whole days; and as I was unable to write, or indeed to do anything but
doze and drink lemonade, I missed the ship. . . . I have still a
horrible cold, and so has Kate, but in other respects we are all right.
I proceed to my third head: the international copyright question.

"I believe there is no country on the face of the earth where there is
less freedom of opinion on any subject in reference to which there is a
broad difference of opinion, than in this.--There!--I write the words
with reluctance, disappointment, and sorrow; but I believe it from the
bottom of my soul. I spoke, as you know, of international copyright, at
Boston; and I spoke of it again at Hartford. My friends were paralyzed
with wonder at such audacious daring. The notion that I, a man alone by
himself, in America, should venture to suggest to the Americans that
there was one point on which they were neither just to their own
countrymen nor to us, actually struck the boldest dumb! Washington
Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Washington
Allston--every man who writes in this country is devoted to the
question, and not one of them _dares_ to raise his voice and complain of
the atrocious state of the law. It is nothing that of all men living I
am the greatest loser by it. It is nothing that I have a claim to speak
and be heard. The wonder is that a breathing man can be found with
temerity enough to suggest to the Americans the possibility of their
having done wrong. I wish you could have seen the faces that I saw, down
both sides of the table at Hartford, when I began to talk about Scott. I
wish you could have heard how I gave it out. My blood so boiled as I
thought of the monstrous injustice that I felt as if I were twelve feet
high when I thrust it down their throats.

"I had no sooner made that second speech than such an outcry began (for
the purpose of deterring me from doing the like in this city) as an
Englishman can form no notion of. Anonymous letters, verbal dissuasions;
newspaper attacks making Colt (a murderer who is attracting great
attention here) an angel by comparison with me; assertions that I was no
gentleman, but a mere mercenary scoundrel; coupled with the most
monstrous misrepresentations relative to my design and purpose in
visiting the United States; came pouring in upon me every day. The
dinner committee here (composed of the first gentlemen in America,
remember that) were so dismayed, that they besought me not to