The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-22 00:00:00

ANOTHER AMERICAN DIFFICULTY.

The Round Table disputes the wisdom of the
American system of separating the seat of Go-
vernment from the commercial capital of the State.
That Legislatures within the Republic are corrupt
in no ordinary degree is a fact generally admitted,
and many reasons have been advanced why it should
be so. We are apt to select what appears to us the
most apparent cause, and dwell on that to the ex-
clusion of others, while many influences may really
combine to achieve the result. In separating the
political capital from the commercial capital, the
founders of the Republic were actuated in no small
degree by the desire to shield the legislators from
temptation. Their argument was simple and forc-
ible as applied to the existing circumstances. If the
poorer Representatives sent into the Legislature by
outlying portions of the Union were brought into
contact with a rich trading city, there was a danger
that they might sell the general interests to benefit
the city, or even a clique of its merchants. If, on
the contrary, the asieinbly was at an out-of-the-
way place, there would be nothing to divert the
mind from its legislative duties, and the oppor-
tunity would not be offerel to bribers by constant
intercourse of learning each individual's weak points,
detecting those who could be seduced and the means
required. At that time the Republic was a simple,
unpretending community of States, where plenty
smiled, but into which little wealth and few luxu-
ries bad penetrated. A man surfeited with pork
wanted no more pigs, and the most thirsty legisla-
t e. could only drink the pailful of milk he possessed ;
his tastes were simple,-and his wants abundantlysup-
plied. As State after State entered the Union they
followed the example set by the fathers, separating
the capital from Cee town destined to be the com-
mercial emporium, and, in it, those returned, ex-
pended the salary which enabled each to live in
comfort, and supply every necessary requirement.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and expe-
rience is practically enforcing on statesmen the truth
that sufficient unto the day of a nation's life are the
constitutional enactments and measures of the gene-
ration without thrusting them, as heaven-born wis-
dom, on the next. Though WASHINGTON could le-
gislate ably for the infant Republic in which he lived,
he could not legislate for what it was to be a century
later, and while there is wisdom in regarding what he
and his assistants did as in some degree inspired, for
then necessary changes only are'made, yetit would be
folly to regard their acts as absolutely inspired, and
the Constitution they drew up as inviolable. Yet the
wisdom in iy be doubted which insisted upon sepa-
rating, even in that day, the political from the real
capital of the country. Doubtless the jealousies
existing between such cities as Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore, had much to do with
the foundation of Washington. Still, its crea-
tion was on a principle slavishly followed by each
State as it entered the Union, though at least two
of the original States seated their own Legislatures
in their large and wealthy commercial emporiums.
The fathers calculated that the means they took
in their day would be effective against corrup•
tion, for the inducements were not sufficiently
strong to overcome the obstacles by which they then
secured the Representatives from contamination.
A class must have large interests at stake who sent
a member to a distant village, when roads were bad
and before railways were established, to engage in
the unsophisticated bribery of the rustic gathering,
where the fact would be notorious, and, at that time,
hateful to the simple-minded Republican commu-
nity. But WASHINGTON could not foresee that the
most distant of the Legislatures might one day be
communicated with, instantaneously, from any part
of the Thirteen original Staten, and reached person-
ally within a few hours. He did not anticipate the
growth of wealth and luxury, wherein are the germs
of corruption, for it is not the poor society, but the
rich, in which such vice flourishes. Had he fore-
seen the change, we might still doubt whether his
imagination could have conceived the machinery
now in vogue. Although the Representatives are
not personally associated with the wealthy mer-
chants, corporations, and classes who desire to
" buy" them, being away in their distant State
capitals, they are under the eye of agents expressly
trained to ascertain the points of a Representative,
accurately estimating his value and price, the pur-
chase, being worked out scientifically. The fathers
had no conception of what a " ring" meant ; and
their imagination could scarcely have grasped the
wealth, the power, and the audacity of such a clique
as the Erie directors. If they had they would have
left the Federal capital at Philadelphia, or removed
it to New York, while the State Legislatures would
have assembled in the most populous, wealthy, and
influential city of each State. These founders of
the Republic, while feeling the strength of one chain
of circumstances overlooked another. The Repre-
sentatives assembled iu a remote locality though out
of the way of the active and wealthy traders, were
within their reach ; they did nut come into contact,
but when it became worth while to make their in-
fluence felt in the Legislature, it was found that
the Representatives in the secluded village were
placed as best suited the bribers. If men are to be
kept on their good behaviour let them feel that
many eyes are upon them. In a great city intrigue
may be met by intrigue ; a pernicious influence may
be counteracted by a high and pure influence, and
there, in the battle of life, the good and bad are so
intermingled that the one is always near to have a
deterrent influence on the other. In the far away
corner, however, this is not so ; for the greedy and
unprincipled proceed to it to seek out their instru-
meats, while the good, who have no object to eerye,

stay at home. Consequently the vicious predomi-
nate in the little community, where, instead of the
fight being between virtue and vice, it is between
contending evil. The state of things is not im-
proved by the absence of a population, for the re-
straints being removed, there is no check on the
worst habits, which is not for the benefit of legis-
lation, nor of the character of Representative assem-
blies. The city of 'Washington is the grandest in-
stance of the working of this system, being created
solely for the Federal capital ; but it is in the
new States that the tendency can be best observed.
Even in California, instead of locating the State
capital at San Francisco, which some day will be to
the Pacific far more than New York is to the Atlantic,
the Legislature for three, years sat in three different
places, the Supreme Court ea?,li time b eing obliged to
follow it, as the contending parties prevailed in their
intrigues about town lots. The Round Table points
out a mischief arising from placing the Federal Go-
vernment in a place like Washington, remote from
the centres of intelligence. Public supervision be-
comes more difficult as centralization progresses,
while the great officers have attained to more and
more power. Thus the rulers of the country, and
those in whose hands are the foreign relations of
what may become " an aggressive empire, are kept
remote from the pressure of public opinion as de-
veloped in a real city." Nor is the Round Table at
a loss for a pointed instance of the harm that may
ensue in Home affairs on the one hand and Foreign
affairs on the other. Supposing that Washington had
been a genuine capital, " with wealth of its own and
cultivation, and independent public opinion, and a
society so vivacious and so attractive that legislators
from all parts of the country were not only incited
to do their best and rewarded by a quick and dis-
criminating appreciation of their powers, but also
drawn into personal associations with one another
under the influenn of a cultivated hospitality ; is it
supposable that leading men from the North and
from the South would have so fatally misunder-
stood one another ?" Or would Mr. SUMNER have
been enabled to make a speech " in which he took
ground quite new to his own and all other parties,"
without attracting attention until deep irritation
had been aroused among a people able to injure the
Republic. The Round Thble contends that if the Le-
gislature sat in New York, he could not have acted
so; adding, "General GRANT has at this moment'
greater power in some respects than has NAPOLEON
the Third. Now, how long would NAPOLEON govern
France from Avignon ? How could he dispense
with the daily and hourly sympathy and intercourse
with the very heart of the nation which is given
him by his residence in its real capital ?" The West
desires the transfer of the seat of Government to
St. Louis, and the metropolitan paper, while regard-,
ing New York as beyond doubt the proper place,
considers that this desire of the West will yet
prove a real difficulty. The West grows in power,
and holds to the crude notion that the seat
of a legislative body can best be fixed by a pair
of compasses applied to a map, and a calcula-
tion of the mileage paid to its members. The
Round Table thinks the time has arrived when
her natural pride should be taken into account
by the East, that she may not first be exasperated
into frenzy and next stamped into subjection as
was the South, but a more civilized course be fol-
lowed in a difficulty which sooner or later must be
met. The New York paper thus coolly talks of
the East stamping down the West ; but we would
be very sorry to see the East try, or it is just pos-
sible it might be stamped out itself. This question,
however, of a National Capital is one of the diffi-
culties of the Republic, which increases with the
march of Empire westward. The statesmen of the
present desire by a lavish expenditure on washing-
ton to root the seat of Government there, that the
suggestion even, may cease to arise in the Western
mind ; but the question will arise for another ge-
neration to settle, and perhaps prove no small
bone of contention. Whatever may be the changes,
we trust the, error will not again be repeated of ima-
gining that a rustic locality will impart to legisla-
tors a rural simplicity, for statesmen ought to know,
the virtue of places removed from human haunts
lies in the fact that there is nobody there ; but that
if they desire to create a pandemonium they should
select such places and offer attractions to the vici-
ous, for the truth of which we would Mer them to
the towns which sprang up with the advancing track
of the Union Pacific Railroad.—Anglo-American
Times.