Daily union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1865-1866, 1865-12-19
he accomplishment of the original concep-

the accomplishment of the original concep-
| ton.
In these facts lie the vice of the enterprise
and the reasons why the people in France
have not comprehended it, why Spain has
had suspicious of it, and why England has
abandoned it. France, when her loyalty in
the matter is better understood will bring
| back England and Spain to it, or she will
act alone with preponderating forces. Span
ish-America will thus be protected, the
United States will be repressed, Spain and
England brought back, and this grand enter
prise will turn out the honor of this century
| in Europe and the honor of France in Span
! ish-America. a- e m
One can easily understand that this people
have yet scarcely any of the conditions of
an American literature. The Mexicans be-
fore the conquest, the pretended savages of
| Montezuma, the Peruvians with their po-
ems of quippos, were in that respect much
more advanced. The gigantic monuments
of the AZtecs have left on the earth traces
| of intelligence and of force very much SUI
perior, thus far, to the exclusively utilitari-
an edifices of the Americans of the North.
The pioneers of the North do not build for
time; the log-splitters only know how to
cut down in order to split up the grand ar
istOcratic trees of the forests which they see
fall with the JOY of men envious of the SUI
periority of nature. Their eloquence is the
struggle of their Legislative assemblies, into
which they carry the rudeness of their vio-
lent manners, and where brutalities of ges-
ture and of the closed fist take the place of
the beautiful moral violences which the
great modern or ancient .oratOrs of Europe
exercise by aid of persuasion or logic, or
men of refinement assembled together for
the purpose of seeking in common after
the right and the justice of things.
Their journals, innumerable because they
cost little or nothing, ore anly so many re-
ceptacles of advertisements of the charlatan-
isms recommended by the Barnums of the
press-receptacles of calumnies and invec-
tives thrown out daily to the various parties,
in order to fasten upon them odious appela-
tions or trivial accusations so as to diseredit |
one another and to take away their sub
scribers Their SALOONS" are held in no. |
ties; their circles of men, which are temper
ed neither by good learning nor by polite
ness toward women, are only so many clubs |
of eager tradesmen, utilizing even their |
hours of repose for theft purses, proud to |
know only that which brings them in money,
and entertaining each other only with real
or illusory enterprises, by which they may
centriple:their fortune. Their liberty, alto
gcther personal has always something about
it hostile to some one; the absence of all |
kindness of manner gives them in general
the air and the attitude of some one who is
in the expectation of being insulted, or who
seeks, by force of pride of manner to pre-
vent the insults that may be offered him.
They have conscience themselves of the con-
tinual disagreeableness of their manners
One of their rare political orators, the
most eloquent and most honest among them,
whom the envy of his fellow-eitizens has al
ways prevented from being elevated to the
Presidency of the Republic said to me one
day: Our liberty consists tn doing all that
may be the most disdgreed6le TO our neighbors."
The art of being disagreeable is their second
nature. To be willing to please is symp-
tom of love. They love no one ; no one
loves them. 1t is the expiation of cyclists.
History presents no parallel of such ply
siognomy; pride, GOODNESS, correctness of
features, mechanism of gestures, munching
Of tobacco in the mouth spit-box under the
feet, legs perched against the chimney-ambs
Or doubled up on themselves without regard
10 the respect which man owes to man, an
accent brief, monotonous, imperiOus, dis
1ainful air imprinted in every feature-this
IS the picture of one of these autocrats of
money.
With few exceptions which stand out and
which suffer by the general pressure in an
Inferior atmosphere, exceptions so much the
more respectable inasmuch as they are more
in the individual, and there is the
North American, there is the people to whom
Mr. Monroe, one of their fatterers, said, in
order to be applauded: "The time is come
when you ought no longer to suffer Europe
o mix in the affairs of America, and from
which you ought to commence to exercise
in the affairs of Europe"