EDITOR'S TABLE. 



111 



into seven provinces ; the religion is Mo- 

 hammedan, and the king, whose power is 

 arbitrary, is looked upon as a sort of divini- 

 ty. The king's harem consists of about 500 

 wives, and all his sons, except the heir to 

 the throne, are blinded with hot irons, a 

 duty performed by the king of the smiths, 

 ^ho is also the surgeon of the harem. The 

 people are skillful workers in iron, but given 

 to the drinking of an intoxicating beer, a 

 practice which great efforts are made to re- 

 press. Spies are extensively employed for 

 that purpose, and any man upon whose 

 premises the forbidden liquor is found is 

 punished by having his wife's head shaved. 

 The king has an army of 40,000 infantry and 

 6,000 cavalry, and the country is heavily 

 taxed for the support of the king and his 

 expensive government." 



Judge Daly quietly compares our 

 own " best Government on the face of 

 the earth " with one of these African 

 governments, and finds the compari- 

 son "not complimentary to our intelli- 

 gence." Here is the passage : 



" The Egyptian Geographical Society, 

 under the presidency of Dr. G. Schweinfurth, 

 the distinguished African explorer, was es- 

 tablished this year at Cairo, through the 

 liberality of the Khedive, consisting of 300 

 members, with an annual income of $7,000. 

 A substantial portion of this income is 

 granted by the Government in view of the 

 advantages to the nation of the labors of 

 the Geographical Society, as is the case with 

 several of the leading Geographical Societies 

 of Europe. But it would be hard to con- 

 vince our Government of the utility of aid- 

 ing, by pecuniary means, our Society, the 

 only one in this country, when it would not 

 even incur the expense of sending a com- 

 missioner to the late great Geographical 

 Congress at Paris, and to our shame we were 

 the only civilized nation that was unrepre- 

 sented in the exposition. It is not compli- 

 mentary to our intelligence and our cosmo- 

 politan relations to the world, of which we 

 form so important a part, that we have a 

 Government that takes no interest in the 

 advance of civilization, and of the trade, 

 commerce, and industry of the world at 

 lar?e, througli geographical exploration and 

 discovery, the means by which it has been 

 chiefly advanced, from the dawn of civiliza- 

 tion to the present time. It was not the 

 fault of tliis Society that our oountry was 

 not represented in the exposition, for ear- 

 nest efforts were made by us as well as by the 



French minister, but were met by the reply 

 that the Congress in Paris was the affair of 

 a private society, which was not the view 

 taken by the other civilized nations, who 

 made liberal grants of money for the success 

 of an undertaking in which the whole world 

 was interested. With our limited means, 

 all that we could do was to send a delega- 

 tion, as nothing could be received for ex- 

 hibition except under the charge of a com- 

 missioner of the government of the country 

 from which it was sent. If the gentlemen 

 charged with the administration of our Gov- 

 ernment read the frequent expressions of 

 surprise that I have read in the various ac- 

 counts written of the exposition, at the ab- 

 sence of any representation from the United 

 States, they would not, I think, be very 

 much impressed with the wisdom and policy 

 of the exceptional position in which they 

 placed our country and people. This was 

 not a case in which we could afford to be in- 

 different, as we do not constitute the whole 

 world." 



THE "ACADEMY '" FOR AMERICANS. 



We had occasion some time ago to 

 refer to the unscrupulous critical spirit 

 which animates a London weekly called 

 the Academy, a periodical established 

 and conducted on the principle of bully- 

 ing itself into notice by copying and 

 exaggerating the most arbitrary feat- 

 ures of British journalism. A special 

 effort has been made to push the cir- 

 culation of the Academy in this country, 

 which makes it proper to point out the 

 policy it has adopted toward American 

 as well as English authors. A little 

 American book on botany was repub- 

 lished in London, and attacked by the 

 Academy in the most vicious way. The 

 criticism was a string of the grossest 

 misrepresentations, by which the whole 

 character of the book was falsified and 

 libeled. Its author happened to be in 

 London at the time, and wrote a letter 

 to the editor of the Academy, exposing 

 the character of its criticism. The 

 editor refused to print it, and the author 

 was compelled to seek another channel 

 to get the true state of the case before 

 the public. The letter declined by the 

 Academy was printed by the Examiner. 



