British Americans

“ 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. ”

“ We have been saddled with new and perilous burdens by the ambition of certain statesmen who have earned the bitter animosity of the great body of the British people entirely out of sympathy with their imperialistic ideals.
[Pg 197]
I have not encountered a single American in Europe who has not expressed, with what I believe is absolute sincerity, a friendly and affectionate regard for England, whose people and whose ways of life they like, and whose language, literature, and ideals belong to our united civilization. ”

“ We have explored the countryside, and studied and analyzed the structure of insular society. We have consorted with Barons, Squires, and Knights of the Shire; with Bishops, Priests, and Deacons; with Waacs, Wrens, and V.A.D.’s; with Farmers, Hedgers, and Land Girls; with Mayors and Corporations. They are all interesting; most of them are quite human; and all, once you know them, are extremely friendly and anxious to entertain us.
For instance, there was the Fourth of July, officially celebrated in London. British Official—not American. The Americans are a patriotic people ”

“ The British were indeed very far superior to the Americans in every respect necessary to military operations, except the revivified courage and resolution, the result of sudden success after despair. ”

“ We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States have been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only—which is a very great mistake. ”

“ The Americans were the chief sufferers Their effect on America. by these orders, and the irritation already felt by them was so increased that it ultimately ripened into war. Their two special grievances were the constant search of their vessels for deserters, and the refusal of the British authorities to recognize their customhouse arrangements. By the English law as then existing an English subject could not get rid of his nationality. ”

“ The defeat of the Americans in Canada and the advantages gained by the British arms in the Jerseys, and indeed for some months in every other quarter, gave to the royal cause an air of triumph. ”

“ Does it not seem plain, therefore, in the shifting of places and combinations, that the British Empire and the United States are to be the chief factors in the new historical scenes of the twentieth century? ”

“ The world explains the British Empire of to-day, and the great American nation which has sprung from it, by a happy congenital talent for colonizing waste places, for self-government, for assimilating and making friends with the unprogressive peoples, by giving them a better government than they had before. And certainly without such gifts the British races could not have overspread so large a portion of the earth. ”

“ When I am asserting the fact that the people of England have a great interest in the well-being of the American Republic, I mean the people of England. I do not speak of the wearers of crowns or of coronets, but of the twenty millions of people in this country who live on their labour, and who, having no votes, are not counted in our political census, but without whom there could be no British nation at all. ”

“ In the United States there are several million British-born who are lost to the Empire for ever. Their sentiments are British, their sympathies are British, but their interests are here, and interest becomes sentiment. And observe that their children born here have sentiment as well as interest for the land of their birth.
“The British Empire is the largest in the world. In natural resources it is the wealthiest. It could support a population of hundreds of millions in a high degree of prosperity. The British are an able and intelligent people. The nation is rich. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course there is a vital difference between the British Empire and the United States; the people of the empire are subjects, and of the republic they are citizens. While Britain technically rules her four hundred million colored subjects from above downward America theoretically holds that all her people are free and equal. The American ideal is higher, the British more practical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A hundred thousand or more Americans go abroad every year, and all spend some time, as well as money, in Great Britain. Except a few favored ones, all tell the same story about the arrogance and sneers of the English. ”

“ He is then likely to perceive ‘the beauty of those British institutions’ which ensure the complete submission of the lower classes to the superior orders,—‘which assign to every man his proper place,’—which ‘teach the servants to be respectful to their masters,’ &c. The admiration of England and of the British government naturally begets a wish to establish, in America, a government after the British model ”

“ England is paying the penalty, in many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for the ruin of America as a nation: they have reason to be thankful that a few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the Americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial diversion of these bitter feelings, and made Great Britain not altogether odious to the Americans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are very close to England now, but we may be certain that, were we to press, as Germany pressed, on British maritime and industrial supremacy, we should be hated too. It is vain to disguise the fact that British fortunes in the past have hinged on American competition, and that the wisest and most sagacious Englishmen have been those who have been most alive to the fact. ”

“ Great-Britain also may be confirmed by you, that to be truly great and successful, she must be just: That to oppress America, is to violate her own honours, defeat her brightest prospects, and contract her spreading empire. ”

“ Thus after 1832 the previous sympathy for America of one section of the British governing class disappears. More--it is replaced by a critical, if not openly hostile attitude. Soon, with the rapid development of the power and wealth of the United States, governing-class England, of all factions save the Radical, came to view America just as it would have viewed any other rising nation, that is, as a problem to be studied for its influence on British prosperity and power. ”

“ However they may sneer at "benighted Britishers," and affect to pity and look down upon their oppressed and unhappy condition, the Americans secretly entertain a mighty deference for this country and the opinion of its people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just as geographically British territory surrounds and abuts on the United States on almost every side; just as commercially Great Britain has always hemmed in, dominated, and overshadowed the United States, so, historically, Great Britain has been the one and constant enemy, actual or potential, and her power a continual menace. How is it possible that the American should think of England as the Englishman thinks of the United States? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But of Americans I can speak with confidence and certainty; and so far from being sick of the part they have taken, they look upon the past madness of Great Britain, which has compelled them to overcome all the prejudices and weak passions, which heretofore bound them to her, and to become independent, as the greatest blessing which Providence ever bestowed upon them, from the first plantation in the new world. ”

“ But, contending for independency and total disconnection from England, as an Englishman, I cannot wish them success; for in a due constitutional dependency, including the ancient supremacy of this country in regulating their commerce and navigation, consists the mutual happiness and prosperity both of England and America. ”

“ Great numbers of our people are of British race, and though the fierce fighting animals of those happy islands are said to abate their native fire and intrepidity, when removed to a foreign clime, yet with the people it is not so; our neighbours of New England afford the world a convincing proof, that Britons, though a hundred years transplanted, and to the remotest part of the earth, may yet retain, even to the third and fourth descent, that zeal for the public good, that military prowess, and that undaunted spirit, which has in every age distinguished their nation. ”

“ And as the American people has formed no comprehension of the British Empire as a whole and is without any understanding of its spirit, so it has drawn for itself a caricature of the British character. ”

“ Long after 1812, we were extremely sensitive as regarded the nation that the majority of Americans looked upon as our hereditary foe, and the calls for war have been sounded in Congress and throughout the land far oftener than most people suspect. That such a calamity to mankind has been turned aside is due mainly to the good sense and mutual forbearance of the majority of people in both countries. England and the United States are the two great English-speaking nations. Together they are stronger than all the world combined. ”

“ Taking advantage of her position of authority — a position built on centuries of aesthetic tradition — England has let pass few opportunities to ridicule and disparage our activities in all lines of creative effort, and to impress upon us her own assumed cultural superiority. Americans, lacking that sense of security which long-established institutions would give them, have been influenced by the insular judgments of England, and, in an effort to pose as au courant of the achievements of the older world, have adopted in large degree the viewpoint of Great Britain. ”