Society, Manners and Politics in the United States
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Title: Society, Manners and Politics in the United States
Author: Michel Chevalier
Translator: T. G. Bradford
Release date: May 25, 2014 [eBook #45761]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIETY, MANNERS AND POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES ***
SOCIETY, MANNERS AND POLITICS
IN THE
UNITED STATES:
BEING A
SERIES OF LETTERS ON NORTH AMERICA.
* * * * *
BY MICHAEL CHEVALIER.
* * * * *
TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD PARIS EDITION.
* * * * *
BOSTON:
WEEKS, JORDAN AND COMPANY.
1839.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839,
BY WEEKS, JORDAN & CO.
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
* * * * *
TUTTLE, DENNETT AND CHISHOLM'S
POWER PRESS,
No. 17 School Street, Boston.
NOTICE.
M. Chevalier was sent to this country in 1834, under the patronage of
Thiers, then Minister of the Interior, in France, to inspect our public
works. But attracted by the novel spectacle presented by society in
the United States, he extended the time of his stay and the sphere of
his observations amongst us, and spent two years in visiting nearly
all parts of the Union, and studying the workings of our social and
political machinery. His letters give the results of his observations,
the impressions made on his mind, his speculations in regard to the
future destiny of our institutions, rather than a detailed narrative
of facts and events, which, however, is introduced when necessary
for illustration or proof. The translator is not, of course, to be
considered responsible for all the opinions and statements of the
original; but it will be found, in his judgment, that M. Chevalier has
studied with diligence and sagacity, drawn his conclusions with caution
and discrimination, and stated his views in a clear, forcible, and
interesting manner. He seems to be perfectly free from any narrowness
or prejudice, ready to recognise whatever is good or of good tendency,
whether in character, manners, modes of life, political and social
institutions, habits, or opinions, without regard to mere personal
likes and dislikes; and to be equally frank in condemning, whenever
he perceives, in our practices, a violation of our own principles, or
of those of an enlightened philosophy. He tells many home truths to
all parties and classes. Some passages of the letters and many of the
notes, which have no particular interest in this country, have been
omitted. M. Chevalier's work has been very favourably received in his
own country, where it has passed through several editions.
T. G. BRADFORD.
_Boston, October, 1839._
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. Page.
Course of our Civilisation over the World.--Oriental Civilisation,
European Civilisation.--Their approaching Contact.--The Arabians
stand between them.--Movement of European Civilisation towards the
East.--Two Routes to the East.--The Three European Types.--Latin
Europe, Teutonic Europe, Sclavonic Europe.--Mixed Character of France
and Austria.--The part to be played by France 9
LETTERS.
I. THE RAILROAD FROM LONDON TO PARIS.
Analogy between certain Political and Voltaic Phenomena.--France and
England.--In what we should imitate the English.--Railroads.--Objects
of a Journey in England.--The Feudal Castle of Heidelberg and the
London Brewery 19
II. LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILROAD.
Impressions of the Railroad.--Railroads in France.--Steam Carriages
will not interfere with Railroads.--Analogy between the present
Condition of France and the State of England after the Expulsion of
the Stuarts.--Religion in Liverpool 29
III. WAR OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES UPON THE BANK.
State of the Question.--History of Banks in the United
States.--Creation of the Bank of the United States in 1816; it
restored order in the finances of the country.--Causes of the
Antipathy of the Body of the People against Banks.--Benefits which
all Classes have derived from Banks.--Commercial Crisis 37
IV. THE DEMOCRACY.--THE BANK.
Democratic Movements in France.--Less Influence than in the United
States.--Errors of the Local Banks.--Their Dividends.--Wisdom of the
Bank of the United States.--Political Dangers of the great National
Bank.--Services rendered by it.--The President's Accusations against
the Bank.--The Multitude applauds 46
V. MOVEMENT OF PARTIES.--BANK QUESTION.
Industrial Crisis.--Backstairs Influence in Monarchies and
Republics.--Party Demonstrations.--Imperfection of the Banking
System.--Excess of Paper Money.--Modification of the Bank
Charter.--Good Sense of the American Democracy.--How great Questions
are settled in the United States 55
VI. PROGRESS OF THE STRUGGLE.--NEW POWERS.
Length of the Debates in Congress.--The Bank must withdraw.--Old
Dignities and old Politics.--New Dignities and new Politics.--New
Power of Industry 69
VII. RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Rage of the Americans for Railroads.--Universal Use of
Railroads.--Glance at Railroads in the United States 80
VIII. THE BANKS.--PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.
Truce between the Parties.--Possibility of a Compromise.--The
Democracy must prevail.--The Bond of Union grows weaker.--Probability
of the Preservation of the Union.--Changes which it may undergo.--The
three Sections, North, South, and West 87
IX. THE FIRST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
Pretensions of every Nation to Superiority.--Pretensions of the
Americans.--The Superiority passes from People to People.--New
Peoples.--Russia and the United States.--English Opinions of the
United States.--The Social System in the United States superior in
respect to the Condition of the Labouring Classes 100
X. THE YANKEE AND THE VIRGINIAN.
Course of Emigration toward the West--Two great Columns of
Emigrants.--Character of each.--Share of Europe.--Virginian
Type.--Yankee Type.--Yankee Predominance in the last half
Century.--The Virginian may in turn get the upper Hand.--Advantages
of the Contrast of Character.--Two Types in History.--Nations of
three Types.--Excess of Unity in France 109
XI. THE CITY OF LOWELL.
Losses of the Jackson Party.--Aspect of Lowell.--Rise of American
Manufactures.--Founding of Lowell.--Lowell Railroad.--Influence of
Manufactures on the Happiness and Morality of the People 125
XII. FACTORY GIRLS OF LOWELL.
Results of Machinery.--The Locomotive Engine.--Wages in
Lowell.--Factory Girls.--American Manners.--Measures of the
Manufacturing Companies to preserve Good Morals in Lowell.--French
Manners.--Will Good Morals last at Lowell?--Moral and Political
Influence of the Public Lands. 133
XIII. THE BANK.--SLAVERY.
Preparations for the Elections.--Bank Question.--Slavery gives the
Means of saving the Bank.--States' Rights Party.--Concessions of the
North in regard to Slavery. 145
XIV. THE ELECTIONS.
The Jackson Party repairing its Losses.--Decisive Results in New
York.--New Acts of Hostility against the Bank.--Hatred of Monied Men
on both sides of the Atlantic. 157
XV. PITTSBURG.
French Settlement of Pittsburg.--Aspect of Pittsburg.--Its
Manufactures.--Rise and Growth of Towns in the United States.--Triple
Symbol of the Church, of Schools and the Press, and of the Bank. 166
XVI. GENERAL JACKSON.
Revolution effected by the General.--His Military Success.--His
Character.--His bold Tactics.--His Embarrassments. 176
XVII. PUBLIC OPINION.
Public Opinion in America very different from Public Opinion in
Europe.--Government of the Democracy.--The Senate. 185
XVIII. CINCINNATI.
Situation and Aspect--Manufactories.--Slaughtering of Hogs.--Water
Works.--General Harrison.--Dependent Condition of the Public
Officers. 190
XIX. CINCINNATI.
Industry of the Inhabitants.--Industrial
Feudalism.--Patronage.--Absence of Idlers.--Rigourous Supervision
kept up over them in the whole Country.--Why the Americans do not
please certain European Travellers.--Gratitude which Posterity will
feel for them. 200
XX. WESTERN STEAMBOATS.
Influence of Means of Communication on Civilisation
and Liberty.--State of the West before the
Introduction of Steamboats.--Introduction of
Steamboats.--Description.--Passengers.--Life aboard.--Accidents;
little Attention which they attract.--Real Rulers in the
West.--Importance of the West. 209
XXI. INTERCOMMUNICATION.
Hydrographical, Political, and Commercial Divisions of the
Union.--Systems of Public Works resulting therefrom.--Lines
extending from East to West.--Erie Canal, Pennsylvania Canal,
&c.--Communications between the St. Lawrence and Mississippi
Basins.--Ohio Canal and others.--Improvements in the Navigation of
both Rivers.--Communication along the Atlantic Coast.--Coasting
Trade.--Lines of Railroads and Steamboats.--Routes radiating from the
Capitals.--Works around Coal Mines.--Miscellaneous Works.--National
Road.--Character of the Public Works in the United Slates.--American
Engineers.--The Public Works strengthen the Union.--Necessity of the
European Governments executing similar Works. 227
XXII. LABOUR.
French Essays in planting Colonies in America.--The English Colonial
System.--American Society organised for Work.--Haste.--Organisation
of Labour peculiar to America.--Organisation proper for
France.--Canada.--Algiers. 276
XXIII. MONEY.
Money among the English and Americans.--System of Honour.--Its
present Impracticability in France.--Pay for Public
Services.--Gratuitous Services in France.--Condition of Public
Functionaries in the United States.--Influence of the Progress of
Manufactures on the Pay of Public Officers.--No Marriages for Money
in the United States.--No Misers. 292
XXIV. SPECULATIONS.
Speculation in Land, in Railroads, and in Banks.--Speculation
necessary to the Americans.--Unsettled Condition of every thing in
the United States.--Trades' Unions.--Inconveniencies of the Excess of
the Innovating Power. 305
XXV. BEDFORD SPRINGS.
Exclusiveness.--Religious Festivals formerly Democratic
Festivals.--Political Processions.--Camp Meetings.--Women in Camp
Meetings; and in the Roman Catholic Festivals.--Suppression of the
popular Festivals in Europe.--Influence of the Philosophy of the
XVIIIth century on the Imagination.--Struggle between the Young,
Middle-Aged, and Old in France.--Pleasures of the Imagination in
England and the United States. 315
XXVI. POWER AND LIBERTY.
Situation and Character of Richmond.--Slavery.--Richmond
Flour.--Inspection Laws.--American Liberty is Liberty of Industry
and Locomotion.--Few Restrictions upon the Interior Trade.--Old
Restrictions upon French Commerce.--Decline of the Foreign Commerce
of France.--Twofold Authority in the United States.--Ancient
Authority, Cæsar.--Duties imposed by Self-Government.--The Authority
of Cæsar could be destroyed in the United States, but not in
Europe.--New Authority by the side of Cæsar.--Canal, School, and Bank
Commissioners; their Powers.--How Industry may flourish in Europe by
the side of Cæsar.--Of American Liberty.--The Liberty of the Yankee
would be intolerable to a Frenchman.--Liberty of the Virginian more
like our own.--Mixture of the two Liberties. 325
XXVII. PROGRESS OF SOCIETY.
Universal Appearance of Comfort in the American Population.--Effect
upon the Condition of Women.--State of the Blacks in the United
States.--Diminution of Taxes considered as a Measure of Relief for
the poorer Classes.--The encouragement of Industry a more effectual
Relief.--American Prosperity the Fruit of Labour.--Means of giving
Activity to Industry in France.--1. Industrial Education.--2.
The bad State of Credit in France paralyses the Spirit of
Enterprise.--Banking Institutions suited to France.--3. Credit must
be made accessible to the Cultivator.--Saving effected by an improved
System of Credit.--4. Means of Internal Communication.--Influence of
a Credit System on the Means of Communication.--Diminution of Price
caused by Facility of Carriage.--5. Legislative Reforms.--The Civil
Code too closely modelled on the Roman Law; its Defects in regard
to Industry.--The Laws in the United States.--Jury Trials in Civil
Causes. 341
XXVIII. SOCIAL REFORM.
Moral Obstacles to the Emancipation of the Blacks in the United
States.--Exclusive Spirit of the English Race.--The Yankees are
new Jews.--The Difficulty in the Way of the Emancipation of the
Labouring Class in Europe also of a Moral Kind.--Insufficiency of
Philanthropy and Philosophy.--Necessity of Religion.--Inaction of the
Religious Authority in Europe.--Religion has effected the Elevation
of the lower Classes in the United States.--Influence of Political
Institutions on the Social Reform.--Connection between the Religion
and the Political Condition of Nations.--Protestantism is Republican;
Catholicism Monarchical.--The Growth of Liberty depends on the
Development of Local and Municipal Institutions.--The Spirit of
Association and the Spirit of Division.--The Principles of Unity and
Association must prevail in France. 360
XXIX. THE EMPIRE STATE.
Tendency to Centralisation in the State of New York; in the
School System; in the Banking-System; in the System of Public
Works.--Results of Public Works.--Charters of Canal and Railroad
Companies.--Influence of the Example of New York.--Modern Nations
cannot dispense with the Action of Authority.--Religion cannot
fully take the place of Political Authority.--Authority must change
its Attributes.--Banks, Means of Communication, and Schools are
the Instruments of Government, which must, in part, take the Place
of the Ancient Attributes of Authority.--Inviolability of the
Individual.--Favourable Disposition of the Public Mind. 370
XXX. SYMPTOMS OF A REVOLUTION.
Riots and Outrages Committed.--Decrease of Respect for
the Laws.--Wrongs of Popular Justice.--Havoc committed in
Baltimore--Neglect of great Principles.--Diminution of Civil
Courage.--Dependent State of the Press.--Want of restraining
Power.--Industrial Superiority and Political Inferiority of the
present Generation in the United States.--Probable Issue of the
Crisis. 385
XXXI. THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
Elements of French Society.--Remnants of the Aristocracy.--Active
Portion of the Middle Class; Idle Portion.--Labourers and
Peasants.--Elements of American Society.--Middle Class
and Democracy.--Difference between the North and the
South.--Disappearance of an Idle Class in America.--The Idle Part
of the Middle Class must disappear in Europe.--There is no Reason
for its Existence.--It has no Office.--Advantages resulting from its
being merged in the Active Portion of the Class. 396
XXXII. ARISTOCRACY.
Authority is yet to organise itself in the United States.--Authority
is founded upon Centralisation and Distinction of Ranks.--Present
Character of Authority in America.--Representative Government,
become the Government of the Majority, tends to Tyranny.--Difference
between the South and the North.--Aristocracy of Birth; Aristocracy
of Talents.--Both co-existed in Ancient Society.--Forms of
Aristocracy among the Romans and the Greeks.--Vigourous Organisation
of the Feudal Aristocracy.--Violent Reaction against the
Nobility.--Christianity has contributed to this Reaction.--The
Feudal System fixed the Barbarians.--Primogeniture in the English
Commons.--Advantages of a Hereditary Aristocracy.--Growth of the
Sentiment of Family.--Necessity of balancing the Innovating and
the Conservative Elements of Society.--How Stability has been
secured without the Hereditary Principle.--Difficulty in the
Way of the immediate Abolition of the Hereditary Aristocracy in
Europe.--The absolute Hereditary Principle has been irretrievably
weakened.--Hereditary Transmission of Office.--Where can the Elements
of an Aristocracy in France be found?--How can an Aristocracy be
established in the United States?--Germs of Aristocracy in the
South.--Dangers of American Society. 405
XXXIII. DEMOCRACY.
Burden of the Past on the old Societies.--Difficulty of Reforms in
old Countries.--Facility of Innovation in new Countries.--Advantages
possessed by the Anglo-Americans for making Social Experiments.--The
American Labourer is _initiated_.--Absence of the _Profanum Vulgus_
in the United States.--The Labouring Classes in the United States
are superior to those of other Countries.--Defects of the American
Democracy.--Analogy to the Romans.--Superiority of the Educated
Classes in Europe.--The respective Merits, present and future, of
America and Europe. 422
NOTES AT THE END OF THE VOLUME.
Page.
1. Use of Iron.--Manufacture of Iron in France and England.--Its future
use in Architecture, 441
2. Coal mined in England, France and Belgium, 442
3. Exports of Domestic Produce from France, England, and the United
States, 443
4. Navigation.--Tonnage of the Shipping of France, England, and the
United States, 443
5. Nullification, (omitted.)
6. The Bank of the United States.--Comparison with the Bank of France
and the Bank of England.--Local Banks.--Private Bankers and Joint
Stock Banks in England.--Provincial Banks in France, 444
7. Of Failures in the United States, 449
8. The Press in the United States;--compared with the English and French
Press, 452
9. Transfer of Funds by the Bank of the United States, 453
10. Paper Money and Metallic Currency.--In France; in the United
States; in England, 453
11. The Cherokees, Creeks, and other Indian Tribes.--Indian Policy of
the Federal Government, (omitted.)
12. Public Lands.--System of Survey and Sale.--Quantity sold and for
sale, (omitted.)
13. Temperance Societies, (omitted.)
14. The Cotton Manufacture in France, England, and the United
States, 454
15. Production and Consumption of Cotton throughout the World, 456
16. Degradation of the People of Colour, (omitted.)
17. Trial of the Incendiaries of the Ursuline Convent, 456
18. Anthracite Coal, (omitted.)
19. Conclusion of the Question of the Public Deposits, (omitted.)
20. Taxation in the United States, 458
21. Construction and Cost of Steamboats in the West.--Number of
Steamboats in the United States, 460
22. Summary View of Public Works in the United States, 462
23. Geological Surveys, 466
LETTERS ON NORTH AMERICA.
INTRODUCTION.
1. That form of civilization which has prevailed among the European
nations, has moved, in its march over the globe, from east to west.
From its cradles in the depths of old Asia and Upper Egypt, it
advanced, by successive stages, to the shores of the Atlantic, along
which it spread itself from the southern point of Spain to the northern
extremity of the British Isles and the Scandinavian peninsula. It
seemed to have here reached its goal when Christopher Columbus showed
it the way to the New World. At each stage it has taken up a new faith,
new manners, new laws, new customs, a different language, dress, and
food, different modes of life, public and private. The great questions
touching the relation of man to God, to his fellows, and to the
universe, and domestic, social, and political order, which had all been
solved at the beginning of the halt, were, after a while, brought again
into discussion, and then civilization, starting again on her march,
has moved onward toward the west, to give them a new solution.
This stream, setting from the east toward the west, is formed by the
junction of two others flowing from the two great Bible races of Japhet
and Shem; which, coming from the north and the south, meet and mingle
together, and are replenished from their respective sources, during
each period of our civilization, through all the episodes, which
obstruct and chequer this majestic pilgrimage. By turns, each of these
forces, whose combined action constitutes the motive power that carries
mankind forward in its course, has been overborne by the other. Thence
it is, that our civilization, instead of advancing in a straight line
from east to west, has swerved in its march, either from the north
toward the south, or from the south toward the north, taking a winding
and devious course, and gathering up, by turns, purer drops from the
blood of Shem or of Japhet. There has been, however, this difference
between the North and the South; that the South has most often acted
upon the North by sending to it the germs of civilization, without
overrunning it with a new race; while the North has awakened the
slumbering civilization of the South by pouring over it swarms of hardy
barbarians, _audax Japeti genus_. Thus is fulfilled the great prophecy
concerning Japhet, that "_he shall dwell in the tents of Shem_."
2. Independent of our civilization and distinct from it, there is
another in the furthest East, whose centre is China, and whose outposts
are Japan, and which embraces its hundreds of millions of men. It
moves in a direction contrary to our own, from west to east, and its
locomotive powers are slight; we might compare the respective speed
of these two civilizations to the two great revolutions of the globe,
the annual revolution in its orbit, and that which gives rise to the
precession of the equinoxes. This oriental civilization, like that of
the west, has repeatedly regenerated itself by a new mixture of the
man of the North with the man of the South. The race of Japhet, which
gave us our Barbarians, and, before the Barbarians, had given us the
Pelasgians, Scythians, Celts, and Thracians, and has since given us the
Turks and Sclavonians, has also furnished the East with its Mongols
and Manchus. The family of Genghis Khan, which conquered the East, also
pushed its victorious hordes, at the same time, to the Rhine.
The Eastern civilization, less active and less easily set in motion
than the Western, probably because it has not enough of the blood of
Shem, and has too much of that of the inferior races, has not risen to
the same degree of improvement with its sister. But we must do it the
justice to confess, that to it belongs the honor of several capital
inventions and discoveries, such as the mariners' compass, printing,
and gunpowder, on which we pride ourselves; and we must moreover
acknowledge that it has solved the problem, to keep under one law, for
an indefinite number of ages, a population greater than that of all
Europe. The Roman empire, whose population was less than that of China,
stood whole only three hundred years. The spiritual authority of the
Pope extended over less territory than that of the Roman empire, and
was absolutely acknowledged only from Charlemagne to Luther.
3. The two civilizations, thus gathered together at the two extremities
of the old continent, and turning their backs upon each other, were
separated by an immense space before the western had fixed itself in
America; now, more than half the intervening distance is passed; Mexico
and South America are covered with offsets from the latter, on the side
which looks toward Asia, as well as on that which fronts us: the United
States cannot long delay to extend themselves from sea to sea; the
Islands of the South Sea are beginning to be peopled by Europeans. From
this point of view, it is clear that America, placed between the two
civilizations, is reserved for high destinies, and that the progress of
population in the New World is a matter of the deepest interest to the
whole human race.
The connecting of the two civilizations is certainly the broadest
subject that can occupy the human mind; it is, in the eyes of the
friend of man, an event of all others most big with hope. It embraces,
politically, the association of all peoples, the balance of the world,
of which the balance of Europe is only a part; in religion, the whole
law of the human family, the true _catholicism_: morally, the most
harmonious reciprocal action of the two opposite natures, which divide
each race, each sex, each people, and each family, and which are
typified in the Bible by Cain and Abel; intellectually, the complete
encyclopædia and the universal language; industrially, a definite plan
for developing the resources of the globe. In our time this question
is no longer merely speculative; it is now something more than merely
food for the dreams of philosophers; it should be the subject of the
meditations of statesmen.
Since the age of Louis XIV., the merchants, who are the pioneers of
state policy, have striven with a constantly increasing ardor, to
open relations with China, because they have felt the importance of a
regular system of exchanges between Europe and a mass of two hundred
million of producers and consumers. The emancipation of North America,
and quite lately the abolition of the English East India Company's
monopoly, have given to the efforts of commerce an irresistible force;
before this power, the laws which close up the celestial empire are
nothing. China is encircled, on the south, by the English and their
tributaries; on the north, by the Cossacks, the van-guard of Russia;
British and American fleets prowl along her coasts; the sleepy
Spaniards of Mexico and the Philippines think of the days of the
galleons, and keep their half-opened eyes fixed upon her. The human
race has just come into possession of new means of communication, which
shorten distance in an unexpected degree. The two civilizations will
soon reach each other and mingle together; it will be the greatest
event in the history of man.
4. Before the art of navigation was brought to perfection, before
Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, Europe had had communications
with China through the medium of the Arabs, independently of the
caravans which traversed Central Asia. The Arabs, conquerors and
missionaries placed between the two civilizations, had spread
themselves by turns toward the East and the West. That people, so
active by starts, has been to the East the messenger of the West, and
to the West, the courier and factor of the East. Unhappily since the
Western civilization has shone with the greatest brilliancy in Europe,
Arabia has flung out but feeble gleams of light; since Providence has
filled us with a devouring activity, the Arabians are fallen into a
deep lethargy; on that side, therefore, the intercourse, which was
never complete nor speedy, has almost ceased. But if, as some suppose,
the Arab race is about to rouse itself from its long stupor, at the
voice and by the aid of Europe, the latter will then have a powerful
ally in its efforts to seize and hold Asia, or to transmit to her
the means of working out her own restoration, and this illustrious
race will thus contribute essentially to the marriage of the two
civilizations.
5. Our civilization, in its march westward, has sometimes turned back
towards the East; thus it has had its Argonauts, its Agamemnons,
and its Alexanders, and more lately its heroes of the crusades and
its Portuguese captains. These partial movements were but temporary
interruptions of its solemn march toward the West; they were merely
countercurrents, resembling the eddies which always exist in the
currents of rivers. Until our own time, Europe has founded no durable
and important establishment in Asia; in proportion as our civilization
advanced westwards, the countries which it left behind escaped from its
influence, and the distance between it and the oriental civilization,
became greater. Alexander is the only person of whom China could feel
any fear, and he passed away like the lightning flash. The Parthians,
the Saracens, or the Turks, were the impregnable bulwarks of eastern
Asia. The mission of Europe was, above all things, to reach and settle
a new hemisphere.
At present, the incontestible superiority of the western nations in
wealth, in mechanical skill, in means of transportation, in government,
in the art of war, enables them to make their way across the Old
World toward the remotest recesses of Asia. The nations whom we are
accustomed to call oriental, but who are only inhabitants of the
_Lesser East_, have ceased to be formidable adversaries to Europe; they
delivered up their swords, at Heliopolis, Navarino, and Adrianople. The
colonization of America is now at length completed from Hudson's Bay to
Cape Horn, but Europe can and ought to move towards the East as well
as towards the West; the isthmus of Suez has as good a chance as the
isthmus of Panama, to become the route of western civilization to the
_Greater East_.
6. Our European civilization has a twofold source, the Romans and
the Teutonic nations. Setting aside for the present Russia, who is a
new comer, and who already, however, equals the most powerful of the
elder states, it is subdivided into two families, each of which is
marked by its strong likeness to one of the mother nations, which have
contributed to give birth to both. Thus there is the Latin Europe,
and the Teutonic Europe; the former comprises the south, the latter
the people of the north; the former is Roman Catholic, the latter
Protestant; the one speaks Teutonic languages, and the other, idioms,
in which Latin is predominant. These two branches, Latin and German,
re-appear in the New World; South America, like southern Europe, is
Roman Catholic and Latin; North America belongs to the Protestant
Anglo-Saxon population.
In the great enterprise of bringing together European and Asiatic
civilization, the Teutonic and Latin nations may both find a field of
action; both occupy in Europe and America, by land and sea, admirable
outposts and excellent positions round that imperturbable Asia, into
which it is their object to force their way. But, during the last age,
the superiority which formerly belonged to the Latin family, has passed
into the hands of the Teutonic race, owing partly to the energy of
England in the Old World, and that of her sons in the New, and partly
to the loosening of the old religious and moral ties among the Latin
nations. The Sclavonic race, which has lately shown itself, and which
now forms a third group of nations in Europe, seems ready to contest
with the Latin race even the possession of the second rank; it is only
the Russians and Anglo-Saxons that interest themselves about Further
Asia, and press upon its frontiers by land and by sea. The people of
the Latin stock must not, however, stand idle in the coming struggle,
or the case will go against them by default; an excellent opportunity
is now offered to regain their lost rank.
7. In our three-headed Europe, Teutonic, Latin, and Sclavonic, two
nations, France and Austria, present themselves under less distinct
features, and with less exclusive characters than the others. France
shares in the Teutonic and Latin natures; in religion, she is Catholic
in feeling, but Protestant out of caprice; she unites the nervous
understanding of the Germans with the elegant taste of the southern
nations. Austria, by the education and origin of the people of her
different states, is half Sclavonic, half Teutonic, and she is
connected with the Latin family by her religion. France and Austria
are, then, the natural mediums of communication, the one between the
Germans and Latins, and the other between the Germans and Sclavonians;
Austria is chiefly Teutonic, as France is essentially Latin. From this
mixed character of France and Austria, we may conclude, that whenever
the balance of Europe, or the harmonious combination of all European
nations in one common object, shall become subjects of discussion,
both will exercise a decisive influence, and their hearty co-operation
in a common cause will make them irresistible. Austria has a more
central position than France; she has a greater number of points of
contact with the different types of western civilization; but France
combines the invaluable advantages of a more homogeneous constitution,
and a more flexible temperament; she has a physiognomy more strongly
marked, a mission more clearly defined, and above all, she has more of
the social spirit. She is at the head of the Latin group; she is its
protectress.
8. In the events which seem about to dawn upon us, France may, then,
take a most important share; she is the depositary of the destinies
of all the Latin nations of both continents. She alone can save the
whole family from being swallowed up by a double flood of Sclavonians
and Germans. To her it belongs to rouse them from the lethargy into
which they are plunged in both hemispheres, to raise them to the level
of other nations, and to enable them again to take a stand in the
world; she also is called upon, perhaps more than any other power, to
encourage the new spirit, which seems to be re-animating the Arabians,
and through them to shake the East. Thus the political theatre, seen
from a French point of view, shows, in a distant back-ground, the
meeting of the Oriental and the Western civilizations, in which we
are called upon to act as mediators, and in the fore-ground, the
education, by France, of all the Latin nations, and of many of the Arab
tribes living around the Mediterranean.
There may be a difference of opinion as to the time when these
revolutions, which are to agitate the depths of Asia, will take place;
I am one of those who think it not far off. I can easily conceive,
also, that some persons should wish to lessen the circle of French
influence, and confine it to the southern countries of Europe; although
to me France seems called upon to exercise a benevolent and wholesome
care over the people of South America, who are not yet fit to take care
of themselves, and although the old traditions of the crusades, the
conquest of Algiers, and the recollection of the expedition into Egypt,
seem to promise us one of the first parts in the drama which will be
acted on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
As for the European nations of the Latin family, no one, I suppose, can
have any doubts concerning our supremacy over them, or concerning our
duties, both to them and to ourselves, in relation to them. We have
been notoriously the head of the family since the time of Louis XIV.,
and we can neither shrink from the burdens, nor from the privileges
of our situation. Our superiority is acknowledged by all its members,
our protection has been accepted by all, whenever it has been offered
without selfish views. Happy would it have been for France, if, content
with this high prerogative, her princes, and above all he who has added
new lustre to the name of Emperor, had not been obstinately bent on the
unnatural purpose of extending their authority over the members of the
Teutonic family!
9. Since the weight has been thrown into the Saxon scale, since the
English race has overborne France and Spain in Asia, in America, and
in Europe, new institutions, new rules of government, new ideas, new
modes of action, in social, political, and individual life, have
sprung up among the English, and more especially among their successors
in the New World; everything connected with labor and the condition
of the greater number of working men, has been carried to a degree
of perfection before unheard of. It seems as if, by the aid of these
improvements, the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons over the Latin
family, must go on constantly increasing. The French, of all the Latin
nations, are most favorably placed, and the only one well placed, to
avail themselves of these improvements by adapting them to their own
exigencies. We are full of energy; never has our mind been more fairly
thrown open; never were our hearts more ready to throb for noble
enterprises.
But we must set ourselves at work without delay; we must do this,
setting aside all considerations of general policy, and of the contact,
whether more or less remote, of the two civilizations. It is a matter
of the last necessity in regard to ourselves, even supposing that we
have not to transmit to the southern nations of Europe, of whom we are
the eldest, and to the inhabitants of the Levant, those improvements
which their situation demands, and which they are ready to receive at
our hands; our own welfare, our own existence is at stake. How, and
under what form shall we be able to make the innovations of the English
race our own? This difficult and complicated question has been the
chief object of my attention during my residence in the New World; I
do not claim the honor of having even partially solved it. But I shall
feel satisfied, if the thoughts suggested to me by the sight of an
order of things so unlike our own, falling under the eyes of one more
far-sighted than myself, shall put him in the way of its solution.
LETTER I.
RAILROAD FROM LONDON TO PARIS.
LONDON, Nov. 1, 1833.
While railroads are talked of at Paris, they are made here. That
from London to Birmingham is already begun; it will be 112 miles in
length, and all the stock, to the amount of 12,000,000 dollars, has
been taken up by subscription; this road will be continued by another
of nearly the same length, from Birmingham to Liverpool, and in five
years Liverpool and London will be only eight hours apart. Whilst
the English capitalists are executing these great undertakings, the
Parisian capitalists look on, but do not stir; they do not even form
projects. Not one of them seems to have seriously considered, that even
in the present state of things, there is more than twice the number of
travellers between Paris and Versailles, than between Liverpool and
Manchester, although the railroad between the last named places has
been opened three years. In London, therefore, they count little upon
the aid of French capitalists in the construction of a railroad from
that city to Paris; they desire it, they would be glad to be able to
go from one capital to the other in fifteen hours, and at trifling
expense; all classes are delighted with the idea of such a thing. But
they feel that such a work is neither expedient nor feasible, without
the joint action of both nations; and as they dare not hope for the
co-operation of France, little is said about it as a serious affair.
Among all the acquisitions, which, since the end of the last century,
have enriched the domain of science, none has opened a wider field than
Volta's discoveries relative to the motion of electricity, and its
development by contact. The phenomena resulting from the two poles
of the Voltaic battery offer an inexhaustible mine to the physical
philosopher; there is no fact in science more general in its nature,
for if any two bodies whatsoever touch each other, they form at once,
by their mutual action and reaction, a Voltaic pile of greater or less
energy. This physical fact has its counterpart in the moral order of
things; if you bring together two men who have hitherto been separated
from each other, in however slight a degree they may have any striking
quality, their friction will certainly produce a spark. If instead of
two men, the two poles of your battery are two nations, the result
is greater in the proportion of a nation to an individual. If these
two nations are England and France, that is to say, the two most
enlightened and most powerful people in the world, this sort of Voltaic
phenomenon then acquires a prodigious intensity; it involves nothing
less than the safety of an old or the creation of a new civilization.
The predominant qualities, good or bad, of France and England, may be
arranged in a series of parallels, the corresponding terms in each
of which will be complements of each other. England is pre-eminent
in affairs, and the qualities which belong to them, coolness,
economy, precision, method, perseverance; taste and genius for the
fine arts, with the enthusiasm, the recklessness, the caprice, the
irregular habits, the wastefulness, at least in time and words, which
characterise the artist, have fallen to the lot of France. On one
side, is reason, cautious and sober, but sure-footed, good sense,
creeping along the ground; on the other, imagination with her brilliant
audacity, but also with her ignorance of things and method, her starts
and trips. Here, an admirable energy in struggling against nature
and metamorphosing the physical features of the globe; there, an
unequalled intellectual activity, and the gift of warming the heart of
mankind with its fires. In England, treasures of industry and heaps
of gold; in France, treasures of thought, wells of science, torrents
of inspiration. In proud Albion, staid, but cheerless manners, reserve
pushed to a chilling excess; in our fair France, easiness of manners
carried to licentiousness, the old Gaulish gaiety, often savoring
somewhat of the camp, a something of the free and easy bordering on the
promiscuous (_un sans-façon expansif qui frise la promiscuité_). On
both sides a large dose of pride; among our neighbors, a calculating,
ambitious pride; the pride of the statesman and the merchant, which
feeds only on power and wealth; which for the country desires
conquests, vast colonies, all the Gibraltars and St. Helenas, eagle's
nests by which all seas and all shores are commanded; and which for
oneself pants for riches, an aristocratic park, a seat in the House
of Lords, a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Amongst us, a vain-glorious
pride, which longs for the unreal, for ideal pleasures; a thirst after
applause for self, after glory for our country; a pride, which, for
France, would be satisfied with the admiration of the world, for self,
with castles in the air, a riband, an epaulet, a line of Béranger as a
funeral oration; the pride of the actor on the stage, of the knight in
the lists. On the north of the Channel, prevail religion and positive
faith; on the south, scepticism, mingled with enthusiasm. There a
deep sentiment of order and respect for rank, combined with a haughty
feeling of the dignity of man; here, a people eager for equality,
excitable, restless, turbulent, yet docile, often even to weakness,
confiding, even to credulity, easily cajoled by its flatterers,
submitting to be trampled under foot like a carcase, during the period
of its lethargy, and at times given over to the most courtier-like
obsequiousness. Among the English the reverence for tradition, among
the French the passion for novelty, predominates; among the former
respect for the law, and obedience to man, on condition that his
supreme rule shall be the law; among the latter, the worship of great
men, and submission to the laws if they are defended by the sword of
Cæsar. On one side the ruler of the seas, on the other the arbiter of
the continent, rousing the world at their pleasure, the one by its
lever of gold, the other by the sound of its voice alone. Surely from
the reciprocal influences of two nations thus constituted and thus
situated on the globe, the most important effects should result, not
only on the general cause of civilization, but on their own mutual
improvement.
The industrial development is not, indeed, the development of the whole
man, but since the beginning of the nineteenth century, no people can
be allowed to reckon itself in the first rank of nations, if it is not
advanced in the industrial career, if it cannot labor and produce. No
people will be powerful that is not rich, and there is now no other way
of growing rich but by work. In regard to production and labor, we have
much to learn from England, and it is a lesson which is to be learned
by the eyes rather than by the ears, by observation better than by
reading. If, then, there were a railroad between London and Paris, the
French, who have now little knowledge of business, would go to London,
where the instinct of method is in the blood, to learn. Our speculators
would go to see how simply, promptly, and plainly great enterprises are
carried on; our shop-keepers and buyers have to learn from England that
to overcharge and to haggle have no connexion with buying and selling
advantageously; our capitalists and merchants, that there can be no
durable commercial prosperity nor security for capital, where there
is no system of credit; they would see the operations of the Bank of
England with its branches and the private banks, and perhaps they might
be incited to bring home, with the needful modification, institutions
and practices so profitable at once to the share holders and to
the public. They would here imbibe the spirit of association, which
in London sweats at every pore.[A] All of us might here see in what
consists and how is realised, that comfort, that care of the person, so
essential to the peace and quiet of one's life, and Paris might perhaps
be led to free itself from the filth of centuries, which formerly
gave it its name, and against which eighteen hundred years later,
Voltaire, whom the ancient monarchy and the faith of our fathers could
not withstand, warred in vain. As we are full of self-love, we should
return from England ashamed of the wretched state of our agriculture,
our roads, and our elementary schools, humbled at the insignificance of
our foreign commerce, and solicitous to vie with our neighbors. I need
not stop to point out what the English might come to seek among us,
they are already converts in this matter, they swarm in Paris, while
it would be easy to count up the Frenchmen who have been in London.
Without saying what the English would get in Paris, I may affirm that
they would leave plenty of sovereigns there. To Paris, the city of
pleasures, the terrestrial paradise of strangers, the railroad would be
a gold mine, and the English, getting familiar with France, would find
profitable investments for their capital among us, which would give
life and energy to useful enterprises.
The railroad from London to Paris would be a commercial enterprise of
the first importance; it would also be a political instrument, a strong
bond of union between England and France. But it is more especially as
a means of education, that it should be most highly recommended, for
there is no fear that the other points of view will be overlooked. The
industrial arts, I said before, are learned chiefly through the eyes;
this is particularly true in regard to the operatives, for in them,
owing to their manner of life, the world of sensation prevails over
the world of ideas. Now the progress of the mechanical arts depends
not less on the workmen than on the foremen and superintendents of
the works; it would be expedient, therefore, to send a certain number
of picked operatives to pass a suitable time in England, just as the
Board of Public Works (_Ponts et Chaussées_) is now in the habit of
sending a few engineers thither. The railroad, by reducing the expense
and trouble of the journey, would probably furnish an opportunity of
despatching companies of artisans selected from among those most worthy
of the privilege. According to the plan of a merchant of Lyons, a
very sensible man, this might be done on a large scale and at little
expense; and he further proposed a system of reciprocity, by which
English workmen should be employed in France and French operatives in
England. It is not impossible that this project may one day be made the
basis of a new law, designed to further the views of our excellent law
of primary education; but the railroad between London and Paris must
first be constructed.
Of the small number of Frenchmen who have visited England,[B] very
few have been led by motives of business. Most have undertaken the
voyage from vague feelings of curiosity, or merely for pleasure; and
the objects of their notice have been the picturesque, the poetical.
They have visited the Gothic ruins of the monasteries and castles,
the cave of Fingal, and the lakes of Scotland, admired the costume of
the Highlanders, the horses and jockeys of the great lords, and the
blooming complexion of the women. They have walked through one or two
parks, visited the hot-houses where all the plants of the world are
collected, braving, behind the glass, the cloudy sky of Great Britain.
They have been through the dockyards and military arsenals, when
they could get leave, under the escort of a sergeant, seen the young
beauties of Almacks and the old curiosities of the Tower, and travelled
over England, just as they would make the tour of Italy or Switzerland.
If the subject of industry has occupied their attention a moment, it
is only in reference to the fashion of some opera decoration. They
have, to be sure, stood amazed at the thousands of vessels whose masts
stretch out of sight along the Thames or in the docks;[C] they have
been delighted with the extent of the great manufacturing towns, the
magnitude of the manufactories, and the height of their chimneys, with
the magical brilliancy of the gas-lights, with the daring bridges of
stone or iron, and with the fantastical appearance of the forge-fires
in the night. But they have never asked, how came England to have
such a vast number of ships, how has she multiplied and extended her
manufactures to such an amazing degree, and how created these towns,
so simple in their architecture, but so fastidiously neat in their
spacious streets; they have not thought to ask the causes of all this
wealth and prosperity.
Yet he who expects to return satisfied from England should visit her
as the Queen of industry; he should see the city rather than Regent's
Park, the East India House rather than Windsor Castle, seek out the
Bank before St. Paul's, the Clearing House before Somerset House,
take more interest in the docks and Commercial House, than in the
armor preserved in the Tower. He should go to the warehouses, the
counting-houses, the workshops, in pursuit of the genius of Great
Britain. He must tear himself from the magnificent hospitality of
the English country seats, and give up his time to the mines and the
forges, which furnish industry with its daily bread, its coal and iron.
(Notes 1 and 2 at the end of the volume.) He must mingle with the stout
and active workmen, quite as much as with the more refined society in
the saloons of the nobility. For myself, I have found nothing in London
which has struck me as more original, and given me greater pleasure,
than a shop in Old Change, whose ware-rooms contain twenty times as
many goods as the largest warehouse in Paris, and whose business
transactions amount to two millions sterling a year, and the great
brewery of Barclay, Perkins & Co. near London Bridge, the order and
arrangement of which are still more striking than its vast extent.
As I stood in this brewery, on a floor on which, distributed in
different rooms, there were ninetynine vats, some of them holding
500,000 or 600,000 bottles, I thought of the famous Heidelberg tun
which I had seen some years ago. It is the only object in a tolerable
state of preservation in the delicious chateau of the Palatine
counts, and it is faithfully visited by all travellers who go to see
that fine ruin, perhaps the finest relic of the feudal times. What a
difference now between the old chateau of Heidelberg with its tun, and
the colossal establishment of the English brewer with its regiment of
tuns! The old castle crumbles to pieces; the rich Gothic sculptures are
wearing away. In vain has a French artist (and, strange coincidence!
that artist himself another relic of the feudal age, an _émigré_, who
with a praiseworthy zeal has been for a long time the self-constituted
guardian of this fine old monument,) in vain has he urged the
government of Baden, to whom the castle belongs, to take some measures
for its preservation. Each year some new dilapidation is caused by the
frosts of winter and the storms of autumn; the old chateau will soon
become a shapeless mass, the very stones will probably be sold, and
nothing will remain, but the drawings of M. de Graimbert, to show what
it has been. The Knights' Hall is stripped of its roof--the arches,
which support the superb terrace whence the eye wanders over the lovely
vale of the Neckar and its beautiful heights,--those arches, rent by
the powder of Louvois,--will some day sink. Meanwhile, the brewery
is enriched one day with a new building, and the next, with a new
steam-engine; and in case of any damage by fire, as recently happened,
the loss is immediately repaired; in the place of the building
destroyed by the flames, rises one more splendid, in which the free use
of iron will be a protection against new ravages.
The statues of the Palatine electors are overthrown in their niches;
no son of their vassals will set them up again; but at the brewery
everything is in perfect order; each tool hangs on its nail, each
kettle is kept well-rubbed and bright. The stables of the noble prince
are a heap of ruins; in the stables of the brewer, rivalling those
of Chantilly, where the great Condé entertained kings, one hundred
and fifty horses, fit steeds for Goliath, are objects of as careful
attention, as those, perhaps, which surrounded the persons of the first
Electors and their gallant knights. The old tun has been empty for a
century and a half; the curious may enter it, and take its measure;
once only has M. de Graimbert seen it spout wine; it was in 1813,
in honour of the emperor Alexander and his allies, the sovereigns
of Austria and Prussia. Even then it was only a pious fraud, the old
tun was not full, the wine flowed from a base barrel which had been
stuck in it the night before. The ninetynine vats of Barclay, Perkins
& Co. are always full of beer; that which is daily drawn off, and
sent all over the United Kingdom and North America, and finds its way
even to the East Indies, would fill the classical tun of the Palatine
Casimir.[D] The secret of this contrast may easily be explained; the
great feudal tun could only be filled by the produce of the feudal
impositions, whilst the vats of the brewery are filled by the voluntary
co-operation of three hundred men, sure of gathering daily the fruits
of their industry; the Heidelberg tun was emptied only to administer
to the pleasures of the prince or his favorites, while the vats of the
brewer quench the thirst of a numerous population, which works hard,
receives good pay, and pays its providers well.
The silence and desolation of the old castle, contrasted with the
bustle and prosperity of the English brewery, are a striking emblem of
the feudal system compared with the modern power of peace and creative
industry. All nations, in proportion as they have the power to change
the warlike qualities of the feudal age into the useful qualities of
the labourer, or as they want the capacity thus to re-cast themselves,
may read their own destiny, either in the state of the flourishing
manufactory, or in that of the deserted and crumbling castle. Happy the
people, who, like France and England, have had strength to shake off
the past, and who, in the quiet enjoyment of their liberties, have only
to concern themselves about the future! Woe to that people, which will
not, or cannot, tear itself away from the past! That people is worn
out; it will die of consumption, and will leave behind nothing but
ruins, poetical, perhaps, but still none the less ruins, that is, death
and desolation: unless indeed a new blood be infused into its veins, or
in other words, unless it be conquered like unhappy Poland.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Thus the London merchants dispense with the care, trouble,
and expense of a money-chest on their own premises, and all money
operations are transacted by a small number of bankers at the _Clearing
House_. The amount of these transactions often rises to fifteen
millions sterling [a day], independently of those which are not
strictly commercial, and of those of the retailers, which do not pass
through the hands of bankers. See _Babbage's Economy of Machinery_.
[B] The whole number of passengers to and from Calais, through which
most of the travellers between England and France pass, is only about
forty thousand yearly. This is not more than the number passing between
Havre and New York.
[C] It is estimated that 25,000 vessels enter the port of London yearly.
[D] 50,000 gallons.
LETTER II.
LIVERPOOL AND THE RAILROAD.
LIVERPOOL, NOV. 7, 1833.
I have just come back from Manchester by the railroad, which is a fine
piece of work; I know of nothing that gives a higher idea of the power
of man. There are impressions which one cannot describe; such is that
of being hurried along at the rate of half a mile a minute, or thirty
miles an hour (the speed of the train as we started from Manchester,)
without being the least incommoded, and with the most complete feeling
of security, for only one accident has happened since the opening
of the road, and that was owing to the imprudence of the individual
who perished. You pass over and under roads, rivers, and canals; you
cross other railroads, and a great number of other roads, without any
trouble or confusion. The great forethought and spirit of order which
in England they suck in with their mothers' milk, preside in every
part, and make it impossible that the trains should fall foul of each
other, or that the cars should run down unlucky travellers, or the
farmers' wagons; all along the route are gates, which open and shut at
the precise moment of time, and watchmen on the look out. How many
persons in France would be benefitted by this short trip, did it serve
only as a lesson of order and forecast! And then the Mount Olive cut is
as well worth seeing as Roland's Breach; the Wapping tunnel will bear
a comparison with the caves of Campan; the dike across Chat Moss seems
to me as full of interest as the remains of the most famous Roman ways,
not excepting even the Appian itself; and there is a column, which,
though only a chimney for a steam-engine, is not, perhaps, less perfect
in its proportions than Pompey's Pillar. Many tourists, even persons
who have not been made weary of sight-seeing in Switzerland and Italy,
would find Chester Bridge, which is not, indeed, on the road, but is
nevertheless very near it, quite as worthy of a visit as the Devil's
Bridge; not to mention that the burning cinders which the engine
strews along the route, might suggest to the traveller, without any
great stretch of fancy, the idea of being transported in a fiery car,
certainly the most poetical of all vehicles.
Those who doubt the policy of introducing railroads into France, and
think it prudent to wait for more light, cite, among other arguments,
the experiments continually making in England to apply locomotive
engines to common roads, the success of which, they think, would save
the expense of rails. There is no doubt that railroads, like every
other new invention, are susceptible of improvement; but they will
always be expensive, and while other nations keep up such _schools_
as the Manchester and Liverpool railroad, and we stand looking on
with folded arms, we shall soon find ourselves, by excess of caution,
fallen behind all Europe in manufactures and commerce. As for the
steam-engines of Gurney, Dance, or anybody else, there is no hope
that they will enable us to save the expense of rails. I think it,
indeed, very probable that engines may be made to take the place of
horses on roads kept in such a state as the English highways; but
upon any road whatsoever, and whatever motive power is employed,
engines or horses, in order to reach a great speed, from twentyfive
to thirty miles an hour, for instance, it is absolutely necessary to
cut through hills, and to fill up or bridge over the valleys, just
as is done for railroads. Besides this great speed forbids the free
circulation of vehicles, and makes it necessary to avoid the level
of the frequented routes, and to pass over or under them by means of
tunnels or bridges. None of the inconveniences, or liabilities of
railroads would be avoided by this system; the expense would be almost
the same, for the most costly portion of the work in railroads is the
cuts and embankments, the bridges and viaducts; the iron required for
the rails forms less than one-third of the expenditure. The expenses
of superintending the routes would be the same. Besides, the road
once graded, there would be a great gain in laying rails, that is,
in making a complete railroad, however little might be the amount of
transportation; for on a Macadamised road the force of friction is
ten times that on iron rails, so that the use of these new locomotive
carriages can never supply the place of railways.
The correctness of these views is proved by what is now doing in
England; while the new steam carriages are getting ready for regular
service, railroad companies are already at work or are organizing
in all quarters. Two works are now in progress which will connect
Liverpool with London, by way of Birmingham; the whole length will
be one hundred and ninety-five miles. Although a trial of the new
carriages is making on the Birmingham road, shares in the railroad
between that town and London are at a high premium. Another company
is preparing to construct a railroad from London to Bath and Bristol,
a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles; companies are also
formed for connecting London with Southampton, on the Havre route to
Paris, and with Brighton, on the Dieppe route; other shorter works
are projected. It is not that the experiments of Gurney and Dance are
unknown or slighted; on the contrary, their importance is fully felt;
the newspapers are full of them, and they even excite some enthusiasm.
In this country, where it is a settled maxim that the labourer is
worthy of his hire, I saw vessels all along the road which had been
gratuitously brought and filled by the inhabitants for the use of one
of these steam-carriages; unluckily the carriage did not arrive when it
was expected; it had got out of order, as it too often does.
The Liverpool and Manchester railroad owes its brilliant success to the
substantial and permanent nature of the interest which binds together
the two towns. It would be impossible to realize a more complete
division of labor; Manchester, with the country twenty miles round
it, is nothing but a workshop; Liverpool manufactures nothing, but
merely sells what her neighbours produce. Liverpool is not, whatever
the guide book may say, another Venice, rising from the waves; it
is a counting-house, and nothing but a counting-house, though on a
vast scale, and under the most perfect regulations, of any in the
world. The business is all done in a space smaller than the _Place du
Carrousel_, where are the handsome Exchange, the Town House, and all
the banking houses, &c. At four or five o'clock each one shuts up his
cell (for the offices deserve this name), and retires to his house or
his country seat, for many of the residences are on the other side of
the Mersey. Liverpool and Manchester are surrounded by a double and
three fold series of canals; the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, the Leeds
and Liverpool, the Sankey, Leigh, Bolton and Bury, Mersey and Irwell
canals, without taking into account the rivers Irwell, Mersey, and
Weaver, which though small, form fine bays at their mouths, and are
more easily and regularly navigable than our great rivers, while the
navigation is carried on with a promptitude and despatch wholly unknown
in France. Since the peace these two towns have enjoyed such a high
degree of prosperity, that ten years ago these means of communication,
with the addition of a fine road, were found to be insufficient. The
counting-house and the manufactory wished to be nearer to each other;
accordingly, on the 10th of May, 1824, a memorial, signed by one
hundred and fifty merchants, declared the necessity of new routes; and
a railroad was decided on. The work was begun in June, 1826, and the
road was opened in due form, on the 15th of September, 1830. A tunnel
is now constructing, one mile and a quarter in length, which will carry
the railroad into the heart of the town, and will cost about 800,000
dollars.
The chief article of English commerce, that in which it has no rival,
and which opens all the ports of the world to English vessels, is
cottons of all descriptions. The value of the produce and manufactures
annually exported from the United Kingdom, during the last ten years,
has averaged 190 millions of dollars.[E] That of cottons alone has
ranged from 80 to 90 millions, and the greater part is made in
Manchester and the vicinity.[F] This single fact would sufficiently
explain the commercial importance of Liverpool; add to this that
Liverpool is in the neighbourhood of the founderies and forges of
Staffordshire and Shropshire, and the manufactories of Birmingham
and Sheffield; that the diminished width of the island, in the 53d
degree of latitude, enables her to reach out her hands at once to the
eastern and western coasts; that she is the centre of the business
between England and Ireland; that she approaches, at the same time,
Scotland and Wales; that she is the head quarters of steam navigation
in England, and it will be seen at a glance that Liverpool is the seat
of a prodigious commerce, inferior only to that of London. Eleven
thousand vessels measuring 1,400,000 tons, enter her nine docks every
year; two-fifths of the whole exports of England are shipped hence, and
more than one-fifth of the British customs duty, or nearly 20,000,000
dollars (equal to the total sum of the French customs), are collected
here. Since the modification of the East India Company's charter, the
Liverpool merchants flatter themselves with the hope of securing a
great part of the India trade, which has hitherto been monopolized by
London; they aspire to rival the commerce of the capital, and it must
be confessed that they are taking the right road to success.
In tracing the history of Liverpool, Manchester, or any other English
town, we are struck with a fact which is full of good omen for France;
it is this, that a people never engages heartily and successfully in
commerce and manufactures, until it feels itself safe from civil or
religious despotism; but once assured on that point, it moves rapidly
and right forward in its industrial career. So long as England was
restrained in her franchises or her faith, she was possessed with one
idea, how to throw off the yoke; once freed from this care, she has
achieved in the different branches of industry what no nation has ever
done before. In the beginning of the last century, not long after the
expulsion of the Stuarts, when Liverpool had only 5,000 inhabitants,
with no commerce but a feeble coasting trade, some of her merchants
conceived the idea of competing with Bristol, which then monopolized
the West Indian trade. Bristol exported to America the products of
the fisheries in the German Ocean, and some fustians and checks
manufactured in Germany, and the Liverpool adventurers took cargoes
of Scotch stuffs; but the attempt was unsuccessful, the Scotch goods
were of inferior quality. Manchester then relieved them from this
difficulty; there were already some manufacturers in that place, who
imitated and surpassed the German articles, and thus provided, the
merchants of Liverpool were able to sustain a competition with those of
Bristol. The smuggling trade with the Spanish colonies, and the slave
trade, undertaken in competition with Bristol, continued to enrich
Liverpool and consequently Manchester. In 1764, when Bristol fitted
out 32 ships for Africa and 74 for America, Liverpool ran 105 to the
former and 141 to the latter; in the same year 1589 vessels entered
the port of Liverpool, while only 675 arrived at Bristol. At present
Bristol is a second-rate mart compared with Liverpool; not that the
former has declined; on the contrary, it is a wealthy city, with a
trade tenfold what it was a hundred years ago. But in the midst of the
general progress, Liverpool has advanced at high speed. It now contains
180,000 inhabitants, or, including the suburbs, 225,000, without
reckoning the floating population of strangers and sailors. During
the siege of Calais, when Edward III. collected all the strength of
England, this town found it difficult to furnish one vessel, carrying
six men; in 1829, it owned 806 vessels of 161,780 tons burthen, manned
by 9,091 sailors. (See Note 4, at the end of the volume.) During the
wars of the French Revolution, Liverpool was able to bear her share
of the burdens of the country, and to spend 170,000 dollars annually
in works of public utility and in embellishing the town. In 1797 she
volunteered to raise a troop of horse and eight companies of foot at
her own charge; in 1798 she raised a regiment of volunteers and the
sum of 80,000 dollars, and in 1803, when Napoleon threatened England
with invasion, two regiments of infantry and 600 artillerists. In the
same period a host of useful and charitable institutions were founded
by subscription, and the Exchange was built at the cost of 600,000
dollars. All this is the work of one century; hardly had James II.
reached Saint Germain, when the first dock in Liverpool was opened;
within thirty years the Mersey and Irwell were canalled. It was the
same throughout England. We must not exaggerate and abuse historical
parallels, but, unless we shut our eyes, it is impossible not to
perceive a striking analogy between the state of England after the
fall of the Stuarts, and that of France since 1830. With both people
there is a feeling of profound security in regard to their liberties,
a deep conviction that they have gained a decisive victory, and that
they have nothing to fear from the encroachments of the civil power
or of a religious corporation; the same wish to see political reforms
gives rise to substantial and palpable improvement in the condition of
the people, and the same disposition on the part of the government to
enlighten and realize the popular will.
The old dynasties of England and France fell in consequence of their
efforts to give political power to the clergy, rather than from any
attempt to restore the feudal system with its brutality and its
rapacity; for the deposed princes themselves were neither rapacious nor
violent. The English revolution, however, was far from giving birth to
irreligion; Liverpool,--which is, so to speak, of to-day, which bears
the stamp, not of England as she was in the sixteenth or the fourteenth
century, but of England as she was in the eighteenth century, as she
is in our own time,--Liverpool is a proof of this. There is no town
in France which numbers as many churches as Liverpool, where there
are thirty-seven of the establishment, in addition to forty-three
dissenters' chapels and meeting houses, Presbyterian, Baptist,
Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker, Jewish, and Roman Catholic; the last
have here five chapels. Most of these have been built since 1750, and
nearly one half since 1800; I have a list under my eye, and the dates
are 1803, 1810, 1813, 1814, 1815, 1815, 1815, 1816, 1821, 1826, 1826,
1827, 1827, 1830, 1831. Are we to believe that this analogy will hold
good on our own soil, and that as she grows rich by industry, France
will return to the religious sentiment? I wish it, I hope it; we are
already past the time when atheism was fashionable in France; it will
not, however, be under the flag of the Anglican church, or of any other
protestant sect that France will rally; she must have a more imposing
and pompous worship.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] The annual exports of France are little more than half this sum.
(See Note 3, at the end of the volume.)
[F] The population of Lancashire, in which are situated Liverpool
and Manchester, increased, between 1801 and 1831, from 672,731 to
1,336,854, that is, it doubled. The increase of population in the rest
of the United Kingdom was only fifty per cent.
LETTER III.
WAR OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES UPON THE BANK.
NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1834.
This country is now in the crisis of a high industrial fever, which
has assumed a political character, and is of a very serious nature;
for the industrial interest, in this country, is the most important.
Last year, when the dispute between the Northern and Southern States,
relative to the tariff was settled, (see Note 5, at the end of the
volume,) the wise and prudent thanked God, that the danger, which
had threatened their country, had been averted; there seemed to them
nothing further to obstruct its triumphant career of conquests over
nature, with an ever accelerated rapidity and increased success. A
series of causes, to appearance of slight moment, has changed these
hopes into fears. Some trifling circumstances revived the old quarrel
between the democratic party, to which the President belongs, and the
Bank of the United States, and both sides grew warm. (See Note 6, at
the end of the volume.) President Jackson, a man of good intentions
and ardent patriotism, but too hasty towards those who venture to
contradict him, declared a deadly war against the Bank, and pushed it
with all the energy and fury, in the same cut-and-thrust style, that
he had the war against the Indians and English twenty years before.
He set his veto to the bill that had passed both houses of Congress,
renewing the Bank charter, which was about to expire in three years.
Not satisfied with this blow, he withdrew from the hands of the Bank
the public money, which, by the provisions of its charter, had been
deposited in them, and which gave it the means of very materially
extending its operations; for the excess of the deposits over the
exigencies of the government amount to not less than ten millions. The
Bank, which had paid to the government a bonus of 1,500,000 dollars
for the privilege of being the depository of the public funds, cried
out loudly against this measure, and with good reason, for no one
denies, that no institution in the union is better able to meet all
its liabilities. It has reduced its discounts, first, because the
removal of the public deposits has diminished the amount of specie in
its vaults, and also, as it declares, whether right or wrong, because
its very existence being threatened by the President's veto, it is
prudent to restrain the sphere of its operations, and to prepare in
time for the final settlement of its concerns. As this institution
takes the lead in the financial world, the other banks, even those to
which the public deposits have been transferred, have been obliged, in
their turn, to restrict their operations. Not only are they afraid to
extend their discounts in proportion to the amount of these deposits,
but they are obliged to contract them, because they find themselves,
as objects of the favour of government in this respect, in a state of
hostility with the Bank of the United States, and it is necessary to be
on their guard in the presence of so formidable an adversary. Thus are
the sources of credit suddenly dried up. Now credit is the life-blood
of the prosperity of the United States; without credit, the populous
towns which are springing up on all sides, as if by magic, the opulent
States, which, far away from the Atlantic and beyond the Alleghanies,
stretch along the Ohio and the Mississippi, would become a solitary
wilderness, savage forests or pathless swamps. The city of New York
alone has twenty banks, the annual average discounts of which, during
the last eight years, have amounted to one hundred millions. At Paris,
where the transactions are certainly more extensive than in New York,
the discounts of the Bank of France, in 1831, amounted to 223 million
francs, and in 1832 to 151 millions.[G] The amount of the discounts
of the Philadelphia banks, in 1831, was 150 millions. A general shock
to credit, however transient, is here more terrible than the most
frightful earthquake.
If I did not fear to lengthen out this letter beyond measure, I would
give some details concerning the struggle between the two parties,
concerning their tactics and their measures in Congress and out of it,
concerning Mr Clay's speeches and General Jackson's home thrusts. But I
think it more important at present, to call your attention to the part
which the Bank of the United States has played since its establishment,
and to the causes which stirred up against it that mass of hatred
and distrust, from which General Jackson derives confidence in his
measures. For it is not merely his own dislike that he gratifies;
from the last elections, which in almost all the States are based on
universal suffrage, it is plain that the numerical majority of the
population is, at this moment, opposed to the Bank.
The Americans had already used and abused systems of credit while under
the English rule. As soon as they had achieved their independence,
they became bolder in their enterprises, more sanguine, or, if you
please, more rash in their speculations. They stood in great need of
credit; the number of banks was multiplied, and many abuses crept in.
The State legislatures made no difficulty in granting bank-charters
to whoever asked for them, and in this respect they have not changed
their practice. If they imposed some restraints, they had no means of
ascertaining or securing their strict observance. The banks, therefore,
often issued an amount of bills wholly disproportionate to their
real capital, not merely twice or thrice, but ten times the value
of their specie and other means. The originators of the bank often
chose themselves directors, and discounted no paper but their own, or
rather they lent to themselves the whole circulation of the bank, on
the bare deposit of the bank shares. This was an ingenious process to
enable whoever pleased to coin current money, without ingots of gold
or silver. The mismanagement of these banking companies has sometimes
been such, that instances have occurred where the officers of the
bank have, on their own authority, opened a credit for themselves,
and generally admitted their friends to share in the privilege. Thus
it was discovered, that the cashier of the City Bank in Baltimore had
lent himself 166,548 dollars, and had made loans to one of his friends
to the amount of 185,382 dollars; all the other officers had taken the
same liberty, with the exception of one clerk and the porter.
The banks abusing the privilege of issuing bills, that is to say of
making loans, individuals abused the privilege of borrowing; hence
mad speculations, and consequently losses by the lender and borrower.
The banks cloaked theirs by new issues of paper, individuals theirs
by new loans; but there were many failures of speculators, and some
of banks. The latter excited the public indignation without reforming
any one. The honest and moderate working classes, the farmers[H]
and mechanics, who found that in the end they were the dupes of the
speculators, since by the depreciation of the paper money, which they
had taken as so much specie, they came in for a share of the loss,
but had no part in the gain, that is, in the dividends, conceived a
violent hatred against the banking system. To this particular cause
of dislike, was added that aversion which may be found in Europe and
everywhere else, felt by persons of methodical habits, gaining little
by hard labour, but gaining regularly, against those who are impatient
to make their fortune, and to make it at all events, and who waste
what they make in the most unbounded luxury and by the most foolish
enterprises, in less time than they have been in acquiring it. Then
there was the natural jealousy of simplicity against cunning, of slow
and heavy minds against the shrewd penetration of others. There was
also that suspicious distrust of all new influences, and all power that
aims to strike its roots deep, a distrust, which is essential to the
American, and which is the source, explanation, and safeguard of his
republican institutions. In short, in 1811, when the old Bank of the
United States, which was on a much smaller scale than the present Bank,
petitioned Congress for a renewal of its charter, an appeal was made to
the farmers and mechanics, and, as at the present day, the hobgoblin of
_a new aristocracy, and the worst of all, an aristocracy of money_, was
summoned up; the petition was not granted.
Soon after, in 1812, war broke out between England and the United
States. The natural effect of war is to diminish confidence, to
make the merchants timid, speculators cautious. Most of the banks,
having been managed with little prudence in better times, were soon
unable to meet the call for specie by the public; they solicited and
obtained from their respective legislatures leave to suspend specie
payments. Their bills had a forced circulation. At the peace of 1815
the banks were not able to resume specie payments, and the system of
inconvertible paper money was persevered in. Imagine then two hundred
and forty-six classes of paper money,[I] circulating side by side,
having all degrees of value, according to the good or bad credit of the
bank which issued them, at 20 per cent., 30 per cent., or 50 per cent.
discount. Gold and silver had entirely disappeared; there was no longer
any standard of price and value; the amount of bills in circulation
had become prodigious.[J] To the bills of the banks was added a great
amount of individual obligations of still less value, issued by private
persons as suited their wants, and which circulated more or less freely
in the neighbourhood. It was a frightful scene of confusion, a Babel,
where all business became impracticable from the utter impossibility of
the parties understanding each other.
It was now felt that, to restore order in the bosom of this chaos,
there was needed a regulating power, capable of commanding confidence,
with ample funds to enable it to pay out specie freely, and whose
presence and, in case of necessity, whose authority, should serve to
recall the local banks to their duty. In 1816, the present Bank of the
United States was, therefore, chartered by Congress for a term of 20
years, with a capital of 35 millions, and it went into operation on the
1st of January, 1817. The seat of the mother-bank is Philadelphia, and
it has 25 branches scattered over the Union. By its interference and
assistance specie payments were resumed by the New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk Banks on the 20th February, 1817, and
in course of time all the other Banks followed the example. This
resumption of specie payments was, first for the banks and then for
individuals, the signal, the occasion, the rule of a general settling
up of old accounts. As there had been much prodigality, unsuccessful
speculations, and dead loss, accumulated through a period of 20 years,
there was now a complete breaking up; many banks failed or suspended
their operations, and from 1811 to 1830, 165 banks were reduced to one
or the other of these alternatives. This state of things lasted three
years; they were three years of crisis, three years of suffering for
industry, that is, for the people of the United States; for this people
is identified with its commerce. The trials of this period have left a
deep and lasting impression. Hatred of speculators and of the Banking
system has taken root in the hearts of the mass of the people, and now
springs up in hostility to the Bank of the United States, which, in the
eyes of the multitude, is the representative of the system, although
it is itself innocent of the mischief, and can alone prevent its
recurrence.
The antipathy of the greatest number against the banks has then a
reasonable cause, but it is not, therefore, any the less blind and
unjust. They see nothing but abuses, and shut their eyes against the
advantages. The great extension of credit, which resulted from the
great number of banks, and from the absence of all restraint on their
proceedings, has been beneficial to all classes, to the farmers and
mechanics not less than to the merchants. The banks have served the
Americans as a lever to transfer to their soil, to the general profit,
the agriculture and manufactures of Europe, and to cover their country
with roads, canals, factories, schools, churches, and, in a word, with
every thing that goes to make up civilization. Without the banks, the
cultivator could not have had the first advances, nor the implements
necessary for the cultivation of his farm, and if the credit system has
given facilities for stock-jobbing to speculators, it has also enabled
him, although indirectly, to buy at the rate of one, two, or three
dollars an acre, and to cultivate lands, which are now, in his hands,
worth tenfold or a hundred fold their first cost. The mechanics who
attack the banking system, forget that they owe to it that growth of
manufacturing industry, which has raised their wages from one dollar
to two dollars a day. They forget that it furnishes the means by which
many of their number raise themselves to competence or wealth; for in
this country every enterprising man, of a respectable character, is
sure of obtaining credit, and thenceforth his fortune depends upon his
own exertions.[K]
At the end of 1819, commerce revived, the financial system of the
United States seemed settled on a sure basis. Since that time, some
shocks have been felt, as in 1822, and in 1825, the latter the reaction
of the great English crisis, but in both cases the storm soon passed
away. The root of the evil was struck on the day that the Bank of the
United States went into operation. This great establishment, which
committed some errors at first and paid the penalty, has for a long
time been conducted with the most consummate prudence. Most of the
leading commercial men, that is to say, most of the talents, of the
country are attached to it as directors, and its foreign correspondents
or associates are the houses whose credit is most firmly established,
such as the Barings of London, and the Hottinguers of Paris. It
exercises the necessary control over all the local banks, obliges them
to restrain their emissions by calling upon them for specie, or by
refusing to receive their bills when the issues are excessive. It was
by its agency that the currency of the United States was established
on so large a basis, that, in 1831, the banks were able, without any
effort, to discount the amount of 800,000,000 dollars, in the principal
cities of the Union, or 1,100,000,000 for the whole country.
Now, this state of prosperity seems to be coming to an end. Here, in
New York, the banks have ceased to discount, and on good paper, for two
or three months, 15, 18, and 24 per cent. per annum have been paid, the
usual rate of the Bank of the United States, and of most of the local
banks, being 6 per cent. At Philadelphia, 18 per cent. per annum has
been given on excellent paper at short dates. At Baltimore, merchants
of great wealth have been obliged to stop payment. Nobody buys;
nobody can sell. Orders for foreign goods are held back; and as every
body here is engaged in business, this state of things threatens all
interests, is the subject of all conversations, of all writing, and of
all thoughts. God grant that the sight of the impending danger may calm
the passions, and that the good sense of the community may banish empty
prejudices and false fears! God grant that both parties may forget
their mutual animosities in their anxiety for the common welfare! This
should be our prayer, not only for the sake of the destinies of this
great nation, but also because our silk manufacturers and the owners of
our vineyards, will pay a part of the expenses of the campaign against
the banks in general, which the radical party is about to open, by a
mortal contest, with the Bank of the United States.
FOOTNOTES:
[G] The maximum of the discounts of the Bank of France was in 1810,
when it amounted to 710 million francs. In 1813, they were 640
millions, in 1826, 689 millions; at these two periods the Bank made a
great effort to sustain commerce. It had less courage in the crisis of
1831-32.
[H] The Americans have retained the English word _farmer_, which
properly signifies one who cultivates a hired soil, _fermier_, although
among them the cultivators are proprietors.
[I] The number of banks at that time.
[J] There was more paper in circulation in 1816 than in 1834, when the
extent and value of business were very much greater.
[K] The mechanics and farmers have no credit open at the banks, but
the traders from whom they buy their tools, implements, raw material,
and provisions, having that advantage, are able to deal with them
on favourable terms; the farmer and mechanic are thus benefitted
indirectly, if not immediately, by the banks.
LETTER IV.
DEMOCRACY--THE BANK.
NEW YORK, JANUARY 11, 1834.
The financial crisis brought on by the quarrel between the President
and the Bank, has not become more serious; there is a great scarcity
of money, that is, a great diminution of credit, but the failures
are not yet numerous or considerable. The last arrivals from Europe
have brought us the news that several of the trades in Paris and at
Lyons have refused to work. What is taking place here in regard to the
Bank, is analogous to what is passing in France among the tailors,
bakers, and carpenters, and what occurs daily in England among the
manufacturing operatives. In Europe, and particularly in France, it
is the rising of a democracy or rather a radicalism, which is yet in
embryo, and which, if it please God, will never come to maturity. In
America, it is the despotic humour of a full grown democracy, passing
more and more into radicalism, the longer it rules without a rival and
without a counterpoise.
It seems to me improbable that the journeymen carpenters, tailors,
and bakers of Paris, should ever give the law to their masters. Among
us, the middling class (_bourgeoisie_) is beginning to feel that it
is its duty to improve the condition of the working class. It has the
authority, but it is conscious that the people has the physical force.
The people has counted its own ranks and those of the _bourgeoisie_,
but it feels that it is not enough to have the number; it sees that it
has nothing to expect from violence, and that it can back its friends
only by improved habits of order and morality. On both sides their
reciprocal rights are mutually acknowledged; each fears and respects
the other. Here, on the contrary, it is perfectly natural that the
democracy should rule the capitalists, merchants, and manufacturers;
it possesses at once the physical force and the political power; the
middling and upper classes inspire it neither with fear nor with
respect. The equilibrium is gone; there is no guarantee against the
popular caprice in the United States, but the good sense of the people;
it must be allowed that this good sense is quite extraordinary, but
it is not infallible. A popular despotism is as easily deluded by
flatterers, as any other despotism.
The Bank of the United States is at this time experiencing the truth of
this observation. I have already alluded to some of the crying abuses
which have excited a violent hatred against the banks in general,
although without the aid of the banks it would have been impossible
for the United States to have increased in population, wealth, and
territory as they have done. These abuses were and are the acts of
the local banks, and not of the Mammoth Bank. On the contrary, the
latter, by the control which it exercises over the local banks for
its own security, checks and limits these abuses, if it does not
completely prevent them. The legislatures of the different States have
been repeatedly called to deliberate on the question of abolishing
all banks and breaking up the banking system; but they have generally
thought, and justly, that the remedy would be worse than the disease.
They have attempted to cure the disorder by restrictive provisions in
the charter of new banks. The State of of New York, in 1829, embraced
the whole subject in the Safety-Fund Act, which established a mutual
supervision of the banks over each other, under the direction of the
Bank Commissioners, and creates at their common expense a safety fund,
designed to indemnify the public in case of the failure of any one
of the banks. But these measures of repression or prevention have
generally proved inefficacious, either from a defect in the means of
coercion possessed by the government, or from a reluctance to use the
powers conferred by the laws.
In their report of the 31st of January, 1833, the New York Bank
Commissioners urgently call the attention of the legislature to the
serious dangers which may result from these institutions as they are
now organized, particularly in the country, and to their excessive
issues in proportion to the small quantity of specie in their vaults.
With two millions in specie, the banks of the State had, at that time,
a circulation of above twelve millions. But this report itself proves,
that the commissioners did not dare to fulfil the duties imposed on
them by the Safety-Fund act; they had the authority to shut up the
offending banks. Their warnings have not prevented the legislature from
chartering new banks by the dozen. This year it will have to act on 105
petitions for charters, that is, eighteen more than the actual number
of banks in the State. To be sure in the present instance, the _let
alone_ principle will probably be violated, for the Governor's Message
of January 7, 1834, urges the two houses to arrest the flood. This Bank
mania, as Jefferson called it, is created by the profits of banking,
which is, and more especially was, before the institution of the Bank
of the United States, the best kind of speculation, exactly in the
ratio of the abuses attending it.[L]
In the local banks, especially in the country banks, the chief aim
of the president and directors is, at all events, come what may, to
make the semi-annual dividend as large as possible. By extending their
operations excessively, they may, if they lose the public confidence,
be driven to a failure; but in the United States the prospect of such a
disaster is much less terrible to the greater number of merchants, and
even to the smaller companies, than it is in Europe. (See _Note_ 7, at
the end of the volume.) When a bank fails, there is, indeed, a great
outcry, because the number of victims is large, and the loss extends to
all classes; for most of the bills being of the denomination of five
dollars and under, they are very generally distributed in the hands
of the labourers, as well as of the wealthier classes. But just in
proportion to the distribution of the loss over the greater number of
persons, is the quickness with which the clamor ceases. The president,
the cashier, the directors, and others principally interested, readily
find means to recover from the blow, by obtaining credit elsewhere, and
the whole affair is at an end.
The Bank of the United States, on the contrary, directed by men of
large fortune and established reputation, connected in business with
the principal houses in Europe, charged with a vast responsibility,
subject to the supervision of the Federal government, which names five
of the directors out of twentyfive, and officiously watched by an army
of journalists, is interested and obliged to follow another course.
Not that it has not committed some errors; but it paid dear for them,
and has never repeated them. Neither are its rules and regulations
perfect; the experience of twenty years will doubtless suggest some
modifications. But even its adversaries admit that it has been
admirably managed. They pretended, at first, that the public money was
not safe in its vaults, but they are at present ashamed to insist upon
this point, as the investigation made by the House of Representatives
proved the absurdity of the charge. The accusations now brought against
it are of a political character.
Politically considered, indeed, the existence of an institution
so powerful as the Bank of the United States may present some
inconveniences. The fundamental maxim of the Federal and State
constitutions is, that the supreme authority is null and void; there is
no government here in the true sense of the word; that is, no directing
power. Each one is his own master; it is self-government in all its
purity. This anomalous and monstrous development of the individual
principle is no evil here, it is even a great good at present; it
is the present stage in the progress of the United States, because
self-government is the only form of government to which the American
character, as it is, can accommodate itself. If individuality had not
free elbow-room here, this people would fall short of its destiny,
which is to extend its conquests rapidly over an immense territory,
for the good of the whole human race, to substitute, in the shortest
time possible, civilization for the solitude of the primitive forests,
over a surface ten times greater than all France, of as great average
fertility as that country, and capable, therefore, of accommodating 350
millions of inhabitants.
From these considerations it is clear, that any power whatsoever, if
possessed of great influence, and exercising it over a great space,
would be inconsistent with the political system of the country; for
this reason the Federal and State governments are in a permanent state
of eclipse. And it is furthermore evident, that the Bank, which is met
at every turn as an agent in all transactions, which governs credit,
regulates the currency, animates or checks at will the activity of
commerce by narrowing or widening the channels of circulation, the
Bank, which by its numerous branches is, like the fabled polypus,
everywhere present, the Bank with its funds, its centralisation,
its trusty creatures, is certainly an anomaly, which may become big
with danger. One might, from an abstract, theoretical point of view,
imagine cases, in which this financial colossus, seated in the heart
of a country absorbed in business, would press with a crushing weight
on the liberties of the people. If it were possible that a new Monk
should wish to restore the English rule, or that a new Bonaparte, the
saviour of the republic in another Marengo, should attempt to make
himself dictator, it would also be possible that a conspiracy between
the Bank and this Monk, or this Napoleon, might overthrow the liberties
of America. But such an event, possible to be sure in theory, (for in
theory nothing is impossible,) is, at present, wholly impracticable
in fact. Yet there are honest and enlightened men, on whom this
theoretical danger makes more impression, than the necessity of a
regulator amidst the chaos of 500 banks, or of an agent, which, by
controlling the currency, should be in financial affairs, what the vast
rivers of the country are in the system of internal communication. They
fear more, for this land of industry, from the imperceptible tyranny of
the Bank, than from a system in which there would be no check on the
cupidity of the local banks, and in which they might renew, with their
paper money, if not the _assignats_ of France, of the Continental money
of the Revolution, at least the commercial anarchy which followed the
war of 1812.
Unluckily for the United States, it is not on this high ground of
foresight, that President Jackson and his friends take their stand in
their attack on the Bank. They do not say, that it is possible that
it may some time, under a new state of things, become an instrument
of oppression; they pretend that it is so already. According to them,
it tends to nothing less than the subjugation of the country to its
rule. In his last annual message, and in an official paper read to the
cabinet on the 18th of September, 1833, the President accuses the Bank:
1. With having intrigued to bring up the question of the renewal of its
charter in Congress during the session of 1831-32, in order to reduce
him to the alternative of giving his sanction to the bill, or losing
the votes of the friends of the Bank in the approaching election,
if he refused it. He forgets that he had himself, in his message at
the opening of that session, recommended to Congress to settle the
business. 2. Of having meddled with politics in opposing his election
in 1832, and of having, with this purpose, enlarged its loans and
discounts twenty-eight and a half millions. The Bank replies that the
statement is incorrect; that its books show, that its available means
having been augmented, between January and May, 1831, ten millions,
and the requisitions of commerce having increased, it had judged
it expedient to extend its credits seventeen and a half millions,
so that the actual extension of its operations was only four and a
half millions. 3. Of having attempted to corrupt the public press,
either by printing a great number of pamphlets, or by gaining over the
newspapers. The Bank answers to this charge, that it has a perfect
right to defend itself by the press, against the continual attacks upon
it to which the press gives currency, that it may certainly be allowed
to reprint the speeches delivered in its favor in Congress, or essays
in which questions of banking are luminously treated, such as that
by the celebrated Mr Gallatin, who was twelve years Secretary of the
Treasury, and afterward minister to France. As to the vague imputation
of attempting to corrupt a press, which pours forth such a number of
journals as the press of the United States, (see _Note_ 8, at the end
of the volume,) it does not deserve a serious answer.
If a European government, from motives of this character, on facts thus
destitute of proof, should attempt to destroy an institution essential
to the prosperity of the country, the cry of despotism would be raised
on all sides. If the state were itself interested in the institution
to the amount of one fifth of its capital (7 millions of dollars),
many persons would charge such an attempt not only with violence, but
with folly. In the United States the numerical majority, which is the
majority of electors, applauded General Jackson's campaign against the
Bank almost as enthusiastically as his campaign at New Orleans. The
military success of General Jackson, his honesty, his iron firmness,
have given him an astonishing popularity. The Bank, on the contrary,
in spite of its daily services, (see _Note_ 9, at the end of the
volume,) is unpopular; it is so on account of the popular hatred of
the Banking System, on account of that jealousy, which, in a land of
perfect equality and suspicious democracy, follows in the steps of
wealth and pomp; it is so because its extensive privileges shock all
republican feelings. In the United States, in spite of the general
habits and laws of equality, there is a sort of aristocracy founded
on knowledge or on commercial distinction. This aristocracy, somewhat
prone to entertain a contempt for the vulgar multitude, causes a strong
reaction against itself in the popular mind, and as it supports the
Bank by its influence and its writings, this is enough, of itself, to
set the pure democracy against the institution. Add to this, that the
Bank, irritated by the hostile demonstrations of the administration,
has sometimes answered it by angry acts of reprisal, not grave in
themselves, but unfortunate in their consequences, and of which its
adversaries have adroitly availed themselves to excite the popular
passions. Although the Bank has the majority of the Senate in its
favor, the chances are now against it. Unless the multitude, which now
shouts HURRAH FOR JACKSON! without reflection, shall be led, between
this and March, 1836, when its charter expires, to reflect seriously on
the matter, it will disappear, until a new experience shall again prove
that it is impossible to get along without it.
Thus, at the very moment when the English Reform ministry is renewing
the charter and confirming the privileges of the Bank of England,
with the approbation of all Europe, here a compact mass, in which,
indeed, the enlightened do not form the majority, but in which,
notwithstanding, some are included, deals the death-blow to a similar
institution, tried and proved by long services. Thus, while one of the
greatest, perhaps, in an economical point of view, the very greatest
of the benefits which France could receive, would be the establishment
of a system of banks, connected with each other as the twenty branches
of the Bank of the United States are with the mother bank, America
is about to witness, if not the death, at least the suspension of
an institution, that has been fruitful of so much good, without the
slightest immediate loss of popularity by those who are doing the work
of destruction. So goes the world in the United States. The history of
this affair shows that the political springs are here wholly different
from those that operate in Europe, and that nevertheless, intrigue and
petty hate have free course here as well as elsewhere.
FOOTNOTES:
[L] The dividends of the Bank of North America were, in 1792, 15 per
cent.; in 1793, 13 1-2; from 1794 to 1799 inclusive, 12 per cent.;
from 1804 to 1810, 9 per cent. Those of the old Bank of the United
States varied from 7 5-8 to 10 per cent. Those of the Pennsylvania
Bank, from 1792 to 1810, from 8 to 10. The Bank of the United States
regularly divides 7 per cent. to the share-holders. In the city of New
York the average dividends of the banks in 1832, was 6.14 per cent.;
of the country banks 9 per cent. It must not be forgotten that the
legal rate of interest is higher in the United States than in Europe;
it is 6 per cent. in Pennsylvania, 7 in New York, from 8 to 9 in the
Southern States, and 10 in Louisiana. In the Western States there is no
regulation of interest by law, but the ordinary rate is very high.
LETTER V.
MOVEMENT OF PARTIES.--BANK QUESTION.
PHILADELPHIA, JAN. 5, 1834.
Of all the cities of the Union, the peaceful Philadelphia is the most
disturbed by the Bank question, because it is the seat of the mother
bank. The State of Pennsylvania also, of all the States, suffers the
most from the financial crisis, because it is the most deeply in
debt, and is obliged to borrow more, either to finish its canals and
railroads, or to pay the interest on its existing debt. Conceive of
the situation of a State, whose population amounts to only 1,500,000
souls, loaded with a debt of twenty and a half millions, whose ordinary
expenditures are less than 600,000 dollars, but which must raise one
million to pay interest already accrued, and nearly two millions and
a half, for the next summer, under penalty of seeing her great works,
executed at an enormous expense, go to ruin, and who knows not whither
to turn. This is not all; some old loans must be reimbursed next
May, or in three months, and, to crown the whole, the capitalists who
contracted last year for a loan of three millions, to be employed on
the public works, are, in consequence of the present crisis, unable
to fulfil their contracts. The local banks, which are bound by their
charters to lend the State at the rate of 5 per cent., rather stand
in need of assistance themselves. To these public embarrassments is
added the private distress, and thus this country, which Cobbett,
who always shows talent, and occasionally gleams of good sense,
dubs the _Anti-Malthusian_, exhibits for the present the spectacle
of a superabundance of labourers. In the manufacturing districts of
Pennsylvania, many of the operatives are without work.
The condition of the rest of the country is not, in general, any more
favorable. I am very ready to believe that the Anti-Jackson newspapers,
for so they call themselves, exaggerate the distress; but making
all due allowance for rhetorical flourishes, it is still undeniable
that there is much distress, especially among the commercial class.
Bare figures are more eloquent than the best advocates of the Bank,
and it is a notorious fact, that excellent paper has been discounted
at the rate of 18 per cent. per annum, and at even higher rates, in
New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The price currents and the
state of the stock-market, show a general fall in prices of 15, 20,
30, and even 40 per cent. Thus far the efforts of the President to
fell the hydra of the moneyed aristocracy, the Mammoth, the Monster,
have had no other effect than to blast credit and the commercial
prosperity of the country; for the Bank has been administered with so
much ability, especially since the presidency of Mr Biddle, one of
the most distinguished men in the country, that notwithstanding the
abrupt removal of the public deposits, notwithstanding the unexpected
and unfair assaults upon some of the branches, particularly that of
Savannah[M], it is beyond comparison the most solvent and safe of all
the financial institutions in the Union. At this critical moment it
has as much specie (ten millions) as all the other 500 banks taken
together, and I know from good authority, that many Jackson men (this
is the epithet adopted by themselves), have been very glad to be
sprinkled with a few drops of the _venom_ of this dangerous _reptile_.
If what is now taking place in this country were to occur in any
European monarchy, those persons who insist upon all nations having a
government cast in the republican mould, whatever may be the condition
of their territory and population, their wealth and knowledge, their
character and manners, would not fail to make it the text of their
harangues against monarchical governments; holding up to view the
picture of an unparallelled commercial prosperity, checked of a sudden
by the caprice of the sovereign, they would prove that such is one of
the unavoidable consequences of an opposition between the interest of
the ruler and the welfare of the nation; they would demonstrate by
geometrical syllogisms, that it is the essence of monarchy to place
authority in the hands of the weak and the foolish, who, to gratify
their personal malice, would not hesitate to hazard the happiness of
millions. They would raise the cry of secret influence, of intrigue,
which, according to them, is one of the attributes of monarchies.
Unluckily for this theory, it is belied by facts under my own eyes,
in the most thorough and flourishing republic that has ever existed.
The selfishness of royalty, or more correctly speaking of courts, has
hitherto begot much mischief and will continue to do so in future; but
it has met with its match in the bosom of republics, and above all
under a system of _absolute_ equality, which distributes political
power in _absolutely_ equal quantities to the intelligent and the
ignorant, to the most eminent merchant and author, and the brutal
and drunken peasant of Ireland, who is but just enrolled in the list
of citizens. An _absolute_ people, as well as an _absolute_ king,
may reject for a time the lessons of experience and the councils of
wisdom; a people as well as a king, may have its courtiers. A people on
the throne, whose authority is limited by no checks, may blindly and
recklessly espouse the quarrels of the minions of the day; let those
who doubt it come here and see it. Ignorance of the true interests
of the country is not the exclusive prerogative of monarchies. The
official papers of the Federal Executive in the affair of the Bank,
so far as concerns a knowledge of the principles of government and
the springs of the public welfare, are on a level with the measures
of the government of Spain or Rome. And yet this Executive is the
creature of the popular choice in the largest sense. It is not merely
in monarchies, that a dancer is to be seen in the post that belongs
to a mathematician. The camarilla! Never have I heard it so much
talked about, as since I have been in this country. It is here called
the _Kitchen Cabinet_, and admitting a fourth of what is said by
the opposition to be true, it is difficult not to believe that its
influence upon public affairs is greater than that of the ministerial
cabinet.
But to return to the Bank. Congress met on the 3d of December; and most
of the State Legislatures are now in session. Every where, and above
all in Congress, the great, not to say the only question agitated, is
that of the Bank. The subject of the discussions is the removal of the
public deposits, which the President has withdrawn from the Bank after
a military fashion, having previously, in the same spirit, removed from
office the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Duane, who, although opposed
to the Bank, considered the President's course illegal and rash.
Thus far, the manifestations of public opinion and the deliberative
assemblies are extremely various and discordant. In New Jersey, a small
and unimportant State, the Assembly has adopted, by a large majority,
resolutions approving the acts of the administration, and instructing
its delegates in Congress to support the President; notwithstanding
which, Mr Southard, one of the Senators from that State, has made an
excellent speech on the other side of the question. The Assembly of New
York, the first State in wealth and population, has adopted similar
resolutions by a vote of 118 to 9. Some persons to be sure, assert that
this is because New York would like to have the Mother Bank.[N] The
youthful State of Ohio, whose growth borders on the miraculous (it now
contains eleven hundred thousand inhabitants, although but 50 years
ago it had not six thousand), Ohio, the Benjamin of the democracy, has
strongly expressed the same wishes. The little State of Maine has done
the same. The administration party lately had a brilliant opportunity
of displaying its sympathies and its hatred. The 8th of January, the
anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, was celebrated by innumerable
public dinners, at each of which numerous toasts were drank. President
Jackson was the hero, and the Bank was the scape-goat, of the day. It
would be impossible to imagine the flood of accusations, insults, and
threats, which was poured upon it, mingled with jests in the taste of
the country upon Mr Biddle; thus, at one of these dinners, the Bank was
toasted, as being _governed by Young Nick according to the principles
of Old Nick_.
But the population of New England, particularly that of Massachusetts,
is opposed to the administration. In Virginia the same opinions seems
to prevail, and it is the same with several of the old Southern States.
The merchants and manufacturers of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Boston, and a hundred other places, have held meetings and adopted
resolutions, strongly censuring the conduct of the government towards
the Bank, and accusing it of having caused the present crisis. Most of
the Philadelphia Banks have petitioned in favor of the Bank. Several
Banks at Boston and in Virginia have refused to take the public money
in deposit; those of Charleston have been unanimous in this measure.
The majority of persons of intelligence, experience, and moderation,
and most of the merchants and manufacturers, are in favour of the Bank.
The country, particularly in the Middle and Western States, and the
operatives in the towns, go for General Jackson.
In Congress the majority of the Senate is friendly to the Bank, and
the majority of the House is on the side of the Administration. The
superiority in debate belongs to the defenders of the Bank. In the
Senate, the three greatest statesmen in the country, Messrs Clay,
Webster, and Calhoun, are on this side of the question, and the
speeches of Messrs Clay and Calhoun have made a strong impression. In
the House Mr Binney, of Philadelphia, and Mr McDuffie have pleaded
the same cause with ability. On the other side there has been more
highflown declamation than reasoning. I have been struck with the
resemblance between most of the speeches and newspaper essays directed
against the Bank, and our republican tirades of 1791 and 1792. There
are the same declamatory tone, the same swollen style, the same appeal
to the popular passions, with this difference, that the allegations
made here are vague, empty, and indefinite, while with us fifty years
ago the grievances were real. Most generally the pictures presented
in these declamations, are fantastical delineations of the moneyed
aristocracy overrunning the country with seduction, corruption, and
slavery in its train; or of Mr Biddle aiming at the crown. Amidst
this swarm of speeches and essays, one hardly ever meets with any
indications of serious study or a tolerable knowledge of the subject;
but I have been struck with the speech of Mr Cambreleng, who has
put forth some prudent suggestions as to the reforms required in
the present system of banking. For it must be confessed, that this
animosity of the President and the body of the people against the Bank
of the United States, blind and unreasonable as it is, is founded on
a real necessity, namely, that of a complete reorganization of the
banking system. When Congress renewed the charter of the Bank of the
United States without modification, in 1832, it committed an error.
It should have seized this opportunity to place the currency of the
country on a more solid basis; and if General Jackson had abode by
the terms of his veto message, in which he declared that he was not
opposed in principle to the establishment of a National Bank, but that
the present Bank could not be retained without some modification, he
might have become the benefactor of his country. He would not, indeed,
have received Cobbett's congratulations, but he would have obtained
the approbation of all statesmen and men of sense in the Old and the
New World. However, whatever his friends may say, as the President did
not foresee the distress, which has befallen American commerce, and as
nobody can doubt his patriotism, we need need not yet despair of seeing
him adopt this wise course.
The present crisis abundantly proves the wretched condition of the
currency, for the original cause of it was quite slight; it was merely
the transfer from the vaults of one bank to those of another of ten
millions, an inconsiderable sum relatively to the amount of the
business of the country. If the local banks, in spite of the control
exercised by the Bank of the United States, had not previously passed
all bounds, they would have been able, when the Bank of the United
States was obliged to contract its discounts by the withdrawing of the
public money, to have enlarged their own in the same proportion, since
those same funds were transferred to their vaults. But the framework of
these banks is so badly put together, that it shakes at the slightest
breath. The slight motion in the political and commercial atmosphere
caused by the President's blow at the Bank, in removing the public
deposits, was enough to make them totter. They are like a colossus with
clay feet, which should have feet of gold, or in other words, specie in
their vaults.
The proportion of metals, of which we have an excess in France, is
here extremely small. In many States, among others New York, there
is an enormous quantity of bills of one, two, and three dollars. In
South Carolina there are 25 cent, and even 12 1-2 cent bills. In
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and some other States, there are none of less
than five dollars. The Bank of the United States emits none of less
than that sum; but this minimum is too low. Most political economists,
and particularly the English, lay it down as an axiom, that the most
perfect money is paper; this is true, if we suppose a nation in which
any disturbance of industry, in consequence or apprehension of war,
from foolish speculations, from glut or panic, is impossible. In such a
land of cockayne, such a terrestrial paradise, an unshaken confidence
would prevail in all transactions, and consolidate all interests. The
metals would only serve to strike medals and to preserve inscriptions
intended to commemorate this ineffable bliss. Paper would there be on a
par with gold, and even higher, as some English writers have maintained
it should be. I do not know if there will ever be a nation in such a
state of heavenly happiness; but I doubt it, because in the world of
finance, as well as in the world of passion, I consider the Tender
River a fable, and pastorals a sport of fancy; but it is very evident
that no such people exists now, or will for some time to come. Now in
the United States, the present banking system, like that of England
from 1797 to 1821, or even 1825, is founded on this theory of the most
perfect money. It is provided, indeed, that the banks shall pay gold
for their paper on demand; but by the side of this clause, which tends
to keep a certain quantity of the metals in the country, is inserted
another, which neutralises it; it is the power of emitting bills in any
number, and of the sum of 1, 2, 3, or 5 dollars. In prosperous times,
the emission of paper is abundant, indefinite; as the necessity of a
metallic standard ceases to be felt, in proportion to the confidence
which prevails, the metals disappear before the excess of paper; there
is scarcely any left in the country. Since I have been in the United
States, I have not seen a piece of gold except in the mint. No sooner
is it struck off, than the gold is exported to Europe and melted down.
When a crisis comes on, the demand for the precious metals increases
rapidly, because every one attaches more value to a positive standard
than to paper, and the later the application of the remedy for the
scarcity of metals, the longer does the crisis last, and the more
serious does it become.
In a new country, where capital cannot, of course, be abundant,
for capital of all kinds, whether of articles of food or precious
metals, is the accumulated produce of labour, it is natural, that the
proportion of paper money should equal and surpass that of metallic
money. The existence of paper money is even a great benefit to any
country. In France we have the enormous sum of 600 million dollars in
specie; (see _Note_ 10, at the end of the volume); in the United States
40 millions are sufficient for all the transactions of a commerce
nearly as extensive as our own. In England the amount of specie at
present does not exceed 220 millions, mostly in gold. Bank notes in
circulation, which constitute the rest of the currency, amount at this
time, in the United States, to 100 million, that is, two and a half
times the amount of specie; in England to about the same as the specie,
which gives for the whole circulation of
The United States, 140 millions--
Of England, 440 millions.
If we had in France the industrial habits of the English and
Anglo-Americans, 200 millions of circulating medium, half in paper
and half in specie, would probably be sufficient for our operations;
but considering our commercial inferiority, suppose that we should
require 300 millions, of which two thirds should be metallic, and one
third paper, it would follow that we might advantageously employ 400
millions, which are now unproductive in the form of specie, and which
add nothing to our pleasures, our comfort, or our industrial capacity.
But if we might expect great benefit from banks of circulation and the
paper which they would issue, it is evident that the Americans, in the
present stage of their wealth, and considering their actual capital,
would find their advantage in putting some check upon themselves in
this matter. It might then be proper to raise the minimum of bills of
the Bank of the United States to 10, 15, or 20 dollars, as in England
there is no paper less than the five pound note. The National Bank, if
it were powerful enough, would keep the local banks in check, and for
this reason it is expedient to increase the capital. There would then
be specie enough in the country for all purposes less than the paper
minimum, and in case of any disturbance, the currency would be less
readily deranged.
Nor is this the only point in which the charter of the Bank of the
United States requires modification; its relations with the Federal
government, as well as with the State governments, need to be modified;
and some projects worthy of consideration, in this view, have been
broached. It would also, probably, be expedient, as Mr Cambreleng has
remarked, to change the rules and regulations relating to private
and public deposits, and to provide that in future they should bear
interest as they do in the Scotch banks. If this system were adopted
by all the American banks, they would gain in solidity, and they would
embrace the interest of all classes, and become provident institutions
for the general good; while at present, their direct profits, the
dividends, fall exclusively to the share-holders, who belong to the
wealthier classes; a fact which contributes not a little to their
unpopularity. Finally, it would be proper to consider to what degree
the immediate advantages of credit might be extended to mechanics and
farmers. In this respect the banks are yet absolutely aristocratical
institutions, the Americans having preserved in banking almost all the
usages of their ancestors, the English. The American banks are now
chiefly devoted to the use of speculators and merchants.
In the midst of so many contradictions, it is difficult to foresee what
will be the issue of the struggle. The friends of the Administration
maintain that President Jackson and Vice President Van Buren are not
only opposed to the Bank as it is, but to any National Bank, and that
they will never yield. The Globe, the avowed organ of the President,
has told Mr Clay, that unless he _can find a Brutus_ (to assassinate
General Jackson,) the Bank will neither have the deposits nor a new
charter. We may doubt, however, whether the President's mind is so
decisively made up, and after all a majority of both houses can set at
nought the _veto_. As to the Vice President, whom his opponents call
the cunning Van Buren, as he aspires to succeed the President, many
persons declare that his object is to gain the vote of the powerful
State of New York, by transferring thither the seat of the Mother Bank,
but that he is too enlightened seriously to wish the destruction of an
institution fraught with so much good to the country.
However this may be, it would be surprising if the present crisis
were not followed, sooner or later, by a reaction in favour of the
Bank of the United States with suitable modifications, or of another
National Bank, which, as Mr Webster observed, would amount to the same
thing, if the share-holders of the present Bank are not sacrificed.
The jealous democracy of this country has this advantage over other
democracies, that in the main it has much good sense; the recollection
of old sufferings caused by the abuses of the banking system, and a
jealousy of all pretensions to superiority, have led it to give ear to
much noisy declamation about the aristocracy of money, particularly
when it has been mixed up with flattery of itself. It may have been
led astray for a moment, when its own prerogatives were the subject of
discussion, as those sovereigns who assert the divine right of kings,
take fire in respect to theirs. Proud of its gigantic labours, it may
have been tempted to believe, that to it everything was possible and
easy, that it had only to frown to cause the Bank to crumble into the
dust at its feet, without being itself shaken by the shock. But facts,
positive, inexorable facts now bear witness that it was mistaken, that
it has trusted too much to its powers and its star, that the agency
of the Bank of the United States is indispensable. The influence of
facts has spread step by step even to the country people, who no longer
find buyers of their produce. The argument is palpable and effectual;
passion cannot long blind men of sense to such facts, for men of sense
are those who do not give themselves up implicitly to abstractions, and
who admit that every theory which is point blank against fact, is false
or incomplete. This is the reason why good sense is worth to the full
as much in politics, as talents.
It is worth while to observe here, that all the political difficulties
in which the United States have become involved, and which have
threatened the existence of the Union itself, have been settled
by means of what are here called compromises, and in France
_justes-milieux_. Thus was ended the serious dispute on the Missouri
question, which had well nigh set the Union in a flame. It was made a
question whether Missouri should be received into the Confederacy with
a constitution sanctioning the institution of slavery. After a long
and ineffectual debate, Mr Clay moved that Missouri should be admitted
unconditionally, but that, at the same time, it should be declared
that in future no new State lying north of 36° 30´ of latitude, should
be admitted into the Union with this institution; this proposition
was received with general favour, and the admission of Missouri was
carried. In the next session, however, a new quarrel arose between
the North and the South, more violent and bitter than the former, in
relation to an article in the constitution of Missouri, prohibiting
any free man of colour from entering the State. Another compromise,
proposed by Mr Clay, finally settled the whole question in 1821, after
it had kept the country in a flame for three years. In 1833, another
compromise was made in respect to the tariff, the honour of which also
belongs to Mr Clay. This question will sooner or later be settled in
the same manner; the Union cannot do without a National Bank, and it
will have one.
There are some lucky persons who succeed in everything, and there are
some lucky nations with whom everything turns out well, even those
events which seemed about to bury them in ruins. The United States
is one of these privileged communities. When Villeroi came back to
Versailles, after his defeat, Louis XIV. said to him, "Marshal, nobody
is lucky at our time of life." Charles V. also, as he grew old, said
that fortune was like a woman, and preferred young men to old ones.
Louis and Charles were right so far as this, that when a man, young or
old, has finished his mission, foresight, ability, and perseverance
profit him little; he fails in whatever he undertakes, whilst he who
has a mission yet to fulfil, takes new strength from the most violent
blows. This is true of nations as well as of individuals. The American
people is a young people, which has a mission to perform; nothing less
than to redeem a world from savage forests, panthers, and bears. It
moves with mighty strides towards its object, for it has not, like
the nations of Europe, the burden of a heavy past on its shoulders.
It may be checked in its career for a time by the present crisis, but
it will come out of it safe and sound, and more healthy than when it
entered it. It will come out with increased resources, with a reformed
banking system, and according to all appearances, even with an improved
National Bank. May the nations of Europe not have to wait long for
institutions, which have so powerfully assisted England and America in
their progress!
FOOTNOTES:
[M] The Savannah branch had out only 500,000 dollars in bills. The
collector of the port accumulated them, as they were received for
customs duties, and one day a broker presented himself at the counter
with 380,000 dollars in bills, for which he demanded specie; but the
disappearance of the bills of the branch from circulation had not been
unnoticed, and funds had been provided for any exigency. Payment was,
therefore, instantly made, and the broker, not knowing what to do with
so much specie, was obliged to request the cashier to receive it in
deposit.
[N] New York is the chief seat of commerce, but Philadelphia is more
central, and is, besides, the city of American capitalists. The removal
to New York would also require the transference of the mint and some
other public offices to that city, at great expense.
LETTER VI.
PROGRESS OF THE STRUGGLE.--NEW POWERS.
BALTIMORE, MARCH 1, 1834.
Failures begin to be frequent in the United States, particularly in New
York and Pennsylvania; the great commercial and manufacturing houses
are shaking. Meanwhile the Senators and Representatives in Congress
are making speeches on the crisis, its causes, and consequences. Three
months have already been taken up in discussing the question, whether
the Secretary of the Treasury had or had not the right to withdraw the
public deposits from the vaults of the Bank, without that institution
having given any just cause of complaint, and merely because it was
strongly suspected of aristocratical tendencies. The resolutions which
have given rise to these debates, have been referred by the Senate to
the Committee on Finance, and by the House to the Committee of Ways
and Means. Debates will rise on the reports of these committees, on
petitions and memorials, and incidental matters, and, I am told, will
last two or three months longer. This slowness is at first glance
difficult to be understood, among a people, which, above all things,
strives to save time, and which is so much given to haste and despatch,
that its most suitable emblem would be a locomotive engine or a
steamboat, just as the Centaurs were anciently confounded with their
horses. From all the large towns of the North, committees appointed
by great public meetings, bring to Washington memorials signed by
thousands, calling for prompt and efficient measures to put an end to
the crisis. On the other hand, the partisans of the Administration
find fault with the prolixity of the legislators. The calmness, or
rather phlegm, which the Americans have inherited from their English
ancestors, is kept undisturbed in both houses of Congress, and the
solemn debate goes on. One speaker for example, Mr Benton, occupied
four sessions, four whole days, with his speech, which led Mr Calhoun
to observe, that the Senator from Missouri took up more time in
expressing his opinion on a single fact, than the French people had
done in achieving a revolution. But these interminable delays ought not
to be too lightly condemned, and for myself I only shrug my shoulders,
when I hear some impatient individuals asserting that Congress would be
more expeditious, were it not for the eight dollars a day which they
receive during the session. This delay may seem irreconcileable with
one of the distinctive traits of the American character, but in reality
is imperiously demanded by the form and spirit of the government, by
the institutions and political habits of the country.
The general discussion in Congress has no other object than to open
a full and free public inquest, which enables each and all to make
up an opinion. It gives rise to a discussion of the question by the
innumerable journals in the United States (where there are 1200
political newspapers), by the twentyfour legislatures, each composed of
two houses, and by the public meetings in the cities and towns. It is
an animated exchange of arguments of every calibre and every degree,
of contradictory resolutions, mixed up with applauses and hisses, of
exaggerated eulogies and brutal invectives. A stranger, who finds
himself suddenly thrown into the midst of this hubbub, is confounded
and stupefied; he seems to himself to be present in the primeval or the
final chaos, or at least at the general breaking up of the Union. But
after a certain time some gleams of light break forth from these thick
clouds, from the bosom of this confusion,--gleams, which the good
sense of the people hails with joy, and which light up the Congress.
We see here the realization of the _Forum_ on an immense scale, the
_Forum_ with its tumult, its cries, its pasquinades, but also with
its sure instincts, and its flashes of native and untaught genius. It
is a spectacle, in its details, occasionally prosaic and repulsive,
but, as a whole, imposing as the troubled ocean. In a country like
this, it is impossible to avoid these delays; first, because it takes
a long time to interchange words between the frontiers of Canada and
the Gulf of Mexico, and secondly, because nothing is so dangerous as
precipitation in a _Forum_, whether it only covers the narrow space
between the _Rostra_ and the Tarpeian Rock, or extends from Lake
Champlain to the mouth of the Mississippi, and from the Illinois to the
Cape of Florida. Unfortunately the session in the _Forum_ lasts longer
than usual this time. The demagogues have set the popular passions
in violent agitation; the sovereign people has allowed itself to be
magnetised by its flatterers, and it will require some time to be able
to shake off the trance. The healing beam, which will fix the gaze of
the multitude and dissipate the charm that envelopes them, has not yet
broke forth from the East, or from the West; meanwhile the merchants
and manufacturers, who are stretched upon the coals, writhe in vain;
there is no answer to their cries.
The Bank, meantime, disappears from sight and keeps silence; it
continues to attend to its own business, and prudently confines itself
to that alone. Its best policy is to avoid as much as possible making
itself the subject of common talk. The demagogues have raised such a
cry of monopoly and aristocracy, that the people have come to believe
the Bank a colossus of aristocracy, a prop of monopoly. These words
_monopoly_ and _aristocracy_ are here, what the word _Jesuits_ was in
France a few years ago; if the enemies of any institution can write
on its back this kind of _abracadabra_, it is pointed at, hooted
at, and hissed at by the multitude. Such is the magic power of these
words, that speculators employ them on all occasions as charms to draw
customers. For example, at the head of the advertisements of steamboats
you read in staring characters: NO MONOPOLY!!! It is pitiful to say
that the Bank of the United States has a monopoly, when there are no
less than five hundred other banks in the country; by this course of
reasoning one might convict the sun of enjoying a monopoly of light.
And yet the multitude has believed it, and believes it still. Now the
best policy for those against whom such a storm of unpopularity is
raised, is to run for port, as the sailors do in a gale of wind. The
Bank has twice attempted to strike a blow, by taking advantage of the
mistakes of its enemies, and both times the stroke has recoiled on
itself.
The first time, the subject of dispute was a draft on the French
government, which was sold to the Bank last year by the Federal
government, and which France refused to pay; the draft was, therefore,
protested, and then paid by the correspondent of the Bank in Paris in
honour of the endorser. In this affair the Executive of the United
States committed two faults: 1. It was an act of indiscretion to draw
on the French government, before the Chambers had made the necessary
appropriation for paying the stipulated indemnity; 2. Instead of
drawing on the French government by a bill of exchange, and selling
the bill to the Bank, without knowing whether it would be accepted,
the Executive would have conducted itself with more propriety towards
France, towards the Bank, and towards itself, if it had authorized
the Bank to receive the moneys paid by the French government, in the
capacity of its agent or attorney. By the commercial practice of all
countries, and of this in particular, the Bank had a right to damages,
and it put in its claim. Its object in taking this step, was much
more to expose the errors of the Executive, than to pocket the sum of
50,000 or 80,000 dollars. But its adversaries immediately raised the
cry, that the Bank was not contented with exacting enormous sums from
the sweat of the people to the profit of the stockholders, (observe
that the dividends of the Bank are moderate, compared with those of
other banking companies in the country, and that the Federal government
is itself the largest share-holder); but that it was now attempting,
by petty chicanery, to extort a portion of the public revenue, and to
bury the _people's money in Biddle's pockets_. To this reasoning, and
it passes for demonstration, the multitude answered by imprecations
against monopoly and the moneyed aristocracy, and by renewed shouts of
HURRAH FOR JACKSON!
A few days since we witnessed another episode of this kind. The Bank
is charged, by act of Congress, with the duty of paying the pensions
of the old soldiers of the revolution. It performs the service
gratuitously, and it is notoriously a troublesome one. It has received
several sums of money for this object, and at this moment has about
500,000 dollars in its vaults, intended for the next payments. The
Administration, desirous of transferring this agency from the Bank,
has demanded the funds, books, and papers connected with it. The Bank
replied, that it has been made the depository of this trust by act
of Congress, and that it cannot, ought not, and will not surrender
it, unless in obedience to an act of Congress. The Bank was right;
the refusal was founded in justice; but mark the consequences. Its
adversaries express the greatest sympathy for these illustrious
relics of the revolution, whom the arrogance of the Bank, as they
say, is about to plunge, at the close of their career, into the most
dreadful misery; they pour forth the most pathetic lamentations over
these glorious defenders of the country, whom a _money-corporation_
is about to strip of the provision made for their declining years by
the nation's gratitude. You may imagine all the noisy arguments and
patriotic harangues, that can be delivered on this text. On the 4th
of February, the President sent a message to Congress in the same
strain. All this is mere declamation, of the most common-place and
the most hypocritical kind; for who will prevent the deliverers of
America from duly receiving their pensions, except those who shall
refuse them drafts on the Bank, which the Bank would pay at once? But
a people under fascination is not influenced by reason, and it is at
this moment believed by the multitude that the Bank has determined to
kill the noble veterans of Independence by hunger. Once more, then,
anathemas against monopoly, hatred to the moneyed aristocracy! HURRAH
FOR JACKSON! JACKSON FOREVER!
Whenever, therefore, the Bank has allowed itself to be drawn into a
conflict, which is the enemy's country, it is pronounced to be in the
wrong, though it were ten times right. On the contrary, when it has
kept to its discounts and credits, it has always been able, without
opening its mouth, to belie the charges of its enemies, who not only
impute to it the atrocious crime of being suspected of aristocracy and
monopoly, but attribute to it now the public distress, of which they
denied the existence a few months ago, and of which they are themselves
the authors. Very lately the Bank came to the relief of several
local banks, which were in danger of failing, and a few days since
it opened its coffers liberally to Allen & Co., one of the principal
houses in the country, who, although having a capital much beyond the
amount of their debts, were obliged, by the pressure of the times, to
suspend payments; the failure of that house, which has no less than
24 branches, would have involved hundreds of others. This is the only
way in which the Bank should assume the offensive; such acts, without
a word of comment, would secure it the favour and the support of all
impartial and enlightened men, and the gratitude of the commercial
interest, much more completely than the most eloquent protests against
the measures of this or that secretary, or the most ingenious and able
defence of itself.
I am more and more convinced that the United States will reap advantage
from this crisis; sooner or later the reform of the banking system must
result from it. Very probably, the National Bank, if it is maintained,
and the local banks, will hereafter be less absolutely separated from
the Federal and State governments; that is to say, that the Federal
and local governments will assume the control of the Banks, and
consequently the banks will become a part of the governments. In this
way many of the abuses of the banking system will be reformed, and the
legitimate and just influence of the banks will be strengthened. It
would be easy to cite numerous facts, which go to prove the tendency
towards this result; thus in some of the States, the Legislatures
have established, or are occupied in establishing banks, in which the
State is a share-holder to the amount of one half or two fifths of
the capital, appoints a certain number of the directors, and reserves
to itself an important control over the operations. There are some
States, as for example, Illinois, in which every other kind of bank is
expressly forbidden by the constitution.
Republican publicists acknowledge only three classes of powers,
the executive, legislative, and judicial; but it will soon be seen
in the United States, that there is also a financial power, or at
least the banks will form a branch of government quite as efficient
as either of the others. The Bank of the United States is more
essential to the prosperity of the country than the Executive, as now
organized. The latter, conducts a little diplomatic intercourse,
well or ill, with the European powers, nominates and removes some
unimportant functionaries, manoeuvres an army of 6,000 men in the
western wilderness, adds now and then some sticks of timber to the
dozen ships of war that are on the stocks at Portsmouth, Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, Washington, Norfolk, and Pensacola. All this
might actually cease to be done without endangering the safety of
the country, and without seriously wounding its prosperity, that is,
its industry. But take from the country its institutions for the
maintenance of credit, or only that which controls and regulates all
the others, the Bank of the United States, and you plunge it into a
commercial anarchy which would finally result in political anarchy.
The word politics cannot have the same meaning in the United States
as in Europe. The United States, are not engaged, like the nations of
Europe, in territorial combinations and the preservation of the balance
of a continent, nor are they entangled in treaties of Westphalia or
Vienna. They are free from all those difficulties, which in Europe
arise from a difference of origin or religion, or from the conflict
between rival pretensions, between old interests and new interests.
They have no neighbour, which excites their suspicions. The policy of
the United States consists in the extension of their commerce, and the
occupation by agriculture of the vast domain, which nature has given
them; in these points is involved the great mass of their general
and individual interests; these are the objects which inflame their
political and individual passions. As the Banks are the soul of their
commerce, their rising manufactures, and even their agriculture, it is
evident that the success of their _politics_ is intimately and directly
connected with the right organization of their banking system. The
real government of the country, that is to say, the control of its
essential interests, is as much in the banks as in any body or power
established by the constitution. The time is come when this fact should
be recognised and sanctioned. As among a military people the office of
marshal or lord-high-constable is the first in the kingdom, so among a
people which has nothing to do with war, and has only to employ itself
with its industry, that of President of the central bank, for example,
ought to be a public charge, _political_, in the sense adapted to the
condition and wants of that people,--and one of the first rank in the
country.
From this point of view, it may be said, that what is now passing
in the United States, is a struggle in which the combatants are, on
the one side, the military interest and the law, which have hitherto
divided between them the control of public affairs, and on the other,
the financial interest, which now claims its share in them; the two
first have coalesced against the last, and have succeeded for a time
in raising the multitude against it, but they will fail in the long
run, since the multitude has more to gain from it than from them. It
is said, that, when the committee of the New York merchants went to
Washington to present a petition with 10,000 names in favour of the
Bank, the President observed to them, that they declared the grievances
of the brokers, capitalists, and merchants of Wall Street and Pearl
Street, but that Wall Street and Pearl Street were not the people. I
do not know whether the story is true or not, but I know that such an
answer would express the opinion of the dominant party. There is a
school here, which attempts to eliminate the wealthy classes from the
people, and which is just the reverse of the old school of European
Tories, which reduces the people to the higher classes, and excludes
from that rank the greater number of the nation. And nothing can be
more unjust, for in order to measure the real importance of the men of
Pearl Street and Wall Street, it is only necessary to consider what New
York would be without them.
In fifty years the population of New York has increased tenfold, its
wealth probably an hundred fold; its animating influences have been
felt for hundreds of miles around. This unparalleled growth is not
the work of lawyers and military men; the merit belongs chiefly to
the industry, the capital, the intelligence, and the enterprise of
that, numerically speaking, insignificant minority of Wall Street
and Pearl Street. It is very easy to cant about the aristocracy of
dollars, and those filthy metals which men call gold and silver. And
yet have not those vile metals ceased to be vile, when they are the
fruit of the industry and enterprise of those who possess them? If
there is a country in the world where it is preposterous to prate about
the aristocracy of dollars, and about the filthy metals, it is this.
For here, more than any where else, every body has some employment;
whoever has capital is engaged in turning it to profit, and can neither
increase nor even keep it without great activity and vigilance. A man's
wealth is, therefore, very generally in the ratio of his importance,
and even of his agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial capacity.
The merchants are not without their faults; they are disposed to weigh
everything in their doubloon-scales, and a people governed entirely by
merchants would certainly be to be pitied. But a people governed by
lawyers or by soldiers would be no happier and no freer. The policy of
the Hamburg Senate in basely giving up unhappy political fugitives to
the English executioner, deserves the contempt of every man of honour;
but would the rule of Russian or even of Napoleon's bayonets, or the
babbling anarchy of the Directory, be less loathsome to those whose
heart beats with the love of liberty or with feelings of individual and
national honour?
The revolutions of ages, which change religion, manners, and customs,
modify also the nature of the powers that regulate society. Providence
humbles the mighty, when they obstinately shut their eyes to the new
spirit of the age, and raises up the lowly, whom this new spirit fires.
Four thousand years ago, it was one of the most important dignities
in Egypt to have the charge of embalming the sacred birds or of
spreading the litter of the bull Apis. In the Eastern empire the post
of _protovestiary_ was one of the first in the state, and not to go so
far back, it was the ambition of many in France, hardly four years ago,
to become _gentilhomme de la chambre_, as the _groom of the stole_,
or, in other words, the _servant in charge of the wardrobe_, is now
one of the grand dignitaries of England. Nobody now-a-days embalms
sacred birds, nobody spreads the litter of Apis. No one intrigues
for the post of protovestiary or gentleman of the chamber, and from
present appearances, I do not think that even the dignity of Groom of
the Stole, will long be an object of ambition in England. There are no
longer lord-high-constables, or great vassals, or knights-errant, or
peers of France in the old sense of the word. The French aristocracy,
so brilliant fifty years ago, has fallen like corn before the reaper.
The mansions of the old heroes have become factories; the convents have
been changed into spinning-works; I have seen Gothic naves in the best
style of art transformed into workshops or granaries, and our brave
troops have become peaceable labourers on the military roads.
Boards of petty clerks, whom the Castellans had employed to record
their sovereign decrees, became in France _parlements_, which braved
the kings and assumed to be guardians of the laws of the realm. At
present the forge masters of Burgundy and the Nivernais, the distillers
of Montpelier, the clothiers of Sedan and Elbeuf, have taken the place
of the _parlements_. German princes, who can boast of their fifty
quarters, dance attendance in the imperial, royal, or ministerial
antechambers, while their Majesties or their Excellencies are
conversing familiarly with some banker who has no patent of nobility,
and who even disdains to oblige his royal friends by accepting one. The
East India Company, a company of merchants if ever there was one, has
more subjects than the emperors of Russia and Austria together. If in
the Old World, where the old interests had marked every corner of the
land with their stamp, the old interests, the military and the law, are
thus obliged to come to terms with the new interest of industry, with
the power of money, how can it be possible, that, in the New World,
where the past has never taken deep root, where all thoughts are turned
toward business and wealth, this same power will not force its way into
the political scene, in spite of the opposition of its adversaries and
its envious rivals?
LETTER VII.
RAILROADS IN AMERICA.
RICHMOND, (VA.) MARCH 15, 1834.
Three thousand years ago the kings of the earth were happy; happy
as a king; but the old proverb is now become a falsehood. Then no
Constantinople was coveted; the citadels of Antwerp and Ancona were
not built. No one troubled himself about the Rhenish frontier; the
natural and simple Herodotus told marvellous tales, like those of the
_Arabian Nights_, about the country watered by the Rhine. The banks
of the Danube were trackless morasses; Vienna was not yet, nor of
course the Treaty of Vienna. Peace reigned between the sovereigns, or
at least their contests were real together academical, philosophical,
and literary. The good king Nectanebus, an enlightened prince, a
patron of the arts, played charades with his neighbours, the mighty
monarchs of Asia; he guessed all their riddles without their being
able to solve his in turn; his glory was unmatched, his people rolled
in prosperity. The condition of men of letters and science was, to
be sure, somewhat of the meanest; grammarians and philosophers were
sometimes dragged to market with halters on their necks, to be sold
like cattle, a treatment to which none but negroes are now subject.
But if they were men of genius, their good star threw them into the
hands of the best of masters, such as Xanthus, the most patient and
kind of men, or good natured princes, like Nectanebus, who knew how to
appreciate true merit. Æsop having become the property of this good
king, soon got to be his counsellor, friend, and confidant, revised
his charades and riddles, and suggested new ones to the king in such
a modest way, that Nectanebus really believed himself the author of
them. One day Nectanebus, by his advice, proposed to his rival monarchs
this difficult problem; How would you build a city in the air? After
they had puzzled their brains without success, Nectanebus prepared to
give a solution of the question in the presence of the ambassadors
of the Asiatic sovereigns solemnly convoked; Æsop put some little
boys in baskets, which were carried up into the air by eagles trained
for the purpose, and the boys began to cry out to the astonished
ambassadors; "Give us stone and mortar, and we will build you a city."
This old story has often occurred to my mind since I have been in the
United States, and I have often said to myself, if Æsop's boys had
been Americans, instead of having been subjects of king Nectanebus,
they would, have demanded materials, not for building a city, but
for constructing a railroad. In fact there is a perfect mania in this
country on the subject of railroads.
While at Liverpool, I went aboard the Pacific to engage a berth, and
Capt. Waite, a very worthy man, who believes in God with all his heart,
and is not any the less on that account a very skilful commander, and
a most intrepid sailor, offered me the latest American newspapers.
The first I opened happened to be the _Railroad Journal_. Soon after
sailing I fell sea-sick, and had scarcely a moment's relief till my
arrival at New York; of all my recollections of the voyage, the most
distinct is that of having heard the word railroad occurring once
every ten minutes, in the conversation of the passengers. At New York,
I went to visit the docks for building and repairing vessels; after
having examined the dry dock and two or three other docks, my guide,
himself an enthusiast on the subject of railroads, carried me to the
railroad-dock, where the ships are moved along a railway. In Virginia,
I found railroads at the bottom of the coal mines, which is not,
indeed, new to a European. At Philadelphia I visited the excellent
penitentiary, where everything was so neat, quiet, and comfortable,
(if that word may be applied to a prison), in comparison with the
abominable prisons in France, which are noisy, filthy, unhealthy, cold
in winter, and damp in summer. The warden, Mr Wood, who manages the
institution with great vigilance and philanthropy, after having shown
me the prisoners' cells, the yards in which they take the air, the
kitchen where the cooking is done by steam, and allowed me to visit one
of the convicts, a poor fellow from Alsace, said to me, just as I was
taking my leave; "But you have not seen everything yet, I must show you
my railroad;" and in fact there was a railroad in the prison, for the
cart in which food was brought to the prisoners.
Some days ago I happened to be in the little city of Petersburg, which
stands at the falls of the Appomattox, and near which there is an
excellent railroad. A merchant of the city took me to a manufactory
of tobacco, in which some peculiar processes were employed. In these
works was manufactured that sort of tobacco which most Americans chew,
and will chew for some time to come, in spite of the severe, but in
this matter just, censures of English travellers, unless the fashion
of vetoes should spread in the United States, and the women should
set theirs on the use of tobacco, with as unyielding a resolution, as
the President has shown towards the Bank. After having wandered about
the workshops amidst the poor little slaves by whom they are filled,
I was stopping to look at some of these blacks, who appeared to me
almost white, and who had not more than one eighth of African blood in
their veins, when my companion said to me, "As you are interested in
railroads, you must see the one belonging to the works." Accordingly
we went to the room where the tobacco is packed in kegs, and subjected
to a powerful pressure. The apparatus for pressing is a very peculiar
contrivance, which I will not now stop to describe, but of which the
most important part is a moveable railroad, suspended from the ceiling.
Thus the Americans have railroads in the water, in the bowels of the
earth, and in the air. The benefits of the invention are so palpable to
their practical good sense, that they endeavour to make an application
of it everywhere and to everything, right or wrong, and when they
cannot construct a real, profitable railroad across the country from
river to river, from city to city, or from State to State, they get one
up, at least, as a plaything, or until they can accomplish something
better, under the form of a machine.
The distance from Boston to New Orleans is 1600 miles, or twice the
distance from Havre to Marseilles. It is highly probable, that within
a few years this immense line will be covered by a series of railroads
stretching from bay to bay, from river to river, and offering to the
ever-impatient Americans the service of their rapid cars at the points
where the steamboats leave their passengers. This is not a castle
in the air, like so many of those grand schemes which are projected
amidst the fogs of the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne; it is already
half completed. The railroad from Boston to Providence is in active
progress; the work goes on _à l'Américaine_, that is to say, rapidly.
From New York to Philadelphia, there will soon be not only one open to
travel, but two in competition with each other, the one on the right,
the other on the left bank of the Delaware; the passage between the two
cities will be made in seven hours, five hours on the railroad, and
two in the steamboat, in the beautiful Hudson and the magnificent Bay
of New York, which the Americans, who are not afflicted with modesty,
compare with the Bay of Naples. From Philadelphia, travellers go to
Baltimore by the Delaware and Chesapeake, and by the Newcastle and
Frenchtown railroad, in eight hours; from Baltimore to Washington, a
railroad has been resolved upon, a company chartered, the shares taken,
and the work begun, all within the space of a few months. Between
Washington and Blakely, in North Carolina, 60 miles of railroad are
completed, from Blakely northwards. A company has just been chartered
to complete the remaining space, that is, from Richmond to the Potomac,
a distance of 70 miles, and the Potomac bears you to the Federal city
by Mt. Vernon, a delightful spot, the patrimony of George Washington,
where he passed his honoured old age, where his body now reposes in
a modest tomb. Between Washington and Blakely, those who prefer the
steamboats, may take another route; by descending the Chesapeake to
Norfolk, they will find another railroad, 70 miles in length, of which
two thirds are now finished, and which carries them to Blakely, and
even beyond. Blakely is a new town, which you will not find on any map,
born of yesterday; it is the eldest, and as yet the only daughter of
the Petersburg and Blakely railroad. From Blakely to Charleston the
distance is great, but the Americans are enterprising, and there is no
region in the world in which railroads can be constructed so easily and
so cheaply; the surface has been graded by nature, and the vast forests
which cover it, will furnish the wood of which the railroad will be
made; for here most of these works have a wooden superstructure. From
Charleston, a railroad 137 miles in length, as yet the longest in the
world, extends to Augusta, whence to Montgomery, Alabama, there is a
long interval to be supplied. From this last town steamboats descend
the River Alabama to Mobile, and those who do not wish to pay their
respects to the Gulf of Mexico, on their way to New Orleans, will soon
find a railroad which will spare them the necessity of offering this
act of homage to the memory of the great Cortez.[O]
Within ten years this whole line will be completed, and traversed by
locomotive engines, provided the present crisis terminates promptly
and happily, as I hope it will. Ten years is a long time in these
days, and a plan, whose execution requires ten years, seems like a
romance or a dream. But in respect to railroads, the Americans have
already something to show. Pennsylvania, which by the last census,
in 1830, contained only 1,348,000 inhabitants, has 325 miles of
railroads actually completed, or which will be so within the year,
without reckoning 76 miles which the capitalists of Philadelphia have
constructed in the little States of New Jersey and Delaware. The total
length of all the railroads in France is 95 miles, that is, a little
more than what the citizens of Philadelphia, in their liberality,
have given to their poor neighbours. In the State of New York, whose
population is the most adventurous and the most successful in their
speculations, there are at present only four or five short railroads,
but if the sixth part of those which are projected and authorized by
the Legislature, are executed, New York will not be behind Pennsylvania
in this respect. The merchants of Baltimore, which at the time of the
Declaration of Independence contained 6,000 inhabitants, and which now
numbers 100,000, have taken it into their heads to make a railroad
between their city and the Ohio, a distance of above 300 miles. They
have begun it with great spirit, and have now finished about one third
of the whole road. In almost every section east of the Ohio and the
Mississippi, there are railroads projected, in progress, or completed,
and on most of them locomotive steam-engines are employed. There are
some in the Alleghanies, whose inclined planes are really terrific,
from their great inclination; these were originally designed only
for the transportation of goods, but passenger-cars have been set up
on them, at the risk of breaking the necks of travellers. There are
here works well constructed and ill constructed; there are some that
have cost dear, (from 40,000 to 50,000 dollars a mile,) and others
that have cost little, (from 10,000 to 15,000 dollars a mile). New
Orleans has one, a very modest one to be sure, it being only five
miles long, but it will soon have others, and after all, it is before
old Orleans, for the latter has yet to wait till its capitalists,
seized with some violent fit of patriotism, shall be ready to make the
sacrifice of devoting some ten or twelve per cent. of their capital
to the construction of a railroad thence to Paris. Virginia, whose
population is nearly the same with that of the Department of the North,
and which is inferior in wealth, already has 75 miles of railroad
fully completed, and 110 in progress, exclusive of those begun this
year. The Department of the North, where it would be quite as easy to
construct them, and where they would be more productive, has not a
foot completed, or in progress, and hardly a foot projected. Observe,
moreover, that I here speak of railroads alone, the rage for which is
quite new in America, while that for canals is of very old date (for
in this country fifteen years is an age), and has achieved wonders.
There are States which contain 500, 800, or 1,000 miles of canals. We
in France are of all people the boldest in theory and speculation, and
we have made the world tremble by our political experiments; but during
the last twenty years we have shown ourselves the most timid of nations
in respect to physical improvements.
FOOTNOTES:
[O] For observations on these statements see _Letter_ XXI., and _the
Notes_.
LETTER VIII.
THE BANKS.--THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.
WASHINGTON, APRIL 10, 1834.
The drama which has been passing in the United States since the opening
of the session, has now reached the end of the first act. The two
Houses have had under consideration the subject of the removal of the
public deposits from the Bank of the United States to the local banks,
by the Executive, and both of them have come to a decision. The Senate
has declared, by a majority of 28 to 18, that the reasons alleged
by the Secretary of the Treasury in justification of the measure,
were neither satisfactory nor sufficient, and, by a majority of 26
to 20, that the conduct of the President in this matter was neither
conformable to the constitution nor to the laws. This is the first
instance, since the adoption of the Federal constitution, of a censure
of the chief magistrate of the nation by the Senate. The House has
resolved, on its part, that the charter of the Bank ought not to be
renewed, that the public deposits ought not to be restored to it, and
that they should remain in the safe-keeping of the local banks. The
first resolve passed by a vote of 132 to 92; the majority for the two
others was much less, 118 to 103, and 117 to 105. It has been resolved,
by a large majority, 171 to 42, that the conduct of the Bank should
be made a subject of investigation, but this majority includes many
friends of the Bank.
It is to be hoped that the Bank will not be the object of this
campaign; the more vigourously it is defended, the more hateful it
becomes to the democracy. Those who feel an interest in their country
and its institutions, ought to make an effort to turn the debate toward
some other point, for both sides have become heated and exasperated
in the struggle, and already violence has been threatened. The most
brilliant services have been forgotten, the purest characters trampled
under foot. The Globe, the avowed organ of the administration, pours
forth the vilest slanders on men, such as Messrs Clay, Calhoun, and
Webster, of whom any country in the world would be proud. It repeated,
and unhappily it reiterates still, that the votes of, the Senate have
been bought by the Bank. On the other hand, General Jackson, to whom
it is impossible to deny the possession of eminent qualities, has
been himself exposed to the vilest indignities; the gray hairs of
that brave old man have been insulted in the most scandalous manner.
Attempts have even been made to throw ridicule on his victory at New
Orleans, the most brilliant affair in the American annals, as if his
glory were not the common property of the country. Some hot heads have
even talked of recurring to violence; commerce and enterprise have
been struck numb; for want of means, the great works of Pennsylvania
have been in danger of being brought to a stand. But at present there
appears to be a general wish to bring back a calm; the failure of a
certain number of individuals, and especially that of some banks, have
proved a signal of alarm, which has recalled every one to a sense
of the common danger, the general ruin that threatened the country.
There has been a failure of a bank in Florida, of one in New Jersey,
and of two in Maryland, one of which, that of the Bank of Maryland in
Baltimore, has caused a great sensation. The leading men of all parties
have set themselves in earnest to search out some means of bringing the
commercial crisis to an end. There is room to hope, therefore, that
the debate will lose its bitterness, and at the same time will take a
wider range; instead of quarrelling about the particular question of
the Bank, it were to be wished that the higher questions of political
economy should be discussed, such as that of a mixed currency, in which
there should be the proper mixture of paper and the metals necessary
to give it stability, without keeping, as is the case in Europe, a
large unproductive capital in the shape of specie; and that of a system
of institutions of credit, banks of loan and discount, of deposit
and exchange, powerful enough to serve as a spring and a stay to the
industry of the country, and yet so balanced in respect to each other
and the powers of the government, as not to be dangerous to the public
liberties. A very able speech of Mr Calhoun's has already drawn the
general attention to the subject of financial reform, and one of the
senators friendly to the administration, Mr Benton, has embodied some
of Mr Calhoun's ideas in the shape of a bill.
It is now universally agreed, that to obtain a solid and stable
currency, it is necessary to keep a certain quantity of gold and
silver in the country; it is seen that while there are paper dollars,
the silver dollars will disappear, that ten-dollar notes necessarily
expel the eagles, and that half-eagles will not stay where there
are five-dollar bills. It is, therefore, proposed to abolish the
issue of notes of less than ten or even twenty dollars, but all that
Congress can do without the aid of a National Bank, is to prohibit
the reception, by the collectors of the customs, of the bills of
any bank which has in circulation notes of less than ten or twenty
dollars; for Congress has no direct power over the local banks. This
measure, however, would be insufficient; for the amount of money paid
for customs bears a very small proportion to the whole circulation
of the country, and consequently would not affect the circulation in
districts remote from the sea coast. The Administration does not deny
the necessity of a police for controlling and regulating the banks;
it seems disposed to effect it by means of some of the local banks,
which should act under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury,
and to which should be granted certain privileges, such as that of
being the depositories of the public money without paying interest.
But this plan has some disadvantages; it would invest the Secretary,
that is the President, with a great discretionary power, which is
wholly at war with the political maxims of American government. It is
a received truth in the United States, that the sword and the purse
ought not to be in the same hands. Beside it is doubtful whether this
control would be sufficiently powerful and sufficiently enlightened,
and finally it would be difficult by means of this chain of local banks
to answer one of the most pressing wants of the country, facility of
exchange; because they are, and must be as slightly connected with each
other, as the sovereign States from which they hold their charters.
To exterminate small bank-notes the surest agent would be a National
Bank, and Congress has the power to establish one. This power, which is
disputed because all its powers are disputed, would not be contested,
if it were stipulated that the Bank should obtain the consent of each
State, before establishing a branch within its limits. It would then
be sufficient that the Bank should not receive the bills of any other
bank, which issued notes of less than 10 or 20 dollars, or which
received the bills of other banks, that issued notes less than the
same minimum. In fine, a National Bank is an admirable instrument of
exchange, and the most influential friends of the Administration are
convinced of the necessity of an institution of the sort. I cannot
believe that the President, and especially the Vice-President, are
really as much opposed to one, as they have the air of being. As it
is possible to conceive of a combination of circumstances, which may
reconcile its existence with the interests and views of Mr Van Buren
(such would be, for instance, the creation of a Bank of which the seat
should be New York, instead of Philadelphia), it may be hoped that
sooner or later, under one form or another, Mr Van Buren may yield to
the necessity of the case. It is true that out of hatred to the present
Bank, the prejudices of the multitude have been excited against the
establishment of any bank at all, and it is much more easy to rouse the
popular passions than to control them when once let loose; this kind
of game has resulted in the self-murder of many a man's popularity.
But in this matter the voice of the public interest and of individual
interest will speak so loud, that it would be astonishing if it did not
make itself heard by a people, so much more sensible and reflecting
than most of the European people. There is, then, in short, still some
chance for a Bank of the United States.
The following are the principal features, in which both parties seem to
me to be at present tacitly agreed. The capital of the Bank to be about
50 millions. The shares of the present Bank, representing a capital of
35 millions, to be exchanged at par for shares in the new bank; the
rest of the capital to be subscribed by the individual States, thus
giving the Bank a more truly national character: The rate of discount
to be reduced from 6 to 5 per cent.; Mr Forsyth, a Senator friendly to
the administration, has demanded this modification: The laws relative
to public and private deposits to be changed in conformity with the
propositions of Mr Cambreleng: The seat of the mother bank to be
transferred to New York: The operations of the Bank to be subjected to
more strict regulations than those of the old Bank have been: The Bank
to be required to keep on hand a larger amount of reserved profits, or
some other provision borrowed from the bank of England to be adopted,
in order to give more security to the institution.
It would not, probably, be impossible to unite a majority of the two
Houses in favour of a plan which should embrace these features. But
there is another subject about which little is said, and upon which
no one has yet publicly declared himself, although there are many
who have thought much about it, and it will not be easy to reconcile
opinions upon it. How shall the Bank be governed? What relation shall
there be between the administration of the Bank, and the Federal and
State governments? How and by whom shall the President of the Bank be
chosen? This subject, about which there is a total silence, appears
to me to be of so vital importance, that I am convinced that what has
occurred in the United States during the last six months, would never
have taken place, if the nomination of the President of the Bank had
been lodged with the President of the United States. In Europe and
particularly in France, the government of the banks is more or less
in the hands and under the control of the king and the ministers. In
America, conformably with the principles of self-government, the Bank,
like all the other industrial and financial institutions, has, up to
this time, governed itself. The Federal government, owning one fifth of
the shares, names one fifth of the directors; its powers stop there.
The American axiom, which forbids the union of the sword and the purse
in the same hand, is opposed to the exercise of a controlling influence
over the choice of the President of the Bank by the President of the
United States; and yet I am persuaded that the democratic party will
not be willing to hear of a Bank, in the government of which it could
not interfere.
The upper classes (_bourgeoisie_) are not here what they are in Europe;
while in Europe they rule, here they are ruled. Democracy takes its
revenge in America for the unjust contempt with which it has been
so long treated in Europe. Now it is to these upper classes, that
the private share-holders of the Bank belong; it is the merchants,
manufacturers, and capitalists, who will always derive the most direct
benefit from a National Bank, although all classes must indirectly
derive great advantages from it. From the time when the upper
classes sanctioned a completely universal suffrage, without making
any exception in favour of natural superiority, whether industrial
or scientific, from the day when they consented that number should
be every thing, and knowledge and capital nothing, they have signed
their own abdication. It is too late to agitate the questions, whether
this is absolutely a good or an evil, or whether it is well, in the
agricultural States, with a scattered population, such as Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois, and bad in large and populous cities, the
seats of a vast commerce, such as Philadelphia and New York. This is
a matter already settled past recall; when the sword is surrendered,
the vanquished must submit to take the law from the victor. In case,
then, of the creation of a new National Bank, the share-holders must
consent to receive their head, either from the President and Senate,
as other public functionaries are appointed, or from the House of
Representatives alone, or from some other similar source. If in a new
or a somewhat modified Bank, the Federal and local governments should
be stockholders to a large amount, this participation of the President
or the House of Representatives, or of special delegates chosen by the
States, in the government of the Bank, would appear altogether natural,
even in the eyes of the most exclusive partisans of self government.
It remains to be seen, whether in this case, the Bank would not be
more likely to become the instrument of party, a _den of intrigue and
corruption, a golden calf_, a _monster_, as it is so often unjustly
called, than in the present state of things.
If this quarrel should be terminated by a compromise, we may expect
that it will be effected on the basis above stated. The upper classes
will, perhaps, consider the conditions as hard, but they should beware
of rejecting them. It would be a great gain to them to obtain, under
any form, a decisive sanction of a National Bank, connected with the
government, and therefore incorporated with the interests of the
country. Not only are numbers at present against the Bank, and numbers
give the law here, but the Opposition is not so well organised as the
democratic party. The Opposition has, indeed, three leaders, who do not
always agree; the views of Mr Calhoun of South Carolina do not coincide
with those of Messrs Clay and Webster on the subjects of the tariff
and States' rights; and Mr Clay, the son of the west, and Mr Webster,
who comes from Boston, the focus of Federalism, differ on several
constitutional questions. The democratic party, on the contrary, is
better disciplined; the two heads, General Jackson and Mr Van Buren,
present a formidable union of qualities and faculties. The old General
is firm, prompt, bold, energetic; Mr Van Buren, who sets up for the
American Talleyrand, is mild, conciliating, prudent, and sagacious;
his adversaries call him the little magician. While the pretensions
of Messrs Clay, Calhoun, and Webster are scarcely to be reconciled
with each other, and neither of them is willing to be second, Mr Van
Buren is ready to serve under General Jackson for the purpose of
becoming his successor in the elections of 1836. Every kingdom divided
against itself cannot stand. But, if no compromise can be made, if the
democracy is too untractable, and the upper classes persist in claiming
more than their position authorises them to do, if the feelings, kept
in a state of excitement, become exasperated on both sides, and the
contest be too much prolonged, the most frightful consequences may
ensue; even the Union may be endangered.
At the close of the war of Independence, the American Confederacy
occupied only a narrow strip along the Atlantic. Since that time the
wave of an active, enterprising, and rapidly increasing population, has
rolled over the Alleghanies, the Ohio, the Mississippi, more recently
over the Missouri, the Red River, the Arkansas, and I know not how far.
Toward the South it is already sweeping over the Sabine, and covering
Texas, while toward the West, it has topped the Rocky Mountains, and
is approaching the Pacific shore. Instead of thirteen States, there
are twentyfour, and the number will soon be increased to twentysix. By
the side of the old Atlantic strip, two other vast tracts with a more
fertile soil, have yielded up their riches to civilised man; one, at
the west, comprises the great triangle lying between the Ohio, the
Mississippi, and the lakes, and the other at the south, includes the
fertile regions of Florida and Louisiana, which, under the French and
Spanish rule, were a solitary wilderness. The geographical centre of
the Union fifty years ago was on the banks of the Potomac, on the spot
where the city of Washington--that paper capital--now stands; it is now
at Cincinnati, and will soon be near St Louis. In proportion as the
territory of the Confederacy has been extended, the Federal bond has
been weakened. It was nearly snapped asunder during the Nullification
crisis, occasioned by the resistance of South Carolina to the tariff
adopted under the influence of New England, in order to protect her
growing manufactures. If Congress had not satisfied the demands of
South Carolina, Virginia would have made common cause with the latter,
and her example would have carried the whole South. The patriotic
eloquence of Mr Webster, the moderation of Mr Clay and his prodigies of
parliamentary strategy, the efforts of Mr Livingston, then Secretary
of State, the firm, and, at the same time, conciliatory conduct of
the President, who, for the first time, heard a bold defiance with
patience, and the calm attitude of the Northern States, prevented for
the moment a general dissolution of the Union; but the germ of mischief
remains; the charm is broken; the ear has become familiar with the
ominous word SEPARATION. A habit has grown up of thinking, and even of
declaring, whenever the interests of the North and the South jar, that
the cure-all will be a dissolution of the Union.
South Carolina keeps her militia organised, and exacts from the State
officers a special oath of allegiance. Georgia and Alabama contest
the validity of treaties concluded between the Federal government and
the Cherokee and Creek nations. (See _Note_ 11.) Most of the States
seek to extend the limits of their individual sovereignty. The
doctrine of State rights has even insinuated itself into the bosom
of orthodox Philadelphia, for I see by the journals, that a States'
rights dinner is announced there. These symptoms may become full of
danger in a moment of universal excitement. When the passions are at
the helm, there is no pause in the course. What, for instance, would
be the event, if Nullification should find an echo in the same States
of the North, where it has lately been so firmly rejected? It is they
that have the most direct interest in the establishment of a National
Bank; it is they that suffer most from the financial combinations of
General Jackson, and from the objections of Southern statesmen against
the constitutionality of a bank. Although no allusion is made to this
danger, it is evident that the solicitude of many persons has been
aroused by it, and it is fortunate that it is so, for a more general
disposition to conciliatory measures is the consequence.
The principle of separation is engaged in a deadly conflict with the
spirit of centralisation or consolidation; hardly was the constitution
signed, when twelve additional articles or Amendments were immediately
adopted, almost all of which contained restrictions on the powers and
attributes of the Federal government. At the same time the authority of
Congress to charter a Bank, and give it powers within the territories
of the States, was contested; on this point, however, the principle of
union was victorious, and the Bank was established. Next, the right
of engaging in Internal Improvements was denied to Congress, which,
after a long struggle, has been compelled to resign its claims; General
Jackson willed it, and it was done. The National Road, which extends
from Washington to the western wilderness, and for which appropriations
have been annually voted, each professing to be the last, shows what
the Federal government could do and wished to do. Even the uniform
system of weights and measures, seems to be on the point of being
broken up, in spite of the express provisions of the constitution.
Pennsylvania has undertaken, nobody knows why, to establish regulations
on this point contrary to the general usage.[P] The public debt is now
paid; that is one Federal tie the less. The Bank, assailed afresh,
is on the point of falling; that is an immense loss to the Federal
principle. The Supreme Court of the United States, one of the bulwarks
of the Union, is assaulted. The vast domain of the West, (see _Note_
12,) the national property, seems in danger of being given up to
individual States, for this disposition is one of the favorite topics
of the democratic party.
But if centralisation comes off the worse in Federal politics, it
has the better within the States. The principal States are engaged
in constructing vast systems of internal communication; they are
establishing for themselves financial systems, and many of them
are about to set up great banks, which shall exercise within their
respective limits the salutary influence possessed by the Bank of
the United States throughout the whole Union. Thus each State, as
it detaches itself from the Federal Union, organises more fully its
own powers, and binds more firmly together its imperfectly combined
elements. But, on the other hand, industry and the spirit of enterprise
restore to the Union the strength, of which political jealousy and
party quarrels tend to deprive it. There is not a family at the
North, that has not a son or a brother in the South; the community of
interests daily grows stronger; commerce is a centripetal force; along
the whole Atlantic coast there is only one mart, New York; there is
only one of importance on the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans; and the
relations of New York and New Orleans make these two cities, instead
of rivals, mutual supports. The railroads and the steamboats spread
over the country the meshes of a net not easily broken; great distances
vanish; before long it will be easy to go from Boston to New Orleans
in eight days, less time than is generally required to go from Brest
to Marseilles. When we reflect on the extent of the Roman empire for
ages, we cannot doubt the possibility of maintaining a certain degree
of unity on the American territory, immeasurably vast as it appears to
an eye accustomed to the divisions of the map of Europe. The Romans
had not attained that degree of perfection in the means of intercourse
which we possess; not only had they no knowledge of steamboats and
railroads, and the telegraph, but they had few highways, and were
unacquainted with the use of carriages hung on springs. The progress
of commercial and financial arts, makes it more easy to manage the
financial concerns of the universe now, than it was to administer
those of a province in the time of Cæsar. I cannot, therefore, make up
my mind to believe, that the Union will be broken up into fragments,
driven in different directions and dashing one against another.
And yet it is very possible, that the Union will not continue long on
its present footing. Are the relations established between the States
by the constitution of 1789, the most perfect that can be devised
now? Ought not the unforeseen formation of the two great groups of
the West and the Southwest be followed by some modification of those
relations? Would not the subdivision of the general confederacy into
three subordinate confederacies, conformable to the three great
territorial divisions, the North, the South, and the West, with a more
intimate union between the members of each group, have the effect of
satisfying the advocates of State rights, without endangering the
principle of union? Would not this arrangement be the means of giving
more elasticity to the Union? Could not the existence of three partial
confederacies be reconciled with that of a central authority, invested
with the undisputed powers of the present Federal government, one army,
one navy, one diplomatic representation abroad, one common right of
citizenship, one Supreme Court, and, as far as possible, one system of
customs, and one Bank? These are questions, which it will, perhaps,
be worth while to examine some day, and even at no distant day. But
it would be desirable, that they should be approached and discussed
with calmness. If they should be unexpectedly raised in a period of
irritation and bad feelings, they would be the signal of a deplorable
catastrophe. Union gives strength; North America, once parcelled out
into hostile fragments, would be of no more weight in the balance of
the world, than the feeble republics of South America.
FOOTNOTES:
[P] An act has been passed by the Pennsylvania legislature, providing
that 2,000 pounds shall make a ton.
LETTER IX.
THE FIRST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 24, 1834.
Which is the first people in the world? There is no nation which does
not make pretensions to this superiority. Who in France has not sung in
the words of Béranger, "Queen of the world, oh my country! oh France!"
in the full conviction, that the French nation was predestined to be
forever at the head of the human race, to eclipse all others, in peace
and in war? For myself, before I had crossed the frontier, I believed
most implicitly, that we were not only the most generous and chivalric
of people, the most intellectual and ingenious, the first in the fine
arts, the most amiable and brilliant; but also that we were the most
enlightened, the first in political and industrial arts, the most
inventive and the most practical, in short, the pattern-nation, perfect
and unrivalled. Notwithstanding the rains and fogs of Paris, I supposed
our climate the mildest and the most serene in the world; in spite of
the Landes and Champagne, I considered it undeniable, that our soil
was the most fertile, our scenery the most picturesque, in the world.
Trusting to the reports of our exhibitions of industrial skill, I was
ready to swear that we had left our neighbours of England a hundred
leagues behind, and that their manufacturers, to avoid being reduced to
beggary by our competition, would soon be obliged to come over to learn
how to smelt and refine iron, how to spin cotton, how to manufacture
steel, how to manage the most gigantic establishments in the most
economical manner, how to despatch mountains of merchandise beyond sea
most expeditiously.
After having crossed the frontier one gradually lowers these
magnificent pretensions; patriotism becomes purer and stronger. In
visiting foreign parts one sees what is wanting to the prosperity and
glory of his country, and how it might be possible to add some jewels
to her crown. Thus it does not require long observation to see, that
if England might borrow much from us, we have not less to receive from
her. The English are not only more skilful manufacturers and better
merchants than we are, but they possess in a higher degree than we
do, those qualities which enable men, after having conceived grand
projects, to carry them into execution. The English have that practical
sagacity and that unbending perseverance, by which our Titan-like
battles of the Revolution and the Empire, our impetuous and devoted
enthusiasm, our unparalleled victories, our unmatched triumphs, were
reduced to treaties of Vienna, that is to say, were made to result in
our own humiliation, and in the enthronement of Great Britain on the
apex of the European pyramid. The English have less of the gift of
speech, but more capacity for action, than we have. And it is owing to
this, that they have found means to extend their colonial possessions,
while all other nations were losing theirs; what they lost in the West,
they have supplied in the East tenfold. They possess that political
sense, to which they owe the peaceful settlement, during the last
three years, of questions, that seemed destined to shake the granite
foundations of their island and bury it in the sea. They have achieved
their Reform; they have abolished the monopoly of the East India
Company; they have reconstructed the Bank; they have abolished slavery.
During this period, we have been revolving about questions of secondary
importance, without being able to make a decision; we do not know how
to go to work with monopolies, which, in comparison with the colossal
privileges of the East India Company, are grains of sand; we, who have
given to the world the most conclusive arguments in favour of liberty
of commerce!
If in Paris, we consider ourselves, in all, and for all, and forever,
the pattern-people, at London, the opinion is not less exclusively and
decidedly in favour of the English. In London, the duke of Wellington
is called the conqueror of Napoleon, which, indeed, is true to the
letter, but is nevertheless perfectly ridiculous, although Lord
Wellington is certainly an extraordinary man. I have seen Englishmen
pettishly shake their head, when they were told that the sky of England
was foggy; with a little malice, one might drive them to maintain, that
they need not envy the climate of Italy, and that even the atmosphere
of Manchester, where the sight of the sun is a rarity, has charms,
in spite of the slanders of its detractors, even for those who have
breathed the air of Naples. At Madrid, that heroic people, which seems
to be awaking at last from its long lethargy, has not lost the habit of
believing in the supremacy of Spain, and there, they dream that they
are yet in the glorious days of Charles V., when the sun never sat on
the Spanish dominions. And we can pardon this in the noble Castilians;
but I verily believe, also, that Don Pedro and Don M
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