There is not the slightest exaggeration in these statements. Their truth
any one familiar with the periodical literature of that period will
least of all doubt. There was a perfect agreement between those who
visited us and described us and those who drew their description from
their imaginations. Nothing distinguished the English traveler or the
English reviewer so much as his piety, and his profound conviction that
religion could not exist where it was not carefully watched over by an
established church. Besides this inevitable moral destitution, we (p. 090)
were irreclaimably given over to vulgarity. Manners there could not be
in a land abandoned to an unbridled democracy. In the most praiseworthy
instances even, men lacked that repose, that fine tact, which were found
universally in the higher orders in the mother country. The defect was
ineradicable, according to most; for it had its baleful origin in
popular institutions themselves. In justice it must be added that there
were some who, in consequence of the American passion for traveling,
entertained a mild hope that in time this rudeness would wear away, and
this total ignorance of good breeding would be enlightened by the polish
and refinement that would be picked up from the quantity to be found
scattered about foreign courts. The published correspondence of that
period is delicious in its frankness. The Englishman, writing to his
American friend, never descends from his lofty position of censor both
of great and petty morals. The inferiority of manners in this country is
a point insisted upon by the former with an assiduity and assurance that
are sufficient of themselves to make clear how high was the breeding to
which he himself had attained. It makes little difference who write the
letters. They all express the same sentiments. They all offer advice as
to the best method America can take to retrieve the good opinion of
Europe which it has lost. They are careful to say that they entertain
the kindest of feelings to the United States; that they neglect no
occasion of doing justice to the good and wise that had found there a
home. Unfortunately these are few in number; and with a lofty sense of
justice they never fail to express disapprobation in strong terms of the
vast amount to be condemned in a land which had fallen under the sway
of a reckless democracy and a godless church. One English (p. 091)
gentleman in the British military service, after being