222 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



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 En 

 gland as in America. The introduction of American provi 

 sions, 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 chari 

 ty 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 affec 

 tionate 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 excep 

 tions, 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 



