

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 43 



that sell Wedgwood ware, which I have been haunting with 

 some success. As I know that you will listen to nothing 

 from me after this I will shut up. 



The same subject is continued in letters to Asa Gray after 

 he war. 



I continue to read the Nation regularly and with great 

 interest. I am so glad that it is the Tories who are going 

 to take up the Alabama case. Though a whig myself (if 

 anything), I always believed that the Tories and Aristocracy 

 generally had better and wiser ideas during the American war 

 than Goldwin Smith, &c. gave them credit for. I have no 

 hesitation in thinking that the honor of our uppermost Tory 

 ( classes is of a higher order than of the middle, just as their 

 ' vices are more conspicuous. They can afford to be more 

 high-minded, just as they can afford to commit sins that 

 damn a lower class, and upon the whole I expect they are 

 less vicious than the middle class and infinitely less than the 

 Wer. Indeed upon scientific grounds I have stated before 

 'Natural selection, and continued success only attending 

 aonesty) I think it should be so. 



Did you ever read that painful book, Malthus on Popu- 



ition ? I did the other day, and was painfully impressed 



y it. I had supposed he was a sort of materialist, who advised 



he checking of the population by restrictive means, and was 



surprised to find nothing of the sort, and a rather fine exordium 



at the end on a future state and the benefits of Christianity ! 



His arguments seem incontrovertible to me. 



To A. Gray 



March 22, 1867. 



I was amused with the Boston Advertiser pitching into the 

 Pall Mall as representing ' the Governing Class.' I suppose 

 the fashionable name misleads them with regard to the 

 point at issue. The P. M. is logically right and B. A. clearly 

 wrong ; the error is in the B. A. assuming that we are a ' free 

 nation.' We are nothing of the sort, and the masses do not 

 wish to be so. They are engaged in the struggle for existence 

 and care nought for freedom or politics — so we have bribery 

 and corruption in all our elections — even amongst the lower 

 educated classes — rampant. Take away bribery — and other 



