“‘Thank you,’ sais I, ‘I shall have great pleasure.’
“He railly was a gentlemany man that. He was so good natured, and took the joke so well, I was kinder sorry I played it off on him. I hante see’d no man to England I affection so much as Mr. Tact, I swear! I begin to think, arter all, it was the right of sarchin’ vessels he wanted to talk to me about, instead of sarchin’ me, as I suspicioned. It don’t do always to look for motives, men often act without any. The next time, if he axes me, I’ll talk plain, and jist tell him what I do think; but still, if he reads that riddle right, he may larn a good deal, too, from the story of “the Gander Pulling,” mayn’t he?”
CHAPTER V. THE BLACK STOLE.
The foregoing sketch exhibits a personal trait in Mr. Slick’s character, the present a national one. In the interview, whether real or fanciful, that he alleges to have had with one of the Secretaries of State, he was not disposed to give a direct reply, because his habitual caution led him to suspect that an attempt was made to draw him out on a particular topic without his being made aware of the object. On the present occasion, he exhibits that irritability, which is so common among all his countrymen, at the absurd accounts that travellers give of the United States in general, and the gross exaggerations they publish of the state of slavery in particular.
That there is a party in this country, whose morbid sensibility is pandered to on the subject of negro emancipation there can be no doubt, as is proved by the experiment made by Mr. Slick, recorded in this chapter.
On this subject every man has a right to his own opinions, but any interference with the municipal regulations of another country, is so utterly unjustifiable, that it cannot be wondered at that the Americans resent the conduct of the European abolishionists, in the most unqualified and violent manner.
The conversation that I am now about to repeat, took place on the Thames. Our visits, hitherto, had been restricted by the rain to London. To-day, the weather being fine, we took passage on board of a steamer, and went to Greenwich.
While we were walking up and down the deck, Mr. Slick again adverted to the story of the government spies with great warmth. I endeavoured, but in vain, to persuade him that no regular organized system of espionage existed in England. He had obtained a garbled account of one or two occurrences, and his prejudice, (which, notwithstanding his disavowal, I knew to be so strong, as to warp all his opinions of England and the English), immediately built up a system, which nothing I could say, could at all shake.
I assured him the instances he had mentioned were isolated and unauthorized acts, told in a very distorted manner but mitigated, as they really were, when truly related, they were at the time received with the unanimous disapprobation of every right-thinking man in the kingdom, and that the odium which had fallen on the relators, was so immeasurably greater than what had been bestowed on the thoughtless principals, that there was no danger of such things again occurring in our day. But he was immovable.