CHAPTER IV.
THE LOCOMOTIVE IN THE STREETS—IN BALTIMORE PUBLIC OPINION FIRST BECOMES SOUTHERN—GROWTH AND PROSPECTS OF BALTIMORE—ON TRADING POLITICIANS AND ILL WILL TO ENGLAND—WHY AN AMERICAN TUTOR THOUGHT NECESSARY FOR AN ENGLISHMAN—REPUDIATION—THE MASSES AND MIDDLE CLASSES IN FAVOUR OF IT—ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF IT—AN ARGUMENT USED 2,000 MILES FROM WALL STREET—WHY REPUBLICANS BOUND TO REPUDIATE—AMERICANS ADDICTED TO ABSTRACT REASONING—INSTANCES.
THE LOCOMOTIVE IN THE STREETS—IN BALTIMORE PUBLIC OPINION FIRST BECOMES SOUTHERN—GROWTH AND PROSPECTS OF BALTIMORE—ON TRADING POLITICIANS AND ILL WILL TO ENGLAND—WHY AN AMERICAN TUTOR THOUGHT NECESSARY FOR AN ENGLISHMAN—REPUDIATION—THE MASSES AND MIDDLE CLASSES IN FAVOUR OF IT—ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF IT—AN ARGUMENT USED 2,000 MILES FROM WALL STREET—WHY REPUBLICANS BOUND TO REPUDIATE—AMERICANS ADDICTED TO ABSTRACT REASONING—INSTANCES.
We very often find a difficulty in getting our horses to take quietly the sound of a railway train in motion. It was at Baltimore that I first saw the locomotive dragging a train along the main street of a city. All the precaution that was taken was merely to ring a bell on the top of the engine to warn foot-passengers and drivers of carriages. Many horses were passed, and many crossed the moving train, but I did not observe that in any instance they took the least notice of it. I afterwards saw the same arrangement at Chicago, at New York, and at many other places, and did not anywhere hear that accidents resulted from it.
A Marylander’s Opinion of Government.
Baltimore was the first place in which I found the general sentiment strongly Southern. Balls and bazaars were being got up, while I was there, for the openly avowed purpose of collecting funds to support those families in the South which had been reducedto poverty by the late war. This made me feel as if I were among another people; for in the North I had heard the South spoken of very vindictively, as ‘that they needed more suffering to take their pride out of them;’ and ‘that nothing could be done with the South till the present proprietors had all been swept away, and Northern men substituted for them.’ I am not aware, however, that I ever heard any remarks of this kind made by persons whom we should describe as of the upper class.
There has been a large emigration to Baltimore, from the States of the late Southern Confederacy, of people who would not live under negro domination as long as they had the means of living elsewhere. Many Northern men also had lately settled there, in expectation that the business of the place would rapidly increase. As it has a fine harbour, and the development of the railway system is now connecting it with the whole of the interior, there appears to be no reason why it should not, at no very distant day, become a dangerous rival of Philadelphia and even of New York. I understood that as many as 4,000 houses were built here in the last twelve months.
‘Sir,’ said a Maryland planter to me, ‘many Americans, of whom I am one, think that the English government is the best in the world. No system of government which, like ours, can breed nothing better than trading politicians, can be either generous or just; and must sooner or later fall, overwhelmed by the hatred of some and the contempt of other sections of the community.’ The same gentleman was of opinion that the animosity felt towardsEngland after the revolutionary war had now almost died out among native-born Americans; for instance, there is, he said, not one Fenian lodge in the whole of New England. Whatever ill-will there may be existing at present originates in the Irish, and radiates from them, if in any instances it has spread beyond them. An Englishman who had been long settled in America, and who took part in the conversation, thought differently. He was of opinion, that at all events a strong prejudice existed in the minds of native-born Americans against the English.
While at dinner at my hotel, a gentleman who was seated opposite to me—he was one of the few stout men, I believe the only one, I saw in America—accosted me with the remark ‘that he could not believe what he understood me to say, that I had not yet been a month in the country, because’—for this was his reason—‘I spoke the language so well. Or if I am to believe it,’ he went on, ‘I suppose you had an American tutor to teach you our language.’ I assured him that he had understood me rightly, and that I had never had the advantage of the instruction he considered necessary, nor was there such a great difference between the language of America and that of England as to make Englishmen feel the need of American tutors. ‘That, sir,’ he replied, ‘is by no means in accordance with my experience. I have myself conversed with Englishmen, and found their language very unlike our own. They seldom know where to use and where not to use the initial H. And their language is full of ungrammatical and vulgar expressions, from which ours is entirely free.’
The Language of America.
This gentleman’s mistake can be easily explained; and the explanation will show that it is one into which an American may very possibly fall. It is a remarkable fact that the English spoken in America is not only very pure, but also is spoken with equal purity by all classes. This in some measure, of course, results from the success of their educational efforts, and from the fact which arises out of it that they are, almost to a man, a nation of readers. But not only is it the same language without vulgarisms, in the mouths of all classes, but it is the same language without any dialectical differences over the whole continent. The language in every man’s mouth is that of literature and of society; spoken at San Francisco just as it is spoken at New York, and on the Gulf of Mexico just as on the great lakes. It is even the language of the negroes in the towns. There is nothing resembling this in Europe, where every county, as in England, or every province and canton, has a different dialect. Of this the philological observer I was dining with was ignorant. He only knew that all Americans spoke uniformly one dialect. He naturally therefore supposed that all Englishmen must do the same; and as his acquaintance with Englishmen was confined to poor immigrants, he imagined that their dialect was the language of all Englishmen.
Often, in parts of the country most remote from each other, in wooden shanties and the poorest huts, I had this interesting fact of the purity and identity of the language of the Americans forced on my attention. And at such times I thought, not without some feelings of shame and sorrow, of thewretched vocabulary, consisting of not more than three or four hundred words, and those often ungrammatically used, and always more or less mispronounced, of our honest and hard-working peasantry. As language is the vehicle of ideas, these poor fellows have not been fairly used, and are being deprived of a large portion of the rich intellectual patrimony of Englishmen.
Will the Debt be Paid?
Before I went to America, I felt as certain as one can feel about any future event, that the Americans would pay every cent of their debt. I think still they possibly may. For their own sakes and for the honour of the race I hope they will. But I am not now so positive on this point as I was. Wherever it was allowable in conversation, I introduced the subject of the debt. At first, to my surprise (but after a time I got so accustomed to the expression of the sentiment that I should have been surprised had I heard anything to the contrary), I never met a single person in railway cars, or in hotels, who was in favour of complete payment. Many were in favour of complete repudiation; but far the greater number advocated the plan of immediate payment, by an issue to the public creditors of, as I heard it sometimes put, cartloads of greenbacks. This, of course, would not be very far from repudiation pure and simple: though nominally a payment in full, it would really be only the payment of a few shillings in the pound, as so large an issue would enormously depreciate the value of the greenbacks. This is the plan of Mr. Pendleton of Ohio, who is now the democratic candidate for the next presidency. It must therefore be approved generally by his supporters.The people, at a knowledge of whose sentiments I arrived in the way I have just mentioned, belonged chiefly, I suppose, to the class of storekeepers and travelling traders; though I have sometimes heard persons whose position I knew was better announce the same opinions. On the other hand, however, I never met with any flourishing and respectable merchant, and I may almost say with anyone whom we should describe as belonging to the upper class of society, who admitted for a moment the possibility of repudiation in any form. It seems, then, that in forecasting the probabilities of this question, the class that has numbers on its side must be regarded as pitted against the class that has on its side cultivation, intelligence, and wealth. But even from these few, some, as was once observed to me, ought probably to be discounted; because it is possible that some may be making a cheap profession of honesty, which they know will not, and have no wish ever should, be acted on. And the more certain they may feel of ultimate repudiation, the louder they may declare themselves in favour of payment. The South, whenever it shall have resumed its place in the councils of the Union, will, as most people seem to think, be in favour of the use of the sponge; for how can people be expected to tax themselves to pay for what was the instrument of their humiliation, conquest, and ruin? The question, then, between payment and repudiation, complete or partial, cannot now be decided so clearly and peremptorily against the latter as one could wish.
Of course the argument most commonly usedagainst payment is, that it necessitates such a burden of taxation as is no longer tolerable, that it is impoverishing the whole community, destroying both the home and the foreign trade, and pressing with peculiar and insupportable weight on the humbler classes.
Again, it is urged by many that the amount of their taxation is the one undoubted cause, both of the cost and of the corruption of their government. If they go back to their old amount of taxation, there will be no work for, and, what will be more to the purpose, no funds to maintain, these armies of official bloodsuckers.
I found, too, that there was floating before the minds of some an entrancing vision of what would be the wealth of the country if production were cheapened and trade revived, and if everybody had twice as much money to spend as at present.
Another argument I frequently heard, was made to rest on an attempt to separate in idea the bondholders and public creditors of all kinds from the people; and while it spoke of them as an extremely wealthy class, living in luxury, and doing nothing (a very unrepublican position for anyone to occupy), it suggested the idea that their wealth was derived from the burdens, that is to say, the sufferings, of the masses of the people, who, all the while, were struggling very hard for a bare subsistence. The object of this comparison is to make the bondholder an object of odium, and the tax-payers of the humbler classes objects of commiseration, in the hope that by so doing a rankling sense of injustice might be implanted in the breast of the latter.
Arguments for Repudiation.
At an hotel in a town on the very frontiers of civilisation, two thousand miles away from Wall Street, I heard the question of ‘to pay or not to pay’ debated, and the conclusion in favour of the latter alternative was clinched by the proof of the impossibility of paying. The speaker was an ex-judge, and was a man who spoke and reasoned well,—I mean in such a way as to carry his hearers along with him. His argument on this point was very concise. ‘Just before the war,’ his words were, ‘the Government of the United States published a return, collected by its own officers, of the value of all the property of the people of the United States. The correctness of this return is unquestioned. We know from it both the saleable value of the property of the people and the annual income of that property. The property of the whole people is for purposes of taxation a single estate, but the debt we have incurred, plus the capital represented by our ordinary taxation, is greater in amount than the value of the whole of the property of the people of the United States; and the interest to be paid on the debt, plus the taxation required for other purposes, general and local, is greater than the income of the property of the whole people. And as no private estate can carry a debt greater in amount than the value of the estate, so no country can bear burdens that represent a property, if they were capitalised, greater than the property of the country, and an annual amount of taxation greater than the income of that property. I will not say, then, that the debt must be repudiated, for that would imply that we had some option in the matter;I will only say that it is impossible that it should be paid, either capital or interest. The estate can’t do it. It is an impossibility.’ Both the statements of this argument and the inference drawn from them appeared to the audience unquestionable. There was a murmur of assent, and conviction was expressed on every face.
I will report the firing off of one more shot against the payment of the debt which I was so fortunate as to witness. It is worth mentioning, both for the sake of theentourageand because it involves a style of argument I found very frequently used, and with convincing effect, among the people of the United States.
The Governor of ——, one of the largest States in the Union, had been so good as to invite me to call upon him, that I might be introduced to some friend of his who would be with him on the following day. On being shown into the reception-room, I found the Governor seated in a kind of state, with his back to the fire and his feet on the table. On the opposite side were seated in a row eight or ten persons. They appeared to be a deputation from some town or association, who were then having an interview with the Governor. When the interruption caused by my entrance was over, a tall grey-headed man who had been speaking as I entered resumed his argument. He had rather the look of a well-to-do farmer, not of our stolid type, but of the keen American type. He was quick and incisive in his style of speaking, and dealt much with interrogatories, as is common with persons who have been mastered by an idea, and cannot but think that itmust appear to others just in the light in which it appears to themselves. He proceeded:—‘What I want to know is, whether this is not a republic?’ He looked round, and was satisfied with the amount of apparent assent. ‘The next thing I would ask is, what is the meaning of a republic?’ No one was prepared with an answer, and so he proposed one himself. ‘A monarchy is a government where everything is contrived for the advantage of an individual. An aristocracy is a government where everything is contrived for the advantage of a few. But a republic is a government in which whatever is for the advantage of the greater number either is or ought to be law. And now I ask another question: would it not be for the advantage of the greater part of the citizens of this State, and for the greater part of the citizens of the United States, that we should have no debt?’ This was an unassailable position; and so he at once proceeded to the conclusion. ‘Well then, I say, that if this is a republic there ought to be a law passed to free us from this debt. If we are not repudiators we are not republicans.’ I am unable to report any other arguments that were urged by the deputation, for at this point the Governor conducted me into another room.
The method of reasoning contained in the gaunt old gentleman’s argument against the payment of debts by republicans is, as I observed, very frequently used and very well received in the United States. It is worth noticing, because it is a method that is seldom used and never accepted on this side the water. It proceeds by assuming the truth of some abstract propositions, of which neither truth norfalsehood can properly be predicated, but which a half-instructed audience is always ready to accept, and then goes on to apply them to some question on which they appear to have a bearing, and which happens to be interesting at the moment. For instance, I was speaking on the subject of negro suffrage with one of the leading supporters of that concession in the South. An Englishman would probably have confined himself to the consideration of the fitness of the African for so important a part in the government of the country. My American friend contented himself with a kind of numerical formula. ‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘the grown-up male population of the country is represented by the number 100. By excluding the negroes from the franchise, you reduce the voters to about one-half, that is 50. But, in a constituency of 50, a majority of 26 will rule. That is to say, 26 will rule 100. That is bad, but it is not all the evil of the restriction. In small bodies it is generally found that one resolute mind takes the lead. The result therefore would be that one would rule the 100. All this would be the consequence of departing from the simple republican rule of giving the vote equally to all.’ The gentleman had this formularised argument in favour of the admission of the African to equal political power with the white race drawn out on a paper, which he took from his pocket-book and showed me—I quite believe, with the idea that I should find it unanswerable. It was all in vain that I pointed out to him that his argument was so abstract that it omitted all consideration of every one of the actual conditions of the question. He himself was thoroughly persuaded of its conclusiveness.
Americans addicted to Abstract Reasoning.
Another argument of just the same kind, but which aimed at the opposite conclusion, was frequently urged upon me. ‘Have you read,’ I was asked, ‘Bishop ——’s book?’ I forget the name of the ingenious prelate. ‘He has demonstrated that the negro is not a man. No human being was saved from the Flood except Noah’s family, and it is quite impossible that he could have had a negro son. The negro must therefore at that time have been regarded as a brute beast. And as Noah was acting under Divine guidance, he could not have been wrong in his estimate of the negro. And the negro cannot be any better now than he was then, for a brute beast can never become a man. We therefore are justified in looking upon him just as Noah looked upon him, and in supposing that he is of the gorilla race, only a little improved.’
I do not mean that a well-educated American would be at all more disposed to accept this kind of argument than a well-educated Englishman, but that it goes down with multitudes of Americans who have from their youth up had very little time for acquiring any knowledge but that of their business, yet feel themselves called on by the circumstances of American life to form and express opinions on almost every subject; and this is a call to which few are slow in responding.