48

AMERICAN REPUDIATION.

your good people's money for the railroad only last year." All this may seem very smart to the Americans; but if I had the misfortune to be born among such a people, the land of my fathers should not retain me a single moment after the act of repudiation. I would appeal from my fathers to my forefathers. I would fly to Newgate for greater purity of thought, and seek in the prisons of England for better rules of life.-[Letters on American Debts.]

AMERICAN CREDIT.

THIS new and vain people can never forgive us for having preceded them 300 years in civilisation. They are prepared to enter into the most bloody wars in England, not on account of Oregon, or boundaries, or right of search, but because our clothes and carriages are better made, and because Bond Street beats Broadway. Wise Webster does all he can to convince the people that these are not lawful causes of war; but wars and long wars, they will one day or another produce; and this, perhaps, is the only advantage of repudiation. The Americans cannot gratify their avarice and ambition at once; they cannot cheat and conquer at the same time. The warlike power of every country depends on their Three per Cents. If Cæsar were to reappear upon earth, Wettenhall's list would be more important than his Commentaries; Rothschild would open and shut the temple of Janus; Thomas Baring, or Bates, would probably command the Tenth Legion, and the soldiers would march to battle with loud cries of Scrip and Omnium reduced, Consols, and Cæsar! Now, the Americans have cut themselves off from all resources of credit. Having been as dishonest as they can be, they are prevented from being as foolish as they wish to be.

THE FOLLY OF REPUDIATION.

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In the whole habitable globe they cannot borrow a guinea, and they cannot draw the sword because they have not money to buy it.

If I were an American of any of the honest States, I would never rest till I had compelled Pennsylvania to be as honest as myself. The bad faith of that State brings disgrace on all; just as common snakes are killed because vipers are dangerous.

THE FOLLY OF REPUDIATION.

We all know that the Americans can fight. Nobody doubts their courage. I see now in my mind's eye a whole army on the plains of Pennsylvania in battle array, immense corps of insolvent light infantry, regiments of heavy horse debtors, battalions of repudiators, brigades of bankrupts, with Vivre sans payer, ou mourir, on their banners, and are alieno on their trumpets: all these desperate debtors would fight to the death for their country, and probably drive into the sea their invading creditors. Of their courage, I repeat again, I have no doubt. I wish I had the same confidence in their wisdom. But I believe they will become intoxicated by the flattery of unprincipled orators; and, instead of entering with us into a noble competition in making calico (the great object for which the AngloSaxon race appears to have been created), they will waste their happiness and their money (if they can get any) in years of silly, bloody, foolish, and accursed war, to prove to the world that Perkins is a real fine gentleman, and that the carronades of the Washington steamer will carry further than those of the Britisher Victoria, or the Robert Peel vessel of war.

E

As for me, as soon as I hear that the last farthing is paid to the last creditor, I will appear on my knees at the bar of the Pennsylvanian Senate in the plumeopicean robe of American controversy. Each Conscript Jonathan shall trickle over me a few drops of tar, and help to decorate me with those penal plumes in which the vanquished reasoner of the transatlantic world does. homage to the physical superiority of his opponents.

VALUE OF PRINCIPLE.

AND now, drab-coloured men of Pennsylvania, there is yet a moment left: the eyes of all Europe are anchored

upon you

“Surrexit mundus justis furiis:"

start up from that trance of dishonesty into which you are plunged; don't think of the flesh which walls about your life, but of that sin which has hurled you from the heaven of character, which hangs over you like a devouring pestilence, and makes good men sad, and ruffians dance and sing. It is not for Gin Sling and Sherry Cobler alone that man is to live, but for those great principles against which no argument can be listened to

principles which give to every power a double power above their functions and their offices, which are the books, the arts, the academies that teach, lift up, and nourish the world - principles (I am quite serious in what I say) above cash, superior to cotton, higher than currency-principles, without which it is better to die than to live, which every servant of God, over every sea and in all lands, should cherish. spiramenta anima.

usque ad abdita

FRUITS OF CONQUEST.-BENEFITS OF AVARICE. 51

SCIENTIFIC FRUITS OF CONQUEST.

To military men we have been, and must be, indebted for our first acquaintance with the interior of many countries. Conquest has explored more than ever curiosity has done; and the path for science has been commonly opened by the sword. [E. R. 1803.]

ENGLISH RESERVE.

THE Society into which a transient stranger gains the most easy access in any country, is not often that which ought to stamp the national character; and no criterion can be more fallible, in a people so reserved and inaccessible as the British, who (even when they open their doors to letters of introduction) cannot for years overcome the awkward timidity of their nature.-[E. R. 1803.]

FRENCH PRECIPITATION.

THE late Mr. Pétion, who was sent over into this country to acquire a knowledge of our criminal law, is said to have declared himself thoroughly informed upon the subject, after remaining precisely two and thirty minutes in the Old Bailey. [E. R. 1803.]

BENEFITS OF AVARICE.

THE avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labour, which is best encouraged by the love of money.-[E. R.]

52

PLAIN WRITING. - GILDING THE GALLOWS.

PLAIN WRITING.

SUCH men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Cæsar; but, in general, a correct and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action: and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth.-[E. R.]

THE INDICATIVE MOOD.

THE whole merit of violent deviations from common style depends upon their rarity, and nothing does, for ten pages together, but the indicative mood.-[E. R.]

ACQUISITION OF GOOD FORGOTTEN.

THE laborious acquisition of any good we have long enjoyed is apt to be forgotten.-[E. R.]

FALSE QUANTITIES.

A YOUNG man, who, on a public occasion, makes a false quantity at the outset of life, can seldom or never get over it. [E. R.]

BAD BOOKS.

THE immorality of any book (in our estimation) is to be determined by the general impressions it leaves on those minds whose principles, not yet ossified, are capable of affording a less powerful defence to its influence.-[E. R. 1803.]

GILDING THE GALLOWS.

Ir is in vain to say the fable evinces, in the last act, that vice is productive of misery. We may decorate a villain with graces and felicities for nine volumes, and