In Dickens's
day each nation understood the other enough to argue. In our time
neither nation understands itself even enough to quarrel. There was an
English tradition, from Fox and eighteenth-century England; there was an
American tradition from Franklin and eighteenth-century America; and
they were still close enough together to discuss their differences with
acrimony, perhaps, but with certain fundamental understandings. The
eighteenth-century belief in a liberal civilisation was still a dogma;
for dogma is the only thing that makes argument or reasoning possible.
America, under all its swagger, did still really believe that Europe was
its fountain and its mother, because Europe was more fully civilised.
Dickens, under all his disgust, did still believe that America was in
advance of Europe, because it was more democratic. It was an age, in
short, in which the word "progress" could still be used reasonably;
because the whole world looked to one way of escape and there was only
one kind of progress under discussion. Now, of course, "progress" is a
useless word; for progress takes for granted an already defined
direction; and it is exactly about the direction that we disagree. Do
not let us therefore be misled into any mistaken optimism or special
self-congratulation upon what many people would call the improved
relations between England and America. The relations are improved
because America has finally become a foreign country. And with foreign
countries all sane men take care to exchange a certain consideration and
courtesy. But even as late as the time of Dickens's first visit to the
United States, we English still felt America as a colony; an insolent,
offensive, and even unintelligible colony sometimes, but still a colony;
a part of our civilisation, a limb of our life. And America itself, as I
have said, under all its bounce and independence, really regarded us as
a mother country. This being the case it was possible for us to quarrel,
like kinsmen. Now we only bow and smile, like strangers.

This tone, as a sort of family responsibility, can be felt quite
specially all through the satires or suggestions of these _American
Notes_. Dickens is cross with America because he is worried about
America; as if he were its father. He explores its industrial, legal,
and educational arrangements like a mother looking at the housekeeping
of a married son; he makes suggestions with a certain acidity; he takes
a strange plea