Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-05-14

The gentle Nazarene
Once knew; for when the waves Of grief gl
With fear our bosoms hll,
kindly voice may lsll the stgHrmll pr Nm
CINcfNNATi, May 49, 1860. N
~ Ei --t------au-------------1. Ito ' .'..
English Criticism of American institutions.
The New York Times, in its last received
issue, has these sensible remarks on this sub
ject; not
II is perfectly natural that the conservative
statesmen and publicists Of England should
feel seriously alarmed at the rapid ex-
tension Of the basis of political representation
in English society, and not very unnatural,
therefore, that they should eagerly sieze upon
every symptom Of disease and disorder in the
political system Of the United States, to hold
Il up as a warning of the perils which are in
herent in the absolute practice of popular
government. The wisest thinkers win nl-
ways be the slowest to pronounce upon the
share which this or that political institution
may have played in the development of ma
tional greatness and prosperity; and rs En-
qland has unduestionably made enormous
progress in the substantial elements of indi-
vidual well-being and general liberty, under
the curious and complex forms of her actual
Constitution, tits no positive indication, either
of political blindness or of social prejudice,
that Englishmen of intelligence should shrink
from adventuring upon changes, both polit-
ical and social, so grave and radical as may
be expected to follow upon any near approach
to that almost universal enjoyment of the
right of suffrage which prevails in the United
States.
Whether, indeed, the exercise of the suf-
frage in any country be a simple right;
whether il ought not to be everywhere re-
garded rather as function implying and re-
quiring certain principles of discrimination
in its distribution, is question which may
properly be debated with earnestness in
Europe, since it has yet to be satisfactorily
and fully answered even in America. We
cannot therefore quarrel with our English
cousins for objecting as vehemently as pos
sible to that argument from American ideas
to English facts, on which the Manchester
school of English politicians have always
laid so much stress. We can even under
stand the motives which lead Parliamentary
speakers aud public journalists to throw the
brighter side of American life into the back
ground, and to spend all the power of their
palettes upon the darker realities of our cur
rent history, whenever the question of repre-
sentative reform becomes the order of the
day among them. Speakers and writers have
adopted the same tactics from the beginning
of the world, and neither American Con-
gressmen nor American journalists are slow
to apply them whenever occasion demands.
But when we are assured, by those who
ought to be the leaders of British opinion
that the institutions of the United State;
have failed;' that we have not only comt
short of proving that England ought to be
Americanized, but have absolutely thrown
ourselves away on our own soil, and under
mined the fabric of our own prosperity, We
know not whether to laugh at the extrava-
gance or TO resent the injustice of a misrep-
resentation as hasty as it is insulting.
To say that the institutions of a country
have failed, is very wide and sweeping
statement, embracing so much matter for
consideration that it can neither be ade-
quately presented nor adequately met in the
limits imposed upon daily journalist. The
mere discussion of what national failure
means can only be compared to the banyan-
tree of the East for the multitudinousness OF
the branches which it shoots forth. Are we
required, for instance, to admit that the in
stitutions of 1889 have failed in France, be.
cause they have broughtabout so many revo-
lutions in the course of their natural develop
ment? If so, how are we to dispose of the
fact that the national wealth, the national
power, all the elements of national great
ness and individual well-beiDg, have in
creased in France almost beyond cOmputa-
tion, during this development
Are we expected to decide that the institu-
tions of England have failed, because En-
gland, after once reaching the leadership Of
Europe, has lost that leadership; because heI
military resources have been tried and found
wanting; because she no longer occupies in
1860 the position relatively TO the other ma
tions of the world, either as respects her
commercial Importance her manufacturing
power, or her diplomatic prestige which she
enjoyed in 1920? Do not her own most pat
riotic writer's continually publish to the
world the frightful uncertainty which over
hangs her future; the risks of domestic de-
mocracy and of foreign coalition which make
dark her horoscope? Are the absolutely i'm
practicable nature of her position in India,
and the fearful condemnation passed upon
her system of government in Ireland by the
enforced expatriation of millions of the Irish
population, to be taken as evidences of ma
tional failure? If not, why are we to admit
that the institutions of the United States
have failed, because we are tormented with
the Mormons in Utah and menaced by the
fierce fanaticisms of pro and anti-slavery
agitation throughout the Republic because
fillibustering has damaged our fame abroad
and caucus rule demoralized our Government
at home?
1t is one thing to say that nation is strug-
Cling with formidable problems, either social
or political, and quite another thing to say
that its institutions have failed; and that
there is no hope for it in the future but in
some absolute reconstruction of its whole
theory and practice of national organization
The institutions of ancient Rome may safely
be pronounced to have "failed" in the time
of Cicero; the ancien regime "failed" in France
under the Regency and Louis XIV; feudalism
failed in Englandunder the last Plantagenets
But where are the signs which indicate any
such failure in the Republican institutions o
America to-day2 For our own part we SEE
in the troubles which to-day beset the United
States, and in the scandals Of which Englisl
conservatism is making such adroit, and a
we have already said, not altogether illegiti
mate use, not the precursors of national dis
solution, but the harbingers of a more Wig
orous and emphatic development of nationa
morality and of enlightened patriotism THAI
has yet determined itself in our history.
LATEST News FROM MEXICo.-The Ney