A Bird's-Eye View of the United States

MR. BRYCE’S voluminous study of institutions and life in our country appears most opportunely for American readers.¹ To take the nearest reason, — we have just passed through one of our great quadrennial elections, and are still politically minded, but no longer engrossed with the immediate exigency. There is no period so well adapted for the consideration of political principles as that which occurs when the outgoing administration of one great party stays its aggressive power, and the incoming administration of the other has not yet shown its full purpose. But in a wider aspect such a book is especially timely. There is an unmistakable current of thought in the direction of an examination of political ideas. Not only is there a marked increase of special study in academic circles and among those whose pursuits tend to mere speculative interest, but the common schools are clamoring for text-books and courses of study in civil government, and historical investigation is turning very distinctly to subjects which involve political elements.

To all students thus particularly affected, and to that large body of intelligent Americans whose general interest is only more intensely expressed by these special classes, Mr. Bryce’s book will be extremely welcome and very serviceable, not only because it contains the mature judgment of a sympathetic critic, but because through its large groupings and its reiterations of certain leading ideas it formulates the criticism which has been prevalent among thoughtful Americans, and shapes for them more definitely the political evils which have made them uneasy. It is easier, for example, to talk about a book which holds American institutions up to view than to talk about those institutions themselves.

Mr. Bryce has made it easy to talk about his book because he disarms personal criticism at once. He is so fair, so frank, so unfailingly courteous, that it is impossible for an American to be angry with him even when he is saying very disheartening things. He gains the ear of Americans, not by flattering them, but by speaking the truth in kindness; and his evidently earnest desire to understand and to explain wins the reader to his side at once, and converts a possible antagonist or apologist into a companion in study. Perhaps no one cause, if we set aside the paramount one of the generous temper of the book, so makes the American reader a friend of the English writer as the minute thoroughness of the knowledge displayed. To find an Englishman speaking American political language without an English accent is to acknowledge him as naturalized in American thought; and as we are, on the whole, happier interpreters of our earlier colonial history than are English historical writers who have equal access to documents regarding a period when America and England were scarcely yet separate in idea, so it is a supreme advantage to have a contemporaneous critic who knows us as we know ourselves, yet enjoys an outside vantage-ground which we do not possess.

Yet the American reader, before he finishes the fifteen hundred pages set before him, is likely to discover the defect of Mr. Bryce’s virtue. He perceives at once that Mr. Bryce means to spare no pains ; that he means patiently to sift facts and impressions, and to balance gain and loss with a fair and open spirit; and that he means, to use General Grant’s expressive phrase, to fight. it out on that line, if it takes all summer. The very leisurely movement of the book is a part of Mr. Bryce’s style; it is characteristic of the calm, even flow of his thought. The long summaries with which he condenses his examination of groups of facts are expressive of the judicial habit which lends so decided a value to the discussion. The foot-notes, dropped to the bottom of nearly every page, illustrate the amount of material which he has gathered, and the modification which his delicate shading of thought constantly makes of some broad generalization. But the load under which writer and reader stagger is too heavy. It cannot be said that any page of the book is dull, or that any one portion of his vast subject is too minutely considered; but when one undertakes so comprehensive a task as the appraisal of a great nation, he is bound, for his own sake as well as for his readers’, to consider the bulk of his endeavor, and to ask himself whether the total impression produced is not likely to be vague and unproductive in proportion as the processes by which the result is sought are multiplied. It is not merely that the very bigness of Mr. Bryce’s book discourages readers, but the most enthusiastic and conscientious become impatient over the repetitions, the accumulation of illustrations, the lack of compactness of statement.

We regret this the more because, as we have intimated above, Mr. Bryce’s book is of the utmost value to American students of American civilization ; and we greatly fear that its force is dissipated by its absence of concentration. It is a book which ought to be read and pondered. Instead, it will be dipped into, and many who begin with reading every line will soon find themselves taking a hop, skip, and a jump across the pages. Nor do we think it an answer to this that the book was written for Englishmen. The greatest worth of the work is not that it informs Englishmen about America, but that it enables Americans to understand themselves better. It is rare that an author can thus lay a nation under obligation to him, and we have a right to complain when this obligation is diminished by the author’s prodigality.

Now that we have relieved ourselves of the one grievance which the book raises, and have thanked this generous giver by wishing he had given us less, we turn to the more agreeable task of examining the nature of the gift. The first two of the six parts into which the work is divided consist of a full and admirably arranged statement of the national government and the state governments. The American reader will find few facts here not already familiar to him. but he will be interested in reading so orderly and yet almost colloquial a presentation of the subject. He will be amazed at the accuracy and fullness of Mr. Bryce’s knowledge; and it really is an evidence of the clearness and comprehensibility of our government as it is found in constitution and administrative order that the whole scheme can be set forth so lucidly and so exhaustively. The most notable fact in Mr. Bryce’s exposition is the emphasis which he lays upon the functions of the state governments. He. has discovered and recognized for its full value what foreigners are slow to perceive, that the federal government is but one component part of the system which is to be compared with representative governments in other parts of the world ; and though he says what is obvious to Americans, he clears the air for all after-discussions by the very fullness with which he presents this part of his subject.

Yet we are not sure that Mr. Bryce perceives the full meaning of the relation which the States hold to the Union. He has fallen a little into the way of speaking which has so often characterized commentators on the Constitution, and belongs to a too legal interpretation of national life. The Constitution, be says, “ is a scheme designed to provide for the discharge of such and so many functions of government as the States do not already possess and discharge.” True; but if he had said “cannot possess.”be would have struck deeper. The constitution presupposes the state governments, but with equal force the state governments presuppose some authority in which they find their completion, as the colonies supposed the crown. To our mind, the complete autonomy of separate States was never a part of the consciousness of those States. It was only afterward, in the theory of doctrinaires, that such a notion was broached. And this, we apprehend, had much to do with the determination that the President should be independent in his position ; that he should be the choice of the people at large, and not a creature of Congress. There was an instinctive sense that the nation required a representative chief ; the very existence of a diversified source of power calls for a unit of expression. The imagination has its part to play in governmental construction, and the growth of the nation in power is attended by a corresponding increase in the dignity of the conception of the President’s office. Mr. Bryce says, with great sagacity, “A vigor ms personality attracts the multitude, and attracts it the more the hunger it grow while a chief magistrate’s influence excites little alarm when exerted in leading a majority which acts through the constitutional organs of government. The may. therefore, be still undeveloped possibilities of greatness in store for the Presidents of the future.” He makes this possibility to turn rather upon the personality of the occupant of the chief magistrate’s chair, but it seems to us inherent in the office. That is to say, as the tendency of political power is away from the formal institutions of government and toward the spontaneous action of the people, — for this the whole course of Mr. Bryce’s study demonstrates, — the chief voice of the people becomes more commanding. It is not too much to say that Mr. Cleveland forced the issue upon which the last presidential and congressional canvass turned.

Mr. Bryce shows his political judgment in his discussion of the question whether or not members of the cabinet should sit in Congress. He refuses to treat the subject either as a panacea for ills or as a mere specific expedient, but recognizes the fact that such a procedure supposes a radical change in existing political methods. But we doubt if the English conception of the cabinet has not somewhat affected his judgment of the body of men who hold the corresponding place in America, and influenced him to depreciate the actual political force resident in them. He sees that they have little direct initiative in legislation, but he overlooks, we think, the force expended in administration. The cabinet is in effect a distribution of the presidential function as executive. The power of the President flows through bis secretaries, and as that power increases in importance, so they partake of the increment. The legislative enactment by which, in a certain emergency, the presidential succession falls to the cabinet helps to increase its dignity, and we cannot discover that in the minds of the people the idea of the cabinet has diminished in importance historically. We doubt if there is as keen an interest in the several States when senators are to he elected as there is when the President is making up his “slate.”

Like other Englishmen, Mr. Bryce finds it hard to reconcile himself to that custom in our country — for it is only a custom — which requires a representative to be a resident of his district. There is an apparent effort on his part to get rid of his English prejudices in this regard and to think with Americans, but he is perplexed by two facts: first, that it narrows the choice ; and second, that the custom is universally accepted as a matter of course. Why, he seems to ask himself, should Americans, So quick to perceive defects in the working of their political machinery, fail to see this egregious mistake, which keeps first-rate men out of Congress because they happen to live in a part of the State where their party is in the minority ? Nor is it easy to find an answer which does not take for granted a decline in the relative consequence of Congress. Yet we think Mr. Bryce will find the solution in that indestructible, fundamental organization of the republic which he himself has clearly recognized. The States in their relation to the Union symbolize on a large scale the play of centrifrugal and centripetal forces. This play goes on in the lower political organisms, even when these are as artificial as congressional districts. The force which keeps alive small political units is the force which makes each unit jealous of its power and function. To go outside of a district for a candidate would be virtually to surrender a right; and this local jealousy of inherent power, though it may occasionally result in a misfortune to the public at large, is too important and radical an element in our political life lightly to be disregarded. The reform of politics constantly calls for the restriction of areas, and in the better period to which we look forward, when the individual voter shall have a fairer show, the neighborhood to be represented will contract or expand as the election has a more or less local significance.

Mr. Bryce’s style is usually conversational in its simplicity and naturalness, but it rises now and then to the dignity of real eloquence. Such is the passage with which he closes his chapter on The House at Work : —

“I have spoken of the din of the House of Representatives; of its air of restlessness and confusion, contrasting with the staid gravity of the Senate ; of the absence of dignity both in its proceedings and in the bearing and aspect of individual members. All these things notwithstanding, there is something impressive about it, something not unworthy of the continent for which it legislates. This huge gray hall, filled with perpetual clamor ; this multitude of keen and eager faces; this ceaseless coming and going of many feet; this irreverent public, watching from the galleries and forcing its way on to the floor, all speak to the beholder’s mind of the mighty democracy, destined in another century to form one half of civilized mankind, whose affairs are here debated. If the men are not great, the interests and the issues are vast and fateful. Here, as so often in America, one thinks rather of the future than of the present. Of what tremendous struggles may not this hall become the theatre in ages yet far distant, when the parliaments of Europe have shrunk to insignificance! ”

The third and fourth parts of Mr. Bryce’s book, those relating to the Party System and to Public Opinion, have the greatest importance for American readers. Both the existing order and the tendency of things are set forth with a fullness and a precision which leave little to be desired. Mr. Bryce is constantly looking for the sources of our political life, and the patience as well as honesty of his search is rewarded by results never before, we think, so satisfactorily obtained by any political pathologist. The whole of this portion is of singular value to thoughtful readers, for it calls them away from appearances to realities, and discloses more specifically than has hitherto been done the main regions of danger in our political system. The only defect which we note is a too faint reference to one healthy sign of our political life; we mean the ease with which leagues and societies are formed for the accomplishment of political results, not directly selfish, and the persistence with which such organizations are carried on. The gradual transformation of political parties into machines for perpetuating political power has led to the formation of leagues irrespective of party, designed to effect some individual political reform. Such leagues as the Civil Service Reform Association, the Indian Rights Society, the International Copyright League, illustrate our meaning. These voluntary organizations, in proportion as they are unselfish, not only represent a healthy condition of the public conscience, but they serve to counteract the debasing activity of professional politics. They may be taken as substitutes for parties forced upon us by the withdrawal of parties from principles to places, but we think it is quite as just to regard them as indications of a more flexible working of democratic institutions. Much of the burden of Mr. Bryce’s book is to the effect that there is a gradual deepening of the political consciousness of the people, a greater capacity for the exercise of power directly, a less dependence upon the old political machinery. What is the outcome of all this multitudinous assembling and voting which has been going on, until the ballot is as easy to the mind as the pen to the hand ? Is it not in the production of a tissue in the body politic which enters into the entire life; not a garment which is worn or thrown aside ? Mr. Bryce more than once speaks of the legal habit of mind which Americans have acquired. We are curious to know whether they have not also acquired a voting and a legislative habit more distinctly than other modern nations ; and we are free to conjecture that when we have sloughed off the spoils system, there will be a healthy activity of the political function, which will find its way to desirable results by just such direct ways as the leagues offer. Something of the same process may be noted in the growth of commissions in the executive part of the government.

The last two parts of this work, devoted to Illustrations and Reflections and Social Institutions, are the most readable, and we may add the most grateful. It is by these parts that Mr. Bryce may be said to justify the conclusions which he reaches with regard to the political future of America. The argument in his mind seems to be: A wide survey of American life discloses certain indestructible elements of nobility which lie at the basis of all progress. The equality postulated in political instruments has become a vital part of the national life. It is no longer a doctrine ; it is an unconscious habit. Therefore the grave evils which appear in political and party life cannot be irremediable. The people who bear with them, and even condone them, are in the last resort the judges ; and there is reason to believe that there is virtue in the people which will assert itself in the gradual adjustment of instruments and institutions to the need of the higher life.

Thus it comes about that the reader who has accompanied Mr. Bryce through the swamps of political malfeasance emerges into the freer air of popular life with a sense not only of relief, but of courage. He has seen the worst, and bad enough it is ; but his companion and friend knew that there was a better view beyond, and his own faith is reassuring. The chapters on the Strength of American Democracy, on the Universities, the Churches and the Clergy, the Pleasantness of American Life, the Future of Political Institutions, and Social and Economic Future are the work not of a mere optimist, who wishes to believe and to prophesy smooth things ; they impress one as the conviction of a close observer, who has throughout his studies worked upon the inductive plan, and who has constantly sought to explain Democracy by the American People, not the American People by Democracy. It is impossible to read these chapters and feel merely complacent. They are stimulants to nobler life ; they are instinct with a faith in supreme good ; and they force upon every American reader a conviction of his responsibility, not of his good fortune alone.

There is one passage in the final chapter which may be quoted both for its melancholy beauty and because it illustrates well the subtle character of Mr. Bryce’s reflections at the close of his long task. He has been speaking of the vastness of the civilized society of America in the not distant future, and of its probable effect upon literature. He imagines a traveler thirty years hence finding everywhere “ nothing but civilization, a highly developed form of civilization, stretching from the one ocean to the other ; the busy, eager, well-ordered life of the Hudson will be the life of those who dwell on the banks of the Yellowstone, or who look up to the snows of Mount Shasta from the valleys of California.” Then he proceeds : —

“ The Far West has hitherto been to Americans of the Atlantic States the land of freedom and adventure and mystery, — the land whose forests and prairies, with trappers pursuing the wild creatures, and Indians threading in their canoes the maze of lakes, have touched their imagination, and supplied a background of romance to the prosaic conditions which surround their own lives. All this will have vanished ; and as the world has by slow steps lost all its mystery since the voyage of Columbus, so America will from end to end be to the Americans even as England is to the English. What new background of romance will be discovered ? Where will the American imagination of the future seek its materials when it desires to escape from dramas of domestic life ? Where will bold spirits find a field in which to relieve their energies when the Western world of adventure is no more? As in our globe, so in the North American continent, there will be something to regret when all is known, and the waters of civilization have covered the tops of the highest mountains.”

So far as literature, and not action, is concerned, we conceive that there will be gain, and not loss; for the riches of material are in the blending of the forces of memory and imagination. In another generation, Washington Territory may be freed from the romantic element which now appeals to the dweller in Massachusetts, but both Washington Territory and Massachusetts will have the historic frontier lighted by the fires of imagination. It must be remembered that the West is not romantic to itself, but to the grandchildren of the pioneers the places covered by civilization will possess in the mirror of time a reflection of themselves full of interest, and capable of lifting their occupiers out of the dull routine of their own everyday life. Walter Scott needed to go back only sixty years in imagination to weave his magic spell, but Scott was the voice of a civilization highly developed. The very development of our American civilization is to give us this advantage, that what was material for prose to our ancestors becomes material for poetry to us.

It is easy to follow Mr. Bryce in the speculations which engage him in the last chapters of his work. He seems almost to be musing by himself, and one hardly likes to break in upon his study. So we will close our very inadequate notes on his great survey of America by listening to the words with which he leaves his readers : —

“ In Europe, whose thinkers have seldom been in a less cheerful mood than they are to-day, there are many who seem to have lost the old faith in progress ; many who feel, when they recall the experiences of the long pilgrimage of mankind, that the mountains which stand so beautiful in the blue of distance, touched here by flashes of sunlight and there by shadows of the clouds, will, when one comes to traverse them, be no Delectable Mountains, but scarred by storms and seamed by torrents, with wastes of stone above, and marshes stagnating in the valleys. Yet there are others whose review of that pilgrimage convinces them that though the ascent of man may be slow, it is also sure; that if we compare each age with those which preceded it, we find that the ground which seems for a time to have been lost is ultimately recovered ; we see human nature growing gradually more refined, institutions better fitted to secure justice, the opportunities and capacities for happiness larger and more varied, so that the error of those who formed ideas never yet attained lay only in their forgetting how much time, and effort, and patience under repeated disappointment must go to that attainment.

“ This less sombre type of thought is more common in the United States than in Europe; for the people not only feel in their veins the pulse of youthful strength, but remember the magnitude of the evils they have vanquished, and see that they have already achieved many things which the Old World has longed for in vain. And by so much as the people of the United States are more hopeful, by that much are they more healthy. They do not, like their forefathers, expect to attain their ideals either easily or soon, but they say that they will continue to strive towards them ; and they say it with a note of confidence in the voice which rings in the ear of the European visitor, and fills him with something of their own hopefulness. America has still a long vista of years stretching before her, in which she will enjoy conditions far more auspicious than England can count upon. And that America marks the highest level, not only of material well-being, but of intelligence and happiness, which the race has yet attained will be the judgment of those who look not at the favored few for whose benefit the world seems hitherto to have framed its institutions, but at the whole body of the people.”