IMPRESSIOXS OF AMERICA. 



533 



received their early training ; and that the sons 

 of these plain and homely farmers had not only 

 created the great manufacturing industries which 

 are now established in the older parts of the 

 country, but had been among the most adventu- 

 rous and successful settlers in the West. An 

 Englishman whom I met in New York the day 

 after I landed, said that wherever I went I should 

 find that the brains came from New England ; 

 my New England friends did not make quite so 

 strong a claim as this, but they asserted that 

 from the farmhouses of the New England States 

 had been derived a very large proportion of the 

 intellectual and moral strength of tbe country. 

 One of the most learned and accomplished men 

 in America, who for some years had preached to 

 a congregation of New England farmers, assured 

 me that they were generally men of strong, shrewd 

 sense and sound judgment, rather slow in their 

 intellectual movements, but with a healthy appre- 

 ciation for solid thinking. Many of them, he 

 assured me, had a considerable number of excel- 

 lent books and read them. On the other hand, I 

 was told by a distinguished lawyer that the intel- 

 lectual development of the farmers was seriously 

 checked by the severity of their out-door work. 

 On the whole, however, the testimony which 

 reached me from those who had the largest ac- 

 quaintance with them supported very strongly 

 the most favorable estimate both of their intelli- 

 gence and their morals. "What I heard about the 

 farmers' wives and daughters was still more de- 

 cisive. These ladies generally rise early and 

 spend their morning in house-work ; but after an 

 early dinner, which most of them cook with their 

 own hands, they " dress," and are generally free 

 to visit their friends or to occupy themselves with 

 their books, their music, or their needle. They 

 take a pride in cultivating the refinements of life. 

 At dinner and supper the table-cloth is as white 

 and the silver as brilliant as in the houses of 

 wealthy merchants in Boston or New York. The 

 farmhouses are planted so thickly over the coun- 

 try that evening entertainments are very numer- 

 ous, and at many of these — so I was assured — 

 the conversation is very bright and intelligent. 

 It is a common thing for a farmer to send at 

 least one of his boys to college, and during the 

 vacations the lads find in their mothers and sis- 

 ters the keenest sympathy with their literary am- 

 bition. One lady, who had been surrounded from 

 her childhood by the most cultivated society in 

 New England, told me that she knew a large 

 number of women living in farmhouses, that she 

 constantly corresponded with some of them, and 



that among the farmers' wives and daughters 

 there were some of the most attractive, most in- 

 telligent, and best informed women that she had 

 ever met with. 



About the effect of the New England agri- 

 cultural system on the intellectual activity and 

 refinement of the population there may be dif- 

 ferences of opinion ; but there can be no dif- 

 ference of opinion as to the effect it must pro- 

 duce on- their political spirit and principles. A 

 population of farmers, owning the land they cul- 

 tivate, is certain to have strong conservative in- 

 stincts. Nor is the conservative temper the spe- 

 cial, or at least the exclusive, characteristic of 

 New England. To an English radical the con- 

 servatism of the people generally is very striking. 

 If a couple of million American voters were sud- 

 denly transferred to English constituencies, the 

 conservative reaction would probably receive a 

 great accession of vigor. Of course, the Church 

 would be disestablished within a few months af- 

 ter the first general election ; perhaps the House 

 of Lords would be abolished ; there would per- 

 haps be an attempt to change the monarchy for 

 a republic ; but there might be a very vigorous 

 conservative spirit in England, as there is in 

 America, in the absence of a throne, a House of 

 Lords, and an ecclesiastical establishment. The 

 respect for the rights of property, for instance, is 

 positively superstitious. Some of the most " lib- 

 eral " of my American friends were astounded by 

 Mr. Cross's " Artisans' Dwellings Act." They 

 were doubtful themselves about the policy and 

 the justice of it ; they were certain that no such 

 act could be carried in America. The proceed- 

 ings of the Endowed Schools Commission under 

 the late Lord Lyttleton, and of the present Charity 

 Commissioners, appear to many Americans per- 

 fectly revolutionary. There are trusts in the 

 United States which are utterly useless, because 

 the conditions under which they were created 

 have become obsolete ; the money is lying idle or 

 is being applied in ways which confer no benefit 

 on the community, but to change the trusts 

 seems like sacrilege or spoliation. A few men 

 are plucking up courage to make the attempt, 

 and are coming to the conclusion that the ghosts 

 of the founders are not likely to appear if the 

 trusts are modified, and that there is nothing in 

 the Ten Commandments requiring us to confer 

 upon any man the right to determine the uses of 

 property for a thousand years after his death ; 

 and yet the boldest of them show a certain tre- 

 mor and awe when they are drawn into a discus- 

 sion of the question. They are like those pa- 



