190 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



This and other circumstances, early in my visit to England, 

 made me reflect that the hostile feeling of the people had never 

 been deeply engaged against us ; while it soon became also evi- 

 dent, that very much less of so much hostility as they once had 

 towards us had descended to the present than we are in the habit 

 of calculating for. 



The reason of the great difference in this respect of the popular 

 feeling in the two countries is evident, though it often extremely 

 puzzles and offends a liberal Englishman, who has been in the 

 habit of looking with a strong feeling of fraternity towards the 

 people of the United States, to find himself when he comes among 

 them, expected in all his opinions and feelings to be either a 

 traitor to his own country or an enemy of ours. It is easily ex- 

 plained however. 



There is a fondness for hostility in our nature that wants some 

 object towards which to direct itself. Seventy years ago, and 

 forty years ago, that object to us as a nation was the kingdom of 

 Great Britain. No other object, until within a few years, has 

 been offered to us to weaken that traditional hostility. All our 

 military and naval glory, the most blazing, though by no means 

 the most valuable, jewels of our national pride, have been our 

 victories in war with Great Britain. Almost our only national 

 holidays have been in a great part exultations over our successful 

 hostilities with Great Britain. " The enemy" and " the British," 

 came to me from my fighting grandfather as synonymous terms. 

 "When I was a child I never saw an Englishman but I was on my 

 guard against him as a spy, and would look behind the fences to 

 see that there was no ambuscade of red-coats. I made secret 

 coverts about the house, so that when they came to sack and burn 

 it, and take our women and children into captivity, I could lay in 

 wait to rescue them. In our school-boy games the beaten party 

 was always called " British." If a law was odious it was termed 



