CHAPTER V.
WASHINGTON—STYLE OF SPEAKING IN CONGRESS—CONGRESS NO NURSERY FOR STATESMEN—SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON—EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN WASHINGTON—SOME OPINIONS OF AN AMERICAN BISHOP—COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE—USE OF THE DEPARTMENT—ITS MUSEUM GIVES AN IDEA OF THE VASTNESS OF THE COUNTRY—ITS NATURAL ADVANTAGES—WHAT VARIETY OF PRODUCTIONS HAS DONE FOR ENGLAND WILL BE REPEATED IN AMERICA—SPECIAL EXCELLENCE OF CALIFORNIAN PRODUCTIONS—THE CALIFORNIAN HIMSELF—CALIFORNIA COMPARED WITH ITALY—WHY COLOURED WAITERS PREFERABLE TO WHITE—NEGRO FUNERAL WITH MASONIC HONOURS—AMERICAN BIRDS’ NESTS—BILL FOR MAKING EDUCATION COMPULSORY—COLOURED SCHOOLS—COMPARATIVE INTELLIGENCE OF THE NEGRO—VULGAR ERRORS ABOUT AMERICANS—NIGHT ATTENDANTS AT HOTEL READ ‘OLIVER TWIST’—CAPITOL—TREASURY—PATENT OFFICE—WHAT OUR DIPLOMACY IN AMERICA SHOULD BE—USE OF ICED WATER.
WASHINGTON—STYLE OF SPEAKING IN CONGRESS—CONGRESS NO NURSERY FOR STATESMEN—SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON—EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN WASHINGTON—SOME OPINIONS OF AN AMERICAN BISHOP—COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE—USE OF THE DEPARTMENT—ITS MUSEUM GIVES AN IDEA OF THE VASTNESS OF THE COUNTRY—ITS NATURAL ADVANTAGES—WHAT VARIETY OF PRODUCTIONS HAS DONE FOR ENGLAND WILL BE REPEATED IN AMERICA—SPECIAL EXCELLENCE OF CALIFORNIAN PRODUCTIONS—THE CALIFORNIAN HIMSELF—CALIFORNIA COMPARED WITH ITALY—WHY COLOURED WAITERS PREFERABLE TO WHITE—NEGRO FUNERAL WITH MASONIC HONOURS—AMERICAN BIRDS’ NESTS—BILL FOR MAKING EDUCATION COMPULSORY—COLOURED SCHOOLS—COMPARATIVE INTELLIGENCE OF THE NEGRO—VULGAR ERRORS ABOUT AMERICANS—NIGHT ATTENDANTS AT HOTEL READ ‘OLIVER TWIST’—CAPITOL—TREASURY—PATENT OFFICE—WHAT OUR DIPLOMACY IN AMERICA SHOULD BE—USE OF ICED WATER.
While at Washington I was frequently present at the debates in both Houses. I was not much impressed by the style of speaking either in the Senate or in the Chamber of Representatives. I heard much good common sense, and many of the attacks and defences which are necessary in party warfare, but I heard no eloquence, and nothing even that on this side we should call good speaking. Where eloquence was attempted, it seemed to me to result in declamation. I went away with the idea that both senators and representatives spoke, not like persons who were in the habit of addressing cultivated audiences, but whose style had been formed by the practice of canvassing-speeches and mob-oratory.
Congress no Nursery for Statesmen.
The most striking difference between our parliamentary system and the American Congress is, that ours is as perfect a school as is conceivable for statesmanship, while theirs can never be anything of the kind, except accidentally and in a very slight degree. With us a man who is destined for public life enters Parliament while still young. If there is anything in him, he is generally able to retain his seat. Thus he is all his life through learning the routine of administrative practice and the science of statesmanship. All along every word he utters is set down in black and white, to stand in evidence for or against him, and to be weighed by the House and by the public. And it is the opinion of the House and public, thus formed, that assigns him his place in the hierarchy of party. If he is capable of becoming a statesman, with time and training he becomes one. If the House and the country know that he has shown himself one of the ablest men of his party, high office is his right. He has to thank no one for it but himself. If he has proved himself the ablest man of his party, the first place is his. He has established his claim to it in the face of the world. Nothing of this kind goes on in the American Congress. It may be said to have no personal continuity. A large proportion of Congress—and this happens every fourth year—are new men, thrown up to the surface by the action of local political causes in their respective States; and most of these new men will themselves be superseded by other new men in the ensuing Congress. The idea of forming statesmen does not at all enter into the aim of the American Congress; it hardly seems to regard itself as standing in need of statesmanship,wherever and however acquired. It is rather a machine for ascertaining and carrying out the opinions of the people. A successful local politician, be he a grocer or a shoemaker, a rail-splitter or a tailor, will find his way into the Senate.
The society of Washington, while Congress is sitting, is remarkable for its great variety. There are the heads of the civil and military departments with their subordinates; and the senators and representatives from all parts of the Union, from California, the great West, the highly educated States of New England, and from the commercial and manufacturing States of New York and Pennsylvania. At present we have only to regret the absence of the gentlemen of the South. Many of these persons bring with them their families. The society thus formed is not so vast as that anyone should be lost in it; nor is there much tendency to break up into sets. The influence of the White House, which acts as a centre, and the practice of general receptions, which is universal among official people and persons of distinction, prevent isolation. The variety just mentioned in the component parts of the society of Washington is very perceptible, and contributes largely to its interest and picturesqueness. The only difference I observed between the manners of these republicans and our own, was that they were easier and less constrained than we are; for no one is haunted with the idea of maintaining or of establishing a position, because no one supposes himself better than anybody else; they appeared, too, to possess, in a greater degree than is common among us, that great requisite of good breeding, the doublefacility of being pleased and of pleasing. I would only add that there seem to be few dull people in American society. There is with them more general animation andenjouementof life than with us.
Episcopal Church at Washington.
On attending morning service at the Church of the Epiphany at Washington, I found on the seat a printed paper containing a letter from the congregation to the minister, announcing that they begged that for the future he would consent to receive an increase to his salary, raising it to £800 a year; and one from the minister to the congregation, thanking them for their liberality. In addition to this salary they had presented him with a furnished house.
Washington, with a population of 120,000, has in the city eight Episcopal churches, and four in the suburb of George Town. There were when I was there two additional congregations in process of formation. At that time they were meeting in an upper room, but it was expected that they would soon be strong enough to build churches for themselves, and to become fully organised. An effort is being made to obtain a bishop for the district of Columbia, and, if possible, to get the consent of the bishops to his being made an archbishop and metropolitan of the American Church.
At the service I attended, there was not a seat vacant in the Church of the Epiphany; but they were all filled with well-dressed persons. In the afternoon of the same Sunday I went to the church of St. John’s, to be present at a Bible class held by the Adjutant-General of the United States army, a man whom any church might be thankful to have among its members, and to hear the catechising conducted by the rector. The children catechised were those of the upper class,for here also I found no ill-dressed people among the congregation. In the evening I went to Trinity Church, where I was told I should see a congregation of the humbler classes. I heard a clergyman conduct the service and preach, who I thought possessed just the qualities which would adapt him for obtaining an influence over those classes, but I saw very few of them in the church.
As I am not aware that any bishop of the American Episcopal Church was at Washington while I was there, I will take this opportunity for offering to the consideration of English Churchmen some remarks that were made to me elsewhere by an American bishop. I run the risk of doing this without permission, because I believe that here at home we are far too ignorant of, not to say indifferent about, what is passing in the minds and hearts too of our American brother-churchmen. He thought that the Episcopal Church in America was the natural, or at all events now the chief, bond of union between the old country and the United States. With very few exceptions, and they are exceptions that are not worth considering, the Episcopalians cherish the recollections of the old country most fondly; whereas it is notorious that the American churches which are connected with English dissent are more or less actuated by feelings, if not of animosity, yet certainly of coldness towards the old country.
Some Remarks of an American Bishop.
The Episcopal Church is a great power in the United States, and is more respected, and more influential in forming and guiding public opinion than even the government and legislature. Its members comprise the great bulk of the most refined and educatedclass in the country. Those who join us from that class come to us because they regard Romanism as a religion not for men, but only for women and children, while they look upon the other churches as having little devotion and less stability.
The Episcopal Church was opposed to the late war, and though pressure was put upon it, it would not give in to the fierce mania of the moment. This was the case in both sections.
The clergy of the different churches, but more particularly of the Episcopal Church, are, in the existing state of things on this continent, the natural and only aristocracy. The lawyers come next. The politicians are nowhere. The American people have had plenty of time and opportunities enough for weighing the latter, and have found them wanting in everything for which man respects his fellow-man: all the while their respect for the clergy of the Episcopal Church has constantly been becoming deeper.
The five Yankee States, with the exception of Connecticut, which is the most Episcopal State in the Union, are rapidly becoming Unitarian and Universalist. This in some degree accounts for the equivocal character of their acuteness, and for their singular want of magnanimity.
When he was in England, he was struck with the fact that the members of the Government took no notice of the American bishops. In this they showed their ignorance of the public mind in America. They also showed their disregard of the advance of the church to which they profess to belong. He did not suppose they neglected them because they were afraid of giving offence to the other religions communitiesof America, but simply because they were ignorant about America, and careless about their own church.
The Americans, being a practical people, have established, in connection with the general government at Washington, a department of agriculture, presided over by a commissioner. One of the objects of this department is to form a perfect museum of the agriculture of the United States. This is the act of a practical people, because as America is a new country, in the process of settlement, there must always be immigrants starting, some for one locality and some for another, who are in need of information as to what kinds or varieties of grain, vegetables, and fruit would be most suitable for the soil and climate of their proposed new home; and as to the best methods of cultivation for each crop; and what will be the difficulties they will have to contend with, and what have been ascertained to be the best remedies for these evils. It is possible that each year the value of the information distributed throughout the Union by this department may be many times greater than the cost of the department. If so, the cost is a small price to pay for a very great advantage.
My reason, however, for mentioning this museum of agriculture, is that it contributes very much towards making distinct in one’s mind the idea of the vast extent of the territory of the United States, and its great range of climate. This it does by ocular demonstration. Here are collected into one view specimens of the agricultural and horticultural produce of every State in the Union, from Maine to Florida, and from Massachusetts to California. These specimens range through all the products of the temperate regions ofthe earth, and descend far down into the list of the products of tropical climes. All the cereals we grow in this country, Indian corn in many varieties, the grape, every description of European fruit—in some cases, as in that of the apple, greatly improved by its transference to America—tobacco, rice, the sweet potato, the sugar-cane, the orange, the banana, ending with the cocoa-nut of the South of Florida.
Natural Advantages of the United States.
Here is a region larger than the whole of Europe, which if it were transferred to the part of the globe which Europe occupies, only retaining its latitude, would reach down to the Sahara of Africa, covering the whole of the Mediterranean. This vast territory contains an inland navigation which is the grandest in the world, and has in no way taxed the labour of man. From its extremest point at the north, at the head of the navigable stream of the Missouri, to its southern point at New Orleans, there is an open course of three thousand miles without a single break, a distance as great as the space which separates London from Timbuctoo, or from Bokhara. And this main artery of communication, the value of which is enhanced a thousand fold by the fact that it runs from north to south, enabling the produce of so many climes to be exchanged, instead of running along the same line of latitude, where there would be little or nothing to exchange, is supplemented on the right and left by 23,000 miles more of the natural navigation of its great affluents. And the vast valley which this system of rivers opens to traffic and travel is so extensive and fertile that it could support the whole population of Europe, and probably will support some day as largea population in far greater material well-being, and with far more highly cultivated intelligence.
If everything throughout this vast territory had been arranged by the most intelligent of mankind, with a view solely to the convenience of its inhabitants, we cannot imagine how it could have been made to contribute to those ends in a higher degree than it does at present. Not only is it capable of producing to a practically unlimited extent every plant that man cultivates, but it is also inexhaustibly rich in the precious and the useful metals, and in mineral fuel. The configuration too of the continent is such as to aid man in many ways in subduing and utilising the soil, for on each side of the grand central valley rises a long range of mountains, the one descending to the Pacific, the other to the Atlantic, which give birth to multitudes of rivers, which connect these vast districts with the two oceans, and supply harbours for carrying on intercourse with all the world.
A Consequence of Variety of Productions.
One of the causes that has most contributed to the wealth and commercial aptitude of the inhabitants of the old country is, that the productions of no two districts in it are precisely similar. The districts, for instance, that breed cattle and sheep are not always those that fatten them, and never those that consume them. So with cereals, one district is good for wheat, another for barley, another for oats, another for beans and peas. Fish that is taken on the coast is consumed in the interior. A similar remark may be made of the various kinds of minerals with which different parts of the island have been enriched. Even the granite of Scotland is wanted in London for its streets. Every town must get itsflag-stones from a distance. Each kind of manufacture has certain requirements which render one district more suitable for it than another; so that for the article produced in each manufacturing locality there must be trade between that locality and all others. Hence it comes about that there is a larger interchange of home productions in this country than in any other in the world. In this respect compare Italy with ourselves. All its districts have much the same productions; the result of which is the minimum of home trade. How enormous must be the differences which must result to Italy and ourselves from this dissimilarity in our respective circumstances! I apply this to the United States of America. The cause which has contributed so much to make us wealthy, intelligent, and commercial, is to be found in the United States—with the difference, however, that what has been done here on a very small scale, is there done, and has yet to be done, on an enormous scale. Their variety of products is far greater than ours, and will have to be exchanged to far greater amounts, and so will employ a proportionately greater number of agents. What a vast traffic will it be when the wheat consumed throughout the Union shall be supplied by what are now the North-western States and California, and the mutton and beef shall be supplied by the Western prairies, and the pork by the maize-growing States, and the various metals, precious and useful, and the different forms of manufacture, each by different localities to all the rest!
This Museum of Agriculture and Horticulture gives one the means of comparing the size and quality ofthe fruits, vegetables, and cereals grown in different parts of the Union. The effects of climate and soil are, as might have been expected, very perceptible. A variety of the apple, for instance, that produces very large and good fruit in Illinois and Michigan, will deteriorate as one goes farther south, till at last it becomes not worth cultivating; while one sees specimens of other varieties, which their nature adapts to the sunnier States. The variety and excellence of the produce of the whole country is very striking, for everywhere in the United States there is light and heat enough and to spare; but what strikes one most of all is, the peculiar and extraordinary excellence of everything that comes from California; for instance, the pear La Belle Angevine, without any of the minute attention that is bestowed on its culture in France, very commonly attains the almost incredible weight of between three and four pounds. And all other kinds of fruit, and every kind of vegetable, grow in the same luxuriant manner. This is something that must be seen to be believed; but when seen, it enables one to understand how in the short space of twenty years this State has passed from an uninhabited wilderness to one of the richest and most powerful States in the Union. With such a climate and soil, to say nothing of its enormous mineral wealth, ‘it is bound,’ to use the local word, to leave New York, and Pennsylvania, and all the old leading States of the Union far behind, and, indeed, every other part of the world, whether new or old.
California compared with Italy.
One cannot become acquainted with half-a-dozen Californians without seeing that man himself has been improved in this wonder-working region—thefinest, not only that the Anglo-Saxon race, but that any race of man has ever inhabited. There is a quickness and determination of mind, and a calmness of manner, a quickness of eye and a cleanness of limb about a Californian that you cannot but notice. They have in a thousand ways shown enterprise which astonishes even Americans themselves. But in nothing have they shown it to such an incredible degree as in their agriculture. Their wines are of many kinds, as may be seen in this museum, and some of them are very good. Their garden produce is quite unrivalled. But I will only mention what they have done in the culture of wheat. Twenty years ago there was no agriculture in this State. Twenty years are not time enough here to enable us to make up our minds as to whether we will use the steam-plough. But in these twenty years the clear-sighted and undaunted Californian has learnt how to grow enough wheat to feed the inhabitants of his own State, and in a great degree of the neighbouring States of Oregon and Washington, and the whole population of our British Columbia. And not content with this, he has undertaken the supply of Chili and Peru, and the other republics on the seaboard of the Eastern Pacific. This comes to a great deal—to what is almost beyond belief. To the Californian, however, it is nothing at all. He has for several years been sending wheat the length of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to England. Eight years ago, I saw cargoes of Californian wheat selling at a profit in Liverpool. And last year he capped even this, for he sent both flour and wheat to New York, selling the former at eleven dollars a barrel—that is, two dollars a barrel cheaperthan the great millers of Richmond can afford to lay it down at, whose mills are, as it were, just outside the gates of New York. And the latter they sold at a price which, had there been enough of it, would have completely excluded Chicago and the great wheat-producing States of the North-west from the market, and so would have swept away, at a single stroke, the chief part of the business of the great Erie Canal.
Any little change at our own door appears great to us, while the mightiest changes at a distance affect us little: if, however, we are disposed to weigh events in accordance with their intrinsic and real importance, we might compare the rising of the star of this extraordinary community with the lately recovered unity and independence of Italy, which has of late engrossed so much of our attention and interest. California at the present moment contains a population of between six and seven hundred thousand souls—Italy one of twenty-four millions. But if the old Nation and the new State were to try their strength against one another, I believe that this handful of keen-witted and intrepid men would go just where they pleased, and do just what they pleased in any part of Italy; while the Italians, however much of their strength they might put forth, would find themselves quite unable to do anything of the kind with California. How much would a Californian population of twenty-four millions make of Italy! They would have no armies of officials, no brigandage, no debt; their ships would sail on every sea; their influence would be felt all over Europe and throughout the world.
Coloured Waiters.
At Washington, as at Philadelphia and Baltimore, I found the waiters at the hotels were coloured men. I very much preferred this to having the white waiters I had fallen in with at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York: the latter, I thought, felt the degradation of their position. In America, waiting in hotels and railway cars, being domestic servants, and keeping barbers’ shops, are the only employments, with the exception of field-labour in the South, which are really left open to the coloured race. For a white man, therefore, to become a waiter at an hotel, is to sink himself to the level of the black. It is impossible to conceive a native American placing himself in such a situation. It is too poor an employment for him; it is of a servile character; and it is one which, in public opinion and by general practice, has been assigned to the African. Even here, in England, one pities the man whom circumstances have made a footman—when one sees the hosts of men occupied in this way in London and elsewhere, and compares what they are, and their sad prospects, with the fine manly fellows they might have been, and the independence they might have secured for themselves and their children in Canada, the Western States, Brazil, on the Rio Plata, in Natal, Australia or New Zealand, or in other places where the climate is fine, land a drug, and the only thing wanted is men who can work as Englishmen and their descendants alone can and do. The feelings, however, of commiseration with which in England we regard the man whom circumstances have placed in such a position, become in America dashed with somewhat of contempt for the whites who voluntarilyplace themselves in it. One does not feel in the least degree in this way towards the coloured waiters. It is not in the nature of the black that he should ever work hard enough to cultivate the soil, where the climate is such that the European is capable of labouring in it. He has it not in him to become, and never has become, a settler. One cannot imagine half-a-dozen negroes voluntarily submitting for half-a-dozen years to the incessant toil—the ploughing, the sowing, the weeding, the harvesting, the threshing, the cattle-tending of a Northern farm. It is not only that they are constitutionally lazy, but that they are also of too volatile a disposition for such a life. Nature, however, has fitted them for such employments as domestic service and waiting in hotels. In their case there is an obvious congruity between the employment and the person. When you thank the willing and cheerful black for changing your plate, or ministering in some way to your personal wants, and get in return the almost universal ‘Vara welcome,’ you do not feel in the slightest degree that a good and likely man is being wasted and degraded just for the promotion of your own comfort and convenience.
A Negro Masonic Funeral.
On a Sunday while I was at Washington, I saw a grand negro funeral. The deceased had been a minister in one of their churches, and also a Freemason. He was therefore buried with Masonic honours. They chose for the procession the streets in which, and the day and the hour of the day when, there would be most people to witness it. The order was as follows:—First came a negro on horseback to open the way; then a powerful band. These weresucceeded by two hundred Masons, all well dressed, with aprons, scarves, and badges. After these the corpse in a handsome coffin. In order that this might be completely seen, the sides of the hearse were of plate-glass. The corpse was followed by twenty carriages, each drawn by two horses. These carriages contained the ladies of thecortége. I saw no attempt among them, by drawing down blinds or the use of the handkerchief, to conceal their grief. Their bearing, I rather thought, indicated the presence in their sable breasts of the very ancient desire to see and be seen. No whites took any part in the funeral. A great many, however, had assembled to see it pass, all of whom appeared to behave very decorously. There was evidently a great effort on the part of the blacks to appear to advantage. It was a curious and interesting sight. Some of the mulattoes were tall and good-looking, but far the greater part of them were intensely ugly. In the procession was every shade of colour, from ebony to what might have easily passed for the complexion of an European; for in the United States not even light hair and blue eyes with a fair skin can rescue from social exclusion the man who is known to have in his veins a drop of negro blood.
Wherever in the South I mentioned this negro funeral, the same remark was made on the Freemasonry of the negroes. Everyone professed himself ignorant of how the negroes had come by it. No one knew who had admitted them; and no one would acknowledge them as brother-Masons.
On going over the Smithsonian Museum, I was much struck by the superiority of the birds ofAmerica to those of Europe in the architectural skill and beauty of their nests.
While I was at Washington, a bill was before Congress for depriving of the franchise every father whose children (up to a certain age) did not attend school at least twelve weeks each year.
It was here that I first saw something of the Freedman’s Bureau. Probably in the first days of emancipation some agency was needed for regulating the movements of the negroes, and for supplying them with information as to their newly acquired rights. I am, however, disposed to think that so extensive a department as this bureau was altogether a mistake. It has cost much, and, as far as I could judge, done some harm and very little good. But of that anon: I will only speak now of my visit to one of the coloured schools I found at Washington under its superintendence. Like all the American schools I visited in towns, it was graded; that is, as we should express it, the school was divided into classes, each class having its own teacher and its own school-room, and being in every particular entirely distinct and separate from all the rest. There were about four hundred children on the books, and the usual number, about fifty, in each grade. It is impossible to exaggerate the advantages of this method of teaching. Each teacher has but one class; therefore the whole of the school-time is actually and actively employed in teaching. One class is not idle while the teacher is attending to another. No child is neglected. All parts of the school are equally cared for. There is much emulation among the teachers, each desiring that his part in the general system shall bedone well. Each teacher having only one step or grade to teach, perfects himself in it, and teaches it thoroughly. When it has been completely mastered, the child is passed on to the teacher of the next step or grade, who in his turn goes through the same process; till at last the child, at the end of three years—for each grade requires six months—leaves the school, having passed through all it professes to teach, and generally having acquired it all thoroughly.
Coloured Schools.
As I am not one of those who believe that the intellect of the longest civilised and most highly cultivated race in the world is no better than that of a race of which no branch has ever been civilised or cultivated in any way or degree—or, to put it in other words, that those who have given greater proofs of intelligence than any other race of men are (which is a contradiction in terms) on a level with those who have never given any proofs whatever of intelligence—I carefully notice everything that appears in any way to militate against my side of the question. For this reason I must mention that I was taken by surprise at the quickness and attainments of these four hundred coloured children. I never saw a school in England in which so much readiness was shown in answering questions as to the meaning of words that occurred in the reading lesson, and questions as to the meaning of what had been read. I must, however, remark that this may perhaps have been owing to the excellence of the teachers, who at present are chiefly enthusiasts in the cause of the negro from New England, and to this method of grading the schools. Of course the children were not readier or better taught than white children are in America.And here, besides, comes in the doubt whether the intellectual development of this race, as all travellers in Africa assert, does not stop at the age of fourteen. There was in connection with these schools one for adult negro scholars, which may be regarded as to some extent a contradiction of this opinion, for I will not call it fact.
A great many of our ideas about American manners are mere traditions of an utterly gone-by state of things, as far away from their present manners (for changes are rapidly effected in America) as our own present manners are from those of Squire Western’s and Parson Trulliber’s day. In travelling 8,000 miles, through all parts of the Union, I never once saw, even in the woods of the South, or on the prairies of the West, any more than in New York or Boston, atable d’hôtedinner, served, at the sound of a bell, at one time for all the guests of the house, upon which a scramble ensued for every dish. I should be surprised to hear that this practice now existed in a single hotel in the Union. The method of proceeding, which is now universal, is for every single person, or party of persons, to be served separately. Nor are the middle-class Americans, who are the chief frequenters of hotels, more rapid in despatching their meals than we are. They are the reverse of talkative. They are not inquisitive. They are far more civil and helpful to one another and to strangers than Englishmen are. Those whom we should consider in good society are in a very high degree quiet and unassuming. I never heard an American use the word ‘Siree’ for Sir; nor did I ever hear one ‘guess’; nor was I ever asked to‘liquor.’ And so one might go on with many other things which were once American practices, but have been utterly abandoned. The fact is that the Americans are the most reasonable and teachable people in the world. Prove to an Englishman that he is wrong, and he will cling to his mistake more closely than before. Prove to the Americans that they are wrong, and the whole people will, as if they were one man, readily abandon their mistake.
Our Diplomacy with America.
I left Washington by an early train. Trains, as is the case with the hours for breakfast and for business, are earlier in the United States than in England. On coming down to the bar of the hotel at 5A.M., I found that the night service of the hotel had spent their long watch in listening to Mr. Dickens’s ‘Oliver Twist,’ each reading aloud in his turn.
In our diplomatic intercourse with the Government of the United States our method of proceeding ought to be founded on a right appreciation of the character of the people, because it is mainly with the people themselves that we have to do. Everybody reads the newspapers; everybody has his opinion, and what is the opinion of the majority is what is done. Now, speaking generally, the character of the people of the United States is such that the simplest style of diplomacy, or rather no diplomacy at all, is requisite in dealing with them. The Americans are an eminently reasonable people, and can be made to understand what is right. It is not as if we had to deal with Austrian, or Russian, or French diplomatists, with whom, unless we have long been much mistaken, reason and right are not the first considerations. What is requisite, then, in dealing with our cousinson the other side of the water, is, that we should ask for nothing but what we are clearly entitled to—what is our due, and our own; and that having asked for no more than what is rightfully ours, we should not concede one jot or one tittle. In two words—right and firmness—are comprised all that we have to attend to. It is absurd to suppose that we are incapable of making them understand what is our right; and they will respect us if we maintain our right with firmness, and they will despise us if we do not. They would never go to war with us knowing themselves to be in the wrong.
But, just as in trade they are always ready to take advantage of every slip or oversight on the part of those with whom they deal, deeming that men, whether themselves or others, must pay the penalty of carelessness, or ignorance, or even of want of sagacity—carrying this to a point beyond what we should consider quite justifiable—so also in diplomacy they will see what can be made out of all kinds of claims and demands such as their politicians are ever ingenious and forward in suggesting. But they are too just and reasonable a people to persist in being misled, after things have been fully and fairly put before them. Having, then, right clearly on our side, all the art that is required for the double purpose of maintaining our right, and of securing their respect, is firmness.
Washington.
In its public buildings Washington has begun to resemble an European capital. Everyone has seen engravings of the Capitol. It is a large marble building with a central dome, very well placed on an eminence at one end of the city. From some reasonarising out of the proprietorship of the land, no private residences or shops have sprung up in its immediate vicinity. The main street, of about a mile in length, connects it with the Executive Mansion, as the President’s house is called in newspaper language. This also is of white marble. It is about as large as the country house of an English gentleman who is in receipt of an income of 10,000l.a year. The ground sinks between the Capitol and the President’s house. Most of the public offices are in the immediate neighbourhood of the latter. The chief part of the city lies around and beyond the President’s house. The Treasury, which has been built since the war, is in its dimensions worthy of the enormous business carried on in it—that is, the printing and issue of the greenback currency. It also is of white stone, I believe a kind of granite. The only other building worthy of notice, either from its dimensions or uses, is the Patent Office. In this is contained a model, or specimen, of everything for which a patent has been issued in the United States. One ought at least to walk through the numerous and spacious and well-filled apartments of this building, to get an idea of the activity of the inventive faculty in America, and of the great honour in which it is held.
I understood from Americans that every facility and security possible are given to persons desirous of taking out patents. Not only is there this museum to enable them to see whether or how the thing has been done before, but there are also persons whose business it is to be thoroughly acquainted with the specifications and objects of all former patents, and who are ready to supply any information on thesubject to all applicants. I could not but contrast this instance of American intelligence and wisdom with our English methods for discouraging invention, notwithstanding the fact that mechanical inventions are among the chief foundations and glories of our manufactures.
The Americans are a population of very thirsty souls. I do not know whether the cause of this is the dryness of the climate, or the habits of the people, or both combined. All day long, throughout the winter as well as the other seasons of the year, people are drinking water with ice floating in it. Many persons finish their breakfast with a large tumbler of this. Wherever men congregate, whether in the drawing-rooms of hotels or of private houses, or even in railway-cars, there is to be found the ever-present and ever-needed iced water. I found myself thirstier, and drank a great deal more in America than I had ever done before; and, like the natives, I felt a repugnance to drink water, however cold the weather might be, without ice in it. Now again in England, I am satisfied with perhaps one fourth of the water I needed in the United States, and I have no desire for the ice I regarded almost as a necessary there.