The quiet, unobtrusive scenery beyond Philadelphia is English in character, and would be still more so if there were hedges instead of railings. By the way, whenever reading biographical notices of distinguished Americans I have been surprised to find that so many of them at one time or other had "split rails" for a subsistence. But now that I have followed the "course of empire" West, I am not the least surprised. I only wonder that every American has not split rails, at one time or another, or, indeed, gone on doing it all his life. For how such a prodigious quantity of rails ever got split (even supposing distinguished men to have assisted in the industry in early life) passes my feeble comprehension. All the way from New York to Chicago there are on an average twenty lines of split rails running parallel with the railway track, in sight all at once! And after all, this is only one narrow strip across a gigantic continent. In fact, the two most prominent "natural features" of the landscape along this route are dwarf firs and split rails. But no writer on America has ever told me so. Nor have I ever been told of the curious misapprehension prevalent in the States as to the liberty of the subject in the British Isles.
In America, judging at any rate from the speech of "the average American," I find that there is a belief prevalent that the English nation "lies prostrate under the heel of a tyrant." What a shock to those who think thus, must have been that recent episode of the queen's pigs at Slough!
Six swine and a calf belonging to her Majesty found themselves, the other day, impounded by the Slough magistrates for coming to market without a licence. Slough, from geographical circumstances over which it has no control, happens to be in Buckinghamshire, and this country has been declared "an infected district," so that the bailiff who brought his sovereign's pigs to market, without due authority to do so, transgressed the law. Two majesties thus came into collision over the calf, and that of the law prevailed. Such a constitutional triumph as this goes far to clear away the clouds that appeared to be gathered upon the political horizon, and the shadows of a despotic dictatorship which seemed to be falling across England begin to vanish. The written law, contained probably in a very dilapidated old copy in the possession of these rural magistrates, a dogs'-eared and, it may be, even a ragged volume, asserted itself supreme over a monarch's farmyard stock, and dared to break down that divinity which doth hedge a Sovereign's swine. There are some who say that in the British Isles men are losing their reverence for the law, and that justice wears two faces, one for the rich and another for the poor. They would have us believe that only the parasites of princes sit in high place, and that the scales of justice rise or fall according to the inclinations of the sceptre, with the obsequious regularity of the tides that wait upon the humours of the moon. But such an incident as this, when the Justices of Slough, those intrepid Hampdens, sate sternly in their places, and, fearless of Royal frowns and all the displeasure of Windsor, dispensed to the pigs, born in the purple, and to the calf that had lived so near a throne, the impartial retribution of a fine--with costs--gives a splendid refutation to these calumnies. Where shall we look in Republican history for such another incident? or where search for dauntless magistrates like those of Slough, who shut their eyes against the reflected glitter of a Court, who fined the Royal calf for risking the health of Hodge's miserable herd, and gave the costs against the Imperial pigs for travelling into Buckinghamshire without a licence? Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. There was no truckling here to borrowed majesty, no sycophant adulation of Royal ownership; but that fine old English spirit of courageous independence which has made tyrants impossible in our island and our law supreme. It was of no use before such men as these, the stout-hearted champions of equal justice, for the bailiff to plead manorial privilege, or to threaten the thunders of the House of Brunswick. They were as implacable as a bench of Rhadamanthuses, and gave these distinguished hogs the grim choice between paying a pound or going to one. Nor, to their credit be it said, did either bailiff, calf, or pigs exhibit resentment. On the contrary, they accepted judgment with that respectful acquiescence which characterizes our law-abiding race, and the swine turned without a murmur from the scene of their repulse, and trotted cheerfully before the bailiff out of Buckinghamshire back to Windsor.