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English Writers on America
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousting
herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible
locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth,
and kindling her endazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam.
MILTON
ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.
IT is with feelings of deep regret that I observe the literary
animosity daily growing up between England and America. Great
curiosity has been awakened of late with respect to the United
States, and the London press has teemed with volumes of travels
through the Republic; but they seem intended to diffuse error
rather than knowledge; and so successful have they been, that,
notwithstanding the constant intercourse between the nations,
there is no people concerning whom the great mass of the British
public have less pure information, or entertain more numerous
prejudices.
English travellers are the best and the worst in the world. Where
no motives of pride or interest intervene, none can equal them
for profound and philosophical views of society, or faithful and
graphical description of external objects; but when either the
interest or reputation of their own country comes in collision
with that of another, they go to the opposite extreme, and forget
their usual probity and candor, in the indulgence of splenetic
remark, and an illiberal spirit of ridicule.
Hence, their travels are more honest and accurate, the more
remote the country described. I would place implicit confidence
in an Englishman's description of the regions beyond the
cataracts of the Nile; of unknown islands in the Yellow Sea; of
the interior of India; or of any other tract which other
travellers might be apt to picture out with the illusions of
their fancies. But I would cautiously receive his account of his
immediate neighbors, and of those nations with which he is in
habits of most frequent intercourse. However I might be disposed
to trust his probity, I dare not trust his prejudices.
It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by
the worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical
spirit and cultivated minds have been sent from England to
ransack the poles, to penetrate the deserts, and to study the
manners and customs of barbarous nations, with which she can have
no permanent intercourse of profit or pleasure; it has been left
to the broken-down tradesman, the scheming adventurer, the
wandering mechanic, the Manchester and Birmingham agent, to be
her oracles respecting America. From such sources she is content
to receive her information respecting a country in a singular
state of moral and physical development; a country in which one
of the greatest political experiments in the history of the world
is now performing; and which presents the most profound and
momentous studies to the statesman and the philosopher.
That such men should give prejudicial accounts of America, is not
a matter of surprise. The themes it offers for contemplation, are
too vast and elevated for their capacities. The national
character is yet in a state of fermentation: it may have its
frothiness and sediment, but its ingredients are sound and
wholesome; it has already given proofs of powerful and generous
qualities; and the whole promises to settle down into something
substantially excellent. But the causes which are operating to
strengthen and ennoble it, and its daily indications of admirable
properties, are all lost upon these purblind observers; who are
only affected by the little asperities incident to its present
situation. They are capable of judging only of the surface of
things; of those matters which come in contact with their private
interests and personal gratifications. They miss some of the snug
conveniences and petty comforts which belong to an old,
highly-finished, and over-populous state of society; where the
ranks of useful labor are crowded, and many earn a painful and
servile subsistence, by studying the very caprices of appetite
and self-indulgence. These minor comforts, however, are
all-important in the estimation of narrow minds; which either do
not perceive, or will not acknowledge, that they are more than
counterbalanced among us, by great and generally diffused
blessings.
They may, perhaps, have been disappointed in some unreasonable
expectation of sudden gain. They may have pictured America to
themselves an El Dorado, where gold and silver abounded, and the
natives were lacking in sagacity, and where they were to become
strangely and suddenly rich, in some unforeseen but easy manner.
The same weakness of mind that indulges absurd expectations,
produces petulance in disappointment. Such persons become
embittered against the country on finding that there, as
everywhere else, a man must sow before he can reap; must win
wealth by industry and talent; and must contend with the common
difficulties of nature, and the shrewdness of an intelligent and
enterprising people.
Perhaps, through mistaken or ill-directed hospitality, or from
the prompt disposition to cheer and countenance the stranger,
prevalent among my countrymen, they may have been treated with
unwonted respect in America; and, having been accustomed all
their lives to consider themselves below the surface of good
society, and brought up in a servile feeling of inferiority, they
become arrogant, on the common boon of civility; they attribute
to the lowliness of others their own elevation; and underrate a
society where there are no artificial distinctions, and where, by
any chance, such individuals as themselves can rise to
consequence.
One would suppose, however, that information coming from such
sources, on a subject where the truth is so desirable, would be
received with caution by the censors of the press; that the
motives of these men, their veracity, their opportunities of
inquiry and observation, and their capacities for judging
correctly, would be rigorously scrutinized, before their evidence
was admitted, in such sweeping extent, against a kindred nation.
The very reverse, however, is the case, and it furnishes a
striking instance of human inconsistency. Nothing can surpass the
vigilance with which English critics will examine the credibility
of the traveller who publishes an account of some distant and
comparatively unimportant country. How warily will they compare
the measurements of a pyramid, or the description of a ruin; and
how sternly will they censure any inaccuracy in these
contributions of merely curious knowledge, while they will
receive, with eagerness and unhesitating faith, the gross
misrepresentations of coarse and obscure writers, concerning a
country with which their own is placed in the most important and
delicate relations. Nay, they will even make these apocryphal
volumes text-books, on which to enlarge, with a zeal and an
ability worthy of a more generous cause.
I shall not, however, dwell on this irksome and hackneyed topic;
nor should I have adverted to it, but for the undue interest
apparently taken in it by my countrymen, and certain injurious
effects which I apprehend it might produce upon the national
feeling. We attach too much consequence to these attacks. They
cannot do us any essential injury. The tissue of
misrepresentations attempted to be woven round us, are like
cobwebs woven round the limbs of an infant giant. Our country
continually outgrows them. One falsehood after another falls off
of itself. We have but to live on, and every day we live a whole
volume of refutation.
All the writers of England united, if we could for a moment
suppose their great minds stooping to so unworthy a combination,
could not conceal our rapidly growing importance and matchless
prosperity. They could not conceal that these are owing, not
merely to physical and local, but also to moral causes--to the
political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the
prevalence of sound, moral, and religious principles, which give
force and sustained energy to the character of a people, and
which in fact, have been the acknowledged and wonderful
supporters of their own national power and glory.
But why are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England?
Why do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the contumely she
has endeavored to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of
England alone that honor lives, and reputation has its being. The
world at large is the arbiter of a nation's fame: with its
thousand eyes it witnesses a nation's deeds, and from their
collective testimony is national glory or national disgrace
established.
For ourselves, therefore, it is comparatively of but little
importance whether England does us justice or not; it is,
perhaps, of far more importance to herself. She is instilling
anger and resentment into the bosom of a youthful nation, to grow
with its growth, and strengthen with its strength. If in America,
as some of her writers are laboring to convince her, she is
hereafter to find an invidious rival, and a gigantic foe, she may
thank those very writers for having provoked rivalship, and
irritated hostility. Every one knows the all-pervading influence
of literature at the present day, and how much the opinions and
passions of mankind are under its control. The mere contests of
the sword are temporary; their wounds are but in the flesh, and
it is the pride of the generous to forgive and forget them; but
the slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest
in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind, and
render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision. It
is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between
two nations; there exists, most commonly, a previous jealousy and
ill-will, a predisposition to take offence. Trace these to their
cause, and how often will they be found to originate in the
mischievous effusions of mercenary writers, who, secure in their
closets, and for ignominious bread, concoct and circulate the
venom that is to inflame the generous and the brave.
I am not laying too much stress upon this point; for it applies
most emphatically to our particular case. Over no nation does the
press hold a more absolute control than over the people of
America; for the universal education of the poorest classes makes
every individual a reader. There is nothing published in England
on the subject of our country, that does not circulate through
every part of it. There is not a calumny dropt from an English
pen, nor an unworthy sarcasm uttered by an English statesman,
that does not go to blight good-will, and add to the mass of
latent resentment. Possessing, then, as England does, the
fountain-head whence the literature of the language flows, how
completely is it in her power, and how truly is it her duty, to
make it the medium of amiable and magnanimous feeling--a stream
where the two nations might meet together and drink in peace and
kindness. Should she, however, persist in turning it to waters of
bitterness, the time may come when she may repent her folly. The
present friendship of America may be of but little moment to her;
but the future destinies of that country do not admit of a doubt;
over those of England, there lower some shadows of uncertainty.
Should, then, a day of gloom arrive--should those reverses
overtake her, from which the proudest empires have not been
exempt--she may look back with regret at her infatuation, in
repulsing from her side a nation she might have grappled to her
bosom, and thus destroying her only chance for real friendship
beyond the boundaries of her own dominions.
There is a general impression in England, that the people of the
United States are inimical to the parent country. It is one of
the errors which have been diligently propagated by designing
writers. There is, doubtless, considerable political hostility,
and a general soreness at the illiberality of the English press;
but, collectively speaking, the prepossessions of the people are
strongly in favor of England. Indeed, at one time they amounted,
in many parts of the Union, to an absurd degree of bigotry. The
bare name of Englishman was a passport to the confidence and
hospitality of every family, and too often gave a transient
currency to the worthless and the ungrateful. Throughout the
country, there was something of enthusiasm connected with the
idea of England. We looked to it with a hallowed feeling of
tenderness and veneration, as the land of our forefathers--the
august repository of the monuments and antiquities of our
race--the birthplace and mausoleum of the sages and heroes of our
paternal history. After our own country, there was none in whose
glory we more delighted--none whose good opinion we were more
anxious to possess--none toward which our hearts yearned with
such throbbings of warm consanguinity. Even during the late war,
whenever there was the least opportunity for kind feelings to
spring forth, it was the delight of the generous spirits of our
country to show that, in the midst of hostilities, they still
kept alive the sparks of future friendship.
Is all this to be at an end? Is this golden band of kindred
sympathies, so rare between nations, to be broken
forever?--Perhaps it is for the best--it may dispel an allusion
which might have kept us in mental vassalage; which might have
interfered occasionally with our true interests, and prevented
the growth of proper national pride. But it is hard to give up
the kindred tie! and there are feelings dearer than
interest--closer to the heart than pride--that will still make us
cast back a look of regret as we wander farther and farther from
the paternal roof, and lament the waywardness of the parent that
would repel the affections of the child.
Short-sighted and injudicious, however, as the conduct or England
may be in this system of aspersion, recrimination on our part
would be equally ill-judged. I speak not of a prompt and spirited
vindication of our country, or the keenest castigation of her
slanderers--but I allude to a disposition to retaliate in kind,
to retort sarcasm and inspire prejudice, which seems to be
spreading widely among our writers. Let us guard particularly
against such a temper; for it would double the evil, instead of
redressing the wrong. Nothing is so easy and inviting as the
retort of abuse and sarcasm; but it is a paltry and an
unprofitable contest. It is the alternative of a morbid mind,
fretted into petulance, rather than warmed into indignation. If
England is willing to permit the mean jealousies of trade, or the
rancorous animosities of politics, to deprave the integrity of
her press, and poison the fountain of public opinion, let us
beware of her example. She may deem it her interest to diffuse
error, and engender antipathy, for the purpose of checking
emigration: we have no purpose of the kind to serve. Neither have
we any spirit of national jealousy to gratify; for as yet, in all
our rivalships with England, we are the rising and the gaining
party. There can be no end to answer, therefore, but the
gratification of resentment--a mere spirit of retaliation--and
even that is impotent. Our retorts are never republished in
England; they fall short, therefore, of their aim; but they
foster a querulous and peevish temper among our writers; they
sour the sweet flow of our early literature, and sow thorns and
brambles among its blossoms. What is still worse, they circulate
through our own country, and, as far as they have effect, excite
virulent national prejudices. This last is the evil most
especially to be deprecated. Governed, as we are, entirely by
public opinion, the utmost care should be taken to preserve the
purity of the public mind. Knowledge is power, and truth is
knowledge; whoever, therefore, knowingly propagates a prejudice,
wilfully saps the foundation of his country's strength.
The members of a republic, above all other men, should be candid
and dispassionate. They are, individually, portions of the
sovereign mind and sovereign will, and should be enabled to come
to all questions of national concern with calm and unbiassed
judgments. From the peculiar nature of our relations with
England, we must have more frequent questions of a difficult and
delicate character with her, than with any other
nation,--questions that affect the most acute and excitable
feelings: and as, in the adjustment of these, our national
measures must ultimately be determined by popular sentiment, we
cannot be too anxiously attentive to purify it from all latent
passion or prepossession.
Opening, too, as we do, an asylum for strangers every portion of
the earth, we should receive all with impartiality. It should be
our pride to exhibit an example of one nation, at least,
destitute of national antipathies, and exercising, not merely the
overt acts of hospitality, but those more rare and noble
courtesies which spring from liberality of opinion.
What have we to do with national prejudices? They are the
inveterate diseases of old countries, contracted in rude and
ignorant ages, when nations knew but little of each other, and
looked beyond their own boundaries with distrust and hostility.
We, on the contrary, have sprung into national existence in an
enlightened and philosophic age, when the different parts of the
habitable world, and the various branches of the human family,
have been indefatigably studied and made known to each other; and
we forego the advantages of our birth, if we do not shake off the
national prejudices, as we would the local superstitions, of the
old world.
But above all let us not be influenced by any angry feelings, so
far as to shut our eyes to the perception of what is really
excellent and amiable in the English character. We are a young
people, necessarily an imitative one, and must take our examples
and models, in a great degree, from the existing nations of
Europe. There is no country more worthy of our study than
England. The spirit of her constitution is most analogous to
ours. The manners of her people--their intellectual
activity--their freedom of opinion--their habits of thinking on
those subjects which concern the dearest interests and most
sacred charities of private life, are all congenial to the
American character; and, in fact, are all intrinsically
excellent: for it is in the moral feeling of the people that the
deep foundations of British prosperity are laid; and however the
superstructure may be timeworn, or overrun by abuses, there must
be something solid in the basis, admirable in the materials, and
stable in the structure of an edifice that so long has towered
unshaken amidst the tempests of the world.
Let it be the pride of our writers, therefore, discarding all
feelings of irritation, and disdaining to retaliate the
illiberality of British authors, to speak of the English nation
without prejudice, and with determined candor. While they rebuke
the indiscriminating bigotry with which some of our countrymen
admire and imitate every thing English, merely because it is
English, let them frankly point out what is really worthy of
approbation. We may thus place England before us as a perpetual
volume of reference, wherein are recorded sound deductions from
ages of experience; and while we avoid the errors and absurdities
which may have crept into the page, we may draw thence golden
maxims of practical wisdom, wherewith to strengthen and to
embellish our national character.
Washington Irving's short story: English Writers on America
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