AMERICAN CENTRIFITGALISM. T HE Times' correspondent in New York sent on
Tues- day a most interesting letter on certain rumours which show how impatient the various States in that loosely compacted Union sometimes become of the tie which binds them together ; and yet how incoherent and incapable of anything like regular crystallisation that impatience itself is. Just now, as before most Presidential elections, there is a good deal of centrifugal force at work, and especially the West is fretting very much under its com- pulsory association with the East, and trying to think that it would be all the happier and more at ease if it could be set free from the necessity of conforming to the principles of a Union which includes so many inconsistent and even diametrically opposed interests, and covers so many natural antagonisms. The East has lent a great deal of money to the West, and the West is irritated at the thought of the securities which it has pledged to the East, and the hard terms, as the West regards them, on which alone it can redeem those securities. Again, the whole Union having adopted the unfortunate habit of jealously " protecting" itself, as it is called, against the commercial competition of Europe and Asia, the West very naturally pursues the logic of the protective system a little further, and asks itself why it may not " protect " itself against the East, and shut out what it regards as tho inconvenient commercial competition of the older and more perfectly developed States. Then, of course, there is the great currency quarrel at work, the silver versus gold controversy, on which so much political conflict turns at the present moment. The silver States think they should get on much better if they were not bound up so in- extricably with the gold States, and might pay all their 4Nbts in the cheaper metal. Then there is a growing sense of disgust between the rougher, and in some sense wilder, life of the half-settled States, and the more -elaborate and polished life of the older communities. The West indulges a sort of contempt for the more fastidious habits of the East, and feels towards its Eastern brothers much as the rough schoolboy feels towards the 'molly-coddle" who comes fresh from a more carefully ordered home. The West is sensible, too, of its rapidly grow- ing power, and all the more angered that it has to defer to 'what it regards as the fanciful and old-fashioned order DI Eastern traditions. At every Presidential election these geographical jealousies break out afresh, and now and then take rather formidable forms as they do just at the present moment, when one great section of the Union thinks that it ought to be able to pay its debts at a very much less sacrifice than that to which the other sections of the Union insist on binding it.
Fortunately, as the Times' correspondent conclusively shows, it is quite impossible really to find any geographical division which would separate the States which wish for a silver currency from the States which wish for a gold currency, or the States which wish to maintain Free- trade between all the parts of the Union from the States which would like to protect themselves against the manu- facturers of the Atlantic coast, or the States which regard • the great bankers as their natural enemies from the States which identify themselves wholly with the interests of 'those bankers, or even the States which love the rough. and-ready type of citizenship from the States which prefer the polished and literary civilisation of Europeanised ideas. Amongst the silver States will be found many which are by no means in other respects of the West, Western. Amongst the great lending States will be found many which are by no means identified with the East. Amongst the -States which are jealous of the manufacturers with whom they want to compete and find that they cannot at present compete profitably, are many which are not to be classed as belonging to the West. And among the States which have a certain contempt for the more orderly and stricter life of the East, are many which cannot possibly be identified with the impetuous and not very consistent restlessness of the Far West. If any attempt were made or could be made to classify the impatient States, and again the States which abide strictly by the old constitutional ideas, it would be found that neither classification would admit of any geographical tie. Some of the South-Western States, for instance, would be found amongst the most restless, and others amongst the most constitutional It is certain that you would often find a wealthy and orderly State cheek-by-jowl with a revolutionary and impatient State. Hence, the Union cannot be broken up, because the elements of disorder are dotted about like the frag- mentary bits of a Scotch county, amongst the most strenuous advocates of constitutional law. Indeed, what the restless portions of the Union have not yet come to understand, is that if there were not so many and such vast • differences as there are amongst the political and com- mercial elements of the Union, the Union itself would not be half as solid as it is. It is because the Union covers all the varieties of life spread over a great continent, that the protective doctrines which have grown up of late, and have rendered the American people so jealous of European and Asiatic competition, have done so little harm to the United States themselves. The Free-trade which the Union guarantees between its widely severed States, be- tween sub-tropical States and temperate States and almost Arctic States, between maritime States and inland States, between mining States and agricultural States, between literary States and half-barbarous States, is the reason why the spread of a narrowly protective policy has done, -and can do, so little harm. Free-trade in a great continent is not so good as Free-trade in a planet, but it is so infinitely better than Free-trade in a very limited area of a few thousand square miles, that the evil of the protective and jealous policy is disguised, and the American people prosper in spite of doctrines which are not only mistaken but would be destructive if they were not kept at bay by the vast extent of the surface over which Free-trade is guaranteed. If once the various States could break asunder and could begin " protecting" themselves against each other, if the West could shut out the East and the North the South, we should soon see the poisonous jealousies which are so freely expressed and circulated in the heat of a Presidential election, rendering the whole continent miserable, and starving out the populations which had prided themselves on fomenting these jealousies. The Union has been saved from ruin by the very extent of the differences between its various members. If positive law had not forbidden the embodi- ment of their jealousies in actual policy, we should long ago have seen the States growing both poorer and more exclusive. Indeed, in that case the West would never have attained the immense power which it now wields in the Union, while the East would have lost half the opportunities for its growth in wealth and influence. What England would have gained by having perfect Free-trade with her Colonies, the United States have gained by being included under the limits of a federal Constitution which covers climates and populations and institutions quite as different from each other as those of England from those of her greater Colonies.
And yet it is remarkable that just at the time when England and her Colonies are drawing nearer to each other, and showing their wish to be more closely united, the different States of the American Union are apparently feeling more keenly their mutual repulsions, and in- dulging a fruitless desire for separation from each other. To some extent, no doubt, it has been beneficial to English feeling here and in the Colonies, not to be tied to each other as the States are tied by an indissoluble con- stitutional bond. Of course we have lost the commercial advantages which the United States have gained (though without duly appreciating their gain) by their inclusion in one great federation ; but the loss has not been without compensation. By realising fully what the loss means, we ha,vo at least learned to desire what we cannot yet obtain ; while the United States, by obtaining what they have never learned to desire, have unfortunately come to under- value and even to dislike that which has been so beneficial to their material interests. It is of the very essence of free communication and free exchange that different localities and different characters should learn the significance of their local advantages and their local disadvantages,— of the gifts which they have, and which those with whom they exchange what they have to exchange, have not,—and the great value of free communication with populations the most unlike to themselves, just because they are so unlike, and because they supplement each other. And this can perhaps be learned better by the sense of want than it can by that of undisturbed possession. The United States do not know what they would lose if they could give the rein to all their jealousies of each other, while England does know, and even her Colonies are beginning to know, what they would gain if they could be put on terms of freer exchange, whether of material or of mental gifts.
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