In fifty years America had become a nation on a par in power and dignity with England. 7 Of the many other official representatives of the United States, in England during this period, consuls and delegates on special missions, secretaries and attachés of legations, little can be said because they kept slight or no records of their impressions. There is a story to be told of the work of James Maury, for many years consul at Liverpool, and Samuel Williams, at London. There is scarcely an American traveler who does not gratefully mention their aid and advice, but consular representation in general did not develop to any great extent until about the middle of the century. Prior to this, American interests in individual towns of England, Ireland, and Scotland were usually guarded by the American envoy at Court or by a native of Great Britain, appointed, because of American sympathies to the task. The same condition holds true of the numerous secretaries and members of the official corps of the American envoys. Most of them were men of small capacity, usually young men who sought the opportunity of a trip abroad before they settled to the more serious business of life. William S. Smith, John Quincy Adams, Washington Irving, and James Gallatin are exceptions to this rule in that they rose to distinction later. The comments of most of these men, if they wrote any, have long been lost or are not of sufficient value or significance to merit record. The criticism of England afforded by this large group of envoys, the majority of them the best American minds of the time, can not, in spite of this fact, be said to add a chapter to American literature, but, when patched together, For lists, and data regarding these men, see the Register of the Department of State, 1870-79, and files in the Division of Publications, Department of State, Washington, D. C. the result is a picture of the English court of the day and a revelation of the development of the American national character which would be hard to equal. The progress of the American envoy at the Court of St. James into a position of dignity in the Diplomatic Corps and in English society was steady. Contrary forces, both in himself and in his environment, could delay but could not prevent it. Even at the end of a half century, however, because of his title, he could not yet take his position with the ambassadors of other first-class powers. The importance of diplomatic etiquette was one of the last lessons which the new nation learned. CHAPTER V PRACTICAL TOURISTS Pioneer Agents-Learning by Observation-Business Men I A new country must of necessity be a materialistic country in order to have a foundation upon which to develop its ideals. America realized her lack of cultural advantages early, but she likewise awoke almost as early to her wealth of natural resources and to her need of knowledge of how to use them to the best advantage. Almost as soon as the peace was signed, her agents sought out England as the home of the industrial arts in order to establish markets for her products and to learn the technique of manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Many of the early statesmen who found themselves in Europe on diplomatic missions improved their opportunities of observing and learning from industrial England, but none more than Thomas Jefferson. "I could write you volumes on the improvements which I find made, and making here, in the arts," he writes on April 22, 1786, to Charles Thomson. "One deserves particular notice . . . the application of steam as an agent for working grist mills. . . . We know that steam is one of the most powerful engines we can employ; and in America, fuel is abundant." Jefferson did not have time, however, to pursue the matter very far, for men so concerned in politics as he, could do little more than suggest such studies to others. On the other hand, Gouverneur Morris's primary motive in taking his trip to France and England in 1788 was mercantile rather than political. He was associated with Robert Morris in private as well as public financial concerns, and it became necessary at that time for one of them to be abroad in order to attend to the European end of the business. France shared with England as an objective for these pioneer agents, and most of them included both countries in their trips. Among the comparatively few records that these men have left, that of Elkanah Watson is outstanding. His letters and journals were edited by his son in 1856 and published under the title, Men and Times of the Revolution. Watson was a young man, full of enthusiasm, patriotic in the extreme, and eager to get the maximum practical advantage from his opportunities for observation. These were by no means small, as he arrived in England just at the end of open hostilities with America and saw from a non-political viewpoint the events which were marking an epoch in Anglo-American political history. Watson was primarily a business man. Early in life he had been apprenticed to John Brown, of Providence, Rhode Island, one of the most successful merchants of his day and a member of that family which has given its name to Brown University. At the time of the war, he was too young to enlist, but he became a dispatch bearer and went on dangerous errands concerned with supplying flour for Washington's army. Because of his success in these matters, Brown offered to make him his foreign agent, and on August 4, 1779, Watson set sail for France. Once arrived, he lost no time in seeking out Franklin at Passy and then proceeded to see what he could of the country. It was not until September, 1782, that he embarked for London. An especial interest attaches to his entry into England, for he had in his company an Englishman who, because of the state of war with France, was forced to assume the rôle of a servant and carry one of Watson's bundles in order to pass the commissioner. When he landed, he did not yet know that the English had decided to give up the contest with America, and it was with a feeling of great apprehension, not unmixed with exultation at the recent victories of the American army, that he proceeded from Dover to London with dispatches to Lord Shelburne and others. Then, having learned that the King would acknowledge American independence at the opening of Parliament in December, he decided to remain in England for that event and to occupy himself meanwhile in visiting the manufacturing districts and in examining the state of agriculture and of improvement in roads and canals. For this purpose he hired, with a friend, a post chaise and threw himself "upon the tide of circumstance." His journal rattles through the congested districts, flies along the open spaces, and halts momentarily here and there for comment, much as this first real American tourist in England must have proceeded over her gravel roads and through her crowded towns in September of 1782. As a route marker, Watson was a success, for one of his first points of visit was that major shrine of the American tourist, the birthplace of Shakespeare. "Stimulated by an ardent and deeply excited enthusiasm," he explains, “I abandoned my friend at the inn, and hastily ran to contemplate the object of my anxious inquiries a little, old, and dilapidated dwelling-the birthplace of Shakespeare." The charnel house, opposite to the church in which Shakespeare was buried, suggested to him the possibility that constant observation of the exhuming of bodies had furnished the poet with inspiration for his most unpoetical lines, his own |