The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-20 00:00:00

tain degree, show confidence ; but faith has lately
been much shaken in all the other securities in
America, as well as in Europe, and men who know
they are treading on dangerous ground are not
deterred, feeling confident, that however perilous
for others, their keen intelligence will enable them
to back out at the proper time. In London, there
were thousands in 1865 who knew that the majority
of the joint-stock companies, in whose shares they
dealt, were rubbish, but trusted to their information
to make a gain, out of w hat to others might be ruinous
loss. The true policy is to fund the National Debt
in interminable gold-bearing bonds, and thus finally
to dispose of a subject that has done so much within
the last few months to injure the credit of the
United States, which Senator SHERMAN consider
can be settled by the adoption of a Bill converting
Five-Twenties into a long loan bearing 41 to 5 per
cent. interest in gold. The loss to the holders of Five-
Twenties has already been enormous, for had this
question not been discussed, there is no other Govern-
ment Security that would have advanced so rapidly
in the late rise. It is not creditable to the United
States that the richest of all countries, the one with
incomparably the greatest future—the one whose
debt bears the smallest proportion to its ability to
pay—should be quoted so :low.—Anglo-American
7 Imes.

DETERIORATION IN AMERICAN
MANNERS.

Thera, is a paper in the Galaxy on deterioration
in American manners. "Nothing is surer," the re-
viewer asserts, "or it would seem more manifest than
that during the last twenty years our manners and
the tone of our society have suffered a great and
wide-spread deterioration. Americans are to-day
less courteous than their fathers were, less deferen-
tial to age and weakness, less careful in the sup-
pression of selfishness, coarser iu their pleasures,
more grossly material in all their views of life." The
Nation takes up and controverts this assertion. It
argues that this is alleged against -a generation
which begins to talk of protecting the weakness of
woman by giving her an equal share with man in
the government of the State, which was led by a
desire of protecting weakness to emancipate millions
of slaves, which, from humanitarian motives as
much as from motives of policy, begins to abolish
capital punishment, and treats its criminals with a
tenderness of kindnes. Taking amusements in
New England, the Nation asserts that the last gene-
ration had rum and no theatres, " the average young
man even within twelve miles of Boston chased a
greased pig on Thanksgiving morning, skated or
'slid down hill' in the winter. In summer at-
tended a church pic-nic, went fishing now and
then, and on the Fourth of July fired at a
mark, or went to the city to see the fireworks.
The average young woman went to an occa-
sional quilting party, an occasional husking, an
occasional sleigh- ride, perhaps to a dance.' To
meeting she and her brother of course went regu-
larly; the evening meeting was perhaps some-
thing in the way of amusement, and was by no
means a purely devotional exercise. Her suc-
cessor goes in pretty regularly to Messrs. Williams
and Everett's exhibition rooms or to De Vries and
Ibarra's ; each winter she attends a course of
lyceum lectures ; she sees Booth in Roy Blas'
and Hamlet ;' she probably has a piano ; she
, reads some of the books in a tolerable. public
library. Her brother's successor is also in the
lyceums and on the committee to hire lecturers ;
indulges more freely than his father in the con-
templative man's recreation, smoking ; oftener runs
in to the city theatre and less often goes to circuses;
will have nothing to do with chasing greased pigs,
and perhaps has more to do with a trotting park
than his father had. Now, as amusements, we
suppose one may properly call these not coarser
but more refined amusements than those they have
displaced. Not that there is no fault to be found
with them, but condemnation of these as compared
with the amusements of twenty or thirty years ago
seems to us a mistake." The Nation admits that in
certain circles of society in great cities, composed
of the newly rich, there is a constant display of
excessively bad manners, the whole tone of such
society being low. But this is not a wide-spread
deterioration. r'or example, Miss Fanny Ellsler
would not to-day be received into the same num-
ber of good houses in New York as she was some
twenty years ago. Mr. Dickens would be received
with due civility and kindness, but the people would
not show so little dignity and self-respect as on his
visit twenty-seven years ago. " Society is less raw
and provincial now than then ; the people have
s.•en more, they have read more, they have mixed
more with people of other nationalities, they have
fought more and had to think more, they have
spent more for ideas and given more away than
their fathers ever did—in brief, the national charac-
ter laas been raised.and dignified, and with it, we
believe, the national standard of good manners.
Certain persons in avenues in New York who give
" cheap and huugries," are not " the American
people taken by and large," and a comparison of
the manners of such persons with the manners of
the Knickerbocker families of the old times—of the
times " below Bond-street"—the families and times
and manners we all regret so much—gives no data
'or generalizing about the manners of the American

people." The error into which the Galaxy reviewer
has fallen is this : there is an undoubted change of
style both in America and in England ; there is less
ceremonial both in dress and manners than was the
fashion with our fathers. Gentlemen do not now
invariably dine in evening dress. Instead of em-
broidered velvet, Scotch tweeds are worn ; high-
heeled shoes and elaborate buckles have been re-
placed by thick-soled half boots; people do not bow
so low nor address each other with the same elaborate
ceremony. There is a greater ease in manners as
in dress, and it is not improbable that this may give
occasion for greater and more frequent displays of
coarseness and vulgarity. The present school of man-
ners makes rules, as the Nation observes, for equals,
rather than for superiors and inferiors, for men who
work, rather than for people who idle. America,
no doubt, has been mainly instrumental in intro-
ducing the new mode which has deceived the re-
viewer into the idea of deterioration. He must look,
however, beyond the mere outside, and he will find
that the Nation is correct in this assertion, " that
it no more encourages selfishness or unkindness, or
meanness or contempt.for the weak, or gross mate-
rialism than did that other school of manners which

was illustrated by the framers of the Fugitive Slave
Law, the host and hostesses of Fanny Ellsler, the
business men for whom the phrase almighty dol-
lar' was invented, the gentlemen whom Josiah
Quincy had to fight hard before the noble amuse-
ment of the theatre could be introduced into Bos-
ton. In punctiliousness our. fathers beat us—beat
us so badly that we have reason to be not proud,
but very proud. But *'should be glad to see a
reasonable ninetee3th-cdritury definition of the gen-
tleman which would put Abraham Lincoln's con-
stituents, as gentlemen, below Mr. Franklin
Pierce's."

A Christian convention has been held in Dr.
Cuyler's church, Brooklyn. Among the subjects discussed
were the methods of reaching the poor and ignorant popu-
lation of our cities, the mission stations of our churches,
and the ravages of intemperance.
_ _ _

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