MANNERS IN AMERICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IX, Issue 587, 19 June 1858, Page 3

MANNERS IN AMERICA.

(From the 'New York Times.') The episode which occurred on Saturday morning in the House of Representatives at Washington has a social as well as political aspect, which a sensitive people like ourselves would do well to consider. We allude to the probable effect of these "little difficulties" -upon the world's opinion of ourselves and of our civilization. Of course we think it right, before we say a word on the subject, to protest that we need not care a sixpence about the world's opinion. Lords of the Alleghanies and the Cordilleras, of the Mississippi and the Hudson, of the broadest lakes and the most interminable prairies of ihe earth, we naturally ought to despise and contemn the effete critism of all the human race besides. Our innumerable banks and our indefi nite railways make us independent of foreign nations as of foreign cash. Unfortunately, however, all things are not as they should be even in our model country, and we practically- do care a great deal more than we are always readyto admit, what Englishmen and Frenchmen say of our manners and customs. We are always on the look-out for any little scrap of comment upon us that a foreigner happens to let drop. If it is favourable, we purr beneath it like a wellstroked cat; if unfavourable, our fury is a frightful thing to see. The faintest insinuation that our men are not all " high-toned" and chivalrous and our women not all graceful and handsome, throws us into convulsion. If a roving- English tourist hints that somebody he met at Washington eat peas with his knife, the peaceful relation of the two countries are immediately endangered. If a London penny-a-liner throws out an insinuation that the stewed prunes on board a Collins steamer are not so good as on the Cunard line, the whole nation rises in frenzy. - In short, there is not a fool or knave, from Maine to California, who is not sure of having his absurdities or rascalities defended to the death, by the whole of this Republic, if he can only get "a for- , eigner to print unkind remarks about them. Such .being the state of affairs, the manners and customs of our leading men, upon whom the eyes of the world are most apt to fall, realiy assume a portentous importance. What is to be done, if our Solons won't conduct themselves with propriety? .If they will treat themselves in the Legislative halls to " a rough-and-tumble and drag-out fight," 'Punch' will make fun of us,the London ' Times' will jeer at us, and many of'the rotten and worn-out aristocracies of the. Old World, whom we despise in our hearts, will say that there are no gentlemen among us. Here for half a century, we have been bragging- to all Europe of the exquisite polish and chivalric re- j •finement of our Southern seaboard planters, of our Carolinian Huguenots, and our Virginian cavaliers. We gave up the Yankees; from the sons of the roundheaded Puritans nobody could look for anything better than gaucherie "and inquisitive impertinence. But our "proud answer to the despot and tyrant," to the old fogies of London and Paris and Vienna, when they boasted of their society and their manners" was a warning to wait till, their fortunate stars should bring them into contact with the chivalry of the Old Dominion or the Palmetto State. We had gradually convinced ourselves, and almost all tne world as well, that onr rice-swamps and our tobacco-fields were stocked with a noble arrnv of plantation Bayards and of "mute, inglorious" Sidneys. It was a dreadful shock to ali of us that Ivrooks, of the line of Butler, gave when he behaved like a pothouse bully in the Senate Chamber, and listening lords and ladies of his native State applauded. People began to think our "chivalry" in some way connected with the celebrated " Mrs. Harris," but we tried to stifle all their doubts by asserting that Brooks had derogated through overmuch drink, and that it was only very vulgar people who clubbed together to buy him canes. And now comes up Mr. Keitt, another " gentleman" of our " well-known style," and plunges us into a worse scrape than the first.