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.
“Oh, of course, it isn’t true,” he said, “and every Englishman will swear it’s a falsehood. But you must not expect us to disbelieve it, nevertheless; for your travellers who come to America, pick up here and there, some absurd ontruth or another; or, if they are all picked up already, invent one; and although every man, woman, and child is ready to take their bible oaths it is a bam, yet the English believe this one false witness in preference to the whole nation.
“You must excuse me, Squire; you have a right to your opinion, though it seems you have no right to blart it out always; but I am a freeman, I was raised in Slickville, Onion County, State of Connecticut, United States of America, which is a free country, and no mistake; and I have a right to my opinion, and a right to speak it, too; and let me see the man, airl or commoner, parliamenterer or sodger officer, that dare to report me, I guess he’d wish he’d been born a week later, that’s all. I’d make a caution of him, I know. I’d polish his dial-plate fust, and then I’d feel his short ribs, so as to make him larf, a leetle jist a leetle the loudest he ever heerd. Lord, he’d think thunder and lightnin’ a mint julip to it. I’d ring him in the nose as they do pigs in my country, to prevent them rootin’ up what they hadn’t ought.”
Having excited himself by his own story, he first imagined a case and then resented it, as if it had occurred. I expressed to him my great regret that he should visit England with these feelings and prejudices, as I had hoped his conversation would have been as rational and as amusing as it was in Nova Scotia, and concluded by saying that I felt assured he would find that no such prejudice existed here against his countrymen, as he entertained towards the English.
“Lord love you!” said he, “I have no prejudice. I am the most candid man you ever see. I have got some grit, but I ain’t ugly, I ain’t indeed.”
“But you are wrong about the English; and I’ll prove it to you. Do you see that turkey there?” said he.