“I am sure of that,” cried the Bostonian; “that’s the way our people do when brought within the sphere of attraction of a court.”
“And is it not strange,” resumed my friend, “that the Americans, who at home are the most thin-skinned people in the world,—always ready to punish in the most severe, and sometimes in the most atrocious manner, every offence offered to the nation or to individuals,—should, on leaving home, so far lay aside their character and self-respect as to literally creep through the palaces of princes for the sordid satisfaction of being able to say that they have been there?”
“The contempt of our fashionable people for the liberal institutions of their country, and their admiration of everything that is European, are so well known and understood in Europe,” observed the Bostonian, “that of all the travellers through France, Germany, and Italy, the Americans suffer the least molestation or inconvenience from passports. Their presence in any country can only serve to chill the ardour of the liberals, as there is indeed no greater punishment for an European demagogue than to pass a year or two in the United States. Our fashionable society is capable of curing the maddest republican of his political distemper. Just send him over here for two months, with plenty of letters to our first people, and he will return home as quiet and loyal a subject as any one born in the sunshine of royal favour.”
“And, on the other hand, it is the European emigrants that have been chiefly instrumental in establishing our present mob government,” observed the New-Yorker. “Those blackguards—I mean principally the Germans and the Irish,—come here with the most ridiculous notions of liberty and equality. Having been slaves all their lives, they set an exaggerated value on freedom, without knowing the value of property. The British constitution, after all, is the best adapted to the wants of a free people; isn’t it?”
“Most assuredly it is,” replied the Bostonian; “we all know it, but none of us dare say so aloud, for fear of being mobbed: but murder will out, you know.”
“What can a man know about our institutions, if he be not ‘raised’ among us?” rejoined the New-Yorker. “Our institutions, after all, are but the English, improved or mutilated, just as you please; but, be this as it may, I prefer the English to our own. I cannot bear equality.”
“Nor I,” said the other American.
“Nor I either,” said the Bostonian; “and I know a number of our people who would not stay in Paris, on account of the ridiculous equality which pervades all classes of French society. They have had quarrels with their servants, and have been summoned with those scoundrels before the same tribunal.”
“That’s the reason I dislike the Irish so much,” resumed the New-Yorker. “They are scarcely a year in the country before they pretend to be equal to our born citizens. I should have no objection to their coming here, provided they would be contented to remain servants,—the only condition, by the by, they are fit for: but when they come without a cent in their pockets, pretending to enjoy the same privileges as our oldest and most respectable citizens, my blood boils with rage; and I would rather live among the Hottentots at the Cape of Good Hope, than in the United States, where every cart-man is as good as myself.”
“I assure you,” said my friend, with a significant smile, “no people in the world are better satisfied of their superiority than the higher classes of Americans. If their pretensions were recognised by the people at large, there would be no happier set of men in the world. There is no species of perfection which they do not attribute to one another: so that one is constantly reminded of the fable of the two asses, one of which found the other an excellent singer, while the latter discovered in the first a great talent for public speaking; the rest of the animals seeing neither the singer nor the orator in either of them. I am at once for an aristocracy like the English, with some lasting, real distinctions. Our patriots have ruined the country by abolishing the institution among us. It would have protected us against the vulgarity of our moneyed men, and produced noblemen instead of fashionable dandies, who are talking of the privileges of gentlemen before they are entitled to the distinction.”