interest or reputation of their own country comes in collision
with that of another, they go to the opposite extreme, and forget
their usual probity and candor, in the indulgence of splenetic
remark, and an illiberal spirit of ridicule.

Hence, their travels are more honest and accurate, the more
remote the country described. I would place implicit confidence
in an Englishman's description of the regions beyond the
cataracts of the Nile; of unknown islands in the Yellow Sea; of
the interior of India; or of any other tract which other
travellers might be apt to picture out with the illusions of
their fancies. But I would cautiously receive his account of his
immediate neighbors, and of those nations with which he is in
habits of most frequent intercourse. However I might be disposed
to trust his probity, I dare not trust his prejudices.

It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by
the worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical
spirit and cultivated minds have been sent from England to
ransack the poles, to penetrate the deserts, and to study the
manners and customs of barbarous nations, with which she can have
no permanent intercourse of profit or pleasure; it has been left
to the broken-down tradesman, the scheming adventurer, the
wandering mechanic, the Manchester and Birmingham agent, to be
her oracles respecting America. From such sources she is content
to receive her information respecting a country in a singular
state of moral and physical development; a country in which one
of the greatest political experiments in the history of the world
is now performing; and which presents the most profound and
momentous studies to the statesman and the philosopher.