216

ISOLATION OF RACES.

places upon the Hudson River, &c., so the Irish and the Highland Scotch, and even the Norwegians, establish themselves in separate localities, and give a tone to the manners, feelings, and habits, and new words and accents to the language of the townships, counties, or states, in which they choose their homes. This will,

no doubt, be found to give peculiarities to the population of the several States, and to modify the temper, and even the legislation, of the Houses of Assembly in each State. But these State differences will disappear in the Federal Congress, and will rarely affect the action or procedure of the Central Government. The greater fire and impatience of one State will be restrained by the coolness and caution of another; and thus, while the warm temperaments of some of the States may prevent national stagnation, they will, it is to be hoped, but seldom prevail to hurry forward the whole Union to hasty and inconsiderate measures.

In regard to the new States which are springing up towards the west and north, it is very interesting to observe how important an influence is exercised by the restless New Englanders upon the establishment among them of political, religious, and educational institutions, and upon the general character and expression of public feeling and sentiment.

The emigrants who go out from Europe-the raw bricks for the new State buildings-are generally poor, and for the most part indifferently educated. Being strangers to the institutions of the country, and to their mode of working, and, above all, being occupied in establishing themselves, the rural settlers have little leisure or inclination to meddle with the direct regulation of public affairs for some years after they have first begun to hew their farms out of the solitary wilderness. The New Englanders come in to do this. The west is an outlet for their superfluous lawyers, their doctors,

INFLUENCE OF NEW ENGLAND.

217

their ministers of various persuasions, their newspaper editors, their bankers, their merchants, and their pedlars. All the professions and influential positions are filled up by them. They are the movers in all the public measures that are taken in the organisation of State governments, and the establishment of county institutions; and they occupy most of the legislative, executive, and other official situations, by means of which the State affairs are at first carried on. Thus the west presents an inviting field to the ambitious spirits of the east; and through their means the genius and institutions of the New England States are transplanted and diffused, and determine, in a great measure, those of the more westerly portions of the Union.

Near Rochester we passed one of the emigrant trains which every day proceed from Albany and Troy to Buffalo, on their way to the Far West. There were women and children and men of all ages, and the ragged and lively, though often squalid-looking Irish, were mixed up with the more decently clad and graver-looking English, Scotch, and Germans. The fare from New York to Albany by water, and thence to Buffalo by railway, is five dollars a-head, though the poor strangers are liable to much imposition in New York on the part of a set of men called runners, who waylay them on landing, and profess to give them information, with the view only of cheating them of their money. Much pains has been taken, however, by the State Emigration Commissioners in New York, with the view of preventing such imposition. It is made unlawful for a tavern or lodging-house keeper to detain the luggage of an emigrant for any debts he may contract; persons are appointed to give information to those who land; and were ordinary prudence to be exercised by European emigrants, very much less opportunity for fraud would be afforded to the swarms of heartless wretches who, in proportion to the

218

OLD HUNKERS AND BARNBURNERS.

population, are probably as numerous at least in New York as in any European city.

Though most of my fellow-passengers were on their way from the fair at Syracuse, the conversation in the cars was more about political differences, conventions, and discussions, than about the proceedings of the show. The Old Hunkers and the Barnburners-two sections of the democratic party-were holding many meetings throughout the country, with the view of bringing about a union, as their differences had been a source of great advantage to the Whigs at the recent federal and state elections. In England, to be a democrat still implies a position at the very front of the movement party, and a desire to hasten forward political changes, irrespective of season or expediency. But among the American democrats there is a Conservative and a Radical party. The former, who desire to restrain "the amazing violence of the popular spirit," are nick-named by their democratic adversaries the "Old Hunkers;" the latter, who profess to have in their hearts" sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,' are stigmatised as Barnburners, but call themselves the "Young Democracy," or the "Progressive Young Democracy." The New York Tribune, in reference to the origin of the names themselves, says that the name Hunkers 66 was intended to indicate that those on whom it was conferred had an appetite for a large hunk* of the spoils,' though we never could discover that they were peculiar in that. On the other hand, the Barnburners were so named, in allusion to the story of an old Dutchman who relieved himself of rats by burning his barns which they infested, just like exterminating all banks and corporations, to root out the abuses connected therewith." It is alleged against the Barnburners, that

* Hunk or hunch is a large slice or piece-as, a hunk of bread and cheese.

PRINCIPLES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

219

their recent conduct in reference to the slavery question, as the supporters of General Cass, the pro-slavery candidate, is sadly inconsistent with their affected hostility to every form of tyranny. But where men go for the predominance of a party, small considerations regarding consistency will not readily restrain them.

But if the principles of this extreme section of the democratic party in the United States be such as their own organs (the Ohio Union, for example,) represent them, they can scarcely be charged with inconsistency in this, or almost any other case. "They believe that the democratic impulses are right, and should be obeyed, not thwarted: they believe in and favour progress, and would not prescribe a fixed rule in all minor matters for all time, but would adapt action to the circumstances and exigencies which arise in the progression of events, and to the rights and interests which accompany or result from that progression and its changes." This is virtually surrendering principle to impulse, and giving the reins into the hands of a constantly shifting expediency. If they find it expedient, for party purposes, to oppose the extension of slavery to-day, therefore, it will not, with these professions, be inconsistent to pronounce it expedient to favour that extension to-morrow.

Proceeding from Rochester to Attica, a distance of forty-four miles, in a south-west direction, we again crossed the several geological formations I have already described, and saw much strong wheat-land. Here and there considerable patches of forest remained, and sometimes fields with the stumps standing; and occasionally my memory was refreshed by a more or less extensive burning of the stumps, reminding me of what I had seen so frequently, and on so large a scale, in the forests of New Brunswick. Thirty miles more brought me to Buffalo; and upon this tract the native forest, still untouched, and the log cabin, and the half-cleared land,

220

EVIL EFFECTS OF LAND-JOBBING.

and the blackened stumps, and the occasional fellings and burnings, told of our approach to the limits of complete settlement-to the wilderness lands, over which the living tide of redundant European energy is so rapidly diffusing itself.

Along the line of this great thoroughfare in the State of New York, comparatively few emigrants now linger. Farmers, with capital to stock a good farm at home, occasionally find eligible farms to buy, upon which they can comfortably settle, and bring up their families without fear of rent-days or shifting corn-laws. But the mass of movers, who are men of comparatively small means, pass on without inquiring whether or not the State of New York has still any suitable land to sell.

It may at first sight be considered as a remarkable circumstance, indeed, that, in a country so large and so new as the State of New York, containing 46,200 square miles, only 350,000 acres were public property at the beginning of 1849. Of these only 25,000 belonged to the State, 11,000 to the Literature Fund, and 314,000 to the School Fund. But a little inquiry soon shows that when people are flocking in from foreign countries, and lands are for sale at a fixed price, landspeculators will spring up, in whose hands large tracts will accumulate, to be held till a rise in price enables the first purchasers to sell with a profit. It is by land-jobbing, in fact, that the largest fortunes have been made in most of the States. Though this land-jobbing has made it the interest of individuals to use all efforts to turn the tide of emigration in particular directions, and has thus at first more rapidly increased the population of the new States, it has undoubtedly, in the end, the effect of retarding the settlement of a country and the development of its natural resources; and it is one of the internal evils under which our own North American colonies are now to a considerable extent suffering.