"Nothing is more common than to hear directly opposite accounts of the
same countries; the difference lies not in the reported but the
reporter." This observation is strictly correct as a general
application, but more especially so when directed to the United States
of America, its people, and its institutions, as viewed by Englishmen,
whose prejudices, strong at all times, and governing their opinions in
all places, are more absolutely freed from restraint and self-suspicion
when set loose upon a people directly descended from themselves, and
inheriting and retaining their customs and their language.
Discrepancies are here also occasioned in many cases by circumstances
over which travellers can have no control, and for whose influence they
are no way accountable; hence things are very differently described, not
so much from the reporters having taken opposite views of the same
objects, but because objects themselves are constantly and rapidly
changing their aspects.--Take the following as an instance.
I remember to have read in one of our most distinguished publications a
few years back a laboured review of a book on America, wherein the
writer found occasion to notice railroads; one of this kind being then
in contemplation as an improved medium of communication between New York
and Philadelphia.
The able reviewer--for right able he was--must have been either an
American or one well acquainted with the face of the country, its trade,
the people, their present condition, and future prospects. The
statistics of the States in question were at his finger-ends; he
produced sound evidence in support of each proposition he advanced; and
the argument thus sustained went to prove, beyond all doubt, that the
spirit of speculation was in this, as in many other particulars, leading
the American people to the verge of madness, and their country to
certain bankruptcy. That in leaving their magnificent lakes, their
endless rivers, and the smooth waters of their coast,--the highways
created by Providence for their use, and amply sufficient for their
purposes--to waste their wealth, distract their commercial views, and
agitate their politics in the projection of railroads that could never
be completed, or, if completed even, would not pay, in our time, the
expense of repairs, or endure the severity of the climate; to construct
which the material must be imported from England, and after every severe
winter would require to be renewed, was, in effect, quitting the
substance for the shadow, and, if begun in folly, could not fail to end
in ruin and disappointment.
I never in my life perused any article more philosophical in spirit or
more conclusive in argument; the scheme was clearly shown not only to be
absurd but impracticable, and the projectors proved either to be
presumptuous imitators, or men profligately speculating upon the
ignorant credulity of their fellow-citizens.
I closed the review, in short, admiring the clear judgment and practical
farsightedness of the writer; pitying the Yankees, for whom I cherished
a sneaking kindness, and inwardly hoping that this very clever
exposition of the folly of their seeking to counteract the manifest
designs of Providence, which had so clearly demonstrated their paths,
might produce as full conviction on their minds as it had on mine.
Well, I forgot the article and its subject, and was only reminded of it
by finding myself one fine day whisking along at the rate of twenty
miles an hour over a well-constructed railway, one of a cargo of four
hundred souls. The impossibility had, in fact, been achieved; and, in
addition to the natural roads offered by Sea, Lake, and River, I found
railways twining and locomotives hissing like serpents over the whole
continent from Maine to Mississippi: Binding the cold North to the
ever-flowing streams of Georgia and Alabama, literally, with bonds of
iron, and forming, indeed, the natural roads of a country whose soil and
climate would set at nought all the ingenuity of M'Adam, backed by the
wealth of Croesus and the flint of Derbyshire to boot.
Now, had such a result been prognosticated only a very few years back,
the man whose foresight had led to such a large view of the subject
would have been mouthed at as mad all over the American continent, and
written down knave or ass, or both, in every practical journal of
Europe.
Such great changes constantly agitated, and reduced to practice with a
promptitude of which even England, with her wealth, industry, and
enterprise, has little notion, make discrepancies between the facts and
opinions of rapidly succeeding travellers, for which neither the
veracity nor the judgment of the parties can fairly be impugned.
Action here leaves speculation lagging far behind; the improvement once
conceived is in operation by such time as the opposing theorist has
satisfactorily demonstrated its impracticability; and the dream of
to-day is the reality of to-morrow.
I feel, in fact, a difficulty in describing without seeming hyperbole
the impressions I daily received, and beheld confirmed by facts, of the
extraordinary spirit of movement that appears to impel men and things in
this country; this great hive wherein there be no drones; this field in
which every man finds place for his plough, and where each hand seems
actually employed either "to hold or drive."
For ever wandering about as I was, and visiting, as I frequently did,
the same places at intervals again and again, I had occasion to be much
struck with a state of things of which I was thus afforded constant
evidence: take for instance,
My first journey in Sept. 1833, between New York and Philadelphia, was
by steam-boat and railway, having cars drawn by horses over thirty-five
miles, which thus occupied five hours and a half. In October of the same
year I did the same distance by locomotive in two hours. When first I
visited Boston, the journey was performed in twenty-four hours, by
steamer to Providence, thence to Boston by stage; the same distance now
occupies fifteen hours, a railway having been last spring put in
operation between Providence and Boston.
Again, in 1834, the traveller had but one rough route from Philadelphia
to Pittsburg. You can now go a third of the distance by railroad, and,
getting into a canal-boat, are dragged over the Alleghany mountains,
through a series of locks not to be surpassed for strength or ingenuity
of contrivance.
In 1833, the journey from Augusta, Georgia, to New York was an affair of
eleven or twelve days; it is now performed in three. Steam and railroad
are, in fact, annihilating time and space in this country. In proof of
it, I can safely assert that if a traveller visiting the South-west,
say, from Savannah to New Orleans, will be at the trouble of
recollecting this book in the year 1837, he will find the account of the
difficulties of my journey extremely amusing; since, in all human
probability, he will perform that in five days, which took me, with hard
labour, perseverance, discomfort, not to say, some peril of life or
limb, just eighteen.
It is these revolutions, and such as these, that form the true wonders
of this country; that stimulate curiosity, excite interest, and well
repay the labour of any voyager embued with a grain of intelligence or
observation, to say nothing of philosophy.
It is to these results, their causes, and their immediate and probable
effects, his mind's eye will be irresistibly drawn, not to
spitting-boxes, tobacco, two-pronged forks, or other conventional
_bagatelles_, the particulars of each of which, as a solecism in polite
manners, can be corrected and canvassed by any waiter from the London
Tavern, Ludgate Street, and by every _grisette_ from America Square to
Brompton Terrace, who may choose to display their acquired gentility
"for the nonce;" and it is the absence of a spirit of philosophy
generally in our writers, and this affectation of prating so like
waiting-gentlewomen, that stings Americans, and with some show of
reason, when they see the great labours of their young country with the
efforts of its people passed lightly by, and trifles caught up and
commented upon, whose importance they cannot comprehend, and which they
have neither leisure nor example to alter or attend to.
After much and close observation, I say fearlessly, that, in all
conventional points, good society in the States is equal to the best
provincial circles in England. The absence of a court, together with the
calls of business, necessarily preclude the possibility of any class
acquiring that grace of repose, that perfection of ease, which
cultivation, example, and a conscious knowledge of the world gives to
the _beau-monde_ of Europe; on the other hand, in the absence of this,
you are seldom pestered with the second-hand ladies'-maid airs of your
pretenders to exclusive gentility, so common amongst Europeans.
The great mass of Americans are natural, therefore rarely vulgar; and
if a freshness of spirits, and an entire freedom from suspicion and the
many guards which ill-bred jealousy draws around the objects of its
care, may be viewed, as indeed they ought to be, as proofs of high
feeling and true culture, then are the men of America arrived at a point
of civilization at once creditable to themselves and honourable to their
women, as nothing can be more perfectly unrestrained than the freedom
enjoyed in all good families here. Strangers once introduced find every
house at all times open to them, and the most frequent visits neither
create surprise nor give rise to suspicion.
Hospitality is inculcated and practised, and the people entertain with a
liberality bordering on profuseness: the merit of this is enhanced by
the great trouble the absence of good domestics entails on the mistress
of even the best establishments. Ladies are here invariably their own
housekeepers, yet, nowhere is the stranger more warmly welcomed, and in
no country is more cheerful readiness evinced in preparing for his
entertainment.
The hand of welcome is also extended and sympathy encouraged towards the
persecuted, whether of fortune or despotism. The exile is sure to find
shelter and security here, without encountering suspicion, whether
necessity or choice induced him to abandon his country.
Honoured be the land which offers to the stranger a free participation,
on equal terms, of all it holds dearest! Hallowed be the institutions
which hold out to talent a free field, and where honest ambition knows
no limit save the equal law!
I shall ever love America for the happy home it has proved to the
provident amongst the exiles from Ireland. In almost every part of the
land, they form an important portion of the freemen of the soil. If, on
becoming American, they have not at all times ceased to be Irish in that
full degree the political economist would desire, there are many
allowances to be made for them.
Let it not be considered an unpardonable enormity that the poor Irishman
runs a little riot when suddenly and wholly freed from the heavy clog by
which the exhibition of his opinions has been restrained at home. It is
not surprising that those who have been for life hoodwinked should fail
to see clearly for themselves in all cases; or that, falling upon
interested guides, they are occasionally led astray.
Wayward and wilful I will admit them sometimes to be, and in evil hands
their misdirected energies may for a time become the instruments of
evil. Mistaken in judgment they may often be, for such is the lot of
humanity, but regardless of right and justice they seldom are, and
ungrateful or ungenerous they cannot be. The evidence of their native
spirit of enterprise is found in their daily braving destitution in the
hope of bettering their hard lot. Their hatred of oppression is proved
by their ill-directed, but constant struggles for equal rights; and, if
kind-heartedness and charity cover a multitude of sins, no people on
earth can justly claim a larger stock. In illustration of which I will
present one proof out of the many I possess, because it will at once
serve as an illustration of my assertion, and gratify those who love to
contemplate the bright side of poor humanity.
The following statement was enclosed to me by an excellent Quaker, one
of the partners of the house from whose books the document is extracted,
with a letter which I need not insert here, but will add, that the
statement is incontrovertible.
"From the 1st of January 1834, to the 1st of May 1835, Abraham
Bell and Co. of New York have received from the working classes of
Irish emigrants, that is, from common labourers, farm servants,
chambermaids, waiters, &c. to remit to their friends and kindred in
Ireland, the sum of fifty-five thousand dollars, in amount varying
from five dollars upwards. The average amount of the whole number
of drafts sent is twenty-eight and a half dollars each."
New York, May, 19th, 1835.
There is not a part of the country to which I have wandered, where I did
not find that a like gentle recollection of the destitute left at home
prevailed. In every large city is some one or more Irish house, which
becomes the popular medium through which these offerings of the heart
are transmitted to the miserables at home. When it is reflected that the
donors are themselves the poorest of the poor, and that often at the
close of their first summer, they are found transmitting their earnings
to some mother, or aunt, or sister, without providing against or
thinking of the severity of approaching winter, no eulogy can be too
strong.
"Well, but look, David," remonstrated my kind friend H---- in New
Orleans, to a poor fellow who, after three months' hard labour, brought
him forty-five dollars to send home, "let me recommend you to keep back
ten dollars of this to buy yourself a warm coat; we have a cold month
coming, man, and you are ill off for covering."
"It's true for ye, sir," cried Davy, scratching his head, and glancing
down at his ragged garments, "bud it's only for a month you'll be havin'
cowld here, and the poor crature at home has a long winter to get over,
and her as bare as myself, and less able for id. The clothes cost a heap
o' money here, too, I find; and if you plase, sir, in the name o' God,
send all I have home, and I'll keep off the cowld, when it comes, by
workin' the harder."
Instances are constantly occurring of labourers, landing at a good
season, going to work though hardly able from weakness, and at the end
of their first week bringing three or four dollars to be sent home.
I will not multiply instances, as I might do, nor need I offer further
comment. I confess freely that I have a pride in setting this
much-enduring class of my countrymen before the English people, who,
generous themselves, know how to appreciate good in others. At these
times one page of fact is worth a volume of unsupported eulogium. If the
present short statement contributes to promoting a kind feeling towards
a little known, although much abused class, it will have accomplished
the end contemplated, and in doing this, will have served all parties.
_Friday, 19th._--After passing four days with my New York friends, on
this morning, at six A.M. descended from No. 1; and having bade Mr.
Willard a final adieu, quitted the City Hotel, where, during many
comings and goings, I had always lodged, and where I had constantly
experienced the greatest attention.
Reached Philadelphia, in company with a few kind friends, and found that
the Algonquin had that morning dropped down to Newcastle. Made one or
two calls, and early to bed.
_Saturday_, at six A.M. went on board the steamer, and in a couple of
hours after got a sight of our ship, at anchor near Newcastle, where we
arrived about nine A.M.
Whilst attending upon the arrangement of my baggage on the quay here, a
little boy delivered me a parcel. It was directed to me, with the
donor's compliments and good wishes.
On opening it, I found it contained a roll of caricatures, together
with one of the earliest journals ever printed in Pennsylvania, and a
couple of copies of the latest journal started here, being the first
number of a Newcastle journal that very day published.
In an hour after, we embarked; and this attention of a stranger was the
last kind act of the many courtesies which I have received in this
country, which I quit with the feelings of a son of the soil.
After dropping down as far as Delaware city, we anchored for the tide.
As it blew fresh, our pilot determined not to weigh before daylight.
_Sunday 21st._--On coming from between decks found that we were well out
in the bay, a schooner standing for us to take our pilot. I descended to
the cabin to write a note or two, and found myself almost involuntarily
scribbling verses. 'Tis an odd freak of my fancy, that although never
addicted to poetizing, and ordinarily incapable of manufacturing a
couplet that will jingle even, I am rarely agitated by any strong
feeling, without having a sort of desire to rhyme; luckily the delusion
is exceedingly short-lived, and unfrequent in its visitations. The
reader shall, however, have all the benefit of my present attempt, as I
feel bound to treat him, who may have held on with me thus far, with
perfect confidence.