king in England. I replied that he was not elected, but
that he became king by birthright, &c. A Kentuckian observed, placing his
leg on the back of the next chair, "That's a kind of unnatural." An
Indianian said, "I don't believe in that system myself." A third--"Do you
mean to tell me, that because the last king was a smart man and knew his
duty, that his son, or his brother, should be a smart man, and fit for the
situation?" I explained that we had a premier, ministers, &c.;--when the
last gentleman replied, "Then you pay half-a-dozen men to do one man's
business. Yes--yes--that may do for Englishmen very well; but, I guess, it
would not go down here--no, no, Americans are a little more enlightened
than to stand that kind of wiggery." During this conversation, a person
had stepped into the room, and had taken his seat in silence. I was about
to reply to the last observations of my antagonist, when this gentleman
opened out, with, "yes! that may do for Englishmen very well"--he was an
Englishman, I knew at once by his accent, and I verily believe the
identical radical who set the village of Bracebridge by the ears, and
pitched the villagers to the devil, on seeing them grin through a
horse-collar, when they should have been calculating the interest of the
national debt, or conning over the list of sinecure placemen. He held in
his hand, instead of "Cobbett's Register," the "Greenville
Republican."--He had substituted for his short-sleeved coat, "a
round-about."--He seemed to have put on flesh, and looked somewhat more
contented. "Yes, yes," he says, "that may do for Englishmen very well, but
it won't do here. Here we make our own laws, and we keep them too. It may
do for Englishmen very well, to have _the liberty_ of paying taxes for the
support of the nobility. To have _the liberty_ of being incarcerated in a
gaol, for shooting the wild animals of the country. To have _the liberty_
of being seized by a press-gang, torn away from their wives and families,
and flogged at the discretion of my lord Tom, Dick, or Harry's bastard."
At this, the Kentuckian gnashed his teeth, and instinctively grasped his
hunting-knife;--an old Indian doctor, who was squatting in one corner of
the room, said, slowly and emphatically, as his eyes glared, his nostrils
dilated, and his lip curled with contempt--"The Englishman is a
dog"--while a Georgian slave, who stood behind his master's chair, grinned
and chuckled with delight, as he said--"_