CHAPTER XXV.

EARLY AMERICAN CARICATURE.

Benjamin Franklin was the first American caricaturist. That propensity of his to use pictures whenever he desired to affect strongly the public mind was an inheritance from the period when only a very small portion of the people could read any other than pictorial language. Among the relics of his race preserved in Boston there is an illustrated handbill issued by his English uncle Benjamin, after whom he was named, which must have been a familiar object to him from the eighth year of his age. Uncle Benjamin, a London dyer when James II. fled from England, wishing to strengthen the impression made by his printed offer to "dye into colors" cloth, silk, and India calico, placed at the head of his bill a rude wood-cut of an East Indian queen taking a walk, attended by two servants, one bearing her train and the other holding over her an umbrella. At the door of his shop, too, in Princes Street, near Leicester Fields, a figure of an Indian queen appealed to the passer-by.

Such was the custom of the time. The diffusion of knowledge lessened the importance of pictorial representation; but the mere date of Franklin's birth--1706--explains in some degree his habitual resort to it. Nearly all the ancient books were illustrated in some way, and nearly every ancient building appears to have had its "sign." When Franklin was a boy in Boston a gilt Bible would have directed him where to buy his books, if he had had any money to buy them with. A gilt sheaf probably notified him where to get those three historic rolls with which he made his entry into Philadelphia. The figure of a mermaid invited the thirsty wayfarer to beer, and an anchor informed sailors where sea-stores were to be had. The royal lion and unicorn, carved in wood or stone, marked public edifices. Over the door of his father's shop, where soap and candles were sold, he saw a blue ball, which still exists, bearing the legible date 1698. Why a blue ball? He was just the boy to ask the question. A lad who could not accept grace before meat without wishing to know why it were not better to say grace once for all over the barrel of pork, would be likely to inquire what a blue ball had in common with soap and candles. His excellent but not gifted sire probably informed him that the blue ball was a relic of the time when he had carried on the business of a dyer, and that he had continued to use it for his new vocation because he "had it in the house." Benjamin, the gifted, was the boy to be dissatisfied with this explanation, and to suggest devices more in harmony with the industry carried on within, so that the very incongruity of his father's sign may have quickened his sense of pictorial effect.

Franklin lived long, figured in a great variety of scenes, accomplished many notable things, and exhibited versatility of talent--man of business, inventor, statesman, diplomatist, philosopher; and in each of these characters he was a leader among leaders; but the ruling habit of his mind, his _forte_, the talent that he most loved to exercise and most relished in others, was humor. He began as a humorist, and he ended as a humorist. The first piece of his ever printed and the last piece he ever wrote were both satirical: the first, the reckless satire of a saucy apprentice against the magnates of his town; the last, the good-tempered satire of a richly gifted, benevolent soul, cognizant of human weakness, but not despising it, and intent only upon opening the public mind to unwelcome truth--as a mother makes a child laugh before inserting the medicine spoon. So dominant was this propensity in his youthful days, that if he had lived in a place where it had been possible to subsist by its exercise, there had been danger of his becoming a professional humorist, merging all the powers of his incomparable intellect in that one gift.

Imagine Boston in 1722, when this remarkable apprentice began to laugh, and to make others laugh, at the oppressive solemnities around him and above him. Then, as now, it was a population industrious and moral, extremely addicted to routine, habitually frugal, but capable of magnificent generosity, bold in business enterprises, valiant in battle, but in all the high matters averse to innovation. Then, as now, the clergy, a few important families, and Harvard College composed the ruling influence, against which it was martyrdom to contend. But then, as now, there were a few audacious spirits who rebelled against these united powers, and carried their opposition very far, sometimes to a wild excess, and thus kept this noblest of towns from sinking into an inane respectability. The good, frugal, steady-going, tax-paying citizen, who lays in his coal in June and buys a whole pig in December, would subdue the world to a vast monotonous prosperity, crushing, intolerable, if there were no one to keep him and the public in mind that, admirable as he is, he does not exhaust the possibilities of human nature. When we examine the portraits of the noted men of New England of the first century and a half after the settlement, we observe in them all a certain expression of _acquiescence_. There is no audacity in them. They look like men who could come home from fighting the French in Canada, or from chasing the whale among the icebergs of Labrador, to be scared by the menaces of a pontiff like Cotton Mather. They look like men who would take it seriously, and not laugh at all, when Cotton Mather denounced the Franklins, for poking fun at him in their newspaper, as guilty of wickedness without a parallel. "Some good men," said he, "are afraid it may provoke Heaven to deal with this place as never any place has yet been dealt withal."

Never was a community in such sore need of caricature and burlesque as when James Franklin set up in Boston, in 1721, the first "sensational newspaper" of America, the _Courant_, to which his brother Benjamin and the other rebels and come-outers of Boston contributed. The Mathers, as human beings and citizens of New England, were estimable and even admirable; but the interests of human nature demand the suppression of pontiffs. These Mathers, though naturally benevolent, and not wanting in natural modesty, had attained to such a degree of pontifical arrogance as to think _Boston_ in deadly peril because a knot of young fellows in a printing-office aimed satirical paragraphs at them. Increase Mather called upon the Government to "suppress such a cursed libel," lest "some awful judgment should come upon the land, and the wrath of God should rise, and there should be no remedy." It is for such men that burlesque was made, and the Franklins supplied it in abundance. The _Courant_ ridiculed them even when they were gloriously in the right. They were enlightened enough and brave enough to recommend inoculation, then just brought from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The young doctors who wrote for the paper assailed the new system, apparently for no other reason than because Increase and Cotton Mather were its chief defenders.

When Benjamin, at the age of sixteen, began to contribute to his brother's paper, he aimed at higher game even than the town pontiffs. He dared to lampoon Harvard College itself, the temple of learning where the clergy were formed, whose precincts he had hoped to tread, his father having dedicated this tenth son to the Church. He may have had his own father in mind when he wrote, in one of his early numbers, that every "peasant" who had the means proposed to send one of his children to this famous place; and as most of them consulted their purses rather than their children's capacities, the greater number of those who went thither were little better than blockheads and dunces. When he came to speak of the theological department of the college, he drew a pen caricature, having then no skill with the pencil: "The business of those who were employed in the temple of theology being laborious and painful, I wondered exceedingly to see so many go toward it; but while I was pondering this matter in my mind, I spied _Pecunia_ behind a curtain, beckoning to them with her hand." He draws another when he says that the only remarkable thing he saw in this temple was one Plagius hard at work copying an eloquent passage from Tillotson's works to embellish his own.

This saucy boy, who had his "Hudibras" at his tongue's end, carried the satirical spirit with him to church on Sundays, and tried some of the brethren whom he saw there by the Hudibrastic standard. Even after his brother James had been in prison for his editorial conduct, Benjamin, who had been left in charge of the paper, drew with his subeditorial pen a caricature of a "Religious Knave, of all Knaves the Worst:" A most strict Sabbatarian, an exact observer not of the day only, but of the evening before and the evening after it; at church conspicuously devout and attentive, even ridiculously so, with his distorted countenance and awkward gesticulation. But try and nail him to a bargain! He will dissemble and lie, snuffle and whiffle, overreach and defraud, cut down a laborer's wages, and keep the bargain in the letter while violating its spirit. "Don't tell me," he cries; "a bargain is a bargain. You should have looked to that before. I can't help it now." Such was the religious knave invented by the author of "Hudibras," and borrowed by this Boston apprentice, who had, in all probability, never seen a character that could have fairly suggested the burlesque.

The authorities rose upon these two audacious brothers, and indicated how much need there was of such a sheet in Boston by ordering James Franklin to print it no more. They contrived to carry it on a while in Benjamin's name; but that sagacious youth was not long in discovering that the Mathers and their adherents were too strong for him, and he took an early opportunity of removing to a place established on the principle of doing without pontiffs. But during his long, illustrious career in Philadelphia as editor and public man he constantly acted in the spirit of one of the last passages he wrote before leaving Boston: "Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumults of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentments. They have a strange power in them to hush disorders of the soul and reduce us to a serene and placid state of mind." He was the father of our humorous literature. If, at the present moment, America is contributing more to the innocent hilarity of mankind than other nations, it is greatly due to the happy influence of this benign and liberal humorist upon the national character. "Poor Richard," be it observed, was the great comic almanac of the country for twenty-five years, and it was Franklin who infused the element of burlesque into American journalism. He could not advertise a stolen prayer-book without inserting a joke to give the advertisement wings: "The person who took it is desired to open it and read the Eighth Commandment, and afterward return it into the same pew again; upon which no further notice will be taken."

This propensity was the more precious because it was his destiny to take a leading part in many controversies which would have become bitter beyond endurance but for "the strange power" of his "pieces of pleasantry and mirth" to "hush disorders of the soul." He employed both pen and pencil in bringing his excellent sense to bear upon the public mind. What but Franklin's inexhaustible tact and good-humor could have kept the peace in Pennsylvania between the non-combatant Quakers and the militant Christians during the long period when the province was threatened from the sea by hostile fleets and on land by savage Indians? Besides rousing the combatant citizens to action, he made them willing to fight for men who would not fight for themselves, and brought over to his side a large number of the younger and more pliant Quakers. Even in that early time (1747), while bears still swam the Delaware, he contrived to get a picture drawn and engraved to enforce the lessons of his first pamphlet, calling on the Pennsylvanians to prepare for defense. He may have engraved it himself, for he had a dexterous hand, and had long before made little pictures out of type-metal to accompany advertisements. Hercules sits upon a cloud, with one hand resting upon his club. Three horses vainly strive to draw a heavy wagon from the mire. The wagoner kneels, lifts his hands, and implores the aid of Hercules's mighty arm. In the background are trees and houses, and under the picture are Latin words signifying, "Not by offerings nor by womanish prayers is the help of gods obtained." In the text, too, when he essays the difficult task of reconciling the combatants to fighting for the non-combatants, he becomes pictorial, though he does not use the graver. "What!" he cries, "not defend your wives, your helpless children, your aged parents, because the Quakers have conscientious scruples about fighting!" Then he adds the burlesque picture: "Till of late I could scarce believe the story of him who refused to pump in a sinking ship because one on board whom he hated would be saved by it as well as himself."

At the beginning of the contest which in Europe was the Seven Years' War, but in America a ten years' war, Franklin's pen and pencil were both employed in urging a cordial union of the colonies against the foe. His device of a snake severed into as many pieces as there were colonies, with the motto, "_Join or Die_," survived the occasion that called it forth, and became a common newspaper and handbill heading in 1776. It was he, also, as tradition reports, who exhibited to the unbelieving farmers of Pennsylvania the effect of gypsum, by writing with that fertilizer in large letters upon a field the words "_This has been plastered_." The brilliant green of the grass which had been stimulated by the plaster soon made the words legible to the passer-by. During his first residence in London as the representative of Pennsylvania he became intimately acquainted with the great artist from whom excellence in the humorous art of England dates--William Hogarth. The last letter that the dying Hogarth received was from Benjamin Franklin. "Receiving an agreeable letter," says Nichols, "from the American, Dr. Franklin, he drew up a rough draught of an answer to it." Three hours after, Hogarth was no more.

A few of Franklin's devices for the coins and paper money of the young republic have been preserved. He wished that every coin and every note should say something wise or cheerful to their endless succession of possessors and scrutinizers. Collectors show the Franklin cent of 1787, with its circle of thirteen links and its central words, "_We are one_" and outside of these, "_United States_." On the other side of the coin there is a noonday sun blazing down upon a dial, with the motto, "_Mind your Business_." He made the date say something more to the reader than the number of the year, by appending to it the word "_Fugio_" (I fly). Another cent has a central sun circled by thirteen stars and the words "_Nova Constellatio_." He suggested "_Pay as you go_" for a coin motto. Some of his designs for the Continental paper money were ingenious and effective. Upon one dingy little note, issued during the storm and stress of the Revolution, we see a roughly executed picture of a shower of rain falling upon a newly settled country, with a word of good cheer under it, "_Serenabit_" (It will clear). Upon another there is a picture of a beaver gnawing a huge oak, and the word "_Perseverando_." On another there is a crown resting upon a pedestal, and the words "_Si recte facias_" (If you do uprightly). There is one which represents a hawk and stork fighting, with the motto "_Exitus in dubio est_" (The event is in doubt); and another which shows a hand plucking branches from a tea-plant, with the motto "_Sustain or Abstain_."

The famous scalp hoax devised by Franklin during the Revolutionary war, for the purpose of bringing the execration of civilized mankind upon the employment of Indians by the English generals, was vividly pictorial. Upon his private printing-press in Paris he and his grandson struck off a leaf of an imaginary newspaper, which he called a "Supplement to the Boston _Independent Chronicle_." For this he wrote a letter purporting to be from "Captain Gerrish, of the New England Militia," accompanying eight packages of "scalps of our unhappy country folks," which he had captured on a raid into the Indian country. The captain sent with the scalps an inventory of them, supposed to be drawn up by one James Crawford, a trader, for the information of the Governor of Canada. Neither Swift nor De Foe ever surpassed the ingenious naturalness of this fictitious inventory. It was indeed _too_ natural, for it was generally accepted as a genuine document, and would even now deceive almost any one who should come upon it unawares. Who could suspect that these "eight packs of scalps, cured, dried, hooped, and painted, with all the Indian triumphal marks" upon them, had never existed except in the imagination of a merry old plenipotentiary in Paris? There were "forty-three scalps of Congress soldiers, stretched on black hoops four inches diameter, the inside of the skin painted red, with a small black spot to denote their being killed with bullets;" and there were "sixty-two farmers, killed in their houses, marked with a hoe, a black circle all around to denote their being surprised in the night." Other farmers' scalps were marked with "a little red foot," to show that they stood upon their defense; and others with "a little yellow flame," to show that they had been burned alive. To one scalp a band was fastened, "supposed to be that of a rebel clergyman." Then there were eighty-eight scalps of women, and "some hundreds of boys and girls." The package last described was "a box of birch-bark containing twenty-nine little infants' scalps of various sizes, small white hoops, white ground, no tears, and only a little black knife in the middle to show they were ripped out of their mothers' bellies." The trader dwells upon the fact that most of the farmers were young or middle-aged, "there being _but_ sixty-seven _very_ gray heads among them; which makes the service more essential." Every detail of this supplement was worked out with infinite ingenuity, even to the editor's postscript, which stated that the scalps had just reached Boston, where thousands of people were flocking to see them.

Franklin was more than a humorist; he was an artist in humor. In other words, he not only had a lively sense of the absurd and the ludicrous, but he knew how to exhibit them to others with the utmost power and finish. His grandson, who lived with him in Paris during the Revolutionary period, a very good draughtsman, used to illustrate his humorous papers, and between them they produced highly entertaining things, only a few of which have been gathered. The Abbé Morellet, one of the gay circle who enjoyed them, remarks that in his sportive moods Franklin was "Socrates mounted on a stick, playing with his children." To this day, however, there are millions who regard that vast and somewhat disorderly genius, who was one of the least sordid and most generous of all recorded men, as the mere type of penny prudence. Even so variously informed a person as the author of "A Short History of the English People," published in 1875, speaks of the "close-fisted Franklin."

It is in vain that we seek for specimens of colonial caricature outside of the Franklin circle. Satirical pictures were doubtless produced in great numbers, and a few may have been published; but caricature is a thing of the moment, and usually perishes with the moment, unless it is incorporated with a periodical. Almost all the intellectual product of the colonial period that was not theological has some relation to the wise and jovial Franklin, the incomparable American, the father of his country's intellectual life, whether manifested in literature, burlesque, politics, invention, or science.

The Boston massacre, as it was called, which was commemorated by the device of a row of coffins, often employed before and since, might have been more properly styled a street brawl, if the mere presence of British troops in Boston in 1774 had not been an outrage of international dimensions. The four victims, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Cauldwell, and Crispus Attucks, were borne to the grave by all that was most distinguished in the province, and the whole people seemed to have either followed or witnessed the procession. Amidst the frenzy of the time, these coffin-lids served to express and relieve the popular feeling. The subsequent acquittal of the innocent soldiers, who had shown more forbearance than armed men usually do when taunted and assailed by an unarmed crowd, remains one of the most honorable of the early records of Boston.

There were attempts at caricature during the later years of the Revolutionary war. From 1778, when inflated paper, French francs, British gold, and Hessian thalers had given the business centres of the country a short, fallacious prosperity, there was gayety enough in Philadelphia and Boston. There were balls and parties, and sending to France for articles of luxury, and profusion of all kinds--as there was in the late war, and as there must be in all wars which are not paid for till the war is over. There are indications in the old books that the burlesquing pencil was a familiar instrument then among the merry lads of the cities and towns. But their efforts, after having answered their momentary purpose, perished.

And the habit of burlesque survived the war. There are few persons, even among the zealous fraternity of collectors, who are aware that a New York dramatist, in the year 1788, endeavored to burlesque, in a regular five-act comedy, the violent debates which distracted all circles while the acceptance of the new Constitution was the question of questions. A copy or two of this comedy, called "The Politician Outwitted," have been preserved. In lieu of the lost pictures, take this brief scene, which exhibits a violent squabble between an inveterate opponent of the Constitution and a burning patriot who supports it. They enter, in proper comedy fashion, after they are in full quarrel.

"_Enter_ OLD LOVEYET _and_ TRUEMAN.

"_Loveyet._ I tell you, it is the most infernal scheme that ever was devised.

"_Trueman._ And I tell you, sir, that your argument is heterodox, sophistical, and most preposterously illogical.

"_Loveyet._ I insist upon it, sir, you know nothing at all about the matter! And give me leave to tell you, sir--

"_Trueman._ What! Give you leave to tell me I know nothing at all about the matter? I shall do no such thing, sir. I'm not to be governed by your _ipse dixit_.

"_Loveyet._ I desire none of your musty Latin, for I don't understand it, not I.

"_Trueman._ O the ignorance of the age! To oppose a plan of government like the new Constitution! _Like_ it, did I say? There never _was_ one like it. Neither Minos, Solon, Lycurgus, nor Romulus ever fabricated so wise a system. Why, it is a political phenomenon, a prodigy of legislative wisdom, the fame of which will soon extend ultramundane, and astonish the nations of the world with its transcendent excellence. To what a sublime height will the superb edifice attain!

"_Loveyet._ Your aspiring edifice shall never be erected in this State, sir.

"_Trueman._ Mr. Loveyet, you will not listen to reason. Only calmly attend one moment.

[_Reads._] 'We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide--'

"_Loveyet._ I tell you I won't hear it.

"_Trueman._ Mark all that. [_Reads._] 'Section the First. All legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.' Very judicious and salutary, upon my erudition! 'Section the Second--'

"_Loveyet._ I'll hear no more of your sections."

They continue the debate until both disputants are in the white heat of passion. Old Mr. Loveyet rushes away at last to break off the match between his daughter and Trueman's son, and Trueman retorts by calling his fiery antagonist "a conceited sot." This comedy is poor stuff, but it suffices to reveal the existence of the spirit of caricature among us at that early day, when New York was a clean, cobble-stoned, Dutch-looking town of thirty thousand inhabitants, one of whom, a boy five years of age, was named Washington Irving.

General Washington was inaugurated President at the same city in the following year. How often has the world been assured that no dissentient voice was heard on that occasion! The arrival of the general in New York was a pageant which the entire population is supposed to have most heartily approved; and a very pleasing spectacle it must have been, as seen from the end of the island--the vessels decked with flags and streamers, and the President's stately barge, rowed by thirteen pilots in white uniforms, advancing toward the city, surrounded and followed by a cloud of small boats, to the thunder of great guns. But even then, it seems, there were a few who looked askance. At least one caricature appeared. "All the world here," wrote John Armstrong to the unreconciled General Gates, "are busy in collecting flowers and sweets of every kind to amuse and delight the President." People were asking one another, he adds, by what awe-inspiring title the President should be called, even plain Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, regarding "His Excellency" as beneath the grandeur of the office. "Yet," says Armstrong, "in the midst of this admiration there are skeptics who doubt its propriety, and wits who amuse themselves at its extravagance. The first will grumble and the last will laugh, and the President should be prepared to meet the attacks of both with firmness and good nature. A caricature has already appeared, called 'The Entry,' full of very disloyal and profane allusions." It was by no means a good-natured picture. General Washington was represented riding upon an ass, and held in the arms of his favorite man Billy, once huntsman, then valet and factotum; Colonel David Humphreys, the general's aid and secretary, led the ass, singing hosannas and birthday odes, one couplet of which was legible:

"The glorious time has come to pass When David shall conduct an ass."

This effort was more ill-natured than brilliant; but the reader who examines the fugitive publications of that period will often feel that the adulation of the President was such as to provoke and justify severe caricature. That adulation was as excessive as it was ill executed; and part of the office of caricature is to remind Philip that he is a man. The numberless "verses," "odes," "tributes," "stanzas," "lines," and "sonnets" addressed to President Washington lie entombed in the dingy leaves of the old newspapers; but a few of the epigrams which they provoked have been disinterred, and even some of the caricatures are described in the letters of the time. Neither the verses nor the pictures are at all remarkable. Probably the best caricature that appeared during the administration of General Washington was suggested by the removal of the national capital from New York to Philadelphia. Senator Robert Morris, being a Philadelphian, and having large possessions in Philadelphia, was popularly supposed to have procured the passage of the measure, and accordingly the portly Senator is seen in the picture carrying off upon his broad shoulders the Federal Hall, the windows of which are crowded with members of both Houses, some commending, others cursing this novel method of removal. In the distance is seen the old Paulus Hook ferry-house, at what is now Jersey City, on the roof of which is the devil beckoning to the heavy-laden Morris, and crying to him, "This way, Bobby." The removal of the capital was a fruitful theme for the humorists of the day. Even then "New York politicians" had an ill name, and Congress was deemed well out of their reach.

But those were the halcyon days of the untried administration; to which indeed there was as yet nothing that could be called an Opposition. The entire nation, with here and there an individual exception, was in full accord with the feeling expressed in Benjamin Russell's allegory that went "the round of the press" in 1789 and 1790:

"THE FEDERAL SHIP.

"Just _launched_ on the _Ocean of Empire_, the Ship COLUMBIA, GEORGE WASHINGTON, Commander, which, after being thirteen years in _dock_, is at length well _manned_, and in very good condition. The Ship is a _first rate_--has a good _bottom_, which all the Builders have pronounced _sound_ and _good_. Some objection has been made to parts of the _tackling_, or _running rigging_, which, it is supposed, will be _altered_, when they shall be found to be incommodious, as the Ship is able to make very good _headway_ with them as they are. A _jury_ of _Carpenters_ have this matter now under consideration. The _Captain_ and _First Mate_ are universally esteemed by all the Owners--Eleven[40] in number--and she has been _insured_, under their direction, to make a good _mooring_ in the _harbor_ of Public Prosperity and Felicity--whitherto she is bound. The Owners can furnish, besides the Ship's Company, the following materials:--_New-Hampshire_, the Masts and Spars; _Massachusetts_, Timber for the Hull, Fish, &c.; _Connecticut_, Beef and Pork; _New-York_, Porter and other Cabin stores; _New-Jersey_, the Cordage; _Pennsylvania_, Flour and Bread;--_Delaware_, the Colors, and Clothing for the Crew; _Maryland_, the Iron work and small Anchors; _Virginia_, Tobacco and the Sheet Anchor; _South-Carolina_, Rice; and _Georgia_, Powder and small Provisions. Thus found, may this _good Ship_ put to sea, and the prayer of all is, that GOD _may preserve her, and bring her in safety to her desired haven_."

[Footnote 40: Only eleven States had accepted the Constitution when this was written.]

The Government had not been long domiciled in the City of Brotherly Love before parties became defined and party spirit acrimonious. The popular heart and hope and imagination were all on the side of revolutionized France in her unequal struggle with the allied kings. Conservative and "safe" men were more and more drawn into sympathy with the powers that were striving to maintain the established order, chief of which was Great Britain. President Washington, in maintaining the just balance between the two contending principles and powers, could not but give some dissatisfaction to both political parties, and, most of all, to the one in the warmest sympathy with France. In the dearth of pictorical relics of that period, I insert the parody of the Athanasian creed annexed, from the _National Gazette_ of Philadelphia, edited by Freneau, and maintained by the friends of Jefferson and Madison:

"A NEW POLITICAL CREED FOR THE USE OF WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.

"Whoever would live peaceably in Philadelphia, above all things it is necessary that he hold the Federal faith--and the Federal faith is this, that there are two governing powers in this country, both equal, and yet one superior: which faith except every one keep undefiledly, without doubt he shall be abused everlastingly.

"The Briton is superior to the American, and the American is inferior to the Briton: and yet they are equal, and the Briton shall govern the American.

"The Briton, while here, is commanded to obey the American, and yet the American ought to obey the Briton.

"And yet they ought not both to be obedient, but only one to be obedient. For there is one dominion nominal of the American, and another dominion real of the Briton.

"And yet there are not two dominions, but only one dominion.

"For like as we are compelled by the British constitution book to acknowledge that _subjects_ must submit themselves to their monarchs, and be obedient to them in all things:

"So we are forbid by our Federal executive to say that we are at all influenced by our treaty with France, or to pay regard to what it enforceth:

"The American was created for the Briton, and the Briton for the American:

"And yet the American shall be a slave to the Briton, and the Briton the tyrant of the American.

"And Britons are of three denominations, and yet only of one soul, nature, and subsistency:

"The Irishman of infinite impudence:

"The Scotchman of cunning most inscrutable:

"And the Englishman of impertinence altogether insupportable:

"The only true and honorable gentlemen of this our blessed country.

"He, therefore, that would live in quiet, must thus think of the Briton and the American.

"It is furthermore necessary that every _good_ American should believe in the infallibility of the executive, when its proclamations are echoed by Britons:

"For the true faith is, that we believe and confess that the Government is fallible and infallible:

"Fallible in its republican nature, and infallible in its monarchical tendency, erring in its state of individuality, and unerring in its Federal complexity.

"So that though it be both fallible and infallible, yet it is not twain, but one government only, as having consolidated all state dominion, in order to rule with sway uncontrolled.

"This is the true Federal faith, which except a man believe and practice faithfully, beyond all doubt he shall be cursed perpetually."

A rude but very curious specimen of the caricature of the early time is given on the next page of the collision on the floor of the House of Representatives between Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold, both representatives from Connecticut. Lyon, a native of Ireland, was an ardent Republican, who played a conspicuous part in politics during the final struggle between the Republicans and the Federalists. Roger Griswold, on the contrary, a member of an old and distinguished Connecticut family, a graduate of its ancient college, and a member of its really illustrious bar, was a pronounced Federalist. He was also a gentleman who had no natural relish for a strong-minded, unlettered emigrant who founded a town in his new country, built mills and foundries, invented processes, established a newspaper, and was elected to Congress. If Hamilton and Griswold and the other extreme Federalists had had their way in this country, there would have been no Matthew Lyons among us to create a new world for mankind, and begin the development of a better political system. Nor, indeed, was Matthew Lyon sufficiently tolerant of the old and tried methods that had become inadequate. He was not likely, either--at the age of fifty-two, standing upon the summit of a very successful career, which was wholly his own work--to regard as equal to himself a man of thirty-six, who seemed to owe his importance chiefly to his lineage. So here was a broad basis for an antipathy which the strife of politics could easily aggravate into an aversion extreme and fiery--fiery, at least, on the part of the Irishman.

Imagine this process complete, and the House, on the last day of the year 1798, in languid session, balloting. The two members were standing near one another outside the bar, when Griswold made taunting allusion to an old "campaign story" of Matthew Lyon's having been sentenced to wear a wooden sword for cowardice in the field. Lyon, in a fury, spit in Griswold's face. Instantly the House was in an uproar; and although the impetuous Lyon apologized to the House, he only escaped expulsion, after eleven days' debate, through the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote. This affair called forth a caricature in which the Irish member was depicted as a lion standing on his hind-legs wearing a wooden sword, while Griswold, handkerchief in hand, exclaims, "What a beastly action!"

The vote for expulsion--52 to 44--did not satisfy Mr. Griswold. Four days after the vote occurred the outrageous scene rudely delineated in the picture already mentioned. Griswold, armed with what the Republican editor called "a stout hickory club," and the Federalist editor a "hickory stick," assaulted Lyon while he was sitting at his desk, striking him on the head and shoulders several times before he could extricate himself. But at last Lyon got upon his feet, and, seizing the tongs, rushed upon the enemy. This is the moment selected by the artist. They soon after closed and fell to the floor, where they enjoyed a good "rough-and-tumble" fight, until members pulled them apart. A few minutes after they chanced to meet again at the "water table," near one of the doors. Lyon was now provided with a stick, but Griswold had none. "Their eyes no sooner met," says the Federalist reporter, "than Mr. Lyon sprung to attack Mr. Griswold." A member handed Griswold a stick, and there was a fair prospect of another fight, when the Speaker interfered with so much energy that the antagonists were again torn apart. The battle was not renewed on the floor of Congress.

But it was continued elsewhere. Under that amazing sedition law of the Federalists, Lyon was tried a few months after for saying in his newspaper that President Adams had an "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp," had turned men out of office for their opinions, and had written "a bullying message" upon the French imbroglio of 1798. He was found guilty, sentenced to pay a fine of a thousand dollars, besides the heavy costs of the prosecution, to be imprisoned four months, and to continue in confinement until the fine was paid. Of course the people of his district stood by him, and, while he was in prison, re-elected him to Congress by a great majority; and his fine was repaid to his heirs in 1840 by Congress, with forty-two years' interest. These events made a prodigious stir in their time. Matthew Lyon's presence in the House of Representatives, his demeanor there, and his triumphal return from prison to Congress, were the first distinct notification to parties interested that the sceptre was passing from the Few to the Many.

The satire and burlesque of the Jeffersonian period, from 1798 to 1809, were abundant in quantity, if not of shining excellence. To the reader of the present day all savors of burlesque in the political utterances of that time, so preposterously violent were partisans on both sides. It is impossible to take a serious view of the case of an editor who could make it a matter of boasting that he had opposed the Republican measures for eight years "without a single exception." The press, indeed, had then no independent life; it was the minion and slave of party. It is only in our own day that the press begins to exist for its own sake, and descant with reasonable freedom on topics other than the Importance of Early Rising and the Customs of the Chinese. The reader would neither be edified nor amused by seeing Mr. Jefferson kneeling before a stumpy pillar labeled "Altar of Gallic Despotism," upon which are Paine's "Age of Reason" and the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvetius, with the demon of the French Revolution crouching behind it, and the American eagle soaring aloft, bearing in its talons the Constitution and the independence of the United States. Pictures of that nature, of great size, crowded with objects, emblems, and sentences--an elaborate blending of burlesque, allegory, and enigma--were so much valued by that generation that some of them were engraved upon copper.

On the day of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States, March 4th, 1801, a parody appeared in the _Centinel_ of Boston, a Federalist paper of great note in its time, which may serve our purpose here:

Monumental Inscription.

"_That life is long which answers Life's great end._"

Yesterday expired, deeply regretted by millions of grateful Americans, and by all good men, THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES: animated by A WASHINGTON, AN ADAMS, A HAMILTON, KNOX, PICKERING, WOLCOTT, M'HENRY, MARSHALL, STODDERT, AND DEXTER. Æt. 12 years.

Its death was occasioned by the secret arts and open violence of foreign and domestic demagogues: Notwithstanding its whole life was devoted to the performance of every duty to promote the Union, Credit, Peace, Prosperity, Honor, and Felicity of its Country.

At its birth, it found the Union of the States dissolving like a rope of snow; It hath left it stronger than the threefold cord.

It found the United States bankrupts in estate and reputation; It hath left them unbounded in credit, and respected throughout the world. It found the Treasuries of the United States and Individual States empty; It hath left them full and overflowing. It found all the evidences of public debts worthless as rags; It hath left them more valuable than gold and silver.

It found the United States at war with the Indian nations; It hath concluded peace with them all. It found the aboriginals of the soil inveterate enemies of the whites; It hath exercised toward them justice and generosity, and hath left them fast friends. It found Great Britain in possession of all the frontier posts; It hath demanded their surrender, and it leaves them in the possession of the United States. It found the American sea-coast utterly defenseless; It hath left it fortified. It found our arsenals empty, and magazines decaying; It hath left them full of ammunition and warlike implements. It found our country dependent on foreign nations for engines of defense; It hath left manufactories of cannon and musquets in full work. It found the American Nation at war with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli; It hath made peace with them all. It found American freemen in Turkish slavery, where they had languished in chains for years; It hath ransomed them and set them free.

It found the war-worn, invalid soldier starving from want; or, like Belisarius, begging his refuse-meat from door to door; It hath left ample provision for the regular payment of his pension.

It found the commerce of our country confined almost to coasting craft; It hath left it whitening every sea with its canvas, and cheering every clime with its stars.

It found our mechanics and manufacturers idle in the streets for want of employ; It hath left them full of business, prosperous, contented, and happy. It found the yeomanry of the country oppressed with unequal taxes; their farms, houses, and barns decaying; their cattle selling at the sign-posts; and they driven to desperation and rebellion; It hath left their coffers in cash, their houses in repair, their barns full, their farms overstocked, and their produce commanding ready money and a high price. In short, it found them poor, indigent malcontents; It hath left them wealthy friends to order and good government.

It found the United States deeply in debt to France and Holland; It hath paid all the demands of the former, and the principal part of the latter. It found the country in a ruinous alliance with France; It hath honorably dissolved the connection, and set us free.

It found the United States without a swivel on float for their defense; It hath left a Navy--composed of 34 ships of war, mounting 918 guns, and manned by 7350 gallant tars.

It found the exports of our country a mere song in value; It hath left them worth above seventy millions of dollars per annum. In one word, it found America disunited, poor, insolvent, weak, discontented, and wretched; It hath left her united, wealthy, respectable, strong, happy, and prosperous. Let the faithful historian, in after-times, say these things of its successor, if he can. And yet, notwithstanding all these services and blessings, there are found many, very many, weak, degenerate sons, who, lost to virtue, to gratitude, and patriotism, openly exult that this Administration is no more, and that the "Sun of Federalism is set forever." "_Oh shame, where is thy blush?_"

AS ONE TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE IN THESE TIMES, THIS MONUMENT OF THE TALENTS AND SERVICES OF THE DECEASED IS RAISED BY

The Centinel.

_March 4th, 1801._

The victorious Republicans, if less skillful than their adversaries in the burlesque arts, had their own methods of parrying and returning such assaults as this. At an earlier period in Mr. Jefferson's ascendency, the politicians, borrowing the idea from Catholic times, employed stuffed figures and burlesque processions in lieu of caricature. While the people were still in warm sympathy with the French Revolution, William Smith, a Representative in Congress from South Carolina, gave deep offense to many of his constituents by opposing certain resolutions offered by "Citizen Madison" expressive of that sympathy. There was no burlesque artist then in South Carolina, but the Democrats of Charleston contrived, notwithstanding, to caricature the offender and "his infernal junto." A platform was erected in an open place in Charleston, upon which was exhibited to a noisy crowd, from early in the morning until three in the afternoon, a rare assemblage of figures: A woman representing the Genius of Britain inviting the recreant Representatives to share the wages of her iniquity; William Smith advancing toward her with eager steps, his right hand stretched out to receive his portion, in his left holding a paper upon which was written "_Six per cents_," and wearing upon his breast another with "£40,000 _in the Funds_;" Benedict Arnold with his hand full of checks and bills; Fisher Ames labeled "£400,000 _in the Funds_;" the devil and "Young Pitt" goading on the reprobate Americans. In front of the stage was a gallows for the due hanging and burning of these figures when the crowd were tired of gazing upon them. Each of the characters was provided with a label exhibiting an appropriate sentiment. The odious Smith was made to confess that his sentence was just: "The love of gold, a foreign education, and foreign connections damn me." "Young Pitt" owned to having let loose the Algerines upon the Americans, and Fisher Ames confessed that from the time when he began life as a horse-jockey his "_Ames_ had been villainy."

It is an objection to this kind of caricature that the weather may interfere with its proper presentation. A shower of rain obliterated most of those labels, and left the figures themselves in a reduced and draggled condition. But, according to the local historian, the exhibition was continued, "to the great mirth and entertainment of the boys, who would not quit the field until a total demolition of the figures took place," nor "before they had taken down the breeches of the effigy of the Representative of this State and given him repeated castigations." In the evening the colors of Great Britain were dipped in oil and _French_ brandy, and burned at the same fire which had consumed the effigies.

Later in the Jeffersonian period, the burlesque procession--_caricature vivante_--was occasionally employed by the New England Federalists to excite popular disapproval of the embargo which suspended foreign commerce. Elderly gentlemen in Newburyport remember hearing their fathers describe the battered old hulk of a vessel, with rotten rigging and tattered sails, manned by ragged and cadaverous sailors, that was drawn in such a procession in 1808, the year of the Presidential election. There are even a few old people who remember seeing the procession, for in those healthy old coast towns the generations are linked together, and the whole history of New England is sometimes represented in the group round the post-office of a fine summer morning. The odd-looking picture of the Gerry-mander, on the previous page, belongs to the same period, and preserves a record not creditable to party politicians. Democratic leaders in Massachusetts, in order to secure the election of two Senators of their party, redistricted the State with absurd disregard of geographical facts. The _Centinel_ exhibited the fraud by means of a colored map, which the artist, Gilbert Stuart, by a few touches, converted into the immortal Gerry-mander. Governor Gerry, though not the author of the scheme, nor an approver of it, justly shares the discredit of a measure which he might have vetoed, but did not.

The war of 1812 yields its quota of caricature to the collector's port-folio. "John Bull making a New Batch of Ships to send to the Lakes" is an obvious imitation of Gillray's masterpiece of Bonaparte baking a new batch of kings. The contribution levied upon Alexandria, and the retreat of a party of English troops from Baltimore, furnish subjects to a draughtsman who had more patriotic feeling than artistic invention. His "John Bull" is a stout man, with a bull's head and a long sword, who utters pompous words. "I must have all your flour, all your tobacco, all your ships, all your merchandise--every thing except your _Porter_ and _Perry_. Keep them out of sight; I have had enough of _them_ already." No doubt this was comforting to the patriotic mind while it was lamenting a Capitol burned and a President in flight.