Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

chronicles its petty details of life with an air of profound insight; pokes a finger into its deepest social abysses, and measures its political strata by his umbrella. Can he describe for you the America of to-day? Like a child at a panorama he may have looked upon the illuminated screen where the hidden painting and light and lens have thrown their shadows and reflections, but of the causes of the scene he looks upon or of the philosophy of its action, he at best only guesses. How much you Americans have suffered in this way at the hands of my roving countrymen I blush to confess, but it is some relief to know that it has not always been without compensating injuries.

IV.

GROUNDS OF INTERNATIONAL AMITY.

Grounds of inter

In compliment to your common sense I avoid the hackneyed sentiments about the national eternal ties which bind England and America. England and America are two human nations,

amity.

and would go to war with as much zest, and perhaps ferocity, as any two nations in the world. That sort of sentiment has been overdone; and when one of my countrymen vapours to you about our common race, common language, common Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, W. Field, and Holloway's pills, you may be sure he either has nothing to say, or is over here collecting for some church or charity. Ladies and gentlemen, our international brotherhood is to be evinced by better things than these: by a candid study of each other's social errors or improvements: by a candid interchange of thought: by a candid, sincere, bold, and reciprocal criticism of each other's societies, literature, politics, religion by the suppression of jealousies and heartburnings: by a more intimate knowledge on either part of all those countless varieties of circumstance which tend to prove, not that our language but our interests are one. It is in this spirit that I have come among you, not to expose or condemn my own country, but frankly to speak of such things in my own country as may be of consequence to you, or may enable you

the better to understand its difficulties as well

as its greatness.

V.

VESTED INTERESTS.

interests.

Where is one to begin upon a subject of so Vested vast a range? Here you have many problems-there there are hundreds. Politics here have their knotty points, there they are tangled in innumerable skeins. The diversities of sects, the antipathies of religions, the incongruities of class interests, are here grave and embarrassing-there they are numberless, extreme, irritable, irreconcilable. Sociology is here beginning to be a well of profound depth-there it is a bottomless. whirlpool. The evils and wrongs of society are here enough to make men anxious-there they force themselves upon every intelligence, and what is to some people more important, carry their interest home to every breeches pocket-where there is one. Institutions here are many, and their relations vast-there they have multiplied through centuries, consist of the accretions of ages, and are built

into the very framework of society. Interests like these you touch at your peril. They have arms and suckers as numerous and powerful as a devil-fish. They cling to the rock of their rights like limpets. When you tear them away you must break off large sections of their base with them.

Here, then, is suggested our first topic. A prominent thing which stands out in the condition of the England of to-day is the number and power of VESTED INTERESTS. The Crown has vested interests-the aristocracy have vested interests-the Church has vested interests-the clergy -the liquor-sellers—the army and navy

the bench and the bar-officials of the court, of law-every endowed charity-the schools, and many schoolmasters, railways, turnpikes, municipal corporations, lords of manors, dukes and chancellors of duchies, markets, fairs, constitute a vast and mighty array of vested interests. You can scarcely drive the chariot of legislation in any direction without jarring against one of these obstructive in

terests.

VI.

INFLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS.

of vested

Hence Reform in England, and among Influence yourselves, however similar it may be in interests. principles, is in development a different thing. In new communities anomalies in laws, in customs, in polity, vanish before reformers like clouds before the wind. In old societies they can only be removed under the threat of danger, as you blow up houses to stay a great conflagration, or by the slow incessant wearing of advancing and receding tides of public opinion.

Aye! great is the potency of vested interest! It is a solid body concreted into the wall of society, and you can only remove it by breaking down that on which it is stayed. It cannot be abated without noise, and labour, and money; a solvent people are least and last willing to apply to it. Its impudence is astounding, its claims exorbitant, its obstinacy selfish and intractable.

In proportion to the number of vested

« AnteriorContinuar »