The Express.
London, England, 1867-05-16 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 16, 1867.

to go about here announcing as a fact of some im-
portance that Senator This or Bank Director That
had once kept a thread and needle store, people
would probably laugh at you. In short, the feel-
ing which makes an Englishman'attach so much
importance to a man's being born in a certain posi-
tion in life may be said to be unknown here out of
a small set in the large cities. I do not mean to
say that people do not take pride in belonging to a
good family, or that it would not help a man in
"marrying well," but on his success in business
or politics it would exercise no influence whatever
at the North.

His having split rails had about as much to do
with Mr. Lincoln's nomination for thu presidency
as his height in his stockings. Nominating con•
ventions in America are not composed of scholars
and gentlemen, it is true ; but neither are they
composed of imbeciles. The members are gene-
rally plain sensible men, and are little moved
by the superfine considerations of fitness and pro-
priety which rule at the Carlton Club. The Conven-
tion of 1860 selected Mr. Lincoln for the presidency
because Mr. Seward's claims having broken down,
and no other Eastern man of prominence offering
himself, and it being desirabletosecurethe adhesion
ut the West, Mr. Lincoln was the moat prominent
man of the largest and most influential Western
State. Ho was the best known republi-
can politician and one of the moat respected
lawyers in Illinois, and therefore was one of the
class from whom candidates have to he selected.
Now, he became a prominent politician and a re-
spected lawyer because he was an able man,
and a humorous, forcible stump speaker,
and thoroughly upright in all his doings.
When he stumped the State against Douglas in
1859 people crowded to hear him, and his speeches
were printed and spread broadcast over the
country, not because he had split rails in his
youth, or was not "gentlemanly " in his appear-
anoe, but because the speeches were excellent of
their kind. The Americans may not be the wisest
people in the world, but they arc nut such fools as
to crowd to a man's lectures, laugh at his jokes,
applaud his arguments, and give him their legal
business to do because he was once a day labourer.
All this may be said mutretis mutandis of Mr.
Johnson. That Mr. Johnson's having been a
tailor affected the Baltimore Convention in selecting
him for the vice-presidency is an assertion so'
ridiculous that it is very hard for anybody
who knows what American feeling on these sub-
jects
is to set about gravely refuting it. In the
first place, Mr. Johnson's early antecedents were I
not known, I believe, to anybody in the Convention.
I know as a fact that the leading members of it
knew absolutely nothing about him except that he
had been before the war United States senator
from Tennessee. The reasons which operated in
securing his nomination were that he was a senator
from a Southern slave State, and that he was the
only senator from • seceded State who had re-
mained faithful to the Union. Moreover, it was
felt desirable that he should appear on the repub-
lican " ticket " to prevent its having the strictly
sectional character which it would have if the can-
didates for the presidency and vice-presidency
had been both Northern men. Now, why
was he senator from Tennessee ? Why, as
he has so often told the world, did
ho fill every office in the gift of the people of the
State, from that of village alderman up to senator?
Simply because, whether a man of ability or not,
he happened, in the various districts in which he
lived, to be the ablest man of his party, the most
attractive, truculent, and foulmouthed stump
orator--or "crossroads" orator, as they call it down
there. His tailoring, or his low origin, or lowly
condition, had about as much to do with it as the
cut of his coat. Mr. Cm-ode's joke about him
had therefore absolutely no political or social sig-
nificance. It was a joke which the subject before
the house, thoroughly ridiculous as most members
cousidered it, suggested not unnaturally. I
do not defend his taste in making it ; but
it is a joke which might occur to anybody who
knew Mr. Johnson had been a tailor, but
most men would not have thought it worth re-
peating in public. I doubt whether most member►
of the house saw anything more "snobbish" in it
than the House of Commons sees in the occasional
allusions made in debate to the "Asian mystery."
In fact, the sting of it only strikes those who, like
the Times' correspondent, and perhaps most other
Englishmen, consider it a terrible misfortune for a
statesman to have once been a tailor. Americans
do not take this view of it ; they generally con-
sider it simply an incident in his career, but an
incident without colour.
Two-thirds of the false inferences which
Englishmen draw from the phenomena of Ameri-
can society are due to the practice, which in this
instance has been faithfully followed, of judging
Americans and their doings by the English stan-
dard—reasoning from English ideas, English
habits, and English prejudices. The whole body
of English opinion, let me say, on the subject of
personal dignity, the comparative respectability"
of occupations, is as little known here, and affects
men's lives as little as the Roman law. I do not
say that there are no circles at the North into
which the European feeling about labour and
descent have not found an entrance, and do not
find expression in conversation. But you do not
meet with them out of Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia, and they affect the national life and
progress about as much as the opinions of the "de-
cayed gentlewomen" who "used to inhabit" Hamp-
ton Court Palace. A man is here a man, and
nothing more ; and it may be said, with as close
an approach totruth as can be made on such sub-
jects, that nothing but his own faults or follies
can affect his social or political standing. The other
day P. T. Barnum, the great showman, was nomi-
nated for Congress in Connecticut. He is in his
private dealings an honest man, is an anti-slavery
man, a rich man, and a humane man, yet he was
badly beaten because he was a " profaned hum-
bug." Could it have been said of him that be
was the son of a strolling tinker, and had passed
his youth as a boot-black, and had it been said it
would not have affected him in the least ; but the
taint of professional duplicity killed him.
The Pall Mall Gazette, by-the-bye, has been badly
hoaxed. John Morrissey's speech in Congress, on
which it comments, was composed by a wag in this
city, and sold on a fly-leaf at a cent a copy for
nearly three months in the streets by the news
boys. Morrissey never officially opened his mouth
in Congress, except to say "No ;" he voted with
the democrats. This is even worse than the speech
which Milos O'Reilly passed off on the Saturday
Review as General Dix's, in 1864.