1821. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 337 "Had the English critics who have exercised themselves on Americanisms remembered that language is a fluctuating thing, never stable, constantly improving or declining, always changing, they would have saved themselves trouble and us abuse. They would have remembered that many a good and useful word brought to America by the first settlers and of approved use in its day has survived here while lost in Great Britain, and recollecting, they would have asked whether we or they have done the language most harm. They would have remembered that such words as presidential, of, or belonging to a chief magistrate ruling by the consent of the people, and congressional, of, or belonging to a body of representatives equally chosen by the people, represent political ideas utterly unknown in Great Britain, are terms forced on us by our institutions and are not corruptions of the language. To charge us with affecting a new language is a calumny; to charge us with actually writing or speaking a corrupt dialect is equally so."* Arguments of this sort availed nothing, and in a few months the Quarterly was attacking America as violently as ever in a review of four of the many recent books of travel.† The writers of each were abused for reporting what little good they saw in the United States, extracts were taken from their books to show the bad manners and vulgarity of the Americans, their shiftless ways, their want of refinement and general intelligence, and the conclusion reached that the praise so grudgingly given by travellers was not supported by the facts they recited, and that the republic was on the high road to ruin. None," the reviewer said, "but the servile flatterer or the sour and discontented sectary in whose bosom no spark of patriotism now glows could think of placing the people of the United States in comparison with those of England." England and America. North American Review, July, 1821, No. xxxii; new series, vii. Views, Visits, and Tours in North America. Quarterly Review, April, 1822. The books were: Remarks made During a Tour through the United States, etc., William Tell Harris. A Visit to North America, etc., Adlard Welby. Letters from the Illinois, etc., Richard Flower. Views of Society and Manners in America, by an Englishwoman (Frances Wright). VOL. V.-23 Every fact stated by such persons belies their panegyrics and proves how vain it is to look for the arts and elegances of life, for refinement and general intelligence in so heterogeneous a population as that of the United States. Among a people so circumstanced the refinement of intellectual and polished society is not to be found or expected, and whether it ever can exist under a republican form of government may well be doubted. There is good reason to believe that as population grows more dense in the Western States the existing form of government will be found inadequate, and that the United States will, of necessity, become two, if not more, rival nations." The horrors of democracy as displayed in America was a theme of which the editor of the Quarterly never wearied. He was at all times loath to lay it down. Each book of travels in our country was a new incentive to attack us. When, there fore, in an evil hour Faux published his " Memorable Days in America," Gifford once again took up his favorite task and outdid all former efforts. So intemperate was the article that the Boston publisher of the Quarterly refused it a place in the American edition, and the editor of the North American Review prepared an elaborate answer. The charges brought against us by Gifford, and supported * Memorable Days in America. Being a Journal of a Tour in the United States, principally undertaken to ascertain by Positive Evidence the Condition and Probable Prospects of British Emigrants, etc. By W. Faux, an English farmer. + Memorable Days in America. The Quarterly Review, July, 1823. The publishers of the American edition of the Quarterly Review have hitherto reprinted the whole in exact conformity with the original. Some articles they would gladly have omitted or curtailed as disgracing the high literary character of the journal by abuse and misrepresentation of the manners and character of the United States. These articles have generally been written in a style of great vulgarity, and by persons who are either entirely ignorant of the country, or who studiously misrepresent or falsify. With regard to this article the case is different. It brings forward wantonly and unnecessarily the names of private individuals whose feelings must be outraged by being thus dragged before the public. It goes further. The publishers have received a communication stating that this article contains a libel upon the character of a distinguished individual at Washington, which must be canvassed in a court of justice in his native country, and cautioning the American publisher against being accessory to this offence. The article, therefore, has been wholly omitted. 1823. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. 339 by citations from the pages of Faux, were the old ones of ten years' standing. We were a dishonest, cunning, cruel, lawless, godless nation. We held slaves, tolerated rowdy juries, met civil officers with violent resistance, kept such peace as we had by regulators and lynch law, could not speak the English language correctly, and in our Constitution did not acknowledge the existence of a God. "We are very much inclined," said Mr. Gifford, " to ascribe the vicious and heartless conduct of the Americans, with which every page of Mr. Faux's book teems, to the total disregard of religion on the part of the Government. This fatal mistake in framing their Constitution has been productive of the most injurious consequences to the morals of the people; for to expect men will cultivate virtue and morality and neglect religion is to know little of human nature. The want of an established national religion has made the bulk of the people either infidels or fanatics. In the back settlements here and there a fanatic sectarian holds forth in a hovel or under a tree, and in the old States no kindly associations are connected with the gloomy and heartless performance of religious worship. The village church, with its spiry steeple, its bells, its clock, and well-fenced churchyard, with its ancient yew tree and its numerous monumental records of the dead, are here utterly unknown." To this and to much more in the same strain the North American replied in spirit and in kind. Gifford and Faux were reminded that so long as slavery existed in the British West Indies it was not for an Englishman to be horrified at the sight of slavery in the United States; the instances of American brutality they cited were matched by precisely like instances drawn from the pages of British reviews; and Gifford was warned that if he continued his abuse the North American would read him such a lesson from English works of standard authority as should force him to be silent or change his tone. He was assured that what the political feuds of the past had failed to do was rapidly being done by such publications as the Quarterly Review; that it was a matter of notoriety that the feeling entertained in this country toward Great Britain was less friendly in 1824 than it had been ten years before at the height of the war; that he and his review were largely responsible for alienating two nations that ought to be friends; and that it merited consideration whether or not it was wise to do all that could be done by a literary journal. of commanding influence " to turn into bitterness the last drop of good-will toward England that exists in this country." And now Blackwood's assumed the task of peacemaker. "Let us calmly consider," the editor said, "whether such a cause ought to have produced such an effect. Let us dispassionately examine whether any article, in the Quarterly or elsewhere, of the kind complained of should bring forth such threats of retaliation, such hints that a repetition of Quarterly reviewings of American manners will turn into bitterness the last drop of good-will toward England that exists in the United States.' "The Americans complain that our travellers misrepresent them by describing and exaggerating scenes of low life; that our journals make ridiculous or angry comments on these and similar details; that we deride their literature; and that several among us do not show for their government, their legislators, and their administration of justice the veneration with which such things are regarded across the Atlantic. It is made a matter of mortal offence that tourists who visit America complain of bad roads, promiscuous inns, intruding companions, bundling three in a bed, mosquitoes, smoky log huts, swamps, rude servants, and vaporing associates. Why should Americans wonder at these complaints? In thinly settled countries such as theirs, roads will occasionally be bad and inns indifferent. In States governed as theirs, men will be found who think impertinence is freedom and reviling other countries doing their own honor. But is the mouth of the traveller going among them to be gagged? Must he see everything white or golden, without a tint or dark shadow? Nobody but an habitual inmate of grog-shops supposes that the descriptions of coarse habits and vulgar conversations, whether caricatures or real pictures of the inn, steamboat, and mail-coach manners, are intended to represent the manners of American ladies and gen *North American Review, July, 1824. 1824. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. 341 tlemen. But if a traveller must of necessity mix with such society, must he hold his tongue? Is not this sort of life worth description? Let the American who feels sore read our travellers' stories of foreign countries. Is there any concealment of the sorry fare, garlicked dishes, filthy rooms, swarming vermin, and haughty landlords of Spain? Do we fail to notice the awkward lumbering diligence of the French? the obstinate postmaster of the Germans? Are our travellers more complimentary of the domain of the autocrat Alexander than of that of the democrat Jonathan? "If we turn from travellers to critics on American literature we find that America has no cause to complain of us as a nation. We say the United States has produced no great writer. Is it not so? Classical learning is there underrated and neglected. Knowledge of any kind is valued as a preparation for some intended vocation, and not as a source of enjoyment. The demand for business talent is so great and the rewards so tempting that men are drawn away from study. It is not to be expected that America will produce scholars, poets, dramatists, novelists, for many a year to come." * A few months later the editor returned to the subject, and in the course of a review of another book of travels † in our country adopted a manner yet more conciliatory. Why is it," said he, "that up to this hour we have no such travellers in America as we have in other countries-scholars, gentlemen, philosophers, profound and liberal thinkers, lovers of plain dealing? Why is it that up to 1824 the statesman, the man of science, the yeoman of Great Britain, are acquainted with America only through the representations of such persons as Hewlett, Weld, Ashe, Parkinson, Welby, Fearon, Faux, Hall, and Miss Wright-persons who would not have been permitted to write essays on anything in a provincial newspaper or poetry magazine?" + * Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October, 1824. A Summary View of America, comprising a Description of the Face of the Country and of Several of the Principal Cities, and Remarks on the Social, Moral, and Political Character of the People. Being the Result of Observation and Inquiries during a Journey in the United States. By an Englishman. 1824. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, December, 1824. |