THE KNOW-NOTHINGS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume V, Issue 303, 26 September 1855, Page 3

THE KNOW-NOTHINGS.

(From the Guardian, April 11.) American politics do not often possess much interest for renders on this side of the Atlantic, of whom scarcely one in ten knows the meaning of the mosi ordinary of the Yankee party words, as Whig, Loco-foco, Democrat. It is only under the stimulus of a new and peculiarly piquant name that public attention in Europe is sufficiently escited even to ask a question concerning the internal affairs of a nation which, however connected with various members of the European family by community of blood and interests, has yet the misfortune to be situated at the distance of three thousand miles from the nearest point of the European continent. It seems to be thought almost impossible that the internal squabbles of so remote a people can really to any serious extent touch ourselves; and so long as men have a tolerable notion whether, under existing circumstances, annexation is or is not in the ascendancy, they are reckoned to have a very sufficient ami creditable knowledge on the subject of Transatlantic politics. As if acquainted with this want of curiosity, not certainly very flattering to their national vanity, on the part of the European public, and determined to do their best to pique it, the Ameiicans appear generally to have aimed at a strangeness in their party nomenclature which should necessarily arrest attention and provoke inquiry. The same ingenuity which in former days assigned to important political organisations the designations of "Loco-foco" and "Barnburner," has recently manifested itself in the coinage of the word " Know-nothing"—an epithet adapted by the literal meaning of its terms to call forth the sympathy of the masses, while by its possible embodiment; of a delicate Socratic irony, it won on the attention of the educated. The true sense in which the name " Know-Nothing" is to be considered to apply to the party that has hitherto rejoiced in it, we believe to be a matter for deep and recondite speculation among the learned of future ages. So many and such conflicting accounts of the matter have reached ourselves, that we shall content ourselves for the present with endeavouring to state, as accurately as our information will enable us, the objects for which the " Know-Nothings'* have banded themse^es together, and the causes which have brought them into being. f .The party of the "Know-Nothings" which now, dropping irony and disguise, comes out with manifestoes, newspapers, committees, and all the recognised machinery of a great political combination, under the imposing title of " the American party of the United States," and which, according to the calculations of those who profess to have means of testing the feelings of the Slates generally, is to win the next Presidential election, and thereby acquire supreme power for four years over the great Transatlantic Republic, has, we believe, been brought into existence entirely through a widespread feeling of the gross corruption and jobbery which prevails throughout the whole Union —a corruption and jobbery in which all the historical parties are equally involved—with regard to the distribution of patronage. Tt may be useful for those who are now, not without some grounds of reason, raising an outcry against thp abuses of patronage among themselves as dispensed by what they call an aristocracy, to cast their eyes across the Atlantic and observe the result obtained when the disposal of the good things of office falls to the lot of the leaders of a thorough-going democracy. The Know-No-thing manifesto informs us that "division among parties is now kept up for the profit of those who may thrive by it, in a career which looks to no honourable ambition, and scarcely affects to refer to the public good. Party action has -lust all dignity above tbatof a mere struggle %t the power of dispensing patronage, and has done what it could to inculcate in the mind of the people an opinion that Government is but a complicated system of rewards for office-seek-ers, in whom the faculty for faithful service is the last and the least of the qualifications they are expected to present." It is, we believe, notorious that office in the United States is made entirely a reward for electioneering or other private services, and that a man is absolutely never advanced to any dignity or emolument on grounds of mere personal merit detached from considerations of party. The Know-Nothings profess that they will remedy this abuse ; and it is to this profession that their vast spread and rapid growth is to be attributed. Their ranks

are swollen by all those who possess public spirit enough to be ashamed of the existing state of things; and also, probably to no small extent, by that far larger class which, not possessing strong claims upon party grounds on the present political leaders, is devoid of any expectation of profiting by their struggles, and can only obtain office for itself by lending the weight of its influence to new men, whose gratitude is not yet mortgaged to prior claimants. Thus the movement is fed from the very source against which it professes to ilirect itself, and success is likely to prove only too rude a test of the sincerity with which principles have been professed, excellent in themselves, but at any time difficult to maintain, and in America not required by the public opinion of the community. Besides the profession of an intention to reform the present system of patronage, the American party proposes to itself two objects, which it will be more easy to carry out. The first of these is to put some check on immigration, and on the political influence of the immigrants, who form so large and increasing an element in the population of the States. The jealousy which is here indicated is not unnatural ; and it is more surprising that it has slept so long, than that it is now awakened. There is no instance on record of a nation having so freely imparted its citizenship to all comers as the United States have done for the last halfcentury ; and none where anything like such an influx had set in for which a stringent system of checks had not been devised at a far earlier period. The convenience of easing the labour market has doubtless chiefly weighed with their politicians, with whom commercial considerations have always "been more regarded than political. To the changes which the " KnowNothings" propose, none can object on this side the Atlantic. They will leave America far more free than Europe, and they may probably operate to our advantage in checking that violent flood of emigration which has lately threatened to denude some portions of these islands of their inhabitants. But by far the most curious of. the new views developed by the nascent party, is the opposition to Roman Catholicism. Hitherto utter indifference to all distinctions of creed has been the unanimous profession of the various political sections of the great Republic, which have feared to compromise one of the main foundations of the Union, the principle of religious liberty, by venturing to throw any slight or slur whatsoever upon the members of any particular persuasion or form of belief. An exception is at last taken in the case of that one religious bodj which, possessing in a pre-eminent degree powers of organization, of union, and of secret action, cannot but exercise a most important political influence in any community where by its numbers it constitutes a tolerably considerable element. Emigration from Ireland and Germany has of late years much increased the proportion borne by the Roman Catholics of the Union to the rest of the people, and evidently the political weight of tUs body begins to be felt and to cause annoyance in certain quarters. According to the Know-nothing manifesto, the Roman Catholics are not only banded together as a political party in respect to elections, which on the principles of Republicanism could scarcely ho made a charge against them, but aim at obtaining an exceptional legislation for the members of their own body, which is with some reason objected to. The nature of the legislative objects aimed at is not explained, but we are left to infer that they are at variance with the principles on which the Union is founded. In Europe scarcely any free State, where the Roman Catholics are not the dominant party, has been nble, with due regard to the preservation of its liberties, to put them altogether on a par with the other citizens. It remains to be seen whether in America itself the perfect liberty hitherto allowed to all sects can be fully maintained in the case of a religious body which aspires to universal domination.

The following characteristic letter is addressed by Walter Savage Landor to the people of England. TQ THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. (From tho " Atlas," April 25.) " I have lived longer than I have thought of living, or than I wished to live, and have writtea much since I hoped to have left off writing At no time have I sought any kind of emolument from my various publications, although no gain is so honourable, or may be. I desired but to gratify those who know me, and to profit (by

instructing) those who know me not. To this intent I am now bending over my paper. People of England ! since you have in part recorered the right use of eyes and ears, after the pageants and the acclamation, look about yon far and near, but near first. It was declared by the greatest, the wisest, the most watchful and most unwearied of teachers, the truest, although the most unsuccessful of reformers, that they who would not believe in Moses and the Apostles, would not believe if one rose from the dead. What is divine is far aboTe what is logical or what is experimental; so I venture not to question the hypothesis. But ! you have before you not one alone who has risen from the dead. A thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, stand before you dead to themselves ; they are not dead to you, unless you will it. And do you, can you, "look up towards them ? Yes ; for you were not their murderers, though, some whom you trusted were. Take heart then, Englishmen, and look up. All those whose paler eyes are upon you, were alert like yourselves last year, last spring, last summer, last autumn; many until winter withered them. Where are they now? Dare ye not investigate ? dare ye not inquire ? Do they not yet stand before you, their bodies wasted by famine in the midst of plenty, their tongues blue and rough with thirst, their wounds gaping and swelling out with worms ? Be cautious, and stumble not over the heaps of limbs that are lying at your feeti Are ye still incredulous? Are ye still resolved to take no notice, no care, no thought, of what brought about this saddest of all the calamities and disgraces our country ever endured ? Sweep away (for you can) injustice, arrogance, oligarchy. Sweep these away ; and then perhaps the spirits of your brethren and your children, who fought so'bravely but so ineffectually, may intercede for you. Had your leaders been chosen from amidst you, no need would there be for such intercession. By some strange fatality, the valiant and virtuous Nott attained command ; but below the highest He rose from the people; he rescued an army, or at least what remained of one ; he repressed and pacified Afghanistan ; he lived temperately, unostentatiously, inoffensively, in India; he returned-to England, dropt into the bosom of his family, and died poor. Others had stood still, and stood stiller when he called them to their duty : others were made peers for decimating their armies by their indiscretion. Nott subdued the enemies of his country; he had none of his own outside the Cabinet. Surely our nation will never hear his grandchildren cry out for bread which should have been brought into his house. Let a Napier be the historian of these events ; I am'incompetent. Meanwhile, my fellow countrymen, upon you rest matters more urgent. Consider well for what you are fighting; consider what debts and liabilities you are incurring, and what obligations you are throwing off your own shoulders on your children's, not only to the third and fourth generation, not only to the ninth or tenth. Leave them at least the patrimony of honour. Your masters —I will never say yoti —pretended to liberate an insulted nation from a mightier ; they persuaded you to send armies and navies for the protection of the Ottoman empire ; these armies and navies were indeed sent to consolidate an empire ; but it was the Austrian, not the Ottoman. Your masters have aided no people in the maintenance or the recovery of their rights. The contrary is clearly shown by the words I quoted from Lord Castlereagh in my last letter; words in which he makes a merit to the Tzar of his treachery to Denmark, to Sweden, to Poland, and "wherever else the despots of the north directed it. His worthy successors have now delivered up to Austria the richest provinces of that empire of which they constituted themselves the guardians. To gratify Austria they dismantle Turin and Alessandria, shove the Piedmontese army from the frontier, hale it, embark it, and provide that the broken limbs of Italy shall be as much in want of bandages as those of our own soldiers. For iess money than you squander in a single month, you might have purchased nine-tenths of the Cossacks. We always had the worst diplomatists in the world ; Turkey and India might have given ours instruction. At this moment the Sultan feels and asserts his dignity. He knows that we have already betrayed him, and he reasonably apprehends worse treachery to come. We can make at present no peace with Russia; fortunate if we fall iuto uo lro£ on this side of her.

In line, my fellow-countrymen, unless you drive out the traitors you have confided in, you will presently have doubled your national debt, in smelting down your gold for the legs of foreign thrones. Kossuth has told you more than this, and told it more emphatically. To that glorious man I am only what a pre'della is to a grand altar-piece, a narrow slip containing in small compartments a few subjects relative to the design above. For me to contend with him in eloquence would be preposterous; but I will contend with him in love of truth and in love of country: and I pray to God that the contest between us may for ever be undecided. Walter Savage Lakdor. April 21.