ry told by
another president, of 223 representatives who received accommodation
from the bank, at the rate of a thousand pounds apiece, during its
struggle with Jackson.

America as known to the man in the cars, and America observed in the
roll of the ages, do not always give the same totals. We learn that the
best capacity of the country is withheld from politics, that there is
what Emerson calls a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from the
social organisation, so that the representatives approach the level of
the constituents. Yet it is in political science only that America
occupies the first rank. There are six Americans on a level with the
foremost Europeans, with Smith and Turgot, Mill and Humboldt. Five of
these were secretaries of state, and one was secretary of the treasury.
We are told also that the American of to-day regards the national
institutions with a confidence sometimes grotesque. But this is a
sentiment which comes down, not from Washington and Jefferson, but from
Grant and Sherman. The illustrious founders were not proud of their
accomplished work; and men like Clay and Adams persisted in desponding
to the second and third generation. We have to distinguish what the
nation owes to Madison and Marshall, and what to the army of the
Potomac; for men's minds misgave them as to the constitution until it
was cemented by the ordeal and the sacrifice of civil war. Even the
claim put forward for Americans as the providers of humour for mankind
seems to me subject to the same limitation. People used to know how
often, or how seldom, Washington laughed during the war; but who has
numbered the jokes of Lincoln?

Although Mr. Bryce has too much tact to speak as freely as the Americans
themselves in the criticism of their government, he insists that there
is one defect which they insufficiently acknowledge. By law or custom no
man can represent any district but the one he resides in. If ten
statesmen live in the same street, nine will be thrown out of work. It
is worth while to point out (though this may not be the right place for
a purely political problem) that even in that piece of censure in which
he believes himself unsupported by his friends in the States, Mr. Bryce
says no more than intelligent Americans have said before him. It chances
that several of them have discussed this matter with me. One was
governor of his State, and another is among the compurgators cited in
the preface. Both were stron