When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of England,
I speak from observation, not from authority; but I speak from the
experience I have had in a pretty extensive and mixed communication
with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks,
and after a course of attentive observation, begun in early life,
and continued for nearly forty years. I have often been astonished,
considering that we are divided from you but by a slender dyke of about
twenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the two
countries has lately been very great, to find how little you seem to
know of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of
this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously,
if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally
prevalent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of
intrigue, of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want
of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation
of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their
abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such
thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make
the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great
cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and
are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the
only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number;
or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre,
hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.