THE

STATESMEN OF AMERICA

IN

1846.

BY

SARAH MYTTON MAURY.

Veritas et Justitia hos reddunt Honores

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,

PATERNOSTER ROW.

1847.

TO THE HONOURABLE

JAMES BUCHANAN,

SECRETARY OF STATE,

AT WASHINGTON.

MY DEAR SIR,

- AT length I have the pleasure of presenting to your acceptance the "STATESMEN OF AMERICA IN 1846." They will be succeeded by the "OPINIONS OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN ON AMERICA."- Both of these works are indebted to your suggestion for their origin; and for the privilege of being inscribed with a name so distinguished as that of JAMES BUCHANAN.

I have been anxious that the "Statesmen" should appear in Washington during the Session of Congress in 1847; presuming that most of

iv.

my friends will be there again assembled. Should the Portraits be pronounced good likenesses, I shall be proud and happy; and even should they be found but faint in their resemblance, the attempt itself to delineate them, will prove to the valued originals how deeply engraven on my memory are their names and features.

The Journals announce a change in the political aspect of the country. It appears to me, however, that the Whig elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and especially in the Dictator State of New York, have arisen out of questions purely local, and affecting those sections alone. The actual true majorities in the United States will ever be vested in the Democratic ranks; naturally and invariably the dominant party in a Republic. It must be so;-though incidental circumstances would sometimes cause it to appear otherwise. I anticipate that the Americans will make a Democratic President in 1848; and, perhaps, a moderate or a Democratic Whig in 1852.

But I will cease to interrupt you with my

V.

English fireside lucubrations; though I indulge in them frequently for the sake of recalling my pleasant residence at Washington, in the midst of its frank and social circles. I trust to be remembered, and sometimes to be wished for by many of the actors in those brilliant scenes, which their kindness rendered to me so fascinating.

Will you, my dear Mr. BUCHANAN, present to our mutual friends, in the name of my husband, his most grateful acknowledgments for the hospitality and protection accorded to his Wife and Son by his faithful and generous countrymen ;—and in my name, will you add, that I anticipate with delight the time when I shall return again to be among them. England is

my birthplace, and as such is dear; she is the

nursery

of my

earliest and tenderest affections,

and as such her name is sweet:

"Here my Father's house was reared;

Here my Mother's voice was heard;

Here my infant children played,

Beneath the oak's wide spreading shade."

But in all the essential advantages of life, Ame