"It is the attempt, and not the deed, confounds me."
But what are the nature and extent of this American audacity? Our countrymen have undertaken to minister to their own wants by the production of certain Wares and Fabrics which they had formerly been content either to do without or to buy from Europe. Being urgently invited to do so, they have sent over some few of these results of their art and skill to a grand exposition of the World's Industry. Even if they were as bad as they are represented, these products should be here; since the object of the Exhibition is not merely to set forth what is best but to compare it with the inferior, and so indicate the readiest mode of improving the latter. Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Barbary, Persia, have sent hither their wares and fabrics, which hundreds of thousands have examined with eager and gratified interest—an interest as real as that excited by the more perfect rival productions of Western Europe, though of a different kind from that. No one has thought of ridiculing these products of a more primitive industry; all have welcomed and been instructed by them. And so ours would have been treated had they been in fact the wretched affairs which the London Commercial press has represented them. It is precisely because they are quite otherwise that it has been deemed advisable systematically to disparage them—to declare our Pianos "gouty" structures—"mere wood and iron;" our Calicoes beneath the acceptance of a British servant-girl; our Farming Tools half a century behind their British rivals; our Hats "shocking bad," &c., &c.,—all this, in the first months of the Exhibition, while the Jurors appointed to judge and report upon the merits of rival fabrics were making the requisite investigations. Their verdict is thus substantially forestalled, and the millions who visit the Exhibition are invited to look at the American department merely to note the bad taste and incapacity therein displayed, and learn to avoid them.
But the self-constituted arbiters who thus tell the American people that Art is not their province—that they should be content to grow Corn and Cotton, looking to Europe for the satisfaction of their less urgent necessities, their secondary wants—are they impartial advisers? Are they not palpably speaking in the interest of the rival producers of Europe, alarmed by the rapid growth and extension of American Art? Would they have taken so much trouble with us if American taste and skill were really the miserable abortions they represent them?
These indications of paternal care for American Industry, in danger of being warped and misdirected, are not quite novel. An English friend lately invited me to visit him at his house in the neighborhood of Birmingham, holding out as an inducement the opportunity of inspecting the great Iron and Hardware manufactories in that neighborhood. A moment afterward he recollected himself and said, "I am not quite sure that I could procure you admittance to them, because the rule has been that Americans were not to be admitted. Gentlemen taking their friends to visit these works were asked, at the door, 'Is your friend an American?' and if the answer was affirmative, he was not allowed to enter—but I think this restriction has been generally abrogated." Here you see, was a compassionate regard for American Industry, in danger of being misled and deluded into unprofitable employments, which neither The Times nor any of its co-laborers has been able to more than humbly imitate.
To my mind, nothing can be more unjust than the intimation that, in attempting to supply her own wants (or some of them) in the domain of Art and Manufacture, America has rushed madly from her sphere and sought to be Europe. She has already taught Europe many things in the sphere of Invention, and is destined to teach her many more; and the fact that her Carriages are condemned as too light and her Pianos as too heavy, her Reaping Machines as "a cross between a treadmill and a flying chariot," &c., &c., by critics very superficially acquainted with their uses, and who have barely glanced at them in passing, proves nothing but the rashness and hostility of their contemners. From such unworthy disparagement I appeal with confidence to the awards of the various Juries appointed by the Royal Commissioners. They are competent; they have made the requisite examinations; they (though nearly all European and a majority of them British) are honorable men, and will render an impartial judgment. That judgment, I firmly believe, will demonstrate that, in proportion to the extent of its contributions, no other country has sent more articles to the Exhibition by which the whole world may be instructed and benefited than our own.