The Press.
London, England, 1855-07-07 00:00:00

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a growing indifference to corruption among the masses of
the people." This is startling language, but truth compels
me to say that it was a common theme of conversation and
a common subject of complaint in intelligent circles during
my last visit to the United States. Mr. Mackay refers to
" the propensity for jobbing discovered by the federal au-
thorities," and adds, " indeed, in this respect I have heard
several Americans declare that they believed their own
Government to be the most corrupt on earth." This ap-
pears to me too strong a condemnation, but the disease
prevails in the State legislatures and in the councils of the
various cities just as much as at Washington. No one in
New York seemed fur a moment to doubt the alleged
jobbing and trickery resorted to in obtaining privileges from
the civic rulers. Leading men of every shade in politics in-
formed me that offices and favours were there openly bought
and sold; that aldermen and councilmen accepted these
situations for the avowed purpose of getting quickly rich ;
and that jobs every week were there perpetrated with im-
punity which in this country would bring to disgrace every
person connected with them. I believe that as great cor-
ruption exists in the Government of that city as was ever
brought to light in the days of the Stuarts : and, what is
more, I have heard people defend it on the ground that in
America all can at one time or other share in the plunder,
whereas in Europe public robbery was the privilege of the
few.

This is not b 0 bad for the Government of
" the enlightened republic." Mr. Layard would
even find his bands full in America. For fur-
ther information upon the climate and country,
towns, cities, and modes of travelling of the
Americans, their thousands upon thousands of
miles of railroad and electric telegraph, of rivers
and canals, steamboats and traffic, their immense
workshops and steam-mills, their gigantic hotels,
their cotton and their commerce, their vine culture,
their iron trade, their system of education, their en-
terprise and their labour—for all these, and many
other points, we must refer the reader respectively to
Mr. Robertson and Mr. Baxter, and epcially to the
latter for his admirable views upon the slave trade,
as well as for a graphic description of Cuba ; and for
lighter and more amusing reading, but not the less in
structive, to Mr. Beste and Mr. Weld. But upon the
important points of the relative value of the produc••
tiveness of labour in England and America, we may
quote Mr. Robertson's opinion. The great cost of
producing cotton goods in America arises, in addi-
tion to the high price of labour, remarks Mr. Robert-
son, from

the higher cost of machinery, its general inferiority, the
comparatively imperfect adaptation of one department of
manufactures to another, the scarcity and dearness of
capital, and the expensive and inefficient management of
joint-stock associations.

I arrive at the conviction that labour is less productive
in America than in England, and therefore that in propor-
tion to the labour employed in each country, the gross
annual income of America is comparatively less than that
of Lireat Britain. This conviction rests upon the fol-
lowing grounds. It has been shown that the cotton,
woollen, and iron manufactures of the States are now pro-
fitable to those interested in them, solely by a protective
duty levied upon the foreign imports of the same articles.
The same remark maybe made about other manufacturing
branches to which I have not drawn attention, because the
rate of profit ou one branch of industry generally measures
or determines the profit on other branches; for capital
flows from one to the other, always seeking that which is
most profitable, and forsaking that which is least. In the
same class I include sugar, which is also grown with a
profit to the cultivator, only because protected by a custom
duty. Those branches of industry, therefore, maintained
only by protection—only by the consumers paying for their
productions more than their value—are a loss to the
nation, and the labour employed in them contributes
nothing to the general wealth of the country.
The attention which they, as a nation, pay to their
material interests is not conducive, Mr. Robertson
thinks, to the study of the higher branches of
science :

The almost exclusive attention which is paid in America
to the material interests of the country, the eager pursuit
of wealth, and the excitement and agitation arising from
politics, deprive the people of all leisure for thought. their
perceptions are quickened, but their reflective faculties are
neglected and weakened ; and, if I mistake not, the habits
of one generation have a tendency to become constitu-
tional, or a part of the character of the next. With these
acquired habits, then, with this gradual change of cha-
racter, and 'without a class with hereditary wealth enabling
it to devote its leisure to self-culture and refinement, or to
encourage those studies in others, the American people
will have to rely to a large extent on the older nations of
the world for instruction in many of the higher depart-
ments of Knowledge. They will teach us many practical
truths, and, it may be, solve many of the problems of
every-day life, but in most of the higher branches of human
learning—in science, art, literature, philosophy, and ge-
neral mental culture, they will look to Europe, for genera-
tions to come, for their purest models and for their best
instructors.

That America is a fine country, and in some re-
spectA a convenient country, w•e have good proof in
Mr. Beste's complaints upon reaching England :

We soonlanded • and were in dear—dear England again.
I had paid four dollars, or sixteen shillings, for the carriage
of my luggage, a distance of two miles, from the hotel to
the steamer at New York : at Liverpool, I paid thirty shil-
ling; for the carriage of the same luggage about half a mile
so the railway-station. Next morning, we took our places,