The possible destiny of the United States of America--as a nation of a
hundred millions of freemen--stretching from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of
Shakespeare and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not
wish to see it realized? America would then be England viewed through
a solar microscope; Great Britain in a state of glorious
magnification! How deeply to be lamented is the spirit of hostility
and sneering which some of the popular books of travels have shown in
treating of the Americans! They hate us, no doubt, just as brothers
hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman concerning
themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other country
on earth. A very little humoring of their prejudices, and some
courtesy of language and demeanor on the part of Englishmen, would
work wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.
Capt. Basil Hall's[17] book is certainly very entertaining and
instructive; but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and
more especially his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable.
After all, are not most of the things shown up with so much bitterness
by him mere national foibles, parallels to which every people has and
must of necessity have?
What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No
doubt, taxation may, and perhaps in some cases must, press unequally,
or apparently so, on different classes of people in a state. In such
cases there is a hardship; but in the long run, the matter is fully
compensated to the overtaxed class. For example, take the householders
in London who complain so bitterly of the house and window taxes. Is
it not pretty clear that, whether such householder be a tradesman who
indemnifies himself in the price of his goods; or a letter of lodgings
who does so in his rent; or a stockholder who receives it back again
in his dividends; or a country gentleman who has saved so much fresh
levy on his land or his other property; one way or other, it comes at
last pretty nearly to the same thing, tho the pressure for the time
may be unjust and vexatious, and fit to be removed? But when New
England, which may be considered a state in itself, taxes the
admission of foreign manufactures in order to cherish manufactures of
its own, and thereby forces the Carolinas, another state of itself,
with which there is little inter-communion, which has no such desire
or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher price, it is
altogether a different question, and is, in fact, downright tyranny of
the worst, because of the most sordid, kind. What would you think of a
law which should tax every person in Devonshire for the pecuniary
benefit of every person in Yorkshire? And yet that is a feeble image
of the actual usurpation of the New England deputies over the property
of the Southern States.
There are two possible modes of unity in a state; one by absolute
coordination of each to all, and of all to each; the other by
subordination of classes and offices. Now, I maintain that there never
was an instance of the first, nor can there be, without slavery as its
condition and accompaniment, as in Athens. The poor Swiss cantons are
no exception.
The mistake lies in confounding a state which must be based on
classes and interests and unequal property, with a church, which is
founded on the person, and has no qualification but personal merit.
Such a community may exist, as in the case of the Quakers; but in
order to exist, it must be comprest and hedged in by another
society--_mundus mundulus in mundo immundo_.
The free class in a slave state is always, in one sense, the most
patriotic class of people in an empire; for their patriotism is not
simply the patriotism of other people, but an aggregate of lust of
power and distinction and supremacy.