A Porter Or A
Farmer's Servant In The States Is Not Proud Of Reading And Writing.
It Is To Him Quite A Matter Of Course.
The coachmen on their boxes
and the boots as they set in the halls of the hotels have
newspapers constantly in their hands.
The young women have them
also, and the children. The fact comes home to one at every turn,
and at every hour, that the people are an educated people. The
whole of this question between North and South is as well
understood by the servants as by their masters, is discussed as
vehemently by the private soldiers as by the officers. The
politics of the country and the nature of its Constitution are
familiar to every laborer. The very wording of the Declaration of
Independence is in the memory of every lad of sixteen. Boys and
girls of a younger age than that know why Slidell and Mason were
arrested, and will tell you why they should have been given up, or
why they should have been held in durance. The question of the war
with England is debated by every native pavior and hodman of New
York.
I know what Englishmen will say in answer to this. They will
declare that they do not want their paviors and hodmen to talk
politics; that they are as well pleased that their coachmen and
cooks should not always have a newspaper in their hands; that
private soldiers will fight as well, and obey better, if they are
not trained to discuss the causes which have brought them into the
field. An English gentleman will think that his gardener will be a
better gardener without than with any excessive political ardor,
and the English lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have
a very pronounced opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the
cabinet ministers. But I would submit to all Englishmen and
English women who may look at these pages whether such an opinion
or feeling on their part bears much, or even at all, upon the
subject. I am not saying that the man who is driven in the coach
is better off because his coachman reads the paper, but that the
coachman himself who reads the paper is better off than the
coachman who does not and cannot. I think that we are too apt, in
considering the ways and habits of any people, to judge of them by
the effect of those ways and habits on us, rather than by their
effects on the owners of them. When we go among garlic eaters, we
condemn them because they are offensive to us; but to judge of them
properly we should ascertain whether or no the garlic be offensive
to them. If we could imagine a nation of vegetarians hearing for
the first time of our habits as flesh eaters, we should feel sure
that they would be struck with horror at our blood-stained
banquets; but when they came to argue with us, we should bid them
inquire whether we flesh eaters did not live longer and do more
than the vegetarians. When we express a dislike to the shoeboy
reading his newspaper, I apprehend we do so because we fear that
the shoeboy is coming near our own heels. I know there is among us
a strong feeling that the lower classes are better without
politics, as there is also that they are better without crinoline
and artificial flowers; but if politics, and crinoline, and
artificial flowers are good at all, they are good for all who can
honestly come by them and honestly use them. The political
coachman is perhaps less valuable to his master as a coachman than
he would be without his politics, but he with his politics is more
valuable to himself. For myself, I do not like the Americans of
the lower orders. I am not comfortable among them. They tread on
my corns and offend me. They make my daily life unpleasant. But I
do respect them. I acknowledge their intelligence and personal
dignity. I know that they are men and women worthy to be so
called; I see that they are living as human beings in possession of
reasoning faculties; and I perceive that they owe this to the
progress that education has made among them.
After all, what is wanted in this world? Is it not that men should
eat and drink, and read and write, and say their prayers? Does not
that include everything, providing that they eat and drink enough,
read and write without restraint, and say their prayers without
hypocrisy? When we talk of the advances of civilization, do we
mean anything but this, that men who now eat and drink badly shall
eat and drink well, and that those who cannot read and write now
shall learn to do so - the prayers following, as prayers will follow
upon such learning? Civilization does not consist in the eschewing
of garlic or the keeping clean of a man's finger-nails. It may
lead to such delicacies, and probably will do so. But the man who
thinks that civilization cannot exist without them imagines that
the church cannot stand without the spire. In the States of
America men do eat and drink, and do read and write.
But as to saying their prayers? That, as far as I can see, has
come also, though perhaps not in a manner altogether satisfactory,
or to a degree which should be held to be sufficient. Englishmen
of strong religious feeling will often be startled in America by
the freedom with which religious subjects are discussed, and the
ease with which the matter is treated; but he will very rarely be
shocked by that utter absence of all knowledge on the subject - that
total darkness which is still so common among the lower orders in
our own country. It is not a common thing to meet an American who
belongs to no denomination of Christian worship, and who cannot
tell you why he belongs to that which he has chosen.
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