course of society. The parties by which the Union is menaced do not rest upon abstract principles, but upon temporal interests. These interests, disseminated in the provinces of so vast an empire, may be said to constitute rival nations rather than parties. Thus, upon a recent occasion, the north contended for the system of commercial prohibition, and the south took up arms in favour of free trade, simply because the north is a manufacturing, and the south an agricultural district; and because the restrictive system which was profitable to the one was prejudicial to the other. In the absence of great parties, the United States abound with lesser controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute shades of difference upon questions of very little moment. The pains which are taken to create parties are inconceivable, and at the present day it is no easy task. In the United States there is no religious animosity, because all religion is respected, and no sect is predominant; there is no jealousy of rank, because the people is every thing, and none can contest its authority; lastly, there is no public misery to serve as a means of agitation, because the physical position of the country opens so wide a field to industry, that man is able to accomplish the most surprising undertakings with his own native resources. Nevertheless, ambitious men are interested in the creation of parties, since it is difficult to eject a person from authority upon the mere ground that his place is coveted by others. The skill of the actors in the political world lies, therefore, in the art of creating parties. A political aspirant in the United States begins by discriminating his own interest, and by calculating upon those interests which may be collected around, and amalgamated with it; he then contrives to discover some doctrine or some principle which may suit the purposes of the new association, and which he adopts in order to bring forward his party, and to secure its popularity; just as the imprimatur of a king was incorporated with the volume which it authorised, but to which it nowise belonged. When these preliminaries are terminated, the new party is ushered into the political world. All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a stranger to be so incomprehensible and so puerile, that he is at a loss whether to pity a people which takes such arrant trifles in good earnest, or to envy that happiness which enables it to discuss them."* We had intended to speak at some length of the character and influence of the press in the United States; but we have left ourselves no space to do so. That press, unfortunately, represents and expresses the enlightened and intelligent minority of the NATION just as little as do the government and the members of Congress; and for the same reason. American newspapers are numberless and low-priced. They are not cheap-regard being had to the character of their contents (even Mr. Chambers admits this); but they are sold often for a halfpenny, oftener for a penny, and are therefore within the reach of nearly every Five-sixths of the matter they contain is advertisement; one. * Tocqueville, Démocratie en Amérique. the remaining sixth (if we put out of view a few, a very few honourable exceptions) is about equally divided between home personalities, often deplorably low in language, and abuse or depreciation of England. This character is traceable to two sources: "the facility with which they can be set on foot gluts the market (says Mr. Tremenheere), and reduces the profits to so low a point that very few men of ability and character will condescend to embark in that species of occupation." Then, being so low in price as to be purchasable by the mass of the population, they are addressed to that mass, and written so as to gratify it. They "who live to please, must please to live." The vast majority of them, therefore, almost as an inevitable consequence, pander to the prejudices and inflame the passions of the average body of readers, a body which, in America, embraces nearly the whole working-classes. The consequences of this, present and prospective, are very serious indeed. "Unfortunately, our own press not uncommonly presents examples of a mode of comment on what it disapproves in the conduct of the American government and people, the caustic satire of which burns deeper than the arguments. Every disparaging word is caught at, and its import magnified; and every sarcasm, from whatever quarter,-in book or pamphlet, speech or newspaper,-is quoted and requoted for years as proofs of the bad disposition of the English people towards every thing American." The following observations,* written above four years ago, well deserve attention on both sides of the water at the present conjuncture : "In the mean time that democratic press is occupied in nursing the popular ambition by holding forth the doctrine that it is the 'manifest destiny' of the American people to absorb the whole continent, and its adjoining islands. It stirs up the warlike spirit which pervades the whole country; it systematically teaches them to undervalue the power of England, and to look upon her as weak and declining; and it inspires them with an evident desire to try their strength with Great Britain, in the confident expectation that it would give them very little trouble to lay her prostrate. That during the excitement on the Cuban affair, of which I had good opportunities of watching the course, the democratic press should pour forth even more than its usual quantity of declamation in its endeavour to stir up the passions and promote the objects above adverted to, might be expected; but I confess I did not expect to see so many of the Whig papers at that time fall into the same tone. The conduct of some few of them was manly and honourable. They resisted from the first the popular impulse towards that unprincipled aggression. But it was lamentable and of evil augury to read, in other papers of that party, leading articles, the premises of which were for, and the conclusions against, that act of piracy; sen* Tremenheere, Notes on Public Subjects, p. 134. tences one day condemning the offender, yet defending the offence; another day sentences taking the opposite line, and so written as to be quoted as proofs of consistency should the turn of events render the 'cry for Cuba' an available one at the next elections. The trimming of some of the Whig papers during several weeks displayed as complete a want of principle as the aggression, and a less amount of determination than the democratic papers exhibited in their bold and unscrupulous adoption of it from the beginning. This high opinion of themselves, and low estimate of other powers, which pervades, I believe, the numerical mass of the people of the United States, renders it by no means improbable that they may at any moment, in a period of popular excitement, hurry along the upper and more sober-minded classes of the community, and their government, into a course of national policy which those classes might in reality condemn, but which they would have no power to arrest or alter. Such an instance, to refer to no others, occurred in the case of the Mexican war, which was condemned by all their best statesmen, and against which they were warned in the most earnest manner by nearly all that deserved to exercise any moral weight in the community. But the popular current was too strong for them, and they were finally led to acquiesce in what they could not prevent; one imprudent step of the government, in risking a small body of troops in an exposed position, having been held to commit irretrievably both government and people. Such periods of popular excitement must be expected to recur at no very great intervals, where their causes fall in with the principles of a large, not to say preponderating body in the state; where so many eager expectants are ever on the watch to profit by them; and where an unscrupulous press is ever at hand to mislead the popular mind, and to play upon the excitable temperament of the people. When such occasions arise, I believe there is no more effectual mode of keeping the peace than to show unmistakably to those persons who pull the wires of these popular excitements, that there is no weakness in the counsels of Great Britain, nor any failing in the strength of her arm, if need be, to sustain them. Those persons, indeed, know full well, that no more than a minute fraction of that strength was ever put forth in the unfortunate collisions that have hitherto taken place between Great Britain and the United States. The great mass of their readers are profoundly ignorant of that fact. It will not be the fault of these newspaper-writers, if their fellow-countrymen are not some day rather roughly awakened to their error." Looking back over the whole matter, and endeavouring to look back upon it dispassionately, we must avow that our anticipations are by no means sanguine or pleasing, whether as regards the improvement and elevation of American policy or the permanence of the existing American Union. On both subjects we cannot help sharing to the utmost those sad and gloomy fears which we know to fill the minds of many of the most thoughtful H H and far-seeing Americans themselves, and which appear in every page of Judge Story's writings. We see few elements of amendment, and many of deterioration. We entertain only the faintest hopes that the Union will last another generation. We are not sure that we feel any earnest desire that it should. A state whose power was so vast, while its political morality and wisdom were so low, would be of ill augury to the well-being of the rest of the world. The official avowals, plain or thinly disguised, of Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Pierce, of intended territorial aggrandisement; and the language of Mr. Everett, when secretary of state, as to the impossibility of resisting the conquering and filibustering tendencies of American citizens,-to say nothing of the orations delivered in both Houses of Congress,-leave little prospect of arresting a career of aggression and injustice, which, as the extension of slavery and the preponderance of slave-states are among its chief motives, cannot be tamely acquiesced in by the north. The New-England states, New York and Philadelphia, will not choose long to be dragged through national iniquities of which the object and effect must be to give a preponderance to their southern rivals. Sooner or later issue must be joined on this question. And when the north and the south shall separate, the west will not choose to be linked to the destinies of either. Besides this, as every year extends the boundaries of the United States, admits new territories into its fold, complicates its interests, multiplies the questions and increases the perplexities with which its statesmen have to deal,— statesmen of greater ability, experience, character, and commanding grasp of mind are required to deal with concerns of such ever-growing magnitude. The politicians fit to manage the national affairs of a Republic reaching from Maine to Mexico must be few and rare indeed! Yet every year fills the halls of Congress and the Presidential chair with men of briefer training, shallower capacity, and lower, because more popular, views of statesmanship and public morals. A task tenfold greater than that which was a sore weight to Washington and Adams is laid upon the shoulders of a Pierce, a Marcy, and a Cass. As matters become more delicate, more difficult, and more perilous, a poorer, a feebler, and a rasher set rush in to handle them. What must be "the end of these things," it needs no prophet to foretell. When that end may come, we are not anxious to conjecture. In conclusion: the remarks which we have made above as to the non-representative character of the government and the press of the United States may suffice to suggest the line of conduct to be adopted by this country on those occasions when, as recently, endeavours are made, for personal or party purposes, by American officials to fix a quarrel on Great Britain, and when those endeavours are disavowed and condemned by the classes whom we have ventured to designate as constituting par excellence the American NATION. We must assume, as far as possible, a passive and impassive attitude; ignoring all that we are suffered to ignore; hearing nothing that we are not compelled to hear; taking no notice of provocative speeches in Congress or bombastic articles in newspapers, which, though spoken and written at us, are not addressed to us; and heeding, as little as we can in courtesy, Presidential and State documents which, though addressed to us, are written and spoken at Americans and for American political designs. We must pass by all insults in mere words, as not the deliberate language of national organs, but only the bluster of men untrained to statesmanlike decorum or refined courtesy, whom temporary accident has raised to high positions. If they proceed to acts, we must meet and repel them with the quiet repression becoming men who feel that they are dealing with antagonists as much blamed by the nation in whose name they act, and whose power they abuse, as by the nation whom they gratuitously assail. We must be especially on our guard against identifying the Washington officials, whose term of office is expiring, with the permanent PEOPLE of America; and we must be careful, by no angry or intemperate language of ours directed against that people, to lead them to make common cause with their temporary and mischief-making rulers. "Stand we firm and resolute, Like a forest-close and mute, With folded arms, and looks which are With folded arms and steady eyes, Till their rage has died away." We are aware that it is never an easy thing, and not always either a decorous or a possible one, thus to separate a nation from its government, especially when that government is ostensibly and pre-eminently the creature of the popular choice. Nevertheless in this case we must do it, and the notorious facts of the case justify us in doing it. And before laying down the pen, we wish to forestall a possible misunderstanding and a probable charge. We have no desire, and have had no intention, to speak with disrespect of that portion-the numerical majority-of the American people which does elect the legislative and administrative officers of the United States, and whose sentiments, therefore, those officers may fairly be assumed to speak. Towards this majority -the actual electoral body-we feel no disrespect. They are |