Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious errors have been corrected.

The January Journal has no Article VIII.

THE
BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
JANUARY AND APRIL, 1871.
VOLUME LIII.

AMERICAN EDITION.

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE LEONARD SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY
340 FULTON STREET, BETWEEN BROADWAY AND NASSAU STREET.

1871.

S. W. GREEN.
PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND BINDER
16 and 18 Jacob St., N.Y.

INDEX TO VOL. LIII.

Abbott, Rev. Edwin A., Bible Lessons, Part II., [154].

Abbs, Rev. John, Twenty-two Years' Missionary Experience in Travancore, [297].

Ainger, Rev. Alfred, Sermons preached in the Temple Church, [316].

Alcott, L. M., Little Women, [157].

Alford, Henry, D.D., Truth and Trust: Lessons of the War, [318].

American Press, The,; Influence of the Press on Civilization, [1], [2]; Raymond's Life, [3]; The Newspaper in America, [ib.]; Reviews, [5]; Want of a Comic Periodical, [ib.]; Roman Catholic Organs, [6]; Religious Journalism, [7]; The Princeton Review, [8]; Superiority of the Independents and Presbyterians in Theological Authorship, [9]; General Criticism of the American Press, [ib.]; Inferiority to that of England, [10]; Corruption of the English Language, [ib.]; Scurrility and Personality, [10], [11]; Absence of Anonymous Editorship, [11], [12]; Low scale of Morality, though improved of late, [12]; Great Power of the Press, and the responsibility which each power involves, [13].

Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vols. XVII. and XVIII., [151].

Attwell, Henry, A Book of Golden Thoughts, [140].

Barham, Life and Letters of Rev. R. H., by his Son, [209].

Baring-Gould, S., The Origin and Development of Religious Belief—Part II., [142].

Barlowe, Master John, The Bruce, [140].

Barnes in Defence of the Berde, [140].

—— Albert, The Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century, [147].

Barni, Jules, Napoléon 1^er, et son Historien, M. Thiers, [218].

Barrett, G. S., The Revision of the New Testament, a Lecture, [320].

Beauvoir, The Marquis de, a Voyage round the World, [123].

Beecher, Henry Ward, The Plymouth Pulpit, [320].

Belcher, Lady, The Mutineers of the 'Bounty' and their descendants, [115].

Bennet, Rev. James, The Wisdom of the King, [320].

Bentley Ballads, The, [209].

Berkeley's Works, Professor Fraser's Edition of, [256]; England's Neglect of her Philosophers, [ib.]; Berkeley's Historical Position not sufficiently recognised, [257]; Mr. Fraser's Picture of him at College, [258]; Two earliest books, [259]; Berkeley at Court, [ib.]; Interest in Social Morality, [259], [260]; Rapid Church Preferment, [260]; He starts for the Bermudas to found a College, [ib.]; Stops at Rhode Island, and remains there some years, [ib.]; Writes his 'Alciphron,' [261]; Dr. Johnson, [ib.]; Close of Berkeley's active life, [262]; Founds a Scholarship at Yale College, [263]; His life as Bishop of Cloyne, [ib.]; Belief in Tar-water, [ib.]; Removal to Oxford, [264]; Death, [ib.]; Berkeley's Philosophy, [ib.]; Views of two classes of his Critics, [265]; Too much founded on his Early Writings, [ib.]; The true Key to his Philosophy, [266]; Its relations to Locke and the English Mystics, [266], [267]; Three Stages of Development, [268]; 'New Theory of Vision,' [ib.]; 'Principles of Human Knowledge,' 269; The Abstract Idea of Matter, [270]; Something more than mere Sensations, [ib.]; Associations, [271]; Deficient Perception of Ethical Relations, [272]; The 'Siris,' [ib.]

Bingham, Hon. Cap., Journal of the Siege of Paris, [291].

Bible, The Holy, arranged in Paragraphs and Sections, [154].

Blackburn, Henry, Art in the Mountains, [129].

Blackmore, R. D., Lorna Doone, [139].

Blunt, Rev. J. H., A Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, [146].

Bonapartism, The Downfall of, [218]; Analogy between the Imperialism of 1804 and that of 1852, [219]; The latter hopelessly collapsed, [220]; The Strange Revolution in Literature, [221]; The Mutual Hatred of French and Prussians in the Emperor's Favour, [222]; His Relations, real and supposed, to Religion, [222], [223]; The Second Empire rendered possible by the strength of the Napoleonic Idea, [224]; Causes of the Empire's Decay, [ib.]; Reaction against the Despotism of the Capital, [226]; Rottenness of Paris Life, [ib.]; Ignorance of itself and of other Nations, [227]; M. Leclercq's Views, [228]; 'Papiers Secrets,' [229]; Management of Money, [229], [230]; 'Cabinet Noir,' [230]; The Emperor warned by Persigny, [ib.]; Lanfrey's account of Napoleon I., [231]; The Erckmann-Châtrian Novels, [232]; General political knowledge assumed in them, and with reason, [233]; Impossibility of Predicting the Future of France, [234].

Bonar, Horatius, D.D., Life and Truth, [317].

Boorde, Andrewe, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, [140].

Braund, J. H., History and Revelation, [152].

Bray, Mrs., The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes, [116].

Brevia, Short Essays and Aphorisms, by the author of 'Friends in Council,' [310].

Broadus, J, A., D.D., A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, [148].

Brougham, Life and Times of Lord, [297].

Brown, J. B., First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth, [314].

—— —— Misread Passages of Scripture—Second Series, [319].

Brunel, Isambard, The Life of I. K. Brunel, [294].

Buchanan, Robert, Napoleon Fallen, [303].

Bulwer, E. (Lord Lytton), King Arthur, [304].

Bungener, F., St. Paul: his Life, Lectures, and Epistles, [152].

Bunting, Memorials of the Rev. W. M., [120].

Burn, R., Rome and the Campagna, [127].

Burton's History of Scotland, Vols. V., VI. and VII., [161]; Important place held by Scotland in English History, [ib.]; Character of Mr. Burton's Books, [162]; Period treated of in the Present Work, [ib.]; Mary Stuart, [ib.]; Elizabeth's Policy, [163]; Murray, [164]; James 1st, [165]; The Reformation in Scotland, [166]; James as King of the three Kingdoms, [168]; Effects of the Union in Scotland, [169]; Restoration of Prelacy, [ib.]; Policy of Charles I., [170]; The Covenant, [171]; Outbreak of Civil War, [172]; Westminster Assembly, [174]; Execution of Charles, [175]; The Scotch overcome by Cromwell, [ib.]; The General Assembly Dissolved, [ib.]; Masterly Policy of Cromwell, [ib.]; Subsequent History, [176]; Estimate of the Book, [ib.]

Capper, John, The Duke of Edinburgh in Ceylon, [298].

Chamberlayne, T., The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis; and other Poems, [133].

Clarke, C. C., The Riches of Chaucer, &c., [141].

—— —— Tales from Chaucer in Prose, [141].

Coinage, Report from the Royal Commission on International, [14]; Nature of the Question, [14], [15]; Mr. Jevons's Investigations, [15], [16]; Convention entered into by Four Countries, [16]; Importance of England's joining in it, [17]; Plan proposed to facilitate this, [17], [18]; Comparison of the Amount of Gold Coinage in different Countries, [19]; Charges at the Different Mints, [20]; Precedent for Change in English Coinage, [21]; Small proportion of the Gold brought into the Country Coined, [ib.]; Summing-up, [22].

Colborne, P., The Measure of Faith; and other Sermons, [319].

Collins, Mortimer, Marquis and Merchant, [309].

Conder, G. W., Tender Herbs, [317].

Cordery, J. G., The Iliad of Homer, Translated, [304].

Cotton, Memoir of Bishop, [295].

Courthope, W. J., The Paradise of Birds, [133].

Cowper, Poetical Works of, Edited by W. Benham, [134].

Creasy, Sir E. S., History of England, Vol. II., [113].

Crowfoot, J. R., Fragmenta Evangelica, [93].

Cubitt, James, Church Design for Congregations, [129].

Cunningham, General, The Ancient Geography of India, [302].

Dale, R. W., The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church, [318].

Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, [299].

Deane, Life of General, [118].

Diary of a Novelist, [136].

—— of the French Campaign of 1870, [273].

—— of the Besieged Resident in Paris. [291].

Dixon, W. H., Her Majesty's Tower, Vols. III. and IV., [292].

Duncan, P. M., The Transformation of Insects, [126].

Duplessis, G., The Wonders of Engraving, [128].

Early English Texts, [176]; Importance of Studying the Early English Language and Literature,176, [177]; Efforts made to Facilitate and Promote such Study, [177]; Early English Text Society and its Publications, [178]; Theological Works, [179]; Romances, [180]; Fourteenth Century Texts, [ib.]; The 'Vision of Piers Plowman,' [ib.]; Mr. Toulmin Smith's edition of 'English Gilds,' [182]; 'Early English Alliterative Poems,' [ib.]; Arthurian Romances, [182]-[185]; The 'Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry,' [186]; 'The Wright's Chaste Wife,' [ib.]; Furnivall's 'Babees Book,' [187]; 'Book of Quinte Essence,' [ib.]; Religions Books, [ib.]; Condition of the Society, [ib.]; Its Important Objects, [189].

Eiloart, Mrs., From Thistles—Grapes? [137].

Episcopal Church, Parties in the, [189]; Diversities in Opinion and Practice existing in the Church, [189], [190]; Dr. Hook's Representation of High Church Views, [190], [191]; Those of the Evangelicals, [191]; Broad Churchmen the only Men who maintain Clerical Liberty, [192]; What Stanley says, [ib.]; General Spread of a Measure of High Church Feeling, [193]; Some little Influence Acquired by Convocation, [ib.]; Alleged Catholic Revival, [194]; Boldness of the Ritualists, [195]; Youthful Energy of the Party, [ib.]; Their Practical Wisdom, [196]; The 'Twelve Days' Mission,' [197]; The Power of Individuals Utilized, [198]; The Advance of the Party Favoured by Circumstances, [ib.]; Also, by Controversies, [199]; By the Fear of a Separation between Church and State, [200]; Almost entire Extinction of the 'High and Dry' School, [201]; The Anglican Clergyman of To-day, [ib.]; Contempt for Law, [203]; Decline of the Evangelical Party, [204]; Causes of that Decline, [206]; Approaching Crisis in the Establishment, [209].

Episodes in an Obscure Life, [306].

Erckmann-Châtrian, Romans Nationaux, [218].

Established Church in Wales, The, [72]; Principles involved in the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, [ib.]; Mr. Gladstone's Attempt to escape from applying these Principles to Wales, [73]; Influence of England on the Religious History of Wales, [74]; The Church Establishment since the Reformation, [75]; Its Failure, [77]; The Appointments of Englishmen to Welsh Bishoprics, [79]; Testimony of two Welsh Clergymen on the subject, [79], [80]; Fathers of Welsh Methodism, [80]; Effect of the New Movement on the Church, [81]; Primary Cause of all the Evils, [84]; Comparison of the Established Church with Nonconformists during this Century, [ib.]; Church Accommodation, [85]; Number of Attendants, [87]; Schools, [89]; Preponderance of Nonconformists in Welsh Literature, [92]; The Eisteddfod, [ib.]; Exceptional Scarcity of Crime in Wales, [93].

Fair France, [125].

Foreign Protestant Pulpit, [318].

France, Alsace and Lorraine, [273].

Francillon, R. E., Earl's Dene, [306].

Fraser, A. C., The Works of Bishop Berkeley, [256].

Fraser-Tytler, C. C., Jasmine Leigh, [309].

French, The late F. W., Things Above, [320].

Froude, J. A., History of England, Vols. VIII.-XII., [126].

Future of Europe, The, [273]; The Progress of the Race Interrupted, [274]; The Fault not all on One Side, [ib.]; Prussia's openly avowed Desire of Domination, [275]; Excuses made for her Conduct; [ib.]; Bismark's Ground that of Political Expediency, [276]; His False Reasoning, [ib.]; Prussia will not stop short in her aggressive Career, [277]; Her want of Money, [ib.]; National Character, [278]; Prussia's Absorption of all Germany into Herself, [279]; The King made Emperor, [280]; Despotic Constitution of the Empire, [ib.]; Austria must also be Absorbed, [281]; Holland in Danger, [282]; Relations between Prussia and Russia, [ib.]; What Prussia may do in Turkey, [283]; Change of Proportion in the Powers of Europe, [284]; Decrepitude of Austria, [ib.]; Ruined State of France, [285]; Effects of her Prostration upon Europe, [286]; Isolation of England, [287]; Difficulties to be encountered by her, [ib.]; Duties of her Government, [287], [288].

Gilbert, W., Martha, [307].

Gledstone, J. P., The Life and Travels of George Whitefield, [297].

Gogerly, Rev. G., The Pioneers, [297].

Greg, W. R., The Great Duel, [292].

Hamilton, The late James, D.D., Moses, the Man of God, [153].

Hampden, Some Memorials of Bishop, [296].

Hare, A. J. C., Walks in Rome, [302].

Harold Erle, [307].

Heraud, J. A., The In-Gathering, [134].

Hinton, J., Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions, [301].

Hood, E. Paxton, the World of Moral and Religious Anecdote, [140].

Hoole, C. H., The Shepherd of Hermas, Translated, [151].

Hoppin, Professor, the Office and Work of the Christian Ministry, [316].

Hutton, R. H., Essays, Theological and Literary, [311].

Ingoldsby, [209]; Value of this kind of Writing, [209], [210]; Barham's Clerical Life little touched on, [210]; Character of his Humour, and his Superiority to others in this Respect, [212]; His attacks on Superstition, [213]; The 'Ingoldsby Legends' adapted to Young Readers, [214]; Deficiency of Poetry in Them, [ib.]; Hook, [215]; Anecdotes, [216].

Interests of Europe in the Conditions of Peace, The, [273].

Jacox, F., Secular Annotations on Scripture Texts, [150].

Jeafferson, J. C., Annals of Oxford, [294].

Juvenile Literature, [154], [309].

Kaye, J. W., The Essays of an Optimist, [140].

Kay Spen, The Green-Eyed Monster, [309].

Keshub Chunder Sen, The Brahmo Somaj, [148].

Landels, Rev. W., D.D., Beacons and Patterns, [318].

Lanfrey, P., Histoire de Napoléon 1^er, [218].

Leathes, Rev. S., The Witness of St. John to Christ, The Boyle Lecture for 1870, [149].

Leclercq, Emile, La Guerre de 1870, [218].

Letters on the War, [291].

Lewis, Rev. W. H., D.D., Sermons for the Christian Year, [319].

Louis's own Account of the Fight, [218].

Low, Lieut. C. R., The Land of the Sun, [125].

M'Combie, The late W., Sermons and Lectures, [320].

MacDonald, G., The Miracles of our Lord, [152].

Macduff, J. R., D.D., Memories of Patmos, [153].

Mackennal, A., Christ's Healing Touch, and other Sermons, [319].

MacLeod, A., D.D., Christus Consolator, [148].

Macmillan, Rev., H., The True Vine, [318].

Malmesbury Papers, The, [23]; Importance of the Period Comprised, [ib.]; The Father of the First Earl, [25]; Friendship with Handel, [ib.]; Almack's Rooms Designed, [26]; Fashionable Amusements, [ib.]; Court Dress, [28]; The Pantheon, [30]; England a Hundred Years Ago, [31]; Old London, [32]; Paris, [ib.]; The First Earl, [34]; His Diplomatic Embassies, [ib.]; The Editor of the Books, [35].

Malmesbury, Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of, [23].

—— —— Letters of the first Earl of, his Family and Friends, [23].

March, Rev. D., D.D., Night unto Night, [154].

Mariette, [138].

Martin, Samuel, Rain upon the Mown Grass, and other Sermons, [150].

Mateer, Rev. S., The Land of Charity, [297].

Matson, W. T., Poems, [134].

Maverick, A., Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years, [1].

Meade, Lieut. the Hon. H., A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand, [299].

Melville, Henry, Sermons, [318].

Michelet, Jules, La France devant l'Europe, [273].

Mourin, E., Les Comtes de Paris, [54].

Muller, F. Max, Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. III., [139].

Murray, Rev. J., The Prophet's Mantle, [318].

My Little Lady, [307].

Newman, Professor F. W., Europe of the near Future, [273].

O'Flanagan, J. R., The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland, [288].

Oliphant, Mrs. John, [136].

Oosterzee, Rev. J. J. Van, D.D., The Theology of the New Testament, [145].

Palestine, Explorations in, [36]; Purposes and Plans of the Exploration Society, [ib.]; Early Operations, [36], [37]; The site of Capernaum Decided, [37]; Ai and Cana, [ib.]; Synagogues Examined, [38]; Tombs, [ib.]; Temples, [39]; Topography of Jerusalem, [40]; The old Walls, [44]; Site of the Temple, [45]; Jewish Archæology, [49]; A Museum for the Antiquities Discovered, [ib.]; Inscriptions, [50]; The Moabite Stone, [51]; Light thrown by it on Early Writing, [51], [52]; Natural History and Geology, [53]; Importance of continuing and Encouraging the Society's Work, [53], [54].

Paley, F. A., Religious Tests and National Universities, [235].

Parker, Joseph, D.D., Ad Clerum, [148].

—— —— The City Temple Sermons, [316].

Parr, Louisa, Dorothy Fox, [308].

Pope, The Works of Alexander, [303].

Porter, Noah, D.D., The American Colleges and the American Public, [302].

Present Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology, [144].

Prussian Aggrandisement and English Policy, [273].

Pulpit Analyst, The, [154].

Rae, W. F., Westward by Rail, the New Route to the East, [123].

Rees, T., D.D., History of Nonconformity in Wales, [72].

—— Rev. W., The Church of England in Wales, [72].

Religious Tests and National Universities, [235]; Why Disabilities have so long been Retained at the Universities, [ib.]; Desires on different sides for their removal, [237]; Objections brought against it, [ib.]; Ineffectiveness of Tests, [239]; Needless in connection with Sinecures, [ib.]; Principles recently adopted regarding Education, [240]; Importance of the connection between the Universities and Elementary Education, [240], [241]; Clerical Fellowships and the effects they Produce, [241]; Evidence given before the House of Lords, [242], [243].

Richardson, F., The Iliad of the East, [136].

Robinson, Wade, Loveland., and other Poems, chiefly concerning Love, [133].

Rothschild, C. and A. de, The History and Literature of the Israelites, [143].

Rowlands, Rev. D., Sermons on Historical Subjects, [317].

Ruskin, John, Fors Clavigera, [310].

Schmid, C. F., D.D., Biblical Theology of the New Testament, [145].

Schmidt, A., Elsass und Lothringen, Nachweise wie diese provenzen dem deutschen Reiche verloren gingen, [273].

Scrutator, Who is responsible for the War?, [273].

Seeley, Professor, Lectures and Essays, [114].

Sermons, [316].

Sewell, E. M. and S. M., Yonge, European History, [116].

Shairp, J. C., Culture and Religion in some of their Relations, [149].

Shalders, E. W., Sermons for the Times, [320].

Shand, A. J., On the Trail of the War, [116].

—— A. I., Against Time, [135].

Sieges of Paris, The Early, [54]; Comparison of Paris with other Capitals, [55]; Its History, [56]; Sudden rise in importance, [57]; Attacks by the Northmen, [58]; Rivalry with Laon, [59]; Great Siege of Paris by the Northmen, [60]; Abbo's account of it, [61]; The Siege Raised, [65]; Further Ravages, [66]; Second German Invasion, [67]; Its Results, [69]; Analogies with the War in our Time, [71]; Future Fate of Paris, [72].

Six Months Hence, [137].

Stanford, Charles, Symbols of Christ, [317].

Stapleton, A. G., The French Case truly Stated, [273].

Strauss, D. F., Krieg und Friede, [273].

Stubbs, W., Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History, [291].

Swainson, C. A., D.D., The Athanasian Creed, and its usage in the English Church—A Letter to Dean Hook, [143].

Tappan, The Life of Arthur, [120].

Taylor, Rev. W. M., The Lost Found and the Wanderer Welcomed, [317].

Tennyson, A., and Arthur Sullivan, The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens, [130].

Thistleton, Rev. A. C., The Story of Job, [319].

Tholuck, A., D.D., Hours of Christian Devotion, [153].

Thompson, J. P., The Theology of Christ from His own Words, [145].

Tourguéneff, Ivan, S., On the Eve, [308].

Tregelles, S. P., The Greek New Testament, [93]; Value of the Work, [ib.]; The Author's previous Writings, [94]; The MSS. he has followed, [95]; His Text Compared with Alford's, [97]; His Labours interrupted by Illness, [98].

Trench, W. Stewart, Ierne, [305].

Trollope, J. Adolphus. A Syren, [135].

——, Anthony, The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, [138].

Two Months in Palestine, [125].

Tyerman, Rev. L., Life and Times of Wesley, [119].

Vaughan, C. J., D.D., Christ satisfying the Instincts of Humanity, [316]; Half-Hours in the Temple Church, [317]; Counsels to Young Students, [ib.]

Vera, [305].

Victor Hugo, Napoléon le petit, [218].

Victory of the Vanquished. The, [139].

Vince, Charles, Lights and Shadows in the Life of King David, [319].

Wadsworth, Charles, Sermons, [318].

War Correspondence of the Daily News, [291].

War of 1870, The, [98]; Possible Results of the War, [98], [99]; Its Causes, [99]; Sketch of its History, [100]; French Scheme and Movements, [ib.]; Speedy Organization of the Germans, [101]; First Battle, [102]; Woerth and Forbach, [103], [104]; Gravelotte, [105]; Insane scheme made for MacMahon, [107]; Sedan, [109]; Surrender of Metz, [110]; Revival of the French Spirit under Trochu and Gambetta, [ib.]; Wonderful Defence of Paris, [111]; Blame attaching to Prussia, [112]; Lessons of the War, [ib.]

War of 1870-1, [243]; The Last Half of the Great Drama, [244]; Proceedings after the Disaster of Sedan, [ib.]; Investment of Paris, [245]; Trochu's Scheme of Defence, [245], [246]; Gambetta's Balloon Journey and Efforts in Collecting Troops, [246]; Doings of the Germans, [246], [247]; Effects of the Fall of Metz, [247]; The promising movements of D'Aurelles de Paladines, [ib.]; His Failure and its Causes, [248]; Change in the German Plans, [249]; Their Superiority in Generalship, [250]; Was Trochu Incompetent? [251]; Chanzy's Brilliant Actions, [ib.]; Reinforcements obtained on Both Sides, [252]; Bourbaki's rash Scheme, [252], [253]; Chanzy's Defeat, [253]; Bourbaki's attempt at Suicide, [254]; Progress of the Siege, [255]; Famine, [ib.]; The War Ended by the Fall of Paris, [ib.]; The Future of France; [ib.]

Wardlaw, Gilbert, The Leading Christian Evidences, [147].

Watson, Albert, Cicero, [118].

Wedgewood, Julia, John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century, [119].

Wesley, The Poetical Works of John and Charles, [135].

White, John, Sketches from America, [126].

Wickham, The Correspondence of the Right Hon. W., [117].

Williamson, Rev. A, Journeys in North China, Manchuria, and Eastern Mongolia, [121].

Wylie, Rev. J. A., Daybreak in Spain, [125].

THE
BRITISH QUARTERLY
JANUARY 1871

Art. I.—Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years. Progress of American Journalism, from 1840 to 1870. By Augustus Maverick. Hartford, Connecticut: A. S. Hale. 1870.

There is no country in the world which so finely illustrates the diffusive spirit of modern civilization as America; for, though in other lands human nature seems to rise to a greater height in individual instances, and to stand out in more picturesque relief, it is the nation which has excelled them all in equalizing the rights, the enjoyments, and the intelligence of man. Many circumstances have contributed to this happy result. America has been clogged by none of the mischievous remains of feudal institutions, and but little affected by those violations of political economy, older than the age of reason, which have checked the free and natural development of European communities. Its provisions for popular education were from the first singularly wise, liberal, and ample; there was no legislation to restrict all civil and social advantages to the members of a single religious sect; and no taxes on knowledge or artificial monopolies of any kind, to prevent the people from having access to that full variety of opinions, inquiries, and statements of fact, which is necessary to intellectual advancement. Above all, it was born old, with all the elements of European civilization to start with, and equipped with a complete literature, in which it would seem almost impossible to find place for any great genius, and with the best English works placed within every man's reach, at less than a tenth of their original cost. Taking these things in connection with the boundless material resources of the country, it is not by any means difficult to explain the magical rapidity of its advances in wealth and population, the signal prosperity it has already enjoyed, and the extraordinary power and greatness to which it is evidently destined.

The development of the press, like the improvement of the means of civilization, is a certain sign of the relative advancement of a nation. We use the term civilization here to signify not so much the development of some elevated and delicate parts of human nature, such as art, philosophy, or politeness, as that of political liberty and social progress; and in this sense the progress of the press becomes historically the most constant and faithful indication of the general progress of a nation. The truth of this proposition becomes evident, from the close connection that exists between the press and the public, from the action and reaction, the efflux and reflux, from the true corporate unity which brings into the press the life-blood of the country. We depend upon the newspaper for distributing knowledge, as well as creating it; it is an instrument by which the opinions and feelings of the people may be guided and developed, as well as communicated and ascertained. It is in fact an essential element in the peculiar spirit and tendency which characterizes our modern civilization. Still we are far from holding that it is a perfect instrument, or free from very serious drawbacks. Eminent men like Lamartine speak of it in terms of extravagant eulogy, predicting that before the century shall have run out journalism will be the whole press, the whole human thought, and that the only book possible from day to day will be the newspaper; a great English novelist speaks of it as a link in the great chain of miracles which prove our national greatness; and Bulwer Lytton calls it the chronicle of civilization, the great mental camera which throws a picture of the whole world upon a single sheet of paper. These somewhat rhetorical representations are very common, but they are far from exact or truthful. We suspect that the newspaper tends in all countries to ignore, more or less, all knowledge that will not render its teaching popular; that its chief figures are often the wicked, the worthless, and the shallow; and that its pictures, though generally faithful, are often false, distorted, and narrow. De Tocqueville liked the liberty of the press, rather from the evils it prevented, than from the advantages it created; and Montalembert represents Liberty as saying to the Press, like the unhappy swain—'Nec cum te nec sine te vivere possum.' John Stuart Mill has two objects of hatred; Puritanism, with its positive creed and aggressive zeal, and the ascendancy of the middle classes, through the newspaper press, with all their mediocrity and bigotry. He has always protested, in the interests of his great idol, individuality, against 'the régime of public opinion,' against the various 'usurpations upon the liberty of private life,' against the moral intolerance of society, carried on through, the newspapers. Amidst these various estimates of the press we are disposed to take a middle course. It may sometimes be wielded by unworthy hands, for unworthy purposes; its liberty may run into licence, and the rules of good taste and propriety be violated; its policy on public questions may be unscrupulous and unprincipled; but we remember that modern progress would have been impossible without it; that the people are not its slaves, but its patrons and critics; and we would lay no other restraint upon it than the invisible fetters imposed by the intelligence and good feeling of its readers. Whether, then, we consider the amount and quality of intellectual force put forth in it, the character of mind acted on by it, and the wide area over which it operates, especially in England and America, where it has the greatest expansion, we cannot but regard it as a subject for sincere congratulation that its influence has been exercised so uniformly on the side of public safety and public morals, that there has been a gradual improvement of late years in the moral tone of newspaper management, and that it has succeeded in creating and fostering a healthy and independent public opinion on all the questions of the age.

The great development of the American press has taken place during the last thirty years, keeping pace exactly with the advancing prosperity of the country. A large number of new and powerful processes, as well as influences of a more general kind, were converging towards this result. The education of the people, the progress of legislation, the discoveries of science, the inventions of art, conspired to make literature, especially in the newspaper form, a prime necessity of American life, and to place it within every man's reach on easy terms; while every improvement made in the art of communication and travel still farther contributed to its growth, and increased its utility. So it has come to pass that America is the 'classic soil of newspapers;' everybody is reading; every class is writing; literature is permeating everywhere; publicity is sought for every interest and every order; no political party, no religious sect, no theological school, no literary or benevolent association, is without its particular organ; there is a universality of print; the soldiers fighting in Mexico or in the Southern states are printing the journal of their exploits on the battle-field; the press is seizing on the whole public life and upon so much of private life as through social irregularity, or individual force of character, or national taste, necessarily emerges into publicity; fostering on the one hand the worship of the almighty dollar, but establishing a strong and wholesome counterpoise, by stimulating that zeal for public education, that enthusiastic spirit of philanthropy, and that truly munificent liberality by which the American people have been always distinguished. As we have already intimated, the modern development of the press is just thirty years old. There was no telegraph before 1843; no fast ocean-steamer to carry news from the old world for some years later; and no Associated Press to organize the supply of intelligence. The first American newspaper was printed at Boston, in 1690, fifty years after the appearance of the first English newspaper; in 1775 there were only 34 newspapers; in 1800, 200; in 1830, 1,000; and the latest statistics give no less than 5,244 as the total number of journals published in the United States, of which 542 are daily, 4,425 are weekly, and 127 are monthly.

Our common idea of the American newspaper is that of a print published by a literary Barnum, whose type, paper, talents, morality, and taste are all equally wretched and inferior; who is certain to give us flippancy for wit, personality for principle, bombast for eloquence, malignity without satire, and news without truth or reliability; whose paper is prolific of all kinds of sensational headings; and who is obliged, in the service of his advertising customers, to become enthusiastic on the subject of hams, exuberant in the praises of hardware, and highly imaginative in the matter of dry-goods. Perhaps this representation might apply, with some degree of correctness, to a portion of the newspaper press, especially that published in the country towns and villages; but we shall immediately see that American literary enterprise, especially in the great cities, is not to be judged by such unworthy examples. The work of Mr. Maverick, which appears at the head of this article, supplies a large amount of information concerning American journalism, connecting its more recent development with the name of Henry J. Raymond, a well-known Republican politician, who founded the New York Times, one of the most respectable and powerful newspapers in the States. We cannot say much for the book, on literary grounds: it exhibits nearly all the worst qualities of Transatlantic journalism itself—flimsiness, personality, and haste; but its information is very interesting and acceptable to European readers. The facts of Raymond's life may be supplied in a few sentences. He was born in 1820, at Lima, in the state of New York; he graduated at the University of Vermont; he went to New York city in 1840, and was introduced to newspaper life by Horace Greeley; he passed ten laborious years on the Tribune, and the Courier and Inquirer; and in the year 1851 he may be justly said to have opened a new era in American journalism, by establishing the Times, a daily paper, which carried temperance and dignity into political discussion, banishing all personalities, and maintaining a high critical and moral tone, which was all but unknown before that period. Like most American journalists, he engaged actively in politics, becoming in 1849 a member of the New York Legislature, and afterwards speaker of the House of Representatives, and Lieutenant-Governor of the State; and in 1864, member of Congress. He was a sincere and upright politician, who always staunchly opposed the slave party in the United States, but lost popularity and credit, by his exceedingly foolish and unfortunate championship of President Johnson, through all his remarkable freaks of obstinacy and eccentricity. On returning home from his office, on the night of the 18th June, 1869, he dropped down in the hall of his house, in a fit of apoplexy, and died five hours afterwards, without recovering consciousness. He was in his fiftieth year. Henry Ward Beecher said, in the funeral oration at his grave, that Raymond 'was a man without hate, and, he might almost say, without animosity; his whole career had been free from bitterness;' and Horace Greeley bore this high testimony to his professional ability;—'I doubt whether this country has known a journalist superior to Henry J. Raymond. He was unquestionably a very clever and versatile, but not powerful writer; and excelled especially in newspaper management.' We shall have occasion to refer again to his services as a journalist.

In proposing to give some account of the American press, both secular and religious, we have to remark that the first great stimulus given to newspaper enterprise in America was by James Gordon Bennett, the well-known editor of the New York Herald, which was established in the year 1834. This able journalist was born in 1800, at Newmill, Keith, Banffshire, of Roman Catholic parents. He was originally designed for the priesthood, and had passed through a portion of his preliminary training in the Roman Catholic College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, but ultimately abandoned the prospects of a clerical life, and emigrated to America, in his nineteenth year—as he said himself—'to see the country where Franklin was born.' There he formed an early connection with the press, but it was not, as we have said, till 1834 that he founded the Herald. We are all more or less familiar with the moral and intellectual characteristics of this newspaper—unsparing personality, intolerable egotism, and sleepless hatred of England; but we are not so foolish as to imagine that the Herald became popular and successful because Americans are fond of personal abuse, or private scandal, or of the ceaseless denunciation of this country. These offences against good taste and right feeling existed long before the publication of the Herald. The secret of its remarkable success lay in the vigour and tact with which Bennett laboured day and night to furnish ample and early intelligence of events in all parts of the world, without regard to cost and labour. Mr. Maverick tells us that 'all the old and heavy-weighted journals, which lazily got themselves before the New York public, day by day, thirty years ago, were undeniably sleepy,' and that 'the ruthless Bennett shocked the staid propriety of his time by introducing the rivalries and the spirit of enterprise which have ever since been distinguishing characteristics of New York newspaper life.' The Herald was successful, then, because Bennett made it his business to present his readers with fresh, ample, and correct news. No editorial eloquence, no skilful flattery of national prejudice or party feeling, could have atoned for any shortcoming in this respect. The other newspaper managers were soon compelled to imitate his energy and skill in the supply of news, and Mr. Maverick has informed us how effectively his example was sometimes followed, by his rivals. On one occasion, before the days of the telegraph, the leading New York journals despatched reporters to Boston, to obtain an early account of a speech by Daniel Webster, who was then in the plenitude of his fame. Two reporters represented each journal; but Raymond alone represented the Tribune. On their return home by the steamer the other reporters passed the night in convivial pleasantries; but Raymond was busily engaged all the time, in a retired part of the vessel, writing off his report for a batch of printers who were on board with their 'cases' of type; so that the entire report, making several columns of the Tribune, was prepared for being printed on the arrival of the steamer at New York, at five o'clock in the morning. The feat was a remarkable instance of newspaper enterprise. The Hudson River steamboats afterwards regularly carried corps of printers with types, from Albany to New York, to prepare the speeches of legislators for next morning's journals. Carrier-pigeons were employed to convey the latest European news from Halifax or Boston to Wall-street; and pilot-boats made long voyages, in stormy weather, to meet Atlantic steamers in search of early news. In election times pony-expresses were appointed by rival journals to carry early intelligence of results; as, in railway times, 'locomotive engines were raced on rival lines of railroad in the interest of papers which had paid high prices for the right of way.' Sometimes a little of that 'smartness,' which is so popular in America, was displayed in these newspaper rivalries, as when, on one occasion, the Tribune reporter ran off to New York on a special engine, hired expressly for the Herald, and thus succeeded in publishing an early and exclusive edition of some important news.

The success of the Herald led Horace Greeley to found the Tribune, in 1841. We can see at once that, like Bennett and Raymond, he was greatly endowed with that species of sagacity which divines at a glance the capabilities of a new project or speculation. Greeley was the son of a New England farmer, and came to New York a poor penniless boy. His earlier essays in newspaper management were total failures; but the Tribune was remarkably successful from its very commencement. It eschewed the coarse and violent style of the Herald, and pursued a far more generous and enlightened policy on public questions, while it almost rivalled the business-like energy of its earlier contemporary; but it ultimately injured itself by its championship of socialism, and a host of other secular heresies. For, though Greeley was of a remarkably practical turn of mind, at least in the management of his own business, he was a great theorist, committed to every recherché novelty in faith and life, a moral philosopher, after a fashion of his own, sincere and liberal in his ideas, with deep sympathies for the working classes, advocating their rights, and seeking their elevation, while he did not fear to expose their follies and their faults. The Tribune became, under his management, the organ of socialism and spirit-rapping, woman's rights, vegetarianism, temperance, and peace principles. It seemed, in fact, the premature harbinger of the 'good time coming,' adept in all the cant of reform, and familiar with the whole philosophy of progress, a very clear vein of sense being perceptible to critical minds, in the elegant sophistry with which it vindicated its own course, and tried to overwhelm all objectors. It attempted, in fact, to turn to account the remarkable tremour of the public mind, which arose from what was seen or said between 1845 and 1855 of mesmerism, electro-biology, spirit-rapping, Swedenborgianism, and psychology; but we are glad to know that the Tribune has greatly improved in its general views, and comes more into accord with common ideas on these curious subjects.

It was the disgust and disappointment of the public with the socialistic heresies of the Tribune, as well as with the shameless and indecent personalities of the Herald, that led to the establishment of the Times, in the year 1851. It took rank at once as a dignified and able journal. Its influence was exercised from the first on the side of morality, industry, education, and religion; and to use the words of an eminent English journalist, now at the American press, 'it encouraged truthfulness, carried decency, temperance, and courtesy into discussion, and helped to abate the greatest nuisance of the age, the coarseness, violence, and calumny, which does so much to drive sensible and high-minded and competent men out of public life, or keep them from entering it.' No one, certainly, has ever done more than Henry J. Raymond for the elevation of the American newspaper. We cannot justly overlook the substantial services done in the same department by the New York Evening Post, under the management of its veteran editor, William Cullen Bryant, the poet; by the New York World, a new paper distinguished by the talent, incisiveness, and dignity of its articles; and by the Nation, managed by Mr. Godkin, an Irishman, once connected with the London press, and which stands upon the intellectual level of the best European periodicals.

We are indebted to Mr. Maverick for a tolerably full account of the present position of New York journalism. There are 150 newspapers published in that city, of which 24 are daily papers, two of them published in the French language, and three in the German. The remainder are weekly journals, of which eighteen are in German, one in Italian, and two in Spanish. There are no less than 258 German newspapers in all America, the largest number being published in Pennsylvania. There are eighteen religious newspapers published in New York. We have the following information in reference to the literary and mechanical arrangements of the daily press:

'Each of the great daily papers of New York to-day employs more than a hundred men, in different departments, and expends half a million of dollars annually, with less concern to the proprietors than an outlay of one-quarter of that sum would have occasioned in 1840. The editorial corps of the papers issued in New York on the first day of the present year numbered at least half a score of persons; the reporters were in equal force; sixty printers and eight or ten pressmen were employed to put in type and to print the contents of each issue of the paper; twenty carriers conveyed the printed sheets to its readers, and a dozen mailing clerks and bookkeepers managed the business details of each establishment. Editorial salaries now range from twenty-five to sixty dollars a week; reporters receive from twenty to thirty dollars a week; and the gross receipts of a great daily paper for a year often reach the sum of one million of dollars, of which an average of one third is clear profit. These statistics are applicable to four or five of the daily morning journals of New York.'

There is much literary ability displayed in the daily and weekly journals of Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and other leading cities. The Boston Post is a leading paper in that city. It is answerable for all the paradoxical absurdities of the famous Mrs. Partington. The Washington National Era, like the National Intelligencer, of the same capital, has a high position, as a literary and political journal. It was through its columns that Mrs. Stowe first gave to the world her 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' just as Judge Haliburton first published 'Sam Slick, the Clockmaker,' in the pages of a Nova Scotian weekly newspaper.

It is a remarkable fact that the Americans have never produced a Quarterly worthy of the name, except the 'North American Review,' which is certainly below the intellectual level of the four or five English reviews which are reprinted in New York every quarter within a fortnight of their publication in England. It was said, in explanation of the fact that the French had never succeeded in maintaining a review on the plan of the English Quarterlies, that their opinions and parties change so often, and the nation was so volatile, that they could not wait a quarter of a year upon anybody. But this explanation will not apply to the Americans. The 'North American Review' has always had on its list of contributors the very best names in native literature, such as Longfellow, Everett, J. R. Lowell, Motley, Jared Sparks, Caleb Cushing, George Bancroft, and others. Yet its success has been very partial. Its literary position ought to have been far more decided. The 'Atlantic Monthly' holds a deservedly high place in American letters, with such authors as Emerson, Holmes, and Mrs. Stowe among its principal contributors; but its influence has always been thrown into the scale against Evangelical Christianity. 'Harper's Magazine,' published in New York, is an illustrated monthly for the fashionable world, with a circulation of 150,000 copies. 'Bonner's Ledger' has pushed its way into the front rank of weekly magazines, by its romances, its essays, and its poetry, from such writers as Parton, Beecher, Everett, Saxe, Bryant, and many others. The sporting world has its Wilkes' Spirit of the Times; the advocates of woman's rights have the Revolution, in the hands of Susan B. Anthony and E. C. Stanton; the grocers have a Grocers' Journal; the merchants a Dry Goods Reporter; the billiard-players, a Billiard-cue; and the dealers in tobacco, a Tobacco Leaf. The advocates of Spiritualism and Socialism have a large number of journals in their service. But, strange to relate, the Americans have not a single comic periodical like our 'Punch.' Mr. Maverick says that, in the course of a dozen years, many attempts have been made to establish such a print, but without success. 'Vanity Fair' was the best of the class, but its wit and its pictorial illustrations were equally poor and trivial. All the comic papers that flourished for a few years were only remarkable for the immense amount of bad wit they contained, for a wilderness of worthlessness, for an endless process of tickling and laughter; with only an occasional gleam of genuine humour and imagination. If the Americans have failed in producing such a periodical, it is not from the want of literary men possessed of the vis comica, for Oliver Wendell Holmes, James R. Lowell, Shelton, Butler, and Saxe are first-rate humourists. The English comic papers can command all the abounding talent of men like Douglas Jerrold, Albert Smith, W. M. Thackeray, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Thomas Hood, F. Burnand, and a host of other satirists. The Americans, however, have never had a Tenniel, a Doyle, a Leech, a Du Maurier, or a Keene, to throw off, week after week, the most amusing and instructive of pictorial satires. All they have hitherto done in this department is to copy with tolerable taste and skill the best cartoons and wood-cuts of 'Punch' and our illustrated magazines. Perhaps America has yet to find its Bradbury and Evans. It is evidently most in want of a publisher. After all, there is hardly anything the Americans need more than a good comic paper, to moderate the intensity of their politics, to laugh down the extravagant follies of American society, to measure the strength of their public men, to register their blunders, and expose their hollowness, to watch over the caprices of fashion, to criticize the press itself, with its coarseness and scurrility, its disgraceful advertisements, and its downright fabrications; taking good care to keep free from those sins which so easily beset satirists, rancour, obscenity, and attacks on private character. They need a satirical journal, just to apply to all things the good old test of common sense; and when uncommon wit is allied with common sense in branding any custom or habit as evil, it must be very deeply rooted if it cannot be overturned or modified. Besides, the Americans, as a hard-working race, need a refreshing humour to relieve the strain upon their mental and physical energies. Emerson remarked of Abraham Lincoln, that humour refreshed him like sleep or wine; and a nation so eager in all kinds of work deserves the innocent relaxation that comes from literature in its most sparkling and pleasing form.

The volume of Mr. Maverick makes almost no allusion to an important department of the American press, which demands some notice at our hands, viz., that which ministers to the intellectual and moral wants of the Irish Roman Catholic immigrants. There is no city of any magnitude which does not possess its Catholic organ. New York city is the proper centre of the Catholic press, but Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Boston, Charleston, and St. Louis have each their weekly paper for the Irish population. Intellectually, these papers are very inferior, and so illiberal that almost every question is viewed from the single standpoint of creed, race, or country. The liberal policy of a free and progressive state has hardly produced the slightest effect upon them. It is a very remarkable fact that in America, as in other countries, journalism is not wielded in the service of Romanism with any freshness and power, except by converts from Protestantism. We find Brownson's Review, the Freeman's Journal, the Shepherd of the Valley (now discontinued), and the Catholic Herald, in the hands of perverts, just as in Europe the Tablet was founded by a convert from Quakerism, the Dublin Review is in the hands of an Oxford pervert, and the Historisch-politische Blätter of Munich was founded by Professor Phillips, and maintained in great scientific efficiency by Yarke, both converts from Lutheranism. The Irish press in America is very ultramontane. It seems drunk with the very spirit of religious servility, mad with the hatred of liberty, and adopts the strictest Roman Catholic doctrines, following them out to their extremest consequences, with a rudeness and arrogance of style, approaching to vulgarity. Orestes Brownson says that the Pope is nowhere so truly Pope, and finds nowhere, so far as Catholics are concerned, so little resistance in the full exercise of his authority as in the United States. No European editor, except Veuillot, ever wrote in the style of Brownson himself, who is intellectually without a peer among Romish editors; for he takes the strongest and most unpopular ground as the very foundation of his ecclesiastical and political theories. Veuillot shocked the good sense and liberal feeling of Europe, by defending the Inquisition and the St. Bartholomew massacre; but Brownson despises all prudential considerations, in claiming for his church the right to put heretics to death, for he holds that this is punishment, and not persecution. The Shepherd of the Valley held that the question of punishing heretics was one of mere expediency, and declared that in the event of his church gaining the ascendancy in America, there would be an end of religious toleration. The Pittsburgh Catholic censured these outspoken utterances; but the Boston Pilot rebuked its Pittsburgh contemporary for its censures, declaring that the Shepherd of the Valley said nothing that was not true; yet saying itself, with marked inconsistency, 'No Catholic wishes to abridge the religious rights of Protestants.' It is in perfect consistency with such ultramontane ideas that these Irish newspapers uniformly take the side of royal despots in great national struggles, and deny all sympathy to revolutionary leaders except those of Ireland. Though they usually cry out lustily when any step in American legislation or any popular combination manifests even an appearance of hostility to Catholic interests, they actually had the audacity, in 1859, to defend those royal miscreants of Italy, who rioted in the misery of their subjects, and of whom it was truly said, 'They kept one-half of their people in prison and the other half in fear of it.' They sympathised with the Poles in their last insurrection, because their oppressor was a schismatic; they had no sympathy with Hungarians, or Italians, or Spaniards, because their oppressors were Catholics. The Boston Pilot—the most popular journal of the Irish—forgot its rôle so far in 1848, as to take a liberal view of the European revolutions. The result was that the Univers, in giving an account of Catholic journalism in America, excluded the Pilot from its list of the orthodox; the clergy, moreover, condemned it; and it was obliged to express its penitence for such an error of judgment. The Pilot, after all, is more reasonable and less fanatical than most of the Catholic papers, and is specially copious in its reports of Catholic news. All these Irish newspapers are, without exception, bitterly anti-English in their tone and spirit. One might suppose that having escaped from misery and poverty, and launched upon a new career of prosperity and contentment, the Irish could afford to forget England; but, like their teachers at the press, they are strong in historical grudges, and their hatred to this country is as much theological as political. The Irish-American journalist delights in copying into his paper the abuse of England, collected from all quarters of the world, and in times of war or rebellion depreciates our triumphs and magnifies our misfortunes. The Catholic clergy have found it hard to control the opinions of a portion of their Irish countrymen, who, though sufficiently submissive in spiritual concerns, have shown a disposition to assert an independence of clerical control in matters affecting the interests of Ireland. Sometimes, indeed, the clergy have been led to humour this national feeling, as when they were in the habit of attending the 'Tom Moore Club,' at Boston, though it had been more than suspected that the favourite poet had died out of the pale of the church. At length the Shepherd of the Valley pointedly condemned their appearance at the annual banquet, on the ground that the poet was ashamed of his country's religion during life, and that English preachers performed the obsequies at his grave. The appearance of Thomas Francis Meagher in America, after his escape from penal servitude in Australia, greatly perplexed the bishops and clergy; but the mot d'ordre went forth, and all the Catholic newspapers in America, with a single exception, assailed him with the greatest bitterness, for his enlightened opinions upon religious liberty, and upon the relation between Church and State. Thousands of the Irish, notwithstanding, rallied round Meagher; and the Irish-American was established, for the vindication and enforcement of his principles. There are a few other organs of Irish nationality, including the Irish People, of John Mitchell, published in America, but, with the exception of the People, they are all contemptible, in every point of view. You find in their pages column after column of windy jargon and tawdry rhetoric, which would consign an English editor to a madhouse. This gaudy and ornate style, with a profusion of florid imagery and Oriental hyperbole quite overpowering, seems to characterise every Nationalist journal. It is these papers that have inflated the Fenian bubble. We pity the deplorable ignorance of the Irish masses, their misguided enthusiasm, and their preposterous pertinacity in the pursuit of visionary ends; but we have no language too severe to apply to their intellectual leaders who pursue their ignoble calling from a mercenary calculation of the profits to be derived from bottomless credulity. We fear that the Irish press generally has succeeded in imparting an education to the emigrés that can serve only to nurture hatreds, which, like curses, too often come home to roost, and that some considerable time may be expected to elapse before all the appliances of American civilization and Christianity shall succeed, as they most certainly will, in the assimilation of such intractable materials.

Our notice of the American press would be incomplete without some account of that ample supply of religious literature which is furnished by thousands of weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals. The religious newspaper is almost peculiar to America, and is far superior to any similar publication in England. The English paper is more ecclesiastical and less religious; the American, while equally strenuous and careful in the advocacy of denominational claims, supplies much of what we usually obtain here from the Sunday Magazine and the Family Treasury. The literary superiority of the religious press over the secular in America arises mainly from the fact that its conductors and contributors are mostly clergymen who have been graduates of colleges, and are possessed of a considerable amount of classical culture and training. Every denomination has a large number of weekly organs. The two leading newspapers of the class are the New York Independent and the New York Observer, the former an organ of the Congregationalists, and the latter of the Presbyterians. The Independent was originally conducted by the Rev. Dr. Bacon, the Rev. Dr. Thompson, and the Rev. Richard Storrs, jun.; it afterwards passed into the hands of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who wielded it with great power and efficiency in the anti-slavery cause; and it is now managed by Theodore Tilton in company with several others. It contains a great variety of religious, political, and general news, devotional and literary pieces of great merit, together with foreign and domestic correspondence, written with an excellent spirit. Mr. Beecher has established, and conducts, the Christian Union, another religious paper, which is rapidly rising to popularity and power. The Advance, a religious paper published in Chicago, and conducted by Dr. Patten, is one of the best of the religious papers of America. The Observer is one of the oldest and best established papers, once exceedingly Conservative in its views of slavery, but always distinguished by sound judgment, good taste, and fair culture. The Methodists are well represented by the Christian Advocate and Journal, and the Baptists by the Examiner and Chronicle. The monthly organ of the American Tract Society has a circulation of about 200,000, which it owes to its catholic character and its extraordinary cheapness. The quarterly literature of the American churches is of a very high character. The Bibliotheca Sacra is the great organ of New England theology, and the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review is the leading representative of the Calvinism of the Westminster standards. These are the two most powerful reviews. The Bibliotheca Sacra is published at Andover, the scene of the learned labours of Moses Stuart, the biblical expositor, and was established twenty-seven years ago. It differs from the Princeton Review and all British reviews in publishing the names of its contributors, and it has succeeded in gathering to its pages a vast amount of the most versatile talent from nearly all the Congregational Colleges of America. Its most original contributor in the domain of metaphysical theology is Professor Austin Phelps, of Andover, whose articles on 'The Instrumentality of the Truth in Regeneration,' and 'Human Responsibility as related to Divine Agency in Conversion,' published within the last two or three years, prove that much of the genius and spirit of Jonathan Edwards still exists in New England theology. Another eminent contributor, Professor Park, of Andover, who is also its principal editor, has been frequently in collision with Dr. Hodge, of the Princeton Review, on points of Calvinistic divinity. Professor Bascom has been recently publishing in its pages a series of articles on 'The Natural Theology of Social Science'—a subject hitherto left too much in the hands of secularists—and has succeeded in lifting it with advantage into the higher sphere of theology. The articles of this review are generally marked by a high style of ability and a scientific thoroughness: and are, many of them, worthy of being reproduced, as they have been, from time to time, in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review. The spirit of its management is exceedingly liberal. We observe, for example, that it recently published an article on 'Christian Baptism,' from the professor of a Baptist College, in conformity with a plan adopted by the conductors of securing from representative men of different sects and schools of thought, articles unfolding distinctive, theological opinions, and exhibiting with something like scientific precision the exact peculiarities of meaning attached to the terminology of the respective schools. The Princeton Review is the oldest quarterly in the United States. It was established in 1825 by Dr. Charles Hodge, the well-known commentator on the Epistle to the Romans, who was then, and still is, a Professor in the Princeton Theological Seminary; but it was not till 1829 that it ceased to be a mere repertory of selections from foreign works in the department of biblical literature. It is, beyond all question, the greatest purely theological review that has ever been published in the English tongue, and has waged war in defence of the Westminster standards for a period of forty years, with a polemic vigour and unity of design without any parallel in the history of religious journalism. If we were called to name any living writer who, to Calvin's exegetical tact, unites a large measure of Calvin's grasp of mind and transparent clearness in the department of systematic theology, we should point to this Princeton Professor. He possesses, to use the words of an English critic, the power of seizing and retaining with a rare vigour and tenacity, the great doctrinal turning-points in a controversy, while he is able to expose with triumphant dexterity the various subterfuges under which it has been sought to elude them. His articles furnish a remarkably full and exact repository of historic and polemic theology; especially those on 'Theories of the Church,' 'The Idea of the Church,' 'The Visibility of the Church,' 'The Perpetuity of the Church,' all of which have been reproduced in English reviews. The great characteristic of his mind is the polemic element; accordingly we find him in collision with Moses Stuart, of Andover, in 1833, and with Albert Barnes in 1835, on the doctrine of Imputation; with Professor Park, in 1851, on 'The Theology of the Intellect and the Theology of the Feelings;' with Dr. Niven, of the Mercersburg Review, in 1848, on the subject of the 'Mystical Presence,' the title of an article which attempted to apply the modern German philosophy to the explanation and subversion of Christian doctrines; with Professor Schaff, in 1854, on the doctrine of historical development; and with Horace Bushnell, in 1866, on vicarious sacrifice. In fact, a theological duel has been going on between Andover and Princeton for nearly forty years, the leading controversialists of Andover being Stuart, Park, Edward Beecher, Baird, and Fisher, and those of Princeton, Hodge, the Alexanders, and Atwater.[1] Hodge has contributed one hundred and thirty-five articles to the Review since its commencement; Dr. Archibald Alexander—a venerable divine, who resembled John Brown, of Haddington, in many respects—contributed seventy-seven; his son, Dr. James Waddel Alexander, twice a Princeton Professor, and afterwards pastor of the wealthiest congregation in New York, contributed one hundred and one articles; another son, Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander, the well-known commentator on Isaiah, contributed ninety-two, mostly on classical and Oriental subjects; and Dr. Atwater, another Princeton professor of great learning and versatility, contributed sixty-four on theological and metaphysical subjects. The articles in the Princeton on science, philosophy, literature, and history, have generally displayed large culture and research. The review of Cousin's Philosophy, in 1839, by Professor Dod, was one of the most remarkable papers that appeared on the subject in America, and was afterwards reprinted separately on both sides of the Atlantic. Another theological quarterly of America, is the New Englander, published at Newhaven, Connecticut, and representative principally of Yale scholarship. Nearly all the leading names in New England theology, such as Bellamy, Hopkins, Emmons, Dwight, Griffin, Tyler, and Taylor, among the dead, and Bushnell, Beecher, and Bacon, among the living, are associated with the venerable University of Yale. Tryon Edwards (the great-grandson of Jonathan Edwards) is one of the contributors to the New Englander. The professors and graduates of the college are its principal contributors. Among them are to be found the distinguished names of Dr. Noah Porter and President Woolsey. The former has recently contributed to the New Englander, a series of valuable articles, just reprinted in a small volume, on 'The American Colleges and the American Public;' an able discussion of the fundamental principles of University education. The Mercersburg Review is the quarterly organ of the German Reformed Church, and has been conducted, from its commencement, by Dr. Niven and Professor Schaff, the well-known historian. The Baptists have their Christian Review, the Methodists their Methodist Quarterly Review, the Lutherans their Evangelical Review, the Episcopalians their Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review, and the Unitarians their Christian Examiner, which reflects from time to time the vicissitudes of Unitarian opinion. There is one fact suggested by this review of the American religious press, viz., that Episcopacy holds a very inferior place beside Independency and Presbyterianism in theological authorship. We all know how greatly things are changed, even in England, since Dr. Arnold deplored, and all but despised, the culture of Dissenters, for we have Dean Alford, but the other day, confessing in the Contemporary Review, 'Already the Nonconformists have passed us by in Biblical scholarship, and ministerial training.' But in the United States, the palm of theological scholarship has always rested in the hands of Congregational and Presbyterian divines. The best theological seminaries, the ablest theological reviews, and the most original as well as extensive authorship in the various branches of theology, belong to the two denominations referred to.

We shall now proceed, as briefly as possible, to make some observations of a critical nature upon the intellectual and moral character of the American press generally. It is not, certainly, in any spirit of national superiority that we point to the undoubted fact that, notwithstanding the great expansion of newspaper literature in the States, the wide diffusion of popular education, and the circulation of English books of the best kind at a mere nominal cost, the Americans have as yet produced nothing representatively like our London Times, or Punch, or the Athenæum, or the Illustrated London News, or the Saturday Review, or the Art Journal, or the Edinburgh and Quarterly. They have not even produced a single great newspaper writer like Captain Stirling, of the Times, Albany Fonblanque, sen., of the Examiner, or Hugh Miller, of the Edinburgh Witness, for Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, though capital editors, are all greatly inferior to these men in that art of scholarly, dignified, and tasteful leader-writing, which gives such a power and charm to London journalism. Newspaper writing is, perhaps, the most difficult of all writing; there is none at least in which excellence is so rarely attained. The capacity of bringing widely-scattered information into a focus, of drawing just conclusions from well-selected facts, of amplifying, compressing, illustrating a succession of topics, all on the spur of the moment, without a moment's stay to examine or revise, argues great intellectual cultivation. The articles may not be of a lofty order, or demand for their execution the very highest kind of talent, but the power of accomplishing it with success is very uncommon, and of all the varieties of ways in which incompetency is manifested, an irrepressible tendency to fine writing is associated with the greater number of them. De Tocqueville says that democratic journalism has a strong tendency to be virulent in spirit and bombastic in style. It certainly runs the risk of lawlessness, inaccuracy, and irreverence, with much of vehemence, and with little taste, imagination, or profundity. One serious charge we have to bring against the American newspapers is, that they have sorely vulgarized and vitiated the English language. We are aware that many of them imagine the language of their country to be the standard as to idiom, pronunciation, and spelling, and any English variation from their golden rule as erroneous and heterodox; but such critics are entitled to no consideration whatever. If men of education at the American press refuse to study the style of the great authors who fixed and purified the language of our common forefathers, so that we may have one and not two languages spoken on opposite sides of the Atlantic, let them at least imitate such writers of their own as Washington Irving, Horace Bushnell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose pure and native English is wholly free from all the corruptions and affectations of phrase which overrun American newspapers, simply because it is beautifully modelled upon the most elegant and polished writers of English literature. In fact, the Americans have always been greatly in need of a critical organ, like the old Edinburgh Review, to purify the literary atmosphere from the clouds and mists of false taste which deface it, to stand censor on books and newspapers, a recognized authority in the literary republic, for whose quarterly judgments readers might look with interest, and authors with trembling. The North American Review, though written with great spirit, learning, and ability, and abounding in profound and original discussions on the most interesting subjects, has never filled the place of the Edinburgh, and, indeed, its own style is not free from the common sin of affectation. It is pleasant to think of William Cullen Bryant, the poet, hanging up in the office of his newspaper—the New York Evening Post—a catalogue of words that no editor or reporter is ever to be allowed to use.[2] Let us hope that the literary men of America, of all classes, will seriously aim at the formation of a purer, chaster, and juster style of writing, for what they have hitherto produced has been defective in taste rather than in talent.

Another great sin of American journalism is its intolerable personality, violence, and exaggeration. This was the disgrace of our own English press at no distant period. Cobbett was a great sinner in this respect, He had much to do with raising the intellectual, and lowering the moral, reputation of the modern newspaper. The wide diffusion of enlightened views on politics and religion is attested, however, in a remarkable manner among ourselves, by the moderation of tone which we now see in journals which, about twenty years ago, were remarkable for their scurrility and violence. It is no longer a recommendation to an English newspaper to be known as an assailant of the Royal Family, the aristocracy, the bench of bishops, or parsons. Several publications that, a few years since, professed atheism and secularism, have become extinct, and the quondam organs of Chartism and fierce democracy have been obliged to become respectable. But many of the American newspapers are much worse than the English were a quarter of a century ago. With us, faction has become less mischievous and shameless; unfounded accusations less common and less malignant; invectives more measured and decorous; not merely because the evil passions which required to be fed with the abuse of individuals have calmed down, but because the British press is now guided by the principle of attacking public opinion, not private characters, measures, not men; and its quarrels are usually governed by the laws of honour and chivalry, which proscribe all base advantages. Put an American newspaper cannot assail another newspaper without mentioning the editor's name, and calling him coward or rascal. If you cannot answer your opponent's objections, you caricature his appearance, or dress, or diet, or accent, as Bennett is in the habit of treating Greeley; and if you are foiled by his wit, you recover your advantage by stabbing his character. No allusions become too indecorous for your taste; no sarcasms too bitter for your savage spite; and no character pure enough to be sacred from your charges and insinuations. The American editor pursues his antagonist as if he were a criminal. The New York World lately devoted four columns of its space to illustrate by quotations the amenities of American journalism. The majority of the papers seem to subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages which spring from an utter contempt for the restraints of decency and candour; and we are strongly of opinion that this work of cruel intimidation is pursued with unrelenting eagerness, not from the influence of angry passions or furious prejudices, but in the cold-blooded calculation of the profits which idle curiosity or the vulgar appetite for slander may enable its authors to derive from it. We are not prepared to endorse all the strong statements made by infuriated rivals concerning the proprietor of the New York Herald; but he leaves us, in no doubt, himself, as to the light in which he regarded his own frequent chastisements. Immediately after James Watson Webb had severely whipped him in the streets of New York, the whole affair was recounted, in the Herald with a sensational circumstantiality that had an evident eye to business, though we cannot overlook the remarkable good humour with which Bennett treated the whole affair:—

'The fellow,' he says, 'no doubt wanted to let out the never-failing supply of good humour and wit which have created such a reputation for the Herald, and appropriate the contents to supply the emptiness of his own skull. He didn't succeed, however, in rifling me of my ideas. My ideas in a few days will flow as freshly as ever, and he will find it to his cost.'

Imagine the London Times degraded to the condition of its responsible editor rejoicing in his own personal chastisement! American journalists fight like their French brethren. They never dream of explanations. Bullets and bowie-knives are the natural sequel of such recriminations as disgrace their newspapers. This extreme violence is part of the loose political morality so common there. Americans seem to be taught almost from their infancy to hate one-half of the nation, and so contract all the virulence and passion of party before they have come to the age of reason; but before their newspapers can be said to enter upon the course of real usefulness which is open to them, they must have come to believe that political differences may exist without their opponents being either rogues or fools. Jefferson said in his day that the scurrility of the press drove away the best men from public life, and would certainly have driven away Washington had he lived to suffer from its growing excesses. James Fenimore Cooper, the celebrated novelist, had a horror of newspapers, and instituted actions at law against a host of them for literary libels. He once remarked, 'The press of this country tyrannizes over public men of letters, the arts, the stage, and even private life. Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it is gradually establishing a despotism as ruthless and grasping and one that is quite as vulgar as that of any Christian state known.' This view of the case is certainly serious and suggestive. Party violence may be carried to a length that defeats itself, for it may harden public men against all newspaper criticism whatever, to the great injury of public affairs, and thus lower the estimation and disturb the course of public opinion. Nowhere are fools more dogmatic than in politics, and nowhere are wise men more doubtful and silent; but American party writers have no respect for the Horatian maxim, 'in medio tutissimus'—the secret of that moderation of opinion which has distinguished the most genial and sagacious men in our political world. They must really learn to cultivate a love of truth and justice; they should seek to attain the power of holding the scales steadily, while the advantages or disadvantages of every question are fairly weighed; they should stamp upon their professional life the impress of personal rectitude and honour, and not wait—to copy the tone of the old apologies—till a higher standard of public morals, and a more intelligent cultivation of political and literary inquiries, shall have raised for them a new class of readers. It is the prerogative of genius to create the light by which it is to be understood and appreciated; but the working talents of a country, which are identified with its immediate interests, ought at least to rise a little above the surrounding level.

We are led, from this point, to notice another defect in American journalism,—the absence of the anonymous usage, which is, indeed, mainly answerable for the scurrility and violence already referred to. The British editor is usually unknown to the public; the French journalist subscribes his name at the foot of his articles; but the American editor publishes his name and address boldly at the top of his newspaper. The effect of this custom is to identify the authority of the journal with the personal influence of the editor; it tends to a habit of deciding questions on personal grounds, and to a far too marked superfluity of the tu quoque argument. The object of the American journalist is not so much the instruction of the public as the political advancement of himself, for journalism usually forms the first stage in the course of an ambitious politician, or a rising statesman; and the American usage is certainly very well adapted to this end. Our anonymous habit limits the discussions of the press and abolishes egotism, while it certainly tends to debar personalities. It has been remarked, as a suggestive fact, that personality is the common vice of the only free press in the world, which ignores the anonymous principle; and that in England, under a contrary usage, personality is little known, always reprobated, and, indeed, in cases of flagrant personal attacks, the authorship is usually but thinly disguised. It is absurd to defend the American habits as manly and ours as cowardly; for their habit tends to make writers far from circumspect or considerate of the feelings of others. But, in fact, the publicity in which American journalists delight is only akin to the publicity of American life generally. The British public would not tolerate the intrusion of the press into private or family concerns; yet one New York paper published, in the panic, of 1857, the name of every gentleman who bought a silk dress for his wife, or gave a dinner-party to his friends. Other newspapers criticize the dress and appearance of ladies at balls and cricket parties, the personality of their praise being almost as offensive as at other times the coarseness of their vituperation.

We confess that we do not entertain a very high opinion of the morality of the American press, though we admit there has been a sensible improvement within the last thirty years. Emerson made the remark, in his 'English Traits,' that the London Times was an 'immoral institution,' on the ground we presume, of its frequent changes of opinion. We are far from defending the leading journal in its policy of tergiversation—for there can be no doubt it ever fights on the stronger side, upholds no falling cause, and advocates no great principle—but it was never yet bought with bribes or cowed by intimidation. It has sometimes shown that it is conducted on principles superior to mere money considerations, for, during the Railway mania of 1845, when its advertising sheet was overrun with projected lines of railway, realizing to the proprietors the enormous sum of from £2,839 to £6,687 per week, the Thunderer turned its fire on these projects, and lost nearly £3,000 in a single week. We do not charge the American press with any flagrant changes of policy or principle, for we believe it is, in these respects, sufficiently consistent. But we deplore the absence of high moral purpose, as well as independence in its discussions of public questions. The American people demand a large amount of flattery; they have come almost to loathe the wholesome truth; they must be pampered with constant adulations, so that no one will venture to tell them their faults, and, neither at home nor abroad, dare moralists venture a whisper to their prejudice. This is a serious drawback. America wants more writers of the class who are said to prefer their country's good to its favour, and more anxious to reform its vices than cherish the pride of its virtues. Besides, we strongly suspect that the American journalist is very careless about the truth. We mean the truth of fact, which is part of the historic disposition of the age, as opposed to all that is sensational. He resembles the French rather than the English journalist in the tendency to regard good news as more important than correct news. The English journals make it their business to present their readers with news and not advice, with facts and not opinions, so that they can form opinions for themselves, and the power of our press is thus enormously increased, but only on conditions that effectually prevent the arbitrary exercise of it. The American writers for the press have followed our example in some degree, but their disposition to provide startling and sensational intelligence is too often manifested at the expense of truth. Mr. Maverick gives an account of a number of disreputable hoaxes played by the newspapers upon the public of America, which were justified, we presume, to the consciences of the authors by the observation of Lord Bacon—'A mixture of lies doth ever add pleasure; doth any man doubt that if there were taken from men's minds vain opinions, nattering hopes, false valuations, and the like, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things?' The 'Moon Hoax,' which was published in the New York Sun in 1835, was one of the most skilful and successful of these literary frauds. Successive numbers of that paper contained a pretended extract from the pages of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, under the title of 'Great Astronomical Discoveries latterly made by Sir John Herschel, LL.D., F.R.S., at the Cape of Good Hope.' The paper had a remarkable air of scientific research, such as might deceive all but the most learned and wary. The Herschel telescope was represented as affording a distinct view of lunar roads, rocks, seas, cascades, forests, houses, people, and monsters of various shapes. The 'Roorback Hoax' was a shameless attempt to injure the character of J. K. Polk, when he was a candidate for the Presidency, by representing him as possessing forty-three slaves who had his initials branded into their flesh. The deception was wrought by simply adding to a sentence in Featherstonehaugh's Travels in America four lines of the hoaxer's own, recording the disgraceful lie referred to. We confess that we cannot recognise the morality of a transaction which Mr. Maverick records in the history of the New York Times, without apparently the slightest suspicion of its dishonesty. When the New York Herald got hold of the single survivor of the ill-fated Atlantic steamer, Arctic, which was lost in September, 1854, an assistant on the Times succeeded, by means of an adroit pressman, in purloining an early copy from the Herald press-rooms, and actually published the Herald's report an hour earlier than that journal. We cannot understand what Mr. Maverick means by representing the Herald as 'playing a trick to keep the news from the other papers,' unless the Herald was actually bound to supply its contemporaries gratuitously with the exclusive news it had obtained from the survivor at its own sole expense. The transaction seems to us merely a clever specimen of American 'smartness.'

But we must draw these observations to a close. We cannot but admit that the press of America, with all its defects, is an engine of great power. It is on this ground we desire for it a close approximation to those intellectual and moral qualities which have given British journalism such an influence over the affairs of the whole world. In fact, two such nations as America and Britain, working in the same language, should be always learning from each other; for the eager energy of the one should push forward the occasionally lagging progress of the other, and our matured caution restrain their hasty inexperience. America is great in all that leads to immediate and available results. She has given us several of the greatest mechanical inventions of the age; she has far excelled us in the theory and practice of religious liberty, as well as in the more liberal recognition of denominational brotherhood among the religious sects; while she has furnished a noble example of public spirit in the support of religion, missions, and education. Let us hope that in time she will equal, if not surpass us in a periodical literature, which, if even still more intensely political than ours, will display a breadth and strength of thought, together with a wisdom and dignity, which will add immensely to its power. There is one aspect of Transatlantic literature which already contrasts favourably with our own, and that is its generally cordial recognition of Evangelical Christianity. With the exception of the German and French newspapers, which chafe under the restraints of a Christian country, and scoff at Judaic sabbaths, Pharisaic church-going, and tyrannical priestcraft, there are no newspapers of any position in the States that are avowedly anti-Christian; and there is less disposition than formerly, on the part of the American press generally, to exclude all reference to distinctive Christianity. It was considered a remarkable circumstance at the time of the American revival that several newspapers, notorious for a thinly disguised infidelity, and for a most undisguised enmity to Evangelical religion, should not only publish the most ample reports of the movement, but commend it in a way that has had no parallel in English journalism, even before the tide of public opinion had turned decisively in its favour. It is the common custom still for American newspapers to print the sermons of popular preachers, and to publish a large amount of religious intelligence. The press is also intensely Protestant, and has contributed to the growth of that enormous assimilating power by which American Protestantism has absorbed generation after generation of the Roman Catholic emigrants. The statistics of the Propaganda declare that one half of the whole number has been lost to the Church of Rome; and the explanation is, that they can no more escape from the influence of American ideas than from the effects of the atmosphere and climate.

It becomes, therefore, a matter of the greatest consequence that the literary guides of a nation with such a destiny as America, should understand the responsibilities under which their power is exercised. They should take care, above all things, to use their influence not to materialize the mind of society, by obtruding material concerns too much upon the attention, to the neglect of those moral and spiritual interests which constitute the very foundations of its greatness. This is a real danger, for, as De Tocqueville remarks, the tendency of modern democracy is to concentrate the passions of men upon the acquisition of comforts and wealth. They cannot be ignorant that the most clearly marked line of social progress over the whole world is coincident with the line of the Christian faith; that wherever true religion has had free access to the centres of human action, a palpable advance has been made in knowledge, liberty, and refinement; while poverty, injustice, and licentiousness, which are the ulcers of a depraved society, have in that degree been checked and healed. They must understand that honesty is the grand necessity of the world at this time, in its politics as well as its theology, in its commerce as well as its science. Let these things be understood by the leaders of American thought, and we cannot but anticipate a proud future for their country. It is a subject of just congratulation to England that her children have stamped their character on a vast continent, and, that instead of discontented colonies subjected to her caprice, she can now point to a great people, with all the best life of the ancient nations throbbing in their veins, flourishing exactly in proportion to their freedom, and trained, through all their bloody disasters which almost threatened to ruin their work, to build a stronger rampart, and to reclaim a broader shore for posterity. The interests of humanity demand that a nation so strong in all the material elements of civilization, and manifesting such an impetuous disregard of limit and degree in all its enterprises, should be equally strong in its intelligence and its Christianity.

Art. II.—Report from the Royal Commission on International Coinage. 1868.

Although during the deplorable struggle between Germany and France public attention has been of necessity mainly directed to the conflict, yet it is impossible, for many reasons, to do otherwise than regret this concentration of interest. The last session of our Parliament was fertile to an unusual degree in measures of public utility and importance; but it is not too much to say that the difficulties incurred by several of these measures in their passage through both Houses would have been greatly enhanced had the engrossing events which have recently agitated all Europe occurred at the time. The only satisfaction which can be obtained in contemplating, even from a distance, the misery inflicted on such countless thousands, arises from the hope that when the last echoes of the strife have faded away, a peace, firm and durable—durable because based on sound principles—may link together those nations who are now suffering from the effects of the struggle. Till this is the case, the evils arising from the war will not be confined to those actually engaged in it. Meanwhile, it is really no slight misfortune that many subjects, not unimportant to the country, should fail to obtain the attention which they would otherwise have received, in consequence of the superior interest of the central European crisis.

Professor Jevons' remarks at the late meeting of the British Association at Liverpool, on the manner in which points of importance were thus swamped, will not readily be forgotten by those who heard them. Among other subjects, the Professor instanced that of an international coinage, which, after having received considerable and careful attention, had receded for a time from that prominence which it deserved.

In this country, the question has been considered from two points of view—the one taken by those who are desirous to adopt a universal system of coinage, as well as a universal system of weights and measures; the other, by those who are aware of the present and increasing deterioration of the gold coinage of the country, arising from the number of coins deficient in full weight which are now in circulation.

Neither of these points have escaped the notice of the active mind of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer (Right Hon. R. Lowe). He has become aware that many of the gold coins now in circulation are below the legal tender weight; that the opportunity of a considerable re-coinage might be made use of to assimilate the weight of gold in the sovereign to that contained in twenty-five francs, and that in doing this the expense incurred in the coinage of gold might, by means of a seigniorage, be spared to the country.

To explain these points, it will be well, in the first place, to refer to a report of the then Master of the Mint, and Colonel Smith, late Master of the Calcutta Mint, in reply to the question put by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

'What would it cost, first to manufacture a sovereign, and afterwards to keep it in good condition for all time? The coin is always losing weight by wear, while it passes from hand to hand, and ends by becoming light (after three-quarters of a grain of gold have been lost), and is no longer current. The individual piece has thus a limited existence, and must be withdrawn and replaced by a new sovereign of full weight; that, again, by another in due time; and so on. Now, for what present payment could this succession be maintained? What is the contract price to cover the first construction, and all future restoration?'[3]

To put it in another shape. The person who thinks it worth his while to convert his gold bullion into coin, according to this plan, is to pay for the expense of manufacture, and is also called upon to contribute to a reserve fund, by means of which the natural deterioration of the coin he has caused to be put into circulation is to be provided for.

The coinage of gold in this country is—and it is well to explain this point at the outset—entirely gratuitous as far as the Government is concerned. That is to say, any person possessing gold bullion of the required purity of standard, may, if he chooses, take that bullion to the Mint. And, in due time, the officers of the Mint will return him—weight for weight—an equal quantity of gold coin. In due time, however, means in practice, a considerable delay; and delay in money matters means loss of interest. Hence, it arises, that in the natural course of events, no private person takes gold bullion to be coined, himself. But he carries it to the Bank of England. Now, that great corporation, among other duties to the State, has this particular charge. It is bound to buy all gold bullion of standard fineness offered to it, at the rate of £3 17s. 9d. per oz. These payments are made in bank notes; and as bank notes are immediately exchangeable for sovereigns, the result is, that any one possessing gold bullion of the Mint standard, can at once and immediately turn that bullion into gold coins for the slight cost of 1¹/2d. per oz., or something less than ¹/2d. for every sovereign. This is really buying a sovereign at cost price, for the mere manufacture of a sovereign costs fully a ¹/2d., as will be mentioned further on. What is more, the payment, small as it is, does not accrue to the Government, but is retained by the Bank of England, and is considered as being only sufficient to compensate that institution for the trouble and expense of the operation, including the loss of time, and consequent loss of interest incurred. No provision is made to include the loss by wear, which, though imperceptible at the moment, accumulates in process of time to a large amount. Investigation shows that 100 sovereigns lose 8d. a year by fair usage. If the amount of British gold coin in circulation amounts, as it is supposed to do, to eighty millions, sixty-eight being whole sovereigns, and twelve millions in halves, the annual loss would amount to £35,000 from deterioration due to wear alone. The charge for manufacturing sovereigns is not high when all that has to be done is taken into consideration. Great precautions have to be taken in the process to secure the needful quality. Each bar has to be brought to the required standard. Careful assays are made, and great exactness in the weight of each coin is, of course, essential. All these points cannot be attended to without considerable expense. Again, the great amount of valuable property in the shape of coin and bullion necessitates vigilant watching. The total charge is estimated at ¹/2d. each sovereign. Half sovereigns are, in proportion to value, more expensive to strike than sovereigns. They also wear more rapidly. This arises from greater rapidity of circulation, and also from the fact that, weight for weight, each half sovereign presents a greater surface for abrasion than a sovereign. After making careful calculations, the Master of the Mint and Colonel Smith arrived at the conclusion that a charge of £1 13s. 6d. for every £100 coined would be sufficient to cover all expenses. That is to say, that if an arrangement were made with a contractor to undertake to manage the Mint, and to keep the gold coinage in good repair, he would require, to hold him harmless from loss, to be paid about £1 13s. 6d. for every £100 in the average proportion of sovereigns and half sovereigns put into circulation. And this sum is at the present time lost to the community.

It is characteristic of the manner in which public questions are handled in this country, that throughout the report, to which is attached the name of an official in such high place as that of the late Master of the Mint, continual reference is made to the investigations, not of a public officer, but of Mr. Jevons, Professor of Political Economy in Owen's College, Manchester. Mr. Jevons, being desirous of ascertaining the condition of the gold currency, made inquiries of bankers and other suitable persons in all parts of the United Kingdom, requesting them

'to take one or two hundred pounds in sovereigns, and half the amount in half-sovereigns, from gold received in the ordinary course of business, and to cause the number of coins of each date to be counted and stated. The aid thus requested was furnished with a readiness which I had no right to expect, and which I cannot sufficiently acknowledge. Not a few gentlemen, on becoming acquainted with my purpose, procured very extensive returns, and the final result was, that this kind of census of the gold coinage was extended over one-sixth of a million of coins, thus composed:

'At least one gold coin in every hundred now existing in this country was, on the average, enumerated; and, as there were 321 separate returns received from 213 distinct towns or localities, including almost every place of commercial importance, it may be allowed, I think, that sufficient data were acquired for determining the average character of the circulation.'—Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. xxxi., p. 439.

Mr. Jevons' inquiry was, as he describes it, made in a private manner, but it was, beyond question, conducted most efficiently and thoroughly. And there is no reason to doubt that he has rather under-estimated than over-estimated the case when he states, that about 45 per cent. of the sovereigns and 62 per cent. of the half-sovereigns now in circulation in the country are lighter than the legal standard. If this statement appears excessive to any one, he can easily verify it for himself. He has only to go to his banker, in whatever part of the United Kingdom he may reside, and ask him to provide out of the gold in his till—out of the ordinary circulation of the locality—100 sovereigns of full weight. Then, if he inquires how many sovereigns have been picked over to obtain this number, he will—within those reasonable limits of variation which every similar calculation is liable to—find that Mr. Jevons' statement gives a correct idea of the ordinary circulation.

But Mr. Lowe, as will have been observed, did not confine himself to the actual deterioration of the existing British gold circulation. His thoughts took a wider range—'a coin which would have the advantage of an international circulation' occurred to him as a possible thing—and, further, that the British sovereign, reduced to an exact equation with twenty-five francs of gold coin of France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, &c., might be such a coin. The question of the desirability of an international coinage has frequently been discussed. From some of the remarks which have been made on Mr. Lowe's speech, it might have been imagined to be only a recent idea. But this is far from being the case. Much attention was drawn to the point in 1851. The difficulty then experienced in comparing the value of the articles produced in different countries and shown at the Great Exhibition, naturally suggested the idea of a coinage common to all nations. The International Statistical Congress then took the matter up at their meetings at Brussels, in 1853, and at Paris, in 1855, and at London, in 1860. This last-named meeting was held under the presidency of the late Prince Consort, and his address on its opening was the last public speech delivered by him. In it are to be found these words, which show that the importance of the question of international coinage had not escaped the notice of the Prince:—'The different weights, measures, and currencies, in which different statistics are expressed, cause further difficulties and impediments. Suggestions with regard to the removal of these have been made at former meetings, and will, no doubt, be renewed.' Before this meeting separated, an international commission was formed to report on the question. Further consideration was given to it at Berlin, in 1863. In December, 1865, the idea was put into practice. A formal convention was entered into by France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland; and those four countries established an international currency among themselves. The French Government followed up the subject by giving official notice of this convention, inviting this country, with many others, to send commissioners to attend a conference 'for the purpose of deliberating upon the best means of securing a common basis for the adoption of a general international coinage.'

'The Conference was attended by thirty-three delegates, representing twenty different countries, viz.:—Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, United States, Wurtemburg.'

'The delegates were not authorized in any way to bind their respective countries, but they voted according to their own opinions.'

'Great value seems to be attached to the cooperation of England in any measure of this description. England has been forward in urging the policy of free trade upon Continental nations; and while her joining in any movement originated abroad for promoting and facilitating commercial intercourse would be most favourably received, and would increase her influence among them, her declining altogether to enter upon it might appear to be inconsistent with her general conduct upon such questions.'

'The recommendations of the Conference may be shortly stated to be:

'I. The adoption of a single gold standard.

'II. The adoption of ⁹/10 as the proportion of fine gold in the coins.

'III. That all gold coins hereafter struck in any of the countries which are parties to the Convention, should be either of the value of five francs or multiples of that sum.

'IV. That a gold coin of the value of twenty-five francs should be struck by such countries as prefer it, and be admitted as an international coin.

'In other countries steps have been taken with a view to promote a general international coinage.

'A Bill has been introduced into the Congress of the United States for altering the value of the American coinage, so as to assimilate it to that of the Convention of 1865; and we have received the report of the Finance Committee of the Senate of the United States, recommending the adoption of the measure, with certain amendments; together with a report also presented to the Senate, adverse to the passing of the Bill.

'A Bill has been introduced into the Canadian Parliament for the regulation of the currency of that country, in which provision is made for the adoption by Canada of the system of the Convention, in the event of the measure above referred to becoming law in the United States.

'Another Bill has been introduced into the Congress of the United States, in order to assimilate the coinage to that of this country, making the half eagle equal to our sovereign.

'The Federal Parliament of the North German Confederation has passed a resolution declaring necessary the adoption of a decimal monetary system.

'Finally, we have received a communication from the Foreign Office, by which it appears that the Government of Sweden have proposed to strike a gold coin equivalent to ten francs, and further to coin pieces of twenty-five francs as soon as such a coin shall be struck in France.'—Report from the Royal Commission on International Coinage, 1868.

The Spanish Government has recently given notice of being willing to join the Convention (Nov., 1869), and the pattern pieces of the twenty-five franc coin have already been struck at the Paris mint.

This brief résumé of what has actually been done by several other nations, suffices of itself to show that the question deserves, as Mr. Lowe has stated in Parliament, very careful consideration.

Four nations, with more than sixty-six millions of inhabitants, already possess an international coinage. That is to say, any merchant in the furthest point to which the Convention extends knows at once, if he takes up a paper with the prices current at Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, or any of the great centres of commerce, what those prices mean, and how nearly they correspond with his own. Other nations besides France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, are prepared to join in this uniform coinage. It is not unlikely that the sixty-six millions may be more than doubled shortly. Will it not be a great disadvantage to the thirty or thirty-two millions inhabiting these islands to be outside this great confederation?

The values of the gold in the pound sterling and in twenty-five francs approximate very closely. To enable this country to join the confederation, it would be needful for the values to be equalized. This must be done in one of two ways.

Either the amount of gold contained in the proposed coin of twenty-five francs must be increased by twenty centimes to make it the equivalent of the English full-weight sovereign. Or, the weight of gold in the English sovereign must be diminished to make it equal to that contained in the 25-franc piece. The Royal Commissioners on International Coinage appear to have entertained an aspiration—it can hardly be termed a hope—that the former plan would be adopted; but it can scarcely be looked for. The inconvenience to the nations who have already joined the Convention would be so great as to preclude the idea. The other alternative alone practically has to be considered. It amounts to this: that 2d. in value should be taken out of every sovereign. But to do this without due compensation would be to alter every existing contract. A seigniorage to be charged on all bullion taken to the mint to be coined, is proposed as a method of bridging over this difficulty. To effect this such a charge or seigniorage would have to be proportionate to the amount of bullion subtracted from each sovereign.

It is desirable to trace out what effect such a charge would have. It would be—

'tantamount to an enhancement of the purchasing value of the coinage in the country of its currency. It immediately augments the value of the coinage as expressed in its exchange value for bullion, unless the weight of pure metal in the coinage be simultaneously reduced to the same extent as the amount of the seigniorage. The following may serve as a test example, and avoid the necessity for the use of fractions:—"What would be the effect of a seigniorage of 1 per cent, in a country where it is imposed for the first time?" It would be this: that whilst the pieces of current coin before the imposition of the seigniorage were exactly worth their weight in uncoined bullion of the same intrinsic fineness, they would, after its imposition, be worth 1 per cent, more than their weight in bullion of the like standard.'—Mr. Hendriks' Evidence, Royal Commission on International Coinage, p. 142.

The sovereign, thus diminished in weight, would still possess exactly the same purchasing power—within the limits of the country—as it previously had. Beyond those limits, as shown by the practice of the French mint authorities, it would still retain its value. It would not be, as the present sovereign now is, undervalued in consequence of the mint charges of other nations.

An objection may be, and has already been, made to the alteration—that such a change would be unfair to all those creditors who had made contracts in the old coin, and would be repaid in the new. This objection is sufficiently disposed of by the fact that, as mentioned before, the purchasing power of the new coin will be equal to that of the old.

If any doubt existed, a further security might be given under all circumstances, by adopting the plan recommended by Colonel Smith, the late Master of the Calcutta Mint. His proposal is, 'that the new sovereign shall be changeable for gold bullion at the present price.' This would cause the value of the new coin to remain equal with that of the present coin, exactly as the value of the existing silver coinage is maintained. The present shilling, even when of full weight, is by no means worth its weight in the metal of which it is made. The pound troy of standard silver is, and has been in England, since 1817, coined into sixty-six shillings. The value of the shilling, thus debased, is maintained at the proper level by the coin being limited, as a legal tender, to 42s. by tale. The result is obvious. Silver of the value of something like 18s. does service for 20s. What is more, this has been the case for years, and no one has ever been injured by it. And the same effect would surely follow if Colonel Smith's plan were carried out. If the holder of 100 sovereigns were to desire to convert them into gold, he would take them to the Bank of England, who would give, as now, a certain quantity of bar gold of standard fineness, at £3 17s. 10¹/2d. per oz. The sovereign would, to a certain extent, become a 'token' coin; that is to say, each sovereign would, as the shilling is now, be worth something less than the stamped value. But it would, within the limits of the convention, that is, within the limits of the civilized world, be current exactly to the extent of its nominal value; and any one desiring to employ it beyond the limits of the Convention would be placed in exactly the position in which he is now, by simply taking his gold coins to the Bank of England and exchanging them for bar gold. A further advantage would arise from this diminution in weight of the sovereign. As the sovereign is worth a fraction over ten rupees in India, it follows that the internationalization of the English sovereign, and the reducing it by about twopence, to make it equal with twenty-five francs or five dollars, would immediately rectify the present difference between the British sovereign and the 10-rupee piece; and the rupee, the British florin, and the Australian florin would, in the international scheme of coinage, ultimately become absolutely identical, so far at least as gold coinage is concerned.[4]

Any alteration of coin in so backward a country as India would have to be introduced with great caution; but the advantage of assimilating the currency to that of this country cannot be doubted. There are great disadvantages in allowing coins, nearly identical in value, to circulate together; and if the 'sovereign' remains at the present value, what Mr. Jevons anticipates may not be unlikely to happen.

'It is only necessary for the Continental nations and the United States to issue, as is already proposed, a piece of twenty-five francs in order to supplant the sovereign; for, as the new coin would have the value of a well-worn sovereign, it would soon be accepted equally with the sovereign in all foreign countries and our colonies, if not at home. At the same time, the difference of value being about 2d. in the pound, would ensure the melting of all new sovereigns in preference. Thus, however many sovereigns are coined, we should never succeed in dislodging the 25-franc piece from circulation. More even than at present our British Mints would perform the labours of the Danaïdes, ever pouring forth new and beautiful coin, at once to disappear into the bullion dealer's crucible. The sovereign would be an evanescent coin, constantly liable to be recoined with the permanent impress of a foreign mint. Common sense, as well as invariable experience, tells us that we must be worsted in this contest of the heavier and the lighter coin.'—Professor Jevons' Paper in the Journal of the Statistical Society, vol. xxxi., p. 429.

The extent of the populations employing the 20-franc piece as their principal gold coin, has already been mentioned. Some persons may say, 'It is true these nations more than double in number the persons whose basis of accounts is the pound sterling; but still there may be more "sovereigns" in existence than 20-franc pieces.' Now, it is by no means as easy to enumerate the coins in a country as to make a census of the inhabitants. You may count the dwellers in the poorest hovel. But you cannot count the coins hidden under the hearth, or in the end of the stocking. It is, however, by no means clear that the amount of British gold coin in existence is as much as that circulated by several other nations. Sovereigns, so far from preponderating, appear to be in an absolute minority. At the Paris Conference of 1867, the amounts of the gold coinage of Great Britain, France, and the United States were stated as follows:—

It is, of course, impossible to state with certainty what proportion of coins struck at any mint at any time remain in existence afterwards. Some coins are called in, some are lost, others find their way to the melting-pot: it is impossible to say how many continue to circulate. One thing, however, is certain, that whatever casualties of this nature any coins are exposed to, British coins feel to the fullest extent. The rapidity of circulation in Great Britain tends to great deterioration from wear and tear. The absence of seigniorage causes our coinage to be relatively undervalued in proportion to other gold coins.[6] Even supposing British coins to remain current as long as those of other nations, they are certainly less numerous. They are probably far less frequently hoarded. The coinage returns from 1851 to 1866 inclusive show the relative proportions even more clearly than the earlier statements. Our Mint was less fertile during that time, than either the Mints of France or the United States.

The amount of gold coin in a country is very far from being an indication, either of its wealth or of its business transactions; but these figures suffice to show that the sovereign does not hold the pre-eminence frequently ascribed to it. Even if the proceeds of the Sydney Mint are added in, the sovereign will still be found in the minority. The Sydney Mint was established in 1855. The coinage has been as follows:—

And it must not be assumed that all these Australian sovereigns are in circulation now. An imperfection in the process of refining incident on carrying on that operation in a new country, left a certain portion of silver at all events in the earlier mintages, and this circumstance is believed to have made these coins favourites with the 'melters.' Sir A. Donaldson, formerly Colonial Secretary, and Colonial Treasurer to the Government of New South Wales, gave evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Sydney Branch Mint, appointed in 1862; and, after stating that he believed that a considerable number of the Australian sovereigns have reached England, added, 'as a matter of fact, I think they all find their way to the refiner.' Mr. W. Miller, of the Bank of England, when examined before the same Committee, 'understood that upwards of 2,000,000 were sent to this country some time ago, and that they have been melted.' This was before the proclamation making these coins legal tender in this country. They have probably been less frequently melted since that proclamation. But it cannot be assumed that the whole twenty millions are still in circulation. Even including all of them, the sovereign would not be the preponderating coin as far as number is concerned.

Mr. Hendriks, a very eminent statistician, who has paid much attention to questions connected with the coinage (vide Journal of the Society of Arts, February 14, 1868), has given to the public the grounds upon which he bases his opinion that, although the sovereign and the dollar may be more widely diffused than the Napoleon, there are now current in the world twice as many Napoleons as sovereigns, four times as many as half-eagle or five-dollar pieces, and about one-third more than sovereigns and half-eagle pieces together. This writer has also made the following calculations, showing the relative importance of the United States, England, and France, as the chief manufacturing countries of coinage since 1792. The object of the division of the results into separate periods is to show the altered condition since the gold discoveries in California and Australia.

In further commenting, in the pages of the Economist, on these statistics, Mr. Hendriks observes:—

'It thus appears that whilst England coined 48²/3 per cent., or nearly one-half, of the grand total from 1792 to 1851, her proportion has fallen from the first place to the last, in the subsequent period 1851 to 1866, her fresh coinage having therein sunk to 21¹/2 per cent., or a little more than one-fifth of the total. The proportion for France was 33 per cent. in the first period, and 47 per cent. in the second. From the second place she thus moved to the first. But the advance of the United States was equally marked, and from the smallest proportion, 18¹/3 per cent, in the period 1792 to 1851, there was an increase to 31¹/2 per cent., or to the second place, in the period 1851 to 1866.

'The report from the Secretary of the American Treasury for 1868 gives more recent statistics, namely, for the years ended 30th June, 1867 and 1868. These show a gold coinage of about forty million dollars in 1867, and of about twenty-four million dollars in 1868. But in England, in 1867, the gold coined was actually less than half a million sterling, or under two and a half million dollars' worth in American coin. And in 1868 the English Mint turned out only £1,653,384 sterling, or about eight million dollars' worth in American coin. The gold coinage of France has also declined below the rate of fresh production in America. Thus America is rapidly attaining the first place as a gold coining country. And it will be a question for future time to solve, whether the English and Australian Mints, in their united working, will exceed the manufacture by the United States' Mints at Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Denver.'

As some persons may say, 'Other nations need a larger gold coinage than we do, because their paper money and banking systems are not like ours; but their coinage is no proof of the extent of their business transactions,' it is best to mention that the united export and import trade of the European countries alone, who have already joined the Monetary Convention, or have signed preliminary treaties of adherence thereto, amounts to no less than five hundred million pounds sterling per annum at the present time, or to nearly one-fourth more than the aggregate exports and imports of the United Kingdom. It will now be desirable to mention the charges made for coining, or seigniorage, at the principal mints. In England no charge is made; but the 1¹/2d paid to the Bank on each ounce of standard gold bullion, amounts to about 0·1605 (say 3s. 2¹/2d.) per cent. In France it is different. When gold is carried to the mint there, coin is returned for it, with a certain deduction. This deduction is about ¹/4 per cent. Beyond this there is some delay, practically, before the coin is returned. On an average the loss of interest on the money, caused by this delay, amounts to about ³/4 per cent. Altogether, the charge is about 1 per cent., or more than six times the charge now made in England. In Prussia the charge is ¹/2 per cent., and the delay is about the same as in Paris. In America and India it is about the same.[7]

It appears from these statements that there is nearly a universal consensus of practice in charging a seigniorage. There is also a nearly universal consensus of opinion on the part of the leading authorities in political economy (such as Adam Smith and J. S. Mill) that such a seigniorage, when moderate, really enhances the value of the coin to the extent of the charge. If, therefore, this opinion is correct, it follows that the gold coinage of England, where no charge is made, will be depreciated—that is, will not obtain its real value in those countries where a charge is made. It is not difficult to show that this is the case in France; and if in one country where a seigniorage is charged, it follows, of course, in all of them.