only for once, to touch upon politics; but it shall be but generally, and nothing but the necessity of self-defence shall make him resume the subject. With reluctance, but from a sense of duty, he must criticise a paper in his own work, communicated to him by a valued friend, to whose taste and sentiments he would defer, perhaps, on any occasion but the present. But when his friend deprecates our literary feuds with America, he applies, in the Editor's opinion, the most faulty methods of appeasing them. He denies, and it is to be hoped we all deny, any systematic hatred towards the Americans; but he charges the large majority of that people with being vain, vulgar, and boisterous, and full of national prejudices; which, when they come to this country, take the form of unmeasured hatred and rudeness. Hard words these; and, perhaps, not very usefully uttered even if true. But if they be not true-if this sweeping computation of the tolerable or intolerable character of a whole nation can be even suspected of exaggeration, how unfair and how dangerous to have made it. For his own part the Editor can say, that he believes he has known more Americans than the writer of the paper. Possibly, in the course of his life, not less than an hundred-men of various vocations, characters, and degrees of education. He has argued with them, and heard them argue, on national subjects; but he can safely declare, that he never thought them more boisterous than other men; on the contrary, rather distinguished, in general, by coolness and self-possession. Exceptions of warmth, as among the people of all countries when their prejudices are ruffled, he may have observed; but unmeasured hatred, or rudeness, never.

If we dislike the American manner, (our own, the world says, is not perfect) we should not rake up its imperfections when we protest our wish to put an end to a paper war with that people. It is an useless jar in the tones of our harmony to talk of their disagreeable peculiarities at the moment of confessing that those faults have not eaten into the heart and substance of their national character, and after quoting travellers, who attest "the gallantry, high feeling, and humanity of their troops, and the general religion and hospitality of their people."

But the Americans are told they should be satisfied with our full acknowledgments of their virtues. And so they would have been, no doubt, if the compliments from our press had not come to them so bedaubed with inconsistent aspersions, as to resemble oranges that have been dipped in the kennel. For, in testifying their humanity, we parenthetically bemoan their ferocity. We reproach them, and yet say we are willing to be well with them. We hold out to them the olivebranch, and whip them with it as a conciliatory ceremony. With all this we tell them, however, that they must not be offended, because it is our way to caricature and gibbet Kings and Queens, and Bishops, for the popular entertainment, forgetting that the Americans have nothing to do with our treatment of Kings and Bishops, and that our literature should be as dissimilar as possible to either gibbets or caricatures. Farther, we enjoin them silence and good humour. The charms of silence we illustrate by harangues on their soreness and irritability; and we suggest their vulgar manners, their scanty literature, and the prospect of their language being for ever amenable to our correction, as themes on which they may meditate during their pleased and pensive taciturnity.

But we admire the writings of Washington Irving, and, it might have been added, the pictures of Lesley, and of the American Newton.* And this is a pledge of our perfect liberality. So thinks the Editor's friend, but not so the Editor. For the Americans have gone before us in this species of justice, having praised our British books abundantly, and yet without obtaining credit for entire freedom from prejudices. Nor, in strictness, have they deserved it. It is on neither side an excuse for national abuse to have paid compliments to individuals. The charitable feeling between two kindred and free nations ought to extend much farther, and exclude all collective animosity. How to produce this Christian spirit is, to be sure, the problem which can never be practically

The Editor calls him American, because there is an ingenious English artist of the same name.

solved in perfection. Yet, let antipathies be softened, if they cannot be eradicated. If our interests and those of America be the same, they should unite us; if they jar, the more composure of mind is necessary to adjust them. America is told that she will always find friends in England, from the party which supports the republican side of our mixed constitution. But is this all that England can offer America-not the milk of human kindness, but the spare gall of political wrangling? Is not every English royalist interested to demonstrate, in his demeanour towards America, that Monarchy creates more courtesy of manners, than Republicanism?-that chivalrous recollections inspire magnanimity? that our Universities teach dispassionate ethics; and that our Church is at the head of Christian churches, by its having impressed our public character with forbearance and charity?

So much for the feelings that ought to be brought into this business. As to wrangling with America in print, it should be the policy of all honest British politicians to avoid it.

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If the anxious Monarchist be alarmed at her citizens over-describing their democratical blessings, he should recollect that every contemptuous word we throw out is a challenge to their pride and boastfulness, and a temptation for them to exaggerate the pictures of their own felicity. And though we may expose many of their false assertions, yet, as all human things have imperfections, those of our own venerable institutions are in turn laid open to the detraction of antagonists, whom we irritate in order to make sure of their candour. It is true that rude remarks on England might come from America, supposing our press to be ever so moderate. English emigrants rail at us; but for these the native American character is not responsible. Granting, however, that this railing is an evil, how is it best to be mitigated? The transatlantic press cannot be silenced by force: though vanquished in argument, it would argue still. All angry discussion on our part that inflames the whole American people, makes them speak ten times of our tithes and taxes for once that they would mention them if not embarked in a provoking controversy. And their boastings

of immunity from such burthens-boastings undeniably aggravated by the reproaches which we offer them-come indirectly, through seditious newspapers, to our taxed and tithed, and reading poor. By wrangling with the only nation that speaks English, we render the only foreign newspaper an uneducated Englishman can read, to the utmost extent in our power, a gazette of his causes for discontent. If the American press be despicable, the surest token of our contempt would be silence; if it be formidable, it is better to be at peace than at war with it. If America has been violent in this war of words, it is clear that we have not been moderate: even her federalists have been insulted by us. When she has spoken of those whom she thought her great men, and mentioned Patrick Henry, it has been contemptuously asked, in one of our most popular publications, "Who is he?"-The memory of Patrick Henry is deeply respected by his countrymen. He was the first orator who stood up in an American assembly to propose the resolution of their independence. Whether we choose to call him great or not, he was a bold and distinguished man. His name is inwoven in his country's history, and ought to have been known to every one pretending to write about America.

This is not the way to deal, either effectively or fairly, with the citizens of the United States. Let us increase the number of their liberals, by our own liberality. Their Republicans, in candid moments, will acknowledge defects in their own system of policy, calculated to make an Englishman better satisfied with his own institutionsacknowledgements which their pride will justly refuse to our haughty treatment; and it must be owned that we treat them haughtily, when we subjoin to the name of one of their best and bravest patriots the ignorant and insolent interrogation of "Who is he?"

There is no need to flatter their self-complacency. But surely it need not compromise our dignity, that the general character of our publications should gain over the young American, who is to be the future senator or ruler of his country, to form pleasing associations with the political literature of Britain. It were better that the language recording his ties of affinity with us, were not

the only one, perhaps, in the world, in which he can read humiliating truths or irritating falsehoods about his country, and expressions of contempt, calculated to make him vow, in the weakness of human nature, that no love shall be lost between himself and Old England.

The worst thing urged against America is her negro slavery—a theme, no doubt, for the general philanthropist, but not for the Englishman as a ground of unqualified national vanity. Slaves cannot breathe in England. Yes, but they can breathe in the English West Indies, and breathe heavier groans (it is said) than in America. And we profit by this slavery, and we pay taxes to maintain it. The negro, however, is free the moment he reaches our shores. And could he reach them at his pleasure, we might then boast that we took the chains from his limbs, and bound them round his heart. But he cannot come over to us. An English soldier would help to kill him, if he asserted his liberty; and the main power that coerces him is English. Now, the plea which our own colonists allege for possessing slaves is necessity, and we either admit or reject this plea. If we absolve the West Indian, we cannot condemn the American. If we denounce them both as tyrants, it is clear that, of the two, we are most nearly and practically concerned with our fellow subjects of the West Indies. If we can justify or palliate their slavery, let us make allowance for that of America. And if we cannot justify it, then, before we preach the emancipation of slaves to another empire, we should first make efforts to accomplish that emancipation in our own.

It is prophesying at random to speak of the future dependence of the American language and literature upon ours; and it is unfair to deride their future prospects of fame, which are neither contemptible nor chimerical. In maintaining real rights, let us be resolute; but not in bandying irritating and useless speculations. Much less in accusations that heighten national antipathies. How degrading to both countries was the spectacle when the American press accused Englishmen of stirring their punch with the amputated fingers of Irish rebels, and when England retorted by charging Ame