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 LI E) RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VLR5 ITY 
 
 or ILLI NOIS
 
 AMERICANISATION. 
 
 'tiUx 
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 BY 
 
 AN OLD WHIG. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ROBERT JOHN BUSH, 32, CHARING CROSS. 
 
 1866. 
 
 Price Threepence.
 
 "I see in America the generality of people living in a style of plenty un- 
 known in monarchical countries, and I see that the principle of its Govern- 
 ment— which is that of the Rights of Man — is making rapid progress in the 
 world." — Thomas Paine. 
 
 ** This is no question between ^lonarchy and Republicanism ; it is a ques- 
 tion of policy, a question of possessing a real control over the public funds 
 by those who contribute to those funds," — Mr. Bright. 
 
 " Our only chance of national prosperity lies in the timely remodelling of 
 our system, so as to put it as nearly as possible upon an equality Vith the 
 improved arrangement of the Americans." — Mr* Cobden. 
 
 " Every man who is not incapacitated by personal unfitness, or whose ad- 
 mission would not be attended by political danger, is morally entitled to 
 come within the pale of the Constitution." — Mr, Gladstone. 
 
 " Mr. Gladstone has been converted by Mr. Bright, aa Sir Robert Peel 
 was converted by Mr. Cobden." — Morning Star.
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ., 
 
 M.P. FOR WESTMINSTER. 
 
 Sir, — From your letter to the Secretary of the Reform 
 League, which was read at the Reform demonstration on 
 Primrose Hill, along with one from Mr. Bright of a rather 
 incendiary cast, I infer that you go heartily along with the 
 member for Birmingham in his present policy. Widely as you 
 differ, on many questions, from the Americanised section of 
 the Liberal party of which he is the sole leader, you have 
 joined that small but energetic faction in supporting a Reform 
 Bill, founded on those Democratic principles to which Mr. Fox 
 so unwisely gave his adhesion, during the Revolution fever of 
 1789, and with which the followers of Mr. Fox have been 
 playing fast and loose ever since that memorable era. In 
 taking this course, which is certainly not the one that Philo- 
 sophical Radicalism had a right to expect from the author of 
 ** Considerations on Representative Government," you have been 
 actuated, no doubt, by a wish to get rid of a troublesome 
 question, in order that the way may be opened up for settling 
 those practical measures of sanitary, social, and educational 
 reform which the wants and privations of the poorer classes 
 most imperatively demand. Another reason, probably, was 
 the conviction, that neither the House of Commons nor the 
 London daily press (which is the breath of its nostrils), is
 
 quite prepared to take those calm and considerate views of the 
 Suffrage question which you so ably expounded, as " a writer 
 of books," before you entered that House ; and which you 
 might have been expounding still more effectively now, as a 
 member of Parliament, through the columns of every daily 
 newspaper in the United Kingdom — aye, and even through all 
 the best American papers — had you wisely entered the House 
 as the independent member of a small borough, and not as 
 the delegart;e of so thoroughly Americanised a constituency a& 
 that of Westminster. You may possibly object to my 
 characterising the **free and independent" electors whom 
 you represent as **an Americanised constituency;" but a 
 little reflection will convince you that I am perfectly justified 
 in using that phrase. Should any one question its correctness, 
 my only reply would be to point to the notable alteration 
 which has taken place in your opinions, since you exchanged 
 the peaceful seclusion and fearless independence of a student's 
 life, for the feverish excitement and mental subjugation which 
 must always be the lot of any man — whatever intellectual 
 eminence he may have attained — who aspires to represent a 
 Democracy like that of Westminster. 
 
 In your excellent little treatise ''On llepresentative Govern- 
 ment," there ia a passage on the dead-levelling tendency of 
 Democracy which ought to be frequently and thoughtfully 
 read by every Liberal member of the House of Commons, and 
 especially by all those — a pretty large number — who have not 
 yet learned the real meaning and full significance of the word 
 *' Araericanisation." I use that term to express what you 
 describe so well in the following paragraph : — 
 
 " Political life is indeed, in America, a most valuable school, but it is a 
 school from which the ablest tea hers arc excluded, the first minds in the 
 country beino; as cfrectually shut out from the national representation, and 
 iVoiu public functions generally, as if they were under a formal dis([ualiti- 
 tatioii. The Dciuo.s, too, beinj; the one source of power in America, all 
 
 ,uiuc:
 
 the selfish ambition of the country gravitates towards it, as it does in 
 despotic countries towards the monarch : the people, like the despot, is 
 pursued with adulation and sycophancy, and the corrupting effects of power 
 fully keep pace with its improving and ennobling influences." 
 
 1^0 w, if this be the inevitable tendency of Democracy in 
 America, as it manifests itself at the present day, I cannot 
 help thinking that it was rather disingenuous to make use of 
 De Tocqueville's evidence in favour of those Democratic in- 
 stitutions, as you have done in the following portion of your first 
 siDcech on the Reform Bill, seeing that Do Tocqueville could 
 speak only of what he saw thirty-two years ago, whereas we 
 have the later and far more valuable accumulated experience 
 of what has taken place in the ** Model Republic " from that 
 period down to the present day-: — 
 
 " Let me refer bon. gentlemen to Tocquevillc, who is so continually 
 quoted when he says anything uncomplimentary to Democracy, that those 
 who have not read him might mistake him for an enemy of it, instead of 
 its discriminating but sincere friend, Tocqueville says that though the 
 various legislatures are perpetually making mistakes, they are perpotually 
 correcting them too, and that the evil^ such as it is, is far outweighed by 
 the salutary effects of the general tendency of their legislation, which is 
 maintained, in a degree unknown elsewhere, in the direction of the interests 
 of the people. Not that vague abstraction, the good of the country, but 
 the actual, positive, well-being of the living human creatures who com- 
 pose the population." 
 
 This is certainly most complimentary to American Demo- 
 cracy on the part of M. De Tocqueville ; but how will it bear 
 the test of examination ? You have told us in your essay 
 " On Representative Government" that "a Government is to be 
 judged by its action upon men, and by its action upon things.') 
 Apply this test to the sanitary legislation of Great Britain 
 and the United States, and you will find that the limited 
 aristocracy of this country, in its administrative action, has 
 been much more successful in promoting '*tlie actual, positive 
 well-being of the living human creatures who compose the 
 population " of Great Britain, than the unlimited Democracy
 
 8 
 
 of America has been in promoting that of the sovereign 
 people of the ** Model Republic." I make no mere random 
 statement in asserting this truth, as you must admit when 
 you have digested the unpalatable facts contained in the fol- 
 lowing paragraph, which I copy from the New Yoric 
 
 Courier : — 
 
 " In England, where if progress is slow it is always sirre, the best 
 results have attended the observing of sanitary provisions. There the 
 value of human life is better appreciated than it is here, and the duty of 
 doing all that lies within the reach of human means for preserving it is 
 fully acknowledged. * ... In looking at the rate of mortality in 
 oar own country, it will be found that there is much work to be done. "We 
 have grossly neglected the laws of health, and have ignored the obvious 
 results obtained in England. Instead of lengthening the average term of 
 life in our cities, we have shortened it. In Philadelphia the average term 
 of life between the years 1810 and 1820 was 26. From 1820 to 1844 it 
 was 22 years, and in 1857 it was 20 years only. In Boston, between the 
 years 1810 and 1820, it was 27 years; from 1820 to 1844 it was 21 years, 
 and in 1857 it was but 20 years. In this city (New York), from 1810 to 
 1820 it was 26 years; in 1821 it was 21 years ; in 1843 it was 19 years ; 
 and now the average term is only about 15 years." 
 
 So great an increase in the rate of mortality in the three 
 largest, wealthiest, and most influential cities of the Union, i» 
 a terrible fact, and one that involves some very important 
 conclusions. Observe, too, that this frightful deterioration of 
 the public health, this wholesale destruction of human life, 
 has been going forward with steady pace from yeai- to year 
 among a people for whose education the most lavish provision 
 has been made. **In the cities of ^Boston, I^ew York, and 
 Philadelphia, more money, in proportion to the population, is 
 raised by taxation, for the support of common schools, than in 
 any other cities in the world."* Nor is there any lack of 
 means to provide everything that is needful for the preserva- 
 tion and improvement of the public health. The annual 
 
 ♦ The " Fourth of July Oration," pronounced in the City Hall, 
 Boston, before the municipal autliorities, by the Hon. Edward Everett. — 
 JVm' York Trilmnc, July, 1800.
 
 revenue levied in the city of New York alone is now ten times 
 greater than the entire sum raised by the Government of the 
 whole American Union at the end of last century. At that 
 time the average amount paid by each inhabitant of KewYork 
 was about 4s. per head, man, woman, and child. Last year it 
 was nearly 80s. per head ; showing an increase in the pressure 
 of local taxation, within that period, of 2,000 per cent. ! 
 
 "When we inquire into the causes of the increased mortality 
 in the ** Empire City " of the Union, whose journalism inspires 
 public sentiment, and manufactures public opinion for the 
 *' Model Kepublic,'* we find that one of the chief sources of the 
 evil has been the unchecked progress of what is called "the tene- 
 ment system," a wretched sort of barracks on a gigantic scale, 
 in which some three or four hundred thousands of the working 
 classes of Kew York find lodgings.''^ Last I^ovember, when 
 rumours of the approach of cholera had awakened public 
 attention to the fact that so many nurseries of pestilence were 
 growing up in the very midst of the city, the New Yorh 
 Tribune gave a report of ''A Tour among the Tenements,'^ 
 from which I take the following graphic passage, in order to 
 show you how much more powerful the aggi-egate greed of an 
 unlimited democracy is likely to become than " the aggregate 
 
 * Some idea of the magnitude of these dwellings may be gathered from 
 one, which is 50 feet front by 250 feet deep. It has an alley running the 
 whole depth on each side of it. These alley- ways are excavated to the 
 depth of the cellars, arched over, and covered with flag stoops, in which, 
 at intervals, are open gratings to give light ; the whole length of which 
 space is occupied by water-closets without doors, and under which are open 
 drains communicating with the street sewer. This building is occupied 
 mostly by foreigners. It is calculated for 126 families, each family having 
 a room in which they cook, eat, sleep, and sit. The only ventilation is 
 by a window which opens against a dead wall eight feet distant, and to 
 which rises the vapour from the vaults below. Such buildings are, many 
 of them, provided with gas and water, and they vary in the degree of ven- 
 tilation and sanitary regulation. The importance they occupy in this 
 metropolis is manifest in the fact tliat the population of the city of Neir 
 York was, in 1861, 810,000 ; of which one-half lived in toaement houses. 
 — Appleion's American Ct/clopccdia, 18(51.
 
 10 
 
 wisdom of humanity," on which Utopian reformers place bo 
 much reh'ancc : — 
 
 " An ' Improved ' Dwelling. 
 "Rif^ht in the centre of the city, in the middle of countless millions of 
 wealth, arc hundreds of buildings of the following description: — The first 
 we visited is labelled * Improved Tenement Building,' and true to its title 
 it is an improvement upon many. It is in Park-street, and is six stories 
 high. Each storey contains two rooms of about ten by fourteen feet, with 
 a small dark windowless bedroom of about half that size. A narrow, 
 dark staircase winds from top to bottom. In each is a family of several 
 persons. All the cooking is done in the same apartment. Ventilation is 
 impossible, from the construction of the house. But the saddest feature of 
 all is at the basement. The only place which answers to the name of 
 water-closets for the men, women, and children, baflles all descriptioii, and 
 would disgrace the worst camp or prison in the South. This reeking 
 cesspool, situated at the bottom of the chasm between two huge buildings, 
 poisons all the air that ever passes by the windows. They must, of neces- 
 sity, inhale these pestiferous odours continually. For this privilege these 
 tenants pay from five to six dollars a month [£12 to £15 a year]." 
 
 The interest on capital invested in these ''improved" 
 cholera beds is enormous ; ''in many cases not less than 35 
 per cent." Such houses, we are told, " are all full, and the 
 rents collectable." The poor tenants, in spite of universal 
 suffrage and the ballot, and the lavishly-endowed common 
 schools, are completely at the mercy of their landlords, who, 
 as the Tribune remarks, " have not the custody of either the 
 health, or the morals, or the comfort of theii' tenants," and 
 who, consequently, like certain rich companies in this 
 country, "consult only their profit," acting strictly in accord- 
 ance with the doctrine of laissez faire : " Everyone for him- 
 self, and the Devil take the hindmost." 
 
 As to the remedy, the New TorJc Tribune^ in spite of its 
 hopefulness, and firm persuasion that America manages its 
 affairs better than England has ever done, is very much as 
 sea. " The great difficulty," as it informs us, " lies in the 
 fact that there exists no authority to control or prevent these 
 matters ; no person whose function and responsibility it is to
 
 11 
 
 have them corrected." What more fatal sentence could be 
 passed on the working of unlimited democracy than this me- 
 lancholy confession ? *' You tell the House of Commons, on 
 the authority of De Tocqueville, that, *' though the various 
 American legislatures are perpetually making mistakes, they 
 are perpetually correcting them." Where is the proof of 
 this ? In the same speech, you say, ** the general tendency 
 of their legislation is maintained, in a degree unknown else- 
 where, in the direction of the interests of the people." But 
 this is flatly contradicted by the incontrovertible facts I have 
 given, and which furnish so complete an illustration of what 
 you had stated so well, (before you were returned for West- 
 minster,) in the following passage of your '* Considerations on 
 llepresentative Government" : — 
 
 "In the false democracy, which, instead of giving representation to all, 
 gives it only to the local majorities, the voice of the instructed minority 
 may have no organ at all in the representative body. It is an admitted 
 fact that, in the American democracy, which is constructed oi^ this faulty 
 model, the highly-cultivated members of the community, except such of 
 them as are willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment, 
 and become the servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, seldi)m 
 offer themselves for Congiess or the State Legislatures, so little likelihood 
 have they of being returned." 
 
 It would be unreasonable to look for wise measures from a 
 
 Legislature composed of men without sufficient moral courage 
 
 or honesty to assert their own convictions ; and it would be no 
 
 less unreasonable to look for brilliant examples of national 
 
 progress and civilization among a people whose institutions 
 
 are founded on so debasing a principle. As for the vast sums 
 
 expended in educating the people of the United States, how 
 
 utterly worthless must all that expenditure be rendered, so 
 
 far as regards the diffusion of 'political ivisdom, tohich implies 
 
 political honesty i when it isfouud that those ** highly-cultivated 
 
 members of the community" who wish to enter Congress 
 
 can do so only by " sacrificing their own opinions and modes
 
 12 
 
 of judgment," and becoming the mere " senile mouthpieces 
 of their inferiors in knowledge" ? * 
 
 In your " Thoughts on Parliamentary Eeform," which 
 was published in 1859, you made a remark, with reference to 
 the corrupting influence of the ballot on national morality, 
 which, as it bears upon this point, I shall take the liberty of 
 quoting : — 
 
 " There arc few points in which the English, as a people, are entitled to 
 the moral pre-eminence with which they are accustomed to compliment 
 themselves at the expense of other nations ; but of these points, perhaps 
 the one of greatest importance is, that the higher classes do not lie, and the 
 lower, though mostly habitual liars, are ashamed of hjing.\ To run any 
 risk of weakening this feeling — a difficult one to create, or, when once 
 gone, to restore — would be a permanent evil too great to be incurred for 
 so very temporary a benefit as the ballot would confer, even on the most 
 exaggerated estimate of its necessity." 
 
 This was your sober and well-matured opinion, in 1859, 
 
 when you were *' a writer of books." What youropinion may be 
 
 * The besetting, the degrading vice of America is the moral cowardice 
 by which men are led to truckle to what is called public opinion, though 
 this opinion is as inconsistent as the winds — though, in all cases that enlist 
 the feelings of factions, there are two, and sometimes twenty, each differ- 
 ing from all the others, and though, nine times in ten, these opinions are 
 mere engines set in motion by the most corrupt and least respectable por- 
 tion of the community, for unworthy purposes. — J. Fenimore Cooper. 
 
 The Englishman is so much attached to his independence that he 
 instinctively re&ists every effort to invade it, and nothing would bemore likely 
 to arouse him than to say the mass thinks differently from himself ; whereas 
 the American ever seems ready to resign his own opinion to that which is 
 made to seem to be the opinion of the public. I say seems to be, for so 
 manifest is the power of public opinion, that one of the commonest expe- 
 dients of all American managers is to create an impression that the public 
 thinks in a particular way, in order to bring the common mind into sub- 
 jection,— i^<^. 
 
 t Englishmen are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, 
 and they require plain dealing of others. We will not have to do with a 
 man in a mask. Let us know the truth. . . . To be king of their 
 word is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say *' the English of 
 this is," &c. ; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the 
 lowest of the people is " honour bright," and their vulgar phrase, " his 
 word is as good as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation, and 
 the cause is damaged in the public opinion on which any paltering can be 
 fixed. — Emerson^s Ettglish Traits.
 
 13 
 
 with regard to the need of the ballot, in 18G9, should you con- 
 tinue to represent the Americanised constituency of West- 
 minster for the next three years, must be left to conjecture. 
 From what has already happened, I would not like to predict 
 very confidently what your verdict may be, some throe years 
 hence, when the eloquent member for Birmingham brings 
 forward his motion for the adoption of secret voting as the 
 only effectual mode of suppressing bribery and corruption. 
 
 From the general tone of your treatise ** On Representative 
 Government " your friends and admirers naturally expected 
 that, when the important question of Parliamentary Ecform 
 came under discussion, you would gladly embrace so excellent 
 an opportunity of ventilating the enlightened ideas you had 
 there expounded, with reference to the principles by which 
 Reformers ought to be guided in dealing with this question. 
 In the Preface to that work you remarked that ** both Con- 
 servatives and Liberals have lost confidence in the political 
 creeds which they nominally profess, while neither side ap- 
 pears to have made any progress in providing itself with a 
 better." And yet, as you justly observe, ** such a better 
 doctrine must be possible ; not a mere compromise, by splitting 
 the difference between the two, but something wider than 
 either, which, in virtue of its comprehensiveness, might be 
 adopted by either Liberal or Conservative, without renouncing 
 anything which he really feels to be valuable in his own 
 creed." 
 
 This is true Liberalism, which differs as widely from the 
 blatant, sham Liberalism of stump orators and Demos- wor- 
 shipping journals as the Anglican idea of freedom differs from 
 the American idea. The latter is founded on the false doc- 
 trine of the rightful supremacy of a mere numerical majority, 
 and the equally false theory of the natural equality of man- 
 kind. The English idea of freedom is as much opposed to the
 
 14 
 
 Democratic absolutism of '* a tyrant majority" ap it in to tlie 
 Autocratic absolutism of an Emperor elected by universal 
 suffrage and the ballot. " Englishmen," as Mr. Emerson re- 
 marks, are not to be led by a phrase ; they want a working 
 plan — a working machine — a working constitution." Hence 
 the strong aversion they have always manifested to Gallican 
 and American ideas when any attempt has been made to in- 
 corporate them in our institutions. Their first inquiry is : 
 How have those theories worked in America and France ? So 
 far as the United States was concerned, it was easy to give a 
 plausible answer to this question a few years ago. But the 
 civil war which broke out in 1861 gave a terrible blow to the 
 theory of American perfectibility, as well as to those argu- 
 ments in favour of " Americanising our institutions " which, 
 the advanced Liberals naturally founded on that theory. 
 
 It was only a few months before the fall of Fort Sumter 
 that Mr. Bright, in a speech he made at "Wakefield, drew the 
 following contrast between the working of English and 
 American institutions : — 
 
 " How came it— he asked their public writers — he asked their statesmen 
 — he asked ministers of religion, — how came it — the fact was indisputable — 
 that in the United States the great body of the artisans and labouring 
 classes were so much better off than those of this country were ? He 
 knew of three causes that would account for it. In the United States the 
 land was wholly free from all feudal law and tenures ; the people were 
 instructed by an extensive and thoroughly working common school 
 system, useful to a degree infinitely beyond what the people of this 
 country ever dreamt of; and further, that, from some cause or other that 
 he could not then inquire into, the Government of the United States, 
 although the population of each country was about 30,000,000, spent 
 about 60,000,000^. less than the Government of this country."* 
 
 The majority of your "Westminster constituents, who 
 
 * Another and more potent cause, which Mr. Bright did not mention, 
 is the difference in regard to density of population in the two countries. 
 In America it ranges from 60 or 70 inhabitants per square mile in New 
 England, to 3 inhabitants per mile in Texas and California. In Great 
 Britain the average is 242 inhabitants per square mile.
 
 15 
 
 hanker after Utopian visions of a perfect political system, 
 have been no doubt indoctrinatedwith the same opinions as Mr. 
 Bright. From the revolutionary era when Paine wrote his 
 ** Rights of Man," down to the present day, the democratic 
 press has been constantly instilling the doctrines of American 
 perfectibility into the minds of our artisans and labouring 
 classes. !N"o member of the House of Commons, either on the 
 Conservative or the Liberal side, knows better than you do how 
 false those doctrines are, and therefore you ought to take 
 advantage of the prominent position you now hold to assert 
 your independent convictions on that head. 
 
 You have told us that *'the natural tendency of represen- 
 tative government, as of modem civilization, is towards 
 collective mediocrity ; " and that " this tendency is increased 
 by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their ten- 
 dency being to place the principal power in the hands of 
 classes more and more below the highest level of ir^struction 
 in the community." Now, if this be the " natural tendency" 
 of all reductions of the franchise, you ought seriously to con- 
 sider whether you are acting wisely in assisting Ministers to 
 hurry a franchise extension bill, founded on democratic prin- 
 ciples, through Parliament, when you know that that measure 
 was advisedly framed to give ''leverage " for eflfecting greater 
 changes in the same direction. 
 
 I am, yours faithfully, 
 
 AN OLD WHIG.
 
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