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Democratic absolutism of "a tyrant majority" as it is to the Autocratic absolutism of an Emperor elected by universal suffrage and the ballot. "Englishmen," as Mr. Emerson remarks, are not to be led by a phrase; they want a working plan—a working machine—a working constitution." Hence the strong aversion they have always manifested to Gallican and American ideas when any attempt has been made to incorporate them in our institutions. Their first inquiry is: How have those theories worked in America and France? So far as the United States was concerned, it was easy to give a plausible answer to this question a few years ago. But the civil war which broke out in 1861 gave a terrible blow to the theory of American perfectibility, as well as to those arguments in favour of "Americanising our institutions" which, the advanced Liberals naturally founded on that theory.
It was only a few months before the fall of Fort Sumter that Mr. Bright, in a speech he made at Wakefield, drew the following contrast between the working of English and American institutions:—
"How came it—he asked their public writers—he asked their statesmen—he asked ministers of religion,—how came it—the fact was indisputable—that in the United States the great body of the artisans and labouring classes were so much better off than those of this country were? He knew of three causes that would account for it. In the United States the land was wholly free from all feudal law and tenures; the people were instructed by an extensive and thoroughly working common school system, useful to a degree infinitely beyond what the people of this country ever dreamt of; and further, that, from some cause or other that he could not then inquire into, the Government of the United States, although the population of each country was about 30,000,000, spent about 60,000,000l. less than the Government of this country."[1]
The majority of your "Westminster constituents, who
- ↑ Another and more potent cause, which Mr. Bright did not mention, is the difference in regard to density of population in the two countries. In America it ranges from 60 or 70 inhabitants per square mile in New England, to 3 inhabitants per mile in Texas and California. In Great Britain the average is 242 inhabitants per square mile.
