University of Virginia Library

1. JOHN BULL IN AMERICA;
OR,
THE NEW MUNCHAUSEN.

CHAP. I.

Previous to my departure for the Western
paradise of liberty, my impressions with regard
to the country were, upon the whole, rather of a
favourable character. It is true, I did not believe
a word of the inflated accounts given by certain
French revolutionary travellers, such as Brissot,
Chastellux, and others; much less in those of Birkbeck,
Miss Wright, Captain Hall, and the rest of

the radical fry. I was too conversant with the
Quarterly Review, to be led astray by these Utopian
romancers, and felt pretty well satisfied that
the institutions of the country were altogether
barbarous. I also fully believed that the people
were a bundling, gouging, drinking, spitting, impious
race, without either morals, literature, religion,
or refinement; and that the turbulent spirit
of democracy was altogether incompatible with any
state of society becoming a civilized nation. Being
thus convinced that their situation was, for the present,
deplorable, and in the future entirely hopeless,
unless they presently relieved themselves
from the cumbrous load of liberty, under which
they groaned, I fell into a sort of compassion for
them, such as we feel for condemned criminals,
having no hope of respite, and no claim to benefit
of clergy.

Under this impression, and with a determination
to look to the favourable side of the subject on all
occasions; to be pleased with every thing I saw,
and to make a reasonable allowance for the faults
originating in their unhappy situation, I left England.
I can safely lay my hand on my heart, and
declare to the world, that I was, and still am, as
free from prejudice against any nation whatever,
as any English traveller who has ever visited this
country.

Being fully aware of the superiority of British
ships and British sailors, I declined the advice of
certain merchants at Liverpool, to embark in one

of the line of American packets, and took passage
on board the British brig Wellington, for Boston,
as my business was principally in New-Orleans,
and I wished to arrive at the nearest port. I did
not like to go directly for New-Orleans, being
apprehensive of the yellow-fever, which rages there
all the year round, with such virulence that the
people all die off there regularly once in two years.
Our passage was long and tedious, so much so that
the Packet in which I was advised to sail from Liverpool,
arrived at Boston four weeks before the Wellington.
But this I am assured was owing more
to good fortune than to any superiority either in
the ship or sailors, over those of the mistress of
the seas. I passed my time both pleasantly and
profitably in reading the Quarterly.

On the seventieth day from losing sight of Old
England, we made land at Cape Hatteras, which
forms the eastern point of Boston Bay, which we
entered just before sun-set; and being favoured
with a fine fair wind from the north, came up to
the wharf in about two hours from entering the
Capes. Coming up, we saw the famous sea-serpent,
but he was nothing to those I had frequently
seen in the Serpentine, so called from its abounding
in these articles. Being very anxious to go on
shore, I desired one of the sailors to call a hack,
which very soon arriving, I ordered the fellow to
drive me to the best hotel in the place: accordingly
he put me down at the mansion-house hotel,
kept by William Renshaw, a place of great reputation

throughout the United States. The fellow
charged me a quarter of a dollar, which is twice as
much as I should have paid in London! Being
determined not to be imposed upon, I appealed to
the landlord, who assured me it was all right; so
I paid him, after giving himself and his horses a
hearty malediction.

The landlord, civilly enough, considering the
country I was in, desired to know if I wished to
have a room for the night. I answered him in the
affirmative, and begged, as a particular favour, that
he would put me into one with not more than six
beds in it. He seemed a little surprised, but assured
me my wishes should be gratified. I was
accordingly shown into a neat room enough, with
a single bed. Ay, ay, thought I, this landlord
knows how to distinguish his guests—but my
wonder subsided when the waiter, who I was
surprised to find was a white man, told me his
master was an Englishman.

Soon after I was called down to supper, where I
found twenty or thirty persons, all perfect strangers
to me, and who, seeing I was a stranger I
suppose, paid me those little civilities, which, to
one who knows the world, are always sufficient to
put him on his guard. Accordingly I declined
them all, and answered the questions put to me
rather short, insomuch that a person, who I took
to be a naval officer, seemed inclined to quarrel
with me. Nothing indeed can be more disgusting
to a stranger than these civilities, from people one

does not know; and nothing gave me a more unfavourable
impression of the rude manners of these
republicans, than the freedom with which they
chatted about their private affairs, and joked each
other before me, a perfect stranger. It displayed
a want of—tact—a familiarity so different from the
conduct of people in similar circumstances in London,
that I retired to my room in disgust. I afterwards
learned that the naval officer threatened to
“lick” me, as he called it, for my surly ill manners,
as he was pleased to denominate my gentlemanly
reserve.

I retired to rest, and found my bed tolerable
enough; but the American goose feathers are by no
means as soft as those of London. In the morning
I went down to breakfast, determined to keep
these forward gentry at a distance. But it did not
appear to be necessary, as none of these rude boors
took the least notice of me, and if I wanted any
thing, I was obliged to call the waiter to bring it
to me, for no one offered to hand it about the table;
I was exceedingly disgusted at this Gothic want of
politeness, which, however, was nothing strange,
considering the vulgar habits of equality which prevail
in this republic; so I called for a coach, with
an air of importance, and rode round the city, with
a view of seeing into the character and habits of
the people.

The first thing that struck me, was the vast disproportion
of negroes, in the streets and every
where else. I may affirm, with perfect veracity,

that nearly one half the inhabitants of Boston are
black. Each of these poor creatures has a white
man always standing over him, with a large club
about the thickness of a man's arm, with which he
beats the poor slave for his amusement. I assure
you I have seen, I may say, a thousand instances
of this kind of a morning. There is hardly a slave
here that has not his head covered with scars, and
bound up with a handkerchief; and almost every
step you take, you perceive the stains of blood
upon the pavement, which, I am assured by Governor
Hancock himself, is that of the negroes. I
have seen a lady of the first distinction here, walking
the Mall, as it is called, with a stout black-fellow
behind her, and occasionally amusing herself
with turning round and scratching his face till
it was covered with blood. This Mall is a place
of about half an acre, covered with dust, with a
few rotten elms, and a puddle in the centre. Even
the little children here are initiated into human
blood almost as soon as they are able to walk; and
the common amusement of young persons is to
stick pins in their black attendants, while every
boy has a little negro, of about his own age, to
torture for his pastime.

The blacks here, as I was assured by his excellency
the Governor, whose name is Hancock, have
but one meal a day, which is principally potatoes,
and fare little better than the miserable Irish or
English peasantry at home. The Governor told
me a story of a man, who tied his black servant

naked to a stake, in one of the neighbouring canebrakes,
near the city, which abound with a race of
moschetoes that bite through a boot. Here he
was left one night, in the month of December,
which is a spring month in this climate, and the
next morning was found stone dead, without a drop
of blood in his body. I asked if this brutal tyrant
was not brought to justice? The Governor
shrugged up his shoulders and replied, that he was
now a member of Congress!

To an Englishman, who is only accustomed to
see white men in a state of slavery and want, it is
shocking to see black ones in a similar situation.
My heart bled, with sympathy for the wrongs of
this injured race, and I could not sufficiently admire
the philanthropy of the members of the Holy
alliance, who have lately displayed such a laudable
compassion for the blacks.

Next to the continual recurrence of these disgusting
exhibitions of cruelty, the most common
objects seen in the streets of Boston, are drunken
men, women, and children. I was assured by the
Mayor, Mr. Phillips, one of the most charitable
and philanthropic men in the State of Maine, that
on an average, every third person was drunk every
day, by nine o'clock in the morning. The women
however, don't get fuddled, he tells me, till after
they have cleared the breakfast table, and put the
room to rights, when they set to and make merry
with the young children, not one in a hundred of
whom ever see the inside of a school, or a church.

The consequences of this mode of life are, that the
whole of the people exhibit a ruddy complexion,
and what appears at first sight to be a strong muscular
figure; but on a closer examination the roses
will be found to be nothing more than what is called
grog-blossoms, and the muscular appearance
only bloated intemperance.

Ignorance is the natural result of a want of knowledge,
as the Quarterly says. Consequently, where
children never go to school, it is not probable that
learning will flourish. Accordingly, nothing can
equal the barbarous ignorance of both the children
and grown up persons in this republican city. I
happened to be at the house of a judge of one of
the courts, and was astonished to find, on my giving
his son, a boy of about twelve years old, a book
to read, that he could not comprehend a single
word! The poor mother, who was, I suppose, a
little mortified on account of my being a stranger,
(they don't mind these things among themselves,)
patted the booby on the back, and assured me the
poor boy was so bashful! Most of the justices of
the peace here, make their mark, instead of signing
their names to warrants, &c. and what is difficult
to believe, many of the clerks in the banks
can't write their names. I never saw a school
while in Boston. There is a college, to be sure,
but I was assured the professors did not quite understand
English. The Rev. Cotton Mather, one
of the most enlightened and popular preachers here,
has written a book called the Magnalia, in which

he gives a variety of witch stories, such as would
be laughed at, even among the Indians, but which
they all believe here, as if it were Holy Writ.
The work is just come out, and affords apt illustration
of the state of the human intellect on this
side of the Atlantic.

Religion is, if possible, in a worse state than
literature, manners, or morals. There is not a single
church in Boston, nor any religious exercises
on Sunday, except in a few school rooms, by the
methodists and other fanaties. I am assured it
is the custom all over New-England, as well as in
the states of Newburyport and Pasquotank, to
spend the Sabbath like every other day in the week,
except that they put on clean clothes, a thing never
thought of, even among the most fashionable
ladies, except on that occasion.

Boston is a terrible place for fevers and agues.
Every one of the inhabitants, except the slaves,
is afflicted with them in the spring and autumn,
as sure as the leaves appear in the former, and fall
in the latter. The consequence is, that they look
like so many ghosts, without flesh or blood, and if
you go into the shops, you may hear the money
jingling in the pockets of the shop-keepers, by the
mere force of habit, even if the poor man should
happen, at that moment, to be free from the ague;
or “shake,” as they call it.

Besides this, they have earthquakes and inundations,
three times a week if not more. After
the earthquake generally comes an inundation,

which destroys all the crops for hundreds of
miles round, and covers the country so, that the
tops of trees and chimneys just appear above the
water. This is succeeded by a fog so thick, that
many persons are lost in the streets of Boston,
and wander about several days, without being
able to find any of the houses. This is the origin
of the phrase “I guess,” so universal in New-England;
for these fogs are so common, that one
half the time people are obliged to “guess” at
what they are about. Hence, too, the half pint of
whiskey which every man takes in the morning
the first thing he does after getting up, is called an
anti-fogmatic.

These are the principal things I observed in my
morning's ride. At dinner the naval officer took
occasion to make himself most indecently merry,
with certain sarcasms on the stupid, surly, self-importance,
which some people attempted to pass off
for real dignity and high breeding. The rudeness
of republicanism, indeed, is obvious to the most
superficial observer from the first moment a man
sets foot in this country of beastly equality. After
dinner a person who had been troubling me with
his attentions, since my arrival, offered to carry
me to the Athenæum, a great literary institution,
where they read newspapers, and talk politics,
which they mistake for literature. I must not forget
to observe, that nothing can be worse than the
taste of these people, which is perfectly barbarous,
except their genius, which is perfectly barren.

Nothing is read here but newspapers, almanacs,
dying-speeches, ghost stories, and the like. Their
greatest scholar is Noah Webster, who compiled a
spelling-book, and their greatest poet the author
of Yankee doodle. The utmost effort of republican
genius is to write an additional stanza to this
famous song, which, in consequence of these perpetual
contributions, is, by this time, almost as
long as a certain Persian poem, which, if I recollect
right, consisted of one hundred and twenty
thousand verses.

I brought letters to some of the principal magnificoes
here, but did not deliver them. I like the
dinners and old wine of these vulgarians, but really
it is paying too much for them to be obliged to
listen to their vulgar hemp, cotton, tobacco, and
nankeen speculations, without being allowed the
privilege of laughing, or even yawning in their
stupid faces. Then one is obliged to drink wine
with madam, be civil to her dowdy daughters, who
“guess they have no occasion for dancing”—and
what is the climax of horrors, retire from the dinner-table
to the drawing-room, to hear miss break
the sixth commandment in the matter of half a dozen
sonatas, and two dozen of Moore's Melodies.

By the time I had sojourned a single day in the
land of promise, I began to be mortally ennuyé. I
inquired of the waiter if there was any thing in the
fancy way going on. He replied there were plenty
of fancy stores in Court-street!—I asked if there
was likely to be a mob soon, as I had heard these

republicans amused themselves in that way. He
replied, that mobs never happened in Boston.
Any executions? No—“My G—d,” exclaimed
I in despair, “what a dull place!” I devoted the
evening to packing up, and after supper, being desirous
to make an impression on these bumpkin
demos, called out loudly to the waiter, in my best
Corinthian tone—“Waiter!—you infernal waiter!”
“Here, sir.” “Waiter, bring a boot-jack
and pair of slippers.” “Waiter—you infernal
waiter,” replied a voice which I took for an echo.
“Here, sir,” said the waiter. “Waiter, bring
me two boot-jacks, and two pair of slippers.” On
looking round I perceived the echo was my old
enemy, the naval officer. Being determined, however,
to take no notice of such a low fellow, I again
called out.—“Waiter, bring a candle into my
chamber, and a warming pan to warm my bed.”—
“Waiter, bring two candles, and two warming-pans,
into my chamber. I shall sleep in two beds
to night,” cried echo. I gave him a look of withering
contempt and walked out of the room, leaving
behind me a horse laugh, which, as I judged,
proceeded from these illiterate cyclops. Before I
went to bed I looked over the fifty-eighth number
of the Quarterly to refresh my memory.