Show HERBERT SPENCER ON AMERICA The latest English guest whom we have intsrtained in the AngloSaxon waythat is at dinner is Herbert Spencer It ws a very notablo company that greeted him and tLe peaking was capital Mr Spencer own address wa an interesting paper in which he preached the gospel of relaxation In an interview published pub-lished some time before he hail made some incisive criticisms upon American Am-erican life and character and in his dinner address ho said that ho was going to find fault That was frank and there has been no traveller among us whose observations were likely to be more valuable They all talk to us like uncles or pedagogues exclaimed Araericus impatiently What business have I they to lecture us in this style Wo are quite old enough to take care of I ourselves and quite able to run this continent without any instruction from Englishmen Suppose that some American guest in England should eay lo bie host that he wanted to give them some good advice and point out to them a few of their defects and then proceed to pat them on the head with pratrouizing praise dont you think there would be a storm if f strangers like us very well if they dont like us very well It is a matter of supreme indifference to U1n Why then do we ask them how they like ue And why should the people of one country scornfully decline to bear the comments of sensible people of other countries Every man is or ought to be glad to receive intelligent counsel and to see his life from other points of vIew than his own Why obould not the uitizsn be equally sensible We did not ask De Tocqueville to come and see us and analyze our political institutions insti-tutions and their operations We did not ask Von Hoist to write our con atituticnal history But Da Tocque vlUo and Von Hoist have laid ua and all other lovers of popular constitutional constitu-tional liberty under great obligations Both of them haie written belter books of their kind about uu than any American has written It is absurd to snarl that we dont care what they say and that they had better stay at home and not lecture ua Wtien Dickens stung us with the satire of Martin Chuzzkwit he was not only accused of ingratitudeas if a man were bound to find no fault with any abuse and not to criticise any tendency ten-dency in a country where be had been kindly welcomed but he was told to look at home and assured that if he wanted to depict outrageous evils and ridiculous people he had only to portray his beloved England Chat was paid with a Quo ala ol indignation indig-nation But what else was Dickens doini all hia life What are his books in this point of view but a prolonged arraignment of the abuses and of the absurd social types of his native England But when Henry James jun draws a goodnatured and shrewd sketch ot the American girl abroad in Daisy Mfller although it is plainly intended to show the conventional con-ventional Europe that the American girl is misjudged we petulantly wonder won-der why ho could not choose another type to illustrate The observations of intelligent foreign critics are no more hostile than the American criticisms which the confirm When for instance after af-ter a most intelligent recognition of the material advantages ot this country Mr spencer eaya that if there had been another and higher progress commensurate with the material ma-terial advance there would de nothing noth-ing to wish he says nothing which very many Americans have not felt and Raid and be adds an improve ment from histury which had occurred occur-red to many Americans and had I been strongly stated by them thct while the republics of middle ages surrounded themselves with material splendor their liberty decayed And what is this but a contemporary statemuut of the old truth which Goldsmith put into memorable verse 100 years ago Ill fares the land to hastening the prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay Mr Spencers further remarks that under the forms of freedom we may loose its substance and that in some ways which he points out we are loosing it in the burden of warning warn-ing of many an intelligent American Ameri-can which does not need the old illustration of Caesars introduction of the empire under republican forms nor the warning of Burke that ambition though it has ever the same general viewabas not at all times the same means nor the same particular objects So when Mr Spencer says that paper constitutions constitu-tions will not work and that the real basis and bulwark of national greatne and of progressive liberty is character and not education he says what every thoughtful Amerioan perceives S per-ceives and believes He does not say indeeed what many Americans know and what explains the emphasis em-phasis with whioj we insist upon S education that the preceplion of the desirability of general education is in itself an evidence of general character char-acter Education alone may not eave a people from political trouble but constitutional liberty will not be maintained by an ignorant people peo-ple That our goodnature is a kind of moral indifference i which is really a defect of character is another of MrS Mr-S Spencers observations which is a corroboration cor-roboration of much American comment com-ment upon American life It has S an explanation in the condit ions of that life for which Mr Spencer Spen-cer does not make allowance But his remark ia only that of the railroad rail-road traveller last enmrner which this easy chair recorded In a new country everybody must good hnmorely help everybody else and make the beet of everything Perhaps Per-haps Mr Spencer has not heard the story of the American gentleman travelling in a certain part of the country who was qurtered in the hotel in a room of which the window opened upon the p ama where his fellowcHizsns sat tilled back in chairs talkias roaditg the newspapers news-papers and expectorating here was no shade or shutters to the window The traveller deairing to change hisdrens for want of any other curtain hung a shirt over the windov to aecure his eeoluaion But a watchful fellowcitizen chanced to see the unwonted attempt to escape the public eye and the traveller was surprised in the mcs extreme stage of his change of raiment to see the improvised curtain suddenly torn away and a face thrust inquiringly i into the window with the remark I i jess wantei to see what youre so private abaut The case was an extreme ex-treme one and a laugh was certainly a better recourau than a revolver gjJBut in everything that invovea a principle as Mr Spencer truly says there ie profound wisdom in Hamlets phrase Greatly to find quarrel in a straw This again ia but a new I fuca of the old wi dom obsto princi pHs For a straw ahowa which way the wind blows How can a sensible Amer can quarrel with tho shrewd and kindly insight oJ u quiet Englishman English-man who when he is asked his opinion opin-ion shows that he agrapa with the askar At the dinner Mr Spencer did not speak as un Englishman or a critio or a cynic but aa a philosopher philoso-pher The end of all our study and endeavor he said oh uld bs corn pete living Intemperate devotion to work of any kind like nil intemperance intem-perance weaken tae power cf right living lu America a3 in England there is taLl absorbing paauon 1 for work Therefore in th j interest of a better and more truly effiicient Ida lot us heed the gospel ot relaxation and recreation It was aa he said an unconventional unconven-tional afterdinner speech and Mr Bcburz very happily cited thu speaker himself aa a utrlking illustration illustra-tion as striking as any Yankee of the consequences of disregarding his own doctrine of the desirability of recreation for a complaer lila But it was not nn English uncle tipping tip-ping his bumptious American nephew with good advice nor pedagogue peda-gogue lecturing us upon our follies and defects nor a supercilious for eigneer condescending It was a thoughtful guest of our own kindred kind-red of the same high and generous purpose that we attribute to the best of our countrymen comparing notes in the most friendly way and speak lug to us not disinctly as American fO much aa men living in America If any American of corresponding standing with Mr Spencer should go to England and speak to Englishmen English-men after dinner in the same simple and friendly way they would be very foolish fellows If thoy listened with any less courtesy and heed than we have listened to Mr Spencer |