slave who kneels to his master to restore him to
slavery, that he may have his animal wants sup
plied, without being troubled with human rights
and duties. Acquiescence like this is an argument
which cuts the wrong way for those who use it.
But this acquiescence is only partial ; and, to
give any semblance of strength to the plea, the
acquiescence must be complete. I, for one, do
not acquiesce. I declare that whatever obedience
I yield to the laws of the society in which I live is
a matter between, not the community and myself,
but my judgment and my will. Any punishment
inflicted on me for the breach of the laws, I should
regard as so much gratuitous injury : for to those
laws I have never, actually or virtually, assented.
I know that there are women in England who agree
with me in this I know that there are women in
America who agree with me in this. The plea of
acquiescence is invalidated by us.
It is pleaded that, by enjoying the protection of
some laws, women give their assent to all. This
needs but a brief answer. Any protection thus
conferred is, under woman s circumstances, a boon
bestowed at the pleasure of those in whose power
she is. A boon of any sort is no compensation
for the privation of something else ; nor can the
enjoyment of it bind to the performance of any
thing to which it bears no relation. Because I,
by favour, may procure the imprisonment of the
thief who robs my house, am J, unrepresented,
therefore bound not to smuggle French ribbons ?
The obligation not to smuggle has a widely dif
ferent derivation.
I cannot enter upon the commonest order of
pleas of all; those which relate to the virtual
influence of woman ; her swaying the judgment and
will of man through the heart ; and so forth. One
OF WOMEN. 153
might as well try to dissect the morning mist. I
knew a gentleman in America who told me how
much rather he had be a woman than the man
he is ; a professional man, a father, a citizen. He
would give up all this for a woman s influence. I
thought he was mated too soon. He should have
married a lady, also of rny acquaintance, who would
not at all object to being a slave, if ever the blacks
should have the upper hand ; " it is so right that
the one race should be subservient to the other !"
Or rather, I thought it a pity that the one could
not be a woman, and the other a slave ; so that
an injured individual of each class might be exalted
into their places, to fulfil and enjoy the duties and
privileges which they despise, and, in despising,
disgrace.
The truth is, that while there is much said
about " the sphere of woman," two widely different
notions are entertained of what is meant by the
phrase. The narrow, and, to the ruling party, the
more convenient notion is that sphere appointed
by men, and bounded by their ideas of propriety ;
<{ a notion from which any and every woman may
I fairly dissent. The broad and true conception is
j of the sphere appointed by God, and bounded
i by the powers which he has bestowed. This com-
\mands the assent of man and woman ; and only
\he question of powers remains to be proved.
That woman has power to represent her own
interests, no one can deny till she has been tried.
The modes need not be discussed here : they
must vary with circumstances. The fearful and
absurd images which are perpetually called up to
perplex the question, images of women on wool
sacks in England, and under canopies in America,
have nothing to do with the matter. The prin
ciple being once established, the methods will
follow, easily, naturally, and under a remarkable
H5
154 POLITICAL NON-EXISTENCE OF WOMEN.
transmutation of the ludicrous into the sublime.
The kings of Europe would have laughed mightily,
two centuries ago, at the idea of a commoner,
without robes, crown, or sceptre, stepping into the
throne of a strong nation. Yet who dared to laugh
when Washington s super-royal voice greeted the
New World from the presidential chair, and the
> old world stood still to catch the echo ?
\ The principle of the equal rights of both halves
} of the human race is all we have to do with here.
{ It is the true democratic principle which can never
seriously controverted, and only for a short time
evaded. Governments can derive their just powers
only from the consent of the governed.
155
PART IT.
ECONOMY.
* That them s^vest them they gather. Thou openest thine
hand ; they are filled with good."
104th Psalm.
THE traveller from the Old World to the New is
apt to lose himself in reflection when he should be
observing. Speculations come in crowds in the
wilderness. He finds himself philosophizing with
every step he takes, as luxuriously as by his
study fireside, or in his rare solitary walk at
home.
In England, everything comes complete and
finished under notice. Iach man may be aware
of some one process of formation, which it is his
business to conduct; but all else is presented to
him in its entireness. The statesman knows what
it is to compose an act of parliament ; to proceed
from the first perception of the want of it, through
the gathering together of facts and opinions, the
selection from these, the elaborating, adjusting,
moulding, specifying, excluding, consolidating, till
it becomes an entire something, which he throws
down for parliament to find fault with. When it
is passed, the rest of society looks upon it as a
156 ECONOMY.
whole, as a child does upon a table or a doll,
without being aware of any process of formation.
The shoemaker, thus, takes his loaf of bread, and
the clock that ticks behind his door, as if they
came down from the clouds as they are, in return
for so much of his wages ; and he analyzes nothing
but shoes. The baker and watchmaker receive
their shoes in the same way, and analyze nothing
but bread and clocks. Too many gentlemen and
ladies analyze nothing; at all. If better taught,
and introduced at an early age into the world of
analysis, nothing, in the whole course of educa
tion, is probably so striking to their minds. They
begin a fresh existence from the day when they
first obtain a glimpse into this new region of dis
covery.
Such an era is the traveller s entrance upon the
wilder regions of America. His old experience is
all reversed. He sees nothing of art in its entire-
ness; but little of nature In her instrumentality.
Nature is there the empress, not the handmaid.
Art is her inexperienced page, and no longer the
Prospero to whom she is the Ariel.
It is an absorbing thing to watch the process of
world-making; both the formation of the natural
and the conventional world. I witnessed both in
America ; and when I look back upon it now, it
seems as if I had been in another planet. I saw
something of the process of creating the natural
globe in the depths of the largest explored cave in
the world. In its depths, in this noiseless work
shop, was Nature employed with her blind and dumb
agents, fashioning mysteries which the earthquake
of a thousand years hence may bring to light, to
give man a new sense of the shortness of his life.
I saw something of the process of world-making
behind the fall of Niagara, in the thunder cavern,
where the rocks that have stood for ever tremble
ECONOMY. 157
to their fall amidst the roar of the unexhausted
floods. I stood where soon human foot shall stand
no more. Foot-hold after foot-hold is destined to
be thrown down, till, after more ages than the
world has yet known, the last rocky barrier shall
be overpowered, and an ocean shall overspread
countries which are but just entering upon civi
lized existence. Niagara itself is but one of the
shifting scenes of life, like all of the outward that
we hold most permanent. Niagara itself, like the
systems of the sky, is one of the hands of Nature s
clock, moving, though too slowly to be perceived
by the unheeding, still moving, to mark the lapse
of time. Niagara itself is destined to be as the
traditionary monsters of the ancient earth a giant
existence, to be spoken of to wondering ears in
studious hours, and believed in from the sole evi
dence of its surviving grandeur and beauty.
While I stood in the wet whirlwind, with the crys
tal roof above me, the thundering floor beneath,
and the foaming whirlpool and rushing flood before
me, I saw those quiet, studious hours of the future
world when this cataract shall have become a tra
dition, and the spot on which I stood shall be the
centre of a wide sea, a new region of life. This
was seeing world-making. So it was on the Mis
sissippi, when a sort of scum on the waters beto
kened the birth-place of new land. All things
help in this creation. The cliffs of the upper
Missouri detach their soil, and send it thousands
of miles down the stream. The river brings it,
and deposits it, in continual increase, till a barrier
is raised against the rushing waters themselves.
The air brings seeds, and drops them w r here they
sprout, and strike downwards, so that their roots
bind the soft soil, and enable it to bear the weight
of new accretions. The infant, forest, floating, as
it appeared, on the surface of the turbid and ra~
158 ECONOMY
pid waters, may reveal no beauty to the painter ;
but to the eye of one who loves to watch the pro
cess of world-making, it is full of delight. These
islands are seen in every stage of growth. The
cotton- wood trees, from being like cresses in a pool,
rise breast-high ; then they are like the thickets,
to whose shade the alligator may retreat; then,
like groves that bid the sun good-night, while he
is still lighting up the forest ; then like the forest
itself, with the wood- cutter s house within its
screen, flowers springing about its stems, and the
wild-vine climbing to meet the night breezes on
its lofty canopy. This was seeing world-making.
Here was strong instigation to the exercise of analysis.
One of the most frequent thoughts of a specu
lator in these wildernesses, is the rarity of the
chance which brings him here to speculate. The
primitive glories of nature have, almost always
since the world began, been dispensed to savages ;
to men who, dearly as they love the wilderness,
have no power of bringing into contrast with it the
mind of man, as enriched and stimulated by culti
vated society. Busy colonists, pressed by bodily
wants, are the next class brought over the thresh
old of this temple : and they come for other pur
poses than to meditate. The next are those who
would make haste to be rich ; selfish adventurers,
who drive out the red man, and drive in the black
man, and, amidst the forests and the floods, think
only of cotton and of gold. Not to such alone
should the primitive glories of nature be dis
pensed ; glories which can never be restored. The
philosopher should come, before they are effaced,
and find combinations and proportions of life and
truth which are not to be found elsewhere. The
painter should come, and find combinations and
proportions of visible beauty which are not to be
found elsewhere. The architect should come, and
ECONOMY. 159
find suggestions and irradiations of bis art which
are not to be found elsewhere. The poet should
come, and witness a supremacy of nature such as
he imagines in the old days when the world s
sires came forth at the tidings of the rainbow in the
cloud. The chance which opens to the medita
tive the almost untouched regions of nature, is a
rare one ; and they should not be left to the vanish
ing savage, the busy and the sordid,
I watched also the progress of conventional life.
I saw it in every stage of advancement, from the
clearing in the woods, where the settler, carrying
merely his axe, makes his very tools, his house, his
fireplace, his bed, his table ; carves out his fields,
catches from among wild or strayed animals his
farm stock, and creates his own food, warmth, and
winter light, from primitive life like this, to that
of the highest finish, which excludes all thought of
analysis.
The position or prospects of men in a new coun
try may best be made intelligible by accounts of
what the traveller saw and heard while among
them. Pictures serve the purpose better than re
ports. I will, therefore, give pictures of some of
the many varieties of dwellers that I saw, amidst
their different localities, circumstances, and modes
of living. No one of them is aware how vivid an
idea he impresses on the mind of humanity; nor
how distinct a place he fills in her records. No
one of them, probably, is aware how much happier
he is than Alexander, in having before him more
worlds to conquer.
My narratives, or pictures, must be but a few
selected from among a multitude. My chapter
would extend to a greater length than any old no-
* vel, if I were to give all I possess.
\ The United States are not only vast in extent :
1 they are incbtimably ricTTin material wealth. There
160 ECONOMY.
are fisheries and granite quarries along the nor
thern coasts ; and shipping from the whole com
mercial world within their ports. There are tan
neries within reach of their oak w r oods, and manu
factures in the north from the cotton growth of the
south. There is unlimited w r ealth of corn, sugar
cane and beet, hemp, flax, tobacco, and rice. There
are regions of pasture land. There are varieties
of grape for wine, and mulberries for silk. There
is salt. There are mineral springs. There is mar
ble, gold, lead, iron, and coal. There is a chain of
mountains, dividing the great fertile western valley
from the busy eastern region which lies between
the mountains and the Atlantic. These mountains
yield the springs by which the great rivers are to
be fed for ever, to fertilize the great valley, and
be the vehicle of its commerce with the world.
Out of the reach of these rivers, in the vast breadth
of the north, lie the great lakes, to be likewise the
servants of commerce, and to afford in their fishe
ries the means of life and luxury to thousands.
These inland seas temper the climate, summer and
winter, and insure health to the heart of the vast
continent. Never w r as a country more gifted by
nature.
f It is blessed also in the variety of its inhabitants.
However it may gratify the pride of a nation to be
descended from one stock, it is ultimately better
that it should have been compounded from many na
tions. The blending of qualities, physical and in
tellectual, the absorption of national prejudices,
the increase of mental resources, will be found in
the end highly conducive to the elevation of the na
tional character. America will find herself largely
blessed in this way, however much she may now
complain of the immigration of strangers. She
complains of some for their poverty ; but such T
bring a will to work, and a capacity for labour. She v
ECONOMY 161
complains of others for their coming from countries
governed by a despotism ; but it is the love of free
dom which they cannot enjoy at home, that brings
such. She complains of others that they keep up
their national language, manners, and modes of
thinking, while they use her privileges of citizen
ship. This may appear ungracious ; but it pro
ceeds from that love of country and home institu
tions which will make staunsh American patriots
of their children s children. It is all well. The
New England States may pride themselves on
their population being homogeneous, while that
of other States is mongrel. It is well that sta
bility should thus have been temporarily provided
for in one part of the Union, which should, for the
season, be the acknowledged superior over the
rest : but, this purpose of the arrangement having
been fulfilled, New England may perhaps hereafter
admit, what some others see already, that, if she
inherits many of the virtues of the Pilgrims, she
requires fortifying in others ; and that a large rein
forcement from other races would help her to
throw off the burden of their inherited faults.
/ There can scarcely be a finer set of elements
the composition of a nation than the United
States now contain. It will take centuries to fuse
them ; and by that time, pride of ancestry, vanity
of physical derivation, -will be at an end. The
ancestry of moral qualities will be the only pedi
gree preserved ; and of these every civilized nation
under heaven /possesses an ample, and probably an
equal, share./ Let the United States then cherish
their indiistriWs Germans and Dutch ; their hardy
Irish; their intelligent Scotch; their kindly Afri
cans, as well as the intellectual Yankee, the insou
ciant Southerner, and the complacent Westerner.
All are good in their way ; and augment the mo-
16*2 ECONOMY.
ral value of their country, as diversities of soil, cli
mate, and productions, do its material wealth.
Among the most interesting personages in the
United States, are the .Solitaries; solitary fami
lies, not individuals. Europeans, who think it
much to lodge in a country cottage for six weeks in
the summer, can form little idea of the life of a
solitary family in the wilds. I did not see the most
sequestered, as I never happened to lose my way
in the forests or on the prairies : but I witnessed
some modes of life which realized all I had con
ceived of the romantic, or of the dismal.
One rainy October day, I saw a settler at work
in the forest^ on which he appeared to have just
entered. His clearing looked, in comparison with
the forest behind him, of about the size of a pin
cushion. He was standing, up to the knees in
water, among the stubborn stumps, and charred
stems of dead trees. He was notching logs with
his axe, beside his small log -hut and stye. There
was swamp behind, and swamp on each side ; a
pool of mud around each dead tree, which had
been wont to drink the moisture. There was a
semblance of a tumble-down fence: no orchard
yet ; no grave-yard ; no poultry ; none of the graces
of fixed habitation had grown up. On looking
back to catch a last view of the scene, I saw two
little boys, about three and four years old, leading a
horse home from the forest ; one driving the ani
mal behind with an armful of bush, and the other
reaching up on tiptoe to keep his hold of the
halter; and both looking as if they would be
drowned in the swamp. If the mother was watch
ing from the hut, she must have thought this
strange dismal play for her little ones. The hard
working father must be toiling for his children ;
for the success of his after life can hardly atone to
ECONOMY. ] 63
him for such a destitution of comfort as I saw him
in the midst of. Many such scenes are passed
on every road in the western parts of the States.
They hecome cheering when the plough is seen, or
a few sheep are straggling on the hill side, seeming
lost in space.
One day, at Niagara, I had spent hours at the
Falls, till, longing for the stillness of the forest, I
wandered deep into its wild paths, meeting no
thing hut the belled heifer, grazing, and the slim,
clean swine which live on the mast and roots they
can find for themselves. I saw some motion in a
thicket, a little way from the path, and went to see
what it was. I found a little boy and girl, work
ing away, by turns, with an axe, at the branches of
a huge hickory, which had been lately felled.
" Father " had felled the hickory the day before,
and had sent the children to make faggots from the
branches. They were heated and out of breath.
I had heard of the toughness of hickory, and
longed to know what the labour of wood-cutting
really was. Here was an irresistible opportunity for
an experiment. I made the children sit down on
the fallen tree, and find out the use of my ear-
trumpet, while I helped to make their faggot.
When 1 had hewn through one stout branch, I was
quite sufficiently warmed, and glad to sit down to
hear the children s story. Their father had been a
weaver and a preacher in England. He had brought
out his wife and six children. During the week,
he worked at his land, finding some employment or
another for all of his children who could walk
alone ; and going some distance on Sundays to
preach. This last particular told volumes. The
weaver has not lost heart over his hard field-la
bour. His spirit must be strong and lively, to
enable him to spend his. seventh day thus, after
plying the axe for six. The children did not seem
164 ECONOMY.
to know whether they liked Manchester or the
forest best ; but they looked stout and rosy.
They, however, were within reach of church and
habitation; buried, as they appeared, in the depths
of the woods. I saw, in New Hampshire, a family
who had always lived absolutely alone, except when
an occasional traveller came to their door, during
the summer months. The old man had run away
with his wife, forty-six years before, and brought
her to the Red Mountain, near the top of which
she had lived ever since. It was well that she nicir-
ried for love, for she saw no one but her husband
and children, for many a long year after she jumped
out of her window, in her father s house, to run
away.
Our party, consisting of four, was in the humour
to be struck with the romance of the domestic his
tory of the old man of the mountain, as the guide is
called. We had crossed Lake Winnepisseogee, the
day before, and watched from our piazza, at Cen
tre Harbour, the softening of the evening light over
the broad sheet of water, and the purple islands
that rested upon it. After dark, fires blazed forth
from the promontories, and glimmered in the
islands ; every flaming bush and burning stem being
distinctly reflected in the grey mirror of the waters.
These fires were signs of civilization approaching
the wild districts on which we were entering. Land
on the lake shores has become very valuable; and
it is being fast cleared.
We were to have set off very early on our moun
tain expedition, next day; but the morning was
misty, and we did not leave Centre Harbour till
near eight ; nearly an hour and a half after break
fast. We were in a wagon, drawn by the horses on
which the two ladies were to ascend the mountain
from the guide s house. The sky was grey, but
promising; for its curtains were rising at the other
ECONOMY. 165
end of the lake, and disclosing ridge after ridge of
pines on the mountain side. The road became very
rough as we began to ascend ; and it was a wonder
to me how the wagon could be lifted up, as it was,
from shelf to shelf of limestone. One shelf sloped
a little too much, even for our wagon. Its line of
direction was no longer within the base, as children
are taught at school that it should be. All the
party, except myself, rolled out. The driver,
sprawling on his back on a terribly sharp eminence
of limestone, tugged manfully at the reins, and
shouted, " Whoi-ee" as cheerfully as if he had been
sitting on a cushion, in his proper place. He was
not a man to desert his duty in an extremity. He
was but little hurt, and nobody else at all.
The wagon was left here, and we ascended a
mile, a steep path, among woods and rocks, to the
guide s little farm ; plunging into a cloud, just be
fore we reached the house. It was baking day ;
and we found the old dame, with a deaf and dumb
daughter, one of three deaf, busy among new
bread, pies, and apples. Strings of apples hung
against the walls ; and there was every symptom of
plenty and contentment within and without doors.
The old dame might have been twin sister to Juliet s
nurse. She was delighted to have an opportunity
of using her tongue, and was profuse in her invita
tions to us to stay, to come again, to be sociable.
The exercise she takes in speaking must be one
cause of her buxom health. Out of a pantomime,
I never saw anything so energetic as her action ;
the deafness of her children being no doubt the
cause of this. She seemed heartily proud of them ;
the more, evidently, on account of their singularity.
She told us that the daughter now at home had
never left it. " Her father could not spare her to
school ; but I could have spared her." What a life
of little incidents magnified must their s be ! Aw
166 ECONOMY.
one of my companions observed, the bursting of a
sboe, or the breaking of a plate, must furnish talk
for a week. The welcome discovery was made that
\ve had a mutual acquaintance. A beloved friend
of mine had ascended the mountain some weeks
before, and had followed her usual practice of carry
ing away all the hearts she found there. The old
dame spoke lovingly of her as " that Liza ;" and
she talked about her till she had seen my foot into
the stirrup, and given me her blessing up the
mountain.
The path was steep, and the summit bare.