, all land has been bought, sold, held, and improved 
 with reference to the streets that were one day to run 
 through it, by it, or near it. The work was so well done 
 that those maps, and no others, are still used by assessors 
 of taxes, and for all other official purposes. Copies of them 
 are to be found for reference in one of the rooms of the 
 building whereto all the world repairs every November to 
 be taxed. Bearing these facts in mind, the reader will 
 easily comprehend the audacity of the theft to which his 
 attention is now directed. 
 
 A new street is ordered to be " opened," and the judges 
 of the Supreme Court appoint three commissioners to per 
 form the work, at four dollars per day each. To " open " a 
 street, in the legal sense, is not to go to work with shovel 
 and pickaxe and convert a strip of meadow into a street, 
 but merely to buy the strip from the owners, transfer the 
 title to the Corporation, and then formally declare the 
 street " opened." Since the surveys are already done, and 
 the maps already made, and since the expense of the whole 
 transaction is borne by the owners of land upon the street, 
 who bought that land because the street would one day ex 
 ist, this legal opening is the merest form. The commission 
 ers buy the land required at the rate of one dollar for each 
 lot taken, which is one among many proofs of the pure for 
 mality of the business. We will now state, first, what the 
 three commissioners actually do who are so lucky as to have 
 a street to open ; and then we will show what is charged 
 for the arduous work. 
 
 They meet in a room in the third story of a building in 
 Nassau Street, which is from five to eight miles from the 
 street about to be opened. They hire the room for the 
 meetings of the commissioners. True, it is already occu 
 pied, and no change in it is made by the occupant ; but 
 they hire it, nevertheless. They appoint a surveyor, a 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 377 
 
 clerk, an assistant clerk, and sometimes, we believe, a mes 
 senger. These appointments cost them three minutes of 
 their valuable time; for there are people who have acquired, 
 in some way, a claim to those appointments, and are ap 
 pointed as a matter of course. There is not, there cannot 
 be, a doubt that the " understanding " between the judges, 
 the commissioners, the surveyors, and the clerks is com 
 plete before the first step is taken. The clerk is the ruling 
 mind of the affair. It is he who lets the room ; it is he who 
 draws up the final report ; it is he who divides the spoil, 
 and takes, probably, the largest single share. He conceives, 
 arranges, starts, and conducts the operation, and he does it 
 at his ease in his own hired room. The officers being ap 
 pointed, the commissioners have earned their four dollars 
 each, and adjourn. 
 
 Every day, between the hours of twelve and two, they 
 visit the apartment, inquire after the health of their clerk, 
 perhaps take a cigar with him, see that their names are 
 entered as having attended, which entitles them to four 
 dollars, and then return, refreshed, to their private business. 
 Meanwhile sundry advertisements are published, announ 
 cing to parties interested what is going on. The surveyor 
 may or may not take a car and ride up to the street, or 
 walk over the part to be opened. Perhaps there is a house, 
 built before 1811, which extends over the line of the street; 
 and if so, the owner is entitled to compensation. Usually, 
 however, there is nothing of the kind ; and usually the 
 surveyor, an old hand at the business, knows whether there 
 is or not without going up to see. A draughtsman, mean 
 while, has been copying a map of the street from the maps 
 of 1811 ; and the clerk writes along the border of it (from 
 the tax-books) the names of the owners of the lots on each 
 side of the street. Sundry other advertisements are then 
 published, calling upon parties interested to come and see 
 what has been done, and state objections, if any there are. 
 The clerk^then draws up a report, and the thing is done. 
 None of these operations are hurried. Care is taken of the 
 interests of the commissioners. It is not until they have 
 paid their noontide respects to the clerk for a prodigious 
 number of days that the street is pronounced " open." 
 
 Then the bill is presented. The surveyor charges as 
 
378 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 though he had made original surveys and drawn original 
 maps. The clerk charges as though his report were the 
 result of original searches and researches. The commis 
 sioners charge as though the opening had been the tardy 
 fruit of actual negotiations. The rent of the room is charged 
 as though it had been occupied wholly by the commission 
 ers. And all of these charges are the very highest which 
 any one, in his most lavish mood, could even think of in 
 connection with the work supposed to be done. When we 
 add, that half a dozen of these openings are frequently go 
 ing on at the same time, in the same snug upper room, and 
 conducted by the same individuals, the reader will not be 
 surprised to learn that the net result of the business to the 
 master spirit, for the year ending June, 1866, was $ 25,466, 
 of which sum $ 4,433 was charged for the rent of the room, 
 which he hires for about $ 300 per annum, and $ 950 was 
 charged for "disbursements and postage-stamps." One 
 surveyor s bill for the same year was $ 54,000. It has been 
 ascertained, after a laborious examination of the public 
 records, that the total cost of "opening" twenty-five streets, 
 or parts of streets, averaging less than half a mile each in 
 length, was $257,192.12. The public is indebted for this 
 information to Mr. William H. Whitbeck, president of an 
 association of property-owners recently formed to protect 
 themselves against further spoliation of the same nature. 
 
 The Executive Council of the Citizens Association has 
 recently given publicity to a large number of facts relating 
 to the same iniquity. We will select one of them : 
 
 " In opening 124th Street, the Commissioners awarded to the owner 
 of a house standing in the northwest angle of 124th Street and Second 
 Avenue some $ 4,500 for the damage to his building by the opening 
 of the street. If this house had stood in the middle of the street, and 
 had been entirely destroyed by the opening, he should not have re 
 ceived one cent, inasmuch as the house was built subsequent to 1811, 
 when the map of the city was planned. The fact is, that, in 1811, a 
 monument was planted at the intersection of 124th Street and Second 
 Avenue, and the person who built the house built it in the angle of 
 the street, and facing the country road. The owner knew well where 
 the street was to be, and so avoided building upon it. As the house 
 was built facing the angle, the two ends of its rectangular piazza ex 
 tended about six feet over the line, the one end over the line of Sec 
 ond Avenue, and the other end over the line of 124th Street. Now, 
 if the owner built his house encroaching upon the street, he should 
 not have been paid for the damage caused by his own negligence. It 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 379 
 
 appears, however, that the piazza has been rounded so as not to ex 
 tend over the line ; and for this rounding of the piazza, which could, 
 have been done at an expense of certainly not more than $ 1,000, the 
 owner has been allowed the enormous sum of $4,500. The house 
 stands there as good as it ever was. Need we say that the owner is a 
 prominent politician ? " 
 
 We have since conversed with the gentleman who was 
 charged with the investigation of this case. He assures us 
 that the rounding of the piazza cost, in reality, about $ 250 ; 
 and that he placed it at $ 1,000 in his report, because, be 
 ing ignorant of carpentry, he deemed it best to mention a 
 sum much in excess of the probable cost. 
 
 Our lessening space warns us to forbear, though we have 
 scarcely made an impression upon the mass of facts before 
 us. We cannot dwell upon the favoritism practised toward 
 the real constituents of the spoilers, the liquor-dealers, 
 who actually paid a less sum per annum for licenses, and 
 contributed a smaller amount to the Inebriate Asylum, 
 than the liquor-dealers of Albany. We must pass by such 
 enormous frauds as that known by the name of the Ganse- 
 voort swindle, in the course of which a tract of land was 
 bought from the city at half its value, kept in costly litiga 
 tion for several years, then bought back by the city for 
 twice its value, and all the taxes remitted for the inter 
 vening period. Nor can we give details of the manner in 
 which mean men steal from the price of the school-chil 
 dren s copy-books and slate-pencils, nor open up the enor 
 mous and complicated cheat which is covered by the word 
 " stationery." How the hard-earned claims of poor labor 
 ers are " shaved," under pretence that there is no money to 
 pay them in the Treasury ; by what means a clerk of a 
 market enjoys an income as large as that of the President 
 of the United States ; how the funerals of eminent men, 
 the celebration of national festivals, and the return of 
 scarred veterans from the seat of war have been made the 
 occasion, first, of drunken revelry, and afterwards of 
 wholesale plunder ; how the delicate wines provided for the 
 sick in the public institutions are poured down the filthy 
 gullets of many whose natural drink is distilled molasses ; 
 how the most valuable ferry leases, wharf privileges, and 
 railroad charters are given away or sold for a tenth of their 
 value to " dummies " who represent the very men who 
 
380 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 grant them ; how many men hold two or more offices at 
 once ; and fifty other scandals into which we have looked, 
 we must pass by with this brief indication of their na 
 ture. It would be amusing to show the process by which 
 (until honest Christopher Pullman stopped it last spring) 
 the city was made to pay $ 87 every time the Corporation 
 granted permission to an old woman to keep a peanut-stand 
 on a corner, for which she paid one dollar. As a portion 
 of the "proceedings" of the two boards, the "resolution " 
 had to be published in seventeen newspapers, and paid for 
 in each, which cost the sum just mentioned. The same 
 worthy gentleman has proved, by personal inquiry, that 
 every rocket or firework discharged on the Fourth of July 
 by order of the Corporation costs the city exactly twice as 
 much as a private citizen pays for the same articles. 
 
 The result of all this plunder is, that in thirty-six years 
 the rate of taxation in the city and county of New York 
 has increased from two dollars and a half to forty dollars 
 per inhabitant ! In 1830, the city was governed for half a 
 million dollars. In 18G5, the entire government of the 
 island, including assessments on private property for public 
 improvements, cost more than forty millions of dollars. 
 In 1830, tjie population of the city was a little more than 
 two hundred thousand. It is now about one million. Thus, 
 while the population of the county is five times greater 
 than it was* in 1830, the cost of governing it is sixteen 
 times greater. And yet such is the value of the productive 
 property owned by the city, so numerous are the sources 
 of revenue from that property, that able men of business 
 are of the deliberate opinion that a private company could 
 govern, clean, sprinkle, and teach the city by contract, 
 taking as compensation only the fair revenue to be derived 
 from its property. Take one item as an illustration : un 
 der the old excise system, the liquor licenses yielded twelve 
 thousand dollars per annum ; under the new, they yield 
 one million and a quarter. Take another : the Corporation 
 own more than twenty miles of wharves and water-front, 
 the revenue from which does not keep the wharves in re 
 pair ; under a proper system, they would yield a million 
 dollars above the cost of repairs. 
 
 We trust no reader of this article not one needs 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 381 
 
 to be reminded that the money stolen by the thieves into 
 whose hands the city has fallen is the smallest item of the 
 mighty sum of evil resulting from the system. A person, 
 however, must intimately know New York to realize what a 
 welling fount of moral pollution it is. Those within the 
 circle of corruption, and all with whom they continue to 
 have dealings, lose at length all sense of honor and shame, 
 all power to distinguish between right and wrong, and, 
 finally, all knowledge that there is any difference between 
 them. It is a most insidious thing. Many a good young 
 man has been drawn into the system so insensibly that he 
 has become an habitual stealer of the public money, almost 
 without knowing it. Others are conscious thieves, but not 
 yet hardened beyond remorse. Some of these are, as it 
 were, imprisoned in the system, and know not how to es 
 cape. A very large number are morally non-existent, and 
 have no other thought or occupation except to devise and 
 execute schemes of spoliation. And we do believe that no 
 man who serves, sells to, or buys from the city, and no man 
 who tries to serve, sell to, or buy from the city, does en 
 tirely escape contamination. What a tale we could tell of 
 one notorious, but not naturally bad man, who, from a re 
 spectable though humble employment on the wharves, was 
 lured into the low politics of his ward, and drank himself 
 into such favor that he obtained, at length, the means of 
 buying the privilege to steal as head of one of the depart 
 ments, and now, his place being abolished, and all his 
 ill-gotten gains squandered in vice and ambitious schemes, 
 slinks out of view, fatally diseased, and bereft of hope ! 
 But this part of our subject we leave to our readers own 
 reflections, and we rejoice to know that it will fare better 
 there than it could in these pages ; for, truly, the moral 
 harm which this system is now doing in New York, and 
 to the country through New York, is something which 
 baffles and eludes written language. 
 
 The question now occurs, How was it that a city contain 
 ing so many public-spirited and honorable men fell into the 
 control of a gang of thieves 1 
 
 It has all come about in one generation. Within the 
 memory of men still living, the affairs both of the city and 
 the State of New York were so well managed that other 
 
382 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 States and cities were glad to copy their methods of doing 
 public business. The time was when men, after a brilliant 
 career in Congress, regarded it as promotion to be Mayor 
 of the city ; when a seat in the city legislature was the 
 coveted reward of a lifetime of honest dealing in private 
 business ; when a seat in the State Legislature was the 
 usual first step to the highest places in the national govern 
 ment ; when the very ward committees were composed of 
 eminent merchants and lawyers ; and when even to serve as 
 secretary to a ward committee was a feather in the cap of 
 a bank-teller or head book-keeper in a great house of busi 
 ness. In other words, the time was when the city was gov 
 erned by its natural chiefs, the men who had a divine 
 right to govern it. Nay, more : it was once a distinction 
 to be a voter, since none could vote w r ho were not house 
 holders. None could vote who had not given their fellow- 
 citizens some evidence of an ability to vote understandingly, 
 and some indication of a disposition to vote correctly. The 
 particular test selected we do not admire ; and all we can 
 say in favor of it is that it was better than none. It did 
 exclude the great mass of ignorance and vice ; it did admit 
 the great mass of intelligence and virtue ; it did answer the 
 purpose in a respectable degree. 
 
 This system was changed by the Constitutional Conven 
 tion of 1821, which abolished the household restriction, and 
 admitted to the polls all citizens, native and foreign, except 
 convicted criminals and madmen. Among those who op 
 posed this fatal change was Martin Van Buren ; and all the 
 dire consequences of it which he predicted have come upon 
 the city. He said it would utterly corrupt the politics of 
 New York, by giving it over into the hands of ten thousand 
 ignorant or vicious men, whose votes could not be overcome. 
 It would " drive from the polls all sober-minded people," 
 from mere despair of effecting any good by voting. It would 
 take away one powerful motive to virtue by abolishing the 
 distinction between voters and non-voters. To be a voter, 
 said Mr. Van Buren, is now " the proudest and most inval 
 uable attribute of freemen." It was one of the rewards of 
 industry and self-control. A proud day it was to a young 
 mechanic, when he left his new home and his newly married 
 wife, and walked, for the first time, to the polls to deposit 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 383 
 
 his vote. It stamped him a respectable man. He was 
 thenceforth a full-fledged citizen, one of the masters of the 
 city, the rulers of which were his servants ; and they knew 
 it, and treated him accordingly. Mr. Van Buren s remon 
 strances were not heeded, and the old system was abolished. 
 
 The evil consequences did not immediately appear, be 
 cause the habit of selecting respectable men for the public 
 service survived the system which had created that habit. 
 The reign of Andrew Jackson, which debauched the national 
 government, developed rapidly all the tendencies to corrup 
 tion latent in the government of the city. A lower grade 
 of men were elected to office, and a grade still lower worked 
 the machinery by which they were elected. Still, there 
 was no system of stealing. A defalcation occasionally oc 
 curred ; aldermen sometimes pocketed bundles of cigars 
 from the "tea-room"; others contrived to convey their 
 families to evening parties at the expense of the city; 
 others may sometimes have cribbed an odd half-ream of 
 paper or a box of pens ; and, doubtless, there was some 
 jobbery, and much favoritism, as there is in all govern 
 ments. Honesty, however, continued to be the rule in the 
 public service. We mean, that, although the politics of 
 the city were debased, and the men elected were always 
 depreciating, there was no thought among them of using 
 their places as conveniences for plundering their constituents. 
 As late even as 1850 an alderman or chief of a department 
 would have actually lost standing with his fellows if sus 
 pected of taking a bribe or of having a concealed inter 
 est in a contract. Yes, even in 1850, but sixteen years 
 ago, it was a disgrace to steal the people s money on any 
 pretext. If any one had then foretold that the time was 
 at hand when the only men in the city government de 
 spised and snubbed by their equals would be the few who 
 did not steal, no man could have believed the wild pre 
 diction. 
 
 About the year 1850, when it began to be perceived that 
 omnibuses could no longer convey the morning and evening 
 multitudes of people, and when street railroads in many 
 avenues were projected, the Corporation conceived the fancy 
 that they had the right to grant the privilege of laying 
 rails in the public streets to private companies. In fact, it 
 
384 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 was taken for granted on all hands that this was their right ; 
 and it was in connection with those railroad grants that 
 the corruption, on a great scale, began. It was then that 
 the low, immature, ignorant, unprincipled, irresponsible, 
 untaxed persons who formed the majority of the city legisla 
 ture discovered that an alderman could, by a judicious use 
 of his opportunities, not merely get a good deal of money, 
 but make his fortune, during a single term of service. 
 " Rings " were then first formed ; " agents " were then first 
 employed, the mysterious go-betweens who have to be 
 "seen "before anything can be done. The necessity for 
 this machinery was soon perceived ; for, at first, some sad 
 mistakes occurred, which threatened for a time to spoil the 
 game. One company, for example, distributed forty thou 
 sand dollars among the Aldermen, but were outbid, and the 
 grant was given to another company. Naturally enough, 
 "they demanded their money back ; but many of the poor 
 creatures had already squandered their shares, and were 
 totally unable to refund. One of the defrauded men, as it 
 chanced, was a member of the grand jury, and he announced 
 his determination to bring the matter before that body. 
 Means were found to satisfy his claim ; about one half the 
 whole sum w T as given up, and the rest was paid in promises 
 that have never been fulfilled. New-Yorkers remember the 
 ancient, familiar firm of Kipp and Brown, formerly blazoned 
 on the gorgeous sides of countless omnibuses. Mr. Solomon 
 Kipp, the head of that firm, used to say that he personally 
 expended fifty thousand dollars in " getting through " the 
 two comparatively unimportant railroad grants in which 
 he was interested. We have the affidavits of other par 
 ties before us, which justify the conclusion that, from this 
 single source, the Corporation corruptly gained a round 
 million in about ten years. 
 
 Thus the system of spoliation began. Thus was the cu 
 pidity of the politicians inflamed. From that time to this, 
 the ordinary New York politician has regarded public office 
 in no other light than as a chance to steal without the risk 
 of the penitentiary. It is not that the city government, so 
 far as controlled by politicians, sometimes steals. We do 
 not make that charge. We say it does nothing but steal ; 
 for even the most useful or necessary public work is 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 385 
 
 sanctioned by it only so far as it affords promise of gain to 
 politicians. 
 
 At the present time, as we are informed by one whose 
 opportunities of knowledge are unequalled, all the political 
 concerns of the city are controlled by about seven men, 
 heads of city departments and others. In most of the 
 wards, a nomination to office by the party which is ludi 
 crously styled Democratic insures an election by the people ; 
 and it is these seven men who work the machinery by 
 which Democratic nominations are ground out. They are 
 the power behind the ballot-box, greater than the ballot-box 
 itself. Candidates for Congress, for the State Legislature, 
 fbr the numerous boards of city legislators, must pass the 
 ordeal of their inspection, and pay their price, before their 
 names can go upon the " slate " ; and such is the absolute 
 ness of their power over ignorant voters, that they have 
 caused to be elected to Congress by Irish votes a man who, 
 as editor of a " Know-Nothing " newspaper, had been em 
 ployed for seven years in vilifying Irishmen and their 
 religion. They have taken up a man who commanded one 
 of the companies of artillery that marched from the field 
 of Bull Run because their "time was np," and, while the 
 whole civilized world was pointing at him the finger of 
 scorn, elected him to one of the most lucrative offices in 
 the United States. Of late years, these lords of the town 
 have had the deep cunning to give a few of their best ap 
 pointments and several minor offices to Republicans, as 
 part of their system of preventing investigation. This was 
 a master stroke. Most of the publishers of newspapers 
 were already bribed to silence by the Corporation advertis 
 ing, and all the reporters were hired not to report anything 
 disagreeable by the annual gift of two hundred dollars. 
 This letting in of a few Republicans to share the spoils 
 completed the system of repressing inquiry. They have 
 known, too, how to turn to account the feud between two 
 Republican leaders, which, after distracting the politics of 
 the State of New York for many years, has transferred the 
 battle-ground to Washington, and now threatens to snatch 
 from the nation the fruits of its victory over rebellion, or 
 at least to postpone its enjoyment of them. 
 
 Such are some of the consequences that have resulted 
 17 Y 
 
386 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 from admitting to the polls unqualified and untaxed men, 
 in a city which catches and retains the worst of the foreign 
 emigration, and where there are seven foreign-born voters 
 to every five native. In New York, we actually see the 
 state of things contemplated by Daniel Webster in his 
 Pittsburg speech, when he asked, " Who would be safe in 
 any community where political power is in the hands of 
 the many, and property in the hands of the few 1 " Such 
 an unnatural state of things, he added, could nowhere long 
 exist. Political power in the city of New York is in the hands 
 of seventy-seven thousand foreign voters and fifty-two thou 
 sand native voters ; while the great bulk of the property of 
 the city is owned by about fifteen thousand persons. Po 
 litical power in New York simply means the power to steal 
 with impunity the property of those fifteen thousand per 
 sons. This stealing does not take the form of open and 
 indiscriminate spoliation, because it can be more conven 
 iently done, and longer done, through the machinery of 
 politics. 
 
 Having now stated as fully as our limits permit the con 
 dition of the government of the city, it remains for us to 
 do what little we can towards pointing out the remedy. In 
 considering this part of our subject, modesty and hesitation 
 would become the wisest and ablest of men. It is no time 
 to dogmatize and declaim, when the dearest interests of 
 civilization are to be rescued from imminent and deadly peril. 
 Next year, we trust, there will be a convention assembled 
 to revise the Constitution of the State of New York, and 
 upon the action of that body we hang all our hope of speedy 
 and radical reform. If any one, therefore, has so much as 
 a single well-weighed suggestion to offer toward a practi 
 cable plan, now is the time for him to offer it. On this great 
 and most difficult problem every person in the State of 
 New York who is so happy as to have a thinking head upon 
 his shoulders should now habitually meditate and converse. 
 
 Patchwork will not answer. That has been tried, and 
 found insufficient. While the ship is still on the ocean, it 
 is well to stop the leak with anything that will even slightly 
 diminish the risk of death. But the thing now in order is 
 to go into dock, and overhaul the hull from keel to taffrail, 
 or perhaps to abandon the vessel and build a new one. It 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 387 
 
 is so exceedingly important for us all to understand this, 
 that we will pause here a moment to mention a few of the 
 expedients for checking thievery which have signally failed. 
 All mere expedients have failed, or are failing. Nothing 
 will ever stop it but some system, the natural working 
 of which will put into office a controlling number of honest 
 men. 
 
 The total failure of the contract system is a case in point. 
 To check jobbery and favoritism, it was enacted several years 
 ago that all work done for the city, and all commodities 
 supplied to the city, greater in value than $ 600, should be 
 the subject of contracts, to be awarded, after due notice, to 
 the lowest bidder. The contract system, so far from put 
 ting an obstacle in the way of corruption, has furnished 
 facilities for it. We have the sworn testimony before us, 
 that it is common for fictitious bids to be sent in, for genu 
 ine ones to be bought off, and for parties who are best pre 
 pared to do the work required to be kept in ignorance of 
 the proposals. Large iron contracts, for example, have been 
 awarded before any one of the great iron firms have been 
 aware that such contracts were in the market ; and they have 
 been awarded to men who never melted a pound of iron 
 nor had any means whatever of doing the work. To a 
 pork-butcher was assigned the contract for building a very 
 costly bridge over a wide river ; and the difficult work of 
 grading an avenue, hilly and rocky, has been awarded to a 
 politician ignorant of the most rudimerital engineering. 
 We have before us a successful bid for supplying the city 
 offices with stationery, in which we find the bidder offering 
 to supply " blue folio post " at one cent per ream ; " magnum 
 bonum pens," at one cent per gross ; " lead pencils," at one 
 cent per dozen ; " English sealing-wax," at one cent per 
 pound ; and eighty-three other articles of stationery, at 
 the uniform price of one cent for the usual parcel. This 
 was the " lowest bid," and it was, of course, the one ac 
 cepted. It appeared, however, when the bill was presented 
 for payment, that the particular kind of paper styled " blue 
 folio post " had never been called for, nor any considerable 
 quantity of the other articles proposed to be supplied for 
 one cent. No one, strange to say, had ever wanted "mag 
 num bonum " pens at one cent a gross, but in all the 
 
388 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 offices the cry had been for " Perry s extra fine," at three 
 dollars. Scarcely any one had used " envelopes letter-size " 
 at one cent per hundred, but there had been countless calls 
 for " envelopes note-size " at one cent each. Between the 
 paper called "blue folio post," at one cent per ream, and 
 the paper called " foolscap extra ruled," at five dollars and 
 a half, the difference was too slight to be perceived ; but 
 every one had used the foolscap. Of what avail are con 
 tracts, when the officials who award them, and the other 
 officials who pay the bill, are in league with the contractor 
 to steal the public money ^ 
 
 To prevent one of the most common kinds of theft, it was 
 enacted that every person who presented a bill to the city 
 should take an oath, before receiving his money, that he had 
 not paid, and would not pay, any part of it to any one for 
 getting him the work. This law is shamelessly evaded 
 every day. A school commissioner orders work of a print 
 er, telling him to be sure to charge a good round price. 
 The work is done, the bill presented, the oath taken, the 
 money paid. A few days after, that commissioner or his 
 friend has some printing of his own to be done, which the 
 printer does, and sends with the work a receipted bill. We 
 can produce a printer who has upon his books $ 10,000 
 worth of work done gratis, in recompense for services ren 
 dered in procuring him city jobs. When the procurer of 
 the work has no occasion for printing, it is usual for him to 
 borroiv sums of money of the printer, which, like Dr. John 
 son s sixpence, are " not to be repaid." Many of these petty 
 politicians are, in fact, universal " dead-heads," and prey on 
 all the town. One remark which we chanced to hear from 
 one of them was exceedingly suggestive. " Pullman," said 
 a young Councilman to our honest friend Christopher, 
 " what did you want that Harlem Railroad grant rescinded 
 for 1 " He alluded to the grant of the privilege to lay rails 
 and run cattle trains through the handsomest street in the 
 upper part of the island, in the teeth of the most vehement 
 opposition on the part of the residents. " For my part," 
 continued the virtuous youth, " there is no company I would 
 sooner give my vote to than the Harlem. If I ask em to 
 take on a hand or give a place to a friend, they re^sure to 
 do it. There s not a more obliging company in New York 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 389 
 
 than the Harlem." The Harlem Railroad Company, reader, 
 is Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the ablest men of busi 
 ness now living. The Councilman whose words we have 
 quoted would not be employed by him in any post requir 
 ing average skill and honesty. And yet, behold the great, 
 strong man courting the favor of the weak, little one ! Do 
 we blame either of these men 1 We arraign only the sys 
 tem which puts them in false and corrupting relations with 
 each other and with their fellow-citizens. 
 
 It was lately enacted, that a three-fourths vote of both 
 boards the Aldermen and Councilmen should be requi 
 site to pass any bill granting or paying money. This was 
 done because there was always a Democratic majority in 
 both boards, and that majority was always corrupt. But 
 it did not even retard the profuse voting of money. It 
 merely required the Ring to buy up or bully a few more 
 members, which was done in a week, and the work went on 
 as bravely as before. The present board of Councilmen be 
 gan their term of service with thirteen Republicans and 
 twelve Democrats, owing to special exertions on the part of 
 reformers. Those thirteen Republicans were elected, at 
 great expense, for the sole purpose of outvoting the thieves, 
 and they were all solemnly pledged so to do. But the sys 
 tem repels men of strong and tried honesty, and conse 
 quently seven of the thirteen speedily fell into the toils. 
 Some were purchased, others were intimidated, others were 
 persuaded, but all yielded alike to the behests of the Ring. 
 And, really, we cannot wonder at it. The six faithful 
 members of the board are useless to their constituents. 
 The most just, the most necessary measure proposed by 
 them is voted down as a matter of course. A young, inex 
 perienced Councilman sees, on the one hand, the favor of 
 his colleagues, the smiles of the City Hall, the freedom of 
 the city s stores and shops, places for his friends, and 
 $ 7,000 a year ; and, on the other, the frowns and surly 
 opposition of his colleagues to everything he asks or pro 
 poses, a warfare against nefarious schemes which he knows 
 to be useless, and which the public neither applaud nor 
 hear of. For his brother, no easy clerkship is created ; for 
 his second-cousin s benefit, no great man discovers that he 
 is in need of a fourth assistant messenger ; and if a carman 
 
390 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 in his ward loses a horse through a hole in a wharf, and 
 justly calls upon the neglectful city government to buy him 
 another, it is enough for him to introduce the bill for it to 
 be voted down. Can we wonder that so many immature 
 persons yield to a temptation so insidious, and which ad 
 dresses itself to so many of the weak places in human nature 
 at once 1 
 
 Another well-meant expedient has completely failed. 
 Owing to the lavish expenditures, it invariably happens 
 that many of the sums appropriated for specific objects are 
 exhausted long before the end of the year. For example, 
 in 1865, the comptroller estimated the cost of printing and 
 stationery at $ 145,000, and the Legislature of the State 
 granted $ 160,000. But the amount expended in that 
 year was $310,324. This excess would have presented 
 difficulties to ordinary financiers, but none to those who 
 control the finances of New York. Formerly, the deficit 
 was supplied by " transferring " the money appropriated to 
 other objects. " Transfer, the wise it call." But this de 
 vice having been forbidden by legislative enactment, parties 
 interested sued the city for the amount of their claims ; and, 
 having obtained judgment against the unfortunate city, 
 went through the form of seizing the portraits and furni 
 ture of the Governor s room in the City Hall. Then a judi 
 cial decision was obtained, which declared that judgments 
 against the city " must be paid " ; and, sheltered by this 
 decision, the city treasurer paid them. In the year 1864, 
 the amount of the judgments paid from the public treasury 
 was $ 1,262,398. Last winter, a new expedient was devised 
 to prevent this impudent evasion of a most proper and ne 
 cessary law. It was enacted that no amount in excess of a 
 specific appropriation should be recoverable by judgment. 
 By what audacious trick this enactment will be set at naught 
 has not yet appeared ; but that it will be set at naught we 
 have little doubt. If it is not, it will be only owing to the 
 vigilance and tact of the public-spirited lawyers who are 
 lending the aid of their talents to the Citizens Association. 
 
 As these minor expedients have failed of their object, so, 
 we believe, the grand expedient of all the transfer of the 
 control of the city government to the State Legislature 
 is not to be relied on for the future. That expedient, false 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 391 
 
 *- 
 
 in principle, was justified only by the urgent necessity of 
 the case. To that temporary transfer of power from a com 
 pletely corrupt to an incompletely corrupt organization, we 
 owe it that the city of New York is still, in some degree, 
 inhabitable. For ten years past, nothing has stood between 
 the city and universal spoliation, except the Governor of 
 the State and a small number of intelligent, incorruptible 
 members of the Legislature. To them we owe the rescue 
 of the police from the control of city politicians ; and to 
 the police, thus rendered efficient, we owe the deliverance 
 of the city from rapine during the riots of 1863. For 
 twenty-four hours, until adequate assistance arrived, they 
 kept the mob in check by their discipline, courage, and 
 rapidity. No one can tell what would have occurred, or 
 what would not, if we had then had for policemen creatures 
 appointed to serve the mean purposes of the mean men 
 whose character we have been exhibiting, and who were in 
 the fullest sympathy with brother savages torturing our 
 prisoners captured in war. To the Legislature, also, we are 
 indebted for a tolerable administration of the affairs of the 
 Central Park, of the Health Board, and of some other de 
 partments now controlled by honest men appointed at Al 
 bany. 
 
 On the other hand, the interference of the Legislature 
 has, at length, reduced the city government to a condition 
 of political chaos. The Mayor has been deprived of all 
 controlling power. The Board of Aldermen, seventeen in 
 number, the Board of twenty-four Councilmen, the twelve 
 Supervisors, the twenty-one members of the Board of Edu 
 cation, are so many independent legislative bodies, elected 
 by the people. The police are governed by four Commis 
 sioners, appointed by the Governor for eight years. The 
 charitable and reformatory institutions of the city are in 
 charge of four Commissioners whom the City Comptroller 
 appoints for five years. The Commissioners of the Cen 
 tral Park, eight in number, are appointed by the Governor 
 for five years. Four Commissioners, appointed by the 
 Governor for eight years, manage the Fire Department. 
 There are also five Commissioners of Pilots, two appointed 
 by the Board of Underwriters and three by the Chamber 
 of Commerce. The finances of the city are in charge of 
 
392 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 the Comptroller, whom the people elect for four years. The 
 street department has at its head one Commissioner, who 
 is appointed by the Mayor for four years. Three Commis 
 sioners, appointed by the Mayor, manage the Croton Aque 
 duct department. The law officer of the city, called the 
 Corporation Counsel, is elected by the people for three years ! 
 Six Commissioners, appointed by the Governor for six years, 
 attend to the emigration from foreign countries. To these 
 has been recently added a Board of Health, the members 
 of which are appointed by the Governor. Was there ever 
 such a hodge-podge of a government before in the world ? 
 And nowhere is there any adequate provision for holding 
 these several powers to their responsibility. Consequently, 
 although the system of plunder has now been in operation 
 for sixteen years, during which the public thieves have 
 stolen not less than fifty millions of dollars, not one man 
 of them has ever been punished; nor even made to dis 
 gorge. 
 
 There is a still more terrible objection to governing the 
 city of New York at a city one hundred and sixty miles 
 distant from it. The Legislature itself is corrupt. The 
 same seven men who control the politics of the city nom 
 inate the city members of the Legislature ; and these, rein 
 forced by corrupt men from other cities, control one branch 
 of the Legislature and are powerful in the other. Some 
 times the city leaders cause themselves to be elected to the 
 Legislature ; but usually they select, from the clerks in the 
 public offices, their own creatures, mindless, dependent 
 men, whose only virtue is a cur-like fidelity to their mas 
 ters. No language can overstate the hopeless incapacity 
 of these men for the business of legislation. They can 
 only vote as they are ordered ; and if you wish to buy 
 their votes, you must arrange the price, not with them, but 
 their owners in New York. To elect such men to the Legis 
 lature is only to transfer power from the Legislature to 
 the lobby. There at Albany we see, within the rails of the 
 Assembly, a crowd of poor, ignorant, irresponsible clerks ; 
 and in the lobby we find men representing Cornelius Van- 
 derbilt, the Central Railroad, the Erie Railroad, the Astor 
 estate, and many other men and companies controlling vast 
 resources and carrying great prestige. Moreover, the agents 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 393 
 
 representing these strong men and powerful organizations 
 are persons of skill and audacity. When such a reversal 
 of the natural order of things exists, and when the mem 
 bers of the Legislature are paid by the State a less sum 
 per diem than their board costs, to say nothing of drink 
 and billiards, what must be the result 1 We need not 
 say. 
 
 A very able lobby agent, who has been in the business 
 many years, has given us an inkling of the mode of proce 
 dure. " When we get to Albany," said he, " we make out 
 our lists, and, after studying them and comparing notes, we 
 classify members, and make an estimate of what it is going 
 to cost to get our bills through. We find out about how 
 much each man expects, and who is running him. Then 
 we arrange the thing in New York with certain people, 
 whose consent is necessary. The price for a vote ranges 
 from fifty dollars to five hundred, unless it is that of the 
 chairman of a committee. He wants more, because he has 
 to appear on the record as originating the measure." 
 
 It was probably one of these originating gentlemen who 
 could explain the testimony given recently in an Albany 
 corruption case by a lady who proved herself a true help 
 meet to her husband. She testified that a lobby agent 
 called at her house one Sunday afternoon, when there was 
 " some conversation " respecting the accused Senator, which 
 the court " ruled out." She continued thus : " The next 
 morning I put $ 2,500 in greenbacks into a yellow en 
 velope, and gave it to my only son, eleven years old. The 
 boy got into the wagon with his father. / never saw the 
 money again" 
 
 If there is in this world a man who can be truly said to 
 know anything, Mr. Thurlow Weed knows the Legislature of 
 the State of New York. His testimony respecting the cor 
 ruption in that Legislature, as given in the " Daily Times," 
 a few nlonths ago, is as follows : 
 
 " Formerly the suspicion of corruption in a member would have put 
 him into Coventry, while knowledge of such an offence would have 
 insured the expulsion Of the offender. Now bribery and corrup 
 tion prevail to an extent greater than existed in the worst days of 
 the Parliament of England, where, happily for England, the practice, 
 has been reformed, as it must be here, or corruption will undermine 
 the government. No measure, however meritorious, escapes the at- 
 17* 
 
394 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 tention of strikers. Ycnal members openly solicit appointment on 
 paying committees. In the better days of legislation, when no un 
 lawful motive existed, it was considered indelicate in a member to 
 indicate to the Speaker any preference about committees. The evil 
 has been growing, each year being worse than the preceding, until 
 reform is sternly demanded. Could the secret history of the present 
 Legislature be exposed to the public gaze, popular indignation would 
 be awakened to a degree heretofore unknown. In the Assembly 
 everything was struck at. Not even a religious charity found exemp 
 tion. The source of rapacious corruption were the Assembly Railroad 
 Committee, and the Committee on Cities and Villages. I say this 
 upon reliable authority, to correct the Tribune and the Times, 
 in both of which journals this Legislature is commended for its in 
 tegrity. That there were honest and honorable members in both 
 Houses, by whose integrity and firmness much bad legislation was ar 
 rested, is true. The Senate, fortunately, presents an inflexible 
 majority of upright members ; while in the House, the King was for 
 midable enough to put through whatever paid or promised to pay 
 liberally, in defiance and derision of the efforts of an honest minor 
 ity." 
 
 Mr. Weed says, that not even a religious charity found 
 exemption. We can confirm that assertion. A com 
 mittee of benevolent ladies went to Albany last winter, and 
 asked the Legislature to give them $ 20,000 in aid of an 
 institution for the nurture and education of children who 
 lost their fathers in the war. They said in their petition, 
 that, after having been compelled to refuse admission to 
 two hundred children of slain soldiers and sailors, who had 
 no one left on earth to care for them, they had resolved to 
 try and erect a larger building, for which purpose they pro 
 posed to raise $ 20,000, and asked the Legislature to double 
 the sum. Even this holy charity the shameless villains 
 "struck at." An agent of the Ring called upon the ladies, 
 and said, in the plainest English, " Pay me $ 2,000, and 
 you can have half the sum you petition for ; pay me 
 $ 5,000, and you have the whole." The poor ladies, con 
 fronted for the first time in their lives w T ith the extreme of 
 human depravity, knew not what to think of this proposal, 
 nor what to say to the man who made it. Anxious for 
 their orphans, and far from their natural advisers, they 
 were on the point of yielding, when the husband of one of 
 them came to the rescue, and urged them not to taint their 
 infant enterprise with the leprosy of corruption. They 
 were reluctant to give up the aid so urgently needed, but 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 395 
 
 they did so at last. Later in the session, the Ring, finding 
 that nothing could be got from them, allowed the honest 
 minority to carry a bill giving them $ 5,000. This narra 
 tive we received from the lips of the estimable and distin 
 guished lady who headed the deputation. 
 
 It is such facts as these which convince us that the Legis 
 lature, as now elected, cannot be trusted for the future 
 government of the city. The reform must be radical. It 
 must begin at the bottom, with the voters, and work its 
 way up. The Citizens Association a body of eminent 
 merchants, lawyers, and men of leisure, united for the sole 
 object of reforming the government of the city have 
 proved, by most costly and laborious experiment, that the 
 majority, long controlled by the plunderers, cannot be 
 shaken from their devotion to them. By needless inter 
 ference \vith the Sunday usages of the Germans, as well as 
 by some wise and just restrictions upon the selling of 
 liquor, the friends of reform have rendered the great grog 
 shop interest a unit for the corruptionists, and that interest 
 can send to the polls twenty-five thousand votes. By very 
 great exertions, an honest man can be chosen Mayor : for 
 there is still in New York a small majority of the whole 
 number of voters who will vote as they ought, if the issue 
 is clear between honesty and corruption. But in the wards 
 and districts inhabited chiefly by ignorant foreigners and 
 vicious natives, the case is hopeless. Printed matter can 
 not reach them. They are untrained in the duties of 
 citizenship. A prodigious number of them have some small 
 interest in maintaining the system of plunder ; for from the 
 stolen millions flow numberless rills of lawless or excessive 
 gain ; so that the city is like an Italian farm irrigated by 
 the dirty waters of a pestilential stream. They pay no 
 tax. Since their share of the taxation is paid by them in the 
 form of rent, it is the " extortionate landlord " whom they 
 blame when their rent rises, in five years, from six dollars to 
 twelve dollars a month, for two little rooms. They never 
 think of going round to Councilman O RafFerty s grog-shop, 
 or Assemblyman Tooley s desk in the Comptroller s Office, 
 or Supervisor McShaughnessy s market-stand, and berating 
 them for cutting down their children s allowance of fresh 
 meat and Christmas toys. It has been found impossible to 
 
396 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 make them see any connection between their pinching rents 
 and the reckless votes of a man who has promised one of 
 their relatives the place of seventh assistant door-keeper to 
 the scavenger s office. The thing has been faithfully tried, 
 and found impossible. What honest men print they cannot 
 read, what honest men say they will not hear. 
 
 In view of the expected Constitutional Convention, we 
 beg to offer for consideration the following suggestions. 
 
 No. man should be deprived of the right of suffrage who 
 now legally possesses it. The State must fulfil its compact 
 to the end, cost what it may. 
 
 But no man, native or foreign, should henceforth be ad 
 mitted to the suffrage who cannot read English composition 
 of medium difficulty. More than that the State has no 
 right to demand. Its right to exclude persons who cannot 
 read arises from the fact that such persons are dependent 
 upon others for the information without which an intelli 
 gent vote cannot be cast. Such a rule, applied to the city 
 of New York, would exclude not less than fifteen thousand 
 votes ; and this alone would give the city back to its legiti 
 mate owners, the virtuous and industrious portion of its 
 inhabitants. This alone would do it ! 
 
 No man should be allowed to vote at any city or State 
 election who has not paid a direct tax ; and that tax should 
 vary with the whole amount to be raised. It would cost 
 about twenty millions a year, for many years to come, to 
 govern, tame, and teach Manhattan Island. Suppose the 
 voters tax were thirty cents per million dollars of the levy. 
 Then, if the city were honestly governed, a workingman s 
 tax would be $ 6 a year. But if stealing should raise the 
 levy to forty millions, it would be $ 12. Now, the differ 
 ence between $ 6 and $ 1 2 to a man who earns $ 1 5 a 
 week is such that he would be very likely to ask his 
 representatives what it meant, which is the very result to 
 be desired. 
 
 The system of governing the city of New York at Albany 
 should be abandoned as soon as it can be safely done. If 
 the city cannot govern itself, it must learn how to do it ; 
 and there is no way of learning how to do a thing except 
 by doing it. 
 
 No officers should be elected by the people except the 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 397 
 
 Mayor and the members of the city legislature. The peo 
 ple are puzzled and confounded on election days by long 
 lists of candidates, whose names they never heard before. 
 To ask the mass of voters to select a corporation counsel, a 
 sheriff, a comptroller, a judge, is self-evident absurdity. 
 
 The distinction between the city of New York and the 
 county of New York, with all its costly train of conse 
 quences, should be abolished. 
 
 Longer terms of service for Mayor, Aldermen, and Coun- 
 cilmen would, perhaps, be desirable. The appointments to 
 all minor offices should be permanent. No creature should 
 be intrusted with the unlimited power of removal. If the 
 city would be well served, it must treat its servants so that 
 men of honor and capacity will be found to serve it. A 
 man of honor and capacity will not hold his livelihood at the 
 mere mercy of another man. 
 
 There must be a decided increase of many salaries. Men 
 capable of managing the finances of a great city, men fit to 
 control any of the departments, cannot be induced to fore 
 go their chance of fortune in private business by salaries no 
 greater than those paid to bank-tellers and book-keepers. 
 A rich man of respectable talents may occasionally be in 
 duced to serve as Secretary of the United States Treasury 
 for a sum per annum less than modest housekeeping costs 
 in Washington. It is insanity to pay him such a salary, it 
 is true ; but then the honor counts for something. In a 
 commercial city, business is done on business principles ; 
 and if a $ 20,000 man is wanted, $ 20,000 must be paid for 
 him. It is not just salaries that burden any people ; it is 
 stealing that does that. On the other hand, an officer who 
 holds his office until proved to have misbehaved in it need 
 not be paid the salary justly due to one whom a breath un 
 makes. 
 
 Somewhere in the system of city government there must 
 be a power, a court, a something, independent and disinter 
 ested, before which an officer accused of misconduct or 
 incapacity can be arraigned promptly and fairly tried. 
 
 It might be well that the Board of Aldermen should be 
 composed of men who pay a tax upon $ 5,000 worth of real 
 or personal estate. With a taxed and restricted suffrage, 
 this safeguard against profusion might not be necessary; 
 
398 TOPICS OF THE TIME. 
 
 but if the suffrage remains unrestricted and untaxed, some 
 provision of this kind will have to be adopted. 
 
 These are some of the ideas which have occurred to us, 
 and we offer them for consideration, with sincere deference 
 to those who are versed in the art of governing. It is an 
 arduous task which the people of New York have before 
 them, and it will task both their wisdom and their patience 
 to the uttermost. It will be difficult to dislodge the pub 
 lic thieves. It was difficult to take Richmond. But the 
 taking of Richmond and the capture of the Rebel army 
 were not more essential to the triumph of the United 
 States over its enemies, than the reform of the government 
 of New York is to the credit and spread of free institutions 
 throughout the world. We have all heard of revivals of 
 religion. Why may we not look for a great and glorious 
 revival of public spirit 1 There are, indeed, indications that 
 such a revival has begun. We hear of several instances of 
 men of leisure who are awakening to the truth that there 
 is a nobler way of using the gift of leisure than in looking 
 out of a club window, or in collecting valueless rarities, or in 
 printing exactly one hundred copies of antiquated trash 
 upon " large paper." The existence of an organization so 
 respectable and determined as the Citizens Association is a 
 sign of promise, and we hope to see its efforts seconded by 
 other societies. Dr. Franklin mentions that, several months 
 before the meeting of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 
 clubs and societies were formed for the purpose of exchang 
 ing opinions and gathering knowledge relating to the science 
 of government. One of them met weekly at his own house, 
 when papers were read and discussed, and questions were 
 proposed for consideration during the week. Why not have 
 a dozen such in every W 7 ard this winter ready to co-operate 
 with the Citizens Association 1 The " Tribune," which has 
 honorably distinguished itself by giving unrelenting pub 
 licity to schemes of spoliation, and the " Times," which has 
 exposed much of the interior working of the system, and 
 holds no parley with the thieves, both, we are assured, 
 are ready to lend their columns to the work of reform. 
 Whatever any club may be able to expose or suggest, that 
 is of the requisite brevity and importance, will find ready 
 access to the public through those great journals. 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 399 
 
 We have been obliged in this article to limit ourselves to 
 a single feature of the misgovernment of New York, the 
 stealing of the public money. There are departments of 
 the system into which we shrink from casting a glance. 
 To some of these corrupt men are intrusted the pauper, 
 the sick, the criminal, the insane. It is their duty to guard 
 the myriads of the virtuous poor against the rapacity which 
 builds for them habitations that are unsafe and pestilential. 
 Think what the government of such a city might be and 
 do, what noble institutions it might found, what grand 
 experiments undertake, what beautiful edifices construct, 
 what merit employ and reward ! The legislature of the 
 city, composed of men eminent in business, in science, and 
 in benevolence, the men first in their several spheres, 
 would rank high among the great parliaments of the world, 
 and contribute powerfully to its advancing civilization. The 
 city of New York abounds in able and honest gentlemen, 
 in every sphere of life. On just conditions they can be won 
 to the public service. Why can we not have them 1 
 
 And let no one suppose that this is a subject which con 
 cerns the people of New York only. It concerns us all. 
 Not only has every American citizen an interest in the 
 welfare and honor of his country s chief city, but the evils 
 under which New York suffers exist, to some degree, in 
 many other townSj and threaten all of them. New York, 
 as we have said, is a sieve which lets through the best of 
 the emigration that comes to our shores, but catches and 
 retains the worst ; and therefore it is in that city that the 
 system of unqualified suffrage has been first put to a test 
 under which it has broken down completely and hopelessly. 
 But in all our large cities there is of necessity an assemblage 
 of ignorant, irresponsible, and thoughtless men, totally 
 incapable of performing the duties of citizenship. We 
 accordingly find in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, New 
 Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, 
 St. Louis, and many other cities, the insidious beginnings 
 of that misgovernment which has made New York the by- 
 word and despair of the nation.* New York, too, is suffer- 
 
 * During the prevalence of the cholera, an appalling glimpse was given 
 the public of the interior of a jail in the city of Brooklyn. An eye-witness 
 wrote : " The cholera there resulted from overcrowding the cells. The 
 ventilation is bad, the air offensive, the food, pork, beans, bread, and mo- 
 
400 TOHCS OF THE TIME. 
 
 ing vicariously -for her sister cities. As it has been her des 
 tiny to suffer most from the evils of ignorant and untaxed 
 suffrage, so it is her duty to wrestle first with those evils, 
 and apply a remedy which shall ,be radical, final, and uni 
 versally imitable. She will perform that duty. She is per 
 forming it. No city of equal size on earth contains so 
 great a mass of public spirit and administrative capacity, 
 and we feel persuaded that the time is near at hand when 
 those great qualities will be successfully exerted in rescuing 
 the metropolis from the hands of the spoilers who have 
 stolen into possession of it. 
 
 It looks now as though one half of civilized mankind were 
 going henceforth to live in towns ; and it appears to us 
 that in the laying out, the decoration, and government of 
 towns America has shown a particular talent. How full of 
 all pleasantness are the villages of New England, with their 
 gardens and lawns, their tidy fences and spotless houses, 
 their ample streets, and their mighty elms waving over all. 
 What other land can show towns so vigorous and handsome 
 as Nashville, Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Rochester, and 
 fifty others that will occur to the reader 1 What a spirited 
 thing it was in Vermont to commission young Larkin Mead 
 to adorn her Capitol with a statue of Ethan Allen ; and in 
 Cleveland, to commemorate Perry s victory by one of the 
 finest out-of-door monuments in the world ; and in Tennes- 
 
 lasses: and when the late intensely hot and debilitating -weather is taken 
 into account, it should be a matter of wonder that every one was not 
 stricken down. The criminal courts adjourned from June until October, 
 and to my knowledge there are many there too poor and friendless to get 
 bail, that will be able to prove their entire innocence Avhen put on trial. 
 To keep these persons in overcrowded cells with broken-down drunkards, 
 whose systems were fitted by long habit for disease, would be little better 
 
 than murder A pan ic existed that no imagination can conceive. 
 
 Terror was in every face. In one cell, an Englishman in collapse, rising 
 up and falling down convulsively, his cell-mates running round almost 
 distracted; in another, a corpse about to be removed. Two little boys, 
 waiting to go to the House of Refuge, were screaming at the top of their 
 voices from fear; a drunken man singing a maudlin song in a corridor; 
 men in the halls, with their faces to the gratings, trying to breathe fresh 
 air, for fear of inhaling contagion. Several others, with symptoms of ap 
 proaching cholera, were expecting death. If all the prisoners could be 
 kept in the jail until they dropped off one by one, there might be some 
 sense in it, apart from its inhumanity. But the jail supplies the alms- 
 house, the penitentiary, the workhouse, and, in many instances, the lunatic 
 asylum, with inmates. Prisoners are first usually taken there before being 
 sent to those institutions." 
 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 401 
 
 . see, to crown the heights of Nashville with a State House 
 of unequalled elegance and solidity ; and in marvellous 
 Chicago, three times to raise the entire city for the sake of 
 better drainage, and to bore far out under Lake Michigan 
 for pure water ! How good it was in great Boston to put it 
 within the reach of all her boys and girls to learn how to 
 swim, and of all her men and women to practise the art ! 
 This was one of those fine details of civilization which are 
 only reached after the great essentials have been realized 
 and become habitual. New York, too, might boast, even 
 amid her blushes. The Central Park was a noble gift to 
 posterity ; the Croton Aqueduct was a truly Roman thought ; 
 and all the islands, are they not covered with public in 
 stitutions, nobly planned 1 We can truly say, that the peo 
 ple of the United States have shown an aptitude for orderly 
 and elegant arrangement. They know how to make their 
 towns and cities fit abodes for civilized beings, and they 
 mean to make them such. 
 
 But the spoiler must be expelled, or he will spoil all. 
 Honest men possess all the true, trustworthy intelligence 
 there is in the world. Villains of talent there may be, but 
 no wise villain, still less a villain of public spirit. The 
 thieves must be driven out, if it costs a bloody war and 
 it will cost a bloody war if they are not. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY