Part 6

Mr. Canning, not long before his death, openly vaunted the moral influence of England, by way of supporting his political schemes. Nothing is more evident than the fact that the journals of this country frequently admit articles that are intended to produce an effect in other states. I think they over-estimate their influence, however, for I do not believe that the opinion of England has any material power, except in America. As a people the English are not liked on the continent of Europe, and I think the disposition is rather to cavil at their truths, than to receive their fallacies. The aristocracy of England has a great influence, by its wealth, power, and style, on the _desires_ of all the other European aristocracies, which very naturally wish themselves to be as well off, but the dogmas of this school would hardly do for the daily journals. I do not say that the English press totally overlooks this class and its interests; on the contrary, it does much to sustain both, but it is by indirect means, and not by argument, or by appeals to the passions. It tells of the liberal acts of individuals of the body, recapitulates the amount of rent that has been remitted to the tenantry, and the number of blankets that has been distributed to the poor. The left hand is studiously made to know what the right hand has done in this way, among the great and noble, while the charities of the more humble are usually permitted to pass in silence. Not satisfied with this, the world is regularly enlightened on the subject of the large entertainments given by the great, the names of the guests, and not unfrequently with the dresses of the women. The ravenous appetite of the secondary classes to know something of their superiors, is fed daily in this extraordinary manner, (the practice exists nowhere else, I believe,) and thousands of dreamy bachelors and prim maidens, pass their days in the high enjoyment of contemplating at a distance, the rare felicities of a state of being to which a nearer approach is denied them, and which a nearer approach would destroy.

I remember when I came to London in 1826, to have laughed at an account of the manner in which Lord A., and Lady B., and Sir Thomas C., had passed their mornings, with the usual gossip of fashionable life that the article contained, when an American who had been some time in England, gravely assured me that there were thousands in the nation, who would not buy the paper were this momentous stuff omitted. There have been books, for a very long time, which contain the pedigrees, titles, creations, and family alliances of the peers, and which furnish mental aliment for hundreds of devout admirers of aristocracy. These books, which are useful enough in a certain way, when it is remembered that the peers control the first empire of modern times, have been extended to the baronets and knights, and latterly to the gentry of the country. The whole forms a curious study, when one is disposed to ferret out the true principle of the government, and the modes by which families have attained power,[5] but they are read with avidity, in England, as a means of holding an intercourse with beings, who, as respects the mass, form quite another order of creation.

But if the journals, in this manner, contribute to support the aristocracy by feeding these morbid cravings of the excluded, they do more towards overturning it, just now, by their open and rude attacks. I do not say, that I have ever met with an Englishman, who is not, in some degree, under the influence of the national deference for nobility, for to be frank with you, I can scarcely recall twenty Americans, who are exempt from the same weakness; but there are a good many who, by drawing manfully on their reason and knowledge, are enabled to detect the fallacies of the system, and who do not scruple to expose them in the public journals. These men, of whom I may have made the acquaintance of a dozen, remind me of the lasting influence which the ghost stories of the nursery produce on the human mind. We drink in these tales eagerly in childhood, and, in after life, though reason and reflection teach us their absurdity, few of us go through a church-yard in a dark night, without fancying that its sheeted tenants may rise from their graves. Thus do the boldest of the English, when philosophising the most profoundly on the wrongs and inexpediency of aristocratic rule, look stealthily over their shoulders, as if they saw a lord! You may judge of the profoundness of the impression, here, by its remains in America. Certainly, the mass of the American people, care no more for a lord, than they care for a wood-chuck; perhaps, also the feeling of the real gentry of the country, is getting to be very much what it ought to be, on such a subject, seeing no more than a man of the upper classes of another country, in an English nobleman; but take the class immediately below those who are accustomed to our highest associations, and there is still a good deal of the sentiment of the tailor, in their manner of contemplating an English nobleman. Alas! it is much easier to declare war, and gain victories in the field, and establish a political independence, than to emancipate the mind. Thrice happy is it for America, that her facts are so potent, as to be irresistable; for were our fate left to opinion, I fear we should prove ourselves to be any thing but philosophers.

It will not be doing justice to the English press, if we overlook its disposition to indulge in coarse, national, and personal vituperation. The habit of resorting to low, personal abuse, against all who thwart the views of their government, or who have the manliness to promulgate their opinions of the national characteristics, let it be done as honestly, as temperately, or as justly as it may, is too well known to admit of dispute. It may be a natural weakness in man, to attempt to ridicule his enemies, but the English calumniate them. They calumniated every distinguished man of our revolution; no general can gain a victory over them, and escape their vituperation; and the moral enormities attributed to Napoleon, had their origin in the same national propensity. Some of the English, with whom I have spoken on this subject, while they have admitted this offensive trait in their press, have ascribed it to the morality of the nation, to whose wounded sensibilities, the abuse is addressed! This is very much like imputing uncharitableness to sins, to a Christian conscience. Certainly, I am no vindicator of the personal, or political, ethics of Napoleon. As respects his morals, I presume, they were very much like those of other Frenchmen of his time and opportunities, but if the sensibilities of England, were so exaggerated, on such subjects, why did they go abroad in quest of examples to scourge? I doubt, if there be any thing worse in the private career of Napoleon, than the intrigue with the “Fair Quaker,” in that of George III., or any thing approaching that, which every well-informed man here tells me, is the present condition of the court of Windsor. Did you ever hear the familiar French song of Malbrook?

“Malbrook s’en va t’en guerre.” etc. etc. etc.

Malbrook, you know, was the Duke of Marlborough, and the song is the French mode of revenging the nation, for the manifold floggings it received at his hands. The wisdom of thus killing an enemy in doggerel, whom they could neither slay, nor defeat, may be questioned, but imagine, for a moment, that Wellington, and his fortunes had been French, and then fancy the abuse he would have received. I never yet met with a Frenchman, who had not a most sincere antipathy to the Duke of Wellington; they tell fierce stories about the Bois de Boulogne, and other similar absurdities, the outbreakings of the mortified pride of a military people, but I never yet saw, or heard a personal calumny against him, in France, unless it was connected directly with his public acts. They say, he permitted the terms of the capitulation of Paris, to be violated; but they do not enter into his private life, to villify the man. I have, sometimes, been afraid, this tendency to blackguardism, was “Anglo-Saxon,” for it manifests itself in our own journals, more particularly among the editors of New England, who, if they have more of the sturdy common sense, and masculine propensities of the Fatherland, than their more southern contemporaries, have also the coarse-mindedness. I have industriously sought the cause of this peculiarity, and at one time, I was disposed to attribute it to a low taste in the mass of the nation, which I again ascribed to the effects of the institutions, just as with us, the strongest term of reproach among the blacks, is for one to call his fellow, a “nigger;” but observation has convinced me, that this national taste is only secondary, as a cause. The press now caters to it, it is true, but it first created it. I believe, its origin is to be found in the vulgarity inherent in the active management of capricious commercial interests, the factitious state of the national power, and the genuine and unaffected outbreakings of a pecuniary cupidity. Look at home, and you will see the presses under the control of those, who have the management of floating interests, tainted by the same vice. “The love of money, is the root of all evil,” and the propensity to blackguard those who thwart the rapacity of the grasping, is one of its most innocent enormities.

I think it very evident, that there is much writing in this country, that is especially intended for “our market.” The English, who control the reviews and journals, are fully aware of the influence they wield over the public mind in America, and you may be quite certain, that a nation, whose very power is the result of combination and method, does not neglect means so obvious to attain its ends. There is scarcely a doubt, that articles, unfavourable to America, low, blackguard abuse that was addressed to the least worthy of the national propensities of the English, were prepared under the direction of the government, and inserted in the Quarterly Review. Mr. Gifford admitted as much as this, to an American of my acquaintance, who has distinctly informed me of the fact. I presume the same is true, in reference to the daily press. Some fifty paragraphs have met my eye, since I have been here, in which the writers have pretty directly exulted in their power over the American mind. This power is wielded to advance the interests of England, and, as a matter of course, to thwart our own. It probably exceeds any thing of which you have any idea. Whether the English government actually employs writers about our own presses or not, at present, I cannot say, but it has, unquestionably, agents of this sort, on the continent of Europe, and I think it highly probable that it has them in America.

We talk of the predestination of the Turks, but I question if the earth contains a people who so recklessly abandon their dearest, and most important interests, so completely to chance, as ourselves. Both the government and the people, appear to me, to trust implicitly to Providence for their future safety, abandoning even opinion to the control of their most active enemies, and shamelessly deserting those who would serve them, unless they happen to be linked with the monster, party. The chief of a political faction may do almost any thing with impunity, but he who defends his country, unconnected with party, is abandoned to the tender mercies of the common enemy. In this respect, we are like the countryman in a crowd of pick-pockets, full of ourselves, but utterly unconscious of our risks.

The young Englishman who aspires to fortune will select his object, and support it, or attack it, as the case may be, with his pen. He will endeavour to counteract democracy, to sustain the English Free Trade system, to excite prejudice against America, to arouse antipathy to Russia, to prove France ought not to possess Antwerp, or, to uphold some other national interest, and, if a clever man, he is certain to be cherished by that government and rewarded. Some of the most eminent men England has produced, have forced themselves into notice in this manner.

Let us fancy an American to run a similar career. So little is the nation brought before the European world that the chances are, as one hundred to one, he would attract no notice here; but, we will imagine him in possession of the ear of Europe, and able to bring his matter before its bar. If England were opposed in either her prejudices, or interests, he would as a matter of course, be vituperated; for whom did the English press ever spare, under such circumstances? No doubt, a thousand honest and generous pens would be ready to be their countrymen’s vindicator; no doubt the government would throw its broad mantle around its friend, and manifest to the world its sense of its own dignity and interests? No such thing; the abuse of the English press would produce even more effect in America than in England; its tales, however idle or improbable, would be swallowed with avidity, as tales from the capital circulate in the provinces, and, as for the government, it already has a character here for confiding in those who openly repudiate its principles! Well may it be said, that we have reason to be thankful to God for our blessings, for if God did not take especial care of us, we should be without protection at all.

I have been much struck, here, with the little impression that is made by the reviews. Exceptions certainly exist, but the critical remarks that, written here, produce no visible effect, would give a work its character with us. Every body, that is at all above the vulgar, appears to understand that reviewing “is the great standing mystification of the age.”

In making all these comparisons, however, we are too apt to overlook the statistical facts of America. A short digression will explain my meaning. If we speak of the civilization of England in the abstract, it is not easy to employ exaggerated terms, for it challenges high praise; but when we come to compare it to our own, we are to take the whole subject in connection. Were the entire population of the United States compressed into the single state of New York, we should get something like the proportions between surface and people, that exist in England. In reflecting on such a fact, one of the first things that strike the mind, is connected with the immense physical results that are dependent on such a circumstance. The mean of the population of New York for the last thirty years, has been considerably below a million; but had it been fourteen millions during the same period, leaving the difference in wealth out of the question, how little would even England have to boast over us! Losing sight entirely of the primary changes that are dependent on a settlement, and which perhaps seem to be more than they really are, we have actually done as much in the same time as England, in canals, rail-roads, bridges, steam-boats, and all those higher modes of improvement, that mark an advanced state of society. These are the things of which we may justly be proud, and they are allied to the great principle on which the future power and glory of the nation are to be based. They are strictly the offspring of the institutions.

We offer our weak side when we lay claim to the refinements, tastes, and elegancies of an older, or, in our case, it would be better to say, a more _compact_ condition of society. The class to which these exclusively belong is every where relatively small. I firmly believe it is larger with us, than among the same number of people, in any other country, though this opinion is liable to a good deal of qualification. We know little or nothing of music, or painting, or statuary, or any of those arts whose fruits must be studied to be felt and understood; but, in more essential things, we have even sometimes the advantage; while in others, again, owing to our colonial habits of thought, we have still less reason to be proud.

To apply these facts to our present subject, you will easily understand the manner in which a nation so situated will feel the influence of opinions of an inferior quality. In all communities men will defer to actual superiority, when it acts steadily and in sufficient force to create a standard. Unluckily manners, tastes, knowledge, and tone are all too much diffused in America to make head against the sturdy advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. As a basis of national greatness, this mediocrity commands our respect, but it is a little premature to set it up as a standard for the imitation of others. It even over-shadows, more particularly in the towns, the qualities that might better be its substitute. Its influence on the whole is genial, for so broad a foundation will, sooner or later, receive an appropriate superstructure, but, _ad interim_, it places a great deal too much at the disposal of empirics and pretenders. This is the reason (coupled with the deference that the provinces always show to the capital) why reviews and newspaper strictures produce an effect in America, of which they entirely fail in England. Here the highest intellectual classes give reputation, while in America it is derived from the mediocrity I have mentioned, through the agency, half the time, of as impudent a set of literary quacks as probably a civilized country ever tolerated. There are as flagrant things of the sort perpetrated here, as in America, but their influence is limited to the milliners and shop-men. A national _prejudice_ may take any shape, in England, for no one is exempt from the feeling, from the king on his throne to the groom in his stable; but, keeping this influence out of sight, the standard of taste and knowledge is too high, to be easily imposed on.

Some one has said, with more smartness than truth perhaps, so far as one’s own contemporaries are concerned at least, “that no author was ever written down except by himself.” Many an author however, has been temporarily written _up_ by others. I have just had a proof of this truth.

A work has lately appeared here, of rather more pretension than common. This book is deemed a failure in the literary circles of London. Of its merits I know nothing, not having read it, but in the fact, I cannot be mistaken, for I have heard it spoken of, by every literary man of my acquaintance, from Sir Walter Scott down; and but one among them all, has spoken well of it, and he, notoriously a friend of the author, “damned it with faint praise” more than any thing else. The bookseller paid too much for the manuscript, however, to put up with a loss, and a concerted and combined effort has been made to write the book up. In England these puffs, which are elaborate and suited to a grave subject, have had no visible effect, while I see, by the journals at home, that the work in question is deemed established, on this authority!

I am told that the practice of writers reviewing themselves, is much more prevalent here than one would be apt to suspect. One can tolerate such a thing as a joke, but it is ticklish ground, and liable to misconstruction. But man loves mystification. The very being who would bristle up and resent a frank, manly vindication of a writer that should appear under his own name, would permit his judgment to be guided by the same opinions when produced covertly, nor would the modesty of the author, who glorifies himself in this sneaking manner, be half as much called in question, as that of him who, disdaining deceit, and met his enemies openly!

There is less of simulated public opinion in the English press than in our own, I presume; owing to the simple fact, that public opinion is neither so overwhelming nor so easily influenced. The constant practice of appealing to the public, in America, has given rise to the vilest frauds of this character, that are of constant occurrence. When it is wished to induce the public to think in a particular way, the first step is to affect that such is already the common sentiment, in the expectation that deference to the general impression will bring about the desired end. I have known frauds of this nature, connected with personal malice, which, if exposed, would draw down the indignation of every honest man in the nation, on those who practised them; some of whom now pass for men of fair characters. It is scarcely necessary to say that such fellows are thieves in principle.

There is another all-important point on which, in the spirit of imitation, we have permitted the English press to mislead us. Nothing can be more apparent, in a healthful and natural state of the public mind, that a lie told to influence an election, or to mislead on a matter of general policy, ought to be just so much the more reprobated than a lie that affects an individual merely, as the concerns of a nation are more engrossing and important than the concerns of a private citizen. In America, an election ought to be, and in the main it is, an expression of the popular will for great national objects; in England, it is merely a struggle for personal power, between the owners of property. The voter with us, is one of a body which controls the results; in England, he is one of a body controlled by direct personal influence. No greater, ordinary crime, against good morals and the public safety, can be committed, than to mislead the public in matters of facts connected with an election; and yet an “electioneering lie,” is almost deemed a venial offence in America, because they are so deemed here, where, as a rule, every thing is settled by direct personal influence and bribery.