of his inheritance from that grandfather who had fought the Britishers
in the wars of the Revolution. Possibly, too, he had heard as a boy,
in his native Vermont village, tales of British perfidy in the recent
war of 1812. At all events, he was utterly incapable of anything but
bitter animosity toward Great Britain. This unreasoning prejudice
blinded his judgment in matters of diplomacy, and vitiated his
utterances on questions of foreign policy.

Replying to Clayton, he said contemptuously, "I do not sympathize with
that feeling which the Senator expressed yesterday, that it was a pity
to have a difference with a nation so friendly to us as England. Sir,
I do not see the evidence of her friendship. It is not in the nature
of things that she can be our friend. It is impossible that she can
love us. I do not blame her for not loving us. Sir, we have wounded
her vanity and humbled her pride. She can never forgive us."[406]

And when Senator Butler rebuked him for this animosity, reminding him
that England was after all our mother country, to whom we were under
deeper obligations than to any other, Douglas retorted, "She is and
ever has been a cruel and unnatural mother." Yes, he remembered the
illustrious names of Hampden, Sidney, and others; but he remembered
also that "the same England which gave them birth, and should have
felt a mother's pride and love in their virtues and services,
persecuted her noble sons to the dungeon and the scaffold." "He speaks
in terms of delight and gratitude of the copious and refreshing
streams which English literature and science are pouring into our
country and diffusing throughout the land. Is he not aware that nearly
every English book circulated and read in this country contains
lurking and insidious slanders and libels upon the character of our
people and the institutions and policy of our Government?"[407]