From The Fortnightly Review. SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE UNITED

STATES.

II.

In America everything seems to go by political divisions, except when men say openly that it is time for the honest men of both sides to join together against the rogues of both sides. On the other hand, I could learn next to nothing on one of the points on which I most wished to learn something, namely the adminis tration of justice and of everything else in the rural districts. My only opportunity was during a sojourn in a rural part of Virginia, where, as far as I could see, nothing of any public interest went on at all. I was reminded of the ancient inhabitants of Laish, who dwelled careless, quiet, and secure, who had no business with any man, and who had no magistrate to put them to shame in anything.* Yet even here. I heard now and then of political differences; only here too, as elsewhere, on most questions of immediate importance, the division did not follow the same lines as the received cleavage into Democrats and Republicans.

My visit to the United States had partly, but not wholly, the character of a lecturing tour. That is to say, I lectured in a good many places, mainly in the university and college towns, while I visited a good many other places where I did not lecture. Among these last was the federal capital. I was thus mainly thrown among professors and others more or less given to literary or scientific studies; but, without ever finding myself in the very thick of American political life, I also saw a good deal of political men, and heard a good deal of political matters. I saw something of federal affairs at Washington, something of State affairs at Albany, something of municipal affairs at Philadelphia. It must always be borne in mind that State affairs and municipal affairs come under the head of politics no less than the affairs of the Union, and I often asked my American friends of that political divisions affect every detail both parties what was the difference beof all three. My American friends, who tween them. I told them that I could see naturally wished to learn something back none; both sides seemed to me to say again from me in exchange for all that I exactly the same things. I sometimes learned from them, were now and then got the convenient, but not wholly satissomewhat amazed at finding how little I factory, answer: Yes; but then we mean could tell them about English municipal what we say, while the other party only matters. They seemed to find it hard to pretends. Certainly at the present mounderstand the nature of a man who did ment the difference between different secnot live in a town. They were naturally tions of the Republican party is much all the more amazed when I sometimes clearer to an outsider than the difference sportively told them that I actually held between Republicans and Democrats. a nominal municipal office, one which I On intelligible questions like free trade suppose that Sir Charles Dilke or some and civil service reform, or again, the other reformer will before long take from local Virginian question of paying or not me. It seemed a hard saying when I told | paying one's lawful debts, the division them that I had stayed longer in Phila- does not follow the regular cleavage of delphia than I had ever stayed in London, longer than I had, since my boyhood, stayed in any town except Rome and Palermo. I have seen, and somewhat attentively studied, an American municipal election; an English municipal election I have never seen or taken any interest in. I am aware that in English municipal boroughs party politics largely affect the choice of councillors; I do not know how far they affect the votes of the councillors when they are once elected.

parties. I certainly found it easier to grasp the difference between a stalwart Republican and one who was not stalwart, than to grasp the immediate difference between a Republican and a Democrat. Questions of this kind are plain enough; the distinction between the two great acknowledged parties is just now much less plain. But it must not be inferred that it is a distinction without a

* Judges xviii. 7.

difference. The two parties seem to say is the very way to lead to separation. I the same things, because just at the pres- know of no immediate reason to fear any ent time no question is stirring which at attempt at centralization such as might all strongly forces them to say different thus lead to separation. But it does things. Their differences have been im- seem to be a possible danger; it seems portant in the past; they may be impor- to me that there are tendencies at work tant in the future; but just now questions which are more likely to lead to that form which would bring out their differences of error than to its opposite. Nothing are not uppermost. I am not sure that can be a plainer matter of history than this is a wholesome state of things. If the fact that whatever powers the Union there must be and there doubtless must holds, it holds by the grant of the States. be-parties in a State, it is better that It is equally plain that the grant was they should be divided on some intelligi- irrevocable, except so far as its terms ble difference of principle, than that po- may be modified by a constitutional litical warfare should sink into a mere amendment. And the power of making a question of ins and outs, of Shanavests constitutional amendment is itself part of and Caravats. But, though the distinc- the grant of the States, which thus agreed tion between Republicans and Democrats that, in certain cases, a fixed majority of looks from outside very like a distinction between Shanavests and Caravats, it is only accidentally so. The distinction may easily become as real as the distinction between Tory and Radical, Legitimist and Republican. Should any question ever again arise as to the respective powers of the Union and of the States, it is easy to see which side each party would take. It is simply because there is no such burning question at present stirring that the two parties seem to say exactly the same things, and yet to be as strongly divided

as ever.

the States should bind the whole. The error of the Secessionists lay in treating an irrevocable grant as if it had been a revocable one. The doctrine of the right of secession, as a constitutional right, was absurd on the face of it. Secession from the Union was as much rebellion, as much a breach of the law in force at the time, as was the original revolt of the colonies against the king. The only question in either case was whether those special circumstances had arisen which can justify breach of the ordinary law. But it is a pity, in avoiding this error, to run into the opposite one, and to hold, not only that the grant made by the States to the Union was irrevocable, but that the grant was really made the other

I may speak on this matter as one who has made the nature of federal government an object of special study. It strikes me that, as the doctrine of State rights was pushed to a mischievous ex-way. I find that it is the received doctreme twenty years and more ago, so there is danger now of the opposite doctrine being pushed to a mischievous extreme. The more I look at the American Union, the more convinced I am that so vast a region, taking in lands whose condition differs so widely in everything, can be kept together only by a federal system, leaving large independent powers in the hands of the several States. No single parliament could legislate, no single government could administer, for Maine, Florida, and California. Let these States be left to a great extent independent, and they may remain united on those points on which it is well that they should remain united. To insist on too close an union

trine in some quarters that the States have no rights but such as the Union allows to them. One of the Boston newspapers was angry because I stated in one of my lectures the plain historical fact that the States, as, in theory at least, independent commonwealths, surrendered certain defined powers to the Union, and kept all other powers in their own hands. The Boston paper was yet more angry because a large part of a Boston audience warmly cheered warmly that is, for Boston such dangerous doctrines. I was simply ignorant; those who cheered me were something worse.*

I must even cleave to the phrase "sovereign States," though I know it may offend many. A State

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the form given to the executive. It is perfectly natural that the word "federal" should be in constant use in a federal State, in far more common use than any word implying kingship need be in a kingdom. There is a constant need to distinguish things which come within the range of the federal power from things which come within the range of the State or cantonal power. And for this purpose the word "federal" is more natural than the word "national." The proper range of the latter word surely lies in matters which have to do with other nations. One would speak of the "national honor," but of the "federal revenue." That "national" should have driven out "federal" within a range when the latter word seems so specially at home, does really look as if the federal character of the national power was, to say the least, less strongly present to men's minds than it was twenty

Now notions of this kind are not con- and one not federal is a difference of fined to a single newspaper. And they original structure which runs through surely may lead to results as dangerous everything. It is a far wider difference at one end as the doctrine of Secession than the difference between a kingdom was at the other. Both alike cut directly and a republic, which may differ only in at the very nature of a federal system. Connected perhaps with this tendency is one of those changes in ordinary speech which come in imperceptibly, without people in general remarking them, but which always prove a great deal. In England we now universally use the word government" where in my boyhood everybody said "ministry" or "ministers." Then it was "the Duke of Wellington's ministry" or Lord Grey's; now it is "Lord Beaconsfield's government" or Mr. Gladstone's. This change, if one comes to think about it, certainly means a great deal. So it means a great deal that, where the word "federal" used to be used up to the time of the Civil War or later, the word "national" is now used all but invariably. It used to be "federal capital," "federal army," "federal revenue," and so forth. Now the word "national" is almost always used instead. I have now and then seen the word "fed-years back. e-al" used in the old way, but so rarely that I suspect that it was used of set purpose, as a kind of protest, as I might use it myself. Now there is not the slightest objection to the word "national;" for the union of the States undoubtedly forms, for all political purposes, a nation. The point to notice is not the mere use of the word "national," but the displacement of the word "federal" in its favor. This surely marks a tendency to forget the federal character of the national government, or at least to forget that its federal character is its very essence. The difference between a federal government is sovereign which has any powers which it holds by inherent right, without control on the part of any other power, without responsibility to any other power. Now every American State has powers of this kind. The thirteen States did not receive their existing powers from the Union; they surrendered to the Union certain powers which were naturally their own, and kept others to themselves. Within this last range the State is sovereign: within the range of the powers surrendered to the Union the Union is sovereign. Of the old States this is historically true in the strictest sense. Of the constitutionally true; for they were admitted to all the

later States admitted since the Union was formed it is

rights of the old thirteen.

It is rather odd that this emphatic use of the word "national" should have been accompanied by changes which have made the being of the United States less strictly national, in another sense of the word, than it was before. That great land is still essentially an English land. But it is no small witness to the toughness of fibre in the English folk wherever it settles that it is so. A land must be reckoned as English where a great majority of the people are still of English descent, where the speech is still the speech of England, where valuable contributions are constantly made to English literature, where the law is still essentially the law of England, and where valuable contributions are constantly made to English jurisprudence. A land must be reckoned as English where the English kernel is so strong as to draw to itself every foreign element, where the foreign settler is adopted into the English home of an English people, where he or his children exchange the speech of their elder dwell

ings for the English speech of the land. | memory of the wrongs which drove them Nowhere does the assimilating process go from the old. I share the natural indig on more vigorously than in the United nation against those who, either in Ireland States. Men of various nationalities are or in America, make a good cause to be easily changed into "good Americans," evil spoken of; but, as long as the Irishand the "good American" must be, in man seeks to compass his ends only by every sense that is not strictly geographi-honorable means, we have no right to cal or political, a good Englishman. And, blame him because his ends are different as regards a large part of the foreign set- from ours. But all this is perfectly contlers, no man of real English feeling can sistent with the manifest fact that the give them other than a hearty welcome. Irish element is, in the English lands on The German, and still more the Scandi- both sides of the ocean, a mischievous navian, settlers are simply men of our element. The greatest object of all is for own race who have lagged behind in the the severed branches of the English folk western march, but who have at last made to live in the fullest measure of friendship it at a single pull, without tarrying for a and unity that is consistent with their thousand years in the isle of Britain. severed state. Now the Irish element in But there are other settlers, other in- America is the greatest of all hindrances mates, with whose presence the land, one in the way of this happy state of things. would think, might be happy to dispense. It is the worst, and perhaps the strongI must here speak my own mind, at the est, of several causes which help to give a great risk of offending people on more bad name to American politics. Political sides than one. Men better versed in men in all times and places lie under American matters than myself point out strong temptations to say and do things to me the fact that the negro vote bal- which they otherwise would not say and ances the Irish vote. But one may be do, in order to gain some party advanallowed to think that a Teutonic land tage. But on no political men of any might do better still without any Irish time or place has this kind of influence vote, that an Aryan land might do better been more strongly brought to bear than still without any negro vote. And what I it is on political men in the United States venture to say on the housetops has been who wish to gain the Irish vote. The imwhispered in my ear in closets by not a portance of that vote grows and grows; few in America who fully understand the no party, no leading man, can afford to state and the needs of their country. despise it. Parties and men are thereVery many approved when I suggested fore driven into courses to which otherthat the best remedy for whatever was wise they would have no temptation to amiss would be if every Irishman should take, and those for the most part courses kill a negro and be hanged for it. Those which are unfriendly to Great Britain. who dissented dissented most commonly Any ill-feeling which other causes may on the ground that, if there were no Irish awaken between the two severed branches and no negroes, they would not be able to of the English people is prolonged and get any domestic servants. The most strengthened by the presence of the Irish serious objection came from Rhode Isl- settlers in America. In some minds they and, where they have no capital punish- may really plant hostile feelings towards ment, and where they had no wish to keep Great Britain which would otherwise find the Irish at the public expense. Let no no place there. At any rate they plant in one think that I have any ill-feeling to- many minds a habit of speaking and actwards the Irish people. In their own ing as if such hostile feelings did find a island I have every sympathy with them. place, a habit which cannot but lead to I argued long ago in the pages of this bad effects in many ways. The mere rureview on behalf of Home Rule or of mor, the mere thought, of recalling Mr. any form of Irish independence which did Lowell from his post in England in subnot involve, as some schemes then pro- serviency to Irish clamor is a case in posed did involve, the dependence of point. That such a thing should even Great Britain. I should indeed be incon- have been dreamed of shows the baleful sistent if I were to refuse to the Irishman nature of Irish influence in America, and what I have sought to win for the Greek, how specially likely it is to stir up strife the Bulgarian, and the Dalmatian. Nor and ill-feeling between Great Britain and is it wonderful or blameworthy if men America even at times when, setting Irish who have left their old homes to escape matters aside, there is not the faintest from the wrongs of foreign rule should ground of quarrel on either side. In a view carry with them into their new homes the of poetical justice it is perhaps not unrea

And

sonable that English misrule in Ireland such an experiment been tried. should be punished in this particular this, though in some ages of the Roman shape. It may be just that the wrongs dominion the adoption and assimilation which we have done to our neighbors of men of other races was carried to the should be paid off at the hands of mem- extremest point that the laws of nature bers of our own family. But the process would allow. Long before the seat of is certainly unpleasant to our branch of empire was moved to Constantinople, the the family, and it is hard to see how it name Roman had ceased to imply even a can be any real gain to the other. presumption of descent from the old patricians and plebeians. A walk through But the Irishman is, after all, in a wide any collection of Roman inscriptions will sense, one of ourselves. He is Aryan; show how, in the later days of the undihe is European; he is capable of being vided empire, a man was far oftener sucassimilated by other branches of the Eu- ceeded by his freedman than by his son. ropean stock. There is nothing to be And besides freedmen, strangers of every said against this or that Irishman all by race within the empire had been freely himself. In England, in America, in any admitted to citizenship, and were allowed other land, nothing hinders him from be- to bear the names of the proudest Roman coming one with the people of the land, gentes. The Julius, the Claudius, the or from playing an useful and honorable Cornelius, of those days was for the most part among them. All that is needed to part no Roman by lineal descent, but a this end is that he should come all by Greek, a Gaul, a Spaniard, or an Illyrian. himself. It is only when Irishmen gather But the Gaul, the Spaniard, the Illyrian, in such numbers as to form an Irish com- could all be assimilated; they could all munity capable of concerted action that be made into Romans. They learned to any mischief is to be looked for from speak and act in everything as men no them. The Irish difficulty is troublesome less truly Roman than the descendants just now; it is likely to be troublesome of the first settlers on the Palatine. Such for some time to come; but it is not likely men ceased to be Gauls, Spaniards, or to last forever. But the negro difficulty Illyrians. The Greek, representative of must last either till the way has been found out by which the Ethiopian may change his skin, or till either the white man or the black departs out of the land. The United States and, in their measure other parts of the American continent and islands have to grapple with a problem such as no other people ever had to grapple with before. Other communities, from the beginning of political society, have been either avowedly or practically founded on distinctions of race. There has been, to say the least, some people or nation or tribe which has given its character to the whole body, and by which other elements have been assimilated. In the United States this part has been played, as far as the white population is concerned, by the original English kernel. Round that kernel the foreign elements have grown; it assimilates them; they do not assimilate it. But beyond that range lies another range where assimilation ceases to be possible. The eternal laws of nature, the eternal distinction of color, forbid the assimilation of the negro. You may give him the rights of citizenship by law; you cannot make him the real equal, the real fellow, of citizens of European descent. Never before in our world, the world of Rome and of all that Rome has influenced, has

a richer and more perfect speech, of a higher and older civilization, could become for many purposes a Roman without ceasing to be a Greek. In all these cases no born physical or intellectual difference parted off the slave from his master, the stranger from the citizen. When the artificial distinction was once taken away, in the next generation at least all real distinction was lost. This cannot be when there is an eternal physical and intellectual difference between master and slave, between citizen and stranger. The Roman Senate was filled with Gauls almost from the first moment of the conquest of Gaul; but for a native Egyptian to find his way there was a rare portent of later times. No edict of Antoninus Caracalla could turn him into a Roman, as the Gauls had been turned long before that edict. The bestowal of citizenship on the negro is one of those cases which show what law can do and what it cannot. The law may declare the negro to be the equal of the white man; it cannot make him his equal To the old question, Am I not a man and a brother? I venture to answer: No. He may be a man and a brother in some secondary sense; he is not a man and a brother in the same full sense in which every Western Aryan is a man and a brother. He