British supremacy

“ Is it not true that if these principles had been universally adopted, half the bitterness which has been due to the rivalry of the European Powers for colonial possessions would have been obviated? To-day these principles are being advocated by many earnest men as representing the only mode by which the supremacy of western civilisation throughout the world can be reconciled with the avoidance of bitter rivalry and war between the civilised states ”

“ If any person cannot conceive the supremacy of Great Britain to exist, without the power of laying taxes to levy money upon us, the history of the colonies and of Great-Britain since their settlement will prove the contrary. He will there find the amazing [52] advantages arising to her from them—The constant exercise of her supremacy—and their filial submission to it, without a single rebellion, or even the thought of one, from the first emigration to this moment—and all these things have happened, without an instance of Great-Britain laying taxes to levy money upon them. ”

“ The fact is that the whole concept of modern statesmanship needs revision. But England has been, and is, the chief of sinners. Quite apart from the idea of a self-contained Empire there is the idea of Britain as an organized nation. And the British Empire as an organized Empire, organised for trade, for industry, for economic justice, for national defence, for the preservation of the world's peace, for the protection of the weak against the strong. ”

“ Clearly, so far as concerns the great dominions, the British Empire is far from being a military domination imposed by force. It is a voluntary partnership or brotherhood of free peoples, a Commonwealth of Nations. It is a wonderful achievement in the combination of unity and freedom, an experiment in the unforced co-operation of free States such as has never before been seen in human history. ”

“ Of late years American writers have come to tell Americans the truth; namely, that if the power of Great Britain were to be wiped out to-morrow and all her monuments were to perish except only those that she has built in India, the historians of future generations, looking only to those monuments in India, would pronounce Great Britain to have been, of all the Powers that have held great Empire since the beginning of time, the largest benefactor to the human race. But of this the American people as a whole knows nothing. It only knows that sepoys were blown from the mouths of British guns. ”

“ The strength of the British Empire is increasing, and, so far as human judgment can anticipate, will increase. If other European countries have grown in power, this country has yet more grown in power. ”

“ ON RESISTANCE TO GREAT BRITAIN From a speech in the Provincial Convention, Virginia, March, 1775
BY PATRICK HENRY I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. ”

“ To have given a savage continent an image of the British Constitution is, indeed, the greatest glory of the British crown, "a greater than any other nation ever acquired;" and from the consequences of the genius of Henry, Duke of Viseo, did the British American empire arise, an empire which, unless retarded by the illiberal and inhuman spirit of religious fanaticism, will in a few centuries, perhaps, be the glory of the world. ”

“ Now I come to the point where the two little Republics are brought face to face with the military forces of war-prepared England; when war is inevitable, when the immortal gods could not prevent a clash of arms; when the first shot is fired in a struggle destined to stir the world, humiliate the English officer and lord, and destroy the name and prestige of the great degenerate British Empire. ”

“ England and England’s flag must remain the symbol of our common patriotism. But the British Empire, the Empire of the future, the Empire rising with the sun of a new century, is founded in deeper principles than mere sentimental devotion to the land of our fathers. The principle underlying it is the liberty and brotherhood and welfare of man. We conquer and advance. Wild lands come under our sway. Savage races are subjugated or turn to us for protection. ”

“ To the Liberals it meant presumption, a love of show and of sounding titles, a readiness to annex to the right hand and the left, a proneness to intervene in foreign quarrels, "a policy of bluster," in short. But in the mouth of its exponents Imperialism meant a desire to knit more closely together Great Britain and her colonies; to treat the empire as a whole, and to govern it without any slavish subservience to the "parochial politics" of England; to make the British name respected by civilized and feared by barbarous neighbours. ”

“ We call upon you yourselves to witness our loyalty and attachment to the common interest of the whole Empire. Did we not, in the last war, add all the strength of this vast Continent to the force which repelled our common enemy? Did we not leave our native shores, and meet disease and death, to promote the success of British arms in foreign climates? ”

“ By such instances of public virtue, and the wisdom, vigour, and sound policy, which reign in the councils of his majesty, the British empire may ultimately triumph over its enemies, or at least be preserved entire amidst the general wreck of other nations. ”

“ It was just this consideration of national honour which brought not only England in particular, but the whole Empire, into the field as one man. Great armies sprang into existence before our very eyes. From every quarter of the globe offers of men, money, and supplies of all kinds were poured into our lap with a profusion which was as surprising as it was gratifying. We witnessed, in fact, what required a great national peril to bring to birth, the nascence of the British Empire as a fighting force. ”

“ We represent those vast imperial interests of the British Empire to which you are all proud to belong." It went just as flat. And then I added, "But what in the name of God would have become of the British Empire if it had not been for the village pump?" [Laughter and applause] The fact of the matter is, we are all out in this war. The man at the forge, in the mine, in the field, in the foundry, and the factory, even the Johnny in Rotten Row—they are all taking their little part. ”

“ For my part, I regard Great-Britain as a bulwark happily fixed between these colonies and the powerful nations of Europe. That kingdom is our advanced post or fortification, which remaining safe, we under its protection enjoying peace, may diffuse the blessings of religion, science, and liberty, thro' remote wildernesses. It is, therefore, incontestibly our duty and our interest, to support the strength of Great Britain. When, confiding in that strength, she begins to forget from whence it arose, it will be an easy thing to shew the source. ”

“ A new nation came into being. The friends of the North had triumphed.
Thus in addition to the play of diplomatic incidents, the incidental frictions, the effect on trade relations, the applications of British neutrality, and the general policy of the Government, there existed for Great Britain a great issue in the outcome of the Civil War--the issue of the adoption of democratic institutions. It affected at every turn British public attitude, creating an intensity and bitterness of tone, on both sides, unexampled in the expressions of a neutral people. ”

“ Great enterprises have ever attracted some base adherents, and these by their very presence seem to sully every achievement recorded of nations or cities. But to arraign the fountain and the end of the high action because of this baser alloy? To impeach on this account all the valour, all the wisdom long approved? Reply is impossible; the thing simply is not British.
Indeed, in very deed, it is for another cause, and for another ideal—an ideal that, gathering to itself down the ages the ardour of their battle-cries, falls in all the splendour of a new hope about the path of England now. ”

“ Well! let their armies come, their locusts pour,
Each British heart shall welcome them on shore,
Each British hand is arm'd in Britain's cause,
To guard their birth-right, liberty, and laws,
Rise! Britons, rise! attend fair freedom's cry,
The wretch who meanly fears deserves to die.
His kind protection 'gainst each latent foe,
Still may that Pow'r Omnipotent bestow,
Which first Britannia's sov'reign flag unfurl'd
So high, it flames a beacon to the World! ”

“ There is one people, and one only on earth, that has the ability and the purpose, the will and the force, the experience and the energy to make this gift to mankind, and that power is the British Empire. Whatever the resources or the ambition or the faculties of other great nations, none with the exception of Great Britain is so situated as to make it possible to do this. ”

“ These things prove abundantly that the rising greatness of the British nation is not owing to war and conquests, to enlarging its dominion by the sword, or subjecting the people of other countries to our power ”

“ 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. ”

“ What justifies Britain, as far as she has justification, is the remarkable wisdom and generosity with which she has extended, not onlylaw and order and protection to life and property, but freedom and autonomous self-government, to her colonies and subject populations, with certain tragic exceptions, about as fast as this could safely be done. It is that which holds the British empire together. Great irregular empire, stretching over a large part of the globe: but for this it would fall to pieces over night. It would be impossible for force, administered at the top, to hold it together. ”

“ That shrewd lesson in statescraft has been followed, perhaps unwittingly, by the British Empire in its expansion. Times out of number in Asia, Africa, and America, the foes of one day have been on the next enrolled under the standards of the King of England, and alongside men of his own blood have fought the battles of the Empire. ”

“ They are sentiments which ought never to have occurred even to his heart. I repudiate, I reject them. I remember there was a time when England, with not a tithe of her present resources, inspired by a patriotic cause, triumphantly encountered a world in arms. And, Sir, I believe now, if the occasion were fitting, if her independence or her honour were assailed, or her empire in danger, I believe that England would rise in the magnificence of her might, and struggle triumphantly for those objects for which men live and nations flourish. ”

“ To guard and preserve so vast and lucrative a dominion, to vindicate its integrity alike against outer foes and inner disaffection, to strengthen its unity by drawing closer the bonds, whether commercial or administrative, which linked its various parts to the mother country, became from this moment not only the aim of British statesmen, but the resolve of the British people. ”

“ In short, only in so far as her people have the unity of spirit and of will that mark a nation can Great Britain be either strong or just. The idea of the nation implies a work to be done by the British State, which has to be on the watch against challenge from a continental rival to Great Britain's right to the headship of her empire, and which at the same time has to give to that empire the direction without which it cannot remain united. ”

“ Thus was an extensive tract of country, bountifully endowed with natural gifts, and producing the necessaries and luxuries of life, including spices, metals, and precious stones, added to the British dominions; a numerous race of human beings, of a peculiarly interesting character, was delivered from the power of despotism, and brought under the advantages of the just government and equitable laws of Great Britain. ”

“ The style British Empire has become in time of stress a rallying cry for all the Queen's subjects, and the term has become sanctified by the noble, eager devotion shown to her Majesty, both as a beloved and venerated constitutional sovereign, and as the common bond of unity between those great self-governing daughter-nations which we in the past were accustomed to speak of as 'our colonies.' Consequently British Empire has henceforward a clearly defined, a distinct, a national significance, just as Imperialism has a special and peculiar meaning to all of us. ”

“ The creation of the British Empire has been simply a part (though, perhaps, the greatest part) of that outpouring of the European peoples which has, during the last four centuries, brought the whole world under the influence of western civilisation. That is a great achievement, and it has brought in sight the establishment of a real world-order. It is merely foolish to condemn the "lust of conquest" which has driven the European peoples to subdue the rest of the world, though, of course, we ought to condemn the cruelties and injustices by which it has sometimes been accompanied. ”