The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-09-26

the most honestly disposed king. He
was anxious to relieve the people Of
the heavy burdens Imposed upon them by
his corrupt, profigate, debauched and reckless
predecessors Louis XIV. and NV, but the
task was too great for him or any mortal man.
| The horrible revolution in which he, his family
and his dynasty were swept away, was in
evitable. But here the parallel ceases to APP
ply, for while an opposition campaign for re-
trenchment and reform will sweep away the
democratic Bourbons from power, we are sure
that Mr.. Buchanan will retire from his Office
with the approval of the country as agood and
faithful public servant An intelligent people
well know how to discriminate between his own
acts and measures and the corruptions and
legacies and lobby combinations inherited
from his predecessors.
In conclusion, having indicated from the
lights of history and experience the false and
| await with unusual interest the development
of their plans. We may have an election in
1860 like that of 1910, or perhaps like that of
| 1856, or we may have a scrub race like that of
1924. Considering, at all events, their power
full platform by the spoils and plumber, it is too
soon yet to count upon permanent division of
the democratic party.
! The Local Character OF Manias and
| Isms-Why Standardization and Sew
| arsiism Can Never Prevail.
Thirty years ago a strong agitation was got
up in this country to stop the Sunday mails. 1t
took possession of peoples minds with all the
energy of popular mania, and for time it
seemed as though the men with the white cho-
| kers were going to carry everything before
| them. Beginning in New England, the mother
| land of all our manias and isms, it travelled
| southwark, gathering power as it extended
until it came to the isothermal line which is as
| impossible to the idiosyncratical alterations of
| the North as it is to the niger and the social
peculiarities of the South. There it stopped,
| and the reaction set in. Society came to
| knowledge of the fact that men are not all SUBJ
ject to the same impressions under the varying
influences of external objects, and that wherever
| the social relations or the executive powers of
government extend over a wide range of ter
ritory ard climate, these must be animated and
administered in accordance with principles
more simple and capable OF a wider general
application than belongs to ideas that spring
| from influences purely local and idiosyncratic.
This general law for society and government
| is one that has been developed by the extern
| sion of our political system over so wide an ex-
tent of territory. In Europe it is known
| through the highest reach of reason, but there
| it remains in purely theoretical state. Each
of its nations, limited to territory not larger,
as general thing, than any one of our medium
sized States, cannot feel its practical operation
Their several populations, all existing under
the same peculiar external influences, are SUBJ
ject to the same idiosyncrasies, and their social
relations and their polity are animated and gov
erned by them With our comparatively sparse
population, busy only with the material labors
| of life, the mind has not been dedicated to the
highest pursuits of abstract reason, and there
fore we have attained only practical know
ledge Of this general law through the observa-
| ton of its operation in society and govern
ment extended over the same or greater range
of external influences than that embraced in the
whole of Europe. Thus what in Europe is
known only to the most enlightened few, is
here rapidly becoming, through the practical
teachings Of experience, the guiding rule of the
many.
We never can exhibit the spectacle of a ma
tional idiosyncrasy in religion or politics that
has been SO repeatedly witnessed in Europe
Calvin, ruling the whole of Switzerland; Luz
ther, leading nations in the north of Germany;
John Wcklife, turning the national mind of
c. - 80 ~
preachers, governing England for long series
of years, and other similar examples of the
| supremacy of widespread but purely local
idea. These things are characteristic of north
ern nations and northern nations only. In
| habting regions where nature wears her most
| rigid and harshest garb, life becomes state
Of intellectual activity, and the mind is forced
to feed inwardly on its abstract operations.
From this results the peculiar characteristics
| that mark the northern nations-A tendency
to individual judgment, rejection of external
| influences, and a subsection of everything to
| the test of abstract reason On the other hand,
| the southern nations receive different mental
moulding from their external influences. Sur
rounded by the bounteous productions of ma
ture, life is to them state of sensuous exist
ence, which gives them readiness to admit
authority, an appreciation of the external and
material, and an indisposition towards the in
| ternal and abstract.
| 1t is from the operation Of these causes that
we witness the rapid growth and sudden stop
page or recession of manias or idiosyncrasies
| in the northern, and their entire absence in
southern, nations. They spring from the same
causes, which are purely local, can never ex-
tend beyond certain climatic influences, and
must all disappear before the operation of that
| local intellectual activity which gave them
L;sth To tlais class halonus tho 1xhola cataeeo.