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Or, perhaps, through mistake, or ill-directed hospitality, or the prompt disposition to cheer and countenance the stranger, prevalent among my countrymen, they may have been treated with unwonted respect in America; and, accustomed all their lives to consider themselves below the surface of 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 descriptions of a ruin, and how sternly will they censure the slightest 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, what is worse, they will 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 apparent

ly taken in it by my countrymen, and certain injurious effects which I apprehended 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 wove around 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. The combined misrepresentations of all the writers of England, if we could conceive of such great spirits united in so despicable an attempt, could not conceal our rapidlygrowing importance and matchless prosperity. They could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, but to moral causes: To the political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound moral and religious principles, that give force and sustained energy to the character of a people; and, 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 endeavoured to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of England alone that honour 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 disgrace established.

To ourselves, therefore, it is comparatively of but little importance how we are estimated in England, or whether she 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 labouring 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 completely 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 most sorely in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind, and produce a morbid sensibility to the most trifling collision. It is not so much any one overt act that occasions 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 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

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