BOSTON ON THE WAR..
IT is not often that on this side the Atlantic we can catch a glimpse of what educated Americans think about the great contest in which their country is involved. Our news- paper correspondents, able as they are, write as Englishmen for an English public. The communications which come addressed to us from the States are all impregnated with the feelings of men who know they are pleading before an un- friendly audience, and who, therefore, involuntarily put what they consider the best face upon their case ; while the American papers, and especially the New York papers—the only ones ever seen or quoted in England—are all infected with the love of exaggeration inseparable from a sensation press. On this account it is of real value to get hearing of the utterances addressed by an American of intelligence to Americans, to study the language intended for home con- sumption not for foreign exportation. Such an opportunity has been afforded us recently. On the 4th of last July Dr. Holmes was selected by the City authorities of Boston to deliver the annual oration in commemoration of the anniversary of American independence. From that oration we may gather a fair estimate of how the war is judged by the cultivated intellect of the United States. It was delivered at, perhaps, the gloomiest moment of the Federal fortunes. General Lee was encamped in the heart of Pennsylvania ; the struggle between him and Meade was being waged with varying success ; and it was pos- sible that any hour might bring the tidings that the Northern armies had been routed, and that the Confederates were marching upon Washington. No doubt, at the very moment the harangue was being delivered, Lee was retreating as rapidly as he could, seeking safety in an inglorious flight, and General Pemberton was arranging with Grant the terms of the capitulation of Vicksburg. But no news of these great successes had reached Boston, and the orator had as yet no gleam of victory with which to encourage his audience, waiting, doubtless, more impatiently for the tidings ex- pected hourly than for any studied outburst of declama- tion. Moreover, if there is one man in America who represents the educated unpolitical class more especially than any other, it is, perhaps, Oliver Wendell Holmes. The readers of "Elsie Venner,"--and who has not read that weird graceful story ?—would find it hard to believe that its author was a man of active life. In this impression they would not be mistaken. Till the war broke out, we believe that Dr. Holmes never wrote a line about politics, and held aloof from a pursuit for which his refined and speculative nature almost disqualified him. In the bygone days, so near in time, so distant in fact, when " Quieta non moven" was the maxim by which educated men in America guided their conduct, he was looked upon by the Abolitionist party as the most timid of anti-slavery men. And probably, three years ago, the last thing which either friends or enemies would have expected of Wendell Holmes was that he would come forward as an anti-slavery political speaker. But the war has wrought already many changes in the -United States. It has done away with the apathy of wealth and the dilettante indifferentism of education. For good or bad, it has brought all classes together into an union never known before, and has shown men in characters new to the world, and newer still, perhaps, to themselves. The enthusiasm for the Union has appealed to all classes alike, to old and young, rich and poor, learned and igno- rant. It may—as Englishmen forgetful of their own ante- cedents are wont to assume—be a wicked and a foolish enthu- siasm. But, like all genuine enthusiasm, it ennobles those whose minds are awakened by it. Dr. Holmes himself is no longer of the age when men go out to fight. But his only son has gone forth in his stead ; and if in parts the orator's language seems strained and exaggerated to us, we must remember it was spoken by a father who knew any minute might bring him tidings that he, like so many of those whose faces he saw around him while he spoke, was left childless by the cruel fate of war. However, in his address there is nothing of the stereotyped American self-glorification. Scarce an allu- sion is found in it to the glories of that Revolution in honour of which Independence Day is kept sacred. Poor George III. was allowed to sleep in peace without any recital of his sins; and probably for the first time in any of the eighty-seven Fourth of July orations which have been delivered in Boston, no mention is made of Bunker's Hill, or of the tea which was thrown into the waters of the Charles River, in sight, by the way, of the windows of Dr. Holmes's house. The present has obscured the past, and with General Lee encamped at Gettysburg it was not the time for idle glorifications of American magni- tude and prowess. The whole oration deals with the war, and the war alone. Its one cause Dr. Holmes acknowledges to have been the institution of slavery. "The antagonism," he says, "of the two sections of the Union was not the work of this or that enthusiast or fanatic. It was the consequence of a movement in mass of two different forms of civilization in different directions, and the men to whom it was attributed were only those who represented it most completely, or who talked longest and loudest about it." On the other hand, he makes no attempt to represent the war as a crusade undertaken'on be- half of the negro. "It was waged," he admits, "primarily, and is waged to this moment, for the preservation of our national existence." The chain of argument which runs through his discourse is that the principle of self-government involves ipso facto the right of free discussion and tree political action; that the existence of free discussion and action brought on the "irresistible conflict" between slavery and freedom ; and that, therefore, in striving to preserve the Union the North vindicates a principle fatal to the existence of slavery. "What is meant," he truly remarks, "by self-government, is that a man shall make his convictions of what is right and expedient regulate the community, so far as his fractional share of the Government extends. If one has come to the conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any particular institu- tion or statute is a violation of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected that he will choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and who will, in their wider sphere, do all they legitimately can to get rid of the wrong in which they find themselves and their constituents involved. To prevent opinion from organizing itself under political forms may be very desirable, but it is not according to the theory or practice of self-government." This is all that Dr. Holmes claims for much in England. "There are those," he remarks, "who profess to tear that our Government is becominc, a mere irresponsible tyranny. If there are any who really believe that our present chief magis!rate means to found a dynasty for himself and family, that a coup (1' !tat is in preparation by which he is to become Abraham, Del (maid Rex, they cannot have duly pondered his letter of the 12th of June, in which he unbosoms himself with the simplicity of a rustic lover called upon by an anxious parent to explain his intentions. . . . . An army of legislators is not very likely to throw away its political privileges, and the idea of a despotism resting on an open ballot-box is, like that of Bunker Hill Monument, built on the waves of Boston Harbour." With re- gard to this country, we need hardly say that Dr. Holmes speaks severely, rather, we must admit—as anyone who knows his kindly nature would suppose—in reproach than in anger. His real complaint he puts fairly enough. "We had, no doubt, reckoned very generally on the sympathy of England, at least, in a strife which, whatever pretexts were alleged as to its cause, arrayed upon one side the supporters of an institution she was supposed to hate in earnest, and on the other its assailants." When, however, he tells us further, "That three bending statues cover up that gilded seat, which, in spite of the time-hallowed usurpations and consecrated wrongs so long associated with its history, is still venerated as the throne,—orie of' these supports is the pensioned Church, the second is the purchased army, the third is the long-suffering people," we are reminded unpleasantly of Mr. Jefferson Brick.
However, we could pardon much more unkind things than Dr. Holmes has said of us on account of the manly, stirring English-like patriotism which marks every page of his address. We talk of American sentiment as high-flown and stilted. Let an Englishman consider candidly what our own popular passion would be if the integrity of our country were assailed. Should we think language like this exaggerated in the hour of England's peril ? "By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves of fallen martyrs, by the corpses of your children, and the claims of your children's children yet un- born, in the name of outraged honour, in the interest of
violated sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men everywhere, and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to stand by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and in defeat."
Words such as these would seem natural enough applied to England, and what England is to its the Union is to an American.
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