Honest John Vane :: :: University of Virginia Library

He was commercially honest, indefatigably industrious,
a believer in the equal rights of man, a
strenuous advocate of the Maine liquor law, a
member, if I am not greatly mistaken, of the
church, and every way in good repute among
grave, conscientious people.

His “war record” was admitted to be unimpeachable;
that is to say, he had consistently and
unflinchingly denounced the Rebellion “from its
inception”; if he had not fought for the Union
on the battle-field, he had fought for it on the
stump and in the chimney-corner.

In all his geographical sentiments he was truly
American, even to occasional misunderstanding
of our foreign affairs, and to the verge of what
one might call safe rashness.

He wanted somebody (meaning of course somebody
else) to thrash England well for the Trent
affair, and to annihilate her for the Alabama outrages.
He affirmed in one of his public “efforts”
that our claim for indirect damages should be
prosecuted, if necessary, “before the court of
high Heaven,” which phrase he always regarded
as one of his happiest inspirations, although he
had found it “in the paper.”

He contended that it was our mission, and consequently
our duty to interfere in behalf of oppressed
Cuba by bringing it within the pale of

our own national debt, and generally to extend
the area of freedom over such countries as would
furnish us with a good market for our home productions,
and a mild climate for our invalids.

At the same time he did not want to go to war
for these benevolent purposes; for war, as he frequently
remarked, was a frightful thing, and we
had already shed blood enough to show that we
would fight rather than submit to outrage; he
only proposed that we “should sit still in our
grandeur and let those fellows gravitate toward
us.”

His views concerning internal affairs were
marked by an equal breadth and thickness. He
held that the industry of the American producer
should be protected, at no matter what cost to the
American consumer.

He was opposed to the introduction of Chinese
cheap labor as being injurious to the “noble class
of native artisans,” however it might benefit our
equally noble farmers by furnishing them with
low-priced tools, shoes, and clothing.

He believed that our system of government
was the purest and most economical in the world,
when it was not abused by municipal rings, public
defaulters, railroad legislation, and lobbyists of
the State and national capitals.

He argued that rotation in office is republican,
because it “gives every citizen a fair chance”;
and that it is a means of national education, because
it tempts even the dregs of society to
aspire to responsibility and power.

In the whole superficies of our civil affairs he
saw but one error which needed serious and instant
attention, namely, the franking privilege.
If that could be removed, and two millions thereby
saved annually out of a budget of three or four
hundred millions, he thought that the legislative
sun of American democracy would be left without
a spot, the exemplar and despair of other taxladen
nations.

Such was the optimist and amiable patriotism
of Congressman Vane. While we cannot but admire
it from a sentimental point of view, we are

obliged to regret that it did not rise from a wider
base of information. Whether the conclusions
of this self-taught statesman were right or wrong,
they were alike the offspring of ignorance, or at
best of half knowledge. We can only palliate
his dark-mindedness with regard to American
politics on the ground that it was cosmically impartial,
and extended to the politics of all other
countries, ancient and modern.

He had never heard that our civil institutions
were not exclusively our own invention, but germinated
naturally from the colonial charters
granted by “tyrannical Britain.” He believed
that, because Queen Victoria cost England half
as much annually as Boss Tweed cost the single
city of New York, therefore England ought to be
and must be on the verge of a revolution. He
supposed that Prussia must be an unlettered and
dishonestly governed country, because it is ruled
by a king. Of the ancient states of Greece he
had a general idea that they were republics, with
some form or other of representative government,

Sparta being as much a democracy as Athens.
It would have been news to him, as fresh as anything
arriving by telegraph, that Attica was legislated
for by a single municipality, and that its inhabitants
were three-fourths slaves. The Rome
of his mind was also a representative democracy,
and its conscript fathers were, perhaps, selected
by conscription, like recruits for some armies. Of
the tyranny of capitalists and of the corruption
of magistrates and tax-collectors in that most
famous of all republics, he was as ignorant as he
was, or strove to be, of similar phenomena in the
United States. His reading in ancient history
began and ended with Rollin, to the exclusion of
Niebuhr, Arnold, Grote, Curtius, and Mommsen,
of whom, indeed, he had never heard. It may
be thought that, for the sake of a joke, I am exaggerating
Mr. Vane's Eden-like nakedness and
innocence; but I do solemnly and sadly assure
the reader that I have not robbed him of a single
fig-leaf of knowledge which belonged to him.

As for political economy, he had never seen a

line of Adam Smith, Mill, Bastiat, or any of their
fellows; they not being quoted in “the papers”
which furnished his sole instruction in statesmanship,
and almost his sole literary entertainment.
He was too completely unaware of these writers
and of their conclusions to attack them with the
epithet of theorists or of doctrinaires. All that
he knew of political economy was that Henry C.
Carey had written some dull letters about it to
the Tribune, and that the Pennsylvania iron-men
considered him “an authority to tie to.” His
vague impression was that the science advocated
the protection of native manufactures, and that
consequently it would be worth looking into whenever
he found a moment's respite from business
and politics.

Certainly, it was wonderful how little this self-taught
soul could see into a millstone, even when
it was his own and he ground at it daily. He
was a manufacturer of refrigerators; and very
thankful indeed was he that Congress had imposed
high import duties on foreign specimens of

that “line of goods”; it was patriotic and wise,
he thought, thus to protect American industry
against the pauper labor of Europe. Meantime,
he did not consider that his zinc and hinges, and
screws and nails, and paint and varnish were
taxed; that his own food, raiment, fuel, and
shelter, and also the food, raiment, fuel, and
shelter of his workmen, were likewise taxed;
that, in short, taxation increased the expense of
all the materials of labor and the necessaries of life
which made up the principal cost of his fabrics;
and that it was mainly because of these things
that he was unable to produce refrigerators at
anything like the ante-tax prices.

The government put a little money into one of
his pockets and took the same sum or more out
of several others; and he was so far from seeing
that the legerdemain did not help him, or perhaps
hurt him, that he enthusiastically sang praises to
it. There had been a time when he exported,
when he could boast that a portion of his revenue
came from beyond sea, when he had hopes of
building up a fine market abroad. Not so now;

foreigners could no longer afford to buy of him;
they made all their own refrigerators. John Vane
did not comprehend this adverse providence any
more than if he had himself been made of pine
and lined with zinc. He compendiously remarked,
“Our prices rule too high for those beggars,” and
was patriotically proud of the fact, though sadly
out of pocket by it. Such was his insight into
legislation where it directly concerned his own
bread and butter. You can imagine what a clear
view he had of those labyrinths of it which ramify
through the general body politic.

But if he was not an instructed soul, he was at
all events an honest one. That attribute all his
fellow-citizens conceded to him, even those who
did not see the wisdom or beauty of it; it was a
matter of common fame in Slowburgh, and, one
might almost say, of common conversation. Men
who could not get trusted for five dollars spoke
of him approvingly as “Honest John Vane,” feeling,
perhaps, that in so doing they imputed to
themselves a little of his righteousness, so illogical
are the mental processes of sinners.

It is worth while to relate (if only to encourage
our youth in the ways of virtue) how easily he
had acquired this high repute. While a member
of the State legislature he had refused a small
bribe from a lobbyist, and had publicly denounced
the briber. That this inexpensive outburst of
probity should secure him widespread and permanent
fame does not, to be sure, shed a very
pleasing light over the character which is borne
by our law-givers. But we will not enter upon
that subject; it perhaps needs more whitewash
than we possess. We will simply call the attention
of Sunday school pupils and Young Men's
Christian Associations to the cheering fact that,
at a prime cost of one hundred dollars, our townsman
was able to arise and shine upon a people
noted for its political purity as “Honest John
Vane!” Only one hundred in greenbacks (about
ninety in gold) out of pocket, and the days of
Washington come again! I should suppose that,
for say twice the figure, a legislator of the period
might get the title of “Father of his Country.”