ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

Press, Volume XI, Issue 1385, 16 April 1867, Page 2

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

[From the " Guardian," January 30.] This time next week Parliament will have met again, and we shall be once more immersed in the full stream of our own politics. That which ia close to us will take the precedence of that which is far off, and we shall bo at times comparatively indifferent to events of great importance if they do not directly concern us. Perhaps, before the debates in the House ot Commons lay claim to our attention, we may look once more with ndvant" age to the proceedings in Congress. We are called upon from time to time by certain politicians to profit by the example of the United States; and we may bo wise to take this adrice, it not precisely in the sense in winch it is given. We may learn something trom the contemporary history of almost any civilised nation, and we may nope ior

soeeial instruction from a great peopli who a re of tho snme ra ° e Wlt ! 1 OUr Ivc and whose institutions, if the] have been changed or are now chang • <t were originally modelled on th< Sroe pattern as our own. Imitating the Americans, it woulc seP ni is out of the question at present Thev'arc thinking of one thing, and we of another. Their political hopes fears and aspirations have little ir common with ours. The stirring men among ourselves, the advocates of motion and change, are anxiouß for an extension of the franchise. This is the Question which one party in Parliament will endeavour to press forward, and another to meet or evade. It is a very important question, and, according as it is decided, may issue in great good or great evil ; but, whatever becomes of it, no one will say that it is not worthy to be entertained in the deliberations of a great nation. Happily it is not complicated with any peculiar personal bitterness ; the party leaders, as such, are not vehemently liked or disliked, though some undegerved ill-feeling is shown towards a small knot of supposed obstructives. In America the case is quite different. The advanced politicians in the House of Representatives have proposed to themselves a distinctly personal object. Their struggle is against the President: Mr Thaddeus Stevens wan only their mouthpiece when he said that everything must be sacrificed till " that man " was removed. The charges brought forward to justify the impeachment of Mr Johnson are more serious in word than in fact; and it is probable that his worst enemies do not really believe that he has been accessible to pecuniary corruption. Whether venality has been shown by his agents and instruments, is quite another question. Such things have happened before now in America, and will most likely happen again; the familiarity of her citizens with the dollar has not as yet bred any contempt for it. Mr Johnson himself is one of the last men in the world to be venal; his faults are of quite another kind. He is only too obstinately independent; had he been conveniently pliant, his enemies would not have looked too - curiously into the causes of his pliancy. But he will not bend, and therefore, if possible, he must be broken. In the opinion of Mr Stevens, there is no use in passing acts in the present Btate of the Government, for there is no Executive to enforce them. Here is the awkward difference; Mr Stevens and his friends regard the President as the Executive organ of Congress ; and the President regards himself as the Executive organ not of Congress, but of the people. He has the Constitution distinctly on his side; but his opponents are not prepared to respect the Constitution. They wish to go to their mark, not by the circuitous roads of precedent and law, but by the straight tracks which have been made during the war by the wheels of the Federal cannon. They want a President and Commander-in-Chief after their own mind ; and as they do not find one, they will try to make one. It should be Temembered at the same time that there is a question of suffrage in the background in America ; and a very curious one it is. The President, unhappily, as we are inclined to think, encouraged the Southern States to reject the proposed Constitutional Amendment, according to which the w.eight of each State in the Union was to be measured by, and based upon, its enfranchised population. If any State chose to admit the negroes to vote, the negro voters would help to swell the number of Eepresentatives allotted to that State ; if it preferred restricting the suffrage to its white population alone, it would have to consent to a corresponding reduction of its representative power in Congress. The South showed itself unwilling to accept the terms thus offered ; and the time has now passed at which it would gain anything by accepting them. Congress will now no longer pledge itself really to readmit the Southern States into the Union on these or any other conditions. The conquerors have become angry at the determined resistance to their power, and will make the conquered feel the strength of their arm. A symptom of this determination appears in a measure which has passed the House of Eepresentatives, though we hope it will be rejected by the Senate. It is proposed to forbid any person who took part in the rebellion from practising at law. The severity of this proposal is far greater than may : appear at first sight. In America, the ; practice of law is the direct road to political eminence ; it lies open to the i "rigorous men who can work their way i along it from the office and the shop- i board to the Presidency ; it attracts the > youngmenof fortunewhosefathers have 1 made money for them, and who do not . wish to be idle. To bar it in the face of any class is to subject that class to ; a heavy social penalty, and to discour- i age its hopes of hereafter serving its j country. Of the older men who fought I m the Confederate armies, some have < resumed the legal profession as a means of earning their livelihood; on these < the vote of the House of Kepresenta- 1 tives, if it should become the law of 1 the land, would tell with most unfair severity. It would be hard also on < the young men or boys who fought in l accordance with the wishes of their ] fathers, if they too are to find this i avenue of distinction closed to them, c This severe repression of energy and 1 ability will not help the people of the ] South to associate hereafter with the j people of the North as citizens with < iellow-citizens. 1 But the violent party in Congress \ has a spite against the lawyers which 1 perhaps it is not sorry to indulge. I Ihe separation between the judges and ] f w J er3 general is far less marked in 1 America than in England. In America, r instances have not been wanting of i judges who, having completed their 1 term of office, have quitted the Bench t and resumed practice at the Bar. c A nd the Judges, as members of the i oupreme Court, are in extreme dis- c lavor with Mr Stevens and his fjiends. ( ihat Court, having previously declared i

3 the illegality of military tribunals in - times of peace, has now declared that T the Test Oaths administered in Mis- - souri and elsewhere as a condition of i permission to fill certain offices are also illegal; .and one purpose for | which another President is wanted is to make a Tew new Judges, whose political principles may be sufficiently strong to overpower the legal instincts of their brethren. Such is the state of things prevailing at present in America. The Constitution is praised and admired, of course ; yet to adhere to it is an unfashionable virtue, which involves its possessor in unpopularity if not in positive persecution. Congress finds itself so powerful that it is discontented at the existence of any limit to its action, and is therefore trying to dispenpe with the constitutional checks which strike it as useless encumbrances. The power which should make the laws is at almost hopeless feud with the powers which should execute and interpret them. About a third of the States are lying prostrate at the feet of the victorious majority, and are receiving fresh blows though they are down. We really do not see how England can copy this shifting model with advantage. America will probably emerge from her confusion, greater and more powerful than ever; she has the vigor and the strength of youth, elastic institutions, fewer social inequalities than an old country, and, last not least, millions of uncultivated and almost untrodden acres. We, with our formed, national character, bur traditionary habits, our stereotyped modes of thought, our terrible diversities of social comfort and position, cannot afford to try the same rough experiments. Our differences of opinion we must have, in and out of Parliament; ' but it is to be hoped that we shall not attempt to enforce our views on others with that tumultuous violence which ; at least a portion of Congress is displaying in America. ,