Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/51



ples, but because of the resemblance between them; a resemblance so true to nature that it reproduces not only the virtues, the high spirit and enterprise of the common ancestors of both, but because it brings out all the weakness, the defects and meaner vices which were incident and almost peculiar to the Anglo Saxon stock. The nations are too much alike to agree. Each works for what it conceives to be its own interest with an earnestness characteristic of both. The ruling interest of England is aristocratic, while that in America is in direct conflict. While these rival interests direct the policy of the two nations, there will be between the people a conflict as irrepressible as that which will always continue between two systems so opposite.

England is beyond all countries upon the globe the paradise of the rich man. Millions toil by day and by night upon the earth, and beneath the earth, and upon the waters under the earth, that he may command every conceivable luxury. And all of this with an alacrity which appears to add to the enjoyment the testimony of the toiler that Providence has foreordained and irrevocably decreed the delightful relationship which exists between master and servant.

In England privileges of the most valuable nature accompany the possession of wealth. The rich man may make laws tending to increase his riches and to fortify his posterity in their enjoyment. This is a condition too pleasant to be readily parted with by any class. The example of America is a constant warning, a continuous threat to all of this. There is seen a nation where there are no privileged classes, and where there is a complete defiance of the notion that some are born to rule, and others to submit; there the rich are content with the permission to enjoy that which they have, without arrogantly demanding further advantages because of the possession of wealth. The aristocracy of England find with alarm that the country is being

Americanized, and that unless a great struggle is made, its rule will pass away. And the aristocracy is the respectability, the refinement and the intelligence of the country. For, like that other aristocracy of the South, this one has considered the education of the masses as a dangerous step, and has as systematically avoided it. And at this moment the lower classes in England are quite as unfitted to assume political power as are the freedmen of the South.

To stay this tide of democracy which is sweeping from America over England and the world, is the lifelong business of almost all of the statesmen of the Liberal party, and of quite all of the statesmen of the Tory party of England. Whetherin Parliament or out of it, by means of the press, through the church and the schools; using all social influences;; practising upon the pride of some and the fears of others, the work is carried on by nearly all the rich and gifted of that land. This is no Dame Partington affair with pattens and mop, but a life and death struggle between forces. so doubtfully matched that the most trifling circumstances may determine it, at least for the time, in favor of one principle or the other. The triumph of the National cause in America has not given democracy the final victory, though the success of the rebellion would have turned the scale against it.

If ever an aristocracy deserved success in such a struggle, it is this one of England. The old system of France, before the Revolution swept it away, was steeped in sensuality and vice of every class nameable and unnameable. The aristocracy of Russia is charged with cruelty and corruption sufficient to exclude it from a place in modern civilization. A considerable pd¥tion of the whites of the South were as ignorant as the slaves they ruled, and prone to deeds of violence and bloodshed. The maintenance of caste in England is a matter of conscience, and the duty is discharged