As a consequence, Morris, although he spent most of the year in London, failed to accomplish anything. The feeling in England was hostile to America; to the king, in particular, the very name was hateful. The English were still sore over their defeat, and hated us because we had been victors; and yet they despised us also, for they thought we should be absolutely powerless except when we were acting merely on the defensive. From the days of the Revolution till the days of the Civil War, the ruling classes of England were bitterly antagonistic to our nation; they always saw with glee any check to our national well-being: they wished us ill, and exulted in our misfortunes, while they sneered at our successes. The results have been lasting, and now work much more to their hurt than to ours. The past conduct of England certainly offers much excuse for, though it cannot in the least justify, the unreasonable and virulent anti-English feeling--that is, the feeling against Englishmen politically and nationally, not socially or individually--which is so strong in many parts of our country where the native American blood is purest.
The English ministry in 1790 probably had the general feeling of the nation behind them in their determination to injure us as much as they could; at any rate, their aim seemed to be, as far as lay in them, to embitter our already existing hostility to their empire. They not only refused to grant us any substantial justice, but they were inclined to inflict on us and on our representatives those petty insults which rankle longer than injuries.
When it came to this point, however, Morris was quite able to hold his own. He had a ready, biting tongue; and, excepting Pitt and Fox, was intellectually superior to any of the public men whom he met. In social position, even as they understood it, he was their equal; they could hardly look down on the brother of a British major-general, and a brother-in-law of the Duchess of Gordon. He was a man of rather fiery courage, and any attacks upon his country were not likely to be made twice in his presence. Besides, he never found the English congenial as friends or companions; he could not sympathize, or indeed get along well, with them. This distaste for their society he always retained, and though he afterwards grew to respect them, and to be their warm partisan politically, he was at this time much more friendly to France, and was even helping the French ministers concoct a scheme of warfare against their neighbor. To his bright, impatient temperament, the English awkwardness seemed to be an insuperable obstacle to bringing people together "as in other countries." He satirized the English drawing-rooms, "where the arrangement of the company was stiff and formal, the ladies all ranged in battalia on one side of the room;" and remarked "that the French, having no liberty in their government, have compensated to themselves that misfortune by bestowing a great deal upon society. But that, I fear, in England, is all confined to the House of Commons." Years afterwards he wrote to a friend abroad: "Have you reflected that there is more of real society in one week at [a Continental watering-place] than in a London year? Recollect that a tedious morning, a great dinner, a boozy afternoon, and dull evening make the sum total of English life. It is admirable for young men who shoot, hunt, drink,--but for us! How are we to dispose of ourselves? No. Were I to give you a rendezvous in Europe, it should be on the continent. I respect, as you know, the English nation highly, and love many individuals among them, but I do not love their manners." Times have changed, and the manners of the Islanders with them. Exactly as the "rude Carinthian boor" has become the most polished of mortals, so, after a like transformation, English society is now perhaps the pleasantest and most interesting in Europe. Were Morris alive to-day, he would probably respect the English as much as he ever did, and like them a good deal more; and, while he might well have his preference for his own country confirmed, yet, if he had to go abroad, it is hard to believe that he would now pass by London in favor of any continental capital or watering-place.