The Press. — London, England, 1858-03-06 00:00:00

232 The constant duels, the extravagant clamour, and the violent collisions which occur in American politics are to be traced in a great measure to the pressur6 resulting from per petually appealing to the opinion of the multi tude. We know that there are disgraces enough in some of our British electioneering, but those scandals are confined to the mere underlings of politics : in America many of the leading persons and chiefs of parties are sullied by the furious and vulgar strife in separably attendant upon unbalanced demo cracies. Colonel Aaron Burr, the subject of this volume, was a considerable person in his time, and his memoirs illustrate only too faithfully some of the preceding reflections. In the Army of the Revolution he held the rank of a lieutenant-colonel, and he was sub sequently a senator and Vice-President of the United States. In American electioneering Colonel Burr played a stormy and conspi cuous part. He aspired to be Governor of New York, and was a prominent performer in days characterised by the biographer as " the era of bad feeling." He killed Alexander Hamilton in a notorious duel, which left an indelible stain on his character ; and he went through a variety of incidents of most opposite nature. He was a man of free opinions, and reminds us of one of the nautical desperadoes in Cooper's novels apply ing himself to democratic politics, and ex pending on the platform energies more appro priate to the quarter-deck. The honours of biography in England are not accorded to characters of the Wilkes and Feargus O'Connor type ; but such is not the case in American literature. The 1 muds between notoriety and celebt ity, beta; ('en clamour and opinion, are there not, u'oarly mirked ; and the remarks of Mr. John Stuart Mill. in his review of De Tocqueville's " Democracy," that " America " wants a leisure class," is strikingly con firmed by the sort of books which find large circulation in the United States. But we cannot deny that a work of the kind before us has some historical interest in showing us the transitions through which American democracy has passed. As yet the history of the last fifty years in the States has not found an adequate literary expositor; and certainly there are many curious and striking details in the volume before us which make us wish to see more of the internal political life of the Americans. Aaron Burr was the natural grandson of the celebrated divine, Jonathan Edwards, the author of a well-known work on " The Free dom of the Will." His father, President Burr, married Esther, the third daughter of Jona than Edwards. The Burrs themselves came, it is supposed, from Germany, and Aaron Burr had a great many remarkable qualities. But the biographer has spun out his life too much, and we cannot accept Mr. Parton's literary faculty as adequate to the task of biography. In one place Mr. Parton writes of the " subtle "feminine (!) intellect and resolute will of Jona " than Edwards " (p 30) ; some of the common places of college composition he accepts as original ; he speaks of " Miss Burnett's novels ;" and many other touches record his free-and easy mode of composition. He writes : During the summer of 1787, all minds were fixed upon the proceedings of the convention that was forming the Constitution under which we now live. The science of government never had such a thorough discussion as it then received at the hands of editors, pamphleteers, and wayside politicians. " The science of government " receiving "a the " rough discussion" from " wayside" politi • cians is an Americanism. Scattered through the volume arc many interesting testimonies to the class of American politicians at various periods. Aaron Burr himself was equally conspicuous as a colonel in the Revolution Army, as a barrister, and a platform politician. His vogue in politics was in times when the United States were ruled by the three impor tant connections of the Clintous, the Schuylers, and the Livingstons . Mr. Parton, after cha racterising them, says : These were the three families. The Clinton. had power, the Livingstone had numbers, the Schuylers had Hamilton. Neither of the three was strong enough to overcome the other two united, and any two united could triumph over the third. He might have added that so rapidly do f4mi- THE PRESS, MARCH 6, 1858. ies and connections expire, like " flies of a summer," in the American States that the Livingstone are the only one of these three political families that last. It is said here' of Aaron Burr : For some years after coming to New York, Colonel Burr held aloof from these factions. Absorbed in the practice of his profession and the education of his family, he was not reckoned among the politicians. And when, at length, he entered the political field, it was not as an ally of either of the families, but as an independent power who profited by their dissensions, and wielded the influ ence of two to crush the more obnoxious third. He had a party of his own, that served him instead of family con nections. Gradually certain young men of the town, who had nothing to hope from the ruling power, ambitious, like himself, were drawn into his circle, and inspired with his own energy and resolution. They were devoted to their chief, of whose abilities they had an extravagant opinion. lu every quarter, they sounded the praises of the man who, they said, was the bravest soldier, the ablest lawyer, and the most accomplished gentleman of his day ; endowed with equal valour and prudence ; formed to shine in every scene, and to succeed in every enterprise. Burr's myrmidons, these young gentlemen were styled by General Hamilton. The Tenth Legion they were proudly called by Theodosia, the daughter. The impression left upon the mind of an impartial reader of this biography is that Aaron Burr was like a triple combination in one person of the qualities conspicuous in Sir De Lacy Evans, Mr. Roebuck, and the late Feargus O'Connor. Nearly seven hundred close pages are d' voted to the elaborate deli neation of this strong specimen of a violent politician. The incidental admissions and statements about American statesmen are of interest and value. For example, Washington is described in the following way : Many were, therefore, appointed to high posts in the army because they were persons of importance in civil life; they gave their names to the cause. Among the reasons which made Washington the most complete exemplification of " the right man for the right place," that history exhibits, one was that he was a great Virginia gentleman, who had vast plantations, hundreds of slaves, a fine mansion, and rode about in a chariot and six. " One of the finest fortunes in America," John Adams exultingly exclaims, in mentioning his acceptance of the command. And his exultation was just; for such things have not merely a legitimate influence in human affairs, but the fact of such a fortune being freely risked in the cause, showed the faith the owner had in its justice, im portance, and chance of success. Just so; Washington was not a " Democrat " or a " Radical" either in his principles, man ners, or habits. He was like an eminent Eng lish country gentleman settled in the pro vinces. A " Republican " must not neces sarily be confounded with a Democrat; and Washington had birth, fortune, and hereditary position. Of tile gains at the American Bar, it is here said : At the present day, a lawyer is considered to he in good practice who has a clear gain of four thousand dollars a year. Ten thousand dollars is thought a very large revenue : it is questionable if there are one hundred law• yers in the United States who earnlo much. An average income of twenty thousand is as great as the half-dozen leading lawyers of the country can boast; though, occa• sionally, a lawyer will make that sum by a single case, or even twice as much. In early times, professional incomes could scarcely have been as large as they are now. Among the letters of Alexander Hamilton there is one from a New York merchant, retaining the services of Hamilton in any suits the merchant might have for five years. Inclosed in the letter was a note for a thousand dollars, payable at the end of the five years, with interest at five per cent. Upon the letter is an indorsement, in Hamilton's hand, to the effect that the note had been "returned, as being too much." Certainly the present leaders of the New York bar would not take so modest a view of the value of their services. William Wirt, of Vir ginia, a very brilliant and successful lawyer, practising in the dominant State of the Union, mentions that in 1802 he had an income of twelve hundred pounds a year, A few years later, while passing through New York to try a cause in Boston, he visited some of the New York courts, and inquired respecting the fees of the lawyers. He was astonished at their smallness, and said a Virginia lawyer would starve on such fees. From such indications as these, it is perhaps safe to infer that Hamilton and Burr may have had professional incomes of ten thousand dollars a year, but not more, on an average. Burr used to say that he had made forty thousand dollars from one cause, but whether it was as a lawyer or a speculator that he gained so much, is not clear. In a democratic society of the American kind lawyers will always exercise a disproportionate influence. Their practised fluency and self possession must gain them great personal in fluence in a country ruled by public meetings ; and the American lawyers have had the re putation of being addicted to speculations in land—a sort of adventure in which their knowledge of legal titles would be of great personal use to them. These eminent mem bers, also, become a sort of professional ani s . tocracy. As bearing on the refugee question, the following assertions are interesting. Burr, after a variety of adventures, and after bold, daring attempts to bring a b out a revolu tion in Mexico, came to England i n 180 8, and opened his proje(As to the English Ministers of that time. The purport of his visit to England is thus stated by his biographer:— He came to Europe with the design of laying before the Cabinet of England, or the Emperor of France, his plans for the independence of Mexico, and of procuring at least the authorisation of one of them for carrying out his schemes of personal aggrandisement and elevation in that country. But Joseph Bonaparte's assumption of the Spanish throne was precisely the event, of all others con ceivable, to absolutely close the ears of both Governments to such an application. England, before on ill terms with Spain, promptly took the part of the dethroned king, and sent the flower of her armies to the Peninsular war. Eng. land was publicly and irrevocably committed to the cause of the exiled monarch, and, of course, to the integrity of his dominions. To ask Napoleon's consent to the inde. Pendence of Mexico would have seemed something like ioliciting his consent to the partition of the French empire. Mexico was part of the kingdom which he ruled through his brother Joseph. Mexico was his. If he had been disposed to give it away, an adventurer from far.off America would not have been the selected recipient ... . . He proceeded immediately to business. He bad inter- views with Mr. Canning, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Mul. grave, and many other official persons, to whom his plane were made known. He received not the slightest en. couragement. And we then are told further on:— After a few weeks of active exertion in London, he ceived one day, as he was leaving for the country, a very pointed request from Lord Hawkesbury, one of the Secre taries cf State, that he should present himself forthwith at the Home-office. He went. What transpired is not precisely known. But his right to live in England was so seriously called in question, that he was driven to demand it on the ground that he was born, and still re mained, a British subject. Lord Hawkesbury pronounced the claim monstrous. But Burr was the better lawyer of the two, and knew well the peculiarities of British laws respecting citizenship. The question puzzled the whole Cabinet, was referred to the law officers of the Crown, and was some months in arriving at settlement. Mean while, the claimant lived and wandered in England at his pleasure. Such a claim from a man who had been for four years in arms against the King of England, and who had filled the second office in that victorious republic, whose creation dismembered the British empire, was an amusing instance of Burr's lawyerly audacity. The whole facts, we surmise, are not set forth as to Lord Hawkesbury's " request "—a word which was not necessarily to be interpreted as a command. From a variety of facts detailed in this work, it may be inferred that Lord Hawkesbury might have been anxious to dis countenance Burr, not on account of his strange Mexican projects, but by reason of the then critical minions between England and America. Not long since the "Young Irelanders " were received and harboured in America after their attempts to excite a re volution in the Queen's dominions, but sub sequently a strong check was put by American public opinion on their prac tices in making military and Roman Catholic demonstrations in New York and elsewhere ; and in plain English the American public opinion " put down " the Young Ire lenders, when they attempted to be more than American citizens. As to the point of law pleaded by Burr, the biographer must surely have made some mistake. After the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, such a plea could not be admissible in 1808. Memoirs of the Queens of Prussia. By Emma Willsher Atkinson. London : Kent and Co. PRUSSIA has been more fortunate in her queens than her queens have been in Prussia. Out of the six whose lives are hero given us by Miss Atkinson, three were very much above, and the other three not below, the average, not only of royal persons, but of the female sex in general. Yet not ono of the whole can be called happy, and the least wretched of all was she to whom her husband was only contemptible. Such at least is the picture presented to us by Miss Atkinson. But a little reflection will convince us that it is probably overcharged. Even admitting all her facts to be correct—and we cannot under take to rebut them—her conclusions aro not so legitimate as they appear at first sight. The education of royal personages in the last century was such as to mako them feel loss