QfartiBU MtttOEraitg Slibrarg CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLAS,S OF 1876 1918 Cornell University Library D 363.G76 A political survey. 3 1924 023 000 999 A POLITICAL SURVEY. Ediinhurgh : Printed by Thomas Constable, FOR EDMONSTON ANB DOUGLAS. LONDON .... . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO, CAMBRIDGE . . . . . MACMILLAN AND CO. GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. A POLITICAL SURVEY. BY MOUNTSTUAET E. GRANT DUFF, MEMBER FOB THE ELGIN DISTRICT OP BUBGHS ; AUTHOR or " STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICS," ETC. ETC. EDINBUEGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 1868. [All Rights Reserved.'} Qrllfi W.2I5' TO MY CONSTITUENTS. Gentlemen, — The four addresses whicli compose this volume were begun with a view to their being delivered to audiences in the Elgin District of Burghs, like my Peterhead address of last year. The necessity, however, of making a large number of speeches on our internal politics during the month preceding the recent election, and other circumstances, having prevented my actually delivering them, I now offer them to you through the press. I am not without hope that many of you may receive from the book itself, new knowledge or new ideas, and I have throughout been careful to give references to the best autho- rities on the subjects to which I have alluded, so that if your curiosity is roused by anything I have said, you may not be without the means of gratifying it. Be this as it may, I am sure that you will accept this work, which, though short, is the result of some labour, as one proof more of my desire to make myself acquainted with everything that can largely affect the interests of this great Empire, your share in the government of which, you on Monday last once more intrusted to me. — I am, Gentlemen, your obliged and faithful Servant, M. E. GEANT DUEE. Eden, November 21, 1868. The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023000999 COKTEISTTS. I. EUROPE. PAGE FRANCE. — Liberal Eeforms — Army Organization — Un- rest in the public mind — M. Gr6vy — The amp d'etat — Relations witli other powers : Germany — Views of leadiag French tacticians — ^Political writers : M. Pr6- vost-Paradol — M. Guizot, . . . .1-6 ITALY. — ^Work of the Parliament — M. Marc Monnier's article in the Remie des Deux Mondes — Material pros- perity — ^Education — Effect of freedom — The Roman question — The Pope and the (Ecumenical CouncU, . 6-9 SPAIN. — The Queen's address at the opening of the last session of her Parliament — Gonsalez Bravo — General Prim — Death of Narvaez — Banishment of the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier — Outbreak of insurrec- tion — Flight of the Queen — Present difficulties : Form of government — ^Financial and Commercial policy — Religious Liberty — ^Document of M. Garrido — ^The Church and the People— The Clergy, . .9-16 POBTUQAL. — Unpopular measure altering taxes on con- sumption — Count d'AvUa — The Marquis Sa du Ban- deira — The Slave-trade, . . . . 16, 17 HOLLAND. — The present Liberal Government — Thor- becke — Van de Putte — The present Leaders — The vm . CONTENTS. PAGE Colonial question — Education Law — Max Hamlaar — Alleged commercial and political alliance with France and Belgium, . . . . .17-19 BELGIUM.— The Crown Prince— The Liberal Party— The Army — Customs duties — ^The political situation, . 19-21 SWITZERLAND. — The ultra-democratic movement in the canton of Zurich — Influence of Switzerland on sur- rounding countries — Democratic Institutions in the Swiss Eepublic and in that of the United States 21-23 DENMJBK— Duchy of Schleswig— Betrothal of the Crown Prince to the Crown Princess of Sweden — Danish finances : Mr. Strachey's report, . .23-25 SWEDEN AND iVOi? /F^ F.— Population— Agriculture- Education — Intolerance of the Clergy — Abolition of corporal punishment in the army — Subjects dealt with in the King's speech at the opening of the Norwegian Storthing, . . . . . . 25-27 GEBMANY. — Consolidation of annexations to Prussia — William I., . . . . . . 27, 28 AUSTRIA. — Baron Beust — Difficulty of the questions to be now dealt with — The Prague agitation — Galicia, Eoumania, and Transylvania — The Army — ^Reforms in various departments — Hungary — Eeminiscences of visits to Buda — Croatia, .... 28-32 RUSSIA. — Her underhand manoeuvres in the Principalities — No sensational events of late in Eussia itself — Poland — Material progress — The Yoimg Bear — Political Sketches by Count Miinster — Eelation of the people to the land since 1861 — Nihilism — Eussia's contact with us in Asia, ...... 32-37 TURKEY. — Assassination of the Prince of Servia — Policy of Belgrade — Condition of Eoumania — ^Russia and the CONTENTS. IX PAGE Principalities — The Bulgarian question — The Cretan Insurrection — Ziya Bey — ^Railways, . . . 37-45 QBEECE. — Practicability of a railway from Salonika to the Piraeus — ^M. von Hahn — ^Present state of the country, 45-47 II. ASIA AND AFEICA. ASIATIC TURKEY.— The Sultan's territories in Asia^ Area — Consul Sandison on the transference of the seat of Turkish dominion to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus — Treatment of Christians — ^Reports from various consuls on the operation of the Hatti-Scheriff and Hatti-Huma- youn — ^Roads in Asia Minor — Notes on Turkey — Our diplomatic relations with the Turkish Empire, . 47-53 PERSIA. — Sectarian diiferences between the Persians and the Turks — Ub attractiveness of the country — Attachment of the natives to it — The present Shah — Area and Population — Revenue and Taxation — The Army — Military art — External trade to and from Europe : with India — Our relations with the Court at Tehran — Imperial and Indian sets of relations with Asiatic countries, . . . . .53-62 CENTRAL ASIA. — Its divisions — The Steppe region and its inhabitants — The three Khanates of the settled territory : Present position of Russia with respect to them — Evils which may accrue to us, as to our Indian empire, from Russia's advance— Measures necessary on our part — Our situation in India ever perilous — Must Russia always be hostUe to Great Britain] — Possibility of Russia becoming a most valuable mem- ber of the European family — Her direct interests in Central Asia, ..... 62-72 X CONTENTS. PAGE INTEBIOB GENTBAL ASIA.— E&st&m. Turkestan : its area and population — Dzungaria — Adventures of Yakoob Kushbegee in Turkestan — Manchooria and Mongolia^-TMbet and Nepaul, . . . 72-74 CHINA. — Answer to the question, What is China proper ? — ^Description of average Chinese life — ^Present posi- tion of the Empire — Insurrections going on just now — The Taeping rebellion a thing of the past — Its leader, Hung-sew-tsuen — Future policy of the Govern- ment — The Burlingame mission — Treaties — Our rela- tions with China — Consuls and consular officers : their reports to Foreign Office — ^Books on China — ^Progress, 74-90 JAPAN. — Nagasaki — Our knowledge of the country — Attitude of the Japanese towards the Western Powers — The recent revolution and its results — The Tycoon — Proclamation by the Mikado^ — ^Russia conterminous in the island of Sagalien — Civil War — Our relations with Japan — ^Exports — Island of Yesso — ^Minerals — Kanagawar — ^Consular reports on the state of trade — Change of feeling towards Foreigners — Towns of Hiogo and Osaka — Port of Ne-egata still unopened, 90-100 SI AM. — Its two rulers — Extent and Population— Its claims on our attention — Death of the King — Dutch West Indies — Islands of the Pacific, . . 100-103 NEJED. — Eiad, the capital — Inhabitants, . . . 103 EGYPT. — Our interest in the freedom of transit from Alexandria to Suez — The Suez Canal — ^Recent autho- rities on the general political condition of Egypt — Jurisdiction of the Consular Courts : Observations of Lord Stanley on this subject — ^Desirability of the Egyptian Government showing a greater disposition to adopt European ideas in its local administration — — ^Administration of the Viceroy conniving at the traffic in slaves — ^Remarks of Mr. Consul Reade on this subject — Consuls and consular officers in Egypt, 103-108 XI PAGE 108, 109 109, 110 CONTENTS. ABYSSINIA. — Remarks on the late war, ZANZIBAR. — Its independence — The Slave-trade, MADAGASCAR. — Extent and population — Commercial importance — ^Attitude of the Government towards the Christian converts, . . . . .110 WEST COAST OF Ji^'^/C^.— Livingstone— Fernando Po — Establishment for the suppression of the Slave- trade — Work of Dr. Africanus Horton, a native of Sierra Leone, on the politics of West African countries — Eepublic of Liberia — Dr. Horton's account of Mon- rovia, its capital, . . . . 110-114 MOROCCO. — Extent and Population — The G-overnment— Books on Morocco — Consuls — Recent accounts unsatis- factory — Commerce — Moroccan libraries, . 114-116 rZJiVIjS'.— Its connexion with Turkey, . 116,117 TRIPOLI. — Extent — Commerce — Our relations with it — Its position, climate, soil, etc., . . 117, 118 III. NOETHEEN AND CENTEAL AMEEICA. UNITED STATES.— Faxties arrayed against each other in the recent Presidential contest — ^Republicans and Democrats : what denoted by these names — Mr. An- drew Johnson — What is Reconstruction 1 — Difficulties with which the question is surrounded — ^Brutal docu- ment illustrative of the excesses to which the Southern Democrats went — The Ku-Klux-Klan — The corre- spondent of the Spectator on the state of feeling during the canvass — General Grant — Different views as to the future policy of the Republican party — General Xli CONTENTS. PAGE Butler — ^Foreign Relations: with England— Our North American possessions — The Monroe doctrine — Hum- boldt on Cuba — Relations with Spain : with Mexico : with Russia : and with China — Railway uniting the Atlantic and the Pacific — Desirability that a clear understanding of each other's tendencies and objects should exist between the United States and the British Governments — British prejudices — Feeling towards us of the great cities — The Irish in America — General Blau- and the Fenians — Misconcep- tion amongst us, that Americans of the better class abstain from "participation in politics" — Peculiarities of society in a new country — Ode by James Russell Lowell — Goldwin Smith on the CivU "War — ^Books on America — American correspondence in our News- papers, . . . • 119-151 MEXICO. — Works of Mr. Olmsted— Madame Calderon de la Barca — Contrast between Mexico and the United States — Crackers and Rockets — Naturally divided into three regions — Scenery — Mineral resources — Popula- tion — Education — Disturbed political state — Juarez, the present President — The Emperor Maximilian and the Empress, as described by an English visitor — Pre- sent condition and future prospects of the country — Former diplomatic relations, . . 151-162 CENTBAL AMEBICA.—Physicskl characteristics— Pro- ducts — Its five Republics — Guatemala : its extent and population : Rafaele Carrera : Exports and Imports — Honduras — San Salvador — Nicaragua : Louis Napo- leon's project of proceeding thither — Costa Rica : extent and population — ^Diplomatic relations — Future of these Republics — Communication between the Atlantic and Pacific by water still unaccomplished, 162-169 HAYTI. — Extent and population — ^Recent history — The Haytian and Dominican Republics — Commerce — ^Diplo- matic relations, .... 169-171 CONTENTS. xni IV. rnVTR AMEEICA. PAGE Its leading physical peculiarities — The interest Europeans have in the communities of that Continent — Its extent — Mountains chains — Its vast plains — The relation to each other of its great rivers, . . 172-177 UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA.— E^ent of this region — Political history — Simon Bolivar: as described by Thomas Carlyle — New Granada : internal troubles — The Constitution — General Mos(;^uera — Population — ^Products — Our trade with Panama — The people, morally and inteUectuaUy considered — Our diplomatic relations, . 177-183 VENEZUELA.— Esient of the country— Origin of its name — Sir Walter Ealeigh — Books on Venezuela — General Paez — Population — Commerce — Government — ^War of Independence — Present state of confusion — Discontent and Conspiracies — Our communication with Venezuela — ^British, Dutch, and French Guiana — Slavery in the Dutch West Indies now at an end, 183-187 BRAZIL. — Its immense size — Population — The Emperor DomPedro ir. — The Legislature — ^Attempts at Insurrec- tion — Garibaldi first comes into notice in connexion with one of these — ^Trade with Brazil — The Amazons — ^Brazil as a field for emigration — ^Natural advan- tages : climate, rivers, etc. — Disadvantages, natural and acquired — Slavery stiU maintained — ^Probable repeal of the Aberdeen Act — Sir James Hudson — ^Necessity of a reform in her commercial system — The Brazilian clague — ^Books on Brazil — The work of Agassiz — Our diplomatic relations, . . . 187-198 URUGUAY, — anciently the Banda Oriental — Its extent, population, and climate — Physical characteristics — Monte Video, its chief city — ^Principal exports — Mr. M'Coll's Manual for Emigrants — Agriculture — XIV CONTENTS. PAGE Political condition — The Blancos and the Colorados —English interests, .... 198-202 THE ARGENTINE OONFEDEBATION.—Eatim&ted extent — ^Population — Industry — ^Buenos Ayres — Poli- tical agitations — Rosas and Urquiza — Relation of Buenos Ayres to the other provinces — ^Letters of Mr. Mansfield on the abundance of the Platine valley — Commerce — Constitution — Our diplomatic relations, 202-208 PARAGUAY. — Books on Paraguay — Journey from Buenos Ayres described — The " riverine" provinces — Terri- tories of Paraguay — ^Mixed races of population — Com- merce — Discovery by Sebastian Cabot — Colonization by the Spaniards — Character of Dr. Francia — His nephew. President Lopez — The present ruler, Field- Marshal Solano Lopez — "War in the River Plate, 208-219 CHILE. — Cape Horn — Welsh colony in Patagonia — Val- paraiso — Prosperity of this Republic — Geographical situation — San Martin — His expedition across the Andes described by Mr. Carlyle — Remarkable men — Overthrow of Concepcion and Talcahuana in the earthquake of 1835 — Agriculture and mining — Chilian products — Area and Population — The dif- ferent regions of the country described — War with Spain — ^Revenue — Books on Chile — Education and Religion — Our relations with Chile — Railway pro- jected to join the Pacific with the River Plate, 219-226 BOLIVIA. — The country described — General Santa Cruz — ^Bolivar and Sucr6 — ^Boundary treaty with Chile Grandidier's account of its population — Education Commerce, . . . . 227-229 PERU. — Callao — Ladies of Lima — Estimated area — Mixed races, Negro, Indian, and European — The old Indian stock — The battle of Ayacucho^-Factions in the country — General Ramon Castilla — Fall of the Presi- dent, General Pezet — His successor, Colonel Balti CONTENTS. XV PAGE Eecent earthquake — Climate — Insect pests — Local diseases — Education — Manners — Future prospects — Literature — Position and influence of the Eomish Church — Importance to Peru of the discovery of Guano — EaUway enterprise — ^Exploration of the rivers in the eastern territory — ^Its mineral wealth the curse of the country — Exports — Our diplomatic relations, 229-236 ECUADOR. — Port of G-uayaquil — Its state of perpetual agitation and revolution — General Flores — Extent — Climate — The Galapagos Islands — Its population — Eevenue and trade, . 236-238 REVIEW AND CONCLUSION, . 238-240 MAPS. Sketch-Map of Central Asia, . . to face p. 62 Sketch-Map of South America, . „ 172 EUROPE. I PEOPOSE to devote this evening to a very brief survey of the various States which unite with us to form the Euro- pean political State system, but before entering upon it, I must remind you that this address will cover the same ground as my Peterhead address in the end of last year. I shall try studiously to avoid repeating anything that I then said, but as the condition of Europe remains in many respects the same, there are, of course, not a few matters on which I should naturally touch to-night, which will be absent from the remarks I am about to make to you, and I must ask all those who have a strong interest in foreign affairs, to read what I shall say to-night along with what I said on the 19th December last. FRANCE. — The internal history of our nearest neighbour, during the present year, has been the history, not very inter- esting to us in its details, of the partial accomplishment of those liberal reforms, which were shadowed forth in the Em- peror's letter of the 19th June 1867, together with the carrying out of that unhappy scheme of army organization, into which a brave and usually confident people was hurried in the panic which was caused by the battle of Koniggratz. In the last and least creditable of its works, the Govern- ment has shown no want either of firmness, or of energy ; but in the other it has shown great want of both. Nothing, it has been said, is less wise than to proceed upon antagon- 2 FRANCE. istic principles of action, and Napoleon iii. has been doing this, during the last few months, to a very dangerous extent. Now, it has seemed as if he were about frankly to accept the policy which is understood to have been urged upon him by M. Emile OUivier, and to bid for the support of all those Liberals who had no connexion with the old parties, and, again, he has seemed ready to fall back upon the maxims which are cherished by the majority of the Corps Legislatif, which is more Imperialist than the Emperor. Such a policy could have but oile result, unrest and fever- ish anxiety in the public mind. Every day brings new rumours, sometimes favourable, sometimes unfavourable, to the crowning of the edifice. The smallest incidents are magnified into important events. One day it is a miserable little paper that appears about to bring on a crisis, and the next it is the obsti- nacy, or spirit, call it what you wiU, of a schoolboy, who refuses to accept a prize from the hands of the Prince Imperial. This kind of thing has been going on any time the last seven- teen years in Parisian society. Certain salons have always been repeating cela ne peut pas durer, but now the waves of opinion seem stirred not only more deeply, but, above aU, much more widely. The success of M. Grdvy in the Jura has been rightly considered an ominous circumstance, to which the easy triumphs of the Government in some other departments have been by no means an adequate set-off; and the public favour which appears to be accorded to M. Tenet's book on the coup d'etat, taken together with the Baudin subscription, is another proof, if proofs were wanted, that the new generation of Frenchmen has not forgotten the violence by which the present regime was inaugu- rated, and has, at least to some extent, forgotten that fear of the red spectre which made the " 2d December" possible. The relations of the Empire with other powers have not been disturbed by anything so alarming as the Luxembourg affair, but they have, So far as Germany is concerned, been very uneasy, and the semi-official and opposition press has done FRANCE. 3 its best to increase difficulties ■whidi rec[uired no increasing. The language of the Emperor in his speech at the opening of the Chambers was calculated to diminish the irritation against Prussia ; and there can be no doubt that his early experiences have made him too well acquainted with the state of German feeling to allow him to cherish any illusions as to the possi- bility of France being accepted as a deliverer from the tyranny of Berlin. We may be very sure that, if he ever moves a man towards the Ehenish frontier, it will be bitterly against his wilL A man of his age, character, and tendencies, is not likely to plunge into a war of colossal magnitude and most uncertain result, from mere " gaiety of heart," as his countrymen say. He win do so only if he makes up his mind that, of two evils, a war which may sweep his dynasty away is the one least to be dreaded. "Whether the combined force of Liberal discontent and military impatience will be sufficiently great to make him be- lieve war to be the less dangerous alternative, is the great secret of the future. The views of the leading French tacticians, I take to be very well summed up in the enclosed note of a conversation with one of them, which was lately forwarded to me : — " The treaties of 1815 gave us a detestable frontier. We are, putting aside railways, twenty- one days' march from Berlin, while the Prussians are only nine from Paris. We could tolerate siich a state of things when Germany was only a defensive power, but since 1866 that is no longer the case, and we have at our gates a nation of 30,000,000, which may, at any moment, become aggressive. We were obliged to accept the changes of 1866 and 1867, because we were not prepared. To-day we are pre- pared. The Emperor does not want war, but the status quo is our ultimatum. If they pass the Main, we fight." The fallacy of the above consists in assuming that Ger- many will or can become aggressive, as against France, an error which may be forgiven in a military man, but is not to be for- given in a politician, and yet some of the politicians of France, 4 FRANCE. from whom we might have expected better things, are even less reasonable than the general whom I have been quoting. France possesses few political writers so distinguished as M. Prdvost-Paradol. Paris is never wearied of praising his felicitous turns of expression, and the Academy opened its doors to him at an exceptionally early age. With all that his countrymen say about his brilliancy of expression, readers in other countries cannot fail to agree, but when they go on to praise, not the manner, but the matter, we are obliged to part company with them. The last chapter of his recent work. La France Nouvelle^ is a compendium of everything that a wise Frenchman should not think about foreign politics. It would be difficult to point to any piece of writing more calculated to do mischief by irritating the self-love of a proud and suscep- tible people. If we are to choose between the foreign policy of this gwasi-Liberal manifesto, and the foreign policy of the Imperial Government, we cannot have a moment's hesitation in thanking Heaven that the grip of a power, which has hitherto proved irresistible, is at the throat of all those who sit at the feet of M. Thiers. M. Pr^vost-Paradol would probahly say, that the disapproval of the rivals and enemies of his country — and he considers every nation which is tolerably near and tolerably powerful to be an enemy — is only a confirmation of the truth of his views. I must, however, disclaim, in the most emphatic man- ner, any hostility to France. Like M. Prevost-Paradol, I am obliged to admit that the question of cosmopolitan preponder- ance is already decided against the French, and in favour of the Anglo-Saxon race ; but it seems to me that, in Europe, France may still for a long time hold the first place. The way, how- ever, to do this, is not to rush into a mad war with Germany, in which victory and defeat would be almost alike disastrous, but so to order her internal affairs as to prevent the disproportion between the numbers of Frenchmen and Germans becoming so 1 La France Nonvelle. Par M. Prevost-Paradol. Paris, 1868. FRANCE. 5 alarmingly great. M. Prevost-Paradol himself admits that from 1817 to 1864, the population of Prussia increased by 82 per cent., whUe the population of France only increased by 25 per cent. What Prance wants in order to keep or improve her European position is, — -first, a rate of increase more pro- portioned to that of her rivals ; secondly, an extension of the beneficent policy inaugurated by the commercial treaty of 1860 ; thirdly, a disarmament on a sufficiently large scale materially to add to her industry ; fourthly, internal tranquil- lity ; a,nd fifthly, the adoption of such an attitude in her 'foreign policy as may allow her productive classes to devote their whole energy to their natural work, instead of losing time in speculations as to how many weeks or days peace is likely to continue. If one could believe that M. Pr^vost-Paradol's views were likely to sink very deep into the hearts of the new generation of Frenchmen which he addresses, one would be able to see no hope of quiet ui Europe as long as France remained a first-rate power. Luckily, however, the countrymen of Bastiat have not been left without a witness in favour of a saner method of contemplating the duties and destinies of the glorious region, in which it is their happiness to dwell. Far more reasonable than M. Pr^vost-Paradol's are the views which M. Guizot has put forth, in an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes of the 15th September. Here and there an expression has fallen from his pen, which looks as if it had been intended to pique the Gallic vanity, and to excite against the new dynasty those feelings of dissatisfaction with the position of France, which did so much to make unpopular the government of the citizen King ; but this is by no means the tendency of the article as a whole. It is, in the main, very pacific and very just. Much would be gained if some of the observations with regard to Prussia would take root in the minds of Frenchmen. M. Guizot truly holds, that Prussia is an amhitious power, not a revolutionary power. It is not dominated by those indefinite longings and passions which hurl 6 FRANCE. a people out of its natural sphere, and send it like a meteor through the world, destroying everything which stands in its way. The ambition of Prussia is an ambition hounded ly the limits of Germany. What the ambition, not of Prussia, but of Germany, might become, if excited to fury by having to defend itself against France, is, I wUl add, a very different ques- tion, and our friends in Paris might, with advantage, follow up their reading of M. Guizot's paper by Heine's Be L'Allemagne, a book which, under a lively exterior, conceals a vast deal of sound political doctrine, profitable for these times. ITALY. — Italy, since the end of the Mentana excitement, has been passing a quiet and laborious period. The Parliament of Florence has been engaged, for the most partj in work as dry and unexciting, at least to the foreign reader, as the reports in the morning papers of the proceedings in Committee of Supply. This is as it should be. The romantic age of Italian politics has lasted long enough, and those who wish well to a country, which has been for so many generations interesting and un- happy, should pray that her annals may be dull for many a year to come. Europe has been wonderfully indulgent to her somewhat summary method of relieving herself of a part of her pecuniary burdens ; and it is to be sincerely hoped, that the toleration shown to her and to Austria may not embolden them and others to go further and do worse. Were but the Eoman difficulty settled, the question which every lover of Italy would ask at the end of each lustrum is, not what exciting events have happened there, but what progress is being made in the arts of peace, and in all that enriches and embellishes the life of a nation. What proof is she giving that the blood shed in her many revolutions was not shed in vain ? That question wiU, I daresay, be offcener asked than answered, for want of some one to devote the vast amount of time and trouble that is necessary, first to coUect on the spot masses of statistics, and then to spend weeks in marshalling those statis- ITALY. 7 tics, and putting them in a readable form. This year, how- ever, it is not difficult to answer. It pleased M. Marc Monnier, the author of L'ltalie est-elle la Terre des Marts f and of many other valuable writings on the Peninsula, to return a few months ago to the land for which he had already done so much, and to hive up an enormous mass of information illus- trative of the progress it has been making since 1860. When I had the pleasure of visiting him, in the month of AprU, at Geneva, I found him surrounded by the literary spoils which he had brought across the Alps, and the Revue des Deux Mondes of the 15th August contains, in an admirable article on " Italy at work from 1860 to 1868," which is to other articles what attar of roses is to rose-water, the expressed essence of what he has to tell us. M. Marc Monnier deals first with the population. It is steadily increasing everywhere, except, perhaps, in the island of Sardinia. Sicily leads the van, and she is followed by the Neapolitan provinces, Umbria and the March of Ancona. The schools, the railway, and the army are making this increasing population every year more homogeneous, and will in time kill the dialects, and substitute for them the pure Tuscan. The beggars, of whom Francis II. left 13,000 in Naples alone, are gradually diminishing. Agriculture is reviving. Tell it not in the rooms of the Dilettanti, free Italy is beginning to do a large export trade in pigs ! Bologna, Ferrara, Modena, are making more sausages, — Naples is making more macaroni. Art manufactures are being multiplied — ^majolica and jeweller's work, mosaics and encaustic tiles. The glass-works of Murano are busy, as St. James's Street knows. Printing has made a great start since thought became free, and the disease of the worm has checked, not destroyed, the silk industry. Primary schools have been opened aU through the land ; and the children, especially in Naples, show most remarkable intelli- gence. Women are finding a new opening as teachers, — an ' L'ltalie est-elle la Terre ties Marts. Paris, Haoliette, 1860. 8 ITALY. occupation for which they are unquestionably much better fitted than the sterner sex, as our practical cousins across the Atlantic have long ago ascertained. There was much need for something being done in this direction. The average of per- sons in Sicily who could not read and write, when the Bourbons fled, was ninety out of every hundred. I wish I could report as favourably of the secondary educa- tion, but neither Mr. Arnold nor M. Marc Monnier tells us much good of it. The -authorities are, however, conscious that things are in a bad state, and prepare to remedy what is amiss. I am sorry to observe that they have lost in the last few weeks the assistance of an able and excellent man, M. Matteucci. The higher education prospers. There is not the wUd rush to the lecture-rooms that there was just after the annexations, but 7068 students, in fifteen universities, are an army not to be despised. M. Marc Monnier's account of the immediate effect of free- dom is amusing : — " There was a perfect fury for speaking, writing, hearing, knowing. They read Strauss and Feuerbach. They found M. Eenan — timid. They wanted to learn all languages. Young professors, who knew some twenty, went off to Persia, and brought back five or six more. The jurists swore by Mittermaier. The doctors would talk of nobody but Virchow. Germany, driven from Italy . by force, invaded it again by science, and conquered the whole land as far as Palermo. The alliance with Prussia had been cemented between professors before it had been negotiated by diplomatists.'' l^or are material improvements forgotten. Eoads and rail- ways are being pushed on. The post has been improved. Harbours are being deepened and made more safe. Some day, I suppose, we shall see the Brindisi route put in a position to defy competition, at least until the more distant design of a railway from Belgrade to Salonica is at length realized. But I must pass on to other subjects. I trust I have said ITALY. 9 enough to attract many to M. Marc Monnier's pages — of the excellence of which I can speak with the more confidence, because, having spent many weeks ia the autumn of 1867 in putting into shape the information then accessible in England, with respect to the progress of Italy, I know the value of the new data which he has procured.''^ And the Eoman CLuestion : how does it get on ? It stays in essentials where the premature attempt to pluck the chest- nuts out of the fire left it a year ago. But time is on the side of Italy. Every month that passes by without bringing a catastrophe is a month gained for her. Meanwhile the difficulties of the eldest son of the Church have been materially increased by the proposal to call an CEcumenical Council in the year 1869. Are the French troops really going to be used to make possible an assembly, which wUl be gathered together for the express purpose of damning modern civilisation in general, and the principles of 1789 in particular 1 If so, the humour of the spectacle will transcend anything that Europe has yet seen ! SPAIW. — I said when speaking to you last year : — " All this severity is, of course, preparing a terrible reaction, and paving the way for the overthrow of the last Bourbon throne. No one need care about that, but it is also blighting and blastiag the young shoots of progress in Spain, and throwing back that magnificent, but most unhappy country."^ Those who are not aware that, in lands where the support of the people is not behind the government of the hour, Eoyal speeches should be generally read backwards, must have thought that I had taken a pessimist view of the situation, when they saw, shortly afterwards, in the newspapers, the long and most cheerful address with which' Queen Isabella opened the last session of her parliament. M. Gonsalez Bravo, who ^ North British Review. December 1867. ^ A Glance over Europe. Edinburgh, 1867. 10 8PAIN. has ever wielded the pen of a ready writer, from the time when he appeared on the scene as the' editor of the Ghiirigay, a sort of Spanish Satirist, had exhausted all his arts in making things look pleasant.^ In short, he took the same view, or rather pre- tended to take the same view of Spain, that Mr. Disraeli pre- tends to take of Ireland ; and I may, in passing, just express a regret that no one acquainted with the details of his life has ever taken the trouble to bring out the points of resemblance between him and his Hispano-English antitype. To return, however, to Spain. During the first eight months of the year, the affairs of that country excited but little in- terest. General Prim passed the spring and summer in London, and neither he, nor those about him, made any secret of their intention to take the first opportunity to overthrow the existing Government. Everything, they said, was prepared ; it was a mere question of time and of the sinews of war. In the summer, Narvaez went to his account, leaving the place of armed pro- 1 The following extracts from the speech of the late Queen of Spain at the opening of the Cortes will be found in the Times of December 30, 1867 :— " Senatoks and Dbputies, — On beholding myself once more legally and peaceably surrounded by the Cortes of the nation, and considering the many and frequently dangerous vicissitudes of my reign, I canaot but offer my thanks to Divine Providence, which has been pleased to defend us from so many perils, and likewise to those populations of which you are the repre- sentatives, without whose adhesion 1 should not have been able to fulfil the high duties imposed upon me by my birth, my conscience, and the funda- mental laws of the monarchy. " One of the motives, perhaps the most powerful, of my gratitude, is doubtless the success which has crowned the policy, as energetic as foresee- ing and prudent, adopted by my Government after the rebellious of January and June of last year. Bear in mind the alarm and mistrust which, previ- ous to and subsequent to those excesses, had spread among all classes of society, the threatening prospects of our internal policy, the paralysation of labour and of aU manufacturing and mercantile transactions, the great diffi- culties of our finances, and the fallen condition of our credit. Who can deny the fact of the healthy transformation which since then to the present time has been realized ? . . . "... The army behaved on that occasion as it was to be expected. Confining itself to the strictest limits of military discipline, it afforded glori- ous proofs that its principles of honour are inviolable, attested its filial SPA IK 11 tector of abuses to men less able, and even more unpopular than himself. The first sign that the situation was getting, as the French say, more than usually stretched, was the deportation of several generals, by no means remarkable for the violence of their opinions, and the banishment of the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier. Then came ominous hints in the Times' Paris correspondence — ^hints which those, who knew the old and honourable connexion with Spain, of the gentleman who manages that correspondence, did not disregard. In September came the news that an insurrection had broken out, and per- sons who had watched Spanish politics saw at a glance that it was no mere affair of Aranjuez, for the fleet, ever slow to move in civil commotions, had taken the initiative. A day or two more, and it was clear that since 1854 there had been no such serious movement on the other side of the Pyrenees. Yet a few days and the Queen was over the frontier, and the field left open for aU possibilities. adhesion to my person, accredited its fidelity to tlie Constitutional institu- tions of the kingdom, and confirmed us in tlie judgment that the throne as well as the country had made, — that we can always resolutely reckon on those sentiments and principles for the defence of public order, an inevitable necessity of all legitimate progress, and a fertile source of permanent pro- sperity and true glory. "Our navy does not less merit our high esteem; its improvement has always been a subject of my constant preference, and, faithful to its illustrious representatives, it has maintained in distant seas, with the ability and hero- ism which we all recognise, the honour of our flag. . . . "... A beautiful subject of admiration is offered by a great people, which, during centuries, preserve the essential characters of their individu- ality as a nation, and keep with persevering determination the purity of their inherited faith, and the ancient deposit of their honour and their fame, without refusing, nevertheless, to walk through the new paths which the omnipotence of the Supreme Being incessantly opens to the activity of mankind, and to the success of their progress and prosperity. A remarkable position is that of a monarch, charged with the direction of a nation which finds itself engaged in such an enormous undertaking ; no less illustrious is the glory of those who offer their aid to a Prince with the energy of their action, with the virtue of their constancy, and with the faithful austerity of their counsels.'' 12 SPAIN. These possibilities are of the largest kind, and he would indeed be a bold man who would venture to prophesy how all that is going on is Ukely to end. Up to this time, however, the revolution of 1868 will compare favourably with any other Spanish revolution. There has been less bloodshed, and a much greater display of good sense than has been at all usual. The greatest difficulty is, of course, that of the form of government. It would appear that the republican party is very active, and when people decide peremptorily that Spain is not suited for a republican government, they perhaps too much forget the strong tendency towards republican govern- ment which the Spanish race has shown in the New World. I observe in the National-Zeitung of Berlin that its correspondent heard Castelar tell the crowd who assembled to meet him at Irun, that, if a republic were not adopted, it was not worth while to overthrow the dynasty, and that the only result of per- petuating monarchy would be to raise up a republican Vendue. Since his return to Madrid, he has been labouring for a federal republic. If, however, a federal republic were once introduced, so strong are the centrifugal forces in Spain, that we might well see a repetition of the struggles between ultra- centralizers and ultra^ federalists which have been so common in Spanish America, though railways, of course, would tend to make them less pro- bable. I am decidedly of opinion that, for the present, a monarchy surrounded by republican forms would be, if possible, the best solution of the governmental problem. Who, however, is to be the monarch ? The father of the King of Portugal, whose good sense and experience fitted him above all others for the task has, the newspapers tell us, declined it, and the only other suggestion, in any way promising, has been a Prince of the House of Savoy. This has got historical arguments in its favour, and the family of the King of Italy is surely suffi- ciently committed to the liberal side. The rule, however, of a boy would be the rule of the faction that could get hold of him, and the only use of a King, except to prevent quarrelling for SPAIN. 13 the Presidency, is to exercise the Leopoldiiie'arts of moderation and balancing. Then as to financial and commercial policy : — Figuerola has a good reputation, and starts well ; but is he strong enough to beat at once the party which is in favour of national dishonesty, and the party which hates free-trade ? Is he, a Catalan, by the way, himself, strong enough to fight the Catalan protectionist interests ? In no respect does the revolution promise better than in matters connected with religious liberty. As far back as 1855, the motion of M. Montesinos in favour of religious toleration was only lost by a majority of four, in the Con- stituent Cortes, but many Spaniards of even the Liberal school upheld intolerance as a means, not of defending ortho- doxy, but of promoting unity. An interesting abstract was published in the Pall Mall Gazette the other day of a broad- side printed in Madrid, and containing such sentiments as these : — The author tells the people " that although they have overthrown the tyranny of Isabella, they have yet to deal with a more formidable one, to which hers was merely instru- mental — the tyranny of the Eoman hierarchy. He exhorts the nation not to be deceived by the pretended friendship of the Papacy, which wiU flatter the revolution in order to divide its forces ; but at once to proceed to abrogate the Con- cordat, as even the Austrians, and to burn the document in the market-place. They must abolish the pretended religious cor- porations, which are, in fact, political associations adverse to the liberty of the nation. They must separate the Church from the State, and proclaim the absolute freedom of all forms of worship. This freedom will be a token of the regeneration of a people which religious intolerance and Catholic unity have heretofore reduced to dulness from cleverness, indolence from industry, littleness from greatness, poverty from wealth, the most backward and contemptible condition from the most advanced and formidable. This freedom will be their first 14 SPAIK security for every other franchise, and ultimately for wealth, numbers, industry, commerce, and education. Spain owes this freedom not only to her present residents, but to many thousand descendants of Spaniards, banished from their country or ex- pelled by the terrors of the Inquisition, who, after the lapse of a himdred years, still sigh for the shores of the mother country, and still maintain the use of her language in books and in con- versation. It is disgraceful that many Spanish families should be forced to have their children educated in foreign countries, because in Spain they cannot have them educated in conformity with their own principles. M. Garrido doubts not that the very proclamation of this freedom will draw capital to Spain that has long been kept out of her by her character for intolerant fanaticism ; that it wUl cause an immediate rise in all descrip- tions of Spanish stock, and facilitate the reduction of the prin- cipal of the National Debt. He exhorts Catholics to support this freedom, in order to remove from their eyes the revolting spectacle of that hypocrisy which is nourished in the Church by the opposite system of control ; he exhorts those indifferent to religion to maintain this freedom, as the necessary basis of every other kind, as he shows by the example of the Swiss and American republics. He exhorts the members of the non- Catholic congregations to avail themselves of this freedom as it is now established de facto, and to have no doubt that it must and will be fully ratified and established by the approach- ing deliberations of the Constituent Cortes. He ends by saying • — ' It is only freedom of worship which can reconcile Spain completely and definitively with the civUisation of modern times, from which it has been estranged by the French and Austrian dynasties, which have so resolutely persisted in seeing a great good in that public calamity, Catholic unity. Let us then, Spaniards, resolve to realize that religious revolution without which the political revolution we have accomplished will effect nothing, and find no satisfactory solution for the problem of its organization.' " SPAIN. 15 This document, however, is the production of M. Garrido, who belongs to the extreme Left of European opinion on these matters, as may be imagined when I mention that his valuable book on Spain was translated into German, by Arnold Euge, the famous editor of the Hallischen Jahrhudher. More impor- tant, as a sign of what is to happen, are the acts of the Provi- sional Government, and the language of its circular to its diplomatic agents. It may be that some reaction may take place, but for many a day Spanish religious reactions have been growing weaker and weaker. The reaction after 1812 brought back the Inquisition. The reaction after 1837 did not even replace in the constitution of 1 845 the declarations as to the truth of the Eoman Catholic religion, which were made by the democrats of 1812. The reaction after 1854 brought an educa- tional law in the interests of the priests, but it is very doubtful how far it has been working really in their interests. There are large districts in Spain, where the Church has altogether lost its hold over the middle class, and it would not be impos- sible to point to persons, who have hitherto upheld the exist- ing order of things, not because they have the faintest belief in the established creed, but because they did not want to be bored by controversy as to matters about which they care nothing. I am firmly persuaded that the only chance that really earnest Eoman Catholicism, the Catholicism of Eugenie de GuMn or of the Recit dfune so&wr, has, is to be found in the total and immedi- ate abolition of every unjust privilege which the Church at this moment possesses. Where is the Eoman Church stronger at this moment than it is in Poland ? Take away from the mass of Spanish Catholics those who care for none of these things, and only want a quiet life, those whose abject and stupid superstition does not rise above the lowest forms of heathenism, and those whose religion, as the Fall Mall Gazette, said of Queen Isabella's the other day, is merely a state of permanent hysterics — and how many Catholics will you have left between Cadiz and the Bidassoa ? 16 SPAIK I very much doubt if any one in England is competent to give an opinion as to the real views of the Spanish secular clergy, but I was told in 1864, by a very able Spanish ecclesiastic, whose own opinions were highly liberal, that a broad distinction must be drawn between them and the Camarilla which was under Eoman influence. The regular clergy in Spain, to which we have seen frequent allusions in the newspapers lately, must be very few in number. I have seen no very recent statistics, but I cannot help thinking that there is a vast deal of exag- geration and mistake in the sweeping statements which we have seen about the suppression of the monasteries, and that for monasteries we should read convents, mission- houses, and seminaries. The work of Henry viir. was done to a great extent in Spain a generation ago by Mendizabal. PORTUGAL. — The agitations of her great neighbour do not appear to have in any way affected Portugal, which pursues, under a very tolerable government, its peaceful though not very brilliant career. Peaceful, I say, with reference to foreign States, for she has not been whoUy exempt during the year 1868 from slight internal disturbances. Towards the end of last year a bill was introduced into the Chambers, for the purpose of altering the taxes on consumption. This measure was excessively unpopular, but in spite of its un- popularity it was pushed through by M. Casal Eibeiro's energy. It came into operation on the 1st of January, and excited no small dissatisfaction in various parts of the country. At Lisbon several hundred persons went in procession to present a petition to the King against it. Their procession was interrupted by the military, and the King, alarmed or annoyed at so violent a measure, immediately dismissed his Ministers, and trusted the for- mation of a new government to Count d'Avila. He immediately dissolved, and succeeded in throwing out most of the leading sup- porters of his predecessor. This did not avail him much, and he had the usual short tenure of Portuguese Prime Ministers. PORTUGAL. 17 The majority whicli supported his Conservative-Liberal administration was not very large and not very staunch. The Duke of Louie opposed it in the House of Peers, and after some skirmishing, its six months' tenure of of&ce came to an end. A new administration seemed at first about to be formed under this personage, but the King eventually sent for the Marquis Sa da Bandeira, who, with the exception perhaps of Saldanha, is the most popular man in the country, possessing very con- siderable influence in the army, which, although not very famous abroad, is a powerful political ally in Portugal. Portugal has long had a bad eminence in connexion with the Slave Trade, and in the Slave-Trade Eeports, Class B, pre- sented this year, there is a curious correspondence between Lord Stanley and Sir A. Paget, about a certain Senhor Leivas, who is said, by our consul at Loanda,^ writing under date 14th December 1866, to be the last person in Europe who persists systematically, " notwithstanding his heavy losses, in despatch- ing slave vessels to that part of the coast of Africa." Sir A. Paget, however, it appears, could hear nothing of Senhor Leivas, and we may trust that a later despatch from Loanda, which says that he has, once for all, abandoned the traffic, may be relied on as correct. HOLLAND. — I pointed out last year some curious points of resemblance between the political situation in England and in Holland. More fortunate than ourselves, the Dutch came in the summer of this year once more under the control of a Liberal Government, not, however, until two dissolutions, and some talk of a third, had strained the constitutional machine in a very formidable way. The Liberal Government which came into power is neither so strong nor altogether so wisely com- posed as we might wish. Neither of the two leaders of Dutch Liberal opinion, Thorbecke, the head of the old, nor Franssen van de Putte, whom, I think, I may fairly call the head of the 1 Slave-Trade Reports, Claas A, 1868. B 18 HOLLAND. new school, forms part of it, although the former acts as a sort of " presiding genius." People say at the Hague that " the brains of the Ministry are at Assen," which is the place that returns Thorbecke. The nominal head of the Cabinet is Van Bosse, who has the portfolio of Finance, and perhaps the most important of the other Ministers are Mr. de Wal, who has charge of the colonies, and Mr. Fock, the Home Minister, both of them able men. The parliamentary majority which follows these leaders is not very great. The colonial question is as far from settlement as ever, the chief battle raging for the moment around the length of time for which leases should be given to private adventurers in Java, so as to enable them to compete with the Government culture. The famous education law of 1857 is of course now as ever attacked by the ultra-Conser- vative party, and is looked on of late somewhat coldly by a certain section of the Liberals who take a view pretty much akin to that which is advocated by the Spectator newspaper amongst ourselves with regard to Irish education. The Dutch political novel, of which I spoke last year as throwing considerable light upon the colonial question in Java, has now been translated into English.^ It represents the views of the ultra-radical party amongst Dutch colonial reformers, and the only good review of it which I have chanced to see, which appeared in the Scotsman, and was evidently written by some one who had an amount of information about Java very rare in this coimtry, stated the conservative view with remarkable force and clearness. The Cologne Gazette treats the story of a triple commercial and political alliance between France, Belgium, and Holland, as a mere tale of the sea-serpent, and indeed, it is difficult to see what the two smaller States have to gain by such an alliance, which has its origin probably partly in the im- agination of Parisian journaHsts, and partly in the very unne- 1 Max Ilavelaar; or, Tlie Coffee- Amtwns oftJie Dutch Trading Company. By Multatuli. Translated by Baron A. Naliuys. Edinburgh. HOLLAND. 19 cessary alarm -which was excited in Holland by the events of 1866. BELGIUM. — The daily telegrams about the health of the Crown Prince of Belgium which have been flying over Europe, show how deep the interest in the popular mind about kings and dynasties still is ; for the number of able editors who forgot the existence of the Count of Flanders, married only last year to a princess of Hohenzollern, and, following the lead of a Vienna paper, worked themselves into a state of alarm about the Belgian succession, cannot have been very great. Or is it that' the attachment of European politicians to the palace once tenanted by the wise Leopold, is a cat-like attachment, which survives after the old occupant has passed away? Every one must regret the calamity that has fallen upon people so estima- ble as the King of Belgium and his Queen, but I wish that our journals would keep us better posted up with regard to events in Belgium which have a wider interest. What is really most interesting to Englishmen in the state of that country, is the gradual spread in the ranks of the Liberal party of the soundest and most philosophical ideas in all that relates to politics and trade. I should like to have seen, in some English newspaper, a full account of the very interesting protest made last spring by M. Couvreur against the enormous expense of the army, which Belgium in spite of her neutrality thinks it necessary to keep up ; I should like to hear something about the movement that is going on in favour of the abohtion of Custom-houses. With regard to the last movement, I may read a passage which I find in the report from our consul at Antwerp, presented last February : — " The Liberal tendency evinced of late years in Belgium with respect to commercial questions has been in the main warmly approved and sustained by public opinion at Antwerp. Differences of view, no doubt, exist with regard to the extent to which the principles of free trade and financial reform 20 BELGIUM. should be carried out ; but during the lengthened discussions which took place on this subject in the Antwerp Chamber of Commerce in the year 1861, views of the boldest and most advanced character were put forward, and the proceedings finally resulted in a vote favourable to the entire abolition of customs duties. This idea has been zealously followed up since that period by various other public bodies and associa- tions in different parts of the country. Some of the principal manufacturing towns of Belgium, including Verviers, Arlon, Eoulers, Charleroy, and Ypres, have fully assented to the principles enunciated at Antwerp ; and, finally, the ConseU Sup^rieur de I'lndustrie et du Commerce, a body composed of delegates from all the Chambers of Commerce in the country, formally sanctioned them by adopting a resolution to the following effect, at a meeting held by the Council on the 26th January 1864, viz. : — ' The laws relating to customs and excise should always be in harmony with each other ; but, inasmuch as the absolute suppression of customs duties would exercise a more energetic action upon the development of public wealth than any measure of mere reform, however liberal, it is desirable that the Government should constantly tend towards the attain- ment of that object.'" Information about such matters as these we shall, I sup- pose, never find till our newspapers cease to encourage some of their correspondents to lie "floating many a rood" through column after column. As long as a few are allowed to do this, it is vain to hope for a newspaper which shall teU us every morning everything of interest that has happened throughout the civilized world the day before. Yet a very few years and the telegraph will be so extended as to make this literally possible, but we have not yet learned to use the great instru- ment that science has put in our hands, — and the column of telegrams is often little better than a collection of riddles by the Sphinx. The general political situation of Belgium remains what it BELGIUM. 21 was last December. In the very last days of the year the Ministry was slightly modified, but its essential character remains the same, — Liberal, but not very actively Progressist. It is more than probable that the heightened pulse of English Liberalism may not be without influence upon the politics of Brussels. SWITZERLAND. — Far the most interesting event in the history of Switzerland, during the past year, has been the ultra- democratic movement which broke out last autumn in the great canton of Zurich. Its immediate causes were local squabbles, of no interest to the general public, but it must be taken as symptomatic of a much deeper and wider desire for change than any which could be excited by mere local squabbles. It was neither more nor less than a protest in favour of ^tore democracy, — the democracy of the Agora and the Pnyx as against the representative democracy of our modern days. Pure democracy is nothing new in Switzerland. It has long existed in several of the small cantons ; but Ziirich is very far from being a small canton, and to apply the practice of Uri to Ziirich affairs is something quite unprecedented. The whole movement is the more interesting because it shows, or seems to show, that political opinion in Switzerland is taking an opposite direction from that which De Tocqueville expected it to take, as any one may see who will turn to the paper which that great man read before the Academie des Sciences, Morales et PoUtiques, upon the book of M. Cherbuliez on democracy in Switzerland. I had hoped that before this time some of our autumn travellers might have given us some account of the course which the movement has been taking since the spring, but hitherto this hope has been disappointed. What is important for us after all, however, is not so much to know the precise changes that are agreed upon in the constitu- tion of the canton Zurich, but to know the line in which thought is moving. The last account which I have seen. 22 SWITZERLAND. which was a week or two ago, in a very sensible article of the Cologne Gazette, spoke of the "deluge" as falling in, rather than swelling ; but, on the other hand, I see that one of the most startling of the Ziirich proposals seems likely to be introduced into the Cantonal Constitution of Berne. I cannot, I fear, recommend to you anything of a verj' accessible or popular kind which wlH explain at length the issues that have been raised ; but if I were addressing professed political students, I should recommend two pamphlets, both in German, the one by Dr. GengeV strongly in favour of the movement, and the other by M. Dubs,^ the very able man who is now the President of the Swiss Confederation — which last, although in some respects not unfavourable to it, searches out with great acumen and displays with great clearness its weak points. Switzerland is a small country, and, considered as a " Power," is of little account in Europe ; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that she has not many political lessons for us. I may be permitted to quote, with reference to this subject, a passage from a letter which I addressed last May to one of the newspapers : — " If any one asks, what interest can this storm in a tea-cup have for us, I would beg him to reconsider the events which occurred in Switzerland in 1846-7, and say whether these were without influence on the faU of the July monarchy, and the troubles which shook so many thrones in the year of revolu- tions. Next I would remind him that Switzerland is trUingual, and that any movement which powerfully excites the political, social, or religious passions of her people is carried into Italy through Lugano, into Prance through Geneva, into Germany through Zurich and Basle. Lastly, I would observe that as it would be extremely unwise for English politicians to neglect to study the democratic institutions of the United States because those institutions work under conditions very dis- siniilar to those under which democratic institutions will, in ' Die Erweiterung der Volhsrechte. Von F. Gengel. Berne, 1868. ^ Die Schweizerische Demokratie in ihrer Forteniwickehmg. SWITZERLAND. 23 all probability, one day work in England, so it would be extremely unwise to neglect to watch the development of the democratic institutions of Switzerland because these also work under conditions very different from those which are ever likely to prevail here. The truth is, that the two sets of dis- similar conditions supplement and throw light upon each other. The great Eepublic of the New World, with its young civilisa- tion, its widely scattered inhabitants, and the vast unoccupied regions which stretch around it, wOl be all the more instructive to us if we turn now and then to look at the little republic of the Old World, with its ancient history and crowded popula- tion, hemmed in by the most powerful and jealous of European military monarchies." DENMARK. — Let us pass to another State, which cannot so easily reconcile itself to the fate of small communities, in these days of leviathans, as Switzerland. The unfortunate question about the Danish-speaking portion of Schleswig still remains open, and it is much to be regretted that at least a temporary settlement of it cannot be arrived at, because, whUe it continues in its present state, it is a handle ready for any would-be disturber of the European peace. I say a temporary settlement, because the force of attraction which Germany will exercise over the whole Cimbric peninsula, tends to increase, and may one day overturn any settlement which could at pre- sent be made with ordinary fairness. Meanwhile, Denmark proper, and more especially Copenhagen, has gained largely by recent events, as the following extract from the report of Mr. Vice-Consul A. de 0. Crowe, for the year 1866, sufficiently proves : — " Since the severance of the Duchies from Denmark, and the interruption of the intimate commercial relations existing between the latter and the great German marts of Altona and Hamburgh, the tendency of the Danish commerce in general has been to centre in Copenhagen, which is now the only place 24 DENMARK. in the kingdom offering those facilities, both local and financial, so necessary to the healthy development of industrial enter- prise. In these respects, therefore, Copenhagen has been a decided gainer by the late war, and is rapidly increasing in importance as a commercial emporium. . . . "... The recent territorial changes in Europe have so weakened the political importance of this country, that the preservation of the numerical strength of its merchant navy, and the development of its commercial resources, are con- sidered as paramount necessities. "Efforts are being made to afford exteiided facilities to trade, and considerable sums of money are being expended to improve and deepen the harbour of Copenhagen ; and, with a view to render their commercial intercourse with foreign nations more easy, the Danish Government has recently taken the initiative in proposing a imiform international standard of measurement for merchant vessels; and last March (1867), passed two new measurement and registration laws, based on and in accordance with the principles laid down in our Mer- chant Shipping Act, granting freedom from remeasurement in Danish ports to all foreigners according reciprocity.'' The betrothal of the Crown Prince of Denmark to the Crown Princess of Sweden is an event which has naturally given much satisfaction, and will tend to excite the hopes of the advocateSi of a Scandinavian union ; but you wiU. remember the cautions which I addressed to you when I last spoke upon this subject. It may come about, but it may be destined to remain only, as the German would say, " a pious wish." It is rather to the increase of material prosperity that Den- mark must look to compensate her for what she has lost. In this respect things seem going as we could wish. Mr. Strachey's report on the finances, dated January of this year, is, on the whole, satisfactory. He sums up as fol- lows : — " From this imperfect review of the subjects belonging to my report, it will be gathered that the Danish finances are DENMARK. 25 in a prosperous condition. It is the fault of the public if con- trol is not perpetual and complete. The provisions of the budget are not systematically checkmated by supplementary votes {' revirements des comptes') and the other tricks of subter- raneous financial manipulation. If the accounts are above ground, the actual fiscal pressure does not go beyond the means of the people to meet the tax-gatherer's calls, and there is a reserve fund, valued at from two to three times the amount of the yearly expenditure. A certain party in the State, called the ' Peasants' friends,' betrays, or recommends, an ' ignorant impatience of taxation,' but complaints in this sense are neither general, loud, nor spontaneous. The advent of that war on the Ehine, which some persons here expect with so much optim- ism and revengeful faith, might tempt Denmark into expensive foreign enterprises. On the other hand, the continued preser- vation of European peace, would force upon the Danes the abandonment of the study of ' immortal hate, ' and would give them leisure to pay renewed and more intelligent atten- tion to the natural sinews of Denmark's strength. There is room for improvement in Danish agriculture ; the kingdom's wealth might be economized by the adoption of a free-trade tariff. These changes realized, Denmark, though no longer guided by the instincts of 'a spirited foreign policy,' would be likely to grow every day richer rather than poorer." SWEDEN AND NORWAY.— 'ISo European State fiUs a smaller place in our English periodical press than the united kingdom of Sweden and Norway. With the exception of a letter from Berlin about Mr. Ericsson's engines for utilizing the sun's heat, and a paragraph about dynamite, a blasting agent cheaper and much less dangerous than nitro-glycerine, taken from Mr. Consul Perry's elaborate mercantile report from Stockholm, pre- sented this year, I do not remember for months observing a single notice of the smallest importance relating to the Scandi- navian Peninsula. Even in the copious pages of the Ewcypais- 26 WORWAY AND SWEDEN. cher GescMchtskalender, the whole history of the Northern King- doms for 1867 only occupies ahout two pages. Nature, which has given to these Boreal regions poor soil and a had climate, and which has not compensated her niggardliness in this direc- tion hy any exceptional gifts in other ways, seems resolutely to oppose herself to a country, which was once so famous, ever again taking a proud or commanding position. The population of Sweden, according to Mr. Hamilton's report to the Foreign Office last year, was, in 1864, somewhat over four millions. If the country were as densely populated as England, it would amount to sixty-six millions. A mere fraction of the whole surface is under cultivation, and there does not seem much reason to suppose that, except in the valleys, the agriculturist has very much in his power in the way of taking in more land. Better methods of agriculture, however, are being introduced in the fertile districts, and a table of the relative amount of cereal production in 1820, 1850, and 1865, shows a steady and enormous increase : — 165,000 tons of wheat in 1820 were represented by 540,000 in 1865; 1,692,000 tons of rye in the former year were represented in the latter by 5,600,000, and the increase in the growth of barley and oats was equally remarkable. The number of domestic animals is also advancing, and the mining industry is not, on the whole, falling off. Drunkenness is on the decrease. Education is extending, and with it the sale of books and newspapers ; but this corner of Protestant Europe still remains conspicuous for its intolerance, and the power of the clergy is stUl far too great. It is to be hoped that the more modem organization of the Parliamentary system in Sweden, of which I spoke last year, may give an impulse to more modern ideas. In 1867, the Second Chamber accepted unanimously a proposal for the extension of the rights of Dissenters, but it was defeated in the Upper Chamber by fifty-eight to forty-three. The last reform of which I have seen any mention is the abolition, a few weeks ago, of corporal punishment in the army. I^OE WAY AlfD 8WEBEN. 2 7 The speech with which the Kiag opened the session of the Norwegian Storthing on the 9th of October 1868, deals chiefly with the change in the armament of the troops, rendered neces- sary by the introduction of breech-loaders into other armies, a subject on which His Majesty has been since delivering an address at Christiania ; with the betrothal of his daughter to the Crown Prince of Denmark ; and with the negotiations which have been going on for a closer union between the two portions of his kingdom. On this last — ^the most important matter which is at present discussed in the Scandinavian coun- tries — ^he expresses himself very hopefully. ■ GERMANY. — The history of the last ten months in North Germany has not been marked by any very striking events. The situation is in its main features that which I described to you last December. Prussia is slowly consolidating the an- nexations of 1866, and is not meeting with more opposition than was to be expected from the way in which those annexa- tions were made. Had they been the work of a Liberal Minister, had they been preceded by serious reforms in the internal administration of Prussia, things would now be very different. In Prussia itseK there is no political advance to report, nay, rather the Conservative party is regaining some of the ground which it had lost. In the nature of things, however, not much can be expected from Prussia during the life of its present ruler, — a worthy and conscientious man, to whom accident has brought duties for which he was not educated, and who has lived on into a time strangely unUke that in which his political views were formed. Through all this trying year his government has shown the most laudable desire for peace ; but do not for a moment imagine that everything is not ready for war. The chief mili- tary councillor of the Prussian crown believes, or at least a few weeks ago did believe, in war, and all the necessary orders, which a state of war requires in a country where the citizen is 28 GERMANY. a soldier, were ready, and only required to be posted. If Prussia has to go to war, you may rest assured that aU the necessary measures are taken to bring her whole power to bear with extra- ordinary rapidity, not only against open enemies, but against doubtful friends, and she wiU enter on the war in that frame of mind which I have heard old soldiers declare to be far the most dangerous for an adversary, — a state not of high spirits, but of calm and quiet determination. A U STRIA. — Great and marvellous are the blessings which attend, in this world of ours, political repentance and amend- ment of life ! Such were my reflections when I found Baron Beust treated by the Chicago Tribune, an excellent American newspaper, as a highly liberal politician — " a statesman of the Cavour type." Two or three years have sufi&eed to turn into a model of constitutional virtues, at least to observers on the other side of the Atlantic, a man whom German Liberals till lately seldom mentioned without some epithet expressive of distrust and hatred. The new work in Austria for which he deserves more credit than any one else, goes briskly forward. Of course it is open to criticism, and it is bitterly criticised, but of the various schemes which an Austrian statesman could have selected after Konig- gratz which would not have been open to criticism ? Dualism, with as much concession as possible in all local and municipal affairs to the claims of the minor nationalities : that seems to me the best formula for the government of Austria. What is really dif&cult is to determine the quantum of the concessions. How much autonomy may be left to Bohemia ? How are the rival claims of Euthenians and Poles to be satisfied in Galicia ? On the answers to be given to questions of this kind the whole future of the Empire depends; but who is sufficient for these things ? What statesman, inside or outside the Empire, knows anything lite aU. the fads of Austria ? It is a science in itself. Nay, it is half-a-dozen sciences, and the ablest politician A U8TBIA. 29 can only move timidly and tentatively like a mule among slippery and crumbling rocks. Stm, on the whole, things look well. The atrocious old policy of Divide et impera is dead, we trust, for ever, and Virihus imitis, the motto of the present Emperor, is coming to have a very different meaning from what it had ia the first days of his reign. The Prague agitation continues, no doubt, but if there are any political heads among the Bohemians at all, they must see that to push matters to extremities would be merely to court destruction. They would not even fall, in the event of a break-up of Austria, to that Eussia with which they have been so foolishly coquetting. So" sure as the Moldau runs into the Elbe, they would become absorbed in North Germany, whose active and encroaching civilisation would in a few generations make them even as the Wends. Galicia has become, as Prince Czartoryski told a London audience last spring, the only place where Poles may venture to be Poles ; and his countrjrmen, no less than the Bohemians, must feel, if they have any insight at aU, that their only hope is in a powerful Austria. Once let the Empire be broken up, and " order will reign in Cracow," no less than in Warsaw. There is nothing in the remnant of an Italian question which is left which need, if it is well managed, excite the smallest uneasiness. There is no great danger to Austria from any turn which events are at all likely to take in the Eastern peninsula, though the state of Eoumania and the intrigues in Transylvania may well cause uneasiness. She can have no possible need of an army of 800,000, or half 800,000 men, unless there are stiU hopes entertaiued at Schonbrunn of recovering lost ground in Germany. The fear that this fatal policy may be still cherished in high quarters, is the only thing that leads one to look otherwise than most cheerfully upon the prospects of the Empire. The breach made in the Concordat, the transformation of the machine-like army of old days into an institution instinct with science and life, the conclusion of 30 A TJSTRIA. the -commercial treaty with ourselves, which will commence a new era for Austrian trade, are only a portion of the reforms which are being pushed on in all departments. The Times' correspondence from Hungary, telling, as it has so often of late, of laborious days spent by the Diet in well ordering the internal affairs of a progressing and peaceful people, are so different from the news, so fuU of fierce excite- ment, that used to come from Hungary, when I first took an interest in its affairs, that I have almost to make an effort to remember that it is the same country which I knew. Turning over some papers the other day, I came on a note- book kept by me while travelling in the year 1851, and found, under the head of "Buda, 1851 and 1847," the following entry, which I will read to you in illustration of that old interest of mine in the affairs of these Danubian countries of which I spoke to you last year : — " I stood again upon the heights of Buda, and saw the swift river roll southward at their base. I looked again upon that broad expanse of white houses from which it separated me, and the plain stretching league upon league beyond them. " So much was the same, and so much changed. The war- worn fortress within whose walls I was, bearing already, in 1847, the scars and the laurels of twenty sieges, had added another volume to its history, and could- tell another tale, for Hungary and itself, of days not less exciting than those of Eugene or Montecuculi. " So much was the same, and so much changed. I leant over the parapet, and saw the little vineyard below it, altogether unaltered. The very draw-well, whose peculiar apparatus I had remarked, seemed just as I left it ; but I had been taking a walk round the places I visited- that bright July morning, and what a difference ! From the Blocksberg, which I had climbed for the sake of the view, known then only for its observatory, the Hungarian cannon had played with terrible effect on the dwelling of the Palatine. Behind the gentle rising grounds which AUSTRIA. 31 bound the quiet valley along the edge of which I had passed, their long lines had been sheltered from the fire of the Imperialists. On the slopes of the Schwabenberg, whose peaceful breadths of green had been so refreshing to the eye that day, when it turned from the glare of the walk on the ramparts, Gorgey had had his headquarters, and another powerful battery had been placed. The barracks, where I well remembered having stood, and pitied, from my position in the shade, the soldiers who were going through their drill in the sun, still retained the marks of balls, and just to the right of them, by the Vienna Gate, the Italians had wavered and the Honveds broken in. In the street the stubborn valour or desperation of the Croats had forced them back again — ^back — ^but only for a time ; and still further along it, almost at the other side, when all was lost, Hentzi had fallen, sabre in hand, giving no quarter, and asking for none — in the land, worthy of the land — of Jurissowitz and Zriny. " So much was the same, and so much changed. The same sun was ripening the grapes in the vineyards and glancing on the waters, but he had looked on a vintage of blood since then, and seen over all the land the waters of civil strife, more ter- rible far than these in the spring-time terror of their flooding." I trust we are witnessing the commencement of a good long dull period in Hungarian history, and that no after-traveller in these regions will be able to look back upon four years fiUed with such strange and startling events as those which passed between 1847 and 1851. The long and at one time desperately envenomed quarrel with Croatia, has been arranged by a compromise which is apparently satisfactory to both countries, and I hope that everywhere the healing policy which has been pursued by the present Government is having a good effect. In short, look where we will in the dominions of the Kaiser, the promise of the future is good, if peace can be maintained and the army can be diminished ; but on that if hangs a great deal. If the present state of the finances is not improved, the 32 RUSSIA. Lilliputian bankruptcy of 1868, of which Baron Beust seemed to think so lightly, will be turned before very long into a Brob- dingnagian bankruptcy. MUSSIA. — Eussia has not, during the year 1868, occupied a very prominent place in West European political literature. There have been speculations as to the part she might take in case of a war between France and Prussia, founded for the most part upon mere conjecture. There have been grumblings, not without good reason, about her underhand mancEuvres in the Principalities, but that is about all. She has, in fact, been exerting little active influence beyond her own borders. Only far away, in dim Asiatic regions, has she been making real progress, and carrying her name and fame into new countries. In Eussia itself there have been no sensational events. No new Karakosoff has attempted the life of the Czar. No new Mouravieff has presided over a treason trial. The gradual Eussification of the Western provinces, of the Baltic provinces, and of Poland goes on, but no details of any value come to this country. Bad things enough, we may be sure, are being done ; but the Poles have got so thoroughly the command of the Western press, and minute accuracy of statement is so far from being one of their national virtues, that we may safely rest satisfied with the certainty that violence is exerted, with- out troubling ourselves to examine into particular cases. We are not nearer than we were a year ago to having any satisfactory information as to how far the measures which Eussia has taken since the close of the Polish insurrection are or are not really consolidating her power. Who is going to win the peasants? Will the Eussian win them by his agrarian legislation, or will the Polish gentry win them by patriotism, sentiment, and religion? On the answer to that question it depends whether Poland is to be, in the future, Eussia's Ireland — a difficulty ; or Eussia's Venetia — an impossibility. But why merely advertise that you do not see your way, RUSSIA. 33 and that the future of the Polish question is dark ! Because the first step to knowledge is the knowledge of our ignorance, and because, by sufficiently advertising it, we may put it into the head of one of our countrymen to become the Arthur Young of Poland. All the faster for the absence of sensational events, is material progress advancing. Above all, railways are being pushed forward, and they are the sine qud non of Eussian strength and prosperity. When it becomes, as I trust it one day will become, usual for men of high education to steal one year from the classical routine, to learn a language which is going to exercise so enormous an influence over the human race, we shall be kept better informed as to the movement of mind in Eussia. That is what most nearly concerns us, and it is a pity that we can only learn about it at second-hand. It is very well and very right to sympathize with Poland; but, as has been truly said, to sympathize with Poland is not necessarily to know Eussia. What is gained by shutting out the Muscovite from the political communion of the West ? What is gained by speaking of her as an Asiatic, and not a European Power, — as Tartar, and not Slavonian ? There she is, nevertheless, a fact by no means to be passed over, a quarter of the world, as • Herzen says, between Europe and America. " What is the use," continues that witty writer, " of trying as hard as you can I to make an eiiemy of the young Bear ? Wasn't it enough for you to fight with the old one, who was more hostile to you than to us, and who hated us much inore heartily than he hated you ?" It is the young Bear which it behoves us to know — ^the Eussia of the period which commenced with Alexander ii. " Oh," but some one may say, " it is true enough that for a few years the old Eussia of Mcholas seemed dead, but the patriotic revival caused by the Polish revolution, and the reaction against Liberalism which succeeded the great fires of 1862, have brought aU things back to their former state." That is a vain im- 34 RUSSIA. agination. Not only have a number of measures of great importance been carried through by the Government in the last few late years, a list too long for me to quote, but which you will find very conveniently set out in Count Miinster's Political Sketches;''- but, what is more significant, the whole spirit of the people is altering. What Eussia will ultimately become I know not, but she wiU certainly never again take up the same attitude towards thought and progress in Europe that she did before the Crimean War. Then she was an inert mass, moved by Government. Now she is beginning to live her own life. Two phenomena in Eussia seem to me at this moment peculiarly well worth studying. The first of these is the rela- tion of the people to the land since 1861 ; and the second is the revolt against all guidance except the guidance of science, which has broken out amongst the youth. On the former of these two subjects, the most recent autho- rity to which I can refer you is the pamphlet by M. Schedo - Ferroti, called Le patrimoine du PewpU^ published a few weeks ago, and on the latter, you should read the very remarkable article on Nihilism in Eussia, which appeared in the August number of the Fortnightly Review. Niliilism, as I told you last year, is sometimes used for a mere crazy negation of everything that is usually believed and respected. That was the Nihilism to which Prince Dolgorou- koff's joke, which I quoted, applied, but it is often used to dis- tinguish a peculiar philosophical tendency which has a definite cosmical conception, definite political and social principles, and definite moral ideas. Considered in this light, it may be re- garded as a phenomenon parallel to, though quite distinct from, the Positivism which we know in France and England. But again, it is often used as a name for the whole sum of ten- * Political Sketches of ilie Stale of Europe from 1814 to 1867. By George Herbert, Count Munater. Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas, 1868. ^ Etudes sur VAvenir de la Bussie. Dixifeme Etude. Par D. K. Schgdo-Fer- roti. Berlin, 1868. RUSSIA. 35 dencies favourable to the dislocation and break-u^ of the old state of things in Eussia, and the foundation of a new order upon the principles of right reason. The two following para- graphs, which I quote from the excellent paper already alluded to, wlQ give you fuller explanations : — '' Let us now put the question, What does Nihilism actually represent, if we take it not as a system but as a movement ? There can be no hesitation in replying, that it is the leaven of progressive evolution in Kussia. The peculiar soubriquet affixed to it five years ago is now a little ridiculous ; because there is no man in Eussian society, possessing more or less liberal tendencies, in whose mind some of the so-called Nihi- listic principles are not also found existing. Nor can it be otherwise. All progress, whether in Eussian society or any other, depends upon the emancipation of minds through the influence of positive conceptions. Nihilistic doctrines, in spite of their inconsistencies and their alloy of communistic idealism, contain a large proportion of sound tendencies, among which the first place must be given to the cardinal principle of objec- tive investigation. They contain, also, a deep and significant feeling as to social duties, without which no society can improve. Eussia is now a specimen of a country in which individualism does not and cannot predominate. Peasants and landed pro- prietors, merchants and workmen, the administration, and even the Emperor himself, — everybody understands what constitutes the social element of progress, and in this sense they are all socialists. Who is there in Eussia opposed to the sound and popular movement of mutual solidarity ? Only the so-called aristocratic party, the landlords, who are the champions of ultra- individualism. Look upon modern Eussian society attentively, and you wiU certainly arrive at the conclusion, that you have before you the most democratic people in Europe, a people to whom the much- hated Socialism does not appear either strange or odious. Therefore, the animosity against the Nihilists would be quite absurd if it were to express itself in the same manner 36 RUSSIA. as heretofore. I believe that this name, as a mark of reproach, can be applied only to those young men and women who fell into an absolute negation of everything that constitutes Eussian social life, and preached an unlimited communism and a general levelling. Such types are certainly possible, and may exist among Eussian idtra-Kadicals, but their propaganda represents nothing more than a mere idiosyncrasy. Adherents of this sect are further characterized by their arrogance towards European science and civilisation. When they go abroad, all is bad and worth nothing m their eyes ; the only valuable thing in the world is the novel of M. Chernuishevski ; they have been abun- dantly ridiculed in Eussian literature, and now it is time to leave them alone. Any further diatribes against Nihilists would only be manifestations of personal rancour. . . . "... A country like Eussia, in which all the elements of social life are actively at work, and evidently in a progressive state, cannot be governed by nothing, cannot ' remain much the same,' as has been affirmed. The people may be ignorant, their self-reliance small, liberty in its germ, the administration badly organized, and the Government inconsistent or weak ; but if you see, on the whole, a real improvement without any serious retrograde step, you must accept for this progress the laws of social evolution — ^laws which are everywhere manifested in the world quite independently of any given political form of Government or any system of administration. These social laws dwell in the collective mind of society, and are measured by the general state of its intellectual conceptions. If the Western journalists and politicians who speak of the warlike views and Panslavish pretension of Eussia, could study its pro- gressive movement, they would certainly arrive at truer conclu- sions. It cannot, indeed, be denied, that the Eussian newspapers, and a large part of society, evince Slavish sympathies ; but the tendencies of the rising generation are strongly opposed to any idea of warlike politics or spoliation. Such peaceful principles constitute a real guarantee, based as they are upon the entire RUSSIA. 37 harmony of enlightened Eussian youth with European civilisa- tion, and an ardent worship of science and social studies. In the young men of the most advanced European countries, England, France, and Germany, we see the same philosophical, social, political, and moral tendencies, which manifest themselves in the Eussian rising generation ; even all the peculiarities of Niliilism may be recognised in the intellectual movement of Paris, London, Berlin, and Heidelberg, which gave me the right to say, at the beginning of this article, that Eussian Nihilism possesses a serious significance for the whole of the civilized world. Its best theorems are deeply rooted in the minds of the rising generation of Eussia, and only need to be re-organized upon a complete and positive system, to become sound principles, in which Europe may find a perpetual pledge against all the anti- civilized tendencies of the Eussian Colossus." I recommend these observations to all those who interest themselves in the future of Eussia ; and it is the future rather than the present of Eussia that is important to us. Her contact with us in Asia is a thing not of to-morrow or next day, but it is a thing to which we must look forward as ex- tremely probable, and we must watch more carefully than we do what kind of power Eussia is becoming, before we can form a right judgment as to the frame of mind in which we should anticipate that contact. To this subject, however, I will re- turn in my next lecture. TURKEY. — The atrocious assassination of the Prince of Servia which shocked us aU in the summer, has happUy not been followed by any disturbances in that country. His suc- cessor being a mere boy, the whole real power is vested in the hands of a regency, and it would seem that the persons who compose that regency are not in a hurry to plunge Servia into adventures. The change, in fact, between the autumn of 1868 and that of 1867, in the policy of Belgrade, is very marked and satisfactory. 38 TURKEY. I wish I could say the same of Eoumania, but there things are in a very different position ; in no way are they going well. One day it is the persecution of the Jews which rouses the indignation of all civilized men, another day it is the in- fliction of judicial torture. The international duties of Prince Charles's Government are no better performed than its internal ones, and Baron Beust did not use at all too strong an expression when he spoke of the Principalities as a vast arsenal. What is worse, they are an arsenal under no efficient superintendence, in which a parcel of schoolboys are amusing themselves by sky-larking. About all the proceedings of Bucharest there is what our High Church friends would call a " note " of frivolity, not to say of scampishness, which is made all the more amus- ing from the fact that the central figure, round which the whole crazy business goes on, is a Prince of the grave and intensely respectable house of HohenzoUern. The root of the whole mischief is simply this, that nobody is fully responsible for what happens in Eoumania. Although really quite separate from Turkey, it is nominally still a part of that Empire, and thus the authority of the Suzerain actually becomes a bar- rier to prevent the great Powers who disapprove of the intrigues that are going on, doing anything effective to stop them ; while Eussia, whose interest it is to keep up a perpetual witches' sab- bath along the Lower Danube, is of course only too happy to afford M. Bratiano and his friends every help in its power. One can hardly blame the Czar's Government. To it the extension of Eussian power all over those regions must seem a mere matter of manifest destiny. To be sure, the Eoumans do not speak a Slavonian dialect, but they are cut off by many a league from the nearest population which speaks a dialect derived from the Latin, and Eussia looks upon them as destined to be a mere enclave in a Sclavonic empire, which shall extend from Montenegro to the Black Sea and the Bosporus. All that I say is perfectly natural, but it is equally natural that Europe, whom this little arrangement cannot be expected to TURKEY. 39 suit, should do the one thing which she can do, — insist on Eoumania becoming nominally as well as virtually indepen- dent, and then hold her tight to her international obligations. We should not then hear of bands being organized in the most open manner for the invasion of Bulgaria, armed and provi- sioned in broad daylight at Giurgevo, and sent with a blessing across the Danube. First to make Europe see that this is its interest, and then to make the Porte take the same view, is not so easy. No nation willingly parts with any kind of rights over territory, and we fear that Turkey will he. no exception. The number of the bands which have crossed from the north to the south bank of the Danube, has been probably very much exaggerated, but enough has been done to make the Turkish Government imeasy, and to keep its troops rushing up and down the river to intercept invaders, real or imaginary. Of course the object of these invaders has been to revolutionize Bulgaria, by which 1 mean not merely the province usually so called, but the whole vast region lying to the north and south of the Balkan, and extending from the Danube to the Sea of Marmora. It is doubtful, however, whether they will find this a very easy task. Of all the subject races, the Bulgarians are least inimical to the authority of the Sultan. It is more than probable that if their very moderate and reasonable demands were complied with, they would be a strong bulwark to the Empire. I quote the following from a pamphlet by M. Coprich- tanski, published in French at Constantinople : — " The state of things in which we are plunged is strange and intolerable. We have got rid of our old Greek masters in many places, but up to this hour they are our legal, although illegitimate, sove- reigns. A word can throw us back into their power, and give us up to their vengeance ; we live between two dreads— that of a past which we know too well, and that of a future which we do not know at all. We feel ourselves the object of the hatred of one set of people, and the appetite of another set. 40 TURKEY. The Fanar has excommunicated us. The missionaries of Pan- slavism, Catholicism, and Protestantism drag us each in his own direction; In this frightful confusion our ideas get con- founded, and our eyes hecome dim ; our protectors, disputing with each other the exclusive privilege of protecting us, see with pleasure the prolongation of our sufferings ; each hoping that our sufferings will throw us into his arms. Nowhere, however, do we find a disinterested friend capable of procuring us the only thing we want, namely, to hecome ourselves. " One Power alone could accomplish our wishes, because its interest and our interest coincide, and that is our own Govern- ment, the Turkish Government. " But for years, turn as we would our eyes towards the Sub- lime Porte, we have found sympathies for which we are very much obliged, but at the same time a reserve well calculated to discourage us. " What can the Ottoman Government mean by prolonging this state of crisis ? Does it fancy that it will obtain security for itself by setting Greek and Bulgarian by the ears ? Its real security would be found in satisfying the legitimate and moderate wishes of our people, which does not wish to separate from it, and in the weakening of those whose avowed object is the expulsion of the Osmanlis from Em'ope."^ It is to the Pall Mall Gazette that credit is due, for hav- ing called our attention to the great importance of the atti- tude taken up by these people, with reference to the future of the Ottoman power in Europe. Till that journal began, many months ago, to bring out the Bulgarians into strong relief, there were very few of us, I am afraid, who properly appreci- ated them. On the 1st June 1868 it published a very long letter, dated Constantinople, February 19th, and signed by a Bulgarian, in which the following passage occurs : — " We do not desire anything beyond that amount of tem- 1 La Question Bulgare. Par CopricManski. Constantinople, 18G8. Im- primerie du Oourrier de V Orient. TURKEY. 41 poral autonomy which is necessarily involved in such religious autonomy as the Porte accords to each community. Deliver- ance from the Greeks, direct communication with the central Government, the right of electing our national clergy by our own people, the use of our own language in the church-services, and its cultivation in schools, constitute the whole amount of the Bulgarian demand. As for the rest, we are content to rely on the interest which the Porte itself finds in the gradual in- troduction of reforms. Fidelity to the Government seems to us only the just return for its preservation and guardianship of our nationality, for the Bulgarians fully comprehend that the wreck of the Empire would simply throw them headlong into the gulf of Eussism." The views expressed in that letter were further developed in another, published on the 10th of June, from which I take this extract : — " To come to details ; only ask those who have had any experience of Servia and Bulgaria for their opinion. They wUl tell you, that so far from there being any intimate natural affi- nity between the Servian, a warrior, a man of declamation, a lover of adventure rather than of work, and the steady matter- of-fact, hard-working Bulgarian, the very reverse is the case. From all this it is clear that the establishment of Panslavism would be simply a blow aimed at the individual rights of each Slavonic people. " As for the Greeks, their first encounter was with the Bul- garians, sword in hand, and they had the worst of it. Later on they made use of Turkish rule to take their revenge, fasten- ing on to us under it as leeches of the Panar. Up to this day they obstinately deny us our ecclesiastical rights, while we, on our side, never lose an occasion of testifying estrangement from everything which leads up to or bears upon the great Hellenic question. It is very evident that similarity in religious forms can have no power to combine two such antipathetic spirits as ours and the Greek. I use the wotA forms, because, at bottom. 42 TURKEY. the Bulgarian's religion is not at all that of the Greek. With him religion is more an affair of politics than anything else ; it is, in fact, his emblem of nationality. With the Bulgarian, as with all true Slavs, religion is a profound and self-nurturing sentiment, abiding in the heart unmoved by the fluctuations of worldly interests. Nor do we resemble Eussia any more than we do other Slav communities ; we love individual liberty, and we are strongly imbued with a sense of the rights of property, so that Eussian centralization and communistic ideas are repug- nant to us. Our language is as different from Eussian as French from Italian ; that is to say, certainly not enough to merge into Eussian by natural fusion. Historically, Eussia has never taken a step to attach us to her. As her influence arose in the East, she came to consider us as an inferior sort of Slavonic race, one wholly passive, and doomed to pass under Eussian rule by the mere force of circumstances. Not a word of us in her treaties with the Porte, for she found it best that the Greeks should wield our resources and turn our strength to account in order to undermine the Turkish empire. Hostile now as ever to our separatist aspiration, she is now multiplying attempts to induce us to resume our former position of Greek Helots. It is true, that being deprived by the Greeks of our own ecclesiastical books in Slavonic, we get them occasionally from Eussia ; but this is an idle fact, which really has no other significance than as warning to the Porte of the risk it runs by continuing to abandon us to Greek persecution. Our passive attitude in pre- sence of the bands lately sent by Eussia to stir us up in revolt, and our emphatic disclaimer of fellow-feeling -with the Cretan insurgents, are striking proofs of our want of sympathy with Eussian tendencies, and of the political independence of our own conduct. " Why should we sacrifice this independence ? We are a people of six millions, robust, hard-working, intelligent men ; we live in a wide and fruitful land, and we can well suflBce for ourselves, and do our own work. Accustomed for centuries to TURKEY. 43 Ottoman dominion, we see in it the protecting guard of our national individuality. We are thus attached to Turkey by the double tie of habit and self-interest. Verily the Turkish Government vrill be most ill-advised if it prefers a mere routine obedience, against the grain, to such an attachment as this, based on reason." Of actxial events calculated to strike the imagination of the West, there have been none, I think, this year, in Turkish Turkey. The Cretan insurrection continues in a languid way, but it draws its fuel chiefly from independent Greece, and burns much more quietly than it did in 1867. At Constantinople there have been some changes in administration which look like reforms. There has been a conspiracy against the Sultan, as to the real importance of which I have not been able to get any trustworthy information, and Fuad Pacha, the very able minister who accompanied the Sultan to this country last year, is said to have gone to Italy, in a dan- gerous state of health. On the last day of 1867 a curious letter appeared in the Times, signed by Ziya Bey, having found its way. to Printing-House Square through a Polish newspaper to which it was originally sent. Ziya Bey is a Turkish states- man who, having proposed some reforms of a radical character, found it wise to change the air, and betook himself to Paris. By the way, the {act of his writing to a Polish newspaper is worth noticing, as indicating that approach of the Turks to the Poles, which common hatred of Eussia is bringing about. I quote a paragraph from his letter, which sets forth pretty well the views of the most extreme school of reformers in Turkey : — " In this deplorable state of things, the only salve to be applied is the one so anxiously desired by the population, and so often promised and never administered by the Government. It is a radical reform of the institutions of the State. Thus far the Porte, when pressed for political concessions, has always evaded the demand by inventing the pretext that the Sultan does not see the necessity of change, and that Mahometan 44 TURKEY. fanaticism would not put up with it ; but every one in Turkey- is aware that whatever the Sultan may think of the expediency of taking the step, he is not in a position to oppose it. Whether his ministers are acting wisely or unwisely, he cannot influence them. By virtue of certain irades the ministers are positively authorized, in case of necessity, to use the unlimited power vested in the Sultan without applying to him, and yet be exempt from all personal responsibility. As to the subterfuge of Mussulman fanaticism, it has no foundation whatever. Has the Mussulman population ever restrained the action of the Government in anything ? Whatever that fanaticism may be, it never was, nor is now, an opposing element, as may be proved by reference to numerous facts. . . . "... To work for the integrity of the Ottoman Em- pire, and promote at the same time its dismemberment, is to stultify one's-self Yet such is the course now held by more than one of the Powers which signed the Treaty of 1856. Turkey, to be saved, needs sweeping reforms, which her present antiquated ministers will be unable to carry out. That Cabinet which has no position in the country, nor can boast of influence or sympathy out of it, can only rely upon petty intrigues to maintain itself, and has far too much to do with the prolongation of its existence to consider the interests of the State and people. Fortunately there are enough practical and intelligent men in the country, known to the Sultan, and enjoying public confidence, who would be able and willing to undertake the great work of revival. But to set this enterprise afoot, we need either a direct intervention of the foreign Powers, or a domestic revolution, or the initiative of the Sultan, aided by the sympathies of Europe. The latter alternative would be by far the most beneficial, and might solve in a pacific way a question so complicated in itself, and which, by reacting upon the European balance of power, will ultimately engross the attention of the entire world." The proposed connexion of Varna with the European rail- TURKEY. 45 way system through the extension of the Lemberg Czernowitz line to Jassy, and thence to Giurgevo, for which Concessions have been granted, will very probably lead to a line being constructed from Varna to Constantinople, which would give us a new mail route to India, and be of vast importance to Turkey. The Economist of October 31 points out that pro- jects like the Euphrates Valley EaUway will now begin to look more hopeful, and that even Syria and Persia will become drawn into the vortex of European commerce. To be able to go in two years from this time, in something like eighty hours to Odessa in Eussia, or Galatz in Moldavia, or Varna in Tur- key, is something to look forward to. GREECE.— The following, which I take from a letter of the Athens correspondent of the Times, which appeared on December 7, 1867, shows that even bolder projects have entered some busy brains. Fancy taking a through ticket from Charing Cross to the city of the Violet Crown ! " An interesting extract from a new edition of his Journey from Belgrade to Salonica has been printed apart by M. von Hahn, the Austrian consul at Syra. It examines the practica- bility and the advantages of continuing a railway from Salonica to the Piraeus. M. von Hahn is well known in the learned world by his comprehensive work on Albania, which is the best authority on that strange country, its strange inhabitants and strange language. The journey from Belgrade is full of inter- esting infomlation, but I believe it has not been translated either in England or France. Consul von Hahn was the first who proved that all our maps are wrong in making the Balkan Mountains join the great dorsal range that in Turkey corre- sponds to the Apennines. He found a level country between these two chains of mountains, and he demonstrated, that the construction of a railway would encounter no great difficulties, by purchasing a carriage and horses at Belgrade, and driving them over the existing roads all the way to Salonica, without 46 GREECE. breaking his own neck, or laming his horses. The distance from Salonica to Alexandria, is 670 nautical miles, from Brin- disi to Alexandria 835, and from Marseilles to Alexandria, 1 425. The advantages of a railway to Salonica are evident, and the obstacles are only political. Money has lately felt no attraction towards Austria and Turkey, unless when under the influence of what used to be called usury. Things may soon be changed by a liberal policy at Vienna and rapid agricultural progress in Hungary. A line of railway from the Danube to Salonica would pass through the most industrious population in European Turkey, and would be the most immediately useful to northern Europe, perhaps even including England, of any of the lines lately proposed in the Sultan's dominions." It is very unfortunate that the comparative tranquillity of the Greeks during the present year has interrupted, I trust only for a time, that series of extremely interesting letters from Athens, which occupied so prominent a place in the TiTnss last year. It would be inhuman, I suppose, to desire that there should be a chronic revolution somewhere in the JEgean, in order that we might have a constant supply of such letters. I will not deny, however, that I have been sometimes tempted to wish it.^ The state of things in Greece remains substantially where the year 1867 left it. " T he great ide^ ," that is, the re- conquest of Constantinople, appears to be no nearer to realization. Nor do any signs appear of the nation buckling seriously to what ought to be its task — the task, namely, of making the most of its resources in a common-place moral kind of way. One can well understand that a nation which can look back upon such a past, separated though it be from its great past by wave on wave of almost annihilating conquest, should cherish vague dreams of territorial extension, and hunger fiercely, not only for Crete, but for Thessaly and Epirus. It may be that the energy ' While these sheets are passing through the press the letters have recom- menced. GREECE. 47 of the desire may accomplish its object, for he is a bold man who will say what will and what will not happen in south- eastern Europe. Meantime I wish the news-dealers at Athens would be more scrupulous in their assertions. Scrupulosity, however, was not one of the virtues of their illustrious ances- tors ; and, perhaps, that excellent Hellene did not miscalcu- late, who, on being asked, " Why on earth do your countrymen circulate such fictions ? They don't gain anything by them," answered, " I beg your pardon, they gain at least five per cent." ASIA AJD AFRICA. ASIATIC TURKEY.— li, crossing the broad ocean-river wKich separates Europe from Asia, we turn our faces towards the east, we shall still travel for many and many a league over the territory of the Sultan. Indeed, the Asiatic dominions of that potentate are very much wider than those which he possesses in Europe. Geographers reckon the European pos- sessions of the Sultan, including Eoumania, Servia, and Monte- negro at 204,215 English square miles, whereas his territories in Asia cover 668,580 English square miles, — are, that is to say, more than twenty-one times the size of Scotland, (j Just at present these countries have comparatively little ■political interest for us, and need not detain us long ; although at any moment some commotion at Jerusalem, some squabble on the Russian or Persian frontier, some new outbreak of fana- ticism and race-hatred in the Lebanon, may transfer to Asiatic soil that interest which a section of the public now bestows upon Crete. The most bitter enemies of Turkish domination in Europe are content to leave Western Asia in the hands of its present rulers, and sometimes, I think, in their zeal for cutting by war a knot, which time alone can unravel, forget what might be the result to Christians in the neighbouring contiaent of press- ing too hard on Mussulmans on the western side of the Helles- pont. Mr. Sandison, our consul at Brussa, makes, in a report to Lord Lyons, dated Brussa, April 18th, 1867, the following ASIATIC TURKEY. 49 very judicious remarks upon this subject : — " A Turkisli func- tionary of some rank from Constantinople, lately speaking to me on the subject, observed, ' If things come .to that pass that "we are to be attacked with the design of driving us out of Europe, we shall certainly make a hard fight for it, and may be beforehand with our domestic enemies among the Christians.' The same feeling pervades, no doubt, the mass of his people, though some of them avow a desire for any change of masters in the hope it may better their condition. " But before the idea can be realized of transferring the seat of Turkish dominion to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, there is perO. of scenes of bloodshed taking place, such as the world has rarely witnessed. Nor would this peril be confined to the European side, but when religions and national enmities are inflamed to the utmost, combined with the passion for venge- ance, it might fall ahke on the Christian races interspersed in Asia Minor. The sound of the human voice can be heard from the opposite shores of the -Bosporus, and the passage across the narrow strait need only occupy a few minutes. Numbers of Christians, including Europeans, are also settled along the eastern shore, and their position would become serious were the two shores to be placed under different rule. Or how far inland, or where in Asia, could be drawn a separating boundary line ?" The answers given to the queries addressed to our consuls, with respect to the treatment of Christians in Asiatic Turkey, show, as might be expected in a country which is politically so loosely hung, the most various and conflicting results. For example, Mr. Cumberbatch writes from Smyrna as follows : — " To conclude my observations, I must add, that I consider the stipulations referred to, have been carried out to a certain extent in the large towns, but that in the districts the Hatti-Scheriff and Hatti-Humayoun have remained a dead letter. " I must also add, my Lord, that the Turkish population is infinitely more harshly used than the Christians as regards exactions." D 50 ASIATIC TURKEY. Mr. Palgrave, again, reports from Trebizond,iii these words : — " The general bearing of Mahometans towards Christians in these parts is, in a word, one of absolute and unequivocal toleration. " Of course, squabbles occur here and there, and unmeaning menaces are made, more especially among the lower town population, and sometimes in the vUlages. Such occurrences are often grossly exaggerated by those whose interest it may be to excite or magnify them. But they are reaUy nothing, and tend to nothing." Again, Mr. Skene writes from Aleppo : — " Eeligious tolera- tion doubtless exists On the part of the Government in a degree not equalled in all European countries. When cases of moles- tation on account of creed occur, they are invariably at the instigation of the Christian Churches, whose mutual hostility offers a melancholy contrast to the impartiality of the Turkish authorities ; and even in these cases of molestation, justice and toleration are always practised by the latter. In fact, not only from rival bishops, but even from their own ecclesiastical supe- riors, the Christians suffer more than from their Mussulman rulers." Mr. Eogers writes from Beyrout : — " With certain exceptions, the Christians oppress each other more than the Mahometans oppress them. " The Christians in Syria hardly desire any change. " I cannot believe that any decree of the Turkish Govern- ment can remedy the evil as it exists in Syria. " Any further political change must destroy the principles of Mahometanism, and a subject of discontent amongst the larger class of Turkish subjects is raised, which sooner or later wiU break out in revenge upon the unfortunate recipients of a chimerical boon. "In my humble opinion there can be but one effectual remedy, and this may be hoped for in the increase of liberal sound and secular education in the Ottoman dominions." Mr. Moore writes from Jerusalem : — " The precise nature ASIATIC TURKEY. 51 of tlie stiptilations referred to in the address not being stated, I can only reply that here the Greek and other Christian sub- jects of the Snltan receive practically the same general treat- ment as their Mahometan fellow-subjects, and that there is vast room for improvement in the treatment of both." Mr. Eassam, writing from Moossul, says : — " The old preju- dices have passed away, the Christians may wear any kind of dress, and ride horses at their pleasure. Their religion and churches are respected ; their ecclesiastics are treated with con- sideration, both by ofi&cials, and in social intercourse with one another. " There are, however, two instances, which to the Mahome- tans are insurmountable — to rise before a Christian, and 'to receive in the Mehke meh (court of justice) the evidence of a Christian against a Mahometan. These are religious dogmas which will never alter, unless the whole fabric of religion passes away and another institution is planted in its stead. I have opened the subject before the Doctors of Law, and they assert, ' These are dogmas based on our religious principles ; and if His Majesty the Sultan wishes to order anything contrary, the Mahometan population collectively will not obey him,' and they have added ' that such a step might bring on an insurrection.' However, the evidence of a Christian may be taken before a civil gover- nor in order to throw light on a case when no evidence of a Mahometan could be obtained, and the governor could use such evidence at his own discretion." On the other hand, Mr. Taylor, writing from Diarbekir, gives a very much less agreeable picture of the insolence with which social equality is denied even to Christians who have been de- corated by the Sultan. He adds, however, " There is, I fancy, no doubt that the Porte wishes to carry out its stipulations in good faith, and that many governors also act up to those wishes, but, on the other hand, it is useless to deny that local influences in these central provinces have hitherto occasioned the most important to be studiously neglected." 52 ASIATIC TURKEY. The above information, coming from very distant and dissimi- lar portions of Asiatic Turkey, points to a state of things which is very far from being satisfactory, but at the same time no fair- minded man can read the reports, of which the extracts I have given sufficiently show the spirit, without seeing that improve- ment is going on, and I am sure no thoughtful politician will read them, without resolving to be very careful how he lends himself to any movement that may prematurely drive matters to extremities between the Christian and Mussulman subjects of the Porte. If anything like a satisfactory modus vivendi between Chris- tians and Turks could be arrived at in Asia, such as we have seen under the enlightened administration of Daoud Pacha in the Lebanon, and if the inveterate corruption of the local govern- ments could in any -yvay be checked, a great field might be opened in Asia Minor, not only for the investment of European capital, but even perhaps for emigration. Still, as is observed by the writer of Ifotes on Turkey,^ a pamphlet bristling with remarks well worth consideration, even when they do not immediately commend themselves to our acceptance, " the main hope of progress is from the improved condition of the native population, who are much more likely to make the most of the land than any foreigners." Prom the same pamphlet I take the following passage, which seems to me well worthy of being kept in view by all interested in the political development of the East : — " There is no doubt that roads are most necessary in European Turkey. In Asia it is not quite so certain. Asia Minor is divided by ranges of rocky hills with rich valleys between them, and roads taken over these hills must, if they are carriageable at all, be very steep and tortuous. The horses and mules of the country are light, and not fitted for draught, so that they could not drag great weights up such roads, while camels can carry consider- able burdens over the existing tracks. 1 Some Notes on Turhey. London : Ridgway, 1867. ASIATIC TURKEY. 53 " It is very doubtful whether, in such a country, wheel-car- riages can carry much cheaper than camels. On the road from Beyrout to Damascus, the waggons have not been able to destroy the competition of mules and donkeys, which are much less efficient than camels, and the loss of horses, in dragging heavy loads over such hills, has been very great. No attempt to in- troduce a heavy breed of horses has been successful. They have always given way to the climate. From these reasons it is doubtful whether a system of carriage roads would be of much use in Asia, where the bridle roads across the mountains, if put in good repair, are quite enough for camels and mules, but the extension of railways into the interior would be of immense service. In the interior of Asia Minor and of Syria there are, even now, large crops of grain and other produce which would be most valuable if they were accessible, but which rot upon the ground for want of means of transport to the sea. I was informed that wheat iu the neighbourhood of Aleppo sells in good years at 7s. a quarter, but even at that price it cannot be exported, owing to the expense of carriage. In the same way there are large crops of wheat about Afioun Kara Hissar, which are burnt every year, except when the price is exceptionally high in Europe, when it can be carried to the coast at a profit." Our principal relations with Asiatic Turkey are, of course, carried on at Constantinople ; but we have consuls or inferior consular officers at all the principal ports on the Asiatic shore of the Sea of Marmora, on the coast of Asia Minor, and through- out the Levant, as well, of course, as at Damascus and Jerusa- lem. In the more distant parts of the empire we have a consul- general at Bagdad, and consuls or inferior consular officers at Aleppo, Bassorah, Moossul, Erzeroom, and Diarbekir (Koordis- tan), at Jeddah, and at Trebizond. PERSIA. — From Turkey we pass to Persia, from one great Mahometan State to another. One might fancy that these two neighbours, the strength of Islam, without which all the 54 PERSIA. other States which follow the laws of the Prophet would be a mere bundle of loose sticks, ought to live in close friendship, and constantly act together. This is far, however, from being the case. The Persians happen to be Shiites, or dissenters, — the Turks are Sunnites, or orthodox ; and this sectarian dif- ference is, just as in Christendom, quite enough to make those who agree in nine hundred and ninety-nine points out of a thousand, the fiercest of foes. Nor does it appear that the quarrel is becoming at all less inveterate. On the contrary, it tends to become more envenomed ; and the Prench minister, a year or two ago, could not, it is said, think of testifying his good-will to the people of Tehran in a more graceful way than by burn- ing Omar in effigy. The hatred of the Turks is less active than that of the Persians. They rather neglect than actively oppose the Shah's Government. The Persians, on the other hand, lose no opportunity of tripping up their neighbours ; and, during the Crimean War, were prevented with some difficulty (from giving active assistance to the Czar. Por many years previous to 1848 a sort of guerilla war went on along the frontier. This was put an end to by the labours of the Mixed Commission, which concluded its work in 1852, but the state of the frontier districts does not in many places appear, even now, to be at all what we could wish to see it. Persia, thanks partly to the fact that both its absolute and relative importance were much greater in old times than they are now, thanks also to the Greek genius for exaggeration, has always exerted great influence over the European imagi- nation. Unless, however, all modern travellers are engaged in a conspiracy to slander it, it must be one of the most detest- able countries on the face of the globe ; and must have been very fairly described by that Scottish traveller, quoted by Lady Sheil,^ who said that the whole land is divided into two ^ Olimpses of Life and Mamners in Persia. By Lady Shell. London : , Murray, 1856. PERSIA. 55 portions, one being " desert with salt, and the other desert with- out salt." Professor de Filippi, a naturalist, who formed part of the Italian special mission to Persia in 1862, and has written a book on that country, says : — " The plaias, the hills, the moun- tains — everything, is sterile, dry, and sadly monotonous, from Erivan to Tehran, and after all this is only the antechamber of the desert."^ Unattractive as it is, the natives are, nevertheless, much attached to it. Mr. Watson, lately one of our secretaries of Legation at Tehran, writes as follows : — " The country, such as it is, and uninviting as it seems to the eye of a stranger, is the object of the admiration and the love of every true Persian. I do not mean to assert that love of cotmtry, as Europeans understand the term, is pre-eminently a Persian quality. A Persian is, perhaps, prepared to do as little for his country as any man on earthy but while he holds his country's interests as of no moment whatever in comparison with his own, he yet thinks in his heart that there is no land in the world at all comparable to the land of Iran. I believe most Persians who should be sentenced to perpetual exile, and warned that they would be liable to be condemned to death if again found upon their native soil, would, like Shimei, be unable to resist the temptation of viewing once more what is as dear to them as Jerusalem was to the descendants of Judah. " By the way in which Persians in other lands talk of their own country, one would imagine that Persia was the most charming region of the whole world. Its climate, its water, its fruits, its houses, its gardens, its horses, the shooting it affords, its scenery, its women, are aU the subjects of the most unqualified praise on the part of the Persian in Europe or in India. In the midst of the evidences of European splendour and luxury he boasts how superior in every respect is his native land; and, while partaking in European society and 1 Note di un Viaggio in Persia. Di F. de Filippi. Milano, 1865. ^ 56 PERSIA. dissipation, he longs to drink once more at the fountain-head of the wine of Sheeraz, and to listen once more to the recitation of the odes of Hafiz."-' The existing government of Persia is as nearly a pure despotism as can exist in any country which holds* the Moslem faith, tempered of course by the constant possibilities of assassination and insurrection. The present Shah, who suc- ceeded to the throne as a mere boy, on the death of his father in 1848, is described as a man of considerable ability and^ energy, but our Government has more than once had to com- plain of his taking an anti-British view, when the interests of his country would have been best served by a policy more friendly to us. Since Sir James Outram's expedition, imme- diately before the Indian Mutiny, things have gone much better, and will, I trust, continually improve. 'The most recent, and, I believe, also the most authentic, information about Persia as it is, is contained in a short, but most valuable report, forwarded this year to the Foreign Office, by Mr. Eonald Thomson, whose long experience of the country makes what he has to tell us peculiarly valuable. He estimates the area of Persia at 648,000 square miles, — that is, at more than twenty times the size of Scotland, but of this a vast extent is absolute desert. The whole population he puts at I about 4,400,000— or, in other words, at little more than seven to the square mile, and about half of these belong to migratory tribes. If most previous writers have given much higher figures, we must not forget that Persia has ever been a land of fable. The total revenue, both in money and in kind, amounts to £1,965,000 ; but even of this moderate sum a good deal never reaches the public treasury. Yet the country can hardly be called lightly taxed, for large sums in addition to the legal revenue are extorted, for their own purposes, by local governors. "The burden of taxation," says Mr. Thomson, "falls upon the 1 History of Persia from 1800 to 1858, by R. G. Watson (London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1S66), pp. 5, 6. PERSIA. . 57 agricultural and poorer classes, who are systematically oppressed on account of the revenues and illegal taxes, whilst not a fraction of the sums extorted from them is expended on public works likely hereafter to benefit the nation at large ; and private individuals alone profit by the present unjust system of financial administration." Small as the revenue is, it exceeds the expenditure; and the excess, about £200,000, goes into the private coffers of the monarch. Lady Shell, in her pleasant book, tells us that everybody in Persia is in debt, from the Shah downwards, but this is not now literally the case, for the Shah's debt to Eussia was cancelled a few years ago. The army consists, nominally, of 105,500 men — really of j 30,000, — out of which 10,000 are irregular cavalry. The artillery, and the whole of the rest of the troops, are very badly armed, and every appointment, from that of the general down- wards, is sold to the highest bidder — an arrangement of which we know something in this country, although, unluckily for the Persians, the officers who purchase commissions in Persia have ways and means of recompensing themselves of which our more ordered society knows nothing. The first instructors of the Persians in the art of war, as understood in the West, were Frenchmen, sent at the time when Napoleon was coquetting with the Shah. Then came an English period, when many Indian officers, some of whom are still alive, attained great and deserved reputation in Persia. In recent years the Italians have been the principal professors of the military art at Tehran, but English officers are, it appears, to have the organizing of the fleet which the Shah proposes to create. Mr. Thomson calculates the whole external trade of Persia at about £4,000,000 sterling annually, of which £2,500,000 may be taken as the value of the imports, and £1,500,000 as that of the exports. A diminution in the latter to the extent of nearly £1,000,000 sterling has taken place within the last three 58 PERSIA. years, owing to the failure of the silk produce of Ghilan,^ This sUk failure amounts to a national calamity, which Government and private persons are trying to meet, the former by bringing silk -worms' eggs from other parts of Persia, and the latter by bringing them from Japan. This is but a poor balance-sheet for so large a country, but stOl it is a good deal better than that which Mr. Baillie Eraser^ was able to give in 1833. The chief imports from Europe and India consist of cotton manufactures, cloths, silks, cotton yarns, cochineal, sugar, tea, jewelry, cutlery, china, crystal, glass-ware, iron, brass and copper in sheets, tin, paper, indigo, and fire-arms ; whUe the exports consist of raw silk, raw cotton, tobacco, opium, wheat, gaU-nuts, wool, furs, madder root, dried fruits, shawls of inferior quality and coarse calico for the Eussian and Turkish markets. The trade to and from Europe is carried on partly by the Caspian Sea, and partly by land, either by the Eussian route through Poti and Tiflis, which is well described by Mr. Eastwick;^ or by the Turkish route through Erzeroom and Trebizond. Of the former, Mr. Consul Abbott, writing from Tabreez, says, " that it is by degrees coming into favour with the merchants, and may eventually absorb the whole transit trade to this place. . . . Turkey having again abandoned the project of opening a carriage-road from the Black Sea coast to the Persian frontier, leaves Eussia to profit by her neglect, and any effort she may hereafter make to preserve within her own territory the present carrying trade will probably be too late to save it from following in another channel." On the same subject, Mr. Consul Taylor, writing from 1 Mr. Abbott, writing this year from Tabreez, puts the loss from this cause at from £600,000 to £700,000. ^ An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia. By James B. Fraser, Esq. Edinburgh, 1834. ' Journal of a Diplomate's Three Years' Residence in Persia. By Edward B. Eastwick. London, 1864. PERSIA. 59 Diarbekir to the Foreign Ofla.ce, says that the road from Trebizond to Erzeroom, " though it has been twenty years on hand, has not advanced as many miles, while the sums abeady expended on it by fits and starts have been sufl&cient to con- struct a raiboad. Meanwhile the useless fortifications at Erzeroom are being rapidly pushed on, without any. of the hindrances, arising from a want of proper funds in season, that occasion the non-completion of the road. It seems, indeed, the former will be finished before the latter, and then, perhaps, it will be discovered how indispensable such a communication is, if only even to transport the huge pieces of artillery and military stores necessary to arm works requiring 40,000 men to defend them. Without such weapons, the defences would be battered to pieces by the long-range fire and heavy metal of the new implements of destruction a European army would bring into the field; and the garrison, unable to return an effective shot, from the imperfection of the present cannon in store there. The Porte seems to forget that the road between the Eussian frontier and Erzeroom is a good carriage-road, if compared with the narrow goat-path, alternately scaling stu- pendous mountains, or plunging, by the same miserable track, into the deep valleys at their bases, alone existing between it and the Black Sea." The trade with India is carried on by a regular line of steamers, running from the gulf to Kurraehee, by which, amongst other things, a good deal of opium finds its way from Persia to Batavia, en route for China, and a very large amount / of sugar comes from Batavia. Of aU this commerce, such as it is, the largest share belongs to us, and no doubt, if Persia remains independent and in- creases in wealth and prosperity, we shall obtain a certain amount of direct advantage. There are other reasons, however, which make it very desirable that we should keep ourselves thoroughly acquainted with her affairs, and that our influence at Tehran should continue to be considerable. In the first 60 PERSIA. place, Persia acts as a cover to Herat,^ which lies on the one road by which a large European force might really advance upon the Indus; and, in the second place, it is not for our interest, or for the interest of humanity at large, that Eussia should be turned aside from her, on the whole, useful task of civilizing the barbarians who lie between her present posses- sions and the base of the great ranges to the north of India, by the temptation of overrunning a half-civiUzed country, the possession of which would bring her into near neighbourhood with us, both across land and water. In the earlier part of this century, our Government be- stowed at least as much attention on Persia as it deserved, whence arose, not only a large amount of expenditure, but a very considerable amount of knowledge with regard to that country, especially in the Indian services. Of late, the current has set in a different direction, and if we once took too much trouble with the Court of Tehran, we now, perhaps, take too little. The grounds of this carelessness are quite intelligible. We speak with irritation of Turkish barbarism, but Persian barbarism is far worse ; ^ and the mixture of " fecklessness" and frivolity with blood and violence is naturally verj'- irritating to Englishmen. , Still, however natural our irritation may be, it is probably not for the interest either of Persia or of ourselves to give way to it, and the best way to avoid doing so is to think of Persia, not as in the same category with Egypt or Turkey, but rather as belonging to the same class of powers with which we have, from time to time, been brought in con- tact since we first began to extend our conquests in India. We carry on relations with her through a minister-plenipo- tentiary at Tehran, and through two consuls, one of whom is settled at Eesht, and the other at Tabreez. Eesht is the capital 1 A writer in the Saturday Review of October 10th, speaks as if some intrigue for the transfer of Herat to Persia were going on with the new ruler of Affghanistan, but I have seen no confirmation of the rumour. 2 See in Lady Sheil's and Mr. Watson's books, the story of the Babees, and of the murder of the Prime Minister in 1851. PERSIA. 61 of the importsint province of Ghilan, on tlie south and south- west of the Caspian, and Tabreez is the most populous place in Persia ; the capital of the province of Azerbijan, lying on the great road by which Persia communicates with Europe. "Whether the Persian mission should be under the Foreign Office or the India Office has long been a disputed question. For the present, it has been settled in favour of the former, and that is the reason why I have had no hesitation about in- cluding Persia in to-night's lecture. I need hardly, of course, remind you that we have two sets of relations with Asiatic countries — ^the one set Imperial, the other specially Indian. These two interpenetrate and connect with each other at many points. Tor the horizon of the Indian Viceroy is necessarily wide. Hear the words of one who had the best possible means of knowing what he was talking about : — " Of course, in dealing with independent principalities and powers beyond the bounds of India, the Governor- General must act in concert with the English Cabinet whenever he is dealing with a European State, or with any Oriental nation such as Persia, and Cliina, at whose court there is a representative of Her Majesty. But even subject to this limitation, the Indian Foreign Office yet remains the focus of politics for half Asia — the storehouse of romance of all the East. Murmurs of Dutch aggression in far Siimatra, and whispers of piratical prahus, lurk- ing amid the unexplored isles of the Malayan Archipelago'; rumours of French enterprise in the feverish rice-swamps of Cochin- China, and quaint glimpses of Burmese life at the court of the golden-footed monarch of Mandalay, — such are the varied contents of a mail-packet from the southern seas. Out of the west come tidings of pilgrim caravans at Mecca, of ■pearl-fishers in the Persian Gulf, or of burning slave-ships on the coast of equatorial Africa; the outrages of the Christian Emperor in Abyssinia are not omitted, nor those of the Wahar bee fanatic at Eiad overlooked. North-eastward, down the Himalayan passes of Bhootan and Nepaul, the life that slowly 62 PERSIA. stirs among the Lamas and monasteries of Thibet sends now and then a faint pulsation into Bengal ; and lately the valley of Cashmere afforded a passage to envoys from the uncouth Khans of Chinese Tartary. Finally, in the furthest north, be- yond Affghanistan and the deserts of the wandering Turkomans, looms the giant form of steadily advancing Eussia,"^ Many of the subjects alluded to in this striking passage are more Imperial than Indian, and, as such, I must say a word or two about them; but I may pass over, as specially Indian, Affghanistan, Burmah, and the affairs of that august personage whom we are pleased to describe as the Imaum of Muscat, but who is more properly described as the Sultan of Oman. Certain other matters, hinted at in the above extract, must also be passed over, because in a single lecture on Asia one has enough to do to include ever so slight a sketch of our relations with independent powers, without taking any account of colonial possessions. There is one larger question which is at once thoroughly Im- perial and thoroughly Indian. I allude of course to the question of Central Asia — a question which is every year growing in importance, and to some remarks on which I must now ask your attention. CENTRAL ASIA. — The vast space, extending from the Caspian to the frontiers of the Chinese Empire, and which used to figure in our older maps as Independent Tartary, is divided, — (1.) Into a huge zone of steppes lying along the Caspian and around the Aral, assuming to the eye of the wanderer who has to traverse them the true desert character for many days' march together ; and (2.) into a much more favoured and well-peopled country, through which the Jaxartes and the Oxus — the Syr- Daria and Amu-Daria of modem geographers — with their affluents, spread wealth and fertility. 1 Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1867, pp. 2, 3 ; Art. " Foreign Policy of Sir John Lawrence." ¥ *AJi-ro>ji^ jh. T.ia.1, ^-h. CENTRAL ASIA. 63 The southern part of the steppe region which borders upon Persia is the land of the Turcomans, a hateful race, who live by making forays into the territory of the Shah, and carrying off slaves, whom they sell in the settled country beyond them. The rest of the steppe along and to the north-east of the Cas- pian is inhabited, where it is inhabited at aU, and is not mere salt desei-t, by wild tribes, of whom the most important are the three Kirghis hordes, divided into the great horde in the east, the little horde in the west, and the middle horde between the two others. The settled territory forms three Khanates, — Khokand on the north-east upon the Jaxartes, Bokhara next to it, and Khiva upon the Oxus, nearest to the Persian side of the steppe. A generation ago, when we were talking of an expedition into Affghanistan, Eussia, which had long maintained along her Orenburg frontier an attitude of observation rather than of menace, began to bestir herself, and, partly with a view to make a counter demonstration to us, partly to avenge numer- ous outrages which her traders had suffered at the hands of the Khan of Khiva and the marauders of the steppes, she launched, under General Peroffski, in 1839, a great expedition against Khiva. Peroffski's expedition was, like our own, a complete failure. Overtaken by the winter storms in one of the most inhospitable portions of the earth's surface, his force suffered terribly, and he himself regained Orenburg with no small difficulty. Never, however, was there a truer saying than that celebrated one, " If you want to blow up a fortress, put a Eussian wish under it." The Government of the Czar, nowise discouraged, set to work with infinite patience to make its way across the steppe, turning nominal allegiance into real allegiance, and flat defiance into nominal allegiance. Well after well was dug, fort after fort raised to protect it, while exploring parties, " in the interest of science,'' crept ever inward and onward over Central Asia, till the Foreign Office at St. Peters- 64 CENTRAL ASIA. burg became accurately and minutely acquainted with all the circumstances of what had been so lately all but terra incognita. The history of the years from 1839 to 1863, almost a quarter of a century, is the history of preparation. The Caspian became far more familiar to Eussian sailors. A small flotilla was placed upon the Aral, and some of the islands in that sea were colonized. In the very middle of the Crimean War, Peroffski, who was the soul of all this Eussian advance, was again operating against Khiva, and this time with complete success — the Khan acknowledging, in the most ample manner, the power of the Czar. Far to the east the advance was not less steady on the Khokahd frontier, and already, before the Khivan expedition, a Khokandian stronghold had become Tort Peroffski. It was from this place in 1863 that an expedition was pushed forwards against Khokand, which resulted, after a good deal of fighting in that and the succeeding years, under various commanders, for Peroffski now disappears from the scene, in Eussia becoming master of the nearest of the three Khanates, and in seriously threatening Bokhara. That State of course soon gave the forces of the Czar good reason to push forward into her territoiy, and the operations of 1867 and 1868 must, one would think, have convinced even Bokhariote ignorance that the end will not be long deferred. The latest accounts tell us of the death of the Emir, after deploring the burning of Samarcand, the historical capital of Timour. The position of affairs at this moment is then this, — Eussia has got very considerable influence over Khiva, has incorporated with her own territory a large part of Khokand, and has Bok- hara within her gripe. It well may be, that before she finally incorporates aU the three Khanates, a good many years may pass away, and she may have more serious battles to fight than any which she has yet fought in those regions, especially when the death-struggle with Khiva comes. Hardly in any part of the Mussulman world does fanaticism burn so fiercely as it does CENTRAL ASIA. 65 in those odious countries, and the further advance of the "White Czar may yet be met by a crescentade, preaclied from the Caspian far away into the least known regions of China. Come it slow or come it fast, however, the end will come, and Eussia will devour the whole of what we usually understand as Central Asia. It is an unfortunate circumstance that an accident prevented Sir Henry Eawlinson from bringing this whole subject before the House of Commons last session. No one was so well quali- fied to do so, as that distinguished Asiatic statesman and scholar, whose views as to this question are, if I understand them aright, by no means of so alarmist a character as some persons suppose.'' This is, indeed, a most serious matter, and nothing can be more foolish than to underrate its importance now, because we overrated its importance thirty years ago. The whole situation is altered. Eussia has come more than a thousand miles to meet us, and we have advanced many hundred miles to meet her. " The Sepoy and the Cossack" have not yet encountered each other, " on the banks of the Oxus," but their encounter, peaceful or warlike, has become a much less improbable con- tingency. When Eussia is fairly established in Bokhara, she will come into necessary connexion with the little-known country which lies between Bokhara and those parts of Affghan- istan with which we are familiar, and she wOl pass almost involuntarily within the domain of Indian pohtics. Already she is said to have a body of Affghans in her pay. From this advance of Eussia three evils may accrue to us, (1.) She may actually make an attempt on India, with a serious view to conquest ; (2.) She may make an attack on India by way of feint, in order to distract our attention from her designs on Turkey ; and, lastly, she may, by her very presence, excite 1 Sir H. Rawlinson addressed the Geograpliical Society on the Trade of Central Asia on November 9th, in a speech which seems to have been of the very first importance, but which has not yet been printed. E 66 CENTRAL ASIA. unrest and disturbance amongst our own Indian subjects and feudatories. The first of these dangers does not seem to me a very real one. One cannot say that it would be absolutely impossible for Eussia to push down upon India from Central Asia, but it would be so extraordinarily difficult, that I think it may, at least by the present generation, be left out of the question. A really serious attack of this kind could, so far as I understand, only be made through Persia and Herat ; and if we are foolish enough ever to allow Eussia to possess Herat we deserve the worst that can happen to us. As to her making a feint against us, that, no doubt, is pos- sible enough, and it is a danger against which both our Indian and home authorities must take precautions. The last danger is, however, if not the most serious, at least the most pressing. For indeed it is already upon us. Several years ago envoys from Khokand appeared at Calcutta, to ask for aid against their northern enemy, and chiefs discontented with our rule begin to count the chances of attempting to throw it off with the help of a European ally. On the other hand, Khokand is now a suppliant to St. Petersburg for protection against one of its neighbours in Eastern Turkestan — Yakoob Kushbegee. What, then, should we do? My answer is — 1. "We should strengthen our own position in India, above all we should press forward our railways towards the frontier, make Kurrachee a great port — if the engineers who have been lately consulted say that this can be done, and complete railway communication through the whole of the Indus-valley. To these strategical measures we should add everything that can be done to increase our hold upon that part of the population of India which is not hopelessly disaffected to our rule, by every measure that can tend to its happiness and well-being, while we should stand ready to crush any attempt at rebellion on the part of the 'dis- affected classes as we did in 1857, with overwhelming severity. CENTRAL ASIA. 67 Since affairs in Affghanistan began within the last month or two to get a little more settled, rumours have come to this country that the government of the Viceroy was less unfavour- able to attempting to acquire influence at Cabul, in the only way in which influence can be obtained by us in that capital. This appears to me somewhat premature, but Sir John Lawrence's policy in the affairs of Central Asia has been so prudent that I cannot doubt that if he really contemplates spending money for this purpose, he will have very good reasons for doing so. As to the advance to Candahar, which has been advocated by many since the appearance of a celebrated article in the Westminster in 1857, surely, however wise it may one day be, if things iu Persia and Central Asia take the worst possible turn for us, the time is not yet. But this strengthening of our own position is only our first duty. The second is to keep ourselves minutely acquainted with all that bears upon this Central Asiatic problem, so as neither to tremble at shadows nor disregard real dangers. How we should do this, we were told some months ago by a well-known writer in the Pall Mall Gazette whose wisdom as to all that lies between the Adriatic and the wall of China, is as the wisdom of Achitophel : — " The best heads of elementary instruction for the purpose of rectifying, harmonizing, and concentrating our own and the Indian public opinion on the various branches of the Central Asiatic question we take to be briefly as follows : — Firstly, The keeping each question or thesis of discussion sepa- rate from the others, unless purposely comprehended with them, which last the writer wUl do only at his own risk ; thus, not treating a writer who advocates the absorption of Cashmere into the Indian empire, or the exercise of control over its ruler by forbidding unlicensed diplomatic intercourse on his part with Eussia or Yarkand, as necessarily a Eussophobe preaching an aggressive movement in the north-west ; each topic to be kept separate and cleared as much as possible from generalities. Secondly, The immediate construction by geographers of a raised 68 CENTRAL A8IA. map of Affghanistan, — showing roughly — for our present know- ledge does not admit of its being done otherwise than roughly — that Cabul, the conventional capital of that loose-knit country, does not lie on, but off the trunk-road of invasion of India from the north-west, and its occupation together with that of the neighbouring country would not necessarily follow as a conse- quence of a future forward movement upon Candahar, or even Herat, should that ever be deemed expedient ; the general term Affghanistan being made usually to comprehend two lines of country, physically distinct, and presenting far different degrees of difficulty in every respect. Thirdly, A clear historical state- ment of the periods at which Eussia really endeavoured either to embarrass English rule in India, or actually entertained the project of invading India ; pointing out the then altogether fatuous and chimerical nature of that project, the extreme rarity of its conception, and the entire absence of trustworthy infor- mation at each time in her possession. This should be con- trasted with her permanent and present desire, as revealed throughout her history, of consolidating a Christian empire founded on the ruins of Mussulman Tartar rule, and of securiug ultimately the fuU commercial command or monopoly of Cen- tral Asiatic markets. Fourthly, A complete exposure of the chaotic state in which the very best maps — ours and theirs aHke, except Colonel Walker's last — represent the country between the upper Oxus and the Indus ; the Eussian map of Veniukof, reproduced in the last volume of our Geographical Society, Deing taken as the base of such exposure. We each have been the victims of an elaborate mystification, — or rather, of two — in this respect, the key to which, we believe, will ultimately be found in the volume of memoirs which the Foreign Office is said to have bought in Canning's time from Klaproth, for the sum of £1000, if our geographers are ever allowed a sight of that mysterious document. Fifthly, and chiefly, the instant republication of all Eawlinson's articles."-' ^ Pall Mall Gazette, January 7th, 1868 ; Art. " Eussophobia in India." CENTRAL ASIA. 69 When we have taken every possible precaution the situation will stni be a perilous one. But when has our situation in India been other than a perilous one ? India is a barrel of gunpowder, rovmd which sparks are perpetually flying. The neighbourhood of Eussia adds at the worst a few sparks more. Society in our Eastern Empire is stirred by forces as little understood as those which produce the earthquakes of the material world. I suppose no month passes in which, to say nothing of other alarming intelligence, tidings do not come to the Indian Viceroy of some new religious movement, which may he as harmless as possible ; but which may blow everythiug into fragments. I wonder how many people have ever reflected how much trouble might at any moment be caused by a personage whose name is so little known out of Indian circles as the Akhoond of Swat ? But there is another way of looking at the whole matter. Is it quite so sure that Eussia must be always hostile to this country ? Is it not possible that there may come a time when we shall understand each other in Asia, and strengthen each other's hands ? Many a day must pass before Bokhara becomes a bed of roses for any Christian ruler ; and if Eussia can trouble us, we can assuredly return the compliment. It would be very premature to do anything at present ; but I cannot help think- ing that the day may come when we may hear of a co-operative policy in Central Asia, as we have heard already of a co- operative policy at Pekin. After all, what is this Eussia of which we are afraid ? Is not, perhaps, the old Eussia, the Eussia of Nicholas, dying slowly before our eyes ? "The most impossible things realize themselves with us with an incredible rapidity. Changes which, by their im- portance, are equivalent to revolutions, are accomplished with - out even being perceived in Europe." These are the words of a Eussian, and never were truer words spoken. To go on speculating about the Eussia of the future as if she were the 70 CENTRAL A8IA. Eussia which we have hitherto known, is to lose our lahour. The giant, who lay pinioned tOl 1861, is beginning to awake; and what he may do when he is thoroughly awake, who will venture to prophesy ? All I can say is, it will be very odd if he does exactly what a Court, influenced more by German than by Eussian tradition, has been doing for more than fifty years. The Eussia of to-day is the region of the unexpected, and any- thing may happen at any moment. If, however, there are disintegrating forces in Eussia, which may break up the Colossus, and prevent its being dangerous to us or to anybody else, there are also forces at work which may, conceivably, convert that great empire into a most valuable member of the European family. If Eussia, which is now so protectionist, had once for all accepted free-trade, our relations to her in Asia and out of.it would be very different. Well, there is in Eussia a growing free-trade party ; and reason being on its side, I for one do not despair of seeing the ideas of Cobden and Bastiat as powerful there as they are in Hungary, a country which lives in many respects under similar con- ditions. Then, again, if Eussia, from being one of the most military of Powers, became one of the most peaceful, we should have in her a natural ally. Will any one say that that is impossible? He must be a rash man who will deny that a people may, conceivably, some day follow its own instincts. The Eussian proper, the inhabitant of that vast region which is the true centre of the empire, is by nature the most peaceable of mankind. He has faults enough and to spare, but an appetite for military glory is not one of them. The object — the almost avowed object — of the party at this moment dominant in Eussia, is to create a vast social level, with the imperial power rising above it, — " to build a tower on a steppe," as one of themselves neatly put it. Now, certainly, to my mind it is not clear that that is exactly the kind of social organization which will enable a government for an indefinitely long time to resist the pressure of a whole nation desiring to CENTRAL ASIA. 71 go its own way, not the way which happened to seem good to Peter the Great and his successors. These and many other considerations I might urge, not with a view of " speaking peace when there is no peace," but of discouraging any rash or excited acts and words in this grave matter; but, let the worst come to the worst, what has hap- pened could not have been prevented ; and for the future we have only to trust, so far as I can see, to those measures which I have suggested. This is emphatically one of the instances in which cure is better than prevention. If we follow the much-sneered-at policy of " masterly inaction," I do not believe that we shall ever have our internal difficulties much increased by the neighbourhood of Eussia ; still less do I believe that we shall ever have to face a Eussian invader ; and if we have, the very physical conformation of India should give us comfort. " There are graves enough," it was truly said a quarter of a century ago, " on the Indus and in the Punjaub for any number of Eussians whom Nicholas can bring into the field," but behind the Indus and the Punjaub we have line after line of increasingly defensible territory, and behind all the sea, which is, after all, the true basis of our strength in those far-off countries. In our nervous fears about India, we are only too much in the habit of forgetting that Eussia has very direct and obvious interests in Central Asia, quite apart from any designs which she may have against us. We allow our minds to dwell on the descriptions that have been given by Vamb^ry, and others, of the howling wilderness which they crossed before reaching the settled districts, but we forget that these settled districts are in many parts very fertile ; and that while Eussia retains her present theories of trade it will seem very important to her to be able to keep Central Asia as a market for her own goods, and to prevent the invasion of the hungry traders of Manchester and Birmingham from below the passes. Nor are there wanting other motives to induce her to go on conquering and to conquer to the north of the great ranges, without ever 72 CENTRAL ASIA. thinking of plunging into the sea of troubles which would await her on their southern side. Is it nothing to place the Cross above the Crescent in the Asiatic Mecca— to rule the native countries of Timour and of Baber ? Is it nothing to be able freely to extend herself through what has been called Interior Central Asia ? For at the border of Interior Central Asia she has now arrived ; and we, in our survey, must pass from the little-known countries which are gradually falling under her sway into the less-known ones which begin to open up to her ambition. INTERIOR CENTRAL ASIA.— We have now got into a region in which the politician feels that he is poaching on the preserves of the geographer. This very year there appears a very long and interesting paper in the Journal of the Eoyal Geographical Society, describing the journey of Mr. Johnson to the capital of Khoten, one of the States of Eastern Turkestan. It is necessary to linger but a very few moments in these dim and distant territories. Yet a few moments they must have, for reasons which will presently be clear to you. We could not, indeed, linger long in them if we would, for the amount of political information , about them which is accessible to the European reader is very small. Eastern Turkestan forms, or I ought to say formed, part of the gigantic Chinese dependency of 111, which is roughly estimated in Mr. Williams's Middle Kingdom to have extended over 1,070,000 sc[uare miles — that is to say, to have been more than thirty-four times the size of Scotland. This enormous country is inhabited to a great extent by Mussulmans, amongst whom a furious insurrection, propagated by revolutionary zealots from the Mahometan provinces of China proper broke out some years ago, and has resulted in a great portion, if not the whole, of the district, throwing off the Chinese authority. Hi was divided by the Chinese into the Northern Circuit, otherwise known as Dzungaria, and the Southern INTERIOR CENTRAL ASIA. 73 Circuit, or Eastern Turkestan. Dzungaria we may, I think, dismiss from our consideration, simply observing that in the course of the year 1864, city after city in its wide expanse M^as taken hy the rebels, and that somethiag very like utter anarchy seems to have been the result — an anarchy which, amongst other things, led to a very outrageous violation of the Eussian frontier ia the province of Semipalatinsk. This, of course, touches us nearly ; because if that sort of proceeding is frequently repeated, the Russians in that quarter will, in mere self-defence, be obliged to push forward towards China proper. Eastern Turkestan, as lying nearer our own frontier, may detain us a little longer. Mr. Johnson made twenty-nine marches from Leh or Ladakh, which belongs to our feudatory, the Maharajah of Cashmere, to the capital of Khoten, Ilchi, which is one of the six great cities of this district, known as Altyshahr, of which the others are Tarkand, Cashgar, Aksu, and the even less familiar names of Yanghisar and Oosh- Turfan. All these cities fell in the course of 1866, under the power of an able adventurer from the Khanate of Khokand, who bears the euphonious name of Yakoob Kushbegee, which last word is said to mean Vizier. This personage, finding that his native Khokand was fast becoming a mere Eussian province, went over the mountains and plunged into the seething gulf of insurrection which was raging in Eastern Turkestan. He had great success crushing other pretenders, and amongst them the man who was ruling in Khoten when Mr. Johnson went to IlcM in 1865. So far as I know, Yakoob is ruling stiU,^ and he is so far important to us, that it seems probable that if he or some other strong-handed ruler can keep the peace in Eastern Turkestan, it well may be that the Chinese tea- trade with Central Asia, being interrupted by the insurrection in Ili, a considerable ^ tea-trade may spring up between our 1 Negotiations with Buasia about this potentate and his affairs have, within the last few days, been talked of, and there are strange rumours of an advance of the Russians into his territory. ^ See Mr. Johnson's paper 74 INTERIOR CENTRAL ASIA. tea-producing districts ia Northern India and the millions of tea-drinkers beyond the Kara-Korum range. All this and much more you will find very ably set forth in an article in the Edinburgh Review for April last on Western China, which contains, so far as I am aware, the only detailed information about the recent Mahometan insurrection in China which is at all generally accessible.^ In the vast dependencies of Manchooria and Mongolia, the authority of the Pekin Government appears still unquestioned, although in the former we hear of formidable bands of marau- ders who have recently been giving trouble. "What is much more extraordinary is, that, in spite of all that has happened to distract and weaken the empire, the loyalty of Thibet seems quite unshaken. Nepaul, however, has, we are told, broken the last thread that bound it to the Flowery Land, and no wonder, if it be true that the recent embassy sent from Katmandoo, with the usual quinquennial presents, found it wholly impossible to get near Pekin on account of the disturbed state of the country. CHINA. — We come now to consider the condition of China proper, — of that gigantic territory which has so long attracted the attention of Europe, but which Europe is only just begin- ning to comprehend. And first, let us ask ourselves, Do we habitually keep present to our minds the extent of the human interests that are involved, when, leaving out of account the enormous outlying dependen- cies of China, we speak merely of China proper ? What is this China proper ? I will answer that question in the words of Mr. Meadows : — " This China proper, being one country, occu- pied by one race, speaking one language, Europeans are very apt to picture it to themselves as about the size of one country in Europe, as for instance France, only populated throughout with an astounding — an almost incredible — density, like that 1 See further the Pall Mall Gazette for October 22, Nov. 9, 16, and 19. GHiNA. 75 of the basin of Paris, or of our manufacturing and shipping districts around Manchester and Liverpool. This is a most confusing conception. Chiaa is not more densely populated than England, and contains its 360 millions only because of its enormous territorial extent. If the reader imagiae to him- self Scotland doubled down upon the north-west of England and upon Wales, and then picture to himself eighteen of such compact Great Britains placed together, so as to form one well- rounded State, he will obtain a more correct notion of the extent and population of China proper, as composed of- its eighteen provinces. Some of these provinces consist almost entirely of alluvial plains, but the greater number exhibit an alternation of fertile river valleys, covered like that of the Thames with large populous towns ; and thinly inhabited, hilly, or mountainous regions, more or less difficult of ac- cess. . . . "... The division of China proper into its eighteen pro- vinces is, be it remembered, merely poKtical or administrative. The people are the same in all, the differences in manners and dialects being no other in kind, and scarcely greater in degree, than exist with us between the Glasgow factory-man and the Somersetshire peasant, or the Northumbrian 'hind' and the Cornish miner." ^ Then agaia, have we not accustomed our thoughts to dwell so much upon the grotesque side of Chinese life, as to forget that that life has a side which is as far as possible from being grotesque ? Are we not apt to overlook the fact that, although M. Pierre Lafitte ^ and his English disciples claim too much for it, there is, nevertheless, a great deal about Chinese civilisation which deserves otir sympathy ? I do not think there are many ^ Tlie, Chinese and their Rebellions, by Thomas Taylor Meadows (Smith, Elder, and Co., London, 1856), pp. 5, 6. ^ Considirations GinArales sur VEnsemble de la Civilisation Ohinoise ; Paris : Dunod, 1861. See also Dr. Bridges iu International Policy; London: C]iapman,and Hall, 1866. See also the notes to the Flowery Scroll, a novel just translated by Sir John Bowring. 76 CHINA. of my hearers to wlioin the following remarks, which I take from an extremely interesting, and in parts, brilliant book, lately published, under the name of The Ever Victorious Army, will not appear very new and striking : — " Every one who has dwelt much among the Chinese, as I have done, and especially in their vUlages, will bear me out in saying, that there is common to them all a certain simple ideal of life, which they regard as constituting the highest human happiness, which they claim as their right, which they hold usually existed from the earliest times, and which is intimately connected with the doctrines of their sages and with their his- torical beliefs. Unlike the Hindu, the Chinaman lives in an ordered and somewhat prosaic ideal world. He beholds, in- deed, against his Turanian historical dawn, the gigantic figures of Yaou and Shun, and the great Yu overshadowing the long valley of centuries ; and the great sages, such as Confucius and Mencius, correcting the errors of their times, and dropping words of invaluable wisdom ; but, although all these are grand to him, they are so, not so much in themselves, as in their useful relationship to the knowable and the attainable — to the great primary wants of his race. The determination of the seasons, the building embankments against devastating floods, or the harmonizing of land and water, the overthrowing of unjust kings, wise and kind action in family relationships, and the expression of moral doctrines in an intelligible impressive way — these are the claims to reverence of the heroes of the Chinese Pantheon. The (miscalled) Celestial is a narrow- minded, but exceedingly practical, sort of being. He wants an ordered world, but one ordered only in a certain kind of way. Before his rapt Celestial vision lie the fruitful plains of the Great Flowery Land, lively and bright with the normal life of China, guarded on the north by snowy deserts which are happily far away from him, and on the south by stormy seas with great winds and waves which he does not tempt. His ideal is a happy family life, with age benignant, youth CHINA. 77 reverential, tliree or four generations living contentedly under the same roof ; the fish-pond in front well stocked ; grain abundant ; tea fragrant ; the village harmonized ; the school well taught ; the young Confucius of the family preparing for competitive examinations ; the ancestral tablets going far back and recording honoured names ; the ancestral hall well gilded, and a fit meeting-place for the wise elders ; the spirits of de- ceased ancestors comforted with offerings and loving remem- brances, not left to wander friendless in the air ; the holidays cheerful, with bright silks and abimdance of savoury dishes ; the emperor benevolent ; the people obedient ; foreign devils far away or reverential ; evil appearing only in the form of impos- sible demons, and hideous, wicked emperors, painted on the walls of his house as a warning to foolish youth ; no change in old customs to perplex the mind ; the sacred books reverentially read and remembered ; the present definitely arranged ; the fruitage of the past stored ; behind, sages and emperors ; around, happy families ; beyond, a darkness with which he little concerns himself, but into which his spirit may occasion- ally float a short way on some Buddhist or Tauist idea." ^ Remember this passage relates merely to the average Chinese, to the mass of the people. The aspirations of the educated class are much higher, as any reader of, say for example, the eighteenth chapter in Mr. Meadows's valuable but very unequal book, will soon find out for himself Although, however, the educated class in China is, thanks to their system of competi- tive examinations, exceedingly large and influential (Pekin adopting the common-sense rule that intellect and acquire- ment alone should give a man control in the affairs of State), I will lay no stress upon this class, being confident that the average Chinese, as depicted in the passage which I have just read, sufficiently deserve your sympathy. What, then, is the present condition of this country of three 1 The "Ever Victorious Army." By Andrew Wilson. William Black- wood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1868. 78 CHINA. hundred and sixty millions, and what are its relations to our- selves ? Many parts of China are so remote that we really know very little as to what is going on in them, but this, I think, I may say with confidence, that the position of the empire is very much better than it was a few years ago. There are no doubt several iusurrections in progress, but the Taeping insurrection was stamped out utterly three years ago, thanks ia no small degree to the efforts of a British of&cer, Colonel Gordon, who conmianded the force which was named, with hardly a hyper- bole, the " ever victorious army." In so huge a country it cannot be surprising that there should almost always be some disturbance, especially when we remember that, until lately, the Pekin Government has, for very sufficient reasons, left each province to " soothe and harmonize" its own population, with very little interference from head-quarters. The principal insurrections which are going on just now are the Mahometan uprisings in various parts of the eighteen provinces, and notably in the extreme south-west province of Yunan, where, as I under- stand the matter, the rebels have it pretty much their own way, and have become the wielders of the government ; secondly, the Tufeh insurrection, which is merely an iasurrection of banditti, though apparently a very serious one, in the province of Szechuen ; and thirdly, the rising of the Nienfei, which com- menced amongst the peasants, made homeless by the breaking of the embankments along the Yellow river, but which assumed, till recently checked, formidable dimensions in North-Eastern China, and in opposing which the commander-in-chief of the army, who defeated us at the mouth of the Peiho in 1859, was taken and slain. Of the first two of these insurrections you will find an account in the article on Western China already alluded to, while the third is constantly referred to in the China Telegraph and other newspapers. The Taeping insurrec- tion was a very different affair, and threatened, not only to destroy the Manchoo dynasty, but to plunge the whole country CHINA. 79 into the most terrible anarchy ; but the idea, which is pretty generally spread, that the Taeping rebellion still continues, is merely one more illusion-' added to the many which have gathered round that movement. These illusions have, for the most part, been the result of allowing the wish to be father to the thought. Few more curious books of its size have been published in our times, than the little work of the Swedish missionary, Mr. Hamberg, called The, Chinese Rebel Chief. It is curious from the light which it throws upon the astounding results that may be produced by the working of Hebrew, or quasi-Christian, phraseology upon a race which has grown up under other influences. It is curious from the numerous glimpses of humble life in China which it presents ; but it is still more curious from the evidence which it affords, that the worthy man who wrote it had fully persuaded himself that the Taeping leader, that compound of Attila and the veiled prophet of Khorassan, was a genuine disciple of Him who spake the Sermon on the Mount. Unlike the disturbances which are going on at present, the Taepiug insurrection was, although it gathered into itself many discordant elements, really the work of a single mind. The Taeping leader, Hung-sew-tsuen, does not appear to have had any remarkable talents ; on the contrary, having started in life as a would-be graduate, unable to take the degree which, in the country of competitive examinations, is the first step to official employment and political importance, he fell back upon keeping a village school, and seemed, ia aU respects, an ineffi- cient " stickit minister" sort of person. His disappointment however, brought on illness, and illness brought strange visions, which, mingling with his brooding and revengeful thoughts, and coloured by broken reflections of missionary teaching, developed in him peculiarities which, as has been most truly said, " defy analysis, and even description.'' Much has been written about ^ Strange to say, even Lord Stanley seems to share this iUiision. See his answer to Colonel Sykes in Hansa/rd for 1868. 80 CHINA. Mm, tut notliing I think so good as the following remarks, which I take from The Ever Victorious Army : — " From the hour when Hung arose from his sick-bed, after his first forty days' trance, and, poor and nameless, proclaimed his avatar by fixing on his door-post the proclamation : ' The noble principles of the Heavenly Kiag, the Sovereign King Tsuen,' on through success and defeat and Imperial opposition up to the hour of his death at ISTanking, when human flesh was selling in the market at so much per catty, he seems never to have wavered or abated one jot of his claim to supreme rule on earth. In ordinary times it might have been that Hung- sew-tsuen would have found an ordinary place as an able mandarin, a village teacher, or a literary farmer of more than average power and eccentricity. He might have lived and died the admiration or the wonder of his neighbourhood, but un- known beyond the Hwa district where he was born ; and only his near relatives, as they pointed proudly to the gUded letters recording his name in the ancestral hall, or gave his departed soul kind offerings of food, would have remembered his exist- ence. His bones might have been inurned in some peaceful spot in the hills, close to his home, where he used to confer with his friend Pung Yun-san ; and when his spirit desired to revisit earth, it might there have had sweet repose, shaded by the pine-trees, cheered by the singing of birds, looking down contented on the ancestral fields, still ploughed by his descen- dants, and beyond these to the flowing waters of the Pearl Eiver and the mountains of the White Cloud ; this is what, according to all Chinese ideas, would have been a happy and enviable fate ; but it was not decreed for him. The son of a small peasant farmer, and himself a poor literate, afflicted with fits of madness, and trances, and visions, he was to sweep over the great Flowery Land, and, as Tseng Quo-fan says, cause devastation in sixteen provinces and six hundred cities. His ploughshare of steel and fire drove through the great valley of the Yangtsze and approached the walls of Peking. No small CHINA. 81 tawdry yamun, or village schoolhouse, was his atode for many years, but the ancient capital of China, and the palaces of the Ming. His visions turned into- heaven-sent edicts which decided the fate of millions, and were pondered over in the distant capitals of Europe. At one moment the hlack-haired people seemed about to accept his sway, and when the end came, when his earthly existence was extinguished amid the horrors of the siege of Nanking, his body was found by the Imperial conqueror ' enveloped in yellow satin, ' embroidered with dragons,' almost all China exclaiming with Peking offi- cialdom, ' Words cannot convey any' idea of the misery and desolation he -caused; the measure of his iniquity was full, and the wrath of both gods and men was roused against him.' " The fearful storm which this man conjured up has passed away. The old race still sits on the dragon throne, and it seems not impossible that, in spite of all forebodings, it may sit there for some time longer. The question now arises. What is the policy which the Chinese Government intends to pursue ? Is it true, as some of our papers teU us, that the spirits of the Chinese official world have once more risen, and that if looks forward not only to holding the ground which it already occupies, but to winning back from the foreigner some of those concessions which it so unwillingly made to him? How, in other words, are we to read the riddle of Mr. Burlingarae's mission. When Parliament reassembles we shall no doubt have fuller information about this strange affair, but meantime we are left to form the best guesses we can by the light of Mr. Burling- ame's New York speech, the text of the Treaty with the United States, and the articles in various newspapers. The Treaty was carefully examined, article by article, from a very anti-Chinese, or rather anti-Pekin point of view in two numbers of the Times. The Spectator, in its issue of August 15th, takes the same side. " It is not difficult," says that able journal, "now that Mr. Burhngame's Treaty has F 82 CHINA. been published, to perceive the line of policy upon -which the Court of Pekin is entering, and which, if the European powers, and more especially Great Britain, are not firm, will lead at no distant period to a fourth or fifth Chinese war. The Empress Mother, the Premier Wan See-ang, a really able politi- cian of the high Tory sort,— and Prince Kung, the three persons among whom the sovereignty is at present in commission, who direct aU Chinese policy, and regulate aU Chinese administra- tion with a power as complete as that of the Czar, are evidently penetrated with the traditional ideas of the Chinese of&cial world. In opposition to the people who Eke the trade, and the wealth, and the movement the foreigners bring, they desire first of aU to expel them, and if that may not be to keep them on the sea-board. They feel instinctively, and no doubt justly, that foreigners are a disturbing element in the Empire, weaken- ing the respect for tradition, impairing the despotism of the officials, bringing in ideas, and ways, and forces dangerous to divinely arranged order. . . . " The truth of the whole matter is, that we must either retire from China altogether, to the lasting injury of the Chinese themselves, or insist quietly, but persistently, on receiving in China the treatment we should receive in any other organized State, — permission, that is, to go and come, to trade and build, with a full certainty that in the event of any dispute the olfi- cials, judicial and other, wiU mete out some endurable measure of justice. The day that is secured, the capitulations ought to be abolished ; but the day is stiU far off, and will never be secured if Americans assist Chinese Eldons to return to the exploded policy of isolation. It is to facilitate such a return that this Treaty has been drawn up, and we trust Lord Stanley, who is not often taken in by pseudo-philanthropy, will under- stand the situation sufi&ciently to make the most convenient reply, namely, that no alteration whatever can be made in treaties purchased at so much cost, and with so much treasure, without careful consultation with our representatives in China, CHINA. 83 and with the remaining Treaty Powers. If, while commencing this consultation, he strengthens the hands of his agents in China, instructs Mr. Wade to press for ingress into the interior, but orders him to enforce good behaviour among British sub- jects, behaviour as good as they would show in Calcutta or Bombay, the claims of justice on both sides will be fully satis- fied. The Chinese are bound to grant us permission to trade in the interior ; we are bound to see that the permission is not exercised to their hurt; — ^that, and not an unreal diplomatic equality, is the true basis for all British relations with Pekin." Much the best defence of the Burlingame mission which I have yet seen is to be found in an article in the American representative of the Spectator, the Nation, of September 10, 1868, from which I extract the following passage : — "We believe that the account we gave of the origin and objects of the embassy when the news of it first arrived, last February, was substantially correct : that it is not intended to be a means of getting back to a retrograde policy, but is in reality one more step in a really progressive policy — a measure intended not to restrict, but promote intercourse with foreigners ; and that, in short, it means what anybody who was not in search of hidden mysteries would take it to mean, and what nobody would have the hardihood to deny that it meant if it was sent out by any Power with which we were well acquainted. Here is what we said on the 20th February last as to the policy the present Chinese administration, — and this was not written here, but in China, by a competent and well-informed observer : — " ' On the death of the Emperor, his brother, Prince Kung, and Wan-See-ang, two men who appreciated and accepted the new situation, gained control of the regency by a brilliant coup Sitat, and inaugurated a progressive policy. Its first-fruits were an acquiescence in the residence of foreign ministers at Pekin, and a willingness to profit by their advice, so far as the distracted condition of the empire would allow. Their attention was 84 CHINA. next forcibly drawn to the foreign inspectorate of customs at the Treaty ports, on which England and France had insisted as a collateral security for the indemnity due to them. This institution was at first distasteful, but as each year brought into the imperial exchequer a rapidly increasing revenue from this source, the Chinese have accepted the idea in its entirety, and have developed a revenue service which for efficiency, honesty, and convenience can compare more than favourably with our own. The navigation of the Yangtse river was also conceded, and the substantial advantages to them of the fleet of steamers now trading on that great internal highway of the empire operate in favour of the still further opening of then- waters to foreign commerce. In various places they have established arsenals under foreign supervision, where arms are manufactured to equip their foreign-discipliued troops. They are building gunboats to police their coasts, and repress the piracy which has been '. their curse. They have issued wise . pilot regulations, and appropriated funds for lighthouses where the need is most urgent. "Wheaton's Treatise on International Law has been translated into Chiuese, and they have adopted it as their text-book — understandingly, too, as they proved when a Prussian frigate violated the neutrality of their waters in the last Danish war. In Pekin itself a college has been estabhshed for the instruction of natives in Western knowledge by the ablest professors that could be procured, and there can be no doubt of the benefit that will almost immediately flow from this substitution of positive sciences for the dead husks of Confucian classics.' " Nothing can be more natural than that men who have done aU this should seek closer, more direct, and intelligent relations with the great family of nations, whose laws and learning they are adopting, no matter how distasteful the whole barbarian polity may be. ThE|,t an American should have been selected to fiU the first place in the embassy, if any foreigner was to be selected, is the most reasonable thing conceivable, CHINA. sa both from the fact that hitherto America had had but little trade or intercourse with China, and that she is hereafter Ukely to have a great deal. . . . " There is no Power which has so much prospective interest in China as the United States, because there is the very- strongest probability that we shall, before many years, have a vast Chinese population on the Pacific coast — not naturalized citizens, but living and labouring with the animus revertendi strong upon them — and for whose fate and treatment the Chinese Government, if it makes any change at all in its polity, must hold the United States responsible. Besides this, if the opening up of the Pacific raikoad, and the increase of population on the Pacific slope, do not end before very long in making either San Francisco or New York the great entrepSt of Oriental products, — ^which London now is, — the laws of trade or the nature of the American man must have recently under- gone some great change." The Memorial of the Shanghae Chamber of Commerce, and other similar documents, presented last session to Parliament,^ should, doubtless, be read with all that distrust with which it is expedient to scrutinize the statements of persons who are defending their own pecuniary interests, real or supposed ; but we must, I think, admit that the case of the merchants has not yet been answered. Mr. Burhngame, in his New York address, spoke in the most enthusiastic terms of China, and denounced the intentions and language of what he calls " the tyrannic school." ^ I am fully disposed to think of the Chinese with kindness and respect. I fully admit that the Anglo-Saxon, amongst weaker races, is apt to join the tyrannic school ; and, for all I know to the contrary, many of the names signed to the various memorials in the Parliamentary paper to which I am alluding, may belong to eminent professors of that 1 Memorials addressed by Chambers of Commerce in China to the British Minister at Pekin on the Revision of the Treaty of Tientsin. 2 London and China Telegraph, July 16, 1868. 86 CHINA. school. Such considerations, however, do not carry ns very far. The Shanghae memorialists, after carefully pointing out a number of points in which they think that the Treaty of Tientsin has not been fuUy carried out, or in which they think its working has been found defective, make various suggestions, as to which they may be right or wrong, but which are clearly not conceived in the spirit of the " tyrannic school," and then remark : — " It would appear that the Treaty of Tientsin is in the main fitted to the object for which it was designed, if carried to its legitimate conclusions — that is, to conclusions in accordance with the spirit in which it was framed, and the principles upon which it is based ; and any revision sought for should be directed, not so much to the acquisition of new privileges, as to a confirmation and extension of those already granted." Mr. BurUngame will no doubt be fully prepared either to admit the allegations of the memorialists, or to disprove them — for pray understand I am as far as possible from asserting that they are all correct — am, for instance, inclined to suspect that the cry about transit dues is unreasonably loud. I will not go through the United States treaty article by article. That would not have much interest for you ; but the ninth article is really so extraordinary, that I must for a moment call your attention to it. By that article the United States pledge themselves, inter alia, to disclaim any intention or right to inter- fere in the domestic administration of China in regard to the construction of railroads, telegraphs, or material internal improve- ments. Assuredly no foreign power ever dreamt of forcing the Chinese Government to make railroads and telegraphs ; but are we really to bind ourselves by a solemn treaty, which the Chinese Government may interpret to mean that we shall never aUude in the most distant manner to these inventions of " Foreign Devils," until it pleases it to come forward, and beg us to assist it in carrying out what it now so much abhors ? To such a question there can surely be but one answer, and unless CHINA. 87 Mr. Burlingame can put a totally different face upon the matter, and show that our conception of his meaning is quite erro- neous, the British Government will, I am confident, respectfully inform him, that while, it is ready to scrutinize through the spectacles of Pekin every propos&l that is made with respect to the revision of the articles of the Tientsin Treaty by its own subjects, while it is prepared to consider all questions about transit dues, local taxes, and foreign residents, as well from a Chinese as from a British point of view, it is not going to do a cruel wrong to the people of China by forcing them back within the vicious circle of an evil past. Although the somewhat exaggerated expectations which were entertained in this country about the results of closer rela- tions with China, have not yet been fulfilled, our trade never- theless has enormously increased since the treaty of Nanking, and is now so great that a Government which by any rash act should interfere with it, would indeed have much to answer for. We are now represented by a minister-plenipotentiary at Pekin, and by consuls or inferior consular officers at Amoy and Foochow, in the great province of Fokien, where so much of the black teas are grown ; at Canton and Whampoa, the loading port of that city ; at Mngpo, so pleasantly described by Mr. Oliphant ; at Shanghae, a name peculiarly familiar to the Scottish ear ; at the rising port of Swatow, in the midst of one of the most turbulent and dangerous populations in China ; at Tientsin, where the Peiho meets the Grand Canal, and at Taku, near the mouth of that river, both memorable in the story of Lord Elgin's expedition; at Tangchow, near Chefoo, in the region of the recently discovered gold-fields ; at Taiwan, in the south- w6st, and Tamsuy in the north of the great island of For- mosa ; at Hankow, the enormous emporium on the great river, to which Lord Elgin ascended, and which with its neighbouring cities appears to be a sort of second London ; at Kiu-kiang, lower down the same mighty fiood, and near the beautiful scenery at the entrance of the Poyang Lake, and at New 88 CHINA. Chwang in Manchooria on the north of the Gulf of Pechele, at which last place our representative is, I think, that same Mr. Meadows who wrote the ill-arranged, but in many ways curious and valuable book to which I have already alluded. From all these places very elaborate reports are, from time to time, received at the Foreign Of&ce and laid before Parlia- ment. These reports are of two kinds : — First, Eeports from H.M. consuls made directly to our own officials ; and, secondly, Eeports made by the foreign commissioners, who manage the maritime customs at the different ports open to foreign trade and report to Pekin. Much of the information which they contain is, of course, interesting only to merchants ; but there is enough matter of a more general kind to make it necessary for any one who wants to keep himself au courant of our national relations in China, to give them at least a cursory per- usal Here, for instance, is a passage from the report of Mr. Eobertson, consul at Canton, presented to Parliament in August 1867, which seems to me of no small importance : — " If there is little change to be seen in the market, there is a great one going on in its conduct, for the Chinese have found out they can better and more satisfactorily do their own business themselves than with the aid of foreign intervention. In fact, we have taught them a lesson, and they are profiting by it. From another quarter too, danger is to be apprehended. The import trade is rapidly passing into native hands, and the only apparent reason why the export does not follow, appears to be that foreign competition pays them better and without risk. Should that by any unlooked-for means cease, then it is not at all improbable we shall see the Chinese shipping on their own account, and doing business which, heretofore, was in foreign hands alone. Opium may prove an exception, but otherwise there are strong indications of the general trade of the country forcing a new channel for its development, and the warning previously given that foreign merchants must look to this, loses none of its importance. The truth is, that the foreign community have CHINA. 89 underrated the capabilities of the Chinese, and overlooked, as has justly been observed, their patient plodding perseverance, their immense industry and their attention to petty gains, and by doing its business through the agency of compradores or middlemen, have opened a wide door for Chinese enterprise ; the result of which is now showing itself in a shape not to be mistaken. Hong Kong and Shanghae bid fair to be the d^p6ts of foreign merchandise, where the Chinese merchants purchase goods, and take them to the other ports or the interior, and resell them at prices with which the foreign merchant cannot compete. They are enabled to do this by their thorough knowledge of the requirements of the market, their being able to work their busi- ness at less cost than a foreign firm can, owing chiefly to the absence of compradores or middlemen, and their intermediate imposts on everything that passes through their hands, and, above all, from their being satisfied with smaller profits. The same remark is applicable to exports, and it requires only the termination of the remunerative competition which at present exists to bring these economic elements into play. Already Chinese merchants are large shareholders in, if not sole owners of, the finest coast and river steamers, and the bulk of the carry- ing trade may be said to be in their hands." With these remarks we may compare the following, which I take from The Ever Victoricms Army, which I quote frequently, partly because I want to do what little I can to increase the number of its readers, and partly because our other really good books on China are, most of them, of somewhat old date. The last edition of Sir John Davis's book, which is perhaps the most valuable of all, was published in 1857, but the book itself is much older ; the fourth edition of the Middle Kirigdom,, which I have used, was published in 1861, but that work dates, I think, from 1848; and Mr. Meadows's The Chinese and their Rebellions, which surely deserves to be ranked with them, in spite of his Taeping heresies and some other obvious faults, appeared in 1856 :— 90 CHINA. " What it seems to me we have to dread is, not China hang- ing hack, but going too quickly for our own interests and com- fort. Wan See-ang is reported to have said some time ago to Mr. Hart, ' Foreigners complain at present that China is changing too slowly, but fifty years after this you wiU make war upon us for going too fast.' This astute mandarin was not speaking thoughtlessly. It takes a considerable time to wheel round a very populous and democratic people, like the Chinese, to an unaccustomed stand-point, but once get them round, and their action from it comes to be something tremen- dous. In Japan, a feudal country, any individual Daimio who takes it into his head may introduce a European improvement, such as the use of steam ; but in China, the mass of the people must be, to a certain extent, prepared for the innovation before it can be introduced. Hence progress in some respects is very slow in that country ; but what will be the state of the case when the people of China have got fairly turned round to the point of accepting and using the practical appliances of Western civilisation ? I doubt whether there wiU be any great English mercantile houses on the coast of Cathay. It is to be feared that the native Chinese merchants will very quickly take their maritime commerce into their own hands, and try to dictate prices in London as they are already doing at Hankow and Shanghae. Already the Anglo-Saxons of Australia have had recourse, and not very effectively, to a heavy capitation tax, in order to keep down the competition of Chinese emigration, •vs^ich is nothing compared with what it is capable of becoming. Without doubt, we shaU. open up the Flowery Land effectively enough, but the results of that opening promise to be somewhat different from our fond anticipations." JAPAN. — A sea voyage of 450 miles to the north-east from the port of Shanghae brings us to a long, narrow, and singularly beautiful inlet, with steep rocks on either side, and cascades leaping down amongst them. At the end of this inlet JAPAN. 91 are Mils over 2000 feet high. Between the hills and the water is a town, and, still nearer us, an island, which seems from the anchorage to form part of it. This town is E'agasaki, the only port through which, for several centuries, Europe was permitted to have any intercourse with Japan ; and the island is Decima, long at once the factory and the prison of the Dutch, who monopolized, till quite recently, the privileges and humiliations which attended commerce with the most jealous of empires. Amongst the many remarkable events which our generation has witnessed, few, I think, are Kkely to appear more remark- able to our descendants, than the unsealing of this mysterious country. It has all happened so quickly. Only fourteen years have passed since Commodore Perry of the United States navy appeared in these waters and concluded a preliminary treaty. Then came the clever diplomatic stroke of Mr. Harris, the American consul, who took advantage of the successes of the Allies at the mouth of the Peiho to obtain still larger concessions, and a week or two after followed Lord Elgin's visit, resulting in Mr. Oliphant's extremely pleasant book, which, for the first time, brought things Japanese fairly within the circle of our ordinary political interest. The ten years that have elapsed since Lord Elgin was at Teddo have greatly increased our knowledge of Japan. One misconception after another has passed from our minds, and the Japanese are beginning to grasp the idea that we are not dragons to be kept at a distance ' by every possible art, but friends who come to their country for purposes which cannot be attained without incidentally benefiting them. The valuable but depressing work of Sir Eutherford Alcock,^ written under the constant apprehension of assassination, and singularly successful in communicating the same apprehension to the reader, damped the zeal of the British public to enter into closer relations with Japan, and the bad news of frequent 1 The Capital of the Tycoon. Longman. London, 1863. 92 JAPAN. outrages upon foreigners, which came to us soon after its publi- cation, deepened the sombre impression which it created. The strong measures, however, which followed Mr. Eichardson's murder, produced good effects, by convincing the leading per- sons in the Empire that the Western Powers were thoroughly in earnest, and a sensible change of tone may be perceived in the despatches of the last two or three years. Thus, in the despatches presented in 1866, we find one from Mr. "Winchester to Earl Eussell, in which, under date May 11th, 1865, the fol- lowing passage occurs : — " The first effects of the naval opera- tions were visible in our improved relations with the Tycoon's Government, but it required a certain lapse of time to appreciate their influence on the Daimios, with whom our means of inter- course are so circumscribed. But the proceedings of Choshiu, and the unconcealed desire to open a port in the inland sea, are enough to satisfy my mind that these princes, as well as the Tycoon, have at last reached the practical conclusion, that foreign relations cannot be shaken off, and that, since there is no escape from them, they may as well make the best of them." This is significant, but the following extract from a letter, enclosed in the same despatch, from two retainers of Choshiu, the Daimio who in June 1863 had fired upon the flags of the Western Powers, is still more significant : — "Hitherto there had been a great number of stupid and ignorant persons in our provinces, who, being quite in the .dark as to the real state of Japan, still adhered always to the foolish old arguments. They were unaware of the daily progress of the Western nations in the arts, being like the frog at the bottom of the well. But lately they have learnt in battle (though small) the accuracy of the foreign mechanical contri- vances, and the ease with which these are transported from place to place. They acknowledge that they fall short them- selves, and have begun to improve. The eyes and ears of the stupids having thus been opened, the question of opening the JAPAN. 93 country to foreigners or shutting ourselves up again, has become clear of itself, and there is very little difference of opinion on the subject." The views of those who think that our whole Japanese policy has been a mistake, and that we had no right whatever to exert any sort of pressure upon the Government of that Empire, find clear expression in an essay in the volume called International Policy, in which our doings in foreign countries, and in our own colonies, are criticised from the Positivist point of view. I cannot at all agree with the sentiments of the writer of that paper. All violence in international concerns is, of course, to be deprecated, but I wish there were no worse stains on our national flag than those which it has received in Japan. Doubtless we are very far indeed from having seen the end of the troubles, which its contact with foreigners will incidentally briag to the "land of the rising sxm;" but the Japanese had reached a point of their national development, which they were not likely to pass without an impulse from the outer world. Their civilisation, admirable in many re- spects, was becoming, so to speak, hide-bound, and it is very unlikely that any price which they will have to pay in the way of civil commotion will be at all too dear, if so be that it buys them initiation into the ideas and knowledge of the West. Nothing is further from my intention than to speak slightingly of the results which they have already obtained from the natural evolution of their own ideas. The West will try to force evil as well as good upon them, but, upon the whole, the balance of advantage will be largely on their side. The chief result of the revolution which has recently occurred in Japan, has been to bring the Mikado into something of his old prominence, but the real authority will, I presume, be exercised, anyhow for a time, not by the Mikado himself, but by the powerful southern Daimios, our old friend Satsuma and others, who surround his sacred person. The gj-eat poten- tate, whom we first learned to caU the Tycoon, but have since been 94 JAPAN. • taught to call the SHogoon, has now, unless something occurs to change . the political situation, disappeared from the scene. There is now no Shiogoon, he who was lately such having fallen back into the ranks of the Daimios, although still likely to play a considerable political part. This event, which is notified in the following proclamation by the Mikado, which I copy from the London and China Telegra;ph of July 4, 1868, seems hardly to have excited in this country as much attention as might have been expected, when we remeihber that it was with this man's predecessors that our treaties were made, although they were some little time ago ratified by the Mikado. {Translation) " The conduct of Tokugawa Yoshi-Hisa hav- ing proceeded to such an extreme as to be properly called an insult to the whole empire, and having caused the deepest pain to the mind of the Emperor, both sea and land forces were sent to punish him. Hearing, however, that he is sincerely peni- tent, and lives in retirement, the excesses of the imperial com- . passion shall be exhausted, and the following commands shall be enjoined upon him ; let him be respectfully obedient to them. A period of eleven days is granted him in which to comply with all these orders. " As the above period of eleven days is already a matter of great clemency, upon no account will any other request or com- plaint be listened to. The Emperor, having established both his clemency and his authority, will not allow any claims of alli- ance to have any influence with him. So be promptly obedi- ent, and resort to no subterfuges : — " Article 1. — Yoshi-Hisa having on the twelfth month of the last year, and afterwards, insulted the Emperor, attacked the Imperial city, and fired on the Imperial flag, was guilty of a most heinous crime. The army was accordingly sent out to pursue and punish him. But as he has manifested sincere contrition and obedience, has shut himself up in retirement, and begs that his crime may be pardoned, in consideration of the no small merit of his family, which, since the time of his JAPAN. 95 ancestors, for more than two hundred years, has administered the affairs of the Government, and more especially the accumu- lated meritorious services of Mito-zo-Dainagon (the father of Yoshi-Hisa), for these various considerations, of which we are most profoundly sensible, we give him the following com- mands, which, if he obeys, we will deal leniently with him, grant that the house of Tokugawa be established (i.e., not de- stroyed from the list of Daimios), remit the capital punishment (his crimes deserve), but command him to go to the castle of Mito, and there live shut up in retirement. " Article 2. — The castle of the Shiogoon to be vacated and delivered over to the Prince of Owari. " Article 3. — ^All the ships of war, cannon and small arms, to be delivered up ; when a proper proportion shall be returned (to the head of the house of Tokugawa, which is reduced to the rank of an ordinary Daimio). " Article 4. — The "retainers being in the castle shall move out and go into retirement. "Article 5. — To all those who have aided Yoshi-Hisa, although their crimes are worthy of the severest punishment, the sentence of death shall be remitted ; but they are to receive such other punishment as you shall decide on. Let this be reported to the Imperial Government. This, however, does not include those persons who have an income of more than ten thousand kokus. The Imperial Government alone will punish such." In the China Telegraph of August 24, 1 find the following : — " Amongst other things offered to the north, to promote the re-establishment of peace between the contending parties, we may announce the recall of the ex-Tycoon to Yedo, and the revocation of the edict of confiscation which deprived the Tokugawa chief and clan of their hereditary territories and revenues. The restoration is to comprise three-fourths of their former possessions, one -fourth remaining for the present in the custody of the Mikado. We thus see a fulfilment of our predic- tions concerning the late Tycoon, who, too clever a statesman 96 JAPAK and prudent a politician to be destroyed by the faction arrayed against him, will doubtless, ere long, have a prominent posi- tion assigned him in the council of Daimios, and may yet, as President of that assembly, hold some considerable voice and rule in the direction of the government of the empire. "The following is a translation of the document wj^ch announces the fact to the officers of the Mikado : — ' Instruc- tions have been issued by the Dai-sosai (prime minister) that, in view of Tokugawa Yoshi-Hisa having retired to Mito and repented of his late offence, with unbounded reverence proceed- ing from the bottom of his heart, it is the Imperial wijl, in the exercise of extraordinary clemency, that he be recalled to the Castle of Yeddo, and that hereafter he be summoned to Kioto. It is therefore the order of his Imperial Highness the Com- mander-in-Chief, that the Imperial forces which have advanced in every direction, do quickly return to head-quarters.' " Our minister was put into communication with the Mikado as soon as it became clear that his influence ia temporal affairs was so much greater than was supposed, but by the very last news (China Telegraph, October 19th) it appears that the northern Daimios, unwilling that their southern adversaries should have the command of the Mikado, have set up a Mikado of their own, and the situation is thus summarized : — " Japanese say that now the war wOl be very severe and very long ; that we shall have as large a quantity of silk this year as they can possibly press into the market, but that next year there will be hardly any ; that the country wOl swarm with Lonins, and the authorities wOl be powerless to deal with them unto the whole of the troubles are over, and a strong government is re-established ; and that this can never be the case unto the south is literally crushed." Let us hope that when the smoke of battle has cleared away, and thrags have settled down, peaceful iatercourse with foreigners may become the rule, and not the exception, through the whole of the Japanese empire. JAPAN. 97 From none of the Western Powers has that country anything to fear.- We all go thither for trade, and not for conquest. It is more doubtful whether this can be predicated with cer- tainty of Eussia, and yet she is more liked by the Japanese than any of her European rivals. The two empires are already conterminous, part of the island of Sagalien belonging to each. Some years ago, an attempt was made by the governnient of St. Petersburg to obtain the whole of that island, which is valuable on account of its great deposits of coal, in exchange for some of the Kurile Archipelago, but the negotiation led to no result. We have now, in addition to a minister-plenipotentiary at Yeddo, consuls or inferior consular ofScers at Hakodate, Kana- gawa, Nagasaki, Osaka, and, I presume, by this time, at Hiogo also. Hakodate is in the northern island, that of Yesso. It Kes about 600 miles from Yeddo, and has a deep and completely land-locked harbour, very easy of access. Sir Eutherford Alcock, who visited it in 1859, thus writes : — "Whether its magnificent bay will ever see a fleet of merchantmen and a prosperous foreign trade, it would be bold in any one to say at this moment. It is, at present, chiefly used by whalers. The year previous, thirty called in, twenty-nine American and one French, — no English. Sulphur, lead, and Chinese edibles, with furs and deer-horns, are, at present, all that offer, and these not in large quantities." Mr. Consul Gore, in his report dated January 1, 1867, gives us many particulars tending to show that the prosperity of the place has considerably increased since this description was penned. Amongst other things, he mentions that the town, which is described by Sir Eutherford Alcock as only a long fishing village, has increased to double its original size. Its immediate future is perhaps less brilliant than that of any of the other recently opened Japanese ports, for- the country behind it is not very rich in an agricultural point of view, and its chief exports are still irico, awabee, and combo, of which the G 98 JAPAN. first is the Holothurian known as tlie sea-slug, the second, a species of large sheU-fish, which, when dried, is much esteemed in China ; what the third may be, I cannot pretend to say, but I presume it is not an article of very great value. The soil of Tesso, however, abounds in minerals, which are neglected simply from ignorance of engineering and want of labour. There is lead. There are miles upon miles of iron- sand, which is said to contain over sixty per cent, of pure metal. There is gold, and the sea-cliffs are in some places composed of coal, which is so abundant,, that the Eussians are, at one point, allowed to help themselves freely to it. Kanagawa is near Yeddo. Eeaders of Sir Eutherford Alcock will remember the clever device by which the Japanese ofiBcials succeeded in locating the foreigners at Yokohama, instead of at Kanagawa proper, which is at a little distance from it. Mr. Consul Myburgh, in his report dated April 3d, 1867, gives a rather melancholy account of the state of trade during the pre- vious year, but accounts for it chiefly by temporary causes, and concludes by saying, " I am fuUy persuaded that the stagnation in trade cannot be of lopg duration, and that we shall soon revert to a more salutary state of things," and the latest ac- counts in the newspapers seem to confirm these expectations. From Nagasaki, Mr. Acting-Consul Flowers, writing on January 31st, 1867, sent a favourable report. Amongst the chief exports from that part of Japan are coal and tea. Silk comes to us chiefly from Kanagawa. Mr. Flowers says that the Japanese have now commenced to work their mines pro- perly, and that coal found at a certain depth is almost equal to the best English and Welsh. It seems but the other day since Sir Eutherford Alcock described his land journey to Yeddo, and gave a very much less satisfactory account. "Before closing this Trade Eeport," adds Mr. Flowers, writing to Sir H. Parkes, "I would venture to add a few general, remarks regarding facts which have come under my own personal observation." JAPAN. 99 " It is remarkable to witness the great change in feeling of the natives towards foreigners that has taken place within the last year ; they appear to evince a more friendly disposition, which, in time, must naturally produce most beneficial results." " It is most worthy of remark, and I believe it is the general opinion here, that your recent visit accompanied by the admiral to the Prince of Satsuma, and some of the other leading Daimios, has contributed greatly towards the favourable change, and judging by the anxiety of most of the Daimios to enter into commercial relations with foreign merchants, I anticipate, within a few years, to see the whole of Japan opened up to foreign enterprise." Hiogo and Osaka were only opened to foreigners in the beginning of 1868. Far the best account of them which I have seen is to be found in a report sent by Mr. Locock to the Foreign OfSce, under date June 10th, 1867.-^ Hiogo andKob^, at which last is the site of the foreign settlement, are situated upon two bays of the inland sea, about 365 miles' sail from Yokohama. Hiogo is a town of 20,000 inhabitants. Osaka is a large city, about twenty miles off in the interior, useless to us without the Hiogo-Kobe settlement, but with it extremely valuable. Mr. Locock thus writes : — " A large business can be done in a place like Osaka, opened for the first time to trade, with small and modest means, as was remarked to me by a native who dealt in foreign goods, and sold trumpery saddles at £15 apiece. Osaka is such a busy place that a man can live in a little room or shop of ten mats and carry on a thriving trade. A quarter of a million of human beings are congregated in the city, all clothed in cotton woven at the cottage looms, at a cost superior to that at which we can afford to bring our own goods into the market. " Nor is there much prejudice to overcome : young Japan is eager to cast off its old clothes along with its old restraints. ^ With reference to Osaka, compare also The Capital of the Tycoon. 100 JAPAN. There is already a, furor at Osaka for everything foreign, from a pair of top-boots to a Geneva watch, from a cake of old Windsor to a bottle of champagne ; bales of Manchester goods are to be seen standing on the doorways of wholesale houses, while there are smaller shops which almost exclusively devote themselves to the retail of miscellaneous foreign goods. There are at this moment no fewer than forty native photographers in the city, obtaining their lenses, plates, and chemicals from abroad, and all of them finding full occupation in every style of photo- graphy. . . . " With silk and tea for their homeward freights, with a new and extensive market for their imports, and with a supply of fair coal at hand for their steamers, there appears to be no reason why the foreign settlements of Osaka and Hiogo should not become as large and thriving as those in any other part of Japan." Ne-egata, the port on the western side which should have been open to us ere this, is not yet open, owing, I believe, to the civil war. There is an interesting account of it in the China Telegraph of October 8th, taken from the Japan Herald. It lies in the province of Eohigo at the embouchure of several rivers, which are, however, as usual in Japan, obstructed by a dangerous bar. The town is tolerably large, intersected with canals, and has a much colder climate than any of the other Treaty Ports, except Hakodate. The country around it for many miles is flat, and appears fertile. Manufactures are not numerous, but coarse lacquer, silk and silk-worm eggs, and petroleum, wiU probably be amongst the earlier exports. The inhabitants appear well disposed toward foreigners, and are said to be hard-working and industrious. 8IAM. — Losing sight of the southern promontory of Japan, passing Satsuma's great fief of the Loochoo Islands, and holding on between Formosa and the Spanish colony of the Philippines, we pass through the dangerous China Sea, leave the newly SIAM. 101 acquired French possessions of Saigon far on our right, double Cape Cambodia, and in time find ourselves at Bangkok the capital of Siam, a country curious and interesting in many ways, and not least so in the character and acquirements of its ruler, or, more strictly speaking, of its chief ruler, for there are two kings. I remember talking once with a German diplo- matist who was praising the Emperor of Brazil as the most learned and accomplished sovereign with whom he had ever been brought in contact, when, with the accuracy of his race he checked himself, and added, " I ought, by the by, to except the King of Siam." Not but that the second king, who is brother to the first, is not also a person of great merit and dis- tinction, as any one who reads Sir John Bowring's fresh and valuable book^ will soon find out. The extent of Siam is not accurately known, and the popu- . lation is only guessed at. We may put it down at about four millions and a half. The kingdom is nominally tributary to China, but virtually it is independent ; and we carry on rela- tions with it through a consul at the capital, which is one of the most curious of Oriental cities. Our intercourse with this country is now very considerable. I cannot sum up its claims on our attention better than by reading a letter addressed the other day by J. B., which I think we may translate into Sir John Bowring, to one of the morning papers : — " You throw a little ridicule upon the treaty made between Italy and Siam. Will you allow me to mention that all the great Powers of Europe and America are represented at the Siamese Court ; that since the treaty negotiated by Sir John Bowring, in 1855, ambassadors and envoys from France, from the United States, from Holland, the Hanse Towns, Denmark, and several other countries, have made treaties of amity and commerce ; that, according to the last returns, 98 British ships, •■ The Kingdom amd People of Siam. By Sir John Bowring, F.E.S. London : Parker, 1857. 102 SIAM. 21 Hamburghen, 64 Prussian, 11 Bremen, 125 Siamese, besides smaller numbers of other nations, are employed in the foreign trade of Bangkok alone ; that the exports from Bangkok exceeded last year more than a million, and the imports more than three-quarters of a million sterling in value, and are progressing ; that at the present moment the Austrian Govern- ment is sending to Siam a splendid scientific and commercial mission, bearer of imperial presents, and charged with the negotiation of a reciprocal treaty ; that the King personally is distinguished for his scientific acquirements, for his beautiful collection of philosophical instruments, for his acquaintance with the English and Latin languages, and with the best of modern literature ; that, by the last news, he had gone, with his court, to Wai-wen^ to meet the expedition sent by the French and English authorities to observe and report on the eclipse of the sun — the King himself having long prepared t the astronomical calculations for the Bangkok Calendar ; that the custom-house department is superintended by a subject of the United States, and that the printing establishment is directed by an Englishman ; that, previous to the treaties, the number of British ships yearly visiting Siam seldom exceeded two, and that at this time the average is more than a hundred ; that the import duties are only 3 per cent., and the export duties very moderate. You and your readers cannot but look complacently on this state of things, and I venture to believe that you will willingly help to remove impressions which your notice was not unlikely to convey." I may note, in passing, that we have a consul-general to look after our interests in Borneo, and a vice-consul at Sarawak, but a simple mention of them will be enough ; neither does it fall within the scope of this lecture to allude to our consular establishments in the Dutch West Indies, that "magnificent empire of Insulind," as it has been truly called, " which winds ^ News has just ajtxived of the death of this most remarkable man — the result of a malaria fever, caught on his expedition to observe the eclipse. SIAM. 103 round the equator like a garland of emeralds." We must not tarry there, but disengage ourselves as rapidly as we can from the East Indian Archipelago, not forgetting that we leave behind us in the Pacific some independent countries, where we have representatives, but which are hardly entitled to be noted in a political review. These are the Feejee Islands, the Georgian or Windward Islands, the Navigators' Islands, the Society Islands, and the Sandwich Islands. NEJED. — Stretching across the Indian Ocean, and leaving OUT own possessions on the right, we reach at length the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Thence, keeping along the shore of the Eed Sea, we follow a long strip of Turkish territory, and may re- member, as we pass, that far in the interior of Arabia, behind the holy cities, lies the Wahabee empire of Nejed, with its 1,200,000 inhabitants, and their strange capital Eiad, which Mr. Palgrave described in that remarkable address to the Geographical Society, which was compared at the time to Herodotus reciting at Olympia, and full details as to which you will find in his book.'^ Happily, these uncomfortable fanatics lie far enough out of the way of any probable political contact with us to allow us to pass them by with this brief allusion ; but we must not forget that all recrudescence of Mussulman fanaticism, espe- cially in Asia, must have a certain interest for this country, from its bearing on our position in India, where the zealous foRowers of the Prophet are probably our most formidable enemies. For the present, however, we may go on our way, and need not stop till the sight of Suez relieves us from the heat and tedium of our long voyage. , EGYPT. — Now, then, we find ourselves in Egypt, and once more in the shadow of the Sultan's power, although under the direct authority of the Viceroy. There are few foreign coun- ' Personal Narrative of a Jcmrney through Central and JSastern Arabia. By W. G. Palgrave. London : Macmillan, 1868. 104 EGYPT. tries whose affairs are, in a certain sense, more interesting to us than the land of the Nile. There is probably hardly anything short of a direct aggression on British territory which would so certainly force Great Britain out of the pacific attitude which she would fain eternally preserve, than any attempt to interfere with the absolute freedom of transit from Alexandria to Suez. It is indeed, at least for the present, a matter of vital importance to us ; nor, although the successful prosecution of the long agitated scheme for running a railway down the Euphrates valley would doubtless make us less dependent on the Egyptian route, is it possible to look forward to a time when we could see with equanimity any attempt to tamper with the freedom of this great line of communication between the West and the East. It is important, however, to discriminate our real from our imaginary interest in this matter. It seems now much less probable than it did a few years ago, that, in the words of the gifted author of Eoihen, " The Englishman stretching far over to hold his loved India will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful." Our people have got disgusted with territorial acquisition. They would reject Sicily. They would reject Candia. They would reject Cyprus. They would reject even Egypt, unless perhaps they were sure that their rejection of it wx)uld be the signal for its passing into the hands of some other European power. A famous Indian warrior, now dead, used often to descant to me on the splendid army, far superior to the Sepoys, that might be raised from the Fellaheen, and went so far as to advocate our seizing Kosseir on the Eed Sea, with a view to be prepared against the probable eventuality of a French descent upon the Delta. The last few years have, however, made-great changes in our way of looking at all these matters. I do not think that any one would now use the violent language about the Suez Canal that was at one time common, and not a little encouraged in high places. I may remind you in passing that EGYPT. 105 that great work is a communication now in progress from Port Said, in the Mediterranean, to the north-west end of the Eed Sea. A deep channel is to be dredged through lake Menzaleh, and the waterway is to be prolonged across the isthmus to Suez, advantage being taken of certain other lakes and swamps which lie between these extreme points. Very much seems already to have been accomplished, but the engineering evi- dence as to the possibility of making and keeping up a com- munication for large vessels is so conflicting, and the dust raised by obstructive politicians on the one side, and puffing intriguers on the other, is so great, that a plain man will, I think, suspend his judgment till he sees in what all this is to end. Certain it is that if the promises of the projectors can be carried out, no country will gain commercially so much as England ; and as to political dangers, if they ever existed at all, they will vanish before the determination of the British people, to allow no one, directly or indirectly, to hamper their intercourse with India. As to the general political condition of Egypt, the most recent authorities to which I can direct you are Mr. Senior's conversations, which were printed a few years ago in the Victoria Magazine, but which, we trust, his literary executor win soon publish, with additions, in a more convenient form. Quite recently, too, we have had Lady Duff Gordon's^ interest- ing letters, which give a highly favourable impression of the people, and anything but a favourable impression of the system of Government under which they hve. During the course of the last session an interesting discussion was brought on by Mr. Layard with reference to the jurisdiction of the Consular Courts and judicial reforms in Egypt. There was not much difference of opinion on either side of the House as to the expediency of rectifying the abuses which have gradually grown up under the shadow of the capitulations, until the evils of the present system are almost as great as those against which precautions were taken by the capitulations themselves. Lord Stanley, in i Letters from Egypt. By Lady DuflF Gordon. London: Macmillan, 1866. 106 EGYFT. his reply to Nubar Pasha's very clear and temperate memor- andum on this subject, observes, in a despatch dated October 18,1867:— " Her Majesty's Government cannot doubt that the system which prevails in Egypt in regard to the suits in which for- eigners on the one hand, and the Government and people of Egypt on the other, are concerned, is as injurious to the interests of all parties, as it is certainly without warrant of any treaty engagement. Her Majesty's Government are perfectly wiUing, therefore, to lend their aid to the Egyptian Govern- ment in an attempt to establish a better system, and if the Egyptian Government succeed in obtaining the concurrence of other Powers for the same purpose, you may assure Nubar Pasha that the cordial co-operation of Great Britain wiU not be withheld from so salutary a work. . . . " It appears to Her Majesty's Government that the basis on which proceedings should be initiated might, with the greatest safety, and with the view to more early results, be the adaptation to altered circumstances of the principles laid down in the ancient capitulations, the departure from which has led in a great measure to the evils so justly felt. " Those capitulations, indeed, were established under a very different state of things from that which now exists, and their object was to secure foreigners from arbitrary violence and exactions on the part of the local authorities. But still, although reserving for extra-territorial tribunals exclusively the settlement of questions, whether of a civil or criminal nature, in which foreigners were alone concerned, the capitu- lations did not pretend to deprive the local Government of jurisdiction over foreigners, ra matters, whether criminal or civil, in which they were brought into collision with the laws of the territorial sovereign. .They reserved, however, as a protection to foreigners against the arbitrary, local will of tribunals, a certain right of concurrence or supervision which might act as a check against abuse. EGYPT. 107 " In process of time this check, especially in Egypt, has become the great abuse, and by degrees the authority of the local tribunals has been usurped or set aside by the encroach- ments of an extra-territorial jurisdiction. " This is the state of things which the Egyptian Government desire to remedy, and they cannot be more disposed to make the attempt than Her Majesty's Government to second them in it. " Her Majesty's Government have no fondness for an extra- territorial jurisdiction, even if hmited by the strict letter of the capitulations. They would hail with the utmost satisfaction such an improvement in the judicial system of the Ottoman Empire, and specifically of Egypt, which is so important a part of it, as would justify them in altogether ' renouncing any judicial action in that country, and leaving the disputes of their subjects, and the crimes which they may commit, to the exclusive jurisdiction of the local Government, as is the case in other countries. " With such feelings. Her Majesty's Government are certainly not inchned to hold out for a jurisdiction to which they have no treaty right, which they admit to be a usurpation, though brought about by force of circumstances, and which is as injurious to British interests as it is derogatory to the character and wellbeing of the Egyptian administration. " But Her Majesty's Government consider, and they are glad to perceive that such is the ground on which the application of the Egyptian Government is founded, that foreign Powers have a right to expect that any new system which may be inaugurated in Egypt, should afford ample security to the foreigner — that in pleading before an Egyptian tribunal he will have nothing to apprehend from the venality, the igno- rance, or the fanaticism of his judges ; that the law to be applied to his case, whether as plaintiff or defendant, shall be clear and patent to all ; and that the forms of procedure, and more espe- cially in matters of testimony, shall be well defined, and not 108 EGYPT. admit of being ia any point arbitrarily departed from on any ground whatever." The influx of foreigners into Egypt, induced by the transit of goods and passengers to India, has unquestionably benefited the population in many ways, but we cannot, after reading Lady Duff Gordon's letters, full as they are of stories of out- rageous oppression, help expressing a hope that the Egyptian Government wiU reward the readiness of this country to meet it in a fair spirit, by showing greater disposition than it has hitherto done to adopt European ideas in its local administra- tion. Any one who takes the trouble to turn to Class B of the Slave-Trade Eeports, presented this year, will see that we have no small reason to complain of the way in which the Viceroy's administration still connives at the trafBc in slaves. Mr. Consul Eeade, writing under date of August 9th, 1867, gives full details of visits, disguised as an Arab, to large slave-marts, both in Cairo and Tantah, and says, " It is a matter of public notoriety that from 10,000 to 15,000 slaves are annually brought down the Nile to Cairo, while an equal or even greater number find their way to Sonalcin and the Eed Sea. The principal dealers are well known, and allowed by the local authorities to pursue unmolested their abominable traffic. True it is, that some of these delinquents are occasionally arrested and their property , confiscated, and sometimes a few slaves are even set at liberty, but the great bulk of the trade is tacitly sanctioned, if not actually connived at, by the authorities themselves. At Galabat, on the Abyssinian frontiers, an enormous slave-mart is constantly open." We have a political agent at Alexandria, and consuls or in- ferior consular officers, not only at Cairo, at Suez, at Damietta, but at the less important stations of Atfeh, Port Said, Zag-a-zig, Tantah, Mansourah, and Thebes. ABYSSINIA. — Turning to the southward, and following the western shore of the Eed Sea, we come to Massowah, where ABYSSINIA. 109 the present generation at least is not likely to forget that we had the misfortune to have a consul, the unfortunate. Captain Cameron, whose name and sufferings have become so familiar to newspaper readers. I am not going to use his name for iniiicting on you a discussion about Abyssinia and its politics, of which we have all heard, I think, very much more than enough. Yet let me pause in passing to remark — (1.) That the excellent management of Lord N'apier, coupled with the fortunate infatuation of Theodore, who preferred to fight rather than to call to his aid that "distance" which would have been our most terrible enemy, as it was that of Napoleon in his Eussian campaign,^ did much to increase our military reputa- tion, both in Asia and in Europe; and (2.) that our immediate evacuation of Abyssinia has tended not a little to take away the reproach of perfide Albion. A few more such acts, and the opinion of our contemporaries in other lands will become far less unfavourable to us. ZANZIBAR. — Sailing down the African shore, we come to the beautiful island of Zanzibar, which lies some twenty or thirty miles from the mainland, and is the centre of the power of the Sultan, who rules over the sea-board. Till 1854, Zanzi- bar and its African dependencies, a strip of sea- coast extending for some 12 degrees of latitude, formed part of the possessions of the Sultan of Oman, but it is now independent. We have a consul and a vice-consul at this place, but both of them are ap- pointed and paid by the India GfQce, and their chief relations with the Foreign Office consist, I believe, in corresponding about the suppression of the slave-trade, of which Zanzibar is now the most important maritime centre. From Mr. Acting-Consul Seward's report to the Secretary of Government at Bombay, forwarded in duplicate to Lord Stanley, and published by him in Class B of 1 The reader wto ia not acquainted -with Laoordaire's magnificent descrip- tion of Napoleon's contest with " distance," will thank me for referring him to it. 110 ZANZIBAR. the Slave-Trade Eeports, laid before Parliament this year, it will beseen that certain Englishmen at Zanzibar own slaves to a very large extent, an altogether anomalous state of things, the glaring impropriety of which is commented on in the acting- consul's report, and which contrasts strangely with the efforts which are being made by our cruisers in those seas to put down the slave-trade. Yery copious details of their operations under- taken for this purpose are to be found in Class A of the Slave- Trade Eeports. MADAGASCAR. — Pursuing our voyage, we reach Mada- gascar, where we have a consul, who seems from the Slave- Trade Eeports to have recently had some trouble about the attempt to get up a trade in involuntary passengers between the port of Tamatave and the French colony of Eeunion. The beautiful island of Madagascar, larger than the United Kingdom, fertile and inhabited by an intelligent people, wiU in aU probability become in the future of considerable commercial importance. Hitherto its chief interest for us has arisen from the strange fate of the Christian converts during the reign of the ferocious Queen Eanavalo, of which you will find a sketch in the Edinlurgh Review for October 1867. Queen Eanavalo died in 1861, and was succeeded by her son Eadama ii., whose policy towards the Christians was entirely different, but whose amiable character was crossed by a vein of weakness, if not of madness, and who, after a reign of a single twelvemonth, was succeeded by his queen, Easoherina, who was likewise tolerant of her Christian subjects. She died this spring, and has been succeeded by her cousin, also a woman. I have seen statements in the newspapers to the effect that the policy of the new sovereign is even more friendly to the Christians than-that of her predecessor, but I do not know whether they are made on any sufdcient authority. WEST COAST OF AFRICA.— Gi-rmg, before we turn WEST COAST OF AFRICA. Ill from Eastern Africa, one thought to Livingstone, who bears, I believe, a consul's commission, and is, I trust, still pursuing his explorations in safety, we double the Cape of Storms, and sail northward past the Portuguese colony of St. Paul de Loanda, where we have an establishment for the suppression of the slave-trade, to the Spanish island Fernando Po, the residence of the consul who looks after our interests on the coasts of the Bight of Biafra. Pushing on, we pass the embouchure of the Niger, which also forms part of a consular district ; and still holding on, we pass Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, and our own colony of Sierra Leone, at which last place we have another establishment for the suppression of the slave-trade. Happily, from all this West African coast, the news of the decay of that hateful trafi&c is becoming more and more positive. Legitimate trade is springing up. The barracoons and signal- stations are going to ruin, and if once the Cuban slave-trade were finally put an end to — as it bade fair soon to be even be- fore the outburst of the Spanish revolution, — we may hope to get rid of most of our African squadron, and of many of our responsibilities and expenses in this part of the world. Our colonial connexion with Western Africa is so im- portant, that any discussion of our policy there would seem to belong rather to a lecture on our colonial, than on our foreign relations ; but I wish, before I leave that district, to call your attention to a curious book just published by Dr. Africanus Horton, a native of Sierra Leone, which is full of information and speculation upon the politics of aU these countries. The select Committee which sat on West Africa in 1865, resolved, inter alia, — 1. " That it is not possible to withdraw the British govern- ment wholly or immediately from any settlements or engage- ments on the West African coast. . . . 3. " That aU further extension of territory or assump- tion of government, or new treaties offering any protection to the native tribes, would be inexpedient, and that the ob- 112 WEST GO AST OF AFRICA. ject of our policy should be to encourage in tlie natives the exercise of those qualities which may render it possible for us more and more to transfer to them the administration of all the Governments, with a view to our ultimate withdrawal from all, except probably Sierra Leone. 4. " That this policy of non-extension admits of no excep- tions as regards new settlements, but cannot amount to an absolute prohibition of measures which, in peculiar cases, may be necessary for the more efficient and economical administra- tion of the settlements we already possess." I am inclined to think that these resolutions are founded ia good sense, and that they will be generally approved by the country. We have at present, so far as I am aware, no representative in the republic of Liberia, the small State in which the negro race is experimentalizing in independent government. Mr. Hamilton, in the Statistical Journal for this year, gives a favourable account of its progress. He says : — " The first settlement of emancipated slaves from the United States was in 1820, and in 1847 it was declared a free republic. It now contains about 30,000 civilized inhabitants, about 15,000 of whom, with their descendants, are from America. From 300,000 to 400,000 aborigines reside within the territory of Liberia, and are brought more or less directly under the influ- ence of her institutions. There are about fifty churches in the republic, representing five different denominations. The edu- cated blacks in Liberia and Sierra Leone are intensely religious, and the various sects — Episcopalians, Wesleyans, Baptists, In- dependents, etc. — are represented among them just as in England and the United States. Differing from Sierra Leone, Liberia has been governed since 1847 by blacks alone. Their Constitu- tion resembles that of the United States, and if their proceed- ings are at times calculated to raise a smile, as a parody upon their model, it is impossible to deny the good sense, frugality, and success which have attended them so far. In 1861, the WEST COAST OF AFRICA. II3 revenue was 149,550 dollars against an expenditure of 142,831 dollars. The Presidential message for 1866 alludes, with just pride, to the foundation of the Liberian College, and lays down a plan for national education. There can be no doubt that this well-ordered and weU-governed community will play a great part in the civilisation of Africa. The present state of matters in America will lead to a considerable accession of strength, 600 emigrants having been despatched in the course of 1866, and 942 in 1867. The American Colonization Society, which founded the settlement in 1820, now regularly employ a vessel in the conveyance of emigrants. The settlers have already been able to repel all attacks from the natives, and as they gain strength, will become aggressive, and extend their influ- ence inward."^ Dr. Horton's account is less satisfactory. He observes — " For the last twenty years, the people of Liberia have enjoyed an independent political existence. Experiments have been assiduously made in the various branches of the political affairs of the nation, and at present the Constitution, as it now stands, is found to be lamentably deficient in many points of vital im- portance to the State ; and however sacred and venerable the document may be, the national existence and prosperity demand that it should receive a thorough revision."^ And again — "First appearance aids considerably in our diagnosis of the character of a person, place, or thing. The entrance to Monrovia, the capital of the Liberian Eepublic, reminds one of the entrance to a purely native town, where the light of civilisation has never reached ; and it gives to a casual observer the idea of a want of a firm government, a want of revenue, a want of developmental power, and the existence of great inertia in the municipal authority of Mon- 1 Paper on Trade with the Coloured Races of Africa. By Archibald Hamilton, Esq., in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, March 1868, page 28. ^ West African Countries and Peoples, and a Vindication of the African Bace. By James Afrioanua B. Horton. London, 1868. H 114 WEST COAST OF AFRICA. rovia. At the very entrance of the town, as one jumps out of his boat, he first meets with a number of cane fishing-huts, occupied by an almost naked crowd of kroomen and women ; the children wretchedly tattooed, squatting about in perfect nudity." MOROCCO. — Sailing slowly to the north, we make a step up in the scale of civilisation, and pass from savagery to bar- barism as we enter the Empire of Morocco, which fills up the whole north-west corner of Africa and extends over some 230,000 square miles, is, that is to say, about seven times the size of Scotland. Morocco is thinly peopled, but the real amount of the population is not accurately known, the esti- mates of the best authorities differing very widely. The government is a despotism with all the worst features of Oriental rule. An intelligent merchant, largely engaged in trade with the Empire, wrote to me lately that there has been considerable improvement in the management of financial and fiscal arrangements since the Spanish indemnity and the nego- tiation of a loan in England necessitated the appointment of Spanish and British of&cials to watch over the customs revenues. Oiir knowledge of the country is not very great, although some of the principal towns have been frequently described, as by Lemprike in 1791, by Gallic in 1830, and by Sir Arthur Brooke in 1831. For more recent information we may go to Sir J. Drummond Hay's light and sparkling little book, or to the sketch by M. Xavier Durrieu in Longman's Travellers' Library. Both these belong, however, to the period before the Spanish "War of 1860, and since that war I am not aware of any account of Morocco having been published, unless it be Eohlf's Travels, printed in Petermann's Mittheilimgen, which, however, I have not seen, and the reports of our own consular of&cials. These are stationed at Mogador, Saffee, Mazagan, Dar-el-Baida, Eabat, Arzila, and Laraiche on the Atlantic, at Tangier on the straits, and Tetuan on the Mediterranean, the MOROCCO. 115 second last of these places being much the most important, and the seat of our minister-resident. The last accounts which lie before me, and refer to the year 1867, are the reverse of satis- factory. Mr. Consul White writes from Tangier under date May 23d, 1868 :— " From what has been stated in the present report, it follows that, so far as concerns the empire of Morocco, the year 1867 was marked by much internal distress, consequent upon a bad harvest, by a very considerable falling off in its export trade, and by a slight decrease in its imports. To these facts must also be added a troubled and disorganized condition of the cotmtry, caused by the supineness and apathy of its rulers, combined with great corruption and rapacity. It can hardly be expected that trade and commerce will prosper under conditions so adverse to their growth. Morocco possesses many great natural advantages, an admirable geographical position, a hardy, patient, and industrious population, a climate healthy and temperate, plains and valleys of great extent, and a soil of extreme fertility ; but a just and enlightened govern- ment to encourage industry and foster commerce is wanting. "When the rulers of the country shalL be possessed of intelli- gence and energy, and guided by a spirit of justice; and shall evince some appreciation of the benefits of civilisation, Morocco may be expected to take a higher place among commercial nations, but until then its capabilities will continue to be dis- turbed, industry will languish, and trade and commerce be paralysed."^ From Laraiche we hear of apprehensions of a famine from the drought. From Mazagan come tidings of a great decrease both in imports and exports, and from Mogador, of swarms of locusts, which have devoured the leaves and buds of the olive- trees, as well as of a local insurrection, which the Government has punished by cutting down the ahnond-trees. From Eabat, close to Salee of piratical memory, we hear of the bar at the * Morocco and the Moors. London : Murray. 116 MOROCCO. mouth of the river being an insuperable obstacle to a free or safe communication ■with the port. From Saffee and distant Tetuan come equally dolorous accounts ; and only from Dar- el-Baida, which chiefly exports wool, do we hear anything con- solatory. The principal exports of Morocco, other than specie, were, in the year 1867, wool, almonds, goatskins and hides, to which we may add, strange to say, slippers, of which she exported no less than 329,000 pairs. The average value of the whole exports during the six years ending 1866 amounted to £845,783. Far the largest share of the trade belongs to Great Britain. The largest imports are Manchester cotton goods, and the average of imports from the United Kingdom alone during the six years ending 1866 amounted to £696,263. Our commerce with Morocco is, it thus appears, by no means despicable ; but she is in no other respect of much interest to us, unless indeed it be as a neighbour to Gibraltar, or the pos- sible possessor of manuscripts which may increase our know- ledge. A distinguished continental orientalist once remarked to me that he thought the learning of Europe had a good deal to expect from the opening up of the Moroccan libraries, and M. Durrieu writes, " If ever this country should be completely thrown open to Europe, medicine, philosophy, history, and many sciences may make in it some valuable discoveries ; for not only in all the mosques, but in the houses of almost all the Moorish families who inhabit the towns, there is preserved an immense number of manuscripts, which date from the most brilliant epochs of Mussulman civilisation."^ TUNIS. — Sailing to the eastward along the Barbary coast, after passing those Algerian colonies of France to which Mr. Pr^vost-Paradol in his most recent work assigns so undue an importance, we reach the regency of Tunis, a large district, the ^ The Present State of Morocco. By Xavier Durrieu. London : Longmana, 1854. TUNIS. 117 population of which is very variously estimated by our best and most recent authorities. Officially, Tunis is merely a government of Turkey ; but in reality, it is, for almost all pur- poses, an independent State. Ever since 1705 its ties to Turkey have been somewhat weak, and since 1811 they have become very slight indeed. The Beys send presents at their accession, and prayers are still made for the Sultan as the head of Islam, but they manage their own affairs with the aid of a sort of Privy Council. We have a political agent at Tunis, and inferior con- sular of&cers at the small ports of Goletta, Mehdiah, Monastir, Sfax, and Susa. TRIPOLI. — The regency of Tripoli, which adjoins Tunis, and extends from its borders to those of Egypt, is in a very different position. For a very considerable time previous to 1834 it had been almost independent, but in that year the Sultan recovered his authority and has maintained it ever since. It is a much larger country than Tunis, possessing great dependencies running back far into Africa, of which Fezzan and Ghadames are the principal ; and a good deal of commerce passes through it from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. We carry on relations with it through a consul-general at Tripoli, and inferior consular officers at Derna, Mesurata, and Benghazi. The last accounts which I have seen represent the country as going back rather than forward, but they are not very recent. Were it to become somewhat more civilized, it seems to me far from impossible that the portion of it near the site of the ancient Cyrene, might acquire some importance as a health-resort for persons from the north of Europe. Such, at least, is the impression which I gather from Mr. Hamilton's travels in this district. A writer in Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography, under the head of Cyrenaica, speaks as follows : — " From its position, formation, climate, and soil, this region is perhaps the most delightful on the surface of the globe. Its 118 TRIPOLI. centre is occupied by a moderately elevated table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by mountain streams, running through ravines filled with the richest vegetation, well watered by frequent rains, exposed to the cool sea-breezes from the north, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from the sands and hot winds of the Sahara. The various terraces enjoy a great diversity of climate, and produced a coiTesponding variety of flowers, vegetables, and fruits, and the successive harvests, at different elevations, lasted for eight months out of the twelve." From the Cyrenaica, what more natural for us than, reversing the voyage of Battus, famous in classical antiquity, to sail for Thera, the Santorin of modern geographers, and so make our way though the ^gean and its connected waters, till we pass once more under the walls of Constantinople ? l^ORTHER]^ Aro CENTRAL AMERICA. UNITED STATES.— In two addresses lately delivered,! have, as you know, attempted to give a brief sketch of the present political condition of the countries of the old Contiaent. I propose to-night to ask you to cross the Atlantic ; and this, and my next address, wfll be devoted to the new Continent. Pirst, then, we land on the shores of that great Eepublic, which is the eldest daughter of England, and with which all parts of Great Britain are now connected by so many ties. To attempt to treat, in anythiug like an exhaustive manner, in part of one evening, the present state of politics in the United States, is of course wholly out of the question ; and I shall, accordingly, confine myself to some remarks upon the recent Presidential struggle, upon the foreign relations of the Union, and to one or two hints which may save you from falling into some common misconceptions about North American life and politics. In the recent Presidential contest two parties were arrayed against each other — the Democratic and the Eepublican. The candidates of the first were Mr. Seymour and General Frank Blair. The candidates of the second were General Grant and Mr. Colfax. Democratic and Eepublican ! These are strange names to designate the two great divisions of political opinion in a thoroughly democratic society, which lives under a republican form of government. How did these names arise, and what do 120 UNITED STATES. they mean when interpreted ? The Eepublicans are essentially the same political connexion which was headed by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Adams ; and which was known originally as the Federalist party. The Democrats are essentially the same as the Anti- Federalists, who were headed by Jeffer- son ; and who, having been called Democrats by their opponents on account of their sympathy with the French, and their opposition to the English in the wars of the revolution, after- wards adopted that name, and made out of it very good political capital. The Eepublicans have been throughout their history a Northern party, with its roots firmly fixed in the soil of New England. The Democrats have been a Southern party, with their roots firmly fixed in the soil of Virginia and the South. The one has been essentially an anti-slavery party, the other has been essentially a pro-slavery party. I do not mean, of course, to say that the EepubKcans have been throughout their history so consciously an anti-slavery party as they are now. That would be altogether contrary to the fact : but from the beginning they have been walking on a road which was sure to lead them ultimately to the goal at which they have now arrived, while their opponents have been as steadily walking upon a road which could only lead to a thorough identification of their cause with that of the Southern planters. It was the Eepublicans who triumphed at President Lincoln's election ; and it was the EepubKcans who formed the backbone of the Northern strength. The collapse of the slave power threw enormous influence into their hands. The Southern oligarchy had appealed to the sword ; and having faQed in their appeal, they had no right to expect that their opponents should use any other motto than Vce victis ! The conquerors showed at first extraordinary moderation, and hardly any blood was shed, under circum- stances where we in England would have shed not a little. It is difficult indeed for any one who has been bred up in the political traditions of Europe to comprehend such leniency. UNITED STATES. 121 In the first paralysis of defeat it is probable that the Southerners would have accepted with few murmurs very much severer treatment than that which they have since resisted so fiercely. An unhappy accident, however, placed supreme power at "Washington in the hands of a man whose policy was destined to be singularly perverse. Instead of going with the Eepublican majority in the Legislature, and attempting to restrain its excesses, the new President, Mr. Andrew Johnson, put himself into a position of antagonism to it, and drove it in its irritation to very much more violent measures than those with which it might have been satisfied if he had been a wiser man. With the majority in the Legislature, however, rested the ultimate power, and it carried through its views as to reconstruction in the South in a spirit very different from that which had allowed so many men who had played for, and lost, the stake of their lives, to retire into private life unharmed. But what is reconstruction ? Eeconstruction is the re-ad- mission of the seceding States to political communion with the States which remaiued true to the Union ; and the restoration to them of those powers of State government which, forfeited by the war, had been replaced since their defeat by military rule. But how was this to be done ? The majority of the Legislature decided that each of the States should choose a new constitu- tion for itself, and that in choosing it, the old planters, the old " mean whites," and the ex-slaves, should all have an equal voice, but that all the principal rebels, and the whites who would not take a test-oath, should be unable to vote at all. The effect of this has been, that constitutions for the Southern States have been prepared in the N"orth and voted at the South, over the heads of the white men, by negro majorities. The Southerners and their friends are greatly enraged at this. Thus speaks a well-known English author, writing in the Pall Mall Gazette of the 11th June 1868 : — " For myself, I am prepared to argue, if it be needed, that a negro is not fitted by his gifts and nature to exercise political 122 UNITED STATES. power amidst a community of white men. He is so naturally subservient to the white man's greater power of mind, that, when passion is over, he will always do as some white man shall instruct him. But putting aside for the present a subject which is very vast in its bearings, and in which men have and win dispute very loudly, here has been made a provision for a war of races, with the express object of keeping down a people, in order that that people may be debarred from all political power in the empire. It must be remembered, that Govern- ment in the United States is State Government, for the most part. In Georgia, the black men, on these lines of reconstruc- tion, would have the power of making all laws for the restraint of the white. They would be enabled to enact, that a man should be hung for this or that so-called crime — a white man, if you will, for not taking off his hat to a black man. But it has never been intended for a moment reaUy to intrust this power 'to the negroes ; the intention is, that through the negroes all political power, both State power and Federal power, shaU be in the hands of members of Congress from the North — that the North shall have its heel upon the South, and that the conquered shall be subject to the conquerors. Never has there been a more terrible condition imposed upon a fallen people. For an Italian to feel an Austrian over him, for a Pole to feel a Eussian over him, has been bad indeed ; but it has been left for the political animosity of a EepubHcan from the North — a man who himself rejects all contact with the negro — to subject the late Southern slave-owner to dominion from the African who was yesterday his slave. But it will not be so. There will in these Southern States be a war of races ; hatred from the white man to the poor, timid, incapable, unconscious negro ; suffering for both, infinite suffering for poor Sambo, who wiU gradually begin his appointed task of disappearing ; there will be rapid death of negro children, negro want, and aU the following of negro vices ; but the white man who lives near him will gra- dually reassume his power. There wiU. be an influx of Northern UNITUD STATES. 123 men into these States, and they will gradually become as the white men of the South. The scheme after a while will fail, but in the meantime, all the hatred of a conquering and a con- quered people will be maintained. Such, sir, are my ideas of ' reconstruction.' " These views were further developed, evidently by the same hand, in an elaborate article in the St. Paul's Magazine for September, but there is a great deal to be said on the other side. Listen to the following, which I take from a series of letters signed Anglo-Colonus, which were also addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette last summer, by a very distinguished writer, who visited America at the same time as the gentleman whose words I have just been quoting : — " The prevailing party, who have carried these measures, have an answer to this which at least deserves to be weighed. And every one who is uninfected by the worst American prejudices must in his heart wish that this answer may prove a sound one. Since you cannot protect the negro, they say, the only chance of his salvation is to give him political rights. These of them- selves constitute a safeguard of his person and property. If the negro ticket is worth anything in elections, this consideration will generally supersede at once the hatred of race and the re- vengeful spirit of defeat. Whether a negro be or be not a man, in the true sense of the word, which is a subject of dispute in the South, it is at all events very certain that a voter is. When not only the enjoyment of party victory, but the more substan- tial delight of place and power, depend on the influence which may be obtained over him, he will be protected by an influence much stronger than either the sense of justice or the fear of justice. "... Very slowly, but I trust very surely, the antipathy of race is giving way under the humanizing influences of our time. This is most perceptible in the middle portion of the Union where the colours meet on less absolutely unequal terms : not so few and weak as in the North ; not under the dis- 124 UNITED STATES. advantage of recent field-labour as in the further South. The memories of the war, so fresh and exciting to young American minds, operate in favour of this relaxation of prejudice, because it is impossible to disconnect the glory of the Northern arms from the cause in which those arms were substantially engaged." Xo doubt there is a great deal that is harsh in the work of reconstruction, and one can well understand the rage and dis- gust of the Southerners. Wo doubt if President Johnson had been politic, the Eepublican majority self-restrained to an extraordinary degree, and the Southern bravos content to be quiet and make the best of a bad bargain, the South might have succeeded in getting a very much more tolerable regime under which to live. We know that the President was not politic, and that the Eepublican majority was not self-restrained. Did then the Southern bravos keep quiet, and make the best of a bad bargain ? So far from doing this they did everything in their power to make it impossible for reasonable men to say a word in their favour. Wherever order was not preserved by force, there they began the old system of terrorism and brutality which had so long disgraced the Southern States. They set themselves to bring back slavery under an alias. They did everything as if with a set purpose to irritate the conqueror. Is it then won- derful that he in turn was driven to take very strong measures ? The effect of these very strong measures was to give at the outset of the Presidential canvass once more a gleam of hope to the Democratic or pro-Southern party. If it had rallied round Mr. Chase, who was first thought of as a candidate, it would have attracted to it a large number of moderate men at the IsTorth, who, not seeing with their eyes what was going on at the South, did see with their eyes, and bitterly resented, the excesses of the Republican party. Even in the month of August the extremely able American correspondent of the Spectator wrote very doubtfully about General Grant's election ; but the longer the contest lasted, the more determined did the Southerners seem to give the maximum of offence to the North, and to UNITED STATES. 125 identify their cause with the rebellion. Some of the worst names of the bad times before the war, and during the war, came up again, including those of persons whose lives m any country, except the United States, would not have been worth an hour's purchase after they were once ia the hands of the conqueror. It was openly annoimced, that if the Democrats triumphed, the life of no member of the Eepublican party would be safe at the South. To show the excesses of brutality to which the Southern Democrats went, I quote the following passage, reproduced by the Chicago Tribune, from the Inde- pendent Monitor, a paper published at Tuscaloosa, in Alabama. Beneath a picture of two men hanging on a tree, the one repre- senting a Southern Union man, or Seallawag, as he is called, and the other representing a Northerner who has settled in the South, and is known as a carpet-bagger, comes the following extraordinary composition : — " The above cut represents the fate in store for those great pests of Southern society — the carpet-bagger and seallawag — if found in Dixie's land after the break of day on the 4th of March next. " The genus Carpet-bagger is a man with a lank head of dry hair, a lank stomach and long legs, club knees and splay feet, dried legs and lank jaws, with eyes like a fish and mouth like a shark. Add to this a habit of sneaking and dodging about in unknown places — habiting with negroes in dark dens and back streets — a look like a hound and the smell of a polecat. " Words are wanting to do full justice to the genus Sealla- wag. He is a cur with a contracted head, a downward look, slinking and uneasy gait ; sleeping in the woods like old Cross- land, at the bare idea of a Ku-Klux raid. " Our seallawag is the local leper of the community. Unlike the carpetrbagger, he is native, which is so much the worse. Once he was respected in his circle ; his head was level, and he would look his neighbour in the face. Now, possessed of the itch of of&ce and the salt rheum of Radicalism, he is a 126 UNITED STATES. mangy dog, slinking through alleys, hunting the Governor's office, defiling, with tobacco-juice, the steps of the Capitol, stretching his lazy carcase in the sun on the square, or the benches of the Mayor's Court. " He waiteth for the troubling of the political waters to the end that he may step iu and be healed of the itch by the oint- ment of office. For office he ' bums,' as the toper ' bums ' for the satisfying dram. For office, yet in prospectire, he hath bartered respectability ; hath abandoned business and ceased to labour with his hands, but employs his feet kicking out boot- heels against lamp-post and comer curb, while discussiag the question of office. " It requires no seer to foretell the inevitable events that are to result from the coming fall elections throughout the Southern States. " The unprecedented reaction is moving onward with the swiftness of a velocipede, with the violence of a tornado, and with the crash of an avalanche, sweeping negroism from the face of the earth. " Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of Alabama who have recently become squatter sovereigns, carpet-bags in hand, and they fiUed with dirty electioneering documents ! And twenty times woe to those so-called Southerns who have turned their narrow heads, infinitesimal hearts, and filthy hands against the land of their nativity. " Hereafter, when future generations shall contemplate the fate that these white- skinned wretches had in store for us, they will wonder at the extraordinary degree of forbearance manifested by us of the present dark day. " But the happy day of reckoniiig with these white-cuticle scoundrels approaches rapidly. Each and every one who has so unblushingly essayed to lower the Caucasian to a degree even beneath the African race, wiH be regarded as Tiostis sui generis, and be dealt with accordingly, if found hereabout when the time is ripe for action. UNITED STATES. 127 " The carpet-bagger already begins to sniff the coming ni-wind, and is sneaking out of the country d. la Harrington, of Mobile. But we hope some boreal stragglers may be left far from their ' hums/ to swing alongside of their meridional coadjutors in infamy. " We candidly believe that the picture given to our readers, ut swpra, correctly represents the attitude and altitude of all foreign and domestic foes of our land who shall have the folly to remain ' down South ' after the ides of March. The contract for hanging will be given to the negro, who, having mounted the carpet-bagger and scallawag on the mule that he didn't draw at the election, wiU. tie them to a limb, and, leading the said mule from under them, over the forty acres of ground he also didn't get, will leave the vagabonds high in mid-air, a feast for anthropophagous vermin." " P.S. — It will be seen that there is room left on the limb for the suspension of any bad Grant negro who may be found at the propitious moment." Brutal as this document is, it is not at all exceptionally so. Many of the pro-Southern organs were redolent of the same flowers of oratory, but bad as such oratory is, the acts of the Southern Democrats were much worse. The old organizations which had existed before the war were again called into action, and murder, to say nothing of assault and battery, has been through the whole canvass an every-day matter in the States which were Secessia. I spoke of the old organization, for the Ku-Klux-Klan of which you have read is no new organization got up to resist unjust aggression. Before the war, the whole South was, as has been truly said, one vast Ku-Klux-Klan. The difference was, that before the war, the organization was so strong as to be irresistible ; whereas now, although very strong, it is not irresistible. Its operations, and those of its Northern allies, destroyed all chance of carrying a Democratic candidate. September made it all but certain that Grant must succeed, and long before the end of October it was absolutely certain. 128 UNITED STATES. On the 9th of that month, the correspondent of the Spectator, already alluded to, -who is as far as possible from being an ultra Eepublican — infinitely less Eepublican than the able newspaper which he addresses, — in letters which every one who cares about American politics ought to read whether he agrees with them or not — wrote as foUows : — " My previous letter expressed no mere ' arbitrary individual opinion.' Its conclusions were, at the time when it was written, those of the best-informed and most independent men I know. The cause of the change in our political prospects, according to my observation, is not ' the growing and extending influence of Eepublican principles,' but the blind and brainless action of the Democratic party. It must be confessed that since the war both parties have shown a want, not only of statesmanship, but even of skilful political party management. There were only two worse possible nominees, not rebels, for the Democrats than Mr. Seymour — Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Vallandigham. For the Vice-Presidency they found in Mr. Frank Blair the worst, the most offensively bad candidate that they could have picked out of the Union Army. Hence in a great measure their almost certain defeat. I see daily that this is true. Among my acquaintances comparatively few are malignant Democrats ; by far the greater number are Eepublicans, or Democrats who were hearty supporters of the Government during the war. I therefore, of course, hear not a little Eadical talk in favour of the recent action of Congress. But I also hear much of another tone, and from men who held up some of these loud-talking Eadicals when their knees were dissolving in the dark days of the rebellion. Some time ago I was at a little dinner-party of intimate friends where about a dozen were at table. All were Eepublicans, and all had done some earnest work in the war. In the course of the evening the condition of the country was spoken of, when one man said, as nearly as I can remember, ' I confess that I am disappointed and sur- prised at the result of the war. I feel less as if I had a country UNITED STATES. 129 than I did before ; as if the country I loved and was proud of was gone, and instead of it there was a nondescript place with a nondescript Government managed or to be managed by negroes and Chinamen, and Irish and German emigrants.' Somewhat to my surprise, this speech met with a prompt and hearty assent from nearly every man and woman at the table, where the course of Congress and the impeachment of the President were decried without reserve. Now, I know that not one of those people has changed in principle or in feeling, and yet that they all will vote for Grant. Among my acquaintances is an intelligent and high-minded publisher, who has been a Eepublican from the formation of the party, but who has spent money and energy to the extent of his ability against the reconstruction policy of the majority in Congress, and who was ready to support any good Union Democrat for the Presidency. I saw him about a fortnight ago, and asked him what he was going to do. ' Well,' he said, in a desponding tone of acquies- cence, ' we must submit. The decree has gone forth that the Democratic party must die, at which I shall be glad enough ; but it is hard to be obliged to throw constitutional government overboard, and work with these Eadicals to kill it (i.e., the Democratic party). But what decent Union man can vote for Governor Seymour and General Blair?' An eminent lawyer, a prominent Eepublican from the party's earliest days, said to me in the most unequivocal manner, and evidently with fixed purpose, as to the legislation of Congress during the last two years, 'This will all have to be put right again. It cannot stand. These laws or the Government wlH have to go.' He was ready, I know, to support almost any hearty Union Democrat ; but he will not touch Seymour and Blair with a pair of tongs. I often see a gentleman who served with distinction during the rebellion, and who led a brilliant charge in one of the most important victories of the war, a man of rare intelligence, goodness of heart, and purity of life. Not three months ago he said to me, ' I do hope the Democrats will nominate some man I 130 UNITED STATES. that I can vote for. I did not go into the war to humiliate those Southerners, and bring the negroes in tipon us. I fought for the Union and the Constitution, and emancipation was but an incident of the war ; at first a military necessity, and after- ward a legitimate consequence. But I want the Constitution, and I do not want the negro.' Yet that man will vote for Grant, because he 'would as soon vote for the Devil as for Horatio Seymour/ Another friend who only carried a musket during the war has flown out to me at the action of the Eadicals in Congress, but yet will vote for Grant because Seymour ' fired shots at his back when he was on the Chickahominy.' Only the day before yesterday two men met in my office, one a New-Yorker, a War Democrat, the other a Massachusetts man, a EepUbliean, who had fought all through the war at sacri- fice of money, health, and almost of life, but who yet has for the last two years denounced the action of his party without measure. ' Dash it,' I have heard him say, ' I would rather, ten times over, trust the men that fought me than such fellows as Charles Sum- ner and Thad. Stevens ! ' I had not seen him for some months, and was surprised when he turned to the Wew- Yorker, saying, ' You're a Grant man, I hope ?' ' W-e-ll,' answered the civilian Democrat, ' I suppose I am, because I can't vote for Seymour, and won't vote for Blair.' ' Just so,' said the military Eepubli- can, ' that's just my case. It's hard not to be able to smash those Eadicals, but who can vote for that Copperhead sneak ? Grant at least will be honest and earnest.' And so it goes. Not one of these typical men, representing hilndreds of thousands all over the North, has changed in feeling or opinion ; but they find themselves driven to" the support of the Eepublican nominees, although they detest the Eepublican policy. " But the political unwisdom of the Democrats did not find its last or its fullest expression in its nominations. Ever since the canvass was begun they have been doing the work of the Eepublicans with all their might. The action of the Southern people and the speech of the Southern politicians have been UNITED STATES. 131 almost priceless to the Eepublicans. Had it been necessary, the Chicago Convention could not have done better than to raise a million of dollars and send itto the South, to make sure that the Southerners would act and talk just as they have been talking and acting for the last two or three months. Instead of behaving like men sobered by past events, and who meant to attain a legitimate end by peaceful, constitutional means, they have been blustering and raving, cutting, slashing, and shooting in the old bad way ; and this when the object was to bring War Democrats and Moderate Eepublicans at the North to vote for such — with such a record for the past eight years — a man as Horatio Seymour." The October elections -made, as T have said, absolutely certain what those of September had made all but certain, and the telegram which arrived in the beginning of November, telling us that Grant and Colfax were elected, cannot have been a surprise to any one, however devoted to the " lost cause." It has been said that General Grant is by no means friendly to this country, and that he has expressed strong opinions about our conduct during the war. I do not know whether these rumours are founded in truth, but even if they are, there is nothing in them that need make us uncomfortable. If General Grant has spoken strongly about our proceedings, he has only echoed the feeling of a great number of his countrymen ; but time and an altered tone amongst our people is tending to make that feeling less intense. Again, General Grant has hitherto looked at all such matters, not as a politician but as a soldier. When he has to apply his mind to politics in the same way in which he has hitherto applied it to the duties of his profession, he wOl probably judge as wisely about them, as he did so often during his campaigns. We have nothing to fear as long as the White House is occupied by an honest and able man. The danger of collision would be at its maximum if at a moment when some serious cause of estrangement had arisen between the two C9untries, 132 UNITED STATES. a man neither honest nor able, a man of mere shifts and expe- dients, trained in the worst school of American politics, happened to be President. Mr. Seymour, with Blair as his lieutenant, might have been a troublesome neighbour ; General Grant with Mr. Colfax, in spite of the philo-Fenian epistle of the latter, which some of the American papers have been reproducing, need not in any way disquiet us. Had Seymour and Blair succeeded, it is not easy to say how far their election might not have gone to neutralize the effects of the war, and to expose the United States to the risk of internal convulsion. That the South should be ever strong enough to try issue again with the North in the open field, seems quite out of the question; but an executive at "Washington conniving at the proceedings of the disaffected whites in the late Confederate States might well have ere long seen the power which it had fostered grow strong enough to require military repression at many points. Even a wise and firm executive determined to enforce order, will find that it has no easy task. A Berg in every State would hardly be sufficient, even if armed with the power of the Czar's lieutenant at Warsaw, to keep down the tendency to outrage which is ingrained in the breasts of the Southern " chivalry." The towns may, no doubt, be protected. Horrors like the Camilla Massacre may not be perpetrated. Texas may be reclaimed from its present condition of absolute anarchy, but in the remote localities of almost every State, we shall, it is to be feared, hear of many atrocities for a long time to come. Slowly, however, we may trust the turbulence of the South will be crushed out. Will it be the same with the dishonesty of their Northern allies ? Is American honour and credit put out of all danger by the election of General Grant ? I hope so, but I should be sorry to say that I feel no uneasiness whatever. General Grant has been elected on the Chicago platform ; but so has General Butler ; and he has been elected after a very stiff con- test, turning upon this very matter, in the Fifth Massachusetts' UNITED STATES. 133 district, whicli is, if I am rightly informed, a model district. On this question, so deeply interesting to many Englishmen in a pecuniary sense, so deeply interesting to every one in a politi- cal sense, the Nation of the 29th October writes as follows : — • " We believe that in the incoherent mass which will compose the Eepubhcan party after the election of Grant, a number of men, sufficiently large to exercise important influence, will be found ready to pay the debt in greenbacks, if only they can find a leader who calls himself Eepublican. If General Butler goes back to Congress, these men will reason in this way : — The Convention did not declare in favour of ' gold and silver coin ' except in a few cases ; and in Massachusetts, where the strongest kind of resolutions were passed, they care so little in reality about it, that the chief repudiator of them all, the man who gave repudiation all its energy and living force, is sent back here after a most active canvass — after a canvass which had its origin in the determination of the best men in the district, that the 5-20 should be made a plain one, and which was headed by one of the ablest men in the country. It is evident that the real power for the next two years is in Mr. Butler's hands to a most dangerous extent. The next Congress wiE contain more Democrats than the last, and they will vote solidly for repudiation in any form, as they did to tax the bonds in July. " We have discussed the question only as it bears on the 5-20s ; but there are a thousand other ways of bringing about what General Butler has so long advocated, and apparently advocates now. For example, a sudden cry may be raised that we are over-taxed, that the corrupt native and selfish foreign bond-holder are forcing us to tax ourselves for their benefit, and ruining the country. Under this plea we might pass the semi-annual interest once or twice. EaUroads managed by smaller Butlers do such things with their dividends ; why not governments ; and surely no one — however inclined he is to suppose that the 5-20 question is really settled — will say that 134 UNITED STATES. all other schemes of repudiation have been so thoroughly dis- cussed as to preclude the possibility of a swindle. Let us repeat that the Republican party has no settled policy for the years to come after the election of Grant ; that both parties are in a loose disorganized state ; that at such moments un- scrupulous men have double power ; and that if General Butler goes back to Congress, the party which sends him there will find itself split by the question of debt into two factions which wiU never reunite." The Spectator, always admirably informed about America, takes a more hopeful view, saying in its issue of November 7, — " The policy, not only of order but of honesty, has been secured." I am, I confess, quite unable to make any attempt to forecast the future with regard to this matter ; but this much we may certainly say, that General Grant's success over Sey- mour has indefinitely increased the probabilities of honesty- has much increased the probabilities of the EepubHcans using with moderation their majority, a majority which has, by the way, been decreased by the recent elections — and made certain the death of slavery, not only of the name, but of the thing, while it has not a little increased the probabilities of a wise foreign policy on the part of the United States. The foreign relations of that country fall, for the most part, under five heads — her relations to England, to Spain, to Mexico, to Eussia, and to China. Eolations of one kind or another she has, of course, with all States, but the above are those which at present are, or are likely very soon to be, important. Close neighbourhood, and the magnitude of the issues at stake, will probably, for some time to come, make the foreign politics of the United States more interesting to us than to any other people. Even supposing the Alabama claims and other pending questions finally disposed of, as we are given to understand they soon will be, there remains the question of the position of our North American possessions. Now it does not seem to me that there is any evidence that the United UNITED STATES. 135 States have any desire to possess these countries, and for the present there is no anxiety in these countries to change their allegiance. Even in Nova Scotia, where the public mind has been to some extent irritated by the recent confederation, a disposition seems to be setting in to give the new arrangement something like a fair trial. What changes the future may produce it is impossible to say, but I think we may rest assured that we shall not lose our North American provinces until they are anxious to leave us. By their loss we should suffer no material evil, though, of course, if they were taken from us by war, it would be a blow to our prestige. I cannot, however, believe either that there is any danger of this kind, or that if there were it would be possible for us to ward off the danger by force. The conditions of the struggle would be too unequal, and we must fall back on the old legal maxim — no one is bound to perform impossibilities. Our true policy is so to order our connexion with our North American colonies that they may be no drag upon the prosperity of the empire, and then leave them to take their own course. It is quite within the range of probability that they may desire to preserve an honourable, and in no way onerous, connexion with us for a very long period. It is sometimes imagined that the so-called Monroe doctrine will, when the United States are strong enough, induce them to attempt to oust us from the American continent. This is altogether a misconception. The Monroe doctrine, or, as it might be with equal propriety called, the Canning doctrine, is to be found in two passages of a message sent by President Monroe to Congress at the opening of the first session after the negotiations between Mr. Eush, the American Minister, and Mr. Canning, with respect to the recognition of the independent Eepublics, which rose on the overthrow of the Spanish power in the new world — negotiations during which Mr. Canning pressed upon the Washington Government, with the utmost earnestiiess, the course which that Government afterwards took. The first of these passages runs as follows : — 136 UNITED STATES. " We owe it therefore to candour and to the amicable rela- tions existing between the United States and those Powers, to declare, that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and safety. "With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European Power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence, and maintained it, and whose in- dependence we have on great consideration, and on just prin- ciples, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European Power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." The second passage refers to a negotiation with Eussia rela- tive to the boundaries of the two Powers on the north-western shores of the continent. " In the discussion to which this has given rise, the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle, in which the rights of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any Euro- pean power." The Monroe doctrine has, then, you will observe, no bearing upon our position in North America. As little has it any upon that of Spain in the island of Cuba. It was not in obedience to the Monroe doctrine that filibusters from American harbours attacked that island. No one, however, who has read Alex- ander von Humboldt's remarkable essay on Cuba, wiU wonder that they should have attacked it. " It would indeed," as I have said elsewhere, " be a most convenient possession." " Not only is it the most important of the Antilles, half as large again as Hayti, and nearly equal in extent to England, without "Wales, not only are its havens commodious, its soil UNITED STATES. 137 fertile, and its population free from some of the worst faults of the inhabitants of old Spain, but aU these great advantages are thrown into the shade by its unrivalled position. Havanna is, in some sort, at once the Cadiz, the Corinth, and the Con- stantinople of the West. A fleet issuing from its harbour, ' built in part of the cedar and mahogany of Cuba,' may close the double straits of the Mexican Gulf, both where the great oceanic current rushes in between Cape San Antonio and Yucatan, and where it sweeps forth as the Gulf Stream. ' Just so,' in the words of Humboldt, ' did the armadas which sailed from Cadiz hold the dominion of the ocean near the Columns of Hercules.' " If Constantinople has justly seemed to the Czars the key of their house, not less reasonably may the Havanna appear an indispensable adjunct to the dwellers in the Valley of the Mississippi. A European Power more strong than Spain would be able at any moment, if in possession of Cuba, to interrupt the vast commerce which finds its outlet at New Orleans, and to stop the already great and increasing traffic which passes over the several lines of isthmus transit between the Atlantic States and California. In a strategical point of view also the Havanna is of great importance. The British fleet, after the battle of New Orleans, returned thither with the army on board. Had Cuba been one of the States of the Union, this would of course have been impossible, and the expedition would have found no raUying-place nearer than Jamaica." It is obvious, however, that Cuba would at the present crisis of North American history be a less desirable acquisition to the American Union than she would have been when these words were written, twelve years ago, or than she well may be a decade or two hence. The Chicago Tribune a few weeks ago observed with great truth : — " There is an intimation from Wall Street that Mr. Seward is engaged in negotiations for the purchase of Cuba — whether 138 UNITED STATES. from the Eepublican Junta in Spain, the Captain-General, who is ia possession, or from the ftigitive Queen Isabella, is not stated. Probably the latter would sell cheaper than either of the others, but we hope the administration will not make any- such purchase, nor seek to add to the national embarrassments the terrible task of governing a territory separated from her own, and peopled by a race speaking a different language, and who have no conception of republican government, and whose whole political, social, and industrial system are foreign to ours. " There is but one contingency, when the acquisition of Cuba might become important to us, and that is to prevent it passing into the hands of some Power other than Spain. It might not be consistent with national safety to permit Cuba to become a British or a French possession — dangerous to our internal order in time of peace, and an easy base of operations for rebels or foreign foes in time of war. Only as an escape from a greater and unavoidable calamity ought acquisition of Cuba to be con- sidered. . . . " The purchase of Cuba by the United States will, of course, necessitate the emancipation of the slaves, numbering, perhaps, 600,000. This measure would render an American purchase utterly distasteful to the slave- owners and the mercantile population of Cuba, and these are the governing classes in the island. No purchase made without the popular consent would ever be consummated without violence ; and no purchase involving the emancipation of the slaves will ever be agreed to by the white population. We have enough discontented slaveholders on our hands dow without going to Cuba to borrow a fresh supply." The time may well come when Spain will be anxious to sell, and the United States wUl do well in desiring to possess, the Queen of the Antilles. Eeaders of M. Garrido's book on Spain win see that there are Spaniards who take the same view of the Spanish that Mr. Goldwin Smith takes of the English colonial empire. Considering the history of Spain's UNITED STATES. 139 relation to her colonies, it is strange that that school of poKticians should not be more numerous than it is. Mr. Canning, in one of the most memorable speeches delivered in Parliament during the course of this century, said : — " I resolved that if France have Spain, it should not be Spain with the Indies." Jf we now wished any evil to France, which, thank God, we do not, we should wish her just such a millstone about her neck as those same Spanish Indies. A great German writer once said that " the resistance of the United Provinces to Spain had exhausted the treasures of the golden Peru." Those were true words — but in another, an equally true, and a far more terrible sense, the golden Peru exhausted the treasures of Spain. The conqueror took from the conquered silver and gold, the spoils of the palace and of the mine ; but the conquered took from the conqueror the youth, the daring, and the energy which, if it had remained at home, would have broken the power of the King and of the Church, and have prevented Spain falling into that state of lethargy from which she has had in the last fifty years so many rude awakenings. If the Monroe doctrine does not affect in any way the posi- tion of Spain in Cuba, the same cannot be said of the attempt of the French to found an empire in Mexico, which should be supported to a great extent by European influence. If their proceedings did not directly contravene the Monroe doctrine, it is quite easy to understand that the Americans should have thought they did. Had that attempt been persevered in, it must have led sooner or later to a collision between the Great Eepublic and one of the most powerful of European monarchies. Many now suppose that the United States expect soon to find Mexico in their grasp. More especially was this talked of when, in the month of August, news came to this country of the mission of General Eosecranz. It was somewhat hastily assumed that Mr. Seward meant to close his administration amid a blaze of glory, by 140 UNITED STATES. negotiating the annexation of Mexico. This is probably pre- mature ; but it is difficult to resist the conviction that sooner or later a large part of that country, if not the whole of it, wiU become connected with the Union. Until, however, internal difficulties are settled, no true friend to the Union would wish anything of the kind to happen. The relations of the United States and Eussia are, for the most part, a matter of sentiment — and of somewhat foolish, half-informed sentiment. The immediate cause of this senti- ment was partly the near coincidence in point of time of the Eussian emancipation of the serfs, and the commencement of the war against slavery, and partly the judicious policy of Eussia, which has long been winning golden opinions in the United States by all kiuds of courtesy to a power which could not be its rival, and might one day be its ally. It is true also that there are certain superficial resemblances between the two countries which are quite sufficient to make them look at each other with some friendliness. Above all, they are both, in a certain sense, young. The one indeed has, as Herzen says,^ " been a thousand years on the earth, and two centuries imitat- ing other nations," while the Americans have only the two imi- tative centuries behind them. StiU, in the vast unoccupied spaces, in the great forests, huge rivers, but still more in that disposition of the popular mind which leads it to look towards the future rather than towards the past, there is, so to speak, a kind of parallelism. It is, however, nothing more than a paral- lelism ; and one can well understand the irritation with which a writer in a recent number of the Nation sat down to combat, with even too much zeal, the craze of his countrymen about the empire of the Czar. " Nobody," says this writer, " who thinks 1 Herzen quotes and applies to Russia the words of Goethe about America — " Dich stijrt nioht im Innern Zu lebendiger Zeit TTnniitzea Erinnern Vergeblioher Streit." UNITED STATES. li\ about foreign politics, or has paid any attention to Eussian his- tory, believes that the Eussian Government feels any respect for the principles on which this Government rests, or that its friend- ship for Americans has any better basis than the feeling that we are the one great power of the world which is not likely to interfere with the execution of Eussian schemes of aggrandize- ment, or that there is anything in common between the two countries but size. . . . "... The truth is that our Eusso-mania is based on little or nothiag, and can have no endurance. When we know that coimtry, we shaU. — ^not revise our opinions in regard to it, for we cannot be said to have any, but we shall come to conclusions that will speedily dissipate European fears of a dangerous alli- ance between the most progressive of the Western nations and an odious and brutal despotism like the Eussian." Last, we come to the relations of America with China. Some may smile to see so prominent a place given to these, but I think, looking to the future and not to the present, that they are wrong. Already there are said to be in California some 62,000 immigrants from the Flowery Land, and there is reason to suppose that ere long many of their countrymen will flock into Mexico and Arizona. A provision in favour of the Chinese forms part of the treaty lately concluded by Mr. Burlingame, and even before the conclusion of that treaty, the Celestials had shown a most remarkable power of self-help. Six clubs or companies, one for each of the principal districts from which they came, had been established at San Francisco. The emissaries of these clubs received the immigrants on land- ing, and draughted into their ranks, watchiag over them, pro- viding them with doctors, lawyers, and all other assistance in the country of their adoption. In August 1869 it is hoped that the first of the great rail- way lines which are to unite the Atlantic with the Pacific will be completed, and that a steady stream of trade will begin to pour from San Francisco to New York, — carrying to that city. 142 UNITED STATES. on its way to Europe, far the greater portion of tHe trade of China and Japan. Certain it is that an enormous passenger traffic will spring up, and that Western America and Eastern Asia will become connected by a thousand new ties. The history of Ward and Burgevine may well give us a hint as to the possibilities of American interference in the in- ternal politics of China. Anyhow it will be very odd if very new and interesting combinations do not arise from a close intercourse between a very stirring go-ahead civilisation, and one which, under its stereotyped exterior, contains such re- markable possibilities of change as does that of China. These, however, are mere speculations, and speculations which do not refer to the nearest future. Our own relations to the United States are matters of close and burning interest. I have spoken of the relations between our Governments ; but the link between the American and the British people should be closer than any that can exist between prudent Governments. It should be a link, not of sentimental and spasmodic attachment, but of a clear tmderstanding of each other's tendencies and objects. The world is wide enough for us both, and each can be of infinite service to the other, while out of our hostility can come nothing except calamities to us both and to mankind. If a people so like ourselves were settled very near us, it well might be that our interests might clash ; but the Atlantic is a very broad ditch, and no reasonable object of American ambition can, so far as I see, clash with any reasonable Object of British ambition. Year by year more travellers, from this side, visit the United States, and many prejudices which used to be entertained by us are passing away. On one or two of those which still linger, I will say a few words. There is, for instance, a widely spread notion that the great cities, and, above all, New York, the worst governed of trans- Atlantic great cities, really represents the feeling of the mass of the people. This is very far from being the case. The UNITED STATES. 143 power whicli really governs America is the power of the country districts, — the power of farmers living on their own land, a class which, in so far as it corresponds to anything in the Old World, corresponds to the English freeholders of the seven- teenth century, and has about as little to do with cities and their characteristic faults as can possibly be imagined. This class differs from that of the old English freeholders in being much better educated — thanks to the system of common schools; and this comparatively high education extends far beyond the limits of New England and the old settled 'districts into the far West. I remember being told, by Mr. Goldwin Smith, that nothing in the United States had strack him more, than the very con- siderable knowledge of current English literature which he found among rough men in very remote districts. The mob of the great cities, and especially of New York, is hostile to us for many reasons. First, it is largely recruited from German immigrants of a revolutionary type, who, having been oppressed in their own country, look upon all the poli- tical systems of Europe with disgust. Secondly, it is greatly influenced by the Democrats, who have always been opposed to us ; and, thirdly, it contains an enormous number of Irish- men. The iufluence of the Irish in America is not a matter to which we can look without much concern ; for it is not only in the great cities that they are our enemies. It is impossible to read Mr. Maguire's book, and especially the last chapter of it, without seeing that we have many ill-wishers, who can by no means be counted with the mob. After making every allowance for the very fervid tone of that gentleman's style, the following passage can hardly be read without uneasiness : — " The something that is sure to turn up is, of course, a war with England — an event which would be hailed with a shout of delight by the Irish in America. Imagination could . not conceive the rapture, the frenzy, with which, from every 144 UNITED STATES. side, the Irish would rush to that war. From the remotest State, from the shores of the Pacific, from the southernmost limits of Florida, from the heart of the country, from the far West, from the clearing of the forest, from the home on the prairie — from the mine, the factory, the workshops — from the river and from the sea — they would flock to the upraised ban- ners, equally loved and equally sacred — the green flag of Erin, and the Stars and Stripes of the Great Eepublic. As it were with a bound, and a shriek of exultation, the Irish would wish to meet their enemy — to fight out on land and ocean the feud that has survived through centuries — to revenge, if so they could, the wrongs inflicted by monarchs and soldiers and statesmen, by confiscations, by penal laws, and by evil policy. Nay, I solemnly believe they would not desire a greater boon of America, than that the fighting should be left entirely to themselves; and never did martyrs more joyfully approach the stake in which they beheld the gate of Paradise, than would these Irish exiles and their descendants march to battle in a cause that gratified the twin passions of their souls — ^love and hate. And were the American Government so forgetful of international obligation as to close their eyes to what naight be going on, and allow a fortnight, or a month, to pass without any active interference, and were their unwillingness to act a matter thoroughly understood, — in such a case, the frontiers of Canada would be passed with a rush — and then ! — why, God only knows what then. A rupture with England — to cease when? Is it after a long and terrible or sharp and wicked contest, which would end with the realization of the American idea of the natural boundaries of the United States at the other side of the St. Lawrence, and the Lakes, and from Labra- dor to the Pacific ? The future is in the hands of Providence."^ AH this hatred is of course highly unpleasant, but the Irish in America can only work us mischief in case of our relations ^ The Irish in America. By J. F. Maguire, M.P. London : Longman, Green, and Co., 1868. UNITED STATES. 145 ■with, the Washington Government becoming critical, and critical they should never be allowed to become — never will become, I trust; for the probability of their becoming so will grow less and less as our people get better able to understand their great descendants. Nor must it be forgotten that American politicians, while using the Irish, see through them, and have not that intense admiration for them and their ways which sits so gracefully on the honourable member for Cork. The vast majority of the Irish went in the late election with the Democratic candidates; but here is an extract from a speech made by General Blair at St. Louis in 1866, which shows in what estimation he at least held his enthusiastic Celtic friends : — " Gentlemen, — I am with you heart and soul, and heartUy say, ' God bless the Finnegans.' [A voice — ' Fenians, General.'] I know what I am talking about, and I say Finnegans. [Laughter and confusion.] And I say that I hope to see the cause flourish and prosper, and shall bless the day when Ireland is governed by Irishmen. In accomplishing this laudable undertaking, I will do aU I can to assist you. I will place myself, if needs be, at your head, march with you to Staten Island, oversee your embarkation, will stand on the most elevated bluff of the coast, and, as you raise the green emblem over the stars and stripes, while your steamers, under full headway, are turning their prows to the east, I will say, Oood-hye, God bless you, and may you be successful in your undertaking. May you lift the British lion out of his boots, and wrest from his grasp the emerald gem of the sea ; but whether or not you shall succeed in this endeavour, may you each and all remain in Ireland or elsewhere, and never again set foot upon these shores ! You are wanted there, and we can get along without you !" Speaking seriously, however, the Irish danger in the further West, although serious enough, may be easily exaggerated, pro- vided, that is to say, the Liberal party are now at length able to shape the Irish policy of the British Government according to K 146 UNITED STATES. their tenets. If that is not to he^if the Tory minority in the Parliament ahout to be elected is sufficiently large to fight inch hy inch, and to prevent us as long as possible from doing jus- tice — if year by year more disaffected emigrants sail for America — and if despair of obtaining any relief through Parliamentary action increases in Ireland — we shall no doubt have trouble and bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic ; but the true and really dangerous enemy is not the Irishman in America, but the Tory at home. Another misconception about the United States, which does no little mischief, is the idea that politics in that covmtry are left to a worthless class, and that the best Americans wUl not touch them with one of their fingers. A letter in a recent issue of the JDcdly News, unsigned, but which I know to be written by a person whose opinion on such a subject is of great weight, puts the true state of the case in a very clear light : — " As regards the abstinence of American citizens, distin- guished by refinement of manners, superior education, and exalted social position, ' from participation in politics,' I have only to repeat here that many years of close observation satisfy me that the notions prevalent in England on this subject are the result of a most unfortunate, most mischievous, and now long- continued attempt to judge American society and govern- ment by English standards. The reason why the House of Eepresentatives is largely composed of badly-dressed men of slender education is that a very large proportion of the Ameri- can people are badly dressed and slenderly educated. To expect the great West, for instance, to send to Congress the class of men, in manners, appearance, and social culture, which an average English county or borough sends to Parliament, is simply ridiculous, and nobody expects it who knows what he is talking about. The West sends as good men as it has. It puts in the Legislature, both State and Federal, and in the governorship, its best lawyers and best farmers. It cannot UNITED STATES. 147 send its scholars, even if they were worth anything as politi- cians, because it wants them for its schools, and colleges, and pulpits. If the English traveller who sees the Legislature does not find that the members come up to his standard, the reason is that the communities which choose them are not as wealthy, as cultivated, as dense, as Middlesex or Yorkshire ; and if he finds fault with them for not being so, he shows himself to be a person on whom argument would be wasted. Mr. Eoebuck's account is true of this city.^ But this is really not an American city, and therefore this admission does not improve his position. I have no hesitation in asserting, that a larger proportion of the men of culture and refLae- ment which the country contains are to be found in public life, or in some way occupied with the promotion of public interests in America than in England, and I will add, as the result not of practical political experience, but of close observa- tion of political life, that I have never known a case in which a man of culture and refinement, who had the necessary quali- fications as a public speaker, and had the requisite knowledge of public affairs, of the popular taste and temper, was kept out of politics by his social position. Moreover, it is grossly untrue that such men will not touch politics. There are, as I have said, a large proportion of them in public hfe. There are plenty who lay claim to this character amusing themselves in Europe, but are there no Englishmen of culture who eschew politics, and prefer yachting, or foreign travel, or blank idle- ness, to legislating ? Moreover, I have never heard a cultivated American complain of his exclusion from political life who possessed any fitness for it." Many things which offend us, and justly offend us, in the United States, are in no way peculiar to that country, but belong equally to all new coimtries, where man is too busy fighting with nature, as it were, for the necessaries and commoner comforts of life, to be able to acquire those graces which are the natural 1 New York. 148 UNITED STATES. fruit of wealth, leisure, and hereditary civilisation. The most patriotic Americans wiU tell you that with reference to their country they walk to a great extent by faith and not by sight. It is not so much the thing, as the hope to which they are attached. Yet even now the extremely wide difference "of a reasonable amount of material comfort, and solid, if rude pros- perity, so different from anything that we know in the Old World, exercises a great fascination over benevolent minds. Out of the present embryonic state of North American society what may not come ? Never has the spirit of Christianity, as distin- guished from mere dogma, had so good a chance. Never has any society been exposed, in an equal degree, to the twin good influences of material abundance and education. Never has any society possessed a larger number of quick and inventive brains. Nor must we forget that the Old World is every day sending her for use, under happier circumstances than ours, the last results of our knowledge and experience. Can we wonder that men who have inherited a country so richly dowered, and which is held back by so few of the causes which clog progress in Euro- pean States, should not dream, but earnestly believe, that out of all the preparation that is now going on, will rise a race of men collectively superior to any which the world has seen ? Can we wonder at the proud words of the poet when, speaking of Presi- dent Lincoln, he says, — " Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, Whom late the Nation he had led, With ashes on her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief : Forgive me, if from present things I turn, To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honoured urn. Nature, they say, doth dote. And cannot make a man, Save on some worn-out plan, Eepeating as by rote : UNITED STATES. 149 For him her Old- World mould aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast, Of the unexhausted West, With stuif untainted shaped a hero new. Wise, steadfast in the strength of G-od, and true. How beautiful to see Once more, a shepherd of mankind, indeed. Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth. And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! They knew that outward grace is dust ; They could not choose but trust In that- sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill. And supple-tempered will. That bent Kke perfect steel to spring again and thrust. Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer, Could Nature's equal scheme deface ; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. He was no lonely mountain peak of mind Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars A seamark now, now lost in vapours blind ; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. Fruitful and friendly for his humankind. Yet also known to Heaven and friend, with all its stars. I praise him not j it were too late — And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, — Safe in himself as in a fate. So always firmly he : He knew to bide his time. And can his fame abide. StiU patient in his simple faith sublime, TiU the wise years decide. 150 UNITED STATES. Great captains with their guns and drums, Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes : These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soU, the first American." ^ I have still, however, several countries to speak of to- night, and must break off attempting them. Let me, however, before passing on, strongly advise you to read Mr. Goldwin Smith's admirable little book on the Civil War in America. It contains in its pregnant sentences more reliable information than many large volumes. Much in the United States has changed, of course, in the last few years ; and some books which were greatly to be recommended before the war would not now be of the same use to you. There is indeed a want, so far as I am aware, of any very good quite recent English book of travels in the United States. The two best recent books which I have happened to see upon the subject, and both of which are highly praised by good authorities, are by Frenchmen : the one by M. Laugel ; the other by a son of the well-known politician of the July Monarchy, Duvergier de Hauranne. Almost all our principal papers have now American correspondents. Of those which I am in the habit of seeing, the letters in the Daily News and in the Spectator seem to me the most informing. Politically, I find myself oftenest taking the same view as the former, in cases about which I can ven- ture to judge ; but the infrequency during the last few months of the letters of "a Yankee" seems to me very much to be regretted, and I cannot but think that much of the corre- spondence would bear repuTilication in a permanent form. The Nation newspaper begins to find its way into English clubs and reading-rooms. I should like to see it received at 1 Harvard Memorial Biographies. Commemoration Ode by James Russell Lowell. Lever and Francis, Cambridge, 1867. UNITED STATES. 151 the offices of all our best provincial newspapers. It would pour into our press a constant stream of the best thought upon American literature and politics ; and the new views of European politics which it often takes are always worth examining, even when they do not commend themselves to our acceptance. MEXICO. — From the busy centres of political and com- mercial life in the Northern States of the Union, we may make our way gradually southward, taking as our guides the two admirable books of Mr. Olmsted,-' which, however, both describe the state of things before the great war. Would that some traveller, who could observe as keenly and describe as clearly, would now repeat the same journey ! Such travellers, alas, are few, however, in all times and countries ! If we accompany Mr. Olmsted, we shall pass slowly down the scale of civilisation, and become by degrees prepared for the anarchy and semi-barbarism of Mexico. But, after all, perhaps it wUl be more interesting to make the transition suddenly ; and we can do this with great ease, thanks to a lady whose family is not unconnected with the district in which I am speaking, and whose book, although more than a quarter of a century old, is still in some respects the best that has been written in our language on Mexico.^ Thus writes Madame Calderon de la Barca, who accom- panied her husband direct from the United States to Mexico, where he was sent to represent her Catholic Majesty in that whilom dependency of the Spanish Crown : — " If any one wishes to try the effect of strong contrast, let ' Our Slave States. By Frederick Law Olmsted. 1856. A Journey through Texas. By Frederick Law Olmsted. 1857. London: Sampson Low. ^ For the recent history of Mexico and aU Catholic America, see the Annuaire des Deux Mondes. The fullest geographical and statistical details, with the bibliography of the subject brought down to the date of publica- tion, will be found in the elaborate work of Professor J. G. Wappaus of GSttingeu on these countries, which fills many successive numbers of Stein's Handbuch der Oeographie und Statistik. Leipzig, 1861-66. 152 MEXICO. him come direct from the United States to this country ; but it is in the villages especially that the contrast is most striking. Travelling in New England, for example, we arrive at a small and flourishing village. We see four new churches, proclaim- ing four different sects, — ^religion suited to all customers. These wooden churches or meeting-houses are all new, all painted white, or perhaps a bright red. Hard by is a tavern, with a green paling, as clean and as new as the churches, and there are also various smart stores and neat dwelling-houses ; — all new, all wooden, all clean, and all ornamented with slight Grecian pillars. The whole has a cheerful, trim, and flourish- ing aspect. Houses, churches, stores, and taverns are all of a piece. They are suited to the present emergency, whatever that may be, though they will never make fine ruins. Every- thing proclaims prosperity, equality, consistency — the past forgotten, the present all in all, the future taking care of itself. No delicate attentions to posterity, who can never pay its debts. No beggars. If a man has even a hole in his coat he must be lately from the Emerald Isle. " Transport yourself in imagination from this New England village to that of , it matters not which, not far from Mexico. ' Look on this picture, and on that' The Indian huts, with their half-naked inmates, and little gardens full of flowers — ^the huts themselves either built of clay, or the half- ruined heaux restes of some stone building. At a little distance a hacienda, like a deserted palace, built of solid masonry, with its inner patio surrounded by thick stone pillars, with great walls and iron-barred windows that might stand a siege. Here a ruined arch and cross, so solidly built, that one cannot but wonder how the stones ever crumbled away. There, rising in the midst of old faithful-looking trees, the church, grey and ancient, but strong, as if designed for eternity ; with its saints and virgins, and martyrs and relics, its gold and silver and precious stones, whose value would buy up all the spare lots in the New England village ; the Mpero, with scarce a rag to MEXICO. 153 cover him, kneeling on that marble pavement. Leaving the enclosure of the church, ohserve the stone-wall that bounds the road for more than a mile ; the fruit-trees overtopping it, high though it be, with their loaded branches. This is the convent orchard ; and that great Gothic pile of building, that stands in hoary majesty, surmounted by the lofty mountains, whose cloud-enveloped summits, tinged by the evening sun, rise behind it : what could so noble a building be but the monastery, perhaps of the Carmelites, because of its exceeding rich garden, and well chosen site ; for they, of all monks, are richest in this world's goods. Also we may see the reverend old prior riding slowly from under the arched gate up the village lanes, the Indians coming from their huts to do him lowly reverence as he passes. Here everything reminds us of the past; of the conquering Spaniards, who seemed to build for eternity — ^impressing each work with their own solid, grave, and rehgious character; of the triumphs of Catholicism; and of the Indians when Cortes first startled them from their repose, and stood before them like the fulfilment of a half- forgotten prophecy. It is the present that seems like a dream, — a pale reflection of the past. All is decaying and growing fainter, and men seem trusting to some unknown future which they may never see. One government has been abandoned, and there is none iu its place. One revolution follows another, yet the remedy is not found. Let them beware lest, half a century later, they be awakened from their delusion, and find the cathedral turned into a meeting-house, and all painted white; the railing melted down; the silver transformed into dollars ; the Virgin's jewels sold to the highest bidder ; the floor washed (which would do it no harm) ; and round the whole a nice new wooden pahng, freshly done in green — and all this performed by some of the artists from the wide-awake republic further north. " Just as I wrote these words, a shower of crackers startled me from the profane ideas in which I was indulging ; and the 154 MEXICO. prancing of the horses of Jews and Pharisees, and the crackling of bonfires, warn me that it is time to take an evening stroll — that the sun is down, and the air refreshing. However, as to crackers and rockets, the common people enjoy them by day as much as by night. It is their favourite method of com- memorating any event, secular or religious. ' What do you sup- pose the Mexicans will be doing now V said King Ferdinand to a Mexican who was at the Spanish Court, shortly after the final success of the revolutionists. ' Letting off rockets, your Majesty,' answered the Mexican. ' Well, I wonder what they are doing now in Mexico !' said the Bong in the afternoon. ' Tirando coheies — letting off rockets, your Majesty.' His Majesty chose to repeat the question in the evening, 'What wOl your countryiaen be doing now?' ' The same thing, your Majesty. Still letting off rockets.' " * Mexico was under Spanish rule a much more extensive country than it is now, the United States having devoured a very large portion of it ; even now, however, it is much more than thrice the size of France. It is divided by nature into three regions : the Tierra Caliente, or hot region, on the coast — rich in all the productions of the tropics ; the Tierra Templada, on the upper slopes of the great plateau, above 4000 feet — divinely beautiful, rejoicing in all the treasures of the warmer temperate zone ; and the Tierra Fria, or cold country, being the elevated plateau itself. An erroneous opinion is generally current in Europe that Mexico is throughout beautiful, but this is quite a mistake. A recent traveller expresses himself as follows : — " The traveller whose main object is fine scenery shoidd go no further than Orizaba. Were he, instead of climbing the Cumbres, which lead to the bare, unsightly table-land, to turn to the right, and keep in the green zone along the slope of the hiUs tUl he reached Jalapa, and return thence vid Tampico or 1 Life in Mexico dviring a Residence of Two Years in that Country, by Madame C de la B . London : Chapman and Hall, 1843. MEXICO. 155 Vera Cruz to Europe, he would declare, when he got home, that Mexico was the most enchanting country in the world. The beautiful approach to the Mexican table-land, through the Ti&rra Caliente and the Tierra Templada is as deceptive as the magnificent facades to their poor cathedrals, or the handsome stone gateways, leading absolutely to nothing, on which you often stumble in different parts of the country."^ And again, speaking of the approach to the capital, he " Admitting, as I do willingly, that it would be well-nigh impossible for one at all acquainted with the real history of Mexico, and especially 'with Prescott's highly coloured picture of the conquest of the country by the Spaniards, its most bril- liant if not its most authentic page, to look upon the valley for the first time without some kind of emotion, I cannot but attri- bute this far more to its historical associations than to its intrinsic beauty. Of the city of Mexico itself, you get not a glimpse, for it is completely concealed by a range of bare hills, which crop up in the centre of the valley. Of the much- vaunted lakes you see almost nothing, and the mountains which surround the valley are of that yellowish-brown complexion which characterizes the whole Mexican table-land, and are for the most part quite bare of trees. As for the valley itself, a large portion of it is neither land nor water, but an unsightly expanse of marsh and bog. Of the dry land barely one-third is under cultivation, the remaining two-thirds consisting chiefly of square grass fields, hedged round by impenetrable fences of maguey. " Where, then, are the elements of beauty here ? With the most earnest desire to find them — for I had no other purpose in going out to Mexico than, by looking on the things them- seves, to slake at the fountain-head the thirst occasioned by Prescott's gorgeous images — I can only say that I sought for them in vain, yet till the end of the world, I suppose, people 1 Across Memko in 1864-65. By W. H, Bullock. London and Cambridge : Macmillan and Co., 1866. 156 MEXICO. will go on talking of the beautiful valley of Anahuac, the Indian name of Mexico. However,, it must be borne in mind that the traveller approaching from the east has his back turned upon the snow-capped volcanoes Popocatapetl and Iztaccihuatl, which lend whatever of grandeur it possesses to the Valley of Mexico. Constantly at morning and evening to behold these two mountains lighted up by the rays of the rising and setting sun is the most beautiful sight in the world. Take them away, and in spite of the deep blue sky, it would not be easy to match the rest of the picture in ugliness." Few travellers, I fear, have gone to Mexico like the writer of the passage which I have cited, to verify Prescott or to revel in beautiful scenery. Many more have been attracted by the treasures which are stored beneath her soil. The mineral resources of Mexico are, indeed, almost bound- less, as any one may see by turning to Mr. Middleton's elaborate report, presented to Parliament in 1867. Unluckily, combus- tibles are sadly wanting, and she might with gi'eat advantage exchange many of her veins of silver for coal below, or woods above, the surface of her territory. The population of Mexico is not accurately known, but most writers estimate it at about 8,000,000. By far the most numerous portion of it consists of the old Indian inhabitants of the land, who cultivate the ground, and are for the most part extremely poor. They intermarry, however, freely with the white race, and such marriages are in no way disapproved by the descendants of the conquerors. There are many very large fortunes still in the country, and enormous landed estates are quite common. Education is, of course, at the very lowest ebb ; thanks partly to the secular political jealousy of Spain, partly to the agitations of the last fifty years, and partly to the inordinate power of the Church, which was till recently far the greatest proprietor in Mexico. The character of the people is rather weak than bad — limp, as one traveller frequently calls it ; but the long anarchy has fiUed the land with desperadoes, MEXICO. 157 who make residence outside the towns and travelling along the roads alike works of danger and difficulty, Mr. Prescott's book, which has obtained so great and so just a popularity in this country, has no doubt familiarized many of you with one epoch in Mexican history, but, from the time of the conquest to the early part of this century, the annals of Mexico have little interest for us. There, as else- where, Spain mismanaged her administration in the most melancholy way. The example of the American, and the doc- trines of the French Eevolution, bore fruit in this country in a rising which took place while the Peninsular war was in its earlier phases. Checked in 1811, it broke forth again, and raged at intervals till 1821, or perhaps we shoiild say, rather tOI 1824, when, after the fall of Iturbide, the Federal republican form of government was fully established. From that date to 1864, there were, according to M. Chevalier, forty-six changes in the office of President. That fact alone speaks volumes, and I need hardly add that the state of Mexico, for now more than half a century, has been one incessant revolutionary crisis. I will not detaiQ you by speaking of any of the numerous occupants of the Presidential chair, who preceded Juarez, who now sits in it. This man, whose name has become associated with one of the most terrible tragedies of modern history, is by race an Indian, and by profession a lawyer. He has always enjoyed a very high reputation for probity, and has never, so far as I am aware, been accused of being cruel or bloodthirsty. The commencement of the series of events which culmiuated last year iu the execution of the Emperor Maximilian, lies almost a generation back. In Madame Calderon de la Barca's book, already alluded to, I find the foUowiug extract from her journal : — " October 25, 1840. — The whole world is talking of a pam- phlet written by Senor Gutierrez Estrada, which has just appeared, and seems likely to cause a greater sensation in 158 MEXICO. Mexico than the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in England. Its sum and substance is the proposal of a constitutional monarchy in Mexico, with a foreign prince (not named) at its head, as the only remedy for the evils by which it is afflicted. The pamphlet is written merely in a speculative form, incul- cating no sanguinary measures or sudden revolution ; but the consequences are likely to be most disastrous to the fearless and public-spirited author." M. Gutierrez Estrada went to Europe and laid his views, in the course of the Forties, before the Courts of Austria, Bavaria, and Paris, but the great cataclysm of 1848 diverted attention from them just when they seemed about to be going to make some way, and the project of giving a ruler to Mexico slumbered for many a long year upon the European continent. At length it was taken up by the Emperor of the French, who, fancying that the United States were going to be broken up, thought that he saw an opportunity to put France at the head of a movement for regenerating the Latin race, and raising up a power in the New World which might cope successfully with the irrepressible Anglo-Saxon. We shall see presently that he had a peculiar interest in the Isthmus region of America, from an incident in his own early career ; and I am afraid that per- sons high in the Imperial favour had interests to serve in Mexico, which had neither a romantic nor a political character. The ruler who seemed to him and to others who were active in the intrigue, best suited for the place, was the second brother of the Emperor of Austria, a brilliant and highly- gifted Prince, possessing a very large share of all the accom- plishments and all the virtues. He was married to a daughter of Leopold, who united the Orleans with the Coburg blood, and was a person of quite extraordinary merit. An English visitor to Mexico — one of the keenest and least likely to be dazzled by enthusiasm of contemporary mankind — thus de- scribes them as they appeared to him when sojourning in their capital : — MEXICO. 159 " With all his soul, and with all his might, he sets himself to do his best. Of charming manners, thoroughly frank, cor- dial, and gentlemanly, highly educated, widely travelled, so industrious that he begins his work every morning at four, and scarcely allows himself a moment's leisure, and never a moment's recreation, he presents the ideal of an Emperor trying to do his duty, and fitted no less by nature than by birth fcr imperial station. He is a thoroughly good man, and his goodness tells. The Mexicans cannot help liking and admiring him, and even those who detest the Empire have a kindly feeling for the Emperor. But it would be idle ilattery not to add that he has his faults. He is too impetuous, and too much under the influence of those of his advisers who sub- stitute an intense attention to details, and an adhesion to the bureaucratic traditions of Continental Europe, for wide views of policy, and an accommodation of the system- of government to .the real circumstances under which the Empire is placed. He is also in one sense too good for Mexico. He does not make allowance enough for people of a different stamp and grade of civilisation, and is too keenly alive to the failings of Indianized Spaniards. Unfortunately, both for him and for themselves, those of his subjects whom he offends bear his displeasure far too passively. They are mortified, but they do not venture to show their mortification. If, when a minister found his opinions rejected, his work thrown aside, and his official capacity treated as something too babyish to deserve even the semblance of consideration, he were to insist on resigning, he would do some- thing to raise himself and his nation in the eyes of the Em- peror. When he first went over, the Emperor was honestly prepared to be altogether a Mexican, and to govern through his subjects, and almost every measure which has been taken to conciUate the Mexicans and to soothe their pride has been due to the personal inspiration of the Emperor himself But he has not been able to stand the trial of finding that Mexicans are Mexicans, and the disappointment caused by discovering 160 MEXICO. how deficient they are in the qualities which mark a good governing and dominant race has made him, perhaps, a little unjust to the many amiable and praiseworthy traits of their character. The Empress, too, has evidently had her share in the disappointment which her husband has felt. No one can help admiring her. In any country, even if she were not an Empress, she would scarcely find a rival for grace, dignity, refinement, and nobleness of look and bearing. She has con- ferred on Mexican society an inestimable advantage, for it has now at its head a lady whom all ladies can, without jealousy or misgiving, acknowledge to be indisputably and absolutely their superior. But she has had, it is said, or fancies she has had, great cause of complaint against some of those whom she has admitted to her society, and she has not hesitated to show her displeasure. Too high-minded to stoop to local favourites, and too honourable to set foreign friends over the Mexican ladies of her Court, she has retired into an isolation that is almost complete ; and as she is far too able a woman not to possess and exercise a great political influence, it is possible that some of the steps by which, in spite of his ardent desire for their welfare, the Emperor has in some measure separated himself from his subjects, might be traced to the counsel or suggestions of the Empress."' You remember the early days of their expedition, the high hopes of many, the whispered warnings of a few, amongst whom in this country Mr. Kinglake was the most conspicuous. Gradually the news grew better and better, till it was at its best. Then the tide began to turn. Complication followed complication, and disaster, disaster, till the dark and terrible end in the month of June 1867.^ In the autumn of last year, Juarez, whose fortunes during the success of the Empire had sunk to the lowest ebb, but who 1 " Mexico '' — reprinted from the Saturday Review. 2 The best account which I have seen of the whole of this tragedy is con- tained in a Lecture delivered at Bridgnorth by Sir John Acton. MEXICO. ^ 161 had clung tenaciously to his legal position as the constitutional President of the Mexican Federal Eepuhlic, and had lived to see the wheel come full circle, was once more elected President, the term for which he was previously elected having come to an end. He broke off all diplomatic relations with those coun- tries which had recognised the Mexican Empire, and therefore, of course, with our own. We have now, then, no mission in Mexico, but Lord Stanley, who, by a memorable answer made last year to an excited questioner, on his own side of the House, had shown that the pity and horror caused by the execution of Maximilian had not blinded him to the strong legal position of Juarez, showed by an answer to Mr. Kinglake given at the very end of the Session, that no obstacle would be thrown by us in the way of a return to a normal state of things. During the past year Juarez seems to have had his hands full enough, revolts breaking out in different parts, of the country, and the usual insecurity of life and property prevailing. What will be the end of it all, or whether there can be any end, except the absorption of Mexico into the North American Union, it is very hard to say ; but Europe, we may be very sure, will not again interfere to give a new chance to this most miserable of countries. An English company is engaged in forming a railroad from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico, which has got as far at least as Puebla, if not further, and when finished will be some help towards the creation of a strong Government ; but that is but one good influence amongst a thousand evU ones. A very interesting letter, dated September 28, appeared in the Times, signed by a British resident in Mexico, who declared that he had resided there for the last four years, and had been a witness of all the events which have occurred. This gentle- man, who unfortunately did not give his name, speaks in the highest terms of the conduct of the Juarists after they captured the city in June 1867. He says that the notables who had taken a leading part in supporting the empire were only im- L 162 MEXICO. prisoned for a few montlis and fined ; that complete liberty of conscience and of the press had been maintained, and the constitution of 1867 rigorously adhered to. He further tes- tifies that since Juarez triumphed there have been no forced loans, no exactions ; that the insurrections of which we hear through the New York press are mere local risings against unpopular governors, and that the feeling dominant in Mexico since she recovered her freedom is an exaggerated sense of national dignity, highly unfavourable to any projects of annexa- tion, which some people imagine to be slumbering in the minds of American statesmen. Further, he assures us that since the suspension of diplomatic relations, the interests of British sub- jects resident in Mexico have received the fullest protection from the native authorities, and that the Finance minister acknowledges, in principle, the claim of the bondholders, al- though he rejects the arrangements entered into by Maximilian's Government. Till the recent interruption of diplomatic relations, which will, it is to be hoped, only be temporary, we were represented in Mexico by a minister at the capital, and by consuls or infe- rior consular officers at the very important silver mining towns of Guanaxuato and Eeal del Monte, both well described by Mr. Bullock ; at San Bias, a wretched village on the Pacific coast, and Mazatlan a more important place, not far from it, which was brought into disagreeable notoriety by the insult, or supposed insult, lately offered there to the British flag ; at Tepic in the interior, not far from San Bias; at the eastern sea-ports of Matamoros, Tampico, and Vera Cruz ; at Orizaba, the beauty of which dwells in the recollection of all travellers, and whose celebrated peak is the first Mexican object which is apparent to vessels approaching from the Atlantic ; at Zacatecas ; at San Luis Potosi, and at Merida in the remote peninsula of Yucatan. CENTRAL AMERICA.— 'We now pass to a region for which nature has done even more than she has for that through ^^^ CENTRAL AMERICA. 163 which we have been travelling, and in which the folly of man has not been so conspicuous — I aUude, of course, to Central America. For the physical geographer, this remarkable country com- mences at the isthmus of Tehuantepec, and ends at the isthmus of Panama. For the politician it is otherwise. The whole of the great peninsula of Yucatan, and two other large districts adjoining it, belong to the Mexican republic, and the poli- tical connexions of Panama are South American. The Central America of which I am going to speak, is the much smaller but stiU very large territory, which lies between the Mexican Empire and South America. This most interesting country is somewhat larger than France, possesses the most extraordinary variety of soil and climate, from the everlasting spring of its mountain valleys down to its burning and often deadly coasts. Far from being, as many suppose, a prolongation . of the Andes, with a ribbon of fertility on each side, it is a region of mountains very different in character from the Andes, and connected with the continents of the north and south only by low sierras. These are detached mountain masses, but the space between them is not filled up by an imbroken line of mountains. The most remarkable physical characteristic of Central America is the number of its volcanoes, of which there are no less than twenty-eight. The rivers are numerous. Some are mere torrents, but others, as, for example,''the Eseondido or Blew- fields, and the Montagua, are large and important streams. The vegetation is magnificent. Dr. von Scherzer, of the Novara, writes as follows : — " The journey across the isthmus, right through the heart of the primeval forest, which was decked out in its gayest attire, is one of the most exciting soul-stirring scenes that the eye of the lover of nature ever rested upon. In no part of the world have I seen more luxuriant aud abundant vegetation than is pre- sented by the forests of Central America, and more especially 164 CENTRAL AMERICA. upon the isthmus. And, as if to heighten still more the sense of marvel and enchantment, one traverses this magnificent forest landscape, behind a locomotive running on its iron track. What a contrast ! The wild ravel pf creepers, and the green feathery branches of the palms, almost penetrate into the wag- gons, and tell with umnistakable emphasis that the traveller is indeed surrounded by all the beauties of nature in her tropic garb. Trees of the most varied description and of colossal dimensions flourish in the foreign garment of a borrowed adorn- ment. Between each solitary giant of a forest tree, parasites and lianse spread their delicate green coUs, while many a gigantic stem, enveloped in thousands of beautiful shoots, or dead trunk choked in the embrace of a parasitic creeper, attracts the eye as the train speeds past. So quick and so strong is the process of vegetation here, that every section of this line has, twice in each year, to be freed from the encroachments of the forest children ; nay, were the line to be left unused but for one twelvemonth, it would be difficult to discover any trace of its existence, so completely within that time would the whole dis- trict become once more a wilderness !" Columbus had a peculiar admiration for the district of Veragua, not for its mineral treasures alone ; and it is from this country that his descendants take their ducal title. In some parts of the country there are four harvests of maize in the year. Tobacco, the sugar-cane, the vanilla, the sarsaparilla, are produced in great abundance, and the number of beautiful and valuable woods is extremely great. Central America falls politically into five divisions — Guate- mala, Honduras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Eica; all of them republics, with Presidents elected for a term of years, and the usual Senate and House of Assembly. Much the most important and populous of these is Guatemala, which is the first reached by us as we turn south from Mexico, and leave on the left, nestling between Yucatan and the country in which we have now arrived, our own colony of British Honduras. CENTRAL AMERICA. 165 Guatemala, according to the Statistical Tables for Foreign Countries for 1868, extends over an area of about 40,278 Eng- lisli square miles, — is, therefore, larger than Scotland by about a third. It possesses a very considerable extent of coast-line, both on the Atlantic and Pacific, and a population of about 1,000,000. Guatemala is unquestionably the most powerful of the five Eepublics, but it is also unhappily the one in which the bad old traditions of the Spanish period retain most power. It has suffered terribly from civil wars, and was the scene of the exploits and domination of Eafaele Carrera, the first Indian who began to avenge the conquest by bringing to bear the vast masses of the Indian population against the civilisation of the conquerors. Carrera was the hero of the revolution which trans- formed Central America from the federative republic, under which form of government it had constituted itself when it threw off the yoke of Spain in 1821, into five distinct republics. In his early life he committed great atrocities, but improved very much, as a ruler, in his later years. M. Felix Belly,^ who has written a most interesting book on Central America, says,^" Carrera has often been blamed for the massacres which accompanied, and the proscriptions which followed, his first entrance into Guatemala, but people do not reflect that this half savage, who revolted under the impulse of three centuries of hatred, was, in addition, the instrument of an implacable party, from which he managed later to set himself free. He has not received credit enough for the twenty years of peace which he gave to a country which had been previously torn by anarchy. Juarez has the reputation of being the most honest man in Mexico. Carrera never hesitated in undoing his own acts when their injustice was demonstrated to him, and one could cite from his life twenty instances of high and honourable dealing which would have honoured the greatest sovereigns." Carrera died in 1865, and was succeeded by General Cerna, whom he him- self recommended on his deathbed to the popular choice. ^ A travers PAmSriqm Oentrak. Par Fffix Belly. Paris, 1867. 166 CENTRAL AMERICA. The gulf between the Indians and the whites in Guatemala still inspires uneasiness, but the iastitutions of the country are in many respects good, and a clever Frenchman who lately sketched them in the Revue des Deux Mondes, implies that the first-born of civilisation on the banks of the Seine might well be satisfied with liberty as it is in Guatemala. Its imports in 1866 amounted to £398,825, and its exports in the same year to £411,224. Mr. Consul Hockmeyer, writing to the Foreign Of&ce in November 1867, says, — " Cochineal, which in former years has been almost the only article and resource to pay our debts in Europe, is still, and will always be produced here to a considerable extent. Its value for the year 1866 is still represented at upwards of 900,000 dollars (£180,000), and it will not be less in the present year of 1867. " Coffee, however, will be in future our principal article of exportation, and it is estimated to be of an extent and impor- tance scarcely as yet to be calculated. . . . "... The culture of cotton in this country, to any impor- tant or considerable extent, has thus far proved to be a failure, as the cultivation is exposed to many and great risks, — as blight, army worms, excessive rains, and strong winds." ^ Advancing to the southward we come to Honduras, which is cut off to a great extent from the Pacific, which it touches only at Fonseca Bay. On the other hand, it possesses a very long Atlantic sea-board. Thinly peopled, it is poor at present, but its wide territory, its agricultural and mineral resources, promise it a considerable future. Next to it comes San Salvador, a very much smaller, but more populous and richer country. Alone of all the five re- publics cut off from the Atlantic, and unfortunate in possessing no less than eight volcanoes, and these the most dangerous in Central America, it has nevertheless prospered amazingly ; 1 Consular Reports, 1868. Mr. Consul G. I. Hookmeyer's Report. Guate- mala, November 27, 1867. CENTRAL AMERICA. 167 thanks chiefly to indigo, which it exports very largely. In the face of the disadvantages already mentioned, and a very hot climate, San Salvador is said to be on the whole as popu- lous in proportion to its size as Denmark or Portugal. Very different is the state of Nicaragua, which bore the brunt of the contest which these small communities had to carry on with the ruflSan Walker, who, encouraged by the slave-holders of the South, dreamt of founding in Central America an out- work of their power, and of restoring the African slave-trade. Nicaragua is the largest of all the republics, but very far from beiag the most populous. Its chief article of exportation is cocoa, but it produces also every variety of tropical crop. It extends from sea to sea, having recently swallowed up that Mosquito Coast, over which we used to exercise an uncom- fortable and unsatisfactory protectorate. Perhaps few of you are aware that this far-off country very nearly became the scene of the activity of the present Emperor of the French. In 1842, when he* was a prisoner at Ham, it was proposed to him to petition for his liberty, and to proceed to Nicaragua. This proposal, at first rejected, was renewed in 1 844, and eventually Louis Napoleon announced his intention, if he obtained his liberty, of leaving Europe, and putting himself at the head of the works which it was proposed to undertake to connect the Atlantic and Pacific by a canal passing through the Lake of Nicaragua. You wiU find a full account of this transaction in the second volume of the Em- peror's Collected Works, published in 1856. Circumstances nipped his design in the bud, but there is, as has been truly said, something Imperial in the vague grandeur of the design thus formed by a captive. I extract the foUowiag remark from the paper which he wrote upon this subject : — "War and commerce have civilized the world. War has had its time, and commerce alone now makes fresh conquests. Let us open for it a new route. Let us bring nearer to Europe the tribes of Oceanica and Australia, and cause them to share the blessings of Christianity and civilisation." 168 CENTRAL AMERICA. Last of all we reach Costa Eica, which extends from sea to sea, and is, like San Salvador, extremely prosperous. Its chief product is coffee, and of this it sent out in 1865, according to the statistical tables ahove cited, to the value of £323,709. Costa Eica is a small country, not half the size of Scotland, and contains a population of somewhat over 200,000. It is described at great length in M. T. Belly's book already referred to ; and, unless he has been altogether carried away by his enthusiasm, it must be one of the most delightful countries in the world. Our relations with the Central American States are kept up by a charg4-d! affaires, who resides at Guatemala, but is accredited to all of them ; and we have consuls or inferior consular of&cers at Omoa and TruxiUo iu Honduras, at Sansonate in San Salvador, at San Jos6 in Costa Eica, and at Greytown in Nicaragua. Looking at these five republics as a whole, I think most fair-minded men Vill say that their condition is fully better than could have been expected. After all, not fifty years have rolled away since they got rid of Spain. They started with no experience in government : with an upper class, which had always been in leading-strings ; with a lower class, which wa3 absolutely barbarous, and belonged to a different race. The Church, which ought to have been the great agency of civilisa- tion, has been the great hindrance to it. It has given the people superstition instead of morality ; dolls and processions instead of elevating ideas about either here or hereafter. If their revolutions have been numerous, small blame accrues to them. If they have been the reverse of sanguinary, much credit is their due. An influx of emigrants of a good kind, to reinforce their own better elements, and a further reconcilement of the white and Indian race, are what they seem most to want. There are not many peoples of Latin America for whom, now that the danger from the Southern States has passed away, I should be inclined to augur a happier future, even if nature CENTRAL AMERICA. 169 had given them no exceptional advantage in the struggle for wealth and prosperity. They have, however, such an exceptional advantage. They stand to the great oceanic spaces in the same relation as the territory of Corinth did to the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean. No sooner had it been fairly proved that America was not the much longed for Indies, than one adven- turer after another began to dream of, and search for, a strait to lead to the lands of spice and gold. Charles v. wrote to Cortes in Mexico to discover the " secret of the strait," and the- great warrior wrote back to say that the secret should be dis- covered " if strait indeed there were." Time passed, and man- kind learned at last that the American continent was continuous, and that if it wanted a strait, it must make one for itself. The Communication by water between the Atlantic and Pacific has remained up to our own days a hope and a project. Surely, however, it is reserved for our generation to accomplish this great undertaking. There was a time when every isthmus was looked upon as a friend. It was a bridge for migrations. It was a hyphen connecting different races. Now, however, the needs of the world have changed, and those who sail round the Cape of Good Hope or the Horn wDl be apt to take a hint from a French writer on this subject, and paraphrasing Cham- fort's terrible saying, cry " War to the Isthmus and peace to the Strait !" A great number of projects wiU be found described in M. Belly's work ; and M. Belly has himself a project, which, like that adopted by Louis Napoleon, makes use of the Lake of Nicaragua. I will not stop to discuss the merits of the various proposals, but wish, for the sake of Central America, as well as of the world at large, good speed to each and all of them. HAYTI. — Surrounded by the colonial possessions of European Powers, and so near Jamaica as to have considerable interest for us, lie two small independent States, which divide 170 HA7TI. between them the beautiful island of Hayti, which contains, with ,the small adjacent islets, an area of about 28,000 square mUes, — is, in other words, nearly the size of Scotland, minus the counties of Elgin, Aberdeen, and Banff. Admirably fertile, rich in every natural product of the tropics, possessing a very varied surface and excellent harbours, it ought to have been one of the happiest regions of the earth. "What it may have been before Columbus landed on its shores I know not, but since his time it has been very much the reverse of happy. Up to the peace of Eyswick, it remained attached to the Spanish Crown ; but at that time the western portion of it, which had been colonized by France, was formally ceded to her by Spain ; and she maintained her supremacy there until the terrible insurrection of 1791 and the subsequent disturbances resulted in the establishment of negro rule. In 1822 the Spanish side of the island became politically connected with the western portion till 1843. It then revolted, and a long war was the result, which ended in there being, once more, two Powers in Hayti : the Haytian Eepublic, with about 560,000 inhabitants, covering an area of about 11,000 square miles, in the west ; and the Dominican Eepublic, with about 200,000 inhabitants, covering about 17,000 square miles, on the east. It may be in your recollection that at the time of the Jamaica troubles we came for a short time in contact with the politics of the western portion of the island, through an attack made upon an English steamer by the rebels under Salnave, and that we were obliged to take the part of President Geffrard, who then represented the cause of order. In the course of last year, however, the power of President Geffrard was overthrown. Our former enemy. General Salnave, is now at the head of affairs, and has in his turn rebels to deal with. This model republic has a constitution dating from 1867, with a President elected for four years, four responsible ministers, a Senate, and a House of Commons. HAYTI. 171 In the year 1861, the Dominican Eepublic gave itself up to Spain, to which it had belonged dejv/re previous to 1822, as had the rest of the island previous to 1697, but the wish to do so only-' emanated from a party, and was perhaps, to some extent, the result of corruption, so that after a revolt which raged for nearly two years, Spain in 1865 renounced all her rights, and a Eepublic was once more proclaimed. Since that period there has been at least one revolution. The industrial and commercial prosperity of the island has very much declined since 1791, and here, at least, the experi- ment of a negro republic has been thoroughly unsuccessful. It must not be forgotten, however, that the conditions under which Hayti has lived since the emancipation have been very unsatis- factory. A ferocious servile war was a bad beginning. The division of the island into two parts has tended to keep up a warlike spirit, and to throw power into the hands of military leaders. The revolution found society demoralized by slavery, and education at a very low ebb, so that no reformer has had a sound or firm place on which to take his stand to work for national regeneration. The Statistical Tables for Foreign Countries, presented to Parliament in 1868, give the imports into the republic of Hayti for 1863 at £1,656,107, and the exports at £2,458,000. Our trade with the republic is not inconsiderable, for in the year 1863 we sent thither goods to the value of rather more than half a million. The chief exports of Hayti are coffee, cocoa, logwood, mahogany, and cotton. We have a charge-d'affai/res and consul-general at Port- au-Prince, the capital of the Haytian republic, and inferior con- sular officers at a whole cluster of little ports round the island : at Cape Haytien on the north coast ; at St. Marc, at Gonaives, and at J^remie, all on the gulf which runs so deep into the western side of the island ; as also at Aux Cayes, and at Jacmel on the south. In the Dominican Eepublic it does not appear from this year's Foreign Ofl&ce list that we have any representative at aU. SOUTH AMERICA. I PEOPOSE to speak of South America this evening, chiefly in its political aspect ; but it will make what I have got to say a good deal clearer, if I begin by recalling to you, as briefly as possible, some of the leading physical peculiarities of that continent. Above all, then, I wish to fix in your minds — I. The gigantic size of South America. II. The situation and direction of its chief mountain chains. III. The leading characteristics of its vast levels ; and, IV. The relation to each other of its great rivers. All these matters have a very important bearing upon the politics of the country. Some one may say, however, " Doubt- less that is so, but what interest can the affairs of these far- distant and semi-civilized communities have for the leading nations of Europe ? " That is a very fair question, — yet it is easily answered. In the first place, the amount of the trade between Europe and America is very great. It is continually increasing, and that far more rapidly than most people imagine. If once peace and wise government could prevail there, it would become enormous. Secondly, Many parts of South America present an admirable field for emigration; and, in- deed, emigrants are flowing thither every year, creating con- tinually new links between that continent and ourselves. Thwdly, It is highly desirable that greater knowledge of, and Sketch map of south amehica. 80 UTH A MERIGA. 1 73 sympathy with, the South American peoples should prevail in this country, because an idea has grown up among them that they are looked upon with more friendly eyes by France than by England. That idea finds remarkable expression in the interesting political essay prefixed by Mr. Charles Calvo to his collection of the treaties of Latin America,^ dedicated to the Emperor of the French. The tone of this paper is very hostile to England, which is accused of adopting an oppressive and intolerable policy to a comparatively feeble people. That accusation is not well founded, but I do believe that if we knew more about these countries, our press and our public men would speak of them in a way less likely to wound their susceptibilities. The fortiter in re is highly necessary with them, alike for their sakes and ours, but we might, perhaps, with advantage cultivate rather more of the suaviter in modo. FowrtMy, We in England are the last people in the world who can afford to confine ourselves exclusively to European politics. Our star in Europe is not in the ascendant. The first place in Europe during the next thirty years wiU pro- bably belong either to Germany or to France. Nothing, short of calamities which check civilisation, can prevent this; but our place in the world, looked on as a whole, is so clearly and indisputably the foremost, that it is idle to question it, and, as OUT position is imperial and cosmopolitan, so also should be our knowledge and our views. The extent of South America has been estimated at 6,500,000 English square mUes, say four times the size of Europe, or two hundred and three times the size of Scotland. Of this vast space three-fourths lies within the tropics, and no part, either of the continent or of the islands at its extremity, is so far from the equator as the place where we are now assembled. This enormous mass of land is divided by the Andes into 1 "Reoueil complet desTraitgs de tous les Etats de I'Amferique Latine de- puis 1' annee 1493 juaqu'il nos joura, preo^d6 d'un Mgmoire but I'^tat actuel de I'Am^rique. Par M. Charles Calvo, Charg^-d'Affairea du Paraguay, prfes les Cours de France et d'Angleterre." 6 vols. Paris : Dnrand. 174 SOUTH AMERICA. two unequal parts, a mere ribbon running along the Pacific and. a gigantic expanse lying to the east of these mountains, between them and the Atlantic. About a degree and a half to the north of the tropic, the Andes, which in the southern part of the continent may be described with tolerable accuracy as a single range, sending off from it several spurs to the south- east, lose their more or less wall-like character, and dividing into several branches, enclose vast districts in their ample arms. They attain their greatest breadth in Bolivia, much of which is a huge South American Switzerland, containing cities situated at an elevation as great as the summits of the Pyrenees, and the larger part of the vast mountain lake of Titicaca, said by Humboldt to be twenty times the size of the Lake of Geneva, and nearly 13,000 feet above the sea level. In Peru there is a double chain, and a very marked distraction is drawn, as is pointed out by Von Tschudi, in the parlance of the country, between the Andes proper and the parallel chain of the Cor- dillera. This structure, interrupted by occasional mountain knots, and in one place by a triple division, is continued to the north of the equator, where it is succeeded by a western, central, and eastern Cordillera, an arrangement which con- tinues to the extreme north of the continent. Disregarding the smaller spurs of the Andes, which, I need not say, are by no means small, we may notice three other mountain chains : — First, The CordUlera of the coast, a prolongation of the Andes bending round to the east, and looking down on the Caribbean Sea. Secondly, The Cordillera of Parim^ separating, in so far as they are separated, the basins of the Orinoco and the Amazons. Thirdly, The chain, or rather chains, which, leaving the Andes in Bolivia, run as far as Cape St. Eoque under various names, forming the water-shed between the Amazons and the Plate, and joining the far-extending high country of central Brazil. SOUTH AMERICA. 175 The next physical feature of South America, to which I must direct your attention, is the vast plains which, stretch- ing from the Andes to the Atlantic, fill up incomparably the larger part of this quarter of the globe. These plains may be divided into four classes ; first, in the extreme south you have the gloomy, wood- covered flat of eastern Tierra del Fuego, and its continuation in eastern Patagonia by a waste rising in successive terraces from the ocean to the mountains, covered with shingle, and desolate in the highest degree. These wildernesses extend to the north of the Eio Colorado, where they are met by the plains of the second class, the vast alluvial levels known as the Pampas, destined to a great future, but as yet only very partially subdued to the use of man ; thanks partly to the absence of population, and partly, in some districts, to the want of water. These plains fill up the whole of the centre of the continent, and, unlike those of Patagonia, are of great political importance. Speaking roughly, and includ- ing districts which, although level, have not the " Pampas" char- acter, they may be said to extend for more than twenty degrees from latitude 40° to far within the tropic. Next we come to the great wood-covered plains known as the Selvas of the Amazons, a forest region six times the size of France, wholly within the tropics, and extending to the north of the ecLuator. Here nature is seen in her utmost magnificence and prodigality, but nature has as yet been too strong to give man much chance, so that their political importance is much less than that of our second division, although, no doubt, one day, when science has given man greater odds in the battle of Life, the valley of the Amazons wOl contain a great population, and the remarkable prophecy of Mr. Bates may be fulfiLlled. " The superiority of the bleak north to tropical regions," says that writer, " is only in its social aspect, for I hold to the opinion, that although humanity can reach an advanced state of culture only by battling with the inclemencies of nature in high latitudes, it is under the equator alone that the perfect race of the future 176 SOUTH AMERICA. will attain to complete fruition of man's beautiful heritage, the earth." ^ Lastly, we have the Llanos of the Orinoco, huge inter- tropical steppes, with a mean annual temperature of 84 Fahrenheit, likewise of inferior importance, although their terrible horsemen have made themselves very famous in the wars which have been waged on their northern border. The last physical feature of South America to which I wish you to attend is its marvellous network of water com- munication. First, flowing into the Caribbean Sea, we have the river of the United States of Colombia, the Magdalena, a stream between 600 and 700 miles in length, — small indeed for South America, but which would be counted of the first magnitude in Europe. By it one can ascend for some hundred miles to Honda, which is not very far from the capital, Bogota. A short land journey takes one from Bogota to a navigable stream which falls into the mighty Orinoco, the Eio Ealeana, as it was called by the companions of the prince of English adven- turers. Sir Walter Ealeigh. From the basia of the Orinoco, the wonderful natural canal of the Cassiqniare leads us straight into the Eio Negro, and so to the incomparable Amazons, the grandest of all earth's waters, one of the subordinate affluents of which is said to be navigable by vessels of 300 tons from the sea to within 150 miles of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, while vessels of 1000 tons can ascend the main stream as far as Nauta. The southern tributaries of the Amazons again take one into the very centre of the continent, so that a trifling expenditure of labour would enable a traveller to go from Para to Buenos Ayres by river with only one trans-shipment. With these preliminary remarks, I pass to the more immediate subject of this evening's lecture. Putting aside the few colonies belonging to European powers in South America, that continent is politically divided 1 Tlie Naturalist on the River Amazons. By Henry Walter Bates. London : Murray, 1864. SOUTH AMERICA. 177 into ten very unequal parts, namely : — the United States of Colombia, Venezuela, BrazU, Uruguay, the Argentine Con- federation, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA.— Gommenciag our journey at the isthmus, we find ourselves in the terri- tory of the United States of Colombia, which fills up the whole of the north-west angle of South America. It is a wide region, extending over something like 480,000 square miles; — that is to say, more than fifteen times the size of Scotland, and comprehends every variety of climate — from mountains covered with eternal snow, through great ranges of temperate upland and delicious cool valleys, down to the torrid and most dangerous region along the coast. Few parts of South America have, so far as I know, been so Little described by recent European writers. Indeed, the only very recent description of the country at large, on which I have been able to lay my hands, is a pamphlet by Mr. Powles,^ published two or three years ago for the use of certain English speculators, who had become deeply interested in the agricultural capabilities of Colombia by having large tracts of land assigned to them. In Spanish times it was visited by Humboldt, who, however, spent most of his time in Venezuela ; and in the middle dis- tance we have the two volumes of Colonel Hamilton, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to Bogota by Mr. Canning, and whose account of the ascent of the Magdalena, before the steamboat period, is very interesting. The State of Panama is traversed, of course, every year by numbers of Englishmen, but the rest of the country seems to have few attractions for them, though the great Falls of Tequendama must certainly be among the most extraordinary natural objects in the world. All you need care to know of the political history of Colombia is, however, soon told. In the old days, when the ^ New Oranada cmd its Internal Resources. By J. D. Powles. London : Baily, 1863. M 178 UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. Castilian was still in the land, it formed part of the provinces of the Terra Firma, which comprehended the captaincy-general of Quito, the captaincy-general of Caracas, and the viceroyalty of the New Granada. In 1810, as we shall presently see, a revolution broke out at Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, a few weeks before a similar outbreak at Buenos Ayres set the whole of the rest of the continent in a blaze. The war which ensued raged for fourteen years. When the storm had rolled away — and a fearful storm of smoke and blood it was — the three old provinces of the Terra Firma were united for a few disturbed and anxious years under the remarkable man who had earned, with great justice, the title of their Liberator. In those days his name was a household word in England ; but we live so quickly, and forget so soon, that it well may be that many here present do not know to whom I am alluding. Simon Bolivar was born in 1783 at Caracas, and came of a good Venezuelan family. He was educated partly at Madrid, and married a Spanish lady of rank, who, however, died early. When the Venezuelan Eevolution first broke out on Maundy- Thursday of 1810, Bolivar was sent as an envoy to London, where he received but little encouragement. Eeturning from Europe, he was made governor of the strong town of Puerto Cabello, and from that time forward he was the most promi- nent figure in the terrible and ferocious wars which ended in the downfall of Spanish power in South America. The chief theatre of his activity was his native Venezuela ; but he triumphed not less in New Granada, in Peru, and in Bolivia, was hailed as the Liberator, and was under various titles Dictator of large parts of the revolted colonies of Spain. Con- stantly harassed by faction, sometimes in great danger of assassination, one day the idol and the next the abomination of the multitude, he ended in deep dejection a chequered and far from blameless career at Carthagena in 1831. Thus far Dryasdust and our ordinary biographical diction- UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. 179 aries ; now you shall listen to Mr. Carlyle, who, in his very characteristic essay on Francia, writes as follows : — "And Bolivar, 'the Washington of Columbia,' Liberator Bolivar, he too is gone without his fame. Melancholy litho- graphs represent to us a long-faced square-browed man : of stem, considerate, consciously/ considerate aspect, mildly aqui- line form of nose, with terrible angularity of jaw, and dark deep eyes, somewhat too close together (for which latter circumstance we earnestly hope the lithograph alone is to blame); this is Liberator Bolivar, a man of much hard fighting, hard riding, of manifold achievements, distresses, heroisms and histrionisms in this world ; a many-counselled, much-enduring man, now dead and gone ; of whom, except that melancholy lithograph, the cultivated European public knows as good as nothing. Yet did he not fly hither and thither, often in the most desperate manner, with wild cavalry clad in blankets, with War of Libe- ration to the 'death?' Clad in blankets, ponchos the South Americans call them ; it is a square blanket, with a short slit in the centre which you draw over your head, and so leave hanging; many a liberative cavalier has ridden in those hot climates without further dress at all, and fought handsomely too, wrapping the blanket round his arm when it came to the charge. " With such cavalry, and artillery and infantry to match, Bolivar has ridden, fighting aU the way, through torrid deserts, hot mud-swamps, through ice-chasms beyond the curve of per- petual frost — more miles than Ulysses ever sailed ; let the coming Homers take note of it. He has marched over the Andes more than once, a feat analogous to Hannibal's, and seemed to think little of it. Often beaten, banished from the firm land, he always returned again, truculently fought again. He gained in the Cumana regions 'the immortal victory' of Carabobo and several others ; under him was gained the finish- ing 'immortal victory' of Ayacucho in Peru, where old Spain, for the last time, burnt powder in those latitudes and then fled 180 UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. without return. He was Dictator, Liberator, almost Emperor if he had lived. Some three times over did he in solemn Columbian parliament lay down his dictatorship with Washing- ton eloquence, and as often, on pressing request, take it up again, being a man indispensable. Thrice, or at least twice, did he, in different places,- painfully construct a Pree Constitution consisting of two chambers, and a supreme governor for life, with liberty to name his successor, — the reasonablest democratic constitution you could well construct; and twice, or at least once, did the people, on trial, declare it disagreeable. He was, of old, well known in Paris, in the dissolute, the philosophico- political, and other circles there. He has shone in many a gay Parisian soiree this Simon BoKvar ; and in his later years, in autumn 1825, he rode triumphant into Potosi and the fabu- lous Inca cities, with clouds of feathered Indians somersaulting and war -whooping around him, and ' as the famed Gerro, metal- liferous mountain came in sight, the bells all pealed out, and there was a thunder of artillery,' says General Miller ! If this is not a Ulysses, Polytlas, and Polymetis, a much- enduring and many-counselled man, where was there one ? truly a Ulysses whose history were worth its ink, had the Homer that could do it made his appearance !"^ All that has occurred since his death has shown that Bolivar was too sanguine, that his countrymen were not ripe for a free government, and that the difference between the countrymen of Washington and them was as great as the difference between Washington and himself. Bolivar's republic of "Colombia," for so all this vast country was called when those of us who are now in middle life were learning geography, held together till 1830. Then, however, the centrifugal forces obtained the ascendant, and after a period of struggle, the three old divisions of the Spanish provinces already mentioned, the two captaincies-general, and the viceroyalty, set up each for itself, under the names of ' Miscellaneous Essays, vol. iv. London, 1865, UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. 181 Ecuador, Venezuela, and New Granada. Leaving the others for a little, let us follow the fortunes of 'Se'w Granada. Hardly- had that unhappy country started on its own account, when the niost bitter feuds broke out between the Bolivianos or partisans of the ideas of Bolivar, and the so-caUed patriotic party; be- tween those who wished for a strong centralized government, and those who wished for provincial independence. This con- test lasted for some years, and gave rise to many deplorable incidents, one of the worst of which was the murder of Sucrg, a great soldier of the War of Independence, and the same who gave his patronymic to the capital of Bolivia. Hardly were these contests ended when the ideas instinct with change which shook our old European societies in 1848 began to spread extensively in this semi-civilized country. The result is that it has never fairly escaped from the double circle, iirst of its own self-generated feuds, and secondly, of the imported European feuds of opinion. The last notable incident in its history occurred in 1863, when the party which was in favour of provincial independence prevailed over the party which desired a strong centralized government, and New Granada became a confederation of nine separate political entities, under the name of the United States of Colombia. On the constitution I shall say nothing, except that it is more or less modelled upon that of the United States of America, which, indeed, has largely inspired all the legislators who have framed the fundamental laws of the lost possessions of Spain. These constitutions have a strong family resemblance, and I think one might be justified in saying that on paper they are all pretty good, with, of course, shades of difiference. The very last thing, however, which it is important to consider in exam- ining these States is their paper constitutions, and so in the course of these remarks I shall say very little upon them. Un- like some other countries in South America, the United States of Colombia have not, since the death of Bolivar, been illustrated by the deeds of any statesman or warrior whose name has 182 UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. become very famous in Europe. General and ex-President Mosquera, a man of considerable acquirement, who has written several works upon his native country, and has been mixed up for many years in its agitated fortunes, is not unknown in London ; but I could not mention another name, which would be, to Englishmen who have not special relations with this part of South America, anything more than a name. Late advices spoke of General Mosquera, who was last heard of in Peru, as about to raise a new insurrection in the State of Gauca, but nothing serious has come of it. Like all parts of South America the United States of Colom- bia are very scantily peopled, and cry out for immigrants. Look- ing to the latest figures which I have seen, which are not very late, I should guess the present population at about 2,500,000. The hotter districts of the country export rice, cotton, tobacco, cocoa, and sugar. On the elevated plains of the interior, maize, wheat, and other productions of temperate climates are largely grown, whilst the great llanos or plains export, chiefly, hides and preserved beef. Our trade with Panama^ is very great, though inferior to that of the United States, and we have also considerable relations with most of the northern ports. The moral and intellectual level of the population is not high. Wappaus places it very decidedly below that of Mexico. In Mr. Powles's pamphlet, already cited, will be found, how- ever, some very favourable testimonies from English employers of labour to the good qualities shown by the lower classes when well managed. The clergy is very ignorant, but has lost of late years a great deal of its power. We shall hear the same of many other South American countries. Indeed, I suspect that, although South America is nominally Catholic, there are few parts of the fold which give more anxiety at Eome. ^ In the Brazil and Biver Plate Mail of October 22, there is in a letter from Panama a strange report, to the effect that the Colombian Government is about to give to the Washington Government a concession for a canal through the Isthmus, together with the right of erecting fortresses at each end of the canal. UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA. 183 We are represented in the United States of Colombia by a charg4-d' affaires at Bogota, and we have consuls or inferior consular officers at Buenaventura, and at the very important sea- port of Panama on the Pacific coast, as -well as at Chagres and Colon on the north side of the isthmus, and at Carthagena, Sabanilla, Santa Martha, and Eio Hacha, on the Caribbean Sea. VENEZUELA.— ¥mm the United States of Colombia we pass to Venezuela. This fine country, coveriug about 426,712 English square miles, derives its name from the fact, that the first discoverers found the dwellers around Lake Maracaibo living in huts supported by piles, after the fashion of those villagers in ancient Switzerland, who have given of late so much occupation to the antiquary. The Spaniards called the district in which they found these amphibious settlements Venezuela (Little Venice), and the name gradually extended itself far and wide. It is a region which has long excited the iaterest of Euro- pean travellers. Sir Walter Ealeigh visited it in his search for the land of the " gilded king," and Humboldt explored it very thoroughly. Only this year a large octavo has been published on Venezuela by Mr. Edward Eastwick, who was sent out in 1864 on a financial mission by the General Credit Company. Mr. Eastwick gives a lively sketch of what he him- self observed, and condenses the latest statistical information which is to be found about the country, the great reservoir of which are the works of Codazzi, an Italian engineer who was employed to survey the country by the famous warrior, General Paez. A good deal of information with respect to it is also to be found in a small American book which has just appeared, under the title of The Emigranfs Vade Mecum to the Price Grant^ — the " Price grant" being a concession made in Venezuelan Guiana to a body called the " American, English, and Vene- ^ London and Eichmond Va. U.S. A. 1S68. 184 VENEZUELA. zuelan Trading Company," the chief movers in which appear to be persons in the Southern States of America who are dis- affected to the Federal Government, and helieve that they have a future before them on the banks of the Orinoco. Mr. Maurice Block states the population of Venezuela at about 1,400,000. Half of this number is composed of mixed races, while 300,000 are Creoles, and 400,000 Indians. Writiag in 1864, he says that the largest commerce is carried on with the United States and with England ; but Mr. Eastwick tells us that Germany has lately pushed us to a great extent out of the Venezuelan markets, and his testimony is confirmed,' so far as the region of the Orinoco is concerned, by Mr. Joel, in his report to the Foreign Office from Ciudad Bolivar in 1867. The chief exports are coffee, cocoa, indigo, sugar, and cotton. The United States of Venezuela consist of twenty provinces, which, declaring themselves independent States, " unite," to use the words of their constitution, " to form one free and sovereign nation," occupying the same space on the map as that filled by the Spanish captaincy-general of Venezuela. They have a president, two chambers, and all the other appa- ratus of well-regulated republican government, all of which advantages do not prevent them beiag one of the most ill-doing communities in the New World. How badly they pay their debts, many Englishmen know to their cost ; and those who do not, and are thinking of South American securities, had better read the chapters which Mr. Eastwick has devoted to this subject. Venezuela, enjoying, from its extensive northern sea-board, many opportunities of communicating with the British colonies in North America, early caught something of the revolutionary spirit, and, as far back as 1750, showed signs of disaffection. It was not, however, until our own century that that disaffec- tion became very formidable. Both Miranda and Bolivar were natives of this part of Spanish America, and an English legion VENEZUELA. 185 played a very important part in the decisive battle of Carabobo, which was fought in 1821, and which closed the long and horribly sanguinary struggle with Spain. Unhappily it did not close the wars of Venezuela, for the internal struggles of that country, and its strife with Colombia, caused hardly less misery than the War of Independence itself. Since the last contest between the Federals and the Unita- rists, which was decided in 1863, it has, however, enjoyed, tiU a month or two ago, a period of comparative tranquillity. This summer all has been again confusion. Marshal Falcon, who was President when Mr. Eastwick visited the country, and has been described by him, is a fugitive in the Dutch island of Curaqao; while victory has declared in favour of General Monagas, a name well known in the barren politics and bloody feuds of this unhappy country. One might have imagined that the continual disorders of Venezuela would have tended to brutalize society, but this does not seem to be the case. Mr. Eastwick bears testimony, as Humboldt did long ago, to the kindliness and hospitality of the people ; and this is all the more remarkable, because there are few parts of South America where the purely political antipathy for foreigners is so strong. If not brutalized, how- ever, society is thoroughly disorganized, and the confusion of ranks, conditions,, and social relations is, to our European notions, exceedingly grotesque. In the following paragraph Mr. Eastwick sums up the causes which have thrown so magnificent a country into its present deplorable condition : — " C — knocked the ashes from the end of his cigar, assisted thought by putting his legs conveniently on the lap of a chair, and finally replied as fol- lows : — ' You see, in the first place, there is a difference in the breed. Besides, long before Lexington and Bunker's Hill, the North Americans were ripe for self-government. In South America things were very different. The Spaniards kept their American subjects in profound ignorance. Four-fifths of the 186 VENEZUELA. population could not even read, for there were no schools.'' Even at Caracas, the capital, there was no printing-office till 1816, when one was set up by the Frenchman Delpeche. The illiberality of the Spaniards went so far, that after Isabella's death nothing was done to introduce the cultivation of any plant, or to improve farming. The culture of the vine and the olive were prohibited, and that of tobacco was made a Crown monopoly. Emigration, too, was all but entirely prevented, and, in the total absence of vivifying power, the wonder rather is that Venezuela should ever have become free than that it should have made eo little progress. " Then as to the poverty of the Government, and its con- stant borrowing, there are reasons for that. In the first place, the Creoles of South America, though they have many good qualities, are averse to physical labour. Again, the taxes levied by the Spaniards were aU so odious to the Columbians, that as soon as they declared themselves independent, they made a clean sweep of them, leaving only the customs to supply a reveniie to the Government. Now, it is in the customs that it is most easy to peculate and defraud the State. With a coast- line of 200 miles, how is it possible to keep down smuggling ? ... At present, the annual loss to the Government by contra- bands and frauds is reckoned at six millions. ... One would not be wrong in saying, that the incessant revolutions which distract this unhappy country all commence at the Custom- house. Owing to the frauds of the officials, the customs are raised until the necessaries of life are too dear for men of small means. Thus discontent is sown broadcast, and discontent leads to conspiracies.'' We carry on communication with Venezuela through Caracas, the capital, where we have a charg4-d' affaires ; through the sea-port of La Guayra, famous for being one of the hottest places in the world ; through Puerto Cabello, notorious for ' Yet the Spaniards did something for science, if little for popular educa- tion, both here and in Colonibia. — See Wapp'aus in Stein's Handbuch, vol. i. part 11. VENEZUELA. 187 yellow fever, which Hes further to the west, at no great dis- tance; through Maracaibo, situated on the narrowest part of the great lake of that name ; and we are also represented by vice-consuls at the inland town of Maturin, and at Ciudad Bolivar on the Orinoco, the town which sends us the well- known Angostura bitters. Proceeding along the coast we pass successively British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana, all. large and important countries, but with which, as being colonies, and not independent States, we have nothing to do at present. I may observe, however, in passing, that the question of slavery in the Dutch West Indies excited a few years ago no small interest in the mother country, but the efforts of the reformers, aided by a work of M. Van Hoevell, which caused almost as great a sensation in Holland as Uncle Tom's Cabin in the United States, iiBve now bBBn^suTjcessful, and that hateful institution has ceased to disfigure the possessions of the House of Orange. BRAZIL. — Separated from French Guiana by the river Oyapok stretches for many and many a degree of latitude the mighty empire of Brazil, one of the greatest masses of ter- ritory which obeys a single ruler. Very few people realize the immense size of this country. Perhaps the following state- ment, which I take from" the work of the American mission- aries, Messrs. Kidder and Fletcher, may give them some idea of it :— " The distance on a straight line drawn from the head- waters of the river Parima on the north, to the southern shores of Lagoa Merun in Eio Grande do Sul is greater than that from Boston to Liverpool. It is further from Pernambuco to the western boundary which separates Peru and Brazil than by a direct route from London across the Continent to Egypt." The population of Brazil is unfortunately very trifling, com- pared with the vast expanse on which it lives. The last figures published in 1867, and sent to this country two or three months 188 BRAZIL. ago by our Secretary of Legation at Eio, give 8,184,000 free men, 1,674,000 slaves, and 200,000 Indians. Brazil is the only country in South America which has re- tained the monarchical form of government. The Emperor Dom Pedro II., who is a man of very high cultivation and great merit, belongs to the house of Braganza. It will be in your recollec- tion that John vi. of Portugal avoided the storm which swept over his European dominions during the Napoleonic wars, by retiring to his great colony of Brazil. Before he returned to Lisbon he advised his son Dom Pedro, if he saw Brazil about to follow the example of the Spanish colonies, in separating from the mother- country, to anticipate a military adventurer and to place the crown upon his own head. Things took, more or less, the course which the old king anticipated, and in 1822 Dom Pedro became the first Emperor of Brazil, a position which he retained till he abdicated in favour of his son, the present ruler, ia 1831. There are two chambers of the Legislature, — a Senate and a House of Eepresentatives. The members of the former are selected for life by the Emperor, out of a list of three sent up to him by the provinces, as each vacancy occurs. The members of the Lower House are chosen by indirect election. The system has all the externals, and much of the reality, of constitutional government, but power is to a very great extent in the hands of a slave-holding plutocracy.^ At first sight, this vast country appears to be singularly homogeneous in character, but it is very far from really being so. A line drawn westward from Cape St. Eoque divides it into two very dissimilar portions, and the provinces of the in- terior, running back to Paraguay and Bolivia, are separated from the coast and the capital by vast and hardly peopled regions, which no good road has yet made accessible. The Amazonian district, the coast, and the provinces watered by the Parana, ■^ Titles in Brazil are not hereditary. Von TsohiuU, writing in 1866, says that only 145 native-born Brazilians have titles. BRAZIL. 189 the Paraguay, and their affluents, form three almost distinct countries, requiring some very strong political bond to keep them together. There is little doubt that Brazil would long since have followed the example of Spanish-speaking America, and become a loose federation of States, if the fear of danger from the vast servile population had not been a potent coun- sellor of imity. Between the separation from Portugal and the year 1848 there were not a few attempts at insurrection, iii one of which, that of Eio Grande do Sul, Garibaldi, who joined the rebels, in a tiny privateer called the " Mazzini," for the first time came into notice. One of these risings, that which oc- curred in the neighbourhood of Para, almost, if not quite, took the form of a war of races, and was put down with no little difficulty. Our trade with Brazil is very considerable. In the States- man's Tear-Book for 1868, 1 see the imports from Brazil into the United Kingdom set down for 1866 at £7,237,793 and the ■export of home produce of the United Kingdom to Brazil at £7,223,794. The following table, which I take from a Brazilian official publication,'' puts in a very clear light the important part which her relations with England play in the total com- merce of the empire : — OOTTNTKIES WHICH HAVE CONTKIBUTBD TO THE IMPORTS OE 1864-65. Great Britain, per cent., . . .48 -29 France, . „ . . . 23-29 Eiver Plate, „ • ■ .8-89 United States, „ . . 4-81 Portugal, ,, . . . 4 '7 8 Hanseatic Towns, „ . . 3 '74 Other Countries, „ . . . 6 '20 COUNTKIBS WHICH HAVE OONSUMBD BbAZILIAN PeODITCE, 1864-65. Great Britain, per cent., . . . 42-18 France, United States, Portugal, Eiver Plate, Other Countries, 13-35 13-14 5-26 3-89 22-18 1 The JUmpire of Brazil at the Paris Exhibition, 1867. Laemmert, Rio Janeiro. 190 BRAZIL The most important articles which Brazil sends us are raw cotton and unrefined sugar, and the most important article which we send her is manufactured cotton. Eio exports chiefly coffee, but only the very best comes to England. Sugar and cotton are sent principally from Bahia and Pernambuco. India-rubber is exported chiefly from Para. The extent of our trade with her, however, is by no means an adequate measure of our selfish, to say nothing of our gene- ral philanthropic, interest in the prosperity of Dom Pedro's empire. Our countrymen have sunk an immense amount of capital in Brazil in government loans, railways, mines, and other enterprises. The state of her finances, as well as her general well-being, is therefore a matter of no small importance to us. According to Mr. Pakenham's Eeport, dated on the 1st of May in this year, the expenditure of Brazil is estimated in the Budget for 1868-69 at about £6,774,262. The revenue is esti- mated at about £5,900,000, so that there is a very ugly deficit. The total estimated debt of Brazil, according to the same autho- rity, is £47,595,318. Exception has however, I observe, been' taken to these figures,^ and it is said that a recent report of the Brazilian Government to the Chambers, not available when Mr. Paken- ham wrote, has put the state of affairs in a considerably more favourable light, showing that the revenue exceeds the expen- diture for this year, thanks toi additional taxation, and that the amount of the debt has been diminished, so that it now stands at under £44,000,000. I trust this more cheerful view will turn out to be the correct one. Hitherto the Amazonian valley, almost a world in itself, has been asleep. " The small Peruvian town of Moyabamba has done more trade with Europe through the Amazons," says a well-informed French writer, than any of the towns on the 1 Times' City Article, quoted in the Brazil and Siver Plate Mail, Aug. 7th, 1868. BRAZIL. 191 banks of tliat river, although the products of Moyabamba can only reach Tabatinga and its water- way after a most toil- some land transit. The Brazilians are fond of talking of the Amazons as standing in the same relation to South America as the Mediterranean does to Europe. The comparison is very just, and as there is no part of the empire in which the fusion between the white and Indian blood is becoming so complete, it may be destined to be the seat of a civilisation as distinctive as that which arose round our own Middle Sea. It requires some effort of imagination to picture to ourselves what the Amazons really is. "We have nothing to compare with it. The Ehine, the Danube, and even the Volga, would be nothing more than respectable tributaries to it ; standing in the same sort of relation to it which the Spey does to those great rivers. Para, situated a little way up its southern mouth, will be the empo- rium for all the trade of this wondrous valley, and another point, which seems to me likely to be of very great importance, is Barra or Manaos, at the junction of the Amazons and the Eio Negro. Both these places you will find well described in Mr. Bates's delightful book, Tlie Naturalist on the Amazons. One sometimes hears Brazil talked of as a field for emigra- tion, and imdoubtedly some colonists who have gone thither have prospered greatly. The fate of others, however, has been very different.^ Free labourers are despised in the slave-hold- ing provinces, and in the northern districts European constitu- tions cannot, as a general rule, endure hard laboiir. I think we may say, then, that unless they have very good information indeed, emigrants should not think of- settling in any part of Brazil except the southern provinces of Saint Catherine and Eio Grande do Sul ; and it must be remembered that in Brazil there are not those facilities for obtaining land, which are found in many parts of South America. Land is held for the most part in great masses, — and this, I believe, without any law of entail ; a fact which I would recommend to the notice both of ^ See Av^-Lallemaut, Bdse durch Nord Brasilien. 192 BRAZIL. Liberals and Conservatives with reference to some questions now before this country. It would be hardly possible to exaggerate, and in an address like this quite impossible even to enumerate, the endless natural advantages of this magnificent country. An enormous sea- board, a great variety of climates, magnificent rivers, natural productions of the most varied kinds, are only a very few of them. Why should I mention others ? Is it not enough that Brazil possesses the Amazons ? No other country has such a possession, although up to this time she has made very little use of it. By a decree of last year, the navigation of that noble stream, and of some of its affluents, has been opened, although somewhat too grudgingly, to the flags of all nations.^ But if Brazil has many natural advantages, she has many disadvantages, both natural and acquired. Foremost in the first of these classes we must place the insalubrity of large portions of her territory, and the extreme thinness of her population. Foremost in the second class we must plape slavery, the ignorance and corruption of her priesthood, and the general want of education, though she is, as Von Tschudi points out, now making great efforts to remedy this last defect. BrazH is the last great country which maintains slavery ; and although there is much talk about getting rid of it, and most intelligent persons in the empire would probably admit that the success of the North has sealed the doom of slavery, nevertheless nothiag practical has been yet done towards getting rid of it. Brazilian statesmen should remember the motto on the sun-dial, "Pereunt et imputantw." They may easily delay emancipation till it be too late. Of recent years the tendency of events has been very much to confine the area of slavery to the coast-line between Maran- nam and San Paulo. There is very little of it in the valley of ' See a partisan but interesting pamphlet, called La Politique du BrSsil, ou la Fermetwre des Fleuves sous prStexte de I'ouverture de I'Amazone. Traduit de I'Espagnol. Paris : Dentu, 1867. BRAZIL. 193 the Amazons, thanks to the great numbers of the Indian race there ; and . free labour, combined with the insecurity which is caused by the neighbourhood of republics which do not rejoice in the "peculiar institution," is driving it slowly out of the southern provinces. The centre of the empire, given up to the cultivation of those articles most easily produced by slave labour, such as coffee and sugar, are thus coming to have an interest in the maintenance of slavery, very different from that either of the North or of the South. Still, if we are to wait for the slow progress of natural decay to get rid of this great curse, the nineteenth century will not have the satisfaction of seeing it die. Great Britain has at various times had reason to complain most seriously of the conduct of Brazil in this matter. The external slave trade has now, however, utterly died out ; and I hope that those who believe that the repeal of the Aberdeen Act will lead to its renewal take too desponding a view. That the Aberdeen Act will be repealed seems to me, after what fell from both Mr. Layard and Lord Stanley last year, more than probable. Brazil, however, has never fully satisfied the just demands of this country with regard to the free Africans, or emancipados, who were handed over to the Brazilian Govern- ment with certificates of freedom, by the Mixed Commission Court, of Eio, between 1830 and 1845. The whole of this story — and it is a very ugly one as far as BraziL is concerned — is told in Mr. Christie's JSfotes on Brazilian Questions} It was in maintaining the rights of humanity against the Brazilian slaveholders that Sir James Hudson first showed those remarkable diplomatic abilities, which he afterwards used, so much to the advantage of Europe, on a nearer and a nobler field. If slavery were got rid of, there would be an end to a root of bitterness constantly springing up between Brazil and this ^ N'otes on Brazilian Questions. By W. D. Christie. Maomillaa and Co. London and Cambridge, 1 865. 194 BRAZIL. country ; and much would also be done towards establishing a perfect and enduring good understanding between us, if that country were to enter on a serious reform of her commercial system. Here is a passage from the pen of Mr. Hadfleld, a strong friend to the empire, which was written in 1854, but I am afraid it pretty fairly represents the existing state of things : — " In Brazil you have the ordeal of health visits, poljce and custom-house searchers, before you can even leave the ship ; and if a vessel arrives after dusk, no matter where from, coast- ing or otherwise, she must remain till morning for the visit, after which she is a kind of custom-house prey, watched, and pounced upon in every possible manner if all is not found to be strictly in accordance with the loijg string of regulations, numbered like a criminal code ; and woe betide the unfortunate shipmaster or merchant importing goods who innocently falls into the trap laid for him ! It is a case of heavy fines, damages, and often confiscation of ship or property, although it can be clearly and satisfactorily proved that no one is to blame in the matter, and that there has been no fraudulent intention what- ever. The stipulations of the custom-house code are being continually infringed, and yet, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, it altereth not. AU this is very sad, and unworthy of a country that looks to commerce for its intercourse with Europe, and as a main source of revenue and social progress."^ Brazil has long shown a great desire to stand well with the English public, partly no doubt from the best motives, but partly also with an eye to business ; for a country which so often appears as a borrower in the London market very naturally wishes to enjoy a good repute. Unhappily, she imagines that she can attain this desirable object by the device, so familiar to theatre-goers, of a claque, — and a very efficient claque she has established. It is necessary, therefore, when 1 See also Heywood, " Resources of Brazil," in Statistical Journal for 1864. BRAZIL. 195 any dispute is going on between our Government and that of Brazil, as was the case, for example, in 1863, to observe most carefully in what newspapers the articles favourable to Brazil appear. If in newspapers which we can thoroughly trust, good and well, but if in those of a less trustworthy character, then the chances are great that it is only the Brazilian claque which is speaking through their columns. There ^is so much party spirit at work in the European press, both for and against Brazil, that I think I shall not be doing a useless work if I mention to you some of the books which may be consulted with most advantage by those who wish to form a just opiuion about the affairs of that country. First, for a very roseate account of the empire, I would refer you to a pamphlet written by Mr. Charles Dunlop^ for the use of intending emigrants, then to Mr. Hadfield's pleasant book,^ published about a dozen years ago, as well as to the work by him which is advertised as now in the press, and to the large volume of the American missionaries, Messrs. Kidder and Fletcher. Then for the reverse of the medal, you have Mr. Christie's Wofes on Brazilian Questions,^ an exceedingly in- teresting series of articles by M. Elis^e Eeclus, in the Revue des Beux Mondes, and several others, which appeared about the same time, by M. d'Assier. To them I may add the Recol- lections of the late Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Eeaders who want to pursue the subject more deeply must go to German authorities, to the works of Dr. Ave-Lallemant,* and to the Swiss M. von Tschudi.^ Few, however, will care to do this, and to those who want ^ Brazil as a field for Emigration. By Charles Dunlop. Bates, Hendy, and Co., London. 2 Brazil, River Plate, amd Falkland Islands. By William Hadfield, London. 3 Notes on Brazilian Questions. By W. D. Cliristie. Macmillan, London, 1865. * Beise durch Siid Brasilien. Eeise durch Nord Brasilien, von Dr. Avg- Lallemant. Leipzig, 1859-1860. ^ Beisen durch Sudameriha, von J. J. von Tsohudi. Leipzig, 1866-68. 196 BRAZIL. to read only one book on Brazil, I liave no hesitation in recom- mending the work of Professor and Mrs. Agassiz/ which has the additional advantage of being quite new. These distin- guished travellers met with the greatest possible attention and kindness from the Government of Brazil, so we may be very sure they will set down naught in malice. Here is an extract from their pages, which seems to me to render exceediagly well the impressions which are left upon my mind by my reading on this subject : — " There is much that is discouraging in the aspect of Brazil, even for those who hope and believe, as I do, that she has before her an honourable and powerful career. There is much also that is very cheering, that leads me to believe that her life as a nation will not belie her great gifts as a country. Should her moral and intellectual endowments grow into har- mony with her wonderful natural beauty and wealth, the world will not have seen a fairer land. At present, there are several obstacles to this progress, obstacles which act like a moral disease upon the people. Slavery still exists among them. It is true it is on the wane, true that it has received a mortal blow, but the natural death of slavery is a lingering illness wasting and destroying the body it has attacked. Next to this I would name among the influences unfavourable to progress, the character of the clergy. In saying this, I disclaim any reference to the national religion. It is of the character of the clergy I speak, not of the Church they represent. "Whatever be the Church organization in a country where instruction is stQl so intimately linked with a state of religion as it is in Brazil, it is of infinite importance that the clergy themselves should not only be men of high moral character, but of studious, thoughtful lives. They are the teachers of the people, and as long as they_ believe that the mind can be fed with tawdry street-processions, vith lighted candles and cheap bouquets, ' A Journey in Brazil. By Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz. Trubner, London, 1868. BRAZIL. 197 and as long as the people accept this kind of instruction, they will be debased and enfeebled by it. Shows of this kind are of almost daily occurrence in all the large cities of Brazil. They interfere with the ordinary occupations, and make work- ing days the exception rather than the rule. It must be remem- bered, that in Brazil there is no laborious cultivated class of priests, such as have been an honour to ecclesiastical literature in the Old World ; there are no fine institutions of learning connected with the Church. As a general thing, the ignorance of the clergy is universal, their immorality patent, their in- fluence very extensive and deep-rooted. There are honourable exceptions, but they are not numerous enough to elevate the class to which they belong. But if their private life is open to blame, the Brazilian priests are distinguished for their patriot- ism. At times they have occupied high public stations, serving in the Legislative Assembly, in the Senate, and even nearer the throne ; yet their power has never been exerted in favour of Ultramontane tendencies. Independent religious thought seems, however, rare in Brazil. There may, perhaps, be scep- ticism; but I think this is not likely extensively to be the case, for the Brazilians are instinctively a believing people, tending rather to superstition than doubt. Oppression in matters of faith is contrary to the spirit of their institutions. Protestant clergymen are allowed to preach freely, but, as a general thing. Protestantism does not attract the southern nations, and it may be doubted whether its advocates will have a very wide-spread success. However this may be, every friend to Brazil must wish to see its present priesthood replaced by a more vigorous, intelligent, and laborious clergy." "We carry on relations with Brazil through a minister-pleni- potentiary at Eio de Janeiro, fairest of all earth's cities, so far at least as situation is concerned, and we have consuls or in- ferior consular officers at Para, at Maranham, at Ceara, at Eio Grande do Nort^ at Parahyba do Norte, at Pemambuco, at Maceio, at the magnificent Bahia, at Santos, a little south of 198 BRAZIL. Eio, at Paranagua, at Porto Alegre, on the inlet known as Lagoa dos Patos, and, as listeners to the dreary debates of 1863 on Brazilian affairs are not likely to forget, amongst the barbarous wreckers of Eio Grande do SuL TJRUOUAY. — From the frontiers of the Brazilian province of Eio Grande do Sul, with which it lives on the worst possible terms, stretches down to the northern shores of the river Plate the comparatively small republic of Uruguay, which used to be known in Spanish times as the Banda Oriental, but has now assumed the name of its great river. The republic of Uruguay extends over 71,752 English square miles, is therefore more than twice as large as Scotland, and contained in 1860, according to the manual put out by its Government for the use of emigrants, a. population of 281,500. It enjoys an excellent climate, being swept by fresh breezes both from the Atlantic and from the Plate, and it is in general very healthy. The country is undulatiag, and infinitely more attractive than that on the southern side of the great estuary. The Eio Negro runs through the centre of Uruguay, and with its tributaries has been very aptly compared by Mr. Latham, in his valuable book^ upon sheep-farming in this part of the world, to the arterial system in the human body. Here there is no question of clearing. The settler can go to work at once on the rolling downs, for which the scarlet verbena of our gardens forms, in many places, a brilliant carpet. " The general, and almost entire absence of trees," says Mr. Darwin, " is remarkable. Some of the rocky hills are partly covered by thickets, and on the banks of the larger streams, especially to the north of Las Minas, willow trees are not uncommon. Near the Arroyo Tapes, I heard of a wood of palms ; and one of these trees, of considerable size, I saw. near the Pan de Azucar, in lat. 35°. These and the trees ^ Tlie States of the River Plate. By Wilfred Latham. London : Long- mans, 1866. URUGUAY. 199 planted by the Spaniards offer the only exceptions to the general scarcity of wood. Among the introduced kinds may be enumerated poplars, olives, peach, and other fruit trees. The peaches succeed so well that they afford the main supply of firewood to the city of Buenos Ayres."^ The chief city of Uruguay is Monte Video, containing a population which Mr. Latham sets down at 60,000, composed of many different races, but chiefly of emigrants from Italy. Its port is extensive and secure, and can shelter more than five hundred vessels of all sizes. The " Statistical Tables relating to foreign Countries," presented to Parliament in July 1868, give the total value of the articles exported from Monte Video ia the year 1866 at 11,912,922 dollars, worth at the average rate of exchange three shillings and sixpence each, of which amount 3,142,716 dollars' worth was sent to Great Britain, and a rather larger quantity to France. The principal exports are hides, salted beef, wool, cows' grease and tallow, and the chief occupation of the inhabitants is the rearing of cattle and sheep. Listen to the voice of the charmer. Thus speaks Mr. M'Coll, I suppose a countryman of ours :^ " It is a fact well worthy of notice, that the wheat produced in the Banda Oriental is of a quality much superior to what is grown on the other side of the river Plate. . . . The immense disparity can only be ex- plained by the great difference in geological formation of the two countries. It is weU. known that the vast plains of Buenos Ayres owe their existence solely to the diluvian or marine deposit, whilst the Banda Oriental, which is situated upon the termination of the great ridges which descend from Brazil along the east coast of the southern continent, contains in abund- ance rocks of the volcanic and secondary formations. Hence it is that the river Plate winds so far southward before finding ^ Journal of Eesearches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of H.M.8. Beagle round the World. By Charles Darwin. London : Murray, 1860. ^ The Bepublic of Uruguay, etc., a Manual for Emigrants. Office of the Monte Videan Legation, 1862. 202 URUGUAY. satisfactory — on paper — than the legal guarantees for the security of life and property. Education is at a low ebb. The clergy is exceptionally ignorant. Morality does not flourish. Those who want to see all the worst that can be said of the state of things will of course turn to Wappaus. For some months, it is but justice to say, the troubles of Monte Video have been monetary and not political; and if the summer of 1868 is remembered as a period of financial pressure, it will at least not be remembered for any of those scenes of violence which have been but too frequent in that city and its neighbourhood. Our Government has at various periods taken a very warm interest in the affairs of Uruguay, which needs nothing but political quiet to make her an increasingly useful commercial friend, and English interests are represented by a charg^- d' affaires at Monte Video, and by a vice-consul at Maldonado. THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION.— li we steam away from Monte Video in the evening, we shall find ourselves when we come on deck in the morning in the outer roads of Buenos Ayres, the capital, and far the most important city, of that huge but loosely hung political entity which is known as . the Argentine Confederation. This immense State, " estimated," says Mr. Ford, in a recent report to the Foreign Office, " to cover 515,700 English square miles, and containing a population of only about two to the square mile, stretches westward to the Andes, which look down upon Chile, marches to the northward with Bolivia, far in the centre of the continent, and has Para- guay, Brazil, and Uruguay for its eastern neighbours." It consists of fourteen provinces, of which that of Buenos Ayres, about twice the size of Scotland, is at once the largest, the richest, and the most powerful. Some of the interior provinces of the Confederation are hilly or mountainous, and on the north the vegetation is of a semi- tropical or tropical type, but very much the larger portion of its surface consists of those vast plains known as Pampas, THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION. 203. enjoying the climate of the warmer temperate latitudes, and peculiarly well fitted for the rearing of sheep and homed cattle. The last of these two industries is more especially the industry of the Argentiae Confederation, and influences more than any- thing else the modes of life of its inhabitants. Outside of the towns these are for the most part a wild race of horsemen, skilful with the lasso, ready with the knife, but by no means so savage as they have often been painted, as even Wappaus — devil's • advocate for South American republics as he is — wiUingly admits. In 1810, Buenos Ayres broke away from its Spanish con- nexion, and along with the adjoining provinces has led an agitated, though latterly not unprosperous, life ever since. The ferocious wars, which fill up so much of its history since the attainment of its independence, were not however mere com- bats of kites and crows, as our European pride is apt to lead us to think. They had their source in the nature of things, in the inevitable opposition between the semi-civilized classes of the towns and the herdsmen of the Pampag, — acknowledging a precarious loyalty to some great landowner or daring military leader, but strangers to the very name of law.-' The necessary enmity of these two classes grouped them into the Unitarists, ■who desired a strong centralized government, in which the liberal ideas current in Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth century should be carried out ia every particidar, and the Federalists, barbarians to whom these ideas were mere phrases, but who had so far right on their side, that the policy of their opponents presupposed the existence of a state of society, which in fact did not exist. The war-cry of the Federal- ists was local independence and the loosest possible federa- tion. That at least was their leading principle, for their war- cry was less euphemistic, being indeed neither more nor less than the words long printed at the head of their ofi&cial docu- 1 See Life in the Argentine Eepvhlic in the days of the Tyrants. By D. F. Sanuiento. London ; Sampson Low, 1868. . 204 THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION. ments, " Death to the savage Unitarists." It was this country or federalist party which triumphed with Eosas, who, powerful for some years before, became from 1835 to 1852 the Dictator of Buenos Ayres. He obtained power as a Federalist, but, while cursing the Unitarists, he ruled in a ferociously central- izing spirit. The long and terrible tyranny of Eosas was overthrown by Urquiza, who, in the year 1851, on the 1st of May, being then Governor of the province of Entre-Eios, declared against the Dictator in name of that very federahsm which he had used as a mask for his despotic designs. Urquiza first crossed the Uruguay, and overthrew, without a struggle, the power of Oribe. Next, joined by the forces of that commander, he passed to the opposite shore and totally defeated Eosas in the battle of Monte- Caseros, a very considerable fight, in which some 25,000 men were engaged on each side. Eosas fled to Europe on the 3d February 1852, and Urquiza proceeded to re-organize the confederation on a more truly federal basis. Buenos Ayres, however, although glad enough to be rid of its oppressor, was unwilling to descend from its commanding position.. Urquiza's authority, and that of the congress of Santa Fe, which supported him, was openly resisted, and Urquiza's blockading squadron was bought over by the wealthy Portenos, or men of the Har- bour, as the people of Buenos Ajtcs are called. For seven years that city succeeded in keeping her isolated position, but in 1859 an armed peace ended in actual hostilities, which ter- minated in the return of Buenos Ayres into the Argentine Confederation, which now therefore consists of fourteen States. Thus was fulfilled, at least for a time, the words of Urquiza, in his long and remarkable speech to the Santa Fe congress, which is quoted by M. Martin de Moussy •} "On the Argentine ban- ner there is room for more than fourteen stars, but no one of them must disappear." 1 Description Giographique et Statietique de la OonfSdiration Argentine. Par V. Martin de Mouasy. Paris : Didot, 1860. THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION. 205 Since 1859, or rather since, somewhat later, Buenos Ayres was recognised as the capital, the history of the Argentine Confederation has been one of rapidly advancing prosperity, diversified of course by frequent local disturbances in various parts of its widely extended territory, which are dignified by the name of revolutions ; but the only event of primary import- ance has been the war with Paraguay. There is, I fear, no doubt that a divergence of interests will continue for a long time to make a breach between Buenos Ayres and the other provinces very probable, — for Buenos Ayres would like, naturally enough, to keep the rich revenues of its Custom-house for its own provincial purposes, while several of the other provinces, which feel that they have a great future, chafe against the power and prestige of the " men of the Har- bour." Por some years, however, the whole fourteen sisters have lived peaceably under the presidency of General Mitre, who has, within the last month or two, quietly resigned his power at the end of his term, and has been succeeded by M. Sarmiento, a savant, who has just returned from being ambas- sador to the United States, and who, on education and many other matters, holds opinions in accordance with the best lights of the age. A publicist of the Eiver Plate has said, " The desert is the greatest enemy of South America," and the first object of every one connected with the Argentine Confederation should be to induce emigrants to go thither. Truly emigrants might easily do worse, for although just at present sheep -farming, which was recently so profitable in these countries, seems to be at a discount, there seem to be few places in which an active and enterprising man with some capital more easily grows rich. "What an impression the astonishing abundance of the Platine valley seems to make upon every beholder ! Let us take for instance Mr. Mansfield. At page 229 of his pleasant " Letters" ^ I find the following : — ' Paraguay, Brazil, and the Plate. Letters written in 1852-53. By C. B. Mansfield. Cambridge : Maomillan and Co., 1856. 206 THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION " Pancy the capabilities of these lands where they plant woods of peach trees for firewood, and to feed their pigs, — not because the friiit is not first-rate, but because there are not men enough to eat it. Olives too grow in great perfection at Buenos Ayres, and the vine luxuriates in the ripper provinces, Mendoza and Tucuman ; here is a land of com, oil, and wine ; and as for the honey, as if it was not enough that there should be a score of sorts of bees to make it, the very wasps brew delicious honey. The Banda Oriental and Entre-Eios have the same capabilities as the plains of the West, with such other advantages as are given by a more undulating and broken ground, with a great deal of mineral wealth. " Then for intercommunication. In those parts where the country is hilly there is the best water carriage in the world ; and over the plains, what a country for railways ! why, the whole Pampas ought to be furrowed with tramways (not to speak of steam locomotives, which they do not want yet) ; here is an employment for the thousands of horses which are to be had and fed for nothing. AU the towns of the plain might lay down tram-roads from one to the other, commencing with one from Salta to Buenos Ayres. The glorious timber of Para- guay wiU do for the trams. Iron is not needed. " So much for the land, now for the rivers. These rivers are a mine of uncountable wealth ; the coal of England is nothing to them. I was speaking of the timber of Paraguay, — now here is a beginning for a colony to make heavy profits at starting ; here is a branch of trade with Europe hitherto undreamed of. People have thought and tried to import timber from Brazil, and still do in small quantities — a few shiploads of Jacaranda per annum — ^but Paraguay as a wood market for Europe I should think had scarcely been hinted at, except to be derided ; and yet, excepting the banks of the Amazons, no place is so well suited for supplying the timber, which is the most splendid of aU the splendid products of South America, and the one most cruelly wasted. One great obstacle to the ex- THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION. 207 portation of the Brazilian timber is the difficulty of getting it to the coast ; here, however, is the Paraguay-Parana ready to float down the timber from the interior." Extracts like the above might be multiplied to any extent from the works of writers who have traversed this part of South America. The commerce of the Argentine EepubKc is already large, and is rapidly rising. Mr. Pord, in his report of 1866, tells us that the general imports of 1865 showed an increase of 24 per cent, upon those of 1864. The increase of imports into the Eepublic from Great Britain, in particular, is still more remarkable, amounting to 46 per cent. We send her chiefly textile fabrics, and receive from her principally wool, hides, and sheepskins. The exports of the Argentine Eepublic to Great Britain, which amounted in 1865 to £487,460, give an inadequate idea of her total exports, for while she sent us only the amount I have named, she sent to Belgium and other parts of Europe, through Belgium, goods to the value of more than £1,400,000. Taking, nevertheless, the value of imports and exports together from 1861 to 1865, it wiU. be found that the Argentine Confederation carries on larger transactions with us than with any other State. She has also borrowed considerable sums of money in this country, and many of our countrymen have sunk large sums in the railways which are made or are progressing in various parts of her territory. The Constitution is, I need hardly say, Eepublican and Federalist. The President is elected for six years by the representatives of the fourteen provinces, and there is a Senate and a House of Deputies. We have a minister-plenipotentiary at Buenos Ayres, and a consul at the very rising port of Eosario,^ about 190 ^ Mr. Consul Hutchinson, in his repott, of date July 8th, 1867, says — "Roaario is becoming daily more evident in its position as the second city of the Argentine Republic. Second, be it observed, only to Buenos Ayres in number of population, wealth, revenue, commerce, and public buildings 208 THE ARGENTINE CONFEDERATION. miles from that city and the terminus of the railway which is being made to Cordova 247 miles off in the interior, under the name of the Central Argentine. PARAGUAY. — I have alluded already to more than one of the many good books which have been written of late years upon the Argentine Confederation, and amongst others to that of M. Martin de Moussy, which is far the most comprehensive and valuable of them all. On the little known provinces of the interior may also be consulted with advantage a recent German book of travels by M. Kahl. For the English reader, however, who wants a general view of the country, the work most to be recommended is that by Lieutenant Page of the United States navy, who was sent to survey the Plate and its affluents, soon after the fall of Eosas and the wiser policy of Urquiza threw open to commerce this mighty waterway. We will, if you please, take Lieutenant Page's book with us into Paraguay, where we are now going, and add to our travelling library Mr. Mansfield's Letters, already mentioned, as well as the strongly pro-Parag-uayan work of the Belgian, M. du Graty,^ and a very anti- Paraguay an pamphlet* recently published in London. In order to reach Paraguay we shall embark on a steamer at Buenos Ayres, and after a run of many hundred miles against the powerful stream of the Parana, we shall find ourselves twenty miles above the Argentine town of Corrientes, and entering the mouth of the Paraguay, which joins the Parana but far before that capital in its topographical and geographical position, as well as hydrographical advantages." Mr. Hutchinson has just published a, paper on the Plate, which was read at the last meeting of the British Associa- tion, and a larger work by him, on the same subject, is about to appear, if it has not already appeared.. ' La Plata, the Argentine Oonfedsration, and Paraguay. By Thomas J. Page, U.S. N. Harper and Bros., New York. 2 La RSpiiblique du Paraguay. Par M. Du G-raty. Brussels, 1865. ■^ An Account of Paraguay. From the French of M. Ch. Quentin. London, TrUbner, 1865. PARAGUAY. 209 from the south-west. lidutenant Page thus describes the first part of our journey : — " The confluence of the Parana and Paraguay is about a thousand miles from the Atlantic. The country on both sides is fertile, and, above Buenos Ayres, on the firm lands there are numerous estancias, extending from the river banks for many mUes into the interior. I have been filled with amazement at the resources of the ' riverine' provinces, and their availability, without the construction of roads, cainals, or even the usual obstructions of river navigation, for direct trade with foreign countries. In this course of one thousand miles, the cereals, vegetables, fruits, woods, and flora of almost every zone may be grown to perfection, as is proved by the actual products under the present primitive system of culture. The horned cattle, horses, and sheep are remarkably fine, and their existing numbers, spite of the civil wars which have distracted the country, show the extraordinary adaptability of chmate and natural pastiires to their increase. The population is suflicient to form the basis of an extended and immediate trade ; and the Indians, with the exception of the warlike tribes of the Chaco, are quiet, or semi-civOized. The climate is benign, even in low marshy neighbourhoods, as experienced by ourselves, and attested by many writers, particularly Azara, who was employed by the Spanish Government to run the boundary line between its possessions and those of Portugal, and spent twenty years of his life in this work. The Spanish Americans and Mestizos we met with were uniformly friendly and hospit- able, and the cities and small towns offer some agreeable society.'' When we enter the Paraguay the character of the scenery changes, and the prospect presented to us is thus described by Lieutenant Page : — - "'In the isles of the Parana,' says my journal, 'we have seen the lovely gardens of La Plata ; we have now before us her parks. It is the region of the palm, which here rises to a 210 PARAGUAY. great height. The grass is green, luxuriant, and clean as a well-kept lawn ; deer gambol under the trees, and it needs not a vivacious imagination to conceive that, at each bend in the river, some noble mansion, to which these parks pertain, will appear. A few habitations are alone wanted to animate the landscape, and complete the pleasant association of homes in this fair land. " ' There are extended forests of these palms, so symmetri- cal, fresh, and free from all that could detract from their beauty; growing apart at such exact apparently measured distances, that we are filled with astonishment and admiration.' " We are supposed to be travelling in peaceful times. Had we been travelling during the last two or three years, we should have been stopped by the Brazilian squadron blockadii^ the river, or sunk by a shot from the great fortress of Humaita, which so long defied the enemies of Paraguay. Or, again, had we been traveHing when Mr. Mansfield went up the river, just after the fall of Eosas, we should have been detained at Neembueu, a small Paraguayan frontier town, until- leave arrived from the capital to allow us to proceed further into this Western Japan, the most jealously guarded of all Christian countries. Let us, however, suppose that we have encountered no difficulties, and that we have reached Asuncion. We may then look around, and see the character of the strange region in which we have arrived. Paraguay proper fills up the whole peninsula formed by the rivers Parand and Paraguay, at least as far north as the line of the Eio Apa, a stream flowing from the east into Para- guay, but its Government maintains, in defiance of that of Brazil, that its territory extends far to the north of the Eio Apa, to another stream also flowing into the Paraguay from the east, and called the Eio Blanco. In addition, however, to this, Paraguay claims very large territories in the vast and magni- ficent wilderness west of the Paraguay, known as the Gran Chaco, and also a large extent of country between the Parana PARAGUAY. 211 and the Uruguay, known as the territory of the Misiones. It is then, as you wUl see, very difficult to say what is the exact size of Paraguay, but the inhabited portion of her territory is very small, as they count smaUness in South America. The population is composed of three different races, and of the pro- ducts of their intermixture — the Spanish, the native Indian, and the Negro. Of these, the Negroes form the smallest fraction. The Almanach de Ootha for this year gives the population in 1857 as 1,337,431. The commerce of the country is very trifling, almost the only exports of any importance being to- bacco and the yerba m§,t^, or Paraguay tea, which is the leaf of a shrub belonging to the Holly genus, and known as the Ilex Paraguayensis. This mS,t^ forms the favourite beverage of the inhabitants of the Platine valley, and is as indispensable to them as tea is to ourselves. The preparation and exporta- tion of m§,t^ is a Government monopoly. The Government also possesses a very large portion of the cultivated land of the country, and is in consequence so rich, that, before the Bra- zilian war, it was in the position — ^rare indeed for any Govern- ment — to be able to lend instead of borrowing. Paraguay was colonized by the Spaniards, but was dis- covered by Sebastian Cabot, an Englishman of Venetian de- scent, who sailed in 1527 up the Paraguay as far as its junction with the Vermejo, which comes down and joins it on the right from the far-off Andes, across the enormous plain, which ■ is roamed over to this day by tribes of wild and very dangerous Indians. Sebastian Cabot was searching for a road to the land of treasure, but that land of treasure was meanwhile reached by a more famous adventurer, Prancisco Pizarro, who had come upon it by way of Panama ; so the brave old navigator got less credit for the gold and silver ornaments i which he took from the Indians whom he slew on the Vermejo than he other- wise would have done. Although, however, Spain soon learned that this was not the shortest way to the '' golden Peru," it was nevertheless a way, and, in those days of rapidly realized 212 PARAGUAY. ■ dreams, who could say that there were not other regions ec[ually blest in the interior of the continent ? So the Spaniards went ia considerable numbers to Paraguay, and, in 1537, founded Asuncion. The new settlement prospered fairly, as may more largely be read in Mr. Helps's book on the Spanish Conquest of America ; but the government of Paraguay proper is of little interest to us until the early part of this century, when it threw off the Spanish yoke. The doings of the Jesuits, how- ever, in and near Paraguay, — for the centre of their power did not lie in Paraguay proper, but in the district known as the Misiones, which lies, as we have seen, between the Parana and the Uruguay, — and the government established by the great Order in these parts, form one of the most curious chapters in modern history. I must not, however, linger on it at present, further than to say, that though there were good points in the management by the Fathers of the barbarous Indians with whom they had to deal, there can be no doubt, I fear, that the passive obedience which they inculcated with so much success, has had much to do in rendering possible the despotism which our own and the last generation have seen established in Paraguaj'. That country became independent of Spain as early as 1810, but to very little profit, for before many years had passed away, it had fallen under the rule of a tyrant far more cruel than most Spanish viceroys. This was the famous Dr. Prancia, who, from 1817 to 1840, kept Paraguay almost hermetically sealed against the whole world. Yet the man was not all evil.* He was as incorruptible and upright as Eobespierre, and really cared for the interests of his country, as he understood them, nor is it impossible that he believed that the only way to save it from the bloody revolutions which desolated the whole of the lower valley of the Plate was to draw round it a cordon, and to allow within the borders of the land no rival near the throne. Throne, indeed, there was none, for El Supremo, the supreme one, as he insisted upon being called, was, nomiaally, only the ' For all the good that can be said of Franoia, see Carlyle or Wappaus. PARAGUAY. 213 president of a republic. He had, however, no difSctilty in handing down his power to his nephew, who reigned in his turn for two-and-twenty years. Dr. Lopez, although very arbitrary and unscrupulous, was not so bad as his uncle, and abandoned, to a considerable extent, the policy of exclusion. During a considerable part of his reign, Paraguay was indeed isolated from another cause. Eosas, the Dictator of Buenos Ayres, maiataiaed that Paraguay was a province of the Argen- tine Confederation, and attempted to coerce it by closing the navigation of its great fluvial artery. This state of things was ended in 1852 and in 1853, when treaties were signed esta- blishing the free navigation of the river Plate, and of the streams which unite to form it. Mr. Mansfield, who may almost be said to have discovered Paraguay for this generation of Englishmen, gives us the fol- lowing picture of President Lopez : — " I have only seen the President once siace I was intro- duced to him. I then met him on the road as I was out riding ; he was coming into town from his country-house in a queer old coach, the only one in the place, with as great an escort of soldiers and officers as the Queen would have. Everybody is obliged to stop and take off their hats when he passes ; so, of course, I did so, and received a most gracious bow in return. In Francia's time, everybody was forced to take off their hats to every soldier, and the country boys, who wear no clothes at aU, were obliged to wear hats for the purpose of saluting them. I was saluted the other day by a boy who had no clothes what- ever but a hat, which he doffed as I passed. . . . The ladies of the Eoyal famUy (as they ought to be called, for no king is more absolute than the old gentleman) do not seclude them- selves from the society of other people, but mix with their feUow-creatures like ordinary mortals, keeping a little more state, in tune with their greater wealth — for almost every other family in the country, except their own, has been impoverished by exactions. 214 Paraguay. " The President Hmself rarely sees or receives any society ; he is, I suppose, more utterly alone than any man in the world, for, unlike other kings, he has neither ministers nor advisers of any kind; everything is arranged by his own head, every officer of the executive appointed by him. The bishop is his brother too, and the general of the army his son. The Presi- dent is immensely fat : as he sat to receive me with his hat on, cocked a little on one side, he looked like George the Fourth." The Lopez whom Mr. Mansfield thus describes died peace- ably in 1862, and was succeeded, after a sort of farce of election, by his son, Pield-Marshal Solano Lopez, of whose doings the newspapers are now full. Unlike his father and grand-uncle, the present ruler of Paraguay has seen something of the world. He studied at the ficole Polytechnique in Paris, and saw some service with the Prench in the Crimea. By the Emperor Napoleon he was treated with great consideration and courtesy, while Mr. Mansfield tells us that he was received by the autho- rities in London in a much less friendly manner. Since returning to his own country he has turned his ex- periences abroad to good account ; has pushed on railways and telegraphs, collected vast stores of arms and ammunition, and put himself in a position to play a conspicuous part in South American history. As to his system of government, the less said the better. Paraguay is indeed nominally a republic, but so it was in the days of Prancia, and it is now, as then, simply a despotism under republican forms. In judging him and his doings, it is only fair to remember that we hear very little of his side of the question. When the war is finished we shall be in a better position to judge than we are now. The people over which he rules is jitterly different from any other on the face of the earth, and may well require a peculiar government. Ohe thing, however, I must say. Do not give way to the delusion that he is in any sense a champion of freedom against slavery, as some have asserted. He happens to be fighting PARAGUAY. 215 against a slave-holding empire, but he is fighting against it, not because it holds slaves, but partly from mere ambition, and partly because it inherits, or he thinks it inherits, the en- croaching policy of Portugal Now that we have obtained some acquaintance with the parties to the struggle, let me see if I can make clear to you the meaning of the, at first sight, not very intelligible contest which has been, for the last four years, raging upon the ' shores of the river Plate. This bloody drama opened in 1864, and the first scene was laid in the republic of Uruguay. I told you that that State lived on the worst possible terms with its neighbour, the Brazilian province of Eio Grande. Their mutual hatred is of old standing. It dates back to the first colonization of South America, when Eio Grande was peopled by Portuguese, and Uruguay by Spaniards. The people of Uruguay accuse the Eio Grandians of making raids iato their territory, to which the invaders are pleased to give the highly suggestive name of " Californias," while the Eio Grandians accuse the inhabitants of Uruguay of harbouring their runaway slaves, pursuing Uruguayan rebels over their frontier, and doing other un- neighbourly acts. As in the old days when Scotchmen and Englishmen fought upon the Border, their squabbles kept up an irritation in London and Edinburgh, so has it been with the squabbles of Eio Grande and Uruguay. In the spring of 1864 such loud complaints were made in the chambers at Eio de Janeiro, that the Government of Brazil sent an envoy to request reparation for a long series of wrongs alleged to have been committed against Brazilian subjects. The mission was not successful The authorities at Monte Video were in no complying humour, and Brazil, after some negotiation, declared that she must now take the law into her own hands. In estimating the conflicting statements as to this first stage of the quarrel, it is right to remember that it is Portugal, which, in the New World, encroached on Spain, not Spain which encroached on Portugal. 216 PARAGUAY. It was at this point that Paraguay appeared upon- the stage. President Lopez, as I have already mentioned, studied war in France, and believes, as it would seem with great justice, that he has considerable abilities as a commander. He had long been anticipating the probability of his having, at one time or another, to fight Brazil, and the present appeared to him a suitable occasion. Paraguay, we have already seen, had a ready-made ground of quarrel with Brazil, about their respec- tive boundaries, and Lopez professed to believe that, when the Brazilians attacked Uruguay, they .were merely making a first move in a game which was to close by their attacking him. Not was this view altogether unreasonable, for, although it is true enough that Brazil has more territory than she knows what to do with, she has few provinces to be compared, in their aptitude for speedy European colonization, to the magnificent Paraguay. Be this as it may, however, Lopez either was, or pretended to be, very much alarmed, and announced that if the Brazilians made any attack on the independence of Uruguay, he would immediately declare war. The Brazilians, nothing daunted, held on their course, and Lopez was as good as his word. Before the end of 1864 he had seized a Brazilian vessel, the " Marquis of Olinda," which he found in Paraguayan waters, had imprisoned a Brazilian governor, and had sent an expedition against the BrazUian province of Matto Grosso, which lies on the upper waters of the Paraguay. Not satisfied, however, with attacking his enemy at one point, he wished to invade the pro- vince of Eio Grande. In order to do this, it was necessary to cross a pretty wide strip of Argentine territory, and he applied at Buenos Ayres for permission to do so. Permission was, naturally enough, refused, whereupon the daring Paraguayan declared war with the Argentine Confederation, and, without giving time for the news of his having done so to reach Buenos Ayres, swooped down upon two Argentine ships which were near his territory. To such a challenge of course there could be but one answer, and the Argentine Confederation was added to the PARAGUAY. 217 foes of Paraguay. Meanwhile the Brazilians had got their own way in Uruguay, not without blockades and some fighting. "When the quarrel began, the " Blanco," or White party, was in power, but, as a mere matter of course, there was a Colorado insurrection going on in the provinces, and the Brazilians, ally- ing themselves with the Colorados, upset the Blanco Govern- ment, and provided themselves with convenient tools. The next step was to form a triple league, of Brazil, the Argentine Confederation, and Uruguay, against Paraguay ; and this was done by a treaty signed on the 1st of May 1865. By the 18th article of that treaty it was agreed that it should be kept secret until the principal object should be fulfilled; but kept secret it certainly was not, for it was laid before the British Parliament in March 1866 ; and it then became known that, amongst other things, the allies pledged themselves not to lay down their arms, unless by common accord, until they had overthrown the Government of Paraguay; that they bound themselves to respect the independence and territorial integrity of Paraguay, mutually guaranteeing them for five years ; but that they interpreted the extent of Paraguay as something very different from what the Paraguayans believed it to be; thus settling the disputed boundary questions in their own favour. The war now commenced in good earnest, and has continued to rage ever since, the' Paraguayans performing prodigies of valour, the allies managing their matters till lately, very in- differently indeed. We must not, however, allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking, that because the Paraguayans fight bravely their Government has not been to blame. Whatever inay be the ultimate designs of Brazil or of the Argentine Con- federation, Lopez certainly precipitated hostilities. A more temperate politician would probably have succeeded in playing off against each other the rival ambitions of his two formidable neighbours. There is a passage in a despatch from Mr. Thorn- ton to Lord EusseU, in the Wo. 3 papers presented to Parlia- 218 PARAGUAY. ment in 1865, which has not, I think, attracted sufficient attention :— " Both President Mitre and Senor Elizalde have at different times declared to me, that for the present they wished Paraguay to be independent, and that it would not suit them to annex Paraguay, even if the Paraguayans should wish it ; but they were unwilling to make any engagement to that effect with BrazU, for they did not conceal from me, that whatever were their present views on this point, circumstances might change them hereafter ; and Seiior Elizalde, who is about forty years old, said to me one day, though in mere conversation, that he hoped he should live to see Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the Argentine Eepublic united in one confederation, and form- ing a powerful republic in South America.'' Now, it is clear that both Brazil and the Argentine Con- federation cannot annex Paraguay, and the very fact of both of them being hostile to her, might, one would think, keep her long, in safety. Into details of the war I wiU not enter. It is chiefly inter- esting to us as showing how fine a breed of men has resulted from the intermixture in Paraguay of the Spanish with the Guarani and other liidian tribes, and partly from the fact that such important service seems to be rendered to Lopez by the comparatively few Englishmen whom the outbreak of the war surprised in his country, that the strongest diplomatic remon- strances have failed to make him relax his giip of them. Except in so far as she may be anxious about these unfortunate persons. Great Britain has nothing to do with the war, but to desire its speedy termination, by an agreement which shall throw the Plate and its af&uents fully open to commerce. As to the overthrow of the present Paraguayan Government, that is a matter with which we have no concern. If the allies are right in declaring that much of the old Francia leaven is at work in the heart of his grand-nephew, one cannot be surprised at their making his downfall a condition precedent of peace. PARAGUAY. 219 Trusting that every succeeding mail will bring us less war- like news from these noble but afflicted countries, I turn to subjects more agreeable, and to States less disturbed. CHILE. — Turning southward from Buenos Ayres, we have to sail for some twenty degrees towards the land of ice and snow before we can double Cape Horn. This voyage has no political interest for us, unless we catch a glimpse of the Welsh colony , recently founded at the mouth of the river Chupat, in Patagonia, or driven, perhaps, by contrary winds out of our course, see, far on the left, our own desolate colony of the I'aUdands. At length we sight the " notorious promontory," probably as Darwin saw it, in its proper form, " veiled in mist, and its dim outline sur- rounded by a storm of wind and water." Let us not linger in these hideous solitudes, but run rapidly up the western coast, passing the great island of Chiloe, admirably described by Darwin, and which a French writer has well compared to the hilt of a sword, broken off indeed from Chile, which is its blade, but still re- maining close to it. "We must steam a little more than twenty degrees along the Pacific coast, and get somewhat north of the latitude of Buenos Ayres, before we arrive at the chief sea-port of the republic which we are now going to visit — the famous Valparaiso. Valparaiso ! the Valley of Paradise ; what a name for this not too attractive town, with its red soil and its "fore- top," "main-top," and "mizen-top" ! names quaintly applied by our sailors to three well-marked portions of it. Those who gave the name, however, were Spaniards, who remembered the proverb of their country, " In the land of the blind the one- eyed is king," and, doubtless, after the horrors of Cape Horn, most places would look like a Paradise. Of aU the republics in South America, Chile is the one which has for the last thirty years enjoyed the greatest amount of peace and prosperity. These advantages it owes chiefly to its geographical situation. Cut off by the long chain of the Andes from the Argentine Coiifederation, separated from the 320 CHILE. central portions of Bolivia by the sandy desert of Atacama, it would indeed have been singularly perverse if it had contrived to get into many quarrels. The form of its territory again has been unfavourable to the action of those disintegratiag forces which have worked so powerfully in breaking up more than one of the States, which started along with it on the road of freedom and progress. Long wars have been impossible, for the narrowness of the theatre has made combats decisive. The inaccessible heights of the Andes barring them out from the rich plains of the east, have turned the attention of its inhabi- tants chiefly to the mineral treasures beneath their soU, and to the great sea on the west, the natural highway of commerce. To these advantages of situation, we must add the comparative purity from Indian, and still more from Negro, admixture of her European blood, and the fortunate chance which has given to Chile more than one statesman quite above the level of South America. San Martin, who was perhaps the most remark- able of them, was not indeed a Chilian by birth, but it is with that country that his historical career is chiefly associated. Listen again to Mr. Carlyle, who thus describes his expedition across the Andes to save Chile from Spain : — " Few things in late war, according to General Miller, have been more noteworthy than this march — the long straggling line of soldiers, six thousand and odd, with their quadrupeds and baggage, winding through the heart of the Andes, breaking for a brief moment the old abysmal solitudes ! For you fare along on some narrow roadway; through stony labyrinths ; huge rock mountains hanging over your head on this hand, and under your feet on that the roar of moxmtain cataracts, horror of bottomless chasms; — the very winds and echoes howling on you in an almost preternatural manner. Towering rock-barriers rise sky-high before you, and behind you, and around you; intricate the outgate, the roadway is narrow, footing none of the best. Sharp turns there are where it wiU behove you to mind your paces ; one false step and you wOl need no second ; in the CHILE. '2.'2,\ gloomy jaws of the abyss you vanish, and the spectral winds howl requiem. Somewhat better are the suspension bridges, made of bamboo and leather, though they swing like sea-saws ; men are stationed with lassos to gin you dexterously, and fish you up from the torrent if you trip there. "Through this kind of country did San Martin march, straight towards Santiago, to fight the Spaniards and deliver Chile. Por ammunition waggons he bad sorras, sledges, canoe- shaped boxes, made of dried bull's-hide. His cannon were carried on the back of mules, each cannon on two mules, judi- ciously harnessed ; on the pack-saddle of your foremost mule there rested with firm girths a long strong pole, the other end of which {forked end we suppose) rested with like girths on the pack-saddle of the hindmost mule; your cannon was slung with leathern straps on this pole, and so travelled, swaying and dangling, yet moderately secure. In the knapsack of each soldier was eight days' provender — dried beef ground into snuff powder, with a modicum of pepper, and some slight seasoning of biscuit or maize meal ; ' store of onions, of garlic' was not wanting ; Paraguay tea could be boiled at eventide, by fire of scrub-bushes, or almost of rock lichens or dried mule- dung. No further baggage was permitted ; each soldier lay at night wrapped in his poncho, witb his knapsack for piUow, under the canopy of heaven ; luUabied by hard travel, and sank soon enough into steady nose-melody, into the foolishest rougb colt dance of rmimaginable dreams. Had he not left much behind him in the Pampas, — mother, mistress, what not; and was likely to find somewhat if he ever got across to Chile liviag ? "What an entity one of those night leaguers of San Martia, all steadily snoring there in the heart of the Andes, under the eternal stars ! Way-worn sentries with difficulty keep themselves awake, tired mules chew barley rations, or doze on three legs ; the feeble watch-fire will hardly kindle a cigar; Canopus and the Southern Cross glitter down, — all snore steadily, begirt by granite deserts, looked on by the Constellations in that manner ! San Martin's 222 CHILE. improvident soldiers ate out their week's rations almost in half the time, and for the last three days had to rush on, spurred by hunger ; this also the knowing San Martin had foreseen, and knew that they could bear it, these ragged Guachos of his ; nay, that they would march all the faster for it. On the eighth day, hungry as wolves, swift and sudden as a torrent from the mountains, they disembogued ; straight towards San lago, to the astonishment of men ; — struck the doubly astonished Spaniards into dire misgivings ; and then, in pitched fight, after due manoeuvres, into total defeat on the ' plains of Maypo,' and again, positively for the last time, on the plains or heights of ' Cha- cabuco,' and completed ' the deliverance of Chile,' as was thought, for ever and a day." San Martin, after many adventures, ended his life in France ; but Chile has more recently produced several remarkable men. Amongst these, perhaps the most distinguished are Portales, who did much to inaugurate the era of prosperity which followed 1830, and might have done more if he had not fallen a victim to assassination ; and Manuel Montt, who has filled the office of President, and is still alive and active. The increasing prosperity of Chile is the more remarkable when we remember how terribly it suffers from earthquakes, of all natural visitations the most paralysing to human energy. Darwin was there during the terrible earthquake of 1835, " when a subterranean lake of lava was probably burning under the southern part of the American continent, twice as large as the Black Sea." He visited Concepcion and Talcahuana im- mediately after their overthrow. " In the former," he says, " each house or row of houses stood by itself, a heap or line of ruins ; but in Talcahuana, owing to the great wave, little more than one layer of bricks, tiles and timber, with here and there part of a wall left standing, could be distinguished."^ ' The town of Talcahuana was rebuilt, but was again terribly injured on the 13th of August last — not by an earthquake, but by a tremendous earth- quake wave, — the sea retiring for one-eighth of a mile, and then sweeping on with terrible force. CHILE. 223 " Earthquakes alone," observes the same writer, " are suffi- cient to destroy the prosperity of any country. If beneath England the now inert subterranean forces should exert those powers which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire condition of the country be changed ! "What would become of the lofty houses, thickly-packed cities, great manufactories, the beautiful public and private edifices ? If the new period of disturbance were first to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of night, how terrific would be the carnage ! England would be at once bankrupt ; — all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government, being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of rapine and violence would remain uncontrolled. In every large town famine would go forth, pestilence and death following in its train." Chile, nevertheless, contrives to prosper fairly enough, in spite of these terrible visitations. The two chief pillars of her State are agriculture and mining. The former, we are told by M. Kahl, one of the latest travellers in these regions, received a great impulse from the discovery of gold in California.^ The foolish Chilian grain-producers were, however, rash enough to imagine that their wheat would always command the immense prices which it brought at first, and their demands were so exorbitant that the Americans of the eastern seaboard were able to send cargoes of wheat round the Horn, and fairly to drive the Chilians out of the market. They still, however, grow a great deal for exportation, some of which is sent to England, and much also to Bolivia, Peru, and Australia. The minerals chiefly exported are silver and copper, but gold, cobalt, nickel, and zinc are also Chilian products. According to the " Statistical Tables relating to Foreign Countries," presented to Parliament in July 18^8, the estimated 1 Eeism durch GhUe und die westUchen Provinzen Argentiniem. Von August Kahl. BerUn, 1866. 224 CHILE. area of the country equals 139,335 English square miles; and the population, according to the same authority, was, in 1862, 1,6-76,243, which gives twelve to the square mile — a large population for South America. This population is settled in three very different zones. The first, extending from the extreme north of the country to aboiit latitude 30°, is a desert, barren of vegetation, but rich in mineral wealth, and which may be almost literally described by the lines of Browning : — ..." Another greater, wilder country, That 's one, vast, red, drear, bumt-up plain, Branched through and through with many a vein Whence iron 's dug, and copper 's dealt ; Look right, look left, look straight before — Beneath they mine, above they smelt, Copper ore and iron ore, And forge and furnace mould and melt, And BO on, more and ever more, Till at last, for a bounding belt. Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore.'' The centre of the country, from latitude 30° to about latitude 37°, is the agricultural region; and to the south of that comes the region of wood and pasture. It is in this last region that is situated the virtually independent, and some- times, as at present, rather troublesome Araucania, lying between the Biobio on the north, and the Valdivia on the south, and comprising an extent of territory equal to about five-sixths of the size of Scotland. Chile possesses also a colony on the Straits of Magellan, and makes immense claims in Patagonia, which are not, however, acquiesced in by the Argentine Confederation. After the expulsion of the Spaniards, many years passed before Chile fairly settled down into the tolerably quiet and happy condition in which she has lived for now about a generation. That quiet has been broken on several occasions by internal troubles, but they have been slight indeed in com- parison with those of some neighbouring States. Very recently, CHILE. 225 the unforttmate proceedings of Spain led to a war with that country, the principal incidents of which, especially the attack on Valparaiso, excited much attention in England.^ But that contest, which was certainly in no way dishonourahle to Chile, was, I observe, treated by the President, in his message of last summer, as virtually over. People in this country had, I think, come to pretty much the same conclusion some time before that. The comparative immunity of Chile from revolution and serious external war has kept her finances in a better condition than is at all usual in South, America. The total revenue for 1864 was £1,854,984; the total expenditure, £1,614,073 ; and the total public debt in the year 1865 was £2,933,415 ; while Chilian securities rank high on the London Stock Exchange. Vast masses of information on Chile are stored up in various German periodicals, as well as in numerous works on special subjects published both in Europe and America. The mere enumeration of these fills several pages of Wappaus, but there is, I think, rather a want of good recent popular books on this country. The work of most authority is perhaps that of Pceppig, but it is more than thirty years old. Chile, however, forms the subject of some interesting pages in the Voyage of the " Novara," and Dr. von Scherzer bears very flattering testi- mony to the merit of the Chilian men of science and letters. " There is," he says, " in Santiago, a surprising degree of intel- lectual activity, and great readiness in promoting scientific discovery. The philosophical works which have of late years made their appearance are deserving of the highest praise. The educated foreigner is not regarded askance here with envious eye, nor, because he happens not to be a native, kept in the background, and refused admission to positions of pub- lic trust and influence ; he is rather encouraged in his exertions 1 For a clear sketch of the war, and of the relations between the four Pacific Kepublics during its continuance, see the Bevue des Deux Mondes for October 1, 1868. P 226 CHILE. by the examples of such men as Doineyko, Philippi, Pissis, Moesta, etc. The well-known costly work in twenty-four volumes, describing the physical and political history of Chile was composed by a Frenchman named Claudio Gay, the expanse of printing it in Paris being borne by the Government. The annals of the University of Chile appear in regular publication each year from 1843, and comprise choice though miscellaneous information upon almost every topic of scientific interest."^ Even Wappaus joins in the praise which aU European critics must give to Chile for having not only kept up but improved and extended the institutions for the higher education which the Spaniards foimded in the old colonial times, as well as for her attention to elementary schools. Eeligion, according to the Gottingen Professor, although, as the terrible catastrophe at Santiago in December 1863 proved to the world, very much mixed up with gross superstitions, is not so divorced from morality as in many parts of South America ; and tolera,tion, as is happUy the case aU through that continent, is established in ' practice, if by no means com- pletely so in theory, for the Chilian is often far more liberal in his political than in his religious ideas. We have &chaTg6-d' affaires at Santiago, the Capital, and we have consuls or inferior consular officers at the small port of Talcahuana and Constitucion, at the important coast city of Valparaiso, at Goquimbo, which also does a considerable trade exporting copper, silver, and chinchilla; at Huasco and Cal- dera, which last is already connected by railway with Copiap6, and other places in the interior, and has been talked of as the terminus of a line projected to join the Central Argentine at Cordova, and to unite the Pacific with the Plate. This, if ever carried out, will be a gigantic work, passing, as it wUl have to do, over the pass of San Erancisco, 16,000 feet high. 1 NarraUve of tlis CircumnamgaUon of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara, by Dr. Karl von Scherzer (London : Saunders, Otley, and Co.), vol. iii. p. 297. BOLIVIA. 227 BOLIVIA. — Sailing northward up the Pacific we come to a small and miserable port, in the midst of an utterly desolate country. This is Cobija, where an unpaid vice-consul forms the only resident link between Great Britain and the wide republic of Bolivia, long famous for its stores of the precious metals, and, above all, for the once world-renowned silver mines of Potosi. Bolivia consists of three regions : — 1. A small and narrow strip of rainless wilderness along the sea-coast ; for Peru, as you observe, overlaps its neighbour, and shuts it sadly out from the sea. 2. A magnificent mountain and plateau region full of lofty peaks; and 3. A wide plain, stretching for miles and miles to the fron- tiers of Brazil, Paraguay, and the Argentine Confederation. A time will no doubt come when the great plain will be fully peopled, and then it will be far the most important dis- trict of Bolivia, communicating as it does, on the one hand, though the Madera and its tributaries, with the river of the Amazons, and, on the other hand, through the PUcomayo and other streams, with the gigantic basin of the Plate. Mean- while no South American country has a harder lot than Bolivia. It certainly would be greatly for its advantage if it cduld form part of Peru; and at one time, under the auspices of an able man. General Santa Cruz, it was in close relations with that country. ) Local jealousies and personal ambitions, to say nothing of the active hostility of Chile, made, however, the continuance of that connexion impossible, and Bolivia has now, for a whole generation, preserved a churlish and sterile independence, torn, alas! by factions of at least the average South American ferocity. The name of the country and of its capital alike bear witness to the stormy times from which its escape from Spanish thral- dom dates ; for the name of the country commemorates the liberator Bolivar, and the name of its capital is Sucr^ after the 228 BOLIVIA. general already alluded to who conquered at Ayacuclio, — a word associated on this side of the Atlantic only with the nickname given to the partisans of Espartero, but a word which stirs the blood of the Spanish- Americans like Morgarten or Ban- nockburn. A spell of violence and tumult has brooded over the land since its first birth as an independent State, and it has lived for the most part on indifferent terms with its neigh- bours, the principal cause of its difficulties having been the base money which it, unhappily, set about coining a good many years ago. In 1864 and 1865, Bolivia had also a very pretty quarrel with Chile about the guano in the bay of Mejillones, a quarrel which nearly led to war, but was closed by a boundary treaty, concluded in 1866. With Peru the republic has for some time past been on pretty good terms, and was on the point of giving material aid to that country in its recent, quarrel with Spain, when a new revolution broke out within its own borders, and forced it to concentrate its attention upon its own affairs. Bolivia has not been more fortunate than Chile in its recent visitors. The best sketch of it, which I have seen, is from the pen of M. Grandidier,^ a French gentleman who, with his brother, made a long journey through South America in 1857, chiefly for the purpose of studying various departments of natural history. M. Grandidier's account of the state of man- ners and morals ia Bolivia is very far from satisfactory. He says that drinking and gambling are the chief pleasures of the population, that commerce languishes, and wealth is steadily declining ; nor does there seem any hope of better days, until an easier communication with the more civilized parts of the world is opened, through the great rivers which flow to the east, or by the acquisition of that strip of Peruvian territory on the Pacific sea-board of which I have already spoken. This last is, I fear, a by no means probable contingency. Further ^ Voyage dans VAmMque du Sud. Par M. Ernest Grandidier. Paris : L^vy, 1861. BOLIVIA. 229 impediments to progress are found in the dolce far niente, so dear to the Indian popiilation, and in the scanty inducements which are offered to foreign immigrants by a country where law is weak or corrupt, and which from its inaccessible position may rejoice in the privilege of doing wrong with impunity, to all except its immediate neighbours. The periodical press of Bolivia is said by Wappaus to be behind that of any other South American State. Education is sadly neglected, and in 1860 there were only 8000 children at school Some few works of merit have appeared in the repubKc, amongst which he notices the statistical labours of Dalence and the History of Cortes. The A Imanach de Qotha for 1 8 6 8, quoting from a map of the Bolivian Colonel Ondarza, corrected by the notes of the great geographer Petermann, gives the population at 1,987,352, includ- ing, we presume, the indigenous Indians, who are very numerous in Bolivia. The republic has, according to the same authority, a small internal, but no foreign debt, and the revenue in 1864 was more than the expenditure. The whole amount of the exports and imports, most of which pass through the Peruvian port of Arica, is not very great ; of the former the chief are silver, copper, and gold, tin, sheep and vicuna wool, chinchona bark and guano; of the latter, cotton, woollen, and other manufactured goods. PERU. — Pursuing our way up the coast, and not a little buffeted by an ocean which often iU deserves the name of the Pacific, we arrive at Callao, the port of Lima, and a fine harbour. There is little in the first aspect of this region, whose name was so long a synonym for wealth and magnificence, to tempt us to a prolonged stay. The metallic treasures which dazzled the eyes of the conquistadores have, to a great extent, disap- peared ; and the more real treasures, which industry won from the soil under the gentle despotism of the Incas, have equally vanished with the changes of race and of circimistance. StiU 230 PERU. Lima has a certain charm.^ Its inhabitants are called the Parisians of South America, and the women .more especially are famous for their liveliness and brilliancy, qualities in which they were said, till recently,, only to be surpassed by their sisters of Arequipa, which, till the terrible earthquake of August last, was the second city of the republic. ■The "Statistical Tablesrelatingto Foreign Countries," presented to Parliament in July 1868, give the estimated area of Peru at •502,7i61 .English square miles, that is, at more than sixteen times the size of Scotland. The population in 1859, according to the same authority, was 2,500,000, or, in other words, about five to the square mile. The races are very much mixed, Negro, Indian, and European beiag combined in endless ways, nor, judging by the narrations of travellers, is the mixture on the whole successful. Eeaders of Prescott will ask with interest what remains of the old Indian stock are left in the land.. The most favourable account which I have met with of that people is found in the second of thfe two books which Mr. Markham has given us on Peru.^ " I was thrown," says that writer, " a great deal among the Indians, and at one time I had the most excellent opportunities of judging of their character, and I was certainly most favour- ably impressed. They, now have many vices, engendered by centuries of oppression and evil example, from which their ancestors were probably free ; they are fond of cMcha and agndrdiente, and are very suspicious ; but I found this latter feeling disappears when the, occasion of it is, found not to exist. They have had but too i good reason fqr their suspicion generally. Gn the other handy they are intelligent, patient, obedient, loving amongst each other,' and particularly kind to animals. Crimes of any magnitude are hardly ever heard of among them, and I am sure there is no safer region in the world for the traveller ' For full details about Lima, see the elaborately illustrated work of M. Va^iateB, Sketches of the Capital of Peru. London: Triibner, 1866. ^ Travels in Peru and India. By Clements R. Markham. London : John Murray, 18'62. ' PERU. 231 than the plateaux of the Peruvian Cordilleras. That the Indians are not cowardly and mean-spirited when once roused, was proved in the battles which they fought under the hanner of Tupac Amaru in 1781." i It was on the soil of Peru that, in 1 824, was fought the battle of Ayacucho, which, as I have already mentioned, put an end to the domination of Spain in the New World. The victory, however, which brought her independence, did not bring her prosperity. She has lived tormented by pronunciamentos, most of them singularly luunteresting and unfruitful-^a remark which, however, does not appl;^ to the somewhat grandiose scheme of General Santa Cruz, the Bolivian who wanted to divide Peru into a northern and southern State, and to join her in one con- federation with Bolivia. The jealousy of Chile, and the Chilian victory of Yungay in 1839, was the ininiediate cause of the failure of this project, which hardly, however, possessed the first elements of stability. Eeaders of von Tschudi's first work on Peru,^ will smile as they remember some of the episodes in this struggle, which were witnessed ])j that writer. Since that tipae the principal figure in Peruvian politics has been General Eamon CastOla, a rough and illiterate but able and energetic soldier, who has recently died, after having con- nected his name with almost every , important, event in the annals of his country siuce the War of Independence. Troubled and unsatisfactory these annals have been, and even in the midst, of foreign war the Peruvians have not been able to moderate the hostility of their own factions, The foolish and fruitless proceedings of Spain in, 1864 and 1865 led to the suc- cessful rising of a party in Peru against the then Presiden^i, General Pezet, who, having lived much in Europe, and know- ing the relative weakness of his own people, was accused of not being sufficiently r^ady to take up the glove which the mother 1 gravels in Peru during the Years 1838 to 1842. By Dr. J. von Tschudi. Translated by Thomasina Eoss. London, 1 847. In the Preface to his second work, von Tschudi speaks of a visit to the Peruvian and Bolivian plateau. If his account Of this has appeared, I have not seen it. 232 PERU. country had thrown down. His fall was succeeded by a stormy period, which lasted for some months; and so full of electricity is the political atmosphere in Peru that one was quite relieved to find from the newspapers, some weeks ago, that a new Presi- dent, Colonel Balta, had just been elected without any one being kDIed, or public peace being in any way interfered with. Pew of his predecessors have been so fortunate, and hardly had he been installed than a convulsion of nature, more terrible than any revolution, plunged the whole country in misery. Great as is the extent of Peru, the part of the country which is best suited to support a large and flourishing population, that, namely, between the Andes and the Brazilian frontier, is very thinly peopled, and, indeed, comparatively little known. The western part of its territory, which has a pretty large popu- lation, has not been kindly treated by naturie. The climate is detestable. Insect pests of every description are rife, and it enjoySj according to von Tschudi, a quite peculiar privilege in the number of strange and horrible local diseases to which those who dwell in it are subject. The dreary impression which is left on the mind by most descriptions of modern Peru with which I am acquainted, is not diminished by a perusal of M. Grandidier's pages. He speaks highly, as all do, of the loveliness of Lima, and the grace of its female population, but has very little good to say about the administration of the country, the state of education, or the ways of the people. Mr. Markham gives in both his books a somewhat more agreeable picture ; and the chapter in the more recent of these upon the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Peru, is not discouraging. Writing in 1862 he says : — " Much, indeed, wiU be required, and much I trust is to be hoped from the rising generation of young men who are now about to enter upon public Ufe. Many of them have been educated in Europe, a large proportion are well-informed, polished by travel and extensive reading, and ardently desirous of distinguishing themselves in the service of the State. In PERU. 233 literature they have already displayed considerable industry and ability. The Mevisfa de lAma, a bi-monthly periodical, contains archaeological, biographical, historical, and financial articles and reviews, generally very ably written, in an' en- lightened and liberal spirit. The contributors, among whom are the Senores Lavalle, UUoa, Pardo, Mores, Masias, and the painter Laso, are all young men with a career before them. It is a good sign, too, that effective steps have been taken to edit and reprint historical materials" which have long remained in manuscript, or in scarce old editions. Thus Don Manuel A. Fuentes has recently brought out six most interesting volumes, containing reports of the administrations of several of the Spanish viceroys of Peru, and a new edition of the Mercurio Peruana." His EstadisHca de Lima is also a work which displays considerable merit, and Don Sebastian Lorentes's well- known learning and habit of careful research promise that his History of Peru, now on the point of being published in Paris, will be a work of great value. On one subject of great interest and importance with refer- ence to the future of the country, I mean the position and influence of the Eoman Church, there is an interesting passage in the Voyage of the " Novara," which I will read to you, and in doing so I cannot but express a wish that some traveller competent to the task would give us a monograph on the state and prospects of Catholicism in Latin America. It is a most important subject, and one on which those who would fore- cast the future of the world ought to be well-informed. Full information about it, however, does not, so far as I know, as yet exist in Europe. " Father Vigil," says Dr. von Scherzer, " received me with much cordiality, and we had a long talk on a variety of sub- jects ; at last it turned upon his own weU-known work, and the painful position in which he felt himself with respect to the See of Eome. This was the most interesting portion of our conversation. ' It is not Catholicism that has made the 234 PERU. majority of Catholic nations lag so wofully in the career of progress/ exclaimed the venerable prieat, ' but that which Catho- licism has suffered to be mixed up with it, — ^the Inq^uisition and Monasticism. It is marriage and labour that make indi- viduals moral and useful, and nations great and powerfuL Human society can get on very well without monks or nuns, but not without morals ; not without matrimony and labour.' "Had I not transcribed these words almost at the moment they were spoken, I should hardly have dared to repeat them here, for I durst not have trusted to my memory, that a Spanish American priest should have made such a remark in the ' City of the Three Kings.' These revelations, which are far from being solitary, but find a responsive echo in the bosoms of a portion at least of the male population of the capital, are highly important in arriving at a conclusion respecting the actual religious senti- ment of the Peruvian Eepublic, and are very marked indications that an immense movement is likewise preparing in the Catho- lic Church on the further side of the Andes ; , and that Peru also has found its 'Father PassagUa.' Nay, it would not surprise me in the least should South America, wMch for upwards of three centuries has been dumbly , obeying the behests of spiritual intolerance, suddenly emit letters and propositions which would amount to a virtual separation from the Eoman Catholic Church. It is but a few years since Catholic priests in the Legislative Assemblies of Nicaragua and Honduras recorded their votes in favour of repealing the oi'dinance of cehbacy, and from their pulpits harangued their flocks on the advantages of revolutionary insurrection." Wappaus puts Peru intellectually above, but morally below, New Granada and other South American republics. The prospects of Peru have very much improved since the discovery of the guano, of which, as is well known, she sends us enormous quantities, procured chiefly at the Chincha, Islands, close to the Bay of Pisco. As long as this resource lasts, the credit of the country wiU probably be pretty good, though Mr. PERU. 235 Barton's report on the financial position of Peru, presented to Parliament in 1867, is not precisely a reassuring document. More sa;tisfactory symptoms are to be found in the extension of telegraphic communication, and in the advancement of rail- way enterprise ; the latest accounts giving us very cheering tidings of the work going on upon the difficult but very im- portant line which is to connect Islay with Arequipa. Sir Eoderick MurchisOn, in his address to the Geographical Society this year, told us that while Mr. Chandless and other foreigners had been labouring in the cause of Peru, the Peruvians them- selves have lately been making strenuous efforts to explore the rivers in their eastern territory, not without encountering serious dangers from the wild Indians who still inhabit these regions, and who, in 1866, drove back a joint frontier commis- sion of Brazilians and Peruvians who were exploring the river JavarL Such expeditions show on the part of the Peruvian Govern- ment a proper sense of the unspeakable importance of opening an easy conamunication with the Atlantic. I wish we could hear also of serious attempts to promote immigration, and to turn the agricultural resources of the country to the greatest advantage. In the days of the Incas the population appears to have been much greater, much, happier, and much more uniformly civilized than at present. Its mineral wealth has been the curse of, the " Golden Peru." It attracted the worst kind of colonists. . It tempted the new-comers to tyrannize over the Indian popula- tion, and to drag them from the field to the mine. The wheel soon enough came full circle, and their folly has been amply punished. "To Castile and to Leon, Columbus gave a new world," says the noblest epitaph that ever was written for mortal What have they, done with the magnificent gift ? The total exports from Peru, including bullion and specie, for the year 1865, amounted to £6,245,491. The principal ex- ports are guano, saltpetre, cotton, wool, both of the alpaca and of the sheep, copper, bark, and treasure. 236 PERU. We communicate with the EepubKc through a charge- d' affaires at Lima, the capital, and through consuls or inferior consular officers all along that unhappy coast which lately suffered so fearfully, at Payta on the north coast not far from the borders of Ecuador, at Callao, the port of Lima, at Pisco, at Islay, the port of Arequipa, at Arica, just where the coast turns south, and at Iquique, near the Bolivian frontier. The two last-mentioned places seem to have been altogether destroyed by the recent earthquake, and several of the others have been almost laid in ruins. ECUADOR. — I have said that Callao is a good harbour. The next port at which we land, Guayaquil, enjoys the same ■ reputation, and is the more valuable as the greater part of the coast of the Republic of Ecuador, to which it belongs, is singu- larly iU provided in this respect. Ecuador, than which no State is more appropriately named, for the equator passes through its capital, is politically one of the countries least to be envied in South America. Ever since its liberation, through the victories of Santa Cruz and Sucrd, it has lived in a state of perpetual agitation and revolution. First, as I mentioned at the commencement of this lecture, it formed part of the Ee- public of Colombia. Then^ when Venezuela and New Granada set up for themselves, it followed their example, and now for a whole generation it has had much difficulty in preventing itself being devoured, partly by Peru, which covets Guayaquil, and partly by its old friends, now known as the United States of Colombia. There have even been moments when it seemed once more on the point of becoming subject to a king. Nay, there was an alarm, false, I believe, that one of its own citizens was going to place it again under the tutelage of a European Prince. Ear the most conspicuous character in its history is General Flores, whose life presents an extraordinary series of adventures. Ecuador extends over some 300,000 square miles, is there- ECUADOR. 237 fore nearly ten times as large as Scotland, and comprehends an infinite variety of climates. First, there is the coast region, in parts rainless, in others, as at Guayaquil, very much the reverse ; then there are the districts of moderate elevation, clothed with magnificent forests, such as those in which Mr. Spruce searched for the red-barked chinchonas, the most rich of all their species in the fever-combating alkaloid, which has done so much for mankind, and where, I am sorry to say, the thriftless and bhmdering natives seem to be destroying these most valuable trees as fast as they can. Next, there are the high plateaux, such as that on which Quito, the capital, is situated, amidst one of the most^ extraordinary volcanic regions in the world. Then there are the high, cold, and desert plains, where human life is with difficulty preserved, and beyond the mountain region are the vast declivities and levels which are drained by the headwaters of the Amazons. The Galapagos Islands, situated from five to six hundred miles west of Ecuador, and one of the strangest places which the naturalist can visit, are politically connected with the Re- public. They were examined by Darwin, and it is very curious to observe in his account of them, published many years ago, the first germs of those speculations which have since made his name so famous. The population of Ecuador in 1858, according to the Alma- nack de Ootha for this year, amounted to 1,040,731. According to other authorities, I find the persons of European race set down as about 100,000; but a very much larger number are partly of European blood, and there is both a wild and a settled Indian population. Amidst the former, who dweU. in the eastern plains, the Jesuits laboured as they did in Paraguay, and since the expulsion of the Order, and of their Franciscan successors, the half reclaimed savages, left to themselves, have reverted to their primitive condition. Wappaus puts the intellectual and moral state of the country, as a whole, on about the same level as that of the United States of Colombia. The finances 238 ECUADOR. of Ecuador are, I need hardly say, in a wretched condition, but commerce is advancing, and our own trade with it is not in- considerable^ In February of this year Mr. Vice-Consul Smith sent a short but rather interesting report from Guayac[uil to the Foreign Oface, m. which he pointed out, that the war with Spain has greatly damaged the trade of the country, cocoa beiag its chief product, and Spain being the chief cocoa-ton-' suming country. During the cotton famine, a good deal of cotton was sent from Ecuador, but since the conclusion of the American war its growth has rapidly declined. India-Tubber is another important Equatorial export, but its collection is con- ducted in a wasteful manner by cutting' down the trees, and this resource will consequently soon be cut off. The total Equatorial imports are calculated by Mr. Smith at £434,860 in 1867 ; the total of the exports at £560,069. Some three-fifths of the exports, even in this unfavourable year for the cocoa planter, did, .nevertheless, consist of cocoa. We have here only two representatives — ^the consul, at Guayaquil, and a charg6-d' affaires who resides at Quito. REVIEW ANB GONGLUSIOK— With, the politicaUy storm-tossed, and alas so lately earthquake-tossed, Eepublic of Ecuador our long journey comes to an end. Now, then, that you have followed me through these dis- turbed communities, what shall we say about therh as a whole? Is it true, as Mr. Calvo would have us believe, that they are progressing with the most astonishing rapidity, and that aU is for the best ^in the best of all possible continents ? Is it true, on the other hand, as too many fancy, that South America is inhabited by a race of mongrel barbarians who are rapidly going back into savagery ? I think not. My opinion is, and I think yours will be, that there are germs in South America of something far better than' we have yet s6en in that part of the world. The era oi revolutions is not yet closed. It REVIEW AND CONCLUSION. 239 well may be, for example, that the struggle between Brazil and the Spainish-spe'aking peoples may continue even after Portugal and Spain are united in the Iberian union of the future. It well may be that the dissimilar interests of Northern and Southern Brazil may break that great empire into at least two parts. It may be thkt Paraguay wiU be absorbed by Brazil, and become a South American Poland. It may be that, more fortunate, she will only have the fate that Eosas intended for her, and become a part of the Argentine Confederation ; or a,gain the Argentine Confederation may itself break up, and part of it become grouped round Paraguay. There is no end to the possible permutations and combinations on which one can speculate, but through them all, I seem to see the probability of an often interrupted but on the whole continuous advance' in prosperity. I believe that the project of Bolivar for a Latino- American union was not chimerical, only premature. I do not believe it will ever be the interest of the United States, now that slavery is at an end, to menace the independence of South America. I expect that the commerce of those countries will increase with great rapidity, that the advance of science will make many districts healthy which are at present dangerous ; that a new and higher form of faith, Worked out in Europe, will gradually supersede the singularly low type of superstition, which now prevails through the whole of the country. I believe that negro slavery will disappear from Brazil, and Indian serf- age come to an end throughout the continent. Nowhere has so much progress been made towards the fusion of races. These Paraguayans, who have been fighting so well, are at least as much Indians as Spaniards. I believe that South American morality, which is as a general rule low, will be gradually raised. Even now, as readers of Mr. Bates's book will remember, it varies very much in different parts, even of the same country. After all, we must not forget that in some respects these communities are in advance of many older societies. Political liberty and complete freedom of the press are very general, and though they do not 240 REVIEW AND CONCLUSION. make up for the absence of other things, yet they are surely not to be despised. There is considerable and increasing intellec- tual life, both amongst the volatile Parisian people of Lima, and the graver inhabitants of Chile. Mitre, the late President of Buenos Ayres, is a poet; Sarmiento, who has succeeded him, is a man of letters ;^ and BrazU can already show a tolerable list of contributions to Portuguese literature. Finally, then, I con- sider that, ,although for some time to come it will be chiefly the commercial advices from those countries which will be interest- ing to the English politician, a time will nevertheless arrive, when they will have to be reckoned with by European States as important and useful members of the family of nations, as eben- Imrtig with themselves. To help them on in every way, to hold out to them the right hand of fellowship, to show by our acts that the charges which they bring against us are to a great extent the offspring of an excited imagination, I hold to be the imperative duty of every English public man who is brought into connexion with them. If anything that I have said to-night shall lead any persons to think more kindly of them, or to feel even a glimmering of interest in their struggles, I am sure that I shall not have mis- spent the time which I have expended on the preparation of this address. 1 See the biographical sketch of him by Mrs. Horace Mann in Life in the Argentine Republic. EDINBUBOH : T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVEESITY. WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICS- SPAIN. PRUSSIA. EUSSIA. THE GERMANIC DIET. AUSTRIA, HOLLAND. 1 Vol. Dernij 8«p. Price 10s. M. A GLANCE OVER EUROPE. AN ADDRESS DELIVEEED AT PETERHEAD, 19th December 1867. Smo. Price 1 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, DELIVERED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, ON HIS INSTALLATION AS RECTOR, March 22, 1867. 8do. Price Is SPEECHES DELIVERED IN THE AUTUMN OF 1868. In 8vo, ADDRESS ON THE BURSARY COMPETITION, DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY COURT, ABERDEEN. Jn 8vo. EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS.