Mr. Green was as thorough-going an Englishman as any of his class in the island. Methodical, plodding, industrious, and regular in all his habits, he was honest by rule, and had no leisure or inclination for any other opinions than those which were obtained with the smallest effort. In consequence of the limited sphere in which he dwelt, in a moral sense at least, he was a mass of the prejudices that were most prevalent at the period when he first obtained his notions. His hatred of France was unconquerable, for he had early learned to consider her as the fast enemy of England; and as to America, he deemed her to be the general asylum of all the rogues of his own country--the possession of a people who had rebelled against their king because the restraints of law were inherently disagreeable to them. This opinion he had no more wish to proclaim than he felt a desire to go up and down declaring that Satan was the father of sin; but the fact in the one case was just as well established in his mind as in the other. If he occasionally betrayed the existence of these sentiments, it was as a man coughs; not because he particularly wishes to cough, but because he cannot help it. Finding the subject so naturally introduced, therefore, it is no wonder if some of his peculiar notions escaped him in the short dialogue that followed.
"We have our share of bad men, I presume, sir," he rejoined to the thrust of Captain Truck; "but the thing that has most attracted comment with us, is the fact that they all go to America."
"And we receive our share of rogues, I presume, sir; and it is the subject of animadversion with us that they all come from England."
Mr. Green did not feel the force of this retort; but he wiped his spectacles as he quietly composed his features into look of dignified gravity.
"Some of your most considerable men in America, I believe, sir," he continued, "have been Englishmen, who preferred a residence in the colonies to a residence at home."
"I never heard of them," returned the captain; "will you have the goodness to name just one?"
"Why, to begin, there was your Washington. I have often heard my father say that he went to school with him in Warwickshire, and that he was thought anything but very clever, too, while he lived in England."
"You perceive, then, that we made something of him when we got him over on this side; for he turned out in the end to be a very decent and respectable sort of person. Judging from the language of some of your prints, sir, I should suppose that King William enjoyed the reputation of being a respectable man in your country?"
Although startled to hear his sovereign spoken of in this irreverent manner, Mr. Green answered promptly,----
"He is a king, sir, and comports himself as a king."