It is because it is more egotistical that the patriotism of the American is more easily roused and more easily affronted. He has been educated to despise all other countries, and to look upon his own as the first in the world; he has been taught that all other nations are slaves to despots, and that the American citizen only is free, and this is never contradicted. For although thousands may in their own hearts feel the falsehood of their assertions, there is not one who will venture to express his opinion. The government sets the example, the press follows it, and the people receive the incense of flattery, which in other countries is offered to the court alone; and if it were not for the occasional compunctions and doubts, which his real good sense will sometimes visit him with, the more enlightened American would be as happy in his own delusions, as the majority most certainly may be said to be.
M. Tocqueville says, “For the last fifty years no pains have been spared to convince the inhabitants of the United States that they constitute the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They perceive that, for the present, their own democratic institutions succeed, while those of other countries fall; hence they conceive an overweening opinion of their superiority, and they are not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind.”
There are, however, other causes which assist this delusion on the part of the majority of the Americans; the principal of which is the want of comparison. The Americans are too far removed from the Old Continent, and are too much occupied even if they were not, to have time to visit it, and make the comparison between the settled countries and their own. America is so vast, that if they travel in it, their ideas of their own importance become magnified. The only comparisons they are able to make are only as to the quantity of square acres in each country, which, of course, is vastly in their favour.
Mr Sanderson, the American, in his clever Sketches of Paris, observes, “It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate without objects of comparison; ‘nimium se aestimet necesse est, qui se nemini comparat.’ He will always think himself wise who sees nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, which one cannot know well without residing there, is certainly the complement of a good education.”
After all, is there not a happiness in this delusion on the part of the American majority, and is not the feeling of admiration of their own country borrowed from ourselves? The feeling may be more strong with the Americans, because it is more egotistical; but it certainly is the English feeling transplanted, and growing in a ranker soil. We may accuse the Americans of conceit, of wilful blindness, of obstinacy; but there is after all a great good in being contented with yourself and yours. The English shew it differently; but the English are not so good-tempered as the Americans. They grumble at everything; they know the faults of their institutions, but at the same time they will allow of no interference. Grumbling is a luxury so great, that an Englishman will permit it only to himself. The Englishman grumbles at his government, under which he enjoys more rational liberty than the individual of any other nation in the world. The American, ruled by the despotism of the majority, and without liberty of opinion or speech, praises his institutions to the skies. The Englishman grumbles at his climate, which, if we were to judge from the vigour and perfection of the inhabitants, is, notwithstanding its humidity, one of the best in the world. The American vaunts his above all others, and even thinks it necessary to apologise for a bad day, although the climate, from its sudden extremes, withers up beauty, and destroys the nervous system. In everything connected with, and relating to, America, the American has the same feeling. Calculating, wholly matter-of-fact and utilitarian in his ideas, without a poetic sense of his own, he is annoyed if a stranger does not express that rapture at their rivers, waterfalls, and woodland scenery, which he himself does not feel. As far as America is concerned, everything is for the best in this best of all possible countries. It is laughable, yet praiseworthy, to observe how the whole nation will stoop down to fan the slightest spark which is elicited of native genius—like the London citizen, who is enraptured with his own stunted cucumbers, which he has raised at ten times the expense which would have purchased fine ones in the market. It were almost a pity that the American should be awakened from his dream, if it were not that the arrogance and conceit arising from it may eventually plunge him into difficulty.
But let us be fair; America is the country of enthusiasm and hope, and we must not be too severe upon what from a virgin soil has, sprung up too luxuriantly. It is but the English amor patriae carried to too great an excess. The Americans are great boasters; but are we far behind them? One of our most popular songs runs as follows:—
“We ne’er see our foes, but we wish them to stay;
They never see us, but they wish us away.”
What can be more bragging, or more untrue, than the words of these lines? In the same way in England the common people hold it as a proverb, that, “one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen,” but there are not many Englishmen who would succeed in the attempt. Nor is it altogether wrong to encourage these feelings; although arrogance is a fault in an individual, in a national point of view, it often becomes the incentive to great actions, and, if not excessive, insures the success inspired by confidence. As by giving people credit for a virtue which they have not, you very often produce that virtue in them, I think it not unwise to implant this feeling in the hearts of the lower classes, who if they firmly believe that they can beat three Frenchmen, will at all events attempt to do it. That too great success is dangerous, and that the feeling of arrogance produced by it may lead us into the error of despising our enemy, we ourselves showed an example of in our first contest with America during the last war. In that point America and England have now changed positions, and from false education, want of comparison, and unexpected success in their struggle with us, they are now much more arrogant than we were when most flushed with victory. They are blind to their own faults and to the merits of others, and while they are so it is clear that they will offend strangers, and never improve themselves. I have often laughed at the false estimate held by the majority in America as to England. One told me, with a patronising air, that, “in a short time, England would only be known as having been the mother of America.”
“When you go into our interior, Captain,” said a New York gentleman to me, “you will see plants, such as rhododendrons, magnolias, and hundreds of others, such as they have no conception of in your own country.”
One of Jim Crow’s verses in America is a fair copy from us—