The Portland daily press., 1872-01-23
The Political Influence Of Humor In
America.

The London Spectator says:
Americans have at least one genial quality.
| They do appreciate humOr. OF all the diff
ferences between society there and society
here, we do not know one more striking than
| the political power which, across the Atlantic,
hum0r appears to exercise over the masses of
the people. We have nothing of the kind left
in England. A stroke of political humor is,
indeed, occasionally appreciated, and indvid-
ual statesmen have sometimes benefited or
suffered from caricature, but the English re-
qure to see fun in order to be impressed by
it. The judgment OF Englishmen on O'Con-
nell was distinctly affected by 'H. B.'s'
drawing of him as the "Big Beggerman; !"
Sir j. Graham never quite got over the ''Lit-
tie Dirty Boy;' and Lord John RusselPs in
nuehce waned from the day Punch sketched
him as the small lad who chalked up "No
PoperyP' and then ran away in fright. The
ideal of him in the British mind as the man
of undaunted pluck, who would cut for the
stone or take command of the Channel
Fleet, suffered from the drawing. But since
the days of the Anti-Jacobin and Cannings
''Needy Knife-grinder'' we can hardly recall a
song, or story, or a bon mot which has ex-
ercised an important influence on politics.
The art of political squibbing seems itself to
have disappeared, for we do not allow that the
Battle OF Dorking" comes within that des-
ignation.
1t is different, however, in America, where
humOr has very often of late years had high
political or social effect, has brought certain
truths home to the popular mind as nothing
else could. By far the most formidable en-
emy encountered by President Jackson in his
war on the National Banks was the man
whom it is said he refused on his death bed
to forgive, Seba Smith, who published ''Major
Jack Downing series of letters full of true
Yankee humOr-Yankee as distinguished
from western-humor spiced and favored
with keen intellectual insight. The "BiglOw
papers" with their humorous scorn of slav-
cry and of wars for its extension, were a most
important contribution to the Aboltionists'
cause, as was the song about John Browns
soul to which the north marched to the con-
quest of the south. There is no meaning in
the humor of that song, but there is in its
form, and in the tune which accompanies 1t,
and it kept the link between abolition and
victory necessarily before the minds both of
soldiery and people. Lincoln's humorous
sayings, more particularly his remark about
swapping horses while crossing streams
and his rebuke to the perfervid abolitionists
who were pressing him to go too far ahead of
the national sentiment, II don't know, gent
lemen, that l ever received a deputation
straight from God Almighty BEFORE" had all
the influence of great speeches, as had before
his time the really wonderful burst of glowing
fun in which Senator Hale, sitting in his place
because he was too fat to stand, repudiated
the annexation of Cuba That was speech,
no doubt, but it was the humor in it, and not
the eloquence, which destroyed the formid-
able order of the Lone Star.
Bret Harte's 'Heathen Chinee'' has dis
tinctly modified the popular appreciation of
the Cinnamon, and helped to beat down the
previously threatening dislike felt to them in
assachusetts-where they are competing
with the powerful "Order of St. Crispin," the
great political Union of Shoe-makers, which
returns one-third of the State House of Rep
resentatives. The New York papers declare
that much of the recent victory of decent
citizens over the Tammany Ring is due to
some practical jokes issued, by an artist
named Mast, in Hdrper's Weekly, publica-
ton not very commendable to English ideas,
but of vast circulation and clean of pecuniary
corruption. We have not seen these draw
ings, but the consensus of New York opinion
about them is complete. And we believe
that the new book which has just appeared
''St. Abe and his seven Wives" will paralyze
Mormon resistance to the policy of the Wash
ington government far more than any amount
of speeches in Congress or messages from
President Grant, by bringing home to the
minds of the millions the MISUNDERSTANDING
side of the peculiar institution, its opposition
to all the higher, yet more common instincts
of the heart