Anglo-American

“ Widely separated as some of them were from each other by geographical distance, and diversity of interest and pursuits, there were, nevertheless, political, social, and commercial considerations which made the Anglo-Americans really one people, having common interests and common hopes. ”

“ For more than a hundred years the British Government has labored to disunite our Union or in some way to destroy our Republic, yet we still have Anglo-Americans, and, be it said to our shame, an English Government in Washington, D.C. Let a crown prince or some great lord come to the United States, and then something is sure to happen. ”

“ It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force. ”

“ From that period we behold the people making steady and sure progress in their national life. But long before this last-named event, England had started in the great work of colonisation, in spreading her people over the earth, with the consequent advancement of her commercial interests, and the dissemination of her laws, institutions, language, habits of religious thought, and manners. America was discovered, and she soon {98} claimed and held a commanding position on the American Continent, from which she and her children were never to be dislodged. ”

“ And, when we examine the character of this population, no-one can look on the fearless energy, the sturdy determination, the aptitude for local self-government, the versatile alacrity, and the unresting spirit of enterprise, which characterize the Anglo-Americans, without feeling that here he beholds the true elements of progressive might. ”

“ That is the only good government, which satisfies at once the demands for order, regularity, stability and physical prosperity on the part of those of riper years, and fills the longings of the young, and of that portion of society which always continues youthful, for lively sensations, brilliant schemes, and lofty aspirations. By the side of their parliament, the English have their vast colonies, by which this spirit finds vent, over the remotest seas. [Pg 325] The Anglo-Americans have the West, and also, like Great Britain, the ocean. ”

“ The first of these three nations, the Anglo-Americans, is, next to the English of Europe, that whose flag waves over the greatest extent of sea. Without any distant colonies, its commerce has acquired a growth attained in the old world by that nation alone which communicated to North America its language, its literature, its love of labour, its predilection for liberty, and a portion of its civil institutions. ”

“ There have always been many Americans, indeed, who cherished a very warm sympathy for the mother country, partly owing to family sentiment, partly to the belief that England is among the nations of the Old World the most consistent representative of those principles of civil liberty of which this republic claims to be the completest embodiment ”

“ Wherein do the Americans exceed the sons of Britain? In history, in policy, in poetry, in mathematics, in music, in painting, or in any of the gifts of the Muses? Are they more renowned in the dreadful art of war? or in the mild virtues of peace? Is the fame of America a wonder and a terror to the four quarters of the globe?—We may fearlessly reply in the negative. The outer barbarian knows the American but as another kind of Englishman. ”

“ To-day there is no nation on earth to which America turns with friendlier eyes than England, which gave to it its language, its laws, and its religion, and whose brave sons crossed the seas, and through much trouble and peril laid the foundations of this great new country ”

“ I said 483 to him, that England would always be a country, which would deserve much of the attention of America, independently of all consideration of blood, origin, language, morals, &c.; merely as a commercial people, she would forever claim the respect of America, because a great part of her commerce would be with her, provided she came to her senses, and made peace with us, without any points in the treaty, that should ferment in the minds of the people. ”

“ WHATEVER shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of Americanization; however America may have failed to help my transition from a foreigner into an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity. ”

“ Nothing strikes an American so much on coming to England—kindred though he be, not only in blood and language, but also in customs—nothing at least strikes him more than the beautiful thorn hedges with which our fields are at once divided, sheltered and adorned. ”

“ A thorough American, who comprehends what America has to do, and means to help on with it, ought to choose to be born in New England, for the vitalized brain, finely-chorded nerves, steely self-control,—then to go West, for more live, muscular passion, succulent manhood, naked-handed grip of his work. ”

“ Don't forget that you have produced a relation between England and the U.S. which is really a gain to civilization and that you must come back to look after your work. You can't look after it there: that is the function of an Englishman—and if you do it there they will call you one. The only way you can be a good American is to return to our dear old stupid, satisfactory London, and to yours ever affectionately and faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To William James. ”

“ In conclusion, I may say a few words on the pleasant intercourse we English are having with our American relations, in the interchange of novels, which seems to be going on pretty constantly between the two countries. Our cousinly connection with the Americans dates from common ancestors, of whom we are both proud. To a certain period, every great name which England boasts is a direct subject of pride to the American; since the time when the race diverged into two different channels, we catch a reflex lustre from each other’s great men. ”

“ Increasing Friendliness between America and England.
Speaking by and large, I believe that we like and trust the British people, and that they like and trust us. A marked change has come over the feelings of both peoples within the last quarter of a century. I remember well that when I was a boy, the school histories of the United States had the effect of making all the American boys hate the English. ”

“ In many things—in almost everything—the United States moves the more rapidly. It seems at first a contradiction in terms to say that the Americans are an English people and then to show that [88] in many individual matters the English people is approximating to American models. It is in truth no contradiction; and the explanation is obvious. Both are impelled by the same spirit, the same motives, the same ambitions; but in England that spirit, those motives and ambitions work against greater resistance. ”

“ If it is claimed we must adopt for our money the metal England selects, and can have no independent choice in the matter, let us make the test and find out if it is true. It is not American to give up without trying. If it is true, let us attach England to the United States and blot her name out from among the nations of the earth, [Applause.] ”

“ Its literature, laws, and language are our literature, laws, and language. Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, were a glorious inheritance, which we share in common. Our very life-blood is English life-blood. It is Anglo-Saxon vigor that is spreading our country from Atlantic to Pacific, and leading on a new era in the world's development. America is a tall, sightly young shoot, that has grown from the old royal oak of England ”

“ Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especially in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuing highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and clinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they have no reason to be ashamed. ”

“ Throughout the eighteenth century she was wasting her opportunities of expansion in West and East alike in order to dominate Spain, Italy and the German confusion. The religious and political dissensions of Britain in the seventeenth century had driven many of the English to seek a permanent home in America. They struck root and increased and multiplied, giving the British a great advantage in the American struggle. ”

“ When we duly realize this, and further come to see how the two great branches of the English race have the common mission of establishing throughout the larger part of the earth a higher civilization and more permanent political order than any that has gone before, we shall the better understand the true significance of the history which English-speaking men have so magnificently wrought out upon American soil. ”

“ And for these reasons the United American States will be the representative country of the world. Some may argue, because the commercial power of England is so superior; because she has such numerous general possessions, the English language being the one that must become universally used, that, by virtue of these, that dignity belongs to England. ”

“ The first thing that strikes an American travelling through England is the age of everything he sees, the roots by which every existing institution, custom, or pleasure is intimately connected with its real, tangible prototype in the past. ”

“ We deceive ourselves if we imagine that there is, or at any rate that there was until recently, the slightest sentimental attachment to England in the heart of the American people at large. Among the "hyphenated Americans," as they are called—Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and so forth—it would be folly to look for any such feeling. ”

“ This war lasted many years, and the French and Dutch assisted the Americans with troops, ships, and money.
32. There were many gentlemen in the English parliament who wanted to put an end to the war, by giving up all control over the Americans; but others would not consent, the king was unwilling to do so, till, at last, finding there [185] was little chance of success, the English government gave up the contest, and the American colonies became independent of England, and took the name of the United States. ”

“ The old French model was the former, or rather, to do each one justice, was the original after which the English aristocracy has formed itself. The American of the North and the Northwest, whose character now gives the tone in the United States, is permanently a man of business, he is always the Englishman of the morning. You find many of the Englishmen of the evening on the plantations of the South, and some are beginning to be met with in the great cities of the North.
Tall, slender, and light of figure, the American seems built expressly for labour; he has no equal for despatch of business. ”

“ England takes a few steps upon that glorious path which the great American republic has hewn for the nations of the earth—there will be sure respect for man, as man; and the servants may have some hope of improving their condition. ”

“ English America had English liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people than England. Its inhabitants were self-organized bodies of freeholders, pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and farther forward every year, and never going back. They had schools, so that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing press scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers; they had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election. ”

“ Thus the history of the American people begins in the forests of Germany, where the foundations of their polity were laid, and is continued in England, where they set up kingdoms, embraced Christianity, became one nation, received an influx of Celtic, Danish, and Norman-French blood, formed for themselves that body of customs, laws, and institutions which they transplanted to the new soil of America, and most of which, though changed and always changing, they still retain. ”

“ It is really trying to see the impression most Englishmen have of Americans—impressions gathered simply from these inflictions who, knowing no one but the green-grocer on their corner at home, come abroad to astonish the natives; and who succeed in doing nothing [92] but in making the appellation of American to stink in the nostrils of the foreigner. ”

“ England is, no doubt, the one great civilised power that has escaped an organic or structural change within the last five-and-twenty years. Within that period, the American Union, after a tremendous war, has revolutionised the social institutions of the South, and reconstructed the constitution. ”

“ If it crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. From the hour of American Independence the life of the English People has flowed not in one current, but in two ”

“ If England could, by legitimate means, and without unduly sacrificing or imperilling her own interests, accelerate this consummation, she would, in my opinion, earn the just gratitude of the civilized world. ”

“ I have endeavoured to show, first, that the majority of Englishmen have, even though unconsciously, a fundamental misconception of the character of the American people, arising primarily from the absence of a recognised aristocracy in the United States:—that, in fact, the two peoples are, in the construction of their social fabrics, much more alike than the Englishman generally assumes. ”

“ But I think that the American exaggerates those qualities in himself at the expense of other peoples, and he would acquire a new kind of respect for Englishmen—the respect which one good workman necessarily feels for another—if he knew more of the British Empire. ”