Note 11 — LETTER XXII. TO JACOB SUTHERLAND, ESQUIRE.

That the reader may understand the nature and extent of the prejudices that are inculcated in England, against this country, I extract a sentence from a school book, of a good deal of reputation, written by a clergyman. The edition is of 1830. “The women every where possess, in the highest degree, the domestic virtues; they have more sweetness, more goodness, perhaps as much courage, and more sensibility and liberality, than the men.” Prejudice must have taken deep root, indeed, in England, where the bad taste of a sneer on the courage of America, was not self-evident. One of the best informed men I met in that country, told me, that no event, in his time, had produced so deep a sensation in England, as the unexpected and bloody resistance of the armed population to the British troops, at Bunker Hill. One of the principal causes of the errors of all Europe, as respects us, is owing to the tact, that their writers, anxious to attract, deal with exceptions instead of with the rules. The whole article of “America,” in the book I have just quoted, betrays this fault. Among other absurdities, it says, “there are scarcely in the country, twenty native Americans, (meaning whites, of course,) in the state of domestic servants.” There are, beyond question, tens of thousands, including both sexes, and all ages.