The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-07 00:00:00

HE AMERICAN PRESS.

The Nation thus criticises two interesting articles
in the North American Review for October :—" By
far the most striking and readable of the long arti-
cles in the last North American is that of Mr. Henry
Brooks Adams, who has by this and one or two
similar essays made for himself an enviable reputa-
tion as a courageous politician in the best sense of
the term, and as an excellently clear and for3ible
writer. Mr. Adams's essay has for its main pur-
pose to show that, as regards appointments to office,
we have subverted that principle of the Constitu-
tion which prohibits the absorption by one depart-
ment of the Government of the powers of any
other. The Senate, he charges, has got into its
hands a great share of the power of the Executive ' •
and no one can doubt, we think, that this is indeed
so. But we think, too, that in his desire to make
us return to the fundamental principles of the Go-
vernment, to make us see how much violence we
have done the true spirit of our institutions, Mr.
Adams neglects to pay due attention, or to give
sufficient prominence, to a fact that every one who
calls himself, and is, a practical man,' will be
likely to think a chief thing to be considered.
And that is this, that in practice it was, we
may say, inevitable that the theory of the
Constitution should, in this particular mat-
ter, go by the Board, because to carry it
into practice has became au impossibility. Let
a President throw himself ever so unreservedly on
that popular feeling which, as an American, is ready
to sustain any President who shall Emily declare
that he will not permit offices to be parcelled
out asspoils; let him even win against the Senate the
victory which last spring, when the Tenure-of-
Office' Act was under discussion, Grant tried hard
and honestly, but possibly not with sufficient ob-
stinacy, to win ; let him get back into the hands of
the Executive the power which has been taken
away to be used by men like Fenton and Cameron,
Pomeroy and Butter, for the building up of their
own political fortunes ; let him do this, and much
as would thereby be done for the theory of our
Government—for carrying out on paper the inten-
tions of its founders, what after all would b the
practical difference ? It is, SO far as we can see,
.simply impossible that any one man could properly
make all our appointments. Should he try ever
so hard, Senators and Representatives would
still he the President's advisers as to the fitness of
candidates ; they would still be men to be con-
ciliated, the exercise of the advis)ry power would
still have its corrupting influences, and we should
still be where we are. Some supplementary device
is still to seek after we have given back to the Exe-
cutive the appointing power in its integrity. We
are glad, let us say in taking leave of this article,
that it came in Mr. Adams's way to make this re-
mark :—" Although much has been said against
the President for the selection of personal
friends and relatives for office, so far as this
choice had any political meaning it was rather
deserving of praise and support as the last
remnant of the President's defeated purpose
of rescuing the public service from the taint of po-
litical corruption." And then follows a word or
two which suggest the improbability—practically
innate—of any one man's being able, unaided by
some machinery not now in existence, thus to rescue
the public service : " If a similar process of selec-
tion," says Mr. Adams, " had been carried with
proper care and a wide acquaintance with men
through all the public service, one principal source
of corruption would have been greatly checked."
We have been much interested in Mr. Lewis H.
Morgan's paper on The Indian Migrations.' It is
to be followed by another, and the two together are
intended to present such evidence bearing on the
movements of our aborigines as may be drawn
from a consideration of the physical conditions
under which they live, and from their systems of
consanguinity, their languages, and so forth. Mr.
Morgan's inquiry will include the subject of the
origiu of the North and South American Indians,
and probably no one is better fitted than he to gi're
an opinion. In the article he points out, what many
of us had forgotten, that it is not so very long since
the Indian was a hunter without a horse, and that
therefore the prairies were of little use to him as
hunting-grounds ; that the forest portions of the
continent were not his best habitat, and that, as he
was not an agriculturist to any great extent —at least
in the region this side of Mexico—good fishing-places
were the main necessity for him. The essay then sur-
veys the continent and marks out the seats of Indian
occupation, and seems to indicate that Mr. Morgan
will fix upon the neighbourhood of Puget Sound
and the Columbia River as the cradle of the cop -
per-coloured race, though as to where he will put
its birth-place he makes no certain sign. There
are other things given us by the author, notably an
account, seemingly very reasonable and careful, of
the Aztec civilization, about which so much has been
said—so much too much, we may perhaps say.
And there is what appears to us a very plausible
theory as to the true character of the Mound
Builders, so called, who have seemed to be fairly
installed in the position in our archeology which
is occupied in Ireland by the famous round
towers. They were, perhaps, Village Indians, says
Mr. Morgan, who came from New Mexico, and
found that their system Of. house-building would
not answer in their new home. They had been
accustomed to use adobe brick in the construction
of their baildings, and, for reasons of defence, to
close iu the storey next the ground, and to enter
the house—which, by the way, was an immense
communal dwelling—by means of ladders reaching
to the flat roof. Now, on reaching the region of
the Ohio River, they would find that the frosts,
and rains, and snows of that climate were destruc-
tive of the sun-baked bricks, and they would have
to consider the question of how to build. To make
out of poles and bark a house resting on the na-
tural level of the ground would be to change al-
together their mode of building—a thing not
lightly to be done, especially as their house was
also their fortress. They decided then to substitute
for the first closed storey an embankment On
which this house of poles and bark might be set up
in safety ; and it is thus that we have the mounds.
This seems to us far from being an unreasonable
supposition, and we sincerely trust it may be estab-
lished as the true one. In the interest of future
generations, it is to be hoped somebody may go out
and deposit on the top of some of all of them a judici-
ous, plausible quantity of the " charcoal and ashes,
the remnants of fire-hits," the discovery of which
would, as Mr. Mcirga4 says, strengthen his theory a
good deal—enough, it is likely, to shut the mouths
of many ardwologiste pt unborn,

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