This America. The United States, in his opinion, was doomed to destruction. It was in a revolutionary condition and contained within it "the seeds of those sudden changes which scatter upon the wings of ruin all the labors and products of past experience." We had no established church, therefore we were an immoral and irreligious people. A church establishment, founded on liberal principles, was one of those blessings to which Englishmen were indebted for innumerable benefits. An order of men selected from all descriptions and classes, from the sons of the peer to those of the farmer and the trader, and set apart to cultivate knowledge, diffuse religion, and preserve virtue, must produce a more beneficial and abundant influence than can be dispensed by any other means. blessing we could not enjoy. Upward of three million souls in the United States were destitute of all religious ordinances and worship. In the Southern and Western States societies existed for the sole purpose of rooting out every vestige of Christianity. Many serious people doubted the permanence. of the Federal Constitution because it made no reference to the providence of God. "We, the People," was the constitutional substitute for Jehovah. A few State governments, as in New England and New York, did acknowledge God as the governor among nations, and occasionally recommended a day of general fasting, thanksgiving, and prayer. But the greater number declared it unconstitutional to refer to the providence of God. Virginia would not allow a chaplain to officiate in her State Legislature. Louisiana had rejected by an immense majority a bill for the better observance of the Sabbath. The consequences of this were visible and awful. Among the many institutions to which England stood indebted for her comfort, her security, her prosperity, the courts of law were first in importance. "A peculiar character of dignity attaches to our judges, which gives them respectability allied almost to religious veneration. The nature of their education and their station, which forbids them from being foremost in the circles of even innocent levity, have a tendency to raise their characters and inspire a confidence in their decisions which must be unknown to the people of America. We hear of one of their 1819. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 323 judges appearing on the bench with a countenance battered in a boxing match; of another shot because he had approached to attack his neighbor with pistols and a dagger hidden in his bosom; of some engaged in duels as principals and seconds; of others posted as cowards for declining such contests." As was the bench, so was the bar. The practitioners were advocates, solicitors, attorneys, proctors, conveyancers, and special pleaders all in one. The law was the repository of American talent a talent which did not find its way to the bench, but was spent in intrigue for offices of state. Hence the bar was the school in which American statesmen learned the vulgar chicanery, so easily imbibed in a profession that teaches acuteness but does not inspire integrity. "All the Presidents since Washington and Adams have been lawyers, and so have almost all the secretaries of State, war, treasury, and navy. America, if not priest-ridden like Spain, is in a worse stateshe is lawyer-ridden." Besides being an irreligious, immoral, and lawyer-ridden people, we were ignorant. The number of books published in America which had any tendency to improve the mind or enlighten the understanding were few indeed. It was true that many of the most popular English writings were reprinted in America. But they seemed to be little read. Ages must pass away before America could find either leisure or inclination for the study of Bacon, Locke, and Newton. In every part of our vast country education was on too low a scale. The schools could do no more than create mediocrity in learning. "Meantime she may derive what consolation she can from the reflection that this low state of learning is the natural consequence of that spirit of republicanism on which she prides herself." We had a post-office; but such was the state of ignorance that little correspondence took place, and the post-office could not defray the cost of operating.* "In America the emigrant must expect to find not an economical or cleanly people, not a social or generous people, not a people of enlarged ideas, not a people of liberal opinions or to whom one could express his thoughts free as air, not a * The Quarterly Review, January, 1819, Statistical View of America. VOL. V.-22 people friendly to the advocate of liberty in Europe, not a people who understand liberty from investigation or from principle, not a people who comprehend the meaning of the words honor and generosity. On the other hand, he would find a country possessing the most enlightened civil and political advantages, a people reaping the full reward of their own labors, a people not paying tithes and not subject to heavy taxation without representation, a people with a small national debt and no standing army, and he would find little else." * The attack of the Edinburgh in January was followed in February and March by Blackwood's Magazine with two articles on "The Means of Education and on The State of Learning in the United States." " Learning, in the true sense of the word," says the writer, "is not to be found in America, for the business of a scholar is not one of the occupations of life. There every man of liberal education must have an occupation, and as there are no fellowships or scholarships in the colleges there can be no classes of society with sufficient leisure for the cultivation of science and general literature. The low standing of America in the world of letters and the poor showing she makes in our libraries is due to bad education, to want of learning, and the peculiar uses to which talent is applied. Franklin is their only philosopher whose discoveries have been of use to mankind, and if all the books ever written in the United States were set on fire to-morrow no scholar would miss them. We do not mean to say they have produced nothing worth preserving, but we do assert that they have not one master production of the mind in whose safe keeping all the world is interested. Mr. Irving has much talent and great humor, and Knickerbocker' and 'Salmagundi' are exceedingly pleasant reading; Belknap, Minot, Ramsay, Jefferson, and Marshall have written valuable histories; the sermons of Freeman, Buckminster, and Channing are fine specimens of eloquence and taste; in essays of the lighter kind Wirt and Dennie excel; but of works of the imagination very little has been produced. There is nothing to awaken fancy in that *Fearon's Sketches of America. The Quarterly Review, January, 1819, pp. 124-167. 1819. THE BRITISH REVIEW. 325 land of dull realities. No objects carry the mind back to contemplation of a remote antiquity. No mouldering ruins excite interest in the history of the past. No memorials commemorative of noble deeds arouse enthusiasm and reverence. No traditions, legends, fables, afford material for poetry and romance. America has gone through no period of infancy, no pastoral state. The whole course of life is there a round of dull practical duties. There is a task for each person each day. No man stops to admire the heavens over his head or to scan the charms of the earth under his feet. No one has time to study Nature or acquire a love for the beauties she spreads around." * By this time it had become the fashion to assail the United States, and the fashion having been set, the British Review, or London Critical Journal, followed, and in May, 1819, regaled its readers with an account of the actual condition of the United States. At the head of the article stood a list of seventeen titles of books printed in or relating to America, but it was from two of them-Bristed's "Resources of the United States" and Fearon's "Narrative "-that the reviewer drew his stock of information. He began with the usual remarks on the infancy of our literature, and assigned the reasons. The thinness of our population, spread over an immense area of country, the lack of wealthy families to create a demand for original works, the want of competition and of rewards and honors capable of exciting emulation, were all so many obstacles to the production and circulation of literature. The man who compiled a heavy, dull, and tasteless political journal was sure to be richly repaid for his pains. But a literary work in which genius, wit, and learning combined to amuse and instruct was just as sure to be neglected. There were, as a consequence, few authors by profession in America. If here and there one existed he drudged along in his gainless calling, solitary and alone. He did not repose in the bowers of academic learning, surrounded and encouraged by the wise of other nations. Among his contemporaries there were no * On the State of Learning in the United States of America. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, March, 1819. congenial minds with which to hold communion. And when his work was done there were no institutions, no publishers, ready to print his books on terms honorable and profitable to himself. "His labors do not end when the manuscript is delivered. A distant day is assigned for the payment of what he has earned, a day which too often never comes, and he is forced to be content with the assurances of his printer that delinquent subscribers, dull sales, and bankrupt agents have reduced his profits to nothing. "It is quite possible that the Americans may become a powerful people, but they lack the elements of greatness. They may overcome a portion of the world, but they will never civilize those whom they conquer. The mass of the North Americans are too proud to learn and too ignorant to teach, and having established by act of Congress that they are already the most enlightened people of the world, they bid fair to retain their barbarism from mere regard to consistency." * Continued criticism of this sort having become unbearable, the North American Review felt called on to reply to so much of it as related to the low state of letters. It was pointed out that, with a few exceptions, the age was one of critics and compilers rather than of men of genius; that while we could. not claim for our poets a place with Scott and Byron, Campbell and Wordsworth, we could at least see indications of poetic genius which gave promise of great things in the near future; and that it was unwise to make an elaborate and voluminous defence of America in answer to the faultfindings of certain British critics and travellers. They could not much longer impose on the intelligent and impartial classes of foreigners. It was better to wait for our vindication as the result of our becoming better known and more justly estimated.† But the vindication of our country was not to be the work of time. The task had already been attempted, and a few days after the North American Review appeared at Boston a portly volume, by Robert Walsh, Jr., issued from the press at Philadelphia. Mr. Walsh called his book "An Appeal *The British Review, or London Critical Journal. Actual Condition of the Vnited States, May, 1819. North American Review, September, 1819. |