ENGLISH DISTINCTION OF CASTE.

Southland Times, Issue 1178, 18 June 1869, Page 2

ENGLISH DISTINCTION OF CASTE.

The distinction of caste among Englishmen strike an American visitor very quickly and unpleasantly. In the United States you may see many different races of people ; but the native Americans all belong to the same caste. One may be richer than another, some may be better educated than others: the social positions of the pereons you meet may vary ; but there is {something about every man, which shows that he is as good as any other man, and that he is fully aware of the fact. The Irishmen and Germans, who form so large a proportion of the population you can identify at once; or, if they have become undistinguishable from the masses of Americans, it is because they have lost their native peculiarities, and adopted the national tone and manner. No Ameri* can would think of travelling in any other than a first-class car; the other classes are for the immigrants* No American would think of occupying a menial situation; such positions are reserved for those immigrants who have not yet had time to better themselves, and for the negroes, who are in greafc demand as servants. Select the poorest American you can find, and open a conversation with him and you will soon discover that he is fully informed upon political affairs, and has received sufficient education to express his ideas clearly, and to support them by logical arguments ; while in the perfect equality with which he treats you, and in the unconscious independence which pervades everything he does and says, you will notice that indefinable assertion of manhood which is the key to the American character. In England you find people of practically a single race— aa if America were inhabited by native born Americans alone — and yet the distinctions of classes are as broad as the gulf described by Lazarus. All are Englishmen, but how different in quality! Many, you are pained to observe, are apparently endeavoring to cease to be men, ancl are regarded by their superiors as creatures of other species. There are classes of Englishmen whose natural instinct is to cringe. There are other classes born, like maggots, to grow fat in corrupt^ corners. You can divide the population into sections ; you can number them iv classes, like the children of a school ; you can see that each man knows himself to be in a groove from which there is no escape unless he leave the county. With military discipline one caste marches into the prisons, another into the streets, another into the servant's places, another into the trades, another into the shops, another into the wholesale business, another into banking, another into the professions, and another into the aria-. tocracy. Nobody attempts to leave his company to reach a higher position, and everybody suits his manners to his station. — ' Tinsley's Magazine.'