Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/178

1800.


 * "The weary statesman for repose hath fled
 * From halls of council to his negro's shed;
 * Where, blest, he woos some black Aspasia's grace,
 * And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace."

To leave no doubt of his meaning, he explained in a footnote that his allusion was to the President of the United States; and yet even Moore, trifler and butterfly as he was, must have seen, if he would, that between the morals of politics and society in America and those then prevailing in Europe, there was no room for comparison,—there was room only for contrast.

Moore was but an echo of fashionable England in his day. He seldom affected moral sublimity; and had he in his wanderings met a race of embodied angels, he would have sung of them or to them in the slightly erotic notes which were so well received in the society he loved to frequent and flatter. His re­marks upon American character betrayed more tem­per than truth; but even in this respect he expressed only the common feeling of Europeans, which was echoed by the Federalist society of the United States. Englishmen especially indulged in unbounded invec­tive against the sordid character of American society, and in shaping their national policy on this con­tempt they carried their theory into practice with so much energy as to produce its own refutation. To their astonishment and anger, a day came when the Americans, in defiance of self-interest and in contra­diction of all the qualities ascribed to them, insisted