eater wrong to ourselves?--that we
cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? I observe
there is a certain class of writers in America who are fond of
representing the feeling of this country towards America as one of
jealousy, if not of hatred.. I think, my lord, that no American ever
travelled in this country without being conscious at once that this is a
total mistake--that this is a total misapprehension. I venture to say
that there is no nation on the face of the earth in which we feel half
so much interest, or towards which we feel the tenth part of the
affection, which we do towards our brethren in the United States of
America. And what is more than that--there is no nation towards which we
feel one half so much admiration, and for which we feel half so much
respect, as we do for the people of the United States of America.
[Cheers.] Why, sir, how can it be otherwise? How is it possible that it
should be the reverse? Are they not our bone and our flesh? and their
character, whatever it is, is it any thing more than our own, a little
exaggerated, perhaps? Their virtues and their vices, their faults and
their excellences, are just the virtues and the vices, the faults and
the excellences, of that old respectable freeholder, John Bull, from
whom they are descended. We are not much surprised that a nation which
are slaves themselves should make other men slaves. This cannot very
much surprise us: but we are both surprised and we are deeply grieved,
that a nation which has conceived so well the idea of freedom--a nation
which has preached the doctrines of freedom with such boldness and such
fulness--a nation which has so boldly and perfectly realized its idea of
freedom in every other respect--should in this only instance have sunk
so completely below its own idea, and forgetting the rights of one class
of their fellow-creatures, should have deprived them of freedom
altogether. I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the
case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in
other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a
nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon. I am
not ignorant--nobody can be ignorant--of the great difficulties which
encompass the solution of this question in America. It is vain for us to
shut our eyes to it. There can be no doubt whatever that great
sacrifices will require to be made in order to get rid of this