Lands of the Slave and the Free: or, Cuba, the U. States and Canada. (June, 1862)

Lands of the Slave and the Free: or, Cuba, the U. States and Canada.
By Captain the Hon. Henry A. Murray, R. N.
[London and New York: 1857.] 

Source: The Friend. Honolulu: June, 1862. 

This work principally relates to the United States. The author traveled in 1851 and 1852, from Boston to New Orleans, visiting every part of the country. After returning home, he was urged by his friends to publish an account of his travels, and the accompanying volume embraces the result of his notes and reflections. The book contains much valuable information, but the writer exhibits this radical fault, starting from England with the idea that England and Englishmen are the standards by which to measure and compare the inhabitants and customs of other lands. If in his opinion they do not come up to, or excel those standards, then, forsooth, they must be wrong. While the writer finds much to censure and condemn, yet he makes some admissions which are quite remarkable. In referring to the knowledge which Americans possess of their own country, and the nature of the Republican Government under which they live, the Hon. Mr. Murray makes the following statements: 

"Then, again, with reference to their own country, it is impossible for any one to travel among them without being struck with the universal intelligence they possess as to its Constitution, its politics, its laws, and all general subjects connected with its prosperity or its requirements. * * * The Constitution of their country is regularly taught at their schools: and doubtless it is owing to this early insight into the latent springs by which the machinery of government is worked, that their future appetite for more minute details is whetted. I question very much if every boy on leaving a High School in the United States, does not know far more of the institutions of his country, than nine-tenths of the members of the British House of Commons of theirs." Page 461. 

This high compliment, which is paid to the youth of America, in the foregoing paragraph, will abundantly atone for the many hard raps and cockney kicks with which this book abounds. Here is an admission the most remarkable which we have ever read in any book upon America, written by an Englishman. It really does not afford the reader a very exalted idea of nine-tenths of those persons in England with an "M. P." attached to their names! 

The question is sometimes asked, and by no persons oftener than Englishmen, "For what are Americans now fighting?” We answer, "They are fighting for the maintenance of that Constitution which the Hon. Mr. Murray, of the R. N., says the youth of America understand better than nine-tenths of British House of Commons do the British Constitution." This is why the U.S. Government is now supporting an army of 600,000 soldiers, and expending from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 per day. The people of America know what they are fighting for. If they accomplish their object blessings untold will flow to their own people, the African race, and the whole world. 

The following paragraph is from the London Saturday Review, one of the leading English papers: 

"It happens to be the unanimous experience of nineteen educated Englishmen out of twenty, that a more purposeless and hopeless enterprise than the re-conquest of the South, by the Federal Government, has never been projected in any ancient or modern state." 

The conquest of the South may seem hopeless to nineteen out of every twenty educated Englishmen, but it does not take this view in the minds of the best educated Americans. Federal victories succeed one another with astonishing rapidity. One Union Editor, in Virginia, does not deem it best to hoist his flag at every newly reported victory, but keeps the star-spangled banner flying all the time!