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ART. V. Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States: being a Series of Letters on North America. By MICHAEL CHEVALIER. Translated from the third Paris edition. Boston: Weeks, Jordan, & Co. 1839. 8vo. pp. 467.

WE are glad that this work has been translated, and placed within the reach of the American reader; and also to find that the translator has executed his task with fidelity to his author, and great credit to himself as an accomplished scholar. The work itself. is highly important and interesting, and is well worth the perusal and even the study of every American citizen.

Mr. Chevalier's chief merits as a traveller consist in the fact, that he directs his attention to the most important concerns and interests of the people, among whom he travels. He has a profound sense of the worth of Humanity, and he values manners, politics, institutions, only as they bear on its progress. He clearly perceives that industry must hold the chief rank among the material interests of mankind, and consequently he bestows, as he ought, the greater part of his attention upon the state of industry and the industrious classes. We wish every traveller would do the same, not in our own country only, but in every other. By so doing the materials might at length be collected for a real history of mankind. Hitherto we have had merely the history of the palace, of courts and camps, while scarcely a glance has been bestowed on the industrial masses of our brethren, without whom the palace, courts, and camps would soon cease to be.

In reading this book, it will be well to remember, that it was written to bear upon the writer's own country, not upon ours. Mr. Chevalier makes America, and American society, manners, and institutions merely the text from which to discourse to his own countrymen. His book can therefore afford us but a slight

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clue to what he would judge best for us; it merely tells us what he thinks is best for France. He writes in America and about America, but France is all the time in his heart and in his mind. This fact should induce us to read him with some caution, and to be not too ready to adopt his dicta as law.

Mr. Chevalier appears from his book to have associated, while here, mainly with that portion of our community, which has the greatest distrust of democratic institutions, and manifests the most violent opposition to every democratic administration; and we regret to be obliged to add, that he has, in but too many instances, regarded the complaints of this antiAmerican party as worthy of consideration, and their statements as deserving of credit. Had he known. this party as well as we do, he might have enjoyed their murmurs, but he would hardly have thought it worth his while to detail their opinions, or to record their predictions. The first thing a traveller should do on visiting any country, where parties exist, is to find out which party represents the future of the country visited. Having found out this party, he will do well to study it, and its tendencies; for by so doing he may come to understand the country itself, and to foresee its destiny. But the party of the past is rarely worthy of his study, except so far as a knowledge of it enables him to comprehend the better the party of the future. Mr. Chevalier, unfortunately for him and for the real value of his book, associated while here principally with the party of the past, and has to a great extent given for the actual sentiment of the country, what is merely the sentiment of those who have a secret consciousness, that the sceptre has departed from their hands, and that their forces are nearly all routed and thrown hors du combat.

Still we are by no means surprised at this. Mr. Chevalier had, just before sailing for this country, given in his adhesion to the present order of things in France. The reigning order of things in France,

allowance made for the differences of the two countries, is precisely the order of things which has become superannuated here, and which is represented by our party of the past. In France the old feudal nobility is broken down, and nobility founded on birth has lost its power; the three estates have pretty much. disappeared, and the Third Estate has in fact become the nation. Louis Philippe is called the citizenking, and not improperly, when we use the term to designate the fact, that he represents the power of the Commons, or is chief of the Commons, instead of being the chief of the Noblesse.

But the Third Estate, as distinguished from the Nobility and Clergy, is properly the industrial class. Its great interest is industry, commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the mechanic arts. Of course, then, where this class is the ruling class, industry is the ruling interest. This interest is the interest which must rule in France, if the present order of things is to remain. This Mr. Chevalier very clearly perceives, and hence to the advancement of this interest would he direct the attention of his countrymen, and their government. So far all is well. It is a great step in the progress of Humanity, that of replacing the old society organized for war and conquest, by a society organized for the labors of industry, replacing the old military society by an industrial society.

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But this industrial society is divided into proprietors and operatives, burghers and proletaries. Now in France the means of benefiting the second division are supposed to be the liberal encouragement of the first. The duty of government is thought to be to afford facilities to capitalists for the safe and profitable investment of capital, which will enable them to afford constant employment and good wages to the operatives. Or in other words, government must take care of the rich, so that the rich can take care of the poor. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the actual condition of things in France, to determine

whether this be true policy there or not; but there is a stage in the progress of modern society in all European countries, when this policy is unquestionably the true one. It is a great gain to Humanity, when the government seeks the interests of industry, though it be by its largesses to capitalists, instead of directing all its measures to the benefit of the aristocratic society, that is, the church and nobility.

But this stage is passed with us, or more properly never belonged to our civilization. The great error in our whole legislation has arisen from confounding our society with European, and adopting European maxims where they could have no proper application. When our legislation has been original, it has been unexceptionable; but in almost all cases mischievous, when it has been imitative. The distinctions of the old world do not belong to American Society; and so different in constitution are the two societies, that measures, which in Europe would tend to break down artificial distinctions, here necessarily tend to create them. The only aristocracy, which can amount to anything in this country, must be an aristocracy based on wealth. To an aristocracy of this kind we are not a little exposed. Consequently all measures of government, designed to afford increased facilities to the rich for the profitable investment of capital, necessarily increase the danger; whereas in societies. already aristocratic, in the European sense of the word, such measures tend to break down or neutralize the old aristocracy. There the constitution of society secures to one class important privileges, which even wealth cannot purchase. It is of more importance there to be well-born than to be rich. Consequently wealth needs encouragement, protection, to enable the capitalist to compete with the noble. But here there is no noble. The capitalist is at the top of our society. To legislate especially for him is, then, to legislate especially for an already privileged class.

This is not all. In France, for instance, the opera

tives suffer for the want of steady employment. Their condition would be undoubtedly much ameliorated, could they find constant employment and regular pay. But here constant employment and regular pay, even high wages, would be but very little if any amelioration of the condition of our operatives. There it is well so to organize industry, as to enable the possessors of the funds of production to employ as many workmen as possible. But here such an organization of industry would be no advance on our present condition, but in fact a retrogression. Here, so far as government meddles with the matter at all, it should aim to increase the facilities, by which operatives may become also proprietors.

Miss Martineau, and most liberal foreigners, who travel among us, seem to overlook the fact, to which we have here sought to draw attention. Miss Martineau's beau ideal of society is a manufacturing society, in which the distinction between proprietor and operative is as strongly marked, as the distinction. ever was between a patrician and a plebeian, a seignor and his vassal, or the landlord and his serf or villein. What we want is not employment for workmen, but the diminution, in the greatest possible degree, of the number of mere workmen seeking employment. Everywhere the workman at wages is a sort of slave, more or less at the mercy of his employer. The capitalist invests his capital not for the purpose of obtaining the means of subsistence, but the increase of his wealth. For this end he purchases labor. the workman sells his labor that he may obtain not wealth, but the means of subsistence. Now as the urgency to obtain the means of subsistence must always be greater than the urgency to grow richer, the laborer must always be more desirous of selling his labor than the capitalist can be of purchasing it. Hence the purchaser is in a condition to exert more influence on the terms of the sale and purchase than can be exerted by the seller. He has as much more power over the laborer than the laborer has over him,

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