MR. CHAUNCEY DEPEW'S LAST ORATION.
IT was thought that the Great War had cured Americans of their love of " high-falutin'." That war, and its result in the emancipation of the slaves, supplied them with a legitimate occasion for historic pride, and seemed at first to have begotten in them something of the calm disdain with which the Englishman or the Italian receives any depreciation of the historic or present position of his country. The people who had made that grand effort and succeeded in it, would, it was thought, never again demand to be "cracked up." We fear, however, that this effect of the war is dying away, and that the new generation which did not pass through that fiery furnace is once more finding, in tall-talk and the outspoken admiration of bigness which characterises all things American, grati- fication for a vanity which, to enjoy such solace, must be secretly uneasy. The project of the World's Fair at Chicago is a sound one, and we do not doubt that, like the English in 1851, those Americans who really study the vast collections which will next year be gathered in Chicago, will benefit from their new experience in their conceptions of Art, in their estimate of . the comparative capacity of nations, and even it may be in a growing humility in their own thoughts as to their own place among the producers of the world. We note, how- ever, with sadness, the renewed disposition to be proud of the coming show, not on account of the means of instruction it will afford, or even as proof of the growing appreciation in America of beautiful things, or more perfect things, or things . produced elsewhere, but on account of the huge scale on . which everything is to be conducted. The Fair is not to • contain the most perfect selection of admirable things, but to be bigger than any Exhibition ever planned ; is . to require the construction of canals and systems of railways, merely to enable visitors to traverse it; those • visitors are to be counted by millions, and they are to behold, not merely things worth seeing, but, so far as it is possible, all things big, including—this is no jest—a series of railway accidents, costing £500 a day. If the Americans could gather in a colossal palace the whole human race in one concourse, with all their buildings, from cathedrals to prisons, all their products—literatures and food-stuffs equally—all their successes and all their blunders, all their virtues and all their vices, and make them all visible by an electric light brighter and larger than the sun, they would apparently realise their ideal. They have, or rather, we hope, seem to have, the Hindoo hunger for the gigantic, and would hold a spade as large as a State, with a handle reaching beyond the atmosphere, to be an admirable, as . well as a novel work of art.
They ask for eloquence penetrated with the same spirit. They selected as the "Columbian orator" of Dedication Day, when the buildings intended for the Fair were surrendered to those who are to fill them, Mr. Chauncey Depew ; and he, knowing their taste, poured out an oration which, even in those who have read much of American oratory, and who allow for a taste which was once in a degree that of Englishmen also— Burke having often been very " American " in his imagery —excites a sense of almost contemptuous amazement. If Mr. Depew really boasted, as the Times in its leader of Saturday says he did, that the Fair would surpass the Parthenon, and be big enough to hold all the Cathedrals of the world, he reached the preposterous point in exaggerative declama- tion; but we cannot find the sentences in any report that has reached us. The one reference to the Parthenon and the Cathedrals that we have found is, though much too broad, both original and true. It is quite permissible to say that both in Greece and in the Middle Ages the highest art required" shelter" as well as encouragement from the religious spirit. But without quoting the Times' assertion against him, enough remains to show that Mr. Depew,who is the successful chairman of a great railway, a man of strong sense, much humour, and some genuine eloquence, must have believed that his audience would be most delighted with a torrent of big assertions ; and accordingly supplied them as he would a big demand for traffic accommoda- tion. His first sentences, if they mean anything, can mean only that Christianity would. have been useless with- out the discovery of America. "We celebrate the eman- cipation of man. The preparation was the work of almost countless centuries ; the realisation was the revelation of one. The Cross on Cavalry was hope ; the cross raised on San Salvador (where Columbus first landed) was oppor- tunity. But for the first, Columbus would never have , sailed ; but for the second, there would have been no place for the planting, the nurture, and the expansion of civil and. religious liberty." Civil and religious liberty grew and flourished in England without the help of the emigrants who populated America, and the first effect of Columbus's success was the most awful " expansion " of civil and reli- gious tyranny the world has ever blown, the tyranny which made of all the native populations, from Florida to Pata- gonia, at once slaves and nominal Catholics, and which to this hour has prevented, in the old population, the growth of anything indigenous or free. Even now, the less said of religious liberty in Spanish and Portuguese America the better ; and though the aspiration for civil liberty survived that tremendous despotism, the fact was due at least as much to the defeat of the Armada, which shattered the plans Philip II. had founded on his American gold, as to any effect of Columbus's discovery. We have, however, no intention to correct Mr. Depew's history. That would be an endless task with an orator who actually quotes Egyptian civilisation as an instance of an "unstable "one; ; declares that, when Columbus sailed, Force was "the sole source of the authority" of the Roman Catholic Church ; and while affirming that the first slaver sent to the Colonies was the result of the English commercial greed, implicitly denies that the pilgrims of the ' Mayflower ' were also, and quite as much, a spiritual outcome of the same country. Our amazement is not that an American man of business should be ignorant of history, but that addressing a people who are all Christians, and in great part Christians of a devout and strict, if narrow, type, he should think a comparison between the work of Christ and the work of Columbus would be made acceptable by the implied compliment to the greatness of America. We suppose it was acceptable,—was, indeed, considered mag- nificent, or the Times and. Baron Reuter would hardly have expended thousands in reporting it for Englishmen a little earlier. That is, to us at least, as wonderful as the process which Mr. Depew terms "that transcendent miracle," the marching of the emigrants westward, "founding States," like Colorado, "and cities," like Denver or San Francisco. Would he term the march of the white races from Asia into Europe, which was at least more difficult, and which produced far greater results, the discovery of America being a mere incident among them, a "transcendent miracle ;" or does he. reserve those swelling phrases only for events which are distinctively American ? We sus- pect the latter is the truth, and that Mr. Chauncey Depew, who on one side of his head is an exact calculator, if he were to deliver an oration on the "Early Migrations of Man," would be full of depreciatory epigrams, statistical estimates, and common sense. The big and admiring words, so far beyond any conceivable truth in relation to the matter, do not convey Mr. Depew's matured thoughts, but only the thoughts which, as he rightly believed, would be most taking with his audience.
But then, that audience was all America, and the thought that all America can be delighted with such words, and with stuff like the following, is, we confess, to us who fought the intellectual battle of the North throughout her Civil War, to our own serious though tem- porary hurt, most disappointing. This is Mr. Chauncey Depew's peroration :—" The artists and architects of the country have been bidden to design and erect the buildings which shall fitly illustrate the height of our civilisation and the breadth of our hospitality. The peace of the world permits and protects their efforts in utilising their powers for man's temporal welfare. The result is this park of palaces. The originality and boldness of their con- ceptions, and the magnitude and harmony of their crea- tions, are the contributions of America to the oldest of the arts, and the cordial bidding of America to the peoples of the earth to come and bring the fruitage of their age to the boundless opportunities of this unparalleled Exhi- bition. All hail, Columbus ! discoverer, dreamer, hero, and apostle. We here, of every race and country, recognise the horizon which bounded his vision, and the infinite scope of his genius. The voice of gratitude and praise for all the blessings which have been showered upon mankind by his adventure is limited to no language, but is uttered in every tongue. Neither marble nor brass can fitly form his statue. Continents are his monument, and unnumbered millions, past, present, and to come, who enjoy in their liberties and their happiness the fruits of his faith, will reverently guard and preserve from century to century his name and fame." • How can a people which believes all that, fail to stereotype their civilisation, as the Chinese have done, from the very self-same impulse of self-glorification ? If all that Mr. Depew expresses or implies is true of the great Republic, and true without equal drawbacks, what is the course of wisdom, but to rest, keep all things always as they are, and await the submission, at least by imitation, of the entire world ? As a matter of fact, the best Americans do not believe a word of such adulation, but receive it with a half- pleased, half-satirical expression, in which lurks some faint suspicion of contempt. But the masses believe it, at least in great part, and. by just so much as they believe it, must their energy, in seeking higher paths, be diminished or disappear. If we are at the top, motion must mean descent. We have little favour for the English passion of self-depreciation, for it leads sometimes to a dangerous pessimism,and sometimes to a foggy condition of mind, in which reality is lost sight of, and mischievous men appear as trees walking ; but it is, at least, more Christian and more hopeful than this mental attitude of boastfulness, which induces Mr. Depew, for instance, to boast that the people in America own her wealth, though a third of her farms are in the hands of usurers, and perhaps a fifth more of her riches in that of overgrown capitalists ; which encourages him to forget that the poverty of her cities is at least as striking as their comfort ; and which inspires him to speak of her newspapers and periodicals, "sold for pence," as if they were the superior substitutes for a true literature. There must be some modesty surely in a character if it is to grow larger ; some sense of a higher loftiness somewhere, if the climbing muscles are to be developed ; some hope, above all, if the nation is not to c?ase to aspire. Yet, what room for hope is there in Mr. Depew's picture ? Vanity is not by any means the worst of the foibles, particularly as displayed by a growing child; but vanity which can be tickled by adulation so surfeiting as Mr. Depew offers, is more than a foible, it is a source of that mental disease which is akin to in- sanity, content or pride in that which has no concrete existence. We thought Americans had grown out of it, that the War had warned them of defects both in their civilisation and their State system, that the news coming every day from the South, news which points as its ultimate product to a guerilla war of races, inspired them with a sobering anxiety ; and we shall cherish the illusion even if a year of exhibitions should produce in the minds of men, already too prone to estimate everything by- its magnitude —the result, we admit in part of too big an estate—a demoralising fit of exultation. But, at least, they may suffer us to warn them that their best friends, those who are pleased when they prosper, and sorry whenever pros- perity turns their heads, read speeches like Mr. Depew's with a smile which has in it something more than sadness, even a. trace of resignation to pain.
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