AN AMERICAN RETROSPECT. T HE New York Nation of July 3rd
contains a retro- spect of the last twenty-five years in the United States which is well worth the attention of all Englishmen who are interested in the social and political progress of their kinsmen in America. The writer of this very able paper, whom we can hardly be wrong in supposing to be Mr. Godkin, makes no attempt to reckon up the increase in the number of hogs annually slaughtered in Chicago, or to count up the miles of new railway laid every year ; but, instead, provides us with an exceedingly clear and pene- trating analysis of the moral changes which have come over the country since the war. His is no mere record of annual increments such as satisfies the inferior practitioners of social diagnosis on both sides of the Atlantic, but a real attempt to compare the general configuration of American society twenty-five years ago with that which exists at the present moment. As to the conclusions to be drawn from the premisses thus provided, we shall say some- thing below ; but we must first, and without further apology, sketch the main results of the comparison insti- tuted by the writer in the Nation, who, it may be noted, publishes his article on the completion of the twenty-fifth year of the existence of that journal. When the Nation was started at the close of the struggle between the North and the South, there was hardly a political observer who did not imagine that the military spirit which had been aroused by the war would be retained in some form or other, and that, as Wendell Phillips feared, the old "farming and reading" Republic would give place " to a strong military and perhaps predatory " State. Fortunately, the latter part of the prophecy has not been verified. Europe saw with wonder and admiration a million men lay down their arms without a thought of perpetuating the power of the Army, and sink into ordinary citizens, hardly recognisable as the men who had formed perhaps the most formidable fighting force that the world has ever seen, till the necessity for finding some means by which the surplus revenue could be got rid of called the veterans back to remembrance as suitable recipients of public bounty. In spite, however, of the fact that the war did not leave any trace of " militarism " on the Union, it did no doubt mark the end of the old "reading and farming" Republic, and the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the epoch of Secession have seen the evolution of a new political order. One of the most marked characteristics of American society before the war was, says the writer in the Nation, " the influence of the clergy and the lawyers in their character of publicists and orators." This feature of political life has almost entirely disappeared. The lawyers no longer join in the work of political exposition, and, indeed, almost entirely withdraw from public life. The leaders of the Bar confine themselves to their professional work—the ablest being employed by the great commercial corporations—and are apparently less and less anxious to take part in political movements. This disappearance of the trained lawyers from politics has had an exceedingly unfortunate effect on the Senate. " Nearly every State," says the writer in the Nation, " had at least one Senator of the type of Seward, or Sumner, or Fessenden, or Trumbull—generally a man of very moderate pecuniary means—who not only exerted great influence on the politics of his State, but spoke with more or less moral and intellectual authority on all the questions of the day, and aided his constituents by speeches out of Congress, somewhat in the English fashion, in making up their minds on current topics. This type has almost completely disappeared. It can hardly be said to have any representative whatever in the Senate to-day. There is no Senatorial orator whose utterances are looked for with any eagerness or have any deciding influence on local opinion." In fact, the Senate is now almost entirely a plutocratic assembly, and it looks as if it would soon become as impossible to make a poor man an American Senator, as to make him an English Peer. " In the North:" continues the writer in the Nation, " there is a steady- tendency to give seats in it to successful manufacturers, speculators, or railroad men. As a general rule, too, this class brings to the work of legislation considerable con- tempt for public opinion as expressed through the news- papers, and an almost unbounded belief in the venality of State Legislatures as the result of their own experience in business life ; for a successful business career on the scale which is now common, can hardly go very far without bringing a man in contact with State legislators as an applicant for some sort of favour or privilege, or as the object of the form of extortion known as ' a strike.' Another change by no means for the better is to be found in the entire disappearance of the influence once exercised by " the lyceum lecturer," a person " who represented to the rural population not only literature and art, but political philosophy, and exerted during the period pre- ceding the war a very wholesome and powerful influence.' Strange as it sounds, it is unquestionably the fact that this withdrawal of the intellectual element in politics formerly represented by the lawyers and the clergy, has been contemporaneous with an enormous development of the study of politics in the abstract. All the principal Universities have now schools of political science, and every year the number of writers and thinkers upon political philosophy, political economy, constitutional law, and kindred subjects is swelled by fresh accessions. The contribution made by America to the discussion of abstract political questions is indeed as great, if not greater than, that of any other country, and it would be impossible to find any portion of the world in which the discussion of problems connected with government and sociology is followed with more interest or intelligence. Yet, in spite of this fact and of the remarkable development of the Universities in these fields, it would appear that there has been " an undoubted decline -in the influence of the colleges on popular thought, and in the number of graduates in Congress and in political life." Another change which the writer in the Nation declares to be specially pronounced is " the transfer to wealth of the political and social influence which was formerly shared, if not absorbed, by literary, oratorical, or professional distinction." Twenty-five years ago, the public were hungry for news about authors, preachers,. and lecturers. Now, this mark of distinction belongs solely to the millionaires. " It is their personality and doings which now pique popular curiosity and touch the popular imagination ; it is their talk which is believed to• have most power." Nor is it merely in social considera- tion that the millionaires have won the front places. " In politics they have become perhaps the greatest force of the day." The weight they exercise in public affairs is to- be attributed to two things. Firstly, to the withdrawal of the lawyers and the clergy from the political arena ; and secondly, to their practice of " owning," that is, controlling,. both the professional politicians and the Press. Of late years an increasing number of newspapers, no longer held by independent proprietors, have virtually come into the power of rich men. A general survey, then, of the last in- fluence years, points to the fact that the political once wielded by the intellectual classes in America has passed into the hands of the plutocracy, and that unless the present process is arrested, the United States, informally no doubt, but none the less really, will be governed by an oligarchy of millionaires: The explanation suggested by the writer in the Nation in regard to these changes for the worse may at first sight seem somewhat fantastic ; but for all that, we believe it is substantially the true one. He declares that it is the Tariff and the Protective system that are to blame for the disquieting nature of the altera- tions that have taken place in the political configuration of the Union since the war, and uses what appear to us very sound arguments to support his theor7. Odd as it may sound, it is Protection that has driven the lawyers and the clergy out of politics, and substituted that of the great capitalists. Protection, while it has prevented the farmers and agricultural labourers froni- being as prosperous as they might otherwise have been, has created a large class of capitalists, whose wealth depends, or at any rate who sincerely believe that their wealth depends, solely upon the maintenance of the Tariff. As politics have gradually hardened into a fight over the Tariff question, these men have been drawn into the struggle. They have, however, not entered political life in order to serve their country, but merely with the desire to do what they look upon as' protecting their property. The result has been, that those who occupied themselves with public affairs for less selfish reasons have been shouldered out, and that the maintenance of the protected industries has become a matter of vital importance in Ameri- can politics, just as in England the preservation of power in the hands of the landed interest came to be looked on as the one thing needful for British prosperity. While the Tariff lasts and its friends are supreme, there is no room in the government of the country for any other interest but that of the Protectionists. For example, the Professors of the Universities are almost to a man Free-traders ; hence the rich men, who might otherwise like to avail themselves of their talents, sternly refuse to allow them to enter political life, and even clamour for the withdrawal of local State aid from seminaries where the works of Mill and Fawcett are used " to poison the minds of the young" against the Tariff. On this point we may again quote the actual words used by the writer in the Nation :—" During the thirty years of high protection which followed the out- break of the war, there has been an unprecedented amount of money put into industries created or maintained by legislation ; and as the volume of this investment has swelled, the Tariff question has gradually not only dominated all other questions, but has driven them out of the field. In every country, property which has been directly created by legislation, or which needs special legal protection, is extraordinarily sensitive and jealous. Negro slavery and the English Corn-Laws were two striking examples of this in our own time. Such property, if seriously assailed, is always ready to defend itself by any weapon within its reach, and is sure to surround itself with elaborate bulwarks and safeguards. Foremost among these safeguards is apt to be restriction on the liberty of speech of all within reach of its influence ; the presence of men known to be hostile to it becomes odious ; their actions become suspicious ; their aims in every direction become tainted with treason or immorality ; and, finally, any means of counteracting their influence or destroying their authority seems legitimate. In truth, nothing de- fends itself so desperately, and with such serenity of con- science as to the means to be used, as property in danger." In a word, in the desperate efforts of the Protectionist capitalists to defend the privileged position which they now enjoy, every other influence has been studiously sup- pressed.
If this is the true explanation of the change, as we believe it is, it is one which need not make us entertain nearly so regretful a view of the altered tone of American public life as we should otherwise be obliged to take. .When the upas-tree of the Tariff has been felled, and it cannot stand much longer, the older and better influences will revive, and we shall once more see the American men of " light and leading " claim their right to participate in the government of the country. That the moment the policy of Protection is abandoned this revival will take place, is made the more certain from the fact that the States are rapidly reforming their electoral laws, and in such a manner that, while in the future independent candidates will not, as now, be practically excluded from the polls, bribery and corruption will be rendered both difficult and unprofitable. Already the latter result of electoral reform is becoming apparent. At a recent election in Rhode Island under the new Ballot Act, one of the old-fashioned " bosses " complained : " We thought we were buying votes, but we found we had only bought experience." If we mistake not, when the Nation takes its next retrospect of a quarter of a century, it will be able to point to a state of affairs very different from that'which exists at present, and instead of having to indicate the evil results of Protection and monopoly, it will be able to draw attention to the moral as well as the material advantages produced by the adoption of a system of virtual Free-trade.
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