The Nation 1868-03-19: Vol 6 Iss 142
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‘he Nation. VOL. VL—NO. 142. THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1868. Frve Do.tLars PER ANNUM, Twestve Cents per Copy. CONTENTS. Tum WEEE......--.---- 00 -- sere ce eeee BOR. | Tn mTORE, © oo.coccesncsncs ccvicvccosinceee 230 CORRESPONDENCE : iB The West and Greenbacks.......... 231 EDITORIAL Supreme Court Decisions........... 231 The Situation since the New Hamp. “The Nation's *’ Conservatism..... 231 shire Blection...............2..0++ 224 ‘The Nation's’ Radicalism........ 232 t—Debtor and Cre- Notes: enn a 225 BNE. cocconcccccced: cdcccooeeces 232 » spas ih aaa ca Ra) ae Tt na eer roe 233 Tho Frepesed Constitation of Now Variation of Animals and Plants dhe hes ce stda: oHds ce csaeee 227 under Domestication ............... we Dollars annum. in advance ; Six months, Three Dollars; Forty Dollars to Clube of Ten; Clargymen, Four Dollars. : THE Nation és sent till positively ordered discontinued, and all arrears have been paid. Subscribers are particularly requested to note the expiration of their subscriptions, and to forward what is due for the ensuing year, with or without further reminder from this Gronex STREET, 30 ConnuILL, Lonpon, E. C., AGENT FOR THE RECEIPT OF SUBSCRIPTIONS AND ADVERTISEMENTS. E. L. GODKIN & CO., PUBLISHERS, Box 6732, NEW YORK CITY. The Week. On Tuesday the House, by 122 to 2, passed a bill which at one stroke cuts off $84,000,000 of revenue. It removes the five per cent. tax from manufactures generally, and retains it upon only five or six articles— distilled spirits, fermented liquors and certain kinds of wine, oils dis- tilled from coal, illuminating gas, and manufactured tobacco in all its forms. It is expected, however, that the loss to the Government from this measure of needed relief will not be more than some $60,000,000, as the committee will propose an increase of certain special taxes on different manufactures, and a tax of one-twentieth of one per cent. on sales of manufactured articles when amounting to more than a given sum—say $5,000. On Wednesday, in the Senate, Mr. Dixon delivered a speech, apropos of Mr. Sherman’s Funding Bill, on the reconstruction policy of the Republican party and its financial schemes. An amend- ment to the Judiciary act was passed, permitting writs of error in in- ternal revenue cases to be taken to the Supreme Court. The House, on the same day, occupied itself with Mr. Eliot’s Freedmen’s Bureau bill, which continues the Bureau for another year and re-establishes it wherever ithas been discontinued ; and with Mr. Stevens’s bill for the ad- mission of Alabama without a new election. Mr. Farnsworth defended the bill as well as he was able, and Mr. Brooks attacked it in a set speech; he appealed to Congress to profit by the example of the Am- phictyonic Council, who refused to permit the erection of a monument after the war between Thrace and Lacedemon. The general bill, by the way, which directs that in future elections in the South a majority of votes cast shall be sufficient to ratify the constitutions proposed, has become a law, the President having refrained from vetoing it in the ten days allowed him. Arkansas will vote under it—indeed, is now voting. On this same day the falsity of Mr. Logan’s story about the $18,640,000 undestroyed bonds was plainly shown by a report from the Retrench- ment Committee. Mr. Logan had no answer except general but very violent denunciations of the Treasury Department as reeking with corruption. The same subject came up on Thursday, but there was nothing developed that changes the character of it. Afterwards Mr. | Schenck brought in a bill which he wished the House to pass, saying that there could be no objection to it from either side of the House, as it merely amended the Judiciary act so as to place officers of Inter- nal Revenue on the same footing as Customs officers, so far as regards ppeals from the Circuit Courts to the Supreme Court. While he was Mar. 19. 1868] The Nation. talking, Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, asked him to suffer the bill to be amended by a section repealing so much of the Judiciary act of February, 1867, as authorizes an appeal in Aabeas corpus cases from the Circuit Courts to the Supreme Court. So amended, the bill was passed. Mr. Schenck, who had had a word or two said to him, perceiving that its effect would be to remove the McCardle case out of the Supreme Cour’, did not modify the language he had just used in speaking of the bill. The Democratic members suffered it to pass, partly because they did not see its bearing, and partly, we should say, because they had a little more faith in Mr, Schenck’s sense of honor than they will have again a34|It was a piece of sharp practice which no other Republican in the House could perhaps be much blamed for participating in, but which Mr. Schenck, as having been the meaus of lulling the Democrats to security by words true when he introduced the bill, but false when it was passed, ought certainly to have prevented. On Saturday, however, when he was attacked for his share in the business, he showed not the least compunction, and could not see, apparently, that any fraud had been committed. On Friday the President's trial took up the day After hearing Mr. Stanbery, who was unexpectedly bitter, and Mr Butler, who was bitter as was expected, and Mr. Bingham, who was on the whole unexpectedly calm and cool, the Senate refused to allow Mr. Johnson forty days in which to prepare his answer, refused, on the other hand, to order the trial to proceed at once, and finally settled on Monday next as the day for the filing of the answer. On Monday the Senate did nothing of general interest. The House refused to second the previous question on Mr. Ingersoll’s resolution to issue greenbacks to the amount of such notes withdrawn from circulation by Mr. McCulloch when he was contracting the cvrrency—an encouraging sign. On Tuesday the House discussed the removal of disabilities from Mr. W. W. Holden, Mr. James L. Orr, General Longstreet, and others. The House, on motion of Mr. Schenck, decided to wait a few weeks before taking action. Mr. Stevens asked for the recommittal of his bill for the admission of Alabama, and we shall hear no more of it. The result of the New Hampshire election has not been officially promulgated, but it is certain that Harriman is Governor by a majority that will hardly vary by a score of votes from 2,530. This in a total vote of about 77,000, or, to be exact, of 76,868. The Republican Com- mittee were laughed at by the Democratic press for expecting a vote of 76,531, which, indeed, is about 5,000 more votes than New Hampshire ever cast before this election. Their prediction was, how- ever, verified, as it often has been before, with an exactness that is really astonishing, and which shows that the organization of the party in that State is well worth study and imitation. It is generally un- derstood that for the excellence of this organization credit is to be given to the Hon. E. H. Rollins, who has seen several years of service as head of the State Committee. As regards the relative loss and gain of the two parties, it appears that the Republicans cast 3,803 more votes than last year; that the Democrats cast 4,493 more; and that there is, therefore, on the new vote a gain for the Democrats. The actual Republican majority is diminished by something like 600 or 650. On the whole, the Republicans have every reason to be very well satis- fied with the result of as well-fought a political battle as has ever taken place in this country, and may properly fire guns of rejoicing over the defeat of a very confident enemy. Their adversaries, too, would be more than human not to be a little disheartened, for since 1862 they have never seemed to have so fair a chance of success. The Mobile Tribune, however, takes almost too melancholy a view of the situation, It receives the news with this welcome: “ There is a sulphurous volcanic cloud rising over the northern land ; bo bo
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222 The Nation. [Mar. 19, 1868 and by the lurid light that gleams along its borders we can see houses in flames, and fields desolated, and outraged women flying with dishevelled hair to hide their shame, and mastless hulks with blood-stained decks drift- ing rudderless on seas whitened no more for ever with the canvas-wings of commerce, and cities of the dead whose mouldering ruins would topple over | and fall with the jar upon the air of a single footstep upon their sidewalks, but the footstep is not there.” It should remember that the Democrats have made gains in Bidde- ford, Maine, and other towns. We have on several occasions during the past year drawn attention to the injury to the country which Chief-Justice Chase was doing by going about the country haranguing negroes, by lobbying for the freed- men in Congress, and by going out, in a patriotic glow, to Ohio to vote the Republican ticket, and deliver harangues from his window to crowds in the street. We said that in doing thus, no matter how pure his own motives were, he was destroying the popular respect for his office, and diminishing the popular confidence in his judicial integrity. We said, moreover, that his being talked of even, with bis own permission or connivance, as a candidate for the Presidency, was a great scandal and a great injury to the very class he was trying to serve. But some of our Radical contemporaries were highly delighted with his perfor- mances, thought it a very fine thing that the Chief-Justice should stump the country in a good cause, and that “our most distinguished jurist” Should be a candidate for “ the highest office, etc., etc.” Well, our prognostications as to the result already begin to be verified. He has to preside now at a most important political trial, and his very first ruling or opinion, simply because it happens to be opposed to that of the majority, is ascribed to base motives. Nay, the very people who were most delighted by his political tours have now begun to hold him up to odium, and throw doubts on his fidelity. The last Anti-Slavery Standard, which is filled every week with the writhings or rejoicings of this far-sighted class, denounces the Chief-Justice as “the ally of the President ;” says that he, “ mad with the Presidential fever, desperate in the consciousness of baffled plans, and, meanly jealous of Wade, perhaps cherishing the forlorn hope of a Democratic nomination, joins forces with the enemy.” More horrible still, it calls attention to the disgust- ing fact that on Wednesday week, in the evening, “the doors of the Chief-Justice’s drawing-room were flung open, and the usher” (the avandoned wretch) “announced in a loud voice: ‘ The President of the United States and daughter.’” No wonder that, after this, the Standard pronounces him “a serious obstacle, whose evil intentions are only limited by his courage, which, fortunately, is not great.” We sincerely hope that the result of this attempt to use the bench of the Supreme Court as a step to the White House will be a warning to all Mr. Chase’s successors. This exposure of what goes on in the Chief-Justice’s salons sug- gests naturally the enquiry whether the judges of the Supreme Court have been watched in their own houses as closely as they ought to have been. We greatly fear that both the Judiciary Committee and the Reconstruction Committee have been remiss on this point. The people are dying to learn, for instance, what it was Judge Field said at Mr. Black’s dinner-party, and yet nothing, so far as we have heard, has been done to gratify them. Now, we suggest, respectfully, that more use ought to be made of these gentlemen’s waiters, and espe- cially male waiters, A patriotic attendant at table, properly instructed by General Butler, could certainly, if he kept his ears open, pick up a great deal of interesting matter, and perhaps furnish some startling facts about the political opinions of the monsters who now sit on the bench of the Supreme Court. Some people may think this a wild, visionary idea, and practical men may tell us that waiters are too busy to listen to dinner conversation; but we have considered the matter carefully, and are satisfied there is something in our suggestion. Everybody knows that there are always intervals of indeterminate length between the courses, the blame of which, when they are too long, is laid on the cook, Now, what could be easier than for a waiter of the right sort to keep the guests waiting as long as might be.necessary to jot down, in the pantry, the traitorous utterances of any “ obstacles” who might be round the table in the other room? There has been an amount of neg- ligence about this matter which makes us fear some of our leaders are not up to their work. -—s + We have for some time given up discussing Mr. Thaddeus Stevens's opinions either on reconstruction or political economy, owing to the growth of a conviction in our minds that he did not reach them by ordinary human means—in other words, that he is a prophet or sooth- sayer, or something of that kind. For instance, when he announced some months ago that the man who, while professing to be a demo- crat, denied the claim of the negro to the suffrage, must be an atheist, we felt that some of the links in the chain of reasoning by which he reached this conclusion were hidden from mortal eyes. It is well estab- lished that you cannot refute a prophet; your remedy is, if he becomes troublesome, to disbelieve him. The New York Times, however, does not seem to be of this opinion, and accordingly assails each of Mr. Stevens’s political revelations with as much ardor and enthusiasm as if it were dealing with the product of the common human brain. He has, within a few days, written a letter to Colonel Forney, informing this gentleman that he (Thaddeus Stevens) “has long reflected with such ability as he can command on the subject of the Declaration of Independence,” and has come to the conclusion that “ universal suffrage was one of the inalienable rights intended to be embraced in that instrument by our fathers at the time of the Declaration ;” he therefore gives notice that the Committee on Reconstruction “have finally resolved that no State shall be admitted into the Union unless its con- stitution provides for universal suffrage.” This notice the Times assails with much irreverence and acerbity, but, in our opinion, some- what foolishly. There is no logical means of driving Mr. Stevens from his position. The way to mee* it is the way they meet false witnesses in Hindostan, who occasionally prove trumped-up debts in the courts. The alleged debtor rarely relies on contradictory evidence; he simply produces a greater number of perjurers to swear that they saw the debt paid. So, also, the best mode of meeting Mr. Stevens’s doctrines is to get some other elderly gentleman of good political standing to go to sleep with the Declaration of Independence under his pillow after a late dinner, and find out what “the fathers ” thought after they had drawn the Declaration. The process would, we admit, be danger- ous ; for a person with a weak digestion and an active brain might easily betold by “the fathers” that when they spoke of “ inalienable rights ” they had an eight-hour law and a usury law in their minds, and were in favor of unlimited greenbacks; but the risk must be taken by any- body who wants to demolish Mr. Stevens. When a gentleman gives you, as conciusive, the result of his own “ reflections ” on a subject like this, there is no use in arguing with him, even if he were willing to argue with you, which Mr. Stevens never is, A correspondent writes us from Philadelphia that he has no money invested in United States bonds, and that therefore he has to utter no cry of the bondholder awaiting robbery; but he has, he says, a very large investment for himself and his children in the honor and good name of his native country. So he sends us a fact or two which has fallen under his observation, and which tends to confirm the view that we have all along been taking—namely, that if it were possible for Mr. Butler and Mr, Pendleton to commit the country to repudiation, by “strict construction,” “letter of law,” and so on, the persons from whom the country would be stealing would, in a majority of cases, be, not “a bloated bondocracy,” but poor people who are ahead of the world by only a few hundred dollars, Ask any broker, says our cor- respondent, and he will tell you that bonds of the small denomina- tion—fifties and hundreds—are always from } to } of one per cent. higher than the larger. He gives us an account of a colored man—a servant—whom he met ina hotel. He was a slave in North Carolina when the war broke out, but he made his escape, and in the summer of 1866 had saved from his wages $300, which he had invested in Govern- ment bonds. Mr. Pendleton might easily lay hands on him for pur- poses of experiment, for he lives in Ohio, in Trumbull county. Our attention has been called by a legal correspondent to a para- graph in the Nation of March 5, in which, in speaking of Mr. J. H. Harris, a coiored man in Georgia, who has declined a Congressional nomination for Congress,"we say that, “as a matter of fact, under the Constitution, no colored man can go to Congress for some time.” This is no doubt too sweeping a statement. What we ought to have said
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Mar. 19, 1868] The Nation. 223 was that no freedman could go to Congress for some time; though we | and renders all concerned liable to arrest and imprisonment. The cannot feel sure even of this until we bear from Thaddeus Stevens, who | operation of this law was illustrated in a curious way in the evidence is at present ‘‘ reflecting on the subject of the Declaration of Independ- before a Commission appointed in 1866, and of which M. Rouher was ence,” and discovering new things in it every week. | president, to enquire into the workings of co-»perative associations, _It was declared by some of the leading friends of the movement that It may be remembered that some time ago M. de Kervéguen, a the law prohibiting meetings acted as a great hindrance to it. True, member of the Corps Législatif, in his place in the Chamber, read a the authorization to meet was never refused, but men hated to ask for letter, published in a Belgian paper, charging the Siécle and Opinion | it, or undergo the questioning which sometimes preceded the conces- Nationale, the two most widely-circulated Paris papers, and, in fact, |S!" and consequently the difliculties in the way of the formation of the Paris press generally, with having been bribed by the Prussian | large societies, in which frequent meetings would be necessary, were Governmert to support its policy during the late complications. The | greatly increased. There is little other news of importance from editors of the Siécle and Opinion of course denied the charges, and | France, but the continued increase of the bullion in the bank, and the demanded a “jury of honor” to try their truth, and the “ jury” was | continued falling off in the discounts, show that confidence is not accordingly chosen by the parties, consisting of M. Berryer, the leader | "turning or business improving. of the French bar, M. Jules Favre, who ranks next to him, M Mar- OR ikTe en ie, ore ee tel, and the Marquis d’Andelarre. They have sat and examined wit- | In Italy there is no change in the situation; but there are signs of nesses and documents at intervals during the last three months, and | "turning good feeling between Italy and France, The French Govera- have now announced their decision, which is that the charges in ques. | ment is gradually showing signs of being ashamed of its late outburst tion had not a particle of foundation. M. de Kervéguen excuses him- of zeal on behalf of the papacy, and is beginning once more the old self for his share in the affair by alleging that, when he read the letter, Work of urging reforms on the Roman Government. But it might as he expressly disclaimed all responsibility for it; but his reading it had, | well talk to a millstone. The Pope is so elated by his victory at Men- nevertheless, the effect of raising a howl of delight amongst the Cwsar- | tana that he heeds nobody, and feels grateful to nobody, evidently ists in the Chamber, and to lay Messrs. Havin and Guéroult, the two | believing that the overthrow of the Garibaldians was due to divine editors, under very odious imputations for nearly four months. The interposition. A striking illustration of the depth of his infatuation jury, however, refuse to let him off on this plea. They say that, no is afforded by the fact that he is allowing Rome to be made a focus of matter what disclaimer he made, “he rendered himself morally respon- | Bourbonist conspiracy and intrigue, the object being the attempt at sible from the more serious authority his personal position, and the | revolution in Southern Italy, of which we spoke last week. In order, greater publicity his reading them in the tribune gave to imputations | 'f possible, to mark still more strongly his caning towards legitimacy, which are totally devoid of truth.” There are some gentlemen in| he has presented the “ Colden Rose” to Queen Isabella of Spain. Washington who might learn a useful lesson from this incident—Gen- The ‘Golden Rose” is a cluster of roses growing on one stem, of pure eral Logan, for instance. He recently charged the Treasury officials, in his place in the House, with having reported the official destruction of many millions of Government bonds, while what they really destroyed was only blank paper, the inference being of course that they kept the | bonds themselves. The charge was proved on investigation to be utterly false; but Mr. Logan, instead of being daunted or ashamed, unblushingly replied that, if they did not cheat about the bond burn- ing, they did cheat, “not only by the sale of bonds, but by giving out dies and by paying counterfeit bonds and duplicate bonds,” and that he did not intend to be “driven off or scared off” by “ali the commit- tees on earth or heaven.” It is hard to know how to deal with a gen- tleman in this state of mind ; but it ought not to be forgotten that Gen- | eral Logan is following the example of cooler men. Mr. Boutwell and General Butler heve made noscruple during the past year about throwing out the most monstrous insinuations against the President, for which they have never offered a particle of proof, and for which they have | never sown the least sign of shame or repentance. | Mr. Boutwell, by the way, we learn from the correspondent of the | New York Times, is “the cold and classical Demosthenes of the | House.” We have now got amongst the impeachment managers “ the | Great Commoner,” the “ Cold and Classical Demosthenes of the House,” | _and the “Apostle John of Salvatioa by Impeachment.” We shall doubtless have names for the others in a few days. We hope some- thing handsome will be done for Messrs. Wilson and Bingham by the correspondents in the next distribution. The French Press bill progresses slowly. It is contested at every stage by the opposition, but with no success; but it is evident that the ministers are not nearly so fierce in favor of stringency as the par- tisans of the Empire, or rather its creatures, who form the majority of both Chambers, The great contest of late has been over the right of the press to “analyze” or comment on the debates, which is stoutly refused. But it is admitted, nevertheless, even by so cool an observer as M. Forcade, that the bill is a step in advance, and that under it the liberty of the press is unquestionably increased. A bill has now been introduced regulating the right of meeting. Under the law, as it stands at present, the assembling of twenty persons or more, for pur- gold, and of exquisite workmanship, containing a small receptacle amongst its petals into which the Pope, every time he blesses it, drops a little amber and musk. It is presented by him for life to the Catho- lic sovereign who has done most to merit his esteem, “as the pledge of the paternal affection of the pontiff who sends it; the emblem of the faith, justice, and charity of the sovereign who receives it; and the happy foretoken of the protection of God, who hallows it.” The only question agitated strongly in Italy is the financial question, and the financial condition of Italy is so like that of this country that it is somewhat interesting to watch the workings of public opinion on this subject there and compare them with what may be witnessed here. For instance, some of the newspapers have, in the interest of stock-jobbers, tried to spread a report that it was the intention of the Government to tax the Government coupons—just what some of our Western financiers propose to do with ours. But to this the Minister of Finance replies that nothing of the kind shall be done so long as he is in office, at least without exempting the foreign bondholders; thus drawing a distinction which must present itself to every high-minded man, but which doubtless must seem ridiculous to the Pennsylvania State Treasurer, between those who lend money to a nation without belonging to it, and those who lend it money because its interests are their own. The general belief amongst our repudiators is the old bar- barian one—that the stranger has no rights, and that even if plunder- ing him be a sin, it is only a venial one. A doubt has also been raised in Italy as to whether the foreign bondholders should receive their interest in depreciated Italian paper or in gold. The Pennsylvania State Treasurer will be astonished to hear that the question was dis- cussed in the Italian Parliament, and that the leading men said that the mere discussion of such a point was a disgrace to the country, and the members left the chamber in great numbers, so that there was no quorum. The poor Italians have thus lost an opportunity of playing off a nice trick on the rascally foreign bondholders who were such fools as to lend them money for mere gain. Greece must be an exciting place for politicians; since October, 1863, there have been sixteen different cabinets and ninety changes of individual members of the various ministries—a fact worth pondering poses of discussion, without the authorization of the pelice, is illegal, | by those who think a fixed executive has no value. ar #n@ @ @*u0no07 mwueea ee ee te On”
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The Nation. (Mar. 19, 1868 Articles on any of the subjects usually discussed in this journal will be received from | been, quite harmless. Moreover, we do not think there has been any general impatience about the prolongation of military government at | the South. The country was quite prepared to have it protracted till jafter the next Presidential election, at least; and few men who have given any attention to the condition of the South, and have not been deluded into the belief that there is something magical in disfranchise- ment and impartial suffrage, think it at all wise to withdraw the troops before that time. So that the production of “ new bills” every week, and the great eagerness which has been of late displayed to get Ala- bama into the Union, have been quite unnecessary. It has long seemed so to calm lookers-on ; it may now be considered proved. We may say to the meaning of the New Hampshire election, and of course it has the same thing of the attacks on the Supreme Court, and the attempts been possible to extract from it whatever suited the case of each | to convert it into the tool or creature of the majority for the time enquirer. It has been made to mean simply an endorsement of Grant— | being. The only defence of them ever offered was that the emergency simply approval of the impeachment—simply approval of the new| was a desperate one—that the country must somehow be appeased or mode of bringing in Alabama and approval of Congressional recon. | hoodwinked. So it was gravely maintained, that although a deci- struction generally—simply hatred of the Democratic party, and fidelity | sion against Congress would crush Congress, yet if Congress only altered to the black man, faith in'universal suffrage, and so on. In fact, there and rearranged the Court a little, so as to prepare the decisions in cer- is no limit to the number of constructions which may be put upon it, ‘tain cases, the public would be thoroughly imposed on, and the utter- and probably there is no constraction likely to be put upon it which | ances of the puppets on the bench be received as those of independent will not meet the case at least of a certain number of the voters. | judges. When 35,000 men go to the polls and vote in one way, they do it, like | One other thing has been proved to be unnecessary—and this, in the same number of men joining in any other act, from various) many respects, the most important of all—we mean the countenance motives. We confess we are not competent to say what motive had | given by the Republican leaders to the attacks on the public credit. in this particular case most force. But it is enough for all practical | The question of cheating the public creditors by any device whatsoever purposes to know, as we may say we do know for certain, that the| was not brought before the New Hampshire electors; it has not been result of the election indicates that the Republican party, in spite of its| raised by the Republican party as a party; and yet in so far as the shortcomings, still enjoys the confidence of the public in a greater New Hampshire election indicates anything at all, it indicates that degree than any other party ; that the public is satisfied with its course | nothing of this kind is needed, at least, to secure for Congress the sup- both on reconstruction and impeachment, and is ready to sustain it on | port of the people, and that those who have been engaged in it have both points to the last extremity, and is not disposed to admit the | the melancholy satisfaction of perceiving that they have been doing South to the Union on any other terms than those which are now offer-| some very dirty work, for which there was no sort of occasion. We ed to it; and that the tendency towards Grant as the Republican nom- | have not the slightest doubt that if, when the party at the West began inee for the Presidency inspires confidence and satisfaction. Of course,| to catch the repudiation fever from the Democrats, the principal men people may differ as to the degree of devotign to the party which the | of the party in Congress and elsewhere had made a manly and deter- election betokens ; but that it betokens the above in a greater or less mined stand for honesty, and had laid the matter before the people in degree, nobody will deny. In other words, the subjects distinctly | its true light—showed the inexpediency of it, as well as the immorality before the electors were Grant, impeachment, reconstruction as it| of it; and pointed out, as it was so easy to do, the real lightness and stands, and the general character of the Republican party as compared | evanescence of the burdens to escape which they were proposing to with that of its opponents; and on all these points the verdict has been disgrace themselves—the disease would never have made any progress. favorable, highly favorable—much more so, in fact, than sanguine men| Western men are not mad bulls any more than natural-born knaves. any quarter. If used, they will be liberally paid for ; if rejected, they will be returned to the writers on the receipt of the requisite amount of postage stamps. All Communications which pertain to the literary management of Tuk Nation should be addressed to the Editor. THE SITUATION SINCE THE NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION, THERE has been the usual amount of discussion during the week as ventured to hope; and it is the verdict of a jury of more than average intelligence, and taken after a discussion of more than usual thorough- ness and correctness. . It is all the more valuable because it will, we sincerely trust, put an end to the nervousness by which the party leaders have of late been so much afflicted, and by which the country at large has been so sorely tried. We have always felt, and have over and over asserted, that the Reconstruction bill and all necessary amendments formed a very good measure, with which the country was abundantly satisfied, and which it would faithfully support Congress in carrying out; that, therefore, all that Congress had to do was to keep quiet and go on with its work. There never has been any need of the pills and nostrums—such as the bills creating dictatorship and rearranging the Supreme Court— to which during the past six months we have been treated so often, and which have done so much to bring discredit on the party. We think, too, that for the same reason we might have been spared a considerable number of the steps in the quarrel with Mr. Johnson. Congress might with perfect safety and with great saving of dignity have let him rave and rant, without moving, till he committed an overt act, and then have pounced upon him as it is now doing, It has had to do this in the end, but then it has on its tables the report of the “original im- peachers ”—a laughing-stock for most intelligent men and a disgrace to the country. The reconstruction policy of Congress is not a thing which has been rushed into hastily. It was approached by slow degrees, and maturely weighed; and although the acts in which it has been embodied were drawn with needless haste, the plan as a whole is unassailable, or assailable only by those who have nothing to offer in its place except Andrew Johnson's dictatorship, and their attacks are, and always have | They listen to reason; they modify their opinions under discussion ; and although the sense of corporate honor may not be so strong amongst | them as it is at the East, they are not by any means devoid of it. If, therefore, when the first talk of repudiation was heard amongst them, Republican politicians had faced it boldly instead of running about finding excuses for it and preparing bills to give it legal expression, the party, as well as themselves, would be in a better position than it is to-day. The party has nothing to recommend it to any human being if it shows any lack of principle. It is its devotion to principle, or its indifference to material gain or temporary comfort, which has won it all its fame and given it all the claim it kas to public confidence. As soon as it shows unmistakable signs of being merely a machine by which cowards and knaves get their base passions converted into laws, it will perish with the hearty execrations of all good men. We trust, therefore, the New Hampshire election will revive the con- fidence of the men at Washington in the popular honesty, and put some check on the tendency so common amongst politicians to feel that they are in constant danger of underestimating the general rascality. How to keep just below what he conceives to be the average standard of morality is the only problem which seriously engages the attention of many a man laying serious claims to be considered a “statesman.” The election, encouraging as it is, too, increases instead of dimin- ishing the responsibility of the party in power. The more power ‘there 1s given it to wield, the more necessity is there for care in wielding it—which brings us naturally into the presence of the Honora- ‘ble Benjamin Wade. The chances are, we suppose, forty to one that | Mr. Johnson will be “ hurled from the chair he has disgraced,” to use | the awful language of the “ original impeachers,” and that Mr. Wade will take his place. Mr. Wade was chosen to take his place at a time
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a Mar. 19, 1868] when Congress was still very timid and doubtful about its capacity of maintaining itself against the President, and when there was a vague and, in view of his language and demeanor, not unnatural fear that if he was fully roused he might do something dreadful—no one knew exactly what. It was feared that if impeached he might even resist: and it was felt that in such an emergency the presiding officer of the Senate should be a man of nerve, and should possess some, at least, of the qualities which were supposed to make Mr. Johnson formidable. This, and possibly some little personal jealousy amongst the dii majores of the Senate, led to the selection of Mr. Wade for the chair—that is, of one of the few men in the body who are peculiarly unfitted for the ordinary duties of a presiding officer. Moreover, although the contin- gency of his succeeding to the Presidency in case of Mr, Johnson's deposition was clearly foreseen, it seems to have been supposed that his term would be a stormy one, filled with broils and contentions. The possibility of his entering on it after a peaceful trial, and having to deal with complicated questions of finance and international law instead of conveying Andrew Johnson and his adherents to the lock- up, and defending the White House staircase against Adjutant-General Thomas, does not seem to have occurred to them. The near approach of his accession, and the great difference between the actual circum- stances and those which were anticipated, of course every day ren- ders his unsuitableness for the place more striking; and we believe we are right in saying that a good many senators would be very glad if Mr. Wade had some other sphere of usefulness than that which now awaits him marked out for him. There is, however, now no help for it. He is there, and must be made the best of. What kind of thing his best will be is an interesting question for the public. Should he reach the office, he will be the fourth man of his kind who has filled it. Jackson was the first, and although he enjoys, and is entitled to, some credit for his manner of dealing with nullification, he debauched the public service, and thus inflicted on the country the disease which, at this moment, places the Government in greater peril than secession has ever done, and he set an example of high-handed contempt for the legislature which has probably not been without effect on Mr. Johnson. Mr. Lincoln was the second, and he was so clearly an exception to all rules, that we can no more deduce from his career any conclusion favorable to the claims of men of his training and experience to high offices of government, than we can deduce from Napoleon’s a conclusion favorable to the military talents of natives of Corsica, Of Mr. Johnson we shall say nothing—or only this: that we could, with a very small amount of trouble, produce evidence that a good many, people who were most delighted three years ago with his. early ignorance and his want of social experience, have since acknow!- edged that it is not a good preparation for the highest place in the government of a great country to pass the flower of one’s years in the practice of one of the rudest and simplest of the manual arts, and in | the company of the most illiterate and coarsest portion of the commu- nity. What is more to the purpose, we could easily show that amongst them are some of the most ardent admirers of Mr. Benjamin Wade. Some of the doctrines which have been preached of late years about. the value of “ self-made men” are, in fact, if there be anything in them whatever, hostile to civilization itself—for they would prove that no generation needs the experience of the generations that have gone before it, and that colleges and libraries and the higher education are simply rich men’s luxuries. We have no desire to prejudge Mr. Wade, but we have a right, in| view of what the country has just gone through, to say that the pre- sumption is entirely against his fitness for the place for which the Senate so strangely selected him. He has a large number of Mr. Joln- son’s faults of temper; his education is not much if any better. He owes all his political distinction to his fidelity and courage in the anti- slavery struggle, and that struggle is probably the only subject which he fairly understands. He is lamentably ignorant with regard to the various economical questions by which the country is beset, and, if he has any opinions on finance at all, they are probably not very favorable to the maintenance of the national credit. In his selection of his cabi- net, he is likely to prefer zeal—of which we have already as much as the country can stand—to discretion and knowledge, which the country is dying for want of. What is worse, he will probably, with that blind a * The Nation. 925 | reverence for party traditions and practices for which men of his stamp | are generally remarkable, feel that his first duty in office is to use the | Federal patronage to help the Republican party at the Presidential | election—which is simply another way of saying that he will do what | he can to increase the corruption and debauchery, waste of the public | money, and degradation of Government officials, which have made the _ civil service as great a disgrace as ever befell a Christian country, For | the like of it, we have to search the chronicles of the worst European | monarchies in the eighteenth century. This is the course which expe- rience and principles of human nature fairly warrant us in expecting | him to follow, and those who have put him in his present position have no right to expect that he will not follow it—but then he may disap- point everybody, ourselves included. The scenes in which he is now so prominent an actor, and the trials which he is doubtless receiving, may put him on his guard and thus make him harmless. His integrity and loyalty nobody doubts, and nobody questions his personal claims to esteem; but the world, alas! has not yet been committed to the government of the good-hearted. WEST AND EAST—DEBTOR AND OREDITOR. WHATEVER qualities ex-Governor Seymour may be thought deficient in, no one has ever denied his great ability as a sayer of things well suited to his audience. No one could listen to his address before the Democratic State Convention last Wednesday night, without observing the striking harmony between the speaker and his hearers. No one could carefully follow his argument without becoming convinced that the Democratic mind is completely unsettled on all the great questions of finance, since the speaker, while indignantly exposing all the weak points of Republican policy and Republican rule, most adroitly avoided expressing a single decided opinion of his own on any one of the many vital questions at issue. As far as we can understand the Governor's non-committal utterances, he is in favor of paying the bondholders in | paper, but at the same time of * battling to make that paper as good as . gold.” He evidently wishes to see the bonds paid in gold; but he is evidently uncertain how far the open avowal of that wish would prove acceptable to his hearers. He urges, justly and forcibly, that only a small part of the bonds are held by * theclass of men called capitalists, for whom he has little respect, since they have never risen up to a sense of the truth that wealth and power carry with them duties and responsibilities ;” but he is not ashamed to plead the foolish plea ot the demayogue, ‘‘that the bondholder is paid in coin, while honest, labor gets a debased paper money.” He exposes the unequal distribu- ‘tion of the national banking facilities among the different States, and charges the East with grasping an unfair share of “the spoils of vic- | tory’’—meaning the national bank currency. With dithyrambic force and truly eloquent concentration, he gives in a few words a most strik- | ing statement of one of our greatest financial difficulties, saying: “ We* were once divided into free States and slave States, and the antagonism | filled our land with bloodshed and mourning. Now, the public bonds ‘are mainly held in one corner of our country, and we are divided into debtor States and creditor States. What will be the end of this?”, These few words are the key-note of the entire Western chorus of repu- | diation. The bonds are owned at the East, the banking facilities are ,owned at the East, the West is taxed to pay the interest on the bonds, | and has to pay interest on the currency besides ; everything is paid by the West, everything is received by the East; the East is the "snrious money-lender who reaps the profit of all Western toil. This is the bur- den of the Western complaint. As a serious utterance of a thinking man like Governor Seymour, these words, though eloquent, are not deserving of attention; but, as a happy embodiment of the angry thoughts of a large and influential portion of our countrymen, they may fairly be considered the most striking words spoken in public for many along day. How much of truth do they contain? No belief is more thoroughly diffused, thanks to our modern hanker- ing after popularizing knowledge, than the belief that increased facili- _ties for communication among different countries or different parts of a |country increase our knowledge of those countries, or that increased | facilities for intercourse among peoples destroy national differences and ake different peoples more alike. But this has to be taken with
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226 some qualification. We are in hourly contact with every Western hamlet; but what is it we learn from there? Look at the daily papers : murders, fires, explosions, ice- gorges, railroad accidents, the movements of great men, and the utterances of political conventions, prize-fights, pedestrianism and market reports—columns of all these; but of the private opinions and thoughts of the great masses of men we find nothing. Yet these latter are what concern us most, especially just now, and it will not do to remain ignorant of them, or to disregard them, and to allow men like Governor Seymour to magnify the present differences of opinion between East and West into an antagonism like that between North and South, ‘‘ which filled the land with bloodshed and mourning.” As if by preconcerted action, but in reality only in obedience to the same impulse, the whole press and people of the East are making light of the so-called erratic tendencies of the West towards inflation and repudiation, The East carries on the correspondence with Europe, the East has sold to Europe the bonds held by European investors, the Eest is the great market for the bonds held by domestic investors, and thus the East is peculiarly bound up with the national credit, and has, naturally enough, assumed the duty of defending it. But the worst way in the world to set about defeating an able antagonist is to depreciate or toignore him; and this is precisely what the East is evidently trying to do. We are told, over and over again, that the financial heresies of the West are confined to the ignorant and the lawless, that they have been adopted by party leaders as mere political campaigning weapons, and that, after the November election, no more will be heard of them. There never was a greater mistake. Our private and business advices are unanimously to the effect that these mischievous opinions are held far and wide by all classes of men; that the party leaders are not pro- claiming repudiation because they seek to gain the election, but are seeking to gain the election in order to proclaim repudiation ; and that the silly half-way talk of leaders like Pendleton is due to their only half comprehending what the masses have already fully decided upon. From extensive enquiry we have come to the conviction that this is no exaggerated statement of the case. To shut our eyes to such things is mere folly, Let us rather thank Governor Seymour for hay- ing put the case so clearly before us: ““We were once divided into free and slave States, and the antagonism filled our land with blood- shed and mourning. Now, the public bonds are mainly held in one corner of our country, and we are divided into debtor and creditor States.” Let us admit the fact which no one attempts to deny, that the West is indebted to the East; but let us also examine how far this relative position is natural and unavoidable—let us see whether it need necessarily produce antagonism—whether all arguments in favor of re- pudiation based upon it are not utterly erroneous and fallacious, There is no kind of labor which yields the laborer so direct a return as the labor bestowed upon the tilling of the earth, Agriculture, in- ‘deed, is the most direct production by the laborer himself of that which he most absolutely needs—food, All other labor, of whatsoever kind, produces food only indirectly—that is, by producing some article which can be exchanged for food, But a well-arranged farm can be made to produce almost every essential article of food, and even the most essential articles of clothing. Food and clothing are for all classes of men, but especially for all laboring men, the two prime sources of expense; and of the two, food, the most important and most costly, is almost entirely produced by the farmer himself as the result of his own labor. For this reason there is no occupation which can be carried on so readily by the laborer himself for his own account as farming. Nowhere in the world are good, healthy, productive, accessible, and easily cultivated farming lands so abundant and so cheap as at the West. Nowhere, conse- # quently, can farming be so readily commenced and so successfully con- tinued with a very moderate capital. Nothing is more universally ad- mitted or more thoroughly appreciated, in many of the most important parts of the civilized globe, than the fact, that in the western portion of the United States a healthy, industrious, and economical laboring man of twenty can earn and save enough from the wages of his labor, before he is twenty-five, to purchase and cultivate a farm of sufficient acreage to give occupation and support to himself and family during the rest of their lives. This is the essential characteristic of the West—the J basis of the entire Western development in whatsoever direction. Now The Nation. {Mar. 19, 1868 what are the prominent results of this main factor of national existence ? The ease with which the laboring man becomes independent of his em- ployer is constantly drafting away a large portion of the individualsy working for wages, who are only inadequately replaced by our steady stream of foreign immigration, although the latter far exceeds in mag- nitude, as it excels in beneficence, the exaggerated and half-fabled in- vasions of Eastern nations. Hence the demand for men to work for wages almost always exceeds the supply, and wages consequently are high. The high price of labor has stimulated the ingenuity of a people upon whom ingenuity has been forced by every step forward in their national existence, until that ingenuity has culminated in the produc- tion of an extraordinary variety of labor-saving machines, that supple- ment and multiply the busy hands of every Western farmer. The young laboring man, with his few hundreds of dollars, just developed into an independent farmer, soon finds the greatest obstacle to his success and further progress in the very circumstance that first helped him to his present position, namely—the scarcity and high price of labor, If he could only hire a few extra hands at ploughing time or during harvest- ing, the sun and the rich soil of his own prairie acres would double his crop of corn or treble his yield of wheat. The labor is not to be pro- cured, but the patent ploughs and harrows, the sowing-machines, the mowers, reapers, and threshers can be had, if only the young farmer has the money. Nowhere will a few hundred additional dollars yield so liberal a return as on a new farm one or two years old. It is very evi- dent, therefore, that young farmers, and out West all men are young, are not in the habit of keeping their money idle. Every dollar made from last year’s crop is immediately invested in additional yokes of oxen, or improved harrows, or ploughs, or a reaping machine, or may be in clearing and fencing additional acres, which next year will re- quire further oxen and ploughs and other labor-savers, The return which every fresh dollar invested yields to the intelligent farmer is so great, that he not only steadily and eagerly invests every dollar of his own earnings, but he will even borrow from others what he can, at high rates of interest, to invest with his own. He does not borrow because he is obliged to, he does not borrow because he is poor, he does not borrow as a needy man borrows to supply pressing wants; he bor- rows because it is immensely profitable to him to borrow; he borrows because every additional hundred invested on his farm yields him rich returns, by laying fresh acres of mother earth open to the sun and rain, who labor gratuitously for all of us, but labor for the farmer more than for other men. Need we explain further why money is worth twelve , per cent. out West, or why the whole West is in debt? Is it possible to show more strongly the absurdity of making the indebtedness of the West the cause of complaint against the East, or to charge the East with being responsible for Western indebtedness ? How is it that the East is always especially pointed out as the creditor of the West, or better still, admitting the whole charge in all its gravity, how comes it that the East has money to lend to the West? The soil of the East is generally poor, thousands upon thousands of acres so covered with stones as scarce to allow a glimpse of the soil. The climate is unsuited to profitable agriculture, but in exchange makes, by its sudden and violent fluctuations, the utmost demands upon human ingenuity to provide against its evil effects. The people of the East have consequently become ingenious, inventive, and mechanical. The poverty of New England soil and the variability of New England climate have made New Englanders the most ingenious mechanics since Tyre and Syracuse. This is the essential characteristic of the East in all its development in whatsoever direction, and its most striking result in its influence on social progress is the following : Success in manufacturing depends, next to general ingenuity in its devices, mainly upon the extent to which the process of division of labor can be carried on. Division of labor means the concentration of each laborer’s efforts upon the most perfect production of any one given part of the desired whole. Division of labor in manufacturing is attainable in any degree of perfection only in large establishments. Large establishments, likewise, can alone render the employment of powerful and complicated machinery profitable; and for these two reasons the tendency of all manufactures is to concentrate themselves in large establishments, requiring for their erection and maintenance large capital and great powers of organization and administration. er
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. Mar. 19, 1868] The average Eastern laboring man, no matter how healthy, how indus- trious, how economical, cannot expect under ordinary circumstances to develop the ability to manage, or to acquire the means to own, a large manufacturing establishment. There is no manufacturing business, no foundry, machine-shop, or ship-yard, no wholesale trade, scarcely any important retail trade, in which an industrious, intelligent, economical | workman can expect to earn and save enough in his early years to enable him in manhood to undertake a similar business on his own account. What change in this respect may yet be accomplished by co-operation lies hidden in the future, but for the present it is probably | safe to say that more than nine-tenths of the working-men of the cities and towns of the East must, in the nature of things, continue to work for other men, that is, to be employed at wages by wealthier men than themselves, during by far the greater portion of their lives, The high price of labor at the West has a tendency to sustain similarly high rates of wages at the East. Eastern workmen are not less industrious, less economical than their Western brothers, and they yearly save large | amounts out of their earnings from wages. We have seen what oppor- tunities the West offers to the laboring man for the employment of his savings, making him independent of his former employer and changing him into an owner of land, which he farms on his own account, The East, for the reasons above given, offers no similar opportunity, and the laboring man can do no better than place his surplus earnings in the savings-bank, Herein lics the sum total of the antagonism between | the East and West. To make our argument as pointed as possible we have confined our illustrations to the farm laborer at the West and the factory laborer at the East. These two are indeed the representative men of the two sec- tions. There are, of course, many men following other pursuits besides farming at the West, and as many at the East who labor elsewhere be- sides in factories. But the same laws apply to all. No matter what a man’s business at the West, it is comparatively easy for him to become independent on a very small capital of his own, and it immediately becomes profitable for him not only to use every dollar of additional capital that he accumulates, but every dollar that he can borrow. Thus, at the West, almost all men employ every dollar of their own capital, and not only have nothing to lend to their neighbors, but are borrowers themselves. No matter what a man’s business at the East, it is comparatively difficult for him to become independent on his say- ings. He has no opportunity to invest his savings in a business of his own; he consequently has money to lend, and, instead of becoming a borrower in time, each year adds to his ability as a lender. As Governor Seymour well says, it is a mistake to suppose that the United States bonds are mostly held by capitalists. By far the larger amount is held as an investment of the savings of the hundreds of thousands who have no opportunity of investing their savings in a busi- ness of their own. And not only are the United States bonds so held as an investment of small savings, but a large portion of the State bonds, and railroad bonds, and of the stocks of banks, and of life and fire insurance companies, and of corporations of every other kind throughout the country, is similarly held. and the Government needed money, who could lend it? Surely not the West, where every man was a borrower. Ifthe money which the Goy- ernment raised by loans had been raised by taxes instead, compelling each State to bear its quota, or if the States had been called upon to take their proper share of the loans, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of farmers out West would have had to sell or mortgage their farms in order to pay their share. and make a large percentage on its capital; the East, which did not need its savings as much, lent them to the Government—from selfish motives, if you please, but certainly not to the injury of the West; on the contrary, much to its advantage. The case was precisely similar with regard to the national banking capital. When the applications first began to be received by the Treasury the opportunity was open to all; but the West was making too good an interest on its capital by raising corn and wheat to be tempted by the probable profits of the banking business ; again the East, less fortunate than the West in its opportunities for employing its surplus, had the means to spare and invested them largely in the national banks, somewhat, as it now ap- The Nation. When the war broke out | But the loans were offered in | the open market ; the West needed all its savings to improve its farms | . a ”) —— “I pears, to the injury of the West, but certainly not through any fault of Easteru investors, But not only is the espital of the Government bonds, and of the State bonds, and of the national banks furnished by the savings of the East, but almost every dollar of credit given to West ern merchants is in some way or other similarly derived. == THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION OF NEW YORK. Tue work which the Convention bas done and submitted to the people for approval not only should be, but will be, examined and dis- posed of on its merits, Neither political party will make the adoption of the new constitution a special measure of party policy, Since the irresistible logic of events has convinced the Republicans that the ly ly question of negro suffrage must be separately decided, their zeal in the whole proceeding has wonderfully abated; and the Democrats | were always inclined to oppose any measures that were not entirely iunder their own control. We do not regret this condition of affairs, | An organic law which simply reflected the views of one political party, | which endeavored to perpetuate its power, and which was adopted by the votes of its own members alone, would be a curse to the State. A constitution should establish the government, define its powers in general, place the special limitations which experience has shown to be necessary, and do no more, The moment it proceeds to invade the province of the legislature, it opposes itself to the essential ideas of a representative republican government, and tacitly adopts the prin ples of Cresarism, of all power, but permits them to speak once alone, and then bids them for ever to keep silence. The thought which lies at the bottom of the New York Constitution is—a distrust of the people inthe ordinary management of their political concerns through the legislators and While a s} a show confidence is kept up by making almost every office elective, the le: I ‘ A ; Cesarism acknowledges the people as the source \¢ executive officers whom they clothe with authority. lation of the State in respect to a large number of subjects involving mere questions of policy or expediency is withdrawn from the repre- sentative law-makers, and is made practically unalterable for twenty years. This is a fault which affects all the State constitutions; but none, probably, so injuriously as our own. The inevitable result is a result inevitable upon any @ privri theory, and contirmed by all expe rience—absolute destruction of official responsibility, and the estab- lishment of the bureaucratic system, the most ineflicient and hateful of all kinds of government. Prior to the assembling of the late convention there seemed to have been a very general feeling among the thoughtful men of all parties that the constitution should be entirely reformed. The theories which Michael Hoffman and his followers had introduced in 1846 had cer- tainly produced no good results. The Legislature had become debased, intellectually and morally. The Governor had been made a mere fizure- | head, and not ornamental at that. The edmistration of justice had ne- |cessarily become a practical denial of justice. contained man The convention itself y of the ablest and best men of both parties. It is a most | remarkable fact that these men, whatever differences of opinion they might have upon matters of detail, were virtually unanimous in the desire to re-shape the whole organic law, and to establish a strong government, with direct personal responsibility to the people. To this end they labored in the committces and on the floor of the convention ; but all their endeavors were met by the de: members who represented county interests, and whose ideas could not rise above the politics of the county in which their little personal influ- ence lay. id resistance of the mass of Committee after committee reported, proposing sweeping changes ; their reports were supported by a weight of argument abso- lutely overwhelming ; but the voting was all one way. The result is a constitution differing so little from that of 1846 that the convention was a clear waste of time and money. The following are some of the most important alterations and addi- tions: The proviso in respect to negro voters is stricken out, but may be inserted by the people at the election. The term of office of senators is made four years, and one-half are to be chosen every two years, The Assembly is increased from one hundred and twenty-eight to one hundred and thirty-nine, and the members are to be elected by ‘counties and not by single districts. The Legislature is forbidden tu
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228 audit or to allow any private claim against the State. A Court of Claims is established, consisting of three judges, to be appointed by the The Canal Board and the Contracting Board and the offices A Super- Governor. of Canal Commissioner and Canal Appraiser are abolished. intendent of Public Works is created, to be appointed by the Governor The powers of Supervisors of Counties are defined and somewhat enlarged. The powers of Mayors of cities are defined. The changes in the judical department are greater. The Court of Appeals is to consist of a chief-justice and six associates, to be elected and to hold office for fourteen years. A commission of five extra judges is created to sit for three years, and to dispose of causes pending in the The Supreme Court and the Superior Court The Court of Common Pleas of New York city is increased to six judges. The term of office of the justices of all these courts is to be fourteen years. The Legislature are to organize in the Supreme Court four general terms, consisting of one chief and three others to be chosen from all the judges of the court. A general term shall be held in each district. No judge sitting ina general term or in the Court of Appeals shall review a decision made by himself. It is impossible within the limits of a single article even to glance at these several provisions. We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to the judicial system offered to the people of New York for their adop- tion. Is it an improvement upon the present one? We answer, No; and make this answer, convinced that the existing judiciary has utterly failed, must utterly fail, and should be completely swept away. At bottom lies the evil of elected judges. We do not intend to discuss the general theory of electing judicial magistrates. We shall simply refer to a few facts. The ability of the convention was arrayed on the side of a judiciary appointed by the Governor. Difference of party did not divide such men as Mr. Evarts and Judge Daly on this question. Their arguments were not answered simply because they could not be answered, But their endeavors produced no effect ; the local interests of country politicians were too powerful. The elective judiciary has been in existence in New York for little more than twenty years. What isthe result? If the theory of its advocates be correct, the judges during that time should have steadily improved. We will not insist upon such a test; but we have a right to demand that the system should at least have held its own. Here is a fact which should outweigh the most perfect theory. No one whose acquintance and observation extend over the State will deny that the judges of the higher courts have, as a rule, deteriorated in ability, in all those intellectual qualities which go to make an efficient officer. We do not now allude to moral quali- ties, nor do we wish to point our assertion by examples. It is enough to say that, as a whole, the Bench of 1868 is confessedly inferior to that of 1848. To this statement we challenge contradiction. It is true that there are individual exceptions, and that the falling off is more marked in some portions of the State than in others, and that it is notably so in New York city. Every intelligent lawyer knows that the reported judgments of our tribunals of all grades no longer have the authority throughout the country which once belonged to them. Even the Western courts are inclined to sneer at a modern New York decision, Certainly there is some terrible defect in our method of choosing judges. What shall be thought of a system which makes it possible that, when a judge of an inferior court has made a decision, in a matter attracting great public attention, directly in favor of a large class of persons, everybody should at once say he will be the can- didate of that class for a position in a higher tribunal. The correct- ness of the decision is not now impugned, But a judgment in favor of the liquor interest made Judge Cardozo the inevitable candidate for a place on the Supreme Bench, and it is the possibility of such results which stamps the whole system as radically vicious. There is, how- ever, yet a lower deep. What shall be thought of a system which makes it possible for the brokers of Wall Street to assert that a judge of the highest court in the city is leagued with a combination of stock speculators, and is using his official powers to promote their interests ; for the daily newspapers to repeat the accusation and thus spread it and Senate, present Court of Appeals. of New York city are left as now. The N ation. (Mar. 19, 18¢8 be made. It is an evil of sufficient magnitude when the tribunals have so degenerated in learning and ability that business men are afraid to submit their controversies to a legal determination. When imputations upon the integrity of judges can be made, public safety demands an immediate reconstruction of the courts. The bad results of an elective judiciary were aggravated by a® organization of the courts which seemed as though designed for the express purpose of producing the greatest amount of confusion and uncertainty. The new constitution provides no adequate remedy. The extension of the term of office to fourteen years cannot mitigate tle evils of the elective system. We may state a paradox, but we are con- ‘vinced that all increase in the length of the official term will only add to the dangers; and that if judges are to be elected at all they should be chosen every year. A long official term cannot throw any obstacle in the way of placing a bad or an inefficient man on the bench ; on the contrary, the inducement will only be the stronger for such persons to reach the secure and comfortable seat. The reorganization of the Court of Appeals by making its members permanent, is undoubtedly a step in the right direction; but the provision for four ambulatory general terms in the Supreme Court, made up of judges selected from the whole thirty-three, would seem to make chaos what was before only confusion, The only true principle of the present system is re- jected—that of making the appellate judges also the nisi prius judges. The English courts are organized upon this plan; the old constitution of New York constructed its Supreme Court in the same form ; the constitution of 1846 returned to this method ; and now the jealousy of the country lawyers, who formed so large a portion of the convention, has caused them to reject all the lessons of experience, and to make the courts of review practically permanent. We see no reason then why the proposed judicial system should be adopted. It would be better to endure the present one for a few years longer, until the people became so thoroughly disgusted with its inefli- ciency that they would sweep it away and establish another in accord- ance with a correct theory and with the teachings of history, with judges appointed and holding office during good behavior, and courts so organized that the business could be done without ruinous delay. This has been accomplished in England, and may be in New York. THE OBJECT OF POLITICAL ORITICISM. WE publish elsewhere a letter from a valued correspondent, suggesting to us that we criticise the Republican party a little too much, and do not sufficiently call attention to the low moral condition of the Democratic party. This affords us an opportunity which we have long desired, of point- ing out what we conceive to be a very widespread misconception of the kind of work that a newspaper which sets up to be independent undertakes to do. The division of newspapers into partisan and not-partisan is, if not per- fectly correct, at all events correct enough for practical purposes; and by partisan papers people usually mean papers which stand by their party through thick and thin, defend all its measures, make much of its victories, little of its defeats, and paint its opponents in colors as black as a decent attention to probability will allow. The non-partisan paper, on the other hand, is supposed to be a paper which does not adhere to any party in particular, and is not guided in its criticisms of measures by a regard to the persons who proposed them. The public has, in general, a proper respect for this last-named species of journal as soon as it is convinced that the article is genuine, but then it takes a good deal of both time and trouble to convince it of this in any particular case. The popular presump- tion is always against the sincerity of any paper which lays claim to inde- pendence in the formation of political judgments, and nothing but length- ened observation of it is, in general, sufficient to convince people that its apparent want of loyalty, which all independence involves, is not either the sign or result of great baseness or great weakness. But even after they have conceded that a journal is independent, they insist still that if it be not devoted to any party in particular, it shall at least treat all parties alike, if not in the bestowal of its praise, at least in the bestowal of its censure. For instance they will allow it to denounce the Republicans if it will de- nounce the Democrats at least as often and at as great length. It may speak irreverently of Horace Greeley if the next time it speaks irreverently over the country; and, finally, for a distinguished counsel to fling | it in the face of the magistrate himself as he presides in his own court ? of a prominent editor it selects James Brooks. It may comment on the shortcomings of Mr. Stevens, if it at the same time, or as soon after as con- It need not be that these charges are true; it is enough that they can venient, takes an opportunity of saying something unhandsome about Sen-
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“ater Mar. 19, 1868] ator Doolittle. The Nation. 929 It may oppose the proneness of the Republicans to sumptu ary or repressive legislation if it, on an early day thereafter, calls attention to the Democratic indulgence for tippling and fornication. ular idea of the fairness which ought to accompany independence, and with out which independence is not genuine. That it is, however, a mistaken iilea both of the nature of indeperdence and of the relations of independent journals to the two great political parties, we think not difficult to show. There has been so much mysterious matter written about “ criticism,” and “ schools of criticism,” and “ canons of criticism,” and the “ critic’s func- tion” and bis “ office ” and its value, and criticism has been so often written with alarge C, that the simpler portion of the community has almost ceased to think of it as a thing comprehensible to anybody but poets or metaphysi- cians, and have come to look on the critic as a person who pretends to be wiser than his fellows, but whose claims to superior wisdom the common run of people are tctally unable to dispute. The fact is, however, that criticism is after all only judging, and everybody who forms opinions on any subject necessarily judges either persons or arguments or evidence. In fact, in order not to be a critic, one has to become a brute. About politics, in particular, everybody is a critic, and a newspaper is simply a receptacle for the criti- This is the pop- . . . ° ° ! cism of several people whose opinions run in the same general direction. Whether the criticism is worth anything, or how much it is worth, depends on a great variety of circumstances. Critics have to be weighed, and not counted like voters, and the proceeding in which aggrieved authors and pub- lishers sometimes indulge, of printing a string of favorable and unfavorable critiques side by side and then asking the public to laugh at them all, is, therefore, a foolish proceeding. Matthew Arnold in one of his recent papers illustrated its folly rather forcibly by the case of the gentleman who, dislik- ing something he had found in the Saturday Review, consoled himself with the reflection that the British Banner was of a contrary opinion. Unless political criticism is engaged in merely as a mental exercise, its object is to affect legislation by exerting an influence either on the legisla- ture or on the public which elects the legislature. The critic is not a dis- penser of rewards and punishments. It is not his business to watch public men, and call attention to their good or bad acts, holding the one up to admiration and the other up to reprobation merely for the promotion of vir- tue. He is not ex vi termini a superior being. He is simply aman who, having opinions, makes a business of printing them and circulating them amongst those who care to know what they are, and his aim in printing them is to get enough people to agree with him to make them felt in the government of the country. It follows from this that the main business of political journals is to criticise those who are carrying on the government o; the country—that is, the party in power. It is the party in power which iegislates or refrains from legislating, which commits or omits, which car- ries out the national will, administers the national finances, makes peace or war. It is, in fact, for the time being, to all intents and purposes, the nation itself. It is of it, and at it, therefore, that it is the main business of a newspaper to talk if it wants to affect public policy, and as the party is generally led or represented by a small number of prominent men, the critic has of course always a great deal tosay about these men. The party paper, properly so-called, assumes their impeccability. Every measure they pro- pose is exactly what was wanted to save the country ; their speeches are the essence of wisdom, their motives the loftiest and purest. But then there are not many people who believe this, and nobody who makes any profession of criticising ever comes near believing it. Politicians are but men ; they may be excellent men, and their aims may be admirable, but they may make mistakes in the choice of means—unless they are inspired— and it is the duty of every citizen who thinks they are making mistakes to say so, if he can get anybody to listen to him voluntarily and com- fortably. We are occasionally asked, for instance, why we so often find fault with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Sumner, and so on, and we occasion- ally light upon a paragraph in the columns of some of our radical contem- poraries pointing to this tendency of ours as an indication of some great folly or malignity on the part of the Nation. But if the sages who raise points of this kind had ever seriously reflected on their own raison a’ tre, they would have avoided making an observation which does so little credit to their understanding. The reason why we have a great deal to say about the Butlers and Boutwells and Stevenses and Sumners is that the Butlers and Boutwells and Stevenses and Sumners have a great deal to say about the government of the country. Till they let the nation alone, no newspaper is justified in letting them alone. As long as they are in fact though not in form charged with the government of the country, take a leading part in originating and passing the most important legislative measures, and are listened to with great | the lectures, not to read the essays or buy the poems. work. —————Ee —E . ~y — reverence by a very large and very respectable portion of the community, it is our business to talk about them and about their sayings and doings within the limits prescribed by respect for personal character, week by week, day by day, and to talk more about them than about anybody else. To devote the same amount of space, or even one-tenth of the same amount, to the discussion of the sayings and doings of ex-Governor Seymour or Mr. Pendleton would be trifling with our readers. Neither these gentlemen nor any other Democrats now possess political power. They have undoubtedly influence, but the occasions on which they exert it are rare. Halfa-dozen speeches in the course of the year represent all their visible efforts in the political field, and, therefore, to comment on them week by week one would have to follow them where no journalist has a right to follow any man as long as he is silent—to the retirement of his home. thing may be said of the party to which they belong. We have frequently expressed our opinion in these columns of its moral condition and moral aims, of the principles it professes, and the practices in which it indulges ; but as long as it is a mere opposition—that is, a mere voice, or grow! constant disquisition on its enormities would be a profitless and repulsive One might nearly as well devote one’s self to denunciations of abstract evil. Much the same Of course, if the Democratic party got into power it would, in our opinion, do great mischief. But it is not in power, and the Republi can party is; and the business of the hour, therefore, is not to excite moral indignation against the Democrats, but to get the Republicans to do their duty. There is no latent virtue in any party to make its wrongdoing less hurtful than other people’s wrong-doing. If the Republicans. were to repudiate, for instance, we might safely defy anybody to detect the smallest difference between their repudiation and that of the Democrats They have got no divine right to govern wrong. When General Butler sneers at the idea of a national conscience, as he did the other day in the Boston Advertiser, the devil gets at least as much satisfaction out of his sneer as he would out of a similar one from Fernando Wood or John Morrissey. There are people who flatter themselves that being a “friend of the black man ” entitles a person to a plenary indulgence on all questions not touch ing the negro’s welfare; but this is a doctrine which is sure to disorder the moral stomach sooner or later, because God has so ordered the universe that neither the negro race nor any other race shall derive permanent benefit from wrong-doing. Lying, cheating, misrepresenting, tricking, making the worse appear the better reason, will not help him in the long run. What we say of the relations of the press to parties and politicians may be said, mutatis mutandis, of the relations of the press to every man who places himself prominently before the public, and who, in his own name, makes constant proffers to society of opinions for its adoption on all sorts of subjects. When a man conceives it to be his duty to preach constantly, neither he nor his friends have any right to complain if constant attempts are made to dispute his doctrines, expose his fallacies, or hold his weaknesses up to ridicule. It would be very silly, for instance, of Mr. Ruskin or John Stuart Mill or Professor Fawcett or John Bright to complain that the news papers were always attacking them or criticising them. are not always attacking or criticising the men: The newspapers they are criticising certain influences which, if they conceive them to be good, they are bound to recommend and promote; if they conceive-them to be bad, they are bound tocombat by every means in their power. There are few men here, | outside the field of politics properly so called, who occupy the same kind of position. Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley present, perhaps, the near est approach to it. There is hardly a day in which Wendell Phillips is not in some place or other promulgating somewhat peculiar opinions on society and government. There is hardly a periodical one opens in which one does not find a contribution from Horace Greeley on one of a great variety of subjects. Under these circumstances there is something almost comi cal in the enquiry we sometimes receive, why we so often criticise Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley ; and here, as in many other cases, some of the deeper intellects amongst those who find fault with us account for the strange phenomenon by the hypothesis of profound personal enmity. We shall never have an end of this narrow way of looking at newspaper functions until people give up considering all persons whose aims are good as of equal value to society, and therefore equally entitled to immunity from criticism or fault-finding. The business of a newspaper critic is not with a man’s goodness, but with his way of showing it; good men differ infinitely in their way of showing it, and are, therefore, of widely different degrees of value to society. If the best man who ever breathed were | to set about improving his kind by the delivery of shallow lectures or writing weak essays or publishing bad poems, it would be the duty of | the critic to use all fair means to get the public to stay away from The critic might err
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eg 230 The Nation. [Mar. 19, 1868 = = --—___________- = = ~ in his estimate of them, but then his duty would be none the less clear, and those who are shocked by his boldness would have the consolation of know- ing that, whether he was right or wrong, it is by incessant discussion of persons, of ideas and of measures that the world progresses, that civiliza- tion is promoted, and trath decided. It might be a pleasanter world if every man thought all his neighbors Solomons, and said so; but then the world was clearly not made to be wholly pleasant. ENGLAND. LonpoNn, February 28, 1868. Just as Parliament was settling down to the piece of work which will occupy to all appearance a large part of its time this session, namely, the settlement of Irish affairs, its labors were arrested. We are at the present moment under an interregnum. Lord Derby has resigned office under the increasing pressure of age and the gout, and Mr. Disraeli steps into his place. The change wili be of very trifling importance, resembling at the outside the substitution of the mayor of the palace for a fainéant king. Lord Derby has for some time discharged the ornamental rather than the useful functions of a minister, and it may be added that he has dis- charged them exceedingly well. He had precisely those qualities which the English people delight to honor. He is the representative of one of our oldest families, fourteenth earl of his name, and with an estate of I know not how many thousands a year. He translated Homer and kept race-horses ; and, if I may judge from novels of the “ Guy Livingstone” order, a considerable number of my countrymen hold that distinction on the turf and a familiarity with the classics are as desirable as the Christian graces, and perhaps at times a very fair substitute forthem. Not that this is the case with Lord Derby. He is reaily a high-spirited and vivacious gentleman, who might stand for the ideal worshipped in our great public schools such as Eton or Harrow. He is a man of really generous sympathies, as was shown in his early advocacy of anti-slavery principles ; yet he has no real claims to states- manilike intellect, and possesses a mind rather graceful than powerful. He has that indolence which it must be so difficult to shake off when you have fifty thousand a year and a historic title, and rather condescended to take office, from a sense of loyalty, than sought for it asa distinction. ‘“ My father,” as Lord Stanley said, or rather is said to have said, ‘“‘ would be a very able man, if he knew anything ;” to which it may be added that Lord Derby is reported with the same degree of probability to have declared that Lord Stanley was waiting to read his father’s translation of Homer, when it should be published in the form of a blue-book. In short, Lord Derby is a brilliant but not a useful statesman, and we may hope is one of the last representatives of the old school who condescended to govern the country 80 long as it does not give them too much trouble. His absence will make little or no difference in our politics, but it will be regretted by many people upon whom his popular qualities have made a strong impression. Those who will really regret him most sincerely are the class who look with some jealousy upon the rise of his successor. Most people, indeed, whether liberal or conservative, have seen Mr. Disraeli’s success with a good deal of satisfaction. In the first place, whatever may be our opinion of his sincerity, he is undoubtedly the man with the most brains among our present ministers. Moreover, his success has been won, in spite of every obstacle, by sheer talent and courage. It is a curious thing that the man in whom the qualities of the English aristocracy received their fullest em. boJiment should be succeeded by an adventurer of alien blood, without one of the advantages upon which political success is generally founded in this coun- try. Mr. Disraeli has always acknowledged, and he deserves credit for making the acknowledgment a cause of pride, that he was originally “a gentleman of the press.” No onestarting from euch a position as the author of “ Vivian Grey” and “Coningsby” has ever before succeeded in becoming Prime Minister of England. Beginning as a radical agitator under the patronage of O'Connell, he has gradually fought his way upwards, and, by sheer force of ability, has compelled his party to obey him even when they secretly hated him. Indeed, Mr. Disraeli has always been the object of a more bitter dis. like from his supporters thaa from his opponents. The Conservatives have bitterly grudged the superiority of one who had entered the political arena with none of the acknowledged and usual advantages. He has never main- tained his supremacy by the arts common to most men whose position is held, so to speak, on sufferance. On the contrary, he has always treated his followers with a haughtiness and a reserve which have caused them to dis. like him almost as much as they distrusted him. So remarkable is the repulsion between Mr. Disraeli and his party that one of our ablest writers declared not three years ago that he was “a foreign body in that tepid organization,” and that “some day soon” he would be ejected from it as le needie that has been swallowed will work out from some part of our | bodily frame. | This prophecy, though made by an acute observer, has been signally | falsified. Mr. Disraeli’s hold upon his party is firmer than ever—so | firm that they would be at least as unable to dispense with him as he would | with them. ‘Their dislike has been partly swallowed up in admiration, and, though they can never be cordially fond of him, there is far less chance of a rebellion againstjhis leadership than of a rebellion of the Liberals against Mr. Gladstone. I have already had many opportunities of speaking upon the nature of the process by which this result has been effected. Mr. Disraeli has not reached his present position as the representative of any great principle, nor as leading on his party to the effectual carrying into practice of any of the measures which they had at heart. On theccntrary, he has given effect to principles which he condemned and ridiculed, and has enabled his party to get the credit of measures identical with those which they had most bitterly opposed. Yet there is something about the brilliant display of talent by which this has been accomplished which has dazzled even his opponents in the House of Commons. Whatever else may be said about him, no one can deny that he is the cleverest political tactician extant. And if this is not a sufficient ground for falling down and worshipping him, or even for hailing him as a heaven-born minister, it is not a bad reason for supporting him. To use a metaphor which Mr. Lowe employed last session, he treated the Conservative party as a groom treats a skittish horse ; he brought them up to the object of their aversion, allowed them to look at it and smell at it till at last they were brought insensibly tq pass an obstacle at which they formerly shied. Now, Liberals cannot but hope that the same trick may be repeated this session. No one can do so much to help on reform as a Conservative minister; the House of Lords is compelled to accept the measures which he dictates; and if Mr. Disraeli shows himself as squeezable this session as he did the last, we may hope that he will force upon that assembly of bigoted Jand-owners a fair instalment of reform in re- gard to Irish land laws, and even induce the bishops to consent to the decent education of the people. It is a great thing to have as leader in the Con- servative camp a man who has a head upon his shoulders and is willing to see the importance of reasonable concessions. If some of his followers cry out that he is a traitor, that doesn’t much matter to his opponents. The other changes in the ministry will be insignificant. Mr. Ward Hunt, it is said, will take Mr. Disraeli’s place as Chancellor of the Ex- chequer. I presume that Mr. Ward Hunt’s reputation is pretty nearly con- fined to England ; and I confess that I had never heard of him till he became prominent for his exertions, during the cattle plague, in persuading the House of Commons that the country ought to compensate the land-owners. The House of Commons naturally wanted little persuasion to put its hand in the pockets of the country for the good of its own class. He is a good, steady, and, I should guess, rather wooden country gentleman, who will, doubtless, make a passable subordinate ; but the work of the House of Com- mous will, of course, rest principally upon Mr. Disraeli’s shoulders. Lord Stanley, it is said, will be sent to the comparative obscurity of the House of Lords. As he is not much of an orator, though a sound and able statesman, he will probably not regret a premature elevation to the dignity which cannot in any case be long delayed. And so we shall soon have the Parlia- mentary machinery set to work upon questions of greater importance than any with which it has dealt for years. Lord Russell, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Bright have already produced schemes for Irish reform ; and the extraordi- nary variety of opinion on the subject speaks more for the attention devoted to the question than for any hopes of a satisfactory result. There is, for example, a section of Liberals represented by the Pall Mall Gazette which declares emphatically that the one thing wanted for Ireland is repose. The condition of the Irish people, they assert, has been steadily, if slowly, im- proving. The Fenian outbreak is really less formidable than those to which we have been accustomed in former years. It is confined to a smaller class of the population, and is more exclusively due to foreign agitators. I men- tion these opinions not as approving them, but because I am certain that they are held in good faith by a considerable section of the Liberals.) They represent the old laissez-faire school, and, whilst perfectly willing to upset the Irish Church Establishment, their only policy with regard to the land is to stand still and let things settle themselves. At the opposite pole comes Mr. Mill, who says in so many words—and Mr. Mill can use very plain words when he chooses—that Ireland is in a state to justify revolu- tionary measures. They could not, as he argues with much power, become independent without so great a danger of anarchy and disorder as justifies us in refusing to relax our hold. But, if we keep them, we are bound to do the best we can for their improvement, and, in his opinion, nothing will be satisfactory short of a measure which will place the ownership of the land
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Mar. 19, 1868] in the hands of the actual cultivators. The difficulties urged against such a measure as this are, of course, considerable ; but whatever may be the | value of Mr. Mill's ideas, it is plain that they will be utterly rejected by our present rulers. A revolution will not be made by us in Ireland until we are getting ripe for a revolution in England ; and indeed it is a very important result of these Irish discussions that they are gradually bringing on debates as to the merits of our landed system in England. In any case, no speedy settlement can be anticipated. Between the position occupied by Mr. Mill and that taken up by the Pall Mall Gazette, every possible state of opinion is represented. When the struggle begins in the House of Commons parties will doubtless become more organized, the hostile armies will take up their position, and we shall see what are the chances which are at present obscured in the chaotic whirl of conflicting sentiments. Just now we are at the day before the battle, and no man can clearly distinguish the out- lines of the forces which are gathering for the conflict. If I may venture an illustration from your own politics, I should say that the Irish question is as much more perplexing than that of reconstruction’ as it is older in date. You may form some estimate by a rule of three as to the time it will be satisfactorily settled. In my last letter I noticed the disappearance of Mr. Speke. Mr. Speke has reappeared, and, to use a bit of school-boy slang, his whole performance has been in the nature of a “sell.” Whilst his friends were offering enor- mous rewards for his discovery, whilst every newspaper was speculating on the strange story, and ingenious theories were being spun as to the existence of an organized system of murder in London, Mr. Speke was quietly enjoy- ing himself at Plymouth. He was visiting the beautiful scenery of Devon and Cornwall, going to church, reading his Bible, and studying the articles about himself in the newspapers. He is said to be sane, and the only ex- planations given of his escapade are either that he meant to go quietly to Awerica to preach the Gospel (I don’t know why he should conceal such a laudable intention), or that he wished to avoid being married. It gives a pleasant impression of the position of an English country parson that his only way of avoiding forcible marriage is by disappearing entirely from society. But I don’t quite think that Mr. Speke was sane. Correspondence. THE WEST AND GREENBAOKS. To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: Do you quite understand the feeling at the West about the national finances? We are not, I think, much tainted with the repudiation con- tagion, however much appearances may be against us. Of course we havea small party of repuciators who transfer to the bonds their opposition to the war, but the resolutions of our Chicago Common Council seem to me to express the prevailing opinion west of Lake Michigan. There is, however, some confusion in the popular mind on the matter of public credit, and some opposition to the plans of Mr. McCulloch and specic- payment men, which spring from perfect confidence in the national money, not from distrust of it. It is this faith in greenbacks which I fear you do not comprehend. West of Lake Michigan we never had a paper dollar that was worth exactly as much as a gold dollar. We have been swindled by bankers ever since we were a people. “ Red dog” and “ stump-tail” were the descriptive terms applied by us to our currency before the war. I think nine men in| ten among us rejoiced over the war as a great blessing when the greenbacks | came. Here, at least, was a national bank-bill, an American paper dollar. The faith and wealth of the nation were represented in the words “ The United States promise to pay.” We never had specie dollars. To get a/| paper one that could not break seemed to be the beginning of the millennium. | We have not changed our minds about this ; we believe with all our might in the national paper dollar, and we don’t want it paid. That is what is_ the matter. Our farmers have realized no serious evils from inflation. They received good prices for their produce, and their dollars were at last just as good as anybody’s—dollars to lock up and keep without a scruple of doubt about breaking of the bank. Just now inflation seems to benefit them wonder. | fally. The wheat sells at a good round price, while dry-goods are down to the prices of 1860. The first consequence of this confidence in the national money was that the “ national bank-bills” were an offense to our sight. The farmers said, “ The bankers are at their old tricks. These dollars are an entering wedge to drive out Uncle Sam's dollars. Red dog and stump-tail are on beyond.” | | | } a ation. 931 ———————— Why the Government should pay the bankers for using its credit, er pay them hush-money or show them any mercy, the prairie farmer says he can not see; and he is not convinced that the unsophisticated direct promiee «f the nation needs any propping by bankers. He wants the greenbacks rendered perpetual by act of Congress. The national bank bill prepared the mind of our farmer for distrust. “ They are at their old tricks,” is the feeling with which he hears of any scheme that can benefit the bankers or open a prospect of losing the greenbacks. When he was told that the Secretary of the Treasury was burning up greenbacks he felt as indignant as when the rebels fired on Sumter. In short, our farmer believes in greenbacks, and has had no experience of the evils of inflation. Give him credit for an unfaltering cor. fidence in a dollar which bears the great national name; remember that to him it is small matter whether that national name be stamped on coin or printed on paper, and then enlighten him. Davip Hitton WukELER. Evanston, March 5, 1868. SUPREME COURT DEOISIONS. To THE EpiTor oF THE NATION: Your excellent article of Feb. 20, entitled “The Use of the Supreme Court to the Union,” contains this sentence: “ The three additional instances in which the court has pronounced against the validity of United States statutes are the Dred Scott case, the Test Oath case, and the case of Milligan.” It appears to me, from a careful reading of the decisions (Er parte Milli gan, 4 Wallace, p. 2), that the case of Milligan ought not to be included among those “in which the court has pronounced against the validity of United States statutes.” What statute is invalidated by that decision ? The only statute much discussed in it is one entitled “ An act relating to habeas corpus and regulating judicial proceedings in certain cases,” approved March 3, 1863; under which Milligan asked to be, and was, in fact, discharged from military custody. The controlling question in the case, as the court say, was whether the military commission which tried and sentenced Milligan had jurisdiction, legally, to try and sentence him ; and a leading reason given for answering the question negatively was, that the military commission was not a court ordained and established by Con- gress. The decision does, inde~1, go farther, and declares in effect that Congress could not have ma Willigan’s trial valid by any previous legislation. On this point four members of the court differed from the other five, and filed a dissenting opinion. The opinion of the five is, of course, the opinion of the court ; but is it not one thing to say that Congress cannot make a law of a certain purport, and a quite different thing to pro- nounce against the validity of a United States statute ? 8. C, Peoria, Iuv., March 9, 1868. “THE NATION'S” CONSERVATISM. To THE EpIToR OF THE NATION: Str: There is scarcely an utterance of yours which would be commonly described as “conservative” with which I do not fully agree ; yet I cannot forbear from saying that your paper is, as a whole, a little too conservative. Lask you, and those who, like you and me, are impatient with the reckless ness, imprudence, and general unwisdom of some leading men in the Repub- lican party, to watch with at least equal attention, and to give equal prom: nence to, the same faults, and worse ones, among Democratic leaders. It is true that in the Republican party conscience has acquired a weight disproportioned to its intellect, but it is equally true that in the Democratic party sheer wickedness occupies the place which conscience holds among Republicans. The intellect of the Democratic party to-day is full as weak as that of its opponent, and is as much controlled by the evil passions of its members as that of the Republican party is by its members’ consciences. I fully admit that it is a bad thing for intellect to be blinded by a mor- bid conscience ; but surely it is far worse that it should be blinded by mor- bid passions. There never was a party more utterly incompetent to serve the country than the Democratic party as it is today. It is wortbless in opposition—a sphere in which the Republican party was relatively magnificent. It will be frightful in its excesses if once restored to national power. A party which has shown such amazing lack of brains in managing its own interests will certainly put no more brains (and a bad heart) into the service of the country. 2. @. 8. Brooktrn, March 13, 1868.
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232 “THE NATION'S” RADICALISM, To THE EpIToR OF THE NATION: Sin: Your three Boston correspondents must be conservative indeed if they are so easily alarmed by the radicalism of the Nation. For my part, 1 | one no difliculty in the sentence to which they took so much objection: viz., that in which you justify Congress in refusing to allow Mr. Johnson to test the validity of its acts by legal process, where it is a prerequisite to such legal process that he should first vivlate a statute. If an act should be passed in Massachusetts inflicting upon larceny a punishment which was of dubious constitutionality, and one of your corre- spondents should detect a man picking his pocket, who, being seized, should declare that his sole purpose was to test the constitutionality of the law, I imagine it would make a good deal of difference in your correspondent’s treatment of the plea whether the law-tester was a man of known probity and wealth or a notorious pickpocket. Mr. Johnson cannot test the validity of the law (he claims) without vio- lating it. Very good. If it is void, let him pass free; but if it is valid, then his excuse, which might be sufficient for a man of good character, ought pot to avail one who notoriously is not such a man. READER. New York, March 12, 186s. | Notes. LITERARY, Murray HorrMan, Esquire, has prepared a work, to be published in May next by Messrs. Pott & Amery, entitled “ A Treatise upon the Ecclesi- astical Law in the State of New York.” It will contain the law as to the mode of organization and incorporation applicable to different denomina- tions ; a view of the legal relations subsisting between clergymen and their congregations ; and a presentation of the law as regards pews, vaults, and cemeteries—the tenure end sale of church property, the interposition of civil tribunals, and other topics, Although dealing particularly with the State of New York, it is intended to make the work valuable for churches in all parts of the country———Meesrs. Wynkoop & Sherwood announce the republication of “ Grandpapa’s Arithmetic,” in which M. Jean Macé, com- bining instruction with entertainment, unfolds the mysteries of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in what he calls a “fairy tale.” | “ Liliput Levee” is another book announced by Wynkoop & Sherwood— | a book very different from those of M. Macé, and full of pleasure for chil- | dren. The same house will publish “The Bride of the Wind,” a fairy | story, by Marie Hagenstein, and “ The Merchant of Venice,” as produced at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, 1867, by Edwin Booth. It will | contain illustrations of all the principal scenes, an analysis of the play, | explanatory notes, and articles on costume. The editor is Mr. H. L. Hinton. Sheldon & Co. announce “Steven Lawrence, Yeoman,” Mrs. Edwards's best novel, which has been running through the Galary It is proper to say here that Meesrs. G. W. Carleton & Co. now own all the works of Cap- | The Nation. | St. John’s River, in East Florida. [Mar. 19, 1868 ——p researches. The library is least forward of any department, but here the intention is to procure only such works as are not contained in the public libraries. An interesting chapter of the report relates to the curator’s explorations among the shell-heaps on the Atlantic coast, and also on the For those in Maine and Massachusetts reference is made to the detailed account contained in the American Natur- alist for January, to which we called attention at the time ; and of those in Florida a sketch is given, with a promise of a full description hereafter. The mounds opened along the St. John appear to be much oider than those of New England ; certainly not less than three hundred years old, or antecedent to the discovery of America. Similar explorations are planning for the coming season, and the museum is securing agents in all parts of the world. One of these ought to be Mr. George Catlin; and his museum of Indian curiosities, which the Congress of a less enlightened day refused to purchase for retention in this country, ought to be, if possible, recovered from England. We sincerely hope that as the Peabody foundation becomes better known, the many who can doubtless add objects of value to its cabinets will do so cheerfully and liberally. The West especially may be looked to to furnish relics of the aborigines, both of what it has and of what it may easily find by searching. —Wherever English is spoken Macaulay is at present read, and wherever Macaulay is read Barére is known as an unbounded and fathom- less liar. De Quincey, almost more of an Englishman than Macaulay— though not so exclusively English, for he possessed and often exercised the power of philosophic as well as imaginative detachment—used to grow almost abusive, if our memory serves us, over one of his most impudent achievements in falsehood, one not mentioned by Macaulay—the famous one which has furnished the subject of at least one French “ historical” picture | and been the theme of nobody knows how many bursts of eloquence. It represents the French line-of-battle ship Vengeur refusing to surrender to the British on the victory of June 1, 1794, but going down firing her last tier of guns, the tricolor proudly waving, and the crew shouting as one man “Vive la République,” and declining to be picked up by the boats of Albion. This veracious tale of M. Barére’s used to trouble Thackeray also, and Mr. Hamerton in his last work takes pains to denounce it. Perhaps not even that other fable about Cambronne’s waving his sword at Waterloo, and crying that “the Guard dies,” etc., has been so efficacious in stirring British bile. It is not so well known, however, that at the same time when | Barére invented so much glory for the men of the Vengeur, who, in fact, showed considerable alacrity in climbing into the English boats, he invented a celebrated phrase which has ever since been commonly attributed to Napoleon I. When Barére reported the fate of the heroic vessel to the Con- vention, he added, “ Let Pitt tell that to his nation of shopkeepers.” Any- thing he really said that contains any truth at all it is as well to allow him the credit of, and this nickname must be admitted to be of his manufacture. —Mr. Henry Kingsley is the ostensible editor of a new “ Robinson Cru- soe.” Really, he is not the editor, but only was hired by the publisher to | write a preface, and he has seen fit to send a note to the papers saying so, tain Mayne Reid—some fifteen volumes—formerly published by R. M. | for the critics have shown that the editorial task was not performed with Dewitt, and that they wait for the opening of the Spring trade in order to great care or success. It was intended that the new edition should follow publish a number of novels and other works, the titles of which will be the text of the first edition, and this it did except that ‘the original duly announced. The Catholic Publication Society have in press: “ Tales title-page was not, as it well might have been, exactly copied. Indeed, it from the Diary of a Sister of Mercy ;” “The Life of St. Columba, Apostle | fojJowed the first edition so closely, and with so little discrimination, that it of Caledonia,” by Count Montalembert; “ Nellie Netterville: A Tale of | reproduced the errors which Defoe, in an appended table of errata, took the Cromwellian Wars in Ireland,” by Miss Caddell; “ Problems of the | pains to correct. Upon the discovery of this fact came Mr. Kingsley’s Age: with Essays of St. Augustine on Kindred Subjects,” by Rev. A. F. | explanation, which, while it relieves him from the charge of blundering, Hewit; “The Story of a Sister” (Le Récit d’une Sceur): translated from the French ; and a new illustrated series of books for a Sunday-school | library. | ~—The trustees of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology, established in connection with Harvard College in October, 1867, have made their first annual report, of which the most interesting feature is naturally the report of the curator, Professor Jeffries Wyman. In twelve months the collection of specimens has not, of course, reached a very high number, but several societies were ready to contribute to the outfit of the young institution, and Messrs. Caleb Cushing and E. G. Squier were especially generous in presenting Mexican and Peruvian antiquities of great value. In human crania the museum may almost be.said to be rich already, while its collection of stone implements, both Eurepean and American, is pretty extensive. More than in actual possession, the museum is fortunate in having for its directors men thoroughly acquainted with the progress of | modern discovery and the best scientific methods, and who are a guarantee | that no effort and no money will be wasted in unsystematic or random | would seem, if we know all the circumstances, to leave him open to the heavier charge of what must be considered a piece of deception—and one not the less, but rather the more, to be reprehended in that it is common. We speak of the new edition, however, not so much on this account as because Mr. Kingsley, first among commentators on “ Robinson Crusoe,” points out the truth that the famous novel which children in Oregon and children in America are to-day reading as a romance, which is a part of the fictitious literature of every European tongue and of more than one of the languages of the East, is, in truth, not a romance at all. It is “ merely an allegorical account of Defoe’s own life.” Defoe, in the preface to a little known work of his, entitled “ Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adven- tures of Robinson Crusoe,” declares that “the story, though allegorical, is also historical ;” and again, “that there is a man alive, and well known too, the actions of whose life are the first subject of these volumes, and to whom all or most part of the story most directly alludes.” Mr. Kingsley entertaining no doubt—as indeed none can be entertained—that the “ life of unexampiled misfortunes” portrayed in the work isthe lifeof Defoe himself, — ied
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* wie . [ateane Mar. 19, 1868] endeavors to make the allegory fit the political events and public characters in which Defoe was engaged and with whom he was brought in contact. He acknowledges difficulties in the way of this interpretation ; cannot, for ex ample, see how the shipwreck can be very easily made to stand for the revolution of 1688, or the parrot for the Earl of Oxford, or Doctor Sache- verell for the first savage killed by Crusoe. A critic in the Pall Mull Gazette thinks that it is not at all in this way that the allegory is to be read. To him it seems to deal with Defoe’s personal history—his solitary struggles—and no English writer was more of a solitary—his philosophy, and his religious feelings. It is true that his moral reflections and his auto- biography he chose to set off by a fictitious dress, and that he let his imagination run away with him, so that the setting has obscured the gem ; and it is true even that, in the second part of his book, he became purely a romancer ; but there is good reason to suppose that, really, it was for the sake of the third part—the “Serious Reflections "—that the other two were written, and it seems susceptible of proof, from Defoe’s own words on vari- ous occasions, that in the first part the fiction was employed to secure a hearing for the moralizings of a solitary thinker, and, further, that the various feigned events and personages of that portion of “ Robinson Crusoe” had their antitype in the realm of actual fact. It is not strange, then, to find in the title of Gildon’s squib aimed at Defoe what seems a direct allu- sion to the autobiographicai character of the work. Gildon says: “ The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mr. D—— De F —, of London, Hosier, who has lived fifty years by himself in the Kingdom of North and South Britain.” And Defoe himself, in the preface above mentioned, assures his readers that without going into too exact an explanation of “ the original by the emblem,” he can tell them that there is not a circumstance in the imaginary story which has not its precise allusion to the conduct or life of a man known to the public, whose whole existence has been full of unhap- piness and loneliness. Perhaps Defoe is hardly a subject for a long biog- raphy, but certainly it would be no more than just to so great a writer, and it could not fail to be interesting, if the view of his writings here mentioned were to receive full treatment in a biographical memoir prefatory of his | immortal work. —English lawyers are more fortunate than our own in that they have possession of Tenison Edwards, Esquire. He is a barrister who, having | observed the great amount of Jabor imposed on the profession by the neces- | sity of “ noting up” text-books, conceived the idea of himself doing it for all of them. Tedious labor was not the only thing from which to save them ; the work was one in which an inaccuracy or an omission might lead to the ruin of clients as well as to the injury of the lawyer's reputation. Mr. Edwards’s plan was to compile notes of the effect of each new judicial decision or each new act of Parliament, and to print with the note a refer- ence to the page of the text-books upon which it might bear. He at first used paper gummed on one side, and the lawyer or his clerk had no further trouble than to cut up the slip and paste each note on the margin of the proper text-book. Afterwards, he printed on both sides of the slip, number- ing each note, and binding the slips into avolume. All the labor then neces- sary was to pencil the number of the note on the marginof the book. Still later he added a synoptical index, published half-yearly, embodying the contents of the old volumes ef “ The Notanda Digest ’’ —which is what he calls his work—and including, also, references to the decisions and acts of the six months immediately preceding. The benefit he has thus conferred upon lawyers is very great, and the law is now to a less extent than before a mighty maze withouta plan. It is a pity that Mr. Edwards's ingenuity has not been emulated on this side of the water; we should soon have a digest of the common law as existing here as satisfactory as our digests of statutes. —The German statesman, Friedrich von Gentz, bas been an attractive subject to writers of a later generation. His life and works were the care- ful study of Haym; R. von Mobl and Dr. Bluntschli have treated of his political activity; and Dr. H. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, with the aid of material in the Imperial archives at Vienna, has given, in his “ Contribu- tion to the History of Austria in the Nineteenth Century,” of which we have already once spoken, what he calis a Svelengemdlde, or psychological analysis of Gentz’s character, endeavoring to trace the course of its development, or perhaps we should say retrogression, from liberal to anti-liberal opinions, from virtue to sensuality. One secret of the attention he has thus received from posterity is undoubtedly due to his devotion to German unity in the days when the feeling for unity was less self-asserting and less courageous, and therefore far less powerful than it has since become. It seems that we have not yet done with Gentz. The Prince Metternich, whose most intimate adviser and valued assistant | The Nation. 233 he was, left on his decease four great chests of papers, with the injunction that nothing should be published for twenty years—that is to say, till 1879. Vienna and opened. They have but just been broughi from the castle of Koénigswart to On examination, the correspondence with Gentz proves to be unexpectedly large, and mixed up with papers of all kinds, so as to render the work of assorting sufficiently tedious. It has been con cluded to sort first with reference to Gentz, and to recommend the papers thus collected first for publication to the young Prince Metternich, now ambassador at Paris. --That portion of Bunsen’s “ Vollstiindiges Bibel werk fiir die Gemeinde” which contains the translation of the New Testament, has been published by Brockhaus at Leipsic, omitting the exegetical notes which originally accompanied it. Professor Holtzmann, who, with Professor Kamphausen, has taken up and continued the great work of the lamented scholar, fur- nishes an introduction to the translation—words of high praise to Bunsen “Bible: Work for the People The present publication of the text alone is for the sake of those who would be unable to procure the fuller work and of those who would like to read the New Testament in other than the strong and antiquated speech of Luther. faith of Germany. for having conceived the plan of his It ison this account likely to mark an era in the popular —Dr. Hugo Meyer recently read an essay before the historical depart ment of the Bremen Wiinstlerverein, on the legends and staiues of the his torical Roland (or Hroudland), who perished fighting the Saracens at Roncesvalles. The attempt was made to trace the connection between the traditions (which so abounded in Southern France) in relation to this hero and the old German mythology. The adventures, qualities, and symbols assigned to Roland were clearly taken directly from those which belonged to Balder, the old northern sun-god (known also among the various German tribes as Tyr, Heimdall, Freyr, ete.) ; and not only did the borrowed raiment fit him as a warrior against pagan darkness, but even his name had a divine origin. In certain districts mostly still inhabited by German races, as al! were formerly, there appeared a god J7rvodo, identical on the one hand with the god of light, and on the other hand closely resembling the god Zrmin, and the war-god 7iu or Ziu—the oldest and most widely-spread of the names of this divinity, and connected by philologists with the Greek Zeus, Latin Jupiter, Indian Dydus, etc. The day consecrated to him was Thursday ( Dienstag), the ancient judgment-day, variously known as Zistg among the Suevi, Hrtag Irminstag in Bavaria, Roytag-Rolandstag in Flanders. He was originally worshipped in the form of a pole or pillar, surmounted by a huge ball in token of the sun, called an “Irmin-pillar;’ and the Roland pillars or statues had a similar beginning, along with the scutcheon poles (ScAi/d biume), and the Tiodute or Joduteniume erected as monuments of vietory and at the seats of justice. The subject is an interesting one, and promises to reward further investigations. SCIENTIFIC, THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOoD.—Those who, like ourselves, have read the story of “ Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy,” will remember the exciting scene depicted in the closing chapter. and enthusiastic. Patient dying of sudden hemorrhage, breathing hard, and with a pa'se that hardly moved. A tube anda lancet. The young doctor “fixed his apparatus and performed an operation, which then, as now, was impossible in theory; only he did it. He sent some of Griilith Gaunt’s bright red blood smoking hot into Kate Gaunt’s veins.” Four doctors in attendance—one young Had Mr. Reade cared less for producing a sensation, and more for pre senting the actual state of science in regard to this matter, he would not have made the above statement. We have been induced to look up the his- tory of the transfusion of blood, since it is again attracting considerable attention abroad, and a Swiss physician has introduced a new instrument for the purpose, from which valuable results are expected. We do not find that any attempts were made for the renewal of life or the cure of disease by this practice earlier than the seventeenth century ; though as long ago as the time of King David the constant external application, in old age, of young blood was believed to prolong life. Harvey's great discovery of the circulation of the blood must not only first be made, but defended, before it could be accepted, for thirty years or more, amidst the envy and hatred of contemporary physicians and the jeers of the vulgar. This accomplished, a sort of delirium seized the people, for they believed that, as all diseases were attributable to the blood, they had only to replace bad blood by good to keep off all maladies and become im mortal. ; The first experiments were performed by Dr. Lower, in 1666, at Oxford,
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>) 2) The Nation. { 254 [Mar. 19, 1868 England, by transfusing the b lood of one animal into another; and in the | ment which fulfils all the ends desired. This is, in brief, composed of a sort diary of Samuel Pepys, F.RS., for the same year, it is recorded that “at a} of cupping glass made to adhere to the arm, over the vein to be opened, by meeting of Gresham College, the sre Was an experiment of the blood of one | workipg a small piston connected with it, and of a rubber pouch above this, dog let out, till he died, into the body of another on one side. The first died | which is filled by the working of another piston with water, that is also at upon the place, and the other very well, and likely to do well. This did | the same time forced into the interior of the vessel beneath. When the in- give occasion to many pretty wishes, as of the blood of a Quaker to be let | strument is properly adjusted, all the air being driven out by the water in- into an archbishop, and such like.” It was thought possible that the ex-| troduced, the distended vein is opened by means of a lancet, which pene- change of blood might alter the nature or disposition of the animals, for the operation seemed to be like that of grafting, where the scion imparts its own nature to the sap of the stock grafted upon; hence we find, in the “ Philo- sophical Transactions of the Royal Society ’’ for 1666 a list of queries to be answered by subsequent experiments, two of which are: “ Whether a fierce dog may not become more tame by the transfusing of the blood of a cow- ardly dog? Whether a small, young dog, by being often fresh stocked with the blood of a young dog of a larger kind, will grow bigger than the ordi- nary size of his own kind?” The author of the story which we have men- tioned, struck with the same idea, makes Mrs. Gaunt say, “ Once she told Father Francis, quite seriously, that she had never been quite the same woman since she lived by Griflith’s blood ; she was turned jealous.” The French savans were also at the same time busy experimenting. “ M. Gayant put the blood of a young dog into the veins of an old one, who, two hours after, did leap and frisk, whereas he was almost blind with age, and could hardly stir before.” Similar results attended the experiments on horses. The next step was to try transfusion on man, and, as we might expect, the French were the first to attempt it. Dr. Denis, at Paris, in 1667, cured, as he thought, a lunatic, by introducing in two operations nearly a pound and a half of the blood of a calf into one of the veins cf hisarm. The wife of the man concluded transfusion had done him good, because, as she said, “at the season we are now in, her husband should be outrageous and very mad against herself, and that, instead of the kindness he showed to her at this full of the moon, he used to do nothing but swear and beat her.” Un- fortunately, this patient remained sane for only two months, and died during the third experiment. A woman was cured of palsy, and a man of leprosy, but a young prince of royal blood fell a victim to the operation. These failures led to the decree that no transfusions should be made but by the approbation of the physicians of the Parisian faculty, which amounted to a total prohibition. In England, there were several cases which resulted favorably, it is said ; but in Italy the Pope put a stop to the practice in consequence of the death of two individuals on whom Dr. Riva had operated. From this time transfusion was considered not only useless but danger- ous, till the subject was taken up again by Dr. Blundell, of England, who published a little work in 1824, in which he shows that the experiments of physicians on man in the seventeenth century often failed, because animal was substituted for human blood, as well as on account of the faulty appa- ratus used. His own experiments are exceedingly interesting. He resusci- tated a dog by the transfusion of blood after breathing had stopped five minutes, and for the purpose of showing that, when the system ceases to make blood through disease, life may be prolonged, he nourished a dog for three weeks solely by repeated transfusions from another dog. He gives some account of six instances in which he injected blood into human veins, in some of which respiration had ceased before the operation was performed. In one case he prolonged life for fifty-six hours. The in- ferences he makes from the few opportunities which he had for experiment- ing are, that transfusion may be performed after his method with facility, and that the operation is not attended by any obviously dangerous symptoms, provided the blood be promptly transmitted and the injection of air be pre- cluded. We come now to notice the instrument for transfusion recently invented by Dr. Roussel, of Geneva, who considers it a great improvement on all those previously in use. The earliest operations, those of the seventeenth cen- tury, were performed by introducing one end of a tube, composed either of a succession of quills or of silver, directly into a vein or artery of the animal furnishing the blood, and the other into a vein of the recipient man or beast. The objection to this method is that clots are very sure to form at either end of the tube, where the blood is necessarily for a greater or less length of | time exposed to the air, and these introduced into the circulation are apt to This is a process of immediate transfusion. Dr. Blundell used a syringe, and injected blood previously received in a basin into the veins. The same objection is made to this method as to the former, and, also, that the properties of the whole amount of blood are changed by ex- posure Various contrivances have been resorted to to obviate these difliculties, and at last Dr. Roussel thinks he has invented an instru- produce death. to the air. trates the wall of the glass, and the water is forced out through a glass tube, and its place taken by the blood. The transfusing apparatus is now connected with a silver tube, previously placed in a vein of the patient's arm, and the operation goes on, air being totally excluded. For his inven- tion the doctor claims great results. He asserts that he has repeatedly revived animals that have ceased to breathe; and he gives at length an in- teresting case of a girl of seventeen years, dying of an excessive hemorrhage, to whom he was called. He found her in a profound syncope, skin cold, respiration and pulse gone, face cadaverous, pupils dilated, and, in fact, ap- pearing dead. His ear placed over the heart detected no pulsation, but only a slight vibration. His proposition to introduce some of her sister’s blood into her veins was readily accepted, and the apparatus was soon adjusted. Transfusion commenced, and in less than a minute a beating of the heart Was perceptible ; later, respiration began ; and in twenty minutes, when the operation was discontinued, the patient recovered her lifelike eppearance, opened her eyes, and spoke to her sister. This was in December, 1865, and Dr. Roussel states that she is at present married and in good health. There are but seventy-six recorded casesof transfusion, notwithstanding the thousands of inatances where it might have been serviceable ; for wherever death threatens through loss of blood, there there is a possibility of saving life by this mode of treatment. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the methods heretofore resorted to have been so faulty, and attended so often by disastrous results, that surgeons generally have not cared to incur the responsibility of operating. The doctor suggests that every army surgeon should be supplied with a transfusing apparatus, for many a poor soldier dies not from the severity of his wounds, but from the loss of blood. There have been some experiments of this kind in this coun- try. Dr. Austin Flint, Jr., performed transfusion on a woman bleeding to death, and has reason to believe that her life was thereby prolonged six or eight hours; and a still better result attended a similar operation in New Orleans. VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMESTICATION.* For critical examination in detail, Mr. Darwin’s new book must be re- ferred to the scientific journals and to cultivators and breeders. But, whatever audience he may address, a wide circle of general readers is sure to attend the founder of a new ism, and the word Darwinism has become as familiar as Galvanism or Mormonism. Readers from mere curiosity are likely to be somewhat disappointed in the present work. It is replete— some may say heavy—with facts; and facts in science, important as they are in this case both to practical men and philosophical investigators, are seldom half as enticing as speculations. To the “Origin of Species,” more- over, there was the added zest of heterodoxy. Everybody hastened to read a book which was widely denounced, even by some scientific authori- ties, as dangerous or improper. No doubt the present volumes are flavored with the doctrine of their predecessor, which this is intended to support by evidence. But their main interest lies in the vast array of facts which are here collected and discussed, with the characteristic faithfulness and candor of a writer who was never known to tamper with the evidence, or to keep back anything which told against his theory. There is, moreover, plenty of hypothesis in the second volume, and that quite independent of the Darwinian theory. These volumes are, in the main, a storehouse of facts relative to varia- tion under domestication and kindred topics. The author announces that in a work to follow this he intends to treat of variation in a state of nature ; and in yet another (may he live to complete such arduous undertakings!) he proposes to try the principle of natural selection by seeing how far it will serve to explain the geological succession of organic beings, their geo- graphical distribution in past and present times, and their mutual affinities and homologies. He briefly informs us how the foundations of the views which he has lately made so famous were laid during his voyage in the Beagle, many years ago: “ When I visited the Galapagos Archipelago, situated in the Pacific Ocean, about five hundred miles from the shore of South America, I found myself surrounded by peculiar species of birds, reptiles, and plants, existing * “The Variation of Animals and Piants wales’ Domestication. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S., etc.” In 2 volumes, with illustrations, 8vo. London: Murray. 1863
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Mar. 19, 1868] nowhere else in the world. Yet they all bore an American stamp. In the song of the mocking thrush, in the harsh cry of the carrion hawk, in the great candiestick-like opuntias, I clearly perceived the neighborhood of America, though the islands were separated by so many miles of ocean from | the mainland, and differed much from it in their geological constitution apd climate. Still more surprising was the fact that most of the inhab- itants of each separate island in this small archipelago were specifically different, though most closely related to each other. ‘The archipelago, with its innumerable craters and bare streams of lava, appeared to be of recent origin ; and thus | fancied myself brought near to the very act of creation. | I often asked myself how these many peculiar animals and plants had been produced: the simplest answer seemed to be that the inhabitants of the | several islands had descended from each other, undergoing modification in the course of their descent ; and that all the inhabitants of the archipelago | had descended from those of the nearest land, namely, America, whence | colonists would naturally have been derived. But it long remained to me | an inexplicable problem how the necessary degree of modification could | have been effected; and it would thus have remained for ever, had I not | studied domestic productions, and thus acquired a just idea of the power of | selection. As soon as I had fully realized this idea, 1 saw, on reading Mal- | thus on Population, that natural selection was the inevitable result of the | rapid increase of all organic beings; for I was prepared to appreciate the | struggle for existence by having long studied the habits of animals.” In South America he had already been impressed with the fact of the | prevalence of the same types, under different species or genera, throughout the length and breadth of the continent, and under the most diverse possible conditions ; while other parts of the world, such as South Africa and Austra- lia, although incomparably more like to parts of South America than the different parts of that continent were to each other, were entirely different in their productions. Exhuming with his own hands the bones and armor of extinct gigantic quadrupeds of the same peculiar type with those which now exist there, and reflecting that the equally peculiar animals of Australia were preceded by forms of the same sort, the idea was forced upon him that, in time as in space, the similarity was to be explained by community of descent, the differences by modification and divergence under natura! selection. We have no intention to discuss the subject of natural selection, nor the theory with which Mr. Darwin has connected it ; but we would note, both as an historical incident and a simple although restricted illustration, that anticipation of it which was made, half a century ago, by the distinguished author of the “ Essay upon Dew,” Doctor Wells, an American by birth, which Mr. Brace recently pointed out to Mr. Darwin, and which the latter, in the preface to the last edition of “‘ The Origin of Species,” pronounces to be the first recognition of the principle of natural selection which has been indicated. Dr. Wells, in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1813, after remarking that negroes and mulattoes enjoy immunity from certain tropical diseases, observes, Ist, That all animals tend to vary in some degree ; 2d, That agriculturists improve their domesticated animals by selection ; and adds that what is thus done “ by art seems to be done with equal efli- cacy, though more slowly, by nature in the formation of the varieties of mankind fitted for the countries which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first few and scattered inhab- itants of the middle regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease not only from their inability to sastain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of contending with their more vigorous neighbors. The color of this vigorous race, I take for granted, from what has already been said, would be dark ; but the same disposition to form varieties still existing, a darker and darker race would in the course of time occur; and, as the darkest would be the best fitted for the climate, this would at length become the most prevalent, if not the only, race in the particular country in which it had originated.” And so, con versely, of the white races in colder climates. This “survival of the fittest” seems to us so inevitable that we are dis- posed to agree with Mr. Wallace when he declares that there is better evidence of such selecting power in nature than even direct observation would be, viz., the evidence of necessity. It inevitably must be operative, if animals and plants increase by reproduction in a geometrical ratio while their actual numbers remain, on the average, stationary, which is past al denying ; if they tend to vary; and if variations are heritable, in other words, if offspring tends to resemble parents and grand-parents, which no breeder doubts and few attentive readers of the present work will be likely to question ; and, finally, if the world and the conditions of nature be sub ject to change, however slow ; and the slower the better for natural selec. tion. How much of what was inexplicable or sterile in natural history and biology is to be explained or fecundated by this principle, or in this way The Nation. of viewing things, is still under question. Bat, quite apart from the populer ~_— aow notoriety of Darwinism, it seems certain that these ideas have powerfully, and we suppose healthfully, stimulated scientific enquiry ; and that their introduction within the last ten years marks an era in natural science. My: naturalists—perhaps we should rather say most natural philosophers—who have given attention to the subject appear to acknowledge natura! select as a vera causa, although few are convinced of its suiliciency, unaided, for the whole work which Mr. Darwin assigns to it. on A greater number believe —indeed, the prevalent philosophical natural history of the day is largely based upon the notion, expressed or oftener implied—that species of the same genus, inhabiting the same or even more widely separated regions, are likely to have had a common origin ; and, equally, that the plants and animals by which we are now surrounded are the modified representatives and descendants of those most like them in the last preceding geological ave That these advanced views, however, are attributable only in part to Mr. Darwin, is clear from the fact of their earlier promulgation, more or | distinctly, by such leading paleontologists as Pictet and Heer, and th: >] r later maintenance by Owen and De Candolle, quite irrespective of natural So that, in fact, derivation of present species from preceding ones are equally held by two } rot leas OF lhe selection, which these writers make little of. parties—by those who off-r a natural explanation of the process, and by those who have no explanation to offer for what they nevertheless su pose to have been a natural occurrence. But we are not likely to forget that all such views, under whatever form or qualification maintained, do not pass unchallenged. really prove to be false and mischievous, there is one naturalist, of highest prominence, whose conscience should never accuse him of having neglected to give due warning ; with a persistence worthy of old Cato himself—worthy, coming froui sach authority, of much consideration. is wrong will be duly set right, we may pass on from these debatable to more practical matters. Eight chapters of the first volume and 40 of the 43 wood-cuts are given li the new doctrines who, upon all occasions, has iterated his cefermin cons Confident, therefore, that whatever to the illustration of the varieties of dogs and cats; horses and asses ; | cattle, sheep, and goats; domestic rabbits; domestic pigeons, fowls, ducks, geese, peacock, turkey, Guinea fowl, etc., and a few pages to gold fis! hive bees, and silk moths. whole chapters being devoted to them. The 9th and 10th chapters are occupied with the cereal and some of the commonest culinary plants, fruits, and trees; and the 11th, with bud-variation and some connected matters - also with the action of foreign pollen on the fruit, seed-coats, or other organs of the mother plant, and the analogous effects in animals of a first impregnation upon subsequent offspring. both practical and scientific, centers in the three chapters on inheritance, and in the five following upon crossing and its results, the good effects of crossing, the evil effects of close interbreeding, the advantages and disad vantages of changed conditions of life, ete. ‘Two chapters follow upon selection by man and its consequences; then five in which the causes of variability and the laws of variation are laboriously discussed, and one in which the “ provisional hypothesis of pangenesis” is propounded and ex- plained. The object of the hypothesis designated by this new word is, to connect intelligibly in some causal conception a variety of phenomena which, as | an attentive consideration shows, must stand in some sort of relation to each other ; to correlate the different modes of reproduction with each other and with growth, and also, in the lower animals, with the reproduction of lost parts ; toform some notion as to how not only the characters but the peculiarities of parents are transmitted to offspring, and even are transmit ted from a male parent through a daughter, in which they do not and cannot appear, to a grandscn, in which they do; how certain diseases are heritable and may similarly pass over one generation to be developed in the next; how even remote ancestral characters may sometimes reappear in a descendant; how it is possible that a first impregnation may visibly affect a series of subsequent births; how bybrid plants, when self-fertile, in tle succeeding generations are apt to mix, as it were in patchwork, rather than to combine the characters of the two constituent species, or to divide them among the individuals of a generation, some of them thus reverting to one of the parent types and some to the other. To explain these and the like, Mr. Darwin brings forward his “ hypothesis of pangenesis, which implies that the whole organization, in the sense of every separate atom or unit, reproduces itself ;’ that “ovules and pollen-grains, and the fertilized seed or egg, as well as buds, include and consist of a multitude of germs thrown off from each separate atom of the organism,” reproducing and multiplying themselves, like visible germs and cells, and aggregating by elective aflinity to produce cells or organs like those from which they were derived ; so that . Pigeons receive the fullest consideration, two In the second volume the interest.
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256 if each cell of a plant has the actu il or potential capacity of reproducing the whole plant, it has it only in virtue of ¢ mtainipy antonomous atoms derived from every part. So that “the child, strictly speaking, does not grow into the man, but includes germs which slowly and successively become developed and form the man.” “ Reversion depends on the transmission from the forefather to his descendants of dormant gemmules, which occasionally become developed.” “ When we hear it said that a man carries in his constitution the seeds of an inherited disease, there is much literal truth in “We cannot fathom the marvellous complexity of an but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm— the expre ssion.”’ organic being; much increased. a little universe, formed of a host of self propagating organisms, inconceiva- | bly minute, and as numerous as the stars in heaven.” Physiologists, who chiefly will be interested in it, will comprehend the hypothesis from these brief statements, and will see that its germs are the considerably modified descendants of various earlier speculations. We have no space left for extracts and illustrations even of the less recondite and more practical por- tions of these teeming volumes. Very interesting is the discussion of the ill effects of continued close breed- ing, which is so necessary to perpetuate and exalt the desirable characteris- tics of a race, yet at length so deteriorating that a cross must needs be resorted to; and we think that Mr. Darwin bas fairly shown that the evil is not exclusively attributable to the cumulative inheritance of morbid tendencies common to both parents, but has some deeper foundation in nature : for, as he remarks, “ It is unfortunately too notorious that men and various domes- tic animals, endowed with a wretched constitution, and with a strong hereditary disposition to disease, if not actually ill, are fully capable of pro- creating their kind.” Domestication and civilization here serve as ex peri- ments to determine the point. Under natural selection these feeble indi- viduals would be speedily made way with. We find in another chapter (xi., p. 214) an illustration of this, and of “sound sense” from the natural- selective point of view : “ Unconscious selection in the strictest sense of the word—that is, the saving of the more useful animals, and the neglect or slaughter of the less useful, without any thought of the future—must have gone on occasionally | from the remotest period and among the most barbarous nations. Savagee often suffer from famines, and are sometimes expelled by war from their own homes. In such cases it can hardly be doubted that they would save their most useful animals. When the Fuegians are hard pressed by want they kill their old women for food rather than their dogs, for, as we were assured, ‘old women no use—dogs catch otters.’ The same sound sense would surely lead them to preserve their more useful dogs when still harder pressed by famine.” While contending that no distinct line can be drawn between natural and artificial races, Mr. Darwin attributes the usually different aspect of the two to the fact that man selects and propagates modifications solely for his own use or fancy, and not for the creature’s own good, while the wild anima!, struggling with its incessant competitors and enemies, has every slight variation rigorously tested and preserved or rejected, and is thus kept in full healthful harmony with its surroundings. wide differences of opinion as to whether certain domestic races have descended from one or from several aboriginal stocks, is good evidence that there is no palpable difference between races and species. He effectively compares the firm belief of breeders, that the races which they are rearing NEW WORK BY DR. ROBERT HUNTER. A Popular Treatise on Bronchitis, embracing Bronchial Consumption, Hooping-cough, and Asthma: Their Nature, Causes, and Treatment. 3y ROBERT HUNTER, M.D, By N. C. Author of “ Practical Letters on the Nature, Causes, and | O0¢ handsome 12mo vol.. 360 pages, tinted paper, price, postpaid, $2. S. R. WELLES, Publisher, 289 Broadway, N. Y. Cure of Catarrh, Sore Throat, Bronchitis, Asthma, and Consumption; Carbon cs. Oxygen,” etc., etc. Bound in flexible cloth, price 75 cents. DAVID ¢C. Sent free on receipt of price. JAMES MILLER, Publisher, 522 Broadway. L. W. SCHMIDT, CERMAN BOOKSELLER, 24 BarncLAy Street, New York, (FormMERLY C. 8 DEALER IN NEW Imports regularly all the leading Foreign Publications, including Periodicals. Foreign works noticed in Tux Nation kept constantly on _- Orders for any obtainable handor procured to order. The Nation. And he claims that the LIFE IN T oR, STORIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. . Francis & Co.), 506 BROADWAY (uP sTatRs). Priced catalogues of books in stock issued from time to time, and will be forwarded free to any address. Binding executed in any style. [Mar. 19, 1868 and slightly modifying cannot have come from common progenitors, with that of the naturalist, who is sure of the contrary, though he knows not how nor when they arose, and who in his turn rejects the notion that the closely | allied natural species which he discriminates ever descended from a common /progenitor. Mr. Darwin is convinced that “the long-continued accumula- | tion of beneficial variations will infallibly lead to structures as diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes, and as excellently co-ordinated as | we see in the animals all around us.” The relative potency of the variation | and the selection he illustrates in this wise: | | “Tf an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat | stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the para- mount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which the fluc- tuating variations of each organic being bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by its modified descendants.” And then, on the question which must needs come up; “ In regard to the use to which these fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware that I am travelling beyond my proper province. An ‘omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him. But can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have deter- mined the shape of each fragment were not pre-determined for the builder’s sake, can it with any greater probability be maintained that He specially ordained, for the sake of the breeder, each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants—many of these variations being of no ser- Vice to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time pre-ordained, the plasticity of organization which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. [Not superfluous, surely, if ‘survival of the fittest,’ ‘ excellent co-ordination, and all the harmonious adaptation and diversity we behold are to result from the operation of these very laws.] On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free-will and predestination.” | The very same difficulty, indeed, and the sameimpossibility as that of draw- ing the limits between the fixed and the contingent, either in the material or the moral world, in which both volition and established order play their mingled parts. But in Mr. Darwin’s parallel, to meet the case in nature according to his own view of it, not only the fragments of rock (answering to variation) should fall, but the edifice (answering to natural selection) should rise, irrespective of will and choice! We are informed that the enterprising publishers of the American Agri- culturist propose to reprint Mr. Darwin’s new work, under an arrangement with the author. In England the first edition was exhausted within a week. . IN PRESS—A NEW POEM, ENTITLED THE MEXICAN; oR LOVE AND LAND. By Joun M. Daenatt, Author of * Daisy Swain.” ALLEN EBBS HE WEST; MEEKER. 188 Broapway (Up-stairs), New York, FRA N cl s IMPORTER OF Fine Standard and Illustrated Books. RARE, CURIOUS, AND VALUABLE BOOKS, In all Languages and Departments of Literature, AND OLD BOOKS, For sale by GEO. P. PHILES & CO., 172 Fulton Street, New York. books promptly filled.
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Specimen numbers sent on receipt of the postage. Agents are wanted in every town in the country, and liberal salaries will be paid. Address THE AMERICAN ATHENEUM, 63 William Street, New York. LSI li NG SRG aig 3h pl BARR
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SiS AaB, wl pansies y POKER CES dig cis Mar. 19, 1868] The Nation. 239 “The Nation,” | A WEEKLY JOURNAL, PUBLISHED IN NEW) YORK CITY The following are some of the voluntary testimonials it has received from the press :— | MAINE. The very best of our politico-literary weeklies.—Port- land Daily Press. One of the ablest and best-conducted publications of | this country.— Kennebec Journal. NEW HAMPSHIRE. A very able paper. —Portsmouth Morning Chronicle. VERMONT. Edited with great ability —Burlington Free Press. MASSACHUSETTS. We do not hesitate to pronounce it without a rival or an equal in this country.— Southbridge Journal. Friendly to everything that could advance civilization, and notably indifferent to the claims of persons and par- ties.— Atlantic Monthly. RHODE ISLAND. We commend it to the attention of all teachers who desire to become thoroughly conversant with what is transpiring in the literary world.—Rhode Island School- master. CONNECTICUT. May almost be said to mark an epoch in American journalism.—New Englander. We know of no journal which we can more heartil commend to our readers than this.— Willimantic Journal. NEW YORK. A weekly journal of very considerable ability. —N. F. Herald. Independent and fearless in the expression of its opinions.—N. Y. Times. NEW JERSEY. In point of scholarship and ability it will compare with any paper we know of.— Elizabeth Joornel. ’ PENNSYLVANIA. A periodical approaching nearest to the needs of a community of matured taste of any other published in this country.— Phila. Evening Telegraph. Ite philosophical, literary, and social articles are far above the average standard.— Catholic Standard. MARYLAND. One of the best news and political week! land.— Baltimore Co. Union. *F i Se DELAWARE. An instance where quiet and persistent labor, faith- fully performed, has won public confidence and su t. — Wilenington Commercial. _— OHIO. We are conscious of doing a real service to our readers, and to every wholesome moral and material enterprise of the times, when we direct attention to the Nation as the one newspaper of America which is so full of excellen- ces and so free from faults as to deserve unqualified praise.—Springfield Daily Republican. INDIANA, its literary excellence is all that could be desired.— we — ILLINOIS. eci the ablest of our weekly journals.— ~ y ekly journals.— Chicago No professional or literary man can afford to be without g- it.— Quincy Whi: ae FI ent tn en te un iegenste englische Blatt in A . - ag ege ng n Amerika We prefer it, notwithstanding its Republican politics, to any of the monthlies.— ast Saginaw Courier.” WISCONSIN. Combines in an excellent degree the distinctive fea- tures of the news and the literary journal.— Central Re- ican. Cities IOWA. e prize it for its tact, its talent, and its hearty hon- esty.—lowa Whig. rs Pe The high-water mark of American journalism.— h- ington County Press. j ae | - MISSOURI. | seems to us an independent and highly moral politi- cal journal.— Central Christian Adeocak, “j - KANSAS. A journal which no statesman or student of social and mm progress can afford to do without.—Zducational CALIFORNIA. One - the ablest papers in the world.—California TEXAS. Of superior ability —Flake’s Galveston Bulletin. ALABAMA. One of the most thoroughly Radical Republican papers in the country.—Modvile Nationalist. SOUTH CAROLINA. The ablest of the Radical weekly papers,— Charleston 7 ier VIRCINIA. An excellent literary and political paper.— Winchester ‘ou KENTUCKY. Intensely Radical, very independent, very witty, and gifted with a keen and almost biting common senee.— | Danville Advocate. TENNESSEE. Unter allen uns zngehenden Wechselblittern nimmt die New York Nation mit den gréssten Rang ein. Es enthalt die besten Kritiken fiber neue Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Literatur und Kunst, famose europiische Correspondenzen, und ist durch talentvolle Manner des Zeitalters redigirt.— Nashville Staatszeitung. The sixth volume of the Nation began January, 1868. Terms: Five dollars per annum ; Clergymen, four dollars ; Clubs of ten, forty dollars. Specimen copies sent gratis on application to E. L. GODKIN & CO., Publishers, Box 6732, New York City. Now ReEapy: LIFE AMONG THE MORMONS. \By an Officer of the U. 8S. Army, long a resident of Utah. This book gives a graphic description of the country, manners, and habits of the Mormon people. Milustrated. Price, cloth, $1 25. Finely FATHER TOM AND THE POPE; OR, A NIGHT IN THE VATICAN. The rapid sale of their elegant edition of this work has induced the Publishers to issue 4 still handsome but cheap edition of the same. Price, cloth, 75 cents. The above works sent, postage paid, on receipt of price. MOORHEAD, SIMPSON & BOND, {60 Duane Street, New York. “HOME FOR INVALIDS.” Established in 1847, By E. E. DENNISTON, M.D., At Springdale, Northampton, Mass. NUMBER LIMITED TO THIRTY. REFERENCES.—Boston : Jacob Bigelow, M.D., H. I Bige- low, M.D., Edward Reynolds, M.D , John Homans, M.D. New York: Willard Parker, M.D., Austin Flint, M.D. Brooklyn: C. L. Mitchell, M.D. One Ounce of Gold Will be given for every ounce of adulteration found in “B. T. Bappitt’s Lion Corresr.”* This Coffee is roasted, ground, and sealed hermetically under letters patent from the United States Government. All the “ Aroma” is saved, and the Coffee presents a rich, glossy appearance. Every family should use it, as it is fifteen to twenty per cent. stronger than any other pure * Coffee." One can in | every twenty contains a One DoLLaR GREENBACK. For sale everywhere. If your grocer does not keep this Cof- fee, and will not get it for you, send your orders direct to the factory. B. T. BABBITT, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, and 74 Washington Street, N. Y. OFFICE OF THE ATLANTIC MUTUAL INSURANCE CO. New York, January 25th, 1808. The Trustees, in conformity to the Charter of the Company, submit the following Statement of its affairs o« the Bist December, 1867 : Premiums received on Marine Risks from 1st January, 1867, to 3ist De-ember, 1867..... . ST AVVO % Premiums on Policies not marked off Ist Jan uary, 1867. ts sed 2,838,109 TI Total amount of Marine Premiums. . $10,160,125 46 No Policies have been issued upon Life Risks, nor upon Fire Risks disconnected with Marine Risks. Premiums marked off from 1st January, 1867, to 3ist December, 1567.... ‘ $7,507,128 16 Losses paid during the same period $4,206,364 Gt Returns of Premiums and Expenses.. . 81.983, 8865 98 The Company has the following Assets, viz. : United States and State of New York Stock, City, Bank, and other Stocks $6,564,485 00 Loans, secured by Stocks, and otherwise 2,175,450 08 Real Estate and Bonds and Mortgages 210.000 OO Interest, and sundry Notes and Claims due the Company, estimated at Premium Notes and Bills receivable Cash in Bank oe ; Total Amount of Assets é $13,108 077 11 Six per cent. interest on the outstanding certificates of profits will be paid to the holders thereof, or their legal representatives, on and after Tuesday, the Fourth of February next. Frrty per cent. of the outstanding certificates of the iseue of 1865 will be redeemed and paid to the holders thereof, or their legal representatives, on and after Tuee- day, the Fourth of February next, from which date in terest on the amount so redeemable will cease. The certificates to be produced at the time of payment, and cancelled to the extent paid A dividend of Thirty per cent. is declared on the net earned premiums of the Company for the \ear ending Bist December, 1867, for which certificates will be issued on and after Tuesday, the Seventh of April next, By order of the Board, J. H. CHAPMAN, Secretary TRUSTEES. Henry K. Bogert, Joshua J, Heury, Dennis Perkins, Joseph Ga liard, dr., J. Henry Burgy, Cornelius Grinnell, C. A. Hand, B. J. Howland, Benj. Babcock, Fletcher Westray, Robt B. Minturn, Jr., Gordon W. Burnham, Frederick Chauncey, James Low, Geo. 8. Stephenson, William H. Webb, Paul Spofford, Sheppard Gandy, Robert L. Taylor. B2414 se WIV. 443 BW STA54 08 John D. Jones, Charles Dennis, W. H. H. Moore, Henry Coit, Wm. c. Pickeregill, Lewis Curtis, Charles H. Ruseell, Lowell Holbrook, R,. Warren Weston, Royal Phelps, Caleb Barstow, A. P. Pillot, William E. Dodge, Robt. G. Fergusson, David Lane, James Bryce, Francis Skiddy, Daniel S. Miller, Wm. Sturgis, Chas. P. Burdett, JOHN D. JONES, President. CHARLES DENNIS, Vice-President. W. H. H. MOORE, 24 Vice President. J. D. HEWLETT, 3d Vice-President HUDSON RIVER INSTITUTE. — Term opens April 6. Rev. ALonzo Frack, A.M., Principal, Claverack, Columbia County, N. Y. SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF YALE COLLECE. This department of Yale College, under the direction of President Woolsey, and Professors Dana, Norton, Lyman, Silliman, Whitney, Brash, Gilman, Johnson, Brewer, Rockwell, Eaton, Marsh, and Verril!, furnishes regular and special courses of instruction in Chemistry and Metallurgy, Civil, Mining, and Mechanical Engineer- ing, Agriculture, Natural History, ete For circalars address Prof. D. C. Gilman, Sec., New Haven, Conn. THE EMPIRE SEWINC MACHINE | Surpasses all others in simplicity, durabiiity, beautiful stitch, and easy working. It cre- ates no noise when in operation, and all per- | sons fond of an excellent Sewing Machine { Dd should call and examine it. A liberal dis- Caer count offered to the trade. Salesrooms, 616 BROADWAY. N. Y.; 108 Avenue A, corner of Seventh Street; 685 Sixth Avenne; 243 Grand Street, Williamsburgh. ** Dr. Denniston’s ‘Home for Invalids’ at Springdale in the beantiful environs of Northampton, continues to be a satisfactory place to recommend sick persons to, especially those requiring rest, quiet, time, pure country air,a modified and rational water-cure treatment, and, with all, the advice and care of a scientific and expert- enced physician. Dr. Denniston is himself one of the wisest and most experienced medical men in the Connec- ticut valley, and his establishment is delightfully located, and fitted with every requirement for the comfort and | improvement of an invalid.”’—Springfleld Republican.
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240 The Nation. [Mar. 19, 1868 UNION ADAMS, 6837 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, IMPORTER OF MEN’S FINE FURNISHING COODS, MANUFACTURER OF Fine Dress Shirts, Collars, and Cuffs, Orders by mail receive prompt attention. CHINA AND GLASS. In view of our :emoval up-town in early spring, every article will be sold at a reduction of price, and many kinds of FANCY COODS AT A VERY LARGE REDUCTION. PLATED WARE FROM THE MANUFACTORY OF ROCERS, SMITH & CO. BRONZES, CLOCKS, Etc. DAVIS COLLAMORE & CoO., 479 Broapway, 4 doors below Broome St. NIAGARA FIRE INSURANCE CO. OFFICE, 12 WALL STREET. CasH CAPITAL INCREASED TO : $1,000,000 SuRPLuvs, JuLy-1, 1866, - : 300,000 Losses equitably adjusted and promptly paid. CHARTERED 1850. Cash Dividends paid in fourteen years, 248 per cent. JONATHAN D. STEELE, President. P. NOTMAN, Secretary. MARVIN & CO.’S ALUM AND DRY PLASTER FIRE AND BURCLAR AF E Are the most desirable for quality, finish, and oe . §2%65 Broadway, New Yo Principal Warehouses: 4 73) Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Please send for a Circular. NEW PATENT PIANOS. RAVEN & BACON (Established 1829), Warerooms 644 & 646 Broadway, N.Y., MANUFACTURERS OF PIANO-F aes 7 WITH THEIR PATENT COMBINA- TION SOUNDING-BOARDS Patented August 14, 1866. This invention. introduced exclusively into our Pianos, is of the greatest advantage to the tone of the inetru- ment, as it affects the sounding-board, the very soul of the Piano, and produces thereby a pure liquid tone great- ly superior in quality and power to that of the ordinary iano. The sounding-board, released from its connection with the piano-c: ase, and resting upon under sounding- boards, is relieved from the rigidity caused by such con- nection, and its vibratory quality increased. Our Pianos are first-class in every respect, and pur chasers will have net only our own guarantee as to their quality, but also the guarantee of the reputation of the Instrument, obtained from the e xperience of our patrons who have ured them fora generation. Alli lovers of this eminently household instrument, as well as parties pro- posing to purchase new Pianos, are invited to call and examine our assorsment. | ings and Grounds and other Architectural and Engineering | Works, including the Laying-out of Towns, OIROULAR NOTES & LETTERS OF OREDIT FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS, AVAILABLE IN ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD, ISSUED BY DUNCAN, SHERMAN & CO., New York. Ss. Cc. & CG. C. WARD, AGENTS FOR BARING BROTHERS & COMPANY, 56 Wall Street, New York, 28 State Street, Boston. insurance Scrip. WILLIAM C. GILMAN, 4 Pore Sraest, New Yorks, BUYS AND SELLS INSURANCE SCRIP. BROWN BROTHERS & CoO., 59 Watt Sr., ISSUE COMMERCIAL AND TRAVELLERS’ CREDITS FOR USE IN THIS COUNTRY AND ABROAD. WILLIAM C. TOWNSEND, Stock, Insurance, and Money Broker, 70 Wryposser Sr., PROVIDENCE, R. L Russell Sturgis, Jr., ARCHITECT, 98 Broadway, New York. Vaux, Withers & Co., ARCHITECTS, 110 Broadway. ROBERT MORRIS COPELAND, LANDSCAPE GARDENER, Author of ‘* Country Life,” furnishes plans and advice for laying out public and private grounds. Refers to John M. Forbes, Nathani>: Thayer, Boston, Mass.; Rufus Waterman, Providencc R. Lj Francis G. Shaw, Staten Island; R. 8. Fields, 1 rinceton, N. J. 41 Barristers’ Hall, Boston, Mass, Olmsted, Vaux & Co., LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS, The undersigned have associated under the above title for the business of advising on all matters of location, and of furnishing Desigus and Su ntendence for Build- Parks, Cemeteries, and Gardens. FRED. LAW OLMSTED, CALVERT pees Sac-simile reproductions of 110 Broadwa New York, Januar 7h 1966. sail ‘ COLGATE & CO.’S FRAGRANT TOILET SOAPS. A variety of kinds of superior excel- lence, for sale by first-class druggists and family grocers, and by all deal- ers in meg articles, Cheney Brothers’ Silks. — ALL KINDS OF MACHINE TWIST, SEWINC SILK, TRAMS AND ORCANZINES, FINE ORGANZINES FOR SILK MIXTURE CASSIMERES. PONGEE HANDKERCHIEFS, PLAIN AND PRINTED FOULARDS AND FLORENTINES, SILK WARP POPLINS AND DRESS GOODS, BELT RIBBONS. Silks for Special Purposes to Order. AGENTS: EDWARD H. ARNOLD & SON, 102 Franklin Street, New York. CHENEY & MILLIKEN, 4 Otis Street, Boston. LEONARD BAKER & CO., 210 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, RICE, CHASE & CO., 10 & 12 German Street, Baltimore. ACRICULTURAL WAREHOUSE AND SEED STORE. AMES PLOW COMPANY, Successors To Nourse, Mason & Co.,, AGRICULTUKAL IMPLEMENTS AND MACHINES, SEEDS, FERTILIZERS, Ero Quincy Hall, Boston. 53 Beekman Street, New York. Factories at Worcester and Groton Junction. PRANC’S AMERI CAN CHROMOS re oi water-coior paintings by eminent artists. Ask for them at the Art Stores, Send for list to L. PRANG & CO., Boston. The Nation. VOLUME THE SIXTH. * Unter allen uns zugehenden Wechselbiittern nimmt die New York Nation mit den gréssten Rang ein. Es enthalt die besten Kritiken tiber neue Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Literatur und Kunst, famose europaische Correspondenzen, und ist durch talentvolle Manner des Zeitalters redigirt.”— Nashville Staatszeitung. CONTENTS OF NO. 141: The Week. The Senate and the People. Mr. J. 8. Mill ~ 1, the Irish Difficulty. Presence: Poe The “* High.Toned Gentleman.” The Volunteers of 1867 (Italian Letter). National Repudiation: Correspondence. * Literary Notes. Spiritual Wives. Newport as it Was Mr. Moss's Christian Commission. Current Literature. PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY E. L. GODKIN & CO., 130 Nassau Street, New York. *,* Persons wishing to dispose of Vol. 1. bound or ! unbound, can do so at the office of the %
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eds 1a Mog greey ts tact. See ee