Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1885-03-21
conRuprIox .Ix AMERICA
An Eminent English Critic Says the storI
About IL Are Exaggerated. 1nrno|

An Eminent English Critic says the stories |
About IL Are Exaggerated. -
Matthew Arnold I'm Nineteeth Century |
The Americans themselves use such strong
language In describing the corruption pre-
valent among them that they cannot be sur
prised If strangers believe them. For my
SELF have heard and read much to the
discredit of American political life, how all
the best men kept aloof from 1t, and those
who gave themselves to 1t were unworthy,
that ended by supposiDg that the thing
must actually be SO, and the good Ameri-
cans must be looked for elsewhere than in
politics. Then had the pleasure of dining
with Mr.. Bancroft in Washington, and how
ever he may, in Sir Henry Names opinion,
overland the pre-establshed harmony of
American democracy, he had, at any rate, in
vited to meet me half dozen politicians
whom i'm England we should pronounce to
be members of Parliament of the highest
class i'm bearing, manners, tone of feeling,
intelligence, information. discovered that
| in truth the practice so common in America,
| of calling n politician ga thief" does not
mean so very much more than Is meant i'm
England when we have heard Lord
| Beaconsiield called ga liar " and Mr.. Glad
stone "a mailman" 1t means, that the
| speaker disagrees with the politician in ques
| ton and dislikes him Not that l assent, on
the other hand TO the thick-and-thin Amori-
can patriots, who will tell you that there is
| no more corruption in the politics of the
I United States than in those OF England.
| believe there is more. But the cor
ruption Is exaggerated; IL is not the wide
and deep disease it is often represented; it
is such that the good elements in the
| nation may, and l believe will, perfectly
work it oil and now the truth of what l
| have been saying as to the suitableness
and successful working of the American
institutions Is not really affected by IT.
American society is not in danger from
revolution. Here, again, do not mean that
the United States are exempt from the opera
tion of every one of the causeS--such a cause
as the division between rich and poor, for in
stance-which may lead to revolution. But
mean that comparatively with the old coun-
tries of Europe they are free from the danger
| of revolution and i believe that the good
elements i'm them will make way for them
| to escape out of what they really have of this
danger; also 10 escape in the future rs well as
| now, the future for which some observers
announce this danger a. so certain and for
midable. Lord Macaulay predicted that Tho
| United States must come III time to just the
same state Of things which we witness IL
England that the cities will fill up and tn,
land b come occupied, and then, he said, thu
division between rich and poor would cstab
| lish itself on the same scale aS with us, anC
| be Just rs embarrassing. He forgot tina
the United States are without what certaiulN
fixes and accentuates the distinction betweeI
rich and poor-the distinction ofclasses No
, only have they not the distinction between
noble and bourgeois, between aristocracy ant
middle class they have not even the distinc
ton between the bourgeois and peasant o
artisan, between the middle and lower class
| They have nothing to create it and compc
their recognition of it, Their domestic ser
{ vice Is done for them by Irish, Germans
| Swedes or negroes. Outside domestic. service
within the range of conditions which al
American may in fact be called upon I
traverse, he passes easily from one sort 9
occupation to another, from poverty to riches
; and from riches To poverty. No one OF hi
8 possible occupations appears degrading I
a him or makes him lose caste, and pOyert
itself appears 10 him as inconvcnient and dis
agreeable rather than as humiliating. Whe
the immigrant from Europe strikes root il
a his new home he becomes az the American