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Psychedelic Psychiatry
This page intentionally left blank
 Psychedelic Psychiatry

LSD from Clinic to Campus

erika dyck

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore
 © 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

The Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dyck, Erika.
Psychedelic psychiatry : LSD from clinic to campus / Erika Dyck.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978- 0- 8018- 8994-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0- 8018- 8994-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. LSD (Drug)–Therapeutic use—History. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide—history. 2. History, 20th
Century. 3. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide—therapeutic use.
QV 11.1 D994p 2008]
RC 483.5.L9D93 2008
616.89'18—dc22 2007049668

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paper with recycled content.
 contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1. Psychedelic Pioneers 13

2. Simulating Psychoses 32

3. Highs and Lows 53

4. Keeping Tabs on Science and Spirituality 79

5. Acid Panic 101

6. “The Perfect Contraband” 119

Conclusion 138

Notes 145
Bibliography 171
Index 193
This page intentionally left blank
 preface

Since I began studying the history of LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) I have
often been struck by people’s reactions to my work. Some have asked me
whether LSD is the drug that causes brain damage. Others have heard that it
permanently alters chromosomes or that traces of the drug remain in the body
forever, causing horrific flashbacks and making even one-time users into prime
targets for failed drug tests. Many people’s perceptions of LSD are intimately
linked with danger. People will casually say that they like to smoke marijuana
once in a while or that they would consider taking ecstasy, but they would never
try LSD. Some people have told me stories of someone who knew of someone
who was permanently “damaged” after taking LSD, though few people have
ever met such individuals. I remember hearing similar stories from my own
friends while growing up, like the one about the guy someone knew who took
too much LSD and believed he had been turned into an orange. He allegedly
spent his days sitting alone fearing that someone was going to peel him. People
who feel that the drug is dangerous usually assume that my investigations into
the history of LSD will prove them right.
There are a lot of other people who take a different view. When I give presen-
tations on the subject, invariably somebody approaches me afterward to tell me
a story about one of his or her experiences with LSD. These people are, for ex-
ample, professors, students, medical professionals, and psychologists. They all
appear to be healthy, rational, and well adjusted. Sometimes they want to tell me
about an amazing concert they attended while on acid, but then ask me whether
they may have put themselves at risk of long-term effects. Others reminisce
fondly about their experiences with the drug and believe that it had a very posi-
tive effect on their lives. Most of the people who make these confessions assure
me that LSD changed them, that it was different from other drugs, and that the
experience remains largely indescribable.
 viii Preface

I am almost always asked about my own experiences with the drug. I sup-
pose people think that only somebody who has tried LSD could have developed
such an interest in the topic. Alternatively, they assume that somebody who
spent years studying the history of the drug must have generated an over-
whelming appetite for it. A lot of people ask me where they can get some. I do
not know.
When I began my research into the history of LSD as a graduate student, I
expected to uncover horror stories about irresponsible research experiments,
addictions, and ruined lives. There is no doubt that some LSD consumption has
had negative consequences and that some unethical experimentation with
psychedelic drugs took place in clinical settings. But what I have since learned
is that this is not, by any means, the whole story. I had the opportunity to closely
examine the records of a large set of experiments conducted in Canada in the
1950s. I was surprised to learn that the psychiatrists involved in these experi-
ments went to extraordinary lengths to study the drug before giving it to pa-
tients and even tested it on themselves first. There is no question that the
patients volunteered for LSD treatments.
Although I had access to patients’ files from these early experiments, research
ethics agreements stipulated that I could not contact any of the people named in
these files, nor could I include their names in any publications. However, word
spread about my investigation and former patients began to contact me them-
selves. This very small number of individuals who had been treated with LSD
forty years earlier added a crucial perspective to my study. When we think about
taking LSD as a treatment we may think about it as being a very risky endeavor.
These people explained to me some of the circumstances that led to their partici-
pation in the trials as alcoholics. Alcoholism had affected their families, jobs,
and bodies, their whole lives, so profoundly that they were prepared to try any-
thing to find a solution. One former patient explained that he would have walked
through fire if he thought it would help him stop drinking. They all remained
loyal to the psychiatrists who gave them LSD. Of course, I was not in a position
to follow up with all the patients who had been treated in this way. The testimo-
nies I did manage to collect, though not necessarily representative, contribute an
important perspective that is not found in the textual records.
In addition to the patients who took LSD, I also heard from former graduate
students, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and architects who were involved
in the experiments. Many recounted stories about taking LSD with various ca-
veats or claims ranging from But I only took it once, to try and understand what
my patients/subjects might expect to The stuff is harmless. . . . I probably took it a
 Preface ix

hundred times, the first summer. Many of these people were octogenarians when
I met them, which should call into question concerns about the long-term
effects of the drug.
How should we reconcile these findings with the connection that continues
to exist in the public mind between LSD and danger? This book is the result of
my quest to understand this dichotomy.
This page intentionally left blank
 acknowledgments

I am indebted to many people for financial, material, and emotional support

during this project; all of its weaknesses, of course, are mine alone. Friends and
colleagues Larry Stewart, Valerie Korinek, Cyril Greenland, Cara Pryor, Jenni-
fer Milne, Jason Kleinermanns, Nadine Charabin, Steve Hewitt, and Tristan
Fehrenbach were there from the very beginning. David Wright, Ken Cruik-
shank, Stephen Heathorn, Marcel Martel, Dick Rempel, Stephen Streeter, and
all the members of the History Department at McMaster University helped me
transform a mere germ of an idea into the premise for a book. The encourage-
ment and support from the Johns Hopkins University Press eased the transi-
tion of this project into its current form, and I’m especially grateful to my
editor, Jackie Wehmueller, for her unwavering support, and to the copy editor,
Anne R. Gibbons, for her careful review.
Arriving at the University of Alberta in 2005, I was welcomed by a wonder-
ful community of scholars who have become mentors and friends: Susan Smith,
Pat Prestwich, Lesley Cormack, Beverly Lemire, Dawna Gilchrist, David Cook,
Cressida Heyes, Rob Wilson, and Sarah Carter. I have drawn strength and in-
spiration from an exceptionally talented and generous group of friends: Angela
Graham, Jessa Chupik, Greg Stott, Carrie Dickenson, Jennifer Keelan, Charles
Barbour, Mike Haan, Sean Gouglas, Chris Fletcher, Biella Coleman, Kathleen
Lowrey, Jonathan Reinarz, and Patrick Barber.
Members of the history of medicine community in Canada, the United
States, and the United Kingdom have offered feedback and direction while
patiently listening to excerpts from this project as it has developed over the
years; many sections of this book have benefited directly from the comments
generated at these meetings. The Canadian Society for the History of Medi-
cine, the American Association for the History of Medicine, and the Society
 xii Acknowledgments

for the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs have offered especially rich op-
portunities for me to meet with scholars who share my academic love of his-
tory, medicine, and drugs. Jackie Duffin, David Courtwright, John Burnham,
Shelley McKellar, Geoffrey Reaume, Michael Sappol, Sasha Mullally, James
Moran, James Hanley, Matthew Gambino, Robin Room, Dan Malleck, and
Catherine Carstairs provided invaluable comments. Geoff Hudson, Peter
Twohig, and Maureen Lux, in addition to providing enormous academic sup-
port, helped me to pause and celebrate.
No historical examination could proceed without the help and expertise of
archivists. In this regard I was most fortunate. John Court at the Centre for Ad-
diction and Mental Health Archives, Patrick Hayes at the University of Sas-
katchewan Archives, Kam Teo at the Weyburn Public Library, and Jackie Malloy
at the Soo Line Museum in Weyburn tracked down innumerable requests for
me. I logged many hours in the Hoffer collection at the Saskatchewan Archives
Board, where I am tremendously grateful for the archival expertise of Nadine
Charabin and Christie Wood, Wanda Jack, Bonnie Wagner, and others for pho-
tocopying box after box of documents.
In addition to archival records, I am grateful to everyone who shared their
memories with me; this book is better as a result of their candid reflections.
John Mills, Arthur Allen, Duncan and June Blewett, Ian MacDonald, Neil Ag-
new, Robert Sommer, Allen Blakeney, Frank Coburn, Joyce Munn, Sven Jensen,
Terry Russell, Amy Izumi, and others who know who they are. I am especially
indebted to Abram Hoffer who gave me permission to examine his extensive
collection of papers in Saskatoon, who always provided further detail upon re-
quest, but who never interfered in my interpretation of his work.
Ryan Lockwood and Anand Ramyya made a film called The Psychedelic Pio-
neers from which I learned about presenting history in a different medium.
That project introduced me to some of the real benefits of interprofessional col-
laboration, and my book is better for this experience. The Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council and McMaster University funded my work as a
dissertation; Associated Medical Ser vices and the University of Alberta have
provided me with funding that has allowed me to concentrate on completing
this manuscript while establishing a history of medicine program in the facul-
ties of medicine and dentistry, and arts.
Earlier versions of chapters 1 and 3 were previously published, and I thank
the editors of the respective journals for their permission to reuse this material:
“Land of the Living Sky with Diamonds: A Place for Radical Psychiatry?” Jour-
 Acknowledgments xiii

nal of Canadian Studies 41, no. 3 (2007): 42–66 (chapter 1); “Hitting Highs at
Rock Bottom: LSD Treatment of Alcoholism, 1950–1970.” Social History of Med-
icine 19, no. 2 (2006): 313–29 (chapter 3).
Finally, the support offered by my family and friends has been tremendous.
Susan, Alana, Noel, Vered, Ian, Sherry, Alicia, David, Erna, and the myriad soc-
cer teams who have added me to their rosters over the years have sustained me
through this process. My parents, Penny and Philip, courageously looked the
other way when I moved to Toronto, then to Alberta, but have been wonderfully
supportive of me, always. Finally, though he passed away midway through my
doctoral work, I could not have dreamed my way through a PhD without my
grandad’s love.
This page intentionally left blank
Psychedelic Psychiatry
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

In the spring of 1953, the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond made a historical

journey from Weyburn, Saskatchewan, to Los Angeles, California, where he
introduced author Aldous Huxley to mescaline. Osmond had moved from Lon-
don, England, to Weyburn in October 1951 to practice psychiatry. Once settled
in Weyburn, he began investigating the therapeutic potential of drugs such as
mescaline and LSD. Huxley had heard about Osmond’s experiments with hal-
lucinogenic drugs in Canada and volunteered to take part in the early trials with
mescaline. Although Huxley identified himself as a willing participant, Os-
mond ner vously confided to his colleague that he did not “relish the possibility,
however remote, of finding a small but discreditable niche in literary history as
the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad.”1
The mescaline experience inspired Huxley to write an account, published the
following year, called The Doors of Perception. In one excerpt he recalled swallow-
ing the glass of water with its swirling mixture of mescaline. Before drinking the
mescaline, he carefully took stock of the familiar setting of his home and hap-
pened to fixate on a small vase containing three flowers. Returning to this scene
about an hour after ingesting the drug, he observed: “At breakfast that morning I
had been struck by the lively dissonance of its colours. But that was no longer the
point. I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing
what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by
moment, of naked existence.” Huxley detailed his thoughts and feelings about the
experience in well-crafted literary prose dotted with references to philosophy, po-
etry, and religion. He claimed that his response to the drug permitted him to re-
flect on both simple and complex matters from a clear perspective that allowed for
contemplation about the deeper and subjective meaning of life. Psychiatrists
would later classify such experiences as psychedelic.2
After the fateful mescaline experiment in 1953, Osmond and Huxley devel-
oped a close relationship and corresponded regularly. In 1956, they engaged in
 2 Psychedelic Psychiatry

a friendly competition to come up with a word to describe the mescaline or LSD

experience. Previously they had exchanged terms such as psychomimetic (mad-
ness mimicking), or hallucinogen, or phantastica, but neither of them felt that
the words conveyed the appropriate sensations. After serious deliberation, Hux-
ley forwarded his suggestion to Osmond in a clever couplet:

To make this mundane world sublime

Just half a gram of phanerothyme.3

Osmond responded with his own rhyming couplet:

To fall in Hell or soar Angelic

You’ll need a pinch of psychedelic.4

The classically trained Osmond combined the Greek words psyche—mean-

ing mind, and delis—meaning manifest. He preferred the idea of mind-
manifestation to Huxley’s term, phanerothyme, which he thought was
confusing. More importantly, he enjoyed psychedelic because he felt that it “had
no par ticular connotation of madness, craziness, or ecstasy, but suggested an
enlargement and expansion of mind.”5 In 1957, Osmond explained the term
psychedelic in a paper that presented some of his research findings to the New
York Academy of Sciences. The publication of his paper introduced the term
into the English lexicon.6
Huxley’s participation in the early trials was not only personally rewarding
for him but also stimulated wider interest in psychedelic drug experimentation
in Saskatchewan. Doors of Perception spread the word to readers about Osmond’s
work, and it also served as an important articulation of the psychedelic experi-
ence, which most people found very difficult to describe. Osmond would later
point to Huxley’s book as a way of introducing volunteers to the kinds of feel-
ings and experiences that they might encounter while participating in the LSD
trials. This book played an important literary and scientific role in the develop-
ment of LSD experiments.
By the mid-1950s, Weyburn, Saskatchewan, a small agrarian community,
entertained a dynamic collection of researchers from Great Britain, Czechoslo-
vakia, Denmark, the United States, and elsewhere in Canada; it became a hub of
international networks for the advancement of psychedelic research. These ex-
periments were not marginal, unethical, or unprofessional, even by contempo-
rary standards. These LSD experiments, which made critical contributions to
public health reforms and psychiatric research, became some of the largest,
 Introduction 3

most enduring, and internationally significant experiments in the post–World

War II period.
In the span of twenty-five years, however, LSD underwent a radical transfor-
mation from medical marvel to public pariah. At first, the drug appealed to a
twentieth-century medical profession increasingly fascinated with pharmacother-
apy—using pills to treat illnesses. LSD produced profound physical and psycho-
logical reactions, including hallucinations and delusions.7 These physiological
responses led medical researchers to believe that they might have discovered a
new way of understanding the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. Some psychiatrists
believed that LSD chemically created symptoms that seemed remarkably similar
to those described by patients suffering from severe mental illnesses. Psychia-
trists speculated that if this were true, they could work with biochemists to iden-
tify the organic chemical dysfunction that causes mental diseases. Furthermore,
by taking LSD themselves, psychiatrists felt they could learn to appreciate how
the drug caused dysfunctional thinking, feeling, and behaving, which might en-
able better communication between doctors and their mentally ill patients. By the
end of the 1950s scientists all over the world had conducted thousands of experi-
ments in pursuit of an explanation for the cause of mental diseases; Weyburn
operated as one of the major centers of this research.
In addition to medical interest, the powerful LSD reactions attracted atten-
tion from military investigators. Tests with LSD conducted by the American
military and the CIA on prisoners and military personnel during the cold war
came to light in 1979 when the historian John Marks uncovered an illuminat-
ing set of records. He found that military researchers investigated LSD’s capac-
ity as a “truth serum” or a tool for interrogating spies. Conversely, military
personnel monitored test subjects in an attempt to learn how people might
withstand counterinterrogation while under the influence of drugs. These trials
convinced some CIA agents that spies—notably Soviet communists—would
use LSD as a form of biochemical warfare during the cold war. 8
The CIA’s interest in conducting drug experiments also extended into Can-
ada. In 1988, former psychiatric patients and their families received a court
settlement for treatments performed on them more than three decades earlier
at the Allen Memorial Hospital in Montreal.9 The investigation revealed that the
CIA had funded psychiatrist Ewen Cameron’s tests with LSD on patients with-
out their knowledge or consent. Cameron began with an idea of “depatterning,”
which then led to his theory of “psychic driving” that ultimately involved expos-
ing patients to repetitive images or phrases while taking LSD. One of Cameron’s
 4 Psychedelic Psychiatry

patients in the 1950s was Val Orlikow, the wife of one of Manitoba’s federal
members of Parliament, David Orlikow. Val originally approached Cameron
seeking therapy for postpartum depression; she was given LSD without her
consent. Thirty years later, she and her husband launched a federal government
investigation into Cameron’s experiments on patients at the Allen Memorial
Hospital. The highly publicized court proceedings put human faces on the con-
sequences of involuntary LSD research.10 These subversive and conspiratorial
aspects of LSD’s history underscored fears that the drug belonged in a dark
chapter of the history of involuntary psychiatric experimentation.
By the early 1960s, black market versions of acid appeared and its famed
euphoric high gained popularity, especially among college students. During
this period, the baby boomers became a demographically significant group
whose collective enfranchisement threatened to derail the status quo. Political
activism in the form of civil rights movements, feminism, American Indian
movements, the Quebec Quiet Revolution, and anti–Vietnam War protests of-
fered proof that this younger generation of North Americans was agitating for
change. While this cohort of youths seemed to embrace radical movements,
they also appeared to have a penchant for drug use; indeed taking drugs such as
marijuana and LSD became an important badge of their collective identity.
LSD also inspired the rise of unorthodox spiritual gurus, notably former Har-
vard professor Timothy Leary. Leary’s indiscriminate promotion of drugs in the
mid-1960s went hand in hand with the development of a new religion—the
League for Spiritual Discovery. Leary incorporated psychedelic drug use into a
pseudointellectual movement that aligned itself with developing inner freedoms.
Mixing religious philosophies with LSD-inspired mind travel, Leary campaigned
for inner peace through hallucinogens.11 Although he had many connections
with the emerging youth culture of the 1960s, he also attracted a significant
number of middle-class professionals to his drug-inspired philosophies. His
evangelizing efforts earned him notoriety as an LSD guru.
Other LSD advocates, such as the American author Ken Kesey, promoted
drug use among North American youth as a means of escaping convention.
During his summers as a college student in the 1950s, Kesey had volunteered at
a state psychiatric hospital, an experience that eventually inspired him to write
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). His book, which became a theatrical
production and later an award-winning movie, told the lurid story of Randall
McMurphy. McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson in the Oscar-winning film)
was a transfer from a state prison, a convicted rapist who was deemed to be (or
becoming) insane. In the state psychiatric facility he was treated with a variety
 Introduction 5

of invasive therapies including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and a lobotomy.

Kesey’s famous story shed light on a dark chapter in the history of psychiatric
institutionalization by characterizing psychiatric treatments as instruments of
punishment and coercion. The popular film had an enduring resonance that
has shaped cultural perceptions of psychiatry and its treatments to this day.
Shortly after the publication of his book, Kesey himself participated in psy-
chiatric experimentation. At Stanford University, as part of a CIA-funded pro-
gram called MK-ULTRA, Kesey volunteered to take LSD. Although he was one
of hundreds of student volunteers in the Bay Area in the 1960s, Kesey’s involve-
ment differed from his peers. He embraced the consciousness- expanding expe-
rience as though it were a new personal religion; he became its self-appointed
evangelist. Kesey felt that the mind-manifesting experience triggered by LSD
offered him an alternative perspective on the world and he wanted to introduce
others to his newfound philosophy. Kesey became an icon of the psychedelic
drug movement and promised psychological freedoms to those who embraced
the drugs’ chemically inspired visions. For people who shared this philosophy,
Kesey was a leader. In many respects, however, he simultaneously embodied
the image that would eventually provoke a moral panic over youth drug use.
At the outset of his academic career, Kesey was an athletic, talented student,
the epitome of a promising, all-American, middle- class youth. As a university
student, however, he developed an insatiable love of drugs—psychedelic in
particular—and promoted their use to his peers. During the mid-1960s he
toured the United States in a DayGlo-painted bus named Furthur and expanded
minds with a loyal following of youth calling themselves the Merry Pranksters
who, along with Kesey, distributed acid as “electric Kool-Aid.” Kesey and the
Pranksters encouraged regular LSD consumption along with the rejection of
authority, patriotism, and postwar middle- class values. By 1966, Kesey personi-
fied the growing fears associated with LSD use. Many people became concerned
that an entire generation of Kesey-like figures would become “turned on” by
drugs and steer society into a dangerous future.
LSD shed its early persona as an experimental psychopharmacological agent
from the 1950s and slowly transformed, in the 1960s, in the public view, into
“acid,” a revolutionary street drug. Along with the proliferation of acid came
numerous reports of horrific experiences, undesirable outcomes, teratogenic
effects, and other unexpected results that alarmed medical and political au-
thorities. When added to the climate of social tumult that pitted generation
against generation, LSD ignited a moral panic. Governments swiftly banned
the substance and reclassified it as a narcotic, which meant that possession
 6 Psychedelic Psychiatry

carried severe criminal sentences. Medical research with the drug ground to a
halt. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the image of LSD had become conflated
with danger, delinquency, and abuse. Media reports universally condemned
medical research with psychedelics as unethical and misguided.
Most of the literature to date investigating the history of LSD has focused on
the CIA experiments or the drug culture of the 1960s. These accounts have
reinforced an image of LSD as a dangerous substance. This path from usually
covert medical experimentation to counterculture revolution is the story that
generally unfolded in the mainstream media of the 1950s and ’60s. Several
newspapers put LSD on their front pages in 1963 when Harvard University dis-
missed psychologist Timothy Leary for engaging in quasi-recreational drug use
as part of his funded research. By 1966, the same papers reported that LSD
unleashed radicalism among youth. After its criminalization in 1968, LSD
seemed like it might fade into obscurity, but in the late 1970s and throughout
the 1980s it appeared again and again as the North American public learned
the details of CIA experiments and the ensuing legal battles. In the popular
mind, LSD connoted danger. The connections between LSD and Kesey, Leary,
or an agitated youth counterculture resonate in twentieth-century popular cul-
ture, and this powerful imagery has overshadowed the significance of the ear-
lier history of LSD in medical research.
Other drugs, such as opium, morphine, cocaine, and MDMA (methylenedi-
oxymethamphetamine), have migrated from a clinical setting to the street. And
drugs such as alcohol and marijuana have crossed back and forth across the
boundaries of medicine.12 Like LSD, these drugs were associated with par ticu-
lar groups of people—hippies, Chinese immigrants, black Americans—and
often the drug policies that subsequently criminalized these drugs reveal a dis-
comfort with that group rather than with the drug itself.13 Prozac, Paxil, Ritalin,
and lithium belong to a slightly different category of drugs whose histories are
intimately clinical but whose futures grow increasingly suspicious with news of
long-term side effects, a lucrative street market, and the unrelenting marketing
campaigns of pharmaceutical companies that raise questions about the under-
lying motivations for promoting their use.14 The medical profession is similarly
involved in determining acceptable drug use by defining addiction along with
safe and unsafe use; clinicians have struggled to define the terms of substance
abuse and its treatment.15 Another category of drugs includes ones such as tha-
lidomide: medical wonders turned nightmarish. Marketed primarily in Europe
and Canada, within a year its resultant birth defects, not to mention the vast
number of spontaneous abortions associated with it, alarmed governments, the
 Introduction 7

medical community, and consumers, and set a precedent for developing strict
policies concerning drug trials. After thalidomide, drugs had to be tested with
specific therapeutic objectives for distinctive, identifiable disorders. In each of
these categories, the medical community has been involved, whether in the pro-
cess of discovery, experimentation, prescription, detoxification, or articulating
the side effects or dangers. LSD, as somewhat contemporaneous with thalido-
mide, serves as an important object for studying the relationships between po-
litical, medical, and popular conceptions of drugs and their associated harms
and risks.
During LSD’s transfer from the clinic to the campus, political and legal au-
thorities sought advice from medical experts before criminalizing the drug. In
several jurisdictions legal investigators deliberately privileged advice from med-
ical scientists who had not taken LSD. As a result, the medical researchers with
the most experience studying LSD were not directly involved in the decisions
concerning its subsequent control and regulation. Outspoken psychedelic re-
searchers and “gurus” warned policy makers that a misunderstanding of the
LSD epidemic would result if they were not consulted. Humphry Osmond, as
one of the leading authorities on psychedelics, expressed anxiety over trying to
maintain medical authority in the face of strong pressure from medical and po-
litical opposition. His personal investments in psychedelic drug research in
combination with his sympathy toward some countercultural ideas ultimately
led to his marginalization from the medical establishment.
The story of LSD involves a fascinating period in the history of medicine and
North American culture. I begin by focusing on one of the largest and most in-
fluential sets of LSD trials on the rural Canadian prairies. Weyburn residents
welcomed doctors to this underserved area. The newly elected social democratic
government also welcomed medical scientists and wanted to prove that a social-
ist region could support innovative medical research in the post-World War and
cold war periods. Location, therefore, influenced professional decisions; with
very few colleagues, psychiatrists practicing in Saskatchewan faced fewer dis-
senting opinions from fellow experts. The development and reception of psych-
edelic psychiatry took place in an intellectual environment that welcomed
medical experimentation.
Operating in a well-supported political environment, clinical researchers
began seeking professional support for their studies from psychopharmacologi-
cal investigators throughout North America. The historian Edward Shorter has
described this period in the history of psychiatry as the beginning of “the sec-
ond biological psychiatry,” after parting from it in the nineteenth century with
 8 Psychedelic Psychiatry

the rise of Freudian theories. In other words, psychiatrists looked again to biol-
ogy for explaining and treating mental disorders rather than depending on talk-
ing therapies to treat the worried well. The psychopharmacologist David Healy
referred to the profound changes in treatment options arising out of this period
as a “therapeutic revolution.” The antipsychiatrist Thomas Szasz is more criti-
cal, referring to this decade as one that featured the introduction of the “thera-
peutic state,” contending that psychiatry gained even greater control over its
patients by creating chemical dependence.16 During the 1950s there were dra-
matic changes in mental health research and clinical drug experimentation
that contributed significantly to a new outlook on psychiatry, a medical spe-
cialty that became more and more interested in pharmacotherapies. The tri-
umph of drug therapies emerged as a symbol of the advancement of technology
and medical knowledge. This laid the groundwork for an insidious relationship
between psychiatry and commercial interests, which resulted in the develop-
ment of a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical industry that, arguably, stymied
the psychiatric profession in its ability to offer effective clinical alternatives to
psychopharmacology.17 Civil libertarians, antipsychiatrists, and others who in-
creasingly regarded psychiatry as a pseudoscience complained that these devel-
opments merely added psychopharmacological treatments to the arsenal of
mechanisms employed to maintain social control over individuals deemed ab-
normal or deviant.
Although LSD ultimately did not become a marketable pharmaceutical prod-
uct, its brief use in psychiatric treatments demonstrated an enthusiasm for
pharmacology in the 1950s. LSD differed from other, more commercially suc-
cessful drugs in that it promised to provide a single experience that would help
patients overcome their disorders, rather than simply control symptoms. The
psychedelic drug researchers in Saskatchewan deplored the increased use of
antipsychotic medications that offered patients a lifetime dependence on drugs
that controlled symptoms but never really addressed the root causes of the dis-
order. The therapeutic rationale for LSD consisted of a single intense experience
that its proponents believed could restore self- control to the patients or at the
very least offer personal insights into the disordered nature of their thinking,
feeling, and behaving. In short, psychedelic psychiatrists designed a therapy
that concentrated on empowering patients to play a more active role in their re-
covery, instead of passively accepting treatments doled out by psychiatrists. Far
from being simply another competitor in the growing pharmaceutical industry,
LSD threatened to undermine it.
 Introduction 9

The increased focus on drug treatments in psychiatry brought changes in

therapeutic options and ushered in new theoretical explanations for the causes
of disorder and disease. It also prompted some clinicians to reconsider the pa-
thology of alcoholism. Research groups in other parts of the world were also
studying the causes of alcoholism and considering whether it was in fact a dis-
ease. Although the Saskatchewan investigators did not originally anticipate
LSD’s use as a therapeutic agent, trials with “normals” revealed its capacity to
produce feelings of self-reflection, suggesting that it had some therapeutic prop-
erties.18 These findings led them to apply their biochemical theory of mental
illness directly to alcoholism. Working closely with Alcoholics Anonymous,
psychedelic psychiatrists treated alcoholics using LSD and claimed unprece-
dented rates of success, routinely achieving recoveries in over 50 percent of the
patients. Their psycho-biochemical conceptualization of alcoholism, in combi-
nation with their claims of efficacy, troubled a number of their medical col-
leagues. In par ticular, the idea that LSD cured alcoholics concerned members of
the Addictions Research Foundation in Toronto, who consequently produced
their own LSD trials disputing the findings of the Saskatchewan studies. These
debates illustrated the high professional stakes involved in this kind of research,
which, perhaps surprisingly, focused on evaluating efficacy and methodology
rather than on concern for the drug’s inherent dangers, which would dominate
discussions by the late 1960s.
By the second half of the 1950s researchers began looking beyond their labs
for subjects and methods. In western Canada allegations that members of the
Native American Church of North America engaged in violent behavior after
becoming intoxicated on the peyote cactus captured attention from American
and Canadian government officials, as well as the ascendant psychedelic re-
searchers. The peyote cactus contained the alkaloid mescaline, one of the
hallucination- causing substances under examination by psychiatrists in Sas-
katchewan. The peyote ceremony had been a traditional component of Native
American Church activities, which had its roots in the southern United States
but had been registered in western Canada since the 1930s. By the middle of the
1950s the federal government in Canada attempted to follow California’s lead in
criminalizing peyote, at which point members of the church invited Abram
Hoffer and Humphry Osmond to provide them with scientific evidence con-
cerning the dangers of the drug and the associated ceremony. As part of their
investigations, the two men were invited to participate in a peyote ceremony to
judge the activities for themselves.
 10 Psychedelic Psychiatry

In October 1956 five white men joined a group of ten church members, in-
cluding American representatives from Montana. Their participation in the
peyote ceremony formally introduced some of the researchers to the ritualistic
and spiritual dimension that traditionally accompanied the psychedelic experi-
ence. Their participation in this ritual exposed deeply held views about race and
religion that became entangled in the subsequent debates over the legality of a
native religion that embraced drug use. Although their findings did not satisfy
federal government officials, their ceremonial introduction to peyotism high-
lighted a spiritual component in the psychedelic experience that had been rec-
ognized but not articulated in their scientific trials.
Their observance of the peyote ceremony publicly connected psychedelic re-
search with religion, but contemporaneous developments occurring in other
locations throughout North America also pointed out this relationship. As re-
search into LSD treatments for alcoholism began gathering momentum, Hoffer
and Osmond came into contact with other LSD enthusiasts—medical and non-
medical. A growing cadre of LSD experimenters in Saskatchewan, British Co-
lumbia, California, and New York gradually established a collegial network for
exchanging ideas, strategies for addressing various challenges, and even sup-
plies. Spearheaded by a particularly controversial figure then residing in British
Columbia, Al Hubbard, the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD,” some of the enthusiasts
decided to institutionalize their network and formed the Commission for the
Study of Creative Imagination.19
The commission provided a means for bringing scientific, medical, literary,
cultural, and religious interests together in a coordinated examination of drugs
such as LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and other mind-altering substances collec-
tively referred to by the end of the 1950s as psychedelics. Their attempts to
consolidate efforts helped shield investigators from external criticism for a
while, but it also intensified the methodological and interpretive divisions over
how to best evaluate the drugs and for whom they should be tested. The split
seemed most pronounced over whether the drugs held medicinal or spiritual
properties. Some individuals tried to bridge this gap by articulating positions
on the spiritual dimension of contemporary pharmacological medicine. The
internal splits within the commission highlighted the state of the field at the
end of the 1950s and left psychedelic researchers poorly equipped to weather
the storm that lay ahead.
By the mid-1960s discussions about LSD had shifted from a medicoscien-
tific context to a social and cultural one concerned with the perils of drug abuse.
Public and medical discourse on LSD descended into a dichotomous debate
 Introduction 11

between consumers and resistors. Psychedelic psychiatrists, whose approaches

included taking LSD themselves, became embroiled in these debates that pitted
one generation against another. Questions about the efficacy of the drug in
clinical practice gave way to more pressing concerns over whether medical pro-
fessionals could control the spread of an LSD epidemic.
The records from the Saskatchewan LSD experiments offer a different per-
spective on the drug’s history from the one that condemns LSD as a tool for
military interrogation or as a stimulus for cultural discord. Instead of paranoia
about unethical mind- control experiments or a breakdown in social relations,
a surprisingly optimistic tone emerges in the medical history of LSD in the
1950s. In Saskatchewan, local press reports, provincial government records,
and oral interviews with participants expressed profound enthusiasm for this
kind of research. Personal records maintained by individual LSD investigators
further demonstrate the seriousness of their professional commitment to the
enterprise. Abram Hoffer, one of Osmond’s closest colleagues, and himself a
practicing psychiatrist in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in the 1950s and 1960s
donated more than three hundred boxes of materials related to these experi-
ments to the Saskatchewan Archives Board; thirty boxes alone contain letters of
correspondence between Hoffer and Osmond. Patient case files and personal
letters included in this collection show that people wanted to participate in
these trials; when I conducted a very small sample of oral interviews forty years
later, the former patients still felt that way.
Saskatchewan government records demonstrate that a significant degree of
political support existed for the LSD experimentation. Saskatchewan was one of
the first jurisdictions in North America to implement a system of publicly
funded health care, which later became the blueprint for the Canadian national
system. The election of a social democratic party, the Cooperative Common-
wealth Federation, in 1944 set the province apart from other North American
jurisdictions as it embarked on a twenty-year political experiment with social-
ism; health reform quickly emerged as the number one priority for this govern-
ment. Records from the province’s premier, Tommy Douglas, and his cabinet
ministers illustrated their commitment to making Saskatchewan a dynamic
medical research center that could support health care reforms with homeg-
rown solutions. By the mid-1950s many members of the provincial government
realized that the LSD experiments were a set of studies worth supporting be-
cause they showed potential for sweeping innovation in mental health care.
Letters from patients, families of patients, and community organizations
similarly displayed support for psychedelic research. As the experiments
 12 Psychedelic Psychiatry

expanded to tackle the problems of alcoholism and mental health accommoda-

tions, they attracted significant sympathetic attention from social workers,
psychiatric nurses, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members (and their families),
temperance reformers, and politicians. Letters from such people and groups
revealed a keen interest in LSD experimentation outside the clinical setting;
communities felt they had a vested interest in the outcome of these experi-
ments. Local newspapers, political speeches, and organizational publications
(such as the Bureau for Alcoholism newsletter) regularly applauded local medi-
cal researchers for their pioneering efforts in the field of mental health. This
kind of evidence suggests that the LSD experiments in Saskatchewan were well
regarded and locally supported in the 1950s.
During the oral interviews that I conducted, psychiatrists, psychologists,
nurses, government officials, and patients candidly revealed an enthusiasm for
a historical inquiry focused on the Saskatchewan project. Many of them felt that
such an investigation might help to improve the reputation of LSD experimen-
tation. Professionals involved in the LSD research of the 1950s regularly com-
mented on the exciting research atmosphere that existed in the province at the
time and the feeling among them that novel or radical results could only be
produced under the kind of conditions that existed in Saskatchewan. Nurses
recalled, with pride, their attraction to a project that depended on their partici-
pation as professionals with a specialized expertise as close observers and con-
fidantes of patients, at a time when nurses were struggling to professionalize.
Government officials located the drug research within a wider matrix of politi-
cal reforms. Patients freely and generously supplied me with detailed recollec-
tions of their own experiences, as well as their reflections on the significance of
the trials in Saskatchewan. People treated for alcoholism with LSD claimed an
enduring sobriety. Former patients also explained the central role that they had
played in these trials as the “real” experts of mental illness and addiction. In
sum, patients offered me a history of the drug that is not written down any-
where. Together these oral testimonies provided valuable perspectives from the
participants themselves and challenged the existing cultural and medical his-
tory of psychedelic drugs by contending that LSD treatments worked.
 chapter one

Psychedelic Pioneers

In April 1943, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss biochemist, dissolved an infinitesi-

mal amount of a newly synthesized drug, d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), in
a glass of water and drank it. Three quarters of an hour later he recorded a grow-
ing dizziness, some visual disturbances, and a marked desire to laugh. After
about an hour he asked his assistant to call a doctor and then accompany him
home from his research laboratory at the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in
Zurich. He climbed onto his bicycle and went on a surreal journey. In Hof-
mann’s mind he was not on the familiar road that led home, but rather a street
painted by Salvador Dali, a fun house roller coaster. He had trouble coordinat-
ing his legs to pedal his bicycle. He tried to communicate his predicament to
his assistant but found that he had no voice. Reaching home he encountered a
neighbor he thought had become a witch. When a doctor reached Hofmann he
found him physically fine but mentally in a distraught state. Hofmann later
wondered if he had permanently damaged his mind.1
Hofmann’s serendipitous discovery of the chemical compound LSD intro-
duced a new drug that inspired a flurry of interest. He had first synthesized the
drug in 1938, but without physical contact with the substance until 1943 he re-
mained unaware of its dramatic effects. Not until some spilled on his hand, in
1943, did he discover that he might have produced something worth further
investigation. Following his initial drug reaction Hofmann published his ac-
count of the LSD discovery and shortly afterward the Sandoz Pharmaceutical
Company made the drug widely available to scientific researchers around the
world.2
One of the remarkable aspects of the drug was that it required extremely
small doses to produce powerful reactions. LSD was measured in micrograms
(mcg), and as few as 25 to 50 mcg could cause an individual to hallucinate. Pain
relief from aspirin, by comparison, required a dose of 300,000 mcg for observ-
able effects. This powerful chemical was a colorless, odorless substance that, in
 14 Psychedelic Psychiatry

minute quantities, could cause an individual to believe that he or she had be-
come psychotic. LSD immediately appealed to medical researchers as a drug
that might help explain the origins of mental disorders, particularly those in-
volving involuntary psychoses.
LSD appeared alongside a list of other chemical substances that attracted
significant attention from psychopharmacologists; in the 1950s the introduc-
tion of chemical therapies in psychiatry seemed capable of reforming the disci-
pline and radically transforming the experience of mental illness. One of North
America’s early psychopharmacologists, Thomas Ban, commented that in the
1950s, drug research (psychopharmacology) into mental disorders was respon-
sible for “dragging psychiatry into the modern world.” Psychopharmacological
research at this time received two Nobel Prizes: one was awarded to Daniel
Bovet for research on antihistamines and another to James Black for his identi-
fication of histamine receptors. In fact, in an investigation of the history of
psychopharmacology, psychiatrist David Healy argues that nearly all of the anti-
depressants, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and the
antipsychotics were a result of the drug research that took place during that de-
cade.3 These contemporaneous developments inspired confidence in the medi-
cal contention that psychopharmacological treatments would not only modernize
psychiatry but would also pave the way for dramatic reforms in mental health
care in the post–World War II period.
In 1952 the advent of antipsychotics (drugs that ameliorate the incidence or
severity of psychotic episodes) began with French surgeon Henri Laborit’s dis-
covery of chlorpromazine.4 Over the next three decades this drug, known by the
trade names Thorazine and Largactil, seemed largely responsible for emptying
asylums throughout North America and Europe. Chlorpromazine purportedly
reduced positive psychiatric symptoms in patients in a manner that helped im-
prove the potential for care in the community, or gave way to the optimistic be-
lief that patients could lead meaningful lives outside the institution.5 The
subsequent dismantling of psychiatric institutions had a revolutionary effect on
mental health care. Although chlorpromazine was not the only reason for dis-
mantling the asylum, the increased reliance on drugs in psychiatry demon-
strated the enormous potential for drugs to change the course of mental health
care policy and the important role that they would play in the future of
psychiatry.6
Experimentation with LSD began in earnest in the 1950s in North America
and throughout Europe alongside studies with antidepressants and antipsy-
chotics, in a general climate of optimism that drug research, including that
 Psychedelic Pioneers 15

with LSD, would improve psychiatry. Some LSD trials involved the same inves-
tigators who had participated in experiments with chlorpromazine.7 LSD stud-
ies began in an environment where there was considerable medical faith that
biochemistry would provide the discrete tools that would eventually unlock the
mysteries of the mind. The results of LSD trials were published in major medi-
cal journals and contributed to mainstream psychiatry. By 1951, more than one
hundred articles on LSD had appeared in medical publications. By 1961, the
number had increased to over one thousand. While the majority of articles were
published in English, studies also appeared in Japanese, German, Polish, Dan-
ish, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Russian, Swed-
ish, and Bulgarian.
Access to LSD attracted medical researchers with a variety of approaches to
experimentation. Some tested its physiological effects on animals; others’ stud-
ies involved human subjects who could then report on the drug’s capacity to
bring the unconscious to the conscious; still others explored the drug’s intimate
reaction through self- experimentation. Given its range of applications, LSD ap-
pealed to medical researchers across theoretical approaches. For psychoana-
lysts, the drug released hitherto suppressed memories; for psychotherapists, it
brought patients to new levels of self-awareness; and for psychopharmacolo-
gists, LSD reactions supported their contentions that mental disorders had
chemical origins. For approximately fifteen years medical research with LSD
proceeded with relatively few interruptions.8

Humphry Osmond Brings LSD to Saskatchewan

Humphry Osmond was born in Surrey, England, on July 1, 1917. His father,
who worked in a local hospital as the paymaster captain, moved the family to
Devonshire, but Humphry later lived with his aunt and uncle back in Surrey,
where he completed the rest of his preparatory schooling. Rather than heading
straight into the study of medicine at university, Osmond took a more circuitous
route, beginning with theater writing; he even had a brief flirtation with bank-
ing. He credited Hector Cameron, a physician and historian of medicine, with
introducing him to the wide variety of possibilities within medicine, which cap-
tured his academic interests.9
Osmond had completed his clinical training by 1939, but the outbreak of war
interrupted his regular hospital ward practicum and forced him to engage in
intermittent fieldwork. In 1940, at Guy’s Hospital in London, he experienced
the horrors of the German bombs that rained down on the city, destroying
 16 Psychedelic Psychiatry

Humphry Osmond at Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.

Osmond moved from London, England, to Weyburn in 1951. Courtesy of the Soo Line
Historical Museum Archives.

much of the area but miraculously leaving the hospital more or less intact. For
the next several months he and a few medical school colleagues ran a makeshift
morgue. Several years later, he recalled the profound influence this experience
had upon him: “as a Socialist . . . it wasn’t enough to say this is the inevitable
process of history.” He qualified for medicine in July 1942, but his plans were
again interrupted by the war when he was called to military ser vice in Novem-
ber that same year.10
He joined the Royal Navy and spent Christmas 1942 at the barracks in Ports-
mouth. Later, serving on a destroyer that moved back and forth across the At-
lantic Ocean as German submarines fired torpedoes at them, Osmond struggled
to provide the ship’s crew medical assistance with limited practical experience
and meager medical supplies. While at sea, he also learned that the psychiatric
 Psychedelic Pioneers 17

emergencies were often quite severe and potentially more damaging than the
physical crises.11 Osmond met Surgeon Captain Desmond Curran, head of psy-
chiatry in the British navy, who helped him nurture his interest in psychiatry,
while his medical colleagues chastised him for abandoning what could have
been a promising career in surgery.12
After the war, Osmond was appointed senior registrar at the psychiatric
unit at St. George’s Hospital in London. There he worked closely with John
Smythies and cultivated a keen interest in chemically induced reactions in
the human body. Smythies discovered that the topic had attracted interest in
the late nineteenth century from people such as William James, Havelock
Ellis, and S. Weir Mitchell, but that enthusiasm for studies of hallucinations
had trailed off at the turn of the century. He then happened upon another
collection of articles in the medical literature from the 1920s and 1930s by
authors including Karl Beringer, Alexander Rouhier, and Heinrich Klüver.13
Again, he found that clinical interest in hallucinations eventually disap-
peared.14 Klüver’s book Mescal piqued Smythies’s curiosity with a description
of a chemically induced hallucination, using the active ingredient in the pe-
yote cactus (mescaline) traditionally used in some Native American and Mex-
ican spiritual ceremonies.15 Smythies showed the results of his study to some
colleagues, including Humphry Osmond. Osmond immediately wanted to
learn more about the relationship between the mescaline reaction and hallu-
cinations. After consulting with a medical student, Julian Redmill, and an
organic chemist, John Harley-Mason, Osmond and Smythies determined
that mescaline had a chemical makeup that was very similar to adrenaline.
They postulated that adrenaline might be metabolized in some people in a
manner that produces a mescaline-like substance, a substance that, in turn,
caused hallucinations.16
With the aid of John Harley-Mason, they began examining the chemical
properties of mescaline. Nearly two years of research led them to conclude that
mescaline produced reactions in volunteers that resembled the symptoms of
schizophrenia, a chronic “disease marked by disordered thinking, hallucina-
tions, social withdrawal, and, in severe cases, a deterioration in the capacity to
lead a rewarding life.”17 These findings led to their theory that schizophrenia
resulted from a biochemical imbalance in the sufferer. They believed that the
imbalance might be caused by a dysfunction in the process of metabolizing
adrenaline, which in turn created a new substance that chemically resembled
mescaline.18 This tantalizing hypothesis captivated Osmond’s interests for the
next two decades.
 18 Psychedelic Psychiatry

Smythies and Osmond published the first known biochemical theory of the
archetypal psychotic disorder schizophrenia. In their original publication on
the subject, they argued that schizophrenia was caused by a metabolic failure,
producing an as-yet-undiscovered substance. They suggested that the unknown
substance (M-substance) resembled mescaline. Although mescaline had been
studied medically and had been used in religious ceremonies, Osmond and
Smythies contended that the possible similarities between mescaline reactions
and schizophrenic psychosis had never been explored scientifically. After inves-
tigating the drug and its effects on themselves, they identified patterns of bio-
chemical dysfunction in the adrenaline system. They contended that this new
finding shed light on the causation and manifestation of schizophrenia.19
Contemporary medical research on mental illness, Osmond lamented, had
been misguided by prevailing scientific theories. For example, Eugene Bleuler’s
popular theory of schizophrenia concentrated on interpretations of problems
affecting the psyche.20 According to Osmond, this perspective led clinicians
astray by focusing on psychological symptoms alone without investigating un-
derlying biochemical or metabolic symptoms. In contrast, other clinicians had
developed theories after examining only physiological symptoms. As a result,
they applied somatic treatments, such as psychosurgery, lobotomies, or electro-
convulsive therapy (ECT), with little concern for the psychological component
of mental illness. Osmond and Smythies felt that the efficacy of electroconvul-
sive therapy (shock treatments) had “received some measure of general ap-
proval, but even here there is no agreement as to how it works and even some
uncertainty about whether it works.” Smythies and Osmond felt that a more
satisfying and comprehensive theory of schizophrenia that took account of both
biochemical and psychological factors had to prevail before justifying additional
investments in medical technology. The absence of theoretical approaches, they
complained, meant that mental health therapies relied on chance as much as
science.21
Early in 1951, Smythies and Osmond embarked on a research program that
investigated the biochemical and psychological basis of schizophrenia. First,
they devised a research protocol based on human experimentation with mesca-
line and LSD. Their approach relied on “start[ing] with the signs and symptoms
and natural history of schizophrenia and ask[ing] ourselves how these could be
produced, refusing to be diverted by the existing schools of thought.” They en-
visioned a two-part program. First they would identify the biochemical and
metabolic processes; second they would collect experiences from subjects under
the influence of mescaline or LSD.22
 Psychedelic Pioneers 19

They quickly realized, however, that their colleagues at St. George’s Hospital
were uninterested in supporting this research program.23 Osmond began look-
ing elsewhere for opportunities to develop the hypothesis. After responding to
an advertisement in Lancet, he was invited by the government of Saskatchewan
to assume a position in Weyburn. He and his family moved from London, En-
gland, to Weyburn, Saskatchewan, in October 1951.

From Dust Bowl to Drugs

When the Osmonds arrived in Saskatchewan, the province was in the midst
of transforming itself. In 1944, Saskatchewan had elected one of North Ameri-
ca’s first social democratic governments. The ruling party, the Co- operative
Commonwealth Federation (CCF) led by Tommy Douglas, campaigned as an
activist government committed to radical experimentation in public policy as
well as in the domains of science, medicine, agriculture, and technology. The
party remained in power for five consecutive four-year terms. Throughout its
tenure, the CCF government expressed a commitment to nurture innovation.
In par ticular, this government became known throughout Canada as the first
provincial jurisdiction to enact a program of publicly funded health care, a sys-
tem that the Canadian federal government adopted in 1966.24 The CCF’s re-
form agenda attracted professionals from around the world who enthusiastically
tested new theories and challenged old paradigms in a variety of areas. The
governing party’s socialist ideology and rural base produced a peculiar mix of
agrarian socialism that made the province an attractive destination for many
politically curious individuals.25 Although Saskatchewan was not the only re-
gion that developed a new political party at this time, the CCF’s popularity
demonstrated the willingness with which Saskatchewan residents welcomed
change in the postwar period.26
Saskatchewan’s premier, Thomas “Tommy” Clement Douglas, had a long-
standing interest in mental health issues. His master’s thesis at McMaster
University’s campus in Brandon, Manitoba, explored social problems associ-
ated with mental diseases. The 1933 thesis recommended a variety of commu-
nity endeavors for addressing what appeared to be increasing rates of mental
illness in the twentieth century. In his study, Douglas examined the commu-
nity of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and recommended initiatives in public educa-
tion, religious instruction, state-supported treatment facilities, and even
sterilization to alleviate the mounting stresses of mental illness in the commu-
nity.27 Although his perspectives had changed somewhat by the time he became
 20 Psychedelic Psychiatry

N O RT H W E ST TERRITO RIES
N

MA NI TO BA
CANADA
S A S K AT C H E WA N

Provincial Mental Hospital,

AL BE RTA

North Battleford

University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatoon

General Hospital, Munro Wing,

Regina
North Battleford
Saskatoon
Psychiatric Centre,
Yorkton

Yorkton Provincial Mental Hospital

Regina Weyburn

Weyburn
0 300 km

U N I TED STATES

Sites of psychiatric research in Saskatchewan during the 1950s and 1960s.

premier, Douglas maintained a keen interest in mental health programs and

ensured that psychiatric ser vices were included in discussions about plans for
health care reforms.
Until 1914, Saskatchewan residents seeking mental health care had to travel
to the neighboring provinces of Alberta or Manitoba for medical attention.28
That year the first provincial mental hospital opened at North Battleford, in the
northwest region of the province below the tree line. Seven years later, the sec-
ond mental hospital opened in Weyburn, in the southeast corner of the prov-
ince. By the end of the Second World War each facility housed over two thousand
patients, which was well beyond their capacity.29 Because both institutions were
overcrowded, the Saskatchewan government planned to build a third facility in
Saskatoon.30 Plans for this facility were stalled by poor economic conditions
 Psychedelic Pioneers 21

Thomas “Tommy” C. Douglas, ca. 1944. Douglas was Saskatchewan’s premier from
1944 to 1961. Under his administration, the attention given to health care reforms
attracted medical researchers to the region. Photo no. R-A5739-2. Courtesy of the
Saskatchewan Archives Board.

throughout the 1930s followed by concentrated spending on the war effort dur-
ing the first half of the 1940s.
After World War II several regions across North America faced increases in
patient populations. In 1950, the National Department of Health and Welfare in
Canada reported that nearly sixty thousand people resided in mental hospitals
across the country. This figure represented an increase of almost four thousand
patients from the previous year and reflected a growing trend over the last de-
cade. In addition to the increased need for institutional space, the costs of main-
taining patients within institutions also rose.31 Predictions showed no signs of
a reversal; therefore, political and clinical attention began focusing on develop-
ing sustainable solutions that did not involve dependence on expensive,
 22 Psychedelic Psychiatry

Saskatchewan Mental Hospital, Weyburn. Opened in 1921, this was the second mental
health hospital in Saskatchewan. By the end of World War II both Saskatchewan hospitals
were overcrowded. Courtesy of the Soo Line Historical Museum Archives.

large-scale institutions. In the late 1940s, the Saskatchewan government aban-

doned its earlier plans to construct a third mental health facility in Saskatoon
and instead entertained new options.
Douglas deplored the tradition of placing people with mental illnesses in
custodial institutions. He maintained that overcrowded and understaffed asy-
lums produced terrible conditions for therapy. Moreover, where professionals
were available, he felt they were often too busy attending day-to- day duties
rather than engaging in medical research that might produce more satisfying
alternatives to institutionalization. He believed that a hospital should be a place
of last resort, and that care among relatives and within a familiar community
 Psychedelic Pioneers 23

was almost always preferable to long stays in a hospital. Mental health ser vices,
according to Douglas, should be provided in a comprehensive manner that em-
phasized preventative medicine and involved professional collaboration in the
community. His strategy for accomplishing this objective relied on a combina-
tion of increasing psychiatric research and initiating an aggressive public edu-
cation campaign. Taking cues from a well-known sympathizer of socialized
medicine, Johns Hopkins’s professor in the history of medicine Henry E. Siger-
ist, Douglas proposed that “steps should be taken . . . to get at these people be-
fore they get to hospital; to provide for early diagnosis and treatment; to get the
psychoneurotic and borderline cases in the early stages; to have people take a
new attitude to mental disease; to get the public to know that there is no more
disgrace for one member of the family to get mentally ill than there is for any
other member of the family to [get] pneumonia.”32 This focus on noninstitu-
tional medical intervention set the agenda for mental health reforms in the
province that emphasized innovative medical research and new conceptualiza-
tions of mental illnesses.
In an effort to recast the province as an exciting, avant-garde, even cosmo-
politan, place to be, Douglas and his government appealed to medical research-
ers with promises of research grants, professional autonomy, and an opportunity
to participate in the formation of North America’s first program of socialized
medicine. The attention given to health care reforms transformed the region
into an attractive destination for medical researchers. The erosion of the re-
gion’s professional class during the Depression had created a professional vac-
uum. Conditions on the prairies were among the most severe in North America,
and local residents readily embraced recommendations for new and replenished
ser vices in communities that had struggled to retain professionals during the
decade-long Depression. The CCF government recruited doctors and medical
researchers to fill senior positions in the rapidly expanding provincial civil ser-
vice. A delicate and complicated set of historical and psychological factors gave
rise to a new vision for the region that, above all, created opportunities for
experimentation.
For some people, Saskatchewan became an ideological magnet, attracting
people from around the world who hoped to participate in the various experi-
ments taking place. During the Depression and the Second World War, the pop-
ulation of the province had decreased by nearly 100,000 residents; that population
had nearly been recouped by the early 1960s.33 Medical and mental health inves-
tigators were among those drawn to the province. Robert Sommer, for example,
came to Weyburn in 1957. Sommer was the first research psychologist in the
 24 Psychedelic Psychiatry

area. He and his family, who drove from Kansas to Saskatchewan in their Volvo,
looked forward to living in the “socially progressive” region. Sommer later
claimed that the sparse professional population reduced the stifling influence of
bureaucracy and tradition. He said there was “a professional freedom for experi-
mentation not found elsewhere.” Morgan White, a colleague in Winnipeg, sug-
gested that “Saskatchewan has the reputation for being a place where things
happen. It has attracted within its borders a group of vigorous, independent,
young psychologists whose style of work may set the pattern for the rest of Can-
ada.” Rhodes scholar Allen Blakeney, who in 1944 was a Dalhousie law student,
moved to Regina after completing his law degree because he “wanted to be part
of the action.”34 The region captivated him, and in 1971 he became premier of the
province.
The province appealed to people for myriad reasons. One woman recalled
that upon completing high school in British Columbia she set her sights on
Saskatchewan. She had heard that the government would pay tuition for women
who wanted to go to nursing school. Sold on this idea, she moved from Vancou-
ver to Weyburn, where she started nursing school. She remembered this as one
of the “most exciting times in her life”; not only did she leave home for the first
time but she met people from all over the world who brought with them their
ideas, energy, and cosmopolitan influences. In Weyburn she was introduced to
jazz.35
Contrasted with the province’s postwar appeal were grim reminders of
the previous de cade that made the province unappealing to anyone seeking
an abundance of modern amenities or an urban environment. For many peo-
ple, Saskatchewan remained a backwoods, rural region, disagreeable to well-
established professional organizations or high culture traditions.36 Until the
late 1950s, much of the province had only limited access to electricity and in
many areas indoor plumbing was a luxury. Saskatchewan’s economy, despite
the many changes on the political horizon, was dominated by agriculture. The
development of the province’s professional class, even in urban areas, still paled
in comparison with other regions in the country.
Nonetheless, the optimism and political stability generated by five consec-
utive CCF victories made Saskatchewan an attractive destination for people
interested in participating in a culture of experimentation. The journalist
Ross Crockford remarked: “It was an age of bold experiments. . . . The pio-
neering spirit went beyond art and Medicare, though; it dared to explore the
brain, the psyche and dimensions that passeth all understanding. In the late
1950s, Saskatchewan was home to the largest LSD experiments in the world.”37
 Psychedelic Pioneers 25

In the 1940s the province busied itself establishing the groundwork for re-
forms that would eventually make Saskatchewan a world leader in psychiatric
experimentation.

Psychiatric Services
In November 1946, Premier Douglas appointed a commissioner of mental
health ser vices who also acted as chief psychiatrist for the province. D. G.
(Griff) McKerracher came to Saskatchewan from the Ontario Health Depart-
ment following his ser vice as a medical doctor with the Canadian army during
the Second World War. McKerracher seized upon the opportunity to effect
changes in psychiatric ser vices.38
Part of McKerracher’s vision for psychiatric ser vices in Saskatchewan in-
volved recruiting psychiatrists to the region and facilitating the development of
an active research program. He felt the criteria for reaching this objective in
Saskatchewan’s postwar political climate had to focus on scientific research ini-
tiatives. One of his colleagues recalled McKerracher complaining that “psychia-
try suffered from being alienated from medicine. Medicine tended to be
something you could see through a microscope and you can’t see anything in
psychiatry through a microscope. You can’t lay hands on it; it is all ideas.” The
absence of empirical measures in psychiatry made it a more abstract medical
subject, which McKerracher felt dissuaded students from pursuing careers in
psychiatry and contributed to a lack of trained personnel in the field. McKer-
racher strongly urged a reconceptualization of mental health as an area indis-
tinguishable from general medicine, meaning that its treatment would take
place in a general hospital and general practitioners would play a more active
role in mental health care. Rather than providing health care in separate institu-
tions, which reinforced professional divisions, psychiatric medicine should
form an integral part of modern medicine, similar to many other medical sub-
specialities. Accomplishing this goal required a change in professional and lay
attitudes as well as the integration of appropriate care facilities into the general
health system.39
McKerracher was particularly committed to merging mental and physical
health care systems because of his underlying belief that attitudes toward
mental illnesses were too often shaped by misleading stereotypes. Psychiatric
illnesses carried significant social stigmas based on misconceptions that dis-
ordered behaviors resulted from weak characters or a dysfunctional upbring-
ing. 40 The shortage of professionals in combination with social stigmatization
 26 Psychedelic Psychiatry

meant that mental health care had often languished as a medical specialty
and remained a low priority for public spending. The enticement of major
health care reforms in the province, Douglas’s personal interest in mental
health, McKerracher’s commitment to administrative reforms, and the prom-
ise of new psychiatric research initiatives brought renewed optimism to the
field. McKerracher took advantage of this opportunity and began directing a
program of research in psychiatric ser vices that nurtured novel perspectives
in mental health. 41

Psychedelic Pioneers
Osmond arrived in Saskatchewan during this period of unbounded opti-
mism; he wasted no time launching his research anew from his position as
clinical director of the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital. Within a week of his ar-
rival, he met Abram Hoffer. The two men quickly established a pattern of regu-
lar correspondence that endured for the next forty years. John Smythies
continued to participate in the unfolding biochemical research and mescaline
experiments throughout the next two decades but spent only a short time in
Saskatchewan.42
Hoffer, like Osmond, was born in 1917, but he grew up in a small farming
community in Saskatchewan named after his father, Israel Hoffer.43 He also
took a different path into medicine. Abram Hoffer graduated from the provin-
cial university in Saskatoon with a bachelor of sciences degree in agricultural
chemistry in 1937. Three years later he completed a master’s degree in agricul-
ture and received an award allowing him to spend a year at the University of
Minnesota conducting research on cereal chemistry. Enamored with this sub-
ject, he continued in this field, graduating in 1944 with a PhD in agriculture.
His doctoral research had introduced him to the study of vitamins, particularly
vitamin B, and their effects on the human body. Having developed a strong
background in agricultural chemistry, Hoffer began studying biochemistry as
it pertained to medicine. In 1949, he completed his medical degree at the Uni-
versity of Toronto, where he had developed a par ticular interest in psychiatry.
On July 1, 1950, Hoffer was hired by the Saskatchewan Department of Public
Health to establish a research program in psychiatry for the province.44
Hoffer and Osmond soon joined forces and began collaborating on their mu-
tual research interests in biochemical experimentation. Osmond’s interest in
mescaline led him to LSD, which he discovered produced similar reactions to
those observed with mescaline. But LSD was a much more powerful drug. Early
 Psychedelic Pioneers 27

Abram Hoffer. Hoffer earned a doctorate in agriculture before completing his medical
degree in 1949. He and Osmond collaborated on research with the Psychiatric Ser vices
Branch in Saskatchewan. Courtesy of Abram Hoffer.

trials indicated that the drug might have the potential to help advance a theory
of mental illness that promoted a biochemical explanation. Hoffer, Smythies,
and Osmond explained mental illness as a manifestation of metabolic dysfunc-
tion. If mental illness was in fact a biochemical entity, it could be studied (and
ultimately treated) using modern medical technology. And like physical ill-
nesses, mental illness might ultimately and literally be observable under a
microscope.
The research possibilities generated by Hoffer and Osmond’s theories at-
tracted other people to the province, where they eagerly contributed to the expan-
sion of biochemical studies. Osmond injected a flare of adventure and
cosmopolitanism into the small rural community and fascinated others with his
“bright ideas.”45 Hoffer’s superior administration skills helped secure research
 28 Psychedelic Psychiatry

grants for their work. In addition, Hoffer’s association with the provincial uni-
versity gave him regular access to medical students for teaching and research
purposes. As clinical investigations progressed, many believed that studies with
LSD offered demonstrable proof of the biochemical nature of mental illnesses
and supported the assertion that mental health care should be equal to that avail-
able for physical ailments. The stimulation of theories about mental health capti-
vated interests in this region that was politically committed to reshaping attitudes
toward health and its care. Support for LSD experimentation became part of a
regional commitment to health care reforms.
Throughout the process of establishing medical research in the province,
Premier Douglas reinforced the notion that co- operation and commitment to a
new publicly funded health care system was the linchpin that would reform the
province. Conscripting support at all levels of government, Douglas assured the
people of Saskatchewan that major health care reforms would chart a new fu-
ture for the region: “We are on the vanguard of public health on this continent,
because we have a health conscious people who regard health as something be-
yond price, who are convinced that health is a public utility and the right of
every individual in the nation.”46 Douglas campaigned for a universal health
care plan, one that provided access for all citizens and removed dependence on
insurers. Part of realizing this objective involved investing in medical
research.
Not everyone expressed enthusiasm for the government attention directed
toward drug experimentation. Some of Hoffer and Osmond’s colleagues felt
that this course of research received too much support and that, as a result,
other areas of study were neglected.47 The concentration on an experimental
theory went against mainstream thinking in psychiatry and risked having the
province endorse fruitless research endeavors.48 LSD experimentation nonethe-
less appealed to some psychiatrists and government officials as a legitimate
scientific endeavor that could lead to major breakthroughs in mental health
treatments.
Hoffer and Osmond used their LSD experiments to bolster a biochemical
theory of mental illness, while psychiatrists in other regions employed LSD for
different theoretical aims. They were not the only psychiatrists experimenting
with this drug during the 1950s, but their work benefited from the local support
they received. The political and cultural encouragement allowed them to inves-
tigate LSD with sustained attention. Because their experiments formed part of
the contemporaneous health care reforms, their research also had immediate
practical applications. Their close relationship with the provincial government
 Psychedelic Pioneers 29

provided opportunities to test their theories that did not exist elsewhere. They
were internationally recognized as leaders within the field.
In 1955, Abram Hoffer boasted that Saskatchewan offered optimal condi-
tions for scientific research. He attributed this situation to a mixture of govern-
ment support and professional liberty. He claimed that researchers there
enjoyed an “unusually fertile climate for research—not in terms of temperature
or snow or wind, though Saskatchewan is prodigal with these—but a climate of
freedom.” He added that the “unique” environment in Saskatchewan would
undoubtedly make the province a world leader in medical research through its
capacity to attract top scientists and explore fresh ideas. The blend of political
and medical enthusiasm for innovation in post–World War II Saskatchewan at-
tracted professionals to the region and contributed to its reputation as an inter-
national leader in LSD studies.49
Saskatchewan in the 1950s also became an important laboratory for investi-
gating new public policies and medical ideas. People such as Osmond and Hof-
fer took advantage of these conditions and launched a research program that
challenged existing psychiatric and psychoanalytic explanations for mental dis-
orders. With professional and political support, they managed to weave their
research program into the political reforms in the region. As the program un-
folded, they attracted attention from outside the province, which initially fueled
their research agenda.
The ideological context shaped the research program in Saskatchewan as
well as its local reception. But their research was not inconsistent with broader
developments in the field of mental health. The increasing use of drugs in psy-
chiatry had a revolutionary influence on mental health treatments in the second
half of the twentieth century, and this trend relied, to a large extent, on changes
in the theory and practice of psychiatry. Psychiatric practice at midcentury has
often been described as existing at a crossroads: institutionally based practi-
tioners relied on somatic or bodily interventions that seemed outdated or prob-
lematic; community-based psychoanalysts used approaches that lacked a
biological foundation and did not seem to work, particularly with severe men-
tal illnesses. The LSD therapies developed in Saskatchewan did not fit neatly
into either category but instead reflected aspects of both approaches. This ap-
proach was infused with new ideas inspired by what became known as the
psychedelic experience.50
Psychedelic therapies relied both on a biochemical model of mental illness
and the scientific observation of a subjective experience. By combining these
two elements in one practice, Hoffer and Osmond presented their approach as a
 30 Psychedelic Psychiatry

new theory that merged philosophical and psychological traditions with bio-
medical advances. They distinguished themselves from the psychoanalysts,
whom they regarded as dogmatic therapists largely concerned with treating
middle- class patients, or the worried well. They also differed from psychophar-
macologists, who they felt were equally obsessed with the collection of data
without consideration for the deeper meanings of personal experience. Armed
with their own delicate mixture of biomedical and philosophical influences,
Hoffer and Osmond promoted an alternative to psychopharmacology and psy-
choanalysis with a method that incorporated the use of psychedelics as a means
for bridging some of the theoretical distance between these two models.
Psychiatry had a long tradition of using drugs, but during the postwar pe-
riod the number of psychopharmacological agents increased substantially.51
Somatic treatments, or bodily therapies, such as malaria, insulin- coma, and
electroconvulsive therapy, largely dominated North American psychiatry before
the Second World War; their declining use in the 1950s corresponded with an
increase in psychopharmacological treatments.52 Lobotomies and shock thera-
pies increasingly provoked concerns over the ethical implications of their use
and made patients, and some psychiatrists, apprehensive about the growing
margin of risk associated with invasive and irreversible treatments.53 The fail-
ure of somatic therapies when compared with psychopharmacological treat-
ments suggests that not only the technology and theories were altered in the
postwar period but also the cultural climate surrounding the reception of psy-
chiatric medicine. In the public mind, somatic therapies, particularly ECT and
lobotomies, were dangerous, irreversible, and painful. Drugs, which ostensibly
offered a safer and easier form of treatment, were more readily accepted by pa-
tients and their families.
Psychopharmacology, which eclipsed somatic therapies at midcentury, suc-
ceeded in overtaking psychoanalysis in the second half of the twentieth century.
The introduction of drugs did not initially threaten to overhaul psychoanalysis.
For example, psychoanalysts justified the use of some drugs that helped patients
ease into and out of therapy sessions, whether the drugs were tranquilizers, anti-
depressants, or even psychedelics. Psychoanalysts believed these substances as-
sisted in speeding up the critical development of the doctor-patient relationship
necessary for therapeutic breakthroughs. As drug treatments relied more on bio-
logical theories of mental disorder, the belief that the illness derived from an uni-
dentified brain lesion or neurochemical disruption challenged psychoanalytical
theories. Gradually, the increased dependence on drug treatments in psychiatry
 Psychedelic Pioneers 31

eroded psychoanalytic paradigms and gave way to drug therapies or psychophar-

macological imperatives.
The class of drugs involved in the psychopharmacological revolution and the
theories underpinning their use depended on vastly different understandings
of the causation of mental disorder. Drugs provided psychiatrists with new tools
for studying human behavior and its potential biochemical causes. Chemical
research in the 1950s led to the introduction of new antibiotics, diuretics, anti-
hypertensives, and hypoglycemic agents, encouraging clinical researchers to
continue exploring the potential uses for chemical agents in other areas of
health.54
LSD research in Saskatchewan fit into these broader developments in psy-
chiatry and pharmacology. Ideas arising out of the LSD trials suggested that
mental illness had biological and social precedents and thus required treat-
ments tailored to both sets of needs. LSD offered people a conscious experience
that initially seemed to support theories from biochemists and from psychoana-
lysts. Hoffer and Osmond developed a psychedelic therapy that used chemicals
to trigger new perceptions of self. The psychedelic experience affected people
differently: some approached it philosophically; others insisted that the experi-
ence invoked changes in spirituality; and still others felt it modified their epis-
temological worldview. Regardless of the interpretation of the treatments’
subjective meaning, people regularly believed that the LSD experience funda-
mentally modified their being. In this way LSD treatments differed from most
other psychopharmacological therapies designed to treat a par ticular disorder.
During the 1950s, psychedelic psychiatry promised a consciousness-raising,
identity- changing therapy within a medically sanctioned and scientifically rig-
orous environment.
 chapter two

Simulating Psychoses

“My 12 Hours as a Madman” appeared in Maclean’s, a national Canadian

magazine, in October 1953. In the article, the journalist Sidney Katz offered
readers a vivid description of his LSD experience in a hospital ward in Weyburn.
He was the first nonmedical participant to volunteer for an LSD experiment in
Saskatchewan. His article, like Huxley’s book about the mescaline reaction,
drew attention to the drug experiments being done in Saskatchewan. Katz con-
veyed some of the sensations that would become routinely identified as part of
an LSD reaction:

I will never be able to describe fully what happened to me during my excursion

into madness. There are no words in the English language designed to convey the
sensations I felt or the visions, illusions, hallucinations, colors, patterns and di-
mensions which my disordered mind revealed.
I saw faces of familiar friends turn into fleshless skulls and the heads of men-
acing witches, pigs and weasels. The gaily patterned carpet at my feet was trans-
formed into a fabulous heaving mass of living matter, part vegetable, part
animal. . . . I was repeatedly held in the grip of a terrifying hallucination in which
I could feel and see my body convulse and shrink until all that remained was a
hard sickly stone. . . . Time lost all meaning. . . . Mysterious flashes of multicol-
oured light came and went. The dimensions of the room, elasticlike, stretched
and shrank. . . . But my hours of madness were not all filled with horror and
frenzy. At times I beheld visions of dazzling beauty—visions so rapturous, so
unearthly, that no artist will ever paint them.1

Katz participated in this experiment in an effort to more widely publicize the

drug studies that were beginning to take shape in Weyburn.
When Katz took LSD that day in June 1953, Charles Jillings, Humphry
Osmond, Ben Stefaniuk, and Elaine Cumming monitored him throughout the
twelve-hour-long experiment. They explained to him before he took the drug
“10.45 a.m. The Ordeal Begins: Sidney Katz swallows a dose of drug LSD, closely
supervised by Saskatchewan mental health research scientists Charles Jillings,
Humphry Osmond, Ben Stefaniuk and Elaine Cumming.” From “My Twelve Hours as
a Madman,” by Sidney Katz, Maclean’s, October 1953. Photograph by Mike Kesterton;
used with permission.

“12.01 p.m. What a Madman Saw in Folds of a Towel: Dr. Osmond spread a towel on
Katz’ eyes and promised ‘a pleasant surprise.’ Instantly, he was transported to a temple
at the gates of paradise, in which paraded tiny Oriental empresses in gowns studded
with bright gems.” From “My Twelve Hours as a Madman,” by Sidney Katz, Maclean’s,
October 1953. Photograph by Mike Kesterton; used with permission.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Still narrower grew the passage. Some of the parts we had passed
through were already closed. The wind, fortunately, held fair, and
though it contributed to drive the ice faster in on us, it yet favored
our escape. The ship flew through the water at a great rate, heeling
over to her ports, but though at times it seemed as if the masts
would go over the sides, still the captain held on. A minute's delay
might prove our destruction.
Every one held their breaths, as the width of the passage decreased,
though we had but a short distance more to make good before we
should be free.
I must confess that all the time I did not myself feel any sense of
fear. I thought it was a danger more to be apprehended for others
than for myself. At length a shout from the deck reached my ears,
and looking round, I saw that we were on the outside of the floe.
We were just in time, for, the instant after, the ice met, and the
passage through which we had come, was completely closed up.
The order was now given, to keep the helm up, and to square away
the yards, and with a flowing sheet we ran down the edge of the ice
for upward of three miles, before we were clear of it.
Only then did people begin to inquire what had become of the ship
we had lately seen. I gave my account, but few expressed any great
commiseration for the fate of those who were lost. Our captain had
had enough of ice, so he steered a course to get as fast as possible
into more southern latitudes.
 THE DOG AND DEER OF THE ARMY.
Many of the citizens of Edinburgh will remember a beautiful deer
which, many years ago, accompanied the Forty-second Highlanders,
and how thousands in Princes-street were wont to admire the stately
step, the proud and haughty toss of the antlers, and the mild, and
we may almost say benignant eye of this singularly-placed animal.
Few persons, however, thought of inquiring into the history of this
denizen of the hills, or how it came to pass that an animal naturally
shy to an extraordinary degree, should have been so tamed as to
take evident delight in military array, and the martial music of a
Highland regiment. Still fewer, immersed in their city life, were
acquainted with the amazing swiftness, the keen scent, and the
daring bravery of the stag; whose qualities, indeed, might be taken
as a type of those of the distinguished regiment to which it became
attached. The French could abide the charge of British cavalry; they
had some sort of understanding of such a mode of warfare; indeed,
to do them justice, they were both skillful and brave in the use and
knowledge of arms. But the deadly charge of the Highlanders was a
puzzler both to their science and courage, and they could by no
effort face the forests of cold steel—the bristling bayonets of the
kilted clans. Among these regiments none suffered more—excepting,
perhaps, the Ninety-Second—than the regiment which afterward
adopted the deer as a living memorial of their mountain fastnesses;
and a dog likewise, which became attached to, and for years
accompanied the same regiment, may be supposed to symbol the
fidelity so strikingly characteristic of the Highlanders.
Both the animals adopted by the regiment made their appearance in
the ranks about the year 1832, at St. Ema, in Malta. The deer was
presented by a friend of one of the officers, and the dog belonged
originally to an officer of the navy, who happened to dine at the
mess. The latter animal, from that very night, formed a strong
attachment for the officers and men of the Forty-second; no
commands or enticements could induce him to quit the corporate
object of his affection, and his master at length, yielding to a
determination he could not conquer, presented the animal, which
was of the noble Newfoundland breed, to the regiment. The
attachment very soon became mutual, and thereafter the dog would
follow no one who did not wear the uniform and belong to the corps.
The men subscribed a trifle each, with which a handsome collar was
provided for their friend, inscribed "Regimental Dog, Forty-second
Royal Highlanders." They gave him the name of "Peter," and it was a
strange and notable day in the calendar of the soldiers when Peter
and the deer, who were strongly attached to each other, did not
appear on parade. Peter, it may be supposed, was a great frequenter
of the cook-house, where a luxurious bone, together with a pat on
the head, and a word or two of recognition, was his daily dole from
the cooks—with one exception. When this churlish person officiated,
Peter was frequently obliged to retire minus his rations, and
sometimes even with blows instead—a kind of treatment which he
could by no means reconcile with the respect due to him as the
faithful adherent of so distinguished a corps. At any time when Peter
happened to meet the delinquent, he was seen just to give a look
over his head and a wag with his tail, and walk off, as much as to
say, "I have a crow to pluck with you."
By-and-by the season of bathing parades came round, and he used
to accompany the soldiers in the mornings in such recreations, and
was generally the first to take the water, and the last to leave it; he
wished to see all safe. He knew his own power in this element, as
well as his enemy's power out of it; and it was with a savage joy he
saw one day the churlish cook trust himself to the waves. Peter
instantly swam toward him, and pulled him down under the water,
and would doubtless have drowned him, had not some of the
soldiers come to the rescue. A still more curious exercise of his
instinct is related of his residence at Fort Neuf in Malta, which is
situated to the north of Corfu, and the entrance to which is a
subterranean passage of considerable length. Beyond the mouth of
this cavern Peter was in the habit of ranging to the distance of
thirty-two feet, and as the hour of recall approached, would there sit
with eyes intent and ears erect waiting the return of the soldiers.
When the trumpet sounded, he showed evidences of some
excitement and anxiety; and at the last note went at once to the
right-about, and, as fast as his legs could carry him, made for the
entrance, and was in a few seconds in the interior of the fort. The
reason he went no farther than the thirty-two feet was apparently a
consciousness that he had no pass, without which the men, he
observed, were not permitted to exceed the boundary! That Peter
actually understood this regulation was firmly believed both by the
non-commissioned officers and soldiers.
The police at Malta, especially at Corfu, are very particular with
respect to dogs in warm weather. They may be seen almost daily
going about with carts, on which are set up wooden screens
garnished with hooks, such as butchers use for suspending meat;
and it is no uncommon thing to see from nine to a dozen canine
corpses suspended from these hooks. Peter, it may be imagined, had
a great horror of this ghastly show; and indeed he made many
narrow escapes from the dog-hangman. The regimental collar,
however, was put on him, and every precaution used by the men to
prevent his being destroyed. He was still allowed to go at large, but
was always observed to look with a suspicious and uneasy eye at the
death-cart.
Both the dog and the deer preferred to abide by the head of the
regiment, in and out of quarters. They always remained with the
band. The men composing the band have generally quarters apart
from the other soldiers, this being more convenient for their musical
studies and practice. Peter, although he would follow any of the
soldiers in their Highland dress out of doors, generally preferred the
quarters of the band; and should one-half or a part of the regiment
be stationed at one place, and the other at another, whenever they
separated on the road to their respective quarters, Peter would give
a wistful look from one to the other, but invariably follow the party
which was accompanied by the band. The same was the case with
the stag. He likewise took up his quarters with the band, and
followed closely behind them on their march. This individual was in
the habit of going into the rooms of his friends for a biscuit, of which
he was very fond; but if the article had received the contamination
of the men's breath, he would at once reject it. Experiments were
tried by concealing the biscuit that had been breathed upon, and
then presenting it as a fresh one; but the instinct of the deer was
not to be deceived. Latterly, this animal became extremely irritable,
and if a stranger attempted to pass between the band and the main
body of the regiment, he attacked the offender with his antlers. The
combativeness of Peter was mingled in a remarkable manner with
prudence. Being once attacked by a mastiff of greatly superior size
and strength, he fled for upward of a mile before his enemy, till he
came to his own ground at the entrance of the fort; he then turned
to bay, and gave his adversary effectual battle.
One day in 1834, while the deer was grazing and eating herbs on
the top of Fort Neuf, situated to the north of Corfu, a cat in the
vicinity, startled perhaps by the appearance of the animal, bristled
up as puss does to a dog. On this slight alarm the deer was seized
with a sudden panic, and with one bound sprung over the precipice
—a height of two hundred feet—and was killed on the spot. It was
remarkable that its friend the dog, although not immediately on the
spot, rushed to the battlements instantly, and barked and yelled
most piteously. The death of Peter, which occurred in 1837, was also
of a tragical kind. He chanced to snarl at an officer (who had ill-used
him previously) on his entrance into Edinburgh Castle, of which the
two-legged creature took advantage, and ordered him to be shot.
This was accordingly done; and so poor Peter, in the inexorable
course of military law, fell by the arms of the men who had so long
been his kind comrades, and who continue to lament him to this
hour.
 Monthly Record of Current Events.
POLITICAL AND GENERAL NEWS.
THE UNITED STATES.

The Political Intelligence of the past month is of less than usual

interest. In our last number we gave a very full analysis of the
various documents transmitted to Congress at the opening of the
session. The proceedings of that body have been comparatively
unimportant. One or two motions have been made in the House of
Representatives for the purpose of inducing action on the law of the
last session concerning fugitives from labor, but they have been
rejected by large majorities. All the indications, thus far, clearly show
that Congress is disposed to leave the several measures of the last
session, relating to slavery, entirely untouched. There have been
discussions in both branches upon the construction of a railroad to
the Pacific, upon the land titles of California, and upon other projects
of more or less importance: but as no decisive action has been had
upon them, it is not necessary to make further reference to them
here.
While the issue of the Hungarian contest was yet doubtful, President
Taylor dispatched Mr. A. Dudley Mann to Vienna as special agent, with
instructions to watch the progress of the movement, and in case of
its success to recognize the Hungarian Republic. Any such action
was prevented by the overthrow of the Hungarian cause; but the
Austrian Chargé at Washington, Chevalier Hulsemann, took occasion
of the communication to the Senate of the instructions given to Mr.
Mann, to enter, in the name of his government, a formal protest
against the procedure of the United States, as an unwarrantable
interference in the affairs of a friendly power; and as a breach of
propriety in national intercourse, jeopardizing the amity between the
two countries. He took special exceptions to the epithet iron rule,
said to be applied to the government of Austria, to the designation
of Kossuth as an illustrious man, and to "improper expressions" in
regard to Russia, "the intimate and faithful ally of Austria." He said
that Mr. Mann had been placed in a position which rendered him
liable to the treatment of a spy; and concluded by hinting that the
United States were not free from the danger of civil war, and were
liable to acts of retaliation. To this protest a most masterly and
conclusive reply was furnished by Mr. Webster. Seizing upon the fatal
admission of Mr. Hulsemann, that his government would not have
felt itself constrained to notice the matter, but for the Message of the
President to the Senate, he showed that in taking exception to any
communication from one department of our government to another,
Austria was guilty of that very interference in the affairs of a foreign
power, of which she complained. But waiving this decisive
advantage, Mr. Webster went on to show that the conduct of the
United States was in perfect accordance with the practice of all
civilized governments, and Austria in particular; that the epithet "iron
rule," applied to the Austrian government, did not occur in the
instructions, that the designation of Kossuth as illustrious was
precisely parallel to the favorable notice—no where more favorable
than in Austria—accorded to Washington and Franklin, while they
were technically rebels against Great Britain; and that as Russia had
taken no exception to any mention of her, all such exception on the
part of Austria was officious and uncalled for. He says that had the
Austrian government subjected Mr. Mann to the treatment of a spy,
it would have placed itself beyond the pale of civilized nations, and
the spirit of the people of this country would have demanded
immediate hostilities to be waged by the utmost exertion of the
power of the Republic. In respect to the hypothetical retaliation
hinted at, he says that the United States were quite willing to take
their chance, and abide their destiny; but that any discussion of the
matter now, would be idle; but in the meanwhile, the United States
would exercise their own discretion in the expression of opinions
upon political events. The reply concludes, with the most exquisite
irony, by assuring Mr. Hulsemann that, believing the principles of civil
liberty upon which our government is founded, to be the only ones
which can meet the demands of the present age, "the President has
perceived with great satisfaction that, in the Constitution recently
introduced into the Austrian empire, many of these great principles
are recognized and applied, and he cherishes a sincere wish that
they may produce the same happy effect throughout his Austrian
Majesty's extensive dominions that they have done in the United
States."
The Legislature of the State of New York met at Albany on the 7th of
January. Lieutenant-Governor Church presides in the Senate, which
consists of seventeen Whigs and fifteen Democrats. H.J. Raymond, of
New York City, was elected Speaker of the Assembly, which consists
of eighty-two Whigs and forty-six Democrats, and R.U. Sherman, of
Oneida County, was elected Clerk. The Message of Governor Hunt
was sent in on the first day of the session. It presents an able and
explicit exposition of the affairs of the State. The financial condition
of the State is very satisfactory. The General Fund has met all the
current expenses of the year, and has a surplus of $54,520. The
aggregate debt of the State is $22,530,802, of which $16,171,109 is
on account of the canals. The amount received for canal tolls during
the year was $3,486,172. The Governor recommends an amendment
of the Constitution, so as to allow the State to contract a debt for
the more speedy enlargement of the Erie Canal, and submits
considerations growing out of the increasing business and wants of
the State, sustaining this suggestion. The Governor recommends a
thorough revision of the Free School Law, the establishment of an
Agricultural School, an amendment of the laws, so as to insure a
more equal assessment of property, and an exploration of the wild
lands in the northern part of the State. In regard to the difficulties
that have hitherto prevailed in the Anti-Rent districts, the Message
suggests that they may be obviated by the purchase of the lands in
question by the State, and their sale to the tenants on equitable
terms. Upon national topics the Message says but little. It urges the
importance of faithfully fulfilling the provisions of all existing laws,
and deprecates very warmly all discussions or suggestions looking
toward a dissolution of the Union. The provision of the Federal
Constitution for the surrender of fugitives from labor, it says, is of
paramount importance, and must be observed in good faith. But
"while the claim of the Southern slaveholder to re-capture his slave
is fully admitted," the Governor says, "the right of the Northern
freeman to prove and defend his freedom is equally sacred." The
existing law upon this subject, he says, must be obeyed, though he
thinks it contains defects which men of the South and of the North
will, at the proper time, unite to remedy. "In the mean time," he
adds, "our people must be left free to examine its provisions and
practical operation. Their vital and fundamental right to discuss the
merits of this or any other law passed by their representatives,
constitutes the very basis of our republican system, and can never
be surrendered. Any attempt to restrain it would prove far more
dangerous than its freest exercise. But in all such discussions we
should divest ourselves of sectional or partisan prejudice, and
exercise a spirit of comprehensive patriotism, respecting alike the
rights of every portion of our common country." The Message closes
by urging the necessity of amending the present Tariff, so as to
make it more protective, and of making more effectual provision for
improving the rivers and harbors of the country.
Gov. Wright of Indiana transmitted his Message to the Legislature of
that State on the first day of its session. The expenses of the State
Government, for the past year, were $83,615.10. The whole amount
of revenue paid into the State Treasury was $450,481.65. The total
value of taxable property, as returned for 1850, is $137,443,565,
which is an increase over the previous year of $4,014,504. The
entire population of the State is about 988,000, being an increase
since 1840 of upward of 300,000. The total valuation of real estate
and live stock, exclusive of other personal property, is about
$200,000,000—being $63,000,000 over the entire assessment for
taxation. If to this be added other descriptions of personal property,
the entire State valuation can not be less than $250,000,000. The
Governor estimates that by the year 1852 the State will be able to
appropriate the sum of $100,000 to the payment of the principal of
the public debt. It is believed entirely practicable to liquidate the
entire debt in seventeen years from the first payment. Works of
public improvement are progressing rapidly; there are 400 miles of
plank road, costing from $12,000 to $25,000 per mile, and 1200
miles additional are surveyed and in progress. There are 212 miles
of railroad in successful operation, of which 120 were completed the
past year; and more than 1000 miles of railroad are surveyed and in
a state of progress. The Message strongly recommends a scrupulous
fulfillment of all the obligations of the Federal Constitution connected
with slavery.
In the Florida Legislature resolutions have been passed, declaring
that the perpetuity of the Union depends on the faithful execution of
the Fugitive Slave law—that in case of its repeal or essential
modification, it will become the duty of the State authorities to
assemble the people in convention, with a view to the defense of
their violated rights; and that Florida, in acquiescing in the
Compromise measures, has gone to a point beyond which she could
not go with honor.
The Illinois Legislature met on the 7th. The Message of Governor
French represents the accruing revenue as more than sufficient to
meet current demands on the Treasury. The entire debt of the State
is $16,627,509. Unsold canal lands are expected to realize
$4,000,000. The Governor is in favor of homestead exemption—
declares against all bank charters—recommends the acceptance of
Holbrook & Co.'s conditional surrender of their charter to build the
Central Railroad, and its disposal to the company that offers the best
terms. He speaks favorably of the "Compromise Measures," and says
that they will be faithfully observed and obeyed by the people of
Illinois, as the only means of restoring and preserving harmony.
From California our intelligence is to the 1st of December. Nothing of
interest has occurred there since our last advices. The cholera was
still prevailing at San Francisco. There had been a battle between
the force under the command of Gen. Morehead and the Youma
Indians near Colorado City, on the Gila, in which the general, after
one hour and a half fighting, was glad to retreat beneath the guns of
the little fort, the Indians having lost ten men. The American force
under Morehead was 104; their loss is not stated. Subsequently they
had completely vanquished the Indians, none being found within
fifty miles of the old planting grounds. A fight is also reported
between the Indians and Americans, in the vicinity of Mokelumne
Hill, in which fifteen of the latter were killed, and probably as many
of the Indians. No particulars are given.
The rainy season had commenced. Many new veins of auriferous
stone have been discovered, and various companies have embarked
and are engaged in mining operations with good prospects of
success. Among these operations, in addition to those on the
Mariposa, Merced, and in the northern mines, great hopes and
expectations are entertained from those further south, generally
known as the Los Angelos Company mines, several companies being
engaged in that section, either in mining or in exploring that great
and almost unknown region for its treasures.
The result of the State election has been such that doubt prevails as
to the political complexion of the next Legislature, both parties
claiming it by small majorities. A United States Senator having to be
chosen, makes it rather an interesting question, as the election for
that office will probably turn upon party politics.
The Pennsylvania Legislature is now in session. The message of Gov.
Johnston states the amount of the Public Debt at $40,775,485. The
Governor recommends that all the elections be hereafter held in
October. The project of erecting an Agricultural Department is
commended to favorable consideration. An appropriate arrangement
of the geological specimens belonging to the State is also urged. The
large body of original papers in the State Department connected
with the Colonial and Revolutionary History of the State are in an
exposed and perishing condition, and are recommended for better
preservation. In the early spring the buildings of the Insane Asylum
will be ready for the reception of patients. The school system,
although still imperfect, is rapidly improving in its general condition,
and promises the beneficial results it was designed to accomplish.
The full repair of the canals and railroads of the State is urged as an
important measure. A system of banking, based upon State stocks,
under proper restrictions, is recommended to the attention of the
Legislature. It is thought that the present banking facilities are
unequal to the wants of the business community. On national
questions, Gov. Johnston takes ground in favor of a revision and
alteration of the revenue laws, so as to give adequate and
permanent protection to the industry of the country, the reduction of
postage, and the construction of railway communications to the
Pacific—and in regard to the question of slavery and the Fugitive
Law, counsels obedience to the laws and respect to national
legislation; but excepts to that part of the law which authorizes the
creation of a new and irresponsible tribunal under the name of
Commissioners.

MEXICO.

Intelligence from the city of Mexico is to the 30th of November.

Congress was still engaged in discussing various propositions
concerning the public debt, and a bill had passed both houses for
regulating the interior debt, the original amount of which was about
seventy-five millions of dollars, the new law, however, reduces it
about one-third. It is believed that the new steps taken upon this
subject will prove highly advantageous to the country.
The magnetic telegraph is in operation in the city of Mexico merely
as an experiment, and gives general satisfaction. Efforts are being
made to form a company for placing it from Mexico to Vera Cruz.
Accounts from the Mexican Boundary Commission to the 24th November
have reached St. Louis. Mr. Bartlett arrived at El Paso on the 18th
November, in advance of the main body, in thirty-three days from
San Antonio. He was detained seven days to recruit the animals, and
ten days by a severe snow storm. He had agreed to meet the
Mexican Commissioner on the 1st November. He was accompanied
by a party of young engineers as an escort, well mounted and
armed, together with spies and hunters, and seven wagons with
provisions, equipments, &c., forming a party of forty. On the way Mr.
Bartlett was visited by five of the principal chiefs of the Lipan
Indians, accompanied by warriors. The interview was friendly, but
great care was taken to show them that the party was well armed.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE STATES OF EUROPE.

We take advantage of a moment of apparent pause in the current of

European affairs to present a concise view of the political, financial,
and civil condition in which the close of the first half of the
nineteenth century leaves the leading states of Europe. We do this in
order to furnish a standpoint from which, in the future numbers of
our Monthly Record, the changes which are apparently about to take
place may be observed. The present population of Europe may be
estimated at 262,000,000, upon an area of 3,816,936 square miles,
showing an average of 70 inhabitants to a square mile. If, however,
we exclude Russia, together with Sweden and Norway, which with
almost two-thirds of the area have but one fourth of the population,
and are therefore altogether exceptional, the remaining portion will
have 138 inhabitants to a square mile; while Asia has but 32, Africa
13, North and South America 3, and Australia and Polynesia only 1.
Of this population about 250,000,000, are Christians, of whom there
are 133,000,000 Catholics, 58,000,000 Protestants, and 59,000,000
belonging to the Greek Church; of the remainder there are seven or
eight millions of Mohammedans, and two or three millions of Jews.
Europe is now politically divided into 55 independent states, of which
33 belong wholly to Germany, and are included in the Germanic
Confederation; 7 to Italy; and two to the Netherlands. Of these
states 47 have an essentially monarchical form of government, and 8
are republics. Of the monarchical governments 3 are technically
called Empires, 15 Kingdoms, 7 Grand-duchies, 9 Duchies, 10
Principalities, 1 Electorate, 1 Landgraviate, and 1 Ecclesiastical State.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as it is officially
denominated, contains an area of 117,921 square miles, with a
population at the last census of 26,861,000 (1841), which is now
increased to about 28,500,000. The Colonies and Possessions of the
Crown contained in 1842 5,224,447 inhabitants. The possessions of
the East India Company have a population of somewhat more than
100,000,000; and the countries over which that Company has
assumed the right of protection, which is rapidly changing to
sovereignty, about 35,000,000 more. The political authority of the
Kingdom is vested in the three Estates, sovereign, lords, and
commons. The House of Peers consists at present of 457 members
of whom 30 are clerical; 28 Irish and 16 Scotch representative
peers, elected, the former for life, the latter annually; the remainder
being hereditary peers. The privileges of the peerage consist in
membership of the Upper House of Parliament; freedom from arrest
for debt, and from outlawry or personal attachment in civil actions;
the right of trial, in criminal cases by their own body, whose verdict
is rendered, not upon oath, but upon their honor; in the law of
scandalum magnatum, by which any person convicted of circulating
a scandalous report against a peer, though it be shown to be true, is
punishable by an arbitrary fine, and by imprisonment till it be paid;
and in the right of sitting covered in any court of justice, except in
the presence of the sovereign. The House of Commons, which, by
gradual encroachments upon the other Estates, and especially by
the prerogative which it has acquired of originating all money-bills,
has become the paramount power of the state, consists of 656
members, of whom 469 are for England, 29 for Wales, 53 for
Scotland, and 105 for Ireland. The revenues for the current year,
according to the estimate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
amount to £52,285,000, and the expenditures to £50,763,582,
leaving a surplus of £1,521,418. The national debt of Great Britain
and Ireland, funded and unfunded, amounted, Jan. 5, 1850, to
£798,037,277, involving an annual expenditure of more than
£28,000,000, absorbing considerably more than one half of the
public revenues. The military force of the Kingdom is as follows:
 Household Troops 6,568
Soldiers of the Line, in pay of the Crown 91,956
" " " East India Company 31,100
Colonial Corps 6,272

Making in all 129,625. The whole number of troops stationed in the

United Kingdom is about 61,000, of whom 24,000 are in Ireland. The
force of the British navy in Dec. 1848 is thus given in the Royal
Calendar for 1849:

Ships of 100 or more guns; 750 or more men 26

" 80-100 " 700-750 " 42
" 70-80 " 600-700 " 45
" 50-70 " 400-600 " 39
" 36-50 " 250-400 " 68
" 24-36 " 250 or less " 184

Making a total of 404 armed vessels, with 17,023 guns. To these, the
Calendar adds the names of 74 yachts, hulks, quarter-service
vessels, etc.; 125 steamers, and 21 steam-packets, making 614
vessels of every description. The British Almanac for 1851, probably
a more reliable authority, gives the whole number, on July 30, 1849,
as 339 sailing vessels, 161 steamers of all classes, besides 47
steamers employed under contract as packets, and capable of being
converted, in case of need, into vessels of war.
The Republic of France covers an area of 204,825 square miles, and
its population, as given in the Moniteur, February, 1847, was
35,400,486; besides which, the French colonies have about
1,000,000 inhabitants. The Constitution of the Republic was voted by
the National Assembly at its sitting, November 4, 1848. The
Introduction recites that France constitutes herself a Republic, and
that her object in so doing is a more free advance in progress and
civilization. The Constitution consists of twelve chapters, containing
116 articles, as follows: I. The sovereignty is in the body of citizens.
II. The rights of citizens are guaranteed by the Constitution. III. Of
public powers. IV. Of the Legislative power. The representatives of
the people to be 750 (since increased to 900), elected for three
years, by direct and universal suffrage, by secret ballot. All
Frenchmen of the age of 21 years to be electors, and to be eligible
to office at 25 years. This article is, in effect, modified by a
subsequent law, passed May 31, 1850, by which the electoral lists
are to comprehend all Frenchmen who have completed their 21st
year, enjoy civil and political rights, and have resided in the
commune, or canton, for a period of not less than three years; the
law embraces, moreover, many further restrictions, which greatly
limit the right of suffrage. V. The executive power is vested in the
President, elected for four years, by an absolute majority, by secret
ballot; he is not eligible for re-election until after an interval of four
years. VI. The Council of State consists of 40 members, elected for
six years, by the National Assembly, who are to be consulted in
certain prescribed cases; but government is not obliged to consult
the Council respecting the budget, the state of the army, or the
ratification of treaties. The Vice-President of the Republic is the
President of the Council; he is chosen by the National Assembly from
three candidates proposed by the President. VII. Of the domestic
administration. VIII. Of judicial powers. IX. Of the public forces. X.
Of the Legion of Honor, Algiers, and the colonies. XI. Of the revision
of the Constitution, in case the National Assembly in the last year of
its term shall vote any modification to be advisable. XII. Contains
various temporary dispositions. The finances of France have long
been in an extremely unsatisfactory condition. The immediate cause
of the revolution of 1789 was the enormous and increasing
deficiency of the revenue. Upon the accession of Louis Philippe, in
1830, the expenditures of government began again to exceed the
receipts, until 1846, when the expenditures amounted to
2,793,000,000 francs, exceeding the revenues by 421,462,000f. The
budget presented by the Minister of Finance for the financial year
1851, estimates the receipts at 1,292,633,639f., exceeding the
expenditures by 10,370,390f., being the first year when there has
been a surplus since the revolution of 1830. The consolidated public
debt of France amounts to 4,509,648,000f., to which is to be added
a floating debt of 515,727,294f., making in all more than 5000
millions of francs, the interest upon which amounts to above
327,000,000f., absorbing about one-fourth of the revenue. The
French army now on foot amounts to 396,000 men; by the law of
June 19, the number was fixed at 106,893, to which, according to
the late Message of the President, it will be speedily reduced, should
political affairs warrant the reduction. The navy according to an
ordinance of 1846, was to consist of 226 sailing vessels, and 102
steamers, of all classes, which number, however, was never reached.
The present force is 125 vessels (a reduction of 100 vessels during
the year), and 22,561 men. Since the election of Louis Bonaparte as
President of the Republic, his whole policy has been directed to the
effort of perpetuating his authority, either as President for life, or
Emperor. The Duke of Nemours and Count of Chambord, the
respective representatives of the lines of Orleans and Bourbon, have
each a large number of partisans; while opposed to all of these are
the Democrats and Socialists, of every shade, who are utterly averse
to any form of monarchical government.
We gave in our last Number a view of the general state of the
German Confederation. It is needless to present the statistics of the
minor German States, as they do not possess sufficient weight to act
except in subservience to either Austria or Prussia.
The Kingdom of Prussia consists of two distinct territories, at a
distance of about forty miles from each other, with Hesse-Cassel and
Hanover intervening. It has an area of 108,214 square miles, with a
population, at the end of 1849, of 16,331,187, of whom about
10,000,000 are Protestants, and 6,000,000 Catholics. The finances
are in a very healthy condition. According to the budget of 1850, the
amount of the revenue was 91,338,449 crowns; the ordinary
expenses of government, including the sinking fund of the public
debt, of two and a half millions, were 90,974,393 crowns, to which is
to be added expenses extraordinary and accidental, to the amount
of 4,925,213 crowns, showing a deficit of 4,561,158 crowns. The
public debt, of every description, including treasury notes, not
bearing interest, is 187,160,272 crowns of which the interest
amounts to 4,885,815, absorbing less than one-eighteenth of the
public revenues. The army, upon a peace-footing, consists of
121,100 regular troops, and 96,100 Landwehr of the first class,
forming a total of 217,200. Upon the war-footing the numbers are
augmented to 528,800. The Landwehr is divided into two classes,
the first embracing every Prussian between the ages of twenty and
thirty-two, not serving in the standing army, and constitutes an army
of reserve, not called out in time of peace except for drill, in the
autumn; but called into active service upon the breaking out of war.
The whole country is divided into arrondissements, and no one
belonging to the Landwehr can leave that to which he belongs,
without permission of the sergeant-major. In every considerable
town dépôts of stores are established, sufficient to provide for this
force, and a staff under pay, so that they may be at once organized.
When assembled for drill, the Landwehr receive the same pay as the
regular army. When they are ordered beyond their own
arrondissement, their families become the legal wards of the
magistracy, who are bound to see that they are provided for. The
Landwehr of the second class consists of all from thirty-two to forty
years who have quitted the first class. To them, in case of war,
garrison duty is committed. The Landsturm or levy en masse,
embraces all Prussians between the ages of seventeen and fifty, not
belonging to either of the above classes; this forms the final
resource and reserve of the country, and is called out only in the last
extremity.
The Empire of Austria, containing an area of 258,262 square miles,
embraces four principal divisions, inhabited by different races, with
peculiar laws, customs, and institutions. Only about one-fourth of its
population is comprehended within the German Confederation,
though she now seeks to include within it a great portion of her
Slavic territories. The population, as laid down in the chart of the
"Direction Impériale de la Statistique Administrative," is made up of
the following elements:
 Germans 7,980,920
Slavonians 15,170,602
Italians 5,063,575
Romano-Valaques and Moldavians 2,686,492
Magyars 5,418,773
Jews 746,891
Miscellaneous races 525,873
—————
Total 37,593,125

The national debt, after deducting the effects belonging to the

sinking-fund, amounts at the beginning of the present year to
997,706,654 florins, the interest upon which, 54,970,830 florins,
absorbs more than one-third of the revenues. The receipts for the
year 1848 were 144,003,758 and the expenditures 283,864,674
florins, showing a deficit of about 140,000,000; this, however, is
exceptional; the deficit for the first quarter of 1850, reaching only to
18,000,000 florins. The regular army, prior to the revolutions of
1848, consisted of about 230,000 men, which might be increased in
time of war to 750,000. But so large a portion of the forces of
Austria are required to keep in subjection her discontented Italian
and Hungarian territories, that she could not probably detach, if
unsupported by Russia, 200,000 men for effective service. The navy
consists of 31 armed vessels, carrying 544 guns; 15 steamers, of
which two are of 300 horse-power, the others smaller; besides gun-
boats.
The Russian Empire occupies considerably more than one-half of
Europe, its area being 2,099,903 square miles. The population
according to the most recent estimates is about 62,000,000. Of
these about 21,000,000 are serfs of the nobles, and belong to the
soil; 17,500,000 formerly serfs of the crown, who may be considered
personally as freemen, having been emancipated; 4,500,000
burghers; and the remainder are nobles, either hereditary or
personal; the latter dignity being conferred upon all civil and military
officers, and upon the chief clergy and burghers. No satisfactory
statistics exhibiting the present state of the financial and military
affairs of the empire are accessible. The Almanach de Gotha of the
present year omits the statistical details previously given; and is
unable to furnish more recent details. It is understood, that the
revenues and expenditures for some years past have been about
$81,000,000. The public debt is stated at 336,219,492 silver roubles.
The army is given, in round numbers, at 1,000,000. It is supposed
that in case of war Russia is able to send into the field not less than
800,000 men. This immense disposable force, absolutely under the
control of the Emperor, renders the power of Russia imminently
dangerous to the peace of Europe. By a course of masterly policy,
directed to one end, the influence of the empire has been gradually
extended toward the centre of Europe; and the only conceivable
means of checking it seems to be a confederation of all the German
States, so close, that they shall in effect constitute but one nation. It
is this consideration which, underlying the whole current of
European politics, renders the present juncture of affairs so critical.
The great question of the supremacy of race—the question whether
the Teutonic or the Slavic race shall predominate, and direct in the
affairs of Europe—rests apparently upon the events which are about
to transpire.
The remaining nations of Europe are too feeble in numbers, or too
enervated in character, to exercise any great influence upon the
current of events. The hope once entertained, that a union of the
Italian race was to take place has been frustrated, and the Peninsula,
containing a population of nearly 25,000,000 inhabitants is broken
up into petty governments each more despicable than the other.
Turkey in Europe has about 15,500,000 inhabitants, but the Ottoman
race, is hardly more than a military colony, and numbers but little
above a million; while the Mohammedan religion has less than four
millions of adherents; the Greek church alone numbering eleven and
a half millions. Three-fourths of the population, therefore, both in
race and faith have less affinity for Turkey than Russia, into whose
hands they are ready to fall. Spain, to check whose power was the
great object of all Europe two centuries and a half since, is now
utterly bankrupt in character and means. Every year shows a large
deficit in her revenues, although she pays the interest upon but a
fraction of her public debt, which amounts to fifteen thousand five
hundred millions of reals, the interest of which, at six per cent.
would, if paid, absorb the whole of the revenue. The navy, which as
late as 1802 numbered 68 ships of the line and 40 frigates had sunk
in 1849 to 2 ships of the line, 5 frigates, 14 brigs and corvettes, and
15 small steamers of from 40 to 350 horse-power, and of these
hardly any, it is said, were fit for service. Portugal has experienced a
like decline, every year showing a deficit; the interest of her debt of
about $90,000,000, absorbing fully one-third of her revenues. Greece
is hardly worthy of the name of a kingdom. In a word, incurable
decay seems to have fallen upon all the nations of Southern Europe.
The political condition of Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and
Sweden may be called prosperous, but they have little weight in the
affairs of Europe. Last and least of all, the little Republic of San
Marino, in reality the oldest of all the existing governments of
Europe, with a population of but 8000, sits upon her rock, where for
fourteen centuries she has watched the rise and fall of the mighty
states around her. In all except her venerable antiquity she seems a
caricature upon larger nations, with her army of 27 men, her three
estates, nobles, burghers, and peasants, her two "capitani regenti,"
elected for six months, and her secretaries for foreign and domestic
affairs. But weak as she seems, she was a state when Britain was
but a hunting-field for Danish and Saxon pirates; and may still exist
when Britain shall have become as Tyre and Carthage.

GREAT BRITAIN.

The opening of Parliament is fixed to take place on the third of

February; in the meanwhile Government will have leisure to decide
upon its course with respect to the Catholic excitement, which has
continued to rage with an intensity out of all proportion to the cause
which has excited it. The simple act of appointing bishops to the
various dioceses, has been construed into an arrogant encroachment
upon the prerogatives of the Crown, and an attack upon the liberties
and independence of the people. The surprise of Hannibal, when
lying before the walls of Rome in hourly expectation of the surrender
of the city, could not have been greater at learning that an army had
just been dispatched for foreign conquest, and the very spot where
he was encamped sold for a high price at public auction, than that of
the English at the news that the sovereign of a petty principality,
who had been driven from his dominions by his own subjects, and
was brought back and sustained only by foreign arms, should coolly
map out their country among his own dependents. The papers are
filled with remonstrances, addresses, petitions, speeches, and
protests from every body to every body. Twenty-six archbishops and
bishops, comprising the whole episcopal bench, with two exceptions,
united in a solemn protest to the Queen against this treatment of
England as a heathen country, and the assumption of ecclesiastical
dominion by the Pope. The Bishop of Exeter, having his hands rid of
the Gorham difficulty, refused to sign this document, and prepared
for presentation to her Majesty an address of his own, of portentous
length, couched in that cumbrous phraseology affected by
ecclesiastical writers. This was returned to the author by the
Secretary of State, with the very curt announcement that it was not
a document which he could properly lay before her Majesty.
Addresses were presented on one day from the authorities of
London, and from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. That
from Oxford was read by the Duke of Wellington, that from
Cambridge by Prince Albert, as the Chancellors of the respective
universities. The addresses expressed attachment to the royal
person and the principles of the Reformation; and indignation at the
Papal aggressions upon the royal supremacy; with earnest petitions
that prompt measures might be taken to repress all foreign
encroachments upon the rights of the Crown and the independence
of the people. The London address contained, moreover, significant
hints at innovations, principles, and practices nearly allied to those of
Rome, sanctioned by some of the clergy, and expressed a desire for
the preservation and purity of the Protestant faith. The replies of the
Queen, having of course been prepared beforehand by the Ministry,
are of some consequence, as foreshadowing the probable course of
Government. They were all to the same general purport: she
thanked them for their expressions of attachment to her person and
Government; and declared that it should be her constant endeavor,
as supreme governor of the realm, to maintain the rights of the
Crown and the independence of the people, against all
encroachments of foreign powers; and to promote the purity and
efficiency of the Reformed Church. It was noted as a somewhat
singular circumstance that the room at Windsor where these
deputations were received, contained portraits of Pope Pius VII. and
Cardinal Gonsalves. Among the most singular petitions to the Queen,
was one from the women of Windsor, urging her Majesty to guard
them from the "intolerable abuses of the Papal hierarchy," which
would "enforce upon as many of the people as possible the practice
of auricular confession; and from the bare possibility of this practice
being pressed upon us and our children, we shrink with instinctive
horror." The Scottish Bishops have addressed a letter to their English
brethren, sympathizing with them under this attack, and pledging
their "influence and ability in restraining this intolerable aggression
on the rights of the venerable church." An old law of Elizabeth has
been hunted out, making the importation of relics, crucifixes, and
the like a penal offense, and though the penalties are repealed, it is
still a misdemeanor; some of the more zealous opponents of
Romanism demand that this should be put in force; and also that all
such articles be stopped at the custom-house. They would also have
the exhibition and sale of them prohibited, as being "a means of
enticing men into idolatry," and they add, as idolatry is "no less a sin
than fornication, there seems no solid reason why those who
obtrude idolatrous objects upon the public gaze, should not be
punished as offenders against public morals, as much as the venders
of obscene prints." The general excitement has manifested itself in
some unlooked-for quarters. During the performance at the theatre
of King John, the representative of Cardinal Pandulph was hissed
continually, and could hardly go on with his part; when Mr.
Macready, as King John, pronounced the passage—
 "No Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions,"

the whole theatre rang with deafening applause. The immediate

effect of this agitation will, undoubtedly, be most severely felt by
what is known as the Tractarian party in the Church of England, one
portion of whom will be forced forward to Catholicism, and the other
driven back to the great body of the English Church. Mr. Bennett,
whose church in London was attacked by a mob, on account of
certain alleged Romish practices, has resigned his charge. This is
looked upon as of some importance, from the fact of its being the
church attended by Lord John Russell in London; and that the
resignation was brought about by the Bishop of London, who has
himself been accused of similar tendencies. The general sentiment of
the Nonconformist and Dissenting Press is, that the quarrel is one
between two hierarchical establishments equally hostile to them;
and that, whoever gets worsted, it must result in their own
advantage. The conduct of Cardinal Wiseman has throughout been
marked with great skill and foresight. The ceremony of his
enthronization took place as privately as possible, in order to avoid a
mob; on this occasion he delivered a sermon, characterized by his
usual ability and tact, which was of course published in all the
papers, thus obtaining all desirable publicity. It is as yet uncertain
what steps Government will take. There are rumors of dissensions
on this question in the Cabinet, which must result in its dissolution;
but they seem to come from quarters where the wish is father to the
thought; at least they are not authenticated.
The most important economic movement is the effort which is made
in every direction to increase the sources of supply of cotton, or to
find some means of substituting flax for those manufactures, of
which cotton is now the sole material. The importance of these
measures becomes obvious when it is recollected how great a
portion of British capital and industry is invested in the cotton
manufacture, and to what an extent they are indebted to the United
States for the supply of the indispensable material. The United
States furnish about four-fifths of the cotton used in Great Britain;
and the supply from other sources is diminishing; a decided failure
of the cotton-crop here, or a war, which should interrupt the supply,
would produce greater distress in England than did the failure of the
potato-crop in Ireland. The West Indies cannot be looked to at
present for any large supply. The cotton of India, though well
adapted for the old method of manufacture, is too short in staple to
be advantageously wrought by the machinery now in use, and it has
been found that American cotton transplanted there soon
deteriorates, and on the whole, efforts to extend the culture there
have failed. Australia seems at present the most promising quarter
from which to expect a future supply.
The Highlands of Scotland are now suffering as severely from famine
as did Ireland during the worst year of the potato failure. The cause
of the distress is said to be the absolute entailment of the landed
property, which keeps the country in the hands of those who are too
poor to cultivate it; and the only remedy is to break the entails, so
as to suffer capital to be laid out upon the land, and thereby furnish
employment, and produce subsistence for the resident population.
The Cunard steamers, finding that the Collins and the New York and
Havre lines have at last equaled them in the speed and safety of
their vessels, and far exceeded them in beauty and comfort, have
apparently resolved to test the question of the supremacy of the sea
by the relative capacity of purses. While the Franklin was loading at
Havre, the Cunarders suddenly reduced the price of freight from $40
per ton to $20, and finally to $10, from Havre to New York by way of
Liverpool; which is, in fact, carrying from Liverpool to New York
gratis, the cost of conveyance from Havre to Liverpool, and
transhipment, being fully $10. This is understood to be the
commencement of an opposition, undertaken in a like paltry spirit,
against all the lines of American steamers. It remains to be seen
whether those who have been defeated in a fair and honorable
competition in science and skill, will succeed in so contemptible a
contest as that they purpose to wage.
The present increased value of silver, in all countries, is accounted
for in the commercial papers, not by the excess of gold from
California, but by special and temporary circumstances in the
commercial world. The enormous armaments in Germany require a
large amount of silver to pay off the soldiers. The prevalent feeling
of insecurity has caused the hoarding of large amounts in small
sums, of course in silver, which has reduced the amount in
circulation. In addition to which, Holland has made silver only, a
legal tender, which has occasioned a desire on the part of bankers
who have gold on deposit, to convert it into silver; these, together
with an apprehension that the amount of gold from California would
in time diminish its relative value, have caused a temporary demand
for silver, which has, of course, raised its price.

FRANCE.

The Legislative Assembly continues in session, but the proceedings

are mostly of local interest. The committee presented a report in
favor of the policy of neutrality, recommended by the President in
relation to the affairs of Germany, and brought in a bill appropriating
a credit of 8,640,000f. to defray the expenses of the 40,000
additional men demanded by the President's Message. After a sharp
discussion, the resolutions were adopted, and the bill passed, by a
majority of more than two to one. This is the only test-question,
thus far, between the Government and the Opposition, and shows
that the "Party of Order" are in a decided majority. A bill has been
passed appropriating 600,000f. toward establishing cheap baths and
wash-houses. The communes desiring aid from this fund are to
furnish plans for the approval of the Minister of Commerce and
Agriculture, and to provide two-thirds of the necessary funds,
Government providing the other third, in no case, however, to
exceed 50,000f. A report was presented by M. Montalembert, in
favor of a bill for the better observance of the Sabbath in France.
The prominent points were: that labor on public works should be
suspended on the Sabbath and fête days, except in cases of public
necessity; and that all agreements binding laborers to work on the
Sabbath or on fête days, should be prohibited; this provision,
however, not to apply to the venders of comestibles, or to carriers,
and those engaged upon railways, the post, and similar
employments. The proposition met with no favor.
Letter-writers say that the Elysée is marked by scenes of luxury and
profligacy scarcely paralleled in the days of the Regent Orleans and
of Louis XV. The President is known to be deeply involved in debt,
and the Assembly has been called upon for a further dotation, which
will of course be granted, in spite of the resistance of the
Opposition. Fines and imprisonments of the conductors of the
newspapers are growing more and more frequent.

GERMANY.

The scales have turned on the side of peace. The Gordian knot is to
be untied, if possible, not cut. The affairs of Germany are to be
decided by articles, not by artillery. The crisis seems to have been
brought about by a peremptory demand from Austria, that Prussia
should evacuate the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel within forty-eight
hours, under the alternative of a declaration of war. At the same
time a dispatch arrived from Lord Palmerston, hinting that in the
event of war, the other powers could not preserve their neutrality.
Thus brought face to face with war, both Austria and Prussia were
frightened. A conference was proposed between Prince
Schwartzenberg and Baron Manteuffel, the Austrian and Prussian
Ministers. This took place at Olmutz, where articles of agreement
were speedily entered into. The essential point of the agreement is,
that all measures for the pacification of Germany shall be taken
jointly by Austria and Prussia. If the Elector of Hesse-Cassel can not
come to terms with his subjects, a Prussian and Austrian battalion
are to occupy the Electorate. Commissioners from the two powers
are to demand the cessation of hostilities in the Duchies, and to
propose terms to Denmark. The formation of a new German
Constitution is to be undertaken by a Conference, meeting at
Dresden, Dec. 23, to which invitations have been sent jointly by the
two powers, who are to stand in all respects on an equality. In the
mean time both are to reduce their armies, as speedily as possible,
to the peace footing. This agreement of the Ministers was ratified by
the two sovereigns. In Prussia the opposition in the Chambers was
so vehement that the Ministry dared not meet it, and adjourned that
body for a month, till Jan. 3, the longest period practicable, in the
hope that by that time the issue of the Dresden Conference might be
such as to produce a favorable change. In the mean time, opposition
to the proposed measure has sprung up from an unexpected
quarter. Austria had hitherto acted in the name of the Diet; she now
coolly ignores the existence of that body, and proceeds to parcel out
all the power and responsibility between herself and Prussia. The
minor German States find themselves left entirely out of the
account. They remember the old habit of powerful states, to
indemnify themselves at the expense of the weaker ones, for any
concessions they have been forced to make to each other; and
suspecting some secret articles; or, at least, some understanding not
publicly avowed, between the two powers, they tremble for their
own independence. The sense of a common danger impels them to
a close union, but they are destitute of a rallying point. A portion of
them, with Austria at their head, had declared themselves the Diet;
but if Austria, the constitutional president, withdraws, the Diet can
not have a legal existence. The Dresden Conference, therefore,
meets, with three parties, having separate interests and fears:
Austria, Prussia, and the minor States—the governments, that is, of
all these—while behind and hostile to the whole, is the Democratic
element, predominant probably among the Prussians, strong in the
lesser States, and not powerless even in Austria, hostile to all
existing governments, or to any confederation they may form,
whether consisting of a duality of Austria and Prussia, or a triad,
composed of these and a coalition of the minor States; but longing,
instead, for a German unity. The cannon is still loaded; the priming
has only been taken out.
The last advices from Dresden, of Dec. 28, bring us an account of
the opening of the Conference by speeches from the Austrian and
Prussian Ministers. That of the former was highly conservative in its
tone, dwelling mainly upon the advantages secured by the old
Confederation. The speech of the Prussian Minister, on the contrary,
hinted strongly at the inefficiency which had marked that league.
The proceedings, thus far, have been merely preliminary. The return
of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel to his dominions, under the escort of
Austrian and Prussian troops, was marked by sullen gloom on the
part of the people. Preparations for the forcible disarmament of
Schleswig-Holstein by Austrian and Prussian forces are actively going
on; it is feared that the Duchies will make a bloody and desperate
resistance.
The internal condition of Austria is far from settled. So arbitrary have
been the proceedings of Government, that even the Times is forced
to disapprove of them, and to wish that instead of Russia, the
Empire had a constitutional ally. The discontents among the Croats
and Servians are as predominant as were those among the
Hungarians, and a coalition between the Slavic and Magyar races,
whom Government has hitherto played off against each other, is by
no means improbable. Government dares not assemble the
Provincial Diets, being fully aware that they would set themselves in
opposition to its measures. In Hungary, the few natives who have
accepted office under Austria, are treated by their countrymen as
the veriest Pariahs, and the officials of Government are thwarted and
harassed in every way possible.

ITALY.

The political affairs of the different Italian States are in no wise

improving. The Roman Government finds its Austrian allies
somewhat burdensome guests. They demand that the Austrian corps
of 20,000 men, which entails an expense upon the impoverished
Ecclesiastical States of 6,000,000 francs per annum, should be
reduced to 12,000. Austria declines, at present, to make the
reduction. The American Protestants have been allowed to have a
chapel within the city, while the English have been compelled to be
satisfied with one without the walls; this privilege has been
withdrawn.——The Austrian Governor of Venice has issued a
proclamation directing that the subscriptions for the relief of Brescia,
which was destroyed by Austrian bombardment, shall be closed; on
the ground that the pretense of philanthropy was merely a cloak for
political demonstrations.——At Leghorn domiciliary visits of the
police have been made, the reasons for which have not transpired.
——The state of affairs in Sardinia has been set forth in the following
terms in a speech in its Parliament: "There is in Sardinia no safety
for property; there is neither law nor justice. Not to speak of thefts,
assaults, injuries to property innumerable—look at the
assassinations: two hundred within a short time. Assaults and
highway robberies have increased and are daily increasing. There is
one assassination to every thousand inhabitants. Murders are
committed by day and by night, in towns and villages, in castles and
dwellings. Children of thirteen years are murderers. The judges are
terrified, and dare not execute justice. In England you must pay, but
you have safety for your life. But here Ministers take one half our
income for the State, and then suffer scoundrels to rob us of the
other half. Let Government look to it. If it says it can do nothing, it
does not deserve the name of Government: it is the very opposite of
what should be called Government." The correspondent of the
Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung declares this to be a true account of
the state of things in Sardinia.

SPAIN.

There has been a disruption in the Cabinet. The Minister of Finance,

finding that there would be a deficit of some 240,000,000 of reals,
nearly one-fourth of the entire revenue, proposed a reduction of
expenditures in various departments. This the other Ministers would
not consent to; and the Minister of Finance, finding that he would be
called to solve the difficult problem of making payments without
funds, or resign his post, chose the latter as the more feasible if not
the more agreeable alternative. A surplus of revenue is, of course,
anticipated the coming year. But the calculations of Spanish
financiers never prove to be correct.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, ART, PERSONAL

MOVEMENTS, Etc.
UNITED STATES.

At the New England Society's Dinner, Mr. Webster made a most

felicitous allusion to the Mayflower, à propos to a confectionary
model of that vessel which graced the table: "There was," said he,
"in ancient times a ship which carried Jason in his voyage for the
acquisition of the Golden Fleece; there was a ship at the battle of
Actium which made Augustus Cæsar master of the world; there have
been famous ships which bore to victory a Drake, a Howe, a Nelson;
there are ships which have carried our own Hull, Decatur, and
Stewart in triumph. But what are they all, as to their chances of
remembrance among men, to that little bark Mayflower? That
Mayflower was and is a flower of perpetual blossom. It can stand the
sultry blasts of Summer, resist the furious tempests of Autumn, and
remain untouched by the gales and the frosts of Winter. It can defy
all climates and all times; it will spread its petals over the whole
world, and exhale a living odor and fragrance to the last syllable of
recorded time!"
Mr. Stephenson, of Charlestown, has lately completed a statue of
great merit both in conception and execution. It represents a North
American Indian who has just received a mortal wound from an
arrow; he has fallen forward upon his right knee, the left leg being
thrown out in advance. The right hand which has drawn the arrow
from the wound, rests upon the ground, the arm with its little
remaining strength preventing the entire fall of the body. The statue
is wrought from a block of marble from a quarry just opened in
Vermont, which is pronounced not inferior to the famous quarries of
Carrara.
The literalism of the Panorama has lately been invaded by an effort
toward the Ideal. Pilgrim's Progress has been made the subject of an
extensive work of this kind by two young artists of New York,
Messrs. May and Kyle. They have met with great and well deserved
success. Their work embodies the spirit of Bunyan, and presents all
the scenes of any interest in his famous dream. The seizing of the
popular preference for panoramas for the purpose of converting it
from a wondering curiosity at the reproduction of actual scenes, to
the admiring interest awakened by an imaginative subject, was a
happy instance of tact too rarely found in artists; and the eagerness
with which the public welcomed the change is another evidence of
the general advancement in taste to which we have before alluded.
W.S. Mount, the only artist among us who can delineate "God's
image carved in ebony," or mahogany, has just finished a picture in
his happiest style. It represents a genuine sable Long-Islander,
whom a "lucky throw" of the coppers has made the owner of a fat
goose. He holds his prize in his hands, his dusky face radiant with
joy as he snuffs up in imagination the fragrant odors to come. The
details of the picture—the rough coat, the gay worsted comforter
and cap, disposed with that native tendency to dandyism, which
forms so conspicuous an element of the negro character, are
admirably painted. The effect, like that of every true work of art, and
unlike that of the vulgar and brutal caricatures of the negro which
abound, is genial and humanizing. The picture is in possession of
Messrs. Goupil and Company, 239 Broadway, by whom it will soon
be sent to Paris, to be lithographed in a style uniform with the
"Power of Music," and "Music is Contagious," of the same artist. This
house will soon publish engravings from one of Woodville's
characteristic pictures, "Politics in an Oyster House," and from
Sebron's two admirable views of Niagara Falls.
W.H. Powell is in Paris, at work on his large picture for the Capitol at
Washington. He has recently finished "The Burial of Fernando de
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