on the overplus of their wages. Their masters, however, were responsible for their good conduct, and for their support.

In a sparse white population, with no military, no police, few magistrates, and no prisons, or poorhouses, it was necessary that each planter should be the military and civil chief and magistrate of his estate. His position was much like that of a Scottish chieftain, an Arab sheik, the captain of a ship, or the commander of a military expedition. It was his business to keep order and administer justice. In England, a man who steals is sent to prison, or penal servitude; the negro got a few lashes.

It was the direct interest of every master that his negroes should be strong and healthy, and this interest, aside from all motives of humanity and religion, would lead him to provide them with the best sanitary conditions. It was no less his interest that his negroes should be temperate, honest, moral, and religious. That these motives of self-interest had their effect was shown by the great increase of the slave population. But I am sure higher motives were not wanting, and that thousands of masters conscientiously did the best they could for those whom Providence, as they believed, had entrusted to their care.

I am, by no means, unmindful of what has been written on the wrongs and sufferings of slavery; but it would not be difficult to find a match for every outrage truly attributed to slavery in the reports of the police, and parliamentary commissions of the most humane and civilised of nations in the same period.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

HATRED TO ENGLAND.

66

"WHY," it is sometimes asked, "does America hate England?" And the next question is-" But does America hate England?” Persons who ought to be well informed on the subject affirm and deny. I prefer to state such facts as I happen to know, and give such reasons as occur to me for the feelings which have existed, and may still to some extent exist, toward England among the great body of the American people. The best way to get over our prejudices is to examine their causes, and see whether they have any reasonable basis.

The year of my birth (1815) was that of the battle of Waterloo, and also that of New Orleans, which we Americans have always considered much the most glorious affair of the two, since General Jackson, with a few thousand Tennessee riflemen and hunters of Kentucky, conquered the conquerors of Napoleon. The same troops which were defeated by him on the 8th of January, 1815, returned to Europe and fought under Wellington at Waterloo, but with a different result.

"Old Jackson, he was wide awake,

And was not scared at trifles,

For well he knew what aim we take

With our Kentucky rifles."

CHORUS O Kentucky! The Hunters of Kentucky!"

Every American is proud of the defence of New Orleans, or was, before the war of secession and capture of New Orleans by Commodore Farrugut obscured those ancient glories; only, it was a pity that such a battle should have been fought after peace had been made by the commissioners at Ghent the previous autumn. Steam would have saved the useless bloodshed, and General Jackson might never have been President.

probably not one En

News was long time

England thought little of the repulse; glishman in a thousand ever knew of it. in coming in those days, and though bad news is proverbially said to travel apace, news of military disaster is often smothered on the way. If this caused any mortification, it was amply compensated by the glories of Waterloo. America, until a recent period, celebrated the defence of New Orleans as one of her grandest and most decisive victories.

As we had just come out of the second war with England happy and glorious, having beaten the most powerful nation in the world in two great wars, and alike on land and sea,` my earliest recollections are of the boasts of our national prowess. The successes of the new war revived the recollections of the old. The younger soldiers of the revolution were leaders in the war of 1812. One of the earliest songs that I remember a revolutionary ballad-began with the lines:"Old England forty years ago,

When we were young and slender,
Conspired to give a mortal blow,

But God was our defender."

We also had a famous ballad which described the victory of the American squadron, commanded by Commodore Perry, over the British fleet, on Lake Erie, and another which gave a historical account of a similar naval victory on Lake Champlain. As in more classic or barbaric ages, every hero had his song. Our pretty numerous defeats were not celebrated or much talked about. One of the liveliest of the naval songs which I learned to sing in my childhood was a long descrip tion of the taking of the British frigate Guerrière, Hon. Cap tain Dacres, by the American frigate Consitution, Captain Hull It was set to the once popular air of "A Landlady of France," and began in this fashion :—

"It oft-times has been told

How the British seamen bold

Could flog the tars of France so neat and handy, O!

But they never found their match

Till the Yankees did them catch;

Oh, the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O !
"The 'Guerrière,' a frigate bold,

On the foaming occan rolled,

Commanded by proud Dacres, the grandee, O!
With as choice a British crew

As a rammer ever drew,

They could beat the Frenchman two to one so handy, O!" So it went on, giving a full and particular account of the whole transaction, and crowing melodiously over the discomfited Britons.

The men of middle age now living in America all sang or heard these songs in their boyhood. Every Fourth of July, if not oftener, they listened to orations in praise of American patriotism and valour in the two wars with Great Britain, that tyrant power across the ocean, against which our fathers and grandfathers had fought, and which they had conquered. Many of the aged men I knew had fought in the revolution. The middle-aged were the heroes of the last war. Not a few had fought in both. Our whole history was in these two wars. Stories were told of them around the winter fireside. The grey-haired old man in the chimney-corner had fought the Hessians at Bennington under the New Hampshire hero, General Stark, who said, "We must beat them to-night, boys, or Molly Stark is a widow." Or he had been with Ethan Allen, when he called for the surrender of Ticonderoga, a mountain fortress on Lake Champlain. "By whose authority?" asked the British commander of the file of men that did garrison duty in this post in the wilderness. "In the name of God and the Continental Congress!" said Allen. Not much, according to all accounts, did the Vermont partisan care for either. Then we had long stories of the terrible battles of Saratoga, and the surrender of the British army under General Burgoyne. Five thousand men in those days was a great

number. The loss of a second army of seven thousand, under General Cornwallis, surrendered to the Americans and the French land and naval forces at Yorktown, ended the War of Independence.

Then came the stories of the younger men who were with General Scott on the Niagara, or who shared in the fresh-water naval victories of Perry or McDonough. But the land laurels, excepting those gathered out of season by General Jackson at New Orleans, were, it must be confessed, a rather scanty crop. There were really some smart victories at sea; but in both wars we had at least two defeats to one victory. Washington's great merit was in making good retreats, and keeping an army together under the most adverse circumstances. He wore out armies by compelling them to follow him through difficult and exhausted regions. The extent of the country, the sparseness of its population, the cost and weariness of the struggle, and the aid of France, combined with the prudence of Washington and the valour of my countrymen, enabled them to gain their independence. In the last war- -I mean that of 1812-England was fighting with Napoleon, or it might not have ended so soon, or, for us, so gloriously. There were a good many Americans who thought that it ought never to have been begun. It was declared, in some degree, no doubt, out of sympathy with France, and from motives of gratitude for her help in the revolution; but it is also true that the high-handed measures the British Government thought it necessary to take, in destroying American commerce by blockades and impressing seamen from American vessels, gave the Government of Mr. Madison a very sufficient excuse for declaring war.

The war was popular, especially after it had ended. The party that had declared and maintained it made plenty of political capital out of it; while the party that opposed itthe Peace party, the Hartford Convention Federalists-have never recovered from the odium of alleged British sympa