POLITICAL RUE WITH A DIFFERENCE.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, January 25, 1867. Two of the most remarkable, although not most important con- sequences of our Civil War, are the change of tone toward us in the comments of European publicists, and the knowledge of our affairs which has taken the place of the ignorance, or the confused half-knowledge, which in previous years they were wont to exhibit. The articles which appear now in the principal London papers about our political affairs, often evince such an acquaintance with our system of government, and with the purposes and personal composition of our parties and subdivisions of parties, as to awaken the suspicion that they are either written by " Americans " or with the benefit of American counsel. They take different views of the questions which they discuss ; but so do we ; and their differences are determined by such diversity of view in regard to politics and society as determine ours. The same is true of the speeches in whioh our affairs are subjects of comment ; whereas before the war, an Englishman could hardly open his mouth about us without putting his foot in it, however able he may have been to keep extremes from meeting upon other topics. I need hardly say that the Spectator is admitted here, by those who do not, as well as by those who do agree with its opinions, to have a better acquaintance with our politics and our society, and a truer apprehension of the spirit by which they are animated, than any of its British contemporaries. And if I cannot say that it has not improved in these respects as much as they have, it is only because it had not so much room for improvement. But still, in view of the greater difficulty that there is in the detection of all the differences between two objects which are very like, than with detection of all those between two which are very unlike, it would be strange if there were not many important points in " Ameri- can " public affairs as to which a man born and bred here ought, other things being equal, to know more than one born and bred in England. I am reminded of my advantages of position in this respect, and of the difference in spirit and purpose of the Govern- ments of the two countries, by certain passages in the Spectator (January 12th) which arrived here yesterday.
Monarchy, unless I misapprehend facts and misunderstand Englishmen, does not go for much with you now in the administra- tion of government, and Great Britain may be regarded in the main as an aristocratic constitutional republic, the ultimate con- trol of which is in the House of Commons, as the United States is a democratic constitutional republic ruled by the House of Representatives, the Constitution in the former case being flexible, in the latter fixed. The body of the common law of both countries, and the great charters and writs which are their landmarks and their bulwarks, are similar—they are the same. Yet notwithstand- ing this similarity upon cardinal points in the governments of two nations of the same race, a radical difference appears between the two in their purposes. With you Government seems to be expected not only to rule, but to mould and to construct ; with us the theory is that Government is to rule as little as possible, and not to mould or construct at all, but mainly to protect. This is the theory both of the National and the State Governments,—to leave the individual free, and to protect him in his freedom, which involves, of course, the care that each one shall use his freedom so as not to impair that of any other. This is its only function. To organize the people, to civilize the rural population, to educate or organize the town populations, to extinguish pauperism, to organize labour and the Church, a failure to do which is urged by the Spectator as evidence that the House of Commons has fallen short of reasonable expectations,—these are not the functions of Government in this country ; and compulsory education, compul- sory provisions against thriftlessness, sickness, and old age, and even compulsory morality, are equally foreign to its spirit. If Free Trade ever obtains here, it will do so less upon grounds of political economy, than as a part and parcel of the freedom of the individual,—his right to 14uy what he likes with his own money without hindrance. As I have said before, the fundamental poli- tical axiom here is—that is the best government which governs least ; and no one ventures to dispute it, or to endeavour to set it aside, except those who would like to use the power of the Govern- ment to impose some pet notion or ism upon others, or the money of the nation to forward some particular interest.
It is perhaps to the habit of looking upon Government, the Government, that is, the central ruling power of the nation, as although a representative and responsible, a plastic power, a sort of second-rate Providence, that many Englishmen, and among them chiefly those who are most favourable to the wide representation of the people, hold that our central Government is responsible for the bloody disorders of Southern society, or that it, at least, will be responsible, if that society is not so reorganized that those dis- orders shall hereafter be impossible. Now, the reason of the pre- sent condition of Southern society (except in the poverty of the people and the freedom of the negroes) is not the war, or hatred of the negro, or a rebellious spirit against the Government. It is simply that the South is but half civilized, that according to the standard of civilization at the present day its condition is really semi-barbarous. It is true that negroes are murdered, and that all kinds of violence are done them at the South with impunity. Not only so, but it is true that they suffer in this way more than they did before the war ; for the reason that they have ceased to be valuable property, the injury or destruction of which is resisted from motives of interest. But if negroes are murdered without terror of the law, so are white men. White men have been murdered and outraged, and their houses burned over their heads, at the South for generations with impunity. Possibly before this letter will be read some Lon- don paper will have copied the account of a series of murders which has just come to an end in Eastern Tennessee. Fourteen men of two families were deliberately murdered one by one in a quarrel which began about some fence-rails, and which continued through twenty years, until finally the surviving male members of the two families met and killed each other in the street. Cooler or bloodier murders never were committed ; and yet in case of trial there was acquittal, but generally there was not even indictment. A friend of mine told me not long since that before the war a white man living near him in Northern Georgia was taken out of his house, shot and stabbed before his wife's eyes, and flung, still living, down a well. The men who did this were perfectly well known, but they were not even arrested. Another acquaintance was telling me only the other day of his seeing in the streets of Richmond one man draw a bowie knife upon another, who was walking quietly by himself, unarmed, and lay his head and cheek open with a frightful gash. The assailant, who was proceeding to finish his victim, was in this case interrupted and carried off ; but that was the end of the affair. What need, though, of such recitals? My readers must know by this time how common such occurrences are and always have been in the South, and also that the victims of this slaying and maiming are in most cases white men. In North Carolina the solemn flogging that General Sickles used his military power to prevent was not that of a negro, but of a white man. All this went on for years before the war, and the central Government took no steps to inter- fere with it, simply because it had not the constitutional right of doing so. And now there are men who say all this killing and abuse of negroea is very bad, but so is the murder of white men ; and if my brother may be butchered and flung down a well, and nothing can be done, why should there anything be done when the victim is a negro ? If a dozen of my kinsmen and acquaintances may be murdered with impunity in Eastern Tennessee, because constitutional government is of more importance than individual lives, why should constitutional government be subverted for the sake of a dozen negroes in Louisiana ? Previous experience warns me to say that I do not put forward this reasoning as my conclu- sive settlement of the great question now before the country, but merely as one view of that question which must receive the most serious consideration. It is not that " negro murder is not murder " at the South ; it is that what is murder, whether of white or black, in the North or in England, is not murder there. It is not that our Lower House is derelict because " it has failed to civilize the rural population" of the South, but because the task of civiliza- tion is no part of its functions.
In its criticism of Professor Blackie's oration upon the evils of Democracy, the Spectator, according to my observation of demo- cracy, is correct on every point, particularly in its indication of a. dangerous uniformity in the deliberative body, and ignorance in the constituencies about the larger number of political questions- as the chief evils of that form of government. It is from the latter- deficiency in our people that we are chiefly suffering now. But on one point, as regards this country, the Spectator falls into error. It attributes the corruptness of our Municipal Council and State- Legislature in New York to the lack of sufficient publicity for their proceedings, and of strong public interest in the details of what is done. Now, the fact is, that the proceedings of these bodies are as public as those of any body can be. They are open to all comers ; any one who chooses to do so may watch them, from one year's end to another ; and the public interest in them is that which attaches to that most sensitive of all subjects, the pocket.. But of what use is publicity or interest? You find a big, burly fellow robbing your strong box, and say to him, "-You scoundrel, you are robbing me I" and if you have as much muscle and pluck as he has, plus justice and your intelligence, you take hold of him, and by moral and physical force you bring him under; but if you. have only justice and your intelligence, he thrusts his hands into your gold, and answers, " Well, what are you going to do about it ?" The latter is just our position. We know just how we are swindled and disgraced, and the matter is one on which we are extremely sensitive ; but more than half the voters of the city are emigrant European peasants, to whom we, with twice-sodden brains, have given man for man the same voice in the government that we have ; and so the brutal, swindling demagogues, at whose beck they vote, grin in our faces, and go on robbing us in open day before our- eyes. We see it all, but under present circumstances we can do no- thing. Yet publicity cannot be greater than that which attends the proceedings of our official bodies of all grades. One result of this publicity is at the bottom of a misapprehension in regard to our system of tax-collecting which is common in England. It seems to be generally supposed that the publication here of the lists of incomes is official, and is one manifestation of " American " liking for publicity in private matters. Quite the contrary. The publi- cation of these lists is purely a matter of private speculation. It is done only in the large commercial towns, and its object is to gratify the meanest and most prying curiosity. It began with the publication in a notorious newspaper of about a column of names and incomes, the reporter having picked them out of the tax roll, which is, of course, open to public inspection. There was a protest and a hubbub at once. The collectors, at the request of tax-payers, refused to exhibit their registers, and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue was written to for instructions. His reply was merely that he could discover no law or authority for refusing to show the tax registers to taxpayers, which with us means almost every man in the country. Of course, that settled the question. The whole tax register is now copied and published as a speculation, and the decent, native- born taxpayers submit with as good a grace as they can assume.. Of course, being done, it is of some service to officers of the Internal Revenue Department as a check upon attempted fraud.. But we trust people here very freely in regard to their taxability. The income-tax is national ; but our city and county tax in New York is on property only, personal as well as real ; and his rate is, practically settled by the taxpayer himself. A man finding him- self taxed upon a certain amount of personal property, can pro- nounce the estimate excessive, and upon his oath the tax in reduced to the rate upon the amount which he asserts to be correct. But as the tax books are open to the public, if he takes. a false oath he knows that if he be not publicly exposed, he will at least run a great risk of losing his good repute. We find that. this last part of our system of taxation works well.—A YA.NKEE-
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