Chapter 15

THE DARK SIDE OF REPUBLICANISM

The questions I know you will wish answered are, Whether this stupendous aggregation of States is a success? Does it possess advantages beyond those of the Chinese Empire? Does it fulfil the expectations of its own people? Frankly, I do not consider myself competent to answer. I have studied America and the Americans for many years during my visits to this country and Europe, and while I have seen many accounts of the country, written after several months of observation, I believe that no just estimate of the republican form of government can be formed after such experience. My private impression, however, is that the republic falls far short of what the men in Washington's time expected, and it is also my private opinion that it has not so many advantages as a government like that of England.

It is too splendid an organization to be lightly denounced. The idea of the equality of men is noble, and I would not wish to be arraigned among its critics. There is too much good to offset the bad. I have been attempting to amuse you by analyzing the Americans, pointing out their frailties as well as their good qualities. I tell you what I see as I run, always, I hope, remembering what is good in this spontaneous and open-hearted people. The characteristic claim of the people is that the Government offers freedom to its citizens; yet every man is quite as free in China if he behaves himself, and he can rise if he possesses brains.

Any native-born citizen in the United States may become the head of the nation has he the courage of his convictions, the many accomplishments which equip the great leader, and should the hour and the man meet opportunity. This is the one prize which distinguishes America from England. The latter in other respects offers exactly as much freedom with half the wear and tear; in fact, to me the freedom of America is one of her disadvantages. Every one knows, and the American best of all, that all men are not equal, never were and never can be. Yet this false doctrine is their standard, and they swear by it, though some will explain that what is meant is political freedom. Freedom accounts for the gross impertinence of the ignorant and lower classes, the laughable assumptions of servants, and the illogical pretenses of the nouveau riche, which make America impossible to some people. Cultivated Americans are as thoroughly aristocratic as the nobility of England. There are the same classes here as there. A grocer becomes rich and retires or dies; his children refuse to associate with the families of other grocers; in a word, the Americans have the aristocratic feeling, but they have no peasant class; the latter would be, in their own estimation, as good as any one. One class, the lower and poorer, is arraigned against the upper and richer, and the gap is growing daily.

But this would not prove that the republic is a failure. What then? It is, in the opinion of