George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[285] opinion coincided with mine. So I hope that will be rightly settled. . . . .

Yours sincerely,

To Sir Edmund Head, Fredericton.

My dear Sir Edmund,—I am much struck with what you say about the ignorance that prevails in England concerning this country and its institutions, and the mischief likely to spring from it. Indeed, it is a subject which has for some time lain heavy on my thoughts: not that I am troubled about any ill — will felt in England towards the United States, for I believe there never was so little of it; but that, from Punch up to some of your leading statesmen, things are constantly said and done out of sheer misapprehension or ignorance, that have been for some time breeding ill — will here, and are likely to breed more. I will give an instance of what I mean; the strongest, but by no means the only one.

The slavery question—as we do not fail to let all the world know —is our great crux; the rock on which not only our Union may split, but our well-being and civilization may be endangered. All our ablest, wisest, and best men occupy themselves with it, and have long done so; and if we cannot work out a remedy for it among ourselves, we are well satisfied that nobody else can do it for us. Now in this state of the case, when the sensibilities of our whole people are excited on the subject as they never were before, popular meetings have for some years been holding in England about it; American clergymen have been deemed fit or otherwise to preach in English pulpits, according to their opinions on this text; and, finally, the first ladies in the kingdom—to be followed, of course, by a multitude of the rest— are about to interfere, and give us their advice, all well meant, certainly, but all as certainly a great mistake. At least, so it seems to us at the cool North, where no single person, so far as I know, defends the institution of slavery, or would fail to do anything practicable, within his power, to mitigate its evils. The ladies of England, it seems to us, have as little to do with slavery in the Carolinas as they have with polygamy in Algeria, and know less about it; the men of England have, as we think, no more to do with it than they have with our injustice to our Indians, or with the serfdom of Russia, and its evils and abominations.

We feel this all over the country, and you will not be surprised if