< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu
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EDITOR'S TABLE.
into seven provinces; the religion is Mohammedan, and the king, whose power is arbitrary, is looked upon as a sort of divinity. The king's harem consists of about 500 wives, and all his sons, except the heir to the throne, are blinded with hot irons, a duty performed by the king of the smiths, who is also the surgeon of the harem. The people are skillful workers in iron, but given to the drinking of an intoxicating beer, a practice which great efforts are made to repress. Spies are extensively employed for that purpose, and any man upon whose premises the forbidden liquor is found is punished by having his wife's head shaved. The king has an army of 40,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, and the country is heavily taxed for the support of the king and his expensive government."

Judge Daly quietly compares our own "best Government on the face of the earth" with one of these African governments, and finds the comparison "not complimentary to our intelligence." Here is the passage:

"The Egyptian Geographical Society, under the presidency of Dr. G. Schweinfurth, the distinguished African explorer, was established this year at Cairo, through the liberality of the Khedive, consisting of 300 members, with an annual income of $7,000. A substantial portion of this income is granted by the Government in view of the advantages to the nation of the labors of the Geographical Society, as is the case with several of the leading Geographical Societies of Europe. But it would be hard to convince our Government of the utility of aiding, by pecuniary means, our Society, the only one in this country, when it would not even incur the expense of sending a commissioner to the late great Geographical Congress at Paris, and to our shame we were the only civilized nation that was unrepresented in the exposition. It is not complimentary to our intelligence and our cosmopolitan relations to the world, of which we form so important a part, that we have a Government that takes no interest in the advance of civilization, and of the trade, commerce, and industry of the world at large, through geographical exploration and discovery, the means by which it has been chiefly advanced, from the dawn of civilization to the present time. It was not the fault of this Society that our country was not represented in the exposition, for earnest efforts were made by us as well as by the French minister, but were met by the reply that the Congress in Paris was the affair of a private society, which was not the view taken by the other civilized nations, who made liberal grants of money for the success of an undertaking in which the whole world was interested. With our limited means, all that we could do was to send a delegation, as nothing could be received for exhibition except under the charge of a commissioner of the government of the country from which it was sent. If the gentlemen charged with the administration of our Government read the frequent expressions of surprise that I have read in the various accounts written of the exposition, at the absence of any representation from the United States, they would not, I think, be very much impressed with the wisdom and policy of the exceptional position in which they placed our country and people. This was not a case in which we could afford to be indifferent, as we do not constitute the whole world."

THE "ACADEMY" FOR AMERICANS.

We had occasion some time ago to refer to the unscrupulous critical spirit which animates a London weekly called the Academy, a periodical established and conducted on the principle of bullying itself into notice by copying and exaggerating the most arbitrary features of British journalism. A special effort has been made to push the circulation of the Academy in this country, which makes it proper to point out the policy it has adopted toward American as well as English authors. A little American book on botany was republished in London, and attacked by the Academy in the most vicious way. The criticism was a string of the grossest misrepresentations, by which the whole character of the book was falsified and libeled. Its author happened to be in London at the time, and wrote a letter to the editor of the Academy, exposing the character of its criticism. The editor refused to print it, and the author was compelled to seek another channel to get the true state of the case before the public. The letter declined by the Academy was printed by the Examiner.

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