Anglo-Americans

“ England is at this time the natural emporium of almost all the nations which are within its reach; the American Union will perform the same part in the other hemisphere; and every community which is founded, or which prospers in the New World, is founded and prospers to the advantage of the Anglo-Americans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Americans themselves on which he has animadverted so freely. The thing most comparable to it—most nearly as ill-mannered—is, perhaps, the frank brutality with which the travelling American expresses himself—and herself—in regard to things in Europe. In it, in fact, we see again another aspect of the same fundamentally English trait,—the insistence on the sovereignty of the individual—and Americans come by it legitimately. Every time that they display it they do but make confession of their original Anglo-Saxon descent and essentially English nature. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness—How Frenchmen and Germans View it—Englishmen, Americans, and "Foreigners"—An Echo of the War of 1812—An Anglo-American Conflict Unthinkable—American Feeling for England—The Venezuelan Incident—The Pilgrims and Some Secret History—Why Americans still Hate England—Great Britain's Nearness to the United States Geographically—Commercially—Historically—England's Foreign Ill-wishers in America.
The one thing chiefly needed to make both Englishmen and Americans desire an alliance is that they should come to know each other better. ”

“ Thus we find him all through the war reminding his fellow-countrymen that the Americans were human beings—a fact of a kind that is always forgotten in time of war—and that the Anglo-American problem was chiefly a problem in human nature. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But the Anglo-American stands preëminent for deeds of injustice and acts of oppression, unparalleled, perhaps, in the annals of modern history.
We admit the existence of great and good people in America, England, France, and the rest of Europe, who desire a unity of interests among the whole human family, of whatever origin or race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ England and America ought not to be enemies, 'tis unnatural while the same language is spoken in both lands. Until Americans have found a tongue for themselves, they must still be the children of old England, for they speak the words her children speak by the fireside of her homes. Oh, England! noble, noble land! They may be proud of many things, these inheritors of a new world, but of nothing more than that they are descended from Englishmen ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nevertheless, Anglo-American ideas still dominate and inspire our civilization. It is, indeed, remarkable to what an extent this is true, in the face of the mingling of heterogeneous races in our population. As English is our speech, so Anglo-American ideas are still the soul of our life and institutions. ”

“ Every day of my sojourn in this country deepens the desire in my mind to see an increasing unity of understanding between America and England. I feel that the audacity of America, its passion for the Right Thing, and its impatience with the spirit of muddling through are the finest incentives for modern England, England at this dawn of her political renascence. I feel, too, as Americans themselves most willingly acknowledge, that Great Britain has something to give to America out of the ancient treasury of her domestic experience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, the man we seek is already found, his features rapidly becoming distinct. He is the offspring of Northern Europe; he occupies Central North-Ameriea. Other fresh forms are doubtless to appear, but, though dimly shaping themselves, are as yet inchoate. But the Anglo-American is an existing fact, to be spoken of without prognostication, save as this is implied in the recognition of tendencies established and unfolding into results. The Anglo-American may be considered the latest new-comer into this planet. ”

“ The Colonists still looked to England as their home. They prided themselves on their loyalty; and they regarded the difficulties which hindered complete sympathy between the settlements and the mother country as obstacles which time and good sense could remove. England on the other hand looked on America as her noblest possession. It was the wealth, the growth of this dependency which more than all the victories of her arms was lifting her to a new greatness among the nations. It was the trade with it which had doubled English commerce in half-a-century. ”

“ During the past two months the proposed Anglo-American Understanding has occupied a great deal of attention in Great Britain and Canada, and a very fair amount of similar enthusiasm in the United States. The idea of an understanding which will enable both branches of the English race—if it may be called such—to work side by side, with one aim and one mission, is certainly most worthy. If it can be successfully carried into performance, it will be the most important political development of the nineteenth century. ”

“ The old see-saw of 'nations united in language and customs—brothers at heart,' will be set to vibrating, and all, as they believe, must jog along merrily as of old. For it is with a very little regularly organized stuff of this kind, turned on or off as from a hydrant, and always in dribbling drops at that, that England has, when necessary, pacified and delighted a great number of Americans, semi-insane to be received on terms of equality by the 'higher classes,' whom they worshiped at heart, while they affected all manner of bold Americanisms to hide the truth. ”

“ There were individuals, in and out of Parliament, who recognized the rights of Englishmen, and regarding the Americans as Englishmen, and America as a portion of the British empire, were in heart and with all their energies, in sympathy with the Americans in their struggle for their rights. ”

“ La partie de la nation américaine chez qui l’on devrait rencontrer le moins de préjugés, les hommes qui réunissent l’aisance et l’instruction, ceux qui ont été les moteurs de la révolution, et qui, en soufflant dans l’âme du peuple la haine contre les Anglais, auraient dû, il semble, s’en pénétrer pour toujours; ceux-là mêmes sont insensiblement ramenés vers l’Angleterre par différents motifs. Plusieurs ont étés élevés en Europe; et, à cette époque, l’Europe des Américains n’était que l’Angleterre. ”

“ The Anglo-American is apt to boast, and not without reason, that his nation may claim a descent more truly honourable than that of any other people whose history is to be credited. Whatever might have been the weaknesses of the original colonists, their virtues have rarely been disputed. ”

“ The fact that a few of them, which happened to have a continent at their back and unlimited room for expansion, revolted after a century and a half, has tended to obscure their real contemporary relation to England, much as the refraction of water alters the apparent position of objects under it when seen from an angle. The angle from which we Americans always look at the original colonies is that of our present independent nation ”

“ America is becoming not English merely, but world-embracing in the variety of its type; and, as the English element has given language and history to that land, America offers the English race the moral directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind through Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through America, England is speaking to the world. ”

“ The influence of the British element in our population has proved sufficiently strong to enable the English-Americans to bring it under control and to weld it into a nation that, in its common character and purposes, is English. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The latest and best of the English historians has said that, however important the independence of America might be in the history of England, it was of overwhelming importance in the history of the world, and that though it might have crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. ”

“ Nor was it wholly a gain to the United States. Such at least must be the view of Englishmen who believe in the worth of their country, in its traditions, in the character of the nation, in its political, social, moral, and religious tendencies. The necessary result of the separation was to alienate the American colonists from what was English; to breed generations in the belief that what England did must be wrong, that the enemies of England must be right; to strengthen in English-speaking communities the elements which were opposed to the land and to the race from which they had sprung. ”

“ The New Englander is so constantly engaged in creating changes that in his eyes even variety appears monotonous. When a German subject finds himself oppressed by his Government he emigrates; when a French citizen is oppressed he makes the Government emigrate; when Americans find a portion of their Government trying to emigrate they arm themselves and spend four years in going after it and bringing it back. [Laughter and applause.]
You will find the sons of New England everywhere throughout the world, and they are always at the fore. ”

“ They may in the main be a tiny bit jealous of England, but individually they seem to love British people, and welcome them so warmly one can only regret that more English do not travel in America where they would see her people at their best, for, alas! many of the Americans who come over here leave a wrong impression altogether of the charms of our brothers and sisters across the Atlantic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ New England in America was settled by English of picked moral and intellectual quality, and with the enormous double advantage of freedom to educate everybody and give everybody a chance, and of entire absence of the vile, pauper, and prostitute class which Old-World circumstances had created. The result has been that America, without some superlative advantages possessed by England, has on the broad level done more and done better than England in the direction of mind and quality, character and achievement—truly English in the higher sense of race ”

“ 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. ”