Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/398

386 is one secret of the increase of values which has been more or less marked in all parts of the commercial world. As we have to look for at least an equal addition to the world's possessions in gold and silver in the next period of fifteen years, it may be wise to consider what effect this is to have upon the question of a fall in prices in which we are all alike interested. As the two Americas furnish the larger portion of the gold and silver of the world, the effect upon values of an increase in the amount of these metals will be first felt here. Sagacious observers are beginning to see the effect that this control of the coin supply must have upon our control of the commerce of the world, associated as it is with a geographical position which places us in possession of the modern routes for travel and transportation. A portion of the gold of California and Nevada has already begun to find its way directly to China, in the Pacific steamers, by a line at least eight thousand miles shorter "than the circuitous route hitherto pursued by the way of Panama, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the great Indian Ocean." But we forbear to enter upon the field of prophecy. If we were to develop the ideas of our national future, which are awakened by a consideration of our geographical position and material resources, we should afford as incontrovertable evidence of insanity as did General Sherman when he declared that we should need two hundred thousand men to carry his western campaign to a successful conclusion.

tells us that one of the great desires of his life was to be made a Chevalier of the Order Du Saint Esprit. Many years passed before he attained this much-coveted honor, and then he confesses that it was worthless in his eyes; the reason being that membership of the order had been conferred upon so many, and with so little discrimination, that it had ceased to be what it originally was—an enviable distinction for a gentleman. We are reminded of this confession by the wholesale conferring of the degree of LL. D. in which the University of Oxford indulged itself on the occasion of the presence in England of the American Protestant Bishops who attended the Pan Anglican Synod. The whole batch were made Doctors of the Laws in a lump. It would be mere folly to doubt that the University did this without taking into consideration for a moment whether these Right Reverend gentlemen were really qualified to be doctores utriusque juris. The Oxford men wished to be polite, and to pay the prelates a compliment; and so, as Oxford men had many times before d—'d the American laymen, they now LL. D.'d the American Bishops. But Oxford is not alone in this weakness. Degrees conferred causa honoris have ceased to be an evidence of eminence in the professions to which they properly pertain, and are almost worthless as an honorary distinction. Men are made Doctors of the Laws who are not only not lawyers, but who are so ignorant of Law and its history that they do not know the significance of the degree which is conferred upon them. When a man as free from all knowledge in this respect as Andrew Jackson was, and as void of the spirit of legality, is made an LL. D., who can be regarded as unfit to wear that distinction? But this whole business of conferring honorary degrees has, for a generation, at least, been made ridiculous. Colleges and Universities must either change their practice in this respect, and give degrees only to men who have a good right to take them, or men of sense will treat the offer to be D'd, as Henry Ward Beecher did; one of the pluckiest and most sensible acts of whose public life was his refusal to be made a Doctor of Divinity.