FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

VOL. V.	B E T H A N Y, VA., DECEMBER, 1848.	NO. XII.

      My dear Clarinda--GREAT BRITAIN is, indeed, an agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial nation; but she derives her power, wealth, and glory incomparably more from her manufacturing and commercial pursuits, than from her agricultural resources. Although her agriculture is superior to that of any nation or country in Europe, it nevertheless is inadequate to supply the wants of her own population. Her agriculturists find a home market, the best in the world, for all that they can grow. Her granaries, however, annually require a large supply from the Baltic, or from this side the Atlantic. Consequently provisions are high. Being overpopulated, and having created more than twenty-five millions of wooden, iron, and brazen men, that neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor wear apparel, animated by steam, their "breath of life," and made comfortable by oil, scientifically toil for little or no wages; having thus displaced some ten times their number of human operatives, men and women have become so cheap and worthless that they would not bring fifty dollars per head were they offered for sale in London, Manchester, or Liverpool, with the understanding that their owners were to feed, clothe, and comfort them in health and in sickness, pay their physician, and find them a hillock or a mound in which to deposit their bones.

      The operation of this system has for time immemorial tended to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer, until we find more opulence in a few persons, more magnificence, more riches and grandeur, associated with squalid poverty and abject wretchedness in Great Britain than were ever seen in America or in any nation or country possessing civilization in the world. When we learn that heads of families in various and numerous branches of manufacturing and mining operations are receiving oftener less than above three dollars per week, out of which to feed, clothe, house, and warm themselves--where bread-stuffs, meats, fuel, and house-rents are much higher than in this country, we are at a loss to comprehend how human beings can so live and feel that they are in social rank and privilege at all elevated above the beasts that perish. This is not a verbal definition of degradation, but a definition in fact.

      Nor does it appear that there is any cure for it. We of the [667] United States can multiply machinery without limitation, and raise up millions of these wooden and metalic men, whose stomachs are never empty, whose backs are never bare, and whose muscles never tire, and we have natural men to manage them in the best style, and we have food without limit, and the materials for all manner of fabrics beyond computation, and can have ships and seamen enough to transport our wares and merchandize beyond the seas. We can, indeed, monopolize the markets of the world better than Old England, and can thus encroach upon the living of these down-trodden millions of our race so materially as to starve them outright, unless their political mother makes more ample provision for them by shipping a few millions of them to her large colonial possessions in Asia and America.

      As a politician, I have one theory of national policy, the obvious advantage of which I wonder all men cannot see; but as a Christian, I have another theory I wonder all men cannot approve. As a politician, I plead for the policy of a high tariff, for the purpose of employing all our own materials of wealth to the greatest advantage, and for the purpose of building up our own nation upon the ruin of all rival nations, having a large population and a limited territory. But as a Christian, I go for free trade, and thus equally build up the interests of Great Britain or any foreign country with our own.

      But I would not have you to turn politician, or presume to decide questions of State policy. We have, as Christians, little to do with such matters. Political governments, in their best form, are but mere tents for pilgrims to lodge under while on their journey to the great King and Lord of all. Still people will ask some men their opinions upon every thing; and even ladies have been known to discuss questions of great national interest and honor. This not being either your taste, your privilege, or your duty, I will not trouble you with any other speculations upon the subject.

      I do not much indulge, as you know, in speculations or comments on national character. You must, however, have noted in your hasty tour through Great Britain, certain peculiarities in the English, Scotch, and Irish character. Nations have their well established characters. Paul himself could not but note those of the Cretans. Still I have neither taste nor leisure for instituting comparisons or making out contrasts. With regard to the relative value of political institutions, it may, however, be profitable to note an influence which political institutions have in forming character.

      Monarchy, and its handmaid Aristocracy wend their way through all orders of the English community; and, more or less, clearly [668] impress their image upon the exterior manners of the whole population. The little kings and little lords imitate the great ones. Each little gentlemen feels that he is monarch of all he surveys, and claims of all under him a species of that tribute which he owes to his superior, and so on in the ranks above him, until we ascend to His Majesty the august head of the nation.

      This aristocratic spirit does not present itself to our view only in august palaces, in large and elegantly cultivated estates, in splendid carriages, and in the glitter of rich apparel; but especially and universally in a certain dignity and loftiness of manners on the part of the aspirants, which at once intimates what is expected from those who approach them.

      We have, what we sometimes call in America, republican simplicity and republican manners. Such is the spirit of our institutions developed in our social intercourse. So monarchy has its spirit, and infuses it into the whole community, more or less.

      Christianity, in some points, appears to greater advantage in the Old World than in the New, especially in this respect--that it dignifies the humble and humbles the dignified of the nation. The rich nobleman rejoices that he is made low, and the poor man feels not proud, but thankful, that he is exalted in Christ. Hence Christianity demonstrates its power in England more in this respect than in America. Noblemen, when they become Christians or Christian preachers, are more humble and familiar, and show more respect to brethren of low degree than those of low degree are wont to show to one another. Instances of this kind in extreme cases are not numerous, but in all ranks this spirit is very manifest--at least so it appeared to me.

      The Scotch are still as stern and proud as ever. They are peculiarly well pleased with themselves, and are as much attached to their country as the natives of a Switzerland mountain--to them "the loveliest land on the face of the earth." The country, indeed, is highly picturesque and beautiful. It assumes every form of beauty and grandeur, and seems disposed to accommodate itself to every variety of taste. The people are intelligent, industrious, and generally devoted to reading. I mean the educated classes, and these are a greater proportion to its whole population than I have met with in any other country.

      I was, however, much grieved to see that temperance had not increased: but, on the contrary, intemperance seemed much more in the ascendant than it was some forty years ago. This is the most unpropititious omen of its retrogression, and an alarming [669] indication of the impotency of sound theories and even good common sense to reform and elevate a people. I do not in this remark speak so much from what I saw as from what I heard, and from the published reports of the enormous amounts of spiritous liquors used in that country. True, indeed, I saw too much of it in steam boats and along the public thoroughfares, more than in any other country through which I have recently passed.

      The same aristocratic spirit, only in a lower degree, appears in Scotland as in England. It exhibits itself all over the United Kingdom in the remarkable taciturnity which is maintained in rail cars and steam boats, and in public meetings and public houses. I found myself seated almost on all occasions in public conveyances amidst those who, unless specially acquainted or related, would not break silence in any form of compellation or remark in a hundred miles travel. They seem to fear the violation of some code of manners, or to break caste, or in some unwelcome manner to obtrude upon the rights of others. To Yankees especially, and to Americans in general, who wish to know every thing about every person, place, and thing, this silence is a grievous impost or tax that is paid with the utmost reluctance. Nevertheless it must be paid: for it is not often that a stranger can find any thing more than a Yea or Nay from a stranger to whom he is not formally introduced.

      In Ireland it is quite otherwise. An Irishman must talk. Silence with him is death. True, a few of them seem as if they would desire to imitate their fellow-subjects on the sister island, and to aim at better manners than to talk to strangers; but it is seldom that the resolution is practically carried out, at least for a long time. What the cause is I know not. They have generally more inquisitiveness, and much more native cheerfulness and hilarity. But what the cause? Can a difference in ancestry maintain its sovereignty for a thousand years? Can a greener island, or a brighter sky, or a less partial government produce such a result? The north of Ireland is a more mongrel race than is found in any other quarter of the island. It is more a compound of English, Scotch, French, and Irish--more like the United States in that respect than any other portion of the United Kingdom. It is Protestant in a high degree. Still all these facts do not, to my mind, satisfactorily explain the mystery. I shall, therefore, be content to say that I do not comprehend it. But there is a cheerfulness, a contentedness, a mirthfulness, a communicativeness, a sociability, and, I may add, a general characteristic benevolence, no where else to be seen, all pervading the island, but especially the Protestant part of it. The only [670] philosophical reason given for the garrulity, or talkativeness, or eloquence, as any one may please to call it, of the Irish, is, that they have generally larger mouths than either the English or Scotch. Now as Nature does nothing in vain, the presumption with some is, that, because they have much to say, Nature has given them a larger mouth to say it. However true the connexion between a large mouth and a superabundance of words, I cannot think that this fact, though fully established, satisfactorily explains the phenomenon; for the question then is only changed, How came they to have so much to say?--! I shall bid you good night, and leave you to solve the difficulty as best you can.

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 5 (December 1848): 667-671.]