Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-07-31

interest from an English magazin
| entitled "The Nineteenth Century. ,
The author, Mr.. George J. Holy
cake, visited this country and Can
ada for the purpose Of ascertainins
the feasibility Of obtaining land t.
colonize on the co-operatice system
/ He came, unlike most travellers
with his eyes open and without pre-
viously adopted theories about
America, and the consequence i
that he neither saw things tinged
with universal rose color nor all
black;
Before leaving Washington, ]
thought it my duty to call at the
British embassy and communicate
to his excellency Sir Edward Thorn
ton particulars of the request / had
made to the governments of Canada
and of the United States; since ii
his excellency should be able to APP
prove of the object thereof, it would
be an important recommendation
of it. / pointed out to Sir Edward
that Though public documents
were issaed by the departments of
both governments, the classes most
needing them knew neither how to
collect or collate them, and reports
of interested agents could not be
wholly trusted; while a government
will not lie, nor exaggerate, nor,
but rarely, conceal the truth. Since
the British government do not dis
courage emigration, and cannot
prevent it, it is better that our poor
fellow-countrymen should be put in
possession of information which
will enable them to 20 out with
their eyes open, instead of going
out, as hitherto, with their eyes
mostly shut" l ought to add here
that the Canadian minister of agri-
culture has sent me several valuable
works issued in the Dominion, and
that the American government have
presented me with many works of
a like nature, and upwards of five
hundred large maps of considerable
value, all of which | have placed at
the disposal of the Guild of Co-ope-
ration in London, for dispersion
amid centers of working-men, with
whom the founder of the Guild, Mr..
Hodgson Pratt, is in communica-
ton.
Because / admired many things
in America, I did not learn to un-
dervalue my own country, but came
back thinking more highly of it on
many accounts than / did before,
Not a word escaped me which dis
paraged it. In Canada, as well as
in America, heard expressed the
oldest ideas imaginable of the de-
cadence of England. | always an
sWered that John Bull was as sure
footed, if not quite so nimble, as
Brother Jonathan; that England
would always hold up its Willful
head, and, should the worse come
to the very bad, Uncle Sam would
superannuate England, and appor-
ton it an annuity to enable it to
live comfortably; doing this out of
regard to the services John Bull did
to his ancestors long ago, and for
the goodwill the English people
have shown Uncle Sam in their
lucid intervals. AS yet, I added,
England has inexhaustible energies
of its own. But lately it had Cob
den with his passion for interna-
tional prosperity; and John Stuart
Mill with his passion for truth il
has still Bright with his passion for
Justice; Gladstone with his passion
for conscience and Lord Beacons- 4
field with his passion for-himself
and even that is generating in the
people new passion for democratic
Independence. The two worlds
with one language will know how
to move with equal greatness side
by side. Besides the ineXhaustible
individuality and energy of Ameri-
cans proper, the country is enriched
by all the unrest and genius of Eu-
rope. was not astonished that
America was "big"-I knew that
before. What | was astonished at
was the inhabitants. Nature made
the. country; if is freedom which
has made the people. / went there
without prejudice, belonging to that
class that cannot afford to have
/ went there not to see
which / expected to see,
but to see what there was to beSeen, /
what manner of people. bestrode |
those mighty territories, and how !
they did it, and what they did ii |
for; in what spirit, in what hope,
and with what prospects. / never |
saw the human mind at large before
acting on its own accOunt-unham- |
pered by prelate or king. Every
error and every virtue strive there |
for mastery, but humanity has the |
best of the conflict, and progress is
uppermost. /
Cooperation, which substitutes
evolution for revolution in securing 1
to labor, may have a |
great career in the New World. In /
America the Germans have intell- |
gence, the French brightness, the |
Welsh persistence, the Scotch that |
success which comes to all men who
know how to lie in wait to serve.
The Irish attract all sympathy TO |
them by their humor of imagina-
ton and boundless capacity of dis
content. The English j. maintain |
theirlsteady purpose, and look with !
bovine eyes upon the |
of life around them, wear
ing out the map of a new path with |
looking at it, before making! up
their mind to take it.; but the fertile |
and adventurous American, when |
he condescends to give cooperation |
viii devise new applica-
tions of the principle unforeseen |
here. In America / received depu- |
tations from real state socialists, but |
did not expect to find that some Of |
them We're Englishmen. Bot 1
know them as belonging to that
class of politicians at home who |
were always expecting something |
to be done for them, and who had |
not acquired the wholesome Amer
lean instinct of doing something for
Were state workshops |
in that country, they |
would not have single occupant in
three months. New prospects open |
so rapidly in America, and SO many |
people go in pursuit of them, that L |
met with men who had been in so |
many places that they seemed to |
have forgotten where they were |
born. Ifthe bit Of paternal govern
ment could be got into the mouth |
of an American. it would drop out
in a day-he. opens his mouth so
often to give his opinions on things
in general. The point which seemed I
to be of most interest to American
was that feature of co-ope-
ration which enables working-men
to acquire capital without having
any, to save without diminishing
any comfort, to grow rich by the