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tion. Our large farming population is only a slightly improved breed of the Arabs, and go wandering about without a home-without any of those local attachments which make certain spots "Palestines and Meccas of the mind?" carrying their unframed pictures in their hands, haunted by the fear of the "dollars." Not wholly destitute of natural affection, which even the tiger and jackall have in common with us, we do afford "the pictures of our beloved parents," running the dreadful risk of the final partition-but the frames, the plain cherry wood frames, costing four and sixpence, we refuse to buy, lest they be lost at last, by being divided among some "widow and eight children." There is, doubtless, some profound philosophic principle lying at the bottom of the distinction to be made between the cost of the pictures and the cost of the frames, which Mr. Alison discovered by applying his monarchical stethescope to the breast of democracy, and he has wronged us, and wronged the world, by not incorporating it in his history. It is fortunate the two facts of a "widow with eight children" being an " heiress," and our strong Arabic tendencies, are put together; otherwise, we might be overrun with poor English widows and their numerous progeny. Some few of these, from Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, we have seen in our manufacturing districts, with even more than " eight children," and, heaven knows, they looked like anything but "heiresses." Tribe after tribe of our nomadic farmers had wandered past them without grasp ing the fortune. When our history becomes as old as the Roman history now is, with what astonishment will men read of a state of society where a "widow and eight children" were looked upon as some "rich freighted argosy."

But notwithstanding the high price of labor, and the general competence that prevails in the rural districts, he adds, as an offset, that" pauperism exists to a distressing extent in many of the first peopled states along the sea-coast, and nearly all the great commercial towns of the Union; poor-rates are in consequence generally established, and benevolence is

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taxed nearly as severely as in the old monarchies and dense population of the European_nations." This statement, standing alone and without explanation, is untrue; for though as much money may be paid by the benevolent to relieve the poor in some of our cities, as in the cities of Europe, there is not a fourth part of the demand for it. Besides, poor-rates are not established at all in the sense conveyed by the passage. The poorrates of England are a thing unknown here. But, granting it all, from whence come these paupers? From "the old monarchies, and out of the dense population of the European nations;”—a fact Mr. Alison did not find it convenient to state. To say nothing of the continental nations that make a system of despatching their paupers and criminals to the United States, it needs but to look at England herself to find ample cause for the pauperism that is forced upon us. In one year, between June of 1835 and July of 1836, the Law Commissioners of England reported that seven thousand and seventy-five paupers were expatriated at the cost of $196,000. The proportion that came here it is not difficult to conjecture. Lord Stanley declared, not long since, in the English Parliament, that for five years, excepting 1838, the average amount of emigration to British America alone was from 75,000 to 80,000 annually.

In 1840, there were 90,700 left England. In 1841, there were 118,475. In 1842, 15,000 left in April alone, and during the three months ending last June, 25,008 arrived in New York city. The whole number, for the past year, is estimated at 59,000 to New York city alone. How many of these are paupers, or become so, may be inferred from the fact, that out of 47,571 aliens arrived in one year, 38,057, soon after they landed, had no occupation. Place these facts beside the following table published in the American Quarterly Review of 1838:"In the city of New York, the following extracts have been obtained, illustrative of the comparative amount of poverty and crime, as existing among native Americans and foreigners, from all parts of the United States.

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We have taken this table, ready furnished to our hands, to save the trouble of compiling one ourselves, and because it refers to that period on which Mr. Alison is supposed to have had his eye more particularly, when he wrote his history. It is inevitable that pauperism should exist in our country, so long as England is allowed to deposite her tens of thousands of poor annually on our shore. The vessels from that land of liberty, where property and life is secure, and monarchy and aristocracy shower down their blessings on the people, and the wealthy church provides for the "gratuitous instruction of the poor," are like Alpine torrents, which descend in spring and deposite their mud in the fair valleys below. Vessels have arrived filled with paupers alone, and "the amount expended during seven years by the authorities of New York, for the support of foreign paupers, was $975,016 10,"* while our own countrymen received but a third of that sum. "More than $50,000 is annually paid, by tax on the citizens of New York, for the support of foreign pauperism;" and, of the 2,790 white adults in the Alms House, Asylum, and Penitentiary this year, 1881, or more than twothirds, are foreigners.

Let this ceaselsss flow of paupers continue towards our shore a little longer, and Mr. Alison's words will be true, that "benevolence is as heavily taxed as in some of the old monarchies of Europe." He must, or should have known this state of things before speaking of pauperism in this country, and given us credit for that which he now places upon us as a stigma. They are your paupers, Mr. Alison, that "tax our benevolence" so heavily-Englishmen, filled with all the noble aspirations of British subjects, brought up under the blessed influence of a monarchy, aristocracy, and church establishment, that choke our alms-house, live on our money, and darken our prospects. Your church, with its "gratuitous pro

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vision for the instruction of the poor," leaves to our voluntary system to educate the tens of thousands she sends here in ignorance.

And here, we would remark a great objection to the notes added in Mr. Harper's edition. They lack manliness and independence. For instance, the laughable assertion of Mr. Alison, respecting our slight hereditary feeling, is gravely met, and the division of family estates accounted for, on the ground, that we have seen the evils of primogeniture. So. also, is the charge, that we have no literature, etc., refuted by a catalogue of our colleges, published books, &c. If Mr. Alison sees fit to make assertions so utterly destitute of delicacy and truth as these, they should be put in the catalogue of Trollopiana, and treated as such. He can, if he likes, gravely declare that we are the original types of Lord Monboddo's theory of the human race, but it does not follow that we are soberly to set to work, to prove that we are not monkeys, and hairy, and give measurements and affidavits to show that we correspond to ordinary men. The historian is ridiculed in such cases, more than those he slanders. When speaking of the evils of republicanism, he draws still more largely on his fancy for facts, and says, “as a natural consequence of this state of things, (referring to the practical action of the principle of equality)," there is in opposition to the will or passions of the majority, no security whatever, either for life or property in America;" and again, "is life secure in the United States, when property is placed in such imminent peril? Experience, terrible experience proves the reverse, and demonstrates, that not only is existence endangered, but law is powerless against the once excited passions or violence of the people. The atrocities of the French Revolution, cruel and heart-rending as they were, have been exceeded on the other side of the Atlantic." Much is

* Vid. The Crisis.

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to be allowed for the extravagant assertions of a man of Mr. Alison's peculiarly excitable temperament and strong anti-republican feeling; and, we should feel inclined to put this down as one of his wild statements, made in a moment of irritability, did we not find the same declaration repeated and amplified in the concluding reflection of his work. He states there, 'that deeds of violence have been perpetrated in many parts of the United States by the tyrant majority, with entire impunity, of so frightful a character, that, they exceed in cruelty all the savage atrocity of the French Revolution, and have made the Americans fain to seek a parallel for them in the hideous persecutions and iniquities, which have forever disgraced the Roman Catholic religion." This reiteration and enlargement of the first assertion, destroys our charity; and we charge on Mr. Alison here a deliberate and downright falsehood. We will not dwell a moment on the miserable subterfuge, that a negro has been burned alive, by a mob of excited men, for a crime almost unparalleled in its atrocity. The statement as it stands, and the impression intended to be conveyed by it, is utterly destitute of truth, and Mr. Alison knew it when he made it. It was an ebullition of passion and fancy together, unworthy the writer of a pretended impartial history. Besides, he is testimony against himself in the case; for in repeated instances, when describing the atrocities of the French Revolution, he declares them without a parallel in the history of the world.

Against the declaration that, life and property are insecure, we will make no defence, because it is mere assertion, which any one could have made just as easily, and no one left more unsustained by any proof; but this we do say-for every man killed in this country the last twenty years, by the violence of the mob, we will find ten killed in England by the same cause; and for every dollar of property destroyed in the United States, by popular fury, we will show one hundred thus wasted in England. If he could have for once, consented to leave the regions of fancy, and gone into statistics, we would have offset them with an account of the riots in Birmingham, Manchester, and Bristol, the mob in the Bull Ring, swaying like a forest to the tempest, the night the Reform Bill was struggling through Parliament, and the "torch and daggre meetings" in every part of the kingdom.

ers.

We might read "the People's Charter" aloud, striking at the very foundation of the English Government, and yet it was rolled into Parliament by 4,000 determined men, signed by 3,500,000 petitionWe might describe the midnight heavens made lurid with the incendiary's torch over Birmingham-the burning of the Parliament House and Guildhallthe firing of York Cathedral and the conflagration of the Armory of the Tower;we might point to the Duke of Wellington's house, still standing dilapidated, just as the mob left it-the meeting of 10,000 men in Manchester, solemnly pledging themselves to pay no more taxes-the convocation of 26,000 on the hills of Acerington, swearing "they will never petition Parliament again, but will take redress into their own hands." We might quote Mr. Macauley himself, when at midnight, while the confused sound of the turbulent mob was without, he concluded his thrilling speech on the Reform Bill with " through Parliament or over Parliament it must pass," or Lord Brougham, when he says, "those portentious appearances--the growth of later times-those figments that stalk abroad of unknown stature and strange form-union of leagues and mustering of men in myriads, and conspiracies against the exchequerswhence do they spring, and how come they to haunt our shore? What power engendered those uncouth shapes? What multiplied the monstrous births, till they people our land? Trust me, the same power which called into frightful existence, and carried with resistless force the Irish volunteers of 1782--the same power which rent in twain your empire and raised up thirteen Republics, the same power which created the Catholic Association and gave it Ireland for a portion. What power is that? Justice deserted, rights withheld, wrongs perpetrated, the force which common injuries lend to millions." We might speak in detail of these things and show where the balance lay of "security of life and property." We might describe the burning of the hay stacks of the country, and the public edifices of the cities, all of which was "secure property." We might point to the deadly conflict of the populace with the soldiery, strewing the street with corpses, the threats to assassinate the Duke of Wellington, the murder of the Prime Minister's Secretary in the streets of London, and the pistol shot of Francis that well nigh rid England of her Queen, to show how much more "secure" life was

in England than here. If we could not with all these facts make good our assertion, we would throw in the massacres of Ireland, and the riots of Wales, to fill up the measure, and show by parity of reasoning, how insecure life and property were under a monarchy. If these evils were simply pointed out as things to be deprecated and remedied, we would take the correction with becoming humility; but they are exaggerated a thousand fold, and then all charged over to Liberty. They are not given as simple facts of history, but to show the peculiar working of democracy, and are declared the natural and monstrous offspring of our form of government. This we deny, and point to England to substantiate our denial. There are the same "uncouth shapes," multiplied and enlarged to a fearful extent; and if it be just to make the government responsible for their existence, how stands the English monarchy. After gathering up all the gossip and scattered rumors within his reach, and subjecting them to the coloring process of his own imagination, he triumphantly exclaims, "here, then, is a country in which, if they ever had on earth, republican principles have enjoyed the fairest grounds for trial, and the best opportunity for establishing their benefits. They had neither a territorial aristocracy, nor a sovereign on the throne, nor an hereditary nobility, nor a national debt, nor an established church, which are usually held out as the impediments to the blessings of freedom in the Old World. How, then, has the republican system worked in this, the garden of the world and the land of promise?" The question is answered in the asking if his assertions be true, without the trouble of stating, as he does, that it is an utter failure, and that freedom here is only a name with which to conjure up horrible shapes of evil. But looking at England with the evils of our own country multiplied and enlarged, and with superadded diseases and miseries, under which she sickens and staggers like falling greatness, we, also, may put the question Mr. Alison deems so annihilating. To employ his own expression, (though we beg pardon for writing so ungrammatical a sentence) Here, then, is a country in which, if they ever had on earth, monarchical principles have enjoyed the fairest ground for trial and the best opportunity for establishing their benefitsthey have had an aristocracy, a sovereign, a throne, an hereditary nobility, a

national debt, an established church which are held out to be "no" impediments of Freedom in the old world. And how has the monarchical system worked here? Let the Report of the Commissioners appointed to investigate the state of Ireland-of those sent to inquire into the condition of children employed in the mines and in the factories-let the national debt itself, the starvation and suffering in every part of the land, forcing the inhabitants to other and freer stateslet the speeches of Brougham and Macauley, and the writings of Carlyle, answer. As for ourselves, we believe this mode of reasoning on governments is unsafe, unless taken with great limitations. But if it be sound in one case it is in the other, and Mr. Alison will find that his logic, like Saturn, devours its own children. If pauperism, suffering, popular outbreaks, agitation and universal disquiet, are substantial arguments against the principles on which a government is established, then the Monarchy he declares to be a model for the world stands condemned forever.

As another instance of his novel mode of reasoning, we give the following paragraph, designed as a backer to the assertion, "there is no independence of thought in America." "Is it as usual," he exclaims, "to see candidates for popular favor there, at public meetings, maintain monarchical and aristocratical opinions, as it is in Great Britain to see them support republicanism? Does the hall of Congress resound with arguments in favor of a mixed monarchy in preference to a republic, in like manner as the English House of Commons does with declarations in favor of democratic and republican institutions?" After putting several questions of this sort in his eager way, he answers them himself, and declares, till this thing does happen there is no "real freedom or independence of thought" in America. We hardly know which astonishes us most, the absolute want of common sense in this whole paragraph, or the stupidity of Mr. Alison in allowing it to be placed where it could throw such ridicule on himself. Does he not know that in every republican government, as well as limited monarchy, there are two parties, the more conservative and the more liberal, and that those who uphold a democratic form of government in England are advocating a great party measure in the kingdom, and it has no more to do with independence of thought or freedom of debate, than the

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discussion of the Reform Bill. To adopt Mr. Alison's novel mode of reasoning we might ask, do we hear an unmixed despotism advocated in England, as we do conservatism here? Do the halls of Parliament resound with arguments in favor" of a pure tyranny? Till this does occur there can be no real" freedom and independence of thought" in the British nation. Yet this question might have some force in the latter case, for there are those in England who believe in a despotism, while there are none here who believe in a mixed monarchy. But until there are men found in the United States to admit what they believe a lie, and members of Congress plead for a doctrine, the very first attempt to carry out which by others they would resist with their blood, there can be no independence of thought." He seems destitute of the ordinary sense of ordinary men, when speaking of this country. His want of judgment is only equalled by his want of knowledge, and it surprises us how any literary man could be so ignorant of those things with which the English school children are familiar. How a man could so expose himself to ridicule by writing on topics he knows nothing of, is stranger than falsehood. He gravely speaks of the "two States of Massachusetts and New England." This he repeats twice, exhibiting an ignorance of geography that would have sccured a pupil of one of our district schools a seat on the dunce block. Of the powers of the President, the manner of electing judges, and the Constitution itself, all of which he discourses about with the profoundest gravity, he knows nothing. He makes Washington give his casting vote in Congress at the time he was President of the United States; and, speaking of the separate States of the Confederacy, and their powers, he says, "so extensive and undefined are their powers, that it may be doubted whether they do not amount to those of declaring peace and war, and acting in all respects as independent States." It may not be doubted" that they have power to rebel against the Union-so has Cornwall or Yorkshire to resist the English government; but their powers are as well defined in this respect as words can make them; and if Mr. Alison had taken the trouble to read our Constitution, (as we must in charity think he never has done,) he would have found it expressly stated, that this power is vested in the President and Congress

alone. If one had said that because there had been insurrections in Ireland, and resistance to authority in Wales and Birmingham, that it "might be doubted" whether these separate portions of the kingdom had not power of declaring war, he would have made just as ridiculous a statement as Mr. Alison has done, and no more so. But he evidently thought he was declaiming against the evils of republicanism before an assembly of ignorant Chartists-for, not content with ludicrous fiction, he seeks after the horrible, declaring "that murders and assassinations in open day, are not unfrequent among the members of Congress themselves." Mr. Alison would put even an Italian editor to the blush-since the latter is careful only to leave out every item of news bearing favorably on our institutions, and give every account of a riot or misfortune; but the former makes facts to order while he orders his own facts. But that we should be in so deplorable a state, Mr. Alison makes out to be most natural: “the American," says he, "has no sovereign; in him the aspirations of loyalty are lost; the glow of patriotic devotion is diffused over so immense a surface as to be well nigh evaporated. In the Canadian, on the other hand, patriotism is, in general, mingled with chivalry; the lustre of British descent, the glories of British renown, animate every bosom, at least in the British race," so that their character bears the same relation to the Americans that the Tyrolese do to the Swiss"--i. e. they are a far more noble, brave, and patriotic race. These great and commanding features of the Canadian character are working such wondrous effects in the race, that (he continues) they 'may in some future period, come to counterbalance all the riches of the basin of the Mississippi, and re-assert in America the wonted superiority of northern valor over southern opulence." We are glad Mr. Alison has opened our eyes to this impending danger, so that Congress may immediately set about strengthening the posts on our northern frontier. The irruption of these "Tyrolese of America," has not, heretofore, been considered as a very proximate danger, and we trust that our representatives in Washington will attend to it, before they destroy themselves by mutual assassination. Our clergy and religious institutions fall also under his sweeping assertions. "Religion," he says, "has descended from its functions of denounc

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