The Historical Aspect of the United States [pp. 150-158]

APPLETONS' JO URNAL.
benefactors. The very phrase which I use recalls the mediaeval beneficence out of which
sprang some of the chief educational institutions
of our own country. I do not say that this munificence has died out of the nineteenth century,
at home or in the older countries. In one branch,
that of public libraries for general use-which is
the chief glory of the modern institutions of the
United States, as its almost total absence is the
chief reproach to the metropolis of London-in
these public libraries I understand that at least in
Birmingham a near approach has been made to
the generosity, whether of corporations or of individuals, in the United States. Still the freedom,
almost the recklessness, with which these benefactions are lavished beyond the Atlantic, bears
upon its face the characteristic of an older age,
reappearing amid our modern civilization like the
granite bowlder of some earlier formation. For
the likenesses in our English history to John
Harvard, to the "Ten Worthy Fathers" of Yale,
to Johns Hopkins and Astor and George Peabody and Peter Cooper, we must look to our
Wykehams, our Waynfletes, our Wolseys, at Oxford, and those whose names are immortalized
in Gray's splendid ode on the benefactors of
Cambridge.
2. Again, the distinct character, the independent government, the separate legislation of the
various States which compose the Republic of
North America, represent a condition of political
society to which modern Europe offers no parallel, except perhaps in the small federation of
Switzerland, and for which on so large a scale
we must for an example go back to the not yet
developed states of Europe, just emerging from
the old Roman Empire into the new Christian
empire of Charlemagne, each indeed marked by
the separate nationalities which were already beginning to show themselves, but even in the sixth
or the ninth century speaking, as in the vast continent of North America at the present day, at
least among the educated classes, one language,
and subject, at least in name, to one central government. You will not suppose that in thus referring to the independence and diversity of the
different States of America I am presuming to
enter on that most delicate question of American
politics, the exact point where the fights of the
separate States terminate and the rights of the
central Government begin. I treat of it only in
its general features as an unquestionable phe nomenon, which indicates that the American
Commonwealth is yet in the beginning of politi cal society, and that the end may be something
far different from that which we now behold.
3. Again, in the relations of the laboring
classes to the educated or upper classes of Amer ica, without intrenching on the thorny questions
of capital and labor, of socialism and of political
economy, which are now beginning to agitate the
New World as they agitate the Old, there is a
peculiarity which exists in no European country
at the present time, and which is a problem kindred to the first arrangements of the states of the
ancient classical world. It is the peculiarity by
which mechanical and manual labor is performed,
for the most part, not by natives but by foreigners. What the Pelasgians were in Attica, what
the Helots were in Sparta, what the Israelites
were in Egypt, what the Canaanites were in Palestine, what the Greeks generally called by the
varying names Paraci or Periceci, that is to say,
the aboriginal or foreign element which the ruling class appropriated to itself for these inferior
purposes-that, in some measure, the Irish, the
negroes, and the Chinese are to the Anglo-Saxon
race of the United States. It has often been observed how widely this diversity of the Grecian
commonwealths from those of modemrn Europe
influences any judgment which we may draw
from them and their condition to ours; it is not
less true that a like precaution is rendered necessary by the appearance of this similar phenomenon in the United States of America.
I might multiply indefinitely the instances of
this divergence in the relative stages of social
and political and ecclesiastical existence in America and Europe. Whether we condemn or approve the institutions of the United States or of
our own country, the main practical condition
under which we must start on any comparison
is, that to a very large extent the two spheres of
the Old World and the New World are as almost
incommensurable as the period of Theseus or
Lycurgus with the age of Alexander, or the period
of Egbert or Charles Martel with the period of
Henry VIII. or Charles V.
But besides the light which this view of American history throws on the past and the present,
there is also the further question of the light
which it throws upon the future. It does not follow that because a nation has flourished for many
centuries it is near its end. Far from us be any
such desponding fatalism. Yet still it can not
be denied that the longer the retrospect is, there
is produced a sense of satiety or of completeness
which, to a certain degree, contracts the vision
of the future. It is the reverse of this feeling
that is produced by what I have called the near
and, as it were, closely present antiquity of the
American States. We insensibly look forward to
the possibility of a vaster development than we
do in the older nations. And this expectation is
no new thing. Amid all the evil forebodings,
and all the failures of American existence, it has
always been present. Whether from the remark able circumstance of its first beginnings, certain
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