The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-02-13


authority, from Washington to every extremity
Of the Union. In word, as the corrupt, dis
cordant and disbanded democracy are no longer
worth looking after, let the President begin the
important work of organizing new party. The
materials are abundant, the crisis demands the
experiment, and the country will support it,
European Fears OF American Decay-social
Science In the Old World and In the New.
The European journals have become sadly
alarmed at the social and moral condition
of the United States, and seem to entertain a
general fear that we are going headlong to the
| devil. Many Of them are so much exercised at
this that they are constantly filing their Co
| lumns with homilies upon our public morals;
and each picks out some little flaw in our con-
duct which does not square with its particular
notions of right and wrong, and straightway de-
duces that there is no salvation for U.s.
| The objects at which these cavaliers at Ameri-
can civilization carp are little inequalities and
| specks upon the great web of our society, like
those which may be found upon every piece Of
cloth when it comes fresh from the loom They
bility in service, though they may diminish its
market value in the eyes of those courtly popin-
jays who find utility and delight only in tnsel
and gloss. Social science takes more compre
hensive view, and draws therefrom higher gene
ralizations; and there is much in q comparison
of the relative conditions of American and Eu-
ropean society that would be instructive
to the wiseacres of Europe if they dared to look
upon it. Let us look at few of the contrasts
they present The superficial areas of Europe
and the United States are not very dissimilar,
that of the former being about 3,75O,00O square
miles, divided among ffty-lve States and Terrific
ries and that Of the latter being about 100000
square miles, divided among forty-one States and
Territories. But here the similarity ceases.
Europe is a great peninsula Of ITSELF which is
further divided into number Of smaller PENN
| sulas and islands, on each Of which one or more
isolated, or almost isolated. Kingdoms have been
erected. Thus on the throat Of the great PENN
| sula which juts out westward from Southern Eu-
| rope, stand Austria, Prussia and the German
| Principal les; from these, Denmark on the
north, France on the west and Italy and Turkey
on tie south, extend, with seas separating them
from each other Spain and Portugal occupy
the African extension of the French peninsula,
Sweden and Norway overhang the north of Eu-
rope between the Baltic and the North Sea, and
Great Britain and number of smaller Pow
ers stand upon islands. On these isolated
portions of the earth two hundred and
seventy-eve millions of civilized people reside,
maintaining three millions of armed men in a
time of peace, with which to keep order at home
and menace each other abroad. Power is welded
by series of intermarried and degenerate fami-
lies, whose sway is maintained by the repression
of intellect restriction of individual thought and
action, and studied teaching of the fallacy that
| men are to be valued according to the accident
of their BIRTH and not according to their indivi-
] dual ability to promote the good of the commu-
nifty. Barriers to the intercourse of mankind
have been built up on every side, under the most
specous pretexts of national good, and men
everywhere have been sedulously taught tina
they must hate and oppose each other Amid
this untoward state Of affairs social science has
sprung up, and is gradually tearing down the
hindrances which error has erected between man
and man in Europe; and the tendency of all en-
lightcned legislation of the present day is simply
to destroy and remove the protecting fallaces of
the past.
On the other hand, we have scattered over the
same area in the United States barely thirty mil
| lions Of people, without soldier among them to
| keep order at home or to menace each other; and
a., l.. a1,1
tered along line of five thousand miles offronter,
| to protect the advancing waves Of civilization
| from the savage. These thirty millions Of men
are busiy engaged in developing the resources
of nature, and particularly in opening new ra9tes
and greater facilities for intercourse with each
other. They are selfgoverned; and among them
thought and speech are Free intellect and indi-
vidual action are untrammelled, and every man
finds his level in the community according to the
exercise ofhis individual ability and the value of
his labors to society. Social science, having no
fabric Of barbarous age to pull down, is busily
engaged in developing the intellectual and ply
steal powers of man, and here he exhibits to
wondering Europe prosperity and rapidity of
| progress that knows no parallel
1t is this free working of the American intel
| lect that the European observer cannot compre-
bend; and, as he does not understand it, he trenl
bles before it. Everywhere it Is bubbling up,
gushing out and boiling over. Each individual
man is propagandist and strives to become an
apostle or hero. lie asserts bis thought with all
the zeal Of an enthusiast; others catch 1t up and
present it in thousand ways Of which the origi-
nator never dreamed; men wrangle and contend
over distractions as though the whole world
depended upon their being reduced to
practice; and yet all this chaos Of discus
sion seethes down into the most harmoni-
Gus practical working. The multitudinous
thoughts of millions Of active, energetic, prac-
tical and rnnrnninal ir,ir,dn L.. Tho