The

404

Nation.

A&i&s on any of the subjectsusually discussedin this journal will bereceivedfrom

athy quarter. If used, they will beliberally paid for ; if

~*cjecid,

they Will be?~itu?wdto

the writers 011the receipt of the reynisiteamount of postarjestamnps.

All Communicationswhich pertain to the literary mawzgement@THE NATIONshould
be addressedto the Editor.

THE RESULT OF THE TRIAL.

vote on the verdict, even if it has not resulted in conviction,
has abundantly justified the IIouse in impeaching the President.
When thirty-five out of fifty-four senators pronounce him guilty, it
would be absurd as well as unjust to say that there Kas not ( probable
cause for instituting t!le prosecution, and one may take this view of
the matter even after making some allowance for the influence of party
The trial of a President by the Senfeeling and political excitement.
ate for offences committed in the course of a long quarrel with Congress touching the limits of his polver under the Constitution cannot bc
a.fair one in the sense in which we speak of a fair trial before an ordinary tribunal, where the accused and the judge hare never previously
hacl any relations whatever. The Senate, being a branch of the lcgislature, must have many imperfections as a court of justice; to expect
that it will not, is to expect that senators will prove themselves more
than men. 811 the public can ask of them is that they will make all possible efforts to rid their minds during the trial of pride, prejudice, and
passion, and govern themselves to the best of their ability by the law
and the evidence. That in the present instance they have done so we
have never seen good reason to question, and we therefore think their
action a sufficient vindication of the action of the IIouse in preferring
the charges. One may still doubt the policy of its course, but one
cannot accuse it of mere vindictiveness, or mere subservience to party
spirit in pursuing it.
The failure to convict is to be regretted for several reasons, but
that it leaves Mr. Johnson in the Presidential chair we no longer
include amongst the number. In the first place, it is not unlikely that
during the remainder of his term he IT-ill behave well ; in tile second,
even if he should desire to do mischief. his powers of mischief nom, as
we have already pointed out, are almost ?zil; and in the third, if hc
should commit fresh follies and extravagances, although the scandal
will be great, it will be more than compensated for by the fact that
they will help the Republican party during the coming campaign.
His last follies helped it materially in 1YGG. Moreover, after the
exhibition we have had durin g the last week or two of the taste ani
temper of the men who would in case of his deposition have had
charge of the Government, it is difficult to believe that the country
would have gained by the change, and it is quite certain that the party
would have lost by it, for it would have had to bear the burden o:
their indiscretions.
But the acquittal, although the largeness of the vote for convictior
may justify the House morally, is not likely to strengthen the conlidencc
of the country in the judgment of the majority.
Moreover, it has son16
tendency to create a certain amount of confidence in the
judgment.
It leaves him less hopelessly in the wrong than he seemec
six months ago, and it leaves him in possession of the honors o
the field. His escape, to be sure, has been very narrow, but ir
politics, as in war, an inch of a miss is as good as a mile. He was
before the trial, in the position of a man whom Congress might crush
but would not ; noTv, he is in the position of a man who~ii Congrcs:
tried to crush, but could not. It is certainly not Congress that ha:
gained by this change. *
The House, too, did not shine on the trial.
It was not we1
represented. It tried hard to have the case tried on high morn
grounds, or on grounds of general expediency ; and yet it put in the
forefront of its battle a lawyer whose opinions on high moral ques
tions, or questions of general especliency, nobody heeds, and whost
forte lies in his sharpness as p.leader in courts of law, and whose wan
of manners, or rather want of decency, throughout the case gave thl
President a constant advantage, which increased up to the very Ins
day. Moreover, the Nanagers were overmatched throughout in learn
ing and ability. There is no use now in passing this over withou
TEE

,: p

[niray 21, 1868

lotice. The contrast ras patent to everybody throughout the trial,

ind was a constant subject of comment. What tllc N:mngcrs wanted
n law and logic they had to make up by warmth qf l;mguage ; but
his, though useful in a short case, is not efrcrtive in a trial protracted
,ver several weeks, and before a tribunal of cltlcrly men hardened to
,hetoric, and in whom the fires of enthusiasm llave I~>x~(lied out.
What has made the effect of acquittal most it!ikirious, hc;wcver, has
leen the conduct of a portion of the Raclical press ant1 politicians
.omards those Republican members of the court who were not satisfied
>y the evidence and the arguments of the
guilt. To fail to
:onvict at all was rather mortif~iug, of course ; but to fail after having
:pent a ~cclc in holding the most honored of tlrc p:~rty lenders, its
Xisest heads and purest characters, up to csccration as
villains,
s more mortifying still. Happily the great hotly of t11cparty, ccrtainy all the intelligent portion of it, and all its most inilucntial and
.espected newspapers, made a determined stand against this amazing
jurst of folly, and thus saved the party from damnation-and,
et us add, from well-mcritcd
claninati!,n.
For a party which
:oolly informs the world that its most trustctl, longest tried lead:rs aud counscllors-men honored for their Ic:lrnin~, ability, and
ntegrity-have
committed perjury while sitting as jllllgos in the
lighest court known to the law, and have acceptctl bril~cs from the
( whiskey ring as the reward of their baseness-as the 3i.ibulcn and
;ome kindred sheets informed the public every day during the past
week about-Messrs. Trumbull, Fessenden, and others-of course ought
not to exist any longer. To vote its ticket after RUC~ a revelation
would be a dcgrntlation of the deepc~t lcin(l. It would be useless for
the 3?*ilj~2c to assure us that all the other politicians of the party
were honest except these. Nobody could be dcceivcd in this way.
Fancy following Nessrs. Butler, Stevens, Logan, ant1 JIomce Greeley
with implicit confidence, after Trumbull, Fcsscntlen, Urimcs, IIenclerson, Fowler, and Van Winhle~had turned out shameless and corrupt
scoundrels. The party would have had to 1~ I)rokcn up as an
abomination. No men in it have given such gusrantces of honor, and
purity, and zeal as the so-called traitors.
If these be false, it is impudent to ask the country to trust any others the party can produce.
The more we look into this cr~sscle against the f;lir
of the dissentients, the more reason we find for feeling thankful that the main
body of the party refused to share in it. As all our readers know, what
brought impeachment down on Mr. Johnson was his violation of the
Tenure-of-Office Act in removing Mr. Stanton and appointing General
Thomas Secretary nd interim in his place. The other charges, including that of bad language in 18GG, made in the articl(,s, except the
slender one of trying to seduce General Emory, were all I,rought before
the IIouse by the Impeachment Committee six months before the
present articles were filed, were fully discussed, and it was solemnly
declared by a large majority that they were insufficient to sustain a
prosecution. When, however, be removed 3Zr. Stanton, the House
agreed that he had at last done the deed which brought him within the
meshes of the law, and voted for impeachment for this uct, and in consequence of this act, and this only. Rftcrwartls, ant1 just I,efore the filing
of the articles, Thaddeus Stevens secured the atltlition of tbc eleventh
article, which charged that the removal of Mr. Stanton was a high
crime and misdemeanor, committed in pursuance of his declaration,
made a year and a half previously, that LCongress was not the Congress
of the United States, but only of a part of the States, thereby denying
and intending to deny that its legislation TTTas
ohli,@ory on him.? The
object of this article, therefore, was to connect the rcmovnl of Stanton
in February, iSGH, with a speech delivered in August, 186G; and this
was an afterthought, too. It was not on this that impeachment was
first voted; it was on the removal of Stanton taken by itself, as a violation in terms of a valid law of Congress. Now it is admitted that
large numbers of the Republican senators would vote (( not guilty on
the charge of violating the lam in removing Stanton ant1 appointing
Thomas-that
is, on the very charges wliich pro~lncc(I tllc impeachment. In fact, these charges, it now appears, arc cc,naitlercd to have
brdken down in the course of the trial, so that a l:c~pul~lican senator
may vote not guilty on them without laying bimsclf open to the
suspicion of corruption.
Mr. Stevens, indeed, has declared that they
have no weight ; that the real wejght is in his article : and his article

I(<
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May 21,1868]

The

Nation.

405

Democratic press has dealt in wholesale abuse, most Republican papers

have seemed by their silence to admit that t,hey hat1 no case, and
meant to let the matter go by default. Tct, to the careful observer,
the composition not only of the constitutions, but also of the conventions which draughted them, offers perhaps the most satisfactory proof
yet obtainable from actual experience of the soundness of the policy of
Congress. Not to leave this statement uusupportctl, we propose to
bring together in a compendious form the results of a pretty thorough examination into these matters-results both interesting and valuable, and which can hardly fail to bring conviction in their train.
First, then, to show the component elements going to make up the
conventions themselves. It is well known that their members were
chosen by the combined votes of blacks and whites, without either
educational or other proper restrictions-a
system which, according to
the Democratic soothsnycrs, is to inaugurate and for cvcr ensure ncgro
dominance. The canvass on the part of the Iiepul)licnns
wns active and
thorough. The negroes were in the first flush of power, of the extent
of which they were fully informed. Pet they used it in a manner and
with a moderation which surprised many even of their admirers.
Here are the statistics. In Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi
the black delegates were outnumbered by the white : Conservatives,
so-called. In all the States except Louisiana (where the yellow fever
had frightened multitudes of whites from the State) and South Carolina,
the black members were in so small a ratio as to bc, by themselves,
utterly powerless. Save in the two above-named States, the proportions ranged from a minimum of one-fifteenth in Arkansas to a
maximum of about one quarter in Florida.
These figures certainly
show that, however resolved any white faction may have been to rcpresent the dividing line as one of color, no considerable numl)er of the
blacks pursued the same illiberal policy ; an immense majority of them
must have thrown their ballots for white candidates ; and a not inconsiderable minority actually sinned on the other side, and conferred
their suffrage on thorough-paced Conservatives-a
technical appellation the force of which is wail untlcrstootl.
To our mint1 this last
fact appears a much sounder proof of the intellectual uufitness of the
blacks for suffrage than any other charge against them which has yet
been sustained by proof.
To epitomize any considerable number of these cnnatitutions would,
in our space, be quite impossible. We select, therefore, as fair spccimens, those of Alabama and of Florida.
Alabama was the first State in
the field, with a constitution quite as R;ldical as any since published,
aud subsequently invested with a peculiar interest by reason of the
struggle over its adoption, and the practical lesson taught by that
struggle. Curiously enough, it differs very little, in most respects, from
its predecessor, which was so satisfactory to its opponents. It is true
that it establishes universal suffrage for whites and blacks without any
tests whatsoever; but it is equally true and evident that the trial of
this theory in the Southern States is now a matter of sheer necessity,
which cannot be evaded; and this is the only ratlical innovation in
the entire document, unless the formal abolition of slavery and the
recognition of the supremacy of the National Government may strike
some minds as such. In its other parts, all the topics of the old constitution are touched upon, and all the views and principles of the old
constitution are fully retained; the two run in quite parallel and
similar courses until the subject-matter of the old one is exhausted.
Then, indeed, we find certain additions; but they are objectionable
only on the ignoble basis of a systematic obstruction of all progress
whatsoever in civilization.
They lie mainly in Articles XI. and XII.
The former of these is a very long and thorough series of enactments
concerning education, establishing a most complete system of universal
popular training, and providing ample sources of revenue permanently
THE NEW CONSTITUTIONS
OF THE SOUTHERNSTATES, to maintain the same in vigorous working order. The latter creates a
TEE time seems close at hand when many of the Southern States, Bureau of Industrial Resouraes, with large powers and correspondingly
having complied with the Reconstruction Act, are to rejoin the ancient extensive and important duties, among which are the discovery and
sisterhood. The votes upon the new constitutions have been scanned investigation of all the material resources of the State, and the
with only a passing interest, which has yielded to the more engrossing general diffusion of information concerning them, and also concerntopic of impeachment ; while the constitutions themselves, and the ing improvements in machinery, agriculture, manufactures, and the
very important facts to which they bear witness, have been hon- like. The great majority of the persons framing this document were
ored with a transient glance of kindly recognition by a few only of the native Alabamians, whose lot had been, and was to remain, inseparably
many who should be their warm supporters at the North. While the bound to that of their State, and whose honest object it clearly was

was submitted first to the vote as the strongest and therefore the best
test.
The position of 3Iessrs. Trumbull and
assailants, therefore, is jLlst this. A Republican senator mightsny on his oath, and get be
an honest man, that the removal of 1Ir. Stanton and the appointment of
General Thomas did not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor ; and
he might say on his oath, and yet be an honest man, that the wild
speeches of i8GG did not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor; but
if he says on his oath that he believes the removal of Mr. Stanton in
February, iSF8, was not done in pursuance of a plan formed by 3Ir.
Johnson in 1866, and of which the only evidence is a fragment of a
stump speech made in that year-popularly
supposed to have been
delivered under the influence of whiskey-although
&. Johnson
has ever since gone on acknowledging the validity of Congressional
legislation day by day in the ordinary course of business, he must be
a corrupt scoundrel-bribed
to violate his oath by fraudulent distillers.
His guilt is evident ; he is not only to be driven out of the party, but to
be held up to execration as a dishonorable man. This is a strictly correct
statement of the case. This is the charge against the dissentient
Republican senators, and the whole of it. There is not nearly as much
reason for suspecting a
good faith who refuses to convict on the
eleventh article as on the second and third, on simple grounds of evidence. The reason why the eleventh article has been made a test of
morals is the will of the extremists.
They choose to consider it so,
and Ii
an end on t. They say simply, To this article we require
your adhesion ; on the others we give you your liberty. Vote it, or we
We cast no im.
blacken your character to the extent of our ability.
putation on anybody who voted guilty on that article; but we venture to say that the number of trained lawyers who could do so is
small. Few, we venture to say, swallow it who have not worked themselves into the state of mental inflammation which seems to be endemic
at Washington, and of which Mr. Boutwell offered such a striking
symptom when he showed that Andrew
guilt was greater than
that of Csius Verres by showing that the superficial area of the United
States was greater than that of Sicily.
We be!ieve, for our part, that the thanks of the country are due to
Messrs. Trumbull, Fessenden, Grimes, Henderson, Fowler, Van Winkle,
and Ross, not for voting for
acquittal, but for vinclicating,
we presume nobody but themselves knows at what cost, the dignity
and purity of the court of which they formed a part, and the sacred
rights of individual conscience. They have
American young
men an example such as no politicians have ever afforded them in the
whole course of American history, and at a time, too, when the tcndency to put party claims above everything is rapidly increasing, and
when we are adding to our voting population a vast body of persons
on whom the great laws of morality sit only very lightly, and for whom
party discipline has, of course, the attraction it has everywhere and
always for those who have little other discipline to guide them.
The issue of the impeachment trial was no doubt important as regards the actual political situation ; but the greatest of all questions
for the American people is, whether amongst all the troubles and
changes of this and coming ages the popular respect for the forms of
law, for judicial purity and independence, can be maintained. As long
as it can, all will go well, whatever storms blow ; whenever the belief
becomes general that a court of justice, and especially a IIigh Court,
can be fairly used, whenever the majority please, as the instrument of
their will, it will make little difference what its judgment will be or
who fills the Presidential chair.

The

406

Nation.

to keep all of good that was transmitted

to them from the past, and
to engraft upon it all the improvemcnta suggested by later years.
The constitution
of Florida has more points of interest and novelty,
ancl presents more matter for astonishn,ent, th:m any of its fe!lowS.
In
the convention about twenty out of eighty members were blacks. Yet the
constitution probably surpasses in conservatism that of any State in the
A stable, and what is usually called a L6strong, administraUnion.
tion must, one would say, have appeared to these politicians to be the
Thus, the governor and senators hold office for the
sumvawn bonum.
unusually long term of four years, and the members of the Assembly
for two years. The executive arm is further strengthened by the privilege of appointment,
in conjunction
with the Senate, to nearly cvcrg
0fEce of power, trust, or exccntive importance
in the State. On the
other hand, the Legislature
is limited to an annual session of only
sixty days, unless special!y convened by the governor, when it may
hold another session of twenty days. The governor appoints, and the
Senate confirms, the judges, of whom those of the Supreme Court hold
their position for life or during good behavior, and those of the Cir.
The customary
Council OI
cuit Court for eight years.
a.dvisory board is, in this State, a cabinet proper, in which sit a
Commissioner of Immigration
and a Superintendent
of Public Iustruc.
tion ; and to judge from the duties mapped out for this latter function
ary, he will be the busiest and one of the most powerful officials in the
State. Due provision is made to prevent bribery and tumult at elections; and principals and seconds to duels or challenges, and person:
interested in any election bet or wager, are clcnied the right of suffrage
Neither was this convention slow to learn the lessons of the very late9
passing hours of the age ; they enact that officers may be impeach<Y
for drunkenness,
gambling,
and ( any concluct detrimental to gooc
morals.
Lastly, wc notice the provision, which we have not seen ir
any other of thcsc documents, to wit : that after iSS0 the J,rgislnture
shall pass laws requiring educational qualifications
in all persons vot
ing for t,he first time after that date. While Democrats, who havt
probably never been at the trouble of reading this constitution,
arc
loading it with unlimited abuse as the characteristic
work of Radical:
and demagogues, many Radic,%ls, as Radicals, might criticise it Tit1
some asperity on quite opposite grounds ?. but we will content oursclvei
with showing the ludicrous impossibility
which our opponents woulc
find in making out a case if they would submit to the ignominiou!
drudgery of discovering facts, and to the petty trammels of those fact:
when found.
One is irresistibly tempted to compare this constitution
of Florid:
with that recently prepared by a purely Caucasian convention
fo
submission to the people of this State. We are, of course, aware that
the latter is not considered by the best of its frnmers as by any means
perfect, or as anything more than the best attainable:
but it is the
work of white men, and of white men of whom a very large number
doubted the propriety of ever letting negroes vote at elections, except
under a property qualification,
and this in a State in which nothing is
required of electors of any other race except the possession of the
human form and the male sex. Now, we are bound to say that, tried
by any of the known tests-history,
experience, or principles of human
nature-this
Florida constitution is not only a better one than the one
we now have in this State, but, on the whole, better than the new one
which, after twenty years of experiment, has been offered for our acceptance by the flower of the white portion of the community.

THE

RAILROAD

FRATERNITY.

THE question of railroad

management has lately attracted a large
share of public attention.
The great Erie quarrel, the New York
Central monopoly, the various legal controversies arising from the
doubtful action of several other companies, the violent fluctuations
in
the market price of many of the leadin g stocks, the repeated issue of
large amounts of fresh shares by prominent
lines, the awful accident
at Port Jervis, and many similar event,,9 have caused a great deal 01
enquiry, and nothing but the more exciting and pressing political
events could well have stifled the general spirit of investigation.
To discuss the question intelligently,
it is necessary to understand
thoroughly
that there are three parties in interest : first, the owners ol

he road, whether they be holders of bonds or of shares, who are

relieved to have something to say in the mnttcr ; sccontl, tile general
public who travel and send freight over the rontls, \\-ho are believed
:o have no voice or power whatever, but only a purse to deplete and
L bocly to mangle ; and third, thnt large class of in~livitlnnls who, for
want of a more expressive clesignation, are generally stJlct1 (( tlie railroad-men.
These railroad-men
form a fraternity,
a s?rrct league, a
united body, bound together by a bond, not acknowlc~lgcd
nor even
fairly understood by themselves, but nevertheless real and substantial.
This bond is none other than their acknowledgerl
hostility
to the
general public and to the great mass of railroad stock and bondThe class of railroad-men consists of and comprises the great
holders.
majority of the oficers of all the rnilroads in the corlntr?, the prcsiclents, vice-presidents, the actin, m directors, the engineers ant1 supcrintendents, all the great railroad builders and contractors, the owners of
rolling-mills
who furnish railroad iron, the builders of cars and of
locomotives, the land agents and land speculators, the great lobbyists
and getters of land-grants and subsidies, the capitalists who advance
the monev, and the speculators who deal in the stocks.
To these are
added a crowcl of hungry hangers-on, la-ivyers, jutlgcs, writers for the
press, and petty politicians-the
whole forming a grand nrnly, or rather
a series of grand armies, each under some tacitly acknowledged
leader,
all operating under the well-understood
code of warfare known as
railroad tactics ; knowing
no laws save railroad laws, and knowing
no morals save railroad
these only to evade them ; acknowledging
morals, something entirely apart from all other morals : all bound to
live on the common enemy--the public, and to live well, and to accomplish it by the forcible or treacherous control of every highway
and by-way of communication
throughout
the country.
No generation of feudal barons in the fourteenth
century were cvcr bound to<rether by stronger ties of common interests than those that bind
L,gether the railroad-men
of the Unitetl Stntcs in this nineteenth
century of ours. No generation
of feudal barons lived more openly
or undisguisedly
by force and fraud than do the railroacl-men
of our
times. It is true the old barons ruled their countries sometimes well,
more often ill, ant1 hence may be thought to ll;lvc: tlonc 5ome gootl.
But the railroad barons are also thought to serve the state by managing the railroad lines, and it is to the general prevalence of this belief,
aided by their own audacity, that they owe their power.
To many readers this may seem a fancy sketch.
Rut it is a simple
statement of facts. There are unquestionably
railroads honestly managed, and there arc undoubtedly
many honest men sitting as directors
in railroad boards who are totally ignorant
of the cheats practisecl
under the shield of their honest names. But these are the exceptions,
taints the very birth of nine-tenths of the
not the rule. Corruption
roads. The charter to build a road, however much needed by a ccnnmunity, is scarcely ever obtainecl without a great amount of log-rolling
The charter, when ol)tnined, has a
and generally of actual bribery.
cash value, and the men who own it receive from the company which is
supposed to build the road a large amount of the
stock for
procuring the charter, in addition
to the repayment of their actual
The company thus starts with a
outlay ( for legislative
expenses.
port.ion of its stock given away before it has really come into existence. It has then to organize by electing directors.
It is necessary to
secure the services, or at least the names, of L prominent railroad-men
to give credit and standing to the enterprise.
Neither their services
nor their names can be had without payment.
A number of shares are
respectfully tendered to, and generally accepted by, each of them, and
permission is graciously given to use their names as directors of the
new concern.
One-half or one-third
of the authorized issue of stock
is thus often disposed of without
any LLvalue received, before the
existence of the company is made known to the public.
And now the
The u prominent railroacl-men introduce wellroad is to be built.
known contractors,
who undertake to grade the roacl-that
is, to construct the road-becl and lay the ties-at
a given sum per mile: and to take
in payment the first-mortgage
bonds of the cnmpnny at Fevrnty cents
on the dollar, provicled the company will undertake to make a market for the bonds.
The price contracted for per mile is, of course,
sufficiently large not only to secure the contractor
against loss by the
bonds not bringing
the stipulated
price, but also to enable him to

May 21,1868-J

The

Nation,
________..~~-__-

divide the proits of the contract with the prominent director wb(
procured it for him. Of course, no bargain to this effect is matle; it i;
quite unnecessary. Among railroad-men of good faith the thing i;
pelfectly well understood, and any contractor 7vho failed to m&c
things right with his friends in the board would be immediatcl!
denounced to all railroad-men as unreliable and unsafe, and would by
for ever cast out from the community of railroad-men, and never by
able to get another contract. The same course precisely is pursuec
with the contractors for the iron and for the engines and everything
else, and when the contractors get through they have generally receive<
a one-thousand-dollar bond, of the market value df seven hundrec
dollars, in payment of labor and material worth perhaps five hun
dred dollars, the difference going into the pockets of the variou
emiuent railroad-men connected with the enterprise. In this wa:
the company has contracted a debt of one thousantl dollars for whicl
it has received value to the extent of five hundred.
The next step of the board of directors is to comply with that par
of their agreement with the different contractors by which they bounc
themselves to &make a market for the
bonds. It is herI
that the services of Leminent financial men connected with the enter
prise come into play. By dint of judicious use of editors and reporters
the public is gradually prepared for the appearance of these bonds il
the market. One of the eminent financial men is the treasurer an<
bond agent of the road. IIe generally agrees to buy of the company :
round amount of the bonds at sixty or sixty-five cents on the dollar
provided the company will not sell any thereafter at less than seventy
cents. At the expense of the company the bonds are largely adver
tised, the advertisers generally payin, v for a liberal amount of editoria
Every director, every contractor and mill
and
puffing.
owner, has an interest in praising and endorsing the bonds; the;
recommend them to their banks, their brokers, to the insurance corn
panies and trust companies in which they or their friends happen tc
be directors, nnd they do so with a certain dcgrec of good faith, for thl
bonds are as good as the generality of railroad bonds, and the price i!
sure to advance. In this way a certain amount of the bonds is placec
upon the market, and actually sold at seventy cents on the dollar. The
company then at a convenient moment discovers that, the bonds arf
selling faster than the money is recluired to construct the road, and tht
. advanced to seventy-five cents or
price of (<this desirable security 1s
the dollar. Of course the eminent financial men who bought the bond:
at sixty-five cents, and their friends who bought them at seventy cents
have made a very good thing out of it, and are, of course, warmel
friends of the road than ever before, and can safely recommend the
bonds as an excellent investment. After a while it is rumored that the
company is again selling more bonds than it wants, and that the prict
is to be still further raised. Of course it can never be known how the
secret got abroad, but it is apparently well authenticated ; those whc
are fortunate enough to be posted buy more bonds at seventy-&c
cents, and sure enough before long the secret is made public by ex
tended advertisement, and no more bonds will be sold at less thar
eighty cents. This operation is repeated two or three times, or as ofter
as the market will bear it, and the market value of the bonds i!
made, as agreed with the contractors who undertook the building
and equipping of the road.
The road is then rapidly pushed forward, and if it runs through
desirable territory, and is carefully laid out and well and honestly built
by the contractors, and reasonably well managed and run by the directors, and no one else allowed to pilfer from it, the chances are ten to one,
such is the need of railroads in our rapidly-growing country, that the
road may be able to pay the interest on its first-mortgage bonds and
never belie the statements of those who sold the bonds, nor the anticipations of those who bought them. But it, will nevertheless be true
that the road will be mortgaged-and
this is the case with nine roads
out of ten-for more than double its real cost, and generally mnre nearly
for three times its actual crr,izLe. Unfortunately the probability is that
the road will not, be managed as honestly as it should lje--the temptations to be honest arc nowadays so inadequate, while the temptations
to be a smart G1
are, under the circumstances, almost
irresistible.
We have seen how a large part of the stock has been disposed of.

~.

~~ ~~
~~~~- ~.~~___
~_.._

It is in the hands of legislators, lobbyists, etlitors, of the ori~in:~l owners

of the charter, the eminent railroad-men who form the boarti 01 (li~c.
tOI%, all Of W!lOIIl obtained the StOC!i Tyitllout l)axing for it, !)llt, all c+f
Whom TVOUlcll&c to see the stl:cli valn:tb~u 2nd s:~lnl~lein JVall Strtct
or elsewhere. As lcng as the rc,ad is mort;~:~~~:,l li)r more than its full
V:L~UC, and does
not earn more than enough to
e~.~~~!.~:::!utl the
interest on its morlgage bonds., there can of course IK no tlivicl~nds
paid on the stock, and stock that does not pay diviclcnds, or is not
likely soon to do so, will not sell for a great deal anywhere. JIere is
where the temptation to be dishonest becomes almost irresistible. If
only one or two dividends on the stock could be paid, the stock would
readily sell for fifty to sixty cents on the dollar, and prove a liberal remuneration to the holders for their services in getting the charter or in
lending their eminent names to the enterprise. A tlivitlcntl VLUS~,
be
declared, n-hether earn4 or not, nncl the money 7ilr/s/ l)c l)rovidecl,
honestly if possible, but generally 0therTvise.
A road that is in fair running order can be kept in cquallg good
order by the expenditure of a given percentage of its receipts, say sixty
per cent. If less is spent on it, it will deteriorate a little, slowly but
not perceptibly, save ta the experienced eye. If a good deal less is
spent on it, it Fill run down more rapidly, but need not necessarily
become unsafe, unless the neglect is long continued. The commonest
policy for raising the money to pay a dividenil is to cut tlown the expenses on the road to the lowest possil,le limit, so :,s to m:~lic~:L show
of increased net earnings for some months, boldly to assert that the
road is making far more than its expenses and interest on its bonds,
and then divide the surplus as a dividend upon the stock, wllich then
immediately acquires a market value and enables tllc holtlcrs to sell
out wholly or in part. It is evident that this operation cannot bc repeated, for whatever amount has been cut down from the expenditures
for repairs must very soon be put back into the road, and even largely
increased, to prevent the line from going to ruin. The conscqnencc is,
that after declaring a forcctl diridend the rontl ITill 11c more urgently
in need of money than ever before. If there are no n~orc I)I)IIcI~ to sell,
money will be borrowed on the general credit of the roatl, and the
money so borrowed will appear, if it appear at all, in the next annual
statement under the heading of floating debt, and will not be very
readily understood by the majority of the outside stoclcholtlers. Or
else, under the pretence of extending the line or laying a doul)lc track,
or of otherwise improviug the property, a fresh amount of stock will
be issued and secretly sold to the unsuspecting public, who tllink they
are buying the old stock on which the comply has just shown its
ability to pay a liberal dividend. In the meantime, the eminent railroad-men iu the board who know that this additional amount of stock
is about to be issued, and that it will, of course, depress the price, sell
through their own brokers for their private account large amounts of
the stock, ancl after the fresh issue has become known and the price
depressed, they buy their stock back again for much Icss than what
awhile tile credit of the roatl I~e~omcs so bad
they sold it for.
that it can neither borrow money on its credit, contract Iloating debts,
nor sell more stocks or bonds. The road is then allowed to get into
Port Jerviv accidents become more common, the
very bad condition.
reputation of the line is injurecl, its traHic clcclincs, its incolnc is no
longer suficicnt to pay expenses and interest on its ~uortgage bonds.
Then the mortgage is: foreclosed, the property sold at auction ; if fortunate, the road sells at its full value, the amount of the mortgage is not
fully realized, and the millions of stock held by the unsuspecting pubiic are swept away and vanish into thin air.
We have purposely painted in strong colors, but there is no exagzeration in what we have written. V7lile there arc mnny well and
:lonestly managed roads in the country which will pay dividends, and
:~n them too, through panic, famine, or pestilence, there are many
roads in a tenfold worse condition than anything WC have described;
roads whose colossal proportions will some fine day tmnl)lc about the
ileads of their owners with a terrible crash; roads TV~OSC
semblance of
prosperity has been barely sustainecl by the most nblc railrod tactics,
-luring a period of feverish activity, paper morey expansion, and gcn:ral well-being, but which cannot bear up under auy long ~~ntinuancc
3f the present general depression.
As far as the evils under which our prcscnt railrontl 1ll~l~~gClllCd~

The

408

Nation.

labors affect the value of the property of railroad stock and bondholders, the remedy lies in the hands of the stockholders themselves.
But the evils nre have described have an influence on our national wellbeing far beyond what arises from their mere financial
effects,
and thus
oome directly and prominently within the sphere of practical states
manship. Railroad legislation is one of the great socio-political
questions looming up in the immediate future. It is a question
not confined to our country alone; the same question is being actively
agitated in England as well. It is, in fact, only one of a series of questions that are forcing themselves at this time upon the attention of all
peoples of Anglo-Saxon race: and that will probably involve in their
settlement some serious changes in the whole spirit of our domestic
policy.
Probably no people of either ancient or modern times has given as
complete a trial to the no government theory as that theory has
received at the hands of the people of the United States. Nowhere
has the policy of laker n&r had as full sway. Never has faith been
more unlimited in the virtues of public opinion.
Nowhere have
equally magnificent results cf private enterprise furnished illustration
and proof of the folly of entrustin g to governments what can be accom
plished by individual effort. Pet with all this experience, Tit11 all
this unlimited faith, amounting almost to a national principle of law,
with all the resultant successes, there is, nevertheless, a growing disposition to return to the old-fashioned belief that, after all, government
is not a bad thing in itself; that there ought, after all, to be responsibility attached to the actions of all men ; and that somewhere the power
must reside to enforce that responsibility.
We are being gradually,
not by theoretical arguments but by the invincible logic of bitter
practical experience, educated to the conviction that public opinion,
while immensely effective for doing evil, is, at times, utterly powerless
for good ; and each day now brings us a fresh example of the way in
which great private enterprises, such as railroads, can be perverted
into engines of the most tyrannical injustice, into means of gross official and private corruption, and into reckless instruments of destroying human life by wholesale. In England, where the no government
policy has never attained to the same development as with us, the
reaction has yet set in carlicr, and for some years past there has been
an active agitation of various practical suggestions looking towards an
increased government control or a total absorption by the government
of several important interests, notably life insurance, telegraphs, and
railroads. In the discussion of these questions we are behind Englsnd,
although everything indicates that we arc rapidly travelling in the
same direction ; and it is safe to assert that, for the present, the 6no
government theory has exceeded its tenable limits, and that we are
at the beginning of a decided reaction. Only a few weeks back we
had occasion to refer to a proposition for placing all the insurance
companies under the control of the General Government, to bc exercised
in a manner somewhat similar to the present control over the national
banks. Since then a bill has been introduced into Congress providing
for the purchase of all the telegraph lines in the United States and for
their management by the Post-office Department. And nom we find,
almost hidden amid the rank overgrowth of impeachment oratory, s
resolution of egquiry into the condition of the railroads in all parts of
the country. Let us hope that this enquiry may be the beginning ol
a thorough reform of everything that is objectionable in our present
system.
MR. EVARTS

AND

HIS

TRADUCERS,

W~EH two cr three Congressmen and several newspaper editors

denounced William M. Evarts for acting as counsel for the defence in the
late impeachment proceedings, spoke contemptuously of his services as s
mere matter of I hire I called him a hireling counsel, and accused him in
coarse terms of betraying his party, we said to ourselves : Theseare things
which gentlemen do not say, and which no men say who comprehend the
duties of a lawyer ; let them pass. It was perfectly proper that honorable

members who.could enjoy the eloquence of Mr. Donnelly, and who have on
more than one occasion made the galleries intolerable for ladies not har
dened to Washington life, should be disgusted with Mr. Evarts.
of last week, while devoting two columns to the
But the Independent

extinction of Mr. Evarts, lays down a new rule on the subject of profes.

pay

21, 1868

sional duty which calls for notice, because some simple people are likely to
be deluded by it on a matter of even more importance than Mr.
reputation.
According to this ambority, Mr. Evarts might conscientiously
defend the lowest villain who ever stabbed a fellow-creature in a midnight
brawl, and no one could censure him ; but in sbieldin~ a renegade Presilent from the righteous and avenging judgment of the American people,
he undertook a task ( unpatriotic and base, I shocking, indefensible,
disgraceful, and we know not what beside.
Whether rightly or wrongly, it is at least certain that the IIouse of
Representatives refused to impeach Mr. Jolmson for anything short of a
crime. He has been tried exclusively upon cbarg~s of misconduct which
involved either the direct violation of a statute, or some grave moral delin:luency. The Senate has not for a moment b~~encalled upon to investigate
his errors of political judgment.
The task which Mr. Kvarts assumed, and
which is so shocking,
base, and diegraceful, was therefore simply
that of defending the highest citizen, in the highest court of the land, against
charges of crime. If he had defended the lowest citizen, in the lowest
court, against charges of the same character, or a thousand times worse, his
act would be perfectly proper ; but havin, e done for Andrew .Jolmson, President of the United States, what he might without reproach have done for
John Nokes, forger or thief, be is to be damned to endloss infamy.
Perhaps it is we who are losing our senses ; but if not, this is democracy
run mad. Under such a rule the worst classes of society would be the
most privileged.
A lawyer must enquire, before undertaking to defend a
party accused : Is he sufficiently low, his character sufficiently bad, and
his crime sufficiently great, to justify me in taking up his case ? Here, for
example, in a neighboring city, an infamous and therefore influential politician is charged with murder. His conviction would be a severe blow to
the political faction of which he is an ornament; his acquittal, by fair
means or foul, a triumph for them. Yet no one will breathe a word of censure upon any counsel who may defend his cause. hIr. &arts might do
this with impunity.
But if the accused is respectable and wraltby, and the
crime with which he is charged comparatively venial, tile qucation becomes
a difficult one ; while if he is at the head of the nation, the path of duty is
plainly in the opposite direction.
Not content with denouncing the act of Mr. Evarts in general terms, the
Tnndcpmdent joins in the vulgar assertion that he sold his opinions for hire,
md even specifically charges him with being bribed.
It is a matter
within our own knowledge that Mr. Evarts lost more than thrice the
annual income of any ordinary lawyer by attending the impeachment proceedings ; in other words, that he declined business vastly more remunerative, for the sake of conducting Mr.
defence; and, moreover,
that BIr. Evarts has received no fee whatever for conducting it. This is a
fact which hIr. Evarts would not condescend to state bimeelf, and one which
we should not be at liberty to mention had we learned it from him. We are
almost ashamed to defend him at all against such coarse imputations ; but
unfortunately many well-meaning persons are deceived by them ; and we
must take this liberty with private affairs for the purpose of vindicating
not a single member of the bar, but the whole bar it,self-the
profession
upon whose independence, honor, courage, and zeal the whole world must
rely for the security of justice.
Setting aside all insinuations of this unworthy character, tlrere remains
among many good people a vague impression that lawyers cannot act conscientiously in defence of clients whom they believe to be wrong. This
impression naturally leads to a belief that lawyers must necessarily be dishone&, since they cannot always choose the side which they believe to be
justly entitled to success. Every lawyer knows very well that this is an
erroneous view. There is scarcely any case presented to the courts which
has not two sides, for each of which a great deal may be truly said. And it
often happens that a cause which the lawyer employed in it believes at first
to be unjust, eventually proves to be a just one. 1Ve hare known some
very marked instances of this kind in which, if the lawyers employed had
acted upon the popular theory of their duty as honest men, they would
have committed a gross wrong.
It is the business of a lawyer to collect all the facts and the law which
tend to favor his client, stating nothing untruly, but stating only his
side of the case. It is the business of the judge, after this has been done
on both sides, to decide upon the whole case, and the more thoroughly both
the opposing advocates do their duty, the more easily can the judge ascertain what is exact justice.
This duty every lawyer owes to every citizen who desires his services.
Eminence in the profession only increases the obligation of a lawyer to take
every case which is o&red him upon his usual terms. and to the extent of
his physical power. Men like hIessrs.
Darts, Field, Stanbery, and

May 21, 1868-J

The

Nation.

their compeers have no moral right to refuse their aid to political oppo.
nents, when tried before courts of justice. Suppose that when, in times
not long passed, Wendell Phillips was indicted for conspiracy to rescue a
fugitive slave, all the lawyers of Boston had refused to defend him, on the
ground that they thought him to be an enemy of the Bcl)ublic, what would
the fi&q~/~de7~t have said of them ? Suppose (as was nearly the case) that
when John Brown was brought under the righteous and avenging j udg.
ment of the people every lawyer inVirginia had refused to defend him, would
not another indignant protest have made its way into Mr.
orations?
Yet every lawyer in Virginia was as thoroughly convinced of the guilt of
John Brown as any editor now is convinced of the guilt of Andrew John.
son. And the political necessity for conviction in the former case was tenfold greater than in the latter.
It is Raid that Mr. Evarts was required to render a political service. This
is entirely untrue.
His services were purely legal. The only value of his
political status was in the guaranty which it afforded of such caution and
impartiality in his statements as would secure for him a respectfol hearing
at the bar of the court. This was of immense value, undoubtedly, but it
was an advantage to which Mr. Johnson was entitled, and which could do
no injustice to the prosecution.
In spite of the confident assertions to the
contrary, made by editors who do not understand themen, we have no doubt
that William Curtis Noyee, if living, would have done exactly what Mr.
Evarts has done, and that Charles
would have done the same thing
for Abraham Lincoln, if he had been called upon to do it. We should
lament the decline of professional honor at our bar if we believed that its
leaders would refuse, under the influence of political prejudice, to perform
their legitimate duties.

THE DUTY OF DOING ONE?3BEST,

TIIE elevation of the masses, that is, the diffusion amongst them not
only of political power, but of such material comfort and intellectual light
as our civilization supplies, having become the great work of the day, it is
curious to see what a rush there is into it, and what an effect it is producing
on literature and science and art. Until the close of the last century literature existed only for scholars, and literary works were marked by a polish
and elaboration which, as critics are constantly informing us, have almost
entirely passed away. Afterwards writers addressed themselves to the
upper classes, people of sufficient wealth to have plenty of leisure, and
sufficient taste to make it necessary to take some pains in supplying
wares to them, although they were not as exacting as the readers of
Milton and
day. But now nearly everything that leaves the
press is intended for the million, or, if it is not, it is very soon adapted to
the *million by the issue of abridgments or of
editions.
The
supply of the wants of the million is proving a more attractive field both
for capital and for inventive genius than any other. Two-thirds, at least, of
the brain power of every civilized communit,y is absorbed in the simple
work of cheapening things-of
findia g out ways and means of placing them
within the reach of a greater number of people. This is true of nearly
every branch of industry; but it is doubly true of literature.
Tbei-e is,
perhaps, no field of industry in which so great an tfftirt is now made after
diffusion. Periodical literature is the principal product of this effort ; cheap
publications of all kinds form another. But cheap publications were corn
mon, and the taste for reading widely diffused, for many years before much
pains was taken to improve their quality.
Scholars and literary men of the
best class long held aloof from them. Even the newspapers for many years
after they had come into general use were for the most part filled by per.
sons whose follies and ignorance have left a stain on the press which, in
spite of its prodigious improvement in every respect, it has not yet succeeded
in wiping out. The monthly magazines were, until very recently, few in
number, and their circulation was comparatively limited, and they were not
intended to be and did not succeed in being popular, in the more recent sense
of the word. The cheap weeklies, of the class of which
I%nburgh
Journal was the prototype, until very recently had no contributors who
had made any figure in any other field, or were capable of any other
kind of work.
Of late, however, a determined effort, and in a certain degree a successful
one, has been made by publishers on both aides of the water to get writers
who have already achieved renown as authors, or orators, or politicians, or
philosophers to contribute articles on all sorts of subjects either to widelycirculated periodicals or to books intended to be popular-that
is, to be
bought and read by persons of limited education. In England the monthly
magazines are now so numerous and so cheap that they can no longer be called
a middle-class luxury.
They are in
hands ; and although there

409

is a very fair amount of really careful writing in them by persons who have
something to say, and only speak ahnt what they undrrstand, tllc, co:npetition betrcen them is so great that they are bc,ing forced into suI~l)l<~tuenting the indispensable serial story by the use of names --tImt is, the
publication of costly but worthless artic]as writtun l)y persons of highrepute
for other things than magaziue writing.
Tennyson lms br~,n r~ccutly writing
something under this head which wq are afraid to c!larwctrrize.
(+Iadstoue
has been discussing Ecce Homo also in Gootl Wo~la, a cheap religious
periodical of wide circulation.
In this country the practice is still more common. The Nc:o Fx%
G~7ger may be said to have begun it by getting Edward Everett to write a
series of papers on all sorts of subjects; but after that it spread rapidly.
There is hardly a man of eminence in the country, who has any facility in
composition, whose contributions may not now be found either in religious
newspapers, cheap periodicals, or the books got up to be peddled in the
country districts. In ninety-nine cases out of one huntlrcd these contril)utions
are below criticism, and are, in fact, too bad to be of much service to any
human being. They are apt, too, from the necessities of the case, to treat of
subjects with which the writer possessed no familiarity, and. to do him jus
tice, with which he does not profees to have any familiarity.
The publisher wants his name for his advertisement and his title-page, and he and
the publisher together work themselves up into the belief that anything
from his pen must do service to people who do not read much, and who, on
account of his reputation, will pay attention to what he says-whatever
it may bc. The writer, too, being human, and generally in want of money
surrenders readily to the plea that in this democratic age it is tlre duty of
tbe highly cultivated to spread the results of their culture before the multitude ; that the great work of our day is the diffusion of knowledge ; and
that none can do this so well as those who have been most successful in
accumulating it. As soon as your professor or belles-Iettrrs scholar
hears this, and learns that by contributing
a short treatise on early
rising, a little blast against tobacco, or an analysis of the waters of the
Dead Sea, with his name attached-for
the name is even of more consequence than the article-he
will not only receive a hundred dollars. but be
entitled to the credit of having given <ne turn to the crank of modern
his l)icc~~ wit11 infinite r<.Iish.
civilization, he sits down and stri lies
In fact, some men are nom doing so much of this sort of work that it must,
and does, make serious inroads on their time, and of course the result, in
aught but money, must perforce be left to the imagination.
Of course there is a very large body of writera for popular periodicals and
for book-1)eddlers literature who, in doing this, are doing what lb~~y arc best
fitted for, and on whom therefore we simply bestow our blessing. Our object
in touching on the subject at a]1 is not to upbraid them with the poor quality
of their wares, but to suggest to men and women who have made their
names worth buying by achievements of real value, the possibility that when
they are scratching off slipshod contributions, either on snl\jccts wltich they
only understand very imperfectly, or on which their say is not a whit more
valuable than the say of hundreds of their neighbors, who are capable of
nothing better than treating it, they are not doing their duty. TVe doubt
very much if any man who has closely examined the needs and tendencies
of modern democracy is not satisfied that what it wants most of aI1. and is
likely to want, is not diffusers so mnch as accumulators ; that its danger is
not that the intellectual or moral wants of the many will not be satisfied,
but that their cravings will not be intense enough, and their standard not
high enough. Of diffusers of knowledge there is not the least chance of a
scarcity. One of the first things that everybody does who feels tllr least
leaning towards literature is to seize on some other
ideas, anti, having
Ivatered and otherwise disguised them, to hawk them about for sale. In
this, as in most other branches of industry, there is a perfect glut of middlemen or distributors, and the work is certainly done passably well. \Vhen a
publisher wants, for instance, for a book to be sold by agents, a chapter on
the domestic life of Queen Elizabeth, or on the noses of eminent statesmen,
there is no reason whatever, as far as the quality of the article is concerned,
for his procuring it from Mr. Motley or Chief-Justice Chase. The first
fact, we
lively magazinist of his acquaintance will do it just as well-in
make bold to say considerably better-so that the masses wi]] not suft;:r by
the
being utterly unknown to fame, and never having dono any;
thing to entitle him to be known.
But what the publisher wants is the name.
True; but shou]d the
author lend him his name? No ; for two reasons. If the name is intended
to make that salable which would otherwise be unsalable, by leading
people
to expect the commodity to be of a higher quaIit,y than it reaI]y is,
the use of it is a fraud, to which the owner should not lend himself.
If, on
a1
the other hand, the work can be just as me11 done by some other

410

The

Nation.

by the owmrr of the name, and the owner of the name can do some other
work much better, he is cheating the country and the race by not doing the
latter.
This brings us to the pith of our argument.
We believe it to be
the duty of every man to do his best, and his best only, and his best always,
most service to
and we believe that it is by doin, m this that he
humanity, and does most for the elevation of his own character. There are
cases, of course, in which men of extraordinary powers and acquisitions cannot so well place the results of their labors before the general public as through
the instrumentality
of their own tongues or pens. Agassiz, for instance, is
one of these, and therefore he is doing his appointed work not less on the
And generally wherever any.
platform than in the museum or laboratory.
body, no matter what his attainments are, has extraordinary powers of
statement or elucidation, combined with mastery of a difficult subject, his
place is in the forum no less than in the closet ; he ought to be found in the
enterprising and entertaining weekly as well as in the ponderous folio.
But when a man who is passably at home in political economy and jurisprudence, and whose researches on these subjects are of real value to the
world, tries to persuade himself that he can do good by laying down his
regular pursuits to occupy himself with writing articles on market-gardening, he deludes himself. Or if an astronomer of celebrity should undertake
a series of papers in a Sunday-school magazine on the Milky Way,
he would certainly be guilty of great waste of time, and of waste of
very valuable powers. Instead of helping the race, he would be injuring it.
There is no saying one hears oftener than that all labor is honorable, and
Labor
there are few sayings more fallacious, All labor is not honorable.
is honorable only when it is the best labor of which the person engaged in
Moreover, all labor is
it is capable, and when the doing of it is imperative.
not always honorable in the same degree even then. Nothing but a total
want of respect for and appreciation of the human mind-the
greatest
of
works-will
lead anybody, for example, to place a manual employment on the same level in dignity or respectability with an intellectual one.
A man grooming a horse, though he were doing it with all his soul and for
glory, would not be doing as honorable a work as a man who was
calculating an eclipse. There are degrees in the value of labor, as well as
in the value of human beings. The meanest and poorest of human beings
has something in him worthy of respect ; the lowest kind of labor, if done
in the right spirit and for the right reason, is honorable ; but a noble and
pure and cultivated human being is more valuable, judged by any standard,
than any other, and the more exertion of the human faculties is involved
in any employment, the more respectable will it be. So that if we saw Sir
Isaac Newton taking a quarter of an hour from the Principia every morning to black his boots, the proper remark to be made would be not, What
a fine fellow Sir Isaac is ! but, How can Sir Isaac be so silly? he can get
his boots blacked for a trifle by a man who can do that better than he, and
who can do nothing else.
The work of civilization-that
is, the work of making the human race
wiser and happier-is
best done, like all other work of difficulty and
delicacy, by a division of labor, and the more the labor is divided, the
better will the work be done. Naturally, as civilization advances,
it is divided more and more, -and this division, were men wise, would
be regarded with nothing but satisfaction.
The whaler, who passes
his prime in frozen seas storing up oil for the
lamp, gains, and his
children gain, by the
researches. He loses, and his children lose,
So, also,
if the scholar uses the lamp to light him in making pantaloons.
we are all gainers by having Chief-Justice Chase attend closely to the
decision of contested suits in the Supreme Court. When he left the bench
a .year ago to teach negroes their duties under the Constitution, we were all
losers, because, that work could have been don8 by others. When, too, a
good historian and an 8rUdit8 professor occupies himself in writing entertaining twaddle or easily collected information for a
book or
for newspapers, he for the time being quits his post and leaves a portion of
his real work undone.
Moreover-and
this consideration is perhaps a higher one than the
consideration of ,what a man OW8Sto the rest of the race-every one owes
it to his own character to do 8V8ryWher8 and at all times his best. His
best will, of coUrs8, vary in excellence, and there ar8 times when on8 is
incapable of doing any-thing well, and when, nevertheless, it is imperative
that one should keep working ; but if we have to do bad work, it ought to
If a minister
be in our own line, and in the presence of familiar standards
must twaddle, 18t him twaddle in his own pulpit, with all his excuses in the
way of weariness, or anxiety, or natural deficiencies ranged around him in
their places. lf the lawyer must talk slipshod folly, let it be in court,
where there is some chance of its furthering
the cause of justice or
helping his own interests, and where he will, at all events, be con-

3cious of his shortcoming, though it be in never so slight a degree.

Wh8n a great author or statesman feels the need of putting down som8
:rude thoughts or ill-digested information on paper, let it be in his own
nemorandurn-book,
so that it may serve afterwards for suggestion,
But do not let any one cart the stuff down
Forreproof, or for instruction.
:nto the forum, and call the people about him and say, I zm the wellknown Robinson ; my regular business is teaching school, but I have felt
that the world would be the better of it if I made a few pairs of boots.
Here they are; outwardly they do not look as good as if they were mad8
by a bootmaker, and I doubt if they are as good for ordinary uses. Still
there must be some virtue, surely, in boots made by a teacher, and I recommend you to purchase them and see. You will, at least, find them interesting. Now, not only does this performance lead
friends and
pupils to doubt whether there be such a thing as escclIance attainable in
any vocation, or, at all events, whether absorbing devotion be necessary to
Iattain it, but it leads Robinson himself to feel that all things ar8 possible
to him. When his man of business tells him the boots have gone off like
wild-fire, fifty pairs a day, he naturally begins to consider himself equal to
anything ; instead of growing in modesty he grows in confidence, and his
last end, instead of being better, is worse than his first.

Correspondence.
MONEYAND TFLEMINISTRY,
To TRIF EDITOR OF TIIE NATION:
I am a
daughter, grand-daughter, wife, and so on, through
almost every shade of clerical relationship and connection.
From an early age (say my sixth year, when I was presented with a pair
of No. 7
kid gloves-black
at that, if bitter memory does not mislead
me-in which my little claws were, perforce, sheathed every Sunday, in
certainty that should the donor, whose pew adjoined the
miss the
grateful vision of ten limp finger-ends dangling abjectly to his honor, it
would be a cusus beEliin the parish) I have intended to publish, the day
before my death, a folio containing some of the things I have wanted to say,
but have been prevented from saying by the fact that I was in the ministerial succession. But the date of this prospective iasne bring uncertain,
I venture to speak now on a single point of int8rest to minister and parish.
The majority of the laity, and here and there a clergyman, deprecate the
mention of money in connection with the relationship between pastor and
church. It is, forsooth, so unique, so sacred as to be out of the range of the
vulgar considerations of prudence, humanity, and common honesty.
I have heard of an enfranchised clergyman acting as a member of an
ecclesiastical caucus which was discussing, among other items, the annual
stipend to be paid a new pastor, who adjured the session never to believe
that the amount of salary they should offer would influence in any degree
the decision of the favored candidate. But why should it not? The subtraction of a very few hundreds-in
some instances, of a few tens-may
make all the difference between an anxious, constrained life and a life su&
ciently free from care to secure independence of spirit, the easy working of
the mind, proper provision for the physical necessities of a minister and his
several dependents, with the privileges of charity, and now and then a mite
for art and letters.
Indifference on this point is not a badge of spiritual exaltation, as many
maintain, but the contrary.
Hear St. Paul : If any provide not for his
own, and specially for those of his own house, 7&ebath denied tiLe faith [not
glorified it], and is worse than an infidel.
The publicity of the life of a clergyman and his family requires no proof.
The sanctities of birth, marriage, and death, when known to be, or to b8
anticipated, beneath his roof, are sanctities no longer. The last farthing of
detail is rigorously exacted for common circulation in the parish, and any
reluctance thereto is ascribed to a sinful pride or want of confidence. He
seem to throw himself onto the parish, was one of the gravest
charges which a disaffected faction in a certain church were able to bring
against their young pastor. He had done his work bravely and devotedly,
as all admitted, but too reticently for their liking.
They wanted to hear
from his own mouth just how many pounds of flesh he was losing weekly
in their service, and how many pounds he had not bought in the market
which he needed to have bought ; and had they heard these and other like
pathetic statements from his trembling lips, they would doubtless have
made up a purse which would have figured in the columns of a religious
paper among the Sunny-side items.
Heaven destroy the mark !
The extent to which a minister is required to (throw himself onto tha