122 of all classes, from the richest down almost to the very poorest. European nobles and princes, with sure incomes and immense, have been taken for models; and, with true American enterprise, the models have been outdone. Troops of servants have taken the place of the cook, the chambermaid, and the boy John. Three have been installed where one formerly served. High-seasoned dishes and expensive knickknacks have driven out the plain joint. Silver services have supplanted china, delft, and Britannia ware. Expensive carriages have taken the place of the comfortable old family coach; and coaches and chaises have been set up by families who are really puzzled to find a use for them. The fine arts, which are capable of exerting a refining and excellent influence, have only served to minister to the insolvency of those whose only standard of value is price, and whose rules of taste are graduated by dollars. Travelling in foreign countries has been abused. Once it was a great means of improvement. Now our young men are returned rogues and fops, with extravagant anti-American notions, and a disposition to hug and imitate all the follies of European travellers in this country. The heads of American wives and daughters are turned, and infant children look forward to travel, to finish them. Amusement has been eagerly sought at any cost; and the more extravagant its price, the more gentee Frugality has been contemned as an oldfashioned and dirty foible. Dress has been outrageously expensive, cost being the only criterion of its quality. "So much for a revew of the past. In the present quiet we rejoice to believe a revolution at work. Eyes have been opened to the destructive consequences of an over-issue of bank promises; and the industrious body of the peoph have learned to watch banks with a jealousy which will effectually bar for many a year, any return of the evils we have just gone through. "After all the scenes of commercial distress, and of suffering among the operative and industrious, the conclusion yet remains that nothing We are not so much has been annihilated. The world stands the same. poorer than we were, as we have thought. The only difference is, that time and truth, those experienced appraisers, have restored the old and true valuation to commodities which have been overvalued, and proIt may be that there is some nounced those worthless which are so. depreciation, but prudence and industry will soon put things upon a stable basis. We are much richer in experience, much more humble, much more frugal, much more prudent already; and if the reformation proves permanent, then will even the pressure have proved a good speculation.' This was one of the most sensible expositions of the true causes of the present state of affairs that I remember to have met with in any of the public prints that fell under my eye; and it is to be regretted that such frank and instructive expositions are not more frequently made. Instead of this, each party organ endeavours to throw the whole blame of the matter on the party to which it is opposed; and, to effect this, no sort of device is left untried. Misrepresentation the most gross and palpable is resorted to on the most common occasions, even on those where detection of such misrepresentation is certain; and the result is, that the public press here, as in England, is fast losing what little influ TREASURIES AND SUB-TREASURIES. .123 ence it possessed over the public mind, by writing itself down by its own extravagances. The great question now in debate between the two conflicting parties of the State, for instance, is this: whether the Gov. ernment shall keep safe custody of the surplus revenue in well-secured treasuries of its own, under responsible officers, and with every available guarantee for security, or whether they shall deposite it in a great bank, like the Bank of England, such as was the United States Bank, or in smaller branches of such an institution. One would think that the only question which would interest the people in this affair was as to the relative degree of safety and security, or otherwise; for as it is the community who must pay all the taxes and duties that compose the revenue, and make good any loss accruing after its collection, it is clearly their interest to prefer that mode of custody and safe-keeping which is most secure; and the Government treasuries would seem, to most unprejudiced men, better for this purpose than any private banks. But this plain question has been so mystified by the Whig party, who are against these treasuries and subtreasuries, and who want the Government to deposite this surplus in a great bank, and let that bank trade upon it, so as to afford credit and discounts to merchants and speculators, that the whole community is divided into two hostile parties upon this subject; as they are in Ireland upon the tithe question, in Scotland upon the voluntary system, and in England upon church-rates and the ballot. There would be no great evil in this if fairness of dealing characterized their proceedings; but everything is distorted to serve party views. If the largest meeting is got up on one side, the opposite party declares it to be a mere handful in numbers. If the parties are ever so wealthy and respectable, they are pronounced to be a set of needy vagabonds. If the talent of the speeches should be of the highest kind, they would call them mere drivellings; and if the order was disturbed for a single moment, they would describe it as a bear-garden; and in this, too, the party-press of England has unhappily set them an example. Sometimes, indeed, the fact of the numbers is so notorious that it cannot be safely denied; but then another course is taken to ad mit the numbers, but pretend that, after all, this matters nothing, for other reasons which they assign. A ludicrous instance of this occurred in the Evening Star of February 8, 1838, in which the editor, Major Noah, himself very recently one of the Democratic party that he now denounces, writes thus: 124. * The Dow In aut Evening Post tegate of fie Lacova part Cast hat hier vi at mmerise nezing a "anmary zal in Tes ing full zing sering Irene:II. 17 SOT OF 301.300 navrats 2000 zatiras many-gu ne aut Sevice cat be iVILLEng in one at DE 11 WEET 10 neats Tresent or misJoving sale S1 Stenon DI NE DUDry if the pa aut it we put of the apour and a porten in a same tie The Coed THEyoga wna 1214 17 Tan met a Yammary ELL an vet se iu tome prepares y se uffice-acute q ve vy ur rien neng prene and wing bosque quererade Aterra 18 ming some q deus i va terang that they want : Tummary Hi vo way vrien. They wi dan ter pay story." "Agrarate a the name bere given to people who meet to recommend the Government to keep the revence in safe curly, in treasuries of their own, instead of intrasting it to epeculating tanke, at the rak of insing it all: though in other countries this term is usmany, though erroneously, applied to those who are supposed to desire that the public lands and public wealth should be taken from the rich and divided among the poor. Here, too, the "scramblers for the share of the spoils of the people's money" are not the bankers, who want it to trade upon, with all the risk of gain or loss, but the people themselves, who want their own money to be taken care of, that it may not be scrambled for by anybody; and here also "poverty and the want of bread," which is falmely unnerted to be the condition of those who attended this meeting, is imputed or insinuated as a crime, and as making the parties disreputable by their mere poverty alone, a doctrine as current among the Whigs in America as in England. When a writer of the Whig party has to describe a meeting on their own side, however, he can find no terms suffieiently swelling and lofty in which to express himself. The 2000 who may attend it are not, as in the former case, taken to be the whole body that can be mustered out of 300,000 inhabitants, but, by a magic flourish of the editorial wand, they are made to be the representatives of many millions that are absent, and everything they do or say is of the most pure, most disinterested, most intelligent, most eloquent, and most dignified description. Their "thunder" is not like any other thunder that was ever heard before, and the very globe seems to be shaken to its centre by their gigantic powors. As an illustration of this, the following is from the Daily Whig of the morning succeeding that of the Evening Star, namely, February 9, 1838: EXAGGERATION OF PARTY PRESS. 125 "THE GREAT ANTI-SUB-TREASURY MEETING. "We have heard the old temple of liberty, Masonic Hall, ring till its rafters cracked with the shout of assembled thousands, that drowned the thunders of artillery on a great and patriotic triumph; but we never witnessed or heard anything like the burst of American feeling which resounded there on Wednesday night. If the sound does not make the White House at Washington tremble, and the Machiavelian Belshazzar'st knees smite against each other with fear of change perplexing,' then there is rather strength-giving than death in the poisoned chalice, which, prepared by himself for the people, he must drain to the very dregs of bitterness. "The limits of this paper will not allow us to afford even a meager outline of the powerful appeals which were made to American pride, honour, and patriotism on that occasion, in opposition to the most impudent and tyrannical stretch of power that was ever suggested by the drunken brain of ambition. Everything was said by Chandler Starr, Esq., Alderman Paterson, Alderman Bruen, Hugh Maxwell, Esq., and Hiram Ketchum, Esq., that love of country could dietate or eloquence enforce; and a response was echoed back from the throng crowding every part of the hall that thrilled through every fibre of our body, as it did through the whole assembled multitude. There was but one feeling with three thousand American citizens there present, the representatives of ten millions who were absent, and that feeling was indignation at the tyranny of our rulers. There was but one high resolve that made three thousand hearts beat together loudly, and that was, not to bear the iron yoke which is forging for them. There is no mistaking the spirit of 1776 wherever and whenever it shows itself; and the free people of our United States will be themselves incarcerated in the subterranean dungeons of the Independent Treasury' before they suffer the revenues of the country to be converted to the base uses of political traitors.” Such are the distorted and exaggerated pictures drawn by the writers on each side of the proceedings of their own party and of their opponents; but, though this practice deserves the severest reprobation, candour compels us to admit that the English press has shown them the example, and they have only made the copy more highly coloured than the original. I pass on, however, to other topics. The taste of the populace in New-York for shows and sights is quite as strong as in any part of England, and public celebrations of particular events by anniversary days appear to excite more general attention. Two such days occurred during our stay in this city; the first was called "Evacuation Day," from the English troops having quitted. the city on that day, the 25th of November; and the sec ond was the anniversary of the battle of New-Orleans, where General Jackson obtained so decided a victory over the British. This last was chiefly confined to the administration party, being tinged with political associations; but The White House at Washington is the official residence of the President of the United States for the time being. †This is applied to Mr. Van Buren, the existing president. the first was more general, though the weather was extremely unfavourable to public processions. The reports of the day's proceedings in the newspapers were as varied as their general character; but there was one that offered so good a specimen of a kind of writing which is peculiar to America, that I venture to transcribe it. Its peculiarity consists in a strange mixture of the serious and the sarcastic, the grave and the witty, the sober and the ironical, with all the while an under-current of self-gratulation at the exploits of the country, and the privilege of being one of its citizens. If a foreigner had written it, it would have been thought contemptuous; but from the pen of a native American, it is meant to be at once amusing and complimentary, and would be so regarded even by the personages described. Here it is: "Your hero never shows white feather "We could not but feel a stirring impulse of enthusiasm—a thrill of patriotic pride and self-gratulation-at 7 o'clock this morning, at beholding the indomitable spirit of bravery and contempt of danger exhibited by a detachment of our martial fellow-citizens, returning up Broadway, in the very teeth of the snowstorm, from the performance of their arduous duty at the Battery. There,' we soliloquized, goes the palladium of our country's safety against all the power of a world in arms; there go the dauntless heart, the iron frame, the arm of might, and the soul of patriotic chivalry.' Who can entertain a doubt of American bravery, when he sees hose noble fellows-those unconquerable citizen-soldiers-trudging thus gallantly along, through mud and slush, and wind and snow, bearing their heads erect, with unwinking eyes, and muskets bravely shouldered, and looking as calm and resolute as though the loveliest of spring-time were blooming joyously about them. First came a band of youthful heroes, arrayed with cap and plume, and braided coats, and knapsacks at their backs, unshrinkingly encountering the fury of the elements, without greatcoat or cloak, or even worsted comforter to guard their throats against the damp and cold: then followed the bold musicians, pouring the martial strain from fife, and drum, and trumpet, giving old winter blast for blast; this came the grim and frowning cannons-two of them-each with its tumbril, charged with the fiery dust that emulates the volleying thunder; and last, though far from least, the sturdy veterans of the ancient corps, disdaining all the foppery of Mars, and breasting the pitiless northern wind and driving sleet in their plain blue coats, round hats, and other every-day habiliments. One craven soul there was, whose right hand bore aloft no dreadful sword, but in its stead a large black silk umbrel la; and another had fortified his person with a Petersham. But these were exceptions, and did but show more bravely forth the courage of the rest. There was one hero, marching by the side of the detachment, with a cross-belt slung around him, and a long sword in his red right hand-we took him for a corporal, or perhaps a sergeant-whom we could not behold without excess of admiration. Nature had bounteously endowed his cheeks with a mighty crop of whisker; and on these the snow had settled thick and deep, so that he looked for all the |