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and proper therefore that the general aspect of American society should be that of an independent yeomanry. We need not alarm ourselves by the fear of finding any thing like the spirit of feudalism or the subserviency of rank in the whole range of the republic. That spirit has winged its flight to the camp, its native home, and is now under arms; —it holds no place and exercises no influence in American civil society. It will be perceived that the general aspect of society in the United States, compared with that of the courtiers and higher classes of Europe, among whom there is no communion, no intermingling with the laboring population, must, in the nature of things, be what may be called a popular, and not an exclusive aspect.

The moral effects of a state of society composed of such materials, may furnish matter on which philosophers may speculate; but there can be little doubt on the mind of one practically acquainted with the subject, on which side the sum of human enjoyment preponderates. If slavery, the subjection of mind and body to the will of another, be misery, the degree of enjoyment must be just in proportion to the distance removed from it. It is not enough for a man to have the liberty of moving at his will; he must have the means of doing it, or he is in effect a slave still, under whatever class he may range, and by whatever name he may choose to designate himself. If human happiness, in this our pilgrimage state, depends in the slightest degree upon the trappings of office or any external appendages whatever; if wealth, and rank, and titles, and popular distinction, were the real and true sources of individual and national happiness, then, indeed, we must contract the sphere of enjoyment, and yield the palm of victory to the self-devoted aristocrats of Europe. But if we hold that moral influence has any force; that a disenthralment of personal dependance upon others, is liberty; that the true and only reasonable distinction among mankind is individual wealth and intellectual attainments; then we find the elements of greatness in our republican institutions, and may challenge all other systems of social and civilized society to show an equally prosperous and happy population, and bid them go and ridicule, whilst we are

contented to enjoy. Wealth has far less weight and influence in European society than in American. In Europe, rank rides over the head of wealth. The richest commoner is subservient to the poorest baron, and always looks up to him as his superior. In the United States wealth takes, in some measure, the place of rank, and carries ignorance and vanity to an unequal height, at least in the estimation of the possessor; and perhaps we may venture to affirm, that in nothing is the sagacity of our Fathers more clearly manifested, than in cautiously curbing its political influence. Men stand well in public estimation who sustain a correct, moral character; that estimation is enhanced by intellectual attainments, and both strengthened by opulence. The rubbish which encumbers the steep which leads on to fame is swept away, and personal industry, zeal and merit are stimulated in the career of distinction by the fascinating cloudless prospect spread before the aspirant. No matter what a man's father was, the question is, what character does the man himself sustain ?

Equality of rights by no means argues equality of condition. Inequality of condition is the inseparable result of inequality of mind, of industry, and adventitious circumstances. The idea that the condition of society should be such that all shall have sufficient, is preposterous, contrary to common sense, the unbroken testimony of experience and the will of heaven."The poor ye always have with you." To suppose the idle spendthrift vagabond should make himself master of the same enjoyments, and the same standing in society as the frugal and industrious, is to suppose the primary laws of the great Universal Governor abrogated, and all the inducements which stimulate individuals and advance nations removed, which is to suppose an impossibility. It may suit the wild speculations of coxcomical theorists, but never has had, and never can have, anything practical within its scope. Equality of rights is all for which we contend. Inequality in their use is an individual concern, and spreads itself over the whole human family.

Paupers, foreign and domestic, exist in our land; but a pauper population,

kindred to that matured in Europe, so long as land is abundant and cheap, cannot be thrown upon American society. We are exempt from that stupendous evil, and owe the exemption to the character of our institutions, and the equality of rights, which guaranties to every citizen the fruits of his labor.

Although the way to every honor and every employment the state can give, is unencumbered and open to all, and the incentive to personal exertion is coordinate with the ambition of the aspiring; yet an important feature at the same time meets us, in the utter impossibility of any one raising himself and family permanently above the general level of society. Whatever wealth he may acquire; whatever attainments he may master, and whatever distinction he may gain, the grave closes upon all, and his descendants must act their own part upon the battle-field of life. They know this, and equip themselves accordingly for the contest. In such a condition of society, where the people are thrown upon their own resources, their manners are simple and rural, denoting strength and energy of purpose, without those nice discriminating arts of refinement, which throw an artificial lustre over the face of society, and rather charm the eye than satisfy the understanding. Hence we see, when occasion calls for action, a bold, independent, determined spirit manifested at once. The man consults himself. He does not bow the "knee to a superior lord, nor wait the teachings and instructions of hereditary rulers." If not mustered into the service of his country when an appeal is made to arms, he musters himself; marches at his own expense to the encampment, and, with a native boldness and intre pidity, unchronicled in the history of nations, presents himself a champion in the cause of his country. This is a characteristic of American yeomanry, altogether unique.

When I listened to the orators upon Lord Howick's, now Earl Gray's, motion, that the house should resolve itself into a committee of the whole, to consider the distressed state of the country, I was most forcibly struck with the grasping at all the variety of causes, which the mind could imagine, but the right one. No one seemed clearly

to comprehend, what is just as obvious to my mind as the noon-day sun, that the nobility and aristocracy of the country hold the lands of the kingdom; the merchants and manufacturers the money; there is nothing whatever for the working agriculturist and manufacturing operatives to bring to market, but their labor. They have been, and still are, sweated down to the lowest farthing of wages, which will enable them, when in full work, to sustain existence; and when the demand for labor fails, old age, sickness and infirmity disables, there is nothing left for their support. They perish under the withering hand of charity, with cold, nakedness, and famine. Undoubtedly the taxes press so heavily upon the industry of the country, that a large proportion of the population cannot obtain the comforts of life, a still larger proportion can only command the bare necessaries, and beyond them lies a countless multitude that cannot purchase anything at all. The aristocracy, the manufacturers, and the monied nabobs of the country, have swallowed the kingdom, and, under the hammer of the law, just supply the poorhouses, which, by their magnitude and splendor, are a mockery to the poor starving wretches that inhabit them, with just enough to protract death, and furnish ground for the inquest to bring in a verdict, "Died a natural death."

How different is the condition of the social system in our own country. No complaining in our streets, no crying for bread, comparatively no miserable wretches cast from work-house to work-house, none perishing from want. Labor is always in demand, and the ample wages and cheap provisions enable every one, with ordinary industry,. to supply, upon a liberal scale, his own

wants.

If we advert to the moral aspect of the American Republic, we shall find no cause to shrink from a comparison with that of Europe. The author of American Notes, with all his mendacity and sarcastic spirit, does sometimes strike his harpoon, as if by accident, into a fact of inestimable value. On his journey from Boston to Lowell, by rail-road, he remarks:

"There are also a great many ladies who have nobody with them; for any lady

may travel alone, from one end of the United States to the other, and be certain of the most courteous and considerate treatment everywhere."

Why does he notice this fact; and why so particularly remark upon it? Because, to him, it was a singular fact; because there is no such security for female virtue in his own country, nor any other country in Europe. No lady can travel alone ten miles in England without incurring the greatest risk of being insulted. It is indispensably necessary that she have a protector. The spawn of creation, the rich, pampered, debauched gentry of England, seem to feel, that by virtue of their rank, they are licensed to prey upon female chastity, and to render the lower classes of society as subservient to their lusts as they are to their pecuniary interests. Europe swarms with wretches of rank and wealth, whose sole business is debauchery, in its most disgusting, most outrageous, most unheard of forms. Girls, innocent, unsuspecting girls, enticed from their parents, and by their consent engaged for dress-makers, milliners, ladies'-maids, and general servants, by men moving in the style, dress, and appearance of gentlemen, are sent up to London from the receiving-houses, in various and all parts of the kingdom, and taken, not to the places for which they were engaged, but to receptacles of ill-fame, established, upheld, maintained and protected by the nobility and gentry of the country. Here, these hell-hounds, compared with whom slave-dealers and slave-drivers, and repudiators, whiten into angelic forms, force, not seduce by the ordinary acts of gallantry, their deluded victims, and when virtue is destroyed, and character is destroyed, and with them all the endearing sympathies and prospects of a happy life are destroyed, they are turned out into the streets to perish with hunger or consume with disease. Tell me, ye libertine scoffers at the religion of my country, ye slanderers of her moral and political character, is this true? Deny it, if ye can. From the height of this aristocratic mount, the streams of moral corruption flow down, until all the inferior classes are infected, and the land

is deluged with impurity. From such statements I feel that the moral sense of my countrymen will recoil. They can scarcely credit a narrative so horrible in itself, and so dreadful in its consequences. But that it may be seen that I have not overcharged the statement, nor painted imaginary scenes, nor indeed told the half of a most astounding tale, I beg to subjoin an extract from a circular, now before me, issued by the London Society for the Protection of Young Females, in April, 1841:

"No country in the world is so distin

guished for philanthropy as England. She has established institutions to meet almost reign nations have participated in her every description of human misery. Fobenevolence, and even the brute creation has engaged the benefit of her sympathies. There is, however, one great exception to this rule. Woman, rendered by her na. ture dependant upon man, and more especially entitled to his protection, appears which his protection is not afforded, at to be the only object in this country to least as regards the young and helpless, to whom his protection is more especially required. There is a large class of persons in London, and to a greater or less extent in almost every other large town in the kingdom, who have establishments for, and live by the seduction of young females. The latter, from the bad training of chilassociations, they frequently find it not dren by their parents, and early corrupt difficult to accomplish. But as innocence offers the greatest advantages to these people, deep laid schemes are constantly adopted to entrap young and modest women into their possession.

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The society ounce indicted a brothel. keeper, and were in a condition to prove that she allowed a surgeon, who kept a together with his travelling expenses, berespectable shop, a considerable salary, sides specified license privileges for himself and his assistant, for supplying her house with young and modest females. This he did, chiefly by going into the country, and hiring them for some respectable service in London. On their arrival in London, they were taken to the house and violated without compunction, by the chance of escape. Resistance availed them parties who frequented it, without the least nothing; it only increased their value and price.'

This female beast fled to Boulogne, and is now living there upon the fruits of her iniquity.

"This however is far from being a solitary case. One of these people, who is enabled to drive her carriage from the profits of her trade, keeps her house supplied with a constant succession of young females by some such means. She does not retain any of them more than one or two months; keeping them confined to the house during this time, and then allows them to depart, or turns them out if necessary. Being generally of that age when the judgment is weak, and the sense of shame strong, and finding their character gone, their means of subsistence taken from them, and being polluted in mind as well as in body by the criminal intercourse to which they have been daily compelled to subunit, they give themselves up for lost, and continue in the course into which they have been entrapped. The final result is. that, cut off not only from the sympathies of their own sex, but from those of mankind, and treated with the greatest brutality, especially in the latter part of their career, they eventually perish either by suicide or by disease, the effect of misery and destitution. The extent of this evil is almost beyond belief. It is probable that there are more rapes committed in these houses in one year than by the poor of England in half a century.' &c., &c.*

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Upon the trial of the Marquis of Hertford's servant for embezzlement, the witnesses testified that the marquis travelled openly upon the continent with his mistresses; and after his return to London, they came to his house every night by a back entrance; and what is still more awful, were actually in his house the very night that he died. I trust, upon this painful subject, I need not fortify my statement by any further evidence. If this great feature of national morality is not sufficiently illustrated, the defect arises, not from want of material, but from my forbearance. Our enemies affirm that female virtue in the United States, by common consent and universal practice, is under the protection of the nation, and therefore a national virtue. According to the evidence of English philanthropists themselves, the fact is directly the reverse in Europe. The subtle

fiends of impurity, who pander for themselves or their fellow-dealers in female virtue, are upon the watch. They know whether a lady is sheltered under the protecting arm of masculine vigor or not; if not, the net is spread, and every art which the most accomplished villainy and the most murderous treachery can practice, is used to circumvent and secure the victim. In London, as well as in the country, it is an everyday affair for gentlemen who cannot conveniently be absent from their business, to inquire among their friends and acquaintances for some one, into whose charge they may commit their female relatives and friends, for long and short journeys. 1 have myself travelled 200 miles, for no other purthe human understanding be bowed pose whatever but to escort a lady. If down to so low a point, let us pause a moment, and contemplate the dreadful nature of a system, organized throughout Great Britain, and extending its ramifications to the continent of Europe, for the express and avowed purpose of making spoliations upon female virtue. Those who, in the wise economy of Providence, are especially designated as guardians of the virtue and protectors of the honor of the fair sex, are leagued for the destruction of both. Consider that this diabolical principle and murderous practice, are brought to the fireside of domestic bliss, upheaving the foundations on which the fabric of society, the pillars of right, justice, equity, law, and moral greatness, rest; that rapes, murder of body and soul by suicide, disease and destitution, are matters of cold-blooded commercial calculation-merchandise sold in the shambles of the stews to the highest bidder; that the value is just in proportion to the brilliancy and intrinsic purity of the diamond to be destroyed. See these gigantic brutes, masked in the garb of heaven, but in the exact character of hell, travelling down at the expense of the rich to the cottage of the poor peasant, and with sacrilegious

The following note, addressed to a member of Parliament, a gentleman with a family around him, and of respectable character, by one of those Tartarian demons, and sent by him to the Society, shows the audacity and perseverance with which this astounding commerce is carried on:

"MONSIEUR:-Madame D*** qui vient d'arriver de Paris avec de très jolies demoiselles et une piquante Italienne ose vous prier de vouloir bien l'honorer de votre patronage sur vous trouverez dans une comfortable maison qu'elle vient d'ouvrier sccreté et discretion. Avriez l'assurance de son respect avec lequel elle a l'honneur d'etre, &c., &c.

"Street, No.-."

hands and remorseless heart, plundering the poor man of his only treasurehis child. As the sad tidings of disaster which have overtaken the child, who has but just left the paternal roof in all the charms of youth and loveliness of beauty, are disclosed to an innocent and confiding family, what sorrows pierce and lacerate the heart? Not a smile plays upon the poor man's cheek; not a tear of joy glistens in his eye; but the world becomes a hopeless shelter, himself its miserable tenant. What throbbings permeate the domestic circle. Peace and happiness, and every fond and sisterly endearment cut off, and the wretched victim to man's audacious cruelty, ashamed to meet the eye of her natural guardian, exiled from every fond embrace and all the endearments of home, an outcast from society, looks to the only refuge that awaits her an early lazar-house or an untimely grave-"unpitied and unknown." And the poor mother-ah! who can paint her anguish, when the burning thought of a ruined, lost daughter passes over her desolate soul, as she watches the cradled infant, and pours her rustic melody on the cold ear of misery!

Gratitude should fill our hearts, that God has not permitted our country, as yet, to be the field on which the growth of such abominations can flourish; but that a lady may, in perfect security, travel in all parts of the United States, "from one end to the other," with no shield of protection but her own virtue. Think of the danger and the immeasurable responsibility of parents sending their daughters to foreign schools, to mingle in foreign society, to inhale the malaria rising from the pestiferous marshes of human corruption, and to

ure.

hug to their bosoms sentiments they ought never to know; and thus prepared, to introduce to our domestic circles the seeds of an overwhelming evil, which, in its consequences and extent, no human calculation can measThink not, from what I have remarked, that it is my intention to cast the slightest stigma upon the nobility, or any other class of her majesty's subjects, as a body. Far from it. What I have stated, and a vast deal that I have not stated, in relation to this subject, is before the public, and wellknown to the people of England.

Amongst the nobility, there are multitudes who honor their rank, honor their country-giants in everything great and good-their benevolence is proverbial, and their efforts to stem the torrent of corruption, which floods the land, and threatens to bear down everything before it, are unceasing. The same is equally true of portions of all classes. They are the salt that preserves the body from dissolution.England is made up of extremes-the highest virtues and the lowest vices; the greatest literary attainments and the most untutored ignorance; the largest measure of wealth, and the most abject poverty. She stands unrivalled in everything that is great, and everything that is little. There are few things in her social policy, if we except her jurisprudence, which can be pointed out as examples for American imitation. Monarchial habits, customs, manners, and style of living, are inconsistent with the simplicity of republicanism; and all attempts to marry the two, is an attempt to form a junction of resisting elements. J. S.

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