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Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

III: a word more about America. when I was at Chicago last year, I was asked whether Lord Coleridge would not write a book about America. I ventured to answer confidently for him that he would do nothing of the kind. Not at Chicago only, but almost wherever I went, I was asked whether I myself did not intend to write a book about America. For oneself one can answer yet more confidently than for one's friends, and I always replied that most assuredly I had no such intention. To write aChicago only, but almost wherever I went, I was asked whether I myself did not intend to write a book about America. For oneself one can answer yet more confidently than for one's friends, and I always replied that most assuredly I had no such intention. To write a book about America, on the strength of having made merely such a tour there as mine was, and with no fuller equipment of preparatory studies and of local observations than I possess, would seem to me an impertinence. It is now a long while since I read M. de Tocqueville's famous work on Democracy in America. I have the highest respect for M. de Tocqueville; but my remembrance of his book is that it deals too much in abstractions for my taste, and that it is written, moreover, in a style wh

Such were his character, style, and faculties, that alone perhaps among men of his insight he was capable of getting his ideas weighed and entertained by men in power; while amid all favor and under all temptations he was certain to have still remained true to his insight, unshaken, unseduced, unterrified. I think of him as a real power for good in Parliament at this time, had he by now become, as he might have become, one of the leaders there. His absence from the scene, his retirement in Canada, is a loss to his friends, but a still greater loss to his country, Hardly inferior in influence to Parliament itself is journalism. I do not conceive of Mr. John Morley as made for filling that position in Parliament which Mr. Goldwin Smith would, I think, have filled. If he controls, as Protesilaos in the poem advises, hysterical passion (the besetting danger of men of letters on the platform and in Parliament) and remembers to approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul, he will

ress, or must possess the confidence of Congress. Another observer may say that the marriage laws for the whole nation ought to be fixed by Congress, and not to vary at the will of the legislatures of the several States. I myself was much struck with the inconvenience of not allowing a man to sit in Congress except for his own district; a man like Wendell Phillips was thus excluded, because Boston would not return him. It is as if Mr. Bright could have no other constituency open to him if Rochdale would not send him to Parliament. But all these are really questions of machinery (to use my own term), and ought not so to engage our attention as to prevent our seeing that the capital fact as to the institutions of the United States is this: their suitableness to the American people, and their natural and easy working. If we are not to be allowed to say, with Mr. Beecher, that this people has a genius for the organization of states, then at all events we must admit that in its own orga

pressly and thoroughly suited to it. I had not properly appreciated the benefits proceeding from this cause. Sir Henry Maine, in an admirable essay which, though not signed, betrays him for its author by its rare and characteristic qualities of mind and style--Sir Henry Maine, in the Quarterly Review, adopts and often reiterates a phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that Democracy is only a form of government. He holds up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft's History, in which the Amerind majestically as the laws of being, and was as certain as the decrees of eternity. Let us be willing to give Sir Henry Maine his way, and to allow no magnificent claim of this kind on behalf of the American democracy. Let us treat as not more soss of health; it in general sees its political and social concerns straight, and sees them clear. So that when Sir Henry Maine and M. Scherer tells us that democracy is merely a form of government, we may observe to them that it is in the United St

which I am speaking. The business of these districts would be more advantageously done in assemblies of the kind; they would form a useful school for the increasing number of aspirants to public life, and the House of Commons would be relieved. The strain in Ireland would be relieved too, and by natural and safe means. Irishmen are to be found, who, in desperation at the present state of their country, cry out for making Ire. land independent and separate, with a national Parliament in Dublin, with her own foreign office and diplomacy, her own army and navy, her own tariff, coinage, and currency. This is manifestly impracticable. But here again let us look at what is done by people who in politics think straight and see clear; let us observe what is done in the United States. The Government at Washington reserves matters of imperial concern, matters such as those just enumerated, which cannot be relinquished without relinquishing the unity of the empire. Neither does it allow

ily and successfully. Suppose we now pass to Ireland. I will not ask if our institutions work easceedings we set up, indeed, a make-believe of Ireland's being constitutionally governed. But it is a staple and prosperous society can arise in Ireland? Has he even any ideal for the future there,s, prosperous and deferential, and society in Ireland settling quietly down again upon the old basiion of the House of Commons, the confusion of Ireland. And then, when we have discovered the kind immediately to one's mind in the provinces of Ireland, the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, Walef Commons would be relieved. The strain in Ireland would be relieved too, and by natural and safrt. Let us suppose a similar plan applied in Ireland. There are four provinces there, forming fout of the empire would still be in London, and Ireland would send members to it. But at the same tim provincial legislatures of Great Britain and Ireland would elect members to the House of Lords. T[4 more...]

t in London would leave Ireland to manage itself. Lord Spencer and Mr. Campbell Bannerman would come back to England. Dublin Castle would be the State House of Leinster. Land questions, game laws, police, church, education, would be regulated by the people and legislature of Leinster for Leinster, of Ulster for Ulster, of MunstLeinster for Leinster, of Ulster for Ulster, of Munster and Connaught for Munster and Connaught. The same with the like matters in England and Scotland. The local legislatures would regulate them. But there is more. Everybody who watches the working of our institutions perceives what strain and friction is caused in it at present, by our having a Second Chamber composed almostLeinster, of Ulster for Ulster, of Munster and Connaught for Munster and Connaught. The same with the like matters in England and Scotland. The local legislatures would regulate them. But there is more. Everybody who watches the working of our institutions perceives what strain and friction is caused in it at present, by our having a Second Chamber composed almost entirely of great landowners, and representing the feelings and interests of the class of land. owners almost exclusively. No one, certainly, under the conditions of a modern age and our actual life, would ever think of devising such a Chamber. But we will allow ourselves to do more than merely state this truism, we will allow