points have been properly considered; instead of wrapping themselves up in they should know that there are a set transcendental philosophy, and the of officers paid to watch over their interests, and to guard against the perpetual encroachments, the carelessness, the insolence, and the avarice of monopoly.

LETTERS,

ON

AMERICAN

and pillaged Europe; and this mark is out the greatest of all political probfixed by their faithless legislators on lems, and upon that confederacy the some of the best and most honourable eyes of thinking men are intensely men in the world, whom every English-fixed, to see how far the mass of manman has been eager to see and proud kind can be trusted with the manageto receive. ment of their own affairs, and the establishment of their own happiness. May 18, 1843.

It is a subject of serious concern to your Petitioner that you are losing all that power which the friends of freedom rejoiced that you possessed, looking upon you as the ark of human happiness, and the most splendid picture of justice and of wisdom that the world had yet seen. Little did the friends of America expect it, and sad is the spectacle to see you rejected by every State in Europe, as a nation with whom no contract can be made, because none will be kept; unstable in the very foundations of social life, deficient in the elements of good faith, men who prefer any load of infamy however great, to any pressure of taxation however light.

Nor is it only this gigantic bankruptcy for so many degrees of longitude and latitude which your Petitioner deplores, but he is alarmed also by that total want of shame with which these things have been done; the callous immorality with which Europe has been plundered, that deadness of the moral sense which seems to preclude all return to honesty, to perpetuate this new infamy, and to threaten its extension over every State of the Union.

LETTER I.

To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

SIR,

:

You did me the favour, some time since, to insert in your valuable journal a petition of mine to the American Congress, for the repayment of a loan made by me, in common with many other unwise people, to the State of Pennsylvania. For that petition I have been abused in the grossest manner by many of the American papers. After some weeks' reflection, I see no reason to alter my opinions, or to retract my expressions. What I then said was not wild declamation, but measured truth. I repeat again, that no conduct was ever more profligate than that of the State of Pennsylvania. History cannot pattern it and let no deluded being imagine that they will ever repay a single farthing - their people have tasted of the dangerous luxury of dishonesty, and they will To any man of real philanthropy, never be brought back to the homely who receives pleasure from the im- rule of right. The money transactions provements of the world, the repudia- of the Americans are become a bytion of the public debts of America, word among the nations of Europe. and the shameless manner in which it In every grammar-school of the old has been talked of and done, is the world ad Græcas Calendas is transmost melancholy event which has hap-lated-the American dividends. pened during the existence of the I am no enemy to America. I loved present generation. Your Petitioner sincerely prays that the great and good men still existing among you may, by teaching to the United States the deep disgrace they have incurred in the whole world, restore them to moral health, to that high position they have lost, and which, for the sioned happiness of mankind, it is so impor-hatred it has excited against free institant they should ever maintain; for tutions.

and admired honest America when she respected the laws of pounds, shillings, and pence; and I thought the United States the most magnificent picture of human happiness: I meddle now in these matters because I hate fraudbecause I pity the misery it has occabecause I mourn over the

the United States are now working Among the discussions to which the

moral lubricities of this insolvent people | just now reached this country, this is have given birth, they have arrogated the picture of the finances of the into themselves the right of sitting in solvent States. Their debts may be judgment upon the property of their about 200 millions of dollars; at an creditors of deciding who among interest of 6 per cent., this makes an them is rich, and who poor, and who annual charge of 12 millions of dolare proper objects of compassionate lars, which is little more than 1 per payment; but in the name of Mercury, cent. of their income in 1840, and the great god of thieves, did any man may be presumed to be less than 1 ever hear of debtors alleging the wealth per cent. of their present income; but of the lender as a reason for eluding if they were all to provide funds for the payment of the loan? Is the the punctual payment of interest, the Stock Exchange a place for the tables debt could readily be converted into a of the money-lenders; or is it a school 4 or 5 per cent. stock, and the excess, of moralists, who may amerce the rich, converted into a sinking fund, would exalt the poor, and correct the in- discharge the debt in less than thirty equalities of fortune. Is Biddle an years. The debt of Pennsylvania, instrument in the hand of Providence estimated at 40 millions of dollars, to exalt the humble, and send the rich bears, at 5 per cent., an annual inempty away? Does American Provi-terest of millions. The income of dence work with such instruments as this State was, in 1840, 131 millions Biddle?

But the only good part of this bad morality not acted upon. The rich are robbed, but the poor are not paid: they growl against the dividends of Dives, and don't lick the sores of Lazarus. They seize with loud acclamations on the money bags of Jones Loyd, Rothschild, and Baring, but they do not give back the pittance of the widow, and the bread of the child. Those knaves of the setting sun may call me rich, for I have a twentieth part of the income of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but the curate of the next parish is a wretched soul, bruised by adversity; and the three hundred pounds for his children, which it has taken his life to save, is eaten and drunken by the mean men of Pennsylvania- by men who are always talking of the virtue and honour of the United States-by men who soar above others in what they say, and sink below all nations in what they do who, after floating on the heaven of declamation, fall down to feed on the offal and garbage of the earth.

of dollars, and is probably at this time not less than 150 millions: a nett revenue of only 1 per cent. would produce the two millions required. So that the price of national character in Pennsylvania is 13 per cent. on the nett income; and if this market price of morals were established here, a gentleman of a thousand a year would deliberately and publicly submit to infamy for 15l. per annum; and a poor man, who by laborious industry had saved one hundred a year, would incur general disgrace and opprobrium for thirty shillings by the year. There really should be lunatic asylums for nations as well as for individuals.

But they begin to feel all this: their tone is changed; they talk with bated breath and whispering apology, and allay with some cold drops of modesty their skipping spirit. They strutted into this miserable history, and begin to think of sneaking out.

And then the subdolous press of America contends that the English under similar circumstances would act with their own debt in the same manner; but there are many English constituencies where are thousands not worth a shilling, and no such idea has been broached among them, nor

Persons who are not in the secret are inclined to consider the abominable conduct of the repudiating States to proceed from exhaustion "They has any petition to such effect been don't pay because they cannot pay; presented to the legislature. whereas, from estimates which have what if they did act in such a manner,

But

that of the Americans? Is there not
one immutable law of justice—is it
not written in the book? Does it not
beat in the heart? -
- are the great
guide-marks of life to be concealed
by such nonsense as this? I deny the
fact on which the reasoning is founded;
and if the facts were true, the reason-
ing would be false.

wou'd it be a conduct less wicked than I never forgive us for having preceded them 300 years in civilisation. They are prepared to enter into the most bloody wars in England, not on account of Oregon, or boundaries, or right of search, but because our clothes and carriages are better made, and because Bond Street beats Broadway. Wise Webster does all he can to convince the people that these are not lawful causes of war; but wars, and long wars, they will one day or another produce; and this, perhaps, is the only advantage of repudiation. The Americans cannot gratify their avarice and ambition at once; they cannot cheat and conquer at the same time. The warlike power of every country depends on their Three per Cents. If Cæsar were to reappear upon earth, Wettenhall's list would be more important than his Commentaries; Rothschild would open and shut the temple of Janus; Thomas Baring, or Bates, would probably command the Tenth Legion, and the soldiers would march to battle with loud cries of Scrip and Omnium reduced, Consols, and Cæsar! Now, the Americans have cut themselves off from all resources of credit. Having been as dishonest as they can be, they are prevented from being as foolish as they wish to be. In the whole habitable globe they cannot borrow a guinea, and they cannot draw the sword because they have not money to buy it.

I never meet a Pennsylvanian at a London dinner without feeling a disposition to seize and divide him; to allot his beaver to one sufferer and his coat to another to appropriate his pocket-handkerchief to the orphan, and to comfort the widow with his silver watch, Broadway rings, and the London Guide, which he always carries in his pockets. How such a man can set himself down at an English table without feeling that he owes two or three pounds to every man in company I am at a loss to conceive: he has no more right to eat with honest men than a leper has to eat with clean men. If he have a particle of honour in his composition he should | shut himself up, and say, "I cannot mingle with you, I belong to a degraded people-I must hide myselfI am a plunderer from Pennsylvania.' Figure to yourself a Pennsylvanian receiving foreigners in his own country, walking over the public works with them, and showing them Larcenous Lake, Swindling Swamp, Crafty Canal, and Rogues' Railway, and other dishonest works. "This swamp we gained (says the patriotic borrower) by the repudiated loan of 1828. Our canal robbery was in 1830; we pocketed your good people's money for the railroad only last year." All this may seem very smart to the Americans; but if I had the misfortune to be born among such a people, the land of my fathers should not retain me a single moment after the act of repudiation. I would appeal with such a bold bankruptcy before from my fathers to my forefathers. I their eyes how long will Ohio pay? would fly to Newgate for greater The truth is, that the eyes of all purity of thought, and seek in the capitalists are averted from the United prisons of England for better rules of States. The finest commercial unlife. derstandings will have nothing to do This new and vain people can with them. Men rigidly just, who

If I were an American of any of the honest States, I would never rest till I had compelled Pennsylvania to be as honest as myself. The bad faith of that State brings disgrace on all; just as common snakes are killed because vipers are dangerous. I have a general feeling, that by that breed of men I have been robbed and ruined, and I shudder and keep aloof. The pecuniary credit of every State is affected by Pennsylvania. Ohio pays; but

penetrate boldly into the dealings of morbid hatred of America?" But this nations, and work with vigour and question, all-affecting as it is, is stolen virtue for honourable wealth great from Pilpay's fables :- "A fox," says and high-minded merchants-will Pilpay, "caught by the leg in a trap loathe, and are now loathing, the near the farm-vard, uttered the most name of America: it is becoming, piercing cries of distress: forthwith all since its fall, the common-sewer of the birds of the yard gathered round Europe, and the native home of the him, and seemed to delight in his misneedy villain. fortune; hens chuckled, geese hissed, And now, drab-coloured men of ducks quacked, and chanticleer with Pennsylvania, there is yet a moment shrill cockadoodles rent the air. left the eyes of all Europe are an-'Whence,' said the fox, limping forchored upon you—

ward with infinite gravity, whence this morbid hatred of the fox? What "Surrexit mundus justis furiis:" have I done? Whom have I injured? start up from that trance of dishonesty I am overwhelmed with astonishment into which you are plunged; don't at these symptoms of aversion.' 'Oh! think of the flesh which walls about you old villain,' the poultry exclaimed, your life, but of that sin which has. Where are our ducklings? Where hurled you from the heaven of charac-are our goslings? Did not I see you ter, which hangs over you like a de- running away yesterday with my movouring pestilence, and makes good ther in your mouth? Did you not eat men sad, and ruffians dance and sing. up all my relations last week? You It is not for Gin Sling and Sherry ought to die the worst of deaths-to Cobbler alone that man is to live, but be pecked into a thousand pieces.' for those great principles against which Now hence, General Green, comes the no argument can be listened to- morbid hatred of America, as you term principles which give to every power it- because her conduct has been prea double power above their functions datory-because she has ruined so and their offices, which are the books, many helpless children, so many miserthe arts, the academies that teach, lift able women, so many aged menup, and nourish the world-principles because she has disturbed the order of (I am quite serious in what I say) the world, and rifled those sacred treaabove cash, superior to cotton, higher sures which human virtue had hoarded than currency, principles, without for human misery. Why is such hatred which it is better to die than to live, morbid? Why, is it not just, inevitable, which every servant of God, over every innate? Why, is it not disgraceful to sea and in all lands, should cherish. want it? Why, is it not honourable usque ad abdita spiramenta animæ. Yours, &c. SYDNEY SMITH.

Nov. 3, 1843.

LETTER II.

To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

to feel it?

Hate America!!! I have loved and honoured America all my life; and in the Edinburgh Review, and at all opportunities which my trumpery sphere of action has afforded, I have never ceased to praise and defend the United States; and to every American to whom I have had the good fortune SIR, to be introduced, I have proffered all HAVING been unwell for some days the hospitality in my power. But I past, I have had no opportunity of cannot shut my eyes to enormous paying my respects to General Duff Green, who (whatever be his other merits), has certainly not shown himself a Washington in defence of his country. The General demands, with a beautiful simplicity, "Whence this

dishonesty; nor, remembering their former state, can I restrain myself from calling on them (though I copy Satan) to spring up from the gulf of infamy in which they are rolling,

"Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen."