CHAPTER XXVII

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ENGLISH VEHICLES.—A FEUDAL CASTLE AND MODERN ARISTOCRATIC MANSION.—ARISTOCRACY IN 1850.—PRIMOGENITURE.—DEMOCRATIC TENDENCY OF POLITICAL SENTIMENTS.—DISPOSITION TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES.—COMBATIVENESS.—SLAVERY.

J. and C., after a tramp among the mountains of Wales, which they have much enjoyed, reached the village nearest to where I was visiting last night. This morning a party was made with us to visit —— Castle. We were driven in a “Welsh car,” which is much the same kind of vehicle as the two-wheeled hackney cabs that a few years ago filled the streets of New York, and then suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Two-wheeled vehicles are “all the go” in England. They are excessively heavy and cumbrous compared with ours, the wheels much less in diameter, and they must run much harder, and yet, over these magnificent roads, they can load them much more heavily.

The castle is on high ground, in the midst of the finest park and largest trees we have seen. The moat is filled up, and there are a few large modern windows in the upper part, otherwise it differs but little probably from what it appeared in the time of the crusaders. The whole structure is in the form of a square on the ground, with four low round towers at the corners, and a spacious court-yard in the centre. The entrance is by a great arched gateway, over which the old _portcullis_ still hangs.

[Sidenote: _ARISTOCRATIC LUXURY._]

We were kindly shown through all its parts, including much not ordinarily exhibited to strangers, and I confess that I was not more interested in those parts which were its peculiar features as a feudal stronghold, than in those that displayed the sumptuous taste, luxury, and splendour of a modern aristocratic mansion. The state apartments were truly palatial, and their garniture of paintings, sculpture, bijoutry, furniture, and upholstery, magnificent and delightful to the eye, beyond any conception I had previously had of such things. Let no one say it will be soon reproduced, if it is not already excelled, in the mansions of our merchant-princes in America. Excelled it may be, but no such effect can be reproduced or furnished at once to the order of taste and wealth, for it is the result of generations of taste and wealth. There was in all, never a marvellous thing, or one that demanded especial attention, or that proclaimed in itself great costliness; and while nothing seemed new, though much was modern, most of the old things were of such materials, and so fashioned, that age was of no account, and not a word was said by them of fleeting time. The tone of all—yes, the _tone_—musical to all who entered, was, Be quiet and comfortable, move slowly and enjoy what is nearest to you without straining your eyes or your admiration;—nothing to excite curiosity or astonishment, only quiet esthetic contemplation and calm satisfaction.

I liked it, liked to be in it, and thought that if I had come honestly to the inheritance of it, I could abandon myself to a few months living in the way of it with a good deal of heart. But in the first breath of this day-dreaming I was interrupted by the question, Is it right and best that this should be for the few, the very few of us, when for many of the rest of us there must be but bare walls, tile floors and every thing besides harshly screaming, scrabble for life? This question, again, was immediately shoved aside unanswered by another, whether in this nineteenth century of the carpenter’s son, and first of vulgar, whistling, snorting, roaring locomotives, new-world steamers, and submarine electric telegraphs; penny newspapers, state free-schools, and mechanic’s lyceums, this still soft atmosphere of elegant longevity was exactly the most favourable for the production of thorough, sound, influential manhood, and especially for the growth of the right sort of legislators and lawgivers for the people.

It seems certainly that it would be hard for a man whose mind has been mainly formed and habited in the midst of this abundance of quiet, and beauty, and pleasantness, to rightly understand and judiciously work for the wants of those whose “native air” is as different from this as is that of another planet. Especially hard must it be to look with perfect honesty and appreciating candour upon principles, ideas, measures that are utterly discordant with, and threaten to interrupt, this costly nursery song to which his philosophy, religion, and habits have been studiously harmonized.

Hard, by the way, very hard sometimes, must be the trial of a younger son in one of these families. One son only is the real son, to sympathize with and make his own, his father’s interests, arrangements, and hopes; the others are but hangers-on for a time, and while so must grow accustomed to all this beauty and splendour—must be _enhomed_ to it, and then they are thrust out and return only as inferiors or as guests.

[Sidenote: _DEMOCRATIC TENDENCY._]

Strange! I find this monstrous primogeniture seems natural and Heaven-inspired law to Englishmen. I can conceive how, in its origin, it might have been so—in the patriarchal state, where it was the general direction of the common inheritance, rather than the inheritance itself, that was taken by the eldest of each succeeding generation; but in modern civilized society, with its constant re-familization, and in England especially, where immediate isolated domiciliation of every newly-wedded pair is deemed essential to harmony and happiness, it seems to me more naturally abhorrent and wrong than polygamy or chattel-slavery.

Doubtless, if you take it up as a matter to be reasoned upon, there is much to be said for it, as there is for slavery, or, among the Turks, for extra wiveing, I suppose;—and first, I fully appreciate that without it, could in no way be sustained such noble buildings and grounds—national banner-bearers of dignity—schools of art and systematic encouragement of art, and perhaps I should add, systematic, enterprising agricultural improvements, such as this of five thousand acres thorough-drained _in the best manner_, by the conviction of its profit in one man’s brain instead of fifty men’s, as it must be with us. And finally, it may be that for some few, there is sustained by it a local home, a family nucleus, more permanently than it can be with us.

But there is every thing to be said against it, too, that there is against an aristocratical government and society, for the customs of primogeniture and entail are in fact the basis of aristocracy. And between an aristocratical government and society, with all its dignities, and amenities, and refinements, and a democracy with all its dangers, and annoyances, and humiliations, I do not believe that any man that has had fair observation of our two countries, and who is not utterly faithless in God and man, a thorough coward, or whose judgment is not shamefully warped by prejudice, habit, or selfishness, can hesitate a moment. I think that few Englishmen, few even of the English nobility, and no English statesman, would advise us to return to their system. I think that most of them would be sorry to believe that England herself would fail of being a democratic nation a hundred years hence.

* * * * *

This opinion has been strengthened by the further acquaintance I have had with Englishmen. I have little doubt that the majority of those who ultimately control the British government, do wish and purpose, as fast as it may be expedient, to extend the elective franchise until it shall become universal male adult suffrage. That they do not do this as fast as _we_ should think expedient, is probably to be explained by the fact that they have not yet experienced, and cannot see with sufficient faith, how very rapidly, in God’s providence, the self-governing strength and discernment of a man is stimulated and increased by the freedom to exercise it. And yet one would think that it was on this that they depended alone, so entirely indifferent are they in general to the educational preparation of their subject class to enter the sovereign class.

It may be proper for me here to record my observation of the general disposition of the English people towards our nation, which I confess I did not find to be exactly what I had anticipated, and which I think must be generally much misconceived in the United States.

[Sidenote: _FEELING TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES._]

There is a certain class of the English, conservative whigs more than tories, as I met them, that look upon the United States people as a nation of vulgar, blustering, impertinent, rowdy radicals; very much as a certain set with us look upon the young mechanics and butcher-boys of the town—troublesome, dangerous, and very “low,” but who are necessary to put out fires, and whose votes are of value at elections, and whom it therefore _pays_ to make some occasional show of respect to, and it is best to keep on civil terms with. A considerable number of snobbish, pretending, awkwardly positioned, sub-aristocratic, super-sensible people, that swear by the Times, and have taken their cue from Trollope, follow in their wake. But the great mass of the educated classes regard us very differently; not with unqualified respect and unalloyed admiration, but much as we of the Atlantic States regard our own California—a wild, dare-devil, younger brother, with some most dangerous and reprehensible habits, and some most noble qualities, a capital fellow, in fact, if he would but have done sowing his wild oats.

This may be well enough understood in the United States, but further, there is not in the English people, so far as I have seen them, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, high or low, the slighest soreness or rancorous feeling on account of our separation from them, or our war of separation. Of our success as a republic many of their aristocratic politicians are no doubt jealous; and many having naval and military tastes, do not feel quite satisfied to hear our everlasting boasting about the last war, and would like to have another round or two with us to satisfy themselves that they know how to fight a ship, if they don’t know how to build her, as well as we. There is also a party of “aged women of both sexes,” that worship the ghost of that old fool, “the good king George,” who, I suppose, look upon us with unaffected horror, as they do equally upon their own dissenters and liberals. Yet it never happened to me, though I met and conversed freely with all classes, except the noble, while I was in England, to encounter the first man who did not think that we did exactly right, or who was sorry that we succeeded as we did in declaring and maintaining our independence.

The truth is that, _at that time_, the great mass of thinking men in England were much of that opinion. Our war was with king George and his cabinet, not with the people of England, and if they did reluctantly sustain the foolish measures of the king, it was precisely as our Whigs, who were opposed to the measures that led to the war with Mexico, sustained, with money and with blood, that war when it did come. It is a remarkable thing, that I have noticed that there are many men in England who were born at the time of, or shortly subsequent to our revolutionary war, who are named after the American heroes of that war, Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.

This and other circumstances, early in my visit to England, made me reflect that the hostile feeling of the people had never been deeply engaged against us, while it soon became also evident that very much less of so much hostility as they once had towards us, had descended to the present, than we are in the habit of calculating for.

The reason of the great difference in this respect of the _popular feeling_ in the two countries is evident, though it often extremely puzzles and offends a liberal Englishman who has been in the habit of looking with the greatest feeling of fraternity towards the people of the United States, to find himself when he comes among them expected in all his opinions and feelings to be either a traitor to his own country or an enemy of ours. It is easily explained however.

[Sidenote: _THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION._]

There is a love of hostility in our nature that wants some object to direct itself towards. Seventy years ago, and forty years ago, that object to us as a nation was the kingdom of Great Britain. No other object until within a few years has been offered to us to weaken that traditional hostility. All our military and naval glory, the most blazing, though by no means the most valuable, jewels of our national pride, have been our victories in war with Great Britain. Almost our only national holidays have been in a great part exultations over our successful hostilities with Great Britain. “The enemy” and “the British,” came to me from my fighting grandfather as synonymous terms. When I was a child I never saw an Englishman but I was on my guard against him as a spy, and would look behind the fences to see that there was no ambuscade of red-coats. I made secret coverts about the house, so that when they came to sack and burn it, and take our women and children and household goods into captivity, I could lay in wait to rescue them. In our school-boy games the beaten party was always called “British” (the term “_Britisher_,” I never saw except in a British book or heard except in England). If a law was odious it was termed a British law; if a man was odious he was called an “old Tory;” and it has been with us a common piece of blackguardism till within a short time, if not now, to speak of those of an opposing party as under British influence.

The war had been with us a war of the people; not a woman as she sipped her tea but imbibed hatred to the taxing British, and suckled her offspring with its nourishment; not a man of spunk in the country but was hand to hand fighting with the British, and teaching his sons never to yield to them.

In England, on the other hand, comparatively few of the people knew or cared at all about the war; even the soldiers engaged in it were in considerable numbers mere hirelings from another people, whom the true English would have rather seen whipped than not, so far as they had any _national_ feeling about it. Their hostile feeling was even then more directed towards France than towards America; and now, I do not believe there is one in a thousand of the people of England that has the slightest feeling of hostility towards us, descending or inherited, from that time. It was much so again in the later war. England was at war with half the world in those days, and if a general disposition of enmity towards us had been at all aroused in the course of it, all recollection of it was lost in the fiercer wars with other nations that immediately followed. I doubt if one-half the voters of England could tell the name of a single ship engaged in the war of 1812; whether it was General Hull or Commodore Hull that was heroized in it; whether, in the assault upon New Orleans or Washington, it was that their forces were successful; or whether, finally, they carried or lost the diplomatic point for which their soldiers and sailors had been set to fighting.

Even if the people of England could remember us equally among other important nations as their enemy, it would be a very different feeling towards us that it would lead to, from the remembrance of us as their _old and only_ enemy; so that not only was our original share of the hostile feeling of the people of England a very small one, being principally confined to the king and his sycophants, and the idolaters of the divine right, but the pugnacious element in the nature of an Englishman, of our day, is directed by much more vivid remembrances towards France, or Spain, or Germany, than towards us.

[Sidenote: _THE RADICALS AND SLAVERY._]

Nothing can be more friendly than the general disposition of the English people at present towards us. The liberals, especially, have great respect for us, and look upon us as their allies against the world of injustice, oppression, and bigotry. (Just now the free-traders, however, seem to be a little miffed with us because we have not gone over _stock and fluke_ all at once to perfect reciprocity with them, and the Tories are consequently our greatest flatterers.) The uneducated, common people in general know no difference between America and Russia, but the more intelligent of the working classes are often very fairly informed with regard to our country, and are our most sincere admirers and friends. All the more sober and religious people have a great horror of our slavery and of the occasional Lynch-law performances on our western border, of which they always get the first and darkest reports, and none of the corrections and extenuating circumstances that come in later and cooler despatches. On slavery they are usually greatly misinformed, and view it only as an unmitigated and wholly inexcusable wrong, injustice, and barbarous tyranny for which all Americans are equally responsible, and all equally condemnable, and with regard to which all are to be held responsible, and everlastingly to be scolded at (except a few martyrs, called abolitionists, that obtain a precarious livelihood through their contributions). The Chartists and Radicals, too, are generally _down_ very hard upon an American about slavery, and are commonly grossly misinformed about it. I wish our Southern brethren would send a few lecturers upon the subject to England; the abolitionists have it all their own way there now, and take advantage of it to give the ignorant people ideas about our country which it is very desirable should be contradicted. I wish especially that they could make them comprehend how it is that we at the north have nothing to do with their peculiar institution, and are not to be expected to carry pistols and bowie-knives and fight every body that chooses to attack it all over the world. This is no more nor less than a great many people in some parts of England seem to expect, when they are told that one is an American, and it comes sometimes to be a regular bore to a traveller to have to disappoint them. There is, in truth, a hundred times more hard feeling in England towards America from this cause, than from all others, and it is unfortunately strongest with the most earnestly republican and radically democratic of her citizens.

Within this year or two there has been much more interest with regard to America among all classes in England than previously, more hope and more fear of us than ever before. The works of our best authors—Irving, Emerson, Bancroft, Bryant, Channing, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Whittier—are, many of them, as well known and as generally read in England as in America. The introduction of American provisions, cutting under the native products, has brought even the farmers to scowlingly glance at us, and as, just at this time, most of them are forced to be thinking of emigration for themselves or their children, they are generally disposed to honestly inquire about us. Among all making inquiries of me, I never found one to whom our form of government was an objection. Finally, the present of food which, in the famine, we sent to Ireland—a most mean portion out of our plenty and superabundance to dole out to an actual STARVING neighbour, a most unworthy expression of our Christian charity and brotherly regard for her, it has always seemed to me, but such as it was—obtained for us not only in Ireland, but all through Great Britain, a strange degree of a sort of affectionate respect, not altogether unmingled with jealousy and soreness because they cannot pay it back.

Altogether, considering the exceedingly queer company English travellers seem usually to keep when in the United States, and the atrocious caricatures in which, with few exceptions, they have represented our manners and customs to their countrymen, I was surprised at the general respect and the degree of correct appreciation of us that I commonly found. There is no country not covered by a British flag in the world, that the British of 1850 have any thing like the degree of sympathy with, and affection for, that they have for the United States.

On the other hand, it is happily evident, that since our war with Mexico has given us a new military glory, it has also diverted our national combativeness, in a degree, from our old enemy, and that since the English liberals in so many ways, if not very valuable, at least as much so as ours, have shown their sympathy and desire to assist our common brethren struggling for freedom on the Continent; since the lynching of the Butcher of Austria by the beer-men of Bankside, and the general exultation of the British people over it; since the general intercommunication between the countries has been made so much more frequent and speedy, and cheaper than it used to be, the disposition of our people towards the British has been much less suspicious, guarded, and quarrelsome than it very naturally, if not very reasonably, was, until within a few years.

[Sidenote: _OCEAN PENNY POSTAGE._]

God grant that every tie grow constantly tighter that binds us together to peace, and to mutual assistance and co-labour—for justice, for freedom, for the salvation of the world. If there is any body who does not heartily say Amen to this, I commend him to Elihu Burritt; and all who do, I call upon, from him, to go to work for OCEAN PENNY POSTAGE—so shall our prayer not fail. (_See Appendix, B._)

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