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CHAPTER XI.

PATRIOTISM.

THIS is a word of very doubtful meaning; and until we have the power to analyze the secret springs of action, it is impossible to say who is or who is not a patriot. The Chartist, the White Boy, may really be patriots in their hearts, although they are attempting revolution, and are looked upon as the enemies of good order. Joseph Hume may be a patriot, so may O'Connell, so may ; but never mind; I consider that if in most cases, in all countries the word egotism were substituted it would be more correct, and particularly so in America.

M. Tocqueville says, "The inhabitants of the United States talk a great deal of their at

tachment to their country; but I confess that I do not rely upon that calculating patriotism which is founded upon interest, and which a change in the interests at stake may obliterate."

The fact is, that the American is aware that what affects the general prosperity must affect the individual, and he therefore is anxious for the general prosperity; he also considers that he assists to legislate for the country, and is therefore equally interested in such legislature being prosperous; if, therefore, you attack his country, you attack him personally-you wound his vanity and self-love.

In America it is not our rulers who have done wrong or right; it is we (or rather I) who have done wrong or right, and the consequence is, that the American is rather irritable on the subject, as every attack is taken as personal. It is quite ridiculous to observe how some of the very best of the Americans are tickled when you praise their country and institutions; how they will wince at any qualification in your praise, and

actually writhe under any positive disparagement. They will put questions, even if they anticipate an unfavourable answer; they cannot help it. What is the reason of this? Simply their better sense wrestling with the errors of education and long-cherished fallacies. They feel that their institutions do not work as they would wish; that the theory is not borne out by the practice, and they want support against their own convictions. They cannot bear to eradicate deep-rooted prejudices, which have been from their earliest days a source of pride and vain-glory; and to acknowledge that what they have considered as most perfect, what they have boasted of as a lesson to other nations, what they have suffered so much to uphold, in surrendering their liberty of speech, of action, and of opinion, has after all proved to be a miserable failure, and instead of a lesson to other nations-a warning.

Yet such are the doubts, the misgivings which fluctuate in, and irritate the minds of a very large proportion of the Americans; and such is the

decided conviction of a portion who retire into obscurity and are silent; and every year adds to the number of both these parties. They remind one of a husband who, having married for love, and supposed his wife to be perfection, gradually finds out that she is full of faults, and renders him anything but happy; but his pride will not allow him to acknowledge that he has committed an error in his choice, and he continues before the world to descant upon her virtues, and to conceal her errors, while he feels that his home is miserable.

It is because it is more egotistical that the patriotism of the American is more easily roused and more easily affronted. He has been educated to despise all other countries, and to look upon his own as the first in the world; he has been taught that all other nations are slaves to despots, and that the American citizen only is free, and this is never contradicted. For although thousands may in their own hearts feel the falsehood of their assertions, there is not one who

will venture to express his opinion. The government sets the example, the press follows it, and the people receive the incense of flattery, which in other countries is offered to the court alone; and if it were not for the occasional compunctions and doubts, which his real good sense will sometimes visit him with, the more enlightened American would be as happy in his own delusions, as the majority most certainly may be said to be.

M. Tocqueville says, "For the last fifty years no pains have been spared to convince the inhabitants of the United States that they constitute the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They perceive that, for the present, their own democratic institutions succeed, while those of other countries fall; hence they conceive an overweening opinion of their superiority, and they are not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind."

There are, however, other causes which assist