72 CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as \ve have 

 disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She is especially con 

 descending just now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if 

 we had not outgrown them. I am no believer in sudden 

 conversions, especially in sudden conversions to a favourable 

 opinion of people who have just proved you to be mistaken 

 in judgment, and therefore unwise in policy. I never 

 blamed her for not wishing well to democracy, how should 

 she? but Alabamas are not wishes. Let her not be too 

 hasty in believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson s pleasant words. 

 Though there is no thoughtful man in America who would 

 not consider a war with England the greatest of calamities, 

 yet the feeling towards her here is very far from being 

 cordial, whatever our minister may say in the effusion 

 that comes after ample dining. Mr. Adams, with his 

 famous &quot; My lord, this means war,&quot; perfectly represented 

 his country. Justly or not, we have a feeling that 

 we have been wronged, not merely insulted. The only 

 sure way of bringing about a healthy relation between the 

 two countries, is for Englishmen to clear their minds of the 

 notion that we are always to be treated as a kind of 

 inferior and deported Englishman whose nature they per 

 fectly understand, and whose back they accordingly stroke 

 the wrong way of the fur with amazing perseverance. 

 Let them learn to treat us naturally on our merits as 

 human beings, as they would a German or a Frenchman, 

 and not as if we were a kind of counterfeit Briton whose 

 crime appeared in every shade of difference, and before long 

 there would come that right feeling which we naturally 

 call a good understanding. The common blood, and still 

 more the common language, are fatal instruments of 

 misapprehension. Let them give up trying to understand 

 us, still more thinking that they do, and acting in various 

 absurd ways as the necessary consequence, for they will 

 never arrive at that devoutly-to-be-wished consummation, 

 till they learn to look at us as we are and not as they 

 suppose us to be. Dear old long-estranged mother-in-law, 

 it is a great many years since we parted. Since 1660, 



