The Press. — London, England, 1856-07-05 00:00:00

trickery, of the United correct: that, never for no reproof, and lain a sullen attitude, _Jfiauce, too rude. for concilia• tion. What does such a decisin! rin, bgt, that we have not courage to be ' ptih t ciple to be just; Oat we hale not spirif to demand an apology, nor coOtesyl to make one ? Holding the news it doe of the Con duct of the United Stdtes Goveranent, 110%!iv can our Administration justify the course it has taken? Its submission is not forbearance but pusillanimity. We must disavow the Premier's language, or never more dare io assert the principle, Fiat justitia ruat °alum. After Lord PALMERSTON'S speech, let no one think it possible that negotiations can be en tered into fur sending a new Minister to Washington, or that there is the least chance of a satisfactory settlement of other points is dispute. Mr. DALLAS will remain here only to transmit to his Government exact reports of the opinion our Premier entertains of its faithlessness. POLITICAL PRUDERY. £ZOZPTION has been taken by the youngest, though not least influential,member of the cheap 4 ►ily press to a sentence in our remarks last s• ix..tek on the occurrence at the Queen's Levee. We are charged with " unparallelvd rude- mess," with " gross outrage," with " abominable nonsense," and a good deal more to the like Iffeet. And for what? For supposing it possible that, if some Court regulations were not observed, citizens of the United States might take it into their heads that as they were permitted to enter the presence of our Queen in their ordinary attire, they might at the same time indulge in their ordinary habit—or art, for in the United States it is. brought to great perfection—of expectoration- What says our censor ? No people in the world have a more refined and accom plished deportment towards the female sex than the Americans. . . . To suppose the Americans capable Of each deeds of pollution in the presence of the highest lady of this land is only an evidence of the polluted mind of an English journalist. . . . The writer takes the Americans to task for their manners, and justifies the peacock attire of the Court [this smells of drub and broadbrim], upon the plea that the Americans would otherwise chew tobacco in the presence of a Queen and defile the flounces of a royal dews with filthy saliva. Shame to the Tory talent! Shame to the Tory scribe who-- Ole, jam sails! Let the reader supply, ad libitum, such virtuous indignation as fools and hypocrites have commonly at their fingers' ends to express horror of plain speaking, and he will not need to consult the columns of our contemporary for the rest of his censure. The whole question is one of fact. Did we really sin so far against probability and good manners in the suggestion we made? Is it a libel on American good breeding to say that. not even ladies' presence can restrain the rapid fire of expectoration? To hear our con temporary one would suppose that the t rac tice existed only in the imagination of Tory scribes Is he so ignorant as he pretends to be? Can we believe that a journalist has not only never visited the United States , but has never read one of the books of American travel constantly issuing from the press? Amiable simpleton ! We will take compassion on his innocence, and enlighten him a little. Our extracts are all taken from recent works, and from writers whose general veracity is unim peachable. Be it observed, that we never said the flounces of the royal dress would be de filed—not, at all events, while the dress re mained in repose; we only said that a circle might be described round it, for we know the dexterity of the Americans to be so perfect that. like Scott's Locksley, or Tell when his It Wes life was at stake, or like Cooper's herstockin g with his ride, they will lodge , • charge within a hair's breadth of the ;f4yont designet Did our censor ever hear of Sir. 13/M/ in the Uni ed States is hoarsely / Let us see what he has to 6' 3 0 but the falsehood and tric States' Government, is c theless, such conduct calls that we are now to mainta —too tame for defiance, to • *r. BATTEII. whose tour *unfitly a • old ?Le .., 14 40 ' Ur. s r.; 1 1.) , iikeS . • .r-ker THE PRESS. say of the practice which only exists in the polh •T- jorrnalist was a 1. The chairs, of Juice slog. trip op once,ve6 and whe to inY wAte PresbylteFilit . liquid journeys Philadel- phis, _ wing —Ls enough writing desk on the floor of the ear, I found it, on rtiing - to leave, in the midst of a pool of, and quite saturated with, the juice of the weed. Nor can I ever forget a scene in the hall of the Virginia Hotel, at St. Louis, one wet evening in the summer of 1853, when the floor was a sea of rain-water and liquid tobacco, while the spitting rendered it impos sible for an uninitiated stranger to walk about or read the newspapers. In the street, at the bar-rooms, or on the decks of steamers, however, one can generally, with a little dexterity, avoid being spit upon, unless, indeed, he receive an unexpected volley at a corner ; but in a railroad car there is no way of escape. One man spits on the floor between your legs, another out of the window, within an inch of your nose, a third over your shoulder on the side of the carriage, and a fourth makes a target of the door by which you wish to make your exit; you let fall your glove on the floor, it floats in tobacco-juice, and your wife's gown is ruined by contact with the filthy floor of the carriage. Ha! ha ! Mr. Censor, here is the point. A lady's dress, you see, is not safe from the pol lution which, in your amiable innocence, you had imagined to exist only in the mind of a Tory journalist. We have seen what is the practice in steamboats, in railroad carriages, in hotels, in churches. Captain HAMILTON (" Men and Manners in America ") informs us what is the practice in courts of law The only unpleasant part of the spectacle (for 1 do not suppose that justice would be administered in any country with greater substantial parity) was the incessant saliva tion going forward in all parts of the court. Judges, coup• sel, jury, witnesses, officers, and audience, all contributed to augment the mass of abomination. Still, the evidence is not complete. What is the behaviour of the Ame►icans at their own Court ? How do they behave when received by the highest personage in their land ? Are they more polite in the presence of their President? We summon Mr. CHARLES DICKENS to reply : - - Indeed, all thee* gentlemen were so very energetic and persevering in this latter particular [spitting], and bestowed their favours so liberally on the carpet, that take it for granted the Presidential housemaids have high wages. What says Mr. WARBURTON, the accomplished and truthful author of " Hochelaga "? : Even now I defy any one to exaggerate the horrors of chewing and its odious consequences. Lastly, what say the Americans themselves ? Mr. MURRAY, in his " Lands of the Slave and the Free," gives the following passage as written by a gentleman of one of the wealthiest families in Kentucky : Let us spit out courageously before the whole world. . . . . Let us spit fearlessly and profusely. Spitting on ordinary occasions may be regarded by a portion of my countrymen as a luxury ; it becomes a duty in the presence of an Englishman. Let us spit around him, above him, beneath him—everywhere but on him—that he may become perfectly familiar with the habit in all its phases. I would make it the first law of hospi tality to an Englishman that every tobacco•twist should be called into requisition, and every spittoon be flooded, in order thoroughly to initiate him into the mysteries of chewing. Is our censor now satisfied that we had some better ground for our suggestion than a polluted imagination? If any practice can be called national, surely this practice may be called so. And are we always to avoid men tion of noxious and offensive habits from the miserable prudishness that would affect igno rance of them, or the yet more wretched timidity that fears to give offence by honest speaking? In what other way than by ridicule can we hope to suppress such abominable nuisances? It seems that our habit of what HORACE calls speaking the truth laughingly has proved highly offensive to some squeamish tastes. Language should go through a purifying process of circumlocution. A spade must no longer be called a spade, but an im• plement of husbandry, employed by the professors of the agricultural art for de veloping the productive powers of the soil. SATURDAY, And spitting must not be designated a filthy pracCee, but a custom brought to the per fection of en art by gentlemen in the United States, w ereby 1.49 4!1919ri0 , us qualities of the fragrant ndian — We'erll l 4 • conveniently ex' ral:e fro the mnlini witieleautiful regularity and 7bei on. B ' E PRESI is !ppetimea personal. Wel ,do a ‘ sy l o t li 01 . j. iPnal deal with ab si stra citi tie. pd Q t ' 'is personages? In the st ume bi 11 .. -e's Memoirs," Lot d JOH ti u siELL silently 'endorses a capital PS. of littlel l o3l . 6 on some one who had protested against personality :—" Against fools and " knaves there is nothing effective except " personal satire—all the rest is tubbish " In a journal the public have no right to ex pect uniform correctness of judgment. Some mistakes will inevitably occur. But what they have a right to expect is—honesty and fear lessness; and, let prudes and humbugs cant as they may, those qualities shall never be found wanting iu THE PRESS. ITALY. M. DE MONTALEMBERT°B recent publication on the affairs of Italy is one among many evidences of the disposition with which the best informed and most intelligent conti- nental politicians regard the foreign policy of England. That a Frenchman should have it in his power to say that no other country has so boldly reversed the noble maxim of `'matt, has so systematically trampled on the weak and truckled to the powerful, is a sufficiently melancholy consideration ; but that this should have been the work of a Minister whose boast it is to be the representative of the old Roman policy, may well excite not only hatred but ridicule. The conduct of Lord PALMERSTON towards Greece and towards America furnishes a contrast which we would earnestly recommend to the consideration of the Italian Liberals before they embark in any enterprise through reliance on the aid, or even the sympathy, of the Government of this country. What is it which has recently roused those hopes and feelings in Italy which threaten to explode in insurrectionary movement? Chiefly the language of Lord CLARENDON at the Conferences of Paris. Now, even if we grant that the professions of interest in the cause of Italian freedom to which our Pleni potentiary then gave utterance were perfectly sincere, and in no way affected by the pressure of popular opinion at home, yet surely the prompt manner in which he was at once called to order by Count Beet. for venturing upon this forbidden ground, might have opened the eyes of the Italians to the true state of the case. Admitting, however, that allowance must be made for the-sanguine spirit in which they would naturally peruse the protocol in question, and confessing the possibility that, whatever Lot d CLARENDON might have thought in his own mind, he did really intend to excite the hopes of the patriots, we would enjoin upon these latter the propriety of interpreting people's words by their actions rather than their actions by their words Let them look at what has actually been done in consequence of the Paris Conference, and not at any vague expressions of interest, which may be the symptoms merely of a political stratagem. What, in point of fact, has been the result of the Tripartite Treaty of the 15th of April? Nothing but increased vigour of action in all the absolutist powers. On the ltith of May ap peared the famous circular of Count Boot. to the Austrian diplomatic representatives, with the declaration that " Austria would employ " all her power to repel any unjust invasion of " her rights, from whatever quarter it might " come." And that in turn has been followed up by an immediate ronewal of political pro secutions by the King of NAPLES. It may be said these are not the actions of Lord CLAREN DON. But can it be said that they are in de fiance of the English Government? Naples is, of all European powers, moat exposed to the maritime force of this country. And it cannot be believed that her Sovereign would polluted mind of a Tory journalist : A stranger voyaging in a Mississippian steamboat b t I well arrive at the con us'an that expectoration 1 necessity of existence wi natives of that region, deck, paddle•boxeeraili , cabins, stoves, and cha * eilli tz the wisp* are die 'so eared with brown juice you iket, acre 0 *tour. 1 made a trip • Ohio w voun en * .p 1 'I never saw but once at meal 'anon 'quill lea in his cheek, ant XII . sqnirte4 *ith reolerkable gularity, according t watch,even finite' ntne, or 5,010 times in hours. lhoblier pe h 4; tat beside me in a Presbi church at Cincinnati, ket Itp an incessant fire of t o bacco during the servici I WI on one 9f my first joi on American railroads, 'between New York And Ph phis, having been incautious enough to lay my w • ._