I think that the author of Sam Slick may not be wrong in his assertion, that all America will be a Catholic country. I myself never prophesy; but, I cannot help remarking, that even in the most anti-Catholic persuasions in America there is a strong Papistical feeling; that is, there is a vying with each other, not only to obtain the best preachers, but to have the best organs and the best singers. It is the system of excitement which, without their being aware of it, they carry into their devotion. It proves that, to them there is a weariness in the church service, a tedium in prayer, which requires to be relieved by the stimulus of good music and sweet voices. Indeed, what with their anxious seats, their revivals, their music and their singing, every class and sect in the states have even now so far fallen into Catholicism, that religion has become more of an appeal to the senses than to the calm and sober judgment.

  Chapter Eight.

  Remarks — Societies and Associations.

  Although in a democracy the highest stations and preferments are open to all, more directly than they may be under any other form of government, still these prizes are but few and insufficient, compared with the number of total blanks which must be drawn by the ambitious multitude. It is, indeed, a stimulus to ambition (and a matter of justice, when all men are pronounced equal), that they all should have an equal chance of raising themselves by their talents and perseverance; but, when so many competitors are permitted to enter the field, few can arrive at the goal, and the mass are doomed to disappointment. However fair, therefore, it may be to admit all to the competition, certain it is that the competition cannot add to the happiness of a people, when we consider the feelings of bitterness and ill-will naturally engendered among the disappointed multitude.

  In monarchical and aristocratical institutions, the middling and lower classes, whose chances of advancement are so small that they seldom lift their eyes or thoughts above their own sphere, are therefore much happier, and it may be added, much more virtuous than those who struggle continually for preferment in the tumultuous sea of democracy. Wealth can give some importance, but wealth in a democracy gives an importance which is so common to many that it loses much of its value; and when it has been acquired, it is not sufficient for the restless ambition of the American temperament, which will always spurn wealth for power. The effects, therefore, of a democracy are, first to raise an inordinate ambition among the people, and then to cramp the very ambition which it has raised; and, as I may comment upon hereafter, it appears as if this ambition of the people, individually checked by the nature of their institutions, becomes, as it were, concentrated and collected into a focus in upholding and contemplating the success and increase of power in the federal government. Thus has been produced a species of demoralising reaction; the disappointed units to a certain degree satisfying themselves with any advance in the power and importance of the whole Union, wholly regardless of the means by which such increase may have been obtained.

  But this unsatisfied ambition has found another vent in the formation of many powerful religious and other associations. In a country where there will ever be an attempt of the people to tyrannise over everybody and everything, power they will have; and if they cannot obtain it in the various departments of the States Governments, they will have it in opposition to the Government; for all these societies and associations connect themselves directly with politics. (See Note 1.) It is of little consequence by what description of tie “these sticks in the fable” are bound up together; once bound together, they are, not to be broken. In America religion severs the community, but these societies are the bonds which to a certain degree reunite it.

  To enumerate the whole of these societies actually existing, or which have been in existence, would be difficult. The following are the most prominent: —

  List of Benevolent Societies, with their Receipts in the Year 1834.

  Dolls Cts.

  American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

  155,002 24

  American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions

  63,000 00

  Western Foreign Mission Society

  at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  16,296 46

  Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society

  35,700 15

  Protestant Episcopal Foreign

  and Domestic Missionary Society

  26,007 97

  American Home Missionary Society

  78,911 24

  Baptist Home Missionary Society

  11,448 28

  Board of Missions of the

  Reformed Dutch Church (Domestic)

  5,572 97

  Board of Missions of the General Assembly of the

  Presbyterian Church (Domestic) estimated

  40,000 00

  American Education Society

  57,122 20

  Board of Education of the General Assembly of the

  Presbyterian churches

  38,000 00

  Northern Baptist Education Society

  4,681 11

  Board of Education of the Reformed Dutch Church

  1,270 20

  American Bible Society

  88,600 82

  American Sunday School Union

  136,855 58

  General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union

  6,641 00

  Baptist General Tract Society

  6,126 97

  American Tract Society

  66,485 83

  American Colonisation Society

  48,939 17

  Prison Discipline Society

  2,364 00

  American Seamen’s Friend Society

  16,064 00

  American Temperance Society

  5,871 12

  8,910,961 31

  Many of these societies had not been established more than ten years at the date given; they must have increased very much since that period. Of course many of them are very useful, and very well conducted. There are many others: New England Non-resistance Society, Sabbath Observance Society, etcetera; in fact, the Americans are society mad. I do not intend to speak with the least disrespect of the societies, but the zeal or fanaticism, if I may use the term, with which many, if not all, of them are carried on, is too remarkable a feature in the American character to be passed over without comment. Many of these societies have done much good, particularly the religious societies; but many others, from being pushed too far, have done great mischief, and have very much assisted to demoralise the community. I remember once hearing a story of an ostler who confessed to a Catholic priest; he enumerated a long catalogue of enormities peculiar to his profession, and when he had finished, the priest inquired of him “whether he had ever greased horses’ teeth to prevent their eating their corn?” this peculiar offence not having been mentioned in his confession. The ostler declared that he never had, absolution was given, and he departed. About six months afterwards, the ostler went again to unload his conscience; the former crimes and peccadilloes were enumerated, but added to them were several acknowledgments of having at various times “greased horses’ teeth” to prevent their eating their corn. “Ho-ho!” cried the priest, “why, if I recollect aright, according to your former confession you had never been guilty of this practice. How comes it that you have added this crime to your many others?” “May it please you, Father,” replied the ostler, “I had never heard of it, until you told me.”

  Now this story is very apropos to the conduct pursued by many of these societies in America: they must display to the public their statistics of immorality and vice; they must prove their usefulness by informing those who were quite ignorant, and therefore innocent, that there are crimes of which they had no idea; and thus, in their fanatic wish to improve, they demoralise. Such have been the consequences among this excitable yet well-meaning people. The author of “A voice from America” observes: —

  It has been thought suitable to call the attention of mothers and daughters over the wide country to the condition and evils of brothels and of common prostitution, in towns and cities; to send out agents — young men — to preach on the subject; and to organise subsidiary societies after the fashion of all reforms. The annual report of “The New York Female Moral Reform Society” for 1838, (a very decent name certainly for the object), announces 361 auxiliaries and 20,000 members, with 16,500 subscribers (all females!) to the “Advocate of Moral Reform,” a semi-monthly paper, published by the parent society, devoted to the text of the seventh commandment, and to the facts and results growing out of its violation. “This same class of reformers have heretofore been accustomed to strike off prints of the most unmentionable scenes of these houses of pollution in their naked forms, and in the very acts of crime, for public display, that the public might know what they are: in other words, as may be imagined, to make sport for the initiated, to tempt the appetites and passions of the young, who otherwise would have known little or nothing about it, into the same vortex of ruin, and to cause the decent and virtuous to turn away with emotions of ineffable regret.”

  I cannot help inquiring, how is it, if the Americans are, as they assert, both orally and in their printed public documents, a very moral nation, that they find it necessary to resort to all these societies for the improvement of their brother citizens; and how is it that their reports are full of such unexampled atrocities, as are printed and circulated in evidence of the necessity of their stemming the current of vice! The Americans were constantly twitting me about the occasional cases of adultery and divorce which appear in our newspapers, assuring me at the same time, that there was hardly ever such a thing heard of in their own moral community. Now, it appears that this subject has not only been taken up by the clergy, (for Dr Dwight, late president of Yale College, preached a sermon on the seventh commandment, which an American author asserts “was heard with pain and confusion of face, and which never can be read in a promiscuous circle without exciting the same feelings;”) but by one of their societies also; and, although they have not assumed the name of the Patent Anti-Adultery Society, they are positively doing the work of such a one, and the details are entered into in promiscuous assemblies without the least reservation.

  The author before mentioned says:

  “The common feeling on the subject has been declared false delicacy; and, in order to break ground against its sway, females have been forced into the van of this enterprise; and persuaded to act as agents, not only among their own sex, but in circumstances where they must necessarily agitate the subject with men, — not wives with husbands, which would be bad enough, but young and single women with young and single men! And we have been credibly informed, that attempts have been made to form associations among wives to regulate the privileges, and so attain the end of temperance, in the conjugal relation. The next step, of course, will be teetotalism in this particular; and, as a consequence, the extinction of the human race, unless peradventure the failure of the main enterprise of the Moral Reform Society should keep it up by a progeny not to be honoured.” (“A Voice from America.”)

  Let it be remembered that this is not a statement of my own, but it is an American who makes the assertion, which I could prove to be true, might I publish what I must not.

  From the infirmity of our natures, and our proneness to evil, there is nothing so corrupting as the statistics of vice. Can young females remain pure in their ideas, who read with indifference details of the grossest nature? Can the youth of a nation remain uncontaminated, who are continually poring over pages describing sensuality; and will they not, in their desire of “something new,” as the Prophet says, run into the very vices of the existence of which they were before unconscious! It is this dangerous running into extremes which has occasioned so many of these societies to have been productive of much evil. A Boston editor remarks: “The tendency of the leaders of the moral and benevolent reforms of the day to run into fanaticism, threatens to destroy the really beneficial effects of all associations for these objects. The spirit of propagandism, when it becomes over zealous, is next of kin to the spirit of persecution. The benevolent associations of the day are on the brink of a danger that will be fatal to their farther usefulness if not checked.”

  Of the Abolition Society and its tendency, I have already spoken in the chapter on slavery. I must not, however, pass over another which at present is rapidly extending its sway over the whole Union, and it is difficult to say whether it does most harm or most good — I refer to the Temperance Society.

  The Rev. Mr Reid says:

  “In the short space of its existence, upwards of seven thousand Temperance Societies have been formed, embracing more than one million two hundred and fifty thousand members. More than three thousand distilleries have been stopped, and more than seven thousand persons who dealt in spirits have declined the trade. Upwards of one thousand vessels have abandoned their use. And, most marvellous of all! it is said that above ten thousand drunkards have been reclaimed from intoxication.” And he adds— “I really know of no one circumstance in the history of this people, or of any people, so exhilarating as this. It discovers that power of self-government, which is the leading element of all national greatness, in an unexampled degree. Now here is a remarkable instance of a traveller taking for granted that what is reported to him is the truth.” The worthy clergyman, himself, evidently without guile, fully believed a statement which was absurd, from the simple fact, that only one side of the balance sheet had been presented.

  That 7,000 Temperance Societies have been formed is true. That 3,000 distilleries have stopped from principle may also be true; but the Temperance Society reports take no notice of the many which have been set up in their stead by those who felt no compunction at selling spirits. Equally true it may be that 7,030 dealers in spirits have ceased to sell them; but if they have declined the trade, others have taken it up. That the crews of many vessels have abandoned the use of spirituous liquors is also the fact, and that is the greatest benefit which has resulted from the efforts of the Temperance Society; but I believe the number to be greatly magnified. That 10,000 drunkards have been reclaimed — that is, that they have signed papers and taken the oath — may be true; but how many have fallen away from their good resolutions, and become more intemperate than before, is not recorded; nor how many who, previously careless of liquor, have, out of pure opposition, and in defiance of the Society, actually become drunkards, is also unknown. In this Society, as in the Abolition Society, they have canvassed for legislative enactments, and have succeeded in obtaining them. The legislature of Massachusetts, which state is the stronghold of the society, passed an act last year by which it prohibited the selling of spirits in a smaller quantity than fifteen gallons, intending thereby to do away with the means of dram-drinking, at the groceries, as they are termed; a clause, however, permitted apothecaries to retail smaller quantities, and the consequence was that all the grog-shops commenced taking out apothecaries’ licences. That being stopped, the striped pig was resorted to: that is to say, a man charged people the value of a glass of liquor to see a striped pig, which peculiarity was exhibited as a sight, and, when in the house, the visitors were offered a glass of spirits for nothing. But this act of the legislature has given great offence, and the state of Massachusetts is now divided into two very strange political parties, to wit, the topers and the teetotalers. It is asserted that, in the political contest which is to take place, the topers will be victorious; and if so, it will be satisfactorily proved that, in the very enlightened and moral state of Massachusetts the pattern of the Union, there are more intemperate than sober men.

  In this dispute between sobriety and inebriety the clergy have not been idle: some denouncing alcohol from the pulpit; some, on the other hand denouncing the Temperance Societies as not being Christians. Among the latter the Bishop of Vermont has led the van. In one of his works, “The Primitive Church,” he asserts that: —

  “The Temperance Society is not based upon religious, but worldly principles.