crC. ^/Putrv-e' ^rf(&iA&n4 
 
IHY AMERICANS 
 DISLIKE * * * * * * 
 ENGLAND * * * * 
 
 BY GEORGE BURTON ADAMS 
 
 Professor of History in Yale University J* & <# 
 
 Philadelphia j* j* ** j* j* 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS 
 
Copyrighted by Henry Altetnus, of Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsyl- 
 vania, on yuly 3, i8qb, in the One Hundred and Twentieth Year of 
 the Independence of the United States of America. 
 
 HENRY MORSE STEPHEN 
 
 HENRY ALTBMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND* 
 
 PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S message on the 
 Venezuelan boundary dispute revealed, like 
 a flash light, the existence of a widespread 
 popular dislike it would hardly be too strong to say 
 hatred of England in this country. There is no 
 other country in the world against which there could 
 have been excited by a similar message on a similar 
 issue so sudden and apparently universal a passion. 
 Fortunately the reaction came almost as quickly, and, 
 while it revealed the existence of an even stronger 
 public opinion against war, it revealed also a feeling 
 of love for England and a recognition of the essen- 
 tial unity between us. Whether the feeling of hos- 
 tility or of kinship is really the stronger with us, no 
 man can say with certainty. But it must be regarded 
 as proved beyond all doubt that there is in the minds 
 of a large proportion of our people, very probably 
 of a majority of them, a peculiar feeling of dislike 
 towards England, which they cherish towards no other 
 country, and a peculiar quickness to flame up into 
 open opposition to her whenever she seems to be 
 
 *This essay is the expansion of an article which appeared in 
 the New York Independent of January 2d, 1896, and some 
 paragraphs have been transferred directly from that article with 
 the kind permission of the editor. 
 
 (5) 
 
 514878 
 
6 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 threatening the slightest encroachment upon our 
 interests. 
 
 It is foolish to attempt to deny the existence of 
 this feeling, as some have done since the advent of 
 a calmer mood. There are, no doubt, some parts of 
 the land in which it is less strong than in others, and 
 some circles in which A *iUis* scarcely felt at all. There 
 are many thousands of us who recognize as among 
 the strongest of ties-those of common kiterest and 
 relationship which bin&^us to the motherland. But 
 j it is possible to find in every part of the country and 
 ^ in every class in the community evidences enough of 
 an almost inborn dislike of England. Men of the 
 highest intelligence, of the widest knowledge of 
 affairs, of the most" judicial calmness, of cosmopoli- 
 tan sympathies, men of some or all of these traits, 
 may be found in numbers who are profoundly in 
 earnest in believing that we must be constantly on 
 our guard against the designs of England, and who 
 hold it practically certain, though they would regard 
 a war with England as the greatest of misfortunes, 
 that such a war is inevitable at some not distant date 
 in the future. These men are no doubt a small 
 minority only of their class, but as we go down 
 towards the level of the average man, we may easily 
 make sure that those who hold such opinions rapidly 
 increase in numbers, and the fact is undeniable that 
 -4 the mass of Americans look upon England alone 
 among all the nations of the world as the one which 
 is naturally unfriendly to us, and which we must 
 always regard with suspicion. 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 7 
 
 To those of us who stop to consider what the next 
 century is likely to witness in the history of the world, 
 these feelings seem fraught with possibilities of the 
 greatest disaster to our nation, as well as to our race, 
 but if we would avoid these consequences, the first 
 necessity is to recognize the existence and to find out 
 the sources of the feelings which would lead to them. 
 
 In the first place, and lying at the foundation of all 
 else, is the fact that for more than a hundred years 
 we have been trained in this feeling by an almost 
 uninterrupted series of events. We may date the be- 
 ginning of it, for the present purpose, from the war of 
 the Revolution, though its roots lie much further back 
 in a sense of injustice which had long been growing, 
 and that, too, out of events entirely unconnected with 
 the questions of taxation which led to the Revolution. 
 
 So far as our first war with England has any influ- 
 ence upon feeling at present, it is of the old sort. 
 Americans pay far less attention than they ought to 
 the fact that English people now nearly all regard the 
 cause of the thirteen colonies as that of Englishmen 
 everywhere, and are inclined to say as one of them 
 did to me not long ago that the American Revolu- 
 tion brought to an end the last attempt at personal 
 government on the part of the sovereign in violation 
 of the spirit of the English constitution. 
 
 The feeling which the Revolutionary war left was 
 deepened by the retention of the Western posts, and 
 by the belief, whether right or wrong, that England 
 was plotting to turn loose upon our frontier settlers 
 
8 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 the horrors of Indian warfare. Recent careful inves- 
 tigations in the British official correspondence of the 
 period, preserved in the Canadian archives, have 
 shown that the worst of the charges, made at the 
 time and since, were unfounded, but that still there 
 was some ground for the suspicion that England had 
 other motives for the retention of the posts than 
 those which she stated to our government, and that very 
 likely she intended, in the event of another war with 
 us, to make sure at least that the Indians would not be 
 
 ^ among her enemies. For our present purpose, how- 
 ever, the important fact is that these horrible charges 
 against England were implicitly believed a hundred 
 years ago, and pas*sed into our view of the history of 
 the period. They have been repeated in book after 
 book, and are still taught and believed, though with- 
 \j out the special passion which they once aroused. 
 They stand now merely as a part of the general 
 indictment. 
 
 We have lately celebrated, with general approval, 
 the centennial of the conclusion of Jay's treaty, which 
 put our relations with England on a better footing 
 than before. In 1795, however, the conditions of 
 that treaty, though they were in general acceptable 
 to the commercial interests of the country, seemed 
 to the mass of the people to surrender far more than 
 was gained, and were greeted with a storm of popular 
 indignation which in several places resulted in mob 
 violence. This feeling affected even the popularity 
 
 y of Washington, and aided in the overthrow of the 
 Federalist party. The advantages which the treaty 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 9 
 
 secured were not so quickly recognized, and its 
 temporary influence was to keep alive the bitterness 
 and hostility which the Revolution had created. 
 
 It was but a short time from this to the hostility 
 which was created by the English misuse of the right 
 of search, by the impressment of American seamen, 
 and by the violent disregard of American commer--* 
 cial rights, followed by the war of 1812. It is very 
 true that " the war of 1812 was waged by one free 
 people against another free people in the interest of 
 Napoleon, the real enemy of them both. It diverted 
 England's strength at a time when it was sorely 
 needed in Europe, and it might have been prevented 
 at any time before 1812 by a few conciliatory words 
 followed by conciliatory deeds."* It is very true 
 also that England regarded the war as a mere episode, 
 of the larger struggle, and that Englishmen hardly 
 remember it now. But it is just as true, on the other 
 hand, that the war forms another stage in our history 
 of continuous disagreement with England, and ./ 
 serves to confirm the belief that her permanent atti- y, 
 tude towards us is unfriendly. Its events also feed 
 the confidence in our ability to give the mother land 
 the sound drubbing it is thought she needs a confi- 
 dence which is a very important consideration in its 
 bearing on our attitude towards her. 
 
 England experienced the evil results of her misuse 
 of the right of search when she began her earnest 
 efforts to suppress the slave trade, and, however much 
 
 *Channing: The United States of America. 1765-1865. 
 p. 189. 
 
10 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 Americans may have sympathized with her purpose, 
 their dislike of England was not lessened by her 
 efforts to carry it out. The various boundary dis- 
 putes in the middle of the century served to keep the 
 feeling alive, and if the " baked beans " or " Aroos- 
 took " war was ridiculous, there was some spirit be- 
 hind it, and the excitement of the " fifty-four forty, 
 or fight" period was, in some respects, like that 
 which followed the President's Venezuelan message. 
 
 So much for the history which preceded the civil 
 war. What has been here said on the facts of this 
 period must not be understood to imply that Eng- 
 land 's action, or what was supposed to be 
 England's action, in these cases, still rankles in our 
 hearts, and contributes directly to the feeling which 
 so many now cherish. It would be very difficult, I 
 think, to find a man who now cares very much about 
 any of these things, or who looks at any of them in 
 the light in which his grandfather regarded them. 
 If there were nothing more than this to be said of 
 the causes of the attitude of the majority of Ameri- 
 cans towards England, there would be nothing to be 
 said. There would be no active feeling of dislike to 
 account for. 
 
 But there is a way in which these events of some- 
 what ancient history do have an important bearing 
 on the present attitude of our people. They lie, as 
 has been said above, at the foundation of all the rest. 
 They may not lead any one now to an actual desire 
 for revenge, but they have created a hereditary method 
 of judgment. They have a strong influence on the 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. II 
 
 belief that England is always our enemy, and they 
 are the material out of which the traditional feeling 
 has been formed that we must always look upon the 
 designs of the British government with suspicion. 
 
 This feeling has lately been very concisely put in a 
 public address by Senator Hawley of Connecticut, 
 whose words are better evidence on this point than 
 those of some others, because he can hardly be classed 
 among the blatant and demagogic jingoes who de- 
 claim for popular effect. He says : " The English 
 people are a very good people, but they are not the 
 British government. That is another thing ; and in 
 every emergency with which the United States has 
 been confronted, the British government has been 
 our enemy. " Now whether this is true historically 
 or not true and no doubt much could be said upon 
 the other side the point with which we are here 
 concerned is that it is popularly believed. It repre- 
 sents the a priori attitude of the average American 
 with regard to every question which concerns our re- 
 lations with Great Britain. For this condition of 
 mind these facts of our past history are mainly re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 In the discussions ,of this subject which have re- ^$ 
 cently taken place, many writers and speakers have 
 been disposed to lay the blame for the continued ' 
 influence of these historical events upon the teaching 
 of United States history in our public schools, es- 
 pecially upon the partial presentation of the facts in 
 the text-books in use, and upon the attitude of the 
 teacher in the class-room. Something of the result, 
 
12 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 which the public schools unquestionably produce, is 
 very probably due to these conditions. Many 
 school histories do convey wrong impressions to the 
 X prejudice of England, and probably no one, not 
 even the very best yet written, has told the whole 
 truth as it will one day be told. But if we will look 
 a little below the surface, I think we shall see at 
 once that it makes comparatively little difference in 
 what form the particular text-book in use presents the 
 facts. Mr. Goldwin Smith has recently pointed 
 out in an English journal that some of our most 
 widely used school histories display no hostility to 
 England in their forms of statement. This is cer- 
 tainly as it should be, and it is to be hoped that 
 these books may set the fashion for the future. But 
 this does not cover the whole case. It is not possi- 
 ble for an American boy, at the impressionable 
 public school age, to read the bare facts of the Revo- 
 lutionary war, of the war of 1812 and its prelude, 
 and of our civil war, without a feeling that England 
 is our hereditary enemy, or without a wish, boy- 
 fashion, for another war with her to settle old scores. 
 This at least is the result in most cases. The fact is 
 easy enough of confirmation. In the war plays of 
 our boys, the enemy's army, if it is a foreign war, is 
 always the British army. I was greatly amused re- 
 cently to find, in the course of some inquiries in re- 
 gard to this matter, certain small but violent enemies 
 of England in the family of a friend whose own 
 views are very strongly of the opposite kind. In 
 many such cases the boyish feeling will be speedily 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 13 
 
 outgrown when a more reflective study of our history 
 becomes possible. But in many more it is not out- 
 grown and forms a strong antecedent prejudice under X 
 the influence of which every later opinion takes 
 its shape. 
 
 The attitude of the teacher in the class-room is of 
 much greater importance than the attitude of the text- 
 book. The real interpretation of the facts which 
 the child carries away with him is far more likely to 
 be that which the teacher presents, certainly that 
 which the skillful teacher presents, than that of the 
 book. Here I may be allowed, perhaps, to point out 
 in passing that no class among us possesses a better 
 opportunity, probably none so good, to create a right 
 feeling towards England for the future as the public 
 school teachers of the 'country. This cannot be 
 done by changing the facts of our history. It is to 
 be done partly by putting them in their right light, 
 and partly by showing how deeply and in how many 
 ways we are in the debt of England, especially for 
 our institutions, and how greatly she is like us, and 
 how many interests we have in common. 
 
 With the civil war period of our history, we come 
 to facts which not merely serve as an additional count 
 in the historical indictment, but which are also an 
 active cause of bitter feeling at the present time; 
 indeed, the attitude of England during that struggle 
 towards the government of the North has far more 
 direct influence in creating a feeling of dislike to- - v 
 day than all the earlier incidents of our history to- 
 
14 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 / gather. Thousands of men who can forgive everything 
 else cannot forgive that. The feeling towards the 
 rebels has practically disappeared, even that towards 
 the "copperheads" has ceased to show itself; but 
 one can hear on every hand still, and from the best 
 of men, expression of the old feeling in regard to 
 England ; many, who felt it strongly at the time, 
 hold it almost or quite as strongly now, and it has 
 become the traditional feeling with the second 
 generation. 
 
 It is easy enough to show historically, and it 
 ought to be done repeatedly, that only a small 
 minority of the people of England were hostile to the 
 * Union. The words of our great and influential 
 friends in that country we cannot read even after 
 this lapse of time without a thrill of gratitude. The 
 noble self-renunciation of the suffering cotton oper- 
 atives in declaring that they were ready to starve 
 rather than to be used as a pretext for any action 
 which would lead to the perpetuation of slavery, we 
 recognize as equal in its spirit to any act of our own 
 citizens. But notwithstanding the recognition of 
 these facts, the majority of Americans agree with 
 the words of Senator Hawley just quoted. The 
 J English people may be our very good friends, but 
 they have not been able to control their government, 
 4 and it is with the government that we have had to 
 reckon and shall have to reckon in the future. 
 
 The simple fact is that feeling during the war was 
 so intense and bitter a feeling deepened by the be- 
 lief that the British government, out of dislike or 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 15 
 
 hostility towards the Union, stood ready to prove 
 itself untrue to all its professions on the subject of 
 slavery and this feeling survives still in the breasts 
 of so many then living and engaged with all that 
 they held dear in the desperate struggle, and has 
 passed as an immediate and living belief to so many 
 of their children that no amount of argument will 
 serve to destroy it. 
 
 Another feeling which the civil war period pro- 
 duced in regard to our foreign relations is comple- 
 mentary to this and equally significant. The events 
 of that time are responsible for the popular belief 
 that Russia is our only firm friend among the Euro- 
 pean nations, and that in any future contest with 
 England she is our natural ally, as well as for the 
 further belief that in any future struggle between 
 Russia and England our natural place is on the side 
 of Russia. Whether in this latter case the feeling 
 would be strong enough to lead to any direct action 
 may be doubtful, but that it is cherished by a con- 
 siderable number of our people is certain. It is 
 merely the fact that during the time of our supreme 
 danger Russia was the only great Power that showed 
 an actively friendly disposition towards the govern- 
 ment of the North, which is the source of this 
 feeling. 
 
 It would have been just as easy, it would indeed 
 have been far easier, for England to have gained this 
 advantage for herself. The civil war offered her the 
 opportunity to wipe the past entirely away, and to se- 
 cure the most cordial friendship and support of the 
 
1 6 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 American people for all the future. We hardly state 
 the case too strongly when we assert that it is the 
 X greatest mistake of England's foreign policy during 
 the century that she chose to do the opposite. This 
 is certainly true if the not distant future is to witness, 
 as many signs seem to indicate that it will, a great 
 struggle of races for the virtual control of the world. 
 If such a struggle should come on in any form, of 
 physical force or of peaceful competition, the best 
 and almost the only hope of victory for the scattered 
 and exposed Anglo-Saxon race lies in the cordial 
 
 I union of all its parts in support of their common 
 
 I interests. 
 
 If the mass of the English people had controlled 
 the foreign policy of their government thirty years 
 ago, this mistake would not have been committed. 
 But they did not, and the small minority who ruled 
 England then were actuated partly, in all probability, 
 by a desire to see the Union divided, but perhaps 
 even more by a kind of hereditary feeling of con- 
 tempt for Americans, the supercilious air of superiority 
 which England has so often assumed towards 
 America, and certain classes of Englishmen towards 
 Americans. The latest writer on the history of the 
 United States has referred to this as among the cir- 
 cumstances which aided in bringing about the war 
 of 1812.* That the remembrance of such things 
 enters as a frequent, though minor element on our 
 side, into the popular feeling towards England 
 is probably true. Mr. James Bryce, indeed, in a 
 
 * Charming: The United States of America, p. 188. 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 17 
 
 recent article, disavows this attitude for the English 
 of the present generation. He says: "English 
 travellers and writers used no doubt formerly to 
 'Assume airs of supercilious condescension which 
 must have been offensive to Americans. But these 
 airs were dropped twenty or thirty years ago." 
 Mr. Bryce is hardly correct in this statement, 
 if numerous stories afloat in this country are to 
 be trusted ; indeed, there seems to be something 
 of this character ineradicabiy fixed in the nature 
 of the Englishman, for it is this attitude of insular 
 superiority and contempt for everything foreign 
 that makes the British traveller most cordially de- 
 tested everywhere on the face of the earth. There 
 has been certainly a great change in this regard in 
 the last thirty years so far as America is concerned, 
 but fully half the change has been in the feelings of 
 Americans about these British weaknesses. They no 
 longer touch us, as they once did, on a sore spot, but 
 rather on the humorous side, and would scarcely be 
 worth notice in this connection but for the proba- 
 bility of their influence in determining England's 
 position in the civil war period, and for complete- 
 ness' sake, since it is likely that they do still influence 
 the feeling of individuals. 
 
 It is more profitable to turn to another of the com- 
 plex causes of the popular feeling towards England, 
 the belief in the domineering and monopolizing 
 character of England's policy everywhere in the 
 world. In its most general form, as it is held by 
 
 2 
 
l8 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 the majority of Americans, this belief is probably the | 
 influence which has more to do than all others in 
 creating the current prejudice. England is 
 thoroughly selfish. She stands ready to take every 
 advantage, with no scruples of conscience, of weaker 
 races. She would not hesitate to destroy the indus- 
 try or commerce of any foreign state if she could 
 profit by the result. She is trying to annex every- 1 
 thing for which she can advance a plausible pretext,! 
 or, in a somewhat literal sense of the slang phrase,/ 
 she 4< wants the earth," and she will stick at nothing 
 in her efforts to get it. This is the sum of the in-] 
 dictment, and the majority of Americans believe itJ 
 
 The history of the last two hundred years, as it is 
 interpreted this side the Atlantic, goes far to sustain 
 this belief. But more important as immediate causes 
 of it, are two matters in which most Americans have 
 a present interest, and which serve at least to keep 
 the feeling alive. 
 
 The first of these is the case of Ireland. Of 
 course, I leave entirely out of this account the ille- 
 gitimate influence of the large Irish vote upon poli- 
 ticians who do not care for the results of their words 
 or acts if they can gain a present success. We are 
 concerned here not with an artificial jingo sentiment 
 which may be manufactured to order to influence an 
 election, but with the real sentiment which lies back 
 of it, and which alone renders such abuses possible. 
 Entirely independent of this artificial sentiment, 
 there is a large and legitimate influence of the Irish 
 question upon the general current of our feeling in 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 19 
 
 regard to England. This is partly due to the share 
 which numerous Irishmen and men of Irish descent, 
 who have risen to great and deserved influence in * 
 hundreds of communities throughout the country, 
 have had in shaping public opinion. It is also partly 
 due to the almost universal belief in this country 
 that Ireland has been very unjustly treated by Eng- 
 land, and is so still ; for Americans find it very hard 
 to understand the English fear of Home Rule. They 
 do not appreciate the grounds of the conviction that 
 Home Rule would bring about the dissolution of the* 
 Empire, nor the failure of the Englishman to under- * 
 stand the way in which a federal system of govern- 
 ment works in practice. No other single case has 
 has had anything like so much to do with creating 
 the general opinion among us that England is the ^> 
 oppressor of feeble races, as her conduct in Ireland. 
 
 This opinion in regard to the general character 
 of England's policy is reinforced by other recent 
 cases, like that of the treatment of Portugal a half 
 dozen years ago, and it will be often found cher- 
 ished by men who have no other reason to give you 
 for their dislike of England. 
 
 In the second place, the teaching of the protec- 
 tionist party has had, beyond all doubt, a very de- 
 cided influence in this same direction. This fact is 
 entirely independent of the question whether the 
 protectionist doctrine is right or wrong. Orators 
 and newspapers have labored to teach the people y 
 that England is the decided foe of our industries, 
 seeking by every means, open and secret, to destroy 
 
2O WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 them, and with no slight effect. Any one, who has 
 not taken the pains to examine the fact, would be 
 greatly surprised at the number of persons who would 
 be very angry if they were called ignorant, or easily 
 gulled, who nevertheless implicitly believe in the 
 donations of gold by the Cobden Club to aid in the 
 war upon American manufactures. The circulation 
 of pamphlets in favor of free trade, bearing the 
 imprint of the Cobden Club, whatever good it 
 may have done in individual cases, has probably on 
 the whole done more harm than good, especially in 
 helping to sustain the belief that the English com- 
 mercial classes are the active allies of our own free 
 traders in their supposed war on American manufac- 
 tures. 
 
 These arguments of the protectionist orators have 
 a double interest in this connection. They serve, 
 unquestionably, to keep alive a feeling of antipathy 
 to England in a portion of the nation ; but on the 
 other hand they draw their support and gain their 
 credence from the previously existing common judg- 
 ment of the people of the thoroughly selfish char- 
 acter of England's general policy. It is merely one 
 way in which this opinion manifests itself, though it 
 also acts in a reflex way to keep the parent feeling 
 alive.* 
 
 *It is interesting to notice that the advocates of free coinage 
 of silver mnke spasmodic efforts every now and then to enlist 
 the same belief in the service of their cause. During the 
 present writing, I have had sent rne a copy of a doggerel, 
 ' Song for Free Silver in a Free Nation," to be sung to the 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 21 
 
 I think it is not wrong to say that this feeling of 
 opposition to what is thought to be England's 
 monopolizing tendency is the most universally cher- 
 ished of all the elements which go to make up the 
 popular dislike which is felt towards her. I have 
 been surprised to see the forms which this belief has 
 taken in the case of men who have had, as I have 
 said, nothing else to urge against her, and who 
 might have been expected, from their position and 
 opportunities for information, to have a more correct 
 knowledge of the policy which England is at present 
 really following. For there is no question but that a 
 distinction should be made between the present and 
 the past in this matter, though the mass of Americans 
 fail to make it. Those who are endeavoring to 
 make clear to us the methods and results of British 
 rule in India and in Egypt are doing a very use- 
 ful piece of work. The argument that many of the 
 annexations of the past have been really forced upon 
 the Empire has very little weight with us, though it 
 
 tune of Marching Through Georgia, which contains the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 There's a conflict with Old England, boys, again on Western 
 
 shores, 
 
 There's a battle with a nation that our fathers fought of yore, 
 And we'll sweep her and her Tories, as our fathers did before, 
 Off the land bordered easterly by Georgia. 
 
 Ye men of Northern firmness and ye men of Southern fire, 
 Ye men of Western daring all ye Nation's sons and sires, 
 Let us once again teach England not to rouse a Nation's ire, 
 From the West to the further coast of Georgia. 
 
22 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 is certainly true. No great Empire has ever existed 
 which has not been compelled to follow this policy, 
 and in the case of the Empire \vhich presents the 
 nearest parallel in history to the British Empire, the 
 Roman, it was because of its inability to follow this 
 policy any further that it was in the end overthrown. 
 Nor do we generally make the distinction which 
 ought to be clear to us, between the passion for 
 expansion in the colonies themselves and that in the 
 mother country. The cases which illustrate this are, 
 however, numerous enough in the last thirty years. 
 The Fiji Islands and New Guinea are directly to the 
 point, and the cases in South Africa still more so, 
 because there the home government never yielded to 
 the pressure of the colonies unfortunately, we are 
 tempted to say, for if it had, the dangers which now 
 threaten the Anglo-Saxon occupation of that part of 
 the world would never have arisen. 
 
 But these considerations, however true they may 
 \ be, have as yet but little weight with us, and, as has 
 j ! been said, it is this belief in England's thorough sel- 
 I fishness that has more to do than all else with sustain- 
 i ing the popular judgment behind the policy which 
 passes to-day as the Monroe Doctrine, and it largely 
 . explains why we seem to have one doctrine for Eng- 
 land and another for other nations. There is a fixed 
 .determination in the will of the people of this country 
 ahat on the American continents this selfish policy of 
 England shall find no field for its exercise. If the 
 premises on which this judgment rests were correct, 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 23 
 
 there is no one who would not be ready to defend 
 the conclusion with all his might. 
 
 There is another tendency among us in recent 
 times which must be noticed because it is directly con- 
 nected with this last, and has much to do, though as 
 yet unconsciously, with the influence which the feeling 
 just spoken of is likely to have on our future action. 
 
 No one can have watched carefully the currents of 
 popular sentiment among us for the past quarter of a 
 century without being aware that there is a steadily 
 growing interest on the part of the mass of Ameri- 
 cans in questions of foreign affairs, not merely our 
 own, but those of other people, and that there is with 
 this an increasing tendency to believe that we have 
 a right, and that, in certain contingencies, we ought 
 to interfere in affairs that are not primarily our own. 
 Samoa and Hawaii, Armenia and Cuba and these 
 are not the only cases have not claimed so much of 
 the public attention merely because of the claptrap 
 of jingo politicians, however much of this there may 
 have been about the actual steps taken. They have 
 had behind them all a common sentiment and a real 
 public feeling which rendered possible the noise of 
 the jingoes, and they are signs of a current which is 
 beginning to run steadily in our national life. If we 
 analyze these cases we can find easily what this com- 
 mon sentiment is. It is the feeling that justice ought 
 to be done, that the weak should be protected, that 
 there should be somewhere in the world a nation able 
 and willing to call the oppressor to a halt in the selfish 
 encroachments on the rights of others which his 
 
24 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 power allows him, and finally that the United States 
 is of all nations called to this mission. This feeling 
 may be as yet half unconscious, it may be ignorant 
 and often mistaken in its facts, and subject to great 
 abuse by the designing politician and trader, but it 
 would be a great mistake not to see that it has begun 
 to form, and that it is sure to grow. It is in the main 
 a right sentiment and its influence is likely to be for 
 the good of the world, where the facts are rightly 
 understood. If it is easily misled as to the facts, 
 there is all the more necessity that the real conditions 
 of every case should be clearly and fully set forth by 
 those who know them. However this may be, it 
 seems to me clear that this sentiment, whether well 
 instructed or ignorant, is going to have an increasing 
 ^influence on our foreign policy in the future, and that 
 it must be reckoned with by any nation which is 
 immediately interested in that policy. 
 
 Its bearing on the present subject is direct. Here 
 is the root of the most living and active of all the 
 elements which go to create the suspicion which is 
 popularly entertained of England's intentions. Could 
 the mass of Americans be convinced that England's 
 policy is the reverse of selfish, that she is as willing 
 to be fair and just as we fondly imagine we are our- 
 selves, that she is ready to assist in protecting the 
 weak, and that, so far from being an oppressor, she 
 is willing to aid in bringing the oppression of others 
 to an end, could Americans be convinced of these 
 things, there would be a far stronger tide of popular 
 feeling in her favor and towards active friendship 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 25 
 
 i 
 
 with her than there is at present. Nor would the 
 work of conviction be a difficult one.* 
 
 Here, then, is the conclusion of the matter. 
 
 In the first place, our people have behind them a 
 hundred years of training by the uninterrupted facts 
 of our experience in a certain habit of judgment in 
 regard to England's attitude towards us. It has be- 
 come, we may say, a kind of hereditary tendency. 
 This is the interpretation of things which is presented 
 to the schoolboy when he gets his first impressions of 
 our history, and the citizen, in the majority of cases, 
 begins to form his opinions on public questions with 
 
 * In this connection the following quotation is interesting. It 
 is from a distinguished English wriier on colonial subjects, who 
 is disposed to criticise the tendency which he believes to exist 
 among his countrymen. 
 
 " In England the present age is one in which the spirit of 
 humanity is carried almost to an extreme. Generous sympathy 
 with weakness and suffering in any form goes out so far that it 
 is almost considered a virtue to be weak and a crime to be 
 strong. Whenever there is a point at issue between a small 
 community and a great one, it seems to be assumed that the 
 latter must be in the wrong; and, as their own nation is. strong, 
 Englishmen are inclined to take it for granted, that, whenever 
 friction arises between Great Britain and a small foreign power 
 or between the mother country and one of her colonies or 
 dependencies, the fault must be on the side of the British gov- 
 ernment. They do not consider that strength in a race or nation 
 implies merit, physical, moral, or intellectual; and that a mode 
 of reasoning which invariably condemns the stronger party, 
 may be generous, but is certainly untrue alike to history and to 
 common sense." C. P. Lucas : Introduction to Lewis's Essay 
 on the Government of Dependencies, p. xxxviii. 
 
26 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 a natural bias of this sort. In the second place, this 
 antecedent prejudice is reinforced and in many cases 
 turned into a positive belief by certain present causes, 
 partly acts or supposed acts of England or the gen- 
 eral idea entertained of her policy, and partly acts 
 of our own politicians. 
 
 The result 'is two fold. 
 
 There is on the part of many a positive dislike of 
 England, a readiness to accept the worst interpreta- 
 tion of any act of hers, a belief that she is particu- 
 larly our enemy and would do anything that she 
 could to embarass or injure us, and consequently 
 a readiness to break out into open hostility whenever 
 she seems inclined to encroach upon our interests 
 even in the slightest way. On the part of many 
 more, probably a much larger number, who do not 
 feel this positive dislike or actual hostility, there 
 is still a feeling of suspicion, a conviction that Eng- 
 land is capable of much evil, that she is not kindly 
 disposed towards us, and that she must be carefully 
 watched. This is a kind of latent feeling, which might 
 not have much influence in beginning a quarrel, but 
 which could be easily swept over into active hostility 
 after a disagreement had begun. 
 
 In a general conclusion the other side must not be 
 overlooked. There is certainly on the part of many 
 a very strong liking for England, a real feeling of 
 the tie of kinship, and a more just recognition of the 
 true identity of interest between the two halves 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race. This feeling is undoubt- 
 edly stronger in the East than in the West, and 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 27 
 
 is perhaps strongest within the limits of the original 
 thirteen colonies. It is certainly an especially 
 strong feeling with many who are proud of their 
 colonial descent. It is to be found everywhere, how- 
 ever, among the more intelligent and educated classes 
 of the nation, and it is happily an increasing feeling. 
 
 This is reinforced by the opinion of the com- 
 mercial classes of the large cities an opinion 
 which had much to do with the reaction which fol- 
 lowed so quickly upon the first emotion excited by 
 President Cleveland's message. This opinion is no 
 doubt somewhat determined by the interests of the 
 individuals which make up the class, but it is also 
 true that they are in a position to realize most 
 clearly the conditions of essential unity in the race. 
 
 If one asks which of these two tendencies is the 
 stronger, the answer must be, as was said at the out- 
 set, that no one can tell. The probability is, 
 however, that the feeling of dislike is still the 
 stronger, that the friends of England are still in the 
 minority, and, though they may be relatively stronger 
 than at the beginning of the war of 1812, that the 
 conditions of that war would be virtually repeated in 
 the isolation and powerlessness of this class, if hostili- 
 ties should every begin again between the two coun- 
 tries. That this is probably the case is indicated by 
 the fact that a very considerable number of persons 
 can be found, belonging to the classes in which the 
 feeling is most favorable to England, who argue with 
 some skill and often with much vehemence in support 
 of the popular view in regard to England. 
 
j 
 
 28 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 The practical conclusion is that the prevailing 
 feeling in this country is still unfavorable to England, 
 and she must take the fact into account in her 
 reckonings. If she counts upon a sense of race rela- 
 tionship and kinship, a kind of mother-and-daughter 
 , feeling, she is counting upon something which exists 
 ^ in thousands of individual cases, but which does not 
 exist as a general public feeling, and which would 
 have scarcely an appreciable influence in determining 
 our action in times of great excitement. 
 
 The attempt has been made in this essay to show 
 that the common feeling in this country towards 
 England has a foundation in our past history and in 
 active contemporary causes, but it is hardly possible 
 that any one, who can think clearly and who will look 
 out calmly upon the probable future of the world, 
 can avoid the belief that it is in the main a really 
 mistaken feeling, and that it is in every regard to 
 be deplored. 
 
 Some of the consequences to which it might easily 
 lead us are horrible to contemplate. Here are two 
 of them which have recently been discussed as cer- 
 tainties in case of a war with England. The first is 
 the adoption, as our chief reliance in such a war, of 
 a means of injuring enemies which nearly all civil- 
 ized nations agreed, forty years ago, to abandon as 
 too barbarous for longer use that is, privateering, or 
 legalized piracy. The second is an alliance with 
 Russia in a common war upon the British Empire. 
 This means an alliance with the one most dangerous 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 29 
 
 Power which represents everything, and which is 
 most zealously engaged in spreading everything, in 
 government and civilization to which we are firmly 
 opposed an alliance to make war upon the Power 
 which is most actively engaged in every quarter of 
 the globe in advancing the ideas in which we our- 
 selves thoroughly believe. 
 
 For we ought to remember that England stands 
 for the same things throughout the world for which 
 we stand. Her faults are great and not to be de- 
 nied ; but we should not forget that they are our 
 faults as well. She may be arrogant and overbearing ; 
 but we have not to go so very far back in our history 
 to find the same traits displayed in our own public 
 utterances. She may have borne hard upon barba- 
 rous races under her rule ; but what have we to say 
 of our own Indian policy? She may browbeat 
 weaker nations and may be greedy of land ; but with 
 the crime of the Mexican war to our account, we 
 have not many stones to throw at England. These 
 very faults carry with them the proof of our kinship, 
 and, when all is said, England stands for far more 
 of the things that we believe to be of the highest 
 good for men, for far more of the things on which we 
 pride ourselves, than does any other nation in the 
 world. If we wish to make these things prevail in 
 the world and to give men liberty and justice and 
 the power to rule themselves, our place is on the side 
 of England. If we wish to do our best to help des- 
 potism to prevail and to turn men back from the goal 
 which they are even now nearing to struggle through 
 
30 WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 another eighteenth century of darkness and revolutions 
 to come up to it again, then we ought to be on the side 
 of Russia to help her destroy the British Empire. 
 
 And now I may be pardoned, perhaps, a word to 
 the other side. 
 
 Very many among us recognize the incompleteness 
 and the mistaken grounds of the popular indictment 
 of England, and feel strongly on the other hand the 
 bonds of common interest between us. Some of us 
 consider it, too, almost as great a misfortune that we 
 should have been taught by events to believe Russia 
 our natural ally, as that we should learn to look upon 
 England as our hereditary enemy. But however true 
 it may be that the popular feeling towards England 
 is to be deplored, it is nevertheless a fact, and it can- 
 not easily be changed. The voice of moderation 
 may make itself heard in crises like that through 
 which we have just passed with good effect, but the 
 feeling will remain and argument can do but little to 
 modify it. The responsibility for bringing about a 
 change must rest very largely with England. All 
 that could be done in this country taken together 
 would have far less influence in this direction than a 
 single clear and unmistakable act to show that Eng- 
 land, not the English people, but the British govern- 
 ment as well, regards the United States as its nearest 
 friend, and is disposed to consider our interests its 
 own. It might very easily have done this during 
 our civil war, as has been said ; opportunities to do 
 it will not be wanting in the future. 
 
WHY AMERICANS DISLIKE ENGLAND. 3! 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that it is altogether worth 
 the while of the British government to do this. As 
 we look forward to the next century, it seems the 
 height of folly for England to face the new diffi- 
 culties and far-reaching changes which are coming 
 on, with this great chasm in the Anglo-Saxon world 
 unclosed, when it would be such a simple matter for 
 her to close it 'completely. The way is largely pre- 
 pared in advance. The events of the past winter 
 will themselves serve as a preparation, and it is not 
 unlikely that the response to any such action of Eng- 
 land would surprise us all. 
 
 As for ourselves, in the narrower sense, it is no 
 doubt true that, in iny possible future, our position 
 is far more secure than that of England, and yet it is 
 certain that our own best and highest interests, jind 
 those of all men ^ ver y wnere j demand the ui)ity*anS 
 common action of the Anglo-Saxon race. ^ 
 
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