No. XVI Mr. Slick’s Opinion of the British
“What success had you,” said I, “in the sale of your clocks among the Scotch in the eastern part of the Province? Do you find them as gullible as the Bluenoses?”
“Well,” said he, “you have heerd tell that a Yankee never answers one question, without axing another, haven’t you? Did you ever see an English stage-driver make a bow? because if you hain’t observed it, I have, and a queer one it is, I swan. He brings his right arm up, jist across his face, and passes on, with a knowin’ nod of his head, as much as to say, how do you do? but keep clear o’ my wheels, or I’ll fetch your horses a lick in the mouth as sure as you’re born; jist as a bear puts up his paw to fend off the blow of a stick from his nose. Well, that’s the way I pass them ’ere bare-breeched Scotchmen. Lord, if they were located down in these here Cumberland marshes, how the mosquitoes would tickle them up, wouldn’t they? They’d set ’em scratching thereabouts, as an Irishman does his head, when he’s in sarch of a lie. Them ’ere fellers cut their eye-teeth afore they ever sot foot in this country, I expect. When they get a bawbee, they know what to do with it, that’s a fact; they open their pouch and drop it in, and it’s got a spring like a fox-trap; it holds fast to all it gets, like grim death to a dead nigger. They are proper skinflints, you may depend. Oatmeal is no great shakes at best; it ain’t even as good for a horse as real yeller Varginny corn, but I guess I warn’t long in finding out that the grits hardly pay for the riddlin’. No, a Yankee has as little chance among them as a Jew has in New England; the sooner he clears out, the better. You can no more put a leake into them, than you can send a chisel into teake wood; it turns the edge of the tool the first drive. If the Bluenoses knew the value of money as well as they do, they’d have more cash, and fewer clocks and tin reflectors, I reckon.
“Now, it’s different with the Irish; they never carry a puss, for they never have a cent to put in it. They are always in love or in liquor, or else in a row; they are the merriest shavers I ever seed. Judge Beler—I dare say you have heerd tell of him; he’s a funny feller—he put a notice over his factory gate at Lowell, ‘no cigars or Irishmen admitted within these walls;’ for, said he, ‘The one will set a flame a-goin’ among my cottons, and t’other among my gals. I won’t have no such inflammable and dangerous things about me on no account.’ When the British wanted our folks to join in the treaty to chock the wheels of the slave trade, I recollect hearin’ old John Adams say, we had ought to humour them; for, says he, ‘They supply us with labour on easier terms, by shippin’ out the Irish.’ Says he, ‘They work better, and they work cheaper, and they don’t live so long. The blacks, when they are past work hang on for ever, and a proper bill of expence they be; but hot weather and new rum rub out the poor rates for t’other ones.’
“The English are the boys for tradin’ with; they shell out their cash like a sheef of wheat in frosty weather; it flies all over the thrashin’ floor; but then they are a cross-grained, ungainly, kickin’ breed of cattle, as I e’enamost ever seed. Whoever gave them the name of John Bull, knew what he was about, I tell you; for they are bull-necked, bull-headed folks, I vow; sulky, ugly tempered, vicious critters, a-pawin’ and a-roarin’ the whole time, and plaguy onsafe unless well watched. They are as headstrong as mules, and as conceited as peacocks.”
The astonishment with which I heard this tirade against my countrymen absorbed every feeling of resentment. I listened with amazement at the perfect composure with which he uttered it. He treated it as one of those self-evident truths, that need neither proof nor apology, but as a thing well known and admitted by all mankind.
“There’s no richer sight that I know of,” said he, “than to see one on ’em when he first lands in one of our great cities. He swells out as big as a balloon; his skin is ready to burst with wind—a regular walking bag of gas; and he prances over the pavement like a bear over hot iron; a great awkward hulk of a feller—for they ain’t to be compared to the French in manners—a-smirkin’ at you, as much as to say, ‘Look here, Jonathan, here’s an Englishman; here’s a boy that’s got blood as pure as a Norman pirate, and lots of the blunt of both kinds, a pocket full of one, and a mouthfull of t’other; bean’t he lovely?’ and then he looks as fierce as a tiger, as much as to say, ‘Say boo to a goose, if you dare.’
“No, I believe we may stump the univarse; we improve on everything, and we have improved on our own species. You’ll search one while, I tell you, afore you’ll find a man that, take him by and large, is equal to one of our free and enlightened citizens. He’s the chap that has both speed, wind and bottom; he’s clear grit—ginger to the backbone, you may depend. It’s generally allowed there ain’t the beat of them to be found anywhere. Spry as a fox, supple as an eel, and cute as a weasel. Though I say it that shouldn’t say it, they fairly take the shine off creation—they are actilly equal to cash.”
He looked like a man who felt that he had expressed himself so aptly and so well, that anything additional would only weaken its effect; he therefore changed the conversation immediately, by pointing to a tree at some little distance from the house, and remarking that it was the rock maple or sugar tree.
“It’s a pretty tree,” said he, “and a profitable one too to raise. It will bear tapping for many years, tho’ it gets exhausted at last. This Province is like that ’ere tree, it is tapped till it begins to die at the top, and if they don’t drive in a spile and stop the everlastin’ flow of the sap, it will perish altogether. All the money that’s made here, all the interest that’s paid in it, and a pretty considerable portion of rent too, all goes abroad for investment, and the rest is sent to us to buy bread. It’s drained like a bog, it has opened and covered trenches all through it, and then there’s others to the foot of the upland to cut off the springs.
“Now you may make even a bog too dry; you may take the moisture out of it to that degree, that the very sile becomes dust and blows away. The English funds, and our banks, railroads, and canals, are all absorbing your capital like a sponge, and will lick it up as fast as you can make it. That very bridge we heerd of at Windsor is owned in New Brunswick, and will pay toll to that province. The capitalists of Nova Scotia treat it like a hired house, they won’t keep it in repair; they neither paint it to preserve the boards, nor stop a leak to keep the frame from rottin’; but let it go to wrack sooner than drive a nail or put in a pane of glass. ‘It will sarve our turn out,’ they say.
“There’s neither spirit, enterprise, nor patriotism here; but the whole country is as inactive as a bear in winter, that does nothin’ but scroutch up in his den, a-thinkin’ to himself, ‘Well if I ain’t an unfortunate devil, it’s a pity; I have a most splendid warm coat as e’er a gentleman in these here woods, let him be who he will; but I got no socks to my feet, and I have to sit for everlastingly a-suckin’ of my paws to keep ’em warm; if it warn’t for that, I guess, I’d make some o’ them chaps that have hoofs to their feet and horns to their heads, look about them pretty sharp, I know.’ It’s dismal now, ain’t it? If I had the framin’ of the Governor’s message, if I wouldn’t show ’em how to put timber together you may depend, I’d make ’em scratch their heads and stare, I know.
“I went down to Matanzas in the Fulton steamboat once; well, it was the first of the kind they ever seed, and proper scared they were to see a vessel, without sails or oars, goin’ right straight ahead, nine knots an hour, in the very wind’s eye, and a great streak of smoke arter her as long as the tail of a comet. I believe they thought it was Old Nick alive, a-treatin’ himself to a swim. You could see the niggers a-clippin’ it away from the shore, for dear life, and the soldiers a-movin’ about as if they thought that we were a-goin’ to take the whole country. Presently a little half-starved orange-coloured lookin’ Spanish officer, all dressed off in his livery, as fine as a fiddle, came off with two men in a boat to board us. Well, we yawed once or twice, and motioned to him to keep off for fear he should get hurt; but he came right on afore the wheel, and I hope I may be shot if the paddle didn’t strike the bow of the boat with that force, it knocked up the starn like a plank tilt, when one of the boys playin’ on it is heavier than t’other; and chucked him right atop of the wheel-house. You never seed a feller in such a dunderment in your life. He had picked up a little English from seein’ our folks there so much, and when he got up, the first thing he said was,’Damn all sheenery, I say; where’s my boat?’ and he looked round as if he thought it had jumped on board too. ‘Your boat?’ said the captain, why I expect it’s gone to the bottom, and your men have gone down to look arter it, for we never seed or heerd tell of one or t’other of them arter the boat was struck.’ Yes, I’d make ’em stare like that ’ere Spanish officer, as if they had seed out of their eyes for the first time. Governor Campbell didn’t expect to see such a country as this when he came here, I reckon; I know he didn’t.
“When I was a little boy, about knee high or so, and lived down Connecticut river, mother used to say, ‘Sam, if you don’t give over acting so like Old Scratch, I’ll send you off to Nova Scotia as sure as you are born; I will, I vow.’ Well, Lord, how that ’ere used to frighten me; it made my hair stand right up an eend, like a cat’s back when she is wrathy; it made me drop it as quick as wink; like a tin night cap put on a dipped candle a-goin’ to bed, it put the fun right out. Neighbour Dearborne’s darter married a gentleman to Yarmouth, that speculates in the smugglin’ line. Well, when she went on board to sail down to Nova Scotia, all her folks took on as if it was a funeral; they said she was goin’ to be buried alive like the nuns in Portengale that get a-frolickin’, break out of the pastur’, and race off, and get catched and brought back agin. Says the old Colonel, her father, ‘Deliverance, my dear, I would sooner foller you to your grave, for that would be an eend to your troubles, than to see you go off to that dismal country, that’s nothin’ but an iceberg aground;’ and he howled as loud as an Irishman that tries to wake his wife when she is dead. Awful accounts we have of the country, that’s a fact; but if the Province is not so bad as they make it out, the folks are a thousand times worse.
“You’ve seen a flock of partridges of a frosty mornin’ in the fall, a-crowdin’ out of the shade to a sunny spot, and huddlin’ up there in the warmth? Well, the Bluenoses have nothin’ else to do half the time but sun themselves. Whose fault is that? Why it’s the fault of the legislature; they don’t encourage internal improvement, nor the investment of capital in the country; and the result is apathy, inaction and poverty. They spend three months in Halifax, and what do they do? Father gave me a dollar once, to go to the fair at Hartford, and when I came back, says he, ‘Sam, what have you got to show for it?’ Now I ax what have they to show for their three months’ setting? They mislead folks; they make ’em believe all the use of the assembly is to bark at councillors, judges, bankers, and such cattle, to keep ’em from eatin’ up the crops; and it actilly costs more to feed them when they are watchin’, than all the others could eat if they did break a fence and get in. Indeed some folks say they are the most breachy of the two, and ought to go to pound themselves. If their fences are good, them hungry cattle couldn’t break through; and if they ain’t, they ought to stake ’em up, and with them well; but it’s no use to make fences unless the land is cultivated. If I see a farm all gone to wrack, I say here’s bad husbandry and bad management; and if I see a Province like this, of great capacity, and great natural resources, poverty-stricken, I say there’s bad legislation.
“No,” said he (with an air of more seriousness than I had yet observed), “how much it is to be regretted, that, laying aside personal attacks and petty jealousies, they would not unite as one man, and with one mind and one heart apply themselves sedulously to the internal improvement and developement of this beautiful Province. Its value is utterly unknown, either to the general or local Government, and the only persons who duly appreciate it are the Yankees.”