ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 81 



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 1 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 cordial, 

 whatever our Minister may say in the effusion that 

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

 " My Lord, this means war," 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 

 perfectly understand, and whose back they accordingly 

 stroke the wrong way of the fur with amazing persever- 

 ance. 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, when you married 

 again, you have been a step-mother to us. Put on your 



