Works
Constitutional History of Spain.
Gladstone.
Southern States of the American Union [just issued, 1895].
Relations Between England and America23
(From Gladstone.)
By his frank utterances, expressive of his admiration of the people and the institutions of the United States, he has provoked adverse criticism from a portion of the English press. He thinks the Senate of the United States “the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics,” and the American constitution “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man,” and that “its exemption from formal change, has certainly proved the sagacity of its constructors and the stubborn strength of the fabric.”
In the same essay—Kin Beyond Sea—speaking of our future, he says, “She will probably become what we are now, the head servant in the great household of the world, the employer of all employed; because her service will be the most and the ablest.” In 1856, when the relations between Great Britain and the United States became considerably strained, in an able speech may be found this sentence: “It appears to me that the two cardinal aims that we ought to keep in view in the discussion of this question are peace and a thoroughly cordial understanding with America for one, the honor and fame of England for the other.”
In 1884, he wrote: “The convulsion of that country between 1861 and 1865 was perhaps the most frightful which ever assailed a national existence. The efforts which were made on both sides were marked. The exertions by which alone the movement was put down were not only extraordinary, they were what antecedently would have been called impossible; and they were only rendered possible by the fact that they proceeded from a nation where every capable citizen was enfranchised and had a direct and an energetic interest in the well-being and unity of the State.” “No hardier republicanism was generated in New England than in the slave States of the South, which produced so many of the great statesmen of America.”
In a conversation with Mr. Gladstone in 1887, he referred to the enormous power and responsibilities of the United States, and suggested that a desideratum was a new unity between our two countries. We had that of race and language, but we needed a moral unity of English-speaking people for the success of freedom.
The English or Anglo-Saxon race is essentially the same in its more distinguishing characteristics. Unity of language creates unity of thought, of literature, and largely unity of civilization and of institutions. It facilitates social and commercial intercourse, and must produce still more marked political phenomena. We profit naturally by inventions, by discoveries, by constitutional struggles, by civil and religious achievements, by lessons of traditions, by landmarks of usage and prescription. Magna Charta, Petition of Right, Habeas Corpus, what O’Connell even called the “glorious Revolution of 1688,” are as much American as English.
England claims to have originated the representative system six hundred years ago. Our ancestors brought to this soil, “singularly suited for their growth, all that was democratic in the policy of England and all that was Protestant in her religion.” Our revolution, like that of 1688, was in the main a vindication of liberties inherited. In freedom of religion, in local self-government, and somewhat in state autonomy, our forefathers constructed for themselves; but nearly all the personal guarantees, of which we so much boast on our national anniversaries, were borrowed from the mother country.
Footnote
23 By permission of B. F. Johnson and Co., Richmond, Va.