Diary in America, Series Two

Again, “At the present day the most affluent classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United States, that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorest classes of their fellow-citizens. They concentrate all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public, and they constitute a private society in the State which has its own tastes and its own pleasures. They submit to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they are careful not to shew that they are galled by its continuance. It is even not uncommon to hear them laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions, when they are in public. Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them. But beneath this artificial enthusiasm, and these obsequious attentions to the preponderating power, it is easy to perceive that the wealthy members of the community entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and of their fears. If the maladministration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis, and if monarchial constitutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of what I advance will become obvious.”

It appears, then, that the more respectable portion of its citizens have retired, leaving the arena open to those who are least worthy: that the majority dictate, and scarcely any one ventures to oppose them; if any one does, he is immediately sacrificed; the press, obdient to its masters, pours out its virulence, and it is incredible how rapidly a man, unless he be of a superior mind, falls into nothingness in the United States, when once he has dared to oppose the popular will. He is morally bemired, bespattered, and trod under foot, until he remains a lifeless carcase. He falls, never to rise again, unhonoured and unremembered.

Captain Hamilton, speaking to one of the federalist, or aristocratical party, received the following reply. I have received similar ones in more than fifty instances. “My opinions, and I believe those of the party to which I belonged, are unchanged; and the course of events in this country has been such as to impress only a deeper and more thorough conviction of their wisdom; but, in the present state of public feeling, we dare not express them. An individual professing such opinions would not only find himself excluded from every office of public trust within the scope of his reasonable ambition, but he would be regarded by his neighbours and fellow-citizens with an evil eye. His words and actions would become the objects of jealous and malignant scrutiny, and he would have to sustain the unceasing attacks of a host of unscrupulous and ferocious assailants.”

Mr Cooper says, “The besetting, the degrading vice of America is the moral cowardice by which men are led to truckle to what is called public opinion, though nine times in ten these are mere engines set in motion by opinions the most corrupt and least respectable portion of the community, for the most unworthy purposes. The English are a more respectable and constant (unconstant?) nation than the Americans, as relates to this peculiarity.”

To be popular with the majority in America, to be a favourite with the people, you must first divest yourself of all freedom of opinion; you must throw off all dignity; you must shake hands and drink with every man you meet; you must be, in fact, slovenly and dirty in your appearance, or you will be put down as an aristocrat. I recollect once an American candidate asked me if I would walk out with him? I agreed; but he requested leave to change his coat, which was a decent one, for one very shabby; “for,” says he, “I intend to look in upon some of my constituents, and if they ever saw me in that other coat, I should lose my election.” This cannot but remind the reader of the custom of candidates in former democracies—standing up in the market-place as suppliants in tattered garments, to solicit the “voices” of the people.

That the morals of the nation have retrograded from the total destruction of the aristocracy, both in the government and in society, which has taken place within the last ten years, is most certain.

The power has fallen into the hands of the lower orders, the offices under government have been chiefly filled up by their favourites, either being poor and needy men from their own class, or base and dishonest men, who have sacrificed their principles and consciences for place. I shall enter more fully into this subject hereafter; it is quite sufficient at present to say, that during Mr Adams’ presidency, a Mr Benjamin Walker was a defaulter to the amount of 18,000 dollars, and was in consequence incarcerated for two years. Since the democratic party have come into power, the quantity of defaulters, and the sums which have been embezzled of government money, are enormous, and no punishment of any kind has been attempted. They say it is only a breach of trust, and that a breach of trust is not punishable, except by a civil action; which certainly in the United States is of little avail, as the payment of the money can always be evaded. The consequence is that you meet with defaulters in, I will not say the very best society generally, but in the very best society of some portions of the United States. I have myself sat down to a dinner party to which I had been invited, with a defaulter to government on each side of me. I knew one that was setting up for Congress, and, strange to say, his delinquency was not considered by the people as an objection. An American author (Voice from America) states, “On the 17th June, 1838, the United States treasurer reported to Congress sixty-three defaulters; the total sums embezzled amounting to one million, twenty thousand and odd dollars.”

The tyranny of the majority has completely destroyed the moral courage of the American people, and without moral courage what chance is there of any fixed standard of morality?

M. Tocqueville observes, “Democratic republics extend the practice of currying favour with the many, and they introduce it into a greater number of classes at once: this is one of the most serious reproaches that can be addressed to them. In democratic States organised on the principles of the American republics this is more especially the case, where the authority of the majority is so absolute and irresistible, that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and almost abjure his quality as a human being, if he intends to stray from the track which it lays down.

“In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United States, I found very few men who displayed any of that manly candour, and that masculine independence of opinion, which frequently distinguished the Americans in former times, and which constitutes the leading feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be found. It seems, at first sight, as if all the minds of the Americans were formed upon one model, so accurately do they correspond in their manner of judging. A stranger does, indeed, sometimes meet with Americans who dissent from these rigorous formularies; with men who deplore the defects of the laws; the mutability and the ignorance of democracy; who even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies which impair the national character, and to point out such remedies as it might be possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things beside yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are confided, are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very ready to communicate truths which are useless to you, but they continue to hold a different language in public.”22

There are a few exceptions—Clay and Webster are men of such power as to be able, to a certain degree, to hold their independence. Dr Channing has proved himself an honour to his country and to the world. Mr Cooper has also great merit in this point and no man has certainly shewn more moral courage, let his case be good or not, than Garrison, the leader of the abolition party.

But with these few and remarkable exceptions, moral courage is almost prostrate in the United States. The most decided specimen I met with to the contrary was at Cincinnati, when a large portion of the principal inhabitants ventured to express their opinion, contrary to the will of the majority, in my defence, and boldly proclaimed their opinions by inviting me to a public dinner. I told them my opinion of their behaviour, and I gave them my thanks. I repeat my opinion and my thanks now; they had much to contend with, but they resisted boldly; and not only from that remarkable instance of daring to oppose public opinion when all others quailed, but from many other circumstances, I have an idea that Cincinnati will one day take an important lead, as much from the spirit and courage of her citizens, as from her peculiarly fortunate position. I had a striking instance to the contrary at St. Louis, when they paraded me in effigy through the streets. Certain young Bostonians, who would have been glad enough to have seized my hand when in the Eastern States, before I had happened to affront the majority, kept aloof, or shuffled away, so as not to be obliged to recognise me. Such have been the demoralising effects of the tyranny of public opinion in the short space of fifty years, and I will now wind up this chapter by submitting to the reader extracts from the two French authors, one of whom describes America in 1782, and the other in 1835.

America in 1782

“Je vais, disais-je, mettre à la voile aujour-d’hui; je m’éloigne avec un regret infini d’un pays où l’on est, sans obstacle et sans inconvénient, ce qu’on devrait être partout, sincère et libre.”—“On y pense, on y dit, on y fait ce qu’on veut. Rien ne vous oblige d’y être ni faux, ni bas, ni flatteur. Personne ne se choque de la singularité de vos manières ni de vos goûts.”—Mémoires ou Souvenirs de Monsieur de Ségur, volume I, page 409.

America in 1835

“L’Amérique est donc un pays de liberté, où pour ne blesser personne, on ne doit parler librement, ni des gouvernans, ni des gouvernés, ni des eutreprises publiques, ni des entreprises privées; de rien, enfin, de ce qu’on y rencontre si non peut-être du climat et du sol; encore trouve-t-on des Américains prêts à défendre l’un et l’autre, comme s’ils avaient concouru à les former.”—Monsieur de Tocqueville sur la Démocratie aux Etats Unis de l’Amerique, volume II, page 118.

Volume Two—Chapter Three

Patriotism

This is a word of very doubtful meaning; and until we have the power to analyse the secret springs of action, it is impossible to say who is or who is not a patriot. The Chartist, the White Boy, may really be patriots in their hearts, although they are attempting revolution, and are looked upon as the enemies of good order. Joseph Hume may be a patriot, so may O’Connell, so may —; but never mind; I consider that if in most cases, in all countries the word egotism were substituted it would be more correct, and particularly so in America.

M. Tocqueville says, “The inhabitants of the United States talk a great deal of their attachment to their country; but I confess that I do not rely upon that calculating patriotism which is founded upon interest, and which a change in the interests at stake may obliterate.”

The fact is, that the American is aware that what affects the general prosperity must affect the individual, and he therefore is anxious for the general prosperity; he also considers that he assists to legislate for the country, and is therefore equally interested in such legislature being prosperous; if, therefore, you attack his country, you attack him personally—you wound his vanity and self-love.

In America it is not our rulers who have done wrong or right; it is we (or rather I) who have done wrong or right, and the consequence is, that the American is rather irritable on the subject, as every attack is taken as personal. It is quite ridiculous to observe how some of the very best of the Americans are tickled when you praise their country and institutions; how they will wince at any qualification in your praise, and actually writhe under any positive disparagement. They will put questions, even if they anticipate an unfavourable answer; they cannot help it. What is the reason of this? Simply their better sense wrestling with the errors of education and long-cherished fallacies. They feel that their institutions do not work as they would wish; that the theory is not borne out by the practice, and they want support against their own convictions. They cannot bear to eradicate deep-rooted prejudices, which have been from their earliest days a source of pride and vain-glory; and to acknowledge that what they have considered as most perfect, what they have boasted of as a lesson to other nations, what they have suffered so much to uphold, in surrendering their liberty of speech, of action, and of opinion, has after all proved to be a miserable failure, and instead of a lesson to other nations—a warning.

Yet such are the doubts, the misgivings which fluctuate in, and irritate the minds of a very large proportion of the Americans; and such is the decided conviction of a portion who retire into obscurity and are silent; and every year adds to the number of both these parties. They remind one of a husband who, having married for love, and supposed his wife to be perfection, gradually finds out that she is full of faults, and renders him anything but happy; but his pride will not allow him to acknowledge that he has committed an error in his choice, and he continues before the world to descant upon her virtues, and to conceal her errors, while he feels that his home is miserable.

It is because it is more egotistical that the patriotism of the American is more easily roused and more easily affronted. He has been educated to despise all other countries, and to look upon his own as the first in the world; he has been taught that all other nations are slaves to despots, and that the American citizen only is free, and this is never contradicted. For although thousands may in their own hearts feel the falsehood of their assertions, there is not one who will venture to express his opinion. The government sets the example, the press follows it, and the people receive the incense of flattery, which in other countries is offered to the court alone; and if it were not for the occasional compunctions and doubts, which his real good sense will sometimes visit him with, the more enlightened American would be as happy in his own delusions, as the majority most certainly may be said to be.

M. Tocqueville says, “For the last fifty years no pains have been spared to convince the inhabitants of the United States that they constitute the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They perceive that, for the present, their own democratic institutions succeed, while those of other countries fall; hence they conceive an overweening opinion of their superiority, and they are not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind.”

There are, however, other causes which assist this delusion on the part of the majority of the Americans; the principal of which is the want of comparison. The Americans are too far removed from the Old Continent, and are too much occupied even if they were not, to have time to visit it, and make the comparison between the settled countries and their own. America is so vast, that if they travel in it, their ideas of their own importance become magnified. The only comparisons they are able to make are only as to the quantity of square acres in each country, which, of course, is vastly in their favour.

Mr Sanderson, the American, in his clever Sketches of Paris, observes, “It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate without objects of comparison; ‘nimium se aestimet necesse est, qui se nemini comparat.’ He will always think himself wise who sees nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, which one cannot know well without residing there, is certainly the complement of a good education.”

After all, is there not a happiness in this delusion on the part of the American majority, and is not the feeling of admiration of their own country borrowed from ourselves? The feeling may be more strong with the Americans, because it is more egotistical; but it certainly is the English feeling transplanted, and growing in a ranker soil. We may accuse the Americans of conceit, of wilful blindness, of obstinacy; but there is after all a great good in being contented with yourself and yours. The English shew it differently; but the English are not so good-tempered as the Americans. They grumble at everything; they know the faults of their institutions, but at the same time they will allow of no interference. Grumbling is a luxury so great, that an Englishman will permit it only to himself. The Englishman grumbles at his government, under which he enjoys more rational liberty than the individual of any other nation in the world. The American, ruled by the despotism of the majority, and without liberty of opinion or speech, praises his institutions to the skies. The Englishman grumbles at his climate, which, if we were to judge from the vigour and perfection of the inhabitants, is, notwithstanding its humidity, one of the best in the world. The American vaunts his above all others, and even thinks it necessary to apologise for a bad day, although the climate, from its sudden extremes, withers up beauty, and destroys the nervous system. In everything connected with, and relating to, America, the American has the same feeling. Calculating, wholly matter-of-fact and utilitarian in his ideas, without a poetic sense of his own, he is annoyed if a stranger does not express that rapture at their rivers, waterfalls, and woodland scenery, which he himself does not feel. As far as America is concerned, everything is for the best in this best of all possible countries. It is laughable, yet praiseworthy, to observe how the whole nation will stoop down to fan the slightest spark which is elicited of native genius—like the London citizen, who is enraptured with his own stunted cucumbers, which he has raised at ten times the expense which would have purchased fine ones in the market. It were almost a pity that the American should be awakened from his dream, if it were not that the arrogance and conceit arising from it may eventually plunge him into difficulty.

But let us be fair; America is the country of enthusiasm and hope, and we must not be too severe upon what from a virgin soil has, sprung up too luxuriantly. It is but the English amor patriae carried to too great an excess. The Americans are great boasters; but are we far behind them? One of our most popular songs runs as follows:—

“We ne’er see our foes, but we wish them to stay;They never see us, but they wish us away.”

What can be more bragging, or more untrue, than the words of these lines? In the same way in England the common people hold it as a proverb, that, “one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen,” but there are not many Englishmen who would succeed in the attempt. Nor is it altogether wrong to encourage these feelings; although arrogance is a fault in an individual, in a national point of view, it often becomes the incentive to great actions, and, if not excessive, insures the success inspired by confidence. As by giving people credit for a virtue which they have not, you very often produce that virtue in them, I think it not unwise to implant this feeling in the hearts of the lower classes, who if they firmly believe that they can beat three Frenchmen, will at all events attempt to do it. That too great success is dangerous, and that the feeling of arrogance produced by it may lead us into the error of despising our enemy, we ourselves showed an example of in our first contest with America during the last war. In that point America and England have now changed positions, and from false education, want of comparison, and unexpected success in their struggle with us, they are now much more arrogant than we were when most flushed with victory. They are blind to their own faults and to the merits of others, and while they are so it is clear that they will offend strangers, and never improve themselves. I have often laughed at the false estimate held by the majority in America as to England. One told me, with a patronising air, that, “in a short time, England would only be known as having been the mother of America.”

“When you go into our interior, Captain,” said a New York gentleman to me, “you will see plants, such as rhododendrons, magnolias, and hundreds of others, such as they have no conception of in your own country.”

One of Jim Crow’s verses in America is a fair copy from us—

“Englishman he beatTwo French or Portugee;Yankee-doodle come down,Whip them all three.”

But an excellent specimen of the effect of American education was given the other day in this country, by an American lad of fourteen or fifteen years old. He was at a dinner party, and after dinner the conversation turned upon the merits of the Duke of Wellington. After hearing the just encomiums for some time with fidgetty impatience, the lad rose from his chair, “You talk about your Duke of Wellington, what do you say to Washington; do you pretend to compare Wellington to Washington? Now, I’ll just tell you, if Washington could be standing here now, and the Duke of Wellington was only to look him in the face, why, Sir, Wellington would drop down dead in an instant.” This I was told by the gentleman at whose table it occurred.

Even when they can use their eyes, they will not. I overheard a conversation on the deck of a steam-boat between a man who had just arrived from England and another. “Have they much trade at Liverpool?” inquired the latter. “Yes, they’ve some.” “And at London?” “Not much there, I reckon. New York, Sir, is the emporium of the whole world.”

This national vanity is fed in every possible way. At one of the museums, I asked the subject of a picture representing a naval engagement; the man (supposing I was an American, I presume) replied, “That ship there,” pointing to one twice as big as the other, “is the Macedonian English frigate, and that other frigate,” pointing to the small one, “is the Constitution American frigate, which captured her in less than five minutes.” Indeed, so great has this feeling become from indulgence, that they will not allow anything to stand in its way, and will sacrifice anybody or anything to support it. It was not until I arrived in the United States that I was informed by several people that Captain Lawrence, who commanded the Chesapeake, was drunk when he went into action. Speaking of the action, one man shook his head, and said, “Pity poor Lawrence had his failing; he was otherwise a good officer.” I was often told the same thing, and a greater libel was never uttered; but thus was a gallant officer’s character sacrificed to sooth the national vanity. I hardly need observe, that the American naval officers are as much disgusted with the assertion as I was myself. That Lawrence fought under disadvantages—that many of his ship’s company, hastily collected together from leave, were not sober, and that there was a want of organisation from just coming out of harbour,—is true, and quite sufficient to account for his defeat; but I have the evidence of those who walked with him down to his boat, that he was perfectly sober, cool, and collected, as he always had proved himself to be. But there is no gratitude in a democracy, and to be unfortunate is to be guilty.

There is a great deal of patriotism of one sort or the other in the American women. I recollect once, when conversing with a highly cultivated and beautiful American woman, I inquired if she knew a lady who had been some time in England, and who was a great favourite of mine. She replied, “Yes.” “Don’t you like her?” “To confess the truth, I do not,” replied she; “she is too English for me.” “That is to say, she likes England and the English.” “That is what I mean.” I replied, that, “had she been in England, she would probably have become too English also; for, with her cultivated and elegant ideas, she must naturally have been pleased with the refinement, luxury, and established grades in society, which it had taken eight hundred years to produce.” “If that is to be the case, I hope I may never go to England.”