negyric on the government and people of the United States; accompanied by the grossest and most detestable calumnies against this country, that folly and malignity ever invented. An Englishwoman, with the proper spirit and feeling attached to that proud title, would blush to be thought the author of such a work. We will not, we cannot possibly, believe that one so lost to shame exists among us; and are rather disposed, therefore, to attribute it to one of those wretched hirelings who, under the assumed names of 'travellers,' ' residents in France,' 'Italy,' &c. supply the radical press with the means of mischief. Our first conjecture, indeed, on opening the correspondence, was that we were indebted for it to the consistent Mr. Walsh, who, finding that his former work had made no converts on this side the Atlantic, (with the exception of our northern brethren, to whom the subject endeared it,) had attempted to revive it under a more taking title. A regard to justice, however, compels us to add, that the perusal of a very few pages convinced us that the calumnies are too stupidly outrageous to come from him; and, to say a bold word, we know of no other American that could justify even a guess. Such, however, as the Correspondence is, we must proceed with it. We can smile at the bloated vanity which proclaims a Solon and Lycurgus to be mere simpletons in legislation compared with a Jefferson; and Hannibal a bungler by the side of a General Jackson, whose most glorious achievement, we believe, (before his unparalleled campaign in the Floridas,) was that of the murder of two unarmed Englishmen: nay, we can hear without much impatience, that the American government is the perfection of all human institutions that justice is cheaply dealt out with such an even hand to high and low that slavery even ceases to be a curse--that a spirit of universal benevolence pervades all classes of society that poverty is unknown, oppression unfelt, and dishonesty unpractised-but when we are told, 'that the people of the United States are far superior to the English in all intellectual endowments; in the decencies of life; and in their general conduct towards each other and to strangers -that they have not, like us, disgraced themselves with an established church, supported by penal laws, the work of statecraft and priestcraft united' in short, that 'relief from all the evils which the old governments of Europe have inflicted upon the poor and industrious is only to be found in America'-it becomes a duty to rise up and expose the fallacies, in order to check the ruinous consequences which they are but too well calculated to entail upon those credulous people who are liable to be deluded by them. A single extract from the Letters of the pseudo-Englishwoman will be sufficient to show the general feeling by which the writer is influenced towards England. In speaking of the affair of Frenchton, on the river Raisin, a story is told of the massacre of a detachment of the choicest sons of Kentucky, by the Indians under Colonel Proctor, after a surrender by capitulation on honourable terms,' which concludes thus:- The British commander marched off his troops, gave his prisoners in charge to the savages, and left them, with the wounded and the dying, to be tomahawked and roasted at the stake.' A more infamous and detestable falsehood than this was never fabricated. Colonel Proctor left no prisoners in the hands of the savages'; and every one of those who were captured by the abused and plundered Indians themselves was brought by them to head-quarters, and taken the utmost care of until the whole were given over to their own countrymen. A detached body of Indians, indeed, falling in with some of these choicest sons of Kentucky,' did, we believe, tomahawk a few of them.-And why? Let the Kentuckyans themselves answer the question: it has, in fact, been answered by one of their own writers, and stands unrefuted to this hour. These choice spirits' had seized a party of Indians but a few days before, the greater part of whom they not only scalped, according to their common practice, but coolly and deliberately amused themselves by cutting razor-strops from their backs while alive!* The overflowing rancour which uniformly characterises this writer's notice of the English, is exchanged for the most abject sycophancy whenever America is mentioned; the violation of truth and decency is always the same, in both cases. She is not afraid to assert (p. 346) that, during the late war, a British deserter was never knowingly employed on board an American ship' ! Now there is not a fact on record more notorious than that of the establishment of an organized system at all the American ports for the purpose of inveigling men from our service to man their ships of war. It is known-that this system of seduction was even extended to the crews of boats sent on shore with flags of truce-that the men thus obtained were triumphantly paraded through the streets with bands of music-and that the several collectors of the customs were always at hand to furnish them (for two or three dollars) with certificates of *The Federalist.' See No. XLI. p. 155. We have every reason to believe, exclusive of the authority of the Federalist, that this infernal fact is true to the letter. Why should it be thought incredible of the gougers and gunder-pullers of Kentucky? We have piles of their own papers before us, and we read in them that public subscriptions are raised in order to bestow rewards for bringing in Indian scalps (provided both ears are on); and it is but a step from a scalp to a razor-strop, both of them, no doubt, considered as trophies equally glorious. citizenship.' citizenship.' Of the innumerable facts which lie before us, we will trespass on the reader's indulgence for one or two only; and this for the sake of putting beyond question the habitual disregard of truth by this abandoned prostitutor of the name and character of an Englishwoman.' When the Chesapeake was taken by the Shannon, six and thirty of her crew were recognized as British subjects: many of them were tried and convicted as deserters, and one was hung at Spithead! When the United States captured the Macedonia, that vessel had a very considerable number of deserters from our service on board her: and the court-martial which tried Captain Carden for the loss of his ship, applauds the steady allegiance of the Macedonia's crew, and the attachment to their king and country manifested in resisting' (it is the language of the courtmartial which we are using) the various and repeated temptations held out to them to seduce them from their duty. Thus, too, the officers of the Constitution, after the capture of the Guerriere, tried every art to inveigle the men into their service. 'I was shocked,' (says Captain Dacres, in his address to the court-martial,)' to find, when taken on board the Constitution, so large a proportion of that ship's company British seamen; many of whom I recognized as having been foremost in the attempt to board.' Need we say more?-Yes, one word we will yet add. The American captain, as we have just seen, deliberately put forward the English deserters, to destroy their brethren. Captain Dacres, when he went into action, had on board the Guerriere seven Americans, who had served under him for many years. Before a shot was fired, he ordered every one of them to go below, and not, on any account, to fight against their own countrymen! What does the English woman' think of this?—but we will close with something more to her liking. Captain David Porter, (the hero of the Marquesas,) who commanded the Essex during the late war, called all hands on deck, one morning, to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. On the name of John Erving being called, he told the captain that, being a British subject, he could not take the oath; upon which this boast of the American navy' had him stripped naked, tarred and feathered, rowed ashore in a boat stern-foremost, and turned adrift in that condition. 6 It is not for the sake of renewing old grievances, or of exasperating new ones, that we repeat these facts; but for that of putting down calumny, and preventing unprincipled scribblers on either side the Atlantic from sacrificing the loyalty and honour of the British character to the basest of passions. We now return to Mr. T. Harris, whom we left in the midst of of his raptures at 'the gentleman-like manners of the custom-house officers of New York, and the air of independence' of the people, which, by those,' he tells us, 'who are accustomed to, and pleased with, the servility of behaviour apparent in the lower orders of European countries, would be termed impertinence.' We understand pretty well, we believe, what this language means, and are not therefore surprized to find that Mr. Welby, who also landed here, was not quite so much enraptured with it. Upon entering the boarding-house to which he was recommended, and inquiring for the landlord, a young woman, who was sweeping the floor, slip-shod, desired him to walk into a room she pointed to, where she said he might wait for further orders.' This 'first striking specimen of the effects of freedom without refinement,' as he calls it, was not much weakened in its effect when, on civilly requesting the ostler to call him early next morning, he was told, with that 'air of independence' which is so agreeable to the feelings of Mr. Tell Harris, that he might call himself and be d-d!' The pseudo-Englishwoman, however, has no complaints on this score. She every where procured civilities and services' for a kind thank-ye,' and this, she says, was all that was expected. Mr. Welby was then out of luck, for he met with nothing but a most unconciliating manner of studiously avoiding common civility.' Nor was his predecessor Fearon much more fortunate: he found common civility,' in fact, so rare a commodity, that he could not purchase the chance of one of those cheap thank-ye's, from a little ragged republican, for less than half a dollar-and went without it after all.* But the unbought grace of civility is not the only distinction of this proud city, it is also pre-eminent for honesty: a girl put down her basket by the side of the pavement to point out the way to the Englishwoman,' and it was not stolen!--hence New York is incontestably proved to be quite as civil as any city in England, and perhaps a little more honest.' It is also the seat, she tells us, of cheerful and enthusiastic patriotism:' on this point let us hear Mr. Welby. 'Time alone can wear down their heterogeneous habits into a national character, which many other causes, besides those now enumerated, may at present unite to oppose: the effect is an evident want of energy, * From Mr. Fearon's avowed hatred of England, he anticipated a cordial reception in America, but he was everywhere disappointed. Such was the want of discernment, however, in this earth-born race of republicans, that they actually appeared to value the poor man as little for his hostility to his own country, as for his devotement to theirs. Our heart,' as Antient Pistol says, is fracted and corroborate' when we read the pathetic remonstrances which he makes to them on this barbarous injustice. Even those,' he says, 'who professed republican principles at home, (a sin which might at least, one should think, be forgiven in the United States,) are treated with scorn, as outcasts." of of heart and soul in every thing animating to other nations. I am just returned from witnessing the celebration of the anniversary of their Liberty, such a festival might well be expected to call forth every. spark of enthusiasm; but, even then, not an eye either of spectators or actors glistened with joy or animation, the latter seemed walking to a funeral; the others contemplating the melancholy ceremony! Nothing could dispel the illusion but the gay clothes of the female spectators, to which their countenances in general bore a strong contrast.'-Welby, p. 28. This is not the only amusing specimen of American enthu siasm' which Mr. Welby witnessed at New York and elsewhere, particularly at Philadelphia, where he followed a triumphant procession (with insignia and military music) of one-horse carts, loaded with a magnificent and splendid exhibition' of carcasses, 'such (says the hand-bill) as were never in one day exhibited for sale in any city in the world!' at which 'not even a smile was to be seen; but all passed by with the quiet and order of business: the spectators seemed to be calculating how much the meat would sell for, or taking in large draughts of conceit upon having the honour to attend the best beef in the whole world!' -p. 198. Our traveller is not quite so much enraptured with the incomparable sweetness and beauty of Philadelphia as the pseudoEnglishwoman or Mr. Tell Harris; but we must hasten from the ugly straggling pollards, the green stinking puddles, and the putrifying carcasses of dead dogs' which offended him, and, 'under the influence of a burning sun, fully explained the fevers and agues so prevalent in that city,' to accompany him into the interior. In proceeding through Lancaster to Chambers-burgh, over wretched and dangerous roads, Mr. Welby had the misfortune to break a buckle of one of the traces; happily (he says) a blacksmith resided near the spot,—but he refused to mend it, though night and a thunderstorm were fast approaching.' Tying up the harness therefore as well as he could, he proceeded with his party to a tavern in which they hoped to find shelter; but were repulsed from the door. The thunder was bursting in tremendous peals over their heads, and the rain pouring in torrents, when they reached another of these hospitable buildings erected for the accommodation of travellers! and into this, dreading another repulse, they bolted without asking leave: they found themselves in the tap-room, in the midst of ill-looking people, drinking whiskey and smoking.' On expressing a wish to be shown into another room, the brute landlord, (our traveller in his impatience sometimes loses sight of his politeness,) notwithstanding the |