America, is a possibility, and ought to become a reality, because it is based, as should be all sound political combinations, on community of interests and on similarity of sentiment. The two countries are bound together by community of interest. The great common interest of England and of the United States is the maintenance of peace. The enforcement of the pax Britannica throughout the British empire and the maintenance of civilized order throughout the length and breadth of the United States-and this without recourse to conscription-is the main service which the AngloSaxon race renders to civilization. Now an alliance of the two countries which combined together could always assert an effective command of the seas would permanently secure the peace of a large portion of the world. The so-called Monroe Doctrine, again, has at this moment an unpleasant sound to English ears, but for all this the maintenance of this doctrine, or rather of the ideas which it embodies, would be a benefit to both branches of the English people, and might by their alliance be turned into something very like an established principle of international law. What President Monroe's words really meant at the time when they were uttered is a matter of historical curiosity, but of no practical importance. But it is of moment to ascertain what is the real significance of the Monroe Doctrine, as now interpreted by Americans. Thus looked at it means at bottom two things. It means, in the first place, that no European power shall be allowed to invade the American continent; the attack upon Mexico by France must be the last invasion of its kind, and must remain a warning, not a precedent. The doctrine means, in the second place, that the predominance of the United States throughout the American continent must be admitted by foreign powers in much the same way in which all countries recognize the predominance of British authority throughout India. The Monroe Doctrine has, it is true, as yet not assumed a definite form. Before its final recognition by civilized states it will need accurate definition, and will entail on the United States the recognition of the principle which arises from the very nature of things, that acknowledged authority implies acknowledged responsibility. The matter, however, to note is that with the doctrine itself, or rather with the ideas which underlie it, England has no reason to quarrel. The dogmas that no European power must invade America, which means in effect that the United States will not tolerate such invasion, and that throughout the American continent the United States are the predominant power, constitute only the enunciation of facts which no man can change, and which, therefore, it is folly to deny or to overlook. But, further, if England and the United States were at one the Monroe Doctrine, which would avail for the protection of Canada against any European enemy of Great Britain, might be maintained as zealously by the queen as by the president. The interests of England and America, in short, in the main coincide; a common citizenship, if it tended to a permanent alliance, would be beneficial to both. It would tend to maintain general peace throughout the world, and by giving additional force to the Monroe Doctrine would at once meet the natural policy of the United States, and also enlist the aid of the Union against any foreign power who should attack English possessions in the new world. A neutralized Canada would mean a strengthened England. England and the United States, again, are bound together by community of feeling. This is an assertion which will not command the assent of my readers. Englishmen and Americans can each reproach one another for acts, and still more for words of unfriendliness. It would be irritating and useless to recall transactions which are in everybody's memory, but it is both useful and important to insist upon the undoubted fact that, in spite of the bickerings and in spite of the real causes of difference which have divided and still divide the two countries, there ex- maintenance of a huge standing army, ists a bond of common sentiment and or, still more, with any system which common feeling throughout the whole turns every citizen into a soldier. No English-speaking people, which, quite wise man will dispute that the Contiindependently of the will of this man nental ideal has its good side. There or of that man, or of this party or of is something fine, and even noble, in that party, links together the English the idea that every man should, for a Constitutional Monarchy and the En- portion of his life, take a personal glish Federal Republic. In consider- share in the defence of the state. My ing this matter we had better dismiss aim is not to compare Continental at once the hostile invectives or sar- ideals with English ideals, or to weigh casms of politicians in America and the their respective merits; my only purnot very friendly satire of writers in pose at this moment is to insist upon England. We had better also dismiss the fact that English convictions as from our memory a good deal of the to the position of the army, and as to frothy and not very genuine sentimen- the way in which it ought to be retality which is poured out by English cruited, will be found, both in Great and American speakers at public Britain and in the United States, to dinners or on other occasions on be strictly opposed to Continental ideas. which an Englishman desires to com- That the conscription is unknown in pliment the United States, or an Amer- both countries is as clear a sign as can ican wishes to tickle the ears of an En- be found of the predominance in each glish audience. In these matters of similar moral or political convicwords, good or bad, count for little. tions. Nor is it alien to our present If we want to realize the essential like- purpose to note that the absence of ness of the fundamental ideas which the conscription favors the institution will govern, in the long run, the con- of a common citizenship, since it reduct both of Great Britain and the moves the sources of disagreement United States we must look to more which always abound whenever the citsolid and permanent facts than tran- izens of the one country flee from it to sitory outbursts of rhetorical abuse another in order that they may escape or fleeting expressions of sentimental the burden of military service. affection. Our best course is to examine carefully definite examples of that kind of identity in sentiment which leads, in the long run, to identity of conduct. The two English-speaking nations, in the first place, stand apart from that admiration for military power which prevails throughout Continental Europe. The insularity of England and the physical isolation of America are, no doubt, the conditions which have enabled the English people on both sides of the Atlantic to escape from the burden of enforced military service; but if we ask why the conscription is unknown both in the United States and throughout the British Empire, the true answer is that English ideas of individual freedom, and, above all, the English conviction that the civil power ought everywhere to be supreme, are all but inconsistent either with the Similarity of opinion and practice in all matters which concern the relation of the civil power to the army is, after all, but one expression of that prevalence of common legal conceptions which reveals to any intelligent observer the essential unity of the whole English race. An English lawyer is the natural advocate of isopolity, for no one can so well appreciate the fundamental identity of English and American law, and all that this identity implies. An English barrister who lands for the first time at New York feels for a moment that he is a stranger in a strange country, the strangeness of which is increased, rather than diminished, by the fact that its inhabitants speak the tongue of England; but when once he enters an American court, or begins debating legal questions with American lawyers, he knows that he is not abroad, but at home; he breathes again the legal atmosphere to which he is accustomed. The law of America, he finds, is the law of England carried across the Atlantic, and little changed even in form. In all legal matters it is the conservatism, not the changeableness, of Americans which astonishes the English observer. Old names and old formulas meet us in every law court. Some twenty-six years ago there were to be found in Chicago in daily use forms of pleading which had long become obsolete in England. Nowhere can one discover such choice specimens both of legal learning and of legal conservatism as among the judges or lawyers of Pennsylvania, Vermont, or Massachusetts. We may be certain that men like Lord Selborne, Lord Westbury, or Lord Cairns shocked some of the ablest among American lawyers by their zeal for legal improvements or innovations. Then, too, authorities and precedents are cited by Americans, just as they are cited by ourselves, and as they never are cited by any French advocate or magistrate. The names, moreover, which carry weight are the names to which we are accustomed. Coke, Hale, Mansfield, and Blackstone are as well known, and at least as much reverenced, in Massachusetts as in England. Kent and Story, in like manner, are as much respected in an English as in an American court. Nor is the interchange of legal ideas in any sense a matter of the past. The monumental work of my friends Sir F. Pollock and Professor Maitland is studied with as much care and admiration at Harvard as at Cambridge or Oxford. One may confidently assert that the "History of English Law," or Sir William Anson's "Law of Contract," finds more readers in the United States than in England. The writings, on the other hand, of Holmes, Thayer, or of Bigelow, are in the hands of every Englishman interested in the scientific or historical study of law. Nor is the fact that Englishmen and Americans partake of and contribute to a common legal literature, and that the common law of England is the heritage of the whole English race, a matter of which it is possible to overrate the sig nificance. When at some distant p riod thinkers sum up the results of English as they now sum up the results of Grecian or of Roman civilization, they will, we may anticipate, hold that its main permanent effect has been the diffusion throughout the whole world of the law of England, together with those notions of freedom, of justice, and of equity to which English law gives embodiment. Physical science is of no special country. In the fields of art and of literature England has found rivals or superiors. But it is Rome alone which can compare with England in the capacity for establishing her own law in strange lands. The victories of English law have as yet not captivated popular imagination. Yet it is surely a striking thought that wherever you find the English language, in London, in New York, in California, and in Australia, there you find the law, or much of the law, of England. English law has, moreover, already, in a sense, transcended the limits of the English language. It can hardly be termed an accident, or, if accident it be called, it is one of the most impressive results of chance that the most English, if not the greatest, of the historians of England should have created for India a system of codification which there exhibits the law of England in a new and most characteristic form. Macaulay's Penal Code is as original a work as his "History of England," and may, perhaps, be even longer remembered than the history. Let my readers try to realize the greatness of English achievements in the field of law, for they will then feel that Englishmen in England and Englishmen in America have taken, and are taking, an equal part in the great work of the whole English race, and that their common success in this common effort arises from their possessing the same conceptions of legal order and of legal justice. Here, if anywhere, may be seen community of sentiment and convictions. Common citizenship is the logical, one might almost say the necessary, result of the inheritance of is far less noticeable than the qualities a common law. Identity of sentiment, however, if it exist, reveals itself with nations as with individuals far more clearly in the character of the leaders whom they revere, than in the principles which they avow or follow. Compare, for a moment, two men each of whom stands high among the heroes of his nation. Place Lord Canning side by side with Abraham Lincoln. Comparison, it is true, at first sight suggests nothing but contrast. The polished, and it may be over cultivated, English nobleman who, in virtue of an historic name and of an inherited position, glides almost as a matter of course into the high places of English public life has, we fancy, nothing in common with the self-ed ucated and half-educated lawyer from Illinois who thrusts his way to the front in the rough conflict of American politics, and by the shrewdness of his judgment and the readiness of his humor becomes, at a crisis of his country's destiny, the representative of a national party which has fought its way to power. But if the matter be looked at closely the English governorgeneral and the American president will be found to resemble each other in the position which each occupied in the task which each was called upon to perform, and still more in the methods by which each brought his work to a successful issue. Canning and Lincoln alike occupied a position which could hardly have been assigned to a man of purely civil experience in any country not governed by Englishmen. Each was set to perform duties for the fulfilment of which he had not received the appropriate training. Each was a civilian called upon to suppress a gigantic armed rebellion. Each, though without knowledge of warfare was responsible for the choice of commanders, and for the action of armies. committed errors, but each achieved complete and permanent success. The one saved the unity of the British Empire, the other the unity of the United States. But for our present purpose the success of Canning and of Lincoln Each by which each was enabled to perform his great work. In their unwavering steadfastness of purpose, in their absolute belief in the cause of which they were the defenders, in their abhorrence of violence, in their endless patience, in their trust in law, in their supreme clemency which, though it may at moments seem to be weakness, is in reality only another form of prudence and of justice, the English governor-general and the American president are each other's true counterparts. They each exhibit, with some of the deficiencies of civilians, the highest form of civic virtue. Their statesmanship was not the statesmanship of Cavour, of Bismarck, or of Thiers. We may well doubt whether it would ever have met with full appreciation in Italy, in Germany, or in France. But it is a kind of statesmanship which will always command the reverence of the best and wisest men of England and of America, for it represents all that is truest and noblest in the political ideas of the whole English people. As long as Canning and Lincoln are held in honor throughout the English-speaking world it will be vain to deny that each branch of the English people cherishes a common ideal of goodness and greatness. Common citizenship, then, may well lead to permanent alliance; but my object at the present moment is not to press on a political connection between the two countries, which, if it ever comes into existence, must grow up as the natural result of events, but to urge the advisability of proclaiming a universal English citizenship throughout the whole English world. The real and substantial question is whether such isopolity would not confer considerable benefits on Englishmen and Americans alike. It is difficult to see how any member of the English race on either side of the Atlantic can answer this inquiry with a negative. Fourthly, the time is opportune for the institution of a common citizenship. This is an assertion which will be met by many of my readers with a direct denial. Recent events have discovered an amount of unfriendliness on the part of Americans which in England has excited at least as much surprise as pain. The controversy about Venezuela, the mode in which that dispute was sprung upon the world by President Cleveland, the indifference, not to say the hostility, of the Senate to the Arbitration Treaty are in every one's memory; nor is it wise or reasonable to suppose that expressions of hostility to England represent nothing but the recklessness of politicians. Politicians are reckless and unprincipled, but in their rashness and in their self-seeking there is a method. They aim at pleasing their constituents or their party. If an American senator denounces any attempt to guard against war with England he believes his invectives will be applauded in the state which he represents. He may be mistaken, but he is assuredly as good a judge of the opinion of his constituents as can be his English critics. It must therefore be supposed that at this moment there are large bodies of Americans who are under the influence of feelings unfriendly towards England. It may therefore be argued that for the present, at least, we may well set aside all attempts to draw closer the ties between Englishmen and Americans. My reply is that in matters of permanent policy we must distinguish carefully between the passing feeling of the moment and the true tendencies of the time. Months or years count for little in the annals of a great nation, and if we look at the lasting tendencies of the age we shall conclude that the time is opportune for the formation of a common citizenship. Both England and America are at present strong and prosperous. On neither side could it now be alleged that a step towards union was made by the one country or the other because it needed aid or protection. The moral obstacles again, which in past times have kept the two branches of the English people apart, have been swept away by the current of events. The fancied opposition between a republic and a constitutional monarchy has vanished. No man of ordinary sense now denies that either polity may, according to circumstances, be a legitimate and a beneficial form of government; each is compatible with order, with freedom and with progress. No writer or theorist exists insane enough even to desire the foundation of a monarchy at Washington, and few are the Republicans of America who would wish to see an elective president seated on the throne of Queen Victoria. The existence of slavery combined with the visible imminence of the irrepressible conflict between North and South was till past the middle of this century fatal to any scheme for strengthening the ties which bind together Englishmen and Americans. But slavery is now as unknown throughout the United States as throughout the British Empire. The memories further of the contest between England and her colonies have passed away, and what is more important, we can look upon the struggle in a way different from the way in which it was regarded by our grandfathers and our fathers. We all of us now know that George III. and the nation who supported George III. were not consciously bent on a policy of tyranny. The king, his supporters, and his opponents believed, almost without exception, that the independence of the colonies involved the ruin of Englaud. This was an error, but in judging men's actions we must allow for their delusions. The Englishmen, moreover, who followed the policy of their king, held as we now know, with truth, that during the earlier part of the War of Independence, England was supported by a large amount of colonial loyalty. The mistake of the English Tories was that they engaged in a conflict wherein success was impossible and victory would have been a disaster. But their motives were not mean or in themselves blameworthy. They resembled greatly the motives which actuated the policy of Lincoln. He believed, and in his case with truth, that the rebellion could not be suppressed and the unity of the country be preserved. That he saw facts far more |