Bull—I speak not of Ole, but of John—Bull, when the teazle of opposition has elevated the nap of his temper, is a pestilent fellow: whatever the amount—and there is enough—of the milk of human kindness within him, there is, then, but one way, known among men, of getting it out, and that is, by giving Bull a bloody nose; whereupon he comes to his senses directly, and to a just appreciation of himself and his neighbors. True indeed it is, Bull is remarkably oblivious; and it sometimes becomes necessary to give him another, which is invariably followed, by the same happy result.

Qui hÆret in cortice will never come at the milk of a cocoa nut. It is necessary to strip off its rough coat, and punch sundry holes in its wooden walls, and give it a regular cracking. It is precisely so with Bull. When the fit is upon him, Bull is terrible. He is the very Bull of Crete—the Bull of Claudian, in his rape of Proserpine—

DictÆus quatiens mugitibus urbes
Taurus—————————
Bull is a prodigious fellow;
Nations tremble at his bellow.

There seems to have existed a strange, political hallucination, in regard to Bull and Jonathan. We are clearly, all of us, of one and the same family—a Bull-begotten people; and have a great deal of pleasure, in believing, that old madam Bull was the mother of us all. A goodly number of highly respectable Bulls came over the water, of old, and were well contented with the green pastures of the New World. They differed, upon some points, from the Bulls they had left behind. They did not believe, that there was a power or right, to bellow louder than the rest, vested in any particular Bull, which power came down from Bull to Bull, in unbroken succession, from the Bull of Bashan. Such a belief, in their opinion, would have been a terrible Bull. Well; all at once, the trans-atlantic Bulls began to call the cis-atlantic Bulls—Jonathans. A very good name it was—a great deal better than Bulls. There could be no objection to the name, in the abstract.

But, unfortunately, it was bestowed, as a diminutive, and in derision; and the old Bulls, ere long, began to beat their flanks with their tails, and paw up the earth, and look unutterable things, about Jonathan’s cowardice; and they came over the water in droves, and began to roar awfully; and tore up the earth, under our very noses: and, after doing all, in our power to spare the world the miserable spectacle of a conflict, among Bulls, that were brothers, of the whole blood, we went to work, ex necessitate, with hoofs and horns; and tossed up such a terrible dust, at Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker’s Hill, and Long Island, and White Plains, and upon the Lakes, and at Sheensborough, and Albany, and Brandywine, and Saratoga, and Bennington, and Germantown, and Rhode Island, and Briar’s Creek, and Camden, and Broad River, and Guilford, and Hobkirk’s Hill, and the Eutaw Springs, and York Town, and at fifty places beside, that the old Bulls were perfectly astonished; and so very severely gored withal, that their roaring sunk, at last, into something like Snug’s, when he became fearful of frightening the ladies. The old Bulls—those that survived—went back again, like Sawney, out of the peach orchard; and the mammoth Bull, in London, publicly acknowledged, that we were as independent a set of Bulls, as ever he saw, or heard of.

No man, in his senses, marvels, that a contemptuous, and supercilious sentiment, towards us, in our days of small things, should have been indulged, by the vulgar and unphilosophical, among the English people. It is matter for surprise, nevertheless, that so much ignorance of the American character should have existed, in the higher ranks of British society—such disparaging estimates of men and materiel, on this side the water—such mistaken conceptions—such a general belief of almost universal pusillanimity, among men, who were not a whit the less Englishmen, than their revilers; as though there were something, particularly enervating, in breathing the bracing air of America, and listening to the thorough bass of the wild waters, breaking on our original walls of granite; and in struggling, with our horny hands, along the precipices, for bread—such an awful miscalculation of probabilities, as resulted at last, in the loss to King George of thirteen inestimable jewels, of the fairest water.

The impressions, entertained of the Americans, by the English people, or a great majority of them, about that period, were truly amusing. It is scarcely worth while to comment on the abuse of us, by the early reviewers, and the taunting inquiry, long—long ago, what American had ever produced an epic?—Unluckily, Joel did, at last.—This question, thus early and impudently propounded, was quite as sensible, as it might be, to ask men, who, by dint of industry and thrift, are just getting plain shirts to their backs—who among them ever had lace ruffles? We have improved since that time; and halmost hevery man in the ole population can hutter imself hin werry decent Henglish.

Josiah Quincy, then junior, father of the late President of Harvard University, has noted some curious facts, in his journal, as reported by Gordon, i. 438. In a conversation between him and Col. BarrÉ, who, though he opposed the Stamp Act, in 1765, supported the Boston Port Bill, in 1774. Col. BarrÉ said to Mr. Quincy—“About fourteen or fifteen years ago, I was through a considerable part of your country; for, in the expedition against Canada, my business caused me to pass by land, through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Albany; and, when I returned again to this country, I was often speaking of America, and could not help speaking well of its climate, soil, and inhabitants; for you must know, sir, America was always a favorite with me. But, will you believe it, sir, yet I assure you it is true, more than two thirds of this island, at this time, thought the Americans were all negroes.” Mr. Quincy replied that he did not in the least doubt it, for, if he was to judge by the late acts of Parliament, he should suppose, that a great majority of the people of Great Britain still thought so, for he found that their representatives still treated them as such.

The ministry had decided, that “the punishment of a few of the worst sort of traitors, such as Hancock and his crew, might be sufficient to teach the rest their duty, in future.”—“Some men of rank in the army,” says Gordon, i. 457, “treated all idea of resistance, by the Americans, with the utmost contempt. They are neither soldiers, nor ever can be made so, being naturally of a pusillanimous disposition, and utterly incapable of any sort of order or discipline; and by their laziness, uncleanliness, and radical defect of constitution, they are disabled from going through the service of a campaign. Many ludicrous stories, to that purport, were told, greatly to the entertainment of the house.”

Jonathan turned out, at the end of the Bull baiting, to have been neither a fool nor a coward: and the American Congress received a memorable compliment from Lord Chatham—“For genuine sagacity, for singular moderation, for manly spirit, for sublime sentiments, and simplicity of language, for everything respectable and honorable, the Congress of Philadelphia shines unrivalled.”

In the war of 1812, Bull was the very identical Bull, that he had been before: Frenchmen were frogs; Yankees were cowards—there was nobody that could fight, on the land or the sea, but Bull.

“It has always,” says that wittiest, and, I fear, wickedest of wags, William Cobbett, while addressing Lord Liverpool, “been the misfortune of England, that her rulers and her people have spoken and have thought contemptuously of the Americans. Was there a man in the country, who did not despise the American navy? Was there a public writer beside myself, who did not doom that navy to destruction in a month? Did not all parties exceedingly relish the description given, in a very august assembly, of ‘half a dozen of fir frigates, with bits of striped bunting tied to their mast heads’! Did not the Guerriere sail up and down the American coast, with her name, written on her flag, challenging those fir frigates? Did not the whole nation, with one voice exclaim at the affair of the Little Belt—‘Only let Rogers come within reach of one of our frigates!’ If such was the opinion of the whole nation, with what justice is the Board of Admiralty blamed, for not sending out the means of combatting this extraordinary sort of foe? and for issuing a privilege to our frigates to run away from one of those fir things with a bit of striped bunting at its mast head? The result of the former war, while it enlightened nobody, added to the vindictiveness of hundreds of thousands; so that we have entered into this war with all our old stock of contempt, and a vastly increased stock of rancor. To think that the American republic is to be a great power is unsupportable. Of the effect of this contempt I know nobody, who has so much reason to repent, as the officers of his Majesty’s navy. If they had triumphed, it would only have been over half a dozen fir things, with bits of bunting at their mast heads. They were sure to gain no reputation in the contest; and, if they failed, what was their lot? The worst of it is, they themselves did, in some measure, contribute to their own ill fate: for, of all men living, none spoke of poor Jonathan with so much contempt. There are some people, who are for taking the American commodores at their word, and ascribing their victories to the immediate intervention of Providence. Both Perry and McDonough begin their despatches by saying—“Almighty God has given us a victory.”

This is keen political satire; and it is well, that it should come to neighbor Bull’s ears, from the mouth of an Englishman. It is more gracefully administered thus. That it was entirely deserved, no one will doubt, who has any recollection of Bull’s unmeasured and unmitigated impudence, during the war of 1812, in its earlier stages. May God of his infinite mercy grant, that Peace Societies may have these matters, hereafter, very much their own way; though I have a little misgiving, I confess, as to the expediency of any sudden, or very general conversion of swords into ploughshares, or spears into pruning hooks.