Here, properly speaking, ends my reckoning with you about your father's memory; but as the Canadian newspapers have made some remarks on the subject of Wyoming, with which I cannot fully coincide, and as this letter will probably be read in Canada, I cannot conclude it without a few more words, in case my silence should seem to admit of propositions which are rather beyond the stretch of my creed. I will not, however, give any plain truths which I have to offer to the Canadian writers the slightest seasoning of bitterness, for they have alluded to me, on the whole, in a friendly and liberal tone. But when they regret my departure from historical truth, I join in their regret only in as far as I have unconsciously misunderstood the character of Brant, and the share of the Indians in the transaction, which I have now reason to suspect was much less than that of the white men. In other circumstances I took the liberty of a versifier to run away from fact into fancy, like a school-boy who never dreams that he is a truant when he rambles on a holiday from school. It seems, however, that I falsely represented Wyoming to have been a terrestrial paradise. It was not so, say the Canadian papers, because it contained a great number of Tories; and undoubtedly that cause goes far to account for the fact. Earthly paradises, however, are not earthly things, and Tempe and Arcadia may have had their drawbacks on happiness as well as Wyoming. I must nevertheless still believe that it was a flourishing colony, and that its destruction furnished a just warning to human beings against war and revenge. But the whole catastrophe is affirmed in a Canadian newspaper to have been nothing more than a fair battle, if this be the fact, let accredited signatures come forward to attest it, and vindicate the innocence and honorableness of the whole transaction, as your father's character has been vindicated. An error about him by no means proves the whole account of the business to be a fiction. Who would not wish its atrocity to be disproved? But who can think it disproved by a single defender, who writes anonymously, and without definable weight or authority?
In another part of the Canadian newspapers, my theme has been regretted as dishonorable to England. Then it was, at all events, no fable. But how far was the truth dishonorable to England? American settlers, and not Englishmen, were chiefly the white men calling themselves Christians, who were engaged in this affair. I shall be reminded, perhaps, that they also called themselves Loyalists. But for Heaven's sake let not English loyalty be dragged down to palliate atrocities, or English delicacy be invoked to conceal them. I may be told that England permitted the war, and was therefore responsible for its occurrences. Not surely universally, nor directly. I should be unwilling to make even Lord North's administration answerable for all the actions of Butler's rangers; and I should be still more sorry to make all England amenable either for Lord North's administration, or for Butler's rangers. Was the American war an unanimous and heartfelt war of the people? Were the best patriots and the brightest luminaries of our Senate for, or against it? Chatham declared that if America fell she would fall like the strong man—that she would embrace the pillars of our constitution and perish beneath its ruins. Burke, Fox, and Barre kindled even the breasts of St. Stephen's chapel against it; and William Pitt pronounced it a war against the sacred cause of Liberty. If so, the loss of our colonies was a blessing, compared with the triumph of those principles that would have brought Washington home in chains. If Chatham and Pitt were our friends in denouncing the injustice of this war, then Washington was only nominally our foe in resisting it; and he was as much the enemy of the worst enemies of our constitution, as if he had fought against the return of the Stuarts on the banks of the Spey or the Thames. I say, therefore, with full and free charity to those who think differently, that the American war was disgraceful only to those who were its abettors, and that the honor of Englishmen is redeemed in proportion as they deprecate its principles and deplore its details. Had my theme even involved English character more than it does, I could still defend it. If my Canadian critic alleges that a poet may not blame the actions of his country, I meet his allegation, and deny it. No doubt a poet ought not forever to harp and carp upon the faults of his country; but he may be her moral censor, and he must not be her parasite. If an English poet under Edward III. had only dared to leave one generous line of commiseration to the memory of Sir William Wallace, how much he would have raised our estimation of the moral character of the age! There is a present and a future in national character, as well as a past, and the character of the present age is best provided for by impartial and generous sentiments respecting the past. The twentieth century will not think the worse of the nineteenth for regretting the American war. I know the slender importance of my own works. I am contending, however, against a false principle of delicacy that would degrade poetry itself if it were adopted;—but it never will be adopted.
I therefore regret nothing in the historical allusions of my poem, except the mistake about your father. Nor, though I have spoken freely of American affairs, do I mean to deny that your native tribes may have had a just cause of quarrel with the American colonists. And I regard it as a mark of their gratitude that they adhered to the royal cause, because the governors, acting in the king's name, had been their most constant friends; and the colonial subjects, possibly at times their treacherous invaders. I could say much of European injustice towards your tribes, but in spite of all that I could say, I must still deplore the event of Christians having adopted their mode of warfare, and, as circumstances then stood, of their having invoked their alliance. If the Indians thirsted for vengeance on the colonists, that should have been the very circumstance to deter us from blending their arms with ours. I trust you will understand this declaration to be made in the spirit of frankness, and not of mean and inhospitable arrogance. If I were to speak to you in that spirit, how easily and how truly could you tell me that the American Indians have departed faster from their old practices of warfare, than Christians have departed from their habits of religious persecution. If I were to preach to you about European humanity you might ask me how long the ashes of the Inquisition have been cold, and whether the slave-trade be yet abolished? You might demand, how many—no, how few generations have elapsed since our old women were burnt for imaginary commerce with the devil, and whether the houses be not yet standing from which our great grand-mothers may have looked on the hurdles passing to the place of execution, whilst they blessed themselves that they were not witches! A horrible occurrence of this nature took place in Scotland during my own grandfather's life-time. As to warlike customs, I should be exceedingly sorry if you were to press me even on those of my brave old ancestors, the Scottish Highlanders. I can, nevertheless, recollect the energy, faith, and hospitality of those ancestors, and at the same time I am not forgetful of the simple virtues of yours. [FN]
[FN] Considering the filial motives of the young chief's appeal to me, I am not afraid that any part of this letter, immediately relating to him, will be thought ostentatious or prolix. And if charitably judged, I hope that what I have said of myself and of my poem will not be felt as offensive egotism. The public has never been troubled with any defences of mine against any attacks on my poetry that were mere literary; although I may have been as far as authors generally are from bowing to the justice of hostile criticism. To show that I have not been over-anxious about publicity, I must mention a misrepresentation respecting my poem on Wyoming which I have suffered to remain uncontradicted for ten years. Mr. Washington Irving, in a biographical sketch prefixed to it in an American edition, described me as having injured the composition of the poem by shewing it to friends who struck out its best passages. Now I read it to very few friends, and to none at whose suggestion I ever struck out a single line. Nor did I ever lean on the taste of others with that miserable distrust of my own judgment which the anecdote conveys. I knew that Mr. Irving was the last man in the world to make such a misrepresentation intentionally, and that I could easily contradict it; but from aversion to bring a petty anecdote about myself before the world, I forbore to say any thing about it. The case was different when a Canadian writer hinted at the patriotism of my subject. There he touched on my principles, and I have defended them, contending that on the supposition of the story of Wyoming being true, it is a higher compliment to British feeling to reveal than to palliate or hide it.
I have been thus special in addressing you from a wish to vindicate my own consistency, as well as to do justice to you in your present circumstances, which are peculiarly and publicly interesting. The chief of an aboriginal tribe, now settled under the protection of our sovereign in Canada, you are anxious to lead on your people in a train of civilization that is already begun. It is impossible that the British community should not be touched with regard for an Indian stranger of respectable private character, possessing such useful and honorable views. Trusting that you will amply succeed in them, and long live to promote improvement and happiness amidst the residue of your ancient race,
I remain, your sincere well-wisher, Thomas Campbell.