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

[295] mischief to the whole. No doubt, a revolution in Europe would not be felt here, at once, as a calamity. It might even, for a time, add to our prosperity, already as great as we can bear. But it would come to us at last, as surely as the great Gulf Stream goes from our shores to yours, and then turns back to begin its course anew from the point whence it started. And steam is every day bringing us nearer together, and making us more dependent on each other. Notwithstanding all you may hear in Europe, there is no prospect that the United States will involve themselves in the present troubles of your part of the world. The apprehension of it that was felt in London, in the latter part of October, was very absurd; and I am happy to be able to add that the indiscreet bullying of the ‘Times’ newspaper produced no effect at all on our population, which has often been so very sensitive to such things . . . . The Nicaragua matter—the claim of the British government to certain rights in the Bay of Honduras—is a matter which may be much complicated by diplomacy, and draw long consequences after it. But the obvious trouble, and the one that can be most easily turned to account, is the attempt made by the British government last summer, in our principal cities, to enlist persons for their military service against Russia; breaking or evading our very stringent laws upon the duties of neutrals. . . . . This is a very disagreeable affair. The people can easily be made angry by it, because it was done in a secret, underhand manner. . . . . The ‘Know Nothings’ have come in contact with the slavery question, and have been much injured by it in their resources and organization, for it is very difficult now to organize a new party, all whose principles shall be acceptable in the free States and in the slaveholding States; and it was always foreseen by intelligent men that this Know Nothing party contained, in its secrecy and in its intolerance, the elements of its own destruction. But it is still strong. The principle, that none but persons born in America, bred in its peculiar institutions, and attached to them by habit as well as choice, shall govern America, is—with reasonable limitations—so just and wise, that the party founded on it will surely leave its impress on a government as popular as ours is. They may not elect the next President,—although even this is possible,—but they will succeed in making a better naturalization law than we have now, and see that it is executed with justice, and even with rigor . . . . Your short crops in Europe are filling the great valley of the Mississippi with population and wealth. The wheat, which it costs the