Alexandria Gazette

The New York American answers the question of the Enquirer, by "what right we charge Mr. Stevenson with deference more than was becoming to the rich and noble of England?" By the right of an American, who values his own birthright too much not to feel shame and scorn when the representative of his country at a foreign court plays the fantastic tricks of a courtier, and a waiter upon great men's smiles and favors. That such has been the course of Mr. Stevenson in London, we have from the authority of numerous Americans, who have witnessed what they relate, and who have felt themselves humiliated by the self-humiliation of their minister. Nor is Mr. Stevenson alone in this great offence against the simple dignity of a republic. Mr. Cass, in Paris, is represented to us as the most unwearied courtier of the King—of which, indeed, his garrulous publication about France and its Court affords no little evidence. We look upon any such conduct as a national misrepresentation, besides being pitiably ridiculous. Republican America has and makes no pretension to those conventional trappings of Royal and Aristocratic society, which seem to excite the admiration of too many of our diplomatists; it does not send them abroad to vie in splendor or display with the courtiers around the throne, and much less to ape their manners or court their favors.—The Minister of the United States in London or in Paris should be remarked by simplicity of demeanor and appearance, and by his efforts rather to preserve amid the magnificence of a Court, the plain habits and straightforward intercourse of his own country, than for any poor and imperfect copy of the grandeur and splendors around him.