tion of the negro, and the effects produced upon him in the imperfect state of his knowledge, by the change in his relation to his employer and the white race. One of the most intelligent of recent writers from the land of the South, for example, whose opinions have been stated in the Spectator, records his experiences candidly. "Upon two points he formed very decided opinions. The late Slave States should, in his opinion, be cleared thorough ly and immediately of negro troops. The presence of these troops has a very bad effect both upon the whites and upon their people. The whites are offended and much irritated by what they regard as the intentional insult of intimidating a conquered people by a force of men who were, or might have been, their former slaves. This aggravates their sense of calamity, and makes sore their consciousness of subjugation. In this manner it provokes them also to the manifestation of ill-will against the negroes themselves, and tempts them to throw difficulties in the way of efforts made to adapt the freedmen to their new condition. The freedmen are made lazy and fractious by the presence of troops of their own colour. Their ignorance cannot be over-estimated, or their credulity over tasked. To them the world seems but a few plantations wide, with a place beyond -very like the place beyond Jawdam' he poor creatures think-where Yankees ive, and whence they have come to be the good genii of the negroes. Having a few months ago been mere human chattels, not allowed to be out after a certain time, or to step over a certain line without a pass, the evidence of a hundred of them worth nothing against the meanest white man's word, the presence among them of men of their own race, armed, in uniform, in military array, and exercising power, not over them only, but their masters, makes them -why should it not?-feel as if they each one had Aladdin's lamp! The mere sight of a negro sentinel halting one of their former masters, who only a few months ago might have killed him on the spot for raising his hand, and no questions been asked -this sight, acting upon their childish, half-civilized imaginations, is enough to make them ready to believe everything. And they do believe, and are encouraged by the black troops to believe, that the land ought to be and will be divided among them; and they then fancy that in some mysterious way, consequent upon this miraculously new order of things, they will be able to live upon their acres without labour, as their masters did formerly. There are some of them who, although they are sorely unsettled by their new condition, as it was in evitable that they should be, are not led entirely away by these hallucinations. But these are the house negroes, most of whom have some white blood in them, although it may only be an eighth or a sixteenth; and they hands on the plantations are at present in form the very rare exceptions. The field a mild phase, which manifests itself chiefly in laziness and in impudence of a monstrous and grotesque character, which seems to justify the whites in their ill-feeling, and keeps up a deplorable condition of affairs. "The giving of the elective franchise to the Southern negroes (affirms the same writer) must be postponed as long as possible, certainly for a generation. He (the traveller whom the writer quotes) clung with unflinching tenacity, though with manifest effort and sense of duty, to his conviction that it would be wrong, the negroes being there and subject to the laws of the country, to cut them off, after due preparation and probation, as a race, from all hope of the same political right that was given in the course of a few years to every Irish and German peasant that came to the country-to deprive them, in his own words, of a future. But he said that no man of common sense and ordinary prudence could go down among them and advocate the giving of political power to this overwhelming mass of semi-barbarous (though in the moral sense not savage) and utterly ignorant men who were born and 'raised' not even to own themselves, or be guided by their own volition. He favoured a somewhat advanced standard of qualification for the franchise, to be applied to all of either race who hereafter should be ad mitted to the suffrage. And this, because it would exclude not only the present genedebased of the 'mean whites,' who are inration of negroes, but hereafter the more tellectually benighted, and morally little superior to the negroes, except in that quality of self-reliance which the negro rarely acquires, even in the Free States, in all of which he may acquire real property, and in some become a voter." It will strike many that our relations with America ought to be made fact that the United States populamore simple and agreeable by the tion, out-and-out Republicans as they are in theory, have felt themselves constrained by force of circumstances to transgress their principle of manhood suffrage in the exclusion of the freed negro from political power, and to adopt the English idea, that the franchise is a trust for which any class must show itself fit before it can be fully adopted into the Constitution. It is suggested that a standard of qualification should be prescribed for all, of either race, whites or blacks, who shall hereafter be admitted to the franchise. This is an abandonment of American ideas, and as a marked approximation to British principles of action disarms the New York journalists of half their boasts of Republican liberty, and of all their taunts at our expense. The Americans have become Old Worldlike in more than in possessing a National Debt. They are in no respect so "fast" as they used to be. A drag is placed upon the wheel; and a large and increasing party among them begin to see that limitations must be admitted even to the long-worshipped idea of universal equality. If Americans are ever to agree with us, and we with them, it must be on the basis of the mutual concession that Republican institutions are best for America and Monarchical institutions best for England. We wish their Republicanism, which has a strong infusion still of the old country spirit, well. We do not desire to see it break down. We admit that it has had great successes-the triumph in the late war the greatest of all. We have no doubt that America may be happy under it, and mightily serve the cause of human progress in all its departments. And we claim the same frank admission from Americans with respect to Great Britain and her institutions and ways. It is plainly not intended by Providence that there should be one form of rule in the world, whether by monarchs or by presidents. But there may be substantial unity in variety much the same results reached by different paths in friendly rivalry. The mass of the American people, above the coarse bullies of the political arena, are anxiously concerned for the spread of Christianity throughout the world. Their American Board of Missions-an institution not excelled by any of the great religious societies of England-proves this. Our people have the same spirit. In their admirable public education scheme, designed to protect society from the crimes and miseries of ignorance, the counterpart appears of a principle acknowledged amongst ourselves. We both have a free Press; and in all the essentials of representative institutions there is no discernible difference between us. Our rulers are probably quite as much-we sometimes think they are more-under the control of public opinion than American statesmen. Why, then, should not an alliance, intimate, cordial, and permanent, subsist between America and England? The necessity for such a good understanding is forcing itself more and more every day upon the minds of thinking men. If it did nothing more for the Republic than banish the prejudices from the English mind that barb our criticisms on the peculiarities of our cousins, and remove the sourness from the American mind that forbids respect from foreign nations, it would benefit both countries, and advance the arts of peace. And should a crisis arise at any future time, when a combination of European nations was formed against the principles of light and freedom, an AngloAmerican alliance would have a voice of such commanding power that no conceivable resistance could frustrate its will. It is probable that there never was a time in the history either of England or of America when the obstacles to such an Alliance were so few, or the motives urging its formation so compelling. It cannot be denied that reunited America might become a source of trouble to Great Britain. Despite a National Debt whose interest is equal to that of our own, and a want of familiarity with taxation which will render the payment of that interest more irksome to them than to us, the Americans are steadily surmounting their difficulties, and will be, perhaps in a very few years, a stronger people than ever. No second attempt on the part of the Southern States to break off from the rest can be looked for, and America will continue henceforth one great State, unless the uneasy ambition of its rulers, and the cupidity of its filibustering class, should lead to conquests in Mexico and South America,-in which case the huge confederacy might fall to pieces of itself. It would not be difficult to show that that result is as little likely as a direct attack by America upon England for the recovery of the Alabama indemnities. How much the late change in the relations of American parties to the slavery question alone has done to heighten the political morality of the people, and to improve their dis- proved tone regarding America in our position towards foreign Powers, may own Press ought surely to be exbe gathered from a passage in a remarkable letter written to the Times on the eve of the late war by Mr. Jay, at one time United States Minister in Switzerland. "For half a century (said he) the influence of slavery has weighed upon our country in a thousand disastrous ways. It has delivered our government, more or less, into the hands of political adventurers; it has impelled us into a foreign war; it has awakened in us a rabid appetite for annexation; it has nursed and sent abroad bands of filibusters and pirates upon the territories of friendly and unoffending nations; it has bent our foreign policy out of its natural upright course, and thus given just offence to your and other governments; it has dishonoured our legislative halls with representatives whose chief qualifications were hatred of free institutions, ignorance of religion, and skill in the use of the horsewhip, bowie-knife, and revolver; it has thus kept away from the direction of our public affairs the class of largeminded able Christian persons, most competent to make our country happy at home and respected abroad." The accuracy of such an estimate of the causes of some unfortunate peculiarities in American character seems to be attested by the moderation and patriotic regard for the general weal which have been manifest since slavery fell. Mr. Johnson is, let it be hoped, the type of this new spirit. The speech of his, to the Coloured Regiment at Washington, forbids a doubt of his sincerity, and suggests the belief that he speaks the feelings of the community at large, in saying "Upon the return of peace and the surrender of the enemies of the country, it should be the duty of every patriot, and every one who calls himself a Christian, to remember that with the termination of the war his resentment should cease, that angry feelings should subside, and that every man should become calm and tranquil, and be prepared for what is before him." If a permanent good understanding between England and America be possible and desirable, by what means shall it be brought about? An im pected. There is no subject to produce irritation. We need no longer fear the Americanization of our institutions, for the party which urged that change is admittedly powerless. It would be ungenerous if we threw obstacles in the way of the settlement of the negro difficulty, for which we are in a degree responsible. Canada suggests no serious apprehensions, since the Canadians have shown an unmistakable resolve to maintain their own independence. The eyes of the Americans have been opened by the bursting of the Fenian bubble. They perceive that there is not sufficient internal discontent in Ireland to afford materials for a rebellion above the Cabbage-garden character even under the stimulus of liberal supplies of foreign money. They are beginning, moreover, to understand how powerful for mischief the Irish element among themselves may become in the probably nearly balanced state of their parties. There is accordingly no solid cause of quarrel between the countries, and it seems the part of patriotism to speak of America and the Americans as if there were none. That line taken, and the Confederate cruisers' difficulty-the last relic of old jealousies-allowed, as both parties desire, to lapse quietly, there would appear to be an opportunity which a largeminded English statesman would not be slow to take advantage of for uniting in common sympathies the two nations most alike in all the substantial features of national life. Now that America has become a great military Power her alliance is worth having, and we may reasonably assume that if England does not secure it some other State will. It would be easy to show how a Russo-American offensive and defensive compact would cause us trouble in the Far East; and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that America might even wean from us the particular European alliance in which we place unbounded confidence. A wise people ever looks ahead. The injunction," Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," was not given to nations. INDEX TO VOL. LXVI. Abbey of Glastonbury, Description of, 486; Beatrice, a Verse-Drama, in Two Acts. Act I., Prologue; Palazzo on the Canale Chorus, Cæsar to Christ, Scenes in the Transition Celtic Saints, Legends of. How Saint Eloi Discipline of Valerie Gore; being an extract English Monachism, Rise and Influence of, English Bible, Early History of, and Lite- Esquimaux, Life with the, Captain Hall's. Folk-Books of France, The. Almanacs, GUY DEVERELL. By J. S. LeFanu, Au- General Election, The. Verdict of the 631. Grand Tour, The, 336; the City of the History of English Bible, 363, et seq. IRISH VICEROYS (Gilbert's), The, from Monachism, Rise and Influence of, 483. Moods of Mind: By a Student of Pascal. "NOT WISELY BUT TOO WELL:” A Tale. Chaps. I. to VIL, 123; Chaps. VII. to Number Five Brook-street. By the author of "Bella Donna." Book the First, Not Alone. By Mortimer Collins, esq., 697. Parties, Public Opinion, and the General Parliament, The New. The Coalition Party, 352; Reform Theories-Mr. Bab- Pioneers, The, and Patriarchs of Invention, 296; the Marquis of Worcester and the Classic and Continental Poets-Martial; Mould, No. 1; The Grave-yard; Geneth- Samosatian, Philosopher and Satirist, The; Tinted Sketches in Madeira. Good Friday Twilight of Faith, The; or, Foreshadowings Vestiges of the Picts and Gael, 661. |