Superior City, by its pretentious name, great distance, and our expectations, had risen to much importance in our imagination, but the actual scene presented a wide contrast. A large town—or metropolis—on a poor harbor, without interior resources or communications, had been hastily projected. It is called the head of ocean navigation, and the terminus of many proposed but as yet imaginary railroads. While the titles to all the land are still in litigation, the wilderness shades its streets, and, saving the rare arrival of the Indian mail carrier on snow shoes, during six months of intense cold, they are isolated from all humanity. Its grand prospectus, some five years before, had drawn there about three thousand people; and soon afterward, starved and disappointed, nearly all, save perhaps five hundred, had deserted. About two miles of streets, planked from the mud, with frame dwellings, had been constructed, and they had already attained the first municipal blessing—taxes--to the total of $45,000, payable by this feeble remnant of a settlement, mainly of abandoned dwellings. Should the railroads so frequently surveyed and designed to terminate here be really built, Superior City may see, to some extent, in future years, somewhat of that prosperity which its projectors, blinded by their hopes, had thought already realized.
Few positions are more picturesque. In front, the shores of Portland and Minnesota rise in beautiful grandeur, and the bay and harbor, although imperfect, are richly wooded and very graceful; while, all the way thither, from La Pointe, the lake's waters, lying among the mountains, shadowed by their heavy foliage, remind one much of the scenery of the Lower Danube. Thisghost of a cityhad not much left of interest, and we passed our day in arranging for the journey across the country southward to St. Paul.
And here we found ourselves reallypioneers. No road or transport was alleged to exist. We persevered. Indians and trappers beset us with their projects of tracking and portage by the St. Croix and other rivers, requiring a camp life with strange companions of nearly a month to accomplish the distance of only one hundred and sixty-three miles, equivalent to that of Albany from New York. A military road direct through the wilderness had been often surveyed, and once cut through, of about eighty feet width, to near Sunrise City, fifty miles from St. Paul; at which point the dense forest spreads into oak openings and beautiful prairies. This single cutting, long overgrown in lofty pines, with the frequent surveys and contracts, from the year 1852 to 1857, had cost the United States Government, for this distance of about one hundred and twelve miles, $150,000; and no actual road had ever yet been made. Fortunately for our enterprise, we met a gentleman who had just groped through safely on horseback. We were reassured, and engaged the only available wagon and team—a small, frail affair, devoid of cover, seats, or springs; and, with ample provisions, perched upon our luggage, we rolled out of Superior City that evening, and, passing its significantly large cemetery, we at once entered the forest. These woods are chiefly of pine, cedar, tamarack, or hemlock, gigantic in size, a dreary solitude, unvisited by any bird or game, save an occasional hawk or owl. They are but the southern outposts of that forest army which begirds Hudson's Bay, and spreads its gloomy barrier of the same trees around the dominions of the Ice King, while it is the only forest to be met with in all the Mississippi Valley.
The width of about eighty feet—that theoretical road for which the United States had paid so often and so well—was seen between the mightiest sentinel trees; but in the midst had sprung up a fresh growth, often nearly one hundred feet high, surrounded by huge stumps, and heavy undergrowth of the renewing forest, varied with hopeless mudholes and swamps, and only at intervals of about twenty miles was there any habitation.
Such was thegreat military road. Perhaps its progress equalled the actual wants of this region; for population had not yet crowded any of the forest borders. It was then by the adjoining townships, under State laws, feeblycommencing to be really made as a road; and frequently we halted at the camps of these hardy sons of toil. Our first twenty-one miles to Twin Lakes, at the best speed, with good horses, occupied eight hours, three of which, in the middle of the night, were passed under deluging rain accompanied by thunder and lightning of the most appalling grandeur, thumping in the shelterless wagon over stumps and bogholes through the dreary woods.
Twin Lakes—or the isthmus between two small lakes, in the depths of the forest—is a solitary log house and stable. Its proprietor and our landlord for the night's shelter was, I believe, named John Smith. With his family he had lived there, keeping thishotelfor some years, owningseveral lotsin the paperCity of Twin Lakes, rich in the anticipated tide of gain to flow from the crowded thoroughfare of the great military road.
Happy man! we were the first partyon wheelsthat had yet essayed the road. Perhaps his posterity, by patience, may win their reward.
Our rain deluge, with sheeted lightning and pealing thunder, was ceaseless throughout the night. Its echoes amid the forest solitudes were awful; and our fitful sleep was varied by the rain dripping between the logs of our shelter.
However, morning came at last, bright, clear, and calm; and early we resumed our wagon and way-picking among the familiar logs and stumps, contesting as for life with legions of mosquitoes, sandflies, etc. And thus we made thirty miles farther (halting at a camp for dinner) to theCity of Chengwatana, which is so named on the large and beautiful map thereof, prepared in New York. It is laid out in Broadways, Fifth Avenues, Lydig Avenue, and, I believe, Daly Square, so named from J. Daly, of New York, with parks, colleges, etc., etc., adequate for a million of inhabitants. This fine imaginary picture proved unavailing to sell the land. It still remains a swamp bordering Snake River, in the bosom of the wilderness; and its entire population was only one German and his family—really indefinite in number of children—and two log houses, between which he vibrated at pleasure.
Our arrival was in another violent rain, lasting far into the night; but we considered ourselves, by this time, road and water proof. On the river shore, by the red glare of the fire light a wigwam and some Indians were visible; and frequently we heard their rifle shots. To our surprise, in the morning, instead of deer, they brought in a large basket of lake trout, each pierced through the head with a bullet when approaching the fire light.
Morning found us early on our hard way to the famedCity of Fortuna, whose picture displayed a similar origin and imagination, and its reality was even more doleful.
Fortuna City, on Kettle River, in the woods, contained three log cabins, and no inhabitants. A boy came hither, perhaps from Superior, the day before, to meet our party. After repelling some furious charges of the mosquito cavalry, who displayed their vigor after long starving, we gave up the contest, and attempted sleep.
To our log cabin had come that day several engineers, who formed a surveying party for another railroad project, passing through this forest from St. Paul, whence they had started a month before with an ample wagon train. The Indians had murdered the drivers and captured the wagons with their entire property; and in their destitution they sought this only shelter. We took them forward with us into St. Paul, and were greatly indebted for their intelligent society and kind attentions.
Fortuna City had one peculiar interest to us; it was thelast haltand lodging in the forest. Our next day's ride—if such it may be called—brought us to the oak openings at Folsom's, aclearing on the southern skirt of this wilderness, and shortly after to Sunrise City.
Our forest journey to-day was varied by the utter collapse of the wagon in a vain charge upon an obstinate stump; and perforce we walked for miles, till reaching a camp of the road workers on the farther bank of Grindstone River, we joyfully forded and found shelter from the noontide heat and mosquitoes; while the German sutler, who alone remained, busied himself in his primitiveal frescocookery, which we enjoyed, and then, exchanging to another wagon, hastened on to our destination.
The oak openings—those grand parklike expanses and rolls of land, with stately groups of giant oaks—far surpassing all culture of man, set out by the Creator on such a noble forest background, never looked more majestic and beautiful. They were vocal with singing birds, and filled with life; at their foot thronged the grouse or prairie chicken, darting through the high flowering grasses (richer than all garden flowers) in such numbers that but a few feet from our wheels we shot them in great abundance.
Sunrise City—a village but of yesterday (public lands, for sale by proclamation, adjoining)—is beautifully placed on Sunrise River, and might have then contained about five hundred inhabitants, whose neat white cottages and pleasant streets, bordering a romantic river and bridge, made a picture not unlike the scenery of Warwickshire, England.
We reached here—fifty miles still north of St. Paul—to pass the first night of our ride in a comfortable dwelling.
Many a fine farm, just cleared and broken, attracted us here, and hence along the prairie road into St. Paul, where we arrived at the close of the following day, which proved to be, as we kept no calendar, Thursday, the 9th of August.
Our drive this last day led past numerous linked lakes, with their borders of the tall Minnesota rice grass in flower, the home of the canvas back, pelican, and swan. Passing through the village of Little Canada, we rode on to Minnehaha Prairie along its gentle, verdant slope, and lapse of shining waters of Twelve Lakes, graced with the names of Como, Garda, etc., and adorned with many a pretty boat and sail. A few miles further brought us to the upper terrace of beautiful St. Paul.
As pioneers of this wilderness route, we met with marked attention from all, and passed some agreeable days at St. Paul, Fort Snelling, Minneapolis, St. Anthony, and their numerous points of interest. Our homeward route was by the Mississippi River to Prairie du Chien, where old Fort Crawford, then a mere tenement, commands the confluence of the Wisconsin River with the Father of Waters. This sail of three hundred miles consumed forty-eight hours.
The river banks recede and advance in lake-like expanses along its winding course, and their richly wooded heights, crowned with red sandstone, resemble the ruined Rhine castles. The sail through Lake Pepin, and between the States of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, was varied by frequent and thriving towns and villages.
From Prairie du Chien—a picture of straggling despair—by the Milwaukie and Prairie du Chien Railroad, and the Northwestern Railroad, two hundred and twenty-two miles, we reached Chicago, and passed through a crowd of beautiful towns, in a State scarce a generation since reclaimed from the Indians. Familiar railroads transported us from Chicago to Detroit, Niagara, Albany, and New York.
Our whole distance of travel in three weeks was thirty-four hundred and forty-one miles. It was brief, but spiced with adventure, and over a field of vast interest, present and future.
Our beautiful country, made one and indivisible by the great and good Author of its existence, through its mightynatural features, has, among its chief grandeurs, this water system of the great northern lakes, the frontier of the ever-progressive and patriotic West and North. In dimensions, sublimity, and beauty, by the consent of all, it is without parallel on earth.
A volume of the purest fresh water is gathered in Lake Superior, without visible, adequate supply, to a depth of one thousand feet, with a length of near five hundred miles, and average breadth of one hundred and sixty miles, on a bottom lifted six hundred feet above sea level.
This incalculable mass of water moves its limpid wave through the Saut Sainte Marie into its twin seas, Lakes Michigan and Huron, then by St. Clair and Detroit Rivers is poured through Lake Erie, ever gradually descending, till, at great Niagara, 'The Thunder of the Waters,' it tosses in fury along its rapids, leaps the cataract in glory, at a rate of one hundred millions of tons of water the hour, and then sweeps away into Lake Ontario, to form that northern Mississippi, the River St. Lawrence, which, for over one thousand miles, holds on its ever increasing and widening current, in majesty to the broad Atlantic. By the canals at the Falls and Saut Sainte Marie, direct and continuous ship and steam navigation for sea-going vessels from the Atlantic to Superior City, the extreme Northwest, or Chicago on the Southwest, over three thousand miles through the heart of the continent, is open, while the American coast line along these great waters, exceeds thirty-two hundred miles. Complete in itself, the source of life, health, fine climate, fertility, wealth, and countless blessings to all its shores and valleys, it is divided by lofty barriers from all the other chief water systems of the United States. The Mississippi rises in the highlands of Minnesota at Lake Itasca, more than one hundred miles west of Lake Superior, and gathers in its course all the rivers of its valley. Still loftier mountains separate the sources of the Hudson and Connecticut, and the other rivers of the Atlantic slope.
Blessed with soil and climate unsurpassed, and a Government the nearest to perfection, this region, watered by a mighty inland ocean, is already the chief granary of the world, as well as its great mineral store, although its railway system is not yet extended to its utmost limits; and beyond Michigan it is scarce thirty years since the Americans gained a settlement in its borders.
The greatness of ancient Europe, Asia, and Africa gathered along the shores and harbors of the Mediterranean; all beyond was barbarism, bound to the sovereigns of the Midland Sea only by terror of arms. Even to this day, the laws and literature of those master nations are yet dominant in all the learning and social polity of Europe. This great northern water system is geographically the Mediterranean of the North American continent, and Minnesota, the actual centre, is itsomphalos.
The geographical centre of North America in the heart of Minnesota is also the pinnacle of its watershed—the central source of the majestic rivers whose vast basins determine the physical contour, climates, products, commerce, industry, and political destiny of two-fifths of the whole continent.
With such a theatre for development, the future of this great area, in near grasp, surpasses conception. Egypt, with it endless renown, dwindles into insignificance in comparison. The paramount supremacy of any nation depends wholly on its utility to the rest of mankind.
The warrior nation yields in turn to a stronger foe, while all alike are willing tributaries to the natural arbiter of commerce and source of food supply. Wars, by the laws of Providence, attend the convulsions of national change and growth; but all alike ever welcome the white-winged doves of commerce as the ministers and messengers of national glory and prosperity.
There have been few more striking circumstances connected with the transcendent changes which have taken place in this country during the past three years than the steady verification, amid every change, of those great principles of political economy which, during the past half century, have been the practical guides of European legislation. In fact, under the pressure of war we are slowly coming to realize our fellowship with the communities of the Old World in the laws of social change. Step by step the nation is now passing through all the changes in its internal and domestic condition that took place in Great Britain in the wars with Napoleon. Struck with the novelty and apparent anomalies of our condition, we have been inclined to feel that it was without parallels in history. But in that period of English history which beheld a suspension of specie payment protracted twenty years, an enormous expansion of the currency—the appreciation of gold—a rise in prices unparalleled in any country—a wild spirit of speculation—and, with all, an appearance of astonishing prosperity in the midst of a most exhausting war, we see the reflection of our own condition, and find the lessons by which we should be governed. We have now, for the first time, become a people conscious of taxation. It is clear that the burdens of the future must be still greater than anything we have yet borne in the past. The questions as to the best modes of taxation have already begun to call forth the anxious deliberation of the nation. The question is asked by some if we have not already reached that limit where taxation ceases to be a contribution from the surplus of society, and beyond which it will become a draught on the vital, productive energies of the country. It cannot be unprofitable, at such a time, to examine the history of English taxation in the great periods of similar trial through which that nation has passed.
The great rebellion marks the era of the adoption of a regular system of taxation in Great Britain. 'From a period of immemorial antiquity,' says Macaulay, 'it had been the practice of every English Government to contract debts; what the Revolution introduced was the practice of honestly paying them.'
The change is significant of the triumph of the people. It was found, on the breaking out of the rebellion, that not even an army of Puritans could be sustained without money. The plan of weekly assessments was at first adopted. It was unequal and frequently oppressive. In 1643 it was proposed, in the republican Parliament, to place a tax on the manufacture of beer and cider. The proposition was not at first favorably received. That solemn body had no objection to checking the abominations of beer drinking, but it hesitated to inaugurate a species of taxation which seemed to infringe upon some of the most cherished rights of Englishmen. After much discussion the bill was carried, though with the express declaration that it was compelled by the necessities of the state, and should not be renewed. The tax was soon found too convenient to be dispensed with. In spite of the good resolutions of Parliament, the act was again and again renewed. As the necessities of the state increased, the list of articles was enlarged, and the rate of duty gradually augmented. Thus the excise was introduced to the English people, and thus, almost before they had ceased to look upon it as an intruder, it had acquired a foothold in the budget, from which it has neversince been possible to shake it. The burden of the excise at this period, however, was not oppressive. During the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II. a tax, which has since produced to the state an annual income of $90,000,000, did not probably average more than £500,000. It gives us a singular picture of the simplicity of that period that even this small sum made up one third of the whole royal revenue for the year. The other two thirds were drawn in about equal proportions from the customs and crown lands.
We now approach one of the most important eras in the financial history of England. The nation was yet unaccustomed to taxation, and was weighed down by no national debt. In the Revolution of 1688, and the events that grew immediately out of it, we find, however, the origin of nearly every species of tax now in use in Great Britain. In the same agitated period we find also the beginning of the national debt. Louis XIV. espoused the cause of James, and England entered upon a war with France. In a conflict with the greatest monarchy of Europe, the Government soon found itself forced to adopt a scale of national expenditure which the preceding generation would not have conceived possible. At once, as in a night, a harvest of strange taxes sprang up on every hand. The list of excisable articles was increased. The tax on houses and windows, that had been so unpopular in the preceding reign, was again introduced, and a new appraisement was made of all the real estate in the kingdom. A degenerate age might take exceptions to some of the other taxes now instituted. An act was passed placing a tax upon bachelors and widowers, fixing, at the same time, 'certain rules and duties on marriages, births, and burials, for the term of five years, for the carrying on the war against France with vigor.' Men were not even permitted to enjoy the subtile luxury derived from having a title attached to the name without taxation. Persons of the present day, wishing to know the relative value of the titles, will be interested in the following law, passed at this time:
These, however, were by no means the most burdensome forms of taxation. A man would willingly pay for the distinction of writing himself an esquire, who would grumble with dissatisfaction at the duty on his salt. But to meet the increasing expense of the state, and 'carrying on the war with vigor in France and Ireland' (the propitiating clause with which nearly all the acts of taxation of the period close), the most minute articles, both of necessity and luxury, were required to bear a portion of the common burden. The nation bore its unaccustomed load with singular patience. A license duty on hackney coaches, imposed in 1693, called forth, however, opposition from an unexpected quarter. The outraged wives of the hackmen assembled, and, to express their indignation at the tax, mobbed the offending members of Parliament on their way from the House. It should be mentioned, as showing the intrepidity of that body, or, more probably, the great necessities of the state, that the tax remained unchanged. In spite of all these taxes, the greatest difficulty was experienced in procuring funds to carry on the war. A general lack of confidence in the stability of the Government prevented men from taking up readily the loans which the Government was forced to call for. Various expedients were adopted to attract the cupidity of capitalists. Among these the most successful was the custom of receiving loans upon tontines. This was a species of annuity. Twenty or thirty persons united in the purchase from Government of an annuity upon the joint lives of their whole number. At the death of each his share went to those who remained, and was distributed equally among them. The final survivor took the whole annuity. No inducements, however, were sufficient to overcome the popular distrust. The national debt had already begun to accumulate. Exchequer bills sold on the street at forty per cent. discount; while, at the same time, a wild spirit of speculation and adventure, such as is too apt to be produced by the unnatural excitements of a state of war, had seized upon the popular mind, and threatened, in its reaction, to bring the whole nation to ruin.
It was at this time of excitement and danger that the National Bank was established. It was not at first favorably received. But the effect of its steadying influence soon began to be felt in the whole financial condition of the state. It even checked for a time the frenzied spirit of stock jobbing, which was absorbing the strength of the nation, and with which a few years later, when the whole country ran wild with the South Sea Bubble, it was so nearly involved in a mortal struggle. Under the influence of the Bank, the business of the nation gradually acquired an evenness and stability which was unknown to any former age.
But while the establishment of this National Bank supplied the Government with a ready and economical method of procuring funds, it did not do away with the necessity of taxes. A new form of taxation was now furnished by the Dutch. This small and ingenious people, in the defence of their liberty, had been early forced into extraordinary expenditures, and were in advance of every other nation in the perfection of their system of taxation. The English Parliament had, in the preceding age, borrowed from them the excise. They now took from the same source the idea of stamp duties. This species of tax had been invented in a competition for a prize offered by the Dutch Government for the discovery of a new form of tax, which should press lightly on the people, and, at the same time, produce a large revenue to the state. Stamps were introduced in England in the year 1693. The nation was now in possession of the four most important methods of taxation: customs, excise, licenses, and stamps. The first had existed in the island from a period of immemorial antiquity. The second was introduced by the Great Rebellion. The third and fourth came in with the wars attendant upon the accession of William and Mary.
Of these different forms it may be said, that the second is most obnoxious to the people, and the third most unequal. We should add, perhaps, to this list the land tax, which, founded on the new assessment made by William, became from this time a regular source of revenue. In this period, we see, was laid the foundation of the whole system of taxation now in use in this country and in Great Britain. The hundred years that followed produced no new species of tax. The five forms which we have mentioned, however, were diligently cultivated. In the nine years which immediately followed the accession of William and Mary, about forty distinct acts of taxation were passed by Parliament. Still it was impossible for a nation counting less than six million inhabitants to pay the expenses of a vast and protracted war by immediate taxation. In 1697 a debt existed of about one hundred million dollars. This is the foundation of that national debt which, with trifling exceptions, has been constantly increasing for more than two centuries, and which now occupies a position of influence not second to that of the throne itself. The importance of the Bank increased with the growth of the debt, and the effects of their combined influence appeared on every hand. They were the national pledges for the stability of the Government.
Every fresh rumor of preparation on the part of the exiled Stuarts to enter England, filled the people with alarm for the safety of the Bank. And when, in 1745, Charles Edward landed in Scotland, and made his romantic advance into the kingdom, an enormous run was begun on the Bank. It was prevented from doing harm only by the patriotism of the London merchants. In this brief rebellion the people realized the important financial interest which each citizen had acquired in the permanency of the existing Government and the stability of the reigning house.
At first Parliament had proceeded in the imposition of its taxes on the principle that a tax, to be equitable and easy, should be distributed over a great variety of articles. It was argued that a man would pay a small duty on a large number of things with less inconvenience and consciousness of burden than if the same tax was levied upon a few prominent articles. The pettiness of the tax would keep him in a kind of deception as to the total amount he was paying, which not even the frequency with which he was called upon to pay it would entirely remove. This theory, together with a condition of state in which the wants of Government were constantly increasing, produced, in the time of William and Mary, a constant multiplication of petty taxes. In the early part of the following reign many of these were consolidated in separate funds, which were designated to pay specific parts of the national debt.
But the number of articles subject to taxation was not reduced. The restlessness of the people under the numerous exactions of the excise soon, however, suggested the necessity of a change. Government now passed to one of those extremes which were only too common in an age when political economy had not yet risen into a science, and legislation was only an art of shifts and expedients. In 1736 a tax of five dollars upon the gallon was imposed on all English-made spirits, with a corresponding protective tariff on those of foreign manufacture. The result of this extraordinary tax proved the folly of its originators. It failed as a source of revenue, and, so far from removing these articles beyond the reach of the poor, which had been one of the designs of the bill, it was estimated that the business of smuggling was so stimulated by the enormous bounty offered upon its labors, that the amount of spirits consumed in the kingdom during the existence of this tax was not sensibly diminished. After a short trial the tax was removed.
The work of reducing the list of excisable articles was nevertheless begun, and from this time it went slowly, and, except as interrupted by extraordinary demands upon the state, steadily forward. Stamps, however, were governed by a different law. Its inoffensiveness, the economy of its mode of collection, together with its ready availability, caused this species of tax to be brought into more and more extensive use. In fact, a constant increase of taxation in some form had become necessary in order to meet the increasing expenses of the state. After the close of the war in 1697, strong efforts were made to pay off the national debt, the rising greatness of which filled all classes with alarm. No corresponding efforts since have been rewarded with similar results. In the brief period of peace that followed, the national debt was reduced one fifth. Four expensive wars, following each other in rapid succession, overwhelmed the petty labors of the sinking fund, put an end to the work of diminution, and left the nation, at the beginning of the war with her colonies in this country, oppressed with a debt of $600,000,000. It came out from this struggle with $500,000,000 added to the burden of the state. This point of time may be fixed as the close of the second epoch. A new class ofchanges now begin, which have had, if possible, a greater influence on the financial condition of England, as it exists at the present, than those we have already described.
In 1793, notwithstanding its enormous debt, the country boldly entered upon its great conflict with France. It is impossible to look without admiration upon the obstinate energy displayed by the English nation during this conflict, which lasted, with slight intermissions, for more than twenty years, and by which the annual tax was quadrupled, and the national debt increased beyond a chance of final extinction. In the astonishing revolution which it wrought in the financial condition of the state, as well as in much of the social phenomena with which it was accompanied, this conflict strongly resembles that in which the States of the North are engaged against the South. The first effects of the war appeared in the tax system.
Great changes had taken place in Great Britain since the time of the introduction of a regular system of taxation in 1688. Land was no longer the most important source of income to the citizen. Profits from other sources had sprung up. Commerce had discovered the riches of the Eastern trade, and manufactures, stimulated by new inventions, had begun to assume an importance and exert an influence which already threatened to revolutionize the whole condition of society. Unconsciously to itself, the nation had reached a point where any large increase in the demands of the state must produce a new species of taxation. The war with France supplied the impulse required. In 1797, Government attempted to meet the extraordinary expenses of the year by tripling the tax on houses and windows, etc. The experiment failed. It was found that these taxes, which had been the 'towers of strength' of a preceding generation, could no longer be relied on in the changed circumstances that had been brought about by time.
It was in many respects one of the darkest periods in English history. The Austrian armies, exhausted by repeated defeats, hoped only to be able to defend themselves if attacked. Spain and the Netherlands had joined themselves to France. Against the power of Napoleon England stood up alone. At this critical juncture, a mutiny broke out in the English navy. The whole fleet in the channel refused to do duty. The fleet at the Nore, catching the spirit of revolt, also raised the red flag. The doctrines of the French Revolution were sedulously scattered throughout the kingdom, and in several counties of Ireland actual uprisings had taken place. Added to these were financial difficulties. The enormous outlays demanded for the prosecution of the war were very naturally weakening the public confidence in the final ability of the Government to pay the extravagant sums it was obliged to borrow. Under the influence of the distrust thus engendered stocks fell. Three per cents., which had sold at 98, went down to 53. Many of the loans effected by the Government at this time and during the war were made with a discount of forty per cent. on the nominal value of the stock. Gold was scarce, and rapidly rising. The pressure on the Bank for redemption was greater than it had been since the rebellion of 1745, and threatened, unless corrective measures were at once adopted, to bring that institution to actual bankruptcy.
The undaunted courage and resolution of the Government, in the midst of this accumulation of difficulties, saved the country. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended. By an admirable mingling of firmness and conciliation the mutiny was quelled in the navy without serious consequences resulting to the state. To meet the financial difficulties, an act was passed by Parliament permitting the Bank to suspend specie payment—thus delivering the country, for a period of morethan twenty years, over to a wholly inconvertible paper currency. From these strong measures the enemies of the country anticipated the most disastrous results. They were, however, doomed to disappointment. Even Napoleon at length grew weary of prophesying the bankruptcy of a nation which every year, from this time, gave more and more effective proofs of the stability of its finances. It was the singular fortune of Great Britain to have at the head of its finances, at this juncture, a man, who in a different sphere, exhibited a spirit scarcely less bold, indomitable, and comprehensive than that of the First Consul himself. This man was Mr. Pitt. The finances of Great Britain, even at the present day, bear witness to the extraordinary changes instituted by this statesman. The tax on houses, windows, etc., had failed. In 1798, Mr. Pitt, with a characteristic fertility of invention, brought forward a bill laying a tax on incomes. By this bill, which is the foundation of all those that have since followed, no tax was imposed on incomes that were less than $300; on incomes above this sum a small tax was laid, which gradually increased until it became one tenth of all incomes over $1,000. The income tax was designed by Mr. Pitt to be simply a war tax. According to his plan the interest upon the national debt, which he kept funded as far as possible, was to be provided for solely from the indirect taxes, leaving the direct tax to meet the extraordinary expenses of the war. The most original feature of the financial system instituted by this statesman, however, was the sinking fund. To prevent the rapid accumulation of the national debt, Mr. Pitt, even before the breaking out of the war with France, had obtained from Parliament permission to set aside six million dollars, with an addition, afterward made, of one per cent. of all the loans made by Government, as a fund to be expended in the purchase of Government stock. The rapid growth of this fund from the constant compounding of interest would, he declared, be sufficient, ultimately, to consume the entire debt of the state. The result seemed to justify his prediction. Constantly in the market, the sinking fund saved the state, by its timely purchases many times during the war, from the disastrous depreciation to which the public stock was liable at every unfavorable turn of the conflict. In 1815, so enormous had been the financial transactions of the state that this fund amounted to about $75,000,000.
In 1802 the income tax was discontinued; and, in the following year, was renewed under the name of the property tax. The expenses of the state continued to rise, and it became necessary that this tax should be largely increased. During the last ten years of the war the property tax required ten per cent. of all the incomes of the kingdom—with a few exceptions—to be paid into the national treasury every year. Never before had such a burden been laid on Englishmen. All classes groaned under the exactions of a tax every penny of which they were made conscious of by direct collection. In comparison with the property tax all other burdens seemed easy. It is now clear, however, that the nation could never have passed successfully through the great struggle in which it was engaged without the assistance of the tax upon incomes. It stood next in order of productiveness to the excise. In the year 1815 the property tax produced seventy-five millions of dollars. Still the people remembered with pleasure that the word of Parliament had been given that it should not continue longer than the return of peace. The time was eagerly looked forward to when that promise should be redeemed. Early in 1816 the question of the continuance of the tax came up before Parliament. A strong party, impressed with the importance of diminishing the national debt, advocated its continuance. Every night, for two months,the subject was anxiously discussed. The motion for its abolition was at last carried. The vast crowd which had assembled without the Parliament House to await the result, caught the sound of cheering in the chamber, and, receiving it as a signal of success, rent the air with shouts of joy. The enthusiasm spread with the news. Bells were rung as for a great victory, and bonfires in all parts of the kingdom proclaimed the joy of the nation at its release from what was regarded the moat oppressive burden of the war. Twenty-five years later the income tax was again revived.
The national debt at the close of the war with France amounted to a little more than $424,000,000,000. Of this, $300,000,000,000 had been added by the war. During the last years of the contest the annual expenditures of the state were $585,000,000. The population of the island was at this time 13,400,000, from which $360,000,000 was annually collected in taxes. It is important to notice the condition of the people during this epoch. For nearly twenty years the country had been under the uncontrolled influence of a paper currency. It had been a period of remarkable prosperity, coupled with unparalleled changes. And here we find many points of resemblance with the present condition of our own country. The rapidly expanding currency, the enormous demands of the war, and the spirit of speculation engendered by the sharp alternations of hope and fear, and the extraordinary fluctuations of the markets had stimulated in every branch of business a preternatural activity. Manufactures, which the beginning of the war had found just rising into prominence, rapidly developed in an age of financial profusion. No such progress had ever been made in a corresponding period. Exports were doubled. The shipping rose from one to two and a half million tons. The whole nation exhibited the singular spectacle of a country constantly advancing in wealth and prosperity in the midst of one of the most exhaustive wars that the world has ever seen.
To this, however, there was apparently, at least, one exception. Prices rose steadily from the beginning of the war. This was true not merely of unimportant articles, or those which, by the exercise of a more severe economy, could be in part dispensed with. The cost of the necessaries of life doubled. Wheat rose from forty-nine shillings per quarter in 1797 to one hundred and forty shillings in 1813; while the beef which was sold in Smithfield market, at the beginning of the war, at three shillings per stone, constantly advanced in price, until the same quantity in 1814 could only be bought for six shillings. Malt, coal, wages—everything rose proportionately. Few questions have been the subject of more discussion than the cause of this remarkable rise of prices. Two diverse explanations have been given, each put forth by men whose habits of thought and opportunities for observation qualify them to speak on the subject with authority. One large party attribute the rise of prices that took place at this period, entirely to the influence of the suspension of specie payment by the Bank, which, as they say, flooded the country with an inflated and depreciated paper currency, and thus necessitated a corresponding rise in the price of the articles given in exchange for it. So strongly does this reasoning commend itself to the minds of those familiar with the first principles of political economy, that it has been very generally accepted. And it is worthy of notice that these are almost the only arguments which can be heard in explanation of the similar rise of prices now going on in this country. A more subtile but very important class of influences were brought to notice by another party, under the able leadership of Mr. Tooke. By these the rise of prices is, to a large degree, attributed to the excited spirit of speculation produced by the war, which, as they show, twice during this period brought the country to the brink of ruin. In favor of this explanation it may be further said that the fall of prices began immediately on the close of the war, and at no time was greater than in 1817, two years before the resumption of specie payment by the Bank. In 1819 the Bank of England resumed the payment of specie. Gold, which had been at one time at a premium of twenty-five per cent., now fell rapidly, and in 1821 was again at par.
It is difficult to say which has exerted the largest influence on the finances of Great Britain—the Revolution of 1688, or the wars with France in the beginning of this century. The first gave to England its system of taxation, but the last developed the capabilities of that system, and adapted it to the wants of a growing and commercial people.
The nation came out of its long conflict with taxes pressing upon nearly every important branch of industry. In the sixteen years that followed the war with France, taxes to the amount of nearly $200,000,000, were taken off from the country. These changes gave opportunities for many important reforms. While the national debt was slowly reduced, the tax system underwent great changes. Many taxes which had checked the growth of important branches of business were entirely removed. Efforts were made to reduce the excise, which was always an unpopular form of taxation. In carrying forward these changes, it was found that one really productive tax might be made to take the place of a large number of small duties which pressed with peculiar severity upon the people. Government now turned longingly to that 'splendid source of revenue,' as it was aptly called, which it had so reluctantly relinquished in 1816. In 1842, Sir Robert Peel suddenly brought forward a plan for a new tax upon incomes. It was at once adopted. This income tax differed, however, in many important particulars, from the one which the Government had been compelled to make use of in the wars with France. By it incomes under $750 were exempt. A discrimination of very great importance was also made, which has been the occasion since for much refined discussion, and is founded in sound reason, but which has hitherto been wholly overlooked in the legislation in this country. A discrimination was made between salaries and the incomes divided from realized capital. Taxable incomes, partaking of the nature of a salary, and upon which a tax would have the character of a duty on capital, were required by the provisions of this new act to pay only one half as much as those incomes which arose from, and would be therefore added to, wealth already acquired.
The income, or property tax, as it is now called, completes the system of taxation which is now relied upon to supply the varying but always enormous wants of Great Britain. Through these various sources during the past year the English Government has collected an income of three hundred and fifty million dollars—about the same it obtained through the same channels from a population of thirteen million inhabitants in the closing years of the war with Napoleon. With the same system of taxation, our own Government has, during the past year, obtained an income of one hundred and eleven million dollars. If we examine particularly the sources of the English revenue at these two epochs, and compare them with the corresponding branches of taxation with us, we find that in the year closing in 1815, the receipts from customs amounted to about fifty-six million dollars—a sum, it will be noticed, considerably less than that drawn from the same source in this country for the past year, but only about half the amount derived from customs in Great Britain in the year ending September, 1863. From the property tax was obtainedabout seventy-five million dollars—the modified form of this tax now in use in Great Britain produces about fifty million dollars per annum. Either of these sums is probably much larger than it would be advisable to attempt to produce by a direct tax in this country. Stamps, in 1815, yielded an income of thirty million dollars. During the past year this simple and productive source of revenue produced in Great Britain forty-five million dollars. It seems probable that this species of tax might be extended in this country much farther than it now is, without oppression to the people, and with a handsome increase of the revenue.
But the excise has ever been the most productive fountain of revenue in Great Britain. The income from this tax in that country, during the year ending September, 1863, was eighty-four million dollars. In the year 1815, when, on account of the smaller population, the other sources of revenue were less productive than at the present day, the excise yielded an income of not less than a hundred and thirty-five million dollars. It is worthy of notice that, of this income, the tax upon the various forms of spirituous liquors supplied a large element. English spirits, which, in the experiment of 1736, it had been found could not carry a tax of five dollars per gallon, it was now found easily bore the more moderate but still large tax of ten shillings sixpence sterling. Aside from this tax was the duty on beer, cider, and malt, the last of which alone yielded an income of thirteen million dollars annually.
We have lingered on these details, which to many will be dry and uninteresting, because they supply a kind of guide to the changes which must ultimately take place in the tax laws of this country, and because, further, they furnish an answer to all those objections which periodically disturb the minds of the timid and doubtfully patriotic in our midst. But these lessons we must leave the reader to extract for himself. We close simply with saying that, while excessive and undiscriminating taxation is always a curse, yet taxation, properly imposed, although severe and long continued, may be far from disadvantageous. We have seen the English people slowly arising, through two centuries, from a nation comparatively free from taxation and without a national debt, to one bearing an annual tax of three hundred and fifty million dollars, and holding absorbed in its midst a national debt of nearly four thousand million dollars. We have seen it during this period constantly advancing in prosperity and greatness—the national debt adding stability to the Government, and taxation giving caution and stability to the transactions of private life.
One of the most sublime of all facts beneath that of the Divine Being, appears in the existence of an immortal soul. There it stands—once for all, once forever. The earth might be wasted away, at the rate of a single grain in a century, without passing the very infancy of our spirit's life. How insignificant, in the comparison, a world like our own, in all its temporal aspects. What the future duration of the earth may be, we have no means of knowing; but if less than endless, it is of little moment in the presence of the least capacious human soul.
I find myself writing upon matters connected, at least, with, religion, with the thought of saying something useful—of presenting a valuable experience, if not a valuable congeries of new ideas. Most readers deeply interested in religion are, by this time, demanding that I show my colors—present my creed; otherwise they will shut themselves up from my influence. As I write, church bells are ringing. I know that many of those who now assemble to hang with a deathly solemnity upon the lips of preachers—while death, hell, heaven, eternity, atonement are the themes—will say: 'He treats lightly the most serious matters: he treads with dancing pumps on holy ground.' Now I claim to be, above all things, an earnest, solemn person. Yet do I verily believe that there is a humorous side to all subjects, that is not ignored by even the loftiest beings; and that, in a restricted sense, it may be said of all well-balanced persons, as a philosopher has said of children: 'Because they are in innocence, therefore they are in peace; and because they are in peace, therefore all things are with them full of mirth.' It must be admitted, however, that if the 'orthodox' creed is wholly correct, we find in the Puritans and their existing imitators the only consistent Christians. In view of the inevitable damnation of a majority of the race, they set their faces against all mirth; would eat no pleasant bread, and wear no beautiful raiment. I followed them to the letter, till, the 'naked eye' not being wholly blinded, nor the ear deafened by theologic din, I saw that nature, in all her guises and voices, was firmly opposed to all such gloomy dogmas.
In a word, then, as to creed, I find no satisfactory platform save that of the broadest eclecticism. The motto of the old Greek, 'Know that good is in all,' is mine. I am aware that the danger accruing from this style of creed is, that one often gets, in the effort at impartiality, into the meshes of pantheism; and then your list of gods many and lords many comprises all the chief divinities, from Brahm and Buddh to Thor; you priding yourself the while upon the consideration shown for 'local prejudices' by your not putting Christ at the end of the list. But, after life-long investigation, I am not ashamed to say, in the words, though not in the spirit of Emperor Julian, 'Galilean, thou hast conquered;' with Augustine, 'Let my soul calm itself in Thee; I say, let the great sea of my soul, that swelleth with waves, calm itself in Thee;' with De Staël, 'Inconcevable énigme de la vie; que la passion, ni la douleur, ni le génie ne peuvent découvrir, vous revelerez-vous à la prière;' with practical Napoleon, 'I know men, and Jesus Christ was not a man;' with a Chevalier Bunsen and a Beecher, 'Jesus Christ is my God, without any ifs or buts.' I can assent more decidedly than does Teuflesdröck, in the 'Everlasting Nay,' to the doctrine of regeneration. I narrow the whole matter down to these plain facts: Of all religions, Christianity is best calculated to elevate man's nature; and of all Christians, they reach the highest spiritual condition who regard Christ as utterly divine.
On this other matter that enters so largely into my narrative—the conjugality of disembodied spirits—I cannot forbear some further discourse before proceeding historically. The absurd idea is still prevalent that there is no sex in heaven. Those who retain this notion, despite the revelations of science concerning the universality of sexthroughout creation, cannot reason very candidly. When we find in the earth positives but no negatives, light but no heat, strength but no beauty, action but no passivity, wisdom but no love, intellection but no intuition, reflection but no perception, science but no religion, then, at last, may we expect to see in the heavens men but no women.
Take the conjugal element from human creatures, and you have Hamlet without the ghost. Excepting, perhaps, the religious, it is the most powerful, prominent, exacting part of our nature. In 'man's unregenerate state,' at least, the love story is the most interesting book, marriage the most interesting ceremony, true lovers' dalliance the most interesting sight. For the beloved, one relinquishes all else—performs the greatest prodigies. Marriage is the subject most thought of, most talked about. Around it cluster all the other events of life. Rejoice, then, O 'romantic' youth and maiden, now in the days of thy youth; for this flitting romance—so soon interrupted by care and grief, by shop and kitchen and nursery, by butcher, baker, tailor, milliner, and cordwainer—is about the most genuine experience you will have in this world. Therefore, say I, cultivate romance. Devour a goodly number of the healthier novels. Weep and laugh over them—believing every word. Amadis de Gaul, even, is a better model than Gradgrind. Adore each the other sex—positively worship! Both are worshipful (in the 'abstract').
What healthy-minded person loves not to behold the eye-sparkle of pure admiration between young man and maid? 'They worship, truly, they know not what.' In bowing down to their ideal, they bow to therealhuman—the purified man or woman of the better land. The recluse is ever the true prophet and seer, in this as in still higher matters. Your modest-eyed student, stealing glances of unfeigned admiration at ordinary maidens, is not such a simpleton as some suppose. His seclusion has cleared his vision. He sees on through the eons—sees things as they will or may be—regards the objects of his adoration as he will in the angelhood. Why will so many decry this admiration?—when they see that, not till the youth passes the purely romantic age—fourteen to sixteen or eighteen—and begins to have commonplace thoughts of the other sex, does mischief arise.
The idea of eternal conjugality should lighten all faces with hope, and should have a most conservative influence in society. Those who are not very well matched, and yet are conscious that the very highest earthly bliss comes of a right mating, are not content to pass through this life without enjoying this bliss, if they suppose that it appertains solely to earth. So, many of them break bounds and bonds. Let these but accept the idea that conjugality is one of the chief features of the heavenly life, and they can settle down steadily to the apparent duties of this sphere, content with 'peace on earth,' since now they feel sure of rapture in heaven—a rapture, too, mind you, of a kind with which they are somewhat acquainted. It is all very well to anticipate the fact which 'eye hath not seen,' etc. But men need the prospect of an eternal joy they know of, as much as they needed that awe-inspiring Jehovah should outwork in love-inspiring Christ. In view of this, among other joys set before him, the extra-earnest worker, in public or private, can more easily deprive himself of that amount of social intercourse with the other sex which he craves. Such can suffice themselves with occasional glances of the complementary portion of mankind; and as they hurriedly pass seraphic faces in the street, they wave the hand of the spirit after them, saying: 'I prithee, O thou wonder, art human or no?' 'O you sweet beautiful! 'the king's business requires haste. Providence has set our lives so far apart we cannothear each other speak.' But you will be a woman, and I will be a man, forever. In paradise, I will read wonderful things in those and other such eyes, and wonder at you forever.Vale! vale!'
There is a poet claiming to be of the supernal life—especially of the supernal conjugal—who has written 'epics' and 'lyrics,' of which I must honestly say, as Emerson, I believe, once honestly said of some of the writings of Swedenborg: 'I read them with an unction and an afflatus quite indescribable.' They lift one to the empyrean like nothing else I know of outside the Bible. There is such a saintly purity; such a wondrous, rich, mellow joyousness; such bounding elasticity of spirit; such an evidently irresistible gush of song in the heart; such broad catholicity of religion, that, to some, it seems impossible that they could have been written anywhere but under the perpetual midsummer skies of paradise. It may show poor taste, but to me, in those regions of the upper ether wherein Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and Shelley grow wing-weary, he soars on strong, free pinion. His 'imaginings,' if such they are, of immortal life, as much surpass in plausibility and naturalness those of Milton, Dante, and Virgil, as the acting of a first-class theatre surpasses that seen in the old monkish 'mysteries.' This writer, T. L. Harris, has won much recognition in both hemispheres; would win much more if he appeared simply as a poet, and did not claim a seer faculty, making many positive statements that cannot be verified. He certainly comes up to Aristotle's standard, where he says: 'The object of the poet is not to treat the True as it really happened, but as it should have happened.'
And now the story. I left myself indulging in reveries concerning the expected sight of my invisible charmer. The appointed hour came. I was quite excited. I knew that the land was already full of people who claimed to see the sights of the other world as spirits see them, and fully expected to have my clairvoyant faculty opened. But I saw no 'sudden Ianthe;' and to this day have never seen even a kobold, a wraith, or a döppelganger! This was doubtless fortunate; for I was nearly driven into lunacy by the things Iheardbefore I reached the end of this 'youthful adventure.' I should have gone 'clean daft' if the bugaboo had been permitted to show me the sights they presently promised.
Soon came again my collocutor with explanations.
'You were in such a state of excitement that the united efforts of more than forty of your spirit friends were utterly unavailing for the opening of your sight. We, too, became so excited that we lost all control of ourselves, and could only weep to hear your mournful appeals followed by your surrender of all claims upon me.' ... 'Do not think that I could ever hope to bask beneath the sunshine of your smile after having intentionally deceived you.'
Then followed much similar feminine beguilement; the faculty for which seems to be rather increased by the Jordan bath.
It began to be a noticeable fact that their magnetic power over me was such that they could cast me down to the borders of despair, and raise me thence to rapture at will. Thus a few moments of such ordinary blandishments as the following were the only apparent means of raising my usually slow-moving spirits from a very low to a very high pitch. I was complaining of the waste of paper, in writing words of letters three or four inches high; did not think any law, even a law of nature, justified the imposition of such an expenditure upon a spouse in a separate sphere. 'She' promised to tone down the expressions of attachment until she could talk as largely as she pleased; and to some further suggestions, replied:
'Really, you are quite impertinent,considering the short time we have been married.' ...
Slightly singular as it may seem to those who think that this narration is 'all gammon,' I had gone through the usual course of acquaintanceship with this airy nothing; was first distant and reserved; then slightly thawed, though still horrified at the thought of having all my thoughts read; and finally, after I felt that the invisible eyes had read, in my memory, every page of my history, was perfectly familiar and at ease in the presence this finite searcher of hearts.
I find, next in order, the following:
'So you wish me toprovethat we were married, do you? Well, when you become a denizen of this higher, but none the less practical sphere, you may read, if you please, where, with wonder and strange emotion, I read, in the heavenly records of marriages.' ... [It was dated about the time of my birth.] 'Your banter is not so agreeable as your tenderness.' ... 'You are incorrigible. It will take me many a long age to bring you to a due sense of my importance,' etc. 'Some of my friends are beside themselves with mirth, at my vain attempts at taming a spirit so rude.' Then came another promise of opened vision. 'A truly solemn scene is at hand. Spend the interval in prayer.'
But again there was something wrong about the spiritual zinc or acid, and the electrical machinery would not work. The fair or foul deceiver (who knows?) came up very solemn after this failure.
''Though all men forsake thee,' said Peter, 'yet will not I forsake thee.' So now, when the highest spirits of heaven have fled in terror and dismay, your poor darling will not forsake you. Well might I sit, like Job's friends, seven days, ay, seventy times seven, in silent contemplation of him who—woe is me!—fears that I am but another Delilah, commissioned by his enemies to betray him into their hands. What can I say? what do? Oh that I had never seen the glorious light of the sun or the pure myriads of my happy home, rather than I should have beheld that sight last night. How can I explain the fact that he, whom I, at least, believe to be heaven's most supreme (string of adjectives) favorite, is sitting here with his unutterable but unrepining sorrow looking forth from his ... eyes.'
Just here I caught a glimpse of my divinity, and turning in wrath and scorn to my Titania, said, mockingly:
"While I thineamiablecheeks do coy!"
To this she replies: 'Do not heap additional reproaches upon me, by any such awfully ludicrous quotations.' ... 'So you think that your Delilah is striving to gain time by all these pious and otherwise interesting remarks?' ... 'Nay, do not with loathing cast me from you as an an unholy and hateful thing! for then, oh, what I should then do or be, I cannot, dare not even think.' ... 'Again you see my woman's heart cannot suppress its emotions toward one who still hopes that he has been talking with ——; and who says that, for him to be convinced of this, is to be convinced that she who has been talking with him has not intentionally deceived him.'
She then wrought upon my feelings by portraying her sufferings, until, in my maudlin condition, I was casting about to find how I should help her; just as you sometimes see a drunken tramp striving to pull his drunken pal out of a ditch.
'So, most self-forgetful, you begin to think that you ought to help me bear my burden; as you have planned sitting there, with your little friend encircling you in her so warm embrace. But why should I inform you of such fact, as this last, until you are convinced that all you have heard is not the wily utterance of seducing andhellish spirits? Try not to entertain such awful suspicions. As to the cause of these lamentable failures, I can only suppose that the Lord wishes to make us, who wrongly prophesied, sensible of our inability to foretell future events.'
Then came some bungled Scriptures about my 'mission,' which roused my ire. My taunts drew forth this response:
'Why do you love to ridicule my tenderness, and speak so awfully to one who has no other human source of perfect happiness?'
The day following, the solemn dodge was again resorted to. I began to feel a sort of awe creeping over me. My affectionate friend thereupon wrote:
'What a change a few minutes have wrought in you. Yes! yes! the morning light is breaking. The fiery trial is complete. As I write there rests upon your now placid brow a glorious and marvellously beautiful crown. The cup is drained. 'To him that sat in the valley and shadow of death light has sprung up.' And now awe seizeth me: for there standeth, as yet a long way off, one whose form is like to that of the Son of Man. In a very little while, now, the great event must inevitably occur. He who stands upon the holy mount prepares to open your sight, and give you your commission. How can we see him face to face and live! Let not a passing suspicion of further delay disturb you. Already you begin to feel the influence of his approach. Well may you heave a sigh—as one who experiences a sudden and unlooked-for relief. In less than ten minutes the Lord will appear to you. So make ready, in solemn meditation and prayer, for the most solemn event of your or any other man's life is at hand.'
'If the vision tarry, wait for it,' is the only scripture that seems applicable to my visions: for still they came not. Yet some very serious and substantial experiences now fell to my lot, which shall be the theme of another chapter.
As manager of this exhibition, I would request the orchestra to play something gloomy and grand, during the remainder of the performance; something weird, mysterious; something in which you can hear the soughing of the wind through the pines of the Hartz Mountains or the Black Forest. A passage from aFaustopera orDer Freischutzmight meet the case; for it began to be intimated to me, now that I was sufficiently clairaudient to be able to dispense almost entirely with the pencil, that his Satanic Majesty was no indifferent spectator of the preparation of the man who was about to interfere so signally with his plans and pursuits. Thereupon there began to steal over me for the first time,
'A sense of something dreadful, something near.
However it was managed, from this moment till the end of this phase of life I am narrating, I had an almost constant sense of the presence of 'genii of the pit,' of vast intelligence, cruel as ever Satan was imagined, relentless as fate, cold as Dante's ice hells could make them. At first, some influence led me to review the traditional history and prospects of my supposed distinguished visitor, at some length. I discussed the state of his case with no little unction, though shaking in my boots, and in momentary expectation of being gobbled up, body and soul, and whisked off in sulphurous smoke, with only a sulphur-burnt hole in the carpet to mark the spot where I saw the last of earth.
Presently my inseparable companion broke in with:
'He hears you! he hears you! and never may it be my lot again to look upon—' ... 'There he is again, glaring with inexpressible rage upon the comparatively insignificant man who just now so plainly revealed to him 'the true state of the case.' I am almost afraid to look upon that awfulvisage. 'The state of the case is it?' he exclaims. 'We will see what is the state.''—
There is a break here in the manuscript, which is resumed thus: 'You have conquered! frantic with rage he has fled, never, I trust, to return.'
How will I remember what happened during that awful pause? It was spent, I suppose, in a hand-to-hand conflict with the Prince of Darkness; the agreeableness of which was not enhanced by my vivid recollection of the 'bit of a discooshin' between Christian and Apollyon depicted in the old family Pilgrim's Progress. We are truly 'the stuff that dreams are made of.' What mattered it to me, on that bland summer afternoon, since I was of this opinion, whether it was Beelzebub himself or some departed 'blazing tinman,' with a suit of his majesty's old clothes on, while himself, all snug at home,
'Sat in his easy chair,Drinking his sulphur tea.'
That was certainly one of the most awful moments of my life, in which I felt the first dreadful rush of this invisible tiger. It seemed as if he swooped toward me to annihilate me in a moment; but was restrained by a higher power. His coming was like the rush of a fifteen-inch shell past one's head.
As soon as I saw that the first onset did not destroy me, I gathered strength to face the monster; for a tongue combat seemed all that was permitted him. He put me through my theological paces at an awful rate—using the Socratic dialectic—growling out questions in the tones of a cathedral organ, that made me shiver. Oh that I could remember that fearful catechism! It would make a tract for which the Tom Paine Association would pay a high price. He drove me—partly, I suppose, by magnetic force—step by step, from my cherished religious opinions. My reasons for believing in the cardinal doctrines of Christianity seemed to burn like straw before his fiery rhetoric, and to turn to dust beneath the ponderous blows of his iron logic. He pushed me away from all I had esteemed reliable in the universe, till I seemed to stand on the verge of creation. There I hung with the strength of terror. Then I found poet Campbell true to nature, where he speaks of hope standing intact ''mid Nature's funeral pyre.' I insisted upon 'hoping,' in spite of all his fiery hail.
After he had beaten down all my defences, he began to jeer at me with fierce sneers and goblin laughter that froze my blood. 'SoIwas the contemptible manikin who dared to entertain the idea of equality with him—the Star of the Morning—one breath of whose nostrils would wither me into nonentity. SoIpresumed to stand up and face him, who had, in his time, scattered the hosts of heaven! If it were not for those cursed, white-liveredthings(angels) that stood in the way, he would swoop down and destroy me in an instant.'
Having found and maintained foothold for several minutes on the rock of hope, I began to consider how weak things had of erst confounded the things that were mighty, and soon the wirepullers behind the scenes (whoever they were) had me smiting him hip and thigh. I 'began in weakness, but ended in power.' At first a few muttered remonstrances, but finally whole Ironsides broadsides, with the result above named. The words of my antagonist, during this encounter, rang through my brain with awful distinctness. For a day or two I had been communicating partly with the pencil, and partly by clairaudience, eked out by writing in the air with my forefinger. But this demon, or demonpro tem., needed not to write his words: his 'trumpet gave no uncertain sound.'
The thoughtful reader will perceive what a strong point my magnetizers gained by this scene. After disappointing me so many times, they could not, with all their power over me, have keptme from throwing the whole thing overboard, without resorting to some suchcoup d'état. Being, doubtless, on better terms with the infernal than with the supernal regions, these denizens of the Intermediate Limbo (we will suppose that my strange guests were mostly of this sort of nondescripts) had perhaps induced somebona fidedemon to act the part of the king of them all, 'for this night only.' It certainly was an immense success. I, to be sure, had not received the expected commission: but had I not fought the great red dragon, and, like another St. George, pinned him to the earth, through supernatural aid? Here was a substantial success. I write this merrily enough now; but was not often merry then—was indeed acting great, real tragedy.
I was not long to enjoy this triumph. The word came: 'Again he comes!' Then I had another long, hard fight; but this time was not pushed so near the wall. I was then told by my spiritual adviser and Circe of the unbounded admiration expressed for me by those who had listened to this 'ever-memorable' disputation.
The attempt to craze me, or—putting the best face on it—to show mehow spiritists are generally crazed, now began in downright earnest. All that night, despite my entreaties to be permitted to sleep, I was kept awake, and busied with a variety of 'extremely important' business. I am naturally a solid, regular sleeper, and do not prosper upon Napoleon or Humboldt portions of repose; but now could only suit my persecutors by rising on one elbow in bed, and 'wrestling' for the salvation of my next neighbor. They sedulously poured into my mind all manner of apocrypha concerning this gentleman's shortcomings—about the necessity of praying for and at him, and about the effects of my efforts, i. e., bringing a streak of celestial light upon him—until I was almost ready to wish that he might be ——, rather than that I should have any such unseasonable work to perform in his behalf. But they kept me at it, straight through the night and a large portion of the next day; and finally induced me to go, much against my will, to reveal to him some of my experiences, and to endeavor to force from him an acknowledgment that what I had heard about him was true.