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<h2>Letter 51.</h2> London. Dear Charley:— We have had one of the most agreeable days that I have spent in England. We received a kind invitation from his excellency Baron Vanderweyer, the Belgian minister, to attend a party given by his lady to the young nobility. The invitations were for five o'clock. We found the finest collection of children and young people, from about four years old up to sixteen, that I ever saw gathered together. I should think there were two hundred and fifty. More beautiful children cannot probably be found; and they were dressed in fine taste, and some very richly. One little fellow, about six years old, was, I think, the noblest-looking boy my eyes ever rested upon. Dr. C. inquired of two or three persons whom he knew, who the lad was; and just then an elegant and fashionable-looking lady expressed how much she felt flattered by the kind things said of the little fellow, and told him that it was her son, the eldest son of the Marquis of O——d, and then called him out of the dance, and introduced the little Lord Ossory to him. Among the illustrious juveniles was the future Duke of Wellington, and grandson of the Iron Duke. He is now about four or five years old. I think the sight was one of the prettiest I ever had the pleasure to witness. A few of the parents and older friends of the children were present; and in the company was Mr. Bates, whose kindness to us has been very great. One evening this week Dr. Choules preached at Craven Chapel, near Regent Street, where he had been requested to speak about America, and he took up Education—the voluntary principle—and Slavery. On the last topic he gave some truths that were probably very unpalatable. He stated that the good people here knew next to nothing of the subject; that its treatment amongst us could not be suffered by strangers; and that all interference with it by this nation was as impolitic, and in as bad taste, as it would be for an American to visit England and commence a crusade against the expenditures of the royal household, as a crying sin, while there was misery among the masses in many parts of the kingdom. He spoke of the extreme prejudice which he had met upon the subject, and the rudeness's into which he had found men fall, who seemed to have forgotten every courtesy of life. He gave them many facts, which, though perfectly correct, yet he said he supposed would be interpreted as a special plea on behalf of slavery—although nothing could be more untrue. The prejudice existing here is amusing. They seem to take it for granted that every American raises cotton, sugar, and tobacco, and, therefore, is a slaveholder. However, I find most persons of candor ready to acknowledge that it is questionable whether any good can possibly result from sending English agents to agitate the slavery question in the United States. There are a great many things which we have seen in London that are less worthy of note than those we have written you about, and yet in themselves are very useful and interesting; and we hope the remembrance of them will be of service to us hereafter. I have been much struck with the prevalence of the same names in the streets as those which are so familiar to me on our signs and boards. We have most clearly a common origin, and there are no two nations in the world between whom there is of necessity so much sympathy on all great questions. We have visited the exhibition several times since our return, with fresh pleasure on every occasion. In point of show and splendor, we are doing little in competition with the English, French and Belgian exhibitors; but we have a wonderful deal here that proves Jonathan to be a smart chap at invention, and no slouch at labor-saving operations. We cannot afford to spend the labor of freemen, who own their houses and farms and gardens, upon single pieces of furniture that would take six months to complete. Our time is too valuable for this. The pauper labor of Europe will, I hope, long continue to be cheaper, than the toil of American mechanics. I do not want to see a man working for thirty cents a day. The people of England must laugh in their sleeves when they see every steamer bringing out our specie from America, and when they see us sacrificing our true interests to aid the destructive policy of free trade. I have never thought so much about the tariff as since I have been here, and I am now convinced that we ought to give suitable encouragement to all kinds of manufactures in our country, and so afford a regular market for the products of the agriculturist. The English agents that flood our country are placing the land under a constant drain; and our specie must go abroad, instead of circulating at home. It is only in times of great scarcity that England will want much of our wheat or corn; and the English very freely avow that they hope to be able, ere long, to get their cotton from the East. It seems to me that our Southern States will need their New England constant market, and that our true policy is to take care of ourselves. Certainly there is a great variety of opinion here about free trade, and I hear gentlemen debate strongly against it. The reciprocity of England is a queer thing. All this yarn, Charley, grows naturally out of my starting-point about the exhibition. We go to-night to Bristol, to visit our kind friends once more; thence we run into South Wales, and afterwards set our faces homeward. Yours, &c., weld. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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