Beneath the hostility arising from Britain's war measures lay, in the
American mind, the irritation caused by her patronising air. The
Americans had chafed under British social as well as commercial
intolerance ever since the birth of the Republic. In the British
thought, the Americans were still colonists in that they were not to
the manor born. The Declaration of Independence and the severance of
political ties had left them still dependent upon Britain in the higher
aspects of life.
"The Americans asserted their independence," said the _Edinburgh
Review_, "upon principles which they derived from us. They are
descended from our loins, they retain our usages and manners, they read
our books, they have copied our freedom, they rival our courage, and yet
they are less popular and esteemed among us than the base and bigoted
Portuguese and the ferocious and ignorant Russians."
When an English statesman suggested that his Government would do well
to cultivate the new Republic for the sake of trade if for no higher
motive, Lord Brougham ridiculed the proposition of paying heed to "a
people whose armies are as yet at the plough, or making awkward attempts
at the loom, whose assembled navies could not lay siege to an English
sloop of war.
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