Diary in America, Series Two

“I should imagine, captain, that when you have conversed, and mixed up with us a little more, you will be inclined to retract, and acknowledge what I have said to be correct. I have lived all my life in the States, and I have no hesitation in saying, that we are a very moral people. Recollect that you have principally confined yourself to our cities, during your stay with us; yet even there we may proudly challenge comparison.”

“My opinion is, that unless you can shew just cause why you should be more moral than other nations, you are, whether in cities or in the country, much the same as we are. I do not require to examine on this point, as I consider it to be a rule-of-three calculation. Give me the extent of the population, and I can estimate the degree of purity. Mankind demoralise each other by collision; and the larger the numbers crowded together, the greater will be the demoralisation, and this rule will hold good, whether in England or the United States, the Old World or the New.”

“That argument would hold good if it were not for our institutions, which are favourable to morality and virtue.”

“I consider them quite the contrary. Your institutions are beautiful in theory, but in practice do not work well. I suspect that your society has a very similar defect.”

“Am I then to understand, captain, that you consider the American ladies as not virtuous?”

“I have already said that I have had no proofs to the contrary; all I wish is to defend my own country, and I say that I consider the English women at all events quite as moral as the Americans.”

“I reckon that’s no compliment, captain. Now, then, do you mean to say that you think there is as much conjugal infidelity in New York, in proportion to the population, as there is in London? Now, captain, if you please, we will stick to that point.”

“I answer you at once. No, I do not believe that there is; but—”

“That’s all I want, captain—never mind the buts.”

“But you must have the buts. Recollect, I did not say that your society was more moral, although I said that there was in my opinion less infidelity.”

“Well, how can that be?”

“Because, in the first place, conjugal infidelity is not the only crime which exists in society; and, secondly, because there are causes which prevent its being common. That this vice should be common, two things are requisite—time and opportunity; neither of which is to be found in a society like yours. You have no men of leisure, every man is occupied the whole day with his business. Now, suppose one man was to stay away from his business for merely one day, would he not be missed, and inquiries made after him; and if it were proved that he stayed away to pass his time with his neighbour’s wife, would not the scandal be circulated all over the city before night? I recollect a very plain woman accusing a very pretty one of indiscretion; the reply of the latter, when the former vaunted her own purity, was, ‘Were you ever asked?’ Thus it is in America; there is neither time nor opportunity, and your women are in consequence seldom or ever tempted. I do not mean to say that if they were tempted they would fall; all I say is, that no parallel can in this instance be drawn between the women of the two countries, as their situations are so very different. I am ready to do every justice to your women; but I will not suffer you to remain in the error, that you are more moral than we are.”

“Why, you have admitted that we are from circumstances, if not from principle.”

“In one point only, and in that you appear to be, and I have given you a reason why you really should be so; but we can draw no inference of any value from what we know relative to your better classes of society. If we would examine and calculate the standard of morality in a country, we must look elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“To the lower class of society, and not to the highest. I presume you are aware that there is a greater proportion of unfortunate females in New York, taking the extent of the populations, than in London or Paris? I have it from American authority, and I have every reason to believe that it is true.”

“I am surprised that any American should have made such an admission, captain; but for the sake of argument let it be so. But first recollect that we have a constant influx of people from the Old Country, from all the other States in America, and that we are a sea-port town, with our wharfs crowded with shipping.”

“I admit it all, and that is the reason why you have so many. The supply in all countries is usually commensurate with the demand; but the numbers have nothing to do with the argument.”

“Then I cannot see what you are driving at; for allow me to say that, admitting the class to be as numerous as you state from American authority, still they are very orderly and well behaved. You never see them drunk in the streets; you never hear swearing or abusive language; and you do in London and your seaports. There is a decorum and sense of propriety about them which, you must admit, speaks well, even for those unfortunate persons, and shews some sense of morality and decency even in our most abandoned.”

“You have brought forward the very facts which I was about to state, and it is from these facts that I draw quite contrary conclusions. If your argument is good, it must follow that the women of Paris are much more virtuous than the women of London. Now, I consider that these facts prove that the standard of morality is lower in America and France than it is in England. A French woman who has fallen never drinks, or uses bad language; she follows her profession, and seldom sinks, but rises in it. The grisette eventually keeps her carriage, and retires with sufficient to support her in her old age, if she does not marry. The American women of this class appear to me to be precisely the same description of people; whereas, in England, a woman who falls, falls never to rise again—sinking down by degrees from bad to worse, until she ends her days in rags and misery. But why so? because, as you say, they become reckless and intemperate—they do feel their degradation, and cannot bear up against it—they attempt to drown conscience, and die from the vain attempts. Now, the French and the American women of this class apparently do not feel this, and, therefore, they behave and do better. This is one reason why I argue that the standard of morality is not so high in your country as with us, although, from circumstances, conjugal infidelity may be less frequent.”

“Then, captain, you mean to say that cursing, swearing, and drinking, is a proof of morality in your country?”

“It is a proof, not of the morality of the party, but of the high estimation in which virtue is held, shewn by the indifference and disregard to everything else after virtue is once lost.”

This is a specimen of many arguments held with the Americans upon that question, and when examining into it, it should be borne in mind that there is much less excuse for vice in America than in the Old Countries. Poverty is but too often the mother of crime, and in America it may be said that there is no poverty to offer up in extenuation.

Mr Carey appears to have lost sight of this fact when he so triumphantly points at the difference between the working classes of both nations, and quotes the Report of our Poor Law Commissioners to prove the wretchedness and misery of ours. I cannot, however, allow his assertions to pass without observation, especially as English and French travellers have been equally content to admit without due examination the claims of the Americans; I refer more particularly to the large manufactory at Lowell, in Massachusetts, which from its asserted purity has been one of the boasts of America. Mr Carey says:—

“The following passage from a statement, furnished by the manager of one of the principal establishments in Lowell, shows a very gratifying state of things:– ‘There have only occurred three instances in which any apparently improper connection or intimacy had taken place, and in all those cases the parties were married on the discovery, and several months prior to the birth of their children; so that, in a legal point of view, no illegitimate birth has taken place among the females employed in the mills under my direction. Nor have I known of but one case among all the females employed in Lowell. I have said known—I should say heard of one case. I am just informed, that that was a case where the female had been employed but a few days in any mill, and was forthwith rejected from the corporation, and sent to her friends. In point of female chastity, I believe that Lowell is as free from reproach as any place of an equal population in the United States or the world.’”

And he winds up his chapter with the following remark:—

“The effect upon morals of this state of things, is of the most gratifying character. The number of illegitimate children born in the United States is small; so small, that we should suppose one in fifty to be a high estimate. In the great factories of the Eastern States there prevails a high degree of morality, presenting a most extraordinary contrast to the immorality represented to exist in a large portion of those of England.”

Next follows Miss Martineau, who says—“The morals of the female factory population may be expected to be good when it is considered of what class it is composed. Many of the girls are in the factories because they have too much pride for domestic service. Girls who are too proud for domestic service as it is in America, can hardly be low enough for any gross immorality, or to need watching, or not to be trusted to avoid the contagion of evil example. To a stranger, their pride seems to have taken a mistaken direction, and they appear to deprive themselves of a respectable home and station, and many benefits, by their dislike of service; but this is altogether their own affair, they must choose for themselves their way of life. But the reasons of their choice indicate a state of mind superior to the grossest dangers of their position.”

And the Reverend Mr Reid also echoes the praise of the factory girls given by others, although he admits that their dress was above their state and condition, and that he was surprised to see them appear “in silks, with scarfs, veils, and parasols.”

Here is a mass of evidence opposed to me, but the American evidence must be received with all due caution; and as for the English, I consider it rather favourable to my side of the question than otherwise. Miss Martineau says that “the girls have too much pride for domestic service,” and, therefore, argues that they will not be immoral; now, the two great causes of women falling off from virtue, are poverty and false pride. What difference there is between receiving money for watching a spinning-jenny, and doing household work, I do not see; in either case it is servitude, although the former may be preferred, as being less under control, and leaving more time at your own disposal. I consider the pride, therefore, which Miss Martineau upholds, to be false pride, which will actuate them in other points; and when we find the factory girls vying with each other in silks and laces, it becomes a query whether the passion for dress, so universal in America, may not have its effect there as well as elsewhere. I must confess that I went to Lowell doubting all I had heard—it was so contrary to human nature that five hundred girls should live among a population of fifteen hundred, or more, all pure and virtuous, and all dressed in silks and satin.

When I went to Lowell I travelled with an American gentleman, who will, I have no doubt, corroborate my statement, and I must say that, however pure Lowell may have been at the time when the encomiums were passed upon it, I have every reason to believe, from American authority as well as my own observation, that a great alteration has taken place, and that the manufactories have retrograded with the whole mass of American society. In the first place, I never heard a more accomplished swearer, east of the Alleghanies, than one young lady who addressed me and my American friend, and as it was the only instance of swearing on the part of a female that I ever met with in the United States, it was the more remarkable. I shall only observe, that two days at Lowell convinced me that “human nature was the same every where,” and thus I dismiss the subject.

Mr Carey compels me to make a remark which I would gladly have avoided, but as he brings forward his comparative statements of the number of illegitimate children born in the two countries as a proof of the superior morality of America, I must point out to him what I suspect he is not aware of. Public opinion acts as law in America; appearances are there substituted for the reality, and provided appearances are kept up, whether it be in religion or morality, it is sufficient; but should an exposure take place, there is no mercy for the offender. As those who have really the least virtue in themselves are always the loudest to cry out at any lapse which may be discovered in others, so does society in America pour out its anathemas in the inverse ratio of its real purity. Now, although the authority I speak from is undoubted, at the same time I wish to say as little as possible. That there are fewer illegitimate children born in the United States is very true. But why so? because public opinion there acts as the bastardy clause in the new poor law bill has done in this country; and if Mr Carey will only inquire in his own city, he will find that I should be justified if I said twice as much, as I have been compelled in defence of my own country to say, upon so unpleasant a subject.

Volume Two—Chapter Two

Public Opinion, or the Majority

The majority are always in the right, so says Miss Martineau, and so have said greater people than even Miss Martineau; to be sure Miss Martineau qualifies her expression afterwards, when she declares that they always will be right in the end. What she means by that I do not exactly comprehend; the end of a majority is its subsiding into a minority, and a minority is generally right. But I rather think that she would imply that they will repent and see their folly when the consequences fall heavily upon them. The great question is, what is a majority? must it be a whole nation, or a portion of a nation, or a portion of the population of a city; or, in fact, any plus against any minus, be they small or be they large. For instance, two against one are a majority, and, if so, any two scoundrels may murder an honest man and be in the right; or it may be the majority in any city, as in Baltimore, where they rose and murdered an unfortunate minority21; or it may be a majority on the Canada frontier, when a set of miscreants defied their own government, and invaded the colony of a nation with whom they were at peace—all which is of course right. But there are other opinions on this question besides those of Miss Martineau, and we shall quote them as occasion serves.

I have before observed, that Washington left America a republic; and that in the short space of fifty years it has sunk into a democracy.

The barrier intended to be raised against the encroachments of the people has been swept away; the senate (which was intended, by the arrangements for its election, to have served as the aristocracy of the legislature, as a deliberative check to the impetus of the majority, like our House of Lords), having latterly become virtually nothing more than a second congress, receiving instructions, and submissive to them, like a pledged representative. This is what Washington did not foresee.

Washington was himself an aristocrat; he shewed it in every way. He was difficult of access, except to the higher classes. He carried state in his outward show, always wearing his uniform as General of the Forces, and attended by a guard of honour. Indeed, one letter of Washington’s proves that he was rather doubtful as to the working of the new government shortly after it had been constituted. He says:—

“Among men of reflection few will be found, I believe, who are not beginning to think that our system is better in theory than in practice, and that notwithstanding the boasted virtue of America, it is more than probable we shall exhibit the last melancholy proof, that mankind are incompetent to their own government without the means of coercion in the sovereign.” (Washington’s letter to Chief Justice Jay, 10th March, 1787.)

This is a pretty fair admission from such high authority; and fifty years have proved the wisdom and foresight of the observation. Gradually as the aristocracy of the country wore out (for there was an aristocracy at that time in America), and the people became less and less enlightened, so did they encroach upon the constitution. President after president gradually laid down the insignia and outward appearance of rank, the senate became less and less respectable, and the people more and more authoritative.

M. Tocqueville says, “When the American revolution broke out, distinguished political characters arose in great numbers; for public opinion then served, not to tyrannise over, but to direct the exertions of individuals. Those celebrated men took a full part in the general agitation of mind common at that period, and they attained a high degree of personal fame, which was reflected back upon the nation, but which was by no means borrowed from it.”

It was not, however, until the presidency of General Jackson, that the democratic party may be said to have made any serious inroads upon the constitution. Their previous advances were indeed sure, but they were, comparatively speaking, slow; but, raised as he was to the office of President by the mob, the demagogues who led the mob obtained the offices under government, to the total exclusion of the aristocratic party, whose doom was then sealed. Within these last ten years the advance of the people has been like a torrent, sweeping and levelling all before it, and the will of the majority has become not only absolute with the government, but it defies the government itself, which is too weak to oppose it.

Is it not strange, and even ridiculous, that under a government established little more than fifty years, a government which was to be a lesson to the whole world, we should find political writers making use of language such as this: “We are for reform, sound, progressive reform, not subversion and destruction.” Yet such is an extract from one of the best written American periodicals of the day. This is the language that may be expected to be used in a country like England, which still legislates under a government of eight hundred years old; but what a failure must that government be, which in fifty years calls forth even from its advocates such an admission!!

M. Tocqueville says, “Custom, however, has done even more than laws. A proceeding which will in the end set all the guarantees of representative government at nought, is becoming more and more general in the United States: it frequently happens that the electors who choose a delegate, point out a certain line of conduct to him, and impose upon him a certain number of positive obligations, which he is pledged to fulfil. With the exception of the tumult, this comes to the same thing as if the majority of the populace held its deliberations in the market-place.”

Speaking of the majority as the popular will, he says, “no obstacles exist which can impede, or so much as retard its progress, or which can induce it to heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of things is fatal in itself, and dangerous for the future.”

My object in this chapter is to inquire what effect has been produced upon the morals of the American people by this acknowledged dominion of the majority?

1st. As to the mass of the people themselves. It is clear, if the people not only legislate, but, when in a state of irritation or excitement, they defy even legislation, that they are not to be compared to restricted sovereigns, but to despots, whose will and caprice are law. The vices of the court of a despot are, therefore, practised upon the people; for the people become as it were the court, to whom those in authority, or those who would be in authority, submissively bend the knee. A despot is not likely ever to hear the truth, for moral courage fails where there is no law to protect it, and where honest advice may be rewarded by summary punishment. The people, therefore, like the despot, are never told the truth; on the contrary, they receive and expect the most abject submission from their courtiers, to wit, those in office, or expectants.

Now, the President of the United States may be considered the Prime Minister of an enlightened public, who govern themselves, and his communication with them is in his annual message.

Let us examine what Mr Van Buren says in his last message.

First, he humbly acknowledges their power.

“A national bank,” he tells them, “would impair the rightful supremacy of the popular will.”

And this he follows up with that most delicate species of flattery, that of praising them for the very virtue which they are most deficient in; telling them that they are “a people to whom the truth, however unpromising, can always be told with safety.”

At the very time when they were defying all law and all government, he says, “It was reserved for the American Union to test the advantage of a government entirely dependent on the continual exercise of the popular will, and our experience has shewn, that it is as beneficent in practice, as well as it is just in theory.”

At the very time that nearly the whole Union were assisting the insurrection in Canada with men and money, he tells them “that temptations to interfere in the intestine commotions of neighbouring countries have been thus far successfully resisted.”

This is quite enough; Mr Van Buren’s motives are to be re-elected as president. That is very natural on his part; but how can you expect a people to improve who never hear the truth?

Mr Cooper observes, “Monarchs have incurred more hazards from follies of their own that have grown up under the adulation of parasites, than from the machinations of their enemies; and in a democracy, the delusion that still would elsewhere be poured into the ears of the prince, is poured into those of the people.”

The same system is pursued by all those who would arrive at, or remain in place and power: and what must be the consequence? that the straight-forward, honourable, upright man is rejected by the people, while the parasite, the adulator, the demagogue, who flatters their opinions, asserts their supremacy, and yields to their arbitrary demands, is the one selected by them for place and power. Thus do they demoralise each other; and it is not until a man has, by his abject submission to their will, in contradiction to his own judgment and knowledge, proved that he is unworthy of the selection which he courts, that he is permitted to obtain it. Thus it is that the most able and conscientious men in the States are almost unanimously rejected.

M. Tocqueville says, “It is a well-authenticated fact, that at the present day the most talented men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs; and it must be acknowledged that such has been the result in proportion as democracy has outstepped all its former limits: the race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most remarkably in the course of the last fifty years.”

Indeed, no high-minded consistent man will now offer himself, and this is one cause among many why Englishmen and foreigners have not done real justice to the people of the United States. The scum is uppermost, and they do not see below it. The prudent, the enlightened, the wise, and the good, have all retired into the shade, preferring to pass a life of quiet retirement, rather than submit to the insolence and dictation of a mob.

M. Tocqueville says, “Whilst the natural propensities of democracy induce the people to reject the most distinguished citizens as its rulers, these individuals are no less apt to retire from a political career, in which it is almost impossible to retain their independence, or to advance without degrading themselves.”