One of Spencer's objections to Socialism is that it would "end in military despotism." Nothing else could replace competition so far as to keep a nation industrious. Spencer is right in saying, "Benefit and worth must vary together," which means that wages and salaries should correspond to value of work. Otherwise, "The society decays from increase of its least worthy members and decrease of its most worthy members."
These facts are so generally known already, that there is less danger than is thought by Spencer, of either the national establishment of Socialism or of a ruinous extension of governmental interference. The average American is altogether too willing to have his wealthy neighbours taxed for his own benefit; but he knows that he can make himself and his family more comfortable by his own exertions than his poor neighbours are; and he is not going to let any government forbid his doing so. He does not object to public libraries, and perhaps would not to free theatres; but he would vote down any plan which would prevent his using his money and time to his own greatest advantage. He is sometimes misled by plausible excuses for wasting public money, and arresting innocent people; but he insists on at least some better pretext than was made for the old-fashioned meddling with food, clothing, business, and religion. He may not call himself an individualist; but he will never practise Socialism.
This sort of man is already predominant in Great Britain, as well as in America; and multiplication of the type elsewhere is fostered by mighty tendencies. The duty of treating every form of religion according to ethical and not theological standards is rapidly becoming the practice of all civilised governments; and persecution is peculiar to Turkey and Russia. These two despotisms form, with Germany, the principal exceptions to the rule that political liberty is on the increase throughout Europe, especially in the form of local self-government. The nineteenth century has made even the poorest people more secure than ever before from oppression and lawless violence, as well as from pestilence and famine. Destitution is relieved more amply and wisely, while industry and intelligence are encouraged by opportunity to enjoy comforts and luxuries once almost or altogether out of the reach of monarchs. The fetters formerly laid on trade of cities with their own suburbs have been broken; and the examples of Great Britain and New South Wales are proving that nations profit more by helping than hindering one another in the broad paths of commerce. Industrial efficiency has certainly been much promoted by the tendency, not only of scientific education but of manual training, to substitute knowledge of realities for quarrels about abstractions. All these changes favour the extension of free institutions and also of individual liberty, wherever peace can be maintained. Industrial nations gain more than warlike ones by encouraging intellectual independence; but the general advantage is great enough to ensure the final triumph of liberty.
THIS is much more common in New England and Great Britain than it was in the eighteenth century. The dinner has become the best, instead of the worst in the week. Scarcely anyone rises early; and nobody is shocked at reading novels. There is an enormous circulation in both English and American cities of Sunday papers whose aim is simply amusement. There is plenty of lively music in the parlours, as well as of merry talk in which clergymen are ready to lead. People who have comfortable homes can easily make Sunday the pleasant-est day of the week.
For people who cannot get much recreation at home, there are increasing opportunities to go to concerts, picture-galleries, and museums. Among the reading-rooms thrown open on Sunday in America about 1870 was that of the Boston Public Library; and no difference is now made in this great institution among the seven days, except that more children's books and magazines are accessible on Sunday. What important museums are now open in London, Boston, and New York have been already mentioned in Chapter VI. These opportunities are still limited; but there is no obstacle, except that of bad weather, to excursions on foot or bicycle, behind horse or locomotive, in electric car or steamboat, to beaches, ponds, and other places of amusement. The public parks are crowded all day long in summer; and people who go to church in the morning have no scruple about walking or riding for pleasure in the afternoon. These practices were expressly sanctioned by Massachusetts in 1887, and by New Jersey in 1893; and the old law against Sunday visiting has been repealed since 1880 in Vermont.
The newer States have taken care not to pass such absurd statutes. I believe that the majority of our people were willing, as for instance was that prominent Episcopalian, Bishop Potter, to have the Chicago Exposition open on Sundays. Theatres and baseball grounds attract crowds of visitors in our cities, especially those west of the Alleghanies. Whatever changes are made in the East will probably be in the direction of greater liberty. The only question is how fast the present opportunities of recreation ought to be increased.
No one would now agree with Dr. Chalmers in calling the Sabbath "an expedient for pacifying the jealousies of a God of vengeance." Good people have ceased to think, as the Puritans did, that "Pleasures are most carefully to be avoided" on every day of the week, or that "Amity to ourselves is enmity against God." Preachers no longer recommend "abstaining not only from unlawful pleasures, but also from lawful delights." Popular clergymen now say with Dr. Bellows: "Amusement is not only a privilege but a duty, indispensable to health of body and mind, and essential even to the best development of religion itself." "I put amusement among the necessaries and not the luxuries of life." "It is as good a friend to the church as to the theatre, to sound morals and unsuperstitious piety as to health and happiness,... an interest of society which the religious class instead of regarding with hostility and jealousy, ought to encourage and direct." "There is hardly a more baleful error in the world than that which has produced the feud between morality and amusement, piety and pleasure."
The fact is that pleasure means health. As I have said in a newspaper entitledThe Index: "It is a violation of the laws of health for anyone, not absolutely bed-ridden or crushed by fatigue, to spend thirty-six hours without some active exercise in the open air. Trying to take enough on Saturday to last until Monday, is dangerous, and most people have little chance for healthy exercise except on Sunday. The poor, ignorant girl who has had no fresh air for six days ought to be encouraged to take it freely on the seventh. And we all need our daily exercise just as much as our regular food and sleep. The two thousand delegates who asked, in behalf of ninety thousand working men, in 1853, to have the Crystal Palace open on Sundays, were right in declaring that 'Physical recreation is as necessary to the working man as food and drink on the Sabbath.' The fact is that pleasure is naturally healthy even when not involving active exercise. Dark thoughts breed disease like dark rooms. The man who never laughs has something wrong about his digestion or his conscience. Herbert Spencer has proved that our pleasant actions are beneficial, while painful ones are injurious both to ourselves and to our race. (Principles of Psychology, vol. i., pp. 278-286; Am. Ed.). Thus Sunday amusements are needed for the general health.
"They are also necessary for the preservation of morality. This consists in performing the actions which benefit ourselves and our neighbours, in other words, pleasant ones, and abstaining from whatever is painful and injurious. It is only in exceptional cases that we can make others happy by suffering pain ourselves. Now and then the paths of virtue and pleasure diverge; but they always come together again. As a rule, they traverse precisely the same ground and in exactly the same direction. This is very fortunate; for if pleasure were always vicious, virtue would be hateful and impossible. The most blessed of all peacemakers is he who keeps virtue and pleasure from falling out. There is no better text than that which the little girl said she had learned at Sunday-school: 'Chain up a child and away she will go!' Even so strict a man as Dr. Johnson said: 'I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice.' Is there no need of them on the day when there is more drinking, gambling, and other gross vice than on any other? Need I say what day keeps our policemen and criminal courts most busy, or crowds our hospitals with sufferers from riotous brawls? Has not the experience of two hundred and fifty years justified those English statesmen who showed themselves much wiser than their Puritan contemporaries in recommending archery, dancing, and other diversions on Sunday, because forbidding them 'sets up filthy tippling and drunkenness?' To keep a man who does not care to go to church from getting any amusement, is to push him towards the saloon. And not only the laws against liquor selling, but others even more necessary for our safety, would be much better enforced if we did not encourage lawlessness by keeping up statutes which our best men and women violate without scruple and with impunity, or which actually prevent good people from taking such recreation as they know they ought to have. Outgrown ordinances should not be suffered to drag just and necessary laws down into contempt. "Nobody wants to revive those old laws of Massachusetts Bay which forbade people to wear lace, or buy foreign fruit, or charge more than a fixed price for a day's work. No more Quakers will ever swing from a Boston gallows merely for preaching. But our laws against Sunday amusements are in the same spirit as that which hung Mary Dyer. In old times, government kept continually telling people what to do, and took especial pains to make them go to church on Sunday. If they stayed away, they were fined; if they did not become members, they were not allowed to vote; if they got up rival services, they were hung; if they took any amusement on Sunday, they were whipped. All four classes of laws for the same unjust end have passed away, except that against Sunday recreation. This still survives in a modified form. But even in this shape it is utterly irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of our government. All American legislation, from the Declaration of Independence, rests on the great truth that our government is founded in order to secure us in our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our State is a limited partnership for mutual protection. We carry it on in order to make our freedom more complete; and we tolerate no restrictions on ourselves except such as are necessary conditions of the greatest possible liberty. These principles are already fully acknowledged on six days of the week, but only partly on the seventh. Still, there is a growing recognition of the likeness between laws against Sunday amusements and such prohibitions of eating meat in Lent as once caused people to be burned alive."
A weekly day of rest is a blessing; but David Swing is right in saying that "Absolute rest, perfectly satisfactory to horse and dog, is not adequate to the high nature of man." Complete torpor of mind and body is more characteristic of a Hindoo fakir than of a Christian saint. Should those who wish to rest as much as possible on Sunday sleep in church? There is nothing irreligious in fresh air. The tendency of outdoor exercise to purify and elevate our thoughts is so strong that Kingsley actually defended playing cricket on Sunday as "a carrying out of the divineness of the Sabbath." If there is no hostility between religion and amusement on six days of the week, there cannot be much on the seventh.
No Protestants are more religious than the Swedes and Norwegians. Everybody goes to church; there is theological teaching in the public-schools; and advocacy of liberal religious views was punished in 1888 with imprisonment. No Scandinavian objects, so far as I know, to indoor games, croquet, dancing, or going to the theatre on Sunday; and these amusements are acknowledged to be perfectly proper throughout continental Europe. No one who allows himself any exercise or recreation on Sunday has a right to say that his neighbours do not need more than he does. Lyman Beecher could not preach his best on any day when he did not work hard at sawing wood or shovelling sand in his cellar. There would be less dyspepsia on Monday if there were more exercise on Sunday. Herbert Spencer tells us that "Happiness is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends alike to increase health where it exists, and to restore it when it has been lost. Hence the essential superiority of play to gymnastics."
A Bible Dancing Class is said to have been organised, in deference to such facts, in New Jersey by an Episcopalian pastor, who perhaps wishes to accomplish Jeremiah's prediction of the Messianic kingdom, "Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance." Among other liberal clergymen is Brooke Herford, who says: "We want Sunday to be the happiest day in all the week. Keep it free from labour, but free for all quiet, innocent recreations." Rev. Charles Voysey wrote me in 1887, lamenting the immorality arising "from the curse of having nothing to do or nowhere to go on Sunday afternoons and evenings." "Young persons especially," he said, "would be better, and morally more safe, for greater opportunities of innocent pleasure and games at the hours of enforced idleness on the Sunday."
The spirit of the legislators is changing like that of the clergy. The first laws against Sunday amusement were passed by men who thought all pleasure vicious on every day of the week. Our present statutes are kept in force by people who like amusement, and get all they want of it; but who make it almost impossible for their poor neighbours, in order to conciliate ecclesiastical prejudice. "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne and lay them on men's shoulders"; but they themselves do not feel the weight.
Whatever may be the advantage of keeping Sunday, it cannot be kept religiously when it is kept compulsorily. Rest from unnecessary labour and business on one day every week may be for the public welfare; but this rest is not made more secure by indiscriminate prohibitions of amusement. The idlest man is the most easily tempted to disturb his neighbours. No man's property is more safe or his personal liberty more secure because his neighbours are liable to be fined for playing golf. Laws against Sunday recreation do not protect but violate individual liberty. A free government has no business to interfere with the right of the citizens to take healthy exercise and innocent amusement whenever they choose.
These considerations would justify a protest, not only against the Sunday laws made by Congress for the District of Columbia, but also against the statutes of every State in the Union, except Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, and Wyoming. "Whoever is present at any sport, game, play, or public diversion, except a concert of sacred music, or an entertainment given by a religious or charitable society, the proceeds of which, if any, are to be devoted exclusively to a religious or charitable purpose," on what is called "the Lord's day" in Massachusetts is liable to a fine of five dollars; the penalty for taking part may be fifty dollars; and the proprietor or manager may be fined as much as five hundred dollars. New Jersey still keeps her old law against "singing, fiddling, or other music for the sake of merriment"; and express prohibitions of "any sport" are still maintained by Connecticut, Maine, and Rhode Island. Prominent among other States which forbid amusements acknowledged innocent on six days of the week, are New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Many of our States show particular hostility to card-playing, dancing, and theatre-going. The fact that fishing was practised by some of the Apostles on Sunday has not saved this quiet recreation from being prohibited by more than twenty commonwealths.
If every Sunday law were a dead letter, it ought to be repealed, because it tends to bring needed laws into contempt; but among recent results of Sunday legislation are the following. In 1876 some children were fined for playing ball in Rhode Island; so, about this time, in Massachusetts, were a boy for skating, a young man for playing lawn-tennis, and a merchant for fishing with his little son. In 1894 two men were fined $10 each for playing golf on a lonely hill, in the commonwealth just mentioned; five boys under fifteen arrested for playing marbles in New York City; and every member of a baseball club in Pennsylvania fined. In 1895 a man and a boy of fifteen were fined $20 each for fishing in New York; and the attempt of some clergymen, aided by police, to break up a show in Missouri, caused a tumult in which men's heads were broken by clubs, while women and children were trampled underfoot. On the first Sunday that the London galleries and museums were thrown open to their owners, May 24, 1896, two men were shot dead in Attleboro, Mass., by a policeman who had been ordered to break up a clambake. In that same year and State, a manager was fined $70 for allowingYankee Doodleto be performed in the Boston Theatre; three men were arrested for bowling; half a dozen Jews who had been playing cards in a private house were fined $10 or $20 each, and those who could not pay were sent to jail. Among the Sabbath-breakers arrested in 1897 were a number of newsboys at the national capital, nine golfers in Massachusetts, a young man for holding one end of a rope over which some little girls were skipping in New York City, and also the manager of a show in New Jersey, who spent ten days in jail. Fines were levied in 1898 for playing golf in Connecticut, and twenty-five fishermen were arrested on one Sunday in Buffalo, N. Y. Such are the risks which still accompany innocent and healthy amusements in the Eastern States. Many such arrests are made in order to collect fees, or gratify malice; and neither motive ought to be encouraged by the friends of religion.
Some magistrates in Long Island, N. Y., are believed, while still holding that baseball breaks the Sabbath, to have discovered that golf does not. It is further said that on July 9, 1899, some baseball men who had been playing a Sunday game to a large crowd saved themselves from arrest by using their bats and balls to imitate golfing as soon as a policeman appeared in their grounds.
None of the Sunday laws is so mischievous as the decree of Mrs. Grundy against all forms of recreation not practised by the wealthy and fashionable. These people have so much time on six days of the week for active outdoor sport and indoor public entertainments, that they make little attempt to indulge in such recreations on Sunday. People who have only this one chance of playing ball, or dancing, or going to stereopticon lectures, concerts, and operas, suffer in health by having these recreations made unpopular as well as illegal. The climate of New England and New York, as well as of Great Britain and Canada, has unfortunately been so arranged that there are a great many cold and rainy Sundays, when much time cannot be spent pleasantly in walking or riding. This matters little to people who get all the amusement they want in their parlours. But what becomes of people who have no parlours? For instance, of servant-girls who have no place where they can sing or even laugh? Shop-girls and factory-girls find their little rooms, Sunday after Sunday, too much like prisons. Young men are perhaps even more unfortunate; for they go to the saloon, though this is often closed without any better place of amusement being opened. Why should every week in a democratic country begin with an aristocratic Sunday, a day whose pleasures are mainly for the rich?
Libraries and museums are blessed places of refuge; but "What are they among so many?" The residents of the District of Columbia are particularly unfortunate, as the Smithsonian Museum, National Library, and other buildings, which are open during six days, are kept shut on Sunday. Congress seems to be of the opinion that working people need no knowledge of natural history, except what they can get from sermons about Jonah's whale and Noah's ark. Washington is not the only city whose rich men ought to remember the warning of Heber Newton: "Everything that tends to foster among our working people the notion of class privilege is making against the truest morality in our midst. As they look upon the case, it is the wealthy people, whose homes are private libraries and galleries of art, who protest against the opening of our libraries and museums to those who can afford no libraries and buy no pictures. Sabbatarianism is building very dangerous fires to-day."
We should all be glad to have more intellectual culture given on Sunday. One way of giving it would be for the churches to open public reading-rooms in the afternoon. This would be decidedly for their own interest; and so would be delivery of evening lectures on history, biography, and literature. The Sunday-schools in England found it necessary, even as late as 1850, to give much time to teaching reading and writing as well as the higher branches. Sunday-school rooms in America, which now are left useless after Sunday noon, might be employed in teaching English to German, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants during the afternoon and evening. Classes might also be formed in vocal music, light gymnastics, American and English history and literature, physiology, sociology, and political economy. Such changes would make our churches all the more worthy of the founder, who "went about doing good."
The observance of Sunday as a day of rest from labour and business will be all the more popular as it is made precious to irreligious people. They are numerous enough to have a right to ask that the public school-houses be opened for free classes in French, German, drawing, and modelling; botany, chemistry, and bird-lore; cooking, sewing, and wood-work. If teachers of these branches were employed on Sunday by our cities, less money would be needed for police. Our industrial interests would certainly gain by having this system carried out as far, for instance, as is done by Lyons and Milan, which have special Sunday-schools for teaching weaving. Goldsmiths are instructed by similar schools in Austria, and blacksmiths in Saxony. The full advantage of Sunday classes of the various kinds here suggested might not perhaps be seen until a taste for them could be made general, but doing this would go far to diminish the taste for saloons.
The first step, however, which ought to be taken by our legislatures is the repeal of all laws hindering the sale of tickets on Sunday to exhibitions of pictures or curiosities, concerts, stereopticon lectures, or other instructive entertainments which are acknowledged inoffensive during the rest of the week. How far dramatic performances and other very attractive forms of public amusement should be permitted to take place on Sunday is a question which ought to be settled by municipal authorities, with due reference to each special case. The people whose feelings ought to be considered are not those who wish to stay away from such places. They can easily do that without help from the police. The people who ought to be heard, first and last, are those who wish to get innocent amusement on their one day of leisure; and the only thing which the police need do is to see that they do get it without being defrauded or tempted into vice. Only the actual existence of such temptation can justify interference with dancing or card-playing in a private house. The Sunday reforms most needed, however, are those which will promote out-door exercise and mental culture.
1780. Emancipation in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
1783. Peace between IL S. A. and Great Britain, September 3d.
1785. Great prosperity of British factories about this time.
1787. Slavery prohibited north of Ohio River; slave-trade opposed in England; Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation published.
1788. Constitution of U. S. A. ratified by a sufficient number of States, June 21st.
1789. Bastille taken, July 14th.
1791. Paine's Rights of Man, Part L, published, March 13th; Louis XVI. accepts the new constitution, September 14th.
1792. France a republic, September 21st.
1793. Slavery abolished in French colonies, February 4th.
1795. Insurrection in Paris crushed by Bonaparte, October 5th; free public schools founded throughout France.
1796. Bonaparte commander of army of Italy, March 4th.
1797. French Directory makes itself absolute, September 4th; Venice ceded by France to Austria.
1798. Irish rebellion, May 23d.
1799. Usurpation by Bonaparte, November 10th.
1800. Election of Jefferson; Schelling's Transcendental Idealism published.
1801. Inauguration of Jefferson, March 4th.
1802. Birth of Victor Hugo, February 26th; Lamarck's Recherches published.
1803. Hayti declares herself independent, January 2d; death of Toussaint in prison, April 27th; birth of Emerson, May 25th; Emmet's insurrection in Ireland, July 23d.
1804. The Code Napoleon announced, January; Napoleon pro-Liberty in the Nineteenth Century claimed Emperor, May 18th; crowned, December 2d; Schiller's William Tell published.
1805. Battle of Austerlitz, December 2d.
1806. Death of Schiller, May 9th; birth of J. S. Mill, May 20th; battle of Jena, October 14th; Berlin decree of Napoleon against commerce with Great Britain, November 21st.
1807. Slave-trade prohibited by Great Britain, March 25th; Peace of Tilsit, July 7th, raises Napoleon to height of power; embargo laid by U. S. A., December 22d; Oken announces the vertebral analogy of the skull; Hegel's Phaenomenologie des Geistes published.
1808. Rebellion of Spaniards against French rule; witchcraft mob in England; Goethe's Faust, Part L, published.
1809. Birth of Darwin, February 12th; revolt of Tyrolese under Hofer, April 8th; states of the Church annexed to France, May 17th; death of Paine, June 8th; Pope imprisoned, July 6th; divorce of Josephine, December 15th; Lamarck's Philosophie Zoôlogique published.
1810. Hofer shot, February 20th; marriage of Napoleon with Austrian Archduchess, April 1st; post-offices required to open every Sunday in U. S. A., April 30th; revolt against Spanish rule of Buenos Ayres, May 25th, and of Chili, September 18th.
1811. Nottingham riots against machinery, November.
1812. Birth of Dickens, February 7th; war against Great Britain declared by U. S. A., June 18th; Wellington enters Madrid, August 12th; Moscow burned, September 14th; Byron's Childe Harold, Coleridge's Friend, and Hegel's Logik published.
1813. Wellington invades France, October 7th; battle of Leipsic, October 16th, 18th, and 19th; Francia ruler of Paraguay; Unitarian disabilities removed in England; Shelley's Queen Mab and Owen's New View of Society published.
1814. Napoleon is deposed by Senate, April 1st, and abdicates, April 11th; liberal constitution introduced by Louis XVIII., May; Washington taken and burned by British, August 24th; Peace of Ghent between U. S. A. and Great Britain, December 24th; Congress of Vienna opens November 3d; graves of Voltaire and Rousseau violated.
1815. Battle of New Orleans, January 8th; Waterloo, June 18th; controversy of Unitarians and Trinitarians in U. S. A.; last heretic burned in Mexico; Lamarck publishes the first volume of his Histoire Naturelle.
1817. Shelley's children taken from him on account of his opinions, March 26th; demonstration at the Wartburg, October 18th; unusual poverty in England; her authors and orators made liable to imprisonment without a trial; Ben-tham demands suffrage for men and women not illiterate; Shelley's Revolt of Islam published.
1818. Chili liberated by battle of Maipu, won by San Martin, April 5th; religious tests abolished in Connecticut; Hannah M. Crocker's Rights of Women published.
1819. Assassination of Kotzebue, March 23d; Carlsbad Conference, August 1st; "Peterloo" massacre at Manchester, August 16th; Shelley's Prometheus Unbound published.
1820. Revolution in Spain, January 1st; and at Naples, July 2d; assassination of French princes, February 13th, causes reaction against liberalism; birth of Herbert Spencer, April 27th; Owen's plan of Socialism proposed, May 1st; conference of Troppau, December 8th; Missouri Compromise; Sydney Smith asks, "Who reads an American book?"; Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow published.
1821. Brazil begins a revolt, January 1st, as do Greece and Sardinia in April, and Peru in July; death of Napoleon, May 5th; Venezuela and Colombra made free by battle of Carabolo, won June 24th, by Bolivar; Austria supreme in Italy; Lundy begins his Genius of Universal Emancipation.
1822. Death of Shelley, July 8th; independence of Brazil proclaimed, September 8th; massacre at Scio; Fourrier's book on Association published.
1823. Spanish patriots crushed by French army, April; Monroe Doctrine announced, December 1st; British Anti-Slavery Society formed; Victor Hugo's Odes and Ballads published.
1824. Mexico a republic, January 31st; Bolivar, dictator of Feru, February 10th, defeats Spaniards at Ayachuco, December 9th; death of Byron, April 19th; accession of Charles X., September 16th; repeal of statutes forbidding English labourers to combine or emigrate; Westminster Review founded.
1825. Much opposition to slavery in Kentucky, Maryland, and North Carolina; many socialist communities founded in U. S. A.; elective courses of study at Harvard College, and also at the University of Virginia, where attendance at religious exercises is made voluntary; Coleridge's Aids to Reflection published.
1826. Citizens of New York petition for repeal of Fugitive Slave Law, and for emancipation in the District of Columbia.
1827. Battle of Navarino, October 20th; Taylor sent to prison for blasphemy, October 24th.
1828. Test Act repealed; Frances Wright lectures against clergy.
1829. Jackson inaugurated March 4th; Catholic Emancipation Act signed, April 13th; Miss Wright opens a Hall of Science in New York City on Sunday, April 25th; James Mill's Analysis and Fourrier's Industrial New World published.
1830. Independence of Greece acknowledged by Turkey, April 25th; accession of William IV., July 26th; revolution at Paris begins July 27th; King's troops driven out, July 29th; he is succeeded by Louis Philippe, August 9th; revolts in Brussels, Warsaw, and Dresden; independence of Belgium acknowledged, December 26th; Hetherington sent to prison for six months for publishing The Poor Man's Guardian; Victor Hugo's Hernani acted; Tennyson's Poems and Lyell's Principles of Geology published.
1831. First number of The Liberator\ January 1st, and of The Investigator, April 2d; Carlile sent to prison for his writings, January 10th; Cobbett tried and acquitted, July 31st; massacre of fifty-five white men, women, and children by slaves in Virginia, Sunday, August 21st; Warsaw surrenders to Russians, September 7th; Reform Bill defeated by bishops, October 7th; Jamaica insurrection, December 22d; free trade convention in Philadelphia; Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris published.
1832. New England Anti-Slavery Society founded in Boston, January 1st (becomes Mass. A. S. in 1836); death of Goethe, March 22d; the insurrection at Paris described in Les Misérables, June 5th and 6th; Reform Bill passed and signed, June 7th; Jackson re-elected, November 6th; woman suffrage lecture in London, December 2d; Jackson's proclamation against attempt of South Carolina to secede, December 11th; bloody resistance to tithes in Ireland; Elliott's Corn Law Rhymes published.
1833. Gradual reduction of tariff voted by Congress, March 1st; death of Bentham, June 6th; Act of Parliament for emancipation in West Indies passed August 28th; American Anti-Slavery Society founded at Philadelphia, December; pro-slavery mobs there and in New York City; municipal suffrage extended in Scotland; unsectarian public schools in Ireland; first free town library in U. S. A. founded at Peterboro, N. H., and opened Sundays thenceforth; Emerson's first lecture; Carlyle's Sartor Resartus published.
1834. Emancipation in West Indies takes place, August ist; new poor law in England, August 14th; insurrection headed by Mazzini in Italy.
1835. Death of Cobbett, June 16th; anti-slavery periodicals taken from post-office at Charleston, S. C, and burned by mob, July; convent at Charlestown, Mass., burned by a mob, August; Garrison mobbed in Boston, and other abolitionists in New York and Vermont, October 21st; extension of municipal suffrage in England; Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Strauss's Life of Jesus published.
1836. Transcendental Club founded in Boston, September; Parker begins to preach; tithes commuted in England; taxes on newspapers reduced; dissenters permitted to marry without disobedience to conscience; Emerson's Nature and Dickens' Pickwick Papers published.
1837. Discussion of slavery in House of Representatives suppressed, January; Miss Grimké's anti-slavery lectures, June; Emerson's address on The American Scholar, August 31st; Anti-Slavery Convention of N. E. Methodists, October 25th; Carlyle's French Revolution published.
1838. Emerson's Divinity School Address, July 15th; Kneeland imprisoned sixty days, that same summer, for blasphemy; Pennsylvania Hall burned by a pro-slavery mob; Irish tithe system reformed; daguerreotypes invented; Atlantic crossed by steam; railroad from London to Birmingham; Channing's Self-Culture published.
1839. Anti-Corn-Law League organised, March 20th; unsectarian common schools in England; great Chartist petition; Pope forbids attendance at the scientific congress at Pisa.
1840. Penny postage, January 10th; nomination of candidate for President, April ist, by Liberty party: quarrels in May among abolitionists; World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London, in June, refuses seats to female delegates; local self-government in Irish cities; protest of American Catholics against sectarianism of public schools; The Dial begins; Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship published.
1841, Hetherington imprisoned in England for publishing Letters to the Clergy, and the editor of the Oracle of Reason for attacking the Bible; Emerson's first volume of Essays published.
1842. Garrison calls on free States to secede, May; death of Channing, October 2d; Brook Farm started, as are many communties about this time; Spencer's theory of the limits of government published, 1844. Morse proves value of telegraph by announcing nomination of Frelinghuysen for Vice-President by Whigs, May 1st; disunion banner publicly accepted by Garrison, June 1st; annexation of Texas and reduction of tariff decided by election on November 5th; rule against discussing slavery repealed by House of Representatives; Lowell's Poems published.
1845. Parker begins to preach regularly in Boston, February 16th; potato rot in Ireland, August; Vestiges of Creation published.
1846. Mexico invaded by U. S. troops, March; free trade established in England, June 25th, and bill to reduce American tariff signed, June 26th; first volume of Grote's Greece and first number of Lowell's Biglow Papers published.
1847. Mexicans defeated at Buena Vista by General Taylor, February 22d and 23d; death of O'Connell, May 15th.
1848. Revolution in Paris, February 22d; King abdicates, February 24th; insurrections in Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Venice, and Milan in March, afterwards in other cities; "spirit rappings" at Rochester, N.Y., begin March 31st; Chartist demonstration at London, April 10th; Emancipation decreed by French Republic, April 27th; socialist insurrection at Paris, June 23d, 24th, 25th, and 26th; "Woman's Rights" Convention at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19th; revolt in Ireland, July 29th; Buffalo Convention of Free Soilers, August 9th; Kossuth dictator of Hungary, September 25th; State constitution and town ordinances made in October by citizens of California without Federal sanction; pro-slavery defeat at election of Taylor, November 7th; flight of Pope from Rome, November 24th; Louis Napoleon president of France, December 10th; Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, Fable for Critics, and Biglow Papers published, 1849. Defeat of King of Sardinia by Austrians at Novara, March 23d, prevents liberation of Italy; Rome captured by French, July 3d; Hungarian army surrendered to Russians by Gorgei, August 13th; Venice taken by Austrians, August 28th; Emancipation Convention in Kentucky.
1850. Death of Wordsworth, April 24th, and of President Taylor, July 9th; Fugitive Slave Bill signed, September 18th; first national "Woman's Rights" Convention at Worcester, Mass., October 23d and 24th; Bradlaugh's first lecture; Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Spencer's Social Statics, and Tennyson's In Memoriam published.
1851. London Great Exhibition opens May ist; a fugitive slave rescued at Boston, Sunday, February 16th, another at Syracuse, N. Y., October ist; usurpation of Louis Napoleon, December 2d, 1851.
1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin published, March 20th; death of Frances Wright, and accession of Napoleon III., December 2d; Herbert Spencer announces the principle of Differentiation.
1854. Repeal of Missouri Compromise proposed by Douglas, January 23d; return of Burns, a fugitive slave, from Boston, June 2d; U. S. Constitution publicly burned by Garrison, July 4th; Kansas election carried by border ruffians, November 29th; Thoreau's Walden published.
1855. Spencer's Pyschology and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass published, 1856. Sumner assaulted, May 22d..
1857. Disunion Convention, Worcester, Mass., January 15th; death of Béranger, July 16th, and of Comte, September 5th; tariff reduced twenty per cent, in U. S. A.; Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. i., published.
1858. Essays by Darwin and Wallace read in public, July ist; Jews admitted to Parliament by act passed July 23d; death of Robert Owen, November 17th; Lincoln and Douglas campaign in Illinois.
1859. Austrians defeated at Magenta, June 4th, and Solferino.
June 24th; Lombardy annexed to Sardinia by treaty of Villafranca, July nth; John Brown takes possession of Harper's Ferry, Sunday, October 16th, and is tried November 2d; Darwin's Origin of Species published, November 24th; John Brown hung, December 2d. 1860. Split of Democratic party, April 30th; death of Theodore Parker, May 10th; Garibaldi enters Naples, September 7th; election of Lincoln, November 6th; secession of South Carolina, December 20th; annexation of two Sicilies to Sardinia, December 26th; Mill on Liberty published.
1861. Confederate States of America organised, February 8th; protective tariff passed, March 2d; Russian serfs emancipated, March 3d; Lincoln inaugurated, March 4th; Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, March 17th; Fort Sumter bombarded, April 12th, surrendered, April 13th; Lincoln's proclamation, Monday, April 15th, calls all the North to arms; death of Cavour, June 6th; Union defeat at Bull Run, Sunday, July 21st.
1862. Paper money made legal tender in U. S. A., February 25th; return of fugitives from slavery by army or navy forbidden, March 13th; negro soldiers, April; death of Thoreau, May 6th, and of Buckle, May 29th; disastrous campaign of McClellan in Virginia ends by his retreat, July 8th; Union victory at Antietam, September 19th; emancipation announced as a possible war measure by Lincoln, September 22d; Union defeat at Fredericksburg, December 13th; Victor Hugo's Les Misérables published, also Spencer's First Principles containing his full theory of Integration and Differentiation.
1863. Lincoln proclaims emancipation, January 1st; signs bills suspending Habeas Corpus Act and establishing conscription, March 3d; Union defeat at Chancellorsville, May 3d; Vallandigham sentenced, May 7th; battle of Gettysburg, July 1st, 2d, and 3d, ending in a Union victory; Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, July 4th; Mississippi opened by surrender of Port Hudson, July 9th; Union victories at Lookout Mountain, November 24th, and Chattanooga, November 25th; Fenian Convention at Chicago, November 25th; Darwinism much opposed by European clergy about this time.
1864. General Grant takes command of all the Union armies, March 12th; undecisive battles in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania, May 5th-10th; Fugitive Slave Act repealed, June 23d; Nevada admitted, October 31st; Lincoln re-elected, November 8th; Sherman marches from Atlanta, November 16th, and enters Savannah, December 22d.
1865. Death of Cobden, April 2d; Richmond entered by coloured cavalry, April 3d; Lee surrenders, April 9th; Lincoln shot, Good Friday, April 14th, dies April 15th; slavery abolished by Thirteenth Amendment, December 18th; Lecky's Rationalism published.
1866. Prussian victory over Austria at Kônîggratz, July 3d; Venice part of Kingdom of Italy, November 4th.
1867. First convention of the Free Religious Association, May 30th; suffrage extended in England, August 15th; Home Rule in Hungary.
1868. Fourteenth Amendment in force, July 28th; Cuban declaration of independence, October 10th.
1869. Irish Church disestablished, July 26th; witnesses allowed to affirm in Great Britain.
1870. Death of Dickens, June 9th; Napoleon III. defeated at
Sedan, September 1st; France a republic, September 4th; Rome part of the kingdom of Italy, October 9th; Inger-soll begins to lecture; Home Rule agitation in Ireland, 1871. Paris surrendered to Prussians, January 28th; Communists supreme there, March 18th, suppressed, May 28th; emancipation in Brazil; Darwin's Descent of Man published.
1872. Death of Mazzini, March 10th; secret ballot in England; Abbot's "Demands of Liberalism" published in The Index (which began January 1, 1870).
1873. Spain a republic, February 11th; death of J. S. Mill, May 8th; American Liberal League, September 1st.
1874. Military usurpation at Madrid, January 3d; death of Sumner, March 11th; citizens of District of Columbia disfranchised, June 17th; Alphonso XII. king of Spain, December 30th; Mrs. Besant begins to lecture; Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three published.
1875. Sunday Society organised at London.
1876. Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia opens, May 10th, and conventiom of Liberal League, July 1st; disputed election for President, November 7th; Sunday convention in Boston, November 15th; vivisection restricted in England; Cuban rebellion suppressed, 242 Liberty in the Nineteenth Century.
1877. Museum of Fine Arts in Boston open in and after March on Sundays.
1878. Anti-clerical resolution passed by Woman Suffrage Convention, Rochester, N. Y., July; split of Liberal League at Syracuse, N. Y., Sunday, October 27th; Professor Winchell obliged to leave Nashville, Tenn., for evolutionism.
1879. Specie payment resumed in U. S. A., January 1st; death of Garrison, May 24th; Henry George's Progress and Poverty published.
1880. Bradlaugh refused his seat in Parliament, May 21st; many patriots banished to Siberia.
1881. Czar Alexander II. assassinated, March 13th, anti-Jewish mobs on and after April 27th; Bradlaugh excluded by force, August 1st.
1882. Death of Longfellow, March 24th, of Darwin, April 18th, of Emerson, April 27th, and of Garibaldi, June 2d.
1883. Foote and Ramsay, English journalists, sentenced respectively to twelve and nine months in prison for blasphemy.
1884. Death of Wendell Phillips; February 2d; Cleveland elected President, November 4th; Professor Woodrow dismissed from Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C, for teaching evolution, December 12th.
1885. Death of Victor Hugo, May 20th, and of General Grant, July 23d.
1886. Bradlaugh takes his seat, January 13th; railroad strike in
Missouri suppressed by Federal troops, March; bloody conflict of Chicago anarchists with police, May 4th; statue of Liberty unveiled in New York Harbour, October 28th.
1887. Chicago anarchists hung, November 11th.
1888. U. S. tariff reduced by Mills Bill, July 21st; Cleveland defeated, November 6th; imprisonment in Sweden for blasphemy; Bellamy's Looking Backward published.
1889. Brazil a republic, November 15th; death of Browning, December 12th.
1890. Australian ballot tried in Rhode Island, April 2d; U. S. tariff raised by McKinley Bill, passed by the 4 Billion Dollars Congress, and signed October 1st.
1891. Death of Bradlaugh, January 30th, and of Lowell, August 12th; Jews expelled from Moscow in April, and much persecuted this year and in 1892; New York Museum of Art opened on Sunday, May 31st, to 10,000 visitors.
1892. Death of Walt Whitman, March 26th, of Whittier, September 7th, and of Tennyson, October 6th; bill excluding Chinese from U. S. A. signed, May 5th; Congress votes for closing Chicago Exposition on Sundays, July 19th; Cleveland re-elected, November 8th; New York Museum of Natural History open Sundays; revised edition of Spencer's Social Statics published.
1893. Chicago Exposition formally opened May ist, first open Sunday, May 28th; Parliament of Religions begins Monday, September nth, 10 a.m.
1894. Death of Kossuth, March 20th, of Holmes, October 7th, of
Lucy Stone, October 18th, and of Tyndall, December 4th; Debs, leader of a riot in Chicago, enjoined by U. S. judges, July 2d, and put down by Federal troops; reduction of U. S. tariff, August 2d; Home Rule approved by House of Commons, September ist, refused by House of Lords, September 8th; universal suffrage and extension of local self-government in England; a professor in University of Texas dismissed for evolutionism.
1895. Death of Frederick Douglass, February 20th, and of Huxley, June 29th; rebellion in Cuba; men arrested in New York City for selling ice, umbrellas, etc., on Sunday; eight men who had worked on that day, after keeping Saturday as the Sabbath, forced to labour in the chain-gang in Tennessee.
1896. British Museum, National Gallery, and other institutions opened to the public on Sunday, May 24th, and afterwards; two Sabbath-breakers shot dead that same day by a policeman in Massachusetts; death of William Morris, October 3d; Democratic candidates defeated on a free-silver platform, November 3d.
1897. Dingley Bill to increase tariff, signed July 24th; death of Henry George, October 27th.
1898. War declared by U. S. A. against Spain, April 21st; death of Gladstone, Ascension Day, May 19th; independence of Cuba secured by treaty, August 12th.
1899. Death of Ingersoll, July 21st.