24

NATIONAL SENTIMENT OF ENGLISHMEN.

as a sarcasm, I have always taken it as a compliment; for in all nations respect has been felt for those men who have not forgotten the land of their birth, when they lost sight of their habitations. But if this feeling were a crime, Englishmen should never impute it to us; for in what part of the world has an Englishman ever been found who had not carried with him a good many testimonials that John Bull was his father! This hauteur that Englishmen never can get rid of, and perhaps never should, sometimes niakes them very disagreeable; but it is part and parcel of that national sentiment which, however disagreeable it may make some Englishmen, makes England very great.

These were the feelings with which I landed on the shores of England, went through her islands, and looked on society and government. The standard by which I judged government and the organization of society, was that which all men of sense will say is founded in justice. My premises were facts which I saw and learned for myself. My logic was that of the Declaration of Independence and my own heart, between which there was no collision. My conclusions were honestly drawn, and without pausing to think of the consequences, I published them to the world.

I

IX.

HAVE never entered the lists with critics or enemies to defend my book on England. Attacks without number were made on it (and in this country on its writer) on both sides of the Atlantic, but I never had a disposition to reply, and if I . had felt like it I never should have found the time. My faith in authorship and fame is summed up in a word; if a book has not enough truth and vitality in itself to live, all the bolstering in the world will do no good. Who knows but the Spartans were right after all, in putting their sickly children out of the way. It seldom pays to raise them, especially literary bantlings. Time, the great regulator, will do justice at last to

MY CRITICS AND REVIEWERS.

25

every volume, and every man. It is a good maxim, that if you cannot put fire into your book, put your book into the fire. Whatever is necessary or useful to the progress of mankind, mankind will take care of. I am willing and glad to be tried in whatever I have written, or done, or may write, or do, hereafter, by that impartial tribunal. For I do not yet know of an instance, in which any contribution made in a proper spirit to the good of mankind has ever been allowed to die. As the stream of time moves on, it can and will bear on its bosom every thing that is buoyant enough to sustain itself. All else must sink, and ought to. Neither the partialities nor the prejudices of contemporaries can alter the decisions of the future. The judgments of men cannot be swayed for any great length of time by the petty strifes of contending rivals, or parties of the brief hour of struggle.

One of my most candid critics said, I could not have become qualified to write about England when I had passed hardly a year there. This struck me as a new sort of objection to urge against the correctness of a man's vision, because he spent so short a time in looking at the objects he described. There are men who might gaze, like Newton's dog, for years on Newton's stars without making much progress in the science of astronomy. Another of my English reviewers remarked, in speaking of these same critics, that "it would be more just to inquire whether what the writer saw and said was really so." I account for the fact that I did say some things about England that other visitors had not remarked, by giving an idea of the manner in which I economized my time. A residence of many years in Europe since that period, has only illustrated an observation I made when I first went abroad, that most travelers, especially Americans, are equally prodigal of their time and their money. I remember that when I reached England I was impressed with the feeling of how much my time would be worth there, if it were well spent. I have always found in my travels and sojournings, that a few hours, or even a few minutes, well spent at the right time, would

26

HOW I FIRST WROTE OF ENGLAND.

multiply forever my resources of happiness. I felt this when I looked for the first time on the frowning rock of Gibraltar; the sun-clad mountains of Grenada; the tideless bosom of the Mediterranean; the mosaic shores of Italy; the dome of St. Peter's; the frost-work of the Duomo of Milan; so felt I when first standing on the fields of Montenotte and of Marengo.

I

X.

WAS very young when I went to England. The first man I ever saw in my life who was famishing with hunger, I saw in London. The first female I ever looked on in the streets, whose raiment could not cover her form, was in London. The first structure raised by the hand of man that overwhelmed me, was Westminster Abbey. The first prison that made me shudder as I gazed on it, was Newgate. The first throne I ever saw was the throne of the then youthful and still beloved Victoria. These things struck me deeply; I felt deeply; I saw clearly. I described with earnestness and honesty what I saw -from the palace, with all its splendors, to the underground homes of the heathen in the collieries-from the dizziest heights to the lowest depths, I scoured through England for myself. I saw with my own eyes. I turned England inside out and upside down straight before the eyes of Englishmen themselves; and, forsooth, because I showed them what they never had seen before, and told them what they did not know, they said it was all made up. Well it was made up of facts. My statements have stood the test of twenty-four years, and all my pictures of the vice, the degradation, the sufferings, the sottishness, the heathenism of the masses of the British people, have been outdone since, by Reports made to the British Parliament on the horrors of the Collieries, the barbarities practiced in the Workhouses, the worse than slave toil of the Factories, the plethora of the Prelacy, the spiritual as well as the physical poverty of their flocks, the ignorance of the great herd of England's home subjects, and, in a single word, the accursed system of govern

MY ENGLISH TEACHERS AND DEFENDERS.

27

ment and society which is made for the express purpose of dressing one Englishman in gold and sending him to the House of Lords, and another Englishman in rags and sending him to the workhouse.

In some departments, my teachers then and my defenders since, have been the first men of Great Britain. Brougham, in his better days, before he began to drivel; Carlyle, in his better days, before he began to scold and drivel; Cobden, then glowing in, and since passed from the furnace, one of the greatest and most admired of the men of our times; Bright, the great Quaker man of State; Mill, the public economist of the world; Goldwin Smith, of Oxford; Daniel O'Connell, the Irish liberator; Dickens, who had partly before, and who has entirely since, torn off the garb of hypocrisy under which the British aristocracy had enwrapped itself in the dreadful work of embruting and enslaving the largest portion of the people; Thackeray, who shows the honeycomb system of villainy, fraud, dissipation and rottenness on which the aristocratic structure of England stands: so, if my work was the work of a boy, I am not utterly ashamed to own it as a man; for unworthy as it may have been of the favor it received, it was written in an honest and truthful spirit, and for the good of mankind.

I

XI.

HAVE given pretty liberal space to the course of the Government and the press of England towards us during our civil war.

England is responsible for the losses occasioned by the "Alabama," First, not because of the violation of any act of Parliament which could neither increase nor diminish her responsibilities, but because upon the principles of international law, which she has no right to modify by any statute, she neglected, after due notice from our Government, to arrest the departure of the "Alabama."

Second. Because her own revenue officers at Liverpool were

28

PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S VIEWS.

fully apprised of the intended departure of the "Alabama," and knowingly assisted in her leaving port as a Confederate cruiser.

Third. Because after England, by the order of arrest, had acknowledged that the departure of the "Alabama" for such a purpose was contrary to law, neglected to send British cruisers to seize her.

Fourth. Because she sent no notice to any of her colonial ports to seize the "Alabama."

Fifth. Because the "Alabama" was received into British colonial ports after her departure, in violation of law, and instead of being seized by the Colonial authorities, she received the hospitalities of a national vessel.*

* As these proof sheets are leaving my hands, the first Annual Message of President Johnson is received. His language on this subject is clear and unequivocal :-" Our domestic contest, now happily ended, has left some traces in our relations with one at least of the great maritime powers. The formal accordance of belligerent rights to the insurgent States was unprecedented, and has not been justified by the issue. But in the systems of neutrality pursued by the powers which made that concession there was a marked difference. The materials of war for the insurgent States were furnished, in a great measure, from the workshops of Great Britain, and British ships, manned by British subjects, and prepared for receiving British armaments, sailed from the ports of Great Britain to make war on American commerce, under the shelter of a commission from the insurgent States. These ships, having once escaped from British ports, ever afterwards entered them in every part of the world, to refit, and so to renew their depredations. The consequences of this conduct were most disastrous to the States then in rebellion, increasing their desolation and misery by the prolongation of our civil contest. It had, moreover, the effect, to a great extent, to drive the American flag from the sea, and to transfer much of our shipping and our commerce to the very Power whose subjects had created the necessity for such a change. These events took place before I was called to the administration of the Government. The sincere desire for peace by which I am animated, led me to approve the proposal, already made, to submit the questions which had thus arisen between the countries to arbitration. These questions are of such moment that they must have commanded the attention of the Great Powers, and are so interwoven with the peace and interests of every one of them as to have insured an impartial decision. I regret to inform you that Great Britain declined the arbitrament, but, on the other hand, invited us to the formation of a joint commission to settle mutual claims between the two