XXXV
THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE WAR
1846-1848
At the time our difficulties with Mexico approached their climax, the popularity and prestige of the United States abroad were not the highest possible. England, our gentle mother, showed a particular want of regard for us.[1] Herself recently weaned from slavery, she viewed with a convert's intolerance our adhering to that institution. Having just cured her most outrageous electoral abuses, she enjoyed hearing the London Times describe our government as "a polity corrupted in all its channels with the foulest venality." Ever scrupulous and self-denying when a question of gaining territory was concerned, she felt shocked by American "rapacity"; and the Times, while infinitely proud that England's banner waved in every quarter of the globe, ridiculed American "imperial pretensions" as echoed and re-echoed "in a nasal jargon, compounded at once of bad grammar and worse principle."[2]
The disposition of certain states to repudiate bonds held in Great Britain, and their tardiness in paying interest, excited all the righteous indignation of the creditor. The descriptions of this country put forth by honored guests like Dickens and Mrs. Trollope, who made themselves merry and popular at our expense, furnished excuses for countless jibes; and in September, 1845, the Times discovered "great danger" that the nightmare of an old English writer would come true in the United States: "No arts, no letters, no society, and, what is worst of all, continual feare and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."[3]
If one aspect of our civilization appeared more laughable than all the rest, it was the military side. The title of General, observed the Times, was "legitimately common to the greater
294
