2nd. By the freedom of the press in the United States!!
Volume Two—Chapter Three.
Patriotism.
This is a word of very doubtful meaning; and until we have the power to analyse the secret springs of action, it is impossible to say who is or who is not a patriot. The Chartist, the White Boy, may really be patriots in their hearts, although they are attempting revolution, and are looked upon as the enemies of good order. Joseph Hume may be a patriot, so may O’Connell, so may —; but never mind; I consider that if in most cases, in all countries the word egotism were substituted it would be more correct, and particularly so in America.
M. Tocqueville says, “The inhabitants of the United States talk a great deal of their attachment to their country; but I confess that I do not rely upon that calculating patriotism which is founded upon interest, and which a change in the interests at stake may obliterate.”
The fact is, that the American is aware that what affects the general prosperity must affect the individual, and he therefore is anxious for the general prosperity; he also considers that he assists to legislate for the country, and is therefore equally interested in such legislature being prosperous; if, therefore, you attack his country, you attack him personally—you wound his vanity and self-love.
In America it is not our rulers who have done wrong or right; it is we (or rather I) who have done wrong or right, and the consequence is, that the American is rather irritable on the subject, as every attack is taken as personal. It is quite ridiculous to observe how some of the very best of the Americans are tickled when you praise their country and institutions; how they will wince at any qualification in your praise, and actually writhe under any positive disparagement. They will put questions, even if they anticipate an unfavourable answer; they cannot help it. What is the reason of this? Simply their better sense wrestling with the errors of education and long-cherished fallacies. They feel that their institutions do not work as they would wish; that the theory is not borne out by the practice, and they want support against their own convictions. They cannot bear to eradicate deep-rooted prejudices, which have been from their earliest days a source of pride and vain-glory; and to acknowledge that what they have considered as most perfect, what they have boasted of as a lesson to other nations, what they have suffered so much to uphold, in surrendering their liberty of speech, of action, and of opinion, has after all proved to be a miserable failure, and instead of a lesson to other nations—a warning.
Yet such are the doubts, the misgivings which fluctuate in, and irritate the minds of a very large proportion of the Americans; and such is the decided conviction of a portion who retire into obscurity and are silent; and every year adds to the number of both these parties. They remind one of a husband who, having married for love, and supposed his wife to be perfection, gradually finds out that she is full of faults, and renders him anything but happy; but his pride will not allow him to acknowledge that he has committed an error in his choice, and he continues before the world to descant upon her virtues, and to conceal her errors, while he feels that his home is miserable.