if not to conquer. That if this should be accomplished, a servile war would be excited by one party or the other, no one can doubt. This beautiful Island may be desolated by the storm which injudicious and foreign counsellors have excited on her shores, and an unoffending people be made to atone for offences not their own. From these evils, however, we most cordially hope they may be permitted to escape and enjoy for a long course of years the advantages which a fortunate concurrence has conferred upon them. The supplement to the Essai Politique of Humbolt, which occupies the greater part of the second volume, and which presents many statistical views of the whole continent of America, may hereafter be separately considered. ART. III.-Travels in North-America, in the years 1827 and 1828. By Captain BASIL HALL, Royal Navy. 2 vols. 12mo. Philadelphia. Carey, Lea & Carey. 1829. OUR only motive for reviewing this book is, the general expectation that we shall do so. It is to us, on many accounts, a most unpleasant task. We are by no means sure that the majority of our readers will concur with us in some of our views, and we have too much reason to fear that there are many individuals in every part of the country to whom all of them cannot possibly prove acceptable. But we have learned by experience the truth of Seneca's lines, Sæpe vel linguâ magis and since we must needs speak, we shall even speak out. We will begin by confessing that we have been greatly scandalized at the fuss that has been made about Captain Hall and his book. If there were nothing more in it, this fidgety and prurient anxiety about what he has been saying of us behind our backs, is rather a provoking confirmation of what he reports of our efforts to extort his approbation of us before our faces. But our mortification arises from a more serious view of the matter. For our humble selves, we declare, with great sincerity, that none of the impertinencies which have been published about our country and its institutions, in England or elsewhere, have ever given us the smallest uneasiness, nor do we conceive how they should disturb the tranquillity of any rational mind. If the remarks of a stranger convey salutary truths, we feel it a duty to acknowledge, as it is our interest to profit by them. But what possible harm can his errors or his falsehoods do—except, indeed, to those who are sensitive enough to be angry with them? Even in the case of an individual, it would infer a great want of self-respect, to be so excessively alive to the opinions of others-much more to think of retaliating upon a vulgar calumniator in his own way. But what is undignified in the case of an individual, becomes quite absurd in a whole people-especially in a people full of a prophetic confidence in its destinies, and every day, as we are taught to believe, marching with such gigantic strides to the fulfilment of them. Surely, it is unworthy of such a people to think of making any other answer to the misrepresentations of a prejudiced, or theoretical, or lying traveller, (as the case may be) than the pregnant one conveyed in a line of Dante Taci, e lascia volger gli anni.* We cannot say that we found any single passage in these volumes, more offensive to us than the following: "The fact of the greater part of all the works which are read in one country, being written for a totally different state of society in another, forms a very singular anomaly in the history of nations-and I am disposed to think that the Americans would be a happier people if this incongruous communication were at an end. If they got no more books or newspapers from us, than we do from France or Spain, they would, I really believe, be much happier, as far as their intercourse with this country has any influence over them." Vol. i. p. 243. Yet there is, unfortunately, but too much truth in it. For all our hyperbolical vauntings about our own superiority to the rest of mankind, we do defer too much to English criticism, and suffer ourselves at once to be governed and to be made unhappy by it. We have too much national vanity, and too little of the far nobler feeling of national pride. There can be no true greatness either in individuals or in multitudes without self-reliance. Enthusiasm must be too intense to quail at ridicule, genius must soar above criticism, or there is no hope of excellence. We must learn to think only of truth and nature in what we do and say, and to be contented with the applauses of our own people. Instead of clipping and paring away our energies, to suit ourselves to the taste of foreigners, let us give them free • Paradiso, ix. scope, and trust to the sympathies of our neighbours, our friends, our brethren. What Frenchman expects to be admired at London, or cares a straw about the opinions of English and Scotch censors? For him the whole world lies between the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Ocean. We are, in this respect, too fortunate, did we but know and appreciate our own advantages. Ridiculous as some of our anticipations, bottomed upon the "geometrical ratio" may be, there is one which cannot fail. Beyond a doubt, in the course of half a century more, the audience to which American genius shall address itself, (great as it already is) will be far more numerous-the theatre more vast and imposing, if not altogether so brilliant as that of the parent country. At the end of yet another half century, it will be said of England, with truth, pars minima est ipsa sui. Her language will become a dialect. It will be to the great Anglo-Saxon tongue, spoken on the banks of the Missouri and the Hudson, at best, what the Attic was to the Hellenic or common Greek. The majority, with anything like equality of force and advantages, will govern in this as in other things. The adoption into good use in England of very many words, but the other day rejected and ridiculed as Americanisms, shews already what is the inevitable tendency of things. And, after all, what does it signify to us whether that language shall be intelligible and agreeable or not to a foreign ear. Happy the men who shall lead the way in the formation of a national literature-who shall strike the chord to which so many millions of American hearts shall vibrate forever, and leave a name to be re-echoed "With a shout Loud as from numbers without number, sweet We begin by avowing frankly that we have been, upon the whole, agreeably disappointed in Captain Hall's report of us. From all that we had heard of his conversations and deportment while among us, we had been led to expect a great deal of misrepresentation and acrimony in his book. We must do him the justice to say, that there is very little of the formerin the way of any positive suggestio falsi at least-and nothing at all of the latter. Most of what he states as matter of fact, we believe to be substantially true. Our readers will understand us. We would carefully distinguish between his statements and his inferences-between the journal of the traveller and the common-place book of the Tory philosopher. That he should be dissatisfied with our political institutions, was quite a * See the remarks of Captain Hall on this subject, at vol. i. p. 241, matter of course. What Englishman or Scotchman, or any other loyal subject (we say nothing of a salaried functionary) of his Britannic Majesty, could ever tolerate popular government in any shape? Or why should we, who utterly abominate their polity, and give ourselves so little trouble to conceal our aversion to it, deny the same privilege to them? We were fully prepared, therefore, for his diatribes upon this subject; and all that we felt ourselves at liberty to exact from him, was what every gentleman owes to his own reputation, viz. that he should state our case fairly. It would be going too far to say, that he has done this exactly. It would be, perhaps, expecting too much of him to require it. He came hither with preconceived opinions he is an homme à système, and visited us for the purpose of collecting facts to support his theory. He has accordingly seen everything with a partial and prejudiced eye. There is no doubt about this, so far, we mean, as our political constitution and its effects on society are concerned. On another vital subject, as we shall presently have to remark more particularly, he does not seem to have adhered so pertinaciously to his opinions. But on this great subject of popular institutions, he looks at all the phenomena through a false medium, and draws conclusions the very reverse of those which would seem fairly deducible from his own premises. When we say, therefore, that he has not, to our knowledge been guilty of any important misrepresentation, our proposition is, of course, subject to the qualification, that he has suffered his inveterate opinions to throw a false colouring over the objects of his inquiry, and to betray him into the exaggeration and unfairness of a professed advocate. Thus, it is undoubtedly true, that with some few exceptions, the speeches of our members of Congress are intolerably long-winded, rhetorical and commonplace, although it may be true that the subject, by the time it has passed through a discussion of fifty orators and at least as many days, is as fully elucidated as it could be by as many Pitts and Cannings. So, it is certainly true, that the great democratic principle, as it is called, of rotation in office, operates rather too actively to admit of a very mature experience in most of our politicians-and yet it does not necessarily follow but that our raw recruits in legislation are quite a match for the disciplined veterans of other countries. Again, our worthy Captain is lamentably behind the spirit of the age of the nineteenth century-in his notions about an establishment and the union of Church and State; yet he admits that he saw every where the most profound respect for religion, and he is only apprehensive, a priori, lest (to verify his theory) things will not long go on in the same train. Let it be remembered too, that he visited us at a juncture as inauspicious for the country, as it was well suited to the supposed purpose of the tourist. He was here in the very "torrent, tempest and, as I may say, whirlwind of our passions." He was an eye and ear witness of many of those disgusting and disgraceful abominations which have made the late presidential election forever memorable—may it be forever unparalleled— in our history. He heard of nothing else wherever he went. The rancorous hostility, the atrocious calúmnies, the systematic misrepresentation, the violation of every decency of life, that distinguished the party warfare of the day, pressed upon his observation on all sides. He saw the daily press teeming with ribaldry and falsehood, until the very sight of a newspaper became loathsome to every body that had any sense of shame left. He heard of eves-droppers reporting conversations-of friends publishing the letters of their correspondents-of guests violating the rights of hospitality, and the sanctity of the fireside and the festive board. He saw this ruthless and unprincipled warfare carried into the very bosom of domestic life, and even female sensibility and honour assailed by remorseless ruffians, apparently with the countenance of men who ought to have blushed at the bare idea of such an alliance. This baleful spirit pervaded everything, disturbed everything, corrupted everything. It is impossible for any good citizen to contemplate this subject without anxiety and alarm. What is to become of the country if it is to be eternally distracted by the most slavish and degrading of all sorts of political party, that, namely, in which the fundamental maxim of republican government is reversed, and all principles are sacrificed to men? Captain Hall has given anything but an exaggerated account of this mighty evil, in a passage which we are about to cite. Pudet hæc opprobria nobis! We know that there are men, and those probably, among the busiest and basest actors in such scenes, who would as little scruple to deny their existence, as to get them up again whenever their own ends could be answered by it. But protestations of this sort, however vehemently patriotic they may sound, cannot restore the peace, the dignity, and the morals of a people thus excited and misled. We see no remedy for these things while the daily press is conducted as it is-and while good citizens shrink from the responsibility of denouncing the mean or unprincipled expedients resorted to by their own party, and every thorough-paced partisan, on the contrary, acts as if he thought success the only test of merit, and failure the only sort of dishonour worth avoiding. |