THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA: BY THE AUTHOR OF "SAM SLICK."

Mr. Justice Haliburton obtained some notoriety and a certain degree of popularity by his broad caricatures of common life in New England. These books did not display very eminent ability even for the rather low and mean field in which the author found congenial occupation, but the old jokes transplanted into our republican soil had a seeming freshness in the eyes of buyers of cheap books, and they were profitable to paper-makers and printers, until the patience of the public could tolerate no more of their monotonous vulgarity. Judge Haliburton has since essayed a more serious vein, and being wholly without originality, has fallen into the old track of depreciation, sneering, and vituperation, in the expectation that any form of attack upon the people of the United States would sell, at least in England. The unfortunate gentleman was mistaken, as the following very kind reviewal of his book, which we transfer to The International from The Athenæum of July 26, will show.

"The English in America. By the Author of 'Sam Slick,' &c. This is a vulgar and violent political pamphlet, which will fill no small part of the admirers of 'Sam Slick' with alarm and astonishment. The 'English in America' are in these two volumes set forth principally as a parcel of uncouth, disingenuous, and repulsive Puritans, who emigrated to America in the early part of the seventeenth century for the sake of an easier indulgence in disloyalty and schism. Confining himself almost wholly to the events which took place in the colony of Massachusetts, Judge Haliburton has thought it worth while to write a book, half declamation and half treatise, against Democracy and Dissent,—which seem to him to be the two giant evils that oppress mankind. It is no part of our function to discuss the abstract merits of either of these questions; but it is perfectly within our province to point out the errors and faults of those writers who imagine that they can serve a party purpose by making a convenient and derogatory use of literature.

"In the first place, then, we say that the volumes before us are essentially unfair. The 'English in America' have not really and truly been such English as are there described,—nor has their career been such as is there narrated,—nor generally are the actual facts of the case logically and impartially stated in these volumes. Judge Haliburton colors and distorts almost every event and circumstance to which he refers; and there is a coarseness and rancor in the manner in which he speaks of nearly all persons and parties who differ from him in opinion, which has surprised and shocked us. There was no occasion whatever for all this vehemence. In the first place, the facts connected with the early history of the British settlements in America are too well known to permit any attempt at systematic and unscrupulous disparagement of the early Puritan colonists to be in any important degree successful. In the next place, the questions which Judge Haliburton professes to consider have been for all practical purposes discussed and decided long ago. In the last place, we are quite sure that no writer on questions of colonial policy could more effectually cut himself off from all sympathy and influence than by the adoption of an excited and menacing tone.

"We find in the introductory chapter to these volumes a statement to the effect that one of the chief objects in writing them has been to inform Englishmen that Democracy did not appear for the first time in America during the War of Independence; and that the peculiar form of religion that prevailed at an early period in the New England States exerted a very powerful influence over their politics and modes of government. Surely there is nothing new in all this. There is no great discovery here which required for its introduction the expenditure of so much labor and vehemence. We had imagined that the great orations of Burke on Conciliation with America had exhausted long ago not only all the facts but most of the philosophy which is contained in the general view now revived by the author of 'Sam Slick.' There are a sentence or two in one of the most famous passages of perhaps the greatest of these orations which seem to anticipate the present volumes most completely. 'All Protestantism,' said Burke more than seventy years ago, 'even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations, agreeing in nothing but in the communication of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces; where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most probably, the tenth of the people. The colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these colonies has for the greatest part been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, and have brought with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.' The speech of Burke in which these sentences occur ought surely to have passed for something in the estimation of Judge Haliburton before he committed himself to the task of writing this book.

"We are quite sensible that as far as the mere composition is concerned there is very great merit in its publication. The style is vigorous and lively—and not unfrequently the animation rises into eloquence. The narrative parts of the volumes are in general exceedingly well written; and we must not omit to say, that during those short intervals when the author permits himself to lose sight of his extreme opinions he rarely fails to delight the reader with a page or two distinguished by acute observation and good sense.

"Still, the faults of the book are of the most serious kind. It is incomplete in plan: for it is neither a regular narrative, nor a treatise, nor a commentary, nor a history, nor an article for a review—but something of all five. As we have said, it is written in a tone highly excited and partial; and it has the misfortune to appear before the world as the exponent of seemingly a new, but in reality of an old and familiar, doctrine, by employing examples and reasonings of which very few people indeed will not be able to detect at once either the sophistry or the incompleteness.

"We forbear to enter into any general discussion on the well-worn topics of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritan settlements. The verdict of an impartial age has been long ago pronounced on these questions: and we may well deplore the unsound judgment of any writer of the deserved eminence of Judge Haliburton who gratuitously brings upon himself an imputation of outrageous eccentricity by attempting to unsettle, on his own single authority, conclusions so well and so long established....

"There is a great deal said in these volumes in disparagement of the early New Englanders. They are stigmatized as turbulent, schismatic, dishonest, revolutionary, bigoted, cruel, and so on. These are old charges, which have been several times placed in their true light; and it is needless again to undertake a defence and to enter into explanations which are familiar to most educated persons. We are not the indiscriminate admirers of the policy pursued by the first colonists of Massachusetts Bay; but the course which they adopted, the communities which they built up, and the form of liberty which they introduced into the New World can be adequately understood only when surveyed from a comprehensive and impartial point of view. It is at best a shallow criticism which contents itself with the discovery that the settlers were religious zealots, and had no particular respect for either kings or bishops.

... "We close these volumes. We regret that the author has been so ill-advised as to publish them at all. They are well written, as we have said—and in some respects possess great merit; but truth compels us to add, that they are very unworthy of the author and of the great questions they profess to elucidate and discuss."