XI. Value of Articles Imported from 1821 to 1842 XII. Value of Imports from each Country, from 1821 to 1842 Page 200 - 202 XIII. Value of chief Articles of Export from 1821 to 1842 XIV. Balance of Trade for and against the United States, with each Foreign Country, in 1843 XV. Commerce of New York 203 - 204 - 205 XVI. Statistics of American Fisheries XVII. Tabular Estimate of Crops in 1843 206 - 209 - 211 XVIII. Statistics of Ohio-an Agricultural State 213 XX. British and American Trade-Origin of the Commercial difficulties - 221 XXI. Resources compared to the Debts of the States- XXVI. Tabular View of Education in the United States - 239 243 - 244 245 . 247 INTRODUCTION. "AMERICAN FACTS!-We have had quite enough both of their facts and their fictions. Bankruptcy and vulgarity are the only facts left in their swindling 'land of liberty.' Such was one anticipated comment suggested by a name. "Facts are dry things-who will read them? Even to a more agreeable tune than the everlasting Yankee doodle, figures make but very dull music.” So said another captious critic, looking at the outside of the cover. Not encouraging. dium and foolscap. Unreadable books waste a great deal of meTaste rages for the piquant and witty—the funny and the abusive. In this Age of Punch, a plodding dealer in decimals stands but a poor chance with his wares. too stubborn to worship either Momus or Humbug. Facts are But Prosy talkers are even more tedious than prosy writers. in the want of a better explanation of the purpose of the following notes, and at the risk of a yawn or two, I quote the substance of a dialogue, in very plain prose, which I happened to hear a few days since. Enter J- G- an unsophisticated specimen of transatlantic nature- —a farmer from the State of Ohio-with a Byronic collar, but with a matter-of-fact face-indicating more shrewdness than transcendentalism: meets one Mr. F, a New York merchant, who has more the air of a man of the world.' They * Vide Current English Literature-specimens quoted in Chapter xi. B claim acquaintance, and take seats. G rests his right foot on his left knee, clasps his ancle with his left hand, and says Well, F —, I'm right glad to see you. Who would have thought, now, of meeting an old friend in such a village as this. F. Oh, I have been here before-I am an old traveller you know; I saw your name in the steamer's list last month.— Never here before? G. No. It's my first acquaintance with Old England. And what do you think of it, so far? F G Why, I haven't seen it all—but it is a great country— considering it's an island. F. Especially when you consider this Island as the controller of "an empire upon which the sun never sets." G. What a deal of room they have, even in the island. I went to see those great parks at Eaton-Hall and Blenheim-each for the pleasure, mind you, of one family. They don't look much like the over-crowded country they tell us about in books. If the grass hadn't been quite so smooth, and the trees so trim and regular, I might have imagined myself in Ohio again.— They must have plenty of farming land, if they use these parks only to look at. The're pretty places, and no mistake-but what a fine lot of wheat might be grown in them! F. That's a true Yankee notion. Our utilitarianism wants civilizing. There is no doubt that hundreds of thousands in the districts you have not seen yet, would like the chance of earning their bread in those parks. But if you happen to have more land than your neighbour you wouldn't be an Owenite and give him your extra acres? It is not in human nature. The owners of these parks may be philanthropists without being agrarians. G. Just so-but if they have many such parks here, and land enough to support twenty-four millions besides, they must crowd not a few into close quarters. F. They do 'crowd' a good many-no doubt of that— and the political economists have not yet solved the problem how these extremes are to be reconciled and harmonized. G——. But what an everlasting deal of money it must cost to keep up these places. At one of them, the big man in uniform told me they had sixty horses and a hundred servants for the use of the family-besides all they used on the farm. I can't imagine what they use them all for-or how they pay for them. F. If you had a million of dollars per annum to spend, as some have here, you could do "upward of considerable," as we say. The wealth of England is enormous, almost beyond imagining and magnificent are her charities-and yet her destitution is unparalleled. But these are truisms. G. These English are a curious people. The driver going to Hampton Court the other day, discovered my Yankeeship-for I was born in Connecticut, and only raised among the Buckeyes, Well, Jarvey asked me if there are any railroads in America? I thought I'd be even with him—so said I, as we were passing a bridge, "What brook is this?" You should have seen how puzzled and compassionating he looked, when he said in the tone of a judge, "That's the Tems, sir.” F. Scarcely fair, considering that money don't make the rivers, whoever makes the railroads. Besides, you must have injured jarvey's feelings by calling him driver. Coachman is the word in this country. Then G. No?-Well, the next one shall have his due. a passenger on the coach-what top-heavy concerns they areoverhearing the word America, asked me if I knew a cousin of his, one John Smith, who lived "in a place they called Alabama." I hadn't that pleasure; but I just remarked as a sort of explanation, that Alabama is as far from where I live, as a Londoner is from Russia. F. They certainly have rather vague notions here of the degrees of latitude on the Western continent-but American geography fills a very small corner of the English school-books. A Yankee boy learns far more of his 'fatherland,' as we call England, than England cares to know of her degenerate descendants over in the woods. Jonathan sends over a book now and then, with his "compliments, and is progressing as well as can be expected, considering his age;" but Uncle Bull shakes his head, and growls something about "that good-for-nothing scamp-he'll never come to any good-Iv'e disowned him, and cut him off' without a shilling long ago—and I wish he would keep his 'notions at home and mind his own business." G. They say very odd things in this country. In the Birmingham cars I was talking with a respectable, clever sort of man-quite a gentleman-on matters and things in general, and as usual, it would come out that I was one of the "Pariahs of the earth," as one of their editors called us: in short, that I was an American. Would you believe it? he looked amazed, and said, "Why, how long have you been in England? you speak very good English." F. Ha, ha! Not a new occurrence. I never knew a decent American in England who was not similarly complimented more than once. It is surprising; for though as a nation we have had a snuffing from the Scotch, a peppering from the Irish, a perfuming from the French, and a smoking from the Germans and Dutch, there is still so large a proportion of the pure English descent; and the English language, of nearly all natives of the United States, is so universally uniform, that it seems strange to us that an American speaking English is an outrè curiosity, even to an illiterate Englishman. For my part, I think that in spite of the New England nasal twang, and the Southern drawl, among 'the million,' the English language is more generally spoken by all classes in the United States, than it is in England. You will scarcely find anything like the dialects of Somersetshire, Essex, or Yorkshire, even in the wilds of Arkansas or Iowa. G——. I had supposed my English was pretty tolerable; but travellers must live and learn. The very next day, I overheard a young lady, whose papa had been patronizing me, expressing her surprise that I was a white man! I don't know whether she expected a negro or a copper-face; but was it not rather droll? F I have been many a time amused in just the same way. There seems to be a hazy, floating notion, in England, that an 'American' must necessarily mean one of the red aborigines of the forest; and this, after all, is not surprising, on second thoughts, for the poor red man once monopolized the name. Intelligent men, to be sure, ought to know the present acceptation of the word. Half the difficulty is owing to our having no patronymic-no proper national designation-for, strictly speaking, a Patagonian is an American as well as a native of Massachusetts. G. Why, they do call us "Yellow-faced Yankees." I |