An appeal from the judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. Part First, containing an historical outline of their merits and wrongs as colonies; and strictures upon the calumnies of the British writers

Front matter

AN APPEAL FROM THE JUDGMENTS OF GREAT BRITAIN RESPECTING THE tou^sid scathes ©ff &w26Ms<b&9 PART FIRST, CONTAINING AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THEIR MERITS AND WRONGS AS COLONIES; AND STRICTURES UPON THE CALUMNIES OF THE BRITISH WRITERS BY ROBERT WALSH, Jr. Quod quUque fecit, patitur : autotem tcelus Ucpetit, suoque premitur exemplo noceat. SENEC. PHILADELPHIA : PUBLISHED BY MITCHELL, AMES, AND WHITE William Brora, Printer, 1819. Eastern District Of Pennsylvania, to -uXi: BE IT REMEMBERED, That, on the twenty-third (lay of September, in the forty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1819, Mitchell, Ames, and White, of the said District, have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit : " An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States "of America.

Part First, containing An Historical Outline of their M "Wrongs as Colonies; and Strictures upon the Calumnies of the British " Writers. By Robert Walsh, Jr. Quod quisque fecit, patitur : autorem "scelusrepelit, suoque premitur exemplo nocens. Senec." In conformity to the act. of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned" — And also to the act, entitled, "An act supplementary to an act, entitled * An act for the encouragement of learning by securing the co pies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints."

D. CALDWELL, Clerk of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.. MSM©&raDSJ« To ROBERT OLIVER, Esq. OF BALTIMORE DEp\r Sir, This is a clumsy volume, and its tenor may not be exactly in unison with your opinions and predilections. I could, therefore, have wished to attach your name rather to its intended adjunct, which may have higher claims to regard; but I am anxious to improve the first opportunity of bearing public testimony to a character, which an acquaintance of many years, has taught me to vievv^is of un common worth and elevation. It is only a fevvNhonths ago that your merits were commemorated in your native land, in a strain which those inhabitants of your adopted country, who know you well, cannot deem too lofty, nor hesifate to re-echo. In proclaiming you public-spirited, open-hearted, and munificently hospitable, the distinguish ed assemblage in Dublin spoke as our experience would have led us to speak.

Preface

OF THE AUTHOR 1. About the end of the month of January last, I undertook to prepare for the press, a Survey of the institutions and resources ofthe American republic; and of the real character and condition of the American people. A work of this kind, wrought from authentic information, appeared to me to constitute the best refutation of the slanders, which are incessantly heaped upon us by the British writers. In assuming the task, I expected to be able to complete it in the course of the present Summer; and accordingly set on foot such enquiries in the several divisions of the Union, as the design prescribed. After pursuing my first arrangements for a couple of months, I discovered that I had not duly measured the delays incident to the collection of facts, over so extensive a surface, and through the agency of gentlemen engrossed, for the most part, by professional affairs.

Finding that I must allow a longer term than was at first proposed, for the accumulation of materials, I fell upon the plan of making up, in the interval, a preliminary volume, which should em brace a review of the dispositions and conduct of Great Britain towards this country, from the earliest period; and a collateral retaliation for her continued injustice and invective. What I now submit to the public, is the fruit ofthe plan just mentioned. It is not offered as a digested book; but \1

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. as a series of Notes and Illustrations; and it could not be other, from the shortness of the time within which it has been composed. The immediate object required, indeed, nothing more. I have to apologize rather for the bulk ofthe volume, which exceeds my own expectation; and is owing to the impression under which I proceeded, that the quotations, instructive in themselves, and useful towards elucidation and proof, should not be curtailed for the sake of economizing a certain number of pages. As respects diction, I have aimed at clearness and significancy alone. What has been instantly transferred from the desk to the press, must necessarily be liable to the reproach of diffusion and roughness. It is not a model of style or of epitome that is wanting on such an occasion as the British writers have created, for the exertion of our faculties of literary defence, whatever these may be; but an aggregation of facts pointedly told, and the production in detail of whatever tends to rectify perverse, or propagate just opinions.

My purpose in this undertaking generally, is not merely to assert the merits of this calumniated country; I wish to repel actively, and, if possible, to arrest, the war which is waged without stint or intermission, upon our national re putation. This, it now appears to me, cannot be done without combating on the offensive; without making in roads into the quarters of the restless enemy. I had long indulged the hope, in common with those Americans who were best affected towards Great Bri tain, that the false and contumelious language of the higher class at least, of her literary censors, would be corrected by the strong relief, in which our real condition and character were daily placing themselves before the world. We expected that another tone more conformable to truth and sound policy would be adopted, when we had on our side the degree of notoriety as to those points, which usually overawes and represses any degree of assurance in the spirit of envy and arrogance.

But the disappointment is complete, for every American who has paid attention to the tenor of the late British writings and speeches, in which reference is made to these

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. VII United States. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, have, within the twelvemonth past, by the excesses of obloquy into which they have given from the most unwor thy apprehensions, put beyond question the insufficiency of any amount of evidence, and of all the admitted laws of probability and reasoning, to work the reformation to which I have alluded. It was, too, believed by many, that the British writers would assign some bounds to their attacks, as long as we forbore to recriminate; and it was thought harsh and un charitable to touch the sores and blotches of the British nation, on account of the malevolence and folly of a few individuals, or of a party, within her bosom. The whole is proved to be mere illusion. There is no intemper ance of provocation, which could have excited more rancour, and led to fiercer and wider defamation, than we find in the two articles of the forty first number of the Quarterly Review, which treat of American affairs.

The whig journals have begun to rail in the same strain: the Opposition have joined, with the ministerial party, even on the floor of parliament, in a hue and cry against " American ambition and cruelty;" and in affecting to cre dit the coarse inventions of Englishmen who have either visited us for the express purpose of manufacturing libels, or betaken themselves to this expedient on their return home, as a profitable speculation. It is enough, that the desire of emigrating to the United States should spread among the population of England, in an extent deemed invidious, or hurtful; that the territorial security of the Americans on one side should appear about being ren dered complete, with some possible danger to the stability of the British empire in the West Indies, to throw the' British politicians of every rank, and denomination, into paroxysms of despite and jealousy, and to enlist them in a common scheme of misrepresentation which may inspire the British farmer and artisan with a horror of republi can America, and the nations of the world with a distrust of the spirit of her government. We cannot defeat their purpose as far as their country-

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. men are concerned; but we may guard the better against the effects of the hatred and contempt which they labour to inculcate, by acquainting ourselves thoroughly with the true nature and scope of their designs. If we have, as I verily believe, a band of implacable and indefatigable foes. in those who direct the public affairs, and mould the public mind, of Great Britain, we should be fully alive to the fact, and alert in using the means in our power, of restraining the effusions of their malice. National antipathies are to be deprecated in themselves; to excite them wantonly, is an offence against humanity and religion; but we are not censurable, if they are produced incidentally, by the course which self-defence may require of us to pursue. It is the English writer who becomes doubly culpable, if his pertinacity in defaming the United States, be such as to leave to the American, whose right it is to check this as wrell as every other form of hostility, no resource for the purpose, but the exhibition of what is odious and despicable in the character, conduct, and composition of the British nation.

There is much truth in the old maxim of the schools — retorquere non est respondere: to retort is not to reply. The present case forms an exception, however; for the British writers and orators never throw out their reproaches against the United States, without putting Great Britain in glorious contrast; it is the excellence, the purity, and the liberty, and the comfort, which they see at home, that, they would fain have us believe, quicken their sensibility, and embitter the expression of their hate, to the evils and abuses abounding on this side the water. Thus, to expose their real spirit and aims, and to fortify the confidence in our relative merit, necessary to us in this struggle with systematic detraction, we are compelled to investigate and set forth the misery and turpitude by which they are surrounded, and the wrongs and insults of which we have had constantly to complain.

This is not mere recrimination; it is resistance to degrading comparisons and injurious pretensions; we tear off one of the many disguises which our enemies assume to facilitate

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. IX their project of bringing us into disrepute with man kind. It is, certainly, wretched sophistry to argue, as they do, from single instances of disorder and vice; and neither fair nor charitable to display only what is bad in a mixed system, in which the good may greatly predominate. We would not be entitled to follow this example, but for the purpose of repressing it, by shewing how severely Great Britain may suffer in her turn from its adoption elsewhere. Upon the principles of the logic which she has used against the United States, she might be proved to be the most miserable and wicked nation that has ever existed. The pub licity which she gives to all her domestic transactions and circumstances; the discussion which her foreign policy and administration undergo, in and out of parliament, lay bare all her vulnerable points.

Never before was such a mass of materials prepared for the satirist of national vices and distempers, as is to be found in the debates and re ports of her legislature, aud in the innumerable chronicles of her internal history, which, as we there have it, is but a tissue of the grossest enormities and the most cruel dis tresses. In endeavouring to establish her invariable unkindness and injustice to this country, and her liability to reproach in an indefinite degree beyond ourselves, on the grounds of disparagement which she is never weary of repeating, it is not to American writers and travellers, to obscure and vulgar witnesses, labouring under the suspicion of national prejudice, personal pique, or gross venality, that I shall have recourse; but to British authorities of the highest standard; to British historians and legislators, and even to the very journals, which serve as the spiracles, through which the torrents of venom are incessantly spouted against the American people.

Our accusers in Great Britain have built their charges upon English testimony, and that the least respectable of its kind. I shall be found, in im peaching her in return, to use not suspicious foreign, but, in almost every instance, unquestionable British state ments; not the allegations of General Pillet — quite as Vol. I.— B* X

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. trustworthy as those of the Jansons and Fearons— but the records of Parliament and the oracles of the British empire. Here, it cannot escape the reader, how much more dignified and warrantable the retaliation, than the attack ; and that, in repelling aggression with evidence derived from these sources, we do not descend to the level of those who bespatter us with ordure amassed by natural or hired scavengers of their own blood and temper. " The libels of the present day," said Mr. Burke, in his retort upon the Duke of Bedford, " are just of the same stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive an importance from the rank of the persons from whom they come, and the gravity of the place where they are uttered. In some way or other they ought to be noticed." We think and reason thus, in respect to the calumnies with which we have been lately assailed in Great Britain.

All that is accumulated, for instance, in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, in the articles which form the immediate provocation upon which I now write, is an old compost of vile ingredients and impure leven, in itself unfit to be handled, and much more unfit to be imitated. Those journals, however, exert an unrivalled influence over the British public; they are not without considerable authority on the continent of Europe, where they are widely circulated; they have credit and sway with num bers of readers, even in the United States: in the cata logue of their authors and special patrons we find men of eminence, both in letters and politics; some who have a material share in the public councils of their country, and whose writings, on other subjects than the affairs of Ame rica, possess a degree of excellence, which invests the pamphlets in question with a general character of great weight and value. 2.

I will pass from the instance of these Reviews to another, worthy of particular observation, on many accounts; in which, also, the merest, most hacknied ribaldry respecting America, is rendered important and memora-

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. XI ble by " the rank of the persons from whom it came, aud the gravity of the place where it was uttered." Westminster school is one of the principal semina ries of classical education, for the sons of the British nobility and gentry; for those who are destined, either by birthright or custom, to become her legislators and rulers; to wield the national power, and give the tone to national sentiment. It has been long the practice, in this institution, to exhibit annually a Latin play, of which the characters are filled by the senior students, about to be translated to one of the great universities. The performance is attended by a crowd of great personages — by mi nisters of state, dignitaries of the church, and patrician families; and all the eclat is given to the occasion of which we can suppose it susceptible.

A Latin prologue aud epilogue, serving as specimens of scholarship, usually accompany the. play. In an exhibition of the kind, which took place about the conclusion of our late war with Great Britain, the subject chosen for the epilogue was emigra tion to the United States. It was treated in the form of a colloquy between a person preparing to embark, and a patriotic Englishman attempting to dissuade him from the adventure. Nothing can exceed the terseness of the lati nity, but the virulence of the abuse lavished upon America, in this piece. Whatever the writings of the British tra vellers could furnish, that was most injurious, and insult ing to the American people, is here elaborately condensed, aud imbued with a new and more active venom. The following is a translation of part of this classical lampoon.

" DAVUS TO GET A. " Whither do you propose to fly . Get. To Hesperia (America). — Da. What! to that country which is beyond the ocean; a country barbarous in itself and inhabited by Barbarians! In that coun try Geta, Astræa is not a virgin, but a virago : sometimes, as report goes, she is a drunkard, often a pugilist ; sometimes even a thief. Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more to be admired for simplicity or elegance : a negro wench, as we are told, waits on her master at table in native nudity ; and a heau will str ipimself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, and wit" more agility. Do you love your glass, every hour brings with

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. it a fresh bumper. There you have the gum-tickler, the phlegm cutter, the gall-breaker, the antifogmatic. No man is a slave there, for negroes are not considered as ofthe human species in America. Every man thinks what he pleases, and does what he pleases. The young men spurn the restraint of laws and of manners : his own inclination is there every man's sufficient diploma. Bridewell and the stews supply them with senators, and their respectable chief justice is a worthless scoundrel. Does a senatorial orator dexterously aim to convince his antagonist . he spits plentifully in his face ; and that this species of rhetoric may be more efficacious, tobacco furnishes an abundance of saliva for the purpose. The highest praise of a merchant is his skill in lying. Then their amusements ! to gouge out an eye with the thumb, to skin the forehead, to bite off the nose! and to kill a man, is an admirable joke.

Believe me, Geta, even if the black vessel of transportation you embark in, should bear you safely to this elysium of yours, the very passage would exhaust all your funds, and your whole life would be held in pledge, never to be redeemed : your destiny at last would be to feed the rats of a prison. But come, think better of this scheme while you have it in your power. Let the ruined man, the impious wretch, the outlaw, firaise America; if you are yet in your senses, Geta, stay at home." The whole of the dialogue may be read in the Port Folio, into which it was copied in the year 1816, from the English Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1815, to which it was committed thus for circulation, three months after the signature of the treaty of peace and amity be tween Great Britain and the United States.

The able writer who introduced it into the American journal, at tached to it a commentary which equally deserves to be read entire, and of which I adopt the following passages, as speaking what is due from me to the occasion. " Thus it is, that at an age when impressions are apt to take the strongest hold of the mind, — with the associations most calculated to give vividness and effect to the sentiments uttered — at the direction and under the superintendence of the reverend preceptors in the first school of classical education that Great Britain can boast in the presence, and with the sanction of persons deemed highly respectable for rank, learning, character, and station — the young sons of the nobility and gentry of England are taught to pronounce, applaud, and give effect to, the most glaring and disgusting false hoods, and the most virulent and vulgar abuse against this country and its inhabitants universally.

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. XIII "There is nothing in the invectives of the Quarterly Review more abusive and flagitious than this epilogue. I am no advocate for keeping up national animosity, but I do not approve ofthe doctrine of non-resistance; nor do 1 feel the obligation upon Ameri cans of submitting tamely to the insult, when the persons who have descended to these aspersions are themselves liable to the retort. Had this attack been the hasty effusion of a political partizan, or the witty scurrility of a writer whose sarcastic talent furnishes his daily bread, or had we been subjected even to the mistaken correc tion of a well-meaning observer, it might have been passed over: but this, the studied, deliberate composition of deep-rooted enmity, deserves no quarter. One style of reply to impartial and friendly reprehension, another to the sarcastic rancour of a ' proud and in sulting foe.' " It may be, as it seems to be, the intention in Great Britain, to educate their youth in sentiments of the most sarcastic and rancor ous hostility towards America; and I daresay, the attempt will succeed ; and I dare aver also, that it will be met, as it naturally must, by correspondent feelings on this side the water." 3.

We were not altogether ignorant, in the United States, that much of the favour shown to us, since the commencement of the present century, by the whig party in parliament, and their connexions out of doors, arose from the relation of a minority or opposition, in which they stood in the British government. Yet we believed, that there was enough of real cordiality in their feelings, and of elevation in their sentiments, to prevent them, at all times, from countenancing gross misrepresentations of our condition and character, and raising groundless cla mours against our political transactions and views; from setting us in a false or invidious light, merely to embarrass and discredit the ministry, or to promote some domestic ends, such as those of checking emigration, and counter acting extravagant plans of parliamentary reform.

An attentive observation of the language concerning our af fairs, held of late by the whig journals and the par liamentary opposition, has convinced me that we were deceived in supposing they had not always acted, in rela tion to this country, altogether from party feelings and aims, and would not readily sacrifice justice and truth, where it was concerned, to selfish considerations. There is but one interpretation to be put upon the

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. XIV course they have taken, in regard to the execution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot, and the agreement between Spain and the United States for the transfer of the Flo ridas. It has been a system of exaggeration, not to say slander, designed to bring the ministry under the suspi cion of pusillanimity and supineness, and to recommend the assailants to the nation as the truer Britons; the more spirited assertors and anxious guardians of her honour and interests. This accomplished, it was immaterial what feuds and ruinous strife, aud what injustice to the United States, might follow, if their clamours raised a ferment among the British people, and thus forced the ministry to pursue to extremity an unattainable redress, and frustrate a fair and equitable arrangement. Remark the artificial tone and hyperbolical representation, so well, though not primarily calculated to produce discord and aversion be tween the two nations, — of leading members of the mi nority in both houses of parliament.

Mr. Tierney (House of Commons, May 19th, 1819). " There was one foreign power to which he must direct the attention of the house, with the same view as he had mentioned France — he meant America; — she was out of the pale of confederation; with her we had a separate treaty of peace ; towards her we had long cast an eye of jealousy, and it well became us to be prepared for the worst: Let the house consider only what had happened in the last three months. Two British subjects had been executed by an American commander. There might be circumstances warrant ing his conduct, and justifying, according to the law of nations, the approbation which his government had expressed ; but he (Mr. Tierney) was old enough to remember the time when, had two Bri tish subjects been executed by a foreign state in time of peace, this country would not have put up with it quite so tamely.

He .knew the subject was a sore one, and he did not wish to press it farther. " While the noble lord opposite was at congress, two German princes could not have exchanged a few meadows without important expresses being despatched to him. But America owned no con gress: because she was a long way off, ministers seemed to think that danger could not be near, and she was accordingly allowed to take up a position on a vast continent, as injurious as possible lo the colonial returns of this country, putting them in imminent and un deniable jeopardy. " Let the house and the country reflect then, if it was not the

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. XV duty of the government to do something to prepare the empire for possible mischiefs that might arise even from France and America." Sir Robert Wilson (June 4th, 1819) — "America aspired too much after her own aggrandizement. She had sent commissioners to South America to inspire hope and energy there. She had esta blished a strong force in Texas, the province next to Mexico. Ame rica would next demand Cuba." Mr. M'Donald (4th June, 1819) — " Such an aggrandizement of a powerful rival, as the acquisition of Florida, ought not to be passed over without a strict enquiry into the cause of this most ex traordinary and unprecedented proceeding," Sec. And the Marquis of Lansdowne (in the House of Lords, May 11th, 1819) — li Of all the events that could happen at this time, there was not one which so deeply affected the commercial interests of Great Bri tain as the cession of the Floridas to the United States.

The possession of those provinces would enable the Americans to annihilate the British trade in the West India seas; and give them an opportunity of connecting themselves with the black governments there in a manner that might prove essentially injurious to our interests. The cession should have been guarded against at the congress of Vienna. No one at Vienna conceived it necessary to make any provision that should have the effect of preventing the aggrandize ment of the United States. Hitherto there was a balance on which this country used to rely for her security, and it was an essential part of this balance to prevent the Floridas from being ceded to the United States. The conduct of General Jackson in the execution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot was unparalleled in the history of civilized nations.

If at the time when Copenhagen was taken by the British troops, Lord Cathcart, who then commanded them, found that several persons belonging to neutral countries had been engaged in the defence of the place, and ordered them to be exe cuted, on pretence that they had no right to take up arms against Great Britain, would not that act have been a gross violation of the laws of nations."* It may be doubted whether any measures which could have been taken at the Congress of Vienna to guard against the severance of Florida from Spain, would have proved effectual: but the idea of a concurrence of the members of that Congress in precautions against the aggrandizement of the United States for the security of * The languag-e of the ministerial journals, concerning General Jackson, bordered on the infuriate.

Thus we read in the London Courier of March 25, 1819. "General Jackson has the most villanous look ever beheld ; he is never seen to smile. The hero is worthy of the people, and the people of the hero."

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. Great Britain! has something of the marvellous, besides implying an extraordinary sort of equity. We had not been called on to explain how our security might be affected by her aggrandizement in the West Indies; or how the balance on which we might have relied, was de stroyed by " the positions" she had " taken up," all over the world; positions commanding every sea of commer cial importance; — Heligoland; Malta, in addition to Gib raltar; the Isle of France; the Island of Ceylon; the Prince of Wales' Island; New South Wales; the Cape of Good Hope. " Our noble station at the Cape of Good Hope," says a late London paper, "commands the commerce of the globe; it is the natural key to India; tlie bridle of America; the surface which we might people with hardy Englishmen is upwards of 100,000 square miles.

Make the Cape a free port for the nations of Europe, and ice banish North America from the Indian seas." The powers of the Continent may smile when they find Great Britain, while herself adding constantly new Idngdoms to her dominions in the East, aud grasping at every mari time station of consequence in the four quarters of the globe, exclaiming against American ambition and aggrandizement, because the United States had acquired a con tiguous province, from which, if in foreign hands, they must be subject to the severest annoyance, — by fair negotiation, and with the relinquishment of large pecuniary claims, and well-founded pretensions to territory of much greater extent and intrinsic value. The American government and people are as little likely "to demand the Island of Cuba," as they are "to connect themselves with the black governments of the West Indies."