Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

38

THE BLOT OF AMERICA.

patience of restraint, get the better of every other feeling ; and cruelty has no other limit than fear.-[E. R. 1818.]

THE BLOT OF AMERICA.

EVERY American who loves his country should dedicate his whole life, and every faculty of his soul, to efface this foul stain from its character. If nations rank according to their wisdom and their virtue, what right has the American, a scourger and murderer of slaves, to compare himself with the least and lowest of the European nations? - much more with this great and humane country, where the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon the meanest peasant? What is freedom, where all are not free? where the greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious caprice, to the colour of the body? [E. R. 1818.]

INCONSISTENCY OF SLAVERY AND FREE INSTITUTIONS.

sure

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

or

LET the world judge which is the most liable to cenwe who, in the midst of our rottenness, have torn off the manacles of slaves all over the world; they who, with their idle purity, and useless perfection, have remained mute and careless, while groans echoed and whips clanked round the very walls of their spotless Congress. We wish well to America-we rejoice in her prosperity and are delighted to resist the absurd impertinence with which the character of her people is often treated in this country: but the existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime, with which no measure can be kept-for which her situation affords no sort of apology-which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the boast of it disgusting.-[E. R. 1818.]

RUPTURE OF THE UNION.

39

RUPTURE OF THE UNION.

THE Americans are a very sensible, reflecting people, and have conducted their affairs extremely well; but it is scarcely possible to conceive that such an empire should very long remain undivided, or that the dwellers on the Columbia should have common interest with the navigators of the Hudson and the Delaware. - [E. R. 1818.]

OLD COUNTRIES LEAST EXPENSIVE.

ENGLAND is, to be sure, a very expensive country; but a million of millions has been expended in making it habitable and comfortable; and this is a constant source of revenue, or, what is the same thing, a constant diminution of expense to every man living in it. No country, in fact, is so expensive as one which human beings are just beginning to inhabit ;— where there are no roads, no bridges, no skill, no help, no combination of powers, and no force of capital.-[E. R. 1818.]

NAVAL POWER OF ENGLAND AND THE UNITED

STATES.

It would be the height of madness in America to run into another naval war with this country if it could be averted by any other means than a sacrifice of proper dignity and character. They have, comparatively, no land revenue; and, in spite of the Franklin and Guerrière, though lined with cedar and mounted with brass cannon, they must soon be reduced to the same state which has been described by Dr. Seybert, and from which they were so opportunely extricated by the treaty of Ghent.-[E. R. 1820.]

40

BRITISH TAXATION.

[ocr errors]

BRITISH TAXATION.

[ocr errors]

[ocr errors]

WE can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory;-TAXES upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion - taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth on every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home - taxes on the raw material · taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of mantaxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride-at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay.-The schoolboy whips his taxed top- the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road:—and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent. into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent.- flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent.and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers— to be taxed no more.-[E. R. 1820.]

AMERICAN PRIVILEGES.-LIBERTY OF TRADES. 41

AMERICAN PRIVILEGES.

AMERICA is exempted, by its very newness as a nation, from many of the evils of the old governments of Europe. It has no mischievous remains of feudal institutions, and no violations of political economy sanctioned by time, and older than the age of reason. If a man find a partridge upon his ground eating his corn, in any part of Kentucky or Indiana, he may kill it even if his father be not a Doctor of Divinity.-[E. R. 1824.]

LIBERTY OF TRADES.

THOUGH America is a confederation of republics, they are in many cases much more amalgamated than the various parts of Great Britain. If a citizen of the United States can make a shoe, he is at liberty to make a shoe any where between Lake Ontario and New Orleans,- he may sole on the Mississippi,- heel on the Missouri,-measure Mr. Birkbeck on the little Wabash, or take (which our best politicians do not find an easy matter) the length of Mr. Munro's foot on the banks of the Potowmac. But woe to the cobbler, who, having made Hessian boots for the alderman of Newcastle, should venture to invest with these coriaceous integuments the leg of a liege subject at York. A yellow ant in a nest of red ants. a butcher's dog in a fox-kennel -a mouse in a bee-hive,all feel the effects of untimely intrusion; - but far preferable their fate to that of the misguided artisan, who, misled by sixpenny histories of England, and conceiving his country to have been united at the Heptarchy, goes forth from his native town to stitch freely within the sea-girt limits of Albion. Him the mayor, him the alderman, him the recorder, him the

42 WIGS AND GOWNS-AMERICAN LITERATURE IN 1818.

quarter sessions would worry. Him the justices before trial would long to get into the treadmill; but the moment he was tried, they would push him in with redoubled energy, and leave him to tread himself into a conviction of the barbarous institutions of his corporation-divided country. [E. R. 1824.]

[ocr errors]

WIGS AND GOWNS.

THE Americans, we believe, are the first persons who have discarded the tailor in the administration of justice, and his auxiliary the barber- two persons of endless importance in the codes and pandects of Europe. A judge administers justice, without a calorific wig and parti-coloured gown, in a coat and pantaloons. He is obeyed, however; and life and property are not badly protected in the United States. [E. R. 1824.]

EQUALITY OF DRESS.

THE true progress of refinement, we conceive, is to discard all the mountebank drapery of barbarous ages. One row of gold and fur falls off after another from the robe of power, and is picked up and worn by the parish beadle and the exhibitor of wild beasts. Meantime, the afflicted wiseacre mourns over equality of garment; and wotteth not of two men, whose doublets have cost alike, how one shall command and the other obey. [E. R. 1824.]

[ocr errors]

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN 1818.

LITERATURE the Americans have none literature, we mean. It is all imported.

no native They had a

« ElőzőTovább »