They judge them by their own standard; they attribute
effects to wrong causes, forgetting that a different tone
of feeling, produced by a different social and political
state from their own, must naturally produce dissimilar
results.

Any person reading the last sketch containing the account,
given by Mr. Slick of the House of Commons, his opinion
of his own abilities as a speaker, and his aspiration
after a seat in that body, for the purpose of "skinning,"
as he calls it, impertinent or stupid members, could not
avoid coming to the conclusion that he was a conceited
block-head; and that if his countrymen talked in that
absurd manner, they must be the weakest, and most
vain-glorious people in the world.

That he is a vain man, cannot he denied--self-taught men
are apt to be so every where; but those who understand
the New England humour, will at once perceive, that he
has spoken in his own name merely as a personification,
and that the whole passage means after all, when transposed
into that phraseology which an, Englishman would use,
very little more than this, that the House of Commons
presented a noble field for a man of abilities as a public
speaker; but that in fact, it contained very few such
persons. We must not judge of words or phrases, when used
by foreigners, by the sense we attribute to them, but
endeavour to understand the meaning they attach to them
themselves.