Upon this the editor of the Tribune responded, as he shook my hand—
"You are right."
It must be allowed that Jonathan has good reason to mistrust his critics. Most books on America have been written by Englishmen. Now, the English are, of all people, those who can the least easily get rid of their prejudices in speaking of America. They are obliged to admit that the Americans have made their way pretty well since they have been their own masters; but John Bull has always a rankling remembrance, when he looks at America, of the day that the Americans sent him about his business, and his look seems to say to Jonathan: "Yes, yes; you have not done at all badly—for you; but just think what the country would have been by this time if it had remained in my hands."
He looks at everything he sees with a patronising air; with the arrogant calm that makes him, amiable as he is at home, so unbearable when he travels abroad. He expresses cavalierly, criticises freely. He goes over with the firm intention of admiring nothing American. If he finds nothing else to disparage, he will complain of the want of ruins and old cathedrals. He occasionally presents himself at Jonathan's dinner-parties in a tweed suit, fearing to do him too much honour by putting on evening dress. His little talent of making himself disagreeable abroad comes out more strongly in America; and Jonathan, one of whose little weaknesses is love of approbation, I honestly believe, has a cordial antipathy to the magnificent Briton.
The Englishman, on his side, has no antipathy whatever to the Americans. For that matter, the Englishman has no antipathy for anyone. He despises, but he does not hate; a fact which is irritating to the last degree to the objects of his attention. When a man feels that he has some worth, he likes to be loved or hated: to be treated with indifference is galling. John Bull looks on the American as a parvenu, and smiles with incredulity when you say that American society is not only brilliant and witty, but quite as polished as the best European society.
It is this haughty disdain which exasperates Americans.
Jonathan has forgotten that the English were once his oppressors; he forgives them for the war of 1812; without forgetting it, he forgives them for having sided with the slave-owners during the Civil War, but he cannot forgive an Englishman for coming to his dinner-table in a tweed suit.