Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/37

Rh mob of London and Liverpool governs England. The Irish, though they carry the city, cannot carry the state of New York. The power of the country, as well as the largest portion of its worth, in the last resort resides in the yeomen, who, when a real emergency calls, can always be trusted to come forward in overwhelming force, and with a truly patriotic spirit, to guard the great interests of the country.

Hitherto, however, there has been another disturbing element, more serious than Irish violence itself, and one for which the free institutions of America are as little responsible as they are for Irish character. We must suspend our judgment of the American government till we have seen it fairly at work under better auspices than those of the Democratic party. The two presidents of the Republican party whom we have seen augur well for the political future.

English notions of the political character of the Americans are naturally formed mainly from the American journals, or rather they are formed from the worst passages of the worst of those journals, carefully extracted for the English market. The spirit of political journalism in America is necessarily in the main that of the central institutions, and it often enough gives one occasion to raise the question as to the benefits of an anonymous press. It does this not least when it is immolating the character of other nations to the self-esteem of the American people. The writing is, generally speaking, inferior to ours; the calling of a journalist not being so distinct or so well paid there as it is here. I will venture, however, to say that there is nothing in American journalism so profligate or so coarse that a match may not easily be found