220 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



recollection of it was lost in the fiercer wars with other na 

 tions that immediately followed. I doubt if one-half the 

 voters of England could tell the name of a single ship en 

 gaged 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 con 

 fined 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. 



Nothing can be more friendly than the general disposition 

 of the English people at present towards us. The liberals, espe 

 cially, 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 per 

 fect reciprocity with them, and the Tories are consequently our 

 greatest flatterers.) The uneducated, common people in gen 

 eral 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 sin 

 cere admirers and friends. All the more sober and religious 

 people have a great horror of our slavery and of the occasional 



